The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4

by Flint Maxwell

  In Kentucky, we saw the sign written on the roof of a barn. It was painted in a shocking white:

  GONE TO EDEN. OUTSIDE OF SHARON, FL. SAFE. HAPPY. JOIN US!

  This was almost three weeks after we met Richard on the side of the road. None of us had thought of Eden since then. We mostly just thought of survival. There’s a stat in advertising I remember learning in one of my college classes that states you have to see an ad seven times for a customer to actually buy your product. I call bullshit on that because I’d heard about Eden only twice and it was already tattooed on my brain. Twice. As we got closer, I heard about it more.

  And after a few stints in places not so overrun by the dead or choked up by perpetually stopped traffic, we had decided, like the birds, to head south for the winter, and nothing sounded as good as Florida in that moment.

  “Why does it have to be fog?” I mutter to myself. “Anything but fog.”

  Behind me, Norm twitches. His head points toward the dashboard while Abby and Darlene’s are near the back windshield. He thinks he’s being gentlemanly, but really I don’t think either of the ladies care.

  “What?” Norm says.

  I don’t know if he’s talking to me or if he’s suffering from one of the vivid dreams he so often has. Two tours in Iraq and a man can come back entirely different. So far, Norm’s been all right. Sometimes he vies for power. Sometimes he shouts, “My Jeep, my rules!” when we disagree with the route he’s taken to our next destination. “If you want to go that way then you can walk!” is another popular one, but mostly Norm is all right. Much better than I remember him being when we were younger and still living with Mother. And, if I’m being totally honest, it’s nice to have my older brother back.

  “What is it, Jack?” Norm says.

  I turn toward him, seeing the sleep in his eyes.

  “You already know,” I whisper. I don’t want to disturb the girls.

  “Already?” He sighs. “Can life get any shittier?”

  I could answer, but we both know what it would be. It’s a resounding yes. Life can always get shittier when the dead have risen and are out for human flesh.

  They were calling it The End before we lost touch with the outside world, before the radio turned to nothing but static and religious babble, before the internet went down, before the twenty-four hour news networks lost their hosts and correspondents to this sickness.

  The End.

  I’m determined to not let that be the case. I’ll look at Darlene, get lost in her eyes, and I’ll think to myself, I never want that to end. I will do what I have to do to make this a new beginning.

  Anything but The End.

  “How many?” Norm asks.

  I blink blearily. Lack of sleep is catching up to me. I can’t remember if I saw one set of those yellow eyes or two. I close my own, lean forward until my forehead rests against the rear sight of the Glock — rear sight is one of the words Norm has taught me since we’ve been on the road. “One,” I say, almost completely sure of myself.

  Norm is no dummy. He reads my hesitation. “Shit,” he says. “One, two, or three. Doesn’t matter as long as it’s not a pack.” He pulls himself up, pats me on the shoulder. “You need to get some sleep, little bro.” He crawls into the driver’s seat. Next thing I know, he’s got a hand full of metal. It’s the big gun he greeted me with back at the Woodhaven Motel, the one Dirty Harry would carry around.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. My voice is harsh.

  Abby stirs, murmurs something in her sleep.

  “I’m taking care of our little pal,” he says.

  “He’s gone,” I say. “Let him go. We only kill when we have to.”

  It’s not worth dying over. We are completely safe in the Jeep. We have the upper-hand. Killing one — just one — does nothing.

  Norm shakes his head. He pulls out the weapons he has in a small bag under his seat. These are the weapons which make no noise, which bring no attention to us. The hammer, the machete, the baseball bat, the tire iron. He pulls the bat out. The wood is chipped and stained a dull red. It’s only been six months, but Norm has gotten a lot of mileage out of it. The door opens and the dashboard dings. We have set the overhead light to not come on when the door opens, a lesson we learned the hard way back in Atlanta.

  “Seriously, Norm, let it go,” I say.

  “Nuh-uh,” he says. “We are too close to blow it now. I let this one go and next thing you know, it’s taking a bite out of my dick while I’m pissin in the woods. You stay here, keep the girls safe.”

  I almost laugh. The girls don’t need protection as long as Abby is around. She has since become quite the killer of the dead. She no longer fears, and I think that’s the first step to surviving in this world.

  Me, well, I’m constantly scared shitless. I just try not to show it, mainly for Darlene. Because she worries enough as it is. She doesn’t need to know her fiancé is worthless on top of all everything else. I love her, but love doesn’t bash in zombie brains.

  Norm points through the windshield. “There’s the son of a bitch,” he says. “I’ll be back before you can say bacon and eggs.”

  “Bacon and eggs, asshole,” I say.

  He glares at me. “Clever, Jack. Always clever.” He gets out.

  I watch as the fog swallows him up, and thirty seconds later, I’m shaking Abby awake and handing her the Glock. “I’m going to cover Norm,” I say, then I pull the machete free from the bag. I may be terrified, but I can’t let my older brother go out there alone, even if he can handle it.

  Two

  “Norm,” I whisper, “come back, you dummy. It’s not worth it.”

  I’m hunched down, a few feet from the Jeep. The fog is thicker outside. I try to think back to where we were last night, the layout of the land. It was a field, what once might’ve been prime farmland before all this shit happened. Norm parked near the tree line. The dead never seem to wonder out this far in the sticks, away from civilization, but the living do. Sometimes, we have to fear the living more than we fear the dead. Another lesson we had learned the hard way.

  “Norm?” I say again, this time louder.

  There is no answer. The world is quiet. Not even the bugs buzz or the birds chirp.

  I hear a grunt, a soft scream. Wood clunks against skull. It causes me to snap my head in the direction of the noise, but it comes from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I don’t know if I’m looking north or south, east or west.

  I walk on, the machete leading me at a low angle, a precautionary measure. I don’t want to end up shish-kebabing Norm.

  “…take that…you…piece of…shit,” he says. I see a flash of wood. A flash of blood. Brains.

  The thing’s eyes no longer blaze yellow. Now, they are dying, the fire inside of them going out.

  “I told you to stay in the car,” Norm says.

  “When did I ever listen to you?” I reply.

  “I didn’t need your help. It was just one. I could handle it.” Norm’s face is a blur. I can barely see the machete in front of me let alone him.

  “Better safe than sorry,” I say. Besides, it’s almost never just one. They travel in packs, like ravenous animals.

  “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here. We should be at Eden by the time the sun goes down. I can’t wait another day.”

  He walks past me, leaving a thin line in the fog, thinner than the one he would’ve left six months ago. We are all suffering from this life on the run. Sleeping in a crammed Jeep, eating processed foods, drinking warm water and soda. Running. Killing. Sometimes I think it would be easier being one of the monsters, aimlessly shambling about looking for food, moaning, groaning. I realize this would mean giving up. I don’t want to give up. If there’s one thing I can take from my strained relationship with my mother and brother, it’s never give up.

  I follow after Norm, heading back to the car. We will probably sleep for another hour or two, then hit the road and look for food and signs of Eden. I
know we are close, I can feel it. I even dream about it. In my dreams, the walls are a hundred feet tall. There’s electricity and running water that is always hot. I never have to pick up a gun again, I never have to bash in someone’s head who might’ve once been a father or a mother or a priest. Then, of course, I wake up. These last few nights I’ve waken up to Darlene’s quiet sobs. She cries for a sister in San Francisco, a mom and dad in Milwaukee. I don’t know what else I can do to comfort her. Darlene is a realist, she knows the chances of their survival are slim, but I pray for them every night. I pray for her. For me. For the whole world. And I’m not even religious.

  “Norm,” I whisper.

  The fog has begun to clear up the slightest bit. I see the outline of the Jeep, its boxy, black shape. I don’t see Norm, and luckily, the machete is by my side because I bump into his back.

  He has stopped in the middle of the field, and he is not holding his baseball bat any longer. That is in the tall grass, lost somewhere. No. Norm is pointing his gun. It all hits me at this moment: the thumps of their rotting hands against the metal and glass, the gurgling moans, and the screams.

  The yellow eyes flicker on and off like lightning bugs as they shamble about. There are at least ten of them.

  I grab Norm’s arm. He is rigid yet shaking. If I could see his face, I would see a wild mixture of fear and excitement. “Don’t shoot,” I say. “Abby will handle it.”

  And sure enough, Abby does.

  The Jeep’s engine roars to life, the lights turn on, barely visibly through the fog. She doesn’t stomp on the gas. She just eases it, and the lights grow brighter as she comes toward us. Instinctively, I back up. When I bump into something, my heart nearly explodes, the adrenaline and fear bursting out of me. I turn around, raising the machete. Six months ago, I would’ve swung, buried the blade into whatever was behind me, man or dead man. Now, I don’t. I don’t want the blood on my hands. There are few survivors of this plague or reckoning or whatever the hell this is, and the thought of accidentally killing someone who isn’t already dead sickens me. There may come a time when I’m wrong, when I should’ve swung first, asked questions later, but it’s not now.

  This time, my enemy, the thing that spooks me is a tree, one seeming to stretch into the clouds, as old as Time itself. Way to go, Jack.

  I turn back around as I hear the sound of the revving Jeep. Abby has sped up. The lights bump and jump as she goes over the uneven landscape. It is coming right for Norm and me.

  “We gotta move,” I say to Norm.

  But he doesn’t. He is waving his hands, “Stop! No!”

  Somehow, he knows his surroundings, knows we are right by the tree line even in the fog. I think it’s some kind of sixth sense he gets from being a former Army grunt. Either that, or he’s just a crazy son of a bitch.

  Abby doesn’t stop. In fact, she speeds up.

  I dive out of the way, throwing the machete, knowing I just might’ve signed my own death certificate because I won’t find it in this tickling, tall grass, but if the Jeep rolls me over and breaks my legs or straight-up kills me, then I’m even worse off.

  Behind me, at least I think it’s behind me, it’s Jeep versus centuries old tree. By the sound of the glass breaking, metal screeching, I think it’s safe to say the tree has won. I glance to my right where I see the faint glow of the red brake lights, and about fifty feet away the group of dead walking toward the crashed Jeep.

  This is when the engine cuts off. I hear something whistle and exhale a great burst of pressure, then all is quiet except for the snarls of the monsters.

  I stand up. Surprisingly, my foot knocks into something in the grass. I pick it up. It’s the machete. I raise it above my head like a sword.

  I told you it’s never just one.

  Three

  The fog has cleared enough for me to make out their faces. They have been dead a long time. They are squishy, runny. Most of their skin has rotted off to the point of determining whether they’re male or female damn near impossible. It doesn’t matter. My machete comes for their head regardless of sex, race, age, or occupation. I am a regular open-minded killer of the dead. New Age Slayer is what I call it. If you’re already dead and you’re still walking, and you have a hankering for human flesh — especially my human flesh — then I will defend myself. Plain and simple.

  A man wearing overalls and still carrying most of his weight in his middle lunges at me first. His teeth have been rotten longer than he has, that’s for sure. I jab the machete at him. This is another lesson I’ve learned the hard way. One time, as I swung down on a creep like I was a medieval executioner, the blade lodged in her head. I am not strong. I am a string bean and the force of my swing was not enough to reach the creep’s brain. She kept coming, kept snapping her jaws at me like one of those chattering teeth toys. Darlene had to help me that time, and she is not too fond of killing these things. It’s too messy.

  So Overalls is soft enough that I don’t need much force. It’s in and out like a thumbtack popping a balloon. He drops, all four-hundred pounds of him, into a heap. As he hits, his guts deflate. A wave of black, inky blood douses the tall grass. Six months ago, I might’ve lost my lunch seeing that but not now.

  Next in line is something more akin to a skeleton wearing a dress that might’ve once been something you put on for church — Sunday’s finest is what you’d call it — before The End. I raise my leg and kick her in the sternum. I’m practically kicking thin air. Her arms flail out as she stumbles backward, a dusty groan escaping her mouth. In less than two seconds, my machete, still slick with Overalls’s brains, collapses her cranium.

  “Want more?” I shout to the surrounding dead, my arms out like I’m Russell Crowe in Gladiator (minus fifty pounds of muscle). “Come on!”

  Their glowing eyes seem to flicker in the fog. Behind me, I hear Norm’s grunts, the sounds of his baseball bat clobbering their heads. It’s a good sign. When Norm is locked in the zone, he’s like Barry Bonds out there. Each crush of his baseball bat is a home run.

  The fog dissipates, showing the dead in all of their disgusting beauty. Lumps, knobs, bones sticking out of fleshy and unusable arms, tattered clothes, melted skin. I’d be lying if I said my stomach isn’t clenching.

  “Jack!” someone says. I instantly recognize the voice, even through the Jeep’s glass. It’s Darlene. I risk a glance at the crashed vehicle. Most of the windows are intact except for a large crack through the windshield. The glass is tinted. I can barely make out the white moon of her face, the distressed look in her eyes. “Jack!” She beats on the window as if to break it. She’s trapped in the car, surrounded by death, and it’s up to me to bust her out.

  The dead stream out from the woods. Locusts of the Plague, of the Apocalypse, come to pick the bones clean of all Earth’s sinners.

  I am frozen, the weight of the situation pressing down on me. I have to save Darlene.

  Norm’s gun cracks. Two quick shots. Two lightning flashes. Deafening booms. I see a spray of blood. We are getting overrun. When he drops the bat and picks up the Magnum, I know things have taken a turn for the worst.

  Shit.

  Something grips at my shoulder, causing me to jump. I turn back around, unfrozen, and I’m face to face with a young man who has died young and will always be young, even as time goes on. That is, until I shove my machete under his chin, poking a hole in the top of his head where a lava burst of scrambled brains spew out and roll down the sides of his face. The light in his eyes immediately fizzles out. I pull the blade free as easily as I lodged it in his head. The next swing decapitates an old woman. Her head rolls off in the grass, mouth missing lips, dentures chomping nothing but air. I stomp on her head, ending that freak show fast.

  Darlene, I think. Gotta to get to Darlene.

  Norm shoots two more times.

  “Jack, come on!” it’s Abby. She’s on top of the Jeep, pointing the Glock at me. She shoots twice and two dead drop.

  I, with the hel
p of Abby, have cleared a path to the car where the back of Darlene’s head is pressed up against the window facing me. I run to the Jeep, throw open the door. She tumbles out, but I catch her.

  She’s crying. I hate when she cries. The only way I can get her to stop is by taking her into my arms and kissing every inch of her face. But certain circumstances do not let that happen. The real problem is when Darlene is frightened, when she cries, she freezes. And in this world, that's a certain death sentence.

  “Go, Darlene!” I shout. “Run.”

  She takes one look at the dead piled up, making a body-shaped path through this abandoned field, and her eyes widen in terror. A bald corpse in nothing but his underwear sees us, and lumbers away from the crumpled hood of the Jeep. I give Darlene a little push, nothing terrible or violent, just something to get her engine primed and ready to go. She takes off, clumsily but fast. Abby jumps off the roof of the Jeep, and in mid-jump, puts a bullet through the eye of the underwear-wearing corpse. His head jolts back and he stumbles over the tree’s root, gone to the fog.

  “I got her,” Abby says as she lands. She’s a thin thing, thinner since all of this shit went down, so I don’t hear her land. The Glock looks like it weighs more than her.

  I point to the road on the far side of the field. There’s a small pond shimmering in the morning sunshine. “Get to the lake! I’ll get Norm and the weapons,” I say. I didn’t even think to say these words. We always know living with the dead means our lives can take a turn for the worst at any moment. We prepare for this stuff. It’s almost a reflex. Second nature.

  I lunge into the Jeep. Through the tinted glass, I see Norm. A group of the dead surround him, closing in on him, slowly backing him up against the driver’s side door. He has the smoking Magnum in one hand, the baseball bat in his other. His gray shirt, already dingy with months on the road, is soaked through with sweat. I reach in the Jeep where our gym bag of weapons sit on the front seat, grab it and pull it out. The dead around the front of the car haven’t noticed me.