Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles (22 page)

I only thought about Tommy briefly, and realized my only disappointment in the episode earlier in the day was that it forced my hand.

I hated moving.

I sat there for about half an hour, just mellowing out a bit, and decided it was time to pack my shit.  I t
ook my time gathering it up,
slowly tucking
it all inside my
red
’98 Jeep Wrangler.  I’d bought the Jeep used from Joey
Fiocchi
, one of the tattoo artists at the shop who gave me too good a price for it and even offered to let me pay him off a little at a time.  He only did it because he wanted to screw me, and I only ignored that fact because I really needed a vehicle.  Hell, I can’t control other peoples’ motives, and I don’t really care to put
forth
the effort.

I loved that Jeep.  I’ll get me another someday, and not the damned Cherokee – it’s going to be another Wrangler.

After I packed up, I was tired.  It was Saturday, and I really didn’t want to disrupt my mom this late, so I figured I’d just pull up a couch – I wasn’t going to sleep in the skank-polluted bed – and head over to her house in the morning.

I
settled onto the couch early and
slept with one ear open in case dickhead came home
.  At somewhere around
eleven
‘o clock that night, I heard his pickup engine fire, and sat up to see his old Dodge Ram tearing out of the yard and toward the main road, shooting up gravel behind him.
 

I was relieved
that he didn’t come in and try to kiss ass.
  I don’t have too much use for
confrontation, and even less for
anger and bitterness, and Tommy was exactly who I thought he was
anyway
.  I never intended to marry him and the whole episode was probably just the kick in the ass I needed to just get out there and make it on my own.

So I got up, made some strong coffee and poured it in my favorite
insulated mug
– the one that said
I’m the one you gotta blow to get some coffee around here
.  I don’t know why it always struck me as funny.  Maybe it was only because it was a twenty-four ounce
mug
and I loved my coffee.

I
threw the Jeep into gear and
set out for Lula, trying not to spill while I shifted and balanced the cup between my knees.  I headed out on
Jesse Powell Parkway
, and traffic was as light as you’d expect on a Sunday
.  Until, that is, I was approaching
Limestone Parkway
.  Traffic stopped, and I couldn’t even see far enough to find out what the holdup was. 
Some of the cars on the highway had been abandoned,
the doors hanging open and nobody around,
and I began to wonder how long this particular traffic jam had been here.  I was at the tail end of it, and nobody else had come up behind me, so I backed the car
up
and pulled off at the
Old Cornelia Highway
exit.  It would get me to the same place, and I could bypass the entire
mess
, so long as everyone else didn’t have the same idea.

Turns out nobody had the same idea.  Traffic was non-existent, for the most part.  I passed two men walking along the roadside, neither of whom returned my wave and both of whom looked drunk. 

The thought crossed my mind that people just weren’t as friendly as they used to be.  I forgot about it right after it happened, it wasn’t too much longer before I’d think of those two men again, and wonder what the real story was.

The drive
on Old Cornelia
took me a little longer, but twenty minutes later I was pulling into my mother’
s driveway, only to see the last thing I wanted to see.

Tommy’s pickup.  But it wasn’t just here.  It was crashed into my mother’s Camry, the door was open, and the engine was running.

I parked and ran inside the house.  Carole Ann Sanders always left her door unlocked, and I threw the door open and called, “Tommy! 
What the hell are you doing here
?”

“
Charlene, r
un, baby!” came my mother’s voice from deep inside the house. 

My mother’s home was a sprawling ranch with
wood floors,
big rooms
and long hallways
, but only two bedrooms.  She liked to knit, so being single, she used the living room as her craft and knitting room, and kept the spare bedroom ready in case I came to stay the night or
eventually
moved back in, which she never ruled out.  We’d always been close, and even if she didn’t agree with my fashion sense or my chosen profession of the
moment
, she enjoyed my company as much as I always
enjoyed
hers. 

No judging –
it just wasn’t
in her
fabric
to question my choices.  She trusted that what I was doing was right for me, and that I was smart enough to know when to make changes in my own life.

“Run
, Charlene
!” my mother screamed again, and her call was followed by a splintering crash.  I heard her voice again, but it was suddenly cut off by a muffled gurgling.

I charged down the hallway toward the sounds, and saw Tommy’s boots sticking out of the bathroom door down on the right side.  They were thrashing, kicking back and forth.

“Tommy, what the fuck are you doing here!” I shouted, as I reached the bathroom in four running steps.  When the scene in that small room came into view, I let out a terrified scream.

Tommy was on top of my mother, his teeth embedded in her neck. 
He jerked his head up to look toward me, and I saw his eyes.  They were void of irises, but somehow tinged with pink and as horrid as hell, like a demented doll from a horror flick.

As his mouth came off of the wound he’d torn, my mother’s b
lood spurted from her neck in a jettison, spraying into the hall, all over my shirt.  Horrified, I reached down, the adrenaline surging through my body, and pulled Tommy from on top of her, slamming him into the hallway to my left.  I fell on top of my mother and slapped my hand over her neck, but her eyes were slits, and she was pale white. 

“Mama,” I said, “Hold on.  I’m dialing 911.  Hold on, mama.”

I tried to get my cell phone from my pocket,
but I felt Tommy behind me and the phone came out as I fell onto my back beside my mother, my hand slipping from her rapidly draining artery. 

And I saw his face for the first time.  His once bright, blue eyes were dark and sunken, and blood stained his mouth and teeth.  He fell forward, and I was able to get my feet up, my knees bent, and I used his momentum to lift him over my mother and me and head first into the tile wall of the bathtu
b
and shower.  He hit with a dull thud, and I was sure he’d been knocked unconscious.

But after his head slammed the wall and he fell into the porcelain tub, he was scrambling back up.  Before he was able to get back on his feet, I yanked the shower curtain down over his head and got up, slipping badly in my mother’s blood.

Tommy screamed something unintelligible at that point, and it sent chills rippling down my spine.  I grabbed my mother’s feet and dragged her from the room.  I got her perhaps four feet down the hall and lowered her hand to her.  She was unconscious, and I didn’t know then if she was breathing or not.  I pulled out my cell phone, my hands shaking so badly I could barely dial the numbers.  I held one hand on the vein that seemed to have run dry, and with my thumb I dialed the three numbers that were my only hope to save my mother.

There was no answer.

Tommy charged out of the bathroom and slammed into the wall opposite the door.  I didn’t have a choice.  I had to leave my mother for a moment and get my crossbow out of the car.  My mother didn’t have a gun, despite all the times I’d told her to get one, living out there all alone.

I charged back toward the front door and to my car.  I pulled the crossbow out, along with the entire quiver of arrows, and mounted one on the run.  I got into the hallway, and Tommy was there, his face pressed into my mother’s face
, her arms twisted in unnatural positions as though he’d twisted and broken them in an attempt to get to something he couldn’t quite reach
.

“Tommy!” I shouted.  He didn’t turn, jus
t kept on making those horrible chewing, slurping noises as he continued his attack.
  I ran up to him and brought my knee into his head.  He responded w
ith a growl as he fell sideways off my mother
.
  Seconds later it was as though I never pounded his skull, and he was back on his unsteady legs.

I stood back and raised the crossbow.
  I looked at this thing and it dawned on me for the first time that he didn’t appear crazed.  It was something else.  He appeared drawn to my mother’s flesh and blood like a greyhound to a rabbit.

Pure instinct drove him.

There would be no intentional missing this time.  I fired the bow and it pierced his head, right between the eyes.

His already dead-looking eyes
stared
through or past me – I wasn’t sure which – and he fell backward, his boots
coming to rest on the floor
beside my mother’s destroyed face
and her broken body
.

I knew she was dead.  I broke down then, the reality of what had just happened hitting me.  Not the explanation for what Tommy had done; I had no idea that the man I’d just killed had died earlier, or that everything in my world had changed.  But the reality that my mother was dead
, and I’d never see or talk to her again.  No last words of wisdom, no hugs, no more nothing
.

And if I thought back, which I would do again and again over the next months, I’d realize that it was already too late the moment I
first
saw Tommy on top of her.
  The damage that killed her had already been done.

I sank to the floor beside my mother
, my fingers punching redial for 911, and never receiving an answer. 
M
y clothes were blood-soaked, and I don’t have any idea how long I sat there like that.

I had no idea what to do, and no mother to ask for advice.  So I sat there until it got dark and the flies began to gather.  My tears wouldn’t come any longer.

I had nothing left.

Literally.

****

I’m sorry for this sidetrack, and I know I need to get back to what was happening in
Concord
.

But since you’ve gotten to know me over the last two chronicles, you should know everything.

With the death of my mother, I was alone.  She was an only child, too, but my father wasn’t.
  He had several brothers; four, I believe, and a sister.

And it didn’t matter.  My father had left my mom before I was born, and even though I knew his name, I never tried to find him, and he never tried to find me.  I’m not one to put much stock in DNA and blood ties; either you’re a father or you’re not.

He wasn’t.  I don’t know if my mother was immune to urushiol, but I do know she hadn’t changed into one of them before Tommy killed her.

I’ve wondered if my father was immune. Of course I  didn’t wonder it before, because Hemp hadn’t figured it all out yet, but I’ve wondered plenty of times since.

Ironic.  The woman who really cared for me and loved me is dead, and there’s a chance the sperm donor who had nothing to do with me is out there somewhere, alive.

At this point he could walk up to me with my birth certificate and solid proof he was my father, and I’d have to seriously consider whether or not to kill him.

Why?  I don’t know.  I think crazy things sometimes.  Like if he’d never left my mother, maybe he’d have been there
to protect her.

She was very hurt by
his leaving
– so much so that she never
even considered
marriage again.  She kept
men who expressed an attraction to her at
arm’s length, never letting them get too close.
  I think she got laid occasionally, and good for her.  She took what she wanted from the brief relationships and left the other crap on the table.

She didn’t do it for me, though I thought that for some years.  She did it because she didn’t need
men
and would not
come to rely on them ever again.

Okay.  Enough.  Back to my trek.

I buried my mother behind the house in the garden she tended.  The dirt was soft there, and easy to dig.  As for Tommy’s body, I used the remaining stacked cordwood and made a nice pyre for him.  His body burned about 1000 feet from the house so I didn’t have to smell his char.  I intended to st
ay at my mother’s a while, so it wouldn’t do to have any stink.