'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Maine

It was early evening and Mrs. Deneaux was sitting on the deck overlooking the pond. Her gaze had that far away look as she reflected back on her life.

“Beautiful out here isn’t it?” Tracy asked as she came out the sliding door. She was holding a steaming cup of tea, hoping that it would somehow drive the cold in her soul away.

“I’ve seen prettier,” Mrs. Deneaux said as she took a drag.

Tracy looked past the comment. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

Mrs. Deneaux looked over to the woman suspiciously. “For what?”

“BT told us all what you did. He said they probably wouldn’t have made it if not for you. I just wanted to thank you for bringing my brother-in-law and friend back.”

Mrs. Deneaux’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know why I did it?”

“I would imagine because their well being meant something to you,” Tracy replied not sure of the basis to Deneaux’s question.

“I did it because I stood a better chance of surviving with them than without them. Not because I have any personal affinity for either one. I think your brother-in-law is a dolt personally, and BT was just your husband’s lackey. Without Mike directing him, he is as unsure of himself as an eighteen-year-old virgin with a hooker. Now Michael I miss, that was a man that could get out of a jam, smart enough to know what to do and dumb enough to do it himself.” She laughed at her wit.

Tracy was aghast.

“Oh don’t look so surprised, dearie, self-preservation is a pretty strong motivator.”

“At the expense of all others?” Tracy asked.

“Who should be more important to me than me?”

“And you can live with yourself like that?”

“Quite comfortably,” Deneaux answered. She turned back to the pond as a lone loon landed and made an other-worldly cry. Deneaux took another drag from her cigarette. “Are we done talking?” she asked. Tracy had already gone back in.

“Fun isn’t she?” BT asked as Tracy fumed past.

She stopped to respond. “You didn’t at some point think killing her and dropping her on the side of the roadway was a good idea?”

“Every couple of miles, but she never put the damn pistol away,” he responded truthfully.

“How’s Gary doing?” Tracy asked, trying to take her mind off of Deneaux.

“He’s pretty torn up. He thinks he alone is responsible for Mike’s death.”

“That’s ridiculous, Mike is...was a grown man.” Tracy swallowed hard as she made the adjustment from present to past tense.

“He can’t help it, as his big brother he feels like he should have been able to protect him.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Tracy said.

“That’ll do him some good, I think,” BT replied.

“Do you think it’s over, BT?” Tracy asked, her eyes pleading for some hope. “Will my children, will my grandchild be able to live in a world in recovery?”

BT wanted to, no, needed to give her the answer she so desperately sought. He could not find it, though, and remained silent.

Cindy who had been seated in the room, her eyes red from crying, looked at the two of them. “We’re all dead. There is no hope for us. All day long we prepare for the zombies. We are trying so hard to keep them out never realizing that in so doing we are preventing ourselves from being able to leave. And I’m sorry, but this isn’t the Garden of Eden, I don’t want to spend all eternity here. The zombies do not die on their own unless we kill them…they will ALWAYS be out there!” She shouted. “How can we possibly defeat that? Even if we somehow keep them from coming in, what have we gained?”

Tracy wanted to argue with her that, as long as they were alive, they had a chance; she just didn’t have it in her. She was sadder in life than she could ever remember being and she could not see a way to a better place. The survivors on the planet were quickly gravitating to two distinct groups. There were the Cindys; they were defeated and merely marking time until the end. On the far side of the spectrum were the Deneauxs: the ultra-survivors that would do all in their power to stay alive no matter who they had to crush in order to get there.

Mike had treaded the line in between, firmly holding on to the belief that they could somehow not only survive but win, without sacrificing who he was. With his passing, so too did that dream seem to have evaporated. If not for her children, Tracy thought she might find a way to visit Mike sooner.

***

“I was wondering when you would find me,” Gary said to his sister-in-law.

“It wasn’t easy,” Tracy said. She had spent the last ten minutes hunting him down only to find him at the end of Ron’s driveway.

He turned towards her, his eyes shot through with red. Tracy thought that he probably hadn’t slept since they got back. “I’m so sorry, Tracy,” he started.

“For what?” she asked wholeheartedly.

“Mike.”

“Stop it, just stop the ‘woe is me’, Gary. I heard what happened. How could you possibly blame yourself?”

“I left him behind.”

Tracy pressed on, even though she faltered for a moment as she thought about Mike dropping to his knees in the middle of the roadway. “Didn’t he pretty much beg you to leave?”

“Yes,” Gary said, looking down at his feet.

“And what if you hadn’t?” she asked. She waited for long seconds, Gary did not answer. “You’d both be dead. That’s what would have happened. BT would have had to come here and tell your father that he lost two sons!” she said heatedly.

“I wished it were me.” Tears now flowing freely.

“That’s always the case, isn’t it? We’d always like to take the place of the one we lost, and I don’t think it is nearly as selfless an act as we would have ourselves believe.”

“What?” Gary said, looking up from his shoes to Tracy’s hard set of features.

“Taking the place of someone we love. It’s not all we think it is, any of us would do it in a heartbeat. Oh, I guess partly because we’d like that other person to be safe, but you know what the bigger part of the equation is?” Gary was looking at her wonderingly. “It’s so we’re not left behind to harbor the guilt, the what-ifs, and the pain of moving on without the person we love. How much easier would it be to just be in the void of death? No feelings, no pain, no remorse, and especially no guilt,” she said as she propped Gary’s dropping face with her hand.

“He was my brother,” Gary sobbed.

“He was my everything,” Tracy said solemnly. “And I hold not one shred of blame against you Gary…not one. So if I don’t, you shouldn’t either. Do you understand?”

He nodded. “Thank you, Tracy. Mike was a lucky man.”

“I like to think so.”

Gary walked away. Tracy thought his spirits may have been improved. She couldn’t truly tell, though, because she was sobbing.

***

Justin had been watching the exchange between his mother and his uncle from the window in the living room. He was still having a difficult time coming to grips that his father had passed; and now, whether he wanted it or not, he was now the man of the house. It was not a responsibility he felt he was quite ready for or one in which he felt qualified. Especially since he had just recently started to hear the siren call of Eliza in the deepest recesses of his mind.

She was tugging on the folds of his being. At first it was so subtle that he thought it was merely an echo of possession, but he could no longer deny it, whatever was happening was increasing. It had gone from a ghost feeling to a feathery light touch and he was not of the ilk to believe it would subside.

“Easter Evans was a sham,” he said aloud as he absently rubbed his forehead, referring back to the man in Virginia that had supposedly exercised his demons. “She was just biding her time. She made it look like she was gone, and now she’s going to use me to kill the rest of my family. Well I’m not going to fucking let her!” His thoughts were not nearly as convinced.

Travis had been by the entrance to the living room about to tell his brother that their Uncle Ron needed their help with one of the fences. He had wondered who Justin was talking to, and when he peeked in and realized it was only himself, he had for some reason not let himself be known. Travis had noticed that his instincts had been amped up since the zombies came and he was heeding their advice now to not be seen.

Eliza’s back, Travis thought as Justin was talking. He was wondering how long Justin would take to come to that realization and if he would ever tell the rest of the group. He quickly left when Justin stopped speaking. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thought. At least as long as he didn’t say it aloud his mother couldn’t berate him for it.

***

“Would you believe me if I told you I don’t have a shred of evidence but that I know Eliza is on her way?” Travis said to his uncle who was seated on his small backhoe.

“No evidence?” Ron asked.

“Not so much as a napkin with a lipstick stain.”

“And you’re sure of it?”

“I am, Uncle Ron.”

“Any chance you could tell me why you believe that?”

“I could, but I have my reasons not to right now.” Basically I want to see how long it takes my brother to raise the flag. The longer it takes him to warn us the less I’m going to trust him.

Ron held his nephew’s gaze for a few moments, looking for any seeds of doubt in the young man’s face, when he was satisfied there were none he spoke. “How long?”

“Not as long as we want. Other than that, I don’t have any answers.”

“Not very forthcoming are you?” Ron asked. “Fine, we’ll play this your way for now, but eventually we’ll have to talk. Where’s your brother?”

“Damn I knew I forgot to do something.”

***

“You alright, dad?” Lyndsey asked her father.

He was standing in his living room holding a portrait of his family they had taken at Sears. His wife Mary had dragged him out because they were having a sale on the pictures. It had taken over an hour to get his four boys still enough to get proper clothes on them and get their hair combed, but that still paled to the two hours his princess Lyndsey had taken primping her eight-year-old self.

He turned to his daughter with the $4.99 portrait in his hand. “When I look at this picture, I can only see black exes where I should see your mom, Glenn, and Mike’s faces.”

“Oh, dad,” Lyndsey said as she came in to be next to her father.

“And I can’t help but wonder who the next black ex will descend on. It is against the nature of the universe for a parent to watch their children die, yet two of mine have passed and I have not even been able to bury either one. Where is the justice in that?”

Lyndsey had a myriad of platitudes, ‘It’ll be okay, we’ll make it, hang on, live to fight another day’ but they were just hollow words. They had no meaning beyond the airwaves they pushed with the sound of them. She did what she could to console her father.