'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Mike Journal Entry 15

“Miss me?” I asked a shocked room full of the people I loved the most in the whole world. Blood, gore, sinew and a fair amount of entrails hung from every exposed part of me. Henry was the first to react. I hadn’t seen him leap since he was six months old and there was a particularly tasty shoe of Tracy’s that he had enjoyed rending into bite-sized chunks. I had put it up on a coffee table thinking his little stubby legs would never allow him to regain his ill-gotten booty. He had proved me wrong and cost me two hundred bucks in the process (replacement fee of said shoes).

I stooped down a bit as he jumped into my outstretched arms, his stumped tail was going as fast as a hummingbird’s wings after a Starbuck’s double shot cappuccino. But even he had his standards; he would not lick my face.

“Talbot?” Tracy cried, barely able to contain her surprise or shock. “Is that really you?” She took a half step towards me.

“Of course it is!” BT said, barreling towards me. “Who the fuck else would wear a tin foil hat!” He swept me and Henry both up in his massive arms and twirled us around like we were in the Nutcracker ballet.

Apparently the explosion had ripped my knit cap off.

My father’s legs gave out. “I...I couldn’t stand to lose another child,” he sobbed.

Nicole, who was visibly showing her pregnancy now, ran to me with a huge box of sani-wipes. “Oh, Dad, I missed you so much, but I don’t know if I can hug you!” She sobbed and laughed at the same time.

Gary came running into the room. I would learn later that he had been pretty despondent about coming home without me. A massive case of survivor’s guilt, compound that with the fact he had to tell our father he had lost his youngest son. And it wasn’t such a great combination.

“I saw you die, Mike,” Gary said, not quite yet ready to let go of the extra baggage he had been carrying around.

“Word of my death has been greatly exaggerated,” I managed as I was twirled around like a record. “Any chance you could put me down now, BT? People are going to start to talk.”

“Let them.” He crushed me tighter to his chest. The added pressure pushing a little too much on Henry’s midsection, we were rewarded with an air fouling mass of stench.

BT shuffled away from the stink as best he could, me and Henry still held captive.

“I missed you, too,” I told him, “but I’d like to kiss my wife.” BT finally put me down, but looked like he’d scoop me up in a moment’s notice.

“You look like shit, Talbot,” Tracy said stroking my cheek.

I grabbed the wipe proffered from my daughter and vigorously scrubbed my face. It burned and smelled like bleach—it was bliss. Tracy leaned in, we kissed, and the world around us dissolved, there was nothing but her tender lips upon mine. When we finally felt the accumulated gazes of all of those around us, we pulled away.

“I never thought I’d taste you again,” she cried, dipping her head down.

“It’s gonna take more than fire, rogue cats, vampires and zombies to kill me.”

“Apparently.” She kissed me quicker this time. “You will never leave without me again,” she said with a force that made me know that this was no idle threat-slash-request; it was merely the truth. Where had I heard those words before?

Justin came up next; he was never a squeamish one. He wasn’t fond of public displays of affection, but just this one time he obviously figured he’d break his own rules as he hugged me tight. “It sucks being the man of the family,” he smiled. “I’m glad you’re here so you can take it back.”

“Good to see you, too.” I smiled.

Travis was on the verge of tears. He kept wiping his sleeve across his eyes in an attempt to keep up with the tears that were free flowing. As an eighteen-year-old boy, appearance is everything. “I knew you couldn’t be dead,” he said sniffing loudly, his head down. I watched as tears splashed down into the floor.

“Men cry, Travis,” I told him.

He looked up. “Good thing,” he said through the sobs as he wrapped one arm around me, the other looked stiff and I would learn later he had been winged by a bullet.

“What did I miss?” I asked.

Mad Jack and Ron began to tell me of their defenses and I gently reminded them about how easily I had got in.

“We didn’t take into account humans,” Mad Jack said with a frown.

“And I’m sure that’s what Eliza’s thoughts were, too. I took care of her first strike team, but I’ve got to believe she’s going to send another one. I also have these,” I said, holding up four zombie- repellant chains. I explained what they were to those who did not know and we would discuss a way to put them to better use.

Cindy kept looking at me and then the door expectantly. I think she thought that if I had come back from the dead, than quite possibly so had her Brian. I grabbed her hand and slightly shook my head. She knew, she fundamentally knew he wasn’t ever coming back, but the human mind has a way of putting hope above reason. She brought my hand up to her face as she cried. It was long moments before her sobs gave way to a hitching cry, then finally stony silence punctuated by some sniffling. She released my hand and went into another room; I would imagine to be alone with her memories of happier times.

“Where’s Erin?” I asked. Her above all others I owed an explanation.

“We don’t know,” Tracy told me. “She walked out and we haven’t seen her since.”

“She’s out there?” I asked standing up.

“Mike, she wants to be,” BT said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “She died when Paul did, she just didn’t know it yet.”

Now it was my time to bury my face in my hands. I dragged my hands down my face, then realized just how effen gross I was. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Post a guard, then we’ll talk.”

“It’s good to have you back, brother,” Ron said.

“It’s good to be back,” I told them all and I meant it. I left it up in the air if I meant physically back in the house or back from the dead. The clothes I stripped off and neatly deposited in the nearest trash receptacle. The drain was working overtime with the amount of dirt and human debris I was sending its way. I stared straight ahead at the stream of water, choosing, wisely I might add, to not look at what was swirling around my feet.

When I was sufficiently confident that I had stripped at least the top three layers of my skin off, I stopped the water and got out. It was invigorating to be alive, well alive and clean, and home. I stepped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom Ron had given Tracy and I for our stay.

I hastily covered up when I heard a slight cough. “Shit, woman, you scared me. Thought it might be one of the nieces or something.”

“You look good, Mike, a little skinny…but good,” Tracy said.

“I do, don’t I,” I said placing my hands on my abs. “I haven’t seen those since the Marine Corps days.”

“You should come over here.”

“Let me just grab some clothes,” I told her looking through the stack of stuff she had out for me.

“Those can wait,” she said.

My head shot up (and then so did my other one). “Gotcha,” I said, hastily moving over to the bed where she was already under the covers and I prayed naked. (And there was a prayer the big man had heard! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! I would have raised my hands up in the air and shook them around like jazz hands if it were appropriate.)

“You going to keep that hat on?” she asked.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“It isn’t just some random Mike phobia then, like the fear of using your cereal spoon more than once?”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that anymore? And hey, who the hell knows where my mouth has been?”

“I know where I’d like it to be.”

Conversation came to a lull at that point, and somehow it was right. We made love in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, surrounded on all sides by an enemy hell bent on our destruction and for at least a little bit of time we laid all of that on the bedroom floor. When we came to our blissful conclusion, Tracy spoke.

“Life without you was unimaginable,” she said as her hand came up to the side of my face.

“I’ll bet it was.” I laughed as I kissed her palm. “Who wouldn’t miss me?”

“Mike, no, I’m serious…and for once I wish you would be, too.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t too excellent on my end either. I lost a friend I’ve had for thirty years, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that, and now his wife is missing. And we’re still in one hell of a fuck-fest. Just because I’m back doesn’t make that fact go away.”

“Somehow it does,” she said, laying her head on my shoulder.”

“We don’t have to cuddle now do we?” I asked. “I’d like get to get to work or something.”

She smacked me upside the head. “I love you, Michael Talbot.”

“I love you too, woman.” I kissed her long and hard, and we could have rapidly found ourselves back in our earlier predicament (not that I was complaining), but it would have to wait.

Then I probably soured the mood anyway as I pulled away I asked the very last question anyone should ask while in bed with the one they love. “Where’s Deneaux?”

“She was in the kitchen right before you got there. I really wasn’t paying her all that much attention when you came in, why?”

“She’s got some unanswered questions I like some further explanation for.”

“About?”

“I’m pretty sure she has some culpability in Brian’s death and possibly in Paul’s,” I told her as I got up and grabbed some clothes.

“Please tell me you’re kidding?” Tracy asked, as she pulled off the covers and stood.

“Wow.”

“What?” She was looking around.

“You look more beautiful than the day we met.”

Tracy was slightly self-conscious, but even she had to admit that the apocalypse had done wonders for her body. “Thank you, Mike, but right now I just want to beat some answers out of that battle axe.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” I quickly dressed, as did Tracy.