The gun doesn’t come out again, but he pulls something free from the back of his pants. On his gun belt is a leather scabbard. If it is any longer, I would think it houses a sword. It doesn’t and it isn’t. Instead, it’s a long hunting knife, the kind Western pioneers used on the great plains to skin buffalo, I’m sure. Honestly, I have no idea, but this Spike guy is a walking, talking cliche. I hear Tony’s voice echoing in my head: Rootinest, tootinest…
“Which one of you assholes is the leader?”
“I am,” I say. I may be cuffed to a chair and covered in rotten zombie brains, but I am no coward. I am Johnny Deadslayer. “Name’s Jack Jupiter, pard.” I smile and it feels so weird to smile at this point.
“Well, Jack Jupiter, I got some bad medicine for you,” Spike says. There is a silence as his flint-colored eyes meet mine. He has a look about him that is crazy enough to make me want to turn away.
I don’t.
Norm snorts. It’s a painful, fluid snort, but it’s also unmistakably his agonized form of laughter. “Bad medicine,” he says. “Talk n-normal, jackass.”
Spike turns his attention on Norm. “I already took a finger,” he says, brandishing that big knife, “now don’t make me take your tongue, too.”
“Leave him out of this,” I say. “I’m the leader of the group, talk to me.”
Spike arches an eyebrow, tips his cowboy hat. “Fair enough, friend.”
“Good. You got what you want, right? You got Herb, now let us go.”
A smile slowly spreads across Spike’s face. “Yeah, I got the big blacky, but that ain’t what this is about.” He barks a short burst of laughter and gets up from the table. I hear his boots squelching in the blood and zombie brains. “No, Jack Jupiter, this isn’t about what I want and don’t want. See, I always get what I want. That’s the great thing ‘bout this fucked up world we live in now. Ain’t hard to take from the weak,” he taps the butt of his pistol, “when you got the steel to do the takin for ya.”
He rounds the table, and stands directly behind Norm, then he begins to sidle in between him and Abby. He tips his hat at her and says, “Pardon me, miss.” It’s such an alien gesture to see this among the brick walls and sterile lighting and statue like zombies. I can’t help but think he took a wrong turn in a time machine and ended up here instead of 1850’s Texas.
“Jack, the reason you and yours is tied up in some abandoned stock room in my kingdom of Eden is because you disrespected me.”
And what does he call this? Chaining, beating, and scaring people who should be guests.
“We just met you!” Darlene squeals. Her face is paper-white, and she is shaking.
“May be, ma’am, but you’ve been quite acquainted with my right-hand man Butch, have ya not?”
Darlene doesn’t answer.
“I wouldn’t be proud to call that son of a bitch my right-hand man,” Abby wheezes. “He’s a murderer.”
Spike chuckles. “You gotta be sometimes. I’m sure you ain’t squeaky clean yourself, princess.”
“Look at them,” I say. “Look at the women. They’ve been beaten. What kind of man administers beatings on women?”
Actual concern shows on Spike’s face. “Butch said y’all were already like that when he found ya. World’s tough and all.”
“You wouldn’t know how tough it is out there when you’re hiding behind these walls,” I say. “You’re about as tough as Butch is worthy of being a right-hand man.”
Spike pulls his upper lip in a snarl. “Don’t try to act like you know me, boy. You don’t.”
“Oh, I know a lot about you. I have heard some great things. Funny things.”
Spike’s eyes open wide, a fire igniting inside of them.
“It’s kind of hard to be afraid of a guy who runs around playing Cowboys and Indians, dressing up like a poor man’s John Wayne. Yeah, Spike, I know you used to work in the Wild West wing of the theme park. I know you got fired because you didn’t like losing all the time, that you went off script and shot your cap gun at the White Hat, and when he didn’t fall over, you threw a temper tantrum. What was is they compared it to, a kid who didn’t get that action figure he wanted for Christmas? Yeah, I think that was it. Then you tried to fight the White Hat and got your ass handed to you on a silver platter. Boy, that was a helluva story, helped the time fly by in your little prison. You’re a laughing stock around here. Not even Butch respects you.”
I’m smiling now despite none of this actually humoring me. I know I am on thin ice. I do not have the upper hand here. We are this crazy asshole’s captives, and he has a gun and a knife, and exploding zombies. So no, this is probably not smart, but what choice do I have?
“Shut your mouth,” Spike says. “You shut your fuckin mouth right now.” The Southern drawl is gone, replaced by the last semblances of something New York or perhaps New England. It’s distorted enough for me to not rightly know.
I feel everyone’s eyes on me. Even Abby and Norm, whose eyes are almost swollen shut, have opened theirs as wide as they can. Tony, too — the guy who respects this cowboy the least — is now hardly breathing when I look at him, his face telling me I should’ve shut up while I still can.
But, of course, I’m not going to shut up. I’m pissed. I’m scared. I’m tired of assholes trying to push me and mine around.
“You are just a figurehead. Butch is the one who really runs this place. He goes out there and does what needs to be done for Eden while you sit back with your feet up, shooting off cap guns.”
“Enough!” Spike yells.
The gun comes out in a blur and he wraps his arm around Norm’s neck with the hand that holds the hunting blade. “You wanna find out if this here’s a cap gun, partner? Want me to prove it to you? This your brother, right? Wanna see what his brains look like?”
I bite down hard enough for my molars to pop and turn to dust. I went too far. My stomach clenches as I think I just put the nail in my brother’s coffin.
“No,” I say. “I told you to leave him out of this. This is between me and you. Leader versus leader.”
Norm’s face is screwed up in pain, but somehow I notice him smiling. This son of a gun is beaten, missing a finger, on the cusp of death, and he’s smiling. It causes me to smirk too.
“This ain’t funny,” Spike says. “You disrespect me and I kill. Simple, pard.”
I see the murder in his eyes.
I scramble for something to say. I’m no longer fueled by that wave of adrenaline that comes over me in times of great stress and uncertainty. I have to think like Johnny Deadslayer. What would he do? He wouldn’t let his brother die. He wouldn’t let his group be disrespected and humiliated.
I think back to all the old Western movies Norm and me used to watch before he got too old to hang out with his little brother. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Tombstone, Once Upon a Time in the West, these all flood back into my mind. Clint Eastwood snarling across the way at Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, that haunting music playing in the background. Val Kilmer saying, “I’m your Huckleberry,” in Tombstone. Man, that was the pinnacle of my childhood.
There’s one thing I picked up from those movies that I think is useful to me right now.
Spike cocks the hammer back on his pistol. The full click stops the words in my throat. Norm is trying to move his head away from the barrel, but he doesn’t get too far, being confined and cuffed to a chair and all.
“I’m gonna kill each one of ‘em,” Spike says. “Make you watch as the walls is painted with their blood. How ya like that, pard? With the girls, I’m gonna go real slow, make it painful, so that even when it’s your turn, you hear them screaming in the afterlife.” Spit sprays from his mouth as he talks. The toothpick falls and is lost in a pool of dark blood on the table.
“This isn’t about them, it’s about me. I disrespected you, they didn’t.”
Norm chuckles then says, “Me, too…” in a weak voice.
That one thing I learned from those We
sterns is that a gunslinger won’t refuse a gunfight.
Never. Not if you’re a true gunslinger.
“Now I’m gonna make you pay, pard-na!” Spike bellows. He raises the blade in one hand and grabs Norm’s face with the other. The knife presses up against Norm’s ear, and he’s screaming. It’s a sound of a dying man, and it ices my blood. A trickle of red falls down Norm’s neck. His features bunch up in pain.
“I challenge you!” I shout. My last hope. “I challenge you to a gunfight. Like the Wild West.”
Spike lets the blade drop from Norm’s face. He turns slowly to look me square in the eyes.
“You fancy yourself a cowboy, right?” I ask. “Then prove it. Prove to me you’re not just playing dress-up because it’s the end of the world.”
Spike narrows his eyes. His pupils are like steel. “I ain’t gotta prove to you a damn thang.”
There’s a moment of silence lingering between us as we stare, face to face. I know he must have cameras in here. I know Butch Hazard and his crew of soldiers are just beyond the doorway waiting to bust the door down at the first bad sign of things not going in Spike’s favor. I know this and so does Spike.
“Not to me, then,” I say. “Prove it to your right-hand man and your legion of soldiers. Prove it to the people of Eden. Make them respect you instead of fear you.”
“Fear is respect,” he says, his tone taking on that of someone who is not getting their way.
“Well, I guess you’re not only crazy, but you’re dumb, too.”
He shoots up from his leaning posture.
Darlene stares at me, not even breathing. I look to Norm and he’s exhaling a great sigh of relief as he tries to rub the side of his head on his shoulder, unsuccessfully. Then Spike is up and walking back around the table, blade in hand. The spurs jingle. I am reminded of a dog with a bell on its collar, and I can’t help but smile.
“Think that’s funny?” he says.
Next thing I know, his leg comes up and he boots Tony’s chair — with him still in it. And Tony topples over, not even able to flail his arms for balance. The metal bangs against concrete with a sharp crack, and Tony moans out in pain.
But that is the least of my worries.
Spike grips the arm of my chair, spins me halfway around to meet him. The legs scrape the floor like nails on a chalkboard. Darlene screeches.
“No! Leave him alone!” she yells.
I can’t even turn my head and give her a reassuring look, or tell her everything is going to be okay like I have been telling her our entire relationship. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe she’ll finally open her eyes and realize everything isn’t okay.
“Oh, I’m gonna leave him alone. He’ll need to be left alone,” Spike says. The normal voice is creeping out again, almost whiny.
He has that big knife in hand and he swings down on my head. I feel a crack, a sickening crack, and warm blood runs down my face.
He swings again.
“Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting him!” Darlene says.
Crack.
“Darlene,” Abby echoes. She turns toward my fiancé with a look that says, stop it before he hurts you too.
Spike is laughing maniacally. He smiles wide. His teeth are much more rotten this close up. So are the wrinkles in his skin. Probably from hours in the sun, probably from age. I don’t know for sure. I just know he’s not the most handsome fellow.
He hits me over and over again.
I pass out to the sounds of Darlene’s shrieks and Spike’s mad cackles.
Thirty-Eight
I awake to quiet.
I haven’t gotten too much quiet these days. Was it all a dream? The room is almost pitch-black, somehow darker than it was when my eyes were closed and I was lost in the deep, dark pools of sleep. The rough straw mattress and hard concrete bed remind where I’m at, but the smell of the slop bucket solidifies it.
My head feels like it’s on fire.
I rub at it, feeling the dried blood and the knot. The feeling doesn’t go away.
I make a move to get up. My entire body is sore, and not the good kind of sore you get after a tough workout, the kind where you can barely sit on the toilet without thinking, Fuck, I’m never running again and Good job, Jack! No, this hurt is the kind of hurt I’d expect someone who somehow survived getting hit by a Mac truck to feel. Pain filling every nook and cranny, man.
“Kill me,” I try to say, but it comes out in a hoarse whisper. Now I’m realizing how badly I want water. I wonder how long I’ve been out. The bars on the little sliver of window offer no daylight or moonlight, just black sky and damaged hopes.
“Tony,” I say, knowing his cell was close to mine before. Then I speak again, this time the word coming out cleaner. “Tony!”
No answer.
I go back to sleep. I dream of Darlene and Norm. Their dead bodies on fire beneath the forgotten and rusty roller coaster.
I wake, hearing a thud.
Sunlight streams in through the small window, flitting back and forth. Shadow. Sunlight. Thud. Thud. Shadow. Thud.
I rub at my eyes.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It continues like an alarm clock. My body is still sore, but my mind is even worse off. I can’t help but thinking of Darlene and Abby and Norm and Tony, even Herb. If I could just lay here for the rest of my life — which I don’t think will be much longer — I’d probably be better off.
But I can’t.
Johnny Deadslayer wouldn’t. He’d find a way out.
Something wet falls from above me, causing me to stop mid-thought.
Thud. Thud.
Whatever hit me is warm and is dripping down my face. I raise my hand and swipe at it. I look at my fingers. Whatever it is is sticky and red. My heart skips a beat for a moment as I think to myself that it’s blood.
But it can’t be blood.
Thud. Thud.
A fainter thud.
The sunlight drifts in and out of the small cell that has been my home for too long.
Thud.
I turn my head to look at the window.
Now my heartbeat has stopped because what I see on the outside, dangling by a frayed rope, is enough to ice me over completely.
It is Tony.
His face is frozen in a snarl. The only smile I see on him comes across his neck, and it’s a deep smile, a red smile. A slit throat.
Thud-thud-thud.
Blood sprays with each hit.
I am standing on the bed now, and my knees go weak, threatening to give out and have me tumble all the way to the piss-soaked, hard floor.
There is also a bullet hole in Tony’s head. It is dark and almost perfectly circular. Part of my mind tells me the hole is still smoking as if he has just been executed, but I know that is only my brain playing tricks on me. A thin stream of blood runs from this hole, zigging and zagging down the bridge of his nose then his mouth then finally falling off of his chin in thick, red drops.
“Tony,” I say in a whisper.
Around his neck is a sign which looks to be written in his own blood. I TELL LIES AND NOW I’M DEAD.
This is my fault. I never should’ve opened my mouth about Spike’s past. Oh, God. It hurts. A choked sob escapes my throat. If he would do that to Tony, what would he do to my Darlene or my brother or Abby?
I shake my head. No, I can’t think like that. I have to be strong. I have to be Johnny Deadslayer.
Rest in Peace, Tony.
The gates rattle down the corridor. A line of light shoots down the hallway as hinges creak. Boots thud against the concrete, keys jingle, and I almost mistake them for Spike’s spurs, but I know better than that. He wouldn’t subject himself to the cells.
Sunlight catches Butch’s face. “Up, Jupiter,” he says.
In one hand he has a nightstick, and in the other he has his Desert Eagle.
“Where’s Darlene?” I say.
“Don’t worry about her, she’s safe.”
I stand up,
knowing the drill. If I even breathe wrong, I’m taking a nightstick into the gut or the butt of the Eagle to the temple.
“I see you got the present Spike left you,” Butch says. “It was messy, let me tell you.” He leans forward, brings the hand with his gun in it up and whispers, “I told you he was crazy.”
“When’s my shootout?” I ask. “When do I get to put a bullet in his head?”
Butch stares at me, incredulous. Then he speaks the way a man speaks to a cute puppy, that soothing, comforting tone. “Oh, Jack, you can’t be serious. Did you really think he was going to give you an honest chance to kill him?”
“Y-Yeah,” I say.
Butch smiles, lifts his eyebrows up. Sweat drops from his buzzed hair and falls down the sides of his face. “Nope, buddy. Sorry,” he says and chuckles, his face going serious. “Now turn around. And if you mess up one time, Jupiter, just one little display of funny business then I’m breaking both of your arms. If you want to have any chance of surviving in the Arena, you don’t want your arms broken.”
There is a time and place for rebellion, and this is not it.
What the hell is the Arena? I almost ask, but don’t.
He cuffs me and he’s not fragile at all.
Then, he throws a burlap sack over my head that smells like rotten potatoes, and leads me out of the cell, like a pig to the slaughterhouse.
Thirty-Nine
We ride on a horse and buggy, the steady clop-clop of the hooves and the creaking of the wooden carriage confirm that for me.
I hear whispers.
“Is that him?”
“The Zombie Killer?”
“The Carnivore?
“He will put an end to that psycho Spike.”
“He’s come to free us.”
“I think he deserves whatever Spike gives him!”
“Be quiet, you old kook!”
It’s the whisper of a thousand people, all combined into one.
“ATTENTION CITIZENS OF EDEN, WE WILL BE GATHERING AT THE ARENA IN ONE HOUR. ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY. ANYONE CAUGHT OUT IN THE STREETS WILL BE SWIFTLY DEALT WITH.”
The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4 Page 34