“They see everything,” Tony says.
Brian nods, his eyes fixated on me. All of their eyes are.
I just smile. I will leave them if I have to, gone while they’re sleeping, back before they wake up with my brother in hand.
The sun has started to go down, but I am still sweating. I shake, too. With pain, with anger, I don’t know. It’s a combination of a lot of emotions because I know my brother was there when I needed him the most back in Woodhaven. Forget all about him leaving Mother and I and joining the military. I know why he did it and he’s apologized, and he saved Darlene when I couldn’t. If it wasn’t for him being there that July 4th weekend, she would’ve been devoured by all the people I grew up hating. So I can’t leave him there, not even for a night.
“They won’t kill him if that’s what you’re worried about, Jack,” Tony says. “They’ll want all the information out of him they can get. Spike takes things extremely…personal.”
Herb leans away, back to the cover of the shadows he was in earlier. For a second, I think he is going to run. He doesn’t. Just the mention of Spike seems to bring him to his knees.
Still, I voice my opinion on that matter. “I’m not waiting for them to beat him to death. I am going in there and I’m going to kill every last one of those camouflaged bastards.” My voice is like a serrated blade sawing through bone.
Tony comes over to me. He puts both hands on my shoulder. There is a brief moment where I think he is going to wring my neck, maybe slap some sense into me.
“Listen to me, Jack,” he says, gripping me tighter, “you are not in your right mind. You have experienced a great stress. We all have. Norm will be hurt, I won’t lie to you, if I saw correctly, he was already shot in the leg. But Spike won’t kill him this quick. That, I promise.”
I take a deep, steady breath to calm myself, escaping Tony’s grasp as I do so. I lean up against a large cabinet that fits as perfectly as a Tetris piece into the corner of the kitchen. The fine China dishes inside jingle as I do so. Some dust drifts down from the top. My nose tickles like I’m about to sneeze and I really don’t want to cover my mouth with the burning sensation in my arm already revving up to its maximum intensity.
“You’re right,” I say, already planning my midnight escape.
“Just give it one more night. Let’s plan this out first before we go in there guns-a-blazing,” Tony says.
I nod. That is the smart choice, the right one. Then I cross the kitchen tile into the living room where the dead TV stares at me, the waning sun going down behind it.
Something moves outside, a shadow, a silhouette. Slow, lumbering movements.
I part the curtains to see glowing yellow eyes. It’s just the one at first. One that has strayed from its pack. One that has taken to hunting the night too early while its pack mates wobble from one dead foot to the other, decomposing quicker in the scorching Floridian sun.
Then, I see more. Their yellow eyes glinting with dying light. Each one flicks on like street lamps in an abandoned neighborhood as darkness grows closer.
I blink and they’re gone. Maybe I do need some rest.
Twenty-Three
“Are you feeling all right, Jack?” Darlene asks.
We sit in the upstairs bed, the covers still rumpled from our previous night’s stay.
I shake my head. I am not all right. My brother is gone. I am shot. Eden is lost. I am tired and hungry and sad.
“It’ll be okay,” she says.
Rarely, does Darlene have to console me.
I take a deep breath, close my eyes.
“We’ll get Norm back. You’re just not ready to start a war,” she says. “You saw that man. He held me at gunpoint, Jack. He is crazy. Worse than all the zombies.”
“I don’t think anyone is ever ready to start a war,” I say.
She leans forward and kisses me on the corner of my mouth. “You’re right,” she says. “I hate the constant violence. I hate having to be scared all the time.” Her eyes gleam with tears, but she won’t let them fall. I see that in her face. She wants to be the strong one here. She wants to be the rock. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die.”
“Me either,” I say, meaning it.
“We should get to sleep,” she says.
Sleep, that’s all we do in bed.
So far since the dead rose, there’s not been many times or places to do what engaged couples usually do. In the last few months, I can count how many times we made love undisturbed on one hand. Abby or Norm somehow always interrupted us. Zombies, too. Zombies more than anything. I’ve come to think of the act as a bad omen.
I lean forward, the wound prickling with a dull sort of pain, and I kiss her full on the mouth. The act is enough to get my blood pumping faster, but I refrain.
A creak outside of the door causes me to turn away from my fiancé’s beautiful eyes. Through the cracked door, I see a large, hunched figure.
It’s Herb.
“Herb,” I say.
He stops. In a small voice — much too small for a man as big as he is — he says, “Y-Yeah?”
“Come in here, please,” I say.
Darlene gives me a look and arches her eyebrow.
I nod: Don’t worry. It’s the kind of mental telepathy only soulmates can have.
“O-Okay,” Herb says.
I pat the end of the bed.
“What makes you so special?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “Nothin,” he says.
I smile, try to ease the tension.
“C’mon, Herb, don’t be bashful,” I say.
“He’s a super-genius,” Darlene says.
Herb shies away as if he’s blushing. “No, I’m not a super genius, I’m just a man.”
“Then why does Butch want you back?” I ask.
“I’m really not supposed to say,” he says. He swallows hard enough for me to hear the gulp.
“Herb…I’m not the police. I’m not going to arrest you or anything like that.”
“I know…” he says, “I’m just not proud of it.”
Darlene smiles.
She pats Herb. “We’ve all done things we’re not proud of,” she says. “Especially now. It’s life. But we get through it, accept the responsibility, and move on. That’s exactly what you are doing, isn’t it, Herb? You didn’t like what they were trying to make you do, so you left. You moved on.”
Herb smiles — one of those smiles a man cracks in the fresh sunlight of a new day, the darkness behind him. “Yeah…I guess you’re right,” he says.
“You don’t have to tell if you don’t want to,” Darlene says. “It’s totally up to you, but we think you could help prepare us for what we are going to face in the next couple of days. As much as I’d like for my fiancé to stay in bed and get rest, he won’t.” She smiles at me and leans closer to Herb. In a loud whisper, she says, “He’s a stubborn little mule.”
Herb bursts out in laughter.
It’s really not that funny, but I find myself laughing with him. The world has been devoid of real laughter for too long. All those times I should’ve laughed but have been too depressed have been bubbling inside of me and now they’re boiling over. I can’t help it. Darlene laughs, too.
The laughter eventually fades. Abby and the Richards’s below us must think we’re batshit crazy.
Herb wipes his eyes. “Okay, okay,” he says, in a more serious tone. “I ain’t super smart in all aspects of life. I never learned how to drive a car real good for one thing. Almost fifty years old and I can’t remember what side of the double lines I’m s’posed to be on.” He chuckles. “But I’m good at sums and and science stuff. Couldn’t tell you a damn thing about the peri-odd-ik table, no — besides oxygen, that stuff we breathe, and carbon, that stuff that makes the soda pop bubble, but I can figure out how to make things mix together good to make medicines and potions, like the witches in those scary movies my aunt Maggie used to take me to when I was a kid. That was September 18th
, 1977, last time I saw Auntie Maggie alive. It was a Sunday. She took care of me and Phil when my momma died. She died the year after on August 2nd, 1978. That woulda been… ” He brings a finger up to his forehead and squeezes his eyes shut until his face is a mess of wrinkles. “That woulda been a…Wednesday. Yeah, a Wednesday!” He’s smiling now, then he shakes his head and waves a hand. “‘Cuse me, I’m getting all remember-y.”
Darlene pats his large shoulders again. “No, Herb, it’s all right.”
I nod. Wow. Herb has a gift. One you would miss if you wrote him off as a mentally handicapped man. As I almost did.
“I can do these things real nice,” he says. “That’s what Spike and Butch tell me. I can help them solve the problem…you know, the dead people.” His eyes jam shut again. “Gosh, I hate dead people. They’re all…runny and scary.” His eyes light up again. “Like those witches in the scary movies my aunt Maggie used to take me to when I was a kid!”
“So what did he have you do?” I ask.
Herb shies away again, goes into that mental cocoon.
“It’s all right, Herb,” Darlene says.
I asked Tony and Brian, but they didn’t know. They’d only seen Herb a handful of times. Matter of fact, they’d only seen Spike a handful of times, too. Butch is the guy who does the dirty work, who takes the blame when things goes wrong. Spike, I presume, is the king of the castle, the one the citizens of Eden bow down to, the one whose feet they kiss. But he’s also the mastermind, the evil madman who will burn down a village of uninfected just for a small bottle of aspirin, then that same night, he’ll sleep like a baby knowing he cured a couple of headaches. Yeah, I know guys like that. I’ve written about them all my life, dealt with them in high school — Freddy Huber would bash your brains in after gym class, but he’d be praised for making the game-winning touchdown pass later that same night.
It’s a basic fact of life, I’m afraid. There’s assholes and the people they shit on.
These are obviously just huge assumptions. I’ve never met Spike, but it’s safe to say any guy who sends out a task force of gunslinging Jugheads is not a stable man.
“I don’t know, really,” Herb says. “They was having me work with this man. I really liked him. Real smart guy. Said he came from the CDC in Washington and I try to tell him I don’t listen to them CDs. Never did. My aunt Maggie left me a record player when she died. It worked before I had to leave home. I miss that record player…I miss my aunt Maggie.”
He leans forward, huge hands covering his face, and what comes out of his mouth is nothing close to laughter. It’s sobs, deep, rumbling sobs.
Darlene still has her hand on his back, and she looks at him, her eyes bulging. That mental telepathy: Do something, Jack! Help me!
Then me responding with a left-hand scratch of my forehead which transitions to me pushing my too-long hair out of my eyes. What the heck do I do?
Anything, Jack!
Growing up in Woodhaven, I remember my mom working a double at the diner on my eighth birthday and bringing me a half-eaten piece of apple pie with a burning cigarette plopped in the middle as a candle — so yeah, I’m not the best when it comes to comfort.
Jack, come on!
Herb’s sobs ramp up to something rivaling the shifting of tectonic plates.
I put my left hand on his knee, and he jerks at the touch. “It’s all right, Herb,” I say. “L-Let it out?” I’m looking at Darlene and she rolls her eyes. The motherly instincts come out. I would say all women are gifted with these instincts, but then I’ll think of my own mother and know that’s not true.
Darlene wraps her arms around Herb. His sobs subside for the moment. It’s so funny seeing my small fiancé up next to him, but it is also sweet. Now I act on instinct, and I join the hug. Herb’s sobs stop. He pats me on the back with those big mitts, rattling my bones.
“They-they wanted me to cut one of the dead guys’ heads open. They wanted me to cut his brain up,” Herb says.
“Why, Herb?”
He rubs his eyes. “I-I don’t know.” His voice is deep and commanding. No mental telepathy here, it’s obvious enough that I’m another few words away from poking the bear.
“Because Spike is crazy,” Tony Richards says from the doorway.
It startles me.
“He’s crazy, yeah,” Darlene says, eyeing Tony, “we already know that.”
“Everyone in this world is crazy,” I say. It’s a sentiment I’d defend with my last dying breath.
“Not the kind of crazy y’all think he is,” Tony says. “He’s crazier than that.”
“Well, putting Butch Hazard in charge of your security is pretty damn crazy, then kidnapping my brother is also pretty damn crazy.”
“He wants to control an army,” Tony says.
“Hope someone breaks it to him before he gets too far ahead of himself, but there’s not enough people left on the face of the earth for an honest-to-God army.”
Tony chuckles and shakes his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”
I tilt my head. “No?” I say it more like a question.
“Not an army of living people, but an army of the dead.”
Twenty-Four
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, shaking my head.
That is crazy.
“No, I ain’t,” Tony says. “Ask Brian. Hell, ask Herb here if he’s up to talking about it.” Herb shifts farther away from Tony at the sound of his name. “Butch is crazy, but Spike is crazier.”
Someone creaks up the steps. In my fuzzed-brain state, I picture the golden-eyed monsters I thought I saw outside.
A voice drifts toward us.
It’s Brian. “So crazy that he needs put down. When Dad was shooting at him, we was so close.” He uses his thumb and index finger to showcase just how close. Then he snarls, reminding me of a rabid dog — thin, mangy…and hungry for a kill. “But Butch Hazard deserves worse than a bullet to the brain. I’m wanna make him suffer like he made me suffer.”
Herb starts sobbing again. “Poor Tammy.” Blubbering. “I-I-I heard about her.” More blubbers. “S-S-S-She died on a Monday. I always hated Mondays.”
Tony bows his head. “Yeah, poor Tammy.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry — ” I begin. I definitely am, but the curiosity is to great for me to let this one go.
“She was my wife. My pregnant wife. We thought we were safe…” Brian answers, but the stern look on his face, the disgust, the pain, the hurt, doesn’t stay long. He screws up his features like a raincloud swollen with a storm, and he bursts. Sobs, deep, wracking sobs that almost rival Herb’s cut through the quiet farmhouse.
Herb gets up from the bed and walks over to Brian. He hugs him, swallows him up in his large embrace. The two sob, first loudly then quietly while Tony Richards bows his head and closes his eyes. I am too tired to cry, but I feel a sadness. We have all lost others. Me, I lost my mom and my friends in Woodhaven, I almost lost Darlene, and now I’ve lost Norm. Abby lost her mom, too — worst, she had to kill her own zombified version of her mom. She’s talked of other family, long-distance relatives she’s met once or twice in life, but she speaks of them like strangers. The point is, we all lost people, but we are still here and I don’t know if that is a gift or a curse sometimes.
Once the crying subsides, Brian starts to talk. “I met Tammy three days after we arrived at Eden. By that time, it still had some of its grace left. Green grass in front of the lawns, flower beds (Mom loved the flower beds), and a sense of security we couldn’t find nowhere else. It smelled normal…you know, alive. We were all given jobs. Stupid folk labor, really.
“I was one of Eden’s landscapers. Tammy would sit out on her assigned shelter’s porch, a sun hat on her head, always wearing a frilly, low-cut dress. I don’t throw pansy terms around like ‘love at first sight’ often, but that’s exactly what it was.” He sighs and looks out the window into the sunlight’s last fading rays. “Yeah, Tammy’s house was my favor
ite to ‘scape. I’d do my best work over there, and always take way longer than I needed to. Then it got to be that once a week wasn’t enough to see her. I’d sneak out past the compound’s mandated curfew, crawl into her bedroom window. She lived with a cousin, that was all of her family that survived. It wasn’t physical at first. We’d talk and laugh and tell stories of the lives we only lived a few months before, but the way we told ‘em made it seem like they were forever ago. Then it got physical, and she got pregnant. I wasn’t worried, you know, bringing up a baby in a shitty world like this one. I was ready for it. With Tammy by my side, I could do anything.”
Darlene looks at me and smiles. I smile back.
“But sometimes the timing ain’t right,” Brian continues. “Spike pulled a Hitler among the local government of Eden,” he says this while making air quotes with both hands. “And imagine if Hitler never lost World War II…that’s what Eden was. No more lawn mowing. Now you’re in the yard breaking rocks with a pickaxe, helping build them walls with tools you ain’t never heard off. The woman and men were separated, but…” he chokes up again. We are all watching him with dark eyes. He is the center of attention. The electricity is off, but he is in the burning spotlight. “But then Spike wanted more. He wanted to find out why these people came back after they died and how he could use that for his advantage. People were selected for experiments.”
What? Experiments?
Darlene has her hand over her open mouth, her brow wrinkling. It's the look she used to get whenever an animal died on screen in a movie or TV show. Or when one of her romance books deviated from the Happy Ever After trope.
“Tammy was one of them. My unborn child was another. Two for the price of one that dickhead Spike got,” Brian says.
I ball my hands into fists, ignoring the pain in my arm. Murderer runs through my head. Hate comes soon after.
“Maybe he didn’t know,” Darlene says, trying to find a ray of hope in the sad tale.
Tony puts an arm around Brian. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Point is, Butch Hazard knew. Butch Hazard knew everything that went on beyond those walls. Who was humping who, what you ate for dinner three nights ago, who’s constipated, and so on. He knew Tammy was pregnant. She hadn’t started to show yet, but the doctors in town had already put her on them vitamins for the baby — ”
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