“Going to be nice to finally have you stick around for a while.”
“Yeah, that’s something new for me.”
“How are you going to sate your hero complex?” BT had come back in and sat at the table.
“I’m good, as long as I’ve saved your life more times than you’ve saved mine,” I told him.
He smiled again. Much like my brother, it did not have the temerity to travel to his eyes, which were now downcast. “Hell of thing about Alex.”
Gary had got up at some point and come back with some beers. I held mine up. “To Alex.” We all took a drink.
“To Jess.” Ron said as we took another drink.
“To Dad.” Gary said.
By the time we’d gone through the list of all the people that meant something to us that had died in this shit fest, I was hammered. I admit I’m a cheaper date now that I’ve gained a few years under my belt, and I’d never been much of a heavy drinker. But, yeah, I was fairly drunk. Probably didn’t help that by the end, we were repeating names. I probably toasted Jen three or four times. Paul five or more. How does one deal with the accumulation of loss? It is a cold, heavy feeling that settles into the bottom of your heart where it grows sharp barbs that take root and will not release its icy grip. It slowly chokes your system, making even the most basic and simplest of tasks brutally difficult.
2
Mike Journal Entry 2
I awoke the next morning with a modicum of prodding from Tracy.
“Any fucking chance this is all a bad dream like some shitty TV program?” I asked, placing my hand against my splitting head.
“Here, take these.” Tracy handed me a couple of aspirin and a bottle of water.
“How about I just lie here a few days longer?”
“Your son needs you.”
“Yeah, I get that.” I sat up with some difficulty and took the pills and water, swallowing them both as fast as I could get the muscles in my throat to move. “I hate this part,” I told her as I stood.
“The hangover?”
“Naw, I know that will pass. It’s the crushing weight of loss in my chest.”
Tracy kissed the side of my face. What can one really say to that? I know she felt it as well. She was just less inclined to wear it on her sleeve, where I tended to show it for the entire world to see.
“Where is he?” I pulled a shirt over my head. “And why am I naked? Did you take advantage of me?”
“Yes, Michael. Haven’t I told you how hot, drunk, stumbling men make me?”
“Hell, you must have been on fire last night then.”
“Just get out there. He’s at the grave site.”
Another unfortunate development of the apocalypse was the need for us to revert back to the ways things used to be done early on in the country’s formative years. Out of necessity, we’d had to dig graves on our own land, and that we’d already gone past the original capacity was another unfortunate byproduct. Sure, we’d been more hopeful than practical that we could keep the plot small. Worth a shot, I suppose.
I walked out of the house and made my way to Justin. I saw him about twenty yards away, his back to me, his head bowed, and his shoulders slumped. He looked so small, like all the spirit had been ripped from him and all that was left was his battered, bruised and misused body. I approached. When I was next to him, I reached out and wrapped my arm around his shoulder. He said nothing; he did not stir, in fact. I wasn’t sure if he even knew I was there.
We stayed that way for a good, long while. A cold breeze started in the woods off to our right, picking up a swirl of leaves that swept around our feet before going about their way.
“I loved her,” he said with a croak. It was such a strangled sound I thought at first maybe I had imagined it.
Words eluded me. It wasn’t like this was a high school crush (which it had been) and I could tell him that he was young and there were plenty of fish in the sea. And all that stuff parents tell their kids in the vain attempt to make them feel better. It doesn’t work; we know it, they feel it, yet we do it anyway.
“She loved you as well. That’s why she came.”
“Dad, she made it. She made it, and I wasn’t here.” He turned, and I saw the pain etched deeply on his face.
I hadn’t taken this angle into account. I should have—ignorance on my part. It just never dawned on me that he would feel guilt as well.
I squared his shoulders so he had no choice but to look at me. “This is not your fault. This is nobody’s fault. This is a war. People die in wars.”
He turned away so I couldn’t see his tears.
“You will see her again. I promise you that.”
“You talking that reunited in Heaven bullshit? It’s a lie, Dad. There’s no Heaven, only Hell and we’re in it.” He looked at me defiantly. He wanted a battle I would not give him. He was full of grief, and he needed somebody to lash out at.
“The pain diminishes.” That was the best I could offer him. “It will never go away. There will always be a dull ache in your heart when you think about her, but it won’t be as debilitating as it is now. I promise.”
“You don’t know me!” he shouted, twisting his torso so that my hand and arm fell away. “How the fuck do you know how I’m going to feel!?”
“You’re right, how could I know how you’ll feel? I’m just using myself as an example.”
“Go away.” There was no vehemence in his request; he just wanted to be alone. What I wanted was to hug him tight and chase the demons inside of him away. What I ended up doing was walking away. Another chill wind whipped along my side; frostiness blistered up my spine. I looked up to the house. Tracy was on the deck, her arms folded. She had a look of concern on her face as she looked down at me. It was Tommy, though. He was the source of the cold dread that was spreading through me. He stood five feet to her right, staring off to the east. He was looking at nothing that I could discern, other than the direction of the ocean, which was about five miles from here and definitely not visible.
“How’d that go?” Tracy asked as I got within range that she didn’t have to shout.
“Oh, about as well as you would expect. Tommy, what the hell are you doing?” He had not shifted his gaze in the least.
Tracy turned to apparently see the boy for the first time. “Tommy?” There was concern in her face. She walked over and placed her hand on his arm.
He shuddered and jumped an inch or two, shook his head, and then appeared to be trying to orient himself to his surroundings. He said nothing while he turned and strode back into the house. His terror-filled eyes the only clue he’d left to how he was feeling.
“What’s the matter with him?” Tracy asked as I came up the stairs.
“I think he ate some of my sister’s cooking.”
“Michael.”
I shrugged. I told her, “I don’t know,” but I did. Company was coming, and it was unwelcome.
It’s been a week since I’ve touched this journal. I’ve oftentimes thought of just not writing in it anymore. Putting the monsters to page seems to only summon my nightmares. Maybe this was the way I could end the cycle. I found the call to write what was happening almost as powerful as a nicotine addiction. Stopping had made my head light and my thoughts scatter. Panic attacks threatened me daily; it was a week later that I finally put the reason to why I was feeling so shaky, with a cause. Writing was my way of dealing with our new world. For good or bad, I was stuck recording my personal history.
The week had not been completely unproductive, as we worked long and hard at repairing the many areas that needed help. The defenses around the house were as near to impenetrable as we could make them. A fucking whole day and definitely a non-inflated dollar short, but at least we could prevent what had happened before from happening again. Fuck the whole “history repeats itself” shit. Once we were done there, we turned our attention to the destroyed basement. We did some heavy framing and boarded up the massive gap in the wall caused by the
bulkers. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effectual. Like placing a Band-Aid over an ugly wound. When we’d finally finished, I pulled up an old La-Z-Boy chair and sat down, facing the boarded up wall.
“Fuck, this is a comfortable chair. I could stay here forever. Screw it, maybe I will.” Sucks when you realize how right you just might be.
Tommy, who had been picking up something off the floor, looked over to me. He seemed to have something to say on the tip of his tongue, but he kept it to himself. The kid was beginning to freak me out. Like he knew all sorts of nasty things that were about to happen but was hesitant to tell us as if he were protecting us from their exposure.
“What’s with him?” BT dragged a huge couch over to me. I don’t even know where he got it from.
“Beats me.” But again, I kind of knew. In my head, I was berating Tommy for not cluing us in, and yet here I was doing the same damn thing. Frigging irony is a bitch, nope wait, it’s karma that’s a bitch. So what’s that make irony? An asshole, perhaps?
BT dropped the couch and sat down heavily, Gary next to him, Mad Jack taking up the far end. Ron and Nancy started dragging in folding chairs and barstools and basically anything someone could sit on including a bean bag that had been around since the Nixon era. In an impromptu gathering, the entire household save one was present. I wrote out the list of people for a couple of reasons, the first I guess is just historical fact and second because it would never happen again. Not with this cast of characters anyway, and those that died they at least deserved this small mention. Ron; Nancy; their three kids, Meredith, Mark, and Melissa; Gary; Mad Jack; Trip and his wife, Stephanie; my sister Lyndsey, her husband Steve, and their kid Jesse; Tracy’s mom, Carol; the four kids we’d saved from the convenience store, Dizz, Sty, Ryan, and his sister Angel; me; Tracy; and a very pregnant Nicole, along with Travis and both of our adopted kids, Tommy and Porkchop; plus Dennis and Jess’s baby brother, Zachary. The only noticeable absence was Justin, who had not said more than a handful of words to anyone in the last week. Even Henry and his new friends were with us. I noticed he was very cozy with the female dog, though I was having a hard time remembering her name for some reason. The cat, Patches, thankfully stayed away from me as if she knew that I was not all that fond of felines and may never again be, given my exposure to them. I’d talked to Ron a couple of times about her suddenly finding herself out in the woods really far away from the house, but he would hear none of it.
I think it was Trip that cracked out the beer. “Let’s get this party started!” he shouted right before lighting his bong, taking a huge hit, and then downing the “water” which was actually beer that he’d used as a filtration system. Ron could only shake his head. Normally, he’d kick the stoner outside to do it. But right now, we were all together. Living, laughing, and loving, and in reality, that’s all that life is about.
3
Mike Journal Entry 3
It was another week. The most exciting thing that had happened was that the damned cat had killed a mouse and left it by my bedroom door. I swear it was a warning. Like she was saying, “Talk about getting rid of me again, and this could be you.” We both steered clear of each other; seemed safer that way. The more seemingly secure we were, the more anxious I felt. I had been burning at such a high intensity for so long, I didn’t know any other way. I didn’t consider myself an adrenaline junkie; I didn’t want to bungee off anything. I didn’t know what my problem was. I kept waiting for something to happen. More times than not, Tracy would wake to find me peering out the window at the yard below and the woods beyond. Something was fucking out there; I knew in the depths of my ragged soul it was, and its black beady eyes were peering back at me.
“Mike?”
My chest rose and fell at a rate that belied the stillness of the night.
“Mike, come back to bed,” Tracy entreated.
“There’s something out there.”
“What? Where?” She got out of bed and joined me at the window. She was none too pleased, and also alarmed, when she realized I was talking about the abstract. “We’ve been through this Mike. There’s nothing out there. We haven’t seen a zombie in weeks now. Maybe it’s over. Maybe we’re finally safe.”
“Safe?” I scoffed. “Naw, baby, this is just the eye of the fucking storm. The shit is still swirling all around us, waiting for the right time to strike.”
“Wouldn’t Tommy say something? And what does it matter? The fences are up. We have ammunition and a secure location. Haven’t we done enough? Haven’t we won?”
“Won? Won what? Unending damnation and imprisonment? Surviving isn’t winning.”
I caught a flash of light off her engagement ring in the corner of my eye as her hand flew up and struck me across my cheek.
“Shut up!” she admonished me. “Our children … we’ve saved our children. They’re alive, and that’s all that matters.”
The slap, instead of snapping the dismal qualities of my thoughts away, seemed to crystallize them. My shoulders sagged, and I turned away from the window. “I … I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” I was close to tears. “I can’t focus my thoughts. I’m always on edge. My chest constantly hurts. I can’t sleep. Fuck, I can’t even rest.”
“Do you have PTSD?”
And just like that, I at least had an answer. Why that never crossed my mind, I don’t know. They used to talk about it all the time when I was just about to get out of the Corps. I blew it off back then. Could I blow it off now? I pondered how I was going to answer her query. Sure we had a probable cause. So what? Now what? We didn’t have the right drugs or the right personnel to deal with it. And I sure as shit wasn’t going to make it common knowledge. The weak and the infirm are discarded in this world much quicker and with more prejudice than perhaps at any other time in history save the Ice Age. BT would be supportive. I know he would. But I’d always know that in the back of his head, he’d be wondering when I was going to lose my shit. I couldn’t bear the thought of any of them thinking less of me. And what of my new found “power”? I spat that last thought out. I’d given up part of my humanity; I was no longer tethered to a soul. How far could I go adrift? Pretty fucking far was my answer to that. And again, we didn’t have anything that could help me with that. No medicine men, no priests, not even a witch—she’d walked out on us.
“Nope.” I told her firmly. She was going to question me on it. I was about as good a liar as I was a singer, and on the latter, I was so bad that I generally hummed the words to a song I was listening to, even if I was alone.
Her mouth opened, and I was saved. Although, being let off the hook by an alarm is kind of a funny way to be rescued. We’d installed panic switches all throughout the house in case someone was in trouble. It wasn’t going to help with resale value having buttons and wires going everywhere, but we’d stapled most of the cables to the ceiling in an effort to keep them from being a tripping hazard. Hadn’t had a qualified buyer come by in a while anyway. It had been Mad Jack’s idea after what had happened. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t have helped. But who knows, maybe Jess had cried out for someone that wasn’t coming in those final awful moments.
Soft red lights glowed, and the trill of an alarm blurted out three times then was silent. I ran next to my bed and grabbed my gun with Tracy close behind. Now we had a new problem, one we would deal with after tonight, should we make it. The alarm had been sounded, but where was the problem? Ron’s house wasn’t a mansion, but it was good sized and there were three floors, any one of which could be where we needed to be in a hurry.
“The deck!” It was my sister. The crack of a rifle spurred me on. Floodlights bathed the entire yard in their glow.
“What is it?” I was third onto the deck after my sister and Gary. I had my rifle up to my shoulder, and I was trying to acquire a target.
“There’s something over there!” Jesse looked excited. He’d definitely seen something, or at least thought he had. The coincidence that we shared the same vi
ew when I was upstairs was not lost on me.
“Who shot?”
Gary meekly raised his hand.
“This isn’t Catholic school, man. I’m not going to hit you with a ruler. Did you see something?”
“No,” he said in a subdued voice that matched his demeanor. “Don’t tell Ron.” he pointed to a freshly made hole in the deck.
Of course, it was one of the freshly replaced boards. We’d done a good job destroying most of the deck in our final battle with Eliza. I did a quick head count as everyone started pouring through the door and onto the deck. Again, only one was missing. I had a mind-fearing moment where I thought that perhaps it was Justin that had been spotted out in the woods.
“This better not be a drill, Talbot.” BT had come out only in a Speedo and flip-flops. Somehow, the man looked even bigger wearing hardly any clothes.
I brushed past him quickly to go check on Justin’s room.
“What’s wrong with Mike? He’s not even going to say anything about BT’s golden underwear?” Mad Jack asked.
BT grumbled. I half wondered when Trip’s screams of “mercy” would begin. BT kind of let me slide with that shit. Everyone else was on their own. I didn’t know it, but Tracy must have had the same thought, as she was only a stair or two away from me as I took them three at a time. I burst through his door. It was dark and gloomy, much like his spirit had been. The alarm light had been covered with a towel, not allowing it to relieve any of the blackness present there. Even so, I could see his eyes shine as he stared at the ceiling.
The “Oh, thank God” that was on the tip of my tongue was replaced with “Any chance you could have maybe responded to the alarm like everyone else?”