Saturday, September 4, 2010

Volume 4: Ike and Dave's Infinite Playlist of Music to be Murdered By

THE HOST FROM THE SOUTH
Ike & Dave’s Infinite Playlist of Music to be Murdered By
by J. Ian Manczur

Ike leveled his rifle. He had been casually surveying the horde, seeing what there was to see and risking the off chance that a ghost from his past would choose to appear. In previous efforts, he had been lucky enough to find nothing but strangers. Today, in what was an inevitability, an old acquaintance shuffled amongst the dead. The man had no name, no history. Whoever he might have once been was lost with his life. The only thing Ike knew was that the man had saved him. Ike had planned to meet the man, to introduce himself and thank him for his life. The chance never came; now, the man was dead and Ike had failed him. With a pull of the trigger, the man turned to chunks and mist. It was the least he could do.

He put down the gun and settled back in his chair. Theo snickered next to him, wearing a sneer that seemed to be forever imbedded in his face. It wasn’t a pleasant look, aging Theo at least ten years. “What was that all about?”

Ike thought carefully on how to respond and decided to ignore the question altogether. Instead, he emptied and cleaned his rifle in ritualistic fashion.

“Being secretive, are we? Let me guess, settling an old debt?”

“More or less.”

Theo only accompanied Ike in Dave’s absence. Otherwise, he would be skulking downstairs doing who knows what. It didn’t take long for Ike to find out that Theo had little, if anything, interesting to say. Mostly he talked about his past, his father and his regret of not joining them at the island retreat. Ike doubted that a paradise haven for the wealthy existed and decided that anything Theo said was probably a lie. Yet, bad company was better than no company at all, especially if the bad company provided beverages.

Ike sat back, drinking Theo’s beer and nodding along to the stories he only half listened to. After paying the appropriate amount of attention listening to someone who had given him free alcohol, Ike departed, citing the lie that he was concerned about Jack’s well being. Ike proceeded to trade up to a more silent, if unconscious, companion. He returned indoors to find the bundle of blood-washed bandages and fever stained sheets that compromised the being that was once Jack. He wasn’t a pretty sight.

Most that decry their ill fortunes fail to see their own responsibility. In Jack, though, Ike saw a man more than just afflicted by self-made destruction; here was a man that was a victim of circumstance. Of all the conceivable and many inconceivable maladies that crossed Jack’s path like a parade of black cats, the fact that he was still alive only added to the improbable nature of his luck.

And thus in the style of his life, any impressive actions he had taken towards the larger good were bogged down and overshadowed by his reputation for ill fortune. Ike found himself tempted towards the negative, even with his many positive remembrances and his self proclaimed immunity towards the swaying opinions of lesser men. Perhaps, he too was swept up in a conspiracy of fortune against Jack.

With the last of his thoughts pondered, Ike returned out to the unexpectedly empty porch. Theo had made a hasty retreat coinciding with a racket coming from the nearby window. The sound meant that either Dave was returning home or a zombie was breaking in, each being enough of a reason for Theo to not want to be around.

Gun drawn for the unlikely latter reason, Ike was happy to find Dave attempting to squeeze through the bedroom window. Ike pulled the chair from under Dave’s entrance and sat across the room to observe his friend’s troubles. And what troubles they were. Dave found himself wedged face down and out, his shirt caught on jagged metal, and his body parallel to both the wooden floor and the alley two stories below. He frantically waved his feet to reach the chair he had placed for easy access back in the room; the same chair that Ike now occupied. With a good dose of jiggling and wiggling, contorting and exhorting, and tearing and swearing, Dave finally made it in the room. As he dusted himself off, Dave noticed Ike sitting in the room. “Thanks for the help.”

“You’re welcome. So, what’s up?”

“I have good news and bad news.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“Really? Ok, well, the roof next door is too high. We could probably make it, but Jack can’t.”

“So we leave Jack then. Done and done.”

“No!”

“No?”

“I can‘t believe you are so casually suggesting we kill him.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ease off the gas. No one said anything about killing.”

“Leaving him is basically the same thing.”

“If anything, we’re doing him a favor. The grenade, the Molotov, the rusty nail: all Jack, all to himself.”

“But…”

“Kid, he ran over Captain Ripps with a school bus.”

“While saving those kids.”

“Fuck them. He. Ran. Over. Captain Ripps.”

“I do miss that dog.”

“You didn’t have to scrape him off the tires.”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

“What’s your point?”

“He’s just unlucky.”

Dave shrugged. “I can‘t argue with that.”

“Sooner, rather than later, he’s going to die. He can only take so much punishment.”

“Not necessarily.”

“The man lit himself on fire!”

“That doesn’t mean we should leave him alone to die.”

“Not alone, he’ll have Theo.”

“That’s worse.”

“Maybe we’re meant to, you know, maybe it’s his fate.”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“It does.”

“What do you want me to say, Ike?”

“That you trust my judgment and will leave Jack behind.”

“I’m not going to leave him. If you want to go, you have my blessing.”

“Blessing? Anyway, I’m not going to go without you.”

“Then it’s settled.”

“You’re really not going to back down, are you? Fine. So, what was the good news?”

“There’s this nice little garden back yard thingy. We should be able to cut through, almost all the way down the block, pretty easily. Even better: zombie free.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Jack can totally stay with us.”

“After all that?”

“You should have started with the good news.”

The two split, each off to their own tasks to prepare for the next day.

As night settled in, Ike and Dave were joined by a more conscious and more upbeat Jack. Ike couldn’t decide if this turn was due to Jack’s tenacious will or the copious amounts of painkiller that Jack had ingested. Either way, he played a mean game of three man Hearts for a person that had suffered enough to kill a luckier man.

Ike reshuffled the deck. “You know, Hearts is much better with a fourth. I’m just saying, Theo might be..”

Dave cut him off, “No.”

“I don’t really understand what you have against him.”

“He almost got us killed!”

“So did Bob Hurley, but you still have a fucking hard-on for the man.”

“Fuck you, Ike.”

“I’m just saying, if he ordered you to go down on him, you’d be down there.”

Jack advised Dave to ignore the taunts.

“Stay out of this Bandages. Dave, all I want to hear you say is, ‘I don’t have a secret crush on Bob Hurley.’”

“You know, the term ‘secret crush’ is a little gay.”

“This isn’t about me, Dave my boy, this is about you.”

“Fine, I don’t have a secret crush on Bob Hurley.”

“Didn’t believe that for a second. What about you, Bandages?”

Jack interrupted the pointless exchange. “Gentlemen, if I may be serious for a moment.”

Dave sighed from relief, “Please.”

Jack adjusted himself to a more presentable position. Dave hurried over to help him, but Jack shot an aggravated look. “Don’t do that. I don’t need to be treated like a child.” Jack lifted himself up to turn to Ike. “And I don’t like you and I’m sure you don’t like me.” Ike didn’t disagree. “I just want to say that I can take care of myself.”

Ike scoffed. “Obviously.”

“Ike!”

Jack hushed Dave‘s protests with a wave. “I know that there’s no love lost between us, but for better or worse, we’re stuck together, we‘re all stuck together. I know I must look a fright, but it’s really not that bad. As the knight said: tis’ but a flesh wound.” Jack stood to make his point. “My point is, if we’re going to make it, we need to trust each other, we need to know that we will be there for each other, so, I’m making a peace offering.” Jack reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a smaller zip-lock bag. Ike and Dave stared at the contents in impressed silence.

Ike laughed, “You’ve been holding out on us, Cheech?”

“That.. is a lot of ganja.”

Jack rolled a fat joint. “I should warn you, gentlemen, that this is for medicinal purposes only.”

“Yea, it’ll cure you being a constant pain in my ass.”

“Lovely.” Jack sparked the joint.

The three played a few more rounds of cards before settling down to chat. The smoke helped ease the tension between the group. They reminisced of times before and of times together and reminded each other of how they had survived as long as they had. After their tales of bravado and their one-up-manship of the most ridiculous things seen so far, Jack brought it back to a more personal level. “So, guys, if you knew that the world was going to end the way it did, what would you have done differently?”

Dave was the first to answer. “Well, I’ve been actually thinking about this a lot.” He fished out his wallet, which Ike thought was strange that he still carried, and pulled out his debit card. “I have fifty thousand dollars that I had been saving up for awhile. I had planned to take some time off, travel and do the things that I missed out on when I was younger. I mean, I’m still young, but time has a way of sneaking up on you. I got my adventure, that’s true, but I went without for so long and now it means nothing. I would have spent every last penny. Ike?”

Ike didn’t even bother to think about it. His answer was only delayed to exhale, “Nothing.”

Dave didn’t believe him, “Nothing?”

“I really enjoy who I am.” Ike shrugged, “If I changed anything, I wouldn’t be the same.”

“How about you, Jack, what would you change?”

“When I was a kid, back in high school, I was a wild guy. My nickname was Mad Jack and boy did I deserve it. Football, booze, parties, women; it was the fucking life. I passed up many opportunities to go to college for football, I wanted my legacy to be more than just how good I was with a ball. So, I hunkered down and worked, I wanted to be an architect…” Ike passed out.

Ike woke to Dave standing over him. “You missed a great story last night. Jack’s such a fascinating guy. He went on about how his wife had cancer, and how she died in his arms. His daughter who he hadn’t spoken to in years. It was really tragic, but very inspiring.”

“Yea, sounds it. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other opportunities to hear it again.”

“Not if your predictions come true.”

“Just as good, I really didn’t care to hear it.”

Dave rolled his eyes and exaggeratedly sighed in his Dave-ish way.

They headed down, Theo was once again nowhere to be found. Ike briefly wondered where he had gone, but his attention was soon drawn by Jack, who looked quite energetic for a dead man. “You guys ready to go?”

Ike hushed him with a wave of his finger. “One sec, we have a pre-battle tradition.” Dave took two items out of his bag and passed one to Ike. They were Ipods with headphones attached.

“I’m afraid to ask, how do you keep them charged?”

Dave tapped his bag. “Easy, car chargers. You know, abandoned cars are plentiful, especially in garages attached to houses. Like this one had a really nice Cadillac. If there’s a car, you can usually find the keys somewhere. And voila, perfectly charged Ipods.”

Ike added, “Besides, what’s the point of fighting in the post-apocalypse without a sweet soundtrack? Plus, it‘s good for teamwork. Helps with rhythm.”

Dave thumbed through his selection. “So what are we listening to today, 80s?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Karma Chameleon?”

“Red, gold and green.”

“So, we’re agreed.”

“Hmmm, I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right for this situation.”

“And what situation would it be right for?”

Ike pondered for a moment. “Chainsaws!”

“Now that you said it, it does seems pretty obvious.”

“I’ve got it. Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.”

“Ooooooooh, that is good.”

“I know. I suggested it.”

“But..”

“What now Dave?”

“There is no disagreement that it is truly a wonderful song to kill things to, but I feel it doesn’t quite work in this context.”

“Not the right weapons?”

“Not the right scale. Wake Me Up needs to be played when we are fighting at least several hundred enemies. It’s a song you die to.”

“It’s a song you play as you are charging to your death.”

“Now you’re getting the point.”

“Such a miniscule event as this would be a waste of their talent!”

“And that wouldn’t be right!”

“Blasphemy is what that is!”

“Jack! Any suggestions?” Jack simply shook his head in disgrace. “Right-oh. Thriller?”

“Too corny.”

“Prince?”

“When Doves Cry?”

“Hell yea.”

“How can you just leave me standing?”

“Alone in a world that’s so cold.”

“So cold!”

“Maybe I’m just too demanding?”

“Maybe I’m just like my father, too bold?”

Jack turned to walk outside. “You know, I was just starting to like you guys.”

“Jack! Why do we scream at each other?”

Dave cast his eyes down mournfully, “So this is what it sounds like when doves cry.”

“I hate you both so much.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

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