Mark Tufo: Zombie Fallout

She got in to the shotgun seat, although Travis was already in the passenger seat behind her with the window rolled down and the shotgun hanging out, so I guess technically he was in the shotgun seat. I started the car before I hit the garage remote. Tracy rolled her window down.

I couldn’t hold my tongue. “Really?” I asked as I looked at her.

“What?” she replied. “It’s stuffy in here, and you stink.”

“Come back,” I motioned dramatically. “Please come back from wherever you’ve gone. Both of you need to roll up your windows, at least until we get moving.” I got another ‘fine’ out of Tracy, and Travis seemed a little pissed that I was taking his fun away.

The garage door rattled open. I couldn’t see anything right away because of the disparity between the brightness in the garage and the gloom that was our back alleyway, but the thud that hit our rear end as I backed out was obvious. I was a breath away from opening my door and seeing what I had hit when my neighbor smeared up against my window. It’s a good thing I had Henry shit on my foot. It masked what I let go of in my pants. My neighbor from across the alleyway was a decent person in a bull-dykeish way. Don’t get me wrong, I liked her immensely, I just always felt like she was sizing me up for an arm wrestling competition and I would have put my money on her. She owned a Ford pick-up truck, and wore more plaid and wife beater t-shirts than your average trailer park resident. She sported a mullet, which hadn’t been seen in these parts since 1984. She also owned more tools than I did and I ran a Handyman business on the side. You get the general picture.

The thing that pressed up against my car was no longer Jo(e?). She left a trail of pus and guts all across my side of the car, and slimy green pustules burst from her cheek. I swore a maggot crawled out, but by then I had had enough. I hit the accelerator hard enough to almost put my car through her garage door on the opposite side of the causeway. The thing that I had initially hit dragged itself over to my tool shelves and began to pull itself up. I wanted to get out of the car and kill those two but more zombies began to pile into both ends of the alleyway. I had no wish to see how many I could run over before the car stalled so I hit the remote and watched the garage door begin its slow descent, only then realizing that when we got home we were going to have two zombies in our garage to welcome us back. ‘Great!’ (sarcasm again.)

CHAPTER 3

Journal Entry - 3

I was able to get out of the alley before the majority of the zombies could begin to block us in. I winced when I sideswiped one, not because I had hit something but because I knew from the force of the impact I had just put a dent in my wife’s car. I didn’t even look over towards her, but the right side of my face was melting from the glare that was directed at it. There were fewer cars on the road than I would have expected for 8 o’clock on a Thursday night, but that was more than made up for by the sheer number of zombies. Most were just milling about looking for something or should I say ‘somebody’ to eat. Every few hundred feet or so there would be a cluster of ten or so tearing something apart. You and I both know what they were tearing apart but luckily my brain had enough protective competence to mask over that small insignificant fact.

“Oh Jesus,” my wife muttered as we passed a small cluster, just ravaging some poor soul. I can tell you right now these variants on the traditional zombies weren’t just interested in the brains of their victims. I saw one of the zombies look up from his ‘meal’ with what appeared to be a thigh muscle hanging out of its putrid maw. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Tracy continued.

“Then roll down your window. Travis you too, if anything gets too close just shoot, just make sure it’s dead first,” I suggested. Travis looked at me questioningly. “You know what I mean,” I clarified. “Just don’t kill something that’s still alive.” Yeah, I made about as much sense as a Yankee’s fan visiting Fenway Park.

Most of the cars that were on the road weren’t moving; they had been abandoned. I had to keep my speed down to avoid the cars, the zombies, and the occasional victim-to-be.

“Shouldn’t we help them?” my wife asked as she pulled her head back into the car, already looking better now that she'd emptied her stomach. I motioned that she had a little something on the side of her face. She lifted her hand to remove the offending detritus.

“Uh, other side,” I explained. She missed again. I wiped my face again to show her where it was.

“Forget the damn puke!” she yelled. “Shouldn’t we try to help?”

“No,” I mumbled.

“What? Speak up, I can’t hear your altruism,” she retorted acerbically.

“Listen, if we stop we become vulnerable, and we don’t know if the person we would be helping is infected. We can’t take that chance, we have to look out for us,” I argued. I’m not sure if my claim was good enough. Was that how I felt or was I just trying to cover up my cowardice?

Yeah, I was scared out of my mind that first day. Is it that easy for you to pass judgment? We’re mostly in a standoff with the zombies now, but back in the beginning when panic reigned supreme the only thing that mattered to me was me and my family. God, I just hope not in that order.

I probably would have gotten another sarcasm-laden ‘fine’ from my wife if not for the thunder that tore through the car. Travis had decapitated a zombie that was approaching our right side while I had slowed to avoid a nasty five or six car pile-up. I don’t think that he had nearly the feelings of dread I had when I had killed the zombie at our front door. To him this was not so far removed from playing Left 4 Dead on his Xbox 360.

“Got one Dad!” he yelled triumphantly, a gleam in his eye. I muttered my congratulations but all I could think of was some old phrase I had come across in one of my English classes: ‘Take heed your actions lest ye become like the enemy ye seek to destroy.’

I didn’t have much time to reflect on my misgivings as I turned into the Wal-Mart parking lot. It was worse than my worst fears of how this was going to play out. Cars were strewn across the parking lot. It looked like the longest happy hour in history had just finished and the patrons were all trying to get home at the same time. What was worse than the cars were the couple of hundred zombies strolling across the parking lot. I did a quick drive by the front of the store, and I could tell that an almost equal number were inside meandering about. Well, I bet tripe was going to be scarce. This did not bode well for Justin. I was in a quandary; I just didn’t know what to do. I had to look for him, even if he had become one of those things, but I didn’t even know how or where to begin. It’s not like I could ask one of the zombies if they had seen a zombie that matched the description of my son. Luckily, Travis solved my problem with one simple question.

“Dad, why aren’t the zombies attacking us?” Travis asked. I wasn’t traveling much more than 5 miles an hour, fast enough to keep any of them from catching us but not fast enough to stop one from coming towards us. It was then that we took notice of a large congregation of zombies merely standing, all of them facing towards the store with their faces (or what remained of them) all upturned. They almost looked like they were worshipping, but what do zombies worship, is there a God of the Tasty Brain? Is their Eucharist a tiny slice of dried brain matter? I know! I know! It’s sacrilegious but that’s what I was thinking at the time. Even the remnants of the zombies that weren’t already together in this impromptu meeting seemed to be heading in that direction. Some of the zombies that were recent accident victims from the carnage in the parking lot were dragging what remained of their former host body to the flock. Every once in a while I even noticed one or two of the zombies convulsing as if they were receiving HIS or ITS word.