forth in a vain attempt to get away from her ministrations.
“Alright…alright.” He croaked out in between laborious inhalations of breath. When he had hesitated for a fraction more of a second longer than Tracy was willing to tolerate, she started up again. I felt for the kid, if he had been older I would have feared his heart wouldn’t be able to take much more. “I’ll tell!” He squealed. Snot, tears and chocolate goo coalesced in a pool on his shirt as he fought to regain control. On anyone else that would have been the most disgusting sight I had seen, on Tommy it was merely endearing. “Aw I messed up my Star Wars shirt.” Tommy said as he looked down at his belly.
“Tommy!” Tracy shouted as she held her hand up high in a claw like fashion, ready to strike and do more damage.
“Ok, ok stop, but my shirt.” Tracy’s hand got higher. “Your mom likes Jeff Daniels.”
“Jack” I said
He looked over towards me. “That’s what I said.”
Tracy looked over at me pissed that I was helping Tommy stall. I might be a big bad Marine but I’m as ticklish as a puppy. If she started that crap with me, this minivan would be cart-wheeling down the roadway in about ten seconds. “We’re good.” I said holding up my hands.
She redirected towards Tommy, convinced that I would no longer interfere with her. She was right.
“Ryan said your mom likes Jeff Daniels!” He yelled out before Tracy could descend back on him.
She sat back down hard in her seat, a look of bafflement, relief and wonderment across her face. After long seconds of processing the information she turned back towards Tommy.
“You sure?” She asked querulously.
Tommy beamed. No answer was necessary at that point.
“Ryan said my mom likes Jack Daniels?” Tracy reiterated, nearly sobbing.
“Yep Jeff Daniels.”
“Jack.” I said adding my penny and a half.
“That’s what I said.” Tommy said looking at me through the mirror like I had lost my marbles. The earnest way that he was looking at me made me wonder if maybe he had said Jack and I was slowly going insane. Okay so ‘slowly’ would probably be the wrong descriptor, something along the lines of breaking the speed of light might be more apt.
My eyebrows knitted of their own volition. “Tracy what did Tommy say?” I needed help.
“Oh Mike he said my mom was alright.” Now she was full on crying.
Now whether Tommy had said Jack or Jeff was open to debate, but not once did he say Carol Yentas was okay. Sure it was implied. Dead people don’t really like anything except maybe staying dead. I’d be damned though if I was going to be the one that pissed on her cheerios, rained on her parade, took a dump on her tulips, whatever. We had a glimmer of hope in a sea of somberness. The home team needed a win and right now Tommy was pitching a gem. Tracy fairly bounced in her seat the remaining hour of our journey. I could tell she was wavering with bouts of happiness and fits of caution. It is a tough thing to open one’s self to the prospect of something happening that is beyond the belief of what is expected and then once you attain that state of inner balance to have what you hoped for ripped from you.
To get the full effect of this analogy, just for a moment consider yourself a huge, NO HUGE Red Sox fan (like me) and it is the magical year of the lord nineteen hundred and eighty six and it is game six, the Sox are ONE FUCKING OUT from winning the World Series, something you never expected to see in your lifetime. You suck Babe Ruth! A dribbler, a DRIBBLER is hit up the first base line. I had literally along with all my friends popped that bottle of champagne. Cold liquor was bubbling all over my hand as I watched in disbelief as the ball went through BILLY BUCKNER’S legs. I had never known up to that point in life what getting a dream crushed felt like. It was something akin to running over rabbits with a lawn mower. Blood, fur and bone bits everywhere, yep it was pretty much like that. So I’m basically saying that I could empathize with her, in a roundabout way.
The rural road that led up to Carol’s, was for the mini-van, nearly impassable. It had seen some random traffic and if I kept the speed low enough I could follow in the barely visible grooves some other traveler had made. On two occasions some gentle bumper pushing from Jen had got me out of some deeper furrows.
“Maybe we should let Jen go first, she can make a better trail for us hon.”
Tracy’s unspoken look of ‘Not a fucking chance’ shut me up.
When we got to 7 Washburn Road, we were met with a sea of white. An unbroken blanket of snow a foot deep, it might as well have been a moat, there was no way this car was getting through it. The old Victorian style house was set a good two hundred yards off the roadway but even from here it was impossible to not see the blotches of crimson that dotted the yard.
“Talbot is that blood?” Tracy asked. We both saw the giant dream-crushing boot hovering over us. “Where are the bodies?”
“My guess is under the snow.” My thoughts however traveled a little darker. I figured that they had got what they came for and had long since left. Tracy had started to fumble with the door lock. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m going up there.” She said matter-of-factly. “I’ve got to see what happened.” She gulped.
“Hold on. You can’t walk up there. That snows at least a foot deep if something or somebody is still here you’ll never be able to run for it. We’ll hop in the back of Jen’s truck.”
Within a minute we had armed ourselves and got into the back of the truck. My concern lied in the fact of how was I going to pick up Tracy’s pieces of broken soul when she discovered her mother was gone. Oh and gone I hoped she was. If we found her eaten body or worse yet her as zombie, I didn’t know how the Talbots would be able to muster on. The cold reddened Tracy’s features but even that couldn’t compare to the red in her eyes. Tommy was busy wetting his fingertips and smoothing back an invisible cowlick, as if trying to make himself presentable. Well of all the signs he could be portraying that was one of the better ones. As we jostled our way up the yard, I wasn’t convinced we were still on the driveway as the splashes of blood became more pronounced. But it wasn’t just blood, I noticed a boot sticking up in one of the piles. In another was an outstretched hand. It sort of reminded me of a sapling struggling for light. I would have shot it if I really thought it was going to take root.
One thing I could tell was, there hadn’t really been a battle here. Some of the bodies had been out for a lot longer than the others. There was one that aside from a tuft of hair sticking up, I would have never known was there. The blood had been completely covered with subsequent snowfall. A few were fresh, and that could only mean one thing, there was something here worth trying to eat.
My sight was brought to the fore by movement. Someone had arisen out of a chair and was standing on the porch and even from this distance I could tell that they had one mean mother of a breech-loading shotgun at the ready.
Tracy shocked me as she yelled out. “Mom!?”
I wanted to say something about her giving us away but the roar of the truck engine as it struggled to cut through the snow could probably be heard for miles in this new, quiet world. Come to think of it, I was never ever going to miss the sound of a jackhammer at 7:33 in the morning on a Saturday. The shape of the person on the porch had the consistency of someone’s grandmother but the majority of my focus was on that ten-gauge shotgun. We were close enough that if that person started to shoot slugs we’d be able to count ourselves among the other lawn ornaments.
I banged on the roof of the truck for Jen to stop.
She looked out her window. “What’s up Mike?”
“Stop the truck and kill the engine.” I told her.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” She asked.
“Nope.” I answered truthfully, the truck engine simmered to a stop. The pinging of the heated motor the only sound to break up the muffled day.
“Mom?!” Tracy yelled out again.
Nothing, no response. Only the steady unwavering double barrel of a large caliber shotgun. After a few seconds the barrel dipped imperceptibly.
“Tracy?!” Came the tremulous reply.
That was it. Tracy was down off the bed of the truck and running at full tilt. Which really wasn’t all that fast when you’re knee deep in snow. I banged on the roof of the truck again.
“Wagon’s forward!” I yelled and gestured. Don’t ask me why, seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Tracy was PISSED OFF when we passed her on by, and even more so when Jen had nearly blocked off the entire
