'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Mike Journal Entry 16

Angel’s words hung in the air. Gary was the first one out there, he echoed her alarm. Mad Jack looked quickly over the railing and ran back into the house. Within a few moments, a fire spouted from the trench, the sizzle of burning zombies was the only sound. The footbridge burned also, at least a couple dozen zombies had made it into the yard and were now all underneath the deck.

“Well that’s a slight design flaw,” I told BT, looking over the rail trying to see the invaders. He shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the plan for this scenario?” I asked Ron.

“We should get in. The gunmen are still out there,” Ron said ushering us in.

“I’m not really thrilled with having zombies banging up against the house,” I told him.

“Don’t worry about it, Mad Jack has got it handled,” Ron told me.

“Did you get laid?” BT asked in my ear.

“What are you, fifteen?” I asked him back.

“Sorry, man, even while you were looking at the zombies you’ve got this shit-eating grin on your face. I was just wondering if you were now shitting out gold pieces,” he said referring to my failed love making attempt way back at the Big 5 sporting goods store.

“Even if I had gold pieces coming out of my ass, I wouldn’t offer you any.”

“I knew you did!” He smiled, pointing at me.

Tracy took that inopportune moment to show up at the doorway. “You get me in trouble and I’ll toss you over this railing,” I told the big man.

“We’re cool, man, we’re cool,” he said as he smiled at Tracy and went in.

“What’s that about?” Tracy asked as I went in.

“BT thinks I owe him some money,” I told her.

“What would he do with it?” Tracy asked as she followed me into the room.

“Gloat…laugh…probably both.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about?”

BT popped his head into the living room from the kitchen. “Ooh, Tracy you’re hair is a mess do you need a brush?”

“Fuck,” I mumbled.

Tracy spun on her heel. “You told him?” she accused me.

“He guessed,” I said, throwing my hands up. Like what was I supposed to do?

“I hope you enjoyed it because that’s the last apocalyptic sex you’re going to have!” she said as she left the room.

“Man, that’s why I’ve never dated redheads,” BT laughed. “Don’t sweat it she’ll get over it.”

“I didn’t do anything for her to ‘get over’, that was you remember?”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that!”

“Hey, Mike, could you see if the zombies are moving away?” Ron’s voice drifted down from the attic.

I went over to the window. “I’ll be damned, they’re walking into the fire.”

“Mad Jack’s magic box,” BT said as he came up next to me. “He’s been working on a giant one. We got it mounted on the roof.”

“Holy crap, what’s the range?”

“Just about the fire pit,” BT said.

“Wow.” I walked to the door leading up to the attic. “That’s a roger on the zombies, they are now deep-fat fried.”

“That’s gross, Mike, but thanks,” Ron said looking down from the top of the stairs.

“Was that gross?” I asked BT.

“A little bit.” He held his finger and thumb close together.

“Huh, I didn’t think so.”

“You going to apologize to Tracy now?”

“What, are you fucking nuts? I’d rather go outside. Wait, why do I have to apologize? You’re the one that did it.”

“Admitting fault is the first step.”

“One would think that someone who speaks the words would understand their meaning,” I told him.

“Oh I see what you’re doing there. It won’t work, I’m smarter than you.”

“Great, Joe IQ, got any ideas about our friends out there?” I asked him.

“Well, the magic box works great, but I can’t imagine Miss Congeniality is just going to stand by and wait us out,” BT said, getting serious for the moment.

“Miss Congeniality, that’s some funny stuff, can you imagine Eliza in a beauty pageant?”

“I can’t even imagine her trying to smile. Not enough Vaseline in the world to keep that upper lip from sticking to her blood-coated teeth, and God help the contestants if she didn’t win.”

“Stop, man, or I’m going to lose it, I keep picturing her in a sequined gown parade waving to the audience.”

We might have gone on for a little while longer if not for the sound of an explosion outside. I ran to the sliding deck door, I had no sooner slid it open when a round lodged itself deep into the stucco next to my head. BT pulled me back with enough force that I could probably sue him for whiplash damages. Another couple of shots were taken, but without a target in sight they soon stopped. I scrambled over and grabbed my rifle.

I told BT thanks and crawled out the door, effectively hidden by the metal plating lining the railings. I wondered if, from the gunman’s angle, he could put any rounds underneath me. There was no metal there. I looked through the gun slot cut into the metal. I could just see the section of fencing that had been shredded with a hand grenade. Zombies were pouring in—that was bad enough—most were stopping at the end of the pit of their own forced volition or were being involuntarily pushed into the spikes and fire by their brethren as they all fought for limited space. They, however, were not my first concern, I could see the hunched over forms of men trying to stealthily make their way, threading through the zombies.

The explosion had been to make an entry point and the rifle fire was to keep us from seeing their advance. Eliza was making her move. “Trouble,” I told BT, who was on his hands and knees at the doorway to the deck.

“You don’t say?”

“More than usual, okay, smartass?” I asked him back.

“Fine, what’s going on?”

“I can’t tell how many, but we definitely have men coming. Get everyone on alert, we got a few minutes—the number of zombies is actually working in our favor. They’re having a hard time getting through.” I watched a few moments longer. I had counted at least six—possibly seven—men coming our way. I crawled back inside and waited for the troops to rally.

It didn’t take him long, the explosion had done most of the work. Absent were Ron and Mad Jack—who were still tweaking, the box, and sadly Erin, a kind-souled person who had not deserved the loss of her husband and my best friend. I shook my head; I could not afford to go down that dark path.

Then it hit me. “Where’s Deneaux?” I couldn’t stand the woman, but anyone that could shoot the balls off a moth was someone I didn’t mind having in a firefight.

“Maybe God finally called her up,” Nancy said in seriousness.

“No, that would imply he wanted her there,” I told her truthfully.

“The mean lady left,” Angel said right before BT was going to go down to her room and check.

“What?” I asked, spinning to look at the youngest amongst us.

“She stole one of these,” Angel said, pulling a vial out of her pocket, “and then she said we were gonna get what was coming to us. She went downstairs, and then she crossed the yard and left.”

My eyes grew wide. “The basement! BT, Gary…come on. Dad, get a couple of people on each entry point. Do not go outside, they have the exits covered.” I was halfway downstairs by the time I had finished giving my orders.

The basement was how you figure most basements should be in a scary movie: pitch black and dank. I knew where the basement door was; not by sight, but by memory. I set up my defensive position behind a small knee wall that semi-hid a top loading freezer. I heard BT moving around, then Gary came down. The two seconds of blinding illumination as he turned on the lights almost had me in hysterical laughing, but first things first. “Gary, shut the damned light off,” I told him.

“I can’t see anything though,” he said as he snapped the switch into the off position.

“Yeah, and now none of us can, except for the giant blob of yellow in front of my eyes,” I told him.

“Sorry,” he added as he ‘oomphed’ by his foot or shin striking the freezer hard.

“How many times have you been down here?” I asked.

“He keeps moving it.” Gary found a spot behind a stack of MRE boxes.

I figured he should be safe; those meals would be dense enough to stop a tank round.

“I’m sure,” I told him as he settled in. “That’s a hell of a spot you found yourself there,” I said to BT.

“It’s all I could think of.”

“Get over here, man, you hiding behind a lolly column is like an elephant hiding behind a street sign.”

“I have no idea why I missed you,” he said as he got in next to me.

“You think I should come over there, too?” Gary asked.

I was about to tell him ‘sure’, then we all froze when we heard the doorknob to the basement door moving.

“Bitch left it unlocked,” BT growled.

“Someday she’ll get hers. Let’s just make sure her plan goes awry.”

“Awry, funny word,” BT said, and that was it.

Whoever was on the other side of the door was being cautious and I guess I couldn’t really fault them that. The door cracked open an inch or two and light from a cracking dawn sliced a wedge into the basement.

“Lockner, Trent, you two to the left. Ranks, Hubner to the right. Remember…quiet,” their leader said. In the soundless, holding-breath-stillness of the basement, we heard them clearly.

BT put his rifle up; I put my hand on his trigger hand, letting him know I wanted him to wait. Two figures came in and quickly went to the left where their biggest cover was a small file cabinet and lamp. The two heading to the right would actually have some cover as the bathroom was there. I was not going to give them the chance to get their foothold. As soon as they came in and began their deadly migration I opened fire, as did Gary and BT.

Only one of the men even got the chance to fire off a shot, which ended up in the ceiling as a round caught him flush in the kneecap and sent him crashing to the floor. The basement door slammed shut when whoever was on the other side figured out they had walked into an ambush.

We were bathed once again in darkness. At least one of the men I had been shooting at was down for eternity (or at least as long as it took to cycle through a reincarnation depending on your beliefs). I think the one still moaning—if the acoustics were correct in my brother’s basement—was on my side. BT and Gary had been shooting to the left and I had seen multiple crimson blood sprays strike the wall.

“Gary, go upstairs and turn on the light,” I told him.

“You sure, Mike?” he asked.

“You feel like puking?” I asked him.

“Not really.”

“Then go upstairs and turn on the light.”

He again smacked into the freezer as he went passed. “Damn thing,” he said as he stopped to massage his shin.

“Do you think he’s going to need help with that light?” BT asked me.

“BT, you can go, too. I won’t think any less of you.”

“What’s that mean? That you already think so lowly of me that it can’t sink any further?”

“Relax, big man, I’m in no rush to see our handiwork either.”

“That obvious? It’s just killing men…it doesn’t sit right.”

“I know, man,” I told him as the light popped on. It didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust to the carnage on the other side of the basement.

“Mike?” Ron asked, shouting down.

“Four down, three for good,” I yelled. “At least three left, they are under the deck.”

“You need help?” he asked.

“No.” I swallowed. “I’ll take care of it.”

The wall looked like impressionistic art; red was splashed across it like an angry Jackson Pollack had flung the excess against his canvas. I had one headshot on my side, and rapidly graying pink matter was clumped on the wall. It looked like a handhold on those fake rock walls they have in some sporting goods stores. That was the thought I was planning on holding on to. BT had turned away. I cautiously approached; the man who had been knee-shot was still writhing in agony.

I kicked his gun away from him even though he was paying it absolutely no attention. He was going into shock, his eyes pleaded with me for help. I quickly checked the other three for any signs of life. I needn’t have wasted my time. I had drilled one in the eye, his one remaining blue eye gazed up at a Heaven I’m sure he would never see. The two on the left had taken primarily body shots, blood leaked out from at least five or six wounds on each.

“Please help me,” the kneed man begged.

“BT, could you maybe get some bags and cleaning material?” I asked, turning back towards him.

“You sure, man? You have a funny look on your face.”

“I’m good,” I said as I turned back to the attempted usurper. I stepped over him and threw the heavy locking bar in place

I waited until BT was up the stairs, then got down on my haunches next to him. “How many of you were there? Just so you get your math correct, three are now dead.”

“Please, I just need some help,” he asked, licking his lips.

“If the roles were reversed, would you help me? Because I seriously doubt it, especially since you came into my brother’s house and tried to kill us.”

He flinched slightly. “Please.”

“I value your life less than that of the zombies. They do what they do because they are compelled to do so. You did what you did out of self-interest. You purposely came here to murder my family. I will not so much as give you a fucking aspirin until you answer my questions.”

“Five…there were five.”

“I don’t know why I would expect a potential murderer to tell the truth.” I put my rifle down making sure the muzzle was pointing straight at his head. His eyes crossed as he stared down the bore. His hands were clamped against his shattered patella, which was fine, it wasn’t my target anyway.

“What are you doing?” he asked as his eyes got big.

I clamped one of my hands over his mouth; he started to shake his head back and forth. “Stop,” I told him through clenched teeth, “or I’m just going to blow a hole in your face and be done with it.” He must have seen something in the set of my eyes because he did stop. “You see, there are kids upstairs, and whereas I know you don’t give a shit because you were going to kill them, I care a lot. I don’t want them to be exposed to what I am about to do.” I clamped my hand harder over his face and quickly reached behind his damaged knee and started poking and prodding the wound, wiggling loose bone fragments and torn tendons around.

Tears streamed from his face as his screams were muffled in my hand. His breathing was hitching heavily he was in so much pain. His eyes started to close when, with a pop, I pulled two fingers from the back of his leg. I removed my mouth clamp and slapped him hard across the face.

“Don’t pass out on me, champ,” I told him.

“Please,” he begged quietly.

“How many?”

“Ten…there were ten of us.”

“How many truck drivers total?”

“I’m not sure...wait!” he said as I began to move my hand back in place over his mouth. “Over eighty…maybe a hundred.”

“How many zombies?”

“Fifteen, sixteen thousand. I think I heard Kong tell the lady running all of this. She’s...she’s the one you need to watch out for.”

“Yeah, I’m well aware of that.”

“I told you everything, please can I get some help now.”

I stood up and stepped over his body, I rapped on the steel reinforced door. “Hey, shitheads!” I yelled. “I know there’s still six of you out there, want to know how I know.” No response. “Because one is still alive, mostly. Not for long, though, I imagine. Shock alone will probably take him in the next twenty minutes or so.”

Another long wait, I did not think they would respond. “Who is it?” one of the men asked.

“What’s your name?” I asked the guy on the ground, I had to nudge him with my foot. It looked like he was going into pass out mode again.

“Adam,” he rasped.

“Adam,” I repeated.

“If you kill my brother, I’ll gut you like a fish!” the man yelled through the door.

“Empty threat. First off, you were already going to kill me. And I’m the one in here with your rapidly dying brother. Funny you should say ‘gutting’ since I just happen to be holding a fillet knife,” I lied.

I heard hammering blows on the door. “I’ll fucking kill you!” Adam’s brother screamed. His fist blows kept raining down. They eventually began to subside and were replaced by a quiet sobbing. “He’s all I’ve got left.”

I can’t lie, I did have enough humanity in me to have that tug at me a bit. I just had to keep reminding myself of what they had initially come here for: the destruction of my family.

“You willing to trade?” I asked him.

“What do you want?” came his cautious reply.

“I want all of your weapons, then you can take his bleeding ass out of my basement.”

“Fine,” I heard him say quickly.

“Fuck no, Chaz, I’m not giving up my gun. Not here, not now,” one of the attackers shouted. “That bitch will cut our throats if we go back with our tails between our—”

A shot rang out. I waited for the echo of it to die down before I spoke. “Chaz, you still there?”

“Anyone else got a problem with us giving up our weapons?”

I didn’t hear any other dissention.

“Now what?” Chaz asked.

“After you’ve put down all your weapons, with your hands raised I want you to step back from the house so that someone on the deck will be able to see you,” I told him.

“How do we know you’re not going to kill us?” he asked.

“Simple, I’m not you. Better hurry up, Adam is looking mighty pale.”

BT was at the bottom of the stairs with everything I had asked for. I looked over to him.

“Man, I just got down here,” he told me.

“The exercise will do you good, it looks like you’ve been hitting the MRE oatmeal cookies a little hard lately.”

“Fuck you, Mike.” He turned and went back upstairs to check on the status of the gunmen.

“I love you too, man.” I told him. “And stay low, the damn snipers are still out there.”

“Yeah, mom,” he told me.

“We’re waiting!” Chaz yelled impatiently.

“You can wait another minute,” I said under my breath. Or maybe not, I thought as I looked behind me at Adam. He was about as pale as I once figured vampires were; I now knew that wasn’t the case, but just last year that was what I thought. Adam’s breathing was shallow and anything less than a world class hospital wasn’t going to do him much good.

“BT says everything is good to go,” Angel yelled down the stairs. “He also said you were an asshole.”

“Angel!” her brother Ryan shouted.

“Well that’s what he said,” she defended herself. It kept going, but the door upstairs closed and the rest was lost to me.

I grabbed my rifle and took a long look at Adam. I wasn’t completely sure, but his dilated pupils gave me the impression he was no longer focusing on anything on this plane of existence. In fact, they were so wide, they looked like the last thing he had witnessed had scared the shit out of him. I wondered if that would be the last expression I would have when the Dark One came to claim me. Wait…could he claim me? I had no soul to lose? If I made it through the rest of the day I was going to grab some beers and think on that for a little while.

I made sure I was ready to fire and opened the door. Five men peered intently back at me, it was easy to determine who Chaz was by the worried expression on his face.

“All of you turn around,” I told them.

“See! I fucking told you he was going to kill us!”

“I’m going to check for weapons, I’ve been burned by the honor system before,” I told them.

BT was again in the basement. “Can you cover me?” I asked him.

“You want me to do anything else? Maybe get you a glass of water, shine your shoes, do a little tap dance?”

I looked over at him questioningly.

“Sorry, little amped up. Go ahead, I’ll cover you.”

“Gee thanks,” I told him as I put my rifle up against the house. I checked Chaz first; except for a fingernail clipper he was clean as a whistle. The second man had an ankle pistol and a Bowie knife, the third had two grenades shoved in his front pants pockets, I was wondering if he thought I might think these were his balls and just leave them alone. The fourth was also clean, the fifth had a sawed off shotgun shoved down his pants.

“You’re kidding right?” I asked. He shrugged. “Take it out nice and slow, please.”

I jumped when his gun went off. Dumb ass had wrapped his hand around the trigger, when he pulled up he fired, neatly obliterating the front part of his right front from his body. He toppled face first not even attempting to break his own fall. I could hear Gary’s retching from above us.

“Whatever you do, Gary, don’t raise your head over the railing to puke!” I warned him. Brown bile began to leak through the floorboards above and slightly behind us.

“So fruggin gross,” Gary said around a mouthful of semi-digested lunch; and it was. The man’s boot had ripped in two at the top, tendons and muscles had curled up and over the exposed skin, blood drained out so quickly it was easy to see the delicate smashed white bones underneath it all.

“Don’t worry, man, you can hold on to the gun,” I told the fallen man.

He was grunting in misery. It was better than shrieks…but not by much.

“Can I get my brother now?” Chaz asked.

“One more thing,” I said as I put the barrel of the second man’s ankle pistol to his head. I ripped his chain off as I did all the rest excluding the now Shoeless Joe Jackson. “Get him,” I said, stepping to the side. “Just you, though,” I said when two of the others turned.

Chaz ran in to the house, his cry of agony came immediately. “He’s dead!”

“He is?…now get him out of the house. And the other two, hell get them all out of here, including Stubby.”

“What do you want us to do with them?” Steel Balls asked.

“Drag them over to the pit, I don’t care.”

“But...but you took our vials.”

“I left Adam’s and Stubby’s on. You guys can fight for them, grab a body and get off my land.”

“Mike?” BT asked.

“No room here for mercy, buddy.”

“Mike?”

“BT, if we had a jail…maybe. Try to hold on to the reason why they were here.”

“You’re killing us,” Steel Balls, said as he hefted the man Chaz had shot.

“I’m doing no more or no less than you would have done to us,” I told him.

The other man went over and helped Stubby get up. Chaz was still in the basement rocking his brother back and forth in his lap.

The other men including one of their dead were heading across the yard. They were looking at the zombies that were eyeing them back. I wondered how large the sphere of influence for the vial would be. If they got into a tight enough huddle, it should protect the three of them.

I went into the house and dragged the other three dead men out of the house as BT covered me. Their blood had mostly stopped leaking, but I still left a trail a blind man could follow.

The man that had been shot through the head was the worst, dropping bits of brain matter of the floor. I tried to imagine it as something different, but I was staring straight at his head as I pulled him from his arms.

Two of the men were coming back to gather their dead, Stubby was sitting alone, the dead man was now burning in the kerosene at the bottom of the trench, black smoke was wafting up from his burning clothes and hair. The zombie congregation packed a little tighter where Stubby was sitting, either he looked delicious or they really liked smoked meat. A few were jostled into the trench below.

“Let’s go,” I told Chaz when I got the last man out.

His eyes were red-rimmed. “He’s all I’ve got left.”

“Yeah, and all those people you were going to kill upstairs, they’re all I’ve got left. Get out.”

He did without any further words, hefting his brother up over his shoulder. He brushed by as he left. Within a few more minutes all of the dead raiders were now permanent fixtures with the ground. The men were looking at the gap and the zombies, trying to figure out how they were going to get back across. BT and I watched as one of them actually turned and began to come back. I raised my rifle up and he turned back to the zombies.

Steel Balls and the man who had turned around began to talk rapidly, their voices rising to a peak. It looked like Steel Balls won. I could see Stubby begging, his hands were up in the air, he was shaking his head back and forth and trying to scoot back as fast as he could. Steel kicked Stubby in his bad foot. Stubby stopped moving immediately as his scream of pain pierced the silence. He paid no attention as Steel Balls moved and grabbed the chain off his neck.

“Help me, please!” Stubby begged.

I went back inside; BT stayed out a moment longer before joining me. I grabbed a bucket and some water out of the utility closet and had already started cleaning up stains that would never vanish.

“What happened out there, man?” BT asked me.

I looked up from my scrubbing. “What would you have done differently?”

“At least I would have left them the vials,” BT said, rubbing his face with his hands like he was trying to scour away the grime of the event.

“I’m going to walk you through my thoughts.”

“Go on,” he said, pulling up a folding chair that I did not think was up to the task of holding him suspended in space.

“They weren’t here to borrow sugar, BT.”

“I get that, Mike, I do, but that’s cold-blooded.”

“I’m not done.” BT motioned for me to continue. “I let them leave intact, they go right back to Eliza, regroup and try again. She’s not just going to pat them on the shoulders and say, ‘Nice try fellas’. Maybe we stop them again, maybe we don’t. I’m not willing to gamble the lives of those people upstairs at all, no matter how good the odds may seem in our favor. Money is gambled, not lives. Now, as an added bonus, we have seven more vials of Eliza’s brew that we can give to people upstairs. Because when our perimeter is overrun…which it will be…”

BT’s eyes got wide.

“When the zombies get to the house, seven more people upstairs will now have a chance to blend in and maybe get the fuck away from this death house. Seven more of the people we love were just given an extra chance to hold on. And if the dip wads outside had played their cards right, I’m pretty sure the two vials would have been enough to protect all of them. Sure, they would have to know each other a little better than they may have wanted to, but they would have survived. And already they’re turning on each other. I doubt two of them make it back. They’re killing each other. They would have had no problem killing us. I say fuck ‘em, you should, too,” I told him as I got back to scooping brain and scrubbing blood.

The folding chair sighed in relief as BT heaved himself to his feet. He squeezed my shoulder as he went by. “Is there another sponge?” he asked, pointing to the utility room.

“Enough to make it through the apocalypse.”

“I hope so.”