Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (3 page)

Chapter Two – Mike Journal Entry 1

“You
alright, Mike?” BT asked with concern.

“I’m fine. Why? Do I look bad?” I asked him
with the same concern. I didn’t want to start turning into that
pasty-looking version of Tom Cruise in “Interview with a Vampire.”
He always looked anemic, although how that was possible after
drinking all that iron-rich blood, I’ll never know.

“Well, to be honest, you’ve looked better,
but that’s not why I’m asking. You were just standing there and
then this shit-eating grin spread across your face. You looked like
you had maybe just taken a shit in your pants and you didn’t want
anyone to know. That sort of thing.”

“That’s pretty graphic, my friend. I’ve got
an idea.”

“Oh no, why do I ask? Why God?” BT asked as
he turned his head up to the heavens.

“What’s going on?” Tracy asked. The activity
of the last few days was weighing heavily on her shoulders, fearing
for her children and now for her husband. Tracy could not gauge if
BT were wailing to the heavens or merely jesting for Mike.

“Your husband has an idea,” BT said
seriously, never pulling his gaze from the clouds that flew by
overhead, oblivious to the prayers that drifted through them,
seeking a higher purpose.

“Mike, we’ve gone over this time and time
again,” Tracy said, placing her hand on BT’s shoulder in
commiseration.

“I know, I know,” I told them. “But this
time, it’s going to work.”

“Heard that before,” Gary said from twenty
feet across the parking lot of the Big 5 Sporting Goods store they
were in the midst of ransacking. Most everything of any value was
long gone, but there were a few small caliber rifles and bricks of
.22 bullets, some camping gear, a few packs of dehydrated food and,
for some abnormal reason, pallets of knee-high socks. It looked
like the World Cup was coming to North Carolina soon.

“No, I’ve got insider information now,” I
told them.

Tracy’s head bowed as she realized I was
talking about Eliza. It was one thing to know about her, completely
another to be linked to her.

“She’s coming for us,” I told them.

BT threw his hands to his face. “Shocker!” he
exclaimed.

Tracy punched him so hard in the arm, he
actually stepped back a few inches.

“Damn, woman! If I could crane my neck far
enough down to see you, I’d swat you away like a fly,” BT
bellowed.

“Hey, this is pretty cool, I’m usually the
one in the middle of the shit storm.”

“Shut up, Talbot!” BT and Tracy said in
unison, and then they high-fived. Well, to be fair, Tracy
way-high-fived and BT went way-low, but it was the same thing, sort
of.

“Okay, no shit, we all know she’s coming. But
I know when and how. I think it’s time we went on the
offensive.”

“I’m listening,” Brian said, carrying his
third load of socks to the car. “What?” he said as he dropped them
in the backseat. “I like to have clean feet; it’s an Army
thing.”

“So you gleaned all this info from her?” BT
asked, reluctant to use her name.

I nodded, maybe just a little too
enthusiastically.

“Close your mouth when you’re nodding,
Talbot,” Tracy said, “You look like the village idiot.”

“Any chance she fed you some misinformation?”
Brian asked.

“First off, I think she’s probably too
arrogant for that,” I said. “I think she’d tell us willingly what
she planned on doing, probably thinking there was nothing we could
do to stop it,” I told the growing group. Gary and Justin nodded in
agreement. “But no, I’m pretty sure she had no clue I was
eavesdropping on her.”

“Whew, buddy,” BT said, rubbing his hand over
the top of his head. “This isn’t like solving the puzzle on Wheel
of Fortune.”

I stopped him there. “BT, don’t tell me you
watch Wheel of Fortune?”

“What in the hell is wrong with Wheel of
Fortune? Vanna White is a goddess.”

I shrugged, I had to agree with him there.
She might be a few revolutions of the globe past her prime, but who
amongst us had never fantasized about her turning our letters on?
Okay, poor sexual innuendo, but it gets the point across.

“So you were saying?” Tracy asked BT as she
pushed me to wake me from my Vanntasy. (See? That was much
better!)

“No offense, buddy,” BT said, “but your ideas
suck ass.”

For the second time in a matter of seconds, I
found myself agreeing with BT. “Granted. But I’m sick of running, I
want her to re-think her strategy, I want to bleed her this time,”
I said with anger.

“You are not talking that ‘last stand’ shit
again, are you, Talbot?” Tracy flared. “Because if you are, I will
drag your sorry ass out of here by your balls, upside down!”

BT, Gary, Paul and even MJ, who was not
paying us any attention covered up their privates in a mutual
shared sympathy.

Justin nearly split his side laughing. Travis
was shaking his head from side to side, in disbelief that he had
just heard those words issued from his mother’s mouth.

When I felt I could safely remove my hand
from my nether regions, I continued, although I have to admit I had
turned a slight degree or two away from Tracy, so as not to give
her easy reaching access to my cherished jewels. “No, no I promise
no John Wayne stuff. I want her to feel some of the trepidation
that we do every waking second. I want her to think that maybe her
next breath might be her last.”

“Mike, vamps don’t breathe,” Gary said.

“Analogy, brother, just an analogy.”

“Gotcha,” he said, clicking his tongue and
pointing at me with his index finger.

Well, let’s get this part out of the
way
, I thought to myself. “Tracy, I still want you and Meredith
and the boys to head back to Ron’s. The sooner you can get MJ back
there and working on his wonder boxes, the better; and this gambit
should buy us plenty of time.”

She looked at me coldly with her
battleship-gray eyes. I waited silently for the tempest within to
be unleashed. It never came. “You swear to me, Talbot, that this is
not one of your do-or-die stunts and I will do as you ask.”

“Really?” I asked incredulously. “I honestly
wasn’t expecting that.”

“The window of opportunity is closing,” she
said forcefully.

“Yeah, yeah yeah,” I said quickly. “No, it’s
not any sort of final encounter.”

“Then you teach that bitch that messing with
the Talbots means you have hell to pay!”

“Sweet,” I told her. “Who wants to stay for
the fireworks show?” I asked the growing crowd.

“’Bout fucking time,” Deneaux replied,
clapping her hands together and rubbing them briskly.

“You’re in?’ I asked her, unconvinced.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she told
me, dead serious.

“Huh. What a weird friggin’ day,” I said,
shaking my head.

“What do you need and what’s the plan?” Brian
asked.

Like the vast majority of my plans, it was
long in thought and very short on words. As I write that, it
doesn’t make much sense. Suffice to say, it basically boils down to
an ambush, followed by the death of a bunch of her henchmen. If
we’re really lucky, Eliza catches one in that tainted melon of
hers.

“Mike, as the only black member of this
dysfunctional group, I’m truly amazed that I’m still alive. I mean
I’ve watched almost every horror movie ever made, and without fail,
if a man of color is in the movie, he dies first. In recent years,
however, it has gotten somewhat better. Now, we sometimes make it
to second killed, after the ditzy blonde, but I’ve got to imagine
that a brother’s life expectancy in any horror setting is generally
a couple of hours, at most.”

“I agree with your movie assessment, BT, but
how does that apply right now?” I asked him.

“Alright, hear me out… So me still being
alive bucks that trend, right?” I nodded in agreement. “But damn,
Mike, you keep breaking the cardinal sin of all flicks.”

“The splitting up, I know, I know. I feel
like the idiot that says, ‘Yeah I’ll go down to the basement alone
to check out the breaker box, and I only have this one wooden match
to light my way. Oh, and did I mention that we heard suspicious
sounds down there only moments earlier?’”

“Yeah, like that, so you know what I’m
talking about.”

“Sure I do. I’m usually the one asking the
characters on the screen what the hell they’re thinking.”

“Well, what are you thinking?”

“Well, it is dark and the basement does house
the breaker box and my match is the extra long,
barbecue-style.”

“I wonder if I could catch up to Alex?” BT
wondered.

“I want my family out of here, BT. If only I
could I’d send them to some lonely outpost on the moon to get away
from this crap. Their safety means everything to me. They’re the
air I breathe, the food I eat, the…”

“I get it, don’t go getting all soft on
me.”

“Too much information?” I asked him
sincerely.

“I’m starting to see under all that Marine
Corps veneer. Are you sure it wasn’t the Peace Corps? Don’t worry,
I won’t tell anyone.”

“I wonder if Alex would come back and get
you.”

“You think he’s alright?” BT asked.

“I don’t know, buddy, but he keeps breaking
that cardinal rule too.”

“He sure does,” BT said as he walked
away.

“Paul, are you sure about this?” I asked my
best friend for the better part of three decades. Damn! That makes
me sound so old. And then the realization of my eternity slammed
into my chest. My best friend, with whom I had shared so many
experiences, would be a distant memory as I strode through the
world, unencumbered by love. Would I bother with humanity at that
point? The only reason I still interacted with people now was
because of my wife and kids. If she were to be gone, then what?
Would God forgive me? Would it even be considered suicide? I had
already made my bed when I traded my soul for my family’s safety. I
was pretty sure I was on the top of God’s shit list and I can
guarantee that is not anywhere you want to be, just ask the ’04
Yankees. They’ll tell you the same thing.

But what of Nicole’s baby? I would have to
stay alive long enough to make sure he or she was able to find
their way through this world. And then if he/she had kids, what
then? When would I stop? Would I follow them through millennia,
much like Tommy had followed his sister? Each passing day would
push me that much further away from the inevitable death I was so
seeking. Banned from the Garden, the alternative was excruciatingly
painful, if only because I had glimpsed the beauty of it all.

“Talbot, we’re leaving,” Tracy said, stroking
my cheek, and wiping away a tear. “You alright, husband?” she asked
tenderly. “You haven’t changed your mind on this, right? No Rambo
stuff?”

“What?” Gary asked from the entrance to the
Big 5.

“Rambo!” Tracy yelled. “Not Gambo!”

“Gotcha,” Gary repeated with the tongue
clicking and finger pointing gesture.

“I’ll be glad if just to get away from his
new mannerism,” Tracy said, smiling.

“I’ll miss you, wife, but I promise this will
be only for a couple of days, max.”

“She’s that close?” she asked. “She’s
relentless.”

“That’s one word. Mine would be much more
colorful and would end up being all those funny symbols you see in
the Sunday comics when Al Capp swears.”

“Al Capp? Nobody reads Al Capp anymore,
Talbot. What’s wrong with you?”

“You’d think you would have figured it out
after all these years,” I retorted.

“You know you’re nuts, right?” she asked
me.

“That may be, but what does that say about
you for staying with me this long?” I asked her snidely.

“Oh, I plan on publishing a thesis about you
when this ride is over,” she told me seriously. “I’ll be famous,
I’ll be up for Sainthood.”

“Tell God I said hi when you get there,” I
said in jest, but its meaning had so much more depth than the way I
had originally intended it. Tracy’s smile evaporated.

“Oh Talbot,” Tracy said, falling welcomingly
into my arms. “What are we going to do with you?” she said, burying
her face into my shoulder.

“There’s always the rodeo,” I told her. It
was the first thing that came to my mind.

She wiped a tear from her eye and looked up
at me. “You rarely think before you speak, don’t you?”

“What? I think I’d be great, those guys that
get in the barrel and everything.”

“You know those are rodeo clowns, right?” she
was telling me.

“Clowns? I hate clowns. They are the root of
all evil in this world,” I answered.

“You honestly believe that, don’t you?” Tracy
said. “There are zombies and vampires roaming this world, but
clowns rule as the supreme evil being in your world.”

“That’s rich,” BT said. “You never cease to
make me wonder what the hell is wrong with you.”

“I thought the phrase was never cease to
amaze?” I asked him.

“Nope,” he replied dryly.

“Hey, Mike,” Paul said, walking away from a
very angry spouse. Why the hell he was exposing his flank to a
pissed-off wife was beyond me and they called
me
the crazy
one.

“Hey, buddy. Hey, Erin!” I yelled over his
shoulder.

She semi-waved, but it looked more like she
was flashing me the finger as she turned away.

“I take it you’re staying for the
extracurricular fun and activities?” I asked him. He nodded in
return. “And you told Erin to leave with the advance party?”

“Right on both counts.”

“She’ll get over it when she sees your
smiling face in a couple of days.”

“You think?” Paul asked, looking over his
shoulder at his wife’s back.

“I’m an old pro at this; you’ll be fine.”

“I haven’t gone yet, Talbot,” Tracy said from
her car door as she loaded an extra clip of ammo. “I can still kick
your ass before I go.”