Zombie Fallout 2 (32 page)

Had we told her his name? I didn’t think so.

Carol continued. “I didn’t have any gummy bears to put in with the chocolate chips.”

Tommy handed her a bag of gummy bears from his pocket. Was it coincidence? Now Tommy is usually a walking pantry to begin with but he didn’t even hesitate when he reached into one of his many hidden storage compartments.

Carol took the bag as if she had been expecting this. “Great I’ll put them in with the next batch.”

“You have power Carol?” I asked her.

“Gotta be pretty self sufficient when you live this far in the outskirts. See any power lines, city boy. The generator is in the barn.”

I waited until she went back into the house before I did a complete 360 scan of the area. No poles. I did a little happy dance as I realized I was going to take a hot shower tonight.

“What’s the matter Talbot?” BT asked as Jen and Travis helped him up the steps. “Gotta pee.”

Except for being a few shades paler than he oughta be. The big man looked pretty good. This was turning out to be a pretty good fucking day and I was about to eat some chocolate chip cookies!

Tommy was already through the door. I could hear mock slapping as Carol was trying to shoo him away from her cookie sheet.

“Wait until I at least get them off the tray, you’ll burn yourself.” Carol shouted at him. Tommy hovered over her like a News helicopter at a crash scene.

Seeing her grandmother had reignited a spark within Nicole’s eyes. The sadness was still there but it had been layered over a little, with love. And that was how people survived. They moved on. The bleeding, gaping wound, slowly became infused with coagulants and then the bleeding would trickle to a stop. The flesh would scab over and slowly begin to knot itself together and eventually the scab would fall off leaving fresh shiny puckered skin. That would in time eventually fade to a scar. It would be something you would be able to remember the pain of your entire life and you would always have the reminder. But it no longer consumed the resources of the body anymore to heal it.

The smiles around the kitchen table, as we devoured first that sheet and then another sheet of cookies with the surprisingly good taste of gummy bears mixed in, renewed my faith. My faith in what? God, humanity, survival, just plain old cookies, I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t going to question it. If I didn’t have another ultimate destination in mind I could have seen myself spending the rest of my days in this loving household. And then it struck me, why should I drag my family still another 1500 hundred miles across the country. And for what? There was no guarantee that any of my family survived. Carol survived though and if she could do it, then so could they. But she’s in rural North Dakota, not much happened here when everybody was alive. Yeah and my family is in rural Maine. If I could Google it, I’d bet the populations were similar.

Not knowing what had happened to my family weighed heavily but the thought of exposing my immediate family into even more danger to satisfy my curiosity was not an option.

“I sure as hell could be.” I answered her. She smacked me. We headed back into the kitchen. Her first and then me after some slight man parts adjusting. At least the momentary estrogen flood hadn’t completely emasculated me.

After a bunch more laughing and eating I went out to the porch. I would like to say that I had to loosen my belt because of the meal. These last few weeks stripped any fat reserves I had stored. I looked down the yard at the minivan wondering how many trips was it going to take to get everything up here. I also wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of leaving it down there either. It looked too much like an invitation.

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and I think you know it.” I wanted to protest, it might have rang hollow though. “I mean bringing my daughter and my grandkids to me, alive and safe.” I started to speak. “Hush, I know what you’re going to say. But most people didn’t feel like it was what they had to do Mike. A good number of folks turned their guns on their kin rather than stand and fight.” I looked at her in bewilderment. “No Mike you didn’t HAVE to do anything but you did. You know when Tracy first married you, I wondered what the hell she saw in you.”

“Now stop! That’s not an easy thing for me to admit. You know Tracy is my only child and I damn near lost her at childbirth. So I only wanted what was best for her and at the time I didn’t think that was you. But I watched you with Nicole. She stripped away your East coast sarcasm and your ill temper towards the world. You loved her like no other ever could. The father’s pride that beamed in your eyes every time you held her, that alone made me realize my error. I’ve seen you with all your kids Mike and I know that you would do whatever it took to make sure that each and every one of them was safe. And for that Mike I’m sorry that I ever doubted you. But if you take one more swig off my bottle like the last one, I’m taking it all back.”

I handed her the bottle back, I had actually taken a fair hit against the contents. I felt a little bad but it was rapidly becoming covered over with the warm tingly feeling of a buzz.

“Actually had it running about a month or so ago to plow the driveway. Don’t really have a desire much now to go out. “Though if you hadn’t brought this whiskey I might’ve been changing my mind soon.”

CHAPTER 22

Now the question was, did I want to plow the driveway and let any old schmoe have a direct route up or did I want to drag the minivan and all its contents up here. If I dragged it up here and something happened where we needed to get out again we were screwed. Plow the driveway it was then. If anybody came a knockin we’d deal with it at that point. Not like this was I-95 to begin with. I went back into the house and put on everything and anything that I thought would stave off the frigid cold. Whisky glow was only going to get me so far. And yes I know that alcohol doesn’t really warm you up. It does the opposite in fact by thinning your blood. It just makes you FEEL warmer. I had bundled up near to the point of becoming a beach ball with appendages and was three steps down the porch before I realized I had forgotten something. Now I know this was the safest I’ve felt in weeks but still I marched back in pretending to ignore my wife’s questioning gaze and grabbed my nine-millimeter.

The barn, where the tractor was located, was about 100 yards or so from the house. I encountered six death blotches between the house and the barn. I shook my head in marvelment of how Carol had survived. Had she slept? It wasn’t like she could post a guard. She didn’t have a dog anymore. Bastion had died I think two summers ago, struck by the tractor. Tracy had cried for near on a week. Her father had got that coon hound the day he found out he had cancer. He often told people that on his worst days of getting chemo, it was the tail wagging, tongue-licking Bastion that helped him get through the day. Even on his deathbed he had told Carol that the dog had probably given them an extra half of year together. Carol loved that dog, if only for the fact that it had given her and her beloved husband extra time.

It was two years after Everett’s death that she had hired a handyman to get rid of some trash from the back acreage. Something Everett had been promising for close on 15 years. It was more of an inside joke that Everett had never gotten around to it than a point of contention. When the man had come running up to the household with a broken bloody bundle in his arms, Carol had intrinsically known what he carried. She had wept nearly as many tears for the mangy Bastion as she had for her husband. Another link to him was gone. She buried Bastion alongside her husband in the family cemetery.

So I circled back to the original question. How could she ever sleep knowing that at that very minute, a mindless, hungry predator might be closing in. I shuddered. I had reached the front door to the barn, now not nearly as prepared to enter into the gloomy interior.

“They don’t lay in wait Talbot.” I said out loud. It was a trick nearly everyone uses to steel their resolve. I think it’s more to let whatever monster is lurking know that we’re coming in ready or not. I just wish the monster gave the same courtesy. I clicked over the ancient light switch. Two light bulbs lazily lit the room. you could still wear night vision goggles in here and not get any glare through them. The tractor stood dead center in the barn and every deadly implement known to farming kind graced the walls all around me. I was sweating. I felt that it was dignity saving to blame it on the multiple layering I was swathed in.

I had reached the tractor when Justin shouted to me from the door. I realized then my mistake. Not that I was going to shoot Justin or even that he startled me enough to do it accidentally but if someone of ill intent had come up on me, my multi layered fingers couldn’t fit in through the trigger guard. “You are just all sorts of a hot mess, aren’t you Talbot.” I again said out loud to myself.

“I asked if you needed any help Dad.” Justin answered thinking I hadn’t heard his first query, which I hadn’t. I had been whistling demons away at that time.

He looked like shit and five degrees below zero was going to do little to help him. “Sure.” I didn’t know what the cause of his recent detachment to us was but if he was going to throw a lifeline it was my duty to reel him in. “Gotta a gun?”

I didn’t have a fifty fifty answer. I let it drop. Within minutes we discovered that the only other tenants of the barn were an extended family of field mice. I decided that if they were going to leave us alone then I would follow suit. Yep you guessed it. Mice scare the crap out of me. Yes I’ve been to battle. I’ve killed my fellow man and monsters of myth. It’s just something about that hairless tail that really shoots a spike of fear through me. I don’t really want to talk about it. Just add it onto the growing list of Talbotisms.

The tractor cranked after the third time and a good blast of starting fluid into the carburetor. “You up for doing some plowing?” I asked Justin.

He looked at me like I was pulling his leg. “You serious?”

“Sure go ahead.” I told him. For those of you that thought I did this only because I didn’t want to be out in the North Dakota winter only have it partially correct. Isn’t this part of the reason we have kids at all? So they can do the shit jobs that we used to do. Like taking out the trash, mowing the lawn, shoveling walkways. You don’t really wonder why farm families used to be so huge do you? It’s not because screwing is the only thing to do. It’s because there is so much work to be done. Okay and screwing was really the only form of entertainment.