Running with the Horde (20 page)

             
Passing under an intricately carved archway into a room filled with things good little children ought never to touch, I thought this place was perfect for Mark, the boys and me to crash for a few days.

             
It was decorated Victorian style with antiques and leather furniture in shiny museum quality condition, even the dust was afraid to disturb this place.

             
The living area and dining room connected to a large kitchen with shiny restored antique appliances. A side door in the kitchen led back out to a tiny patio and the driveway.

             
The whole place was like an old fashioned dollhouse except for the basement which was more like a cellar with crumbling stone walls. A paneled door in the rear of the room revealed a pantry stocked to the gills with canned goods, water and bottles of alcohol.

             
I sipped from a half-full bottle of brandy as I made my way upstairs to the second floor, the booze warming my belly and sending a heated rush to my face. I felt like I was trespassing on a shrine to the past as I tiptoed up the wooden steps.

             
Two bedrooms and a bath with a claw-foot tub, all spotlessly clean, completed the second story. The bedrooms had gleaming hardwood floors and were lavishly decorated with beautiful old paintings and fancy curtains. The thick handmade quilts and knitted blankets on the beds seem to sing of fall naps, warm Sundays and hot cocoa.

             
It may have been the liquor but the house and all of its personal touches reminded me of my mother. A memory from a better time and place when my parents were still together and seemed happy.

             
But what the hell did I know as I wiped my eyes on a tiny doily, I was just a kid when they split up. I would never see my mother again. I took another long pull from the bottle. She would never meet Daisy or her grandbaby. The end of the world really sucked.

             
A doorway to the rooftop deck opened just down the hall from the bathroom.

             
I decided, with brandy-fueled mirth, it was a fine place to regroup for a few days and let Sam recover. The propane tank on the grill felt almost full and with all the food and supplies we weren’t going to find a better place than this.

             
Before long the Equinox made another slow pass with a small army of zombies keeping pace with it from behind. I waved at Mark from the deck and headed back downstairs to meet him. This time I left through the side door instead of crawling out the window.

             
Mark was gone by the time I made it down to the roadside. Somewhere in the distance I heard a tire peeling out. Ten minutes later he came around again fast, this time without the zombies.

             
“It’s okay?” he asked after he followed me up the driveway and put the car in park.

             
“It’s great,” I told him and started unloading stuff from the trunk.

             
Mark hustled to join me after getting the boys inside. His motor was running overtime as he dashed from the car to the kitchen. I wasn’t moving fast enough for him. He looked at me with alarm like he just realized he had tied his wagon to a crazy dimwit.

             
“Fucking hurry up! We need to be inside before they come back!” he shouted.

             
Mark was becoming quite liberal with his use of the F word and I kept on forgetting to be appropriately afraid of zombies. I picked up the pace to match his and soon the SUV was empty of supplies and toys.

             
In the kitchen I found one of those kitschy wooden plaques with little hooks to hang keys on. This one was hand painted with the words:
Key Party Staging Area
, it seemed a little risqué for the personality of the house but everyone has their secrets.

             
Sam was sleeping on the kitchen floor and Jacob was sitting at the table paging through my photo album. Mark was staring out the window overlooking the driveway searching for zombies.

             
I gathered all the keys and hurried outside. I found one that fit the side door to the garage. It was dark inside and smelled like motor oil and leather but was empty of cars and clutter and just as neat as the house had been.

             
In the back corner of the garage was a large shape covered with a velvet tarp. I pulled off the tarp to reveal a large motorcycle, a Harley Davidson Softail with shiny chrome tailpipes. I carefully covered it up and hurried to the garage doors. It was a double garage but had two single stall doors separated by part of the wall. I opened the door furthest from the bike and pulled the Equinox inside. It smelled like moldy cabbage and farts but would have to do if we needed to leave in a hurry.

             
Later that evening I had the grill burning on high, heating two large pots full of water for everyone to wash up with. We didn’t have an endless supply, so all four of us would have to use it. The boys would go first, then me and Mark last. I felt bad about that but he did have vomit in his hair.

             
He was rooting through drawers by candlelight for some fresh clothes to wear and not speaking to me. I’d given Sam his first pill. He was wrapped in a thick blanket asleep on the floor by the bathroom waiting for the bath to be ready. I was keeping warm just inside the door from the deck where I could watch the grill while Jacob sat against the wall across from me still studying the photo album.

             
I was deep in thought thinking through the ramifications of the Linus Funhouse I’d been through earlier when it registered that Jacob was waving at me.

             
“What’s up, bud?” I asked him.

             
“I’ve been talking to you.”

             
“Oh yeah? Sorry,” I said.

             
“Did you fart inside your brain?”

             
I couldn’t decipher this question, “Sorry, Jacob, I don’t know what that means.”

             
“My daddy would look like you sometimes when mommy was talking to him. She would say he farted in his brain.”

              “Ah,” I replied with a chuckle, “No I didn’t fart in my brain I was just thinking about something else and didn’t hear you.”

             
Jacob considered this a moment, no doubt queuing up his next question.

             
Mark joined us in the hallway and sat down by Sam. He pulled his sweaty head into his lap and started gently smoothing his hair back.

             
“George?”

             
“Yeah, Jacob?”

             
“Did you fart in your brain because you have shit in your head?”

             
“Where did you hear that?”

             
“Daddy said it when we were waiting for you in the car.”

             
“Oh.”

             
I looked over at Mark, his face was red but he wouldn’t look at me. I tried not to laugh.

             
“Hey, Jacob, do you know you just said a naughty?” I asked him.

             
“I know but my daddy says them too. He didn’t used to but he does now, so it’s not naughty anymore,” he said.

             
Mark sighed and gently laid Sam’s head on the carpet.

             
“I am going to go find something for us to eat. Can you call me when the water is ready?

             
I nodded and went back to staring out the door.

             
“George?”

             
“Jacob.”

             
“Who are these people?”

             
He was holding up a photo of Dave and Brenda. I took it from his fingers and stared at it for a moment. Dave and Brenda were arm in arm on a beach someplace. Probably in Mexico. Suntanned and smiling, looking their best.

             
“Just some old friends.”

             
I smiled and handed the photo back to him. He traced their faces with a pudgy little finger.

             
“Do you miss them?” he asked with his head cocked to the side and a quizzical expression on his tiny face.

             
“Sure I miss them. They were my friends.”

             
I was still smiling as he went back to the album but it was an empty smile and I suddenly felt ill. Dave and Brenda were not my friends. I never even really knew them. My only real memory of them was caving Dave’s skull in with a bat and taking all their food. What the hell was wrong with me that I would save their picture in a photo album and take it with me on the road during the zombie apocalypse?

             
Was I fucking crazy?

             
“George?”

             
“Yes?”

             
“Did you fart in your brain again?”

             
“You know…this time I might have. I’m going to go check on that water.”

             
I left him there looking at the faces of all my dead neighbors and went out to stare into the pots of water. I knew it wouldn’t boil until I looked away but that was fine. I stood transfixed in the darkness staring at the blue flames heating the pots. I needed a moment of peace from Inspector Jacob.

             
The little bastard had gotten inside my head and started me thinking. I’d never really had any close friends in my entire life.

             
Causal friends I had coming out of my ass but nobody close. I was always kind of out of place, like I was missing some critical piece that allowed for sustained social connections.

             
The same could be said for girlfriends. I dated a lot but nothing ever really stuck until Daisy came along. Likely she had just started up with me out of boredom or having nowhere else to go.

             
She and I didn’t talk much, had virtually nothing in common but I sure enjoyed her physical company. Maybe Mark was right and I was a shithead. I never explained my actions to anyone. Never tried to rationalize my choices. Rarely conceded on anything.

             
In general, I was pretty much happiest alone or when I got my own way. I just didn’t care. Even worse, I only just realized I didn’t care. The word sociopath crept through my mind like a cockroach. I considered it and found the notion very upsetting.

             
I didn’t want to be a sociopath!

             
Headlights crested the horizon heading in our direction. I killed the burners and ducked out of sight behind the grill as they did a slow drive by and scanned the neighborhood with powerful spotlights.

             
I prayed they wouldn’t see a candle flickering in a window or unnatural shadows moving on the curtains. Sweat trickled into my eye, this would be an inconvenient time for Jacob to come flying out the door to start another Q & A session with me.

             
Someone must have heard me praying because whoever they were, they drove on by.

             
It seemed like it could’ve been the Humvee from the drugstore but with the lights so bright I couldn’t be sure. I touched the pots, they were hot but not boiling. Unfortunately this would have to do. I hefted them in and dumped them in the tub.

             
Mark was back upstairs when I finished the second pot. I told him he should hurry, the water wasn’t that warm. The look he gave me told me he’d seen the vehicle too. We were going to have to keep it dark throughout the night.

…

              The water in the tub was black with colorful red chunks as I watched it swirl down the drain. Mark complained as he was getting dressed in the next room that he felt dirtier after his bath than he had before it. Jacob thought that was silly. I thought dirty bath water had to be better than having dried vomit in your hair but I didn’t say anything.

             
After a dinner of hearty beef stew from cans, Mark got the boys tucked snugly into bed with extra blankets, it was going to be a cold night. They got the master bedroom with the king-sized bed and I took the room with the queen.

             
I was doing my best to tidy up the dinner mess in the dark when Mark came in and said the boys wanted to say goodnight to me. As I made my way up the stairs I could hear Jacob softly singing about Santa Claus coming to town.

             
I poked my head in the door and asked if I could come in. Jacob said I could. Sam said nothing, he was dead asleep. I took a seat on the edge of the bed and sat there while Jacob finished his song. It was a profound pleasure to hear him singing so sweetly. For a moment everything felt normal about the world.