I was a millisecond away from opening the door and severely chewing the ass off some neighborhood punk who was going to cost me a hundred dollars to repair the glass.
“NO!” my wife and son yelled in unison. My wife slammed up against the door to reiterate her point.
“What the hell is going on?!” My adrenaline was pumping. My pet peeves were throbbing, all seventeen of them.
“Look out the peephole,” my wife whispered.
I put my eye to the hole expecting to see some little shit gang-bangers out there tearing things up. What I saw was a tongue.
“I see a tongue! Some asshole is licking my peephole,” I said, then I laughed a little bit. That sounded a little gross even to me.
My wife didn’t see the humor, her face still hadn’t regained her color and my son looked like he was starting to hyperventilate.
My wife told me to look out the window but she made no move to look with me. I’m not the brightest bulb on the string but even I knew at this point something was really messed up. I put on my best male bravado and stepped over to the window. I rolled up the shade and to this day I don’t know how it happened but I simultaneously felt my stomach lurch into my throat and my balls fill in the abandoned spot my belly left behind. There had to have been at least a couple of dozen dead people milling about our communal lawn. Okay, so they weren’t dead in the traditional way, they were still moving, but they were dead all the same.
My quasi-nightmare dream had come true. ZOMBIES were afoot. Now, I know this is a sick fantasy so bear with me. I had always wished for this. I had watched nearly every zombie movie, from the early Dawn of the Dead, with the slow shuffling brain eaters, to the newer 28 Days Later flicks with the fast, semi- intelligent brain eaters. Hell, I even liked the films that made fun of the style, like Shaun of the Dead and Boy Eats Girl. If it involved a zombie I was game.
Now back to the slightly insane part of my fantasy. I guess if you get right down to the guts of it, no pun intended, it would be a way to escape the responsibilities (and boredom) of everyday life. Forget the 9 to 5 grind, the mortgage and clothes shopping, it would just become all about survival of the fittest. I had been planning for this day for almost twenty-five years of my life. I know, pathetic, right? I had a gun safe full of multiple caliber rifles and pistols. I told my wife it was for hunting. I’ve never even BEEN hunting. Either she was REALLY gullible or she was just turning the other cheek. We all have our own crosses to bear. I’ll be honest though, my fantasy involved more the slower, shuffling zombies than the ultra-fast Resident Evil kind. Like it or not, it appeared that IT had finally happened. I closed the blinds as fast as I could, hoping that I didn’t attract any undue attention. My brain was in overdrive.
“Tracy! I yelled a little louder than I meant to. I wrestled with my emotions and tried to calm my flittering heart. “Turn on the TV please.”
She was still in a little bit of shock. “Talbot (our family name), this is no time for ESPN,” she responded waspishly.
“You know, I would like to know how the Giants did tonight, but I was hoping for the news,” I answered sarcastically.
“Oh,” was all she could muster as the thin film of terror began to peel away from her vision.
“Travis.” He didn’t move. “Travis!” I said a little louder.
He finally broke away from his mother's back, confusion and fear still warring for control over his features.
“Go look out the back window, if our deck is clear I want you to make sure the back gate is locked.” Now before you go getting all out of sorts at me, our backyard is about as big as most people’s master bathrooms. The kid would be perfectly safe as long as the gate was still closed and our yard hadn't yet been breached.
But still Travis looked at me with pleading eyes, not believing that his own father would put him back in harm’s way.
“Oh for fuck’s sake! I’ll do it!” I sighed disgustedly. The relaxation on his face was clearly perceptible. I should take it easy on the kid, he was shaken up, and I was going to need his help before this was all over with. I peered out the back, through our vulnerable French doors. We hadn’t been able to afford security bars for them yet. "Oh crap," I muttered, I could see the gate was open. ‘Nothing to it but to do it right? If I die in a towel I’m gonna be pissed though.’ I was able to tell in less than a heartbeat that our postage stamp sized back deck didn’t have any unfriendlies on it. But what I wasn’t able to discover from my present vantage point was if anything (or anyone) was on the other side of the gate. It was a full picket gate and did not afford me the luxury of seeing through to the other side. I opened one of the French doors and immediately wished I hadn’t. The smell was beyond putrid; it smelled like sour milk mixed with a hint of steaming broccoli (which I hate) and a healthy dose of shit all stirred in for the fun of it.
The walking dead weren’t in my backyard but they were close. If they came through the gate now, this was going to be a short novella. My towel caught on the next-to-useless excuse for a lock on the door. I didn’t even stop to grab it. Somehow it seemed more noble to die naked like a savage than with a terry cloth towel around my waist. I moved as quickly as I dared, when it happened! I felt something warm and squishy give way under my right foot. My first thought was BRAINS but then the unmistakable smell of fresh dog shit wafted up to my nostrils. I had to vigorously defend against the revulsion that welled up in me. I so wanted to vomit but I pushed on. I was two steps away from the gate when I heard the telltale shuffling. Did the smell of the shit draw them or were they already close? I threw myself against the gate, quashing down my rising panic, frantically trying to drive the lock home.
You know when you see this crap in the movies, you are always like, “Oh come on, just lock the gate, how effen hard can it be?” Well I’ll tell you. When your heart is going like a trip-hammer and your arms are shaking like you’re on ground zero on the San Andreas Fault during The Big One, it’s unbelievably hard. I felt an impact as something or somebody pushed against the gate from the other side. It wasn’t a concerted effort, which was a good thing; I might have abandoned ship and headed screaming for the house. It was one good push that sent the gate about six inches my way. I pushed back so hard that I almost pushed the gate through the backstop, which obviously would have caused its own set of problems. I was able to drive the bolt home, but I didn’t hang around long to revel in my victory.
“Talbot, get in here!” my wife bawled.
‘MAN,’ I said to myself, doesn’t she realize I almost died out here? Yeah, I was being a little melodramatic but I think I had an appropriate excuse. I was about to ask her "what," when she pointed to the television. The picture was horrible. I knew I shouldn’t have switched from cable to satellite. Why was I getting lost in the details when the situation was so serious? Maybe it was my way of coping, who knows. I tried to minor in psychology in college but couldn’t stand it. The newscaster looked like she had been dragged out of bed to do the report. She probably had been.
"…By all accounts it appears the threat ('OH for God sake's lady! Call it like it is, a spade is a spade already') is overwhelming our ground troops! Estimates have it that nearly a third of our country is already in enemy hands and spreading fast. Do not let one of the infected scratch or bite you. In a matter of hours the virus will kill and then reanimate you. If you or someone you know becomes infected the only way to stop them is to destroy the brain. Do not approach them. Do not try to reason with them. But the worst was yet to come," she continued. "It also seems the pathogen is airborne!" (My heart skipped!) "Even if someone were to die of means other than direct contact with the infected, they also will become reanimated within a few hours of their death."