Zombie Fallout 9 (3 page)

I
t was another week
. The most exciting thing that had happened was that the damned cat had killed a mouse and left it by my bedroom door. I swear it was a warning. Like she was saying, “Talk about getting rid of me again, and this could be you.” We both steered clear of each other; seemed safer that way. The more seemingly secure we were, the more anxious I felt. I had been burning at such a high intensity for so long, I didn't know any other way. I didn't consider myself an adrenaline junkie; I didn't want to bungee off anything. I didn't know what my problem was. I kept waiting for something to happen. More times than not, Tracy would wake to find me peering out the window at the yard below and the woods beyond. Something was fucking out there; I knew in the depths of my ragged soul it was, and its black beady eyes were peering back at me.

“Mike?”

My chest rose and fell at a rate that belied the stillness of the night.

“Mike, come back to bed,” Tracy entreated.

“There's something out there.”

“What? Where?” She got out of bed and joined me at the window. She was none too pleased, and also alarmed, when she realized I was talking about the abstract. “We've been through this Mike. There's nothing out there. We haven't seen a zombie in weeks now. Maybe it's over. Maybe we're finally safe.”

“Safe?” I scoffed. “Naw, baby, this is just the eye of the fucking storm. The shit is still swirling all around us, waiting for the right time to strike.”

“Wouldn't Tommy say something? And what does it matter? The fences are up. We have ammunition and a secure location. Haven't we done enough? Haven't we won?”

“Won? Won what? Unending damnation and imprisonment? Surviving isn't winning.”

I caught a flash of light off her engagement ring in the corner of my eye as her hand flew up and struck me across my cheek.

“Shut up!” she admonished me. “Our children … we've saved our children. They're alive, and that's all that matters.”

The slap, instead of snapping the dismal qualities of my thoughts away, seemed to crystallize them. My shoulders sagged, and I turned away from the window. “I … I don't know what's wrong with me.” I was close to tears. “I can't focus my thoughts. I'm always on edge. My chest constantly hurts. I can't sleep. Fuck, I can't even rest.”

“Do you have PTSD?”

And just like that, I at least had an answer. Why that never crossed my mind, I don't know. They used to talk about it all the time when I was just about to get out of the Corps. I blew it off back then. Could I blow it off now? I pondered how I was going to answer her query. Sure we had a probable cause. So what? Now what? We didn't have the right drugs or the right personnel to deal with it. And I sure as shit wasn't going to make it common knowledge. The weak and the infirm are discarded in this world much quicker and with more prejudice than perhaps at any other time in history save the Ice Age. BT would be supportive. I know he would. But I'd always know that in the back of his head, he'd be wondering when I was going to lose my shit. I couldn't bear the thought of any of them thinking less of me. And what of my new found “power”? I spat that last thought out. I'd given up part of my humanity; I was no longer tethered to a soul. How far could I go adrift? Pretty fucking far was my answer to that. And again, we didn't have anything that could help me with that. No medicine men, no priests, not even a witch—she'd walked out on us.

“Nope.” I told her firmly. She was going to question me on it. I was about as good a liar as I was a singer, and on the latter, I was so bad that I generally hummed the words to a song I was listening to, even if I was alone.

Her mouth opened, and I was saved. Although, being let off the hook by an alarm is kind of a funny way to be rescued. We'd installed panic switches all throughout the house in case someone was in trouble. It wasn't going to help with resale value having buttons and wires going everywhere, but we'd stapled most of the cables to the ceiling in an effort to keep them from being a tripping hazard. Hadn't had a qualified buyer come by in a while anyway. It had been Mad Jack's idea after what had happened. In all likelihood, it wouldn't have helped. But who knows, maybe Jess had cried out for someone that wasn't coming in those final awful moments.

Soft red lights glowed, and the trill of an alarm blurted out three times then was silent. I ran next to my bed and grabbed my gun with Tracy close behind. Now we had a new problem, one we would deal with after tonight, should we make it. The alarm had been sounded, but where was the problem? Ron's house wasn't a mansion, but it was good sized and there were three floors, any one of which could be where we needed to be in a hurry.

“The deck!” It was my sister. The crack of a rifle spurred me on. Floodlights bathed the entire yard in their glow.

“What is it?” I was third onto the deck after my sister and Gary. I had my rifle up to my shoulder, and I was trying to acquire a target.

“There's something over there!” Jesse looked excited. He'd definitely seen something, or at least thought he had. The coincidence that we shared the same view when I was upstairs was not lost on me.

“Who shot?”

Gary meekly raised his hand.

“This isn't Catholic school, man. I'm not going to hit you with a ruler. Did you see something?”

“No,” he said in a subdued voice that matched his demeanor. “Don't tell Ron.” he pointed to a freshly made hole in the deck.

Of course, it was one of the freshly replaced boards. We'd done a good job destroying most of the deck in our final battle with Eliza. I did a quick head count as everyone started pouring through the door and onto the deck. Again, only one was missing. I had a mind-fearing moment where I thought that perhaps it was Justin that had been spotted out in the woods.

“This better not be a drill, Talbot.” BT had come out only in a Speedo and flip-flops. Somehow, the man looked even bigger wearing hardly any clothes.

I brushed past him quickly to go check on Justin's room.

“What's wrong with Mike? He's not even going to say anything about BT's golden underwear?” Mad Jack asked.

BT grumbled. I half wondered when Trip's screams of “mercy” would begin. BT kind of let me slide with that shit. Everyone else was on their own. I didn't know it, but Tracy must have had the same thought, as she was only a stair or two away from me as I took them three at a time. I burst through his door. It was dark and gloomy, much like his spirit had been. The alarm light had been covered with a towel, not allowing it to relieve any of the blackness present there. Even so, I could see his eyes shine as he stared at the ceiling.

The “Oh, thank God” that was on the tip of my tongue was replaced with “Any chance you could have maybe responded to the alarm like everyone else?”

“What for? You had it all taken care of.”

“Get your ass out of bed!” I roared. “You don't know what the fuck is going on down there, all fucking wallowing in self-pity up here!”

“Mike.” Tracy attempted to calm me down. My own panic and issues bubbling to the surface.
Physician heal thyself
thumped around in my head. Maybe I couldn't fix myself, but I sure as shit could him, even if it took a good solid walloping of his ass with my foot.

“We've all lost in this war, and we're going to lose more. That's a foregone conclusion. But while we can, we have to make the most of it. We cannot give up. We can never give up!” My throat was raw as I fought to find a yelling decibel I had not reached since the Marines.

“Fuck you, Dad.” He said it softly, calmly even, then he rolled away, exposing his back to me.

To “lose it” would have been the mild definition. I'm pretty convinced BT had saved either Justin's or my own life, as someone would have to have put me down before I got a chance to hurt my son. Rage took over. My psyche was covered in a deep blood red as all rational thought was ejected from my mind. It was the steel cable vise grip of BT's arms around my body that prevented an irrevocable outcome. He physically removed me from the room.

“Fuck, Talbot, calm the fuck down!” He struggled to get me into a neutral corner. We'd attracted a fair amount of an audience. I could feel veins as thick as my fingers pulsing on my neck and forehead. “It was nothing, false alarm. He missed a false alarm, man. Stop struggling!” I had a modicum of dark joy knowing he was having a difficult time wresting me under control and that if some deep recessed part of me didn't want this, I could have actually torn free. “How the fuck are you so strong?” he asked.

“Insanity,” Trip chimed in. “Can't know you have a finite strength. Or maybe it's because he's not all human.
As-par-a-gus
,
as-par-a-goose
.” I guess he was shooting for the
po-tay-to
,
po-tah-to
analogy.

“Shut up, Trip.” BT grunted as he finally got me downstairs.

The red cloud was passing, but it wasn't taking my anger away with it. My chest heaved and my arms and legs were corded in a tight flex. I looked to the staircase that BT was effectively blocking.

“You don't get it, man!” I shouted at him.

“I don't, Mike. I don't,” he said, putting his hands up in a gesture that pleaded for me to stop.

I looked past BT and up to the top of the stairs. Justin was standing there dressed all in black. The light wasn't good enough, but I think he was smiling. I was convinced it had been him outside; he'd probably beat me back to his room by a couple of footsteps.

“He's trying to get himself killed. He's checked out,” I said pointing. Everyone turned to look, but he had faded back into the shadows.

“He's just depressed; he'll snap out of it.” Tracy had slowly approached.

I knew she was wrong. He'd fallen over the edge. I could see him spiraling away as I myself pin-wheeled my arms on the lip of that same precipice.

I relieved Jesse of his watch. I sat stewing on that deck the entire night. I got to watch a beautiful sunrise that could do little to shine on me, try as it might, as if I had my own personal rain cloud above my head. Unbeknownst to me, BT had spent the entire night on the stairs.

He came out with the sun, an extra-large mug of coffee in each hand.

“Here,” he said before sitting down.

I think I mumbled, “Thanks.”

“Some night, huh?”

I said nothing. We sat for a decent part of the morning.

“Listen, man. Are you going to tell me what is really going on in that head of yours?”

“Tracy put you up to this?”

He looked at me with a fair mixture of shock and hurt then smiled. “Busted. She's worried, man.”

“And you?” I looked over and arched an eyebrow.

“You're Mike Talbot. We're always worried about you.”

“Fair enough.” And it was. We sat longer. Sometimes someone would pop out and say hi, but mostly, we were left alone. “I've got a question.”

“Yeah.” He seemed to be gazing at a bird that had landed in a tree not too far away.

“What's with them Speedos?”

“I was wondering when we were going to get to those.”

“I mean seriously, man. Do you know how disconcerting it is to see a man the size of a minor mountain wearing basically a golden thong?”

“They were a gift.”

“I didn't know the Goodwill gave stuff away.”

“They're Versace, man.” He looked indignant.

“Maybe you should give them back to him.”

“You want to know the truth?”

“I think I deserve that, especially after the things I saw last night.”

“Fine, but you're going to feel bad about this.” And he was right, bastard. “They're from my fiancée, and I feel closer to her when I wear them.”

I cannot tell you how fucking brutal it is to constantly shove your foot into your own mouth. Although you'd think after how many times I'd done it, I would have stretched it out by now.

“It's hard being this big of an ass,” I said as I let my head hang low.

“You make it look so easy though.”

“How you doing?” Tracy had come out. She handed us both some fresh-from-the-oven blueberry muffins.

“I'm fine; your husband is an asshole, though.” BT stood and placed his hand on my shoulder, gave it a light squeeze, and then went inside.

Tracy sat and looked at me.

“Thanks for the muffin.” I took a bite.

She was still looking at me.

“I'm not going to be able to eat this if you keep watching me.”

“I wondered how long it would take that Mike to surface.” She turned so she was looking out to the sky. “Beautiful day.”

“Beautiful muffin. You do this?”

She shook her head. “Your sister.”

I tossed it off the deck and started rubbing my tongue. “I'm going to be sick all damn day now!”