Timothy 02: Tim2 (24 page)

I awoke some time later; the zombie cavalry was long gone. I was drawn up into the fetal position, my still-tied legs drawn up against my chest. My shoulders had dulled to a minor ache as Hugh must have been at work making the necessary repairs. He acknowledged my rising into cognition and then resumed whatever it is parasites do to pass the time.

He’d had ample opportunity to finish me off. I needed to figure out what value he figured I still brought to the table before he figured out how to do it himself and then
disposed of me. First things first, as I untied my feet. I took cautious moments to stand fully up, even using the tree I had been strung to as a brace.

The three men were dead as were somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty zombies. A small battle had been waged here, one that history would never remember. When I felt like I could walk without needing support, I began to follow the trampled pathway the zombies had left in their wake – it seemed like the easiest course of action.

“Glad to still be alive,” I told Hugh. “Thank you.”

He responded with a picture of a person. I got it. And maybe that was why he kept me around; I was pretty adept at finding food stores in a time and place in which that was becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. Humans were on the short end of the stick and things were only going to get more difficult. My belly was cramping and I realized that our last meal might have been as long as forty-eight hours ago. Plus, Hugh’s ministrations were always a strain on our internal holdings.

With Highway Z completed, I was able to get out onto the roadway a lot quicker than I had expected. I did not see our car as I came out, but I had a good idea it was north of our present location. With a renewed vigor for life and an absolute hatred for mankind I walked on. It was at least fifteen minutes before I saw where my latest melodrama had started off. Another five before I arrived. I was exhausted both physically and mentally. I wanted to sleep, but I was pissed off, too. Pissed off that I had been scared and helpless. I would make sure to not make those mistakes again. I started the car and turned it around.

There had to be easier pickings than my little Rambette, but I didn’t have time to flush them out. If I didn’t get some meat into Hugh, he was going to make me start eating myself. I’m sure I’d be tasty, but that was not the road I wanted to go down here. I did some soul searching while I drove; it was not a long and arduous journey, and there wasn’t much of it left. I was thinking back to my and Hugh’s first encounter, how I had fought for my self-preservation at every turn. He had done some horrific things beginning with eating my latest pussy pump and my father – neither of which were pillars of society but didn’t deserve to go out that way.

And then what?

When I realized Hugh was as dumb as a post, I showed him the way. I basically led him to salvation. What did that make me? Did preserving one’s own life at the expense of so many others make me a traitor to man? What were they to me? So many fucking questions…it made my head ache. They were obstacles to my existence. I had transcended them and they had given themselves up to make something better, something more powerful, something damn near immortal.

I quickly shoved down the thought of being hog tied and potentially chopped up into pieces down into a dark corner. This wasn’t a violation, it was an evolution, Hugh and I were becoming the next best thing. Some day in the future, little zombie children would be learning about the history of us: their forefathers.

“Hugh, we still have about a half hour drive ahead of us. Did I ever tell you about the time my father made me stay in a cemetery overnight? No? Well you’re going to love this. I was seven, nope eight, sorry, don’t want to embellish. My grandmother had just died. She was the only relative I had that I’d felt anything close to feelings for. Alright, I said I wasn’t going to embellish, except for one girl in high school, she
was
the only person I’d cared for besides myself. Does that make me a narcissist? Fuck it, like I care. So I’m eight, my grandmother died and I’m balling my eyes out.” Hugh was in the background not really paying attention, but then again, I wasn’t really telling him the story as I was reliving it for myself.

“My father called me a baby for crying so much, blamed it on my mother…said she was raising me to be a sissy boy. Can you believe that shit? I was eight! He told me if I kept it up he was going to toughen me up. The day of the funeral came; I sniffled and cried throughout the entire proceedings. I just kept remembering all the kind things she had said and done for me. How she had produced such a cold and indifferent offspring like my father…I don’t even know how that could be possible. From the church we had to drive about a half an hour because my father found the cheapest plot he could drop her ass in. His words not mine.

“Started to drizzle about halfway there. I had my head pressed against the window and was looking at the pastures as we rolled by. My mom had gone home after the mass, presumably to get shit-faced, which was a pretty normal occurrence with her. After one of my sniffles my dad flicked my head against the glass. I almost started crying anew, but I knew that’s what he wanted. I sat back, staring out the front, not letting him think he had got the best of me. Grandma was a fairly well liked person; she still had a lot of friends that weren’t pushing daisies yet. Must have been twenty or thirty blue hairs there that day. Dad and I stood in the rain as the priest did his ashes to ashes yada-yada spiel.

“Oh, I guess I sound indifferent about it now, but I was crying like a little pussy that day. My dad kept trying to move away from me, I think he was so embarrassed. All of the blue hairs came up to my dad and offered their condolences and also to me, giving me words of encouragement, like ‘she is in a better place’, or ‘you loved her didn’t you?’ I nodded and cried every time one of them came up and called me a little dear. I could feel my father tensing up next to me. He was coiling like a cat getting ready to spring. But the cagey fuck, he smiled and nodded and thanked each and every one of them. We stood there long after the last of them shuffled off to their bridge parties or home to their crappy frozen dinner. We stood there long after the rain went from a calming sprinkle to a downpour. We stood there long after the grave digger had pushed in a mound of dirt, forever enshrouding my nana in an earthen grave. I was shaking, some from the coldness of the rain, some from the fear of my father.

“You done crying, boy?” he asked me, not turning to look down.

I nodded.

“I can’t hear you, boy, if you don’t speak.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes sir what?”

“Yes, sir, I’m done crying.”

“I don’t believe you,” he told me, this time looking at me.

What could I say? My father was calling me a liar, not like I could turn it around and say the same about him.

“You’re going to prove to me that you’re done crying.”

I agreed. What the fuck else could I say or do?

“You’re staying here tonight until you’re done sniveling like a little bitch-boy.”

“Staying where, Dad?” I asked, looking around wildly for some sort of comfortable habitat. Panic was welling up inside of me as dread was weighing down heavily. I simultaneously felt like I was watching this horror unfold from outside myself, whilst also feeling myself retreat into a deep, dark corner as I tried to escape this nightmare.

“You are staying right here on top of your grandmother’s grave.”

“Where...where are you staying?” I choked out, tasting the crappy baloney sandwiches my mom had made for the trip as they made a return visit. Nothing quite as tasty on the planet as a regurgitated baloney sandwich. Baloney and belly butter, ummm ummm.

“I’m going in to town. There’s a little motel. Gonna get myself a bottle of Jack and a hooker.”

I didn’t know what a hooker was, sounded like he was going fishing, but I’d seen enough empty bottles of Jack Daniels to know that my dad planned on getting blistered. A night in a graveyard almost seemed like the better bargain. Odds were a ghost couldn’t punch. 

“Dad?” I asked as he started to walk away. I guess I thought he was kidding. I knew on some level he was as mean as a snake, but he was my dad, this couldn’t possibly be happening.

“Oh yeah…one more thing,” he said, turning around. I was pretty happy thinking that maybe this was just a joke and he was going to bring me along with him. I even started to follow. “Stay near your grandmother’s grave…she’ll be able to protect you,” he said as he turned and left. I abruptly stopped following him and immediately went back to my former spot within the rectangle of my grandmother’s freshly filled in grave.

“Ollie, ollie oxen free,” I said softly, hoping the spirits would honor this safe zone.

I knew of no stronger charm to implore. I heard a car door slam and then the roar of an engine from a distance; he was really leaving. The rain had stopped, but the damage had been done, I was soaked and so was the ground. I was shaking from the cold leeching into my bones or maybe from the passing of so many spirits within my proximity.

Night descended in full force, a sodium light burned brightly about a hundred yards away. It shed not an ounce of light on my present location; it merely served as a reminder that light did exist somewhere, just not here. My legs hurt I had been standing so long. Every so often I could hear the caw of a crow off in the distance and the sighing of the wind as it whipped around the mini monoliths that represented the final resting place of so many people.

“Grammie, are you here?” I asked, looking at her headstone.

A small crescent moon rose that night but was quickly hidden behind a curtain of clouds. For the longest time I didn’t cry, mistakenly thinking my father was watching from some distant vantage point and when he felt an appropriate time had passed he would come and get me and say I was brave. But that wasn’t going to happen, he was busy getting a case of syphilis. Gave it to my mom, as a matter of fact. That was one of the biggest blowouts they’d ever had. Even at that age I was able to kind of piece the puzzle together of why and what they were fighting about, and I thought it served him right for leaving me in the graveyard.

When I sort of came to the conclusion he had really left me in this dark, bleak, and deathly place, I lost it. My head pounded from the force that I had cried. Snot ran from my nose with the same intensity as the tears that cascaded from my eyes. I was panicking; so much of me wanted to run to that distant sodium glow and bask in the circle of light it provided, but my father’s last warning halted me in my tracks. To leave grandma’s protection was to invite a gruesome end. I’d watched enough horror movies to know that.

When I got to the point where I could no longer stand, I sat down, the bottom of my pants instantly soaked through as I rested my back against her headstone. The cold became a tangible thing. It had a force of its own, but it paled in comparison to the fright I felt. I was as much locked in place by the fear of the unknown as I was by my loss of body heat. The stone slab was extracting heat as if in payment for its use. I dozed a couple of times that night, awakening when I dreamed my grandmother was reaching up through the ground to pull me down with her in a deadly embrace. Funny thinking back on it now, but it was just a couple of pointy stones – one sticking on the right side of my ass and the other on my left leg. At the time, though, I thought my heart was going to stop I had been making it work so hard.

By the time the sun had come up the next morning, I had slid off to the side and my face was now covered in dried dirt and my ear was filled with it. Birds were singing and the sodium light had gone out. I had survived the night, no thanks to my asshole dad. The only thing that never made any sense were the footprints in the dew covered grass surrounding grandma’s plot. They were slender and small almost like a woman’s or a young girl’s. They had come right up to where I was sleeping but had not actually made an impression on the grass itself like a person would but rather, as if the imprint of the footfall had removed all the moisture in that exact shape or more likely had not allowed it to ever form come the morning.

I watched as the rising sun burned the dew off and erased any signs of my visitor before I stood. My pants were caked in dirt and I thought about taking them off and draping them across the grave stone so they’d dry, but the idea of being in my underwear in this place seemed sacrilegious, and if my father caught me he’d call me a fruit and cuff me around my ear.

It took longer this way, but I just kept turning with the sun to make sure the wettest part was exposed to the sun’s rays. I was like a fucking human sundial. The sun had crested and was starting its downward trek. I really thought my old man was going to make me stay out here another night. The thought of the girl coming back almost made me involuntarily empty my bladder. My stomach ached from emptiness, and the sun had done its job pushing the cold out, but just barely. Another night in the crisp air and I’d have some exposure problems. Although I didn’t know that’s what it was called then.

I didn’t cry that day; not because I didn’t want to, but rather, if I did and my old man saw me he would leave my ass again – and also because I was fairly dehydrated. I hadn’t pissed the entire day I don’t think there was any water in my system to spare. My dad showed just as the sun began to slip past the horizon. His shirt was untucked, he had a couple of day’s growth of beard and he looked like he’d gone a couple of rounds with a pissed off monkey. He tossed a Happy Meal box at my head and then turned around to head back to the car. Only the fries that had slipped out of the small bag were remaining, and the burger was half gone, but I wolfed down what was left before we got to the car. The toy I tossed to the side when I realized it was for a girl. Maybe my ghostly visitor would like it better than me; it was a pink plastic pony.