“I don’t think there’ll be enough people left in a couple of hours to worry about that,” Jed said, his shoulders slumping even further.
“Oh shit, Jed, it’s that bad?” I asked as I felt my heart drop.
“The wall has been breached in at least a dozen places. If you don’t get out of here and home now you’ll spend your last time on earth with him,” Jed said as he pointed to the far corner of the rec room slash converted cell where a drugged Durgan was recovering from the ad hoc surgery done on his shattered knee.
Sometime while I had been sleeping, Durgan had been wheeled in on a gurney. It was clear that he was not getting anywhere soon under his own volition. It was also clear, to me at least, that I couldn’t leave him. Yes, he was a murdering scumbag who had personally threatened to kill me and would have carried out his plan if given the opportunity, but even then I couldn’t just leave him. I looked longingly over Jed’s shoulder and the way out and back towards Durgan and the Christian-like thing to do. Who was I kidding, I wasn’t even a practicing worshipper. I was more like a pretend worshipper. I couldn’t even do what the vast majority of other pretenders did and go to church on Christmas Eve. Despite all that, I still went back to get Durgan. He jerked awake as I disengaged the foot brake on his gurney. His murderous black eyes quickly lost their postoperative haze and locked onto mine.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he mumbled. Even half asleep he was an asshole.
“Getting you out of here, the zombies have gotten into the complex,” I hastily explained.
A small smile curved across his lips. He was pulling out of his stupor by leaps and bounds. I was halfway across the room pushing the gurney when Durgan spoke.
“You know I’ll kill you the first chance I get right?”
“We’ve already been through this, why don’t you give it a rest.”
That seemed to piss him off to no end. Durgan’s body had been reduced to a shell of its previous self, but this was something that his mind had not yet grasped. He was a bully in the truest nature of the word and was ALWAYS used to getting what he wanted, how he wanted it, when he wanted it. Physical intimidation wasn’t just a means to an end for him, it was a lifestyle, so what issued forth next was pretty much par for the course for him.
“And then when I’m done with you, I’ll kill every one you’re close too,” he said as he croaked out a laugh, his throat unnaturally dry from the anesthesia.
I didn’t even respond, I took my hands off the gurney, walked past Durgan and out the door.
“Wait, where you going?” Durgan yelled. “I was kidding, you can’t leave me here. Wait!” he screamed in fear for maybe the first time in his life.
“You’re an idiot,” Jed said to Durgan as he pulled the door shut and locked it.
“Old man, you can’t leave me here.”
“Son, if I were so inclined to help you, which I’m not, I don’t have the strength to push what’s left of you out of here. Your best chance of survival just walked through this door. And to be honest, I’m glad you opened that big mouth of yours because if you hadn’t, and Talbot had tried to save your worthless life, he might’ve lost his in the effort. There would have been no justice in that.” Jed walked away, not feeling bad in the least as Durgan’s insults faded away into blubbering incoherence.
“Fuck me,” was all I could think to say as I walked out of the clubhouse.
Zombies were everywhere. Some of the townhomes were on fire. I would later learn it was from the zombies that had been firebombed. The few residents of Little Turtle that weren’t hunkered up in their homes were running for their lives, most without much success. Ravenous zombies were making short work of their unlucky catches. More than one victim would be busy looking over his or her shoulder at their pursuer only to run headlong into the loving arms of another zombie. I stared in fascinated horror as I watched what was once a guard (I could only tell by the uniform) literally have his face peeled off. The zombie had grabbed a piece of the guard’s chin in its teeth and pulled straight up. By some sheer witless luck his entire face had come off as neatly as a banana peel. The muscles underneath contorted into a scream but were cut short as another zombie ripped out his Adam’s apple. The ragged hole in the man’s neck leeched off what would have been an earsplitting shriek. Blood flowed freely from the faceless man’s eyes. My mind was in denial. It looked more like special effects in a low budget movie. I could not recognize what was happening as truth. This was an impossibility. People don’t get their faces ripped off. This wasn’t Silence of the Lambs. The guard’s eyes locked on mine, which brought me back to the here and now. I would later convince myself that in that state, the man was not capable of higher cerebral thought; he had to be in shock. But in that moment I was sure that he knew who he was, what was happening and what was about to transpire. The moment was broken when another zombie stepped between our line of sight and honed in on its after dinner parfait, me.
‘Run!’ my mind screamed. I obliged. I had to pull out all of my high school football running back moves. At 43 years old I was lucky not to pull anything else. For every zombie I dodged, two took its place. I figured at this geometric rate I would have to get by 64,000 of them by the time I got to my front door. This was not going to be easy. To my right the remnants of the wall were being pushed over as the main body of zombies fought to get their fair share of fresh meat. None of them wanted to be late for the party. I was twenty-five or so yards from the front of my house when I realized I would never have enough time to knock and convince who was ever on the other side to open the door before I was swarmed over. And my moments of having enough maneuverability were rapidly diminishing.
“Mom!” I heard a familiar voice yelling. “Dad’s coming!” Justin had been watching the front of the house and Travis had been watching the back just in case something like this happened.
Within seconds gunfire erupted from the upstairs windows as Justin, Travis and Brendon opened fire, widening a hole for me that I could have driven a truck through. I would have liked to have sauntered up to the front door like I was John Wayne, but I was scared shitless. Tracy had opened the front door and the security door and was yelling at me to hurry up.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled back with what breath I had left. “What makes you think I need any incentive?”
Paul had stepped onto the front stoop and was covering my entrance. I dove through the front door like the hounds of hell were on my heels. The move was unnecessary; there wasn’t a zombie within fifteen feet of me. I stood up, dusted myself off and tried to act as nonchalant as possible. Tracy calmly locked the security door, not having any of the jitters she had experienced the last time she faced zombies in her yard.
The front door slammed shut just as the boys finished their barrage from above. In the ensuing quiet I heard the roar of the semi as the engine turned over. Someone was making a run for it. I silently wished them good luck and was despondent that I wouldn’t have the chance to get my family on that rig.
“Dude, it’s good to see you,” Paul said enthusiastically.
“You and me both, brother,” I said as I hugged him.
The boys made their way noisily down the stairs to greet me.
“Thank you boys,” I said as I grabbed Tracy and gave her a hug. She uncharacteristically hugged me back.
“Did you escape?” Travis asked.
I disengaged from Tracy, happy to be home. “No, Jed let me out.” I caught them up quickly about what I had been doing, although there wasn’t much to say. I had been sleeping for most of it. Travis told me about the Molotov cocktails.
“Yeah that didn’t work out so well,” I said. Tracy looked at me quizzically. “That must be why some of the townhomes are on fire.”
Now her expression turned to one of alarm.
“Boys, go back upstairs, make sure that no burning zombies get within fifty feet of our row of houses.”
Tommy came up from the basement. “Hey Mrs. T, all the water is upstairs now.” He grinned one of his signature smiles and waved enthusiastically at me. “Hey Mr. T,” and then followed the other boys upstairs.
“Well that wasn’t much of greeting,” I mused.
“He knew you were coming,” Tracy said matter-of-factly. “He’s the reason I had the boys at the windows looking for you. I don’t know if I would have thought to do that. I was pretty much in panic mode.”
“Ryan?” I asked, wondering if it had been Tommy’s spiritual guide that wrapped itself in the guise of television celebrity Ryan Seacrest.
“No,” Tracy said shaking her head. “Bear.”
I looked at her confused.
She shrugged. “Don’t look at me, Tommy said Bear could smell you coming.”
