'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Mike Journal Entry 14

It was after three in the morning when we finally pulled into Searsport.

“Now what?” Azile asked.

“I’d rather just ditch the damn truck, but we’re still ten miles out. However, if we get too close, they’ll hear us coming and if we stop then and don’t show up they’ll get suspicious. How many of those driver’s would recognize you?” I asked, the beginning of an idea forming in my head.

“Kong, Horatio, and maybe four or five others. Why?”

“I think we play the odds.”

“Whose odds? Vegas odds? Because those are never good.”

“So you have the potential of nine people knowing you including Tomas and Eliza, I only have two. When I tell you to pull over, do it, then I’ll drive.”

Azile’s expression was dubious at best.

“It’ll only be for a little way,” I assured her.

“Kong will recognize you. I mean he’ll recognize that you don’t belong, I mean,” Azile explained.

“That will have to be a problem we deal with later. First things first, there’s a dry cleaner at the center of town, pull over when I tell you.”

Between how ill-fitting and smelly my clothes were, Azile didn’t have a comment about my wanting to change.

The sound of the idling truck barely masked the plate glass shattering as I threw an ashtray stand through it. It had been months since police had come to any crime scene and still I looked around guiltily, old habits die hard.

“Hurry up!” Azile said through the window. “And no suits.”

“What are the odds they’ll have jeans here?” I asked her.

“At a dry cleaners? Just hurry,” she reiterated.

I stepped into the blackness of the store, the echoing engine vibrations were slightly disorienting. The long ‘ess’ of plastic wrapped clothes was directly in front of me as were every conceivable nightmare I could think of. I was convinced a horde of zombies laid in wait. I quickly moved behind the counter and scooped up a handful of clothes off the rack. I brushed anything that looked remotely like business wear off to the floor. I wasn’t left with much to choose from.

“Who dry cleans a skull cap?” I asked the non-existent attendant. Someone was still in my corner as I grabbed the small bag off the line. It covered my Eliza blocker perfectly and gave me sort of a World War 2 James Dean look. Hey it’s my mind I can live in any fantasy I want and this way I could get rid of the dreaded Yankees cap.

There was a long sleeved shirt that didn’t look too bad; it had the name of a bar on it, Rollie’s or something close to that. It was a little snug when I put it on, but nothing like my previous duds, and I knew this was clean. Now I needed some pants that didn’t look like I shopped in the boys’ department. This was proving a little more difficult. First off, most of the clothes were women’s, I thought I should still be alright, Maine is known for its stout women. They were of the power suit variety though and then I came across not what I wanted but what I could use.

“They still make Chino’s?” I asked holding the pants up to the near non-existent light. It was difficult to tell, but they looked brown from where I was standing. I turned so that I wasn’t facing Azile and quickly stripped out of the old and into the new.

I ran back to the truck much more comfortable than when I had departed. The brightness of the dome light took some time to adjust as I got back in my seat.

“Well you look good,” Azile laughed.

“My pants are purple,” I said horrified.

Azile was laughing, but she didn’t really let loose until she had me show her the back of my shirt.

“What?”

“It says you won a wet t-shirt contest.”

“Are you kidding me?” I pulled the shirt over my head, and dammit if she wasn’t right. For reasons known only to me, I looked at the care tag, ‘dry clean only’. “Why the fuck would they make a wet t-shirt, shirt, dry clean only?”

“You want to get different clothes?” she asked.

I did and I didn’t. Nothing happened and I didn’t hear anything in there, but that dry cleaners just didn’t feel right. Plus, being this close to my family, I just wanted to get there. “Let’s go,” I told Azile, taking one last look back.

“Last chance,” she told me.

I sat steadfast. When we took the final road before my father’s dirt road drive I had Azile pull over.

“It’s not far is it?” she asked as I ground the gears into drive, forcing rather than allowing. The truck was bucking like a bull with his balls cinched tight—although, if my balls were cinched I’d probably just be crying in a corner.

“You should hide,” I told her as I came up over a small rise. Trucks were lined up on both sides of the roadway, zombies were everywhere. Occasionally I would see a human, but for the most part, they were staying out of the way of the zombies. I eased the truck into the back of the last truck in the line. And by ‘easing’ I mean ‘tapped’ the bumper and by ‘tapped’ the bumper I mean did damage that would have entailed exchanging insurance papers in an earlier version of the world. The noise should not have gone unnoticed, but the sound of gunfire was prevalent. It didn’t stop the owner of the truck from coming out of his cab to investigate.

“Hey, you fucking nimrod, what is your problem?” he yelled as he hopped down, shying away as a couple of zombies checked him out, then moved on.

“I’m real sorry,” I told him.

“Oh, you will be, dipshit,” he said as he moved closer. “Get out here!” he shouted as he walked past the damage I had done to his rig.

“I’m trying…the seatbelt is stuck.”

“Let me help you with that!” he said angrily as he opened my door and hopped on the running board.

The light glinted off the silver of the chain he wore around his neck. I snatched it before he could react, then I pushed him with my hand on his face off of the truck and onto the pavement. Zombies swept in before he could sound the alarm. It was gruesome being this close to a person being eaten, the sounds of lips smacking and teeth cracking into bone. I hoped no one else would notice the zombie congregation as they knelt at the altar of flesh.

A few zombies looked up at me as I came out of the truck. I put the vial around my neck and they went back to the business of orally eviscerating my accident victim. I hastily walked to the back of my truck and moved the latch. Fritz was no longer clutching the cat, for better or worse, the vermin had decided it was better off on its own, I’m sure the stringy thing hadn’t tasted any good, but I won’t lie and tell you I wasn’t happy to see it gone.

“Oh thank God,” Fritz said. He was huddled up against the doors, nearly falling out as I opened them, snot, tears and the drool of the closest zombies covered him from head to toe. I ripped the chain from his neck quickly closing the door to his screams. The trailer rocked a little as Fritz became a late night snack.

I climbed back into the truck and handed Azile a necklace. “Take this,” I told her as I handed it into the back of the sleeper.

“Where’d you get it?”

“Do you really want to know?” I asked back. She accepted it without a response. “I’m going to see if I can find anything out.”

“What about me?”

“I’ll lock the doors. I should be right back, if I’m not, consider me lost.”

Her eyes got big at that statement.

“Azile, if that’s the case, unhitch the damn trailer and get out of here, just leave. If you do stay close enough to figure out what happened and you see Eliza leave, go west or north, just get out of here. If not, come back. Whoever is left standing will take you in.”

“Mike, I came here to kill Eliza. I’m not leaving until that’s done.”

“Okay, let me see what I can find out,” I told her as I got back out of the truck making sure to lock both sides up.

The zombies had pretty much stripped the truck driver clean. Most had left as he was down to about bone marrow; but a few of the more ravenous were even going after that. I pushed them away and I kicked what remained underneath his truck just to avoid any prying eyes. We were far enough from the action, but there wasn’t any reason to take unnecessary risks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so much a kick as it was a push with my boot, because there just wasn’t enough of him left for my sole to find purchase on.

“Fucking gross,” I said looking at my boot that was now covered in what I was going to call ‘goo’. I walked the rest of the way down Dowboin lane, then took the left down onto my father’s lane. I was still about a quarter of a mile from the house but this was where all the activity was happening. The zombies were present but they were very sparse, those that I could see where heading towards the Talbot compound. I saw a knot of men and had to imagine that Eliza was in the middle of it.

I had my gun and I was weighing out the odds of success. If it were just zombies I had to deal with I might have taken a chance, and I still wasn’t sure she was in the throng. I caught a glimpse of her as the group broke up. A large man was walking in my direction. Eliza went to wherever evil bitches go.

“I need prior military volunteers!” the large man was shouting.

“Fuck it,” I muttered. At least I wasn’t lying when I told him I was prior military. “Here.” I raised my hand.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked stopping right in front of me.

“I came in with Fritz. I helped him fix his truck, he told me what was going on and I wanted in. My name is... (what the fuck is my name?) Josh, Joshua Buker.” No clue where that came from but happy for the inspiration.

“You all vialed up?” the man asked.

I showed him. He seemed to have completely missed my pause as I sought to name myself, understandable with how much was going on, add to that the repeated rifle shooting.

“Well, if he trusted you enough to give you his spare, then that’s good enough for me.”

He had a spare? I thought.

“Where’s he at?”

“He’s working on his trailer, told me to see what was going on.”

“You’re prior military?”

“Marines…Afghanistan and Iraq,” I told him.

“Good enough for me, I’ve got a team with two Navy Seals, one Army Ranger and a Green Beret.”

“Great,” I said. Why don’t we just add in some fucking special forces ninjas to make it interesting? I thought. The Army guys would be tough, but the Navy Seals would be brutal, I love my Marine Corps, but the SEALS were second to none, not only in the US, but the entire planet.

“My name is Kong.” I stuck my hand out to shake, he looked at it and then at my face. I got the hint. “You take care of this…then I’ll shake your hand.”

I nodded. What I wanted to do was punch him in the head. Instead, I asked him where I could be briefed about what I had volunteered for.

Half an hour later I had an extra four magazines of ammo plus two grenades. Of the five men, I had come out of the service with the lowest rank, and now I was the oldest among them. My job was to bring up the rear, in this case, that was just fine. Someone had wrangled up a camouflage top for me which I was thankful to wear; the purple pants wouldn’t be a problem in the impenetrable light. We melted into the woods and past the loose ring of men surrounding the house. There was a small sliver of moon to guide us by. I could see the now useless spotlights, shards of glass hanging precariously from them.

I waited until the two SEALS and the Green Beret entered into the ring of zombies before I made my move. I slung my rifle so that it was on my back and closed in.

“Watch it, fucking jarhead,” the Ranger told me as I kicked the side of his boot. He turned I think to give me more shit, then, ironically, I shoved the knife he had given me into his Adam’s apple. I thought the fibrous knot would resist more, but the knife cut the neck protrusion neatly in two. He gurgled as I drove it further in severing his spinal column.

His eyes pleaded for an answer, so I gave him one. “My name is Michael Talbot and that’s my family you’re trying to kill.” He might have understood, but that wasn’t making his passing any easier. I grabbed the chain off his neck and dropped him for the zombies, hurriedly catching up to the rest of my squad.

The fucking SEAL I think was prescient; he turned just as I was coming up on him. The set in my eye may have given it away, or the fresh blood still dripping from my Army combat knife. It had a nice feel to it, not quite as deadly as my beloved Ka-Bar but it would do in a pinch. A grin spread across his lips when he let his M-4 swing on its tactical harness as he pulled out what looked like a short sword from a leg sheath.

“Looks like you brought a butter knife to a sword fight,” he said as he got down into a fighting stance, the zombies were not yielding much room. Our fighting circle wasn’t going to be much more than two strides across. “I’m going to make a Popsicle out of you,” he said, still grinning.

His smile may have faltered a little bit when he realized I wasn’t dissuaded from my present course of action, although he may have just changed it to determination.

“Never much liked you fucking Marines, bullet catchers are all you’re really good for.” He said.

I got down into a fighting stance. “Are those really the last words you want to say?” I asked him earnestly. Before he could reply, I moved in. I’ve got to admit, he was fast. Unfortunately for him I was enhanced. I brought the blade up against his wrist severing as many arteries as I could.

“How...how did you do that?” he asked as blood welled then poured from his non-knife wielding arm. “I’m a Navy SEAL, you can’t do this to me,” he said.

“If you promise me that you’ll leave now and never come back here, ever, I’ll let you leave.”

“Who the fuck are these people to you?” he asked, trying to staunch the flow. Zombies were beginning to jostle around him as fresh blood like ambrosia drew them tight.

“Does it matter?” I asked him back. “I’m giving you the opportunity to save yourself and be done with this madness. There’s a short shelf life on your answer.”

“I can’t...”

I didn’t let him finish the rest of his sentence, with his right hand desperately trying to hold his life fluid in, he was easy pickings. I cut his carotid artery and lifted the vial from his neck. The zombies were chewing flesh from him before he hit the ground.

The remaining two men were at the very edge of the compound, less than three or four zombies from the fence. They were looking back, waiting for the rest of the group to catch up, when I showed.

“Where’s Able and Jericho?” the remaining SEAL asked.

“Hell I would imagine,” I said as I leveled my rifle on them. “I wouldn’t,” I told the other Navy Seal who was trying to bring his rifle up. “Put your weapons on the ground,” I told them.

“And if we don’t?” the Ranger asked.

“I’ve killed four men tonight, do you think I’ve hit my limit?” I asked him. Slowly, with my right hand pulling the vials out of my pocket, I displayed them like trophies. I put them back in my pocket, then put my hand back up to brace the M-4.

“Why haven’t you just killed us?” the Seal asked as he put his weapon down and was standing back up.

“Zombies are one thing, but killing men, that’s completely another,” I told him.

The Navy man nodded slightly in agreement.

“You both have one chance to save yourselves, leave and never come back. That’s all you have to do.”

“That’s it? You’re not going to shoot us in the back?” the Army man asked.

“I could have already done that. Listen, I’m not going to play this game much longer, either leave or die.”

To his credit, the Army guy headed off to the left. I wasn’t sure if he planned on keeping his word or not. More than likely he was going to get out of range, then head back to Kong and tell him what happened. That was actually alright. Let the man know that I had bested four of their best and maybe he would debate the operation in its entirety.

“Knives?” the Seal asked.

“I did knives with your partner,” I told him. “I wish you’d left.”

In one fluid motion I pushed my rifle onto my back and grabbed a grenade. I pulled the pin and ran to the Seal’s location as I pulled on his waistband I deposited the grenade, then I quickly grabbed the chain around his neck. Zombies were vying for position around him as I pushed away. A mash of zombie and human parts burst under the assault of the grenade’s shrapnel. Unluckily for me, I was in the midst of the fallout zone. Hot pieces of anatomy rained down. I was covered in the remains of multiple zombies and at least one man.

Some sporadic gunfire erupted from around me after the explosion, but nothing close. It seemed to be merely a reflexive action. Now that I was paying attention, I could hear the hum of the fence as electric current ran through it. Had to be MJ, I thought, friggen brilliant. I didn’t think it was enough to kill a man if only because of the zombies’ actions as they touched it, but I wasn’t confident enough in their physiology to trust my own life to it. Who knows, maybe what only gave them a slight jolt would send me sprawling through the air like a circus clown shot from a cannon, fun to watch, sucky to live through.

The fence was six-feet high and there wasn’t a tree anywhere near it. I began to rip shirts off the zombies nearest me, they didn’t care and seemed happy to oblige. I wrapped my feet as best I could, hoping that I would have enough insulation, then I sought out a stout zombie which in this case appeared to be a woman of East German descent. She was only about five feet tall, mostly round and looked like she could bench a Beetle.

“Nice to make your acquaintance,” I told her back. She wasn’t properly couched in etiquette. “You’ll do.”

I pushed the back of her knees until she fell to them, then I climbed up. I was now getting quite possibly the first zombie piggy back ride. I wasn’t thrilled with having my knees next to her mouth, but after one failed attempt with her thick arms to wave me away she completely forgot about me as she stood back up, my added weight not hampering or hindering her in the least. I thought this could be a boon for parents everywhere, I could make millions! How many times had we as parents been ridden into the ground from the insistent wishes of our offspring to give them rides, even when their age and weight had begun to exceed our limits? Now, I could sell zombies fitted with saddles that would take the kiddies for rides indefinitely. ZTI could become a global entity (Zombie Transportation Incorporated). Our dependence on foreign oil would be over. They’d have to invent a new monetary term for how rich I’d be.

I would have kept thinking along those lines if I wasn’t receiving a tingling across my thighs and ass. Greta (that’s what I was calling her) was now about two zombies away from the fence, her body was slowly taking on the rigidity of her peers in front of her. I placed my hand on the top of her dirt and oil laden head and balanced my weight so that I could stand. I was thankful the night was still mostly dark, dawn was approaching but still it would be difficult to pick me out of the rest of the crowd, the longer I stayed standing on her shoulders, the better my odds of getting shot at by either side though.

I didn’t feel any electricity as I stood tall on her shoulders—only wavering once, luckily she seemed fairly rooted to the ground at this point. I stepped on the man in front of her—at this point I had a slight tingling—and then, as I stepped on the zombie actually touching the fence, I felt what seemed like pins and needles traversing up my calves. It was uncomfortable at the moment, but I could see it becoming debilitating if I stayed there long enough. My first thought was to place a foot on the fence and jump, but if the current increased and I lost motor function chances were I’d fall back into the zombie stew. The man’s head was at most a foot away from the fence and my feet were less than six inches below the top of it. Even if I were drunk, the jump shouldn’t be a problem.

I think the pressure as I pushed off broke the zombie’s collar bone. He didn’t yell in protest, so I took that as a good sign. I was happy the ground on the other side had been moved recently as it was softer than normal because I had hit it pretty hard. My knees were already suspect at best, and I was happy not to give them any more reason to fail me now. I was a couple of feet away from a ditch that was at least six feet across and peppered with all manner of spikes protruding from the ground; the stink of kerosene was heavy from where I stood. I won’t lie, I was dismayed that my approach was going unnoticed.

The unit that I had dispatched of would have easily made it into my brother’s home and then what? I decided not to dwell on it, nothing fruitful could be gained from it. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have even paused at the gap I had to bridge, right now it may as well have been double its width. Eventually I was going to figure out I was far from an ordinary human…but that moment wasn’t one of them.

“What are the odds there’s a minefield?” I asked. “Probably pretty damned good.” Super deluxe model or not, I was confident that a bomb would send me on my way.

***

“Wait, you’re saying this, what the hell was his name? Buker? Buker fellow took out the entire team?” Kong was asking the out-of-breath Army Ranger, Hank O’Reilly.

“He said he had dusted the other two, then told me and John that we could leave and never come back or die.”

“So was the explosion this Buker guy or John?” Kong asked.

“Oh, I can assure you it was your Navy Seal,” Tommy said, seemingly peering through the trees to the Talbot household.

“How can you be so sure?” Kong asked him.

“Because it was Michael Talbot,” Eliza said, striding up to the circle. “And apparently nothing short of the Rapture is going to take him off this earth. It makes no difference, now at least I know where he is and the whole lot of them can die simultaneously.”

“I just lost three well-trained men, some of my best,” Kong said turning to Eliza, anger flushing his cheeks.

“Perhaps you should have had a better screening technique,” Tomas said smiling. “Maybe asked each of them what side they were on. Michael most likely would have told you the truth.”

Eliza nodded in agreement. “I imagine he would have…right before he killed you.”

Kong didn’t seem so convinced that the man that had called himself Buker would have been able to take him out, but he had just killed three Special Forces men and was still at large. What did I get myself into? “Eliza, I do not think you were forthcoming in our agreement.”

“If you had doubts you should have voiced them before we left,” Eliza told him. “Now organize another team.”

I had my doubts when you ripped Randy’s dick off, Kong thought as he clenched his fists.

“Ten this time…that should be sufficient,” she said.

“Sufficient for what?” Kong asked, trying valiantly to keep his cool. He knew Eliza would have no qualms about eliminating him and putting someone else at the top. He didn’t even consider himself a pawn; he was the board upon which the actual game was being played.

Hank hadn’t left Kong’s side since he got back and already he knew that legend of Buker or Talbot would be spreading across his men like wildfire. He had yet to figure out quite how that phenomenon worked, and something inside him told him he didn’t have the time left to figure it out either.

***

“Can’t stay here, sun is going to be up soon and I’ll be stuck in dead man’s land. And me being covered in gore like this, someone in that house is going to think I’m a zombie and that I somehow got past the fence.”

Minefield or not, I had to leave the spot I was becoming rooted to. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me how easily I traversed the gap, but it did. Now I was just hoping I wasn’t smack dab in the middle of a minefield and everything would be A-Okay. I was within fifteen feet of the deck which was a good ten feet off the ground. I was happy and slightly dismayed to see that the stairs had been removed. I did a once over around the bottom part of the house. There was no way in, it was completely shuttered off with steel plating. I looked up at the decking overhead.

“I should have brought Greta,” I said. “Okay let’s do the math, I’m almost six feet, give or take, mostly give…but whatever. Then if I outstretch my arms, add another three-ish feet, I really need to only jump up about a foot and I can grab the edge of the deck. Subtract from that, I’m a fortyish white guy and I’m still fucked. Wait…half-vamp trumps white. Let’s give it a go.”

I backed up a few feet, still not convinced that I had somehow miraculously crossed a minefield and I didn’t want to throw that to chance again. I ran and jumped not taking into account my added abilities; I almost planted my face where I thought my hands were going to touch. That would have been awesome, me knocked out under the deck after smashing into it.

I grunted as I pulled myself up and over, but only because it felt like the right thing to do. “Why no guard?” The house appeared to be blacked out, but I could see some light spilling from around the blackout curtains. I walked to the back door and turned the unlocked knob. My heart lurched at how easy it could have been for the assassination team and then I entered.