Norm is on me before I can throw my last punch. He barrels into Butch Hazard. Butch is not a large man, he is just one that refuses to fall over.
I pull myself up, getting ready to fight.
We might both be shot, we might both be scared, and in Norm’s case, a little hungover, but Butch doesn’t stand a chance against the Jupiter brothers.
That much I am sure.
I get ready to rush at him when I see the glare of headlights. The remaining soldier is behind the wheel.
The truck is coming right for us.
Two shots ring out from a distance. Dead accurate shots. If the windshield wasn’t bulletproof, the woman would be missing most of her face.
Everything is moving in slow motion. Darlene’s cries for me are warped and watery. Norm’s are not, pained shouts of war. Butch grunts.
All the while, I wonder how I got myself into this situation.
Slow motion off.
Fast forward on.
The truck flies down the road at what seems like a million miles per hour. I dive out of the way, leaving my brother behind. There’s no time to grab him and pull him with me.
Butch swings, his fist connecting meatily with Norm’s face. My brother staggers, feigns a punch, then falls over. He is out cold. Butch Hazard has a mean right hook.
The truck stops about two feet short from Norm’s head.
Slow motion again.
I am in a dream, pumping my legs as fast as I can, but getting nowhere. Each step I get closer to Norm, he gets farther and farther away until the truck is blocking my view. It whooshes in front of me so fast that I stumble and fall on my ass, half on the curb, half on the road. It’s painful now, and I barely feel it because of the adrenaline and fear pumping through my veins, but I’ll really feel it later.
Fast forward.
I hear the squeal of the tires, the distant snarls from the dead. Darlene behind me says my name over and over again. “Jack, Jack, Jack! Come on!”
The door slams. I see a blur of a bloody face, but it belongs to a monster. The beaming sun hits me in the eyes. This monster is not a monster, it’s just a conglomeration of Butch and Norm. Butch has Norm over his shoulders. He dumps my older brother’s limp body into the truck’s cabin.
Then they’re gone, the tires squealing, rifle shots chasing after them, thumping the metal, whining off the asphalt.
No slow motion this time. Just me and the road. I spring up, hardly noticing the pain all over my body. My legs fire up the street, weaving in and out of dead and mutilated zombies, almost slipping in their blood and guts.
But I am not fast enough.
I stop, fall over, feeling my lungs burn, feeling my small dinner of peanuts and flat Coca-Cola threaten to come out of me. I look up at the taillights of the truck, see them getting smaller and smaller.
I swear I see Norm’s hand, his bloody hand, smear the back window, and my heart breaks.
It’s too late. I’ve failed.
Twenty-One
Darlene’s small hands reach under my armpits, but she is too weak to lift me off of the road. It takes all three of them — Herb, Abby, and Darlene.
I have lost one of the last anchors of my old life. My older brother who I grew up with, who I share my most fondest and most terrible memories with is now gone. This is my fault. All my fault.
My family is like table legs. If you take one away, the table is no longer sturdy. It’s falling, no longer a table, no longer whole. I cannot face this dead world without my older brother. We will topple over without him.
I can’t even stand up straight. I might be crying, I’m not sure. Something is stinging my eyes, either tears or sweat.
“Norm,” I say, feeling the lump in my throat.
“We gotta go,” Abby says. “They were shooting. They could — ”
“They weren’t shooting at us. They were helping us,” I say. My voice sounds angry to my own ears, but I’m not the best judge. They all look at me like I’m crazy, and right at this moment, I feel fucking crazy.
“Come on,” Darlene says.
“No, we have to get Norm,” I say.
“Not now,” Abby says. “You’re hurt and not in your right mind, Jack, but we will get him back. We will, I promise.”
I’ve been shot. It’s this realization, this mental acceptance that I’ve been shot which brings the pain. Terrible bursts of pain. Have you ever been shot? It’s worse than anything a dentist can do to you with their tray of sharp torture tools, worse than any doctor with his colonoscopy kit.
“I’m sorry, kid,” a voice says. It’s one I recognize, but not one I’d ever think of hearing again. I turn around and I am face to face with Tony Richards. His son is next to him. Tony carries the sniper rifle with its large scope, the same one I saw back on the farm. The gun hangs over his shoulders on straps.”I tried so damn hard to brain that son of a bitch,” he says.
“If it wasn’t for you two, it could’ve been so much worse,” I say.
Tony comes over and grips be on my good arm. “It’ll be okay,” he says.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“Because we have him on our side,” Tony replies. He is pointing to Herb. Herb’s eyes go wide, his mouth works like he is trying to swallow his tongue. “Herb here is on the inside, I’m sure he told you. He knows all the inner workings of the compound, the secret tunnels, the schedules. Don’t you Herb?” Tony asks.
Herb looks down at his feet, and shakes his head. “I don’t wanna go back,” he says. “Don’t make me — ”
Darlene pats him. “Shh, it’s okay. Don’t worry,” she says.
“Herb knows it ain’t okay. Don’t sugarcoat it, darling. You don’t know Butch Hazard. He would’ve done worse than you could possibly imagine to you and yours, and he would just be the appetizer. The main course would be Spike, and he’d pull your teeth out one by one with dirty needle-nosed pliers, digging into the gums and all, not caring about how loud you scream. Then he’ll cut your fingers off. He likes that for some reason.”
Darlene shakes her head, continues patting Herb.
“You got off a lot easier than you think,” Brian says to Darlene. Then he looks at me. “Don’t think I haven’t lost people, too.”
“Now, let’s get that wound cleaned up,” Tony says, squinting at the bloody mess on my arm.
“We got a lot of medical shit back at the house,” Brian says. When he says this, I have another realization. This is a man who is barely a man. He might be eighteen or in his twenties, but under that scruffy, patchy beard, he is just a kid. His adult life will be short. All of our lives will be. Instead of banks and bills and groceries, date night with the missus, raising kids, and the whole nine yards, Brian Richards will be fighting zombies, running for his life, struggling for food. It’s a thought that saddens me. Abby is the same way. Her father will never walk her down the aisle, her mother will never help her pick out her wedding dress.
As if on cue, Abby looks at Brian, smiles and says, “Great way to put it…‘medical shit’.”
“You can help him? You swear?” Darlene asks.
“I’ll do my best to help your husband, ma’am. Just like he helped me,” Tony says.
She nods gratefully. I wonder what is going through her mind, whether she thinks I’ll actually die from a bullet graze or the fact that her and I never actually got married. We are perpetually engaged. There are not many working chapels these days nor are there many places where I can drop a bunch of money on a wedding ring.
“Besides,” Tony says, “I think owe all of you guys one.” He turns to face us again. The bottom of his eyes are wet, threatening tears. “You were right, Jack. I can’t keep living in the past. There is hope in the future.”
Brian puts his open hand on the back of his father’s neck and gives a little squeeze. Tony’s hand settles on top of his son’s.
“They are in a better place now. It was selfish of me to keep them around like that,” he says.
I
can only nod. The anger and shock in my head is all but fizzling out, replacing with sadness. A deep, painful sadness not only for the Richards family, but for this world in general.
I think of Norm, then, and a man named Spike, cutting his fingers off, torturing him.
Twenty-Two
We get back to the farmhouse in what I would consider a blur. I blame fatigue and shock and all sorts of other emotions I never want to feel again.
Somehow, we all stuffed into the Richards’s Dodge. I actually had to sit on Darlene’s lap because she refused to sit on mine because of my injuries. Screw emasculation, it was comfortable. Brian had had a handkerchief in his back pocket. He tied it tight around the wound on my arm and confirmed that it was just a graze and I’d heal fine with the proper stitching and ointment application. He also told me he wrapped the wound with the side he doesn’t blow his nose on, then he gave me a wink.
I didn’t laugh. That was not a time for laughter.
Now, as I climb out of the Challenger, looking at the farmhouse’s roof where my brother had puked off the side, I do laugh. There is no humor in the laugh. It is the laughter of a man whose insanity has been hanging on by a thread and who has just realized that thread has snapped.
I laugh so hard, it hurts my stomach. I laugh so hard, more blood spurts from the wound on my arm.
Darlene gets out after me. She is concerned, she is always concerned.
“Come on, let’s get him into the house,” Tony says.
Someone grabs my arm and ushers me up the front steps.
The sunshine is gone, no longer roasting my skin, warming me, and I’m in the house, which is considerably cooler but still stuffy. I feel a sense of claustrophobia creeping up my throat as if I am choking.
Brian guides me to the same kitchen table where we had our first meeting — at gunpoint — not even a day ago, but that time I had Norm with me. Even if he was a little drunk, I still felt better. This time, my arm is burning, I am suffering from insanity, and my brother is nowhere to be seen.
“Lay your arm down,” Brian says.
I do.
He starts to work at the knot of the handkerchief. Soon, Darlene is at my side. She says, “You can squeeze my hand if you want. This might hurt a little, honey.” She uses the sweet voice that she always uses when she wants something, or when she wants to prepare me for bad news.
Tony rummages in the other room, throwing pots and pans and junk and books around like he’s a dog digging a hole in loose dirt. “Got it,” he says. “That brother of his didn’t drink all of it.” His voice wavers in my ears.
I feel like I am falling. I feel like a failure.
I remember Ryan, the janitor at the Woodhaven Rec Center, screaming and crying as Miss Fox poured peroxide on his wound. Granted, his wound was much deeper, but that doesn’t do much to calm me down.
“Herb, I’ma need you to hold him,” Brian says. He reaches his hand out to grab the clear bottle. When he pops the cap off, a smell of pure, diesel-grade alcohol explodes from the mouth. I’m talking the type of shit you pour into jet engines. It snaps me out of whatever fugue state I’m in. I see more clearly, think more clearly. It’s a miracle really, and a bit ironic because if I took a sip of that stuff, I’d be worse off than I was before.
“Darlene,” I say.
She looks at me, her face bunched up.
I hold out my hand. “I’ll take it now,” I say.
She smiles, and we lock hands.
“How cute,” Tony says, then, “Herb, come on,” as he points to my arm on the table. Herb is apprehensive. A big man trying to hide in the shadows and not doing a very good job, but he steps forward. His large hands pin my arm down at the elbow.
“Glad you asked for my permission,” I say to him. His eyes widen. “No, I’m just kidding,” I say.
“Ready?” Brian asks.
“Do your worst.”
He pours the alcohol on the wound. I scream so hard, my lungs burns. My knees clatter against the underside of the table and despite Herb putting all his weight on it, it still lifts up about six inches. Abby puts a hand over my mouth. I feel the skin around the wound bubbling and fizzling like one of those science fair baking soda and vinegar volcanoes.
Then, it’s over.
Brian is patting my arm with a bleach-white towel. The skin is numb. I wouldn’t know he was doing that if my eyes weren’t bugged out of my head. Tony produces a small, black leather bag and a pair of reading glasses from a case in his back pocket. He puts them on the end of his nose. He has never looked more like an old man than he does now. I’m just waiting for him to fall over and break his hip.
Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! Like those weird infomercials of the old world we all used to laugh at. I’d give anything to see one of those commercials again. Give anything for it to be three in the morning, Darlene sleeping in the room next to me, her soft snores acting as a soundtrack to the muted television playing while I finally finish that damn werewolf book I left back in Woodhaven. I know it’ll never happen, but a guy can dream, can’t he? Maybe even continue Johnny Deadslayer’s tale with all this real-life inspiration.
Tony sticks me with a sewing needle and I barely feel it at all. I have no idea how Norm could’ve drank a whole bottle of this liquor and not died.
“Are you okay?” Darlene asks.
Abby removes her hand from my mouth, thank God.
“Yeah,” I say, spitting a little, “I don’t feel a thing!”
“I think you can let go of Jack there, Herb,” Brian says. “The absinthe seems to have done the trick. Ain’t nothing like it, I tell ya. Dad should’ve sold it to hospitals all over the world. We’d be millionaires. Not that it matters anymore…” he trails off.
“Yeah, and airports, too. Goodbye gas and oil crisis,” I say.
This garners a few laughs from the group. Nervous laughs. Real laughter in this dead world is hard to come by.
“No, I’ll stick to drinking it,” Tony says after a moment of prolonged silence. He reaches out, grabs the bottle and swigs the last gulp.
“Do you think you should be drinking while you’re sewing up my fiancé?” Darlene asks.
Tony nods. “Helps steady the hands.” Then he’s back to work. Stitching me up and me not feeling it.
“Do you think we should really be sewing me up when my brother is out there with Major Asshole?” I say.
More chuckles, bleeding closer and closer to real laughter.
“I’m serious,” I say.
“Son, you rush into Eden, even at full strength, they will eat you alive,” Tony says. “You would’ve gotten here six months ago when society was still kinda running and before Butch and Spike took over, you’d be looking at totally different story. You would’ve gotten a hot meal every night, the finest medical care, a warm bed to share with your lovely gal here, and whatever else you wanted, but not no more.”
We hadn’t heard about Eden six months ago, or believe me, we would’ve been there. Of course, there are other places with the same promises as Eden. Places where the walls were high and the ammunition was endless. They would let us in because Norm was a much needed soldier, in the raging zombie war. But those places are usually overrun, the fences collapsed, the buildings burned to the ground by some martyr who thought they could save us all by burning themselves.
For some reason, Eden is different. It was our last vestige of hope and now it’s dashed.
“Won’t they know you live here?” I ask.
Tony shakes his head.
“No, this ain’t our house,” Brian says. “Well it is now, but it wasn’t before.”
Tony is too busy stitching me up. He is on the last half of the deep gash. Only a few more minutes of torture.
“But the picture,” I say. “I saw the picture on the mantle. That was you guys.”
“When you’re running for your life,” Tony says, “you grab only your most important possessions. That picture is one of them. We’re origi
nally from Mississippi.” He squints his eye, his tongue lolling out from the corner of his mouth, and I feel a sharper burst of numbed pain than the ones before. He loops the thread and pulls.
I bite my tongue to avoid screaming like a little girl. The old Jack Jupiter would do that, not this new and improved zombie killer.
“There, all done,” Tony says.
I bring my arm back to my side, examining the wound. It hurts just to do that.
“Just need a bandage and it’ll heal up in about a week,” Tony says.
“Were you a doctor?” Abby asks.
Tony shakes his head. “I sold insurance. Terrible job,” he says. “I was close to killing myself every Monday through Friday.” He smiles as if he is joking, but somehow I don’t think he is. Everyone in the nine-to-five world is basically the same, at least in my experience. They’re looking for something to shake up the way things are so they can get that three day weekend or extended vacation. Snowstorm, power outage…plague.
Well, we got it.
“I went to the Mississippi State,” Brian says. “Graphic design.”
“Really? That’s cool,” Abby says. She blinks at him like a girl in love. I can already hear the wedding bells. “I was going to go to Ohio State. I’d actually almost be a sophomore now if none of…well, you know.”
“This is great and all,” I say, kind of annoyed. There’s bigger things here to worry about than our old lives. “But my brother is in the clutches of some crazy Army general and we are not there helping him.” I get up from the table, the pain from my wound barking as I do so.
“Uh-uh, soldier,” Tony says. “Going to Eden now would be suicide, especially hurt.”
“Then I’ll go alone,” I say.
Darlene grabs my bicep. “No,” she says. “I’m not going to lose you.”
“Darlene, I have to do what I have to do. You understand,” I say.
“Let us go with you, Jack,” Abby says. “But wait, just wait. Let us rest and regroup. We’ll hit them harder this way.”
“They won’t see us coming,” Darlene says. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4 Page 28