Zombie D.O.A. (21 page)

I recall being relieved, pleased even, to see normal people and I may have opened my mouth to say “hi”. That was when one of the agents shot me.

When I came round, I was still in the diner, cuffed to a chair, with the smaller of the agents, the Jake Blues lookalike, sitting across from me and the other, somewhat resembling Elwood, leaning against the counter, sipping from a cup. 

Jake was asking me something I couldn’t comprehend. I felt groggy, and my neck throbbed from where I’d been darted.

He learned over and slapped my face. Then he repeated his question. It sounded like, “Where’s the trigger?”

“What?”

“Where’s the trigger?” he repeated.

“What? I don’t know what you…”

“This could go hard for you, you know
,”
Elwood said from the counter.

“I really don’t know, what you’re talking about.”

Jake half-turned towards Elwood, who shrugged. “Do what it takes,” he said.

The Jake lookalike got up and walked towards one of the booths. He had his back towards me and when he turned he was holding a syringe.

“Now, you might think this is sodium pentothal,” he
said, walking back towards me,
“
but it isn’t. This is something infinitely more powerful. Problem is, the side-effects are somewhat unpredictable. Permanent brain damage is not unheard of.“

He sat down in th
e chair again, the syringe
in his hand, a clear liquid contained within. “Last chance, where’s the trigger?”

“I told you I don’t…” I started to say and that was when I noticed the Z rise from behind the counter close to Elwood.

Elwood must have seen something in my expression because he dropped the coffee cup and spun around. As he did, the Zombie bit him in the face, and Elwood started screeching like a steam whistle.

Jake swung round and as he did I kicked out at him and he stumbled over the chair. He came up with the needle protruding from his cheek and a confused expression on his face. He reached inside his coat, probably going for a weapon, and then he collapsed.

Next thing I remember I was running
towards
the door, crouched over and still bound to the chair. I crossed the forecourt without looking and didn’t stop running until I heard the squealing of tires.

I looked up to see a rust-colored truck sliding sideways towards me, smoke spewing from its tires as the driver stood on the brakes. I braced myself and felt the vehicle side swipe me.

Then
,
as if in slow motion
,
I felt myself being lifted from the ground. I was airborne and the world seemed to stand still for a split second before I crashed into the pavement and slid towards the curb. I don’t remember any pain – that would come later. For now, there was just blackness.

When I woke I was lying in a bed in a room with muted floral wallpaper and lace curtains. The window was open a crack and a cool breeze crept in and rustled the
drapes
. I could see a porch with a neatly trimmed lawn beyond that. To the left ran a dirt track lined with tall tulip trees.

I tried to rise and felt pain jolt through my side. As a fighter I’d suffered a few cracked
ribs in my career, so I was no
stranger to that exquisite variety of pain and recognized it right way. What was worse though was the throbbing in my head.  

Nonetheless, I had to get up so I took a deep breath and forced myself into a sitting position ignoring the lightning bolt that exploded along my right side. I noticed a tube of aspirin on the nightstand, shook out two and dry swallowed them.

I
brought
my hand up to my face and I could feel that it was bruised and tender
,
with a doozy of a lump on my forehead.

I peeled back the covers and swung my feet to the floor. I was wearing a pair of navy blue pajamas a couple of sizes too big. My first attempt at standing was a dismal failure and I slumped back onto the bed breathing heavily. On the second try I found my feet, tottered slightly but this time stayed up.

The pajama bottoms chaffed the side of my leg and when I pulled it away, I noticed that the skin down there had been severely scraped and bruised. Someone had taken the time to apply a healthy dose of iodine.

There was a dressing table with a mirror against the wall and I shuffled in that direction. The man who looked back at me was almost recognizable.

Early in my career I’d fought a catch weight contest against a guy named Ronaldo Holmes. Holmes had outweighed me and outreached me and had basically pummeled me for four rounds until my corner had thrown in the towel.  I’d gone to the emergency room with a broken nose, a cracked cheekbone and badly bruised ribs. This was worse.

My face was a ripe shade of purple, turning yellow in spots. My right eye was closed to a slit, and the left was also blackened and bloodshot. The skin on the tip of my nose and on my chin had been scraped off and there was a blackened, goose egg sized lump on my forehead. The worst of it was, I couldn’t remember where I was, wha
t had happened, or how I’d got
here.

But I intended to find out.

The first thing I needed was a weapon, and I saw the perfect thing slotted into the space between the dressing table and the wall, a Louisville Slugger. I can’t tell you how I thought I’d swing it, but I guess it gave me a measure of comfort.

Leaning heavily on the bat, I shuffled down a dark passage, at the end of which was a hallway. The front door stood open, and through it I could see a man crouching down in a flowerbed.

Further along I heard a woman’s voice, a clear soprano singing something that sounded familiar, but that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I followed that voice and found myself in a large, sunny kitchen with a heavy, oak table as its centerpiece. The table was cluttered with the fixings of a meal and at the end of it, a grey-haired woman stood, stirring up something in a mixing bowl.

She was intent on her work and singing to herself, so at first she didn’t notice me. The woman poured the contents of the bowl into a mould and then she raised her head and started to bring her hand to her mouth as though getting ready to call someone. That was when she saw me.

The hand that had been headed for her mouth went instead to her chest and her eyes widened. She took in a couple of deep breaths and then she said, “Mister, you just took five years off an old woman’s life.”

If it wasn’t for Tom and Betsy Riley, I wouldn’t be here telling you this story today. It would be no exaggeration to say that I owe them my life.

Over dinner that night, Tom told me how I’d come to be here.

He’d gone out on his weekly pr
ovisioning run and was heading
home. At the last moment he’d decided to fill the truck with gas, and that had brought him into the road where he’d found me.

“Usually, I’d stay clear of the Parkway ‘cause it’s so clogged, but I try to keep the gas topped up. There’s a couple of stations down there where the wells are still fairly well stocked and you can drop a bucket in them.

“Back before all this happened, I’d run that old truck on fumes before I filled her. But these days… Anyways, the point is, I wouldn’t have even been on that road in the normal course of things. Guess it was your lucky day, Chris.” He paused for a moment then said, “Relatively speaking, of course.”

Tom had come to the point in the road, where the burned out tanker had jack knifed, blocking the highway. “Except,” he said, “Some idiot had tried to go round her in one of those city SUV’s and gotten stuck in the mud.”

He’d considered reversing and going back by another route, but he’d already been gone too long, and didn’t want Betsy worrying. So he’d pushed the car out of the way, and had just rounded the tanker when he heard shots fired.

“Now, I done some time in the military,” Tom said, “so gunfire doesn’t spook me. On the other hand, I have no intention of getting shot up in someone else’s fight. Besides, Bets and I, we’ve got us a pact. When we go, we go together. And I wasn’t about to break a promise, for the first time in forty eight years of marriage.” He gave Betsy a hug and kissed her forehead, and she snuggled into him.

“You a married man, Chris?”

“No, I’m not,” I said, too quickly, realizing as I did, that I was still wearing my wedding band.

There was an awkward silence around the table and then Tom muttered, “None of my damn business, anyhow.”

He got up from the table, “I’ve got a pretty good bottle of Irish whiskey back here, sacrilege in Kentucky, I know, but can I tempt you?

When I declined, he said, ”Probably not a good idea in your condition anyway.” He went off to pour his drink, while Betsy poured each of us a glass of lemonade.

When Tom returned he said, “You know those fellers did you a favor strapping you to that chair. Cushioned the blow when you hit the curb. Wasn’t for that you’d be fertilizer right now. ”

Tom had heard the shots and he’d put his foot on the gas. A minute later I had run into the road in front of his truck.

“I got to tell you,” Tom said. “I was tempted to just keep going. But, even in these times, a man’s got to listen to his conscience. And I got a conscience that bitches worse than a nagging wife, sorry Bets, but there it is. Pain in the ass sometimes, but there it is.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Nothing you won’t have done for me too,” Tom said, embarrassed.

There was another awkward silence around the table, eventually broken by Betsy. “Look at the time,” she said, “I
’ve
got dishes to do. Tom you can stay and help. Chris, you get yourself off to bed. You need your rest.”

I struggled to my feet, leaning on the baseball bat. “You need a hand there, feller?” Bill asked.

“I got it. Night Betsy, Tom. Thanks for…”

“Oh hush,” Betsy said. “Get yourself to bed.”

I had the first of the dreams that night. I was in our old apartment, lying on the floor by the window, the warm afternoon sun making me drowsy. I heard the baby crying and I rose dream-like and stumbled towards the bedroom. From within I could hear Rosie’s tuneless rendition of “The Greatest Love of All”.

I walked past the sideboard, brushing my hand against my boxing trophies as I did. Then I was at the bedroom door and I was suddenly very afraid.

I wanted to run, but as happens in dreams my legs refused to obey, so I pushed the door open and bright light flooded through. I could hear the cries of seagulls and the swish-swish-swish of water gently lapping.

As my eyes adapted I could see that I was on a beach. It was a gorgeous warm
afternoon
with a sky impossibly blue and untainted by clouds. Waves as placid as puppies trickled towards shore, carried on a breeze just cool enough to take the edge off the balmy day.

To my right the coastline made a gradual sweep forming the outline of a wide bay. The land rose steeply from the shoreline there, terminating in a plateau. I could see a house nestled precariously against the cliff. A white house, three stories high with parapets and a red roof.