Tracy’s Chapter - 14

“Mom!” Nicole yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Everyone’s gone!”

Tracy was irritated, last night was the first night in almost a week she had slept clean through. Between the nightmares and Mike’s thrashing about, sleep had been as elusive as an eel in Jell-O. A couple of more hours of blessed sleep and she might almost feel human again. Best not to joke about that, she thought.

“Everyone?” she asked in alarm as she sat up in bed, head swimming in light-headedness. She had not been taking her vitamins as religiously as she had before ‘the infection.’

Depression sometimes weighed heavily on her mind. What was the point of vitamins? They wouldn’t protect against zombies. Guns, one of the things she loathed most in life, were now her only clear salvation. She had turned a blind eye when Mike had begun his slow, methodical collection of guns. She had her own vices, why should she deny him his. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t use drugs, he didn’t run around with other women. He was a good man, maybe a card or two shy of a standard deck but you could always draw in the missing cards on the jokers. Guns! She had worried, A LOT, when he brought the boys shooting, but he was careful and respectful of the power and devastation these devices could inflict. The boys were taught in this manner also. What at first had seemed unnecessary was now paramount to their survival. Civilization and all of its trappings were gone. Darwinism was back. The infirm would die. The strong would survive.

“Everyone?” she asked again, much more softly as she reined in her errant thoughts.

Nicole was now in the bedroom. “Even Tommy,” she answered.

“Are you sure they’re not out on a work detail or getting food or just walking the dog?” Tracy asked. The last question was answered when a loud snort came from the general vicinity of Tracy’s feet.

“Henry, how do you get up on this bed, and without me knowing?” Tracy said as she reached down and patted his snout. Henry obediently rolled over onto his back, expecting and receiving a tummy rub.

“Mom, I went down to the clubhouse and then I went to the gate. They all left. Dad went to the armory and supposedly the boys went to help him but the guard thought they were full of shit.”

“All right, give me a minute.” Tracy said as she pulled the covers the rest of the way off, partially covering Henry. He didn’t stir, apparently happy with his new covering. “What about the guns?” Tracy asked as she headed into the bathroom to put on pants.

People don’t cover their exercise equipment with clothing because it is an easy coat rack. They do it because it hides their guilt. Guilt for having spent so much money on a piece of equipment that now did what any 49-cent hanger could do. The guilt of not having lived up to one’s own expectations, more like promises to oneself. Exercise equipment sent more people to therapists than any dysfunctional mother could hope to achieve.

“When we get back, Nicole, remind me to throw out this elliptical.”

Nicole stared at her mother, believing that she had finally gone over the edge. The stress of the last few days had been great on everyone and obviously her mother had enough.

Tracy opened Mike’s gun safe to find the cache had been nearly exhausted. All that remained was a 22-caliber pistol and rifle. Not that she had any clue to as to what type of guns they were. “How do we know if these are loaded?” Tracy asked Nicole as she picked up the pistol gingerly.

Nicole sighed and walked over to her mother to grab the rifle out of the safe. She proceeded to pretend to know how to load it as she placed it on the bed. Nicole spent the next few anxious minutes under the watchful eye of her mother looking for the nonexistent magazine well, not knowing that .22 rifles are barrel fed. Not wanting to appear ignorant, Nicole picked the weapon back up. “All loaded,” she announced proudly. It wasn’t.

“I didn’t see you put any bullets in it,” Tracy said, but she honestly had no clue. “What about this?” Tracy asked handing over the pistol.

Nicole had watched her boyfriend and her father shoot at least half a dozen times and they always pulled back on something on the top. So when she finally found the mechanism on the pistol that pulled back and then slammed home when her grip faltered, she proudly announced the pistol was also loaded. It wasn’t. At this point Nicole didn’t think they were headed out the gate and was hoping that her armory skills wouldn’t be put to the test.

“Mom, we have no idea where they went and they have at least a fifteen minute head start,” Nicole began pleading. Her mother might be stressed out to the max but Nicole was to put it bluntly, scared shitless.

At 4’11” and maybe 90 pounds after a Thanksgiving dinner, Nicole’s biggest defense had been a Marine dad that some thought might be unstable. Nicole had tortured many a potential threat with the words, ‘My dad knows where you live.’ For some reason Mike could not fathom, all of Nicole’s friends and potential enemies were deathly afraid of him and he had not so much as said boo to any of them. This had all been a device of Nicole. She had made sure that everyone knew of a particular incident in Canada involving her father, several Mounties and a politician. Nicole couldn’t have been any safer if everyone thought her father was Tony Soprano. When her brothers had gotten older they became a second layer of defense, and to top that off was Brendon. If all else failed she had a mouth that belied her diminutive size. To hear her scream one would think they were being besieged by a platoon of howler monkeys. Her dad, who had multiple drill instructors scream at him and shrug it off, shied away from his daughter when her ever-widening pie hole began to vibrate. But shorn of her bodyguards and with an impotent voice, zombies wouldn’t care about screams. It would be more like the sound of a dinner bell to them. She would become what she truly was, Daddy’s little princess. Strip away the abrasiveness of her attitude and there was just a scared young woman.

“I could use some cigarettes too,” her mother announced.

“Let’s go,” Nicole agreed immediately. Addiction is a powerful motivator. Screw the zombies.

Henry looked up from his chair, watching the two women leave. He realized nobody was home and hoped that somebody would be home soon to put out his second breakfast. Tracy and Nicole walked out to the garage. It was when they entered that Nicole noticed the obvious. (Yes, you guessed it, Princess Obvious.)

“You’re going to take Dad’s car?” she asked tremulously.

“Well he did trash my car,” Tracy answered, but not with much verve.

A few months back, Mike and Tracy had been at the grocery store picking out some Starbucks coffee. Mike was in heaven smelling the wonderful aromas of the different beans and spices.

After they had filled up the backseat of Mike’s Jeep and were heading out of the parking lot, Tracy had asked him, if God said this Jeep or me, how hard of a decision would that be for you.

Mike’s answer came swiftly. ‘Oh Hon, that wouldn’t be hard.’ But he hadn’t elaborated and she more than half believed his non-verbalized implication.

“Any better ideas?” Tracy asked.

“Well, we do need cigarettes,” Nicole smiled sickly. More than once in her rebellious youth she had wanted to ‘borrow’ her father’s Jeep when she had snuck out of the house, but she was unruly, not insane. The Jeep had stayed safely tucked away in the garage.

Nicole cautiously climbed up into the passenger seat, half expecting some form of theft deterrent to activate. No matter how much she adjusted the seat and her posture she could not get comfortable; guilt was a difficult suit to wear. Her mother didn’t seem to be wearing it any better than her. The Jeep started loudly in the confined space. If not for the seat belts strapped across their laps, they both might have jumped out. Tracy slowly placed the car in reverse.

“Um, Mom, you might want to open the garage door.”

“Oh yeah, right,” Tracy smiled weakly.

This expedition was getting off to a memorable start, cigarettes or no. Nicole wasn’t sure about the wisdom of this crusade. The door rumbled open, Tracy jerkily popped the clutch, stalling the Jeep. “Oops,”she commented.

“Great,” Nicole muttered under her breath. The next three attempts at reverse didn’t go much better. Then there was first gear to contend with.

Tracy rolled up to the main gate, hopeful they would open it before she lost momentum and had to mess with first gear again.

Igor waved them to a halt.

“Dammit,” Tracy and Nicole muttered at the same time and both for the same reason. Nicole had nearly got her nose broken on the dashboard as the Jeep bucked like a pissed off bronco.

“They be all right, Missus Talbot, they were armed for bear,” he finished when he saw the look of apprehension on her face. “You two should stay here and wait for them to return. It’s too dangerous to go out there.”

“Did you give the boys the same speech?!” Tracy lashed back.

Igor stepped back and motioned for the bus to move. He’d learned a lot of things since he had moved to the States. Women were not subservient like in Russia, and it was best not to stir a hornet’s nest with a short stick. “Have a nice day.” And he walked back towards the bus to get some heat.

Tracy stalled the Jeep twice more at the mouth of the gate. The bus driver seemed on the verge of panic. He was gesturing wildly for Tracy to get out of the entrance way.

“What the hell is he so worried about?” Tracy asked hotly, driving, or actually stalling Mike’s Jeep was getting her flustered. “There isn’t a zombie for miles!” She was wrong, very, very wrong, but they were definitely out of the line of sight. “Keep your damn shorts on!” Tracy yelled as she successfully ground through first and out of the way of the bus. “God, Mike always makes it look so easy.”

“Mom, are you sure we should be out here?” Nicole couldn’t put her finger on it but something didn’t seem right. Her foreboding grew as Little Turtle diminished in the rearview mirror.

Tracy was too busy concentrating on shifting gears to notice anything. It was possible her difficulties with the clutch were stemming more from her subconscious than her foot to pedal interaction. “Huh, got it!” Tracy said triumphantly as she pulled away from the intersection of Havana and Evans with nary a rattle. Now, as she surveyed her surroundings in earnest she had to agree with Nicole. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. She had endangered her daughter and herself and for what, she hadn’t a clue which way her boys had gone. Driving around without a purpose was tantamount to suicide. Sure, they were armed, but neither one of them had shot more than a half dozen bullets and none of those rounds had impacted with the desired targets.

Tracy felt exhausted from the stress of this brave new world, her husband gallivanting all over the place and now her boys were God knows where.

Tracy’s head slumped over the steering wheel as she looked over at her daughter. “Nicole, I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going. Mike will kill us if he finds out about this and not only because we took his Jeep.”

Nicole had never seen her mom so defeated. She had to think of something fast or her mother might just shutdown completely. Nicole had lost her license to drive last year. Not that any patrolman would be stopping to check, but the fact remained that she could barely control an automatic transmission. A clutch was out of the question. The sense of foreboding that she was feeling had not diminished in the least. She had no wish to walk back to the complex.

“I sure could use a smoke,” Nicole said, looking out the corner of her eye, hoping for some reaction besides despair from her mother.

Tracy picked her head up, anguish clearly visible on her taut features. There was also something else…resolve. She was a little bit more than pissed at herself that she should be able to pull out of her funk over a cigarette, but old habits don’t die easily. They can be suppressed or even forgotten for a while but they can and will always rear their ugly heads at the most inopportune times. This, however, was an opportune time. Tracy wasn’t sure if she was mad or grateful that Nicole knew which buttons to push with such precise precision, but after all, she had been practicing for the last eleven years.

Tracy put the truck in gear. “Sounds good to me. Contracting lung cancer is the least of my problems.”

Nicole would have laughed if the thought wasn’t so macabre. Somehow at this point lung cancer was the safer alternative. How the hell did that happen? They drove in silence for only a minute or so as Tracy pulled into the nearest service station a half-mile away. There were a couple of cars in the bays, but they were unattended. Tracy did a lazy figure eight through the parking lot looking for anything that might make this visit not worth their while. Besides spilled gas there were no imminent threats. The lights inside the convenience store were out and the opaque glass masked everything. Tracy parked in front of the store, the Jeep idling quietly. She and Nicole peered intently into the gloom looking for any movement.

“No, if anyone should go in it should be me. I’ve already got two kids, God knows where. You stay here and I’ll run in,” Tracy said, convinced this was the correct maneuver. “If anything happens to me, you just take off,”she said as she began to open her door.

“Shit, you scared me,” Tracy said. As Nicole’s words settled in she realized the dilemma they were in. No matter which approach she took, she would be placing her daughter in danger.

“Let’s go in together,” Nicole interjected before the paralysis of fear took her mother over again.

Nicotine was a powerful drug. It had the power to overwhelm judgment. Tracy nodded weakly. They both opened their doors and stepped out. The cold air was redolent with the scent of spilled gasoline. The noxious fumes made breathing difficult but also had the benefit (or disadvantage) of masking the scent of death. They hurried to the entrance to get away from the overpoweringly strong smell. Had their sense of smell not been burned-out by the gas it would have been assaulted by the now all too familiar stink of death. It would be three breaths too late before they realized their error.

“God, I wish there were some lights on,” Nicole said, a slight tremor in her voice.

Tracy had been first in and was silently glad that was the case. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom inside the store she could make out a pair of scrubs-clad legs sticking out from behind the counter. Those legs were not made for walking anymore. There was also a congealed pool of blood coming from the aisle closest to them. Tracy had no need whatsoever to see what had caused it. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

Tracy shot her hand out and grabbed Nicole’s arm, steering her away from the offending aisle.

“Shhh…did you hear that?” Tracy stopped and listened intently.

Panic welled in them both and Nicole hadn’t even heard a sound. They both stood stock-still as the seconds ticked by. Nicole’s arm began to throb where her mother gripped it like a vise.

Nicole was not one to let a word go unspoken and was about to ask another question when the sound repeated itself. It was rhythmic and faint. There was no menace implied from the sound. All the same Tracy was in no mood to hang around.

Tracy spun to face her daughter. “Let’s just grab a bunch of smokes and some sodas for the boys and get the hell out of here.”

“I’m with you on that, this place gives me the creeps and it’s starting to smell worse than outside. Mom, any particular brand you want me to get?”

“Yeah, all you can carry. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a longtime before Winston-Salem starts pumping more of these out, unless they start to market a brand for zombies. ‘Hey, you’re already dead, why not smoke?’ she tried for a feeble joke.

Both women were so busy ‘shopping,’ neither noticed when the door to the freezer section opened. In the shadows a lone figure stared out at them lustfully.

The image of meat, not the actual word, crossed what rudimentary intelligence the beast possessed. Forward it moved, always forward, always hungry, always in pursuit of its next meal. ‘Life was easy’ it would have thought if it had enough cognitive power to be self-aware. That was not the case though.

Nicole had finished filling her cart and had gone out to the Jeep to fill it with her first load of booty. She couldn’t have been any happier if she had just found Davy Jones’ locker. Her previous dread was long forgotten as she reentered the store. She stopped in her tracks, her smile frozen on her face as she watched in horror. An undead nightmare stalked her unwitting mother.

“Mom!” Nicole shrieked.

Tracy dropped the case of Pepsi. Cans shot out in all directions. As they ruptured, sticky liquid arced through the air. Tracy was about to yell at her daughter for scaring her but when she looked up and saw the sheer terror on her daughter’s face, she knew something was terribly wrong.

Nicole was pointing wildly, her finger thrusting like a woodpecker. Words stuttered in her mouth. “Z-Z-Z…”

Tracy got the point. There weren’t too many words that started with ‘z’ that could instill so much panic, unless of course a murderous zebra was loose in Denver and she was in the way of some succulent wild grass. Tracy spun around to face the threat. Her foot slipped on the newly spilled Pepsi. Her left leg shot out wildly as she plummeted to the ground. The expression on the zombie’s face changed from happiness to confusion as it wondered where its meal had gone. It was a beat or two before its eyes tracked down and locked back on its prey.

Tracy had landed hard on her ass; the fall had not been broken in the least by the tiled floor. Tracy began to back-peddle as the zombie once again began its forward progress. Nicole couldn’t get it out of her head that she wasn’t watching a scary movie on cable; her mind was searching for an escape.

Tracy had pushed back as far as she could, her back colliding with the fridge doors. Her feet sought a purchase that still eluded her on the slick floor. Tracy looked up at her one-shoed pursuer. Shapely legs gave way to a slender waistline and then to what could only be described as porn star breasts. Tracy could barely see around that mounding cleavage to the face mostly hidden beyond. What Tracy saw pissed her off to know end.

“Allison?” Tracy asked indignantly.

Allison-thing slowed her pursuit, not stopping but definitely slowing, as if walking and processing this question were using up most of her operating system.

“Allison Pittman?” Tracy asked again.

The slender face that stared back at her looked confused. The long auburn hair that framed the green eyes was a little bedraggled but for the most part this might be the best looking zombie in the history of the genre, Tracy mused. “I would have hoped that your face got eaten, bitch!” Tracy yelled, as she was finally able to get her feet back under her with the help of the door handle behind her.

“Mom! What’s going on?” Nicole moaned.

The Allison-thing had stopped, almost as if she had had a fatal operating error.

“This thing!” Tracy yelled, “is the bitch that almost split up my marriage.” She glared venomously at the curvaceous corpse.

Right before Mike was laid off from his job, he and Tracy had been having some marital difficulties, as most couples will during a marriage. These problems were exacerbated by the beauty of one conniving, manipulating bitch named Allison Pittman. Allison had become the ‘shoulder’ which Mike had leaned on. She listened intently, always saying the right thing, stroking his ego whenever it needed to be done. She was the perfect seductress. At first Mike hadn’t noticed the subtle shift. They had been friends for almost three years and in that time they had told each other a myriad of private things. Mike could ‘see’ that Allison was one of the prettiest women he had ever laid eyes on. He was happily married and even if he wasn’t, he had talked to Allison long enough to know that her idea of a good time was to devour some poor man’s soul. Then when he was just a dried up husk of himself she would discard him like so much used trash. She was a modern day succubus. Still, she seemed to value their friendship. But when Allison had seen an opportunity, a chink in the marital armor of the Talbots, she did all in her powers to tear open an irreparable wound. It was like a disease with her. She was an unhappy person and wanted everyone else to wallow in her emotional mire. Even as she loathed herself for her actions, she reveled in the thought of bedding Mike and then throwing it in the face of that bitch wife of his.

Mike had finally come to his senses and seen the ruse for what it was. It was almost disastrously too late, but the light of recognition had dawned on him when he was at Allison’s apartment. She had asked him if he would help her move some furniture from one room to the other. He had happily obliged, after all, that’s what friends were for, even if his higher psyche smelled a rat. When he arrived there was a chilled bottle of wine on the table. Mike could see the shimmering candlelight emanating from Allison’s bedroom down the hallway, but the coup de grace was the sheer negligee she was wearing. Mike had always known that she was a stunning looking woman, but this vision that greeted him at the door made him weak at the knees. Mike’s mouth dropped open as panic welled up. He was at a crossroads in his life. Straight ahead lay his wife and kids. Sure, there was some cracked pavement and a pothole or two but it was a scenic, satisfying journey. All Mike could see if he took a hard right in his life with Allison was an ‘under construction’ sign: large orange traffic cones and glaring lit up warning signs that foretold of dangerous curves and hidden bumps that lined the street. That road could be fun for a mile or two. However, Mike was certain that it would end like so many roads he had seen Wile E. Coyote go down so many years before, with a huge sign in the middle of the road that told the driver ‘The End Was Near.’ That would be punctuated, of course, by a huge boulder lying just beyond it. All of this knowledge was too late for the Coyote because he had rocket skates on, but Mike had something that Wile E. didn’t: foreknowledge.

Mike took one more look inside her apartment. Then, one long lingering look at the woman that stood before him. Later he would tell himself it was because he had wanted to be absolutely sure what Allison’s intentions were. Then, without a word, he had turned and walked away. He knew if he had said something, anything, she would have had the perfect riposte and he would have caved. He would have stayed in the apartment and his life would have been irrevocably changed forever, and not for the better.

“Mike?” Allison had asked to his back. “What are you doing?” She had never been on this side of rejection and was not taking to the learning experience too kindly. “You’re turning this down?” she yelled as she flaunted her body.

Even without the condescending tone Mike knew not to turn around. To do so might have turned him to salt like Lot’s wife of Sodom and Gomorrah fame. Or worse yet, have him question what the hell he was doing.

“Go back to your wife!” she yelled. Her tremulous voice reaching volumes that brought out her neighbors, the better to play out this drama.

“What are you, a fag?” she spat. Mike’s face burned as he realized he now had an audience to this spectacle.

Relief flooded through him as he finally reached his car door but was quickly diminished as he realized he would have to turn around to get in. Even from this distance, Allison’s beauty was unrivaled. The sheer hatred that etched her features only confirmed to Mike the wisdom of his decision. Mike’s dick, however, was unstirred by the power of higher reasoning and screamed its own words of hate and discontent at him.

“Definitely not a fag,” Mike said to himself as he made some adjustments to himself, started the Jeep and got the hell out of Dodge.

Allison’s eyes burned holes into the back of Mike’s head as he made his hasty retreat. Her apartment shook from the force she had applied to her door as she slammed it home. It was from that point forward that she had begun to formulate a plan to get Mike dismissed from his job. She had hoped for a scandal of epic proportions and was disappointed when she was only able to manage a ‘job discontinuance.’ She had felt nothing close to remorse when she came to his office that final morning, only something akin to a fulfilling satisfaction.

“Last day?” she had laughed from his office door, a smug smile on her face.

Mike was fairly certain of Allison’s hand in this, but had no desire to give her any more satisfaction than she was already deriving from it.

“Yeah, it’s time for a change, I’ve got some prospects back East that I’m looking forward to checking out.”

It was all a lie, Mike was deeply scared about losing his job, but to see her smirk come off her face for just a fraction of a second made it all seem worthwhile. Mike continued to load his last box with his belongings. Allison was irate as she pushed off from his doorframe. Revenge, unfulfilled. She stalked off, looking for her next victim.

Mike had told Tracy everything about that day, except the part about his traitorous penis. The liabilities of that disclosure far outweighed the benefits. Tracy had on more than one occasion wanted to confront Allison and let her know what she thought of her. Unlike Mike, Tracy was completely convinced that Allison had engineered Mike’s employment demise and had since wanted to exact revenge. Now the demon spawn stood before her, in all her deadly regal beauty.

“How does a zombie look so fucking good?” Tracy asked as she finally got to her feet.

“Mom?” Nicole was still bewildered, but finally took her mother’s words to heart and looked at the monster in front of them.

Except for some unkempt hair and a grayish sheen to her skin tone, the zombie was a knock out. For a second or two Nicole wasn’t sure if they were being confronted by a monster or just a starving civilian. All pretense of a peaceful outcome was shattered as the Allison-thing reengaged her one-track mind. Her mouth opened wide, revealing bits and chunks of her last conquest. Like the door of an ancient mausoleum creaking open, the stench of death issued forward. Nicole brought her pistol up to bear, her hand shaking wildly as she pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Nicole waited impatiently for the terse spring of the recoil and the acrid smell of gunpowder. All that happened was her hand shook wildly from side to side and the acidic smell of decay flooded her senses.

“Shit!” Nicole yelled as she pulled the trigger again and again, but still nothing happened, not even the satisfactory slamming of the firing pin hitting home.

Tracy had not been stationary during this brief interlude; she had also brought her rifle to bear. The Allison-thing was so close that her mouth closed around the barrel of the rifle.

‘Gonna be tough to miss from this distance,’ Tracy thought with a certain sense of satisfaction.

“This oughta take care of that shit-eating grin, BITCH!” Tracy yelled just as she pulled the trigger.

Yes, Allison-thing’s grin did expand, but not because of any hot lead injection. Tracy realized the gun wasn’t loaded. It was more useless than Viagra at a Promise Keeper's Convention. Allison-thing was held at bay as the muzzle of the weapon pressed against the back of her throat. Tracy wanted to scream in rage and frustration, in revenge unfulfilled. Meanwhile, Nicole picked up the closest object that she could find. Tracy reeled as the flying box of condoms narrowly missed hitting the side of her head.

“Really?! That’s the best that you could do?” Tracy shouted.

“Sorry Mom. What are we gonna do?” Nicole shrieked, hysteria rising dangerously close to the surface.

“Go behind the register and see if there’s a bat or a crowbar or something to hit her over the head with,” Tracy said as she struggled with the Allison-thing.

The zombie still hadn’t figured out that to get to the meat it would have to dislodge from the bitter metal stick. The barrel was coming dangerously close to pushing through the back of her slender neck.

“There’s only a cane!” Nicole shouted from the register station.

“That’ll have to do. Hurry, I don’t know how much longer I can hold her back.”

Tracy was struggling under the relentless assault. The Allison-thing would never stop. Tracy knew that even as her arms ached with the strain of holding the undead bitch away from her. Tracy was proud as her daughter conquered her rising tide of fear and approached the zombie, cane upraised. Nicole swung with all her might, but between the mass of the cane and the lack of muscle Nicole possessed, the blow did little more than irritate her mother’s assailant. Again she raised the cane and struck. The zombie finally noticed that she was being attacked. It backed up, dislodging itself from the gun and turned her full attention on the small morsel of meat to her side. ‘Succulent’ was its vacant thought.

“Mom!” Nicole wailed as she dropped the cane and backed away.

Tracy’s arms were burning from the exertion of holding the zombie at bay. As the Allison-thing came loose, Tracy’s arms fell. The rifle in reality weighed only seven pounds, but right now it might as well have been seventy. She caught her breath as the zombie turned all of its attention to her daughter. Nicole was moving backwards, her eyes wild with fear. The look of sheer terror on her face got her mother moving.

“First my husband! Then me! And now you want my daughter?!” Tracy screamed. She turned the rifle around so she was holding the barrel. “Well, you can’t have any of us! BITCH!” Tracy said, as she swung the beefy end of the stock with a strength and aim even Babe Ruth would have been proud of.

With contact came that disgusting sound that only a collapsing skull can make. Some compare it to the sound of a watermelon exploding after a three-story drop. In reality this isn’t even close. It is a much more visceral concussion. The sound assails the senses with the ire of a screeching cat in the dead of night. It is as repellent as a horde of spiders crawling on your head or getting your sternum poked or watching people chew with their mouths open. You get the point. It is a sound that is not meant for human ears. The stock of the rifle nearly stuck in the caved-in cranium of the Allison-thing. As Tracy pulled the gun back she was greeted with an audible pop as the suction between bone, blood and wood separated. Allison-thing’s head hung at an awkward angle. Her body stopped in midstride. It attempted to swivel its head to see its attacker but the bones in her delicate neck were in no better shape than her mashed in melon. Tracy heaved a cry of satisfaction and relief as the Allison-thing collapsed to the floor. Some violent twitching from her extremities kept Nicole and Tracy engrossed for a few long macabre moments. Tracy had more expletives she wanted to shout at her downed adversary but was fearful if she opened her mouth only the contents of her roiling stomach would issue forth. Finally the Allison-thing lay still.

Tracy grabbed Nicole’s arm and pulled her through the exit. Not a word was said on the ride home, or ever again on the matter. Mike would learn of the cigarettes, eventually, but when he questioned his wife, the stern look on her face kept him from pressing the matter. He didn’t see any reason to pry any further. Women were a complete and utter mystery to him but he knew enough about when to keep his mouth shut.