Running with the Horde (34 page)

Chapter 50

“A Pity Party Chapterette”

             
Yes, I meant it, it wasn’t a typo.

             
Damn it!

             
Damn stupid psycho, heroic, dead-zombie Tegan and Rosie and the whole bleeding lot of them!

             
Yes, it was a tragic tale.

             
Yes, it was hard to watch it, I’m sure it was hard to live it, brutal even.

             
No, I didn’t care to watch them party the night away, Tegan’s last night among the living.

             
No, I didn’t care to see how he fucked it up in the end because I’m sure that it was him probably following the lead of something crazy Rosie did, I’m sure it was! Daisy made it away safely I assumed, I suppose I had ass-hat Tegan to thank for that too but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

             
I could only think about one thing.

             
It consumed me.

             
It owned me.

             
It filled my every molecule with blister boiling RAGE!!!

             
It was that hateful, honey-tongued, pus-filled voice of Command, otherwise known as William Jamison McCloud, otherwise known as my father.

             
I would recognize the voice of my dad the same whether he was standing next to me pouring bourbon down his fat face or squawking at me through a satellite phone while I was reliving someone else’s memory.

             
Disbelief and betrayal held a civil war inside my soul. As much as I hated the man, I loved him still. I couldn’t believe he would do this to me. Fuck that! I couldn’t believe he had a hand in doing this to the world!

             
But the facts were the facts. That was his voice; he was Command. He did something to me that nearly killed me but also made me a weirdo beyond imagination. He had arranged for posters of me to be put up all over the city, which I could not get over, seeing that he knew where I lived and could’ve simply provided people street by street instructions to my house. Instead, I had maniacs hunting for me.

             
If he changed
me
, the logical leap was that he had a hand in changing
everyone
by somehow unleashing the Sickness onto the world. I had no idea how or why he did it. I knew he was a good businessman but beyond that I knew very little of my dad’s personal life and almost nothing about his professional life.

             
I can only conclude it was all a very elaborate and of course globally catastrophic game to him. I had the good fortune of being the son of history’s most ridiculously successful super villain.

             
The puzzling things were why and how he’d done it. There is no way he’d pulled it off on his own, not something on this scale.

             
The bounty on my head made no sense when there were a litany of easier ways for my own father to track me down. I’d even tried to drive to his fucking apartment after I’d gotten out of the hospital.

             
Whatever his reasons were, certain facts were more pressing. He had Daisy and our unborn baby. Obviously, he wanted something from me.

             
“What am I gonna do about all this, Tegan?”

             
Staff Sergeant Tegan Matthews, United States Marine Corps, Retired, Zombie, said nothing as I surveyed the hordes of undead in the darkness below.

             
“I would say he’s not gonna get away with it but that ship has sailed already, I mean right?”

             
I walked over to Tegan Matthews, took him by the shoulders and stared deeply into his eyes.

             
“My dad didn’t mean it when he said it to you, I can almost promise you that. But I mean it, Tegan, from the bottom of my heart. Aside from Danny Swanson, which was a truly awful act of vicious murder, I thank you for your service. And someday, when this is all over, I’m gonna throw one back for you, I promise.”

             
I turned out Tegan’s lights for good and gently laid him on the nasty mattress, better than the floor I thought as I walked back to the window.             

             
My eyes were leaking so I hurried to dry them. A grown man doesn’t fucking cry…wait…what? I cry all the time! It’s how I maintain a proper emotional balance…Tegan, you are still an ass-hat.

             
The lights in the mysterious city of downtown Minneapolis burned bright across the river as I leaned out the window. There was so much I didn’t understand and the answers, if there were any, would be found there.

             
“I’m coming for you, dad.”

             
I would add that my hand didn’t slip on the snowy window pane, causing me to almost topple to my death two stories below…but I’d be lying.

Epilogue

              Jacob tried to play quietly with his Sparky Speaks dog like his father insisted but it just wasn’t a very quiet toy. When it barked its shrill bark for the umpteenth time, the crazy crabby lady who hated George, finally had enough.

             
She stomped over to the couch where he was sitting and yanked it from his arms.

             
“I told you to keep this fucking thing quiet, didn’t I?”

             
Jacob nodded and tried not to cry, his faced screwed up tight. But it didn’t work as traitorous tears spilled from his eyes.

             
“You’re gonna cry now?” she shrieked. Then she got down real close to his face and gritted her teeth, “How bout I give you something to cry about, would you like that you little shit?”

             
Jacob slowly shook his head, the tears flowing freely now but he still didn’t make a sound.

             
Tessa pulled a knife from her pocket and flipped it open with a flick of her thumb.

             
“Let’s see how well Sparky Speaks after a little operation,” she hissed as she stabbed the toy dog over and over again.

             
A mini flurry of stuffing snowed down around Tessa and Jacob as she wailed away, a portion of it finding a new home on top of her head.

             
Sam, who was seated next to Jacob on the couch, bravely took his little brother’s hand.

             
“Awww, does big bruda want some too?” she slid the flat side of the blade gently down Sam’s cheek.

             
“Tessa, now don’t do anything crazy,” Steven cautioned.

             
He was standing behind Mark, who was gagged and tied to the chair across from the couch, staring furious death rays into the back of Tessa’s head.

             
“Why not, Stevie? We’ve been here almost three days, it’s starting to feel like Georgie-porgie isn’t coming back,” she giggled and continued to taunt Sam and Jacob with the knife.

             
“He’s coming back, lady, he promised he would,” Jacob said with a stiff upper lip.

             
“Well he’d better do it soon, sweet thing…”

             
Tap-tap-tap

             
“Uh, Tessa,” said Steven.

             
“Cause, I’m starting to feel like one hostage is just as good as three…,” she continued.

             
Tap-tap-tap

             
“Tessa,” Steven said a little more urgently.

             
“Question is…which one of you is his favorite?”

             
Tap-tap-tap

             
“TESSA!” Steven shouted.

             
“WHAT, STEVEN?!”

             
“I think you should look up,” he said nervously.

             
Tessa glanced up at the window above the couch into the eyes of a creature straight out of hell. She screamed and flew backwards dropping the knife on the floor.

             
The creature wore a ball cap advertising beer. Its rotting skin was split in a hideous smile, punctuated by the hole where its nose used to be. Two bulbous, veiny eyes tracked Tessa as she crawled behind Steven to hide.

             
The boys turned to look in tandem and added their own screams to the chorus as they dashed into their father’s lap across the room. Mark couldn’t hold them with his arms tied up but he felt better with them there.

             
He examined the monster in the window, there was something familiar in that ghastly, haughty stare.

             
“Tessa, we have a big problem,” the radio said from Steven’s belt. “We’ve got incoming bogies out here. A shit-ton of them. We’re coming inside,” the panicky voice proclaimed.

             
A lot of noise and cursing could heard from the kitchen as Tessa’s men piled into the house. In the front yard, zombies were streaming in from everywhere. There had to be hundreds of them with more arriving by the second.

             
The men from the kitchen crowded into the tiny living room, jostling each other with all their equipment and guns.

             
“Tessa, the house is surrounded, we’re completely fucked!” one of the men stated the obvious in abject terror.

             
Tessa for one of the few times in her life was speechless from her position between Steven’s urine soaked legs. She did manage a quiet mewling sound that wasn’t unlike one of the sounds Sparky Speaks made that had irritated her so deeply.

             
The house was indeed surrounded by zombies. So many that anyone looking from the living room window would only see zombies until the houses across the street started.

             
They stood as still as stone statues in utter silence, the only sounds the nervous cries of the living as they waited for death to come and take them.

             
Then a small commotion started in the front yard. The zombies began to make room for something it would seem. Narrow at first but then wider to the size of a driveway. A driveway that stretched out into the street and out of sight.

             
A sound like a car engine far off but coming fast was heard by those in the living room.

             
Soon a long, black, stretch limousine pulled into the space the zombies had vacated and came to a stop in front of the big picture window.

             
A grotesque, uniformed dead man in a black driver’s hat exited the car and disappeared from their view as he made for the front steps. They heard his leather soles clack on the concrete. They heard the storm door squeak open….then a polite knock on the door.

             
“Wha…what do we do?” Steven stammered.

             
None of the men spoke, Tessa kept on mewling. Mark uttered something garbled into his gag until Jacob pulled it down.

             
“I think you should answer the door,” Mark said.

             
“Yeah? Do you think I should?” Steven whispered.

             
“I do.”

             
Steven stumbled slowly to the door in a fear-induced daze, fumbled with the lock and pulled the heavy door open.

             
The zombie driver and several others filed into the house and surrounded the people. As the driver stopped in front of him, Mark closed his eyes and waited for the end. He only wished it would be quick for the boys.

             
After a moment when nothing happened, he opened his eyes to find the driver still standing there.

             
He was giving him the finger.

             
Then Mark knew…everything was gonna be okay. 

The End (for now)

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my
wife and family for their patience during yet another of my obsessions.

To Eliot, Jennifer
, Laurie and Jessica for your valuable feedback and support. Thank you for all the gifts!

Contact

For more information visit: josephkrichard.com