Timothy 02: Tim2 (20 page)

“Any damn day, Hugh!” He let me linger in misery a lot longer than he needed to. “Better get your ass in gear there, buddy!” I said as I placed the gun up against my forehead, “Or I’ll take your slimy little ass out!” He reluctantly began to mend the wound. “I figured you’d see it my way,” I said as I pulled myself back into a sitting position.

“EAT.” Hugh said in his normal articulate and eloquent prose.

“That’s what I’m trying to get accomplished. But me and you aren’t going anywhere until you get me fixed up proper. Maybe you should throw a little dopamine into the mix.”

Food is a powerful motivator. As Hugh turned on the pain killer jets, I was immediately flooded with feelings of wellness and happiness. “That’s the ticket,” I told him, letting my lids droop a bit.

“EAT now,” Hugh said as he wrapped up.

“Hugh, there’s like a billion words for EAT. Do you think you could vary it up a bit? Maybe, get a bite? That actually seems much more fitting, don’t you think?”

His stony silence let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought of my thesaurus reference. “Fine,” I said as I stood up, thankful that the door handle was destroyed.

I pushed the door open with the heel of my hand. I got a flashback of my principal’s office as I walked into the HR Generalist’s office. They were similar in that they gave off the smell of disciplinary authority; basically you knew you were screwed if you were called to either. I quickly scanned the room; there was a large file cabinet I figured housed the employee files.

“Sweet,” I said right before I ripped a fingernail off attempting to open it. “Fuck what are there, state secrets in here?”

I went over to the desk – top drawer, left hand corner is where the keys sat. “Do they only hire people with OCD in this place? Or are all office workers afflicted with it?” I said, sucking my bleeding index finger. I opened the drawer with so much force I ripped it free from the cabinet almost having it land on my foot. The day was beginning to grate on me, high or not. Some of the files scattered, but not my sweet Scarlett’s: Scarlett Speight, 10325 Tiny Terrapin Lane.

“How quaint, see you there,” I said blissfully as I quickly exited the building.

I wished I could have used MapQuest or something. I was going to need to stop at a gas station and get a map, how 1980s of me. I got back into my previous rust bucket and headed out. The day, which had been kind of taking a downturn, was now looking considerably better.

I spent more time than I cared looking for a fueling station. There were so many road hazards I had to detour that I almost decided to ditch my ride. When I finally came across one, it looked like it had been ransacked and then looted. It was so desolate inside; even some of the shelving was gone. Who takes shelving in an apocalypse? People are fucking weird.

“No maps. Is every friggin’ survivor lost!” I shouted.

I heard some shuffling in the back garage. Maybe the day wasn’t completely a bust. “Son of a bitch,” I said as I looked at a few dozen zombies. There were some lying down and then others began to dog pile on top. It looked like the grossest Roman Orgy I had ever seen. A couple looked over at me. I could sense Hugh watching raptly. I could even sense a sort of pull within him like maybe he wanted to join the juice exchange fest going on over there. I’d been into some strange stuff in my day, but I didn’t want anything to do with that offal pig pile going on.

“Hugh, what the hell are they doing?” I asked.

He did that index card shuffle through Clarence’s mind ripples until he found an adequate explanation. He came up with a brown bear sleeping in a cave.

“Hibernating? They’re hibernating? Why?”

Hugh’s next image was an empty plate.

“No food? How is that possible?”

Because there’s too many damn zombies, that’s why
, I thought, shielding that from Hugh.

“Sleep? Eat?” Hugh asked.

“Oh, we’re getting food, buddy, because if that’s the alternative...” I left the rest unsaid. “That sure is a lot of mouths to feed.” Looking at the zombies as they alternated head to toe, laying themselves over each other like a master mason, I knew what I had to do. It was just a matter of how I was going to do it without Hugh knowing.

We were already in an unsteady unstable détente, and if I made all his little friends crispy critters, there was no telling what might happen. Out of the two garage bays, one was rapidly filling with tired zombies, and the other had a tired-looking Ford something-or-other hoisted in the air. I glanced over longingly at the gas tank. Odds were it had some fuel in it. Now the question became could I puncture a hole in it and light the resultant spill on fire without my little piggy backer knowing. Of all the zombies I got stuck with mine had to have integrity.

“Hugh, we need gas for our car.”

He didn’t give a shit.

“So we can eat.”

He perked up like a dog getting promised cookies. He settled back down and I could sense him warring within himself to sleep or eat.

Yeah, you keep yourself occupied while I find a container
. There was an empty windshield cleaner jug in the trash. I grabbed it and headed back towards the Ford. I wish I wasn’t this thick, I was actually aiming my 9mm at the tank to puncture a hole before it dawned on me that that might not be the smartest thing I’d done and just today – a day in which I had already shot myself.

“Yup, I was the fastest sperm,” I berated myself. I put my gun away and found a screwdriver. The car was so rusted out that I almost ended up putting my fist through the tank along with the screwdriver. A good stream of gas was flowing as I did my best to make it look like I was trying to get it into the jug. No red flags for Hugh yet; he wasn’t putting the puzzle together. I filled the jug up to the top and I let a fair amount of it slosh out as I made a circuitous route around the garage. I told Hugh I was looking for a funnel, and again, he didn’t give a shit. Never did find a funnel, but the car I was driving didn’t need gas anyway. I let more gas spill out before I walked over to the car. I made exaggerated overtones trying to get the fluid into our ride. When I was convinced the Ford had to be close to empty by now I headed back to the garage thankful for the fact I had the foresight to hold on to my lucky lighter from the supermarket.

I did some magic and made sure to
not
look as I lit the jug on fire. I was almost rewarded with some third degree burns for my effort. When I felt the heat rising off the jug, I turned my head back towards our car and hurled the fire-bomb into the garage. I then walked at a brisk pace away from the burgeoning inferno. A wave of foul fumed heat blew past me, ruffling my oversized clothes as it did so.

Hugh kept flashing an angry red question mark. I ignored him completely. He had an idea what happened, he could tell by the stench. I had not thought to somehow dim that sense. But I made damn sure to not look as glass blew out from the super-heated air. I started the car and hauled ass, being extra careful that I didn’t even look in the rearview mirrors. Hugh was stewing, such a human emotion, I wondered if the longer he stayed in a body the more like ‘us’ he would become. He had an inkling what I had done, no proof by vision, but I was having a difficult time containing my emotions.

I was still driving without a purpose and, pissed off or not, Hugh was going to want to eat soon. There was already some telltale gurgling going on, but of course that could have been the excrescences that had covered Nick’s body. Brainstorm number three of the day, if I was keeping score, I stopped the car and opened the glove compartment.

“You have got to be shitting me,” I said as I unfolded the detailed map of the city. My hands were almost shaking as I tracked down Tiny Terrapin Lane. I turned the car around, very careful to steer clear of the site of my previous barbecue. The smoke from it swirled heavily and mixed with the rest of the exhaust from a world gone to hell.

By my rough estimates, I figured Sweet Scarlett’s house to be roughly twenty-five miles away. I could see now why she had chosen to not yet attempt to bridge the gap from where she was to where she wanted to be. I was straight out of a horrid dream-turned-rancid; of that there was no doubt, but I wasn’t the only monster that had come out to play. A single female had about as much chance of making that post-apocalyptic commute as a gallon of chocolate ice cream had of surviving a support group for divorced women.

Once we got out of the city, the sailing got marginally smoother. Whatever had happened to mankind had happened fast. There hadn’t even been enough time for mass exodus or for Army pukes to mobilize and really screw the pooch. I was trying to figure out if the women were behind me or had succeeded and were even now in the arms of their loved ones. I didn’t know which scenario intrigued me more. I kind of liked the idea of letting my girl be happy for a few moments before I ripped that away from her.

I was so distracted that I never noticed as a black SUV snuck up on my tail. My head smacked off the headrest as it bumped into my rear end. I looked up into my rearview mirror. All I could see was the grill of whatever was slamming into me. They hit me one more time, causing the nose of my car to drop down and the rear tires to squeal as they nearly came up off the ground. The SUV then backed off a few feet and began to come up on my driver’s side.

“Holy shit, Dad! It’s a clown!” the man in the passenger seat yelled. I wasn’t going particularly fast, so it was easy enough to hear the idiot when he spoke.

I could see him in the side mirror. He looked like he was in his twenties or so; from this angle I couldn’t see his father, but I thought I saw someone else in the back seat, possibly younger by the size of them.

The SUV was coming up quickly. “Why the fuck you dressed as a clown, clown?” the son asked.

I turned and smiled as they came up broadside. The gun he was holding all but forgotten as he looked at my face. At first I could see him trying to reconcile the image, and then wretched fear took over. I wiggled my tongue at him like a lizard.

“Dad, get the fuck outta here!” the son said, smacking his father on the shoulder, never taking his eyes off of me.

“We need his stuff, just shoot him,” the father replied.

“Not very neighborly!” I yelled, standing up as far as I could from the confines of my seat. Half of me leaning out the window.

The father looked over I wouldn’t have thought it was even possible, but his look of fear was worse than his son’s. Must have had a wicked case of coulrophobia (fear of clowns, for those of you without a thesaurus). He almost tipped the truck attempting to turn it around so quickly.

“Oh, and just when we were getting to know each other.”

I turned to follow suit. The SUV was pulling away, its engine being almost double the size of mine, and add to the fact that the guy was probably trying to drive the gas pedal through the floor. I would have been more concerned that my ‘fast food’ was a little too fast, but the writing in this case was on the wall. The highway was not completely debris free. Sure, it was fine and dandy for someone going forty…not eighty. His swerves were becoming more erratic and less controlled as he frantically kept looking over his shoulder to see if I was still following.

It was three miles later when the SUV sideswiped a parked VW Van, it rolled three times before it came to a stop on its roof. It was slowly spinning like a second hand on a watch as I pulled up. The heavy ticking from an over-worked engine and the dripping of multiple fluids were the only thing I heard. Then the moans started in earnest. I leaned against my car wishing right then I had a cigarette. That sounded like just about the best thing in the world right then.

“Dad, you alright?” I think the passenger asked.

“Unnhh,” was the reply. I was going to need my pocket-dictionary for that meaning.

“Jerry?” the passenger asked the person I guessed was sitting in the back.

“My leg is bent,” came a definitely pre-pubescent, shocked voice in reply.

Well he’s not going anywhere any time soon
, I thought as I sauntered up to the turned over hunk of shit.

“Whose out there?” the passenger cried out.

“Well it’s either Triple-A, or Triple-F, where the ‘F’ stands for Fucked. I’d guess option two, if I were you,” I said as I peered through the windshield.

He started screaming and throwing punches into the air. He was hung upside down from his seatbelt – they all were as I took a closer look. The father seemed to be coming to and was looking at me. Blood, which should have been pooling in his head from the way he was oriented, was instead blanching out. His mouth defied gravity as it fell open. It looked like I was going to lose him to unconsciousness.

“So let me get this straight,
Dad
,” I said sarcastically. “You care enough about your kids to have them put their seatbelts on, but then you put them in danger by attempting to hijack unsuspecting people? Well you sure did fuck up this time, didn’t you,” I said more as a statement of fact. “Damn, the way you guys are all hung up there, you look like vending machine food. I can only hope you taste better. Might as well get started, all this chasing has worked up my appetite.”

“Please, mister,” the passenger said, scrambling to undo his belt that was keeping him prisoner.

“I’ll get to you, just wait your turn like everyone else,” I told him as I walked over to the driver’s door.