'Til Death Do Us Part

this kidney killer.”

She actually had the corner of one lip pull up in a sliver of a smile.

“It’s just going to be, John,” I told Stephanie.

“How close can you get to the side of the building?” she asked, pointing to her right. The hotel ended and abutted up to an alleyway. “Right at the edge of the alleyway is the fire escape, the truck should be just the right height.”

Except for a couple of lampposts and a mailbox, I thought I could get pretty close.

“Move,” Azile said as she watched me guesstimating how I was gonna go about getting the truck in position. I figured I could make it in about a twelve or thirteen point turn.

“Thank you,” I told her as I moved a reluctant John back to his seat, then crawled over Azile.

Surprisingly, the street poles broke away with not too much effort on the truck’s part. The mail box, on the other hand, seemed to have twenty-foot-deep pylons set into the earth’s mantle. Black smoke poured from the twin smoke stacks as the truck strained against the blue box. The truck thrummed and vibrated as the box failed to yield.

“Fuck this,” Azile said as she threw the truck in reverse.

“Seat belt, man,” John said to me.

“Yeah good move,” I said as I quickly strapped myself in.

Azile took out more than a few zombies as she backed up a good hundred feet or so. The real fun, however, began when the truck started to move forward. She was whipping through the gears, and I wouldn’t doubt if we hit that box doing forty. I wouldn’t know I was too busy holding on for dear life to give the odometer a second glance. Cable bills, vacation postcards, and birthday cards blew in the wind as Azile destroyed that box.

“Air mail!” John yelled.

“Fuck me,” I said as I quickly undid my belt and John’s. Azile had the truck within five feet of the black metal fire escape. “Let’s go,” I told John as I leaned across him, first checking out his rearview mirror, then opening his door. We had a window of opportunity; Azile had cleared a decent sized path.

John started to get out of the truck by stepping down. I grabbed him and pointed up.

“Right,” he told me as he stepped on his seat and onto the roof of the cab. “Nice view,” he said to me as I joined him.

I didn’t agree. I was looking back the way we had come. It looked like a casting call for Thriller coming down the roadway. There was a couple of feet separating the truck from the trailer and the trailer was maybe a foot and half taller than the truck itself. It was not that an imposing of a gap, so I was completely confused when John was looking at it like he was attempting to jump over the Grand Canyon on a moped.

This was the same guy that didn’t mind tunnels much wider than a snake’s asshole and flew a helicopter that looked like it came out of a cereal box. “John, we’ve got to get moving. Just follow me okay?” I stepped up and over the gap, no harder than if I was going to stand on a chair, and not those stupid office chairs with wheels on the bottom of them either.

He missed, his right foot hovered in the air came forward, caught the lip of the trailer and began to slide down the front of it. I reached over and grabbed one of his flailing arms and manhandled him onto the trailer.

“Any chance you want to move this along?” Azile asked, poking her head out. She was seeing the same sight I was.

“Working on it,” I told her. If John thought the gap to the trailer was the Grand Canyon, then the distance to the fire escape might as well have been the Valles Marineris trench on Mars. I don’t know the exact dimensions; I just know it dwarves the Grand Canyon. Maybe it would have been better off if I had just used terrestrial examples, like from the truck to the trailer looked like Snake River Canyon and to the fire escape looked like the Grand Canyon, but would that make any more sense? Who really knows how big the damn crossing is on the Snake River? Even Evel Kneivel couldn’t do it in his stupid rocket motor cycle.

“John, you can do this?” I told him.

“Do what?” he asked, all wide eyed.

“You can do this, honey!” Stephanie said as she started rushing down the escape.

Ohmigosh! I thought, she was a big-boned woman. Not fat…not at all. Just maybe like as a child she had been separated from her Amazonian tribe and come to live in Philadelphia with us lesser human beings. I was under the impression she could have, and should have been a comic book super hero. For a moment, I saw exactly what John did in her. She was statuesque, almost a demi- god.

“Just remember your support group,” she said as she was now standing on the escape directly across from us.

“Support group?” I asked her.

“He’s afraid of heights,” she informed me.

“What about that gyroscope he called a helicopter?”

“Small heights frighten him.”

“Is there even such a thing?” I asked John.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Listen, John, you’re going to need to get to the end of the trailer and get a running start, then curve over right about here,” I said, pointing to where I was standing for just this reference. “Then you’re going to need to jump like your life depends on it…because it does. You got all that.”

He was nodding ‘yes’ as he was looking feverishly at his Stephanie.

“Mike, goddammit, hurry up,” Azile said.

“Honey, we’re running out of time,” Stephanie urged.

I should have known how poorly this was going to go just by how closely John nearly walked right off the back of the trailer.

“He has spatial issues,” Stephanie said to me after she took in a great gasp of air at his near blunder.

“What? Wait. John, hold on!” I said, but he was already barreling down the trailer. “Fuck.” He was making the turn and coming right towards me, then he missed, he flat out missed launching himself. My mind and my body were racing; John was hanging in the air like Wile E. Coyote in that moment before he plummets to the ground.

Luckily I had already been in movement as John was going by; I had one hand on his belt as one managed to get a grip of a fair amount of shirt material around his shoulder. I tossed him much like one would a midget down a bowling alley. (I mean if you’re in to that kind of thing, I’m merely using it as a descriptor.)

As he was arcing towards his wife, I was pin-wheeling my arms violently to keep my balance. I watched as John’s outstretched hands failed to grasp onto the metal railing, Stephanie plucked him out of the air like a little girl chasing airborne dandelions. I had just regained my balance as Stephanie gave me a questioning look. I had snagged her husband and tossed him five feet with no more difficulty than if he had been baby-sized—not that I’m advocating throwing babies.

“Momentum,” I lied to her.

She accepted my explanation. “Thank you so much,” she said as she hugged her weeping husband tightly.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” he told her. “I brought you something.” He extracted himself from her and showed her a giant Rasta-joint that I had no idea where he could have had it on his body and kept it so pristine.

“Honey, you know I don’t smoke,” she said as she kissed him fiercely.

“More for me and Ponch then,” he said turning back. “You coming, man?”

“This is where we part, my friend. It has been both an honor and a trip to have made your acquaintance,” I told him, I was sure going to miss him.

Azile’s horn blast negated nearly every part of John’s response, but I caught something about meeting again. I hoped so as I quickly climbed back down the truck and in. Azile quickly pulled away. I stared out my window as I wiped an errant tear away from my eye.

“You alright?” Azile asked after we had left the bulk of the zombies behind.

“Yeah I just hate leaving friends behind,” I told her.