“So was the explosion this Buker guy or John?” Kong asked.
“Oh, I can assure you it was your Navy Seal,” Tommy said, seemingly peering through the trees to the Talbot household.
“How can you be so sure?” Kong asked him.
“Because it was Michael Talbot,” Eliza said, striding up to the circle. “And apparently nothing short of the Rapture is going to take him off this earth. It makes no difference, now at least I know where he is and the whole lot of them can die simultaneously.”
“I just lost three well-trained men, some of my best,” Kong said turning to Eliza, anger flushing his cheeks.
“Perhaps you should have had a better screening technique,” Tomas said smiling. “Maybe asked each of them what side they were on. Michael most likely would have told you the truth.”
Eliza nodded in agreement. “I imagine he would have…right before he killed you.”
Kong didn’t seem so convinced that the man that had called himself Buker would have been able to take him out, but he had just killed three Special Forces men and was still at large. What did I get myself into? “Eliza, I do not think you were forthcoming in our agreement.”
“If you had doubts you should have voiced them before we left,” Eliza told him. “Now organize another team.”
I had my doubts when you ripped Randy’s dick off, Kong thought as he clenched his fists.
“Ten this time…that should be sufficient,” she said.
“Sufficient for what?” Kong asked, trying valiantly to keep his cool. He knew Eliza would have no qualms about eliminating him and putting someone else at the top. He didn’t even consider himself a pawn; he was the board upon which the actual game was being played.
Hank hadn’t left Kong’s side since he got back and already he knew that legend of Buker or Talbot would be spreading across his men like wildfire. He had yet to figure out quite how that phenomenon worked, and something inside him told him he didn’t have the time left to figure it out either.
***
“Can’t stay here, sun is going to be up soon and I’ll be stuck in dead man’s land. And me being covered in gore like this, someone in that house is going to think I’m a zombie and that I somehow got past the fence.”
Minefield or not, I had to leave the spot I was becoming rooted to. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me how easily I traversed the gap, but it did. Now I was just hoping I wasn’t smack dab in the middle of a minefield and everything would be A-Okay. I was within fifteen feet of the deck which was a good ten feet off the ground. I was happy and slightly dismayed to see that the stairs had been removed. I did a once over around the bottom part of the house. There was no way in, it was completely shuttered off with steel plating. I looked up at the decking overhead.
“I should have brought Greta,” I said. “Okay let’s do the math, I’m almost six feet, give or take, mostly give…but whatever. Then if I outstretch my arms, add another three-ish feet, I really need to only jump up about a foot and I can grab the edge of the deck. Subtract from that, I’m a fortyish white guy and I’m still fucked. Wait…half-vamp trumps white. Let’s give it a go.”
I backed up a few feet, still not convinced that I had somehow miraculously crossed a minefield and I didn’t want to throw that to chance again. I ran and jumped not taking into account my added abilities; I almost planted my face where I thought my hands were going to touch. That would have been awesome, me knocked out under the deck after smashing into it.
I grunted as I pulled myself up and over, but only because it felt like the right thing to do. “Why no guard?” The house appeared to be blacked out, but I could see some light spilling from around the blackout curtains. I walked to the back door and turned the unlocked knob. My heart lurched at how easy it could have been for the assassination team and then I entered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Mike Journal Entry 15
“Miss me?” I asked a shocked room full of the people I loved the most in the whole world. Blood, gore, sinew and a fair amount of entrails hung from every exposed part of me. Henry was the first to react. I hadn’t seen him leap since he was six months old and there was a particularly tasty shoe of Tracy’s that he had enjoyed rending into bite-sized chunks. I had put it up on a coffee table thinking his little stubby legs would never allow him to regain his ill-gotten booty. He had proved me wrong and cost me two hundred bucks in the process (replacement fee of said shoes).
I stooped down a bit as he jumped into my outstretched arms, his stumped tail was going as fast as a hummingbird’s wings after a Starbuck’s double shot cappuccino. But even he had his standards; he would not lick my face.
“Talbot?” Tracy cried, barely able to contain her surprise or shock. “Is that really you?” She took a half step towards me.
“Of course it is!” BT said, barreling towards me. “Who the fuck else would wear a tin foil hat!” He swept me and Henry both up in his massive arms and twirled us around like we were in the Nutcracker ballet.
Apparently the explosion had ripped my knit cap off.
My father’s legs gave out. “I...I couldn’t stand to lose another child,” he sobbed.
Nicole, who was visibly showing her pregnancy now, ran to me with a huge box of sani-wipes. “Oh, Dad, I missed you so much, but I don’t know if I can hug you!” She sobbed and laughed at the same time.
Gary came running into the room. I would learn later that he had been pretty despondent about coming home without me. A massive case of survivor’s guilt, compound that with the fact he had to tell our father he had lost his youngest son. And it wasn’t such a great combination.
“I saw you die, Mike,” Gary said, not quite yet ready to let go of the extra baggage he had been carrying around.
“Word of my death has been greatly exaggerated,” I managed as I was twirled around like a record. “Any chance you could put me down now, BT? People are going to start to talk.”
“Let them.” He crushed me tighter to his chest. The added pressure pushing a little too much on Henry’s midsection, we were rewarded with an air fouling mass of stench.
BT shuffled away from the stink as best he could, me and Henry still held captive.
“I missed you, too,” I told him, “but I’d like to kiss my wife.” BT finally put me down, but looked like he’d scoop me up in a moment’s notice.
“You look like shit, Talbot,” Tracy said stroking my cheek.
I grabbed the wipe proffered from my daughter and vigorously scrubbed my face. It burned and smelled like bleach—it was bliss. Tracy leaned in, we kissed, and the world around us dissolved, there was nothing but her tender lips upon mine. When we finally felt the accumulated gazes of all of those around us, we pulled away.
“I never thought I’d taste you again,” she cried, dipping her head down.
“It’s gonna take more than fire, rogue cats, vampires and zombies to kill me.”
“Apparently.” She kissed me quicker this time. “You will never leave without me again,” she said with a force that made me know that this was no idle threat-slash-request; it was merely the truth. Where had I heard those words before?
Justin came up next; he was never a squeamish one. He wasn’t fond of public displays of affection, but just this one time he obviously figured he’d break his own rules as he hugged me tight. “It sucks being the man of the family,” he smiled. “I’m glad you’re here so you can take it back.”
“Good to see you, too.” I smiled.
Travis was on the verge of tears. He kept wiping his sleeve across his eyes in an attempt to keep up with the tears that were free flowing. As an eighteen-year-old boy, appearance is everything. “I knew you couldn’t be dead,” he said sniffing loudly, his head down. I watched as tears splashed down into the floor.