I looked over my right shoulder as I backed out of the parking lot. Tommy looked like I had just run over a family of rabbits with a lawnmower.
“Did I tell you about the Kit-Kats, Mr. T?” Tommy lamented.
“What are you doing Talbot?” Tracy asked, she hated to see the distress in Tommy.
“Hedging my bets.” Was my terse reply.
“Against what?” Tracy asked. “What’s going on?” She had inklings of how deep my disturbed waters ran and for the most part made sure that she didn’t wade too far from shore. But since this whole undertaking had begun she had started to indulge me more and more. I felt sadness that she would someday swim in the turmoil I mired in daily but that was beyond my control for now.
I parked next to Brendon on the road without telling anyone. I grabbed my gun and got out. “Tra..” She was already moving into the driver’s seat.
“Hold on Talbot I’m coming with you.” BT said, as he fumbled with his seat belt, the material looked stretched to its capacity around his immense bulk.
“Hold on BT, I know that you’re a big sweetheart.” He grumbled. “But any poor folks in there are going to look at you like a raging T-Rex.” He took no umbrage to my words. A small smile may have passed his lips. It was difficult to tell in the fading sunlight.
Travis was halfway out the door. I stopped him too. “Not this time champ.” I motioned for him to get back in the car.
“Talbot let’s just go.” Tracy entreated.
“Go where? I haven’t given up on this place I’m just not 100% convinced yet.” I answered.
“How convinced are you?” Tracy asked. She had not been expecting an answer, so when I came back with 50-50. She understandably didn’t know whether to be troubled or thankful.
I took that one calming breath that really doesn’t do anything except focus you on the fact you are about to do something foolhardy or dangerous, or a combination of the two. All eyes watched me as I slowly approached the motel. Halfway across the parking lot my concern came to fruition in the form of a green laser dot painted plainly on my chest.
“Dad why’d you stop?” Travis asked. His voice rang out too loudly in the unaccountable quiet. I hesitated to turn and tell him. I slowly raised my arms in the universal gesture of ‘Don’t put a cavernous hole in my body.’
“Oh fuck.” I heard from a multitude of mouths behind me. I concurred with them completely. I heard multiple car doors open or slide, the cavalry was on the way.
“Make them stop or you’ll be on the ground before you hear the shot.” The disembodied voice said softly for my ears only. It seemed to be coming from above and to the left of me, but I wasn’t willing to bet my life on that fact.
“STOP!” I said loudly. “He says that if you keep coming, he’ll kill me.” The sheer quantity of guns I heard being cocked behind me at least gave me the slight satisfaction in knowing that my death would be avenged ten- fold.
“What’s your business here?” The voice came again, and now I was willing to put some more stock in the premise of his location.
Odds were though he wasn’t the only one on this field of play. No chance this was a laser device from a tape measure. Those were only of the red variety. Green lasers were much more powerful and generally included only on tactical weapons. Would I feel the splintering of my chest plate as it first contorted to accept the intruding projectile and then shattered around the bullet? Would my heart burst as the bullet tore through it, like so many watermelons I had shot? And if I was somehow still alive after all that damage to myself would I be able to register the paralysis my body suffered as my spinal column was severed in two? Would it be better to be shot with a full metal jacketed bullet that would strike small and leave a fist sized opening in my back? Or with a traditional lead round that would mushroom immediately upon impact thus allowing it to damage more vital organs as it crushed to a stop halfway through my being? Maybe a low velocity round that would hit somewhere center mass and tumble through my body only to find a hasty exit through my orbital socket? It was a gruesome picture I was painting. I truly wished I wasn’t the model for it.
I answered my captor’s question honestly. “My business is to not get shot.” I wasn’t expecting a laugh when I answered him but that’s exactly what I received.
“I think that’s all of our businesses.” I could tell from his tone he enjoyed the response. But his prior wariness, if it had diminished at all, was only by a negligent amount. “I would feel more comfortable if you put that weapon on the ground.” He said to me.
I wasn’t really in a negotiable place, but what the hell. “And I’d feel more comfortable if I wasn’t painted with a laser. It’s a little unsettling.”
“Well that’s the point isn’t it?”
Great I got to deal with a realist.
“Okay you put that gun down, I’ll take the laser off of you but you do realize I’m not the only one that has a bead on you and your traveling party.”
I had figured enough about me. Realizing my family was an errant mosquito bite away from coming under fire was almost more than I could bear. My body shook with rage, my soul quaked with fear. I gently placed my A.R. on the ground. “Alright I’ve held up my end of the agreement.” The laser unwaveringly still dissected my body. I could hear what sounded like a muffled high intensity argument. Seemed to me someone was very adamant about not having guests. That I was waiting patiently for someone else to decide my fate was not sitting well. I carefully eyed my rifle and got busy deciding how quick I could pick it up and at least go out in a Blaze of Glory.
“Don’t even think about it.” The same voice warned me.
“Too late.” I said. He laughed again. Fuckers have night vision goggles. I felt slightly envious and more than a little pissed at myself that I hadn’t thought to pick some of those gems up. I’m sure Dick’s sporting goods would have had some. Not of the military grade but something better than my impotent human vision. Odds were we would have picked this ambush up long before I stumbled my ass across the parking lot. More hushed skirmishing ensued. I had half a mind, the crazier half to be sure, to tell them to hurry up. Holding my arms over my head like this was killing my shoulders. No reason to poke a hornet’s nest though, they don’t even make honey.
After what seemed like indeterminable minutes the arguing had stopped. Who won? The ones that wanted to kill us all outright, or the ones that wanted to kill just the men outright?
“Alright I want you to tell all those people behind you to put their weapons down and come forward with their hands up.” The voice said all business like.
I didn’t need to ponder my response in the slightest. “No.” I’d wished I had those goggles now just to see his expression.
“I don’t think you understood me.” He shot back, with words thankfully.
“Oh I understood you just fine. I’m just not doing what you asked.” Impudence didn’t seem like the right tact but there I was rattling off at the mouth again with reckless abandon.
“We can kill you where you stand. You get that, right?”
“I get that utterly and completely and that is why under no circumstances will I drag my family and friends into your killing zone.”
More hushed arguing. “I’m putting my arms down. My shoulders are killing me.” I yelled.
“Slowly! And do not make a move for that gun!”
“Fine, fine!” I yelled back as I dropped my outstretched hands down and began to rub blood back into my numbed arms.
More hushed brawling ensued. Obviously no succinct chain of command here, Democracies didn’t generally fare so well in survivalist societies but then I remembered I was the one in the less than desirable position.
A woman’s voice shot out this time. I shouldn’t have been surprised at all by her question but I was. “Do you have someone named Tommy with you?”
From behind her I heard another woman’s voice say softly. “That was stupid Maggie, you should have asked them their names.”
I was reaching, but they had opened the door I might as well knock it off its hinges. “Do you have a Kit-Kat machine?” It would have been impossible to not hear their gasps of surprise. “I’ll take that as a yes?”
“How could you know? It was delivered the day the zombies came? It never even made it out into the lobby.” The same female voice asked disbelievingly.
