“Fire department will be here soon, kid. I wish you the best.”
Behind me, Kevin and Abby are scrambling to turn the alarm off. The door was new, but the alarm wasn’t. All it is is a giant bell perched up above the frame with a small hammer ding-dinging at a million miles per hour.
Isaiah spreads his arms like a man who’d been locked away in a prison for thirty years as opposed to a man trapped in a gym for less than two hours. He closes his eyes, inhales deeply. The wind blows, billowing the edges of his loose-fitting shirt.
In the trees, it looks like a great monster shakes awake from its slumber, disturbed by the emergency exit alarm.
But there’s no monster. Only a flock of birds that fly from the branches.
“Get that alarm off!” Pat shouts. Him and his little group of invalids follow him from their campsite on the last basketball court, probably discussing ways on how to assassinate me.
Wow, I am going crazy. First, I think it’s a prank, and now I think I’m important enough to be assassinated.
Kevin jumps as I turn my head. When he lands on the rubber track, the whole ground seems to shake.
The alarm continues; it’s definitely real.
“Seriously, shut that thing off!” Pat says again.
Miss Fox puts a hand over her mouth, tilts her head up at Pat. He’s sweaty again.
“It’s driving me crazy!” Pat says.
“I’m trying!” Kevin’s deep voice rumbles over the sound of the dings. He jumps, and I hear a loud thwack and him sucking in breath through his teeth. Because it’s silent. The big bastard actually punched the bell until it shut up.
No one says anything for a moment.
Pat wears that same conniving smile that never seems to leave his face. “Where are your precious zombies, Jupiter?” he asks, squaring up like he might hit me.
“Leave the kid alone, man,” Isaiah says.
“He bullshitted us. They all did. The little whore who works here, and that big buffoon,” Pat says as if he never saw Toby get ripped apart, as if he thinks this is all one, big practical joke. But did he? Did I?
Is this bullshit?
Pat gives Isaiah a death stare, then he grabs me by the collar. “Give me the gun! I’m gonna teach this pipsqueak who to bullshit.”
Isaiah stands there with it in hand. I see him out of the corner of my eye, like he’s actually contemplating letting this dick-bag put a bullet in my brain. There’s no way he is. Just no way.
“I told you you motherfuckers is crazy. You know what, let’s just forget all of this, go back to our cars, back to our families, and get on with our lives,” Isaiah says. “What do you say?”
Pat’s face goes a shade whiter. Maybe he’s not as crazy as he looks.
Even if he lets go of me, I’m punching him in the face the first chance I get, zombies or not.
Then there’s that sound. At first, I think it comes from the back of Pat’s throat, but the sound echoes, doubles, triples. They aren’t human sounds. They aren’t sounds that come from someone that’s alive.
They’re the gurgles of the dead ringing in my ear the same way they rang in my head when I wrote about them.
Limbs wrap around the bricks, arms and legs searching aimlessly. Then a face. It’s a face of someone slightly recognizable like maybe I saw him at the grocery store, maybe he was a suggested friend on Facebook.
I just don’t remember his profile picture having so much blood in it.
Sixteen
The lights sputter. Flicker. They go off.
Pat lets go of my collar, his jaw dropping open.
“Aw, shit, man,” Isaiah says.
Behind me, Abby screams.
“Get in,” I say.
Isaiah is about twenty feet from the door, but the dead cut off his escape route back into the building.
“Move!” Pat says, then shoulders me out of the way. I go barreling into the door frame pretty hard. It hurts, but I’m in shock so I hardly notice. It’ll hurt worse later. Pat reaches for the handle.
“No!” I yell.
“There’s no time,” he says.
He might be right.
Isaiah raises the gun toward the crowd. It’s thick with distorted faces, shiny blood, and crooked limbs. Each zombie has a sickening, ashy quality to them. They look like that because they’re dead. Because this is real. Because I’m not going crazy.
The gun goes off, and the leader of the crowd goes down in a spray of blood and pallid skin.
Pat pulls the door closed.
I’m reliving Toby all over again. How I tried to save him. How I failed. I don’t want it to be like that, so I ram my own shoulder through the crack, wedge myself between safety and death. I have no weapons, no plan, and the forest of zombies grows thicker by the second. They’re attracted to the sounds. With Abby and Miss Fox’s screaming, it’s a wonder the whole dead world hasn’t shown up yet.
“Come on, Isaiah!” I say.
He still aims the weapon toward the crowd to my right, but on my left, there’s even more. The only place uncovered with them is the church across from us. If we run there’re too many fences to climb, barriers to get past, and how long until more of them show up? Zombies shamble down the pavement, dragging broken legs and feet, moaning, mouths shining with red.
Isaiah catches my eyes.
“So be it, kid,” Pat says. “I’m closing the door.”
It’s funny, really. I was the one who tried to convince Pat, and now he’s going to live and I’m going to die. I’m going to get eaten by the townspeople of Woodhaven. What a way to go. Make sure they have a closed casket at my funeral, just like Mother!
“No, he’s not,” Kevin’s voice booms.
“Hey, asshole,” Pat says.
I hear the dull thud of Kevin’s massive mitts hitting the steel door.
“Come on,” Kevin says.
Isaiah turns to run, the crowd right on his heels. A straggler reaches out, barely snags the loose hem of his sweatpants as she falls to the asphalt. She’s a fat woman, and even in death, her face looks hungry. It’s not enough to bring Isaiah down with her, but it’s enough to trip him up.
He stumbles, and the gun goes sprawling off the pavement, sliding toward the encroaching crowd to my left.
Fear seizes my throat. We’ll need that gun, even if we’re outnumbered, we’ll need it. As I reach out and grab it, a vomit-smelling dead man lunges at me. It’s as if when the zombies see potential meals, they speed up — not an attribute in my zombie fiction, even I’m not that sadistic.
I grab the weapon, and Isaiah grabs me as I stumble forward. Something falls from my pocket, and I feel my heart break when I realize it’s the keys to my rental car. They skitter across the asphalt like it’s ice, now lost in a sea of dead flip-flops.
Kevin yanks us both before I can even think of trying to get them back, then pulls us through while pulling the door shut with his free hand.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Abby says. She jingles her keychain, fumbles with the right one, then finally sticks it into the lock and clicks it secure.
This changes my plans of escape. The motel isn’t that far from the rec center, but I damn sure wasn’t planning on walking. I will have to if it’s the only way. To save the girl of my dreams, I would do anything. Just hold on a little longer. Please, God, let Darlene hold on a little longer.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I say to Isaiah.
He’s sweating, breathing hard, chest rising and falling in a stuttered pattern. “I-I don’t know, man. It seemed safe. They weren’t there, then they were. What the fuck are they? Are those really…zombies?”
“Yes,” I say with one hundred percent surety. I turn to Pat. I want to be pissed at the guy, but if I were in his position, I would’ve done the same, so instead of going off on him, I just say, “Now do you believe me?”
He shrugs. “Something’s up, sure, but zombies? C’mon, Jupiter, that’s just bullshit and we all know it.” His fac
e tells me something different. He’s in denial. Rightfully so. “No such thing as the dead coming back to life, no matter how many times you write about it in your stupid, fucking books.”
“They were dead, man,” Isaiah says. “I looked them right in the eyes. Just blank. Dead, man. Fuckin dead.”
Pat snorts.
“This ain’t funny, dude. We almost lost the gun. And there’s about a million of those things out there. They ain’t playing around, either,” Isaiah says.
We all stare at each other. There’s an odd silence for a moment until it’s ruined by the sounds of thumping fists and gurgling moans. I see their shadows pass under the door. They thunder against the metal. It sounds like a storm.
I start to back away, the rest of the group following me.
We get to the basketball court entrance before we split up again.
“Crazy,” Pat says before he turns down the dark hallway.
I walk across the cafeteria. Everyone stops there. Chairs scoot across the tile. But I keep walking. There’s an indoor soccer field adjacent to the cafeteria made of turf. I walk to the door and open it. The ground is soft, almost like real grass. I slide down the safety wall and onto the field, then take my shoes off.
“I need to get out of here,” I say to myself.
Darlene is a strong woman, but she wouldn’t know what to do to a zombie if the things could talk and tell her. She’ll be scared, frightened, hopeless. Those things outside, call them zombies or not, are deadly, and I need to get to her, need to protect her before it’s too late.
And I know it’s not too late. Darlene and I have this connection. I don’t want to sound cliché or too lovey-dovey (like one of her vomit-inducing romance books), but we don’t have two hearts, we only have one. We are connected at this spiritual level. If she died, I believe I would feel it. Instead, I just feel anxiety and worry from both of us.
She is still okay. She has to be.
Please, God, if you let me get out of here alive, and you let Darlene be okay, I promise I’ll start going to church. I’ll stop saying swear words. I’ll stop eating red meat and watching porn.
There’s hardly any light above me. Just one emergency backup that casts shadows. I don’t know what I was expecting. A harp, maybe an angel coming down from the heavens to assure me it’ll be okay. Instead of clouds, this place smells like a locker room. Like sweaty gym socks.
I really, really need to get out of here.
I get an idea. Nobody gets anything done by sitting around and sulking. I shoot up and head out of the soccer field.
Abby and Kevin are sitting at their table. She has her head down, while Kevin is messing with his phone. The screen is lit up, and he’s swiping something. A flutter of hope freezes my heartbeat. Maybe he’s getting service.
“Working?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Piece of shit cell phone.”
Behind me, something rattles.
“Damn it,” Isaiah says. He holds the Coca-Cola vending machine by each side and rocks it back and forth. “After the shit I went through I think I deserve a drink. But no, the backup generator ain’t gonna send no power to the vending machines, is it? Just my luck.”
“Break it,” Abby says.
He raises his eyebrows. “What?”
“Yeah, just break it. The manager isn’t going to yell at you. The sheriff is dying, or already dead. You won’t get in trouble.”
“Girl’s right,” Kevin says, not looking up from his phone. “I think your crime will be forgiven under our circumstances.”
“You’re right.” He grabs a chair, picks it up, and uses the legs to shatter the glass. One hit was all it took. He grabs a Coke in one hand, and a couple more in the other. “Anyone want one?”
I raise my hand, and he tosses me one.
Kevin shakes his head. “End of the world or not, carbs are carbs.”
We all laugh, but it’s not a laugh you’d expect from a group of friends all having a good time. It’s a shaky laugh, one I think we let out to help keep our sanity.
Abby takes a bottle of water.
“We get saved and someone asks who broke the machine, y’all gonna have my back when I blame Pat?”
More of that uneasy laughter.
“That cop got any other weapons?” Isaiah asks.
“Just a nightstick,” Abby answers.
“Shit, is that him right there?” Isaiah says.
Isaiah sits across from me. I’m facing the broken vending machine. He faces the front doors. My mind says no that can’t be him. I locked the door.
“Look,” Isaiah says again, holding up the hand that has the Coke in it.
I turn around.
The front desk is almost completely shrouded in darkness. Only a sliver of daylight peeks over the trees across the rec center and comes in through the small window. There’s a silhouette standing at the desk. It’s impossible to tell who the person is, but I see the utility belt around the shadow’s waist. The head is crooked, leaning away to the right, and there’s a lump on its neck. Like a towel, I’m thinking. Something about his eyes, too. They glow faintly.
“No, God, please, no,” I say.
Kevin looks away from his phone.
I explode up. This is my fault. I should’ve done what needed to be done in that room. I had the gun. I had a broken broom handle. He practically begged me to do it.
But I couldn’t.
“He’s turned,” I say, my voice more shaky than I intend it to be. “I was going to put him down, but I wasn’t sure if he’d turn. I needed to be a hundred percent sure. And I thought the door was locked…” I’m babbling again.
Abby, Isaiah, and Kevin freeze next to me. I was right. I didn’t want to be, but I was right all along.
“You mean he’s one of them,” Abby says. She speaks like she doesn’t want to believe it, like she’s oblivious to the rules of zombies. Her tone is almost like Pat’s was.
“Stay back,” I say to them, filling my hand with the gun.
I’m going to do what I should’ve done the first time.
Seventeen
As I get closer, I have to make sure he’s really turned before I put a bullet through his brain. It’s too dark, so I move until I’m able to tell. By this time, Sheriff Doaks lunges at me, and I’m not quick enough. A pair of gnarled hands grip me around the collar. We topple over the front desk, hearing the unmistakable sound of the gun clattering off the tile and being swallowed up by the darkness.
I can’t even scream because his dead weight lands on my stomach, driving all the breath from my lungs.
Isaiah jumps in and grabs the sheriff by his shoulders, pushing him away from me. The air fills my lungs quick. I take a deep breath before trying to claw myself away in the opposite direction. Doaks is on his hands and knees. The towel fell off during our little trip over the desk, and now the bite mark shows. It’s black and blue and red. I see some foam around the edges. Pus, too. The sight is bad, but the smell is worse, even worse than it was in the athletic room.
I see Abby and Kevin stop then start backing up out of my peripherals as we watch this zombified version of Doaks crawl toward us.
Isaiah isn’t scared, at least I think he’s not. He’s breathing heavy and fast, staring at the sheriff on his hands and knees with a look of pure hatred.
Doaks lunges again, except this time I’m prepared for it.
Isaiah slides out of the way, throws a punch into the back of the dead guy’s head. It doesn’t do much but speed him toward me. I raise my leg up, not to kick, but to keep him away. It’s enough to send him into the glass partition separating the entrance and exit.
“Quick, give me something to bust his head!” Isaiah shouts.
The front of the rec is pretty bare. Everything that had weight to it is pressed up against the doors in a heap of junk.
I scan the pile real quick, see a set of twenty-five pound weight plates stacked up against the legs of the waiting area couch.
Doaks is in between me and the pile, and Isaiah is too busy. He won’t even take his eyes off the thing. I don’t blame him, not since what happened outside. One false move and you could be on the pavement getting devoured. We saw it first-hand.
Doaks grapples at me, but I dodge it easily. He gets nothing besides air, moaning as he does it. When I pass him, the smell of his rotting flesh is almost enough to make me pass out right then and there, but I don’t.
I grab the twenty-five pounder. It’s heavier than I’d think twenty-five pounds was, but then again, I’m kind of a weakling.
“Here,” I say.
Isaiah takes it, raises the plate above his head. His arms bulge with muscles. Veins dance. He brings it down on Doaks’s face. It’s not a clean hit. Instead, the metal scrapes the side of the face. Skin peels off of him like those string cheeses Mother used to pack in my lunchbox everyday in fourth grade, except a lot more moldy and gross.
Twenty-five pounds sounds like a thunderbolt when it hits the tiles, then it sounds even louder when it rolls into the glass partition, taking a chunk out with it.
Outside the moans get louder.
Kevin keeps shuffling away with Abby behind him.
Isaiah is frozen, and so am I.
If we had the gun, this could be over.
“Kevin! Look for the gun!” I shout. “It fell somewhere behind the desk.”
“I’m not getting near that thing,” he says, and I’m assuming he means Doaks, who stands by the desk.
Then Doaks advances on us with only half a face. I can see the cheekbone, part of his nose cartilage all glazed over with a bloody, thick sheet. He’s basically mutilated, yet he keeps coming.
“You gotta hit him harder than that,” I say over Doaks’s death rattles.
“Be my guest, buddy,” Isaiah says to me over his shoulder. “Seriously, a weight plate? You couldn’t find anything more practical than that?”
I pick up another twenty-five pounder, this time I don’t pass it off to Isaiah. This is my moment. This is where I save the day, all my deepest and darkest fantasies are going to be lived out. I am Johnny Deadslayer. I’ll have to be if I want to get to Darlene. What will happen when the gun runs out of bullets? What will happen when the only weapon I have handy is some blunt object?
The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4 Page 8