Damn that Brian, Milt thought, parking under a tree into which birds eagerly flutter.
Milt hated birds. He didn’t know what kind these were, but he knew he despised them. He had no doubt they were the ones that snuck up to his tiny basement window each morning to wake him with their terrorizing chirps and cheeps.
The chirps and cheeps were already beginning, and Milt felt the throbbing in his head instantly increase.
But I’m the zombie slayer now, he encouraged himself, surely I can take care of a few little birds.
Milt drew his sword from its scabbard and raised it, pointing it directly at the birds. They stopped singing and regarded him in a way that he interpreted as bewilderment, followed rapidly by cool indifference.
The birds resumed their song.
Thoroughly brimming with anger, Milt waved the sword at the birds, hoping to frighten them out of their perch.
The twittering birds refused to budge, and seemed to Milt to twitter with more resolve each time he whirled his sword at them. There was only one thing he could conclude—they were mocking him, and the birds, unreachable as they were, quite literally had the upper wing.
Milt continued to wave the sword about his head until his arms grew tired. He stopped, not having waved the sword for very long, and jammed it back into its scabbard.
Frustrated and out of breath, Milt decided to rest for a few minutes before continuing with his bird-flushing.
He was catching his breath from the sword-waving when the birds’ chirruping took on a more frantic tone, and Milt was convinced the sound was hell-born. He had no doubt these creatures were harbingers of the damned: perhaps they themselves were the very cause of the zombie plague.
Milt decided to throw something at the branch, and not having anything suitable within reach, he would have to climb down from the hood of the car to find a throwing object.
He began to mentally prepare himself for his dismount, and he knew that even if he didn’t find anything to lob at the birds, he would have to get off the car anyway, for he had to escape the infernal birdsong one way or another.
As he was sliding his great rear toward the front of the car, Milt lost control of his jiggling body and slid forward on the hood’s slippery surface. He landed painfully on the car’s front bumper, then toppled to the wet pavement.
The sword clattered to the ground next to him, and he jerked away from the noise, trying to avoid being sliced.
The car made several clanging noises, and Milt was uncertain whether they were noises of gratitude, defiance, defiant gratitude, or just a vehicular death rattle.
Milt got up onto his haunches, slamming his lower back painfully into the car’s bumper as he tried to balance himself, then struggled to his feet.
He picked up his sword and cursed at the birds. The four little birds drew themselves up, flapped their wings at Milt, and flew away.
“Taunting devils,” Milt muttered in disgust. At least, he decided, he could take pride in the rapid-fire way in which he had gotten up. That was an unusual accomplishment for Milt, who usually took upwards of half a minute to heave his great body up into a vertical position.
As he rubbed his lower back, Milt considered that perhaps he was being too hard on Brian. After all, the car’s location was quite fortunate given the rain.
Then again the spot was an obvious bird attraction.
And yet again, parking without tree cover meant an overheated car to return to.
And yet once more, Milt remembered, Brian had done the parking at night, so the tree wasn’t likely to have been a consideration then.
Brian had likely not been in a thinking state at all. He’d probably been strung out and high and all he could think of were snacks, or “munchies,” as the marijuana tokers liked to call the packaged sweet and salty treats that marked a good high’s progression.
In the munchies’ context, the car’s position was a testament to Brian’s stupidity, in parking so far away from the Wegmans, at the far end of the parking lot.
Milt shrugged, admitting to himself that there may be other reasons that tokers take into account when parking their vehicles—reasons of which Milt had no knowledge. Perhaps there was no winning with this one, and perhaps Brian deserved no blame for his car positioning at all.
Finding himself suddenly empathetic, Milt resolved to be nicer to the baseball bat-clutching simpleton, whether he was a drug dealer or not. Milt decided that people deserved second chances, especially in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. He and Brian might be the last people on Earth, so Milt told himself he should make an effort to get along with the man.
Milt coughed at the mental image, realizing that he didn’t want that at all. To be left alone with Brian as the final remnant of humanity: it was horrible to even consider as within the realm of the possible.
Still, Milt knew he’d been too hard on the aspiring squire, and, oddly enough, Milt was anxiously awaiting his return.
It wasn’t only for Brian’s quick return that Milt wished, but for the arrival of more company—of more uninfected human company, to be precise.
Wishing for company was an odd thing for Milt, and he knew it. He had always been comfortable with his reclusive lifestyle, and he was more comfortable alone than as part of a group. Being secluded, to Milt, was always preferable to social interaction. Until now? Milt needed—desperately wanted—more people to join his party, more people with whom to adventure in this wondrous post-apocalyptic world that was now ripe for conquest.
He didn’t fully understand this feeling, but after a few moments of hands-on-hips introspection, he concluded that his new desire to interact with others must somehow be related to the restructuring of the social hierarchy brought about by the zombie apocalypse. Milt knew that he was a natural born leader—at least based on his video game abilities—and now the time had come for him to lead in real life, to lead the remaining uninfected humans.
Then, as if placed there by divine providence, Milt spied an SUV. He watched as the car slowly snaked its way through the stopped traffic of the access road into the strip mall, coming from the direction of Route 29. As it got closer, Milt could make out that there was a man and a woman in the front. The man was driving, and he looked big.
“Hey!” came a man’s voice.
Milt snapped his head over toward the source of the noise to find that Brian had emerged from the Wegmans, and was jogging over to where Milt stood.
“A car!” Brian yelled. “Milt, do you see it? A car! People!”
Then Brian was beside Milt, panting with his hands resting on his knees.
“Well?” Brian said as he pointed to the SUV, “do you see it? I’m sure it’s not zombies driving.”
“Yes I see it,” Milt said, containing his excitement. It was as if his wish was being granted. How strange, he thought, strange and delightful.
“Well aren’t you excited, or at least happy to see there are other people still?”
Milt cleared his throat. “To be sure, your alacrity is misplaced. We know nothing of these newcomers, or of their intentions, which may very well be malevolent.”
“What? No. People stick together in situations like this, to help each other.”
“Unless they having pillage and plunder on the brain.”
“Well, yeah, but...” Brian shrugged. “I guess we’ll know very soon what they’re up to.”
The car was winding through the parking lot, driving away from Milt and Brian.
“We should go after them,” Brian said. “They might not see us.”
Then, as if hearing Brian’s words, the car stopped suddenly with a screech of tires. It slowly began rolling again, and turned around a row of cars to face Milt and Brian.
“It seems,” Milt said, “that they have now ascertained our whereabouts.”
Brian nodded. “Here they come.”
The car began to advance slowly toward the shaded, far end of the parking lot, as if its occupants were examining Milt and Brian from afar.
Milt scratched at the sticky spot around his left nipple, which was no longer as sticky after the rain. Then he took two cold puffs of his inhaler, and sprang forward in barely-contained anticipation.
From a distance, he looked like an enormous, rapidly advancing Jell-O Pudding Snack.
85
Lorie sat at the edge of her seat. Her elbows were on the divider between the two front seats, and she was peering through the windshield as they slowly drove toward the far end of the parking lot.
She couldn’t believe what she saw there. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and looked again. But it was still there.
An enormous blob of pudding was jiggling toward them.
Lorie blinked and looked again.
The pudding was wearing a trench coat and fuzzy slippers.
The pudding had a pony tail.
“Is that a pudding or a person?” Lorie asked.
“What?” Sven asked.
“Right there, next to the guy we spotted with the baseball bat.”
“Oh, oh God, right. I didn’t make that guy out at all.”
“So you’re going with person?”
“Yeah...I guess.”
“You should sell him some sessions,” Jane said weakly. “Not that the money will do you much good if the zombies take over.” Jane let out a frail laugh, and Lorie could tell she was trying to make up for what had happened before, with Evan and the gun.
Lorie understood what that meant of course. She understood what Jane was thinking, and she hoped that Evan did not. Though Lorie had said nothing, she hoped that Evan interpreted the whole thing as an overreaction on account of Jane’s understandably frazzled nerves. That was not an unreasonable interpretation given the way the day was going. Lorie fervently hoped that Evan was not...was not suspecting that he was...even if he was it would probably be better not to know, and—
“That,” Sven said, “is not someone I can help.”
“Why not?” Lorie asked. “Wait, look! He’s got a sword. A sword!”
“How do you know it’s a he?”
“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” Jane said. “I don’t like the looks of this guy.”
Lorie wondered why Jane should be worried about a guy with a sword when they had so many weapons with them now.
“No, this is good,” Sven said. “Real good.”
Lorie thought she heard something strange in Sven’s voice, and she looked over and saw that he was smiling. “What are you so happy about?”
“I know that guy.”
“The pudding?”
“No, no, not the pudding, the other one, the one with the baseball bat, that’s Brian.”
“Hey, I think I remember him,” Jane said. “He’s the...he’s the delivery guy right?”
“Right. Gets me my protein and supplements when I’m in a jam. He’s a life-saver, a great guy too.”
The car was now pulling up in front of the two strangers. Lorie watched, bewildered, as the pudding man waddled out in front of the car, the soft parts of his vast body joggling with each step. Then he put up his hand, palm facing the car, in a signal of halt.
Lorie stared at the hand, trying to make out fingers, but all she could see were weakly differentiated protrusions of pudge, emanating from the remainder of the pudding’s arm. She decided it was a mitt, and not a hand at all.