scared. Gary never did call him on it, so either he had kept it together better than he thought or Gary was too scared to realize Mike’s man-code slip-up.
Gary scrambled over the top of the stove and moved to the backdoor before the cats could attempt to cut off their retreat.
“How many are there?” Gary said, fumbling with wooden matches.
“Enough,” Mike told him, and he believed it.
The gray began to shimmer in Mike’s line of sight as the room filled with dangerous amounts of liquid propane. His tail stilled, and like a military message, the cats as one unit, struck.
Gary had pulled the back door open and Mike was using his rifle as an ineffectual baseball bat. At least three cats had found purchase on Mike’s shins and dug in for the long haul. Their curved claws tore through his skin and the muscle that lay underneath. The pain was excruciating, Mike’s first instinct was to reach down and squish their necks, but he knew as soon as he bent down, they would attack his neck and face and then it would be game over. Mike gritted his teeth and kept swinging to dissuade anymore cats from weighing him down. Occasionally, he made contact, even Bucky Fucking Dent gets lucky sometimes (If you have an old sports book in your safe house look it up; if you’re a Red Sox or Yankees fan, you already know).
Mike heard the match as it struck against the box. He’d seen enough Hollywood movies to know a giant explosion was about to ensue. He could smell the sulfur as the match lit and then out of the corner of his eye, he caught a giant flare as Gary lit the rest of the matches in the small cardboard box.
Mike knew he was still alive because the cats on his legs were making him painfully aware of that fact. The fireball of matches passed dangerously close to his head as Gary gently tossed it deeper into the kitchen. Mike felt Gary’s hand close around his collar as Gary pushed the storm door open and pulled Mike out with him. They were still falling backwards as a flash of ignited gas blew past them. A wave of burnt fur and hair blew by Mike. The fur came from the cats inside, but the hair was his own. Glass shattered as the fire sought air in a need to increase its size. Two of the cats let go of Mike’s legs and were running around wildly in the yard, they were on fire. Mike hoped it took them a long time to die. The third cat was trapped between his legs as he pressed them shut more tightly. The cat was ripping wildly at Mike to get away. He grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him up and away. The cat’s claws were lashing out. Mike held it up and punched it as hard as he could squarely in the face. He was confident he had crushed its skull with the blow. Mike dropped it to the ground. It had paid the ultimate price for its betrayal to humanity and now he was done with it.
“Where’s my rifle?” Mike asked.
Gary tackled Mike. “Roll, dumb-ass, roll!!” He was screaming. “You’re on fire!” He was pushing Mike around on the ground. Mike might have been thick, but he finally figured out what was going on, as the smell of burning hair and skin did not decrease, but rather increased.
Mike rolled around like his life depended on it, which it did. He was finally not actively burning, but smoke was pouring off him; he looked like he had busted a radiator hose.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Gary kept muttering, looking down at his brother.
“Pretty bad?” Mike asked. He was in a great deal of pain, but nothing that compared to the look of despair in his brother’s eyes. Odds were, Mike had third degree burns and had burned right through the nerve endings. “Help me up,” Mike said, extending a blackened hand.
Gary did not reach to grab it; he thought that maybe Mike’s skin would slough off if he did. The house roared behind them as the flames began to engulf the structure.
“Zombies are going to be coming, Gary. Help me up.”
“Umm,” he said and then he took off.
Mike passed in and out of consciousness for the next few moments as the pain began to catch up with him. Blasts of super heated air roiled over him as the house blazed. He thought he may have seen the large gray staring at him from the back door, but he couldn’t be sure. His corneas had been damaged and vision was becoming increasingly difficult. Burning tabbies streamed from some of the blown out windows just in time for the advancing zombies to hunt them down. Mike watched in horror as bulbous blisters began to form on his arms and hands. He may have cried out in pain, but the noise was lost in the destructive thunder of the flames.
Something passed by his immediate field of vision. He stuck his hands up to stop the ensuing bites, either from cat or zombie. Instead, he was hefted up from under his arms and deposited onto the cold, unyielding steel of a wheelbarrow bottom. They, or at least, the person who was pushing it, were now in motion. The heat from the fire hurt his face as the flames came close on the left side as they passed through the gate that led out to the front yard.
Zombies were everywhere. Mike tried to shut his eyes to the horror, but for some damned reason he couldn’t, his eyelids had been seared off.
“What’s wrong with me?” Mike asked.
“Don’t talk, Mike,” Gary said with labored breathing. “You’re going to be fine, fine.”
Mike had watched enough movies to know that line pretty much meant he was a dead man.
“You gonna make it?” Mike asked him. Gary was in pretty good shape, but running for your life pushing a wheelbarrow didn’t really sound conducive to a successful escape.
“Maybe, they haven’t seen us yet…Dammit! Said it too soon.”
“Gary leave me, I don’t think they’ll eat me.”
“Don’t think?” He paused to catch his breath. “Or know?”
He kept running. The wheelbarrow was about as comfortable, Mike imagined, as the old time, horse-drawn buggies of a bygone era, and probably worse because they at least, had some sort of crude, spring shock absorber.
“Mush,” Mike told Gary.
His comment did not elicit a remark. Gary was scared and running for both of their lives and Mike didn’t think he had the steam in him to make it.
“Gary, get me out of this thing.”
Gary didn’t say anything or slow down, at least not consciously, but he was flagging.
“Can’t…touch…you,” he said.
“If you don’t, we’re both toast,” Mike said and Gary winced. It was not the wording he was looking for. “Now, Gary,” Mike said with as much force as he could muster. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
The wheelbarrow almost tipped as he came to a stop. He quickly came around and picked Mike up underneath his arms, Mike was standing on shaking legs. “Run now!” Mike told him.
He looked to Mike and then directly over his shoulder at the zombies rapidly closing the gap.
“Run fucking now!” Mike told him, gingerly placing his smoldering hand on top of Gary’s shoulder. Layers of skin stayed behind as he removed my hand.
“No,” he said.
“Gary I…I can hold them from eating me, but I cannot protect the both of us, will you make me watch them kill you? Please don’t let that happen.”
“Are you sure?” he asked desperately. “I can keep pushing the barrow.”
“Absolutely,” Mike said, although he had no fucking clue.
“I love you, Mike.”
“I love you too, Gary. Now, get the fuck out of here!”
He wanted to hug his brother, but thought better of it. He turned and started to run. Mike stood there for a few seconds, contemplating how he was going to get his legs moving, when cats in varying states of disrepair began to stream by. Some had been burnt as badly as Mike had guessed. He had yet to take a complete inventory. Some had bites taken out of them and at least one or two looked like they might survive the entire ordeal. And then Mike heard their pursuers; zombies were coming up behind him and he didn’t have the strength to even turn around and look.
“Time to find a happy place,” Mike said aloud. Gary gave one long, woeful look from a few houses down before he turned the corner and was out of sight.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What do you mean you left him behind!?” BT was asking, clearly agitated.
