Mark Tufo - Zombie Fallout

“Bear’s not going to hurt you, Dad,” Travis said without much conviction in his voice.

‘Yeah, he’s gonna kill me.’ I thought sourly.

“Get out of here Trav,” I said through gritted teeth. I wanted my son out of harm’s way and I didn’t want him to see me get ripped apart either. Bear didn’t so much as blink when Travis loudly squealed his chair as he pushed away from the table. “That’s a good boy, Bear.”

His uncropped tail didn’t move, it was pointed straight back, the slight curve gave it the appearance of a furry sword. Everything about this dog pointed to menace. Its lips pulled back to reveal inch long canines, drool flowed from its maw. Hair bristled, its haunches coiled low, ready to pounce. I needed my son to get out of here before my legs gave way. They were shaking that much. Travis had made it to the entryway in the kitchen and glanced back once to look at me. I hoped it wasn’t the last time he saw me alive. As Travis rounded the corner, I heard him run up the stairs, I was guesstimating that help was ten or fifteen seconds away, Bear was positioned to strike, now. I moved slightly to my left hoping to get within range of the knife stand. Either the damn dog had extrasensory powers and knew what I was about to do or my number had finally come up. He lunged. I pushed over all the way to the left, my hand grasping wildly for anything that could be used for defense, my hand gripped tightly on a dishtowel. My brain had no true higher function. I was on the lowest plain of thought, SURVIVAL. I whipped that towel out in front of me, ready to deliver one hell of a bullwhip crack. I braced for an impact that never came. Bear had jumped up and put his large fore paws on the counter by the kitchen sink. His gaze riveted to the kitchen window. I was praising any deity that would listen for sparing my life. Help was bounding down the stairs. I looked to my hands and my ineffectual weapon and dropped it lest I got caught with it. Justin was first around the corner, .357 waving wildly, his fever-racked body barely able to hold the weapon.

“Hold on!” I said putting my hands up as I stood up and stepped in front of Bear.

I was as much in danger from that wildly swinging muzzle as Bear was. Justin looked confused. He had been sleeping soundly when the call for help had come. He wasn’t even clear about where the help was to be directed. He was moving quickly from the sleeping world into the waking one but not at a speed quick enough to avert a potential disaster.

“Justin!” I yelled, “It’s all right, put the gun down!”

He wasn’t convinced. “You sure?”

“No,” I answered. “I mean, in the immediate yes, but something is going on.”

I moved slowly away from my blocking position of Bear’s back. He still had not moved, his gaze fixated on the window, his muzzle pulled back in a wicked snarl. I knew what I had to do. I just didn’t want to look through that window. It was an omen of bad things to come, a window into the unfathomable, a gaping wound in the fabric of humanity. Use whatever adjectives you want, it was all of those things. I climbed onto the kitchen counter. Bear managed a sidelong glance at me as I brushed past his enormously large teeth. The big bad wolf had nothing on this dog. I took a deep breath as I began to move closer to the gap caused by the bad tape job. I became enraged for a moment at who had put this bag up and their shoddy workmanship. I wanted to get down off this counter and ‘give it’ to whoever had not been able to tape a bag up correctly, as if this was the cause of all our ills, as if this small hole had manifested whatever demons were lying in wait outside. But I knew that was ridiculous, it was just a stalling tactic. I didn’t want to see what had to be out there. It was Fritzy and he was going to exact his own revenge. I moved closer to the triangular shaped opening, convinced that a cold flat black eye would be staring back at me.

Or it could be even worse than Fritzy. The zombie girl was standing alone in my backyard signaling me to open the back door, and she wanted me to one by one send out my family and friends. She wanted me to watch as each person I loved and cherished in this world was torn asunder. She would laugh as she tore each of their throats open, drinking greedily of their lives. I shook, and Bear whined.

“What is it Mike?” Tracy asked as she came up to the counter and began absently stroking Bear’s raised mane.

I shook my head trying to clear away the malignant thoughts. “Uh, I don’t know.” I didn’t want to tell her what I imagined was out there or that I hadn’t built up enough courage to look.

And in her typical pragmatic way she said. “Well don’t you think you should find out?”

I wanted to yell, ‘Why don’t you fucken climb up here and find out for yourself! Because I think it’s either the fucken crazy guy I murdered yesterday coming back to take me with him into the seventh circle of hell or it’s my zombie girlfriend come to give everyone I love the kiss of death!’ But instead of the histrionics I merely answered with “Yes dear.” It seemed more appropriate.

For the fourth, fifth…tenth time I took a calming deep breath. Whoever tells you that works wonders is full of crap. It did nothing but more fully oxygenate my overactive imagination, like putting gasoline on a tire fire. By now the entire population of the house was in the kitchen, armed to the gills, and all eyes were on me. I put my right eye to the hole. What I saw perplexed the hell out of me. I saw…nothing. Well I mean not exactly nothing, there was the grill, the bench swing, Henry’s sunbathing couch, a snow shovel leaning up against the garage. I guess what I meant to say was there was nothing out of the ordinary. I pulled more of the bag down so I could survey the ground. The snow was as fresh as when it had fallen. There were no foreboding footsteps leading up to the backdoor, no drops of blood from a vengeful specter.

The gate had not been opened or it would have left the telltale signs in the snow. There was no valid reason as to why Bear had behaved the way he had. I was about to re-adhere the bag when I noticed a bit of snow falling. That doesn’t mean too much in the middle of winter in Colorado, but the day was sunny, with not a cloud in the sky. The snow had fallen off the fence that separated my yard from Techno Neighbor’s. Something had bumped up against it and in turn had knocked off some of the snow that had accumulated on the pickets and supports. I still had no reason to be overly alarmed, but Bear had already set the precedent. No sooner had the unsettled snow landed softly in my yard than the fence came crashing down into my grill, knocking it over. The noise was phenomenally loud. I hopped off the counter, not taking my eyes off the developing scene in the backyard.

“Mike, what the hell is going on?” Tracy asked. She couldn’t see what was happening from her vantage point.

“Uh, zombies,” I said flatly.

Zombies were pouring into my yard through the busted fence. I was half tempted to go out there and yell at them for messing up my grill. I loved that thing, the Char-Broil Master Smoker. I had paid good money for that when I was still earning a decent paycheck and to see it just get trampled like that pissed me off.

“Uh, Mike are the back doors locked?” Paul asked.

My eyes went to the back door. That was the weak link in all of this. I swore at myself for having not gotten around to fixing that. I just always assumed the gate would hold, and technically it did. It was the freaken fence that had let me down.

“Mike?” Paul asked again.

“Yeah they’re locked, but they wouldn’t hold back a determined woodchuck if he wanted to get in,” I answered. It was time for action, not reflection. “All right everybody, grab whatever you can out of the fridge and under the cupboards and head upstairs.”