had immediately fallen asleep. I didn’t even want to linger on what was keeping me so affixed to the quilt. I was trying to convince myself that I had fallen into a vat of cotton candy. That illusion, however tenuous, was broken when a bit of bone fell out of my hair. My eyes were adjusting to the vestiges of light that were seeping in from and around the drawn shades. Tracy was not here. I sat up with a start. ‘What was going on?’ Then it hit me! The putrid stink of death! They had made it past Jed’s barriers and were now in the house! My gun was right next to me. I jumped up and out of the bed, anxious to see who, if anybody, could be saved. Fear gripped my chest in a vise. I could let air escape but I didn’t have the capacity to let any in. I was on the verge of panicking. All that I held sacred in this world was in trouble, and my worthless ass had been sleeping. I could hear no sounds of disarray, but that did little to stem the rising tide of trepidation that threatened to dash me against the rocks of sanity. The living dead don’t make much noise. I heard crunching! Bile involuntarily rose in my throat. I would choke on vomit long before I was able to help anyone. I flew down the stairs, turning the corner of the landing in one deft move. Henry greeted my heaving body, bone in his grinning mouth, short stubby tail wagging a mile a minute.
“Well, hey there, sleepyhead,” my beautiful, beautiful wife said from the kitchen as she sipped on a cup of coffee. Dark rings circled her eyes, but I don’t think I had ever beheld such a sight. I laid the rifle down, approaching my wife for a hug and kiss of reassurance.
“Oh hell no!” she said as her eyes lit up in alarm.
I stopped dead in my tracks, what was amiss?
“There’s no way you’re hugging me, smelling like that,” she laughed. “Your stench is what made me wake up this early. Go take a shower, and if you can at least get to the point where you smell better than Henry, I’ll think about kissing you.”
Henry looked up to my wife with a hurt expression as if to say, ‘Don’t compare me to that guy, he stinks.’ And then went back to the delightful chore of chewing on his steak bone. Relief poured, no GUSHED through my system, a wave of euphoria momentarily made me lightheaded. Thankfully I was already halfway back up the stairs. What the hell was going on with me? I was having
I took a brief but intensely hot shower, hoping that I would be rewarded with a renewed and cleansed soul to go with my clean body. When I emerged from the steam and swept my hand over the mirror to wipe away the condensation, I noted that I looked a whole lot better than I felt. Last night’s ordeal had aged me beyond my years. I looked to all concerned to be 43. I, however, felt to be about 63. No more time for reflection. I walked out of the steamy bathroom into the relative coolness of our bedroom. The reddish glow to my skin lit the way. I dressed quickly, delighting in the feel of my t-shirt NOT sticking to my neck, back or arms. I wanted to revel in the cleanliness a little longer but I was already running late for the town hall meeting. I grabbed my jacket from the hook at the bottom of the stairs and was about to head out.
Tracy yelled from the kitchen. “Do you want some breakfast before you go?”
“No time,” I shouted as I turned back to get my rifle; it wouldn’t do to go anywhere without it any more. The old American Express ads moved into my hemisphere of thought. 'Don't Leave Home Without It.” ‘Thanks, Karl Malden,' I murmured to myself.
“I made scones,” Tracy teased.
I stopped short, lucky to not twist an ankle with the forces I used to turn around. “What kind?” I asked, hoping beyond hope. (Not the cranberry almond, not the cranberry almond, not the cranberry almond…) My fingers crossed like a third grader’s.
“Blueberry.”
“With glaze?” I asked, my voice tremulous.
She nodded.
“Yes!” I pumped my fist in the air. “I might be able to spare a minute or two,” I said as I closed the front door.
“I thought so,” she answered as she poured a glass of milk.
The meeting was being held in the complex’s clubhouse. It was a sturdy looking structure, an ‘A’ frame that would probably look much more at home at some alpine setting than here in Aurora, Colorado. I showed up to the meeting twenty minutes late.
“Nice of you to show, Talbot,” Jed said from the dais at the front of the committee room. Everyone present turned to see.
“Um, I got a little detained,” I answered sheepishly.
“What is that on your mustache?” Jed said, straining to get a better look. “Is that blueberry?” he asked incredulously.
I licked it away furiously before he could confirm his suspicions.
“Where is everybody?” I asked trying to change the subject, only realizing too late that I had just made matters worse.
The room was usually standing room only, and that was if we were only going to discuss the mailbox placement. This seemed infinitely more important, and there were dozens of available chairs.
Jed let the blueberries go. His shoulders slumped. “This is all that’s left,” he answered.
I sat down with a thump into one of the many vacancies. “Oh dear God,” I muttered.
Jed was a crotchety old fart but his community had been turned asunder and he was having a difficult time coming to grips with it. This was the fastidious man who scolded children for sledding on the snow-covered hills, fearing that they might tear up the grass underneath. And now his assembly was reduced in one night to a third of the mass it had been. It had been a shock to him, but the tough old badger was going to make sure the rest of us made it through the turmoil. I was impressed, considering he was prior army. I wouldn’t have thought he had the intestinal fortitude for this. But he had already gone far above any of my expectations. While everyone had been running around like chickens without heads, he had the Northern gates shut, guarded and appropriated an RV from the Millers, who were here and still glowering. He had also somehow got hold of a bus to close off the last gate, all the while assembling a team to go house to house (not garage to garage) to dispatch the enemy. I was amazed, and that offer of a kiss was still valid if he ever decided he wanted it. I had done everything humanly possible to save my family; Jed had thought on a much broader scale.
The first part of the meeting had been a sounding of the bell ceremony for the Little Turtle fallen. I was thankful I had missed that. I had no wish to hear the names of the dead. They were just about to get to the meat of the meeting (sarcasm intended) when I showed up.
Jed continued. “I know it’s going to be difficult to guard so much area.” There was no reason for him to verbalize the reason; there were so few of us now. “We have to keep two people at each of the fenced gates at all times, and I’ll take ideas on how to shore those up. They were never designed to stop a determined pedestrian. No need to worry about the southwest gate. The RV isn’t going anywhere.”
Old man Miller got up to protest. “You didn’t say anything about turning it over on its side when you ‘borrowed’ it Jed,” Gerald Miller sneered. “That was mine and the missus’ vacation home!” he yelled as loud as his oxygen tank fueled lungs would allow.
Jed looked like he was about to blow a gasket. That was the same look that got me going and thrown out of the town meeting a few months earlier.
“Gerry, where exactly are you and the missus planning on going to vacation NOW?” Jed stated, placing the emphasis on ‘now.’
“Well, we could have used it to escape to Florida,” Gerry said dejectedly.
“Oh yeah,” Jed stated sarcastically. “They didn’t hand out ANY flu shots in the retirement capital of the world.”
I had missed the news broadcasts that were still operational. They had decisive evidence that the flu vaccination was the culprit and not voodoo mysticism, as many of the more superstitious types (me) had reckoned. At this point though, what’s the difference. A zombie’s a zombie, I don’t care how it got to the point of wanting to eat my brains, I just wanted to make sure that didn’t happen. Gerry didn’t make any more interjections. He pouted as best he could with an oxygen tube coming out of his nose.
“Okay, now that that matter is closed,” Jed said, as he looked straight at Gerry. “I’d like at least four people at the bus gate. I’m worried about the clearance. The zombies that showed up last night showed no inkling that they even noticed there was a way in under the bus. I’d say let’s flip the bus too.”
Gerry loudly harrumphed.
