“MOVE!” Joann shouted from off to our right. I for one did not need to be told even once. I pulled Travis out of the way of the crashing door. The office shook as the door slammed home. My knees were shaking, mostly from the pain, but some, some of it was from Jen’s shooting.
“Looks like Mike just put a cork on a wine bottle.” Mrs. Deneaux said from off to the side of the room.
“Excuse me?” My wife asked her, in as nice a tone as she could contrive. But seething beneath the surface was a fury looking for a place to be unleashed. I didn’t say a word, lest that luminous ire shined my way.
Mrs. Deneaux took many moments to answer Tracy. She took two full inhales from her cigarette and answered on her second exhale, the smoke somehow punctuating her words. “I said, it looks like Mike just put a cork on a wine bottle.”
“I know what you said you old bat!” Tracy burned. (I was doing an imaginary fist bump with her, ‘You go girl!’) Mrs. Deneaux was made of stauncher stuff than I had given her credit for though. No one in their right mind would ever call Tracy anything but a petite woman, but with anger issuing forth from every pore in her body she looked like she could pull the sagging gray green skin right off of Mrs. Deneaux’s old bones. But yet the ‘old bat’ as Tracy so eloquently put it, didn’t bat an eyelash at Tracy’s harsh words.
“Oh honey.” Mrs. Deneaux rasped through her smoke tortured throat. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“The FUCK you didn’t!” Tracy screamed, her finger stopping just short of puncturing Deneaux’s larynx. This time Deneaux did step back. “All the good people that died, and you survived! That above every other fucked up thing that has happened proves to me there is no GOD!”
The entire room held its collective breath, even the babies. How the hell they knew what was going on, I don’t know. I went over to Tracy and grabbed her by the waist pulling her close to me, she sobbed softly on my shoulder.
“Really, I didn’t mean anything by it.” Mrs. Deneaux said to a room full of deaf ears.
The truck came back a few minutes later but it felt like hours. Time stretched worse than in a twilight zone episode. Mrs. Deneaux finally shuffled off to be with her nephew. Even he seemed reluctant to acknowlege her. Family duty though bound him to the task. He shrugged his shoulders at me. Whether to let me know ‘What can you do she’s an old cantankerous bitch?’ or ‘Don’t lump me in with this old cantankerous bitch?’ I wasn’t sure. We all turned as the familiar tell tale sign of a truck backing up impeded our individual conversations.
“What’s he doing?” I said more to say than gain a response.
“Backing up I would imagine.” Joann said seriously. She seemed to be holding onto this small piece of hope with both hands.
“We can’t go through the gate Talbot.” BT said matter of factly.
“Why?” Joann said, it was hard to watch the hope sail out of her like a popped balloon.
“Umm well let’s see...” I started.
Thankfully (because I didn’t have to do it) or not (because he was a prick about it) Justin had the ill-temper to quash out whatever remnants of promise Joann hung on as he answered in my stead. “Because the inside of the gate is full of dead zombies and the outside is full of live ones.” He laughed, dark circles under his eyes lent menace to words.
“That’s all I meant.” Mrs. Deneaux said. Her nephew did his best to quiet her.
But yet the back-up beeping persisted. “Come on.” I said desperately. “Alex has to be thinking the same thing we are.
“Brendon!” My daughter screamed, not from terror but from concern. “What are you doing?” Almost like a well-trained platoon, all of the occupants of the room took up strategic placement with Nicole by the windows. Brendon was on the top of the truck with a rope and some sort of makeshift grappling hook. It looked like a crow bar, but it was tough to tell from all the rope that was tied around it.
I saw immediately what Alex and Brendon had planned. “That’s not going to work.” I said to myself.
“What’s not going to work?” BT asked.
“Watch.” I answered. BT didn’t seem all too pleased with my response. I don’t think he was big on surprises either. Really I hoped that what they had planned would work but physics wasn’t on their side.
Brendon lowered the ‘grappling hook’ down to the cage assembly. After a couple of tries and some errant zombies getting in the way, Brendon was able to snag the cage. “Alright got it Alex, go slow!” He shouted over his shoulder. As Alex placed the truck in gear there was one long second where we all held our breaths as Brendon nearly took a header. Nicole nearly fainted. Brendon quickly righted himself and gave us all a weak smile to let us know he was okay. Alex pulled ahead slowly as Brendon let slack out of the rope. Finally the truck had gone far enough that the true test of this experiment would come to its unfulfilling conclusion. The end of the rope was tied off to the truck’s rear bumper, I didn’t gauge that as being the problem area that or the rope itself looked heavy enough to leash a T-Rex. No the problem lied in the grappling hook assembly, without a hole to thread the rope through, no knot was going to be able to stand up to the forces applied to it.
The loud ‘twang’ was immediately followed by a string of curses as Brendon nearly sacrificed his ear to a valiant but doomed attempt to free us. The rope had snapped back dangerously close to Brendon’s head as it slipped freely from the pry bar. The cage had rocked slightly and had tried in vain to prove me wrong.
“Plan B, Alex!” Brendon yelled.
We had no idea what plan B was, but they were usually a last ditch effort and they were never thought out well. Ever heard of a plan C? No you haven’t because nobody ever survives plan B.
“You guys are going to want to get away from the door!” Brendon yelled to us.
Nearly everyone looked at him like a deer in headlights, some backed up. I could only muster an “Oh fuck,” as Tracy dragged me away from the window.
Alex ground the truck into reverse, when he hit the cage at 5 miles per hour it sounded like Thor had taken his hammer to a mountaintop. Wood splintered and shattered as the bars were forced back through the office. Babies wailed, women cried. I might have pissed myself. I wasn’t stopping to check. The truck came to a sudden stop as the rear end ran into the stout walls of the sheriff’s office. The bars traveled mercifully another two feet before they came crashing into a desk, stopping all momentum. Dust and debris were settling all around us when a small round of cheers erupted and abruptly stopped with Brendon’s shouts of warning.
“Get the fuck in the truck. They’re going underneath!”
Who ‘they’ were, was implicitly known. Why they were going under the truck also didn’t need any further explanation. Marta and her two kids along with Jodi and Eddy plus Joann and the three kids she was taking care of were thrust to the forefront. I had watched Titanic. It’s always women and children first but Thad apparently hadn’t learned the chivalry lesson. He cut off the women and the children and headed for the rear of the tractor trailer where the open doors led into a black hole of relative safety. Thad had one foot on the bumper and one on the ground. I wanted to run up and grab the prick and beat some gallantry into him, when somebody (thing) beat me to it. Thad’s eyes grew wide in horror as a hand shot out from under the truck grabbing his ankle. I watched in (satisfactory) horror as he was pulled over. His head violently slammed into the ground as he lost balance. Could we have helped him? Maybe, but his selfish act actually turned into our salvation. Thad’s body became a wedge between us and them. We could hear his muffled screams. Thankfully it wasn’t too loud. I was certain that one of the third or fourth bites had ripped out his Adam’s apple. Marta and Joann stood transfixed, now was not the time for delay.