Zombies! Rising from the Dead (4 page)

After settling in everyone sat around the pool. The girls talked about whatever girls talk
about, from time to time laughing and giggling about
something;
you know how girls are.
Rick, Frankie and I talked about all the usual stuff which usually involved girls, movies, or
the latest gadget.

After a few trips back and forth to the grill I jumped in the pool to cool off. The sudden
shift in temperature sent
goose bumps
across my body, and for a split second I was frozen
inplace
as the shock of the cool water hitting my warm skin sent ripples up and down my spine.
The heat and soot from the grill washed away and I was left feeling rejuvenated. Everyone else
joined in, eating and periodically taking dips in the pool throughout the day. Later we even shot
off a few fireworks here and there to break up the action.

I'm not sure who it was that came up with the idea to go in the yard and toss around the
baseball, perhaps Frankie, but we all
t
hought it was a good idea. Leaving the girls gossiping on
the patio Rick, Frankie and I went into the house and up the stairs to find
all the
old baseball
garb. In one of the back bedrooms that was seldom used I had stashed the old baseball
equipment, hadn't thought about it or used it in years but I knew it was there. I had a scuffed up
catcher’s
mitt, a yellow, faded baseball and my trusty old Louisville Slugger. We gathered up the
equipment from the closet
where
it had been collecting dust patiently waiting for the day when it
would be needed again.

The back yard was just unused farmland, perfect for a
m
akeshift ball field. We all ran
out onto the field and took our spots. I'm not sure how it was decided who did what first, but
Frankie ended up batting . . . with Rick on the
pitcher’s
mound, it was a very amusing sight.

Frankie walked up
and
took a few practice swings and then pointed to far left
field in the best Babe Ruth impersonation he could muster.

“Hey
bata
'
,
bata
’!'
Hey,
bata
,'”
he chanted in a very comical tone.

Rick, “Mr. Baseball
”
,
tried to be all serious about it even though he hadn't thrown a ball in at least ten years.

He heckled Frankie as he yelled
“
S
sttteeerrriiiiiiiiikkkeeeee
!!!”

Rick tossed out a pitch that was nothing less than comical. The ball didn’t even get
close to the
pitcher’s
mound, veering off and damned near hitting Frankie in the side.
Frankie put the bat down, looked at where the ball landed, and then looked at Rick. He
did a double-take to rub it in.

“What the hell was that?!”
he yelled with a big grin on his face, shaking his head
pitifully at Rick.
The girls simply busted up laughing, and I couldn't help it either.

“Shut up, shut up dammit,”
Rick said in a
melancholy tone.

We all had a good laugh at his expense.

Rick threw a few more pitches with thankfully better
a
ccuracy. Frankie got a strike out
of one and a double on the other,
and then
we switched up. Frankie headed into the outfield and I
went to the pitcher's mound.

The girls sat on the patio watching intently and making the occasional clap or cheer.

Rick went up to bat, picking up my old Slugger and started
s
winging it as hard as he could. A
male display of power, although his large bulbous gut sort of got in the way of his attempt to
convey ferocity.

“You ready for this man? Right down the
middle,
gonna
throw the heat!
”
I warned him.

“Yeah, I'm ready....”
he said confidently.
I reared back and
to
ssed the first pitch, all we heard was air and re-verb of the bat as he

swung
with all his might
,
missing the pitch entirely.

“I thought you were ready!?”
I said, scoffing.

Rick just shook his head and motioned for the next pitch, using the old “bring-it”
motion with his out-stretched hand. We
c
ouldn't help but to rub it in some more as I hollered
back at Frankie in left field.

“Hey Frank you ready for this?”
I questioned.

Frankie made a yawning motion
“ready for what?”
cackled sarcastically.
I tossed out another pitch to Rick, which he grazed with enough momentum to send it rolling
towards second base. Frankie caught up to it with little problem.

“Alright
, alright;
last chance, man!”
I heckled.

Rick started to sway the bat back and forth, for his sake I tossed a slow one right down
the middle. What happened next
s
eemed to be in slow motion,
as
he swung the bat again as hard
as he could, doing so with all the power he could muster but
this
time the bat made full contact.
SWWWWAAAAAAAKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!
I knew it was a
goner;
every bit of the power behind the
swing nailed the ball squarely and sent it reeling! We all watched as the ball flew high into the
sky almost disappearing from sight. Everyone stopped and turned, craning their necks as we
watched the ball fly off into the distance. Frankie put his hand above his eyes to get a better
view of the hit. Even in a major league ball park it would have been close to a home run, on our
little makeshift field it was absolutely outta' there. It finally came down on the
other
side of the
house and bounced a few times before it plopped to rest, nestled in the tall thickets of grass. A

moment
passed and then from the “stands” the girls started cheering and clamping their hands.

“Damn dude...holy shit...you couldn't hit them that hard back in high school!”
I said.

“You like that,
ehhh
?”
Rick said with a chuckle.

“Good job man, I will give you credit!”
I told him.

The girls had gotten such a kick out of Rick's grand slam that they came running out on
the field to participate with us. Frankie,
S
hane and I spent the remaining several minutes
watching the girls jump and bounce around the field in their swimsuits; we were more

interested
in them
,
than in baseball.

We all took several more swings at bat. We got several singles and a few doubles, but
nothing else as great as Rick's grand slam. The girls pranced around from base to base which
we all got a kick out of watching.

In the background every once and a while an announcement would come on the radio
and mention the tsunami's created by the meteor impact. The meteor itself seemed like an
afterthought
and in itself was quickly overlooked in the wake of the other ecological problems that
came after. It was quite the incident, and natural disasters were even more devastating in
undeveloped third world regions which generally were less organized and had fewer resources

to
deal with devastation on such a large scale. We weren't heartless but it was something taking
place thousands of miles away and it seemed to have little bearing on our daily lives. In recent
years with increasingly bad weather, terrorist attacks and just all sorts of bad mojo floating
around it simply didn't have the impact on our psyche that it might have had years earlier. Yet,
during the course of the day it was definitely a topic of conversation, we simply had no idea
that these events taking place so very far away would have an almost immediate, direct impact
on our lives.

The day started to grow long and Frankie and Brittany decided to pack it in and head
home several hours before nightfall. They lived right outside Panatauk and wanted to get on the
road before it got
too
late, we offered them a room for the night but Frankie had to open to store
the following morning and the drive to town would simply have been
to
much. We told him
that we might drive up in a day or two and check out his new building, he had just
relocated his business to a new location and we were eager to see it in full operation. The last
time he showed it to us it was still an empty building in dire need of some TLC.

Rick, Amanda and I started cleaning up. Amanda would be leaving early because
unlike Rick she had to be at work at seven in
the morning. Nonetheless she stayed till the late
hours to spend time with him and to help get things wrapped up only leaving a little after ten. As the lingering festivities moved indoors and things began to quiet down for the night, only
then did we really realize just what catastrophe had taken place. Every channel on the
television was covering the disaster and internet search engines were saturated by keywords
such as meteor, disaster, ocean
,
etc
.,

All over the screen, regardless of what channel we watched, the story was the same.
Great plumes of ash and smoke filled the sky, making air travel impossible. The immediate
areas that weren't destroyed by the impact were covered in caked layers of soot. Homes,