Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (26 page)

I cocked my head to the side, giving it a
large area of my neck to peruse.

“What the hell?” Mary moaned, “I would have
never let you in if I had known you were clinically insane. Make
him stop!” Mary said to Gary.

“BT told me to zip it,” Gary mumbled.

The zombie eyed my neck greedily, and its
mouth opened even wider. I didn’t think that was possible. It
leaned in closer. A thick liquid dropped from its mouth and onto my
neck. I was going to go with it being drool, not that that was much
better, but it was worlds better than the other myriad fluids it
could have been.

The zombie slowly eased its way in, the blood
throbbing through my neck was too much. I might not be its favorite
thing on the menu, but I was hot and it was hungry. I was holding
the zombie a quarter inch from my neck. The strain in my mind and
my body was beginning to wear me down. I could feel the heat of
decay from its mouth on my neck. If I moved a fraction of an inch,
it would bite, and then it licked my neck. Half vamp, former
Marine, father of three, none of that mattered; my stomach
threatened to completely turn itself inside out. I pulled away.

“Kill it,” I moaned to BT.

BT waited until all the noise from his shot
went quiet. “What were you trying to prove?” he asked.

“That I can control them. That what is inside
of you has stopped its advance, that’s what I am trying to
prove.”

“That proves nothing,” Mary said defiantly.
“I’m not letting either of you in here with my son and me.”

My head dragged even lower. I had expended a
lot of energy with the useless test and I had a slow steady trickle
being sent to BT. I could hear rustling inside the house.

“What are you doing, Gary?” Josh asked.

“If they can’t come in, little man, then I
have to go out,” Gary told him.

“Wait,” Mary said. “Are you sure? You could
spend some time here, with us,” she added, a little pleadingly.

“You guys have been great hosts, but that’s
my brother and his friend,” Gary said.

BT and I looked at each other as Gary said
“his friend.”

“I guess he didn’t like your ‘zip it’
comment,” I laughed.

BT shrugged.

“But they’re dangerous,” Mary yammered.

Gary stole a quick glance out the window,
looking at us to maybe see if we had sprouted wings or maybe horns.
“They don’t look any more dangerous than they usually do,” he said,
pulling away from the window.

Mary looked out the window, I think to her,
we had sprouted those things. “How can you say that? One is part
vampire and the other is part zombie! What could possibly be more
dangerous?”

“Mike’s plans,” Gary shot out without missing
a beat.

“I heard that,” I told him.

“Sorry, it was the first thing out of my
mouth, I didn’t even need to think about it.”

“Mom, we can’t leave them out there.”

“We most certainly can,” she answered
him.

“She’s right, Josh. You guys don’t really
know us and you certainly don’t owe us anything. Could you please
just send out a few first aid supplies with Gary so I can field
dress my friend’s wound?” I asked Mary.

“I’ll do it,” Mary agreed.

I didn’t know at the time she was talking
about cleaning the wound herself, not just sending the stuff
out.

We walked over to the front door, I expected
to be greeted by Gary. Mary was looking around the front screen
security door; and when she was satisfied there were no other
boogey men besides BT and me present, she motioned for us to come
in.

“You sure?” I asked her.

“No, so get in before I change my mind.”

BT brushed past me. Mary almost got her neck
stuck craning it high enough to look at BT’s face this close.

BT sat calmly as Mary scrubbed, cleaned and
disinfected his bite and a dozen or so other various scrapes and
bruises.

“You don’t take very good care of yourself,”
Mary chided him.

BT was in the middle of eating a Beef
Stroganoff MRE packet. He didn’t really know what to say to her
comment, so he just kept eating, but he did send me a knowing
glance like “What the hell is she talking about? Doesn’t she know
there’s a zombie apocalypse going on right now?” Or it might have
just been indigestion. I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying him so much
attention as I was one of the things inside of him.

“Man, it’s creeping me out the way you’re
looking at me, and I’m trying to eat too,” BT said.

“Sorry man, I’m just…”

“I don’t want to know,” he said, cutting me
off as he dug deeper into his foil food packet.

I could link with what I’d come to know as
the Hugh-Mann’s, according to my great grandfather’s research. I
read most of his findings while someone else had been driving.
Contrary to popular belief, I can read; it’s writing that most seem
to think I have a problem with. I could sense them and they were
dormant for the moment, kind of like the stasis we had seen from
other zombies, but if BT was to stray more than thirty feet or
more, I lost concentration. Then any influence I had would be gone
and the process would continue. Right now, I could keep him from
becoming a zombie, but if he were to turn, there would be nothing I
could do. That would be the point of no return.

Mary had seemed particularly nervous when she
first started working on BT, but the more she got into the routine
of her profession, the more she loosened up. And there was just
something about the big man. If you were not on the opposing side,
he made you feel safe.

“Is Mike still looking at me?” BT asked as he
dived into a tuna casserole packet.

Mary looked up from a cut on his leg she was
actually stitching up. “Yes,” she answered turning back towards her
work.

“This food would be much more pleasurable if
you weren’t looking at me, man,” BT said, never looking up. “And
you too, little man.”

Josh was sitting at the table and looking at
BT, slack-jawed. “Are you a wrestler?” Josh asked.

“Josh, that’s rude!” Mary said. BT umphed as
she pulled a stitch too tight. “Sorry.”

BT nodded curtly.

“Competitive ballet dancer,” I told Josh.

“What?” BT and Josh both looked at me. Gary
just shook his head as he came in from the living room.

“Sorry, it popped in my head.”

“It’s still all clear out there,” Gary
said.

“We’ve got plenty of moonlight. When BT is
all fixed up, we should probably get going,” I said. “Although the
sun will be coming up soon,” I added as the sky to the east was
already beginning to lighten up.

Mary’s shoulders slumped. We might not be her
primary choice for guests, but we were company and at least one of
us was comforting to her.

“I sure wish we could go with you guys,” Josh
said. “But if my dad came home, and we weren’t here, he wouldn’t
know what to do.”

“Are you sure you won’t spend the night and
get a fresh start in the morning?” Mary asked.

“There are three more of us out there, and I
have no idea where they are or if anything has happened to them and
they’ll only wait so long if they’re already at the rendezvous
point. On top of that, I’m really late checking in with my brother.
If I don’t check in with him soon, he might get a crazy idea to
launch a rescue,” I said.

“Alright, let me just finish cleaning BT up,”
Mary said, standing so she could go into the other room and get
some more supplies. I had a sneaking suspicion that she was going
to drag this out as long as possible. She might even scratch him a
few more times so she’d have something else to put some Bacitracin
on. I was going to keep an eye on her. BT wasn’t going to notice
shit if she kept stuffing different MREs in front of his face.

“How many of those things you going to eat?”
I asked him.

“Don’t bother me while I’m eating, man,” BT
growled, placing one arm protectively around his newest packet,
which looked like pork and beans or something equally as
unappetizing.

And just like that it hit me. I thought back
to Eliza’s caravan and the zombies under Eliza’s control. She
wasn’t actively directing them to sit and behave. She had given
them an earlier command and had somehow tied it off like those
damn, infuriating bread ties. You know the ones; you can never
figure out which way they are tied. You spin them to the left for a
few turns before you realize that it isn’t getting any looser, so
you do the other way, and for some physics-bending reason, you get
the same result. I can’t even begin to tell you how many loaves of
bread I have just ripped the plastic sleeve on. You want to talk
about pissing my wife off? Alright, enough of a divergence.

I knew it was possible to tie commands off, I
just wasn’t sure how to do it. I felt like I was five again and my
dad was telling me to tie my shoe. Sure, he had showed me like
fifteen times previous, but it might as well have been advanced
geometry. I wonder if Eliza would be so kind as to give me a
lesson. And then the second dawning came to my mind.

Tomas?
I reached out tentatively. I
felt like I had enough control that I could communicate with him
and him alone, but I wasn’t completely sure.

“
My sister is extremely angry with you,
Michael,”
Tomas answered.

So she’s not dead?

“
What do you want?”
Tomas said
wearily, or maybe warily.

BT is in trouble
. Now I panicked. How
much information did I want to give him (or them)? Stupid, stupid,
I should have not brought his name up.
Forget it, nothing,
I
said, just about to close the connection.

“
Michael, it was obviously important
enough that you felt the need to seek me out.”

“Dammit!”

“What?” Gary asked.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“I don’t want to know,” Gary said, walking
out of the room.

BT’s been infected
. I laid it all out
there; he was no worse off than he had been a moment before.

There was no response from Tomas for long
seconds, and then I heard what could only be described as a sigh.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
When I hesitated, Tomas spoke.
“There is nothing I can do to help him.”

I actually think you might be able to.

“
Even if I could, I do not understand why
you think that I would be willing to help you.”

Cut the shit, Tomas! Tommy, George,
whatever the hell you want to call yourself now. You are not so far
removed from that boy I knew, the one that I adopted as one of my
own. Eliza is not evil because she has no soul. Eliza is evil in
spite of that. You helped me on that rooftop and you know it, no
matter how you are trying to justify it to yourself or your
bitchster. You could have let me and all the rest of us die up
there. I’m telling you now, BT will die without your help! Don’t do
what you think you’re supposed to do, or definitely not what your
sister would want you to do, do what is right!
I shouted
internally.

“
How is saving BT so that he can try and
destroy us, doing what is right?”
he asked.

He had a valid point from his angle. Just
because I thought it was right didn’t mean everyone else would.
Damn semantics.

Listen, we can go round and round, but
here’s the deal: BT has been bit. I have halted the advance of the
virus, but I do not know how to hold it off indefinitely.

There was a bigger pause than when I had told
him about BT’s infection. I thought maybe I had not made myself
clear enough.

After more long moments of silence, he
responded.
“Eliza grows suspicious and is even now attempting to
see what I am doing. We do not have much time. You will have to
give me access to him.”

I wasn’t so sure about this, I just wanted a
“how to.” Once he had his fingers inside BT, so to speak, he could
do something irreversible.

“
Michael, I can sense your indecision.
You’re right. I could have let you all die on that rooftop. What
purpose would it serve to now undo that? I’m running out of time,
Michael.”

Dammit
.

“What the hell is that?!” BT yelled in
exclamation.

“It’s just a little hydrogen peroxide,” Mary
answered. “The same stuff I’ve been using this whole time.”

“No, in me! Something’s in me,” he said,
standing in alarm.

“Josh, get out of here!” Mary yelled. “He’s
turning into a zombie!”

“I am?” BT asked with alarm.

“Hold on!” I yelled, coming in late to the
party. I had been so intent on watching what Tomas was doing, I was
unaware of my physical surroundings. Gary was moments away from
putting a bullet in BT.

“Mike! What’s going on?” BT asked, looking
like he was getting ready to jump out of his own skin.

“I asked for some help,” I told him.

“What kind of help and who specifically?” he
asked with a very large note of concern.

“I asked Tomas for some help.”

“Tomas, as in Eliza’s brother, Tomas?” Mary
asked Gary.

Gary shrugged his shoulders. “I told her
everything. You guys were gone for a long time.”

“Yes, that Tomas,” I said, answering her
question.

“Mike, don’t you think you should have maybe
asked me before you let the enemy in?”

“Tomas is here?” Josh asked, running to the
front window. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Did you ever stop to think that he could
really do some damage?” BT asked. He was more than a little pissed
off.

“I took a risk. It was a calculated risk,” I
told him.

“With my life!” he yelled, bringing his fist
down on the table. Mary jumped as if she were startled, but it
could have been that the shock wave from the table had caused her
to raise up off the floor.

“There were not many options, my friend,” I
told him.

“Don’t pull that ‘my friend’ shit with me!”
he roared.