Zombie Fallout 9 (41 page)
Authors: Mark Tufo
I
t's amazing
how your mind wanders right before you're about to fall asleep. Why it wandered to this recent passage I don't know. Must be the stress of being stuck inside a bomb shelter.
It was early morning. I'd gone outside to take a piss. Yeah, I don't know why I do it outside. I just like to. There's something back to nature about it, I suppose. I don't tell Tracy I do it because it absolutely drives her nuts, and I already do enough things that test the limits of her love for me, so why add another? Anyway, this isn't about what pisses my wife off (pun intended I guess), this has to do with Trip and Stephanie. I was walking into the house and Stephanie had just tossed a plastic cup at Trip, who was hastily retreating. It had hit him in the shoulder with enough force to spin him sideways. I keep reminding you that Stephanie is a big woman. This is just one more example.
“I can't believe you, Trip!” she shouted loud enough that if we still had neighbors, they would be calling in a domestic disturbance.
“Do I even ask?” I directed my question to BT, who was sitting at the kitchen table.
“You can, but you might not believe it. Maybe, wait a second and see how it plays out.”
“Any more juice?” I asked as I sat next to him.
He picked up the cup that had fortuitously spun back into the kitchen. He placed it on the table and poured me some. Stephanie was ranting and raving. Trip was apologizing profusely. She had cornered him in the living room and was beating him mercilessly with a throw pillow.
“How could you!” she just kept repeating, over and over.
I took a nice, long drink. “Okay, man I need to know,” I said as I placed my nearly empty cup down.
“He took a shit.”
“What?”
“He took a shit,” BT repeated.
“What, like on their bed or something?”
“No, in the bathroom.”
“In the toilet?” I mean, it's a damn shame I had to ask for clarification, but with Trip, there's no real safe assumption. BT nodded. “Okay, just give me the whole story.”
BT had a bemused smile on his face. “Trip goes into the bathroom about twenty minutes ago, I thought maybe a zombie or two had gone in with him because he was grunting and groaning like he was fending off the enemy. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I get it. Maybe if he stopped eating cheese snacks, he wouldn't be so stopped up.” He'd been complaining about not being able to go for the last few days.
“Well, he went. And went, and went. His words, not mine. Said it was like a gravy train was shooting out hisâ”
“Okay, I get it. Did he stop the toilet up?”
“No, but he went and grabbed Stephanie, who was already coming down to brush her teeth. Said he had to show her something.”
“No ⦠he did not.”
“Yup, said he was so proud of his food babies that he had to show her. She of course didn't know what the hell he was talking about, at least until the pungent funk of three-day old colon-festering processed cheese food punched her in the nose.”
“Is there really a need to be that graphic?”
“I gotta admit it was pretty impressive.”
“You went and looked?”
“It was the color of a canary and the size of a small eagle. Of course I had to.”
“What the hell is wrong with the people in this house? So basically Stephanie is yelling at Trip for taking a shit in the bathroom?”
“That's about the gist of it. Said she wanted to brush her teeth and now she wouldn't be able to for at least another hour because of the reek.”
“This is why I piss outside.”
“What?” Tracy had a look of alarm on her face as she walked into the room.
“Dammit.” I mumbled.
Mike Journal Entry 15
A
fter the psychic
stabbing in all of our skulls, there was nothing. Well, I mean my wife will argue that there is generally nothing going on in my head at any time. But I was referring more specifically to vampires or zombies. A day had gone by, and we could hear nothing. We were getting close to opening the door and checking when a soft knocking came on the door.
“Hey,” a female voice called out.
We all stayed silent within. I held my hand up to keep it that way.
“Hey, is there anyone in there?” There was more knocking.
“Answer her,” Tracy said softly.
“What if she's a zombie?” BT asked.
“Really?” the voice on the other side of the door responded. BT shrugged.
“Who's out there?” I called out.
There was a pause on her end. “Who's in there?”
“Fair enough, I suppose. My name is Michael Talbot.”
“I'm Tiffany. Tiffany Churchill.”
“As in Winston?” Trip asked.
“Yeah, of the Kentucky chapter.” I could tell she said it sarcastically. She was endearing herself to me already and I hadn't even seen her.
“So there are no zombies?” I asked before Trip could start to question her about the famous leader.
“Well, I think I'd be dead if there were. They pretty much left after I shot one of the vampires.”
So that's what happened. That made sense, to a degree. Charity seemed to be the one directing the zombies, and when she'd been injured, and hopefully killed, that connection had been removed. Zombies rely on smell and sight to hunt, and now, apparently, echo location, but if no food was present, these new zombies won't stick around long. They went in search of greener pastures. Or what the hell do I know? Maybe Charity's mind ripping scream had sent them off. In the end, who gives a shit as long as they were gone?
I keyed in the code, looked over to BT and Tracy, who both had their weapons ready. I pulled the door open quickly. There was a waif of a woman standing there holding a large hunting rifle. She looked a little worse for the wear.
“Are you good people?” She gulped.
“I am,” I said pointing to myself. “He's an asshole.” I looked over to BT.
“Put the damn guns down,” Tracy told us. “Come on in. We'll get you some food and water.” The girl, young woman really, looked pretty relieved.
BT, me, Gary, Travis, Justin, and Meredith did a complete sweep of the house, the yard, and a little into the surrounding woods. Besides the hundreds of bodies of dead zombies, there was nothing else. We knocked on the bunker door.
“They're gone.” There was relief in our group. Tiffany told us her story up to putting a bullet in Charity's noggin. “We didn't find her. You got anything?” I asked Tommy.
He shook his head curtly.
Tiffany looked over at him strangely. I didn't think now was a good time to let her in on Tommy's and my little secret. She had a very skewed version of what vampires were like, and she was never more than half a step from her rifle. I wasn't going to give her any reason to pick it up and start blasting shit.
“
W
hat now
, Talbot?” BT and I stood on the deck. The yard and the house, and hell, even the family, were in a shambles. I consider myself a fighter not a runner, but right then my instincts and my desires both shared the strong wish to leave, to put this place as far behind us as possible. Maybe if the vamps came from England, we should go there. At least we'd know they weren't with us on the continent. Maybe our best course of action was to find a ship and just sail the seven seas. Although that held as much craving for me as walking on to the set of a BDSM movie respite with leather, whips, chains, and strap-ons. If I'm not making it abundantly clear, those were both things I did not want to do. The thought of all those ocean waves and petroleum jelly, respectively, freaked me out.
“We rebuild.” I'd gripped the railing tightly, maybe to anchor myself so I wouldn't start running and never stop. Forrest Gump might have been impressed if I started. Zombies were out there. One, perhaps two, extremely pissed off vampires were out there. A giant zombie primate was out there, and just to put a cherry on the cake, Deneaux was still out there. And I knew, I just fucking knew, all of those elements were going to find their way back to us no matter where we went. Our fates, our destinies, providence, fortune, chance, and all that other karmic bullshit were so tightly intertwined, that it was an eventuality. We'd added two lives to our group and lost four. You can do the math, these were not sustainable numbers. We were on the losing end of the extinction event. We were the tattered remnants.
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