“There’s a lot of blood, Mom,” Josh told her. “He didn’t get bit, did he?” the boy asked in alarm.
“No, the one over there shot him,” the lady said as she cleaned the wound.
“Why mister? Why did you shoot him?” Josh asked me.
“He’s my brother,” I tried to say in explanation.
“If I had a brother, I wouldn’t shoot him,” Josh told me.
“Wait, no. I didn’t shoot him because he’s my brother. I was trying to save him.”
“By shooting him? Mom, didn’t Uncle Dave tell you not to open the door for the crazy people?” Josh admonished his mother.
The woman looked up at me. “Are you crazy?” she asked, still wiping blood and placing gauze in the wound to staunch the blood.
How did I answer that? More than a fair amount of people, especially recently, had called me crazy. I did the prudent thing, I stayed silent.
“Wonderful,” the woman said sarcastically, wrapping tape around Gary’s head. “Your brother will be fine unless of course you’re not quite through with him yet.”
“Why do I keep running across comedians?” I asked her.
“Come on, put your rifle down and help me get him onto the couch,” she told me.
“What about the zombies?” I asked her, not yet quite willing to yield my only means of defense.
“They can’t get in,” Josh told me. “The only way things can get in here is if we let them in,” he said pointedly looking straight at his mother.
“They needed help,” she told him quickly.
By the time we settled Gary down into the couch, he looked to be more comfortably asleep than anything else.
“He’ll be fine,” she said, sticking out her still bloody appendage. “My name is Mary, Mary Hilop.”
I looked in horror at the proffered hand. “Um, your hand is soaking with blood.”
She pulled it back slightly to look. “There’s like three dots and it’s your brother’s blood anyway.”
“I don’t know where he’s been,” I told her.
“Oh, for Christ’s sakes,” she said, heading into the kitchen and turning on the faucet.
“You’re not worried about contaminated water?” I asked her in all seriousness.
“It’s well water and are you going to make me regret my decision to let you in?”
“My name is Mike Talbot and that’s my brother, Gary,” I told her. “And why did you let us in? You don’t know what kind of people we are.”
She stood for a long time with her hands under the water. (And, I’ll happily admit, she was using liberal amounts of dish soap.) I think she was deciding what she did or did not want to tell me. She finally turned the faucet off and turned to face me. “This morning I was saying my prayers, like I do every day. You know knees on the bedroom floor, hands on top of the bed, and I was just getting up when I heard an answer back.” She looked me straight in the eye, wondering if I was going to think she was nuts.
I didn’t so much as flinch. That was far from the craziest thing that had happened to me, and I’m just talking about today.
When she realized I wasn’t going to try and have her committed, she continued. “The voice said I should help those as I would want them to help me. And when I saw you and the other two running from the zombies out there, I put Josh and myself in your places and thought what would I want someone to do, so I opened the door.”
“That was very brave of you,” I told her, meaning it.
“Did I do the right thing?” she asked me.
“Well, I think so. You saved my brother and my lives.”
“But were you worthy to be saved?” came her next question.
“My brother is,” I told her flatly. She left it at that, and I silently thanked her.
“What of the other man?” she asked.
“BT, his name is BT and he’s quite possibly the best friend I have ever had. We’ve traded saving each other’s lives so many times, I’m not even one hundred percent sure who is in the lead, although I suspect it is me. I have got to go and try and find him.”
“Not for a few days,” Mary said, turning back to the kitchen window. She stood on her tiptoes and pulled the shade to the side. “The zees will stay out here for a few days before they go to wherever they go or some other hapless idiot starts running down the street and then it starts all over again.”
I’m pretty sure she just called me a “hapless idiot.” I’ve been called worse, but it still stung.
“When they first came, they were out there for a couple of months.”
“You never had a breach?”
She turned back to me. “No my ex-husband ended up being a paranoid delusional. He spent more on the security of this house than the actual worth of this place.”
I’m a paranoid delusional, but my house fell in the first few days. What I wouldn’t have done to have talked to her ex beforehand. “Where is Mr. Hilop?”
That was a pretty personal question, and I was still some guy she had just let into her home. I thought she might lie and say sleeping upstairs, but she came out with the truth. “It ended up being his sickness that got the best of him. He was convinced that the zees would be able to get through the back basement window and he went to the hardware store to fix that problem and get some supplies for my son’s hobby, he’d do anything for him. That was three months ago. I’m figuring he’s not coming back, although Josh is still holding out hope.”
“Food isn’t an issue?” I asked.
“You heard the part where I said he was delusional?”
“Gotcha,” I told her. “So you said a couple of days?” I asked, coming up to look through the barred window.
“Yeah, they go somewhere and only come out when someone rings the dinner bell.”
“They go into a stasis,” I said as I quickly pulled the shade back into place. Three zombies were fighting over some sort of scraps and I had no desire to discern what it was. “They all pile up into this giant mass of decayed flesh and stink and sort of hibernate. Our best guess is that food is becoming scarce and this is a way for them to extend their lives, such as they are.”
“They’re cognizant?” Mary asked incredulously. “They have thought beyond hunger?”
“It’s some sort of parasite, so it has a survival instinct, but beyond that…” I shrugged my shoulders.
“How long have you been on the run?” Mary asked.
I got a faraway look in my eyes. “Since the beginning,” I told her.
I know she wanted to press me for more information. She and her son had ridden out the entire storm in the relative safety of this house. Luckily, Gary saved me.
“I can’t see!” he screamed from the living room.
Josh had pulled down all the blackout blinds when the zombies had returned. Besides a few strategically placed emergency candles, the house was as dark as the inside of a coffin.
“You’re fine, Gary,” I said. “Shit!” I yelled as I slammed my shin into a table leg.
“Mike? Mike? Is that you? It’s so cold and dark where I am. I can’t see you, brother. I’ve been shot in the head and I think it’s the end for me. Mom, is that you?”
“No, my name is Mary,” Mary said, getting to his side quicker than I could. Being familiar with the house, she was able to navigate through it more rapidly.
“Mary? Such a beautiful name. Are you my guiding angel?” Gary said dramatically, maybe a little too much.
Mary produced a small flashlight and checked Gary’s wound and his pupils, then turned to me. “Does he have a flare for the dramatic?”
“You tell me,” I replied.
“You know that your wound is not much more than a scratch, right?” she asked Gary.
“Are you sure? Because I see the light,” Gary said.
“It’s a Ray-O-Vac penlight,” Mary told him.
“Oh,” Gary said, sitting up. “Then I’m fine. Mike, you know I’m going to have to tell Dad that you shot me.”
