Drink in case of Emergency (18 page)

             
“Didn’t you hear me? I asked if you wanted us to help you.” Scott shouted. “And you should have taken that more seriously. You scared the women. You could have died.” Tyler, noticed a twinge of anger fly across Amy’s face at the ‘women’ comment, but she said nothing in response.

             
Tyler pulled his boxing gloves off and rubbed gingerly at the gash on his cheek. Amy walked up close and brought her face within inches of his own. She glared closely at the gash, slapping his hand away when he reached up to stop the blood flow.

             
“Maybe you don’t turn when you get scratched, just when you’re bit.” Amy said thoughtfully. She pulled out another cigar and offered it to Tyler. “You fight like a bitch.”

             
“Thanks...I mean, for the cigar, not the criticism.” Amy rolled her eyes at the comment, and gestured back towards Charlie’s house.

             
“Do you want to burn that thing down, just for good measure?”

             
“No? I didn’t have anything against the house...just the guy who lived in it.” Tyler bit into the cigar.  “Besides, I need to take a shower, I’m filthy.”

             
An hour later, the escalade was pulling out of the old subdivision that Charlie Westin called home. The beginning of the ride occurred in relative silence, as everyone was finishing drying off from the quick showers they had each taken. It was Justin who finally broke the silence.

             
“So how was it?” The question was directed at Tyler, but he didn’t reply at first. The silence dragged on until everyone in the car had turned to face him. Scott stopped the car in the middle of the street and turned to listen as well.

Justin’s question seemed innocent and straightforward, but beneath the question was the deeper meaning. Tyler was the first of them to really break the rules. He was the first of the group to do something outlandish, something they had never imagined themselves doing. It was essentially the question of whether what he had just done would be worthwhile, if it was worthwhile to follow their wild fantasies into the future, or if they would be better served to just focus on survival.

“It was...” Tyler trailed off, looked around uncomfortably at the car full of eyes on him. “It was, hands down, one of the top moments of my life.” He took another deep breath before continuing. “I haven’t felt that kind of control, ever! It was like I was completely in control. I knew exactly what I wanted and I took it. I felt so...so manly.”

“Just what I always wanted.” Amy replied sarcastically.

“You’d love it.” Tyler said genuinely. “It feels like nothing you could ever imagine. It’s like, it’s like actually being in charge for once.”

“For once? you’ve never been in charge before?” Jessica looked surprised.

“Are you kidding?” Tyler let out a huff of laughter. “I’m a twenty something male. I’ve never been in charge of anything in my entire life. First it was my parents, and when they’re not around it was my older brother. Then I got my first girlfriend and she was in charge of everything my parents weren’t in charge of. After that, I was in college and I had an RA and professors that told me everything I had to do. Since then, my boss was in charge whenever I was at work.”

“What about the other 16 hours per day?” Jessica was intrigued now.

“I had spent the last two dozen years not being the boss of anything, you think I had any idea how to take care of myself? How to do what I want in my own time? I’ve never even really known what I wanted before.” Tyler had tears forming in the corner of his eyes. “You really have no idea what this feels like.” He let out a long slow breath and Scott began driving the car down the street again.

The next few minutes passed in silence. Everyone seeming to stare out the window, reflecting on what they had just seen. To be fair it wasn’t really something anyone had any right to see. A full grown man boxing a zombie, that wasn’t even something that any of them had ever imagined before. Tyler was the only one who wasn’t looking out a window, he just looked down at his hands. He had pulled the boxing gloves off and was staring at the bruises on his knuckles with a wry smile plastered across his face.

This is the best I have felt in a long time, he thought to himself. He kept staring at his hands, which is why he slammed his head into the back of Jessica’s seat when Scott slammed on the breaks a half block later.

“Dude, what the f...” was all that Tyler could get out before he looked up and saw all five faces around him staring out the windshield. Everyone was staring at a man dispensing gasoline at a small corner gas station. The gentleman was outside of the car, which was a blue Honda Accord. The scene was altogether unremarkable, just a man getting gas. But the setting is was made it incredible.

“I honestly thought we were the only ones left. At least the only ones left in this town.” Scott mumbled just above a whisper.

“Maybe there’s more survivors of whatever happened that we just don’t know about yet? Like maybe a lot of people survived?” Jessica mumbled back, not breaking her gaze at the man from the blue accord. The man was staring back at the escalade, a panicked look on his face. Tyler noticed for the first time that there was a woman in the front passenger seat. She had the same terrified look as the man.

The silent standoff went on for another 10 seconds, before Amy finally spoke up. “How much does a polar bear weigh?” She said in an almost dreamlike trance. The question caught Tyler off guard, partly because of how strange it was and partly because it seemed vaguely familiar to him. Tyler was slowly turning his sight away from the blue Accord to look at Amy, when Chris began repeating the question in a confused tone. It was almost as if the question had been posed in another language, and Chris was just trying to sound out the words.

“How much...” was all the further he got before Amy suddenly snapped out of her daze.

“Enough to break the ice!” Amy shouted and pushed her door open, leaping from the escalade. Tyler saw her hit the ground and start running around the front of the escalade, toward the gas station. Everyone else in the car stared at her in confusion, while Tyler stared back out of the windshield and saw the man reaching in through an open back window of the Accord and pull out a rifle.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

A voice shouted in Tyler’s head, but then the calm tone of the teenage girl came back. The train conductor’s voice, telling him that this was his world now, he decided which way to go. The calming tone of her voice in his mind pulled him out of his shock and had him leaping from Amy’s open door. He was beginning to scream something that sounded vaguely like the word “Wait”, but Amy was already 10 feet in front of the escalade now.

Tyler began rounding the edge of the escalade and saw that Amy had stopped running toward the gas station. Over her shoulder, he could see the man raising the rifle to his shoulder and take aim at Amy.

At his new friend, at the woman who was going to burn down his old bosses house, just because. He loved this woman, maybe wasn’t ‘in love’ with her yet, but it had only been a day, afterall.

Either way, he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.

This masculine decision had Tyler’s feet powering him forward like. Tyler was now alongside Amy, now with her hands raised, when he saw the man turn the gun towards him.

Shock, fear, and panic welled in him all at once, and as swiftly as he had lept from the escalade, Tyler McGovern let out a squeal of terror that would put a dog whistle to shame. With the sound, Tyler promptly curled up in a ball on the ground. A moment later, he blacked out.

****

Fifteen minutes later, Tyler came to. He took a deep breath through his nose and could smell the earthy aroma of grass and dirt. Squinting at first, he slowly opened his eyes. He raised his right hand and rubbed at his sleepy face. It came away sticky and red with coagulated blood.

“Hey, look who’s finally awakey.” Tyler heard a sweet female voice coo. The statement was followed by a round of laughter. Tyler looked around, and found that he was lying on the grass in a park. His friends were all around him, along with a man and woman he didn’t recognize.

“Did my little hero-wero get a boo boo when he was saving me?” Amy continued her baby voice and poked Tyler on the chin, hard. Tyler winced in pain and saw that her finger also came away red from his face.

“You passed out,” the strange man spoke. “passed out and knocked your chin on the pavement. Sorry if I gave you a scare, you guys are the first normal people we’ve run into since Thursday night.” His voice sounded sad, and somehow distant.

“It’s all right, he’s had a big morning anyway. You ready to eat yet, Tyler?” Scott said, offering him a sandwich. “Oh, and this is Paul and Irene.” Scott gestured to the two strangers, each nodding at the role call.

“Hi.” Irene mumbled, and went back to pulling the label from a bottle of water she had in front of her. Tyler got a better look at them and figured they were both in their early forties. Paul had a troubled, distant look in his eyes. Irene looked shaken and terrified. Tyler supposed he couldn’t fault them for feeling this way if they had gone through anything like Amy and Jessica had.

“We’ve been catching them up on what we’ve been up to since this whole thing began. We were about to hear their story too, So you woke up at a good time, actually.” Jessica spoke, and then took a large bite of peanut butter sandwich.

Chris offered drinks, everyone took another water except Tyler, who really wanted another mimosa and icepack for his chin.Getting up slowly, Tyler made his way through the grass of the park they were in and over to the cooler, which stood halfway between the Escalade in the street, and the patch of grass they were picnicking on. He pulled out the remaining two liter bottle of mimosas that Chris had mixed that morning and began drinking straight from it, holding an ice cube to his chin where it mixed with the half caked blood from the small gash on his chin. The water that ran down his fingers was an unfamiliar shade of pink. Tyler wandered back to the group just in time to hear Paul start his story.

“Well, where to begin. I suppose the night all of this started, huh?”

Paul Steger’s deft fingers looped the black bowtie around his neck, quickly tied the knot and pulled it snug. He ran his hands down his crisp white shirt before pulling on the tuxedo jacket. It had always been a little snug, but he had noticed it getting worse since he went “over the hill.”

“Hun, have you seen my pearls?” he heard Irene’s sweet voice calling from the bathroom.

“I think you put them in with the matching earrings from last time.” Paul called back. He checked himself one last time in the mirror before walking out of the master bedroom.

Fifteen minutes later, Becky Henderson showed up at the house. Becky was a sweet girl, seventeen with straight black hair that went halfway down her back. Paul always thought it was fortunate that he and Irene were able to find a babysitter that was so reliable, and she lived just down the street.

“Hey champ, Becky’s here!” Paul said excitedly, pulling his six year old son Max away from a book he was reading on the floor of his bedroom. “Now you’re not going to give her any trouble, are you?” Paul asked in a mocking serious tone. Max shook his head emphatically.

“Mr. and Mrs. Blakemore?” Becky called from the front door. She was a close enough neighbor that she rarely knocked when she was here to babysit. She had gotten used to Paul and Irene running late with getting dressed and having to let herself in.

“Yeah, we’re upstairs.” Paul walked around to the top of the staircase, Max ran down the stairs in front of him and gave Becky a big hug.

The dinner party ending up being a blast, in fact Paul and Irene had such a good time they decided to call home and see if Becky would be willing to spend the night. It wasn’t the first time they had done this, and Becky always said she didn’t mind. She was paid by the hour, and 7 hours of paid sleep was the best deal a teenager could imagine.

When Paul and Irene did end up staying out, they had a pretty solid routine. Most of the dinner parties they attended were usually downtown. Because of this, they typically wouldn’t even have to catch a cab to get to a hotel. On a Thursday night, one or two of downtown hotels would have a room available. Then what started out as a nice dinner would evolve into a romantic evening away. They would get home the next morning, around seven or eight, and Irene would make breakfast for Max. All in all it was a great deal, and an arrangement they had taken advantage almost monthly over the past year. Paul was pretty sure that Becky had just started to expect it, as she seemed to start bringing over a change of clothes and bag of toiletries in addition to her schoolwork.

The next morning, Paul woke sleepily, glancing over he saw the harsh red LED lights of the bedside alarm clock reading 6:02 am. He heard the shower running and wondered for a moment how long Irene had been up for. The two went through their morning hotel routine. Paul made coffee while Irene got ready. It seemed as though Irene was had begun to expect the dinner party to turn into a romantic evening as well, as she had an overnight bag already packed and waiting in the trunk.

Paul and Irene made their way down to the front desk to checkout. Irene noticed things being a little off first. Walking down the hallway to the elevator, they didn’t see a single person, not even a housekeeper, however they could hear muffled moaning and bumping against one or two of the doors. The elevator was empty as well, and when they came into the lobby, things turned horrible, almost immediately.

The front desk attendant was standing in the middle of the lobby, staring out of the double doors at the morning sunrise. A long strand of drool was falling down from his chin, and his posture was off, hunched over to his left side. For a moment, it reminded Paul of when his Uncle Ralph had a stroke at the family Christmas when he was twenty-two. Ralph started talking funny, slurring his speech and moving really slowly, as if he didn’t understand what was going on. Thankfully Paul’s aunt had been a nurse and noticed the symptoms immediately, and Ralph was at the hospital in under twenty minutes.

The front desk attendant, a skinny, prematurely balding man in his late thirties, wearing the crisp uniform that all hotel employees wore, turned slowly when he heard the elevator door open. This is when Paul saw his eyes. They were gray, and vaguely reminded Paul of advanced cataracts. These looked different though, somehow empty.

“Excuse me, are you okay?” Irene asked, her face showing the concern that Paul himself felt for the man. The concern quickly turned to fear and revulsion, when the man opened his mouth wide to show his gaping maw. His teeth looked like blindingly white against the purple gums of the man. Paul had a final thought about whether or not this was another symptom of stroke, when Irene pulled him back from the man. As they were turning to run, Paul saw that the gold name tag on the man’s shirt, ‘Robert’.

Paul and Irene ran out of the front doors of the hotel, now even more concerned as they found the street completely empty. There was not a single car driving on what would normally have been a busy road at early rush hour on a Friday morning.

Paul, now feeling his panic begin to rise, was struggling to remain in control of his voice. “What...Where...where is everyone?”

Irene’s mind was somewhere else,  “We have to get home, we have to make sure Max is okay.”

They rushed into the parking structure that attached to hotel. Irene turned as they were entering the stairwell of the structure and saw that “Robert”, the front desk attendant was coming out of the front doors of the hotel, following them. She let out a whimper of fear and threw her daybag at him. “Just leave us alone!”

Rushing up the stairs to the fourth floor where the Honda Accord was parked, Paul and Irene piled into the vehicle and drove recklessly down the winding tower of twists and turns until they reached the exit of the structure. The exit had a self raising barrier, and the arm was down. Paul stopped and began fumbling through the vehicle to find the ticket that was punched when they entered the structure, twelve hours and one nightmare ago. “Robert” stumbled around the corner and into view, he was coming towards Irene’s side of the car as Paul hand trembled as he tried to fit the small ticket into the equally small opening.

“Paul, just go!” Irene shouted.

“The arm is down!” Paul screamed back in panic, gesturing with his head, as he was now using a second hand to try to steady himself as he slipped the ticket into the register. Robert was now at Irene’s window, his face covered in a terrible mask of purple drool.

“Just go!” Irene shrieked.

So Paul did. He slammed his foot on the accelerator and the Accord shot forward, popping the barrier arm off of the hinge on which it was posted. The Accord made a scraping noise as it bottomed out on the edge of the curb, and Paul turned left onto the empty street, accelerating towards home.

Ten minutes later, Paul pulled into the driveway of their suburban home. Irene was out of the car and running up to the front door before Paul could kill the engine. She felt agonizing seconds of panic and frustration when she realized she didn’t have her house keys and she would have to wait for Paul to catch up to her.

Paul’s nervous fingers almost dropped the house keys, and he missed the keyhole three times before Irene finally grabbed the keys out of his hands and slammed them into the lock, turning it and opening their home.

“Max!?” Irene shouted in alarm. She had no idea what was going on, and she didn’t care about the rest of the world until her son was in her arms. “Max, where are you, sweety?” Irene ran quickly from the foyer, through the kitchen, dining room, and den, before running back to foyer to check upstairs. Paul checked the same rooms, but in the opposite order. Absentmindedly, Paul noticed that Becky’s school bag was sitting in the den.

She was still here, she would have kept Max safe.

Irene was halfway up the steps when a loud thud came from upstairs. It almost sounded as though someone had dropped a watermelon on the floor. The sound made Irene panic, and she sprinted the rest of the way up the stairs, the flip flops on her feet slapping against the hardwood of the stairs. “Max, mommy’s coming!”

“Wait!” Paul shouted from the bottom of the stairs, but he saw only a glimpse of his wife as she rounded the corner at the top of the steps. He ran to the front closet and pulled out a heavy wooden baseball bat he had put there years ago when the neighborhood had a few burglaries. He took off up the stairs after his wife.

At the top of the stairs, Paul turned to make his way to Max’s room, just as he assumed Irene would have done. Sure enough, Max’s bedroom door was wide open, and Irene was standing, her back to him, still as a statue. Between the top of the stairs and Max’s bedroom was the door that led to the guest bedroom. As Paul gradually made his way towards Max’s room, the guest bedroom door opened with a loud creak. Becky, wearing a loose tee shirt and pajama pants, shuffled slowly out, turning to face Max’s room, where all the commotion was taking place.

Paul fought the urge to call out to Irene, because Becky was moving the same way that ‘Robert’ had been moving. Hunched a little to the side, with small shuffling steps. Gradual, but still predatory in some way. Becky let out a low noise, that was something between a moan and a growl, and Paul struck.

Swinging the baseball bat in a hard right to left motion, Paul felt the sickening tremor as the bat connected with the right side of Becky’s head. He heard the slap of wood on skin, and then the deeper and more visceral crack of wood on bone, and then the sticky wet sound of wood on brain. All of these noises came within a split second of one another, and were followed by the thud of Becky’s body falling into the floorboards, like a puppet with it’s strings cut.

Paul was certain that he would see Irene turning to face him when Becky fell. That she would have a look of horror on her face. Horror of either seeing what he had just done, or horror at whatever the monster version of Becky had done to their son. When he got a clear line of sight at Irene again, she was still facing away. The sickening noise and thud behind her hadn’t shaken her from whatever she was staring at. This concerned Paul most of all.

“Renie? What is it?” Paul quickly stepped over the body of his former babysitter and walked into Max’s room.

“What is this? What the hell is this?” Irene shouted and pointed. On the floor, tangled in the Buzz Lightyear blankets that he got for his last birthday, was the snarling, drooling, and growling body of his son. Paul felt hot tears spill down his face, as he stared at the monster that had once been his son. He felt his fingers tighten around the solid wood of the baseball bat, as he spoke slowly.

“I’m so sorry, Irene.”