Other Pursuits and the Actor

Anyone who knows me knows I write. I don’t adhere my writing to corporate construct, however. I write what I want to, and I write what I feel. I don’t think of my words according to marketability. This is not to say that I don’t want to be published. Quite the contrary. But I don’t want to have to fit my own personal voice into the constricting framework required by modern corporate publishing houses. Am I self-indulgent? Probably. But so what? Quentin Tarantino may be the most self-indulgent filmmaker in the history of cinema, and he is revered and continues to make lots of money doing whatever the hell he wants. (Side note: I do not actually believe I am anywhere near the level of self-indulgence that Tarantino demonstrated with both “Death Proof” and that war movie he did with the misspelled title.) I am not the kind of guy who could write romance novels for the masses or even screenplays about museum things that come alive at night. I write what interests me. And there is no point in trying to pursue a living as a writer, because the only people who actually make real money doing it are Stephen King and those guys that wrote those movies about museum things coming to life. It’s like hitting the lottery.

Me, I want my writing to always be…mine.

But, yes, I would like to get published. Really, at forty years of age, I’ve reached a point where I will happily enjoy acceptance from just about anybody. I would like to be welcomed into somebody’s artistic community. No matter how small. So I wrote a short horror story (I like horror stories) for a small publication, one of the only magazines I could find willing to accept unsolicited submissions from unknown writers. I wrote something that I thought was fun, funny, and action-packed. Now, I admit when I write I like to shake up the foundations of grammar. It is a choice, not the result of ignorance or laziness. I often use long, silly sentences that a high school English teacher would call “run-on” sentences. But “run-on” sentences are usually very difficult to understand, and I believe mine make perfect sense. I use them for comic effect, and in the particular instance of this story I submitted, I used these rambling sentences to evoke a hectic feeling. You see, that’s a choice. Maybe you don’t like it, that’s fine. But the feedback I got on the story was simple: I didn’t put all my information at the top of the page, and I use “run-on” sentences. I figured that since I was submitting by email, all he had to do was read it and respond to my email…why would he need a bunch of information at the top of the page? And I already defended my “run-on” sentences, but it seems to me if you are running a publication, you should be able to see that an artist is making an off-beat choice as opposed to treating him like you are a high school english teacher (and by the way, every english teacher I ever had would point out these grammatical errors I did on purpose, but often say they appreciated that I was doing it despite their obligation to proper grammar. Which this guy didn’t. Which means he publishes works but doesn’t have the deeper understanding of artistic license that an average english teacher does.)

But you know what? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s right. Maybe you would agree. So here it is, run-on sentences and all, for you to judge. (Once again the internet is the only place where I can turn myself on the world…of which only maybe four people will notice.) I call it:

The Christmas Squirrel

 

 

 

 

It was madness.

Morning always was.

 After another groggy awakening, alarm going off and the boy barging into the bedroom, dear old dad was up and the silent house was suddenly a bustle of half-panic in order to get the grade school teacher and the kindergartner out of the door in time. How people who didn’t have a teacher for a wife and a kid going to the same school got everyone everywhere they needed to be on time was beyond him. Despite the limited funds provided by a teacher’s salary, he still thanked the cosmos that he had a teacher for a wife. Yeah, it sure is great what an underpaid educator does for children and society at large, but really his gratefulness came down to a matter of logistics.

He knew the house was small and easy to fill with noise, but he was still always amazed that a mere three people could create what felt like an indoor tornado.

 Used to be that he and Marg took turns on lunch making duty, but now he was flying solo. She was putting on the make-up, and he was in the kitchen hassling with the two whining cats that wanted their morning meal of moist canned food (rest of the day they had to deal with the dry stuff.) He heard her talking to Ben as she got herself dressed.

“You need to get dressed for school right now or you won’t have time for breakfast.”

“I know.”

“Of course you know. But you’re still not dressed.”

“I had to get some toys for the car.”

“You do that after breakfast if you have time.”

“I know.”

 “Why do we have do to do this every morning?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who starts it, not me.”

“Ben. Get dressed. And don’t forget to make your bed and feed your fish.”

 He gave his usual grunt of frustration, and stomped off to do all the stuff he hadn’t yet done that he knew he was supposed to do because he had to do it every damn day. And the cats circled the dear old dad’s ankles, and rubbed against his shins, and whined until he placed the food on the floor, and he knew exactly how his son was feeling. He put the tin foil back on top of the open cans, put them in the fridge (which had started making a funny noise a week earlier, but he had already tuned it out) and then pulled out the fixings for sandwiches. Roast beef today, mayo and mustard (no mustard for the boy,) multi-grain and mass produced gluten-rich bread, packaged cheese slices, and pickle chips. He used to add lettuce and tomato, because really that’s supposed to be the healthy part of your average sandwich, but he got too many complaints about wilted leaves and soggy bread, so instead he now added a small side of either baby carrots or grape tomatoes which were never eaten by either of them. But at least he was giving them the option of eating their vegetables.

 Before he started assembling the sandwiches he started the coffee brewing because if Marg didn’t get her giant to-go mug she would be extra cranky, and her routine morning impatience with everything was bad enough as it was. (She wasn’t a cranky woman, quite the opposite actually, but she was never a morning person, and given their current situation and the pressures that weighed her down, he did everything in his power to make sure she had no reason whatsoever to get annoyed or angry.) Dumped some coffee in the reusable filter, poured filtered water into the reservoir, and then he started the old coffee maker brewing. Marg was a lot more precise about measuring the coffee than he was, and she insisted on it because she believed eyeballing it led to a bad tasting brew, but unless she was actually looking over his shoulder he used the eyeball method. She never complained, so he figured either she didn’t really notice the difference or had given up the criticism due to the daily morning pandemonium.

He also put the kettle on the stove and started it for boiling, and put a packet of oatmeal in a small bowl. Ben liked oatmeal. Really, it was the only thing he liked. (Well, pancakes and waffles smothered in syrup, but that was reserved for lazy weekend breakfasts.)

 So, back to the sandwiches. He laid out the bread, spread on the condiments making sure to remember which pair had mustard and which didn’t, then he layered on the meat and the cheese and the pickles. He topped the pile with the other slice of bread, cut the sandwiches in half, and jammed the sandwiches into some plastic containers. He put the containers along with the vegetable snacks and an apple for the wife and banana for the boy in the lunchboxes, one a simple green and the other adorned with superheroes. He put ice packs in each, because this was Southern California and Southern California can get hot even in winter and heat is not good for perishable food items. As he packed, Marg and Ben came out for breakfast, and Marg made herself toast with peanut butter and finished putting together Ben’s oatmeal.

“I want juice,” said Ben.

“Try that again,” he said.

“May I please have some juice?”

 Marg smiled. “I love the sound of that.”

Dear old dad poured the juice.

“Did you make your bed and feed your fish?” he asked Ben.

“Yeah, I…oh, no, I made my bed but forgot the fish.” He jumped up from the breakfast table.

 “One day this stuff will sink in, right?” dear old dad asked Marg.

“Who knows?” she answered. He gave her a peck on the cheek, and left her to her toast.

He started to clean up the kitchen. Ben returned and joined his mother in inhaling a five-minute breakfast at the “dining room” table which wasn’t a dining room at all but part of the “great room” combination of living room and dining area which wasn’t “great” at all but tight or “cozy” if you are a real estate agent.

“And aren’t you forgetting something?” Ben asked his dad.

“Right,” he answered, and then walked over to the Christmas tree in the corner of the living room. He plugged it in, and the lights started blinking while various ornaments started turning round and round, connected to special Christmas light adapters that had loud little motors that spun in a circle.

“Yay!” said Ben.

And then breakfast was over and sunblock was applied, school materials collected, kisses and hugs and good wishes exchanged, and that was it. The door closed. The car pulled away. The cats were asleep.

The tornado was over.

He unplugged the tree.

 And the involuntary stay-at-home dad was left alone to have his own quick breakfast, and neaten up the house and do the dishes while he listened to a podcast or two on his iPhone which he really could no longer afford but couldn’t bring himself to get rid of. When he was done with the morning chores, he switched from the chatter about the latest movies and sporting events to some metal music from his high school years because it was the only music that provided the right kind of inspiration for his morning jog. He used to go to the gym, but that wasn’t in the budget anymore.

“Nothing is in the budget anymore,” he said aloud to himself. His older cat, an overweight tuxedo, looked up from her nap on top of the cat perch, and he flipped her the bird.

 He changed from his bathrobe into a pair of old shorts (old was all the wardrobe he had anymore,) left on the T-shirt he had spent the night in, and strapped on his well worn sneakers. He went out the back door, did a couple quick stretches, walked through the back gate, and geared up mentally for his daily attempt at burning the fat on his belly that kept getting bigger anyway.

 His struggling lemon tree next to the garage with the peeling exterior paint seemed to get uglier every day, and on his way out he noticed a couple caterpillars climbing up the trunk. He stopped to look closer, and saw that there were several of the fuzzy little things making their way out from the trunk to the branches. One of them crawled to the underside of a branch and just…let go. It fell to the ground below, and a squirrel scampered out from one of Marg’s “hummingbird bushes” as she called them, and it snagged the caterpillar and ran back for cover.

If he knew a damn thing about caterpillars, he would have known that this was not normal, but he didn’t and all he could think was that he would have to go to Home Depot and spend money on poison if he wanted to save the ugly old lemon tree.

But first things first. Fat had to be burned. He used to make jokes about all the poor people down the street that were so fat…how could poor people afford so much food? But he knew now that it wasn’t that easy to stay away from food that makes a person fat when you have no money. Cheap food is cheap food, and it is salty and fatty and carb-heavy and loaded with chemicals and the more you eat it the fatter you get. Would all economically challenged folks go to Whole Foods if they could? Who knows? But it doesn’t much matter, because healthy food is too damn expensive. And the other trouble with unemployment is of course the temptation of having a few drinks every night, or more, because what the hell does a hangover matter when all you have to do is get up and make some sandwiches and clean the house, and then listlessly surf the net to prove to yourself that no, there still aren’t any jobs out there.

 When he first switched from the gym to what he jokingly dubbed his “environmental workout,” he ran in the street because asphalt has more give than concrete, but he needed his music to do his run, and as a result had not heard a couple cars coming and those cars had come too close. So with every footfall his middle-aged knees felt the pain of unrelenting concrete which he ignored because he was fat and fat was not good for getting jobs in the advertising industry, especially when young lookers were everywhere who worked for less money and even as he changed his asking price he found that the young pretties were still the favorites, experience and competence be damned. It used to be that the good looking people were only in front of the cameras, but dear old dad had watched as the powers that be surrounded themselves with more and more beauty behind the scenes. He got it, sure, who wouldn’t want gorgeous all around? But he had paid his dues. And his dues didn’t matter.

 One foot fall, slap, then the next, bang, and his knees whimpered in protest, but the AC/DC and Metallica made it possible to fight through the pain. When he jogged, he was in his own body, in his own head, and he barely noticed his middling middle-class suburban neighborhood. He didn’t notice the green lawns, or the occasional yard that had gone native, covered in shrubs and succulents that could survive the dry landscape. He didn’t notice all the adornments of the holidays, wreathes and strings of lights everywhere and lawn decorations.  (If he had, he would have complained to himself about those inflatable Santas and snowmen that stood tall at night when their fans and lights were on, but lay flat and ugly during the day while their owners were at work.)  He didn’t notice the Hispanic landscapers loading and unloading lawn mowing equipment from their near broken down old tiny pickup trucks. He didn’t notice the little girl playing in her front yard while her mother cleaned up the weeds from her flower beds. He didn’t notice the green leafy trees lining the street he was on, or the tall palm trees looming over the neighborhood from the next block. His head was up but his eyes weren’t registering anything except the occasional bump in the sidewalk to avoid a face plant. (He had fallen once on a jog, had cursed the world for cheating him out of a gym membership, and wound up going to the doctor because a skinned knee had become infected. And on a teacher’s medical plan, that infection sucked up an entire week of unemployment insurance.)

But then he did notice something.

It was a squirrel.

 It was a squirrel in the middle of the sidewalk. It was very still, sitting back on its haunches with its head held high, and it was looking at him. He kept running, figuring the bushy-tailed rat was just startled and would soon dash away, but the squirrel didn’t do that. It stayed still, staring. He slowed his pace in order to give the squirrel some extra time to get out of the way.

“Stupid thing,” he said to himself.

But the stupid thing wasn’t changing its position. And his footfalls slowed until he was walking, and then he was a mere fifteen feet away from the rodent and it still hadn’t moved. Suddenly the squirrel wasn’t the only thing absolutely still in the middle of the sidewalk. He remembered when he was a kid his mother had warned him about docile animals. If you see something like a squirrel that doesn’t run when you come near it, that doesn’t mean it is friendly and wants to be pet. It could be a sign of rabies, and you need to get away as quickly as possible.

This squirrel didn’t have any froth around its mouth, and it didn’t seem angry as many rabid animals are, but it still didn’t have that main characteristic of most small, scampering woodland creatures: fear.

He took a step back. The squirrel didn’t move, so he took another step back.

He waited. He watched. The squirrel then took one small leap toward him, and then was still again, back on its haunches. It cocked its head a bit to eye the jogger.

“You looking for a handout?” he asked, thinking that maybe this was a park squirrel that had wandered into the neighborhood, tame and interested in people because he had been treated to a lot of handouts by picnickers.

The squirrel took another leap toward him, and he took another step back. Then the squirrel took three leaps in a row, hopping to close the gap, and he took several steps back, his hands now up in front of him to defend himself.

 He could hardly believe this was happening, squaring off with a squirrel. What did it want? Was it sick or just hungry? He didn’t want to take any chances. He took three large steps backwards, then turned on his heels. He began to jog in the other direction. He didn’t want to light into a full-fledged sprint, he didn’t want this aggressive little thing to sense fear, but when he glanced back over his shoulder, the squirrel was following. It wasn’t moving quickly either, but even moving slowly it was closing the distance between them.

“Shit,” he said aloud.

He wondered if anyone was watching, he wondered if he looked ridiculous trying to get away from a squirrel. He was a grown man, six feet tall, and he was unnerved by this furry little thing. His son had a stuffed animal squirrel, cute as can be, and when he was three his favorite thing was going to the park with dad and watching the squirrels. And now, for some reason, dad was afraid. Dear old dad was afraid of squirrel.

Time to run for real.

He lit into that sprint after all. He hadn’t run that fast in a long time, and why would he? Only people who run like this are Olympic sprinters and people who are genuinely running for their lives. His brow was bursting with sweat, the salt stinging his eyes a bit, but he didn’t think to wipe it off. He just looked over his shoulder again to see that the squirrel had picked up its pace as well and that’s when he realized that this wasn’t just some odd occurrence anymore that would result in a funny story to share with his family over dinner. This was a chase.

It was a chase.

He passed by a couple of landscapers who barely looked up from their leaf blowing, and he imagined they didn’t notice the tiny creature he was running from and figured he was just a fast jogger. He came around a small bend, nearly tripping on a tree root bursting up through the sidewalk because he was looking over his shoulder again. The squirrel was a mere four feet away at this point, and in seconds it would be nipping at his heels. He saw the tow-headed little girl playing in the yard that he hadn’t noticed before and he had a split second thought:

She was an easier target. If he outran this thing somehow, it would change its sights. He took a sharp right into that front yard, tore across the deep green grass, left muddy shoe prints on the deflated Santa and Frosty lawn ornament, and grabbed that girl with both hands and held her to his chest. She screamed and starting kicking at him, but he just held her tight. Behind him, he heard her mother scream.

“Put her down! Put my daughter down! Help! Help us!”

He didn’t stop, and ran through their open front door. The little girl’s mother came tearing in after them. He threw the girl into the living room sofa, and she screamed even louder, then he turned around to push the hysterical woman to the side, and slammed the door shut and locked it. The door actually seemed to buckle when the squirrel hit it from the outside. He moved from the locked door to look out the large picture window directly to the left. He saw the squirrel stumble to the middle of the yard, shake its head, and then it stood up on his haunches again, and stared at him through the window.

The little girl’s mother was holding her crying daughter on the sofa, checking her for injuries.

“What do you want from us?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, catching his breath and trying to gain control over the panic. “I’m sorry…it’s just…”

“Get out,” she commanded, standing up.

“I can’t,” said dear old dad.

“Get out of here right now!” she yelped.

“I can’t.”

“Mommy?” asked the little girl. “What’s happening?”

“There’s a squirrel…” he started to explain.

“Don’t hurt us!” the little girl yelled.

“I’m not going to hurt anyone! There is a rabid squirrel out there!”

The woman, her light brown hair spilling from under her bandana, clearly thought he was insane, and changed her approach. “Okay,” she said in a soft, condescending voice, “you are afraid of a squirrel…that’s okay…just let my daughter and me go and you can stay inside and you’ll be safe.”

“Did you not hear it hit your door? I’m not letting you out there.”

She grabbed a wireless phone off the charger sitting on the end table next to the couch. “If you don’t let us go, I’ll call the police.”

“Fine,” he replied, “yeah, call them. Call animal control, too.”

“Please,” she said.

“Call the fucking police!” he yelled at her, hoping playing into her assumption that he was a crazy man might get her dialing.

It did.

“Yes!” she said into the phone. “We are being held hostage in our own home by some crazy man. Okay, I’ll stay on the line.”

“Good,” said dear old dad. “I’m not crazy. I’m your neighbor. I live a few blocks away.”

The little girl burrowed into her mother’s side, looking out at him from behind an arm.

“I like your tree,” he said to her, pointing at the huge tree a few feet to the right of their stone fireplace. “What do you want Santa to bring this year?”

The little girl started to answer but her mother cut her off. “Don’t talk to my daughter.”

 “Sorry,” he said. “I like your house. It’s very nice. My wife would love to fix ours up the same way.” The house had finished hardwood floors, was perfectly painted with crown molding, had furniture that matched. The direct opposite of his place. He had begun secretly harboring disdain for people that had made real money. And the tree? It truly was spectacular. It looked like something out of Martha Stewart, decorated uniformly in silver and white, including frosted branches. And it smelled so sweet, it smelled like the holidays. He wouldn’t even have had a tree if they hadn’t bought the fake one eight years prior. “I really do like your tree.”

She said nothing, just stared daggers at him with the phone up to her ear.

 He looked out the giant picture window to check on the status of the squirrel. At that moment, he saw one of the many busted up old little landscaper pick-up trucks pull up to the curb outside. Two men, one young and one old, most likely father and son judging by their similar features, both wearing grungy jeans and button down shirts, got out and put ramps up to the truck bed in order to get a lawn mower down and out. The younger man put a leaf blower on his back and grabbed a gas-powered weed wacker. He disappeared around the side of the attached garage.

“Is your squirrel gone?” asked the woman.

“I don’t see it,” he answered. “But your guys are here, we need to tell them it’s out there.” Dear old dad started to wave his arms and shout, “Hey, guys! Look out for the squirrel! There’s a rabid squirrel!”

The old man looked at him, squinting to see him better, the sun reflecting off the window and making it hard to see inside.

“The squirrel! Look out for the squirrel!”

The old man started for the front door when the young man stumbled back into the yard, clutching his shin. Blood seeped in between his fingers from the bite wound beneath his torn jeans, and he struggled to get the leaf blower off his back. He was cursing in Spanish, and the old man turned to help him. The young man started to scream, falling back onto the grass still clutching his leg, and then he began to convulse.

The old man stood over him, not knowing what to do, terror in his eyes.

“What’s happening?” the woman asked.

Dear old dad’s eyes were wide with panic. “He was bitten! One of your guys! He was bitten…something’s happening, I don’t know. I need to go out there…I need to help…please stay here…”

She got up from the couch to look out the window as he started for the door. He stopped dead in his tracks when she screamed. When he looked back out the window, he saw the young man had the old man pinned to the ground, and had buried his face in the old man’s chest. The old man started to yell.

“What the fuck is happening?” he asked.

“That’s a bad word,” the little girl said quietly, but nobody heard her.

“He’s attacking him!” she yelled.

“Jesus,” he said.

And then they both saw the squirrel bound out from behind the garage, look at the two crazed men, the old man’s chest now covered in blood. The young man sat up from his feast, his face completely covered in chunky redness, and growled. His growl did not seem that of a savage human, but rather that of a…beast. Some kind of inhuman beast.

 The squirrel bounded across the yard to the flower bed and disappeared behind a large aloe plant. Then the old man was up next to the young man, his chest a bowled out mass of gore, white ribs glinting in the morning sun. His eyes were wild, and he joined his grunting landscape companion with his own animalistic noises. And the two of them started stumbling around the yard…looking for something with wild eyes and gnashing teeth.

“Still think I’m here to hurt you?” he asked the woman.

The little girl got up from the couch to see what they were looking at.

“Stop!” he commanded and she stopped in her tracks. “We can’t let her see this.”

“He’s right, sweetie,” said the woman. “Stay on the couch.”

“What’s going on?” a tinny voice asked from the phone.

“I don’t know,” answered the woman.

“Zombies,” dear old dad said.

“What?” she asked, beside herself.

“Let’s not have the conversation and all the disbelief,” he answered. “If you aren’t comfortable with the term, okay, but I don’t know what else to call it.”

The old man stumbled toward the window.

“Okay,” he said to the woman, “let’s get away from the window, we don’t want him to see us in here. We don’t want him trying to get in.”

The woman was frozen in disbelief. He grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the window. He turned around to see how many lights were on. It was just the tree. He ran to the corner, got down on his hands and knees, and yanked the plug from the socket.

“Why did you stop the tree?” the little girl asked.

“Shh,” he said in a whisper, “we can’t make any noise.”

 The woman snapped out of her stupor, and moved to the sofa to wrap her arms around the little girl for comfort. For what seemed an eternal moment, he just stared into the woman’s eyes while still on his hands and knees, and it was clear all she wanted was to hear some words of assuagement, but he dared not speak. He just held a finger up to his lips. He had no idea how he would protect these two from the…monsters…if they were to get in.

The tinny voice on the phone asked, “Are you there?”

The woman looked at him, not knowing what to do. He grabbed the phone from her and whispered into it, “We can’t talk. We’re hiding.”

“Help is on the–”

 He hung up on the tinny voice. He looked at the woman whose eyes were wide and unblinking. He crawled toward the window to see what was happening. The old man had lost interest in the window and was now standing in the middle of the yard, as still as the squirrel had been on the sidewalk, and he just stared out at the street. The young man was no longer there.

In the distance, the sound of sirens.

He looked over his shoulder at the woman and her little girl. The sound of help seemed to calm the woman, even if only a little bit. He saw her blink. He looked back out the window as the sirens grew louder in his ears.

Two cruisers came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street from two different directions in front of the house. The old man remained still. Four cops, two in each car, opened their doors and stood up, hands hovering over holsters. All four looked confused and taken aback by what they saw. They glanced at one another, unsure of what to do.

“Be careful! He’s sick! He’s a zombie!” dear old dad screamed from behind the window, but the ambient sounds of outside made him impossible to hear.

One of the officers spoke into the two-way radio clipped to his shoulder.

“Sir,” said another one, the most fresh-faced of the four, as he moved toward the old man, his voice hard to hear through the picture window, “we need to get you to a hospital, an EMT vehicle is on the way.”

And the old man charged. He catapulted himself at the cop who stumbled backward under his weight.

“What the fuck?” the cop yelled. “Get off me!”

 Guns were pulled from holsters, and as they were, the young landscaper ran from the house next door and tackled the cop closest to him. The two cops that remained on their feet started yelling for the landscapers to back off, but they couldn’t get shots off because they were on top of their fellow officers. The young cop managed to push the old man off of him, and stood up, hand held against his neck, and pulled his firearm to put three bullets into the old man’s half-missing chest.

“Oh my God,” said the woman. “What’s happening?”

Dear old dad didn’t answer, just stared slack-jawed out the window. The exit wounds from the bullets in the old man didn’t drip blood, but oozed a congealed version of blood mixed with a frothy white mucous-like substance. And the old man was still moving. The young cop, still holding a hand against his bite wound, began to turn around and around in the yard, and was gargling out a growl choked by the gore in his throat. For some reason he thought of those little motors attached to his Christmas lights at home. Just a sick little hum and thoughtless motors turning round and round.

 The other cop that had been tackled stood up from behind his door, and started kicking the landscaper and cursing at him. It was impossible to tell whether he had actually sustained a bite. But from behind the picture window, dear old dad could see the young landscaper’s head, and he watched as that cop smashed it to a pulp with a billy club.

“It’s fucking zombies!” yelled the cop at the top of his lungs as he continued to smash his billy club on the clearly thwarted creature. “Fucking fiction! Fucking zombie fiction!”

“Zombies!” screamed another.

“Zombies,” dear old dad said to the woman on the couch, and her brow furrowed.

And there were more sirens in the distance while the old man got on his feet despite a mutilated body. The two cops that hadn’t been attacked opened fire, two shots apiece directly into the old man’s head and his skull exploded, brains flying all over the yard, visibly tinged with an unnaturally yellowish substance.

“Please tell me what’s happening,” the woman repeated from the couch.

“The cops…” he began, but didn’t finish as three ambulances pulled up behind the cruisers. “Paramedics,” he said. “But nobody is getting out.”

The glare of the sun on the windshields made it impossible to see the ambulance drivers, but he imagined they were as horrified as he was and smartly opted to stay in their vehicles. The injured officer was now convulsing where he stood, and his counterparts all poured back into their cruisers, clearly not knowing how to handle the situation.

“Their response time has been amazing,” dear old dad said, mostly to himself.

“What do you mean?” mom asked.

“I mean they all got here so fast, as if they were…expecting this?”

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure 911 response is usually much slower.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Turn on your television,” dear old dad said.

She grabbed a remote from an end table, and hit the power button. Nothing happened.

“It isn’t working,” she said.

He flipped a light switch next to the front door to see if it worked, but again nothing happened.

“Power’s out,” he said.

“Why would the power be out?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they turned if off…maybe something else happened…”

“Mommy, I’m scared,” said the little girl.

“It’s okay, honey,” mom answered.

“I want the tree back on,” said the little girl.

“There’s no electricity,” mom explained.

“It’ll come back soon,” he added, “we’ll get your tree up and running soon.”

 He had no idea if that was true, but as a parent he had learned that lying is often the only means of comfort. He looked back out the window to see a large tractor trailer pull up in between the ambulances. He heard a helicopter flying over the house, circling. He thought maybe there was more than one.

“So I guess this window is going to be our news source,” he muttered.

The trailer was white, long, and had a few windows. A door on the side opened and a set of metal stairs were pushed out, and someone in a bio-safety suit stepped out onto the street. He couldn’t make out the face behind the plastic window in the suit’s hood. The three cops in the cruisers got back out, looked at the scientist. The person in the suit pointed at the convulsing officer in the front yard, and the three cops all turned to look at him. They lifted their guns, and every single one of them winced simultaneously as they opened fire on their friend.

 The infected officer’s head exploded in a misty red and yellow cloud, and a small chunk of hairy scalp hit the picture window. It slid slowly down the glass like one of those sticky children’s toys that you get at the joke shop. The scientist moved awkwardly toward the front yard, obviously not having spent much time in the cumbersome suit. When the scientist was closer, it was clear he was a sixty-something-year-old man with a grizzled expression he looked to wear most of the time. He scanned all the gore in the front yard, bent down for  a closer inspection, pulled a petri dish out of a small bag and took a sample of brain, whether it was landscaper or cop brain was unclear. Then he stood up and turned his head back and forth, using his whole body as the suit really had no neck. The scientist stared for a moment at one of the trees in the yard, a six foot tall ficus growing to the side of the large window. He then approached the tree, leaned in to have a look at the trunk, and put a finger out to poke at something.

“What’s happening?” the woman asked again.

 “The CDC, I guess…a CDC guy, he’s looking at your ficus. He’s…it’s a caterpillar. He’s looking at a caterpillar.”

“A caterpillar?”

“My lemon tree…I need to tell him about the squirrel.”

Dear old dad knocked on the window to get the scientist’s attention. The scientist straightened up and approached the window, squinting to see inside.

 Dear old dad raised his voice. “There was a squirrel! The squirrel bit them! Or the landscaper. The first landscaper! A squirrel bite!”

The scientist held up his hands, making it clear he couldn’t quite understand, and as he did the squirrel scampered up on top of one of the cruisers. The cops were still standing at attention by their cars, and one of them began shooing the small animal. It of course didn’t move. He used his gun to push the critter off the roof, and it lunged at his hand, burying teeth into flesh.

“Fucking squirrel!” the cop screeched.

He dropped his gun and clutched his hand, and immediately began grunting and convulsing. The squirrel scampered away. The scientist pointed at the newly infected victim of the squirrel and the remaining two cops aimed and shot him in the head just as the convulsions were becoming incredibly spastic. He crumpled to the ground, his face gone.

The scientist turned back toward the window.

“Stay away from the window!” he yelled. “Not safe!”

Then the scientist headed back to his mobile lab, and the jogger behind the window, good old dad, retreated to join the strangers on the couch.

“What are they going to do?” asked the woman, her daughter now curled up into a ball, head buried in her mother’s lap.

“I wish I knew.”

“They’ll take care of this,” she said, but her voice lacked confidence. She sounded as child-like as her little girl.

“They’ll take care of this,” dear old dad repeated, but with confidence.

Comforting lies only work if you sell them. He should have been an actor. (He was out of work anyway.)

“What do we do now?”

“I guess we wait.”

 He heard more vehicles arrive, he heard helicopters going back and forth overhead, so close the sound was almost deafening. Whenever the choppers lifted upward and quieted a bit, he could hear different people shouting back and forth. He heard a couple gunshots, and the harsh pops made him shudder. He hoped his two companions didn’t notice. His confidence was the only comfort in the room. It wasn’t his comfort, but he felt obligated. And as the din grew outside, his heart shrank within.

 He pictured his little boy, his wife, and in his financial struggles over the last few years he had wished for his own death so many times; the one major expense he had maintained despite everything since losing his job was life insurance payments. If he died, his family would be taken care of, and as an unemployed man he was worth much more dead than alive. Usually his death wish wasn’t genuine, but sometimes…sometimes he really meant it, the pressure of money crushing his will to live. But here, on this couch with the neighborhood falling apart around him, he realized how much he didn’t want to die, how much he just wanted to sit around the plastic tree with the loud spinning ornaments, wanted to have an arm around Marg while watching little Ben tearing open his presents. He realized he just didn’t give a flying fuck about money. Not anymore. He’d rather be alive and in their presence than leave them alone but financially solvent. And maybe that was pure selfishness. He didn’t care. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to be the husband. He wanted to be dad. He needed to get to them.

He needed to get to them right away.

“I need to get out of here,” he said, “I need to get to my family.”

The drone of a helicopter overhead grew alarmingly loud.

“Please don’t go,” yelled the woman, her daughter starting to cry. “You can’t go.”

Suddenly, there was a huge smack against the roof. It sounded like some kind of giant monster had slapped the house. Then he could hear something…unfurling. And suddenly the room was steeped in shadow.

He got up and moved for the window.

“He said stay away from the window! It’s not safe!”

But dear old dad didn’t stop. He went right to the giant window, the only place he had been able to turn to for his news updates, the only place he had been able to at all appraise his bizarre situation. But when he got there, he only saw white and blue. There was a wall of canvas blocking the goings on outside.

“Shit,” he said and rushed to unlock and open the front door.

 “What the hell are your doing?” the woman asked, jumping up from the couch.

The little girl gagged on a sob before yelling, “Mommy!”

He swung the door open to reveal more blue and white canvas.

“What is happening?” mommy asked, voice quivering.

“They tented the house.”

“You mean like for termites?”

“Yeah.”

“But–”

“They’re going to gas the house.”

“With us inside!”

“Yeah.”

He paused for a moment, then went to the little girl and picked her up. This time she didn’t struggle, she didn’t scream. She buried her head in his chest. He grabbed the woman by the hand.

“We’re getting out of here.”

Another, but all new, thundering noise filled his ears, so loud they immediately started ringing. The house shook so violently the woman fell to the floor. Still holding her hand, he yanked her to her feet, and suddenly the three of them were standing in front of the picture window again. What they saw seemed to come in ultra-slow motion.

In truth, it lasted less than a second.

A giant hole was cut into the canvas by what looked like giant fan blades. A helicopter, nose pointed to the ground and completely out of control, flew into the front of the house.

Last thing dear old dad saw was that big, beautiful picture window that once looked out onto a peaceful neighborhood shatter into a million pieces. The last thing he heard was the whimper of a little girl somehow louder than the explosion of fire furiously flashing around him. The last thing he felt was a woman whose name he had never thought to ask for squeezing his hand.

She squeezed so hard she broke his middle finger.

 

Let me know what you think!