“And I climbed down the ladder, the missus told me that if I didn’t come home safe and sound to not bother coming home at all. She was so upset I don’t think she knew that she made absolutely no sense. I figured if I got in enough trouble that I couldn’t get home, then I was pretty much dead.”
I nodded with him in agreement.
“So then she tells me that if I’m going anyway I might as well get…well you get the point, ended up she had a list too. Felt like a damn fool heading to the Piggly Wiggly with a rifle strapped to my back. Drove my old pickup truck.”
Which was actually a 2009 GMC Jimmy, the thing was pristine, I looked longingly at it and then back at the Terrible Teal Machine a few times during our stay there.
“Got to the mart and it was quiet, quiet like the world was holding its breath, wondering what was going to happen next. There was nothing on those two shopping lists I felt was worth my life, damn near turned around the second my boot crunched down on the pavement. I was gonna go back and tell Maggie, my knee was acting up and I couldn’t walk right, much less run iffen I had too. Maggie and Greta would have known I had chickened out, but Greta would have told me so to my face, that dour faced….., is she around? No? Bitch. I had one foot on the ground and one still in the truck. That damn Dew made me do it. I had to have it. Seemed about the only thing in this world ‘sides my Maggie worth living for.”
I loved beer, and I couldn’t even begin to explain how I longed to chug that nectar of the gods but would I risk my life for it? And then I really, I mean really pondered the question. Fuck, I think I would. Stupid, sure but there’s more than one person, starting with my wife, that’ll tell you I’m not a rocket scientist.
“I used my tire iron to pry the doors open, no ‘lectricity and all.” He looked at me as he said this to see if I was judging him for his lapse in moral character.
It took me a second to understand what he was asking me. My understanding? My forgiveness? “We are all doing what we need to do Denmark.” Why he cared about my thoughts on the matter, I didn’t know. I didn’t then and I don’t now, have the power of absolution.
“Smell. The smell was what hit me first. I don’t like to think of it much. I can still recall it. When I was 15 had a Coon dog, that got sprayed by a skunk, that was Chanel No. 5 in comparison.”
Oh I knew that smell all too well, the zombies, not the Chanel No. 5. An SOS pad on a stick, shoved up my nose, and thoroughly whisked around would not eradicate the perpetual olfactory odor that had been burned in that unfortunate sense.
“Michael, I pretended it was the meat gone bad. I guess it kind of was.” He laughed. “Just wrong kind.” His smile disappeared as rapidly as it had come on. “The regular lights were out. There were still a couple of red auxiliary lights hanging on to some small trickle of power. It did little to make the store seem more shoppable. If some little five year old had come from behind a register and said ‘boogey-d-boo’ I would have pissed myself.”
I laughed. Denmark didn’t share in my view. I get that a lot. Either my base of reference is highly skewed or everyone else’s is. I figured it was everyone else, why shine that light on myself.
“I propped the door open to get some light and some breathable air in. It helped some, but only if I stayed within 15 feet of the door. Figured my odds of everything on my lists being that close was slim to none.” He laughed. I didn’t. We’d synch up sooner or later.
“Good story Mike?” Brendon said peevishly as he made his 4th? No maybe 7th trip up the ladder.
I wanted to respond and tell him ‘Yeah not bad.’ But I needed to remember that in the post-apocalyptical world virtually everyone was armed.
Denmark wiped his face with rough hands, long exposed to the ardor of hard work and cold weather. If he had cried, I pretended not to notice. “And then they started to come Mike, those…those things. They were my friends and my neighbors, I blew the head off my kids Sunday School teacher. Perts, the postman nearly got me, I’d never seen him move so fast when he was delivering the mail.”
I so wanted to laugh now, again, not appropriate.
“I put twenty rounds in him ‘fore I had the good sense the lord gave me to let go of the trigger.”
I harkened back to my magazine emptying encounter with the double-fat twins. I think that was like twenty years ago.
“And still they came Mike, had to have been a couple dozen iffen there was one. My ammo drum came up empty just as I killed the last one. If there had been just one more, I probably would have just stood there while it did his thing. I think I was in shock.”
“That’s understandable Denmark. Not many a man has had to go through what you’ve gone through.” I almost thought of adding ‘at least that’s how it used to be, anybody alive now has had to’.
“I didn’t even go back to the truck and get the extra ammo. I grabbed a cart and a sanitary wipe.”
A man after my own heart.
“And shopped, I walked around the bodies like it was the most natural thing in the world. I did grab three of everything just because I never wanted to have to go back to that store again.” He wiped his face again, attempting to remove the invisible stain that the encounter had placed on him.
I assured him, that was the way of the world now. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect but he had done nothing shameful or worthy of his guilt. He appreciated the words but I don’t know how effective they were.
CHAPTER 18 
Within the hour we were all sitting in unit 203. Denmark had salvaged an old potbelly stove that kept the room a balmy two degrees below the temperature on the surface of the sun. Occasionally I had to go outside to keep my lungs from cooking because of the super-heated air. If it bothered Denmark, Maggie or Greta, in the least, they didn’t let anyone know. The mood was convivial, even Greta smiled a few times which I think really caught Denmark by surprise. I was fairly convinced he didn’t think she had the muscle memory to do such an action.
Everyone had let their guard down somewhat. Maggie couldn’t stop fussing over the boys. She said they reminded her of her own boys. They had not heard from Larry or Jim since the start of it all. For moments she would get lost in her thoughts and grief and then come back around full circle beginning with wiping Tommy’s Kit-Kat swathed face. Travis squirmed from her ministrations. Torn between acting like the man he was rapidly and forcibly becoming and the boy who still looked to adults for all the answers and protection. Justin feigned sleep to be left alone. In my twisted brain I feared that it was the contact with goodness that so repelled him from her.
Denmark was a great storyteller and had the entire room enthralled in some story involving a canoe, a tree that ate people and a cat that saved the world. Between the length of the day, the heat from the stove and a now sated belly I found myself dozing off. I was startled awake to some raucous laughter, something about the cat falling out of the canoe and into the water. I stumbled out of the room. I had the uncomfortable feeling that my liver was beginning to cook from the inside out. This must be what that poodle felt like when its master tried to dry him off in the microwave. I opened the door and the bracing cold in my face as well as the fire behind the sensation was invigorating.
“What’d you grow up in a barn.” Came Denmark’s voice.
I had heard the rebuke from my mother enough to know he wanted me to either go in or out and shut the door in either case. My intention was to continue on out and pull in some cold fresh air into my lungs in hopes to store it against the stove's blistering heat.
“Michael?” Denmark asked when I didn’t move.
Tracy turned to look due to Denmark’s tone. I was a man frozen but not by cold. “Talbot?” No response.
I turned. “Boys.” And that was all it took, Brendon and Travis grabbed their gear and followed me out onto the balcony. It was the smell. I couldn’t see a damn thing below me. It was a new moon and even if that wasn’t the case the thick cloud cover still would have blanketed any potential light. Between the smell and the shuffling, we once again found ourselves in the midst of the enemy. It didn’t quite smell or feel like the mother lode but we wouldn’t be able to tell until the morning.
“Sweet Jesus.” Denmark said as he came to the railing.
“Den, don’t you use that kind of language.” Maggie shot from behind him.
“Haven’t seen a one of them in nearly a week I figured it was over.” Denmark remarked.
I felt terrible. I knew without a shadow of a doubt we were the reason they were here. I don’t know how I knew it but I did. BT was busy moving some of the ammo cans into place. Jen was loading and then checking her loaded weapon over and over again like a looped tape.
