Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (16 page)

“Hey Josh, can your cars go faster than a
person?”

“Yeah, why? You want to race? Because I will
SO kick your ass.” He said the last word softly so his mom wouldn’t
hear. But she was entirely too busy cooing over my malingering
brother to know anything about what we were doing.

“What’s the range on the transmitter?” I
asked him, an idea beginning to formulate in my head.

“If you’re talking inside, it would be the
whole house.”

“What about outside?”

“A football field, I guess. I don’t usually
let them get out of sight though.”

“Do you have one you wouldn’t mind not seeing
again?”

“No,” he answered quickly and decisively.
“Why?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said, my gaze still
focused on the trash.

“Oh kid, don’t listen to any of his plans,”
Gary said. He was leaning up against the entrance to the kitchen,
Mary was helping him stay propped up.

“I told him not to get up,” Mary said,
exasperated. “But he just wouldn’t listen. He’s a stubborn
one.”

I noticed that her eyes seemed to shine a bit
as she talked. Looks like someone has a crush and someone else is
eating it up in a big way. I was about to give him silent kudos
until he spoke.

“I had Mary help me get up because when I
heard how quiet you two were in here, I knew it meant you were
thinking about something. You have to be careful, Josh, my
brother’s ‘plans’ usually don’t work out so well.”

“Don’t you have an injury you can go ham up?”
I asked him.

“You shot him in the head!” Mary
exclaimed.

“It’s alright, Mary,” Gary said calmly. “Now
do you see what I’ve had to put up with?”

“You poor baby. Here, let me help get you
back to the couch, or would you be more comfortable in a bed? I’m
sure Josh will give you his.”

“Mom!” Josh yelled.

“The couch is fine,” Gary moaned.

“Oh brother,” I said as both a euphemism and
a commentary on his acting skills.

“But I’d love to hear Mike’s plan before I
do,” Gary said, smiling to me when Mary turned to scowl at me for
delaying his return to a horizontal position.

“Mom, Gary is smiling,” Josh said, pointing
over his mom’s shoulder.

“It’s a grimace,” Gary said as Mary turned
back to face him.

Mary turned back to hear me out and Gary took
his index and middle finger and pointed at his eyes, then at Josh
as if to tell him, I’ve got my eyes on you.

“Mom?!” Josh wailed.

“That’s enough, young man, I want to hear
what Gary’s brother has to say.”

At least, I knew where I was on the pecking
order. “I’ve got to find my friend,” I started. Mary was about to
protest. “I know there’s no way out right now, but I can’t wait two
or three days until they clear out. He might need our…”

“Gary’s not going anywhere in this
condition!” Mary stated with a tone that said it was not open for
discussion.

“Okay, my help.” I clarified, Mary nodded in
ascension. “I would like Josh.” I knew I was treading on thin ice
here. She would kick me out in a heartbeat if she thought I was
putting her son even remotely in danger. I figured it best to
continue my dialog and quickly. “With Josh’s permission, of
course.” Mary’s stance was telling me that whatever hare-brained
scheme I was coming up with, it wasn’t Josh’s decision to make.
“No, nothing like that,” I said, putting my hands up. “I don’t need
Josh.”

The kid instantly looked like he
deflated.

Mary appeared a little heartbroken at the
sight of her son.

“See? What did I tell you about his ‘plans?’”
Gary said.

“Wait a second. I need Josh, but not in any
way that exposes him to the zombies. I need his skills and a
radio-controlled car, if he’ll do it.”

Go on, Mary motioned with her hand.

I laid the rest of it out there. Josh was
immediately on board; he seemed actually pretty excited about it.
Mary took a few minutes longer, trying to think of any way in which
this exposed her son to anything close to danger, but she finally
placed her stamp of approval on it.

“I’m going with you,” Gary said.

“In your condition?” I asked him. “I think
not.”

Mary nodded with my words.

“You made your bed, brother, now you need to
lie in it,” I said cryptically.

I pushed away from the table, placing my
dishes in the sink. I thanked Mary for the meal. I would have
normally waited for the morning to launch my ingenious idea, but
the moon was nearly full and there were no clouds. It was a fairly
bright night and I wanted to get BT back into the fold as soon as
possible. The big guy was probably scared to death without me.

Gary found me about an hour later. I was in a
small sitting room on the south side of the house. I was
alternating between staring out the window at the zombies that
periodically walked by, and stretching out my muscles for the
endeavor they were about to undertake.

“You sure about this, brother?” he asked
me.

“Of course not,” I told him.

“I’m serious,” he said.

“So am I,” I answered.

“What about back-up?” he asked.

“I appreciate it, Gary, I really do. Listen
I’m no track star and that goes double for you. I won’t get to BT
if I’m looking back for you.” Gary looked down. “And hey, if
something happens to me, would this be the worst place in the world
to wrap up the remainder of your days?”

“You’ve always been like a younger brother to
me,” Gary said.

“Kiss my ass,” I told him.

“You be careful.”

“I will, I always am.”

Gary snorted. “Now I know you’re lying,
because you’re insulting my intelligence.”

“Go find Mary; maybe she has some tea that
can help you with that.”

Gary left and I was once again alone with my
thoughts. I finished stretching quickly because no one should be
exposed to my thoughts for too long.

I was as ready as I was ever going to be when
I came out of that room. My head, however, was still clouded with
doubt for what I was about to do. Why did everything always seem
like a good idea right up until launch time? Then it seemed just
about the craziest thing ever.

“Mom? Any words of wisdom?” I asked, looking
to the heavens.

I could picture her saying, “What the hell
are you thinking?” What response would I have to that? Thinking had
never been my forte. There were a multitude of reasons why I did
not build rockets when the world was slightly more normal.

“The car won’t flip?” I asked Josh.

He looked at me like I should leave that up
to the pros.

“What are you eating?” I asked, looking at
his sandwich. It smelled really good, but it looked like
warmed-over vomit.

“A peanut butter and maple oatmeal sandwich,”
he said between big bites. He was busy adjusting something on the
chassis.

“Oatmeal?” I asked. Josh never looked up.

“He loves it,” Mary said, shrugging her
shoulders.

“So this won’t flip?” I asked again, not
wanting to look at his train wreck of a sandwich anymore.

Oatmeal leaked from the sides of the bread as
he stared up at me. “Have you been listening to me at all?” he
asked testily.

“His wife says that a lot,” Gary said from
the couch.

I turned to flip him the finger, but Mary was
boring holes in me, so I thought better of the gesture. It ended up
being a half-hearted wave, which he returned eagerly.

“It can’t flip over because there is no top
or bottom. I designed it that way so if it went over a bump and
flipped over it would never get stuck.”

“That’s awesome,” I said, picking up his
engineering marvel which was basically just four oversized tires
attached to a chassis. “Have you ever gotten it stuck?” I asked,
turning the machine over. He didn’t immediately answer, and I moved
the machine so I could get a better look at the boy. “Josh?”

“Well not stuck, really,” he hemmed and
hawed.

“Feel free to keep going,” I urged.

“Well, I’ve had some problems with this
wheel,” he said, grabbing what was at this moment the front left,
but at some point could be the front right, back left and/or back
right. Yeah, it didn’t make much sense to me at the time either. In
my world, front was front, rear was rear.

“Um, so what kind of problems?” My idea’s
value was beginning to plummet.

“You really shouldn’t badger the kid,” Gary
said.

“Badger the kid? Hey I know I get accused of
not thinking before I speak all the time, but this isn’t our entry
into the county fair where the worst that can happen is a last
place finish.”

“Honey, what’s wrong with your car?” Mary
asked him.

Josh took an extra squishy bite of his
sandwich, and sticky oatmeal plopped to the floor. I would imagine
this was a stalling technique. I’d employed that method many times
myself with varying degrees of results. He gulped down his bite.
“Sometimes this wheel gets stuck,” he said, looking up at my eyes
and then his mother’s.

“How often does it get stuck?” I asked.

“More than it used to.”

Not much of an answer, I thought as I ran my
hands through my hair in the traditional “I’m screwed” way.

“Mike, you can’t still be thinking of doing
this?” Gary asked, rising up from the couch.

“I don’t have a good feeling about BT, Gary.
I can’t explain it, but I really think he needs my help.”

Gary looked at me funny. “BT needs your
help?” He finally came out, asking the obvious question. “Are you
sure this isn’t just your over-active imagination or your senseless
need to put yourself in danger or is it just a way to commit
suicide by zombie?!” Gary said heatedly.

“Well, don’t hold back, brother! Tell me what
you’re really thinking.”

“You’re upsetting him!” Mary came to Gary’s
defense.

I didn’t see it that way, looked way more
like he was doing the disturbing.

“Mike, ever since we left Maine, you have
done everything in your power to put us in as much danger as
possible. It seems like you go out of your way to find the worst
situation, then you head right for it, like you just can’t wait to
see a new and unusual way to die.”

“I don’t remember forcing you to leave Maine,
Gary,” I said forcefully.

“Someone had to watch your back,” he said,
advancing a step on me.

“You do realize, Gary, that we are in the
midst of a zombie apocalypse, right? And that we are no longer on
the top of the food chain. Going out for smokes can now be a life
or death situation.”

“You know I don’t smoke and neither do you,
but you’d probably pick up the habit just to see if you could get
them.”

Gary was pretty worked up. I hadn’t seen him
this angry since they cancelled Battle of the Network Stars
sometime back in the late seventies. “Gary, I’m not doing this out
of some ill-conceived way to commit suicide. My family, my friends
are in trouble, I could never, I would never leave them, or their
fates up to the whim of a crazy bitch vampire.”

“No swearing in my house,” Mary said loudly.
Then she stopped to look at me when she processed the rest of the
sentence. “Crazy bitch vampire?”

“Mom, no swearing,” Josh echoed his mother in
a much-practiced routine.

“Like Dracula vampires?” Mary asked
hesitantly.

“Worse,” Gary said, still with heat in his
voice.

“What? He’s not joking?” Mary asked as she
sat down heavily, nearly missing the edge of the couch. Gary caught
her under her armpit to keep her from hitting the ground.

“Her name’s Eliza and she’s got this thing
for Mike,” Gary said as Mary settled deeper into the couch, trying
to hide herself from the advancing shadows in her mind.

“And you came into my house!” Mary shouted,
rising quickly from her perch. “How dare you!” she said, shaking
with rage.

“You opened the door to us,” I told her.

“I wouldn’t have; had I known!” she
shouted.

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t have the time to
give you our bio when we were trying to save our lives,” I told
her.

“Cool, you know a vampire?” Josh asked,
surprised.

“It’s not nearly as cool as you might think,”
I told him.

“Does she sparkle?” he asked.

“Why would she sparkle?” I asked Josh. I was
clearly confused.

“You wouldn’t understand the reference,” Gary
interjected, with no further explanation.

“Can we forget about all this sparkly shit!”
Mary shouted.

“Mom!” Josh yelled.

“Sorry, Josh. Mommy’s a little stressed-out
right now. Where is this vampire now?” Mary asked, swinging back
and forth between Gary and myself, searching for a truthful
answer.

“Well, I mean she could be anywhere by now,”
Gary said.

“Where was she the last time you saw her?”
Mary asked, trying to extract the information like a stubborn,
impacted tooth.

“Well, what’s your definition of ‘saw’?” I
asked her, trying to get the heat off Gary.

“I swear, I’ll throw you both out right now
if I don’t get a straight answer!”

“What about my head wound?” Gary asked with
alarm.

“Oh for Christ’s sakes! I’ve cut myself worse
shaving my legs!” Mary shouted.

“Eww gross, Mom! Why would you shave your
legs?” Josh asked, clearly turning the shade of green I had when I
saw him eating his sandwich earlier.

“I’ll bet your legs don’t bleed as much as my
head,” Gary said as he absently touched his wound.

“I’ll ask you one more time, Mike, and then
you and your brother will be hitting the streets,” Mary said
seriously. “Whether or not you ‘saw’ (in finger quotes) this Eliza,
where was her last known spot?”

“I-95,” I told her.

“I-95 goes up the entire eastern coast. Could
you please be a little more specific?” Mary said, heading towards
the front door.