Darlene gets up, dazed, her head lolling from side to side. Then, she snaps to attention. I think it’s the smell that hits her first, the rotting smell of dead people. It can get your attention real quick.
“Get him out! Get him out! Get him out right now! I don’t want him eaten, I want him to watch. I want him to watch,” Spike yells, then breaks into his southern drawl. “Time here’s a-wasting!”
He is right, it’s a-wasting and it’s already wasted because the zombies no longer care about the gunshot of the cheering crowd or the screaming Spike. No, all they care about is us.
There’s a fat one with a belly that hangs over his waistband. The bottom part of his jaw is missing. What is left is just a great, red wound speckled with shards of teeth. The top teeth are still sharp, still deadly. Next to him, lunging forward on an ankle that is mostly broken, is a woman who is less rotted than the rest. She must have recently turned. She is a brunette. From a distance, you might even mistake her as normal. But when she opens her mouth and you see the inky-black saliva dripping down her fangs, you realize she is anything besides normal. Next to her, is a man in a greasy trucker’s cap and equally greasy — maybe greasier — coveralls. On his chest, stitched in cursive is a name. SAL, it reads. On Sal’s left is a man long dead, so rotted, I couldn’t even give you an estimated age of this guy. His skin is the color of a fish’s underbelly. Most of his head is cracked open, revealing pinkish-gray brains, dried, crusted blood. I immediately think of Pat Huber, my high school bully and how his head looked after I drove the wrong side of a hammer into his open head wound. I shudder. There’s a man in a ripped and dirty prison jumpsuit. A woman in a dress that might have once been white. A police officer (I think of Doaks and Beth coming at me in the Woodhaven Rec Center), an old woman whose skin sags off her face in droopy folds (I think of my dead mother).
And there is more, but I don’t get a long enough look at them to really see what they were before disease, bite, death, or whatever took them. All I know is their eyes are glowing, they’re hungry, and we are trapped.
Forty-Four
The crowd is in control now. That much is true. Spike stands up on his throne, his arms out to his sides as if letting their screams and cheers and jeers run over him like rainwater. “You like this?” he shouts into the microphone, causing a ripple of feedback to slice my eardrums. My back is pressed into Darlene and her back is pressed into the bars. I hear her grunting, the breath whooshing out of her as I am backed up farther and father.
“You want more?” Spike screams.
“Stop it! Stop it, you sadistic fuck!” Abby says, barely audible over the crowd. I want to scream with her. Then I want to put a bullet in Spike’s head.
The cowboy is beaming.
A strong wind blows in the arena — a welcome one — taking his hat nearly off his head. It moves the stench of death away from Darlene and me.
“We have to fight,” I say. “We can’t go out without a fight.” I say this to myself more than anything.
The dead are inches away from me. No heat radiates off of them. Not anymore. Not like it was when the disease ravaged their bodies. I remember the baking corpses in Atlanta when the shit really hit the fan. You could crack an egg and fry up some hash browns on those dying people, no joke. These zombies, well, they’re about as cold as ice.
“Y-Yeah,” Darlene says.
I break free from her, going head first into a sea of dead. My goal is not to survive, but to clear a path large enough for her to escape.
The bottom of my boot meets the prisoner’s knee, and the skin and bone is brittle. It cracks like a twig. I’m not that strong, even after life on the road for six months, but if you saw the way his knee explodes out of the side of his leg, you’d think I was the fucking Incredible Hulk.
The zombie lets out a choppy shriek. Of pain? Of confusion? Of defeat?
Meanwhile, the crowd is chanting: “We want blood! We want blood!” And they’re jumping up and down, thudding against the bleachers.
The door to the cage squeals open, but none of the zombies notice. They are too focused on Darlene and me. A soldier, the one with the scraggly, patchy beard is entering. He looks as gray and squeamish as one of the dead. He has the pole in hand, one with the wire loop at the far end.
“Get Jupiter out of there! Get him out!” Spike yells. “But don’t hurt my babies!”
I’m going to do more than that. I’m going to kill them all.
“We want blood! We want blood!”
The snarls of the zombies fill my ears.
“Get him! Get him now!”
Another scream, this one outside of the cage. Through the bars, I see Norm spring up off of his knees. It’s a jerky movement, one that would’ve been much smoother had he not been beaten and tortured, but still an effective one. He throws his head back and connects with Butch Hazard’s face and Butch staggers backward, blood gushing from his nose. Norm rolls forward, swipes his leg beneath one of the three remaining soldiers, taking him down. Abby sees this all and must be inspired because her elbow suddenly connects with the gut of the female soldier who is guarding her. The soldier doubles over and her gun goes off, sending sprays of dirt up from the ground.
“We want blood! We want blood!”
Well, they’re getting it, and they’re going to get more.
But cheers? Can you believe that? Happy, smiling people in the crowd. I should’ve realized what kind of people were living here once I saw who Spike really was. Not even Tony would recognize the crowd now. He wasn’t anything like this.
Sal, the dirty mechanic is eyeing me, sizing me up, for some reason oblivious to all the maelstrom going on outside of the cage. I am side-stepping, sizing him up, too.
“Get him!” Spike shouts.
I’m not sure if he is talking about me inside of here or Norm out there. But the soldier answers back. “I’m trying, damn it!” His voice a high-pitched shriek. So loud, I hear it perfectly clear over the buzz of Spike’s microphone, the shouts of the crowd, and the revving-engine sounds of the zombies.
The fat zombie notices that today might be his lucky day. Not only did food plunge into the cage once, but twice. It spins around and grunts a small, quizzical grunt. The soldier freezes on the spot, his back against the cage, hands gripped tight on his AR15 that was slung on his shoulder. He has since dropped the pole with the wire loop. Then, he makes a move for the door, but he only gets it about halfway open before the fat zombie falls on him with a wet plop.
He screams, and the screams are loud, ear-piercing. The rest of the zombies take notice, all of them except Sal who only flicks his head in that direction and looks back to Darlene and me.
“It’s okay,” I say, “we can get past him. Follow my lead.”
She squeezes my waist.
Behind Sal, the zombies are piling up on the soldier. His skin rips, blood spurts like a hot, red fountain. There’s the wet squelching noise of claw-like hands digging into his guts. The AR15 goes off in intermittent bursts, its bullets hitting the metal bars with a high-pitched whine, sparking in every direction. Still, over all this chaos is the chant: “We want blood! We want blood!”
Sal makes his move, and so do I. I fake right, his whole body lurches that direction, and I dart left, my hand wrapped around Darlene’s. Then, I slingshot her toward the door. “Go!” I shout. “Get out of here! I’m right behind you.”
Norm stands over Butch Hazard. He swings down, his fist connecting with his face. Butch shouts out in pain. I never thought I’d hear this man of steel cry out, but I do. I know my brother is a badass from firsthand experience. He may be missing a finger and damn near on the cusp of death but he’s Norman Jupiter.
You don’t mess with the Jupiters, not anymore.
Darlene’s movement is choppy, she is trying to judge the distance between here and the freedom of the outside. It’s a jump not even I could make, and she realizes this at the last moment. So instead of jumping, she steps on the great, squishy
back of the fat zombie, pressing him down on top of the screaming soldier, and then she hops off into the dirt arena beyond the steel cage.
With Sal behind me, I make my own move. The fat zombie is momentarily distracted from his meal after Darlene uses him as a stepping stone, but I go anyway, step right on his face, feeling the exposed inside of his broken-jawed mouth squish beneath my feet. As I am in the air, the cheers from the crowd rocking me, spurring me forward, I see the younger soldier is nothing but a mess of blood and bone. The zombies have stripped most of his meat from his body. He has managed to kill a few, but just one is enough to rip him open. The hot smell hits me like an uppercut, but then it’s gone, and my boots are slamming down on the dirt floor and into a warped form of freedom. Before I turn and run, I grab the metal door and try to slam it shut. It does, but I don’t hear the latch fall into place. It’s enough for now, at least. It will slow them down while I kill the rest of these Eden bastards.
Spike is off his chair now. He looks angry, but he also looks bored.
“I have to do everything myself, don’t I?” he says.
I make a move for Butch Hazard’s assault rifle which has skittered close to the opening of the steel cage. I go with my right hand, feeling a stab of pain in my ribs.
Darlene is to my right, she is trying to pull Abby off of the female soldier, who is no longer fighting back, but just laying there and taking Abby’s barrage of hits.
Stand, I think to myself, stand and take whatever comes to you like a man.
But I’ve come this far.
The AR15’s metal is cold in my grip and as I pull myself up — to stand — Spike’s gun goes off.
The crowd gasps. It’s like we are performers in a play and they are the audience who is supposed to laugh when something is funny, cry when something is sad, and gasp when tensions are high. They’re right on cue. Tensions are really fucking high.
The bullet smacks the metal of the gun, blowing it out of my loose grip, sending it dancing twenty feet across the dirt. The vibrations are like bee stings in the palm of my hand.
He shoots again. His movement is a blur, much too quick for the naked eye, and another slug punches the gun away from Abby and Darlene, sending it flying farther than the one I almost had.
I look to Norm and Butch, anticipating where the next shot will go, but when I look, I see the roles have reversed. Butch is now pinning Norm down. Norm is grunting out, his arms up to block his face from the blows that are raining down on him. Butch grabs his gun, which isn’t an AR15, but the chrome Desert Eagle.
“Should I kill him?” Butch says.
“No, they’re mine. They’re all mine,” Spike says, “‘cause I gotta do everything myself, don’t I?” His accent wavers somewhere between southern and Brooklyn. He is like a malfunctioning robot.
Abby and Darlene are frozen now, looking at Spike.
The crowd buzzes.
“Quiet,” Spike says. And they listen. “Quiet, y’all. I want you to hear every last one of their screams and cries, I want you to hear Jack Jupiter yelling for his momma when I put a bullet in his gut and he’s leaking out all over the dirt.” He hops down off of the platform, one gun in hand, looking at me, and he says in a softer voice, the southern drawl in full swing. “You really picked the wrong town to mess with, pard.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
He smiles.
Butch Hazard has his gun pressed against Norm’s temple, and even he cracks a smile. It’s an odd sight, seeing a man with a gun in hand, blood running from his nose and mouth, smiling. Nightmare-inducing, really.
Spike seems to look past me.
The crowd’s quiet lessens. Hushed whispers ruffle through them like the wind though the leaves. I hear someone shout, “Look out!”
But as I spin around, it’s too late. Sal the mechanic and his buddy, the Broke Kneecap Convict, are on me, driving me to the dirt. I see the door I couldn’t close all the way hanging open, cracked enough for two curious zombies to come through.
Damn it.
As my head thumps the ground, I hear Darlene scream.
Forty-Five
Sal still smells like grease and stale cigarettes. His mouth his wide open and I’m trying to block him with my arms crossed into an X, problem is if he bites me, I’m fucked. Plain and simple. I don’t have any armor on, my arms are bare in this dingy t-shirt I’ve been wearing since God knows when.
I’m not ready to go. Not yet.
But I don’t know if I really have a choice. My body is betraying me. I am weak.
The mechanic chomps down at my face. Black spit dribbles from his teeth, hangs low right in front of my eyes. The smell is terrible. If a bite doesn’t kill me surely the stink will.
He shifts his position, sliding his chest up my arms, sticking his head closer to my face. I turn but can’t really go anywhere.
The Convict, grapples at my boot. I feel his teeth clamping on the leather. I kick out, feel the thud of boot hitting meat, and Convict pinwheels his arms and topples over.
The crowd oohs and ahhs.
Now all I have to worry about is Sal. His jaw is opening and closing, teeth gnashing against each other.
“Stop it!” Darlene screams.
From the corner of my eye I see her lurch forward to come after me, but Spike says, “Move again, wench, and I blow your tits off.”
She freezes on the spot.
Abby grabs her, holds her in place.
I hadn’t noticed before, but I’m screaming, grunting in pain. My bullet wound is on fire. The muscles in my arms are screaming. I am dying. My body is giving out.
The Mechanic presses down on me. He is lumpy and hard. There are knots beneath his coveralls. Hard knots of bone, of…
Metal?
I let my arms give out. The Mechanic crashes down on me.
A sharp burst of pain explodes through my sternum as one particular knot in this zombie’s chest bites into my flesh.
What is it?
Spike is laughing. “Look at him struggle. The great Jack Jupiter, Carnivore and murderer! Struggling like a common man. See? He’s just like the rest of us. He ain’t no one special! They’re all like this. We don’t have to fear ‘em.”
No, not Carnivores, but you have to fear me, is what I want to say but can’t.
The crowd explodes into cheers.
Then Herb’s voice is running through my mind, drowning out the sounds of the crowd and the screams and the snarls of the zombie.
Salvation lies within the heart.
Another of his cryptic messages that shouldn’t mean anything, but I’m grasping at straws (zombie limbs) here.
Salvation lies within the heart.
Remember Sal!
Sal…Salvador…Salvation.
It’s a long shot, but what the hell? I got nothing else to lose. I’m dead either way, and I don’t want to just keel over and die without a fight like the old Jack Jupiter would’ve done. No, I’m Johnny Deadslayer now.
I press my hand up against Sal’s chest. He is soft, mushy beneath his coveralls. My hands find his collar and I rip it open.
The shape of a gun pulsates from this mechanic’s rotten flesh, right where a heart that no longer beats lies. There are jagged and loose stitches around this patch of sewn flesh. Dried, crusty blood, too.
I can’t believe it, but I almost can.
Salvation lies within the heart, Jacky! Herb’s voice again.
I am like a man on the top floor of a burning skyscraper, looking out at the certain doom below me, while flames lick at my back and push me toward the open window. I don’t want to jump, but there’s no other choice. I might survive the leap. I might not. I certainly won’t survive the flames and being buried beneath thousands of pounds of rubble and ash.
I have to plunge into the unknown, or I have to die.
It’s that simple. It’s that complicated.
With my left forearm pressing into Sal’s neck, his slobber spraying and dripping all over my f
ace, his rattles momentarily choked off, I take my right hand and peel away the skin like some demented Christmas present.
I am plunging.
I am falling off of the skyscraper. The blazing heat from the flames is disappearing. Smoke is no longer filling my lungs. I am tasting the sweet air of freedom.
Of salvation.
The stitches pop easily enough and Sal doesn’t even notice I’m tearing him apart.
“Stop it!” Darlene says. “You fucking rat bastard, stop it!”
I am still screaming, but I no longer hear my own screams. I just feel the burning in my lungs, the serrated blade grinding against my vocal cords like a violin’s bow hitting frayed strings.
What I see first is a plastic container. A good, old Ziplock bag meant for leftovers and keeping food fresh.
Herb, you clever son of a bitch. I could kiss —
Thunder claps twice.
Red rain showers my face.
Bits of mushy gray brain find their way into my mouth.
I am coughing. My ears are ringing. A shadow consumes me, eclipsing the floodlights like the moon blocks the sun.
It’s Spike. His gun is smoking and he smiles.
Salvador the mechanic is lifeless on top of me. His dead weight pins me to the ground and my hand digs deeper and deeper into his open chest. I am screaming in pain. My wrist has broken or at least suffered a really bad sprain.
“I think you’ve had enough, Jupiter,” Spike says. His voice is calm and steady, neither a Brooklyn accent or the clichéd cowboy one. I hated both, but at least they don’t upset me to the very core of my existence like this unwavering voice of insanity does. He chuckles. It’s a humorless chuckle, then he says, “Time to put you out of your misery, Jack.”
He levels the big revolver a mere three feet from my face.
Forty-Six
If he pulls the trigger, it’s not going to pretty.
Cold blood drains onto the dirt behind my head, dampening my hair.
I am Johnny Deadslayer I am Johnny Deadslayer I am Johnny Deadslayer goes off in my mind over and over again.
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