'Til Death Do Us Part

“I hope not, although that would probably be preferable to what ails me,” I told him, eyeing the top of my head with the mirror.

“Does shaving your head keep the evil one out?”

I was so intent on trying to find some vestige of hair on my head that I almost missed his comment. Let’s be honest, most of what the guy says can’t be construed as anything other than crazy and I had just become a Telly Savalas stunt double (Yul Brynner? Does that help as a reference? Okay, how about Doctor Evil.)

“What, John?” I asked finally looking over at him, my neck thankful I had stopped craning it in strange ways.

John the Tripper began to look around wildly. “Who’s John?” he asked me.

“You are. That’s what you told me.”

“My name is John the Tripper.”

“That’s what I said,” I answered, although I hadn’t, I had only called him John now that I reflected on it.

“So there’s nobody else here?” he asked, the concerned look on his face dissipating.

‘Just the voices in your head buddy.’ I wanted to tell him, but I was afraid we would get so far off topic that neither of us would be able to recover. “Nobody else, John...” He was about to ask who John was again “...the Tripper.” That seemed to appease him. This was going to be a pain in the ass if I had to call him by his full man- given name every time I wanted to talk to him.

“Your hair…did you get rid of it because they were acting like tiny antennas?”

John was giving me a headache. His verbal gymnastics was like watching two highly skilled Chinese Ping Pong players playing a game hopped up on Red Bull. I couldn’t keep up, or maybe more like a sure-footed goat on a Nepali Mountain pass, I couldn’t follow his windings.

I shrugged. “John...(his mouth opened)...the Tripper (it closed) I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?”

“You’re hair, man!” he said all wide-eyed. “Did you shave it off so that she couldn’t communicate with you?” And before I could answer he added. “I wished I had thought of that, had to go out about five times to get enough tin foil to wrap the whole house. There are some funky people out there. Did you know that?”

Did he just call zombies ‘funky’ people? Well that was a different slant for sure. This guy didn’t even know we were on the losing end of a zombie apocalypse, I didn’t think I had the patience to explain it to him. And for what purpose? John the Tripper seemed to be making his way just fine through his made up world.

“I mean I toured with the Grateful Dead and even Phish for a while. Smelled some truly funked-out hippies, but those people out there…” he said, pointing through his tin foil-covered window, “…there’s not enough patchouli in the world to cover up their smell.”

“Do you have guns?” I asked him, but the odds were that if he had, he would have converted it into some makeshift bong by now.

In a moment of clear thought he looked at me like I was the one on a twenty-year acid stint. “Do I look like I would own a gun?”

I could hear explosions throughout the city. I would learn later that they were the propane cylinders for heating that were catching fire as the city burned.

I stood and walked over to the window.

“What are you doing, man?” John the Tripper asked, his eyes getting wide.

“I just want to look out the window.”

“Hold on!” he yelled, running into the kitchen. He came out with what looked like two tin foil boats, at least until he put one on his head. “Here,” he said, thrusting the other one at me.

“What do you want me to do with that?” I asked.

“It scrambles the signal.”

“What signal?”

“How have you not heard her?” He tilted his head.

Oh, I heard her plenty, and it was a constant struggle to ‘hide’ myself from her. I could feel her evil oiliness as she swept by trying to locate prey or predator with her thoughts. “What the hell?” I said as I grabbed the hat and placed it on. Well if I wasn’t certifiable before, I had now joined the ranks plunging in with both feet. John the Tripper seemed appeased.

“Okay you can check now,” he said with a waving of his hand.

What I saw just about took my breath away. The city looked like you would envision Hell. The sky was lit up a blazing red, dust and ashes moved down the street in tidal waves. “We can’t stay here,” I said, not able to tear my eyes away from the inferno I was gazing upon.

“Fire, fire on the mountain,” John the Tripper sang the Dead tune as he was staring out the window next to me.

“John, you need to get whatever you think is important and we need to get out of here,” I said. He was too lost in the vision before him to even take note I had not called him by his proper name.

“Get up, get out, get out of the door,” he said still in a sing-song mode.

Good, I thought, he’s on the same page. At least that is what I thought until I realized he was still singing the song. “John!” I said grabbing him by the shoulders. “We need to get the fuck out of here!” I yelled, small flecks of spittle hitting him in the face, he didn’t seem concerned.

“I know that, does John, though?” he asked.

“Probably not. Grab whatever you think is important and can help,” I added. Who knew what he thought was important. For all I knew, he would start ripping out the copper piping down in his basement. “Do you have a car?”

“A car? No,” he answered, I could physically witness his thought process as he was trying to go through the catalog of his possessions.

My heart sank. It was going to suck trying to get out of the city ahead of the zombies and the fire.

“I’ve got a van, though.”

I almost kissed him, until I began to wonder if maybe he was using it as a planter in the backyard or something equally as useless. “Keys?”

“In the ignition,” he said, turning back towards the fire. “I was always losing them and that seemed like the safest place.

“It runs then?” I asked, still keeping my fingers crossed.

“In the garage,” he said pointing. “I grew up a few streets away from here before I became a roadie. I loved being on the road, but there was always a part of me that wanted to come home.” Tears were forming in his eyes. “I heard that you can never go home, but that isn’t true. I did, married my high school sweetheart…she still held a flame for me after all those years I was away. We took some cooking classes because we liked to eat well when we got the eats.” He smiled sideways as he reminisced. “Come to find out, I was something of a protege in the kitchen and ended up teaching the class the following year. Stephanie never got any better, but she attended just to stay close to me.” He didn’t clarify, but I figured Stephanie was his wife. “We were married for seven of the greatest years of my life.”

“I’m sorry, John the Tripper, I am. What happened?”

“She went to Washington.”

“What?” I figured she had contracted some rare blood disease and died in his arms.

“She got a job offer. She wanted me to move with her, but I had finally come home and I didn’t want to leave again.”

I wanted to berate him for letting the love of his life get away from him, but it was his life to live as he saw fit. Who the hell was I to tell him differently? Shit, I was just some bald guy wearing a poncho and a tin foil hat. I would have been shunned by bums in Detroit. “I’m sorry,” was all I could muster.”

“For what?” he asked, looking at me. I truly think he forgot the entire thread of the conversation we were just having.

“Ah...nothing. Do you have any shoes I could wear?” I asked as I looked down at my yellow-rimmed tube socks.

“You going somewhere? I sure could use some mushrooms.”

“For cooking or eating?”

“Both, what else would I do with them.”