'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER ONE

Day one without Talbot

“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” Gary kept repeating, as BT shoved him through Mary’s front door.

“Where’s Josh?” Mary screamed, her eyes wide with terror.

“He’s supposed to be here,” BT said, moving to the side so that he could shut the door and look out the curtain.

“He’s not here!” she screamed. “You left him out there!” She was shrieking now.

Gary was still muttering on the floor where BT had deposited him.

“Oh fuck,” BT said silently as he looked through the large, bar-covered picture window of Mary’s modest siege home.

“Where is my son?” she screamed, slamming her fists into BT’s chest.

BT pointed with the tip of his rifle before he headed back towards the front door.

Josh was, at the most, two steps ahead of the lead zombie whose outstretched hand was nearly close enough to touch his collar.

“Oh my God!” Mary said in unison with Gary.

“The fucking toy, he went back for the fucking toy,” BT said as he headed out the front door.

Josh was running for his very existence, but the large remote-control truck he was carrying was impeding his progress. BT did not trust his marksmanship or frayed nerves to start firing at targets so close to a live body, and he couldn’t tell Josh to drop down. BT would be able to get the lead zombie and a couple of others, but there were too many of them. Add to that the real danger that the zombies pursuing him and Gary would completely cut the boy off from the house.

“Drop the damn truck!” BT roared.

Josh looked up; wide, white, terror-filled eyes stared back at him.

“Drop the truck, boy!” BT repeated with more force.

BT watched as Josh had an internal struggle within himself. The boy was deciding on whether or not to give up one of the last things his father had given him or forfeit his life. It was close, but Josh finally let go of the toy monster truck. BT figured the boy’s father was still looking out for him as the truck caught in between the strides of the zombie closest to Josh. Josh yelped as the zombie’s hands reached out and touched him down his back and the bottom of his pants as its legs became tangled in the rubber and plastic causing the zombie to slam chin first into the ground.

The effect was instantaneous as at least another three zombies went down with their leader. Josh was far from out of danger, but BT finally had an opening with which to let lead fly. He lined up a shot and tried to pull the trigger.

“Oh no,” he sighed. He was out of bullets.

“Good a day to die as any, maybe even better than most,” he said as he ran towards Josh. His hastily drawn up plan was to use himself as a human shield.

“Get out of the way, you lummox!” Mary shouted behind him. She didn’t give him much of a chance, though, as she began to shoot. Most weren’t head shots, but the bullets were causing enough damage to slow the zombies down.

Gary came up beside her; he was jamming shells in to his rifle. Tears were still streaming down his face as he began to fire. BT was amazed he could hit anything through the waterfall in his eyes. Luckily Gary was focused on the zombies in the front of the house where his bullets would only slam into the undead.

Josh had about another fifty yards to make it to the house, forty before he made it to BT. BT waited like the anchorman in the first ever zombie relay. First prize was life, everything else was death. BT started jogging towards the house as Josh approached, then snatched him up into his huge arms, going full tilt within four strides. Mary was holding the security door open so that he could dive in with his precious cargo. Gary was busy shoving new shells into his rifle.

“Get in the house!” Mary yelled simultaneously to BT and Gary.

Gary was slow to react. BT grabbed him by the front of his jacket and pulled him in alongside. He pushed Josh ahead of himself as he fell to the floor; he didn’t want to save the boy from zombies only to crush him under his bulk. BT’s chest had no sooner hit the floor when the first zombies crashed up against the security door. Mary was backing up as the house rattled from the multiple impacts.

Gary shut the front door when BT moved his legs.

“What were you thinking!” Mary screamed at Josh, who was full on crying now. “What were you thinking!” she screamed again.

Josh was sobbing so hard that he was hitching and having a difficult time catching his breath. “It...it was from dad,” he wailed.

“Was it worth getting killed over?” She was screaming so loudly, and with such force, that her face was turning red and thick, corded veins were bulging from her neck and forehead.

“Mary, he’s alive, he’s fine,” BT said, trying to restore some order in the house.

She wasn’t having any of it and turned her wrath on him. “Wasn’t it your grand fucking idea to let him go along?”

“Oh I would imagine it was Mike’s insidious ramblings that convinced the boy to go out,” Mrs. Deneaux added.

“You shut up!” Mary wheeled, pointing her finger at the crone. It seemed no one would be spared Mary’s ire. “Where were you when my son was running for his life?”

“Dear, I’m just an old woman. What could I have done?” Mrs. Deneaux asked in return.

“I should have never opened my door. I should have never let any of you into my life.” She was crying now.

“It’s alright, mom, I’m alright,” Josh said, getting up to comfort his mother. She gripped him tightly as if she were afraid to let him go, lest he not be real. She was crying into his shoulder, their roles momentarily reversed. “Mom, we had to let them in, it was the Christian thing to do.”

“I almost lost you, Josh. I can’t lose you…you’re all I have left in the world.” She let loose with a full-throated cry.

“I’m here, mom, I’m here,” he said as he led her towards the couch.

“Where’s Michael?” Mrs. Deneaux asked BT.

BT shook his head almost imperceptibly from side to side. Mrs. Deneaux was careful not to let her joy show. Gary was staring out the living room window, but his eyes did not appear to be focused on anything.

“I didn’t even get a chance to bury him,” Gary mumbled. “What am I going to tell my dad?” he asked the question, but that was not anything any one had an answer to.

“What now?” Mrs. Deneaux asked BT.

“We head towards Maine,” he told her.

“When?” Mary looked up.

BT couldn’t tell if she was wondering when they’d be out of her house or how long she had for her and her son to get ready to go.

Gary had understood the meaning behind her question. “Mary, you can’t stay here,” he said, finally turning back around to face the group. The room darkened as the curtain slid back into place.

“Oh yes we can!” she said with vehemence as she pulled Josh closer. “We’re never going out there.”

“You know you’re going to run out of supplies,” he said calmly, which belied his true countenance.

“We’re better off without them,” Mrs. Deneaux said. “The boy will just slow us down.”

“As opposed to you?” Gary shot back, very much unlike anything that usually came from his mouth.

Mrs. Deneaux shrugged her shoulders and lit up a cigarette in response.

“How dare you!” Mary said to Mrs. Deneaux. “I opened my doors to you, I fed you, I confided in you, then you turn on me?”

“I was trying to help, dearie. You said you didn’t want to go and I thought this would help your argument,” Mrs. Deneaux said, smiling with her tobacco-stained teeth showing. The smile was much too wide and displayed too many teeth to mean anything but contempt.

“Handle a snake, you’re bound to get bitten eventually,” BT said to Mary.

“You must be happy now, BT,” Mrs. Deneaux said.

“What are you talking about?” he asked her.

“Well, it looks like you’re in charge now. With Mike out of the way, you take rightful control,” she said, then took a long pull from her cigarette while waiting for BT’s response.

BT almost rose to the bait, but he could see the grim glimmer of smugness right under the surface in the woman’s face and he’d be damned if he gave her anything remotely similar to a smile.

“Well the age is right,” he said.

“What?” Gary asked.

Mrs. Deneaux’s eyes narrowed as she waited for his response.

“She could be Eliza’s mother,” BT said as he went to the side of the house to see how many zombies Josh had brought back with him.

Josh snorted. “That’s funny because that would make her like five hundred and fifty years old.”

“I remember when spanking your children was an acceptable form of punishment,” Mrs. Deneaux said, turning towards the boy, who shrunk back into the protective embrace of his mother.

“We’re leaving in the morning,” BT said, coming back into the living room. “Mary, I won’t force you, but I really think you should reconsider.”

“Michael would have been more persuasive,” Mrs. Deneaux said.

“You done?” BT asked her.

“For now,” she said taking another drag off her smoke.

“Mary, please,” Gary begged. “You’re not safe here.”

She scoffed at his words. “Oh yeah, I see how safe it is out there,” she said mockingly, not even willing to move her hand to point, but rather nodding with her chin towards the front door.