“Ryan says something about a lantern being on.” Tommy said his eyebrows pinched in a frown as he tried to make sense of his ‘seers’ words.
You could hear a pin drop or Jen peeing a few feet away, you decide which descriptor fits. They were both accurate if not both politically correct. However I don’t think this was going to be on any ACLU docket in the foreseeable future.
“What’d I miss?” Jen asked as she came back wiping her hands in the snow.
BT gave her the short version. “Brendon thinks we should stay at a motel and Tommy says there’s a street light on somewhere.”
She looked as confused as the rest of us, but she recovered a lot faster than any of us. She leaned her head into the minivan.”
“Hi Tommy.” Jen said with a smile. Tommy blushed. “Whatcha got there?”
“Triple berry pop-tart with peanut butter frosting.” He said proudly.
“Dad.” Travis entreated. “You said we were out of pop-tarts.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Wait.” Now I leaned my head into the minivan. “Did you say peanut butter frosting?”
“Uh huh.” Tommy said, shifting uncomfortably as he noticed that everyone was looking at him.
“Did you spread peanut butter on your pop-tart Tommy?” I asked.
He looked at me like I was crazy. His eyes rolled as he answered me. “We don’t even have any peanut butter Mr. T.”
“But pop-tarts never made a peanut butter frosted variety Tommy.” I intoned.
“Oh forget the pop-tarts Talbot.” Jen hushed me.
(I let it go then but I haven’t forgotten about them yet and I can guarantee when the savage vestiges of Alzheimer’s are rendering my mind into brain flavored oat meal and I am slinging my own shit against the walls that I’ll remember triple berry pop-tarts with peanut butter frosting. Oh you dear reader can be assured that after Jen got her answers I checked that pop-tart out and it was indeed the flavor he described. Not that the kid had ever lied but maybe he got confused. He hadn’t.)
“Okay let me get this straight, Brendon says ‘motel’ and Tommy says ‘street light is on’, right?” Jen asked.
Nicole clarified with. “Lantern, he said a lantern was on, not a street light.”
“Let’s go, we’ve got a motel to find.” Jen said with a huge smile on her face.
“Um any chance you could let the rest of us know what mystery you figured out?” BT asked.
“Come on in, we’ll leave the light on for you.” Jen beamed.
“Huh?” BT asked.
Tommy around mouthfuls of an impossibly flavored snack nodded fervently in agreement.
“The old Motel 6 catch phrase.” I wrapped up.
“Exactly.” Jen said. “Let’s go I’m freezing.”
Nobody needed any more persuading than that.
Within twenty minutes we came up on a viable choice for our overnight stay, even if there wasn’t a Dunkin’ Donuts. Beresford South Dakota was about to become our home away from home, at least for the night. It was by far the prettiest place we had stopped thus far in our journey, with its tree lined streets and the pond in the center of town. But pretty doesn’t equate to safe. It was a given that zombies travel to where the food is. So by pure theory alone small towns should be the first places to become devoid of the offending vermin. Like flesh eating locusts, they plunder and pillage the local resources and move on. They don’t hunker down and make roots. Can’t really cultivate a human farm, can you? And then I shuddered as I thought about The Matrix. Okay, but that was about machines harvesting humans for energy. If I come across penned up humans with zombie cowboys, my tentative grip on the fringes of sanity will be forever frayed. I shook my head, trying my best to dislodge the offending vision. Like this shit isn’t bad enough I’ve got to try and drum up even more exciting scenarios. ‘Ah what I’d do for a nuclear bomb.’
“A nuclear what?” My wife asked. Her contortion of fear was clearly outlined.
“Did I say that out loud?” I asked, clearly confused. When had I last let the inner thoughts of my unkempt mind out for all to see? My inner trappings were not a pretty place and I always made a careful case to make sure that my mind was shuttered against even the most curious onlookers. Tracy had long ago learned to not try and find out what I was thinking. My sometimes candid answers more often than not left her confused, concerned and just plain weirded out. Honest to God, I used to think that everybody thought the way I did, and were just as good at hiding it as I was. That however wasn’t the case. My depths of paranoia, conspiracy and psychosis approached and most likely surpassed levels that should have been medicated away. But it was these same ‘malfunctions’ of my mind that had my family thus far safe and sound. If I had really been able to ‘realize’ my dream though we would be riding this out in style in some giant underground shelter. I envy all of you that had the resources to pull that off.
“Look the light is on!” Tommy said excitedly.
And it was. The chill of icy fingers that ran up my spine was back and it was corpse cold. I shuddered involuntarily. Nobody but Tommy saw good in the stupid little hundred-watt bulb, shining bright through the twilight.
“How is that light still on Talbot?” BT asked in hushed tones, with a note of reverence in his voice.
“There’s a machine with Kit-Kats in there, do you have any change Mr. T?” Tommy asked hopefully.
It’s amazing to me that all of us had known Tommy long enough that nobody even looked halfway cross-eyed at him at his pronouncement. If Tommy had said that a convention of clowns respite with balloon animals was in there singing Billy Joel songs, we would all have believed him. Of course I wouldn’t have gone in, clowns are evil, but I still would have believed him.
I pulled into the parking lot. Brendon wisely remained on the street in the event that he needed to make a quick getaway. A few more years of exposure to me and he would be completely infected with my derangement. I was like a proud papa watching his baby take his first steps.
“What are you doing Talbot?” BT leaned in to me and asked, still in that hushed tone.
I wanted to let him know that zombies were more olfactory stimulated than auditory but then I remembered that there were other demons out there that still went bump in the night. Durgan invaded my thoughts for a moment. I snuffed the thought before it could grow. My mind malignancy could not get past the thought that something was amiss here. Zombies are notorious dark dwellers, relying on smell mostly to track down their prey. Odds of zombies being around were about 10%. Next on my list were bad guys, your average low life. Mad Max types, take whatever you will and destroy the rest. Again this is a relatively small percentage, maybe 10% also. This type, while very dangerous, doesn’t lie in wait. They go out and seek to take. Okay next came just regular folks doing their best to survive. I hate to keep beating a dead horse but this is also a small percentage, I’ll stick with the 10%. I might not be the greatest role model for this example but I can guarantee I wouldn’t be hanging a ‘We’re Open’ shingle out on my front door. Now we have our garden variety bad guy, using a lure to bring in some unsuspecting slobs. This percentage was considerably higher than the others, maybe 20%. But unless you carried your own personal physician with you, inviting trouble was not always a viable advantage. It was still early enough in the apocalypse that supplies were fairly abundant. Food, clothes and ammo were everywhere. Zombies had little use for them and by this time outnumbered humans thousands to one. So what was in small supply and would become a high trade commodity? Women, God damn it, it always comes down to women. The bane of our existence and our small party contained three of the golden ones. Okay that 20% might go up.
Now this part is something I’ve let very few people know. That’s a lie. I’ve let nobody know. This, I’ve come to learn is a huge character flaw in myself. I don’t want to change it and I recognize it for what it is. It’s the inability to reach out and help those in need. I don’t feel the altruistic requirement to help people. Now I’ll die for my family or my friends if the demands require it. I’ve risked my neck for the men I’ve fought next to and even for people that I’ve been tentatively tethered too, think Cash. But I will not go out of my way to help those in need. I’m blown away by the people that used to go to Africa and try to help populations dying from starvation. My first response was always, ‘What is their ulterior motive?’ Yeah, there’s the cynic in me rearing its grotesque head. Doctors and nurses could only be in it for the money, rich people giving to charities was for tax purposes, actors donating time to build houses, free publicity. So the thought that some people were in that motel wanting to help others was by and far the largest percentage of probability and it was easily the most difficult for me to reconcile in my mind.
