ZQ Retold Part 7: Tony

“I still don’t think we should go”

Caleb was still having doubts about seeing Tony the next morning.

“Caleb, we don’t have any weapons. If we stay here, the Goblins will finish us off in days. We have to go see him”, Abe told him. Caleb eventually grudgingly agreed to tag along.

Affadax Avenue was just down the street from the street Abe and Caleb lived on. After waiting for a Goblin cart to pass by, Abe and Caleb ran across the street to a nearby gym.

Tony was right, Caleb thought to himself. His house was hard to miss.

Most of Affadax Avenue was lined with brick stores with apartments above. Tony’s house, however, stuck out like a sore thumb. Wedged between a beauty salon and a bar was a tiny, clapboard house with a barbed wire fence in front of it. In the driveway next to the house, was a rusted, beat-up moped that had seen better days.

As Abe and Caleb walked down the walk to the house, they noticed that the yard was littered with cigarette butts, bullets, Styrofoam boxes with NOT DRUGS scrawled in ballpoint pen, and dead skunks.

The tiny porch was screened in, and large, plywood boards were leaning against the screens that prevented anyone from seeing into the porch. Abe tried the porch door, and the rusty thing immediately fell off of its hinges.

The porch was even shabbier than the yard. The floor was littered with rusty nails and pieces of siding. A bench was piled high with boxes of ammunition. Abe and Caleb plugged their noses as they saw a stack of cardboard boxes labeled SKUNKS-DEAD. Nearly all of the paint had peeled off of the door, and the door was covered with pink slips of paper. EVICTION ORDER, each one read.

Caleb slowly reached for the doorknob, and tried it. “It’s locked”, he said.

Abe eyed an ancient-looking window with yellow, warped glass. “I’ve got an idea, he said, picking up a monkey wrench on the ground. He smashed open the window. The glass was so fragile that it practically disintegrated into glass dust.
Abe carefully climbed through the window into a revolting-smelling mudroom, with Caleb close behind. A walk in closet held a ratty, torn-up trench coat, and still more boxes of dead skunks. A door on the wall facing the front door had a grimy keypad, while a door to the right of them had a sign reading KEEP OUT!.

“What lunatic hoards skunk corpses?”, Caleb asked, eyeing the closet and holding his nose.

“Skunks are in high demand by the gangs in the area. The big gang war six years ago was all about who controlled the forest area on the west side of town. It was a big skunk breeding ground”, Abe replied.

He knocked on the door on the right.

“Gordon, if you want a refund on that crowbar, screw you!”, a voice shouted from the keypad door.

“It’s me, Tony, Abe”, Abe called to Tony.

The door was flung open, and out stepped a young man. Atop broad shoulders bedecked in a green Army jacket was a scraggly face covered in stubble, bruises, and scars. A holster held a long automatic pistol, and Abe counted at least eight ammunition clips held in his belt.

“I thought you were an old ‘colleague’”, Tony told them, putting air quotes around “colleague.”

“So, you want us to stay here?”, Caleb asked Tony uncomfortably.

“Who are you?”, Tony asked.

“Caleb. I’m a friend of Abe’s”, he said, following Tony into his living room.

The living room had nothing but an old, rabbit-ears TV, a moth-eaten sofa, several tables covered with guns and ammunition boxes, and another table covered in air fresheners.

“I need ‘em to keep out the skunk smell”, Tony told them, catching them staring at the air freshener-covered table.

“Yeah, about that. . .”, Caleb began. “Why do you keep so many skunks here?”

“They’re in high demand by the gangs here”, Tony replied. “You probably don’t remember this, but the gangs in this town had a big war back in 2007. The war was over who controlled that forest on the south side of town. Big skunk breeding ground. I have live ones in the backyard, but I think the Goblins got to most of them”

“You know, we might need something to defend ourselves here”, Abe said, eyeing a handgun.

“Oh, forgot to ask. Do you need to go get stuff from your house?”, Tony asked Abe.

“So we can stay here?”, Caleb asked.

Tony laughed. “This old dump? Are you kidding? I asked you to come here so we could go to the IDC place on the outskirts of town. I didn’t want to leave you here to die”

“Wait, we’re going where?”, Caleb asked.

“Haven’t you heard? This military group came in and set up a bunker on the west side of town so people have a place to escape the Goblins. I’m taking you two there”

“What, so I’ll be living in some stupid bunker for the rest of my life?”, Abe asked.

“It’s not permanent. We’ll leave once things are back to normal”, Tony replied.

“Back to normal? When? Are the Goblins going to just pack up and leave?”

“Abe, listen to me. I’ve watched enough 1950s sci-fi movies to know that the Goblins are going to be wiped out by our diseases or something”

“What a reliable source”, Abe grumbled, rolling his eyes. “Am I supposed to just let the Goblins have Earth? I want to fight!”, he shouted, picking up the pistol he had been eyeing.

“Put that down!”, Tony shouted, wrestling the gun out of Abe’s hand.

“Why am I always the one who has to sit and watch arguments?”, Caleb murmured as he sat on the sofa”

“You’re the only person who actually trusts me!”, Tony cried. “Everyone else wants me to be executed! You think I want to live here? If I go to the hardware store the cops will get me the moment I open the door! Just go! Hopefully your parents can find your arrow-strewn corpses!”, he screamed, pushing Abe and Caleb out of the door.

“Jeez, what a jerk”, Caleb said as they sat in an abandoned minivan, waiting for a procession of Goblins to pass by.

“You know, maybe he was right”, Abe said under his breath. “I mean, how do two kids fight against an alien army? Plus, I really want to find my parents”

As the two existed from the van, they noticed something they hadn’t had the time to notice, the state of the city.

Affadax Avenue was littered with abandoned vehicles, many of them with broken windows The siren still flickered on and off on an overturned police car. Most of the buildings were at least sort of unscathed, with just broken windows, but Abe could see a church several blocks away with its steeple torn off. In one area, a Goblin battlecart had smashed into a bookstore. The ruined storefront was littered with plaster chunks, wood splinters that looked razor-sharp, and corpses, both Goblin and human.
Turning onto the block where the Jones house was, Abe noticed a heap of rubble in the parking lot of a chiropractor. A large, steel cross had crushed a sedan. It was the steeple from the church.

That night, Abe and Caleb awoke from their slumber to banging on the garage door.

Abe grabbed a club, which he had taken from one of the Goblins, and ran to the door.

“Wait! It might just be Frank, bringing Tyler back”, Caleb called after him.

It was neither Goblins, nor Frank. It was Tony..

“What do you want?”, Abe growled.

“I’m, uh, sorry”, Tony told him. “If you’re wondering, I tried to drive to the IDC bunker a bit after you left. I found your parents. They told me they never wanted to see me again, and that I had to bring you to them if I found you”

“I’m not going to that bunker”, Abe said, defiantly.

“Want to come to my place? I figured that if you’re going to stay out here and fight the Goblins, you’re going to need better weapons than a trowel”, he mockingly said, eyeing the trowel that sat on the garage shelf.

Dear Mom,

Please do not worry about me. I’m living with Tony and Caleb. Tony is helping me fight the Goblins. He’s not giving me drugs, and he’s not conscripting me into his gang.

Abe typed away at Tony’s typewriter. He would ask Frank to deliver the letter to his mother at the bunker the next day.

“So, why do you type on a typewriter? I’m sure that someone in your gang would be willing to give you a computer.”, he asked.

“The company tracks everything you do on it. If they found out what I’m writing about, they’d notify the police”, Tony replied.

“Why not use the dark web?”, Caleb asked.

“The less I’m involved with that, the better”, Tony replied.

“Even gangsters have moral standards”, Abe said, laughing.

After setting the letter on Tony’s desk, Abe and Tony moved the sleeping bags from the garage to Tony’s house. They would stay the night, and return the next day.