For the Fallen (19 page)
Authors: Mark Tufo
Chapter 9 – Stephanie and Trip
“Honey, it would be better if you stayed in the middle of the road,” a clearly nervous
and agitated Stephanie said to her husband. He’d miraculously not hit anything yet,
but even blind luck has to find its target eventually.
Trip dutifully slowed down. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now.”
Stephanie waited patiently for him to continue. “Well, apparently, you’re still thinking
about it.” She almost put her fingernails through the seat cushion as he came within
a fly’s wingspan of clipping a parked cop car.
“About what?” he asked, turning almost completely around to look at her.
“Oh, my God, Trip! I swear you’re going to give me a heart attack. How about you stop
the bus for a moment and we talk.”
“Fair enough,” he told her, slamming on the brakes and nearly sending her flying into
his seat. When the bus was completely stopped, he smiled and looked at her. “Okay,
you first. Do you have any spare tickets?” he blurted out before she could say a word.
“What?”
“The show, it sounds like you and your friends are going to have a great time and
I just wanted to know if you have any spares. I mean, I can make it worth your while.
I have all sorts of party materials and I’ll even throw in the bus ride for free,”
he said excitedly.
“Trip I…”
“That’s cool.” He bowed his head. “I know how hard it can be to get them sometimes.
If I give you money, can you get me a shirt at least? Three xl.”
Stephanie laughed. “Oh, Trip, what would you do with a triple xl shirt?” She rubbed
the side of his grizzled face.
“Blanket for me and you,” he told her.
“You know there’s no show right?”
“You hired this bus under false pretenses? Are you smuggling weed?” He looked around
for any hints of trouble. “I’ll help you, but I don’t like the illegal stuff.”
“Just about your entire life is one illegality.”
“Should we go look for Ponch?”
She’d thought a lot about the man her husband called Ponch. He had a haunted look
about him that she was not able to explain, that and the speed and strength he had
displayed when he had launched her husband off the truck and onto the fire escape
defied explanation. She sat somewhere in between wishing to seek him out and avoid
him at all costs.
“Would you even know where to go?” Stephanie asked, hoping that her husband’s break
into lucidity would be short lived.
Trip pulled out a carefully folded piece of paper from his back pocket. He unfolded
it before handing it to his wife. It was an address, and she didn’t need to see the
name on top to realize whose. Although it was funny to see that John had scratched
out ‘Mike’ and wrote ‘Ponch’.
“Why not?” she asked. It wasn’t like they had a plethora of other options to explore,
and just maybe she would find out what Mike was hiding.
“Do you think you can find an extra ticket for him as well?” Trip asked as he turned
around and started the bus up again.
“Probably.”
“Oh great, he’ll be so excited. Now, I just got to get on the highway and to his house
before the show starts.”
His head was pounding. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, or eaten for
that matter. His life had been a whirlwind of pain and loss after his wife was savagely
killed in front of him. Eliza had opened his beloved’s throat and then let her psycho
brother drain her dry. It had been a horror that had fundamentally changed who he
was as a man. Doctor Baker had been reduced.
He reasoned that, if he still had a soul, it had been diminished as well. The world
he lived in was dimmer—muted might be the appropriate word. He still had enough about
him to realize he might be going insane, but not enough to care. A sliver of light
as thick as a pencil and as bright as a laser blazed across the cell. Doc Baker scurried
into the corner lest some new horror be unleashed upon him. He couldn’t fathom anything
worse than what had already happened, but Eliza was imaginative if nothing else.
“Doc, are you in there?” a familiar voice asked softly.
Baker didn’t fall for the bait. Eliza had been breaking him down mentally for weeks.
He didn’t yet know what this new angle was, but he wasn’t sure how much more he could
bear.
“Doc, it’s me…Porkchop,” the rotund little boy said.
“Pork…” he croaked. “Porkchop?” His throat was so dry that he almost choked on the
words.
“It’s me, Mr. Baker…Dad!” Porkchop said as he threw the door wide open, letting the
full intensity of the sun sear across the small cell.
Doc tried as best he could to sink into the walls to be free of the light. The light
that hid nothing, the light that revealed all. He wanted nothing to do with it. There
were things out there he never wanted to see.
Doctor Baker had taken Porkchop in after the boy had been forced to dispatch of his
abusive father with a videogame guitar controller after the man had eaten his wife,
Porkchop’s mother, and had next set his sights on the boy.
“Where’s…where’s…” he wanted to say Eliza but couldn’t bring himself to actually verbalize
the words; to do so might bring her presence.
“I think she’s dead,” Porkchop said, coming in another step, his nose wrinkling at
the stench in the cell.
Doc knew those words should bring some warmth and lightness to his heart, but the
shroud it was enveloped in would not yield its Boa-like constriction.
“They’re gone, everyone is gone,” Porkchop said. “Even the zombies.”
“Close the door,” Doc said. He was ready to curl up and die.
“We can leave, Mr. Baker.”
Doc stared at Porkchop’s form until he began to take definition, the blurring image
fading into that of a scared boy.
“For what, Porkchop? I’ve lost everything.”
Porkchop didn’t seem hurt by the words. He knew Doc’s wife and kids had been mercilessly
slaughtered while the man had been forced to watch. He would have been next had not
everyone merely left.
“I’m still here.” He thrust his chin up.
“Porkchop, I just want to die.” Doc turned his back to the light.
“If you want the door shut, do it yourself.” Porkchop was crying as he walked out.
Doc cried the moment he was alone. His body rocked with the sobs, tears fell in sheets.
His face puffed up and his sinuses threatened to swell closed, and yet he still kept
going. On some level, he wondered if he could die from the dehydration effect of so
much water leaving his system. His face was a mask of agony as he wailed; primitive
guttural sounds ebbed and flowed to a high keening and everything in between. The
sense of loss was so acute he did not know if he could go on. Even as he stood, he
could not figure out why.
He shielded his eyes as he stepped through the doorway. Birds sang off in the distance,
light streamed through the long narrow corridor he found himself standing in. Chipped
paint hung in sheets. He wondered if it was lead-based and laughed at the absurdity
of worrying about that. He leaned against the wall, the force of reality threatening
to crush him. His face pulsed with pain.
He tenderly reached up and touched it. The angularity of it was unfamiliar; a coarse
beard covered most of it, something he had been meticulous in maintaining when he
had a wife and kids. He nearly slid down the wall.
“For Porkchop,” he said, taking a step rather than faltering. It took him close to
a half hour to make it down that corridor. When he pushed through a door he found
himself in a cafeteria. A lone boy sat at a table crying, an industrial-sized can
of baked beans open before him.
Porkchop was self-salting the beans as he ate, large tears falling into the container.
A spoonful of the caramelized side dish was halfway to his mouth when he saw Doc enter.
He was out of his seat and halfway to the doc before the spoon stopped rattling on
the floor.
“You look like shit!” Porkchop said, almost knocking the doc over as he slammed into
his legs.
Porkchop’s arms encircled the man. Doc reciprocated. Somehow, Doc managed to tap untouched
reserves; more tears flowed, striking the boy on the top of his head. He didn’t notice
as he was making his own puddle on the floor. After a few moments, it was difficult
to tell who was supporting whom.
“There’s…there’s food,” Porkchop said. “Lots of it.” He pulled away. “You need some.”
He grabbed the man’s hand and led him over to the table he had been sitting at. Porkchop
helped the man to sit; he pushed the beans under his nose.
At first, the smell of them had turned Doc’s stomach, making him want to heave the
snot and bile that was beginning to coagulate in his system. Then the survival switch
kicked in. He didn’t wait for Porkchop to return with a spoon, he stuck his dirt-encrusted
hands into the slop and pulled out heaping handfuls, shoving them in his mouth, not
even bothering to chew.
“My mom said it was rude to eat with your hands,” Porkchop said, thrusting the spoon
between Doc’s mouth and the can.
Doc looked up at him. A bean-stained grin formed on his lips. He took the spoon and
started using it like a steam shovel. “Bigger spoon,” the doc said around mouthfuls.
