Zombie Fallout 4: The End Has Come and Gone (41 page)

“
Don’t care
, there’s more of them, there’s always more of them.”

I could only agree.

“But me,” he said, pointing to his chest, “there’s only one of me.”

“Thank the God above for that,” BT said.

Again, I could only agree.

“You stay out of this, black man. I came here to kill Talbot.”

“Damn Mike! Durgan has gone all PC on us,” BT said admiringly.

“Must be the anger management classes,” I said, holding on to BT’s side, trying my best to make it look like that wasn’t what I was doing.

“I’m going to make this slow, Talbot,” Durgan said while grinding his fist into his palm.

“The slower the better,” I told him.

“You’re fucking nuts!” he yelled to me, clearly confused at my answer.

“Nucking futs,” I said.

“What is wrong with him?” Durgan asked BT as if he was going to get a valid response.

“Hopped up on bath salts,” BT said.

“What are you talking about?” Durgan asked. These were not the responses he was expecting to receive and it was throwing him off his game.

“Bath salts,”
Gary
said. “They’re all the rage in
Paris
, haven’t you ever tried them?”

“
Paris
is gone you idiots!” Durgan screamed.

“Oh, my poor pet,” Eliza said coming up behind Durgan. “So strong in body, yet not in mind.”

Durgan’s rage subsided as Eliza stroked his face.

“Are you about ready for the void of life?” Eliza asked me impatiently.

“A cigarette?” I asked Eliza. She looked like she was about to respond in the negative.

“Come, Sister,” Tomas said, stepping onto the roof. “We must be cultured, all condemned men are granted their final wish.”

“Wait, then I would like to change my request.”

“A cigarette then,” Eliza said.

Mrs. Deneaux was a good ten feet away. I was positive I couldn’t make it on my own and it wouldn’t look good if BT dragged me over there.

“Mrs. Deneaux, would you do the honors?” BT asked, over-exaggerating with his head a ‘come hither’ motion.

At least she was quick on the uptake, and for once she didn’t have anything snide to say as she came over and (thankfully) placed the cigarette in my mouth and lit it. I barely had enough steam to inhale and luckily none at all to cough.

“This is ridiculous!” Durgan cried. “How long can it take to smoke a cigarette? You have to finish that damn thing eventually and I’m going to make you pay for delaying the inevitable.”

“Worse than death? You twit,” Mrs. Deneaux said.

“I’ll kill you just for fun you old hag,” Durgan said to her, pointing his finger.

Never skipping a beat Deneaux answered. “Worse than you have tried. Give it your best shot.”

“All of a sudden I like you,” I told Mrs. Deneaux as I gingerly crushed the cigarette under foot. If it had offered even the least resistance I would have toppled over.

“Michael, you don’t look well,” Tomas said.

‘
Thanks
!’ I wanted to yell at him.

“Nothing a case of the deads won’t cure,” Durgan said.

“The deads?” I asked.

“Make the black man move,” Durgan said as he approached steadily, fists clenched by his sides.

Halfway to me and BT had not yet let go. I could feel him fighting within himself to throw me to the side and fight Durgan. It would be an awesome spectacle, just like when I was ten and my friend and I would watch Creature Double Feature on the UHF channel (if you don’t know what UHF is, it’s a dark time in our planet’s history, when we only had about five or six channels to choose from; it was hideous. No 24/7 cartoons, sports or comedy. I shudder to remember the days.) Godzilla versus King Kong, it would have been awesome.

“Michael, if BT does not move, we are done here,” Eliza said evenly.

“BT,” I said.

“I can’t man, he’s going to kill you.”

“What about that whole thing about death not having the right size for me and all.”

“Oh, I was just saying that.”

“You really suck man, now let me go.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” ‘No.’

“This is going to hurt you way more than me.” Durgan said smiling.

“How are you walking so well?” I asked truly wondering not just stalling this time.

“I’m cured man!” Durgan shouted.

“How do you get ‘cured’ from an amputated leg?” Now I was really curious.

“Eliza…” Durgan was cut short as Eliza yelled at him to finish me.

Well that one name pretty much answered my question irregardless that it was a cut short answer.

For each step back that BT took, Durgan took two forward. I swayed back and forth like a tall reed in a soft summer breeze. The best thing that I could ask to happen was that I would be on the back bend when Durgan swung. The audible crack as my jaw burst echoed throughout my skull, the reverberations finally ending in my left pinkie toe, and no I do not know why.

I could vaguely hear Durgan screaming at me to get up so that he could finish me off. It was much more comfortable where I was. I could hear Tracy and Gary, pretty much everyone urging me up, their urgent cries ringing in my ears. But I was falling deeper; the red of pain was rapidly becoming the black of unconsciousness.

It was them that I held on for. Durgan would only wait so long to get from me what he felt I owed him. If I were to pass out, he would still finish me off, most likely starting with a few rib crushing kicks followed by some face pummeling blows, capped off with my head in his hands as he cracked my neck. I might not experience any of the pain involved, but my family and friends surely would.

My jaw rattled in my head, teeth grinding against teeth as I turned over trying to get leverage with arms that couldn’t support Gumby. A fresh wave of nausea and pinpointing blackness threatened to thwart my best efforts as my arms gave. I collapsed, jaw first, onto the tarred roof.

“That’s right, you piece of
dung
. Get up!” Durgan yelled, “What? No witty comeback you
shithead
?” His spittle rained down on me.

The thought of uttering anything more than a throaty moan made me wish for my mother, and I hadn’t done that since I was six.

“If you don’t get up in the next minute I’m going to start teaching your wife what it means to be with a real man,” Durgan boasted.

“You even look at her funny and you’ll be licking your own asshole!” BT yelled.

“You’re welcome,” BT said as I gave him the thumbs up sign, my face still buried in the roof.

Henry charged at Durgan. If I could have screamed at him to stop, I would have. Not that he would have listened. That’s the sort of relationship we have, I give him cookies, he does as he pleases. Henry wrapped his muzzle around Durgan’s lower leg. He must have put all his strength into it because Durgan screamed to the heavens, although they would have turned a blind eye to him as they had to me. He shook his leg violently and swatted Henry away. Henry yelped as he went tumbling twenty feet away. I was thankful to whatever was watching over me now that Durgan was only able to land a glancing blow. Henry came to a stop by the edge of the roof. I could tell his head was reeling as he looked up, eyes not focused on anything, but he’d be all right. More than I could say for me.

The pain in my jaw had begun to ebb. I attributed it to the high octane adrenaline injection from Durgan’s threat. To threaten me was one thing, my family? Well, that takes on a whole new level, and to top it off the asshole hurt my dog!

“You don’t understand now,
Lawrence
,” Durgan sneered. “I can kill you too, just as easily as I can kill him,” he said pointing over to my mostly prone body.

“He’s not quite dead yet,”
Gary
said, quoting Monty Python as I struggled to gain vertical-ability.

“Did you really just do that Uncle Gary?” Travis asked.

Gary
smiled diffidently.

Durgan turned to see me. I was now resting on my knees. I probably could have stood at this point, but I was busy listening to the knitting of the bones in my mouth. It was disturbing. The grinding as molar scraped across canine was akin to biting down hard on fork tines.

Durgan looked at me in alarm as color began to wash back into my face, from winter pale to spring hale. He gave a quick glance to Eliza as if expecting direction, but none was forthcoming.

I put my left foot under me and stood up shakily. I wouldn’t be scaring a Girl Scout, but Durgan looked like he was having second thoughts.

“I broke your jaw, Talbot. Now I’m going to break your spine,” he said as he advanced again.

It hurt like hell to say it but it was worth every snap and pop as I moved my still healing facial bones. “Bring it,” I said as I put my hands up in the old school boxing fashion, fists upside down and all.

I tried to dance around like Muhammad Ali, but I think I looked more like Whitney Houston (you know… can’t dance).

Durgan bull rushed me. I was still operating on something close to seventy-five percent of the old Talbot, but it was way more than he was expecting. So when I side stepped his advance and put everything I could muster into his kidney, his heavy expulsion of air was all I needed to know that I had surprised him and potentially inflicted an iota of damage.

“You should have just stayed down,” Durgan said as he turned. His eyes glowed with a festering heat of hatred and contempt. “I might have made it relatively painless,” he said, advancing but much more slowly and warily.

And without warning he struck, like a cat let loose from a tight trash bag. I didn’t think anything that big could move that fast. His ham-sized fist slammed into my temple. If it hadn’t first caught my upraised fist he would have killed me. Upgrade or not, he would have caved my skull. For the second time I went down, this one with more force than the first. My jaw dislocated as the side of my face bounced from the impact.

“Fuck you Talbot!” Durgan shrieked, standing over my body with his fists by his side, veins bulging out on his neck, his arms throbbing with power.

The pain was intense, but something was happening within me. What started as a ten on the pain index and should have taken days and heavy doses of opiates to alleviate rapidly began to climb down the pain-o-meter. Ten became an eight, which in turn became a five, and then a distant memory at a one or a two.

“And to think I once thought you might be a tough opponent. You ain’t shit!” he screamed.

“You talk too much,” I said as I got my feet back up under me.

If Durgan’s neurons would have just fired a little quicker and he never gave me the chance to get up, then my family would have been doomed. But he just kept watching in amazement as I got completely up onto my feet.

“You should be dead!” he yelled.

“But yet here I am,” I said softly, trying my best to not engage my jaw. A lot easier written than said.

“This can’t be. I’m five times the man I was. You should be dead!” he screamed in consternation, “Eliza, it’s not working. I hit him with everything I had, you promised!”

Eliza looked over to Tomas who never betrayed anything, but the proof was in my unwillingness to die.

“I fear, my pet, that the rules to the game have been changed,” Eliza said.

“What does that mean?” he asked her.

“It means that Michael has cheated and as such our agreement is void,” Eliza said.

“Not true, Eliza,” I said to her. “You said I could not accept help from anyone on this side. You said absolutely nothing about help from your side.”

Eliza was trying to find a loophole in her agreement. I could see the machinations working behind her black eyes. “Very well,” was her grudging response.

Durgan was being unbelievably slow on the uptake of this new information. He could take as long as he desired. I wasn’t waiting for him to figure it out. I swung a roundhouse that started somewhere south of
Detroit
and struck him flush in the nose. Blood blew in a circle away from the impact. His eyes immediately flooded with tears as he dropped down to his knees.

“Yeah!” BT shouted.

With my other arm I hooked an uppercut that shattered all of Durgan’s front teeth, pieces of which intermingled with the growing puddle of blood pooling on the roof. Durgan began to sag forward. I kneed him in his already destroyed nose; shards of bone drilled into my knee as the impact also drove pieces up into his brain casing.

“Ris ran’t ree happenin,” Durgan said through a jumble of broken teeth.

“Oh, I assure you it is,” I said, punching him in the back of the head as he began to pitch forward.

Durgan was face first on the ground, his ass still up in the air. It was a comical pose but it contained no humor in it.

“This is for Jed,” I said as I reared back and kicked him square in the ribs. At least two snapped as he fell onto his side. “This is for shooting me!” as I kicked him flush in the stomach. The force of the strike rolled him over onto his back, a gale of wind fused with blood expelled from his mouth. “This is for Jen!” I said kicking him in his junk. I thought Jen would appreciate that, being the man hater that she was. I got a sick sort of satisfaction out of that.