The Broken and the Dead

Time is a funny thing. When you are tired and sore and can’t sleep, night time seems to last forever. When you are sleeping next to beautiful girl it seems to be over before it starts. That’s the way that night went for me, it seemed that we had just closed our eyes when we were awakened by Lucy jumping on us. Karen was saying something like the tickle bug was going to get her and when I started to get out of bed there was Gina, a sad look on her face, one that didn’t belong on any child.

“Hello.” I said.

She whispered “hi” and I knew she was missing her sister and her mother, so I just asked her if she wanted to go down stairs and say good morning to THE very important picture, she nodded so I told Karen and Lucy that we would meet them downstairs; then I took Gina’s hand and went with her to tell our dead families and friends that we missed them.

Everyone seemed in a good mood, hoping for, no, anticipating the best. Tucker and Weir had remained at the antenna all night and had not picked up a single signal with the exception of what might have been a short wave broadcast, Weir said he thought someone said Columbus but wasn’t sure. Only Tucker seemed down and a bit moody, which I didn’t understand. Amy seemed okay and she was talking over possible search routes with Mrs. West. I was happy to see that Gina’s mood had improved a lot and I once again vowed to thank Karen for THE important picture, and to tell the truth while I held Gina up so she could talk to her mother and sister I silently said hi to my family as well and wished I could tell Billy about my pretty older woman. I know he would have liked Karen a lot too.

Breakfast was a collection of scrambled powdered eggs and slices of canned ham heated on a barbeque fork over the fireplace. There was coffee and tea and something called Tang that Amy tried to convince me that astronauts drank but I think she was making that up.

Breakfast was just ending and Amy was rolling her map up when Mrs. West lifted her coffee mug and said to Tucker

“To the hero’s return!”

Tucker turned red, not the blushing color, but the ‘I am about to explode’ color. He stood up and growled

“Don’t say that to me, never say that to me!”

He slammed his coffee mug down on the table and stormed out, his cane banging harshly on the floor. Karen said

“What was that about?”

There were some ‘I don’t knows’ and ‘no idea’s’ but it was Lucy who spoke up

“It’s his job.”

When we asked what she meant she didn’t look up from the yellow castle she was making with her eggs when she said with a sigh as if we were inattentive kids in school

“When everyone is sleeping he watches out, when everyone is afraid he is brave, when we are not worried then he has to be, see? It’s his job.”

I thought about it and decided she might be right but I had this little ‘itchy’ feeling that just would not go away, that there was something else that we didn’t know. Something that no one knew except Old Man Tucker.

Tucker was waiting out by the truck for Amy, she started to help him get in the passenger seat but he dismissed her. He reminded me of Lucy when she was three: “I can dood it mesef.” The memory made me chuckle and I got a glare from Tucker and an elbow in the ribs from Karen for it. Amy jogged around the front of the truck and fired it up, only a few minutes later they were out of sight.

The day seemed relaxed but we still kept strict over watch. Mrs. West helped me bury the Before, I thought she would be mean or something from the way she hated them but she only seemed a little curious. She examined the claws and the boney eyelids, she pressed the wrist to make the wrist spikes pop out.

She said “it’s small.”

I answered “Yeah, I think it was a girl, maybe a little older than me, I don’t know why really, I just do.”

She looked at it a while and said

“I think you are right. I wonder what she was like.”

I told her I thought she was sweet, then I told her about my relationship with it, how it had ate from my hand. She suggested we not tell Amy or Tucker about that and I said she was probably right about that. We put it in the ground just inside the woods, then went back to the lodge.

As we went down the hill I saw that Amy, Weir and West had been burying our people and I felt guilty for not helping. She said not to worry she knew there was always chores to be done. After that Lucy and Gina and me started to weed the garden but the sky darkened and it began to rain heavily and there was lightning so we went inside. It stormed all through lunch and it got dark so to save the batteries we shut off the solar and lit a couple of oil lamps. Amy and Karen had a pile of dry firewood ready for the fireplace if we needed it as well.

It was kind of hard to wait, and being dismal outside it limited our chores. We did clean every one of our guns, when that was finished Gina and Lucy wanted to play “Viking Boat” again but Amy thought Monopoly would be better since everyone knew how to play. The game did help pass the time until dinner at least even though I didn’t get to be the shoe; after that Karen had over watch so I kept her company.

At nine the rain had let up a little but it was still coming down. Deputy Weir came up to relieve us and we went down stairs to put something dry on. Without thinking I followed Karen into our room, she turned and looked at me,

“So, you think you get to see me naked huh?”

I stammered and my cheeks burned. She laughed and turned me towards the door saying

“Someday Romeo, just not today.”

She patted me on the butt like she was a football coach or something. The door closed behind me and I changed in my room, the idea of her without clothes though, well I tried not to think of that or of garden hoses.

When I came out Amy had put the girls to bed and was talking to Mrs. West. Karen and I were discussing the advantages of having a dog or two if we could find them, the Before had been pretty hard on all animal life, Karen said it seemed they used a lot of calories every day. That’s when Weir called down that the truck was returning. We went out on the porch and saw the rain had stopped at least for now and that was a good thing because the blue tarp coved back of the truck was filled with supplies. We all pitched in and it didn’t take long even though Amy and Tucker had made a rich haul; including a camp stove, six 20lb tanks of propane, two 550 round boxes of .22 long rifle and lots of dry foods including boxes of pancake mix. When it was all inside we decided that inventory could wait until tomorrow. We all sat in a circle and Amy said

“Well. The long and short of it is that they are dead.”

It was incredible, she went on to say they had logged almost 500 miles and had even gone straight to predicted humming circles and had indeed found lots of Before, each and every one was dead, not a mark on them. Mrs. West asked about survivors and she seemed to grow immediately morose. They had gone to the Post Office, and as we suspected it was a burnt out shell, there were lots of dead with at least 15 shot execution style with their hands tied behind their backs.

“Someone might have escaped but if they did they were either hiding or long gone.”

She said there was lots of motorcycle tracks still visible in the mud, so much so there was little doubt who was responsible.

“Dead” I said to Karen, “I can hardly believe it.”

She smiled put her hands around my neck and kissed me. I turned to say something to Tucker but he was gone. I mentioned it and Amy said he had been weird all day, well weirder than usual. She said maybe I could talk to him since he thought so much of me. At first I couldn’t believe what she had said but then I figured it was because of Lucy or a promise he made to mom or something. I went out the front steps but didn’t see him. I walked all around the lodge and then I saw him silhouetted against the moon. He was standing by the graves.

I didn’t try to sneak up on him, really I didn’t, but when I got close enough I could hear him crying. Tucker was crying! I felt uncomfortable and started to leave when I could hear him talking to the dead. He said he was sorry, that everything was his fault; that he didn’t know the monsters were going to die. He said all he wanted to do was fight back, to have his death mean something. I moved closer his back was to me, he was so distraught he still didn’t hear me. Then I got it. The ambush was his idea, his plan, the tracking of the Before, all of it. All of their deaths were on him: Janey, Kelsey and Kyle, Rico and my sister. Probably everyone here as well. That was a lot of guilt. I was about to leave him to it when I heard the familiar click of the hammer of one of his old Colts. I turned back and saw him slowly raise it to the side of his head, to point it at his temple.

I don’t know what came over me, really I don’t. I guess it was just I didn’t want to lose anyone else, maybe temporary insanity or I didn’t want to have to tell Lucy that her personal Monster killer had blown his own brains out. Whatever the reason I reacted quick as a cat;

“NO! Tucker don’t!”

I yelled he was so surprised I think he nearly had a heart attack and saved the bullet, I crossed the distance in a blink of an eye and wrapped my arms most of the way around him and I am ashamed to admit that I too started to cry. I figure it was stress.

“Please Mr.Tucker. Please! We need you, and you didn’t know, and...” (at this time I have to tell you that any nasal discharge on my part was strictly due to allergies). “..and there is Lucy, she loves you. And Amy she loves you even though I don’t know why.”

I babbled for quite a while, I didn’t even realize he had dropped his colt and was hugging me back. Then I pulled out all the stops

“…and Mom made you Old Pie and, and… and I forgive you Mr. Tucker. I really do. I forgive you. Please don’t die.”

Okay, I know it wasn’t all psychologically correct but I had short notice and I wasn’t quite thirteen yet for gosh sakes. Mr. Tucker didn’t say anything for the longest time then he finally said,

“Well John, for you I guess I can put the whole death thing on hold, okay?”

I nodded and he took a red cowboy bandana from his pocket and cleaned my face. We walked down the hill and around to the front steps. We sat there and talked I don’t even remember what we said, but we laughed and kidded around and them Amy came out and joined us and soon all three of us were talking and laughing. Tucker even said something that shocked me

“So John says you love me, is that so?”

Poor Mrs. Driscol was flabbergasted and she was stumbling over her answer and he kept asking,

“So, do ya Amy? Do ya?”

He was laughing, Amy was smiling, and her eyes were sparkling. There was joy.

There are a few moments in a person’s life that we wish we could make last forever. This was one of them. Alas, life does not stop, not for the good or the bad, not for the coward or the brave. Life just is and we have to deal with it however we can until the day we fail and Life lets us go.

There was a roar that continued to grow until the Earth trembled, the windows rattled in their frames.

“John? What is it?”

Amy asked taking Tuckers hand. Suddenly there were a dozen huge white egg shaped objects flying across the sky, one was so close when it went over us it blocked out the sky. It sped off to the west then slowed as it started to land behind a mile of trees. When it set down, all three of us were knocked to the ground by the impact. We could see the top of the egg gleaming in the moonlight even from that distance. Amy asked again,

“John, What in the Hell is going on? What were those things?”

Tucker was silent for a few moments then he said just one word:

“Invasion.”