“Whoa,” Norm says. “That’s one ugly motherfucker.”
I can’t look away from it. It moves and writhes, skin flapping in the breeze. There are bruises all over the body, large welts of black and blue and red. I think someone used our new friend here as a piñata.
“Think it’s the Doc?” Norm asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I’ll get Herb,” Norm says and moves toward the car. My arm shoots out and grabs him harshly around the bicep. He winces. I hate that. Norm would’ve never winced before Eden.
“No, Herb doesn’t need to see this, Norm. Don’t be stupid. Even if it was Klein, how the hell do you suppose Herb would be able to tell?” I say.
I let go of him and Norm’s eyes dart from me to the shifting zombie. He shrugs.
“Yeah, exactly. I’m ninety-five percent sure it’s not. This thing has been here for weeks, maybe months. You saw the Doc, did he look anything remotely close to this less than a week ago?” I ask.
Norm shakes his head.
“Just help me put the poor bastard out of his misery,” I say.
Norm snarls at me as he rubs his arm. “With a grip like that, you can do it yourself. I’m going back to the car. I’m tired. My body aches. And I’m sick of zombies, man.”
“Okay, fair enough,” I say. I’m not going to pry, not going to make him uncomfortable. I just want him back to normal and doing that will get us nowhere.
Norm claps me on the back. “You know I love you, little bro,” he says.
“I know,” I answer.
He walks back to the van.
“Was it the doc?” Herb says.
“Just a zombie,” Norm answers.
I reach for something sharp to shove through this thing’s head. I find a thick piece of glass long enough to reach the zombie’s rotten brains. I pick it up carefully and shove it through one of its empty eye sockets. It screeches softly, then does something remotely close to a sigh. Maybe a sigh of relief. This thing is glad to have been put out of its misery and that’s sad. But it’s a sad world we’re living in.
I head back to the van.
Everyone watches me. Somber looks on their faces, except for Norm who just looks distant, like he’s not fully here. The highway is pretty trashed for what seems like a half mile. We’ll have to drive with two wheels on the shoulder and two in the grass. With this beat up van, it’s tough. We stopped off at a Jiffy Lube about fifty miles out of Eden and were able to fix two of the flat tires, complete replacements, but the other two are pretty bad. We aren’t getting good gas mileage, that’s for sure. Fifty miles on almost four flats does murder to your rims so when the van gets rolling, I swear I can feel the unevenness of the metal going up and down.
Yeah, I hate the van.
I just want to find the Doc and save the world. Is that too much to ask?
I get back to the others and open the sliding door toward the highway’s shoulder side where a tangle of trees and bushes grow wildly.
“You okay?” Darlene asks me. She is looking at my hand. I follow her gaze. My hand is bleeding. I cut it on the piece of glass when I shoved it into the zombie’s eye socket. The skin was tough to break and I had to put most of my weight into it, but I hadn’t noticed the glass bite back. It didn’t hurt until Darlene pointed it out. Now it feels like it’s on fire. I try not to show the pain on my face and wipe the blood off on the thighs of my jeans — yeah, I got out of that fake cowboy getup as soon as I could.
“It’s just a cut — ” I start to say, but stop as I see how big Darlene’s eyes have gotten. “What? What is it?” It’s like I’m missing a finger instead of sporting a small gash.
Abby beside her brings a shaky hand up to point behind me.
Norm says, “Oh, no. Does this shit ever end?”
I feel it on my neck, causing my to bunch me face up and squint my eyes closed. The metal is cold and harsh. Whoever is holding the gun behind me knows nothing about gentleness and why should I expect them to?
“Drop your weapon, my friend,” the man says. “I don’t want to see anymore blood today.”
That’s too bad, I think, because he is going to wind up seeing a lot of it — his own.
From the other side of the highway, climbing over the wrecked and forgotten cars, coming at the van like a slow moving tidal wave is a group of people, all of them dirty, all of them wild. They hold weapons — mostly primitive things, like swords and sharpened sticks. One thin man holds a shotgun but it looks as ancient as the dead zombie in the Civic’s front seat looked. Another man has a hunting rifle. A squirrel shooter. And a woman holds a pistol.
I think of rebelling, but Darlene catches my eyes and with that mental telepathy, tells me, Don’t be stupid, Jack. The chance of failure outweighs the small chance of success. I might be able to kill a couple of these bastards, but they will most certainly take down a couple of my group, too.
I can’t have that.
I drop the pistol and it clatters loudly as it hits the pavement, the sound carrying in the quiet of the abandoned highway.
Four
“Get on your knees,” the man says, still behind me as he kicks the pistol out of reach. I go to my knees, bleeding and more blood pumping through my veins at an alarming rate. I can hear my heartbeat pounding my ears.
“Please don’t hurt us,” Darlene says.
“Shut up, whore!” one of the men on the other side says. He is pressed up against the back window, his features distorted and squished.
“Oh my goodness,” Herb says. “Oh my — ”
“Enough!” the man behind me says. “Everyone shut their mouths. We don’t want to hurt you. We just want your ride and your weapons and whatever else you got in the back.”
“Take it,” Norm says from the front seat.
“No, Norm,” I say, mainly because he’s giving up so easily and not because I care that much for this crappy van and our weapons.
Norm flashes me a sad, frightened look, his eyes glazed.
The other side of the van opens up. One of the men drag Abby out by her hair. She hits the concrete hard and shouts out in pain. My body goes stiff. I lurch forward, but the man behind me grips my neck, not letting me go anywhere.
“Uh-uh,” he says. “Blondie, you come on out now, but keep them hands up. I won’t drag ya…unless I have to.”
Darlene obeys him.
Three more come out from the trees to my right. They are wearing ratty clothes. They are covered in sticks and dirt and bramble. They smell like they shit themselves a few days ago and never changed their pants, letting the stench sink into their skin like moisturizer.
“Get the big one out,” the man behind me says. “He’s the dangerous one. You know what they say about that retard strength.” He chuckles.
Herb is sobbing as they pull him out. Insulting him does nothing to Herb, but it pisses me off.
“Real nice,” Norm says. “Real fucking nice.”
“Shut up!” the man yells.
“Yeah, shut up, buddy old pal old friend,” the man holding Abby’s hair says. “I like the big one, Blade. Can we eat him, too?”
Eat him? The rage coursing through me ices over real quick. It catches me off guard. We’re not supposed to worry about the living eating us. No, only the dead.
Darlene tenses up against the door of the van.
“Be patient, Froggy,” the man called Blade says. “Just round them up for now.”
Oh great, it’s like we’re cattle getting ready for the slaughterhouse.
The one called Froggy barks out laughter, and starts dragging Abby toward the crumbling concrete highway divider. Three of the creeps grab Herb and yank him out of the front passenger’s seat. He goes easily enough. When he’s scared, he’s basically just a giant baby. He couldn’t hurt a fly.
Eat him? I wonder again.
Time to start finding a way out of this.
I look to Darlene. She is not scared. I can see it plainly on her face. When sh
e starts to think, her brow creases and she looks like she’s really upset. It’s cute, but right now I don’t care about cute.
“Get your hands off me!” Norm shouts. The horn honks a couple times as he struggles with the dirty, gripping hands coming into the cabin. He could take them, I think, but he doesn’t. He gives up. The woman holding the pistol swings down with the butt of the gun. The noise the blow makes is sickening and it’s probably hard enough to knock Norm out. It doesn’t.
It’s the next hit that does that.
The shotgun butt slices through the air and cracks him on the side of the head just above his left ear. Lights out.
Norm leans forward, his head bouncing off the steering wheel, sounding the horn again.
“You’re making a big mistake,” I say. My voice is somehow calm. I’m pissed beyond belief. The amount of bullying that goes on in this terrible, post-apocalyptic world is insane. Almost unbelievable. When everyone should be out trying to make a difference, assholes like Spike, Butch, Blade, and Froggy think it’s okay to try to take everything from everyone.
Not happening. Not to us.
But what the fuck do I do? I got no weapon, there’s way more of them than us, there’s a gun pressed into the back of my head, and my right hand man is out cold. We’re fucked.
Through the open door, the man called Froggy is hanging over Abby, stroking her hair. His tongue pokes out between his black teeth and he licks her earlobe. “Oh, you taste sweet,” he says. “I’m gonna enjoy my time with you.” He reaches out and slides his hand down her shirt.
The iciness freezing me shatters. I’m pissed again, blood raging.
Abby doesn’t take it, thank God. She leans forward then flies back, the back of her head cracking Froggy right on the bridge of his nose before he can bury his grimy fingers beneath her clothing. His hands grab at his face. A wave of blood gushes from his nostrils. I tense up again, expecting this asshole to hit Abby, but he doesn’t.
He just laughs and says, “That’s right, baby. I like it spicy. How’d you know?”
I don’t know if he means his women or his food. I don’t want to know, either.
The woman and another man — the one with the shotgun — drag Norm next to Abby on the road. The woman starts to rifle through his pockets. She pulls out his hunting knife and an old pack of Tic-Tacs.
Abby points to the breath mints and says, “Yeah, you all could really use those.”
Froggy busts out laughing again, blood streaming down his upper lip and framing his mouth like clown’s makeup.
“Enough,” Blade says behind me. “Take the big black one over there.”
The three men lead Herb over. I can’t really see because the van blocks me, but Herb is tall enough for me to see him topple over as one of the men — this one wearing a loincloth and a ripped and dirty-blue button up shirt — hits him in what I think is the back of the knees. Herb goes down fast.
“I’m telling you, Blade,” I say, speaking as if Blade and I go way back, “you’re really going to regret this. You don’t know who you’re messing with. The things we’ve done, the shit we’ve seen.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Blade says. “I told you I don’t want to spill any more blood.”
Blade sounds like a reasonable man. And if he would’ve caught me a couple months ago, hell, a couple weeks ago, I would consider rolling over and letting him take what he wants. I was pretty close to doing just that before I heard them say they were going to eat us. I mean that could’ve been a misunderstanding, I guess, but best to not take any chances.
“No blood, huh?” I ask. “Then what’s all this talk about eating my friend over there?”
Blade pushes me forward with the muzzle of his gun. I’m on my knees so it’s not hard for me to fall forward and that’s exactly what I do, hitting my face on the door of the van and stopping myself from losing most of my teeth with my bloody right hand. I leave a smeary, red print on the rusty paint.
“No blood is spilt if we boil it out of you,” Blade says. “What kind of savages do you think we are? Do you think we’d just eat you raw?”
I laugh, honest laughter. Man, I must be going crazy to laugh at something like this. The laughter, I think, just hides how I really feel and that’s frightened to all hell.
“Jack!” Darlene says. “You’re bleeding! Oh, my God!”
“I’m okay,” I say to Darlene.
What Blade and his band of cannibals don’t know is that Darlene is acting. She spoke in her naughty librarian voice, one often used back in the bedroom before all this end of the world stuff went down. She already knew I was bleeding. So I go along with it.
“No, Jack, here,” she says, and she pulls her shirt off. The bra she’s wearing beneath the pale yellow v-neck is brand new, one she picked up in a Victoria’s Secret at some strip mall we drove by on our way onto the highway. It’s one of those push-up jobs, which she doesn’t need, but damn, does it look good. “Wrap it around your hand,” she says. “Stop the bleeding.”
From the other side of the van, Froggy and the other men whistle and shout at her. She doesn’t bother covering up. Instead, she pushes her chest out farther and turns back to Blade. The pressure of the muzzle in my back lessens. I risk a glance and see Blade is not some old geezer. He is a young man, probably closer to my age than Norm’s. He’s dirty and sweaty, he smells as bad as the rest of them, but if you gave this guy a shower and some better clothes, he might be a respectable enough fellow. Except for the cannibalism. That’s kind of a deal breaker, actually.
Blade is looking right at Darlene’s chest. I try to let the jealousy pass over me, and I think to myself that this is all part of the plan. No worries. No worries. All part of the plan.
“Wow, oh wow,” Blade says, licking his lips. “You are quite a beauty.”
Darlene smirks. “Oh, really?” she asks. “Little old me?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a girl like you. All the women around these parts have rotten tits or they look like Frog Mom over there.”
“Hey, leave my pudding pop out of this!” Froggy says. I see him give the woman an approving glance, but she doesn’t acknowledge it.
Blade ignores Froggy and puts his hand out to Darlene.
The gun is about six feet away from me to my right. I risk another glance and start to reach for it. Now or never.
I get a boot to the back. My head catches the metal body of the van with a thunk.
“Don’t move,” Blade says.
“Blade, let’s get the hell out of here,” one of the men says. “We don’t need the bitch. The big guy is enough to feed us for the rest of the winter. C’mon.”
Blade puts an arm out to quiet the man and looks down at me. “Plans have changed. I want them all and the girls. Tie them up.”
He pushes his body up to Darlene who is still wearing that fake, Naughty Librarian smirk on her face, except now she squeezes her arms together, accentuating the cleavage.
From where I’m at on the ground, I see boots walking over to me and a length of rope trailing behind it.
Time is short.
I poke my head up. The gun seems farther away now. On the other side of the door, Abby is struggling with Froggy as he ties her hands. Norm is already tied, blinking slowly like a man who’s just woken from a drunken slumber. Herb is on his knees, his hands behind his back, his head bowed and lips moving a mile a minute in some sort of silent prayer.
The man with the rope coming for me rounds the corner. He’s grinning, solely focused on me and not on the great assets of my fiancé. Maybe I’ll kill him last.
I hear Darlene say from behind me, “Do you like them? Do you want to feel them? Ohhhh, it’s been so long since I’ve had a real man touch me.”
Okay, too far. She’ll be hearing about this later. Naughty Librarian is going to lose her job…if I’m still alive to fire her.
Of course, Blade takes the bait. Who wouldn’t? And he’s not shy, he has big hands, and
believe me, he gets a handful…and then some more. I feel my face growing hot.
“What the fuck?” Abby shouts. “Jack! Jack!”
“Simmer down, idiot,” Froggy says.
I don’t see it, but I hear a blow landing and Abby going oof.
These guys really messed with the wrong crowd.
Darlene is not only selling it now, she’s serving it up on a clichéd platter. Blade presses his whole body up against her, but he still has his boot on my lower back and his pistol trained on the side of my face.
“Yeah, just like that,” Darlene says.
“She’s definitely a keeper,” Blade says, his voice muffled by my fiancé’s flesh. We catch eyes, that unspoken communication saying Don’t worry.
And just as she looks away I see her left hand slide down his back until her fingers drift to her own pocket where the tip of a ballpoint pen barely sticks out. She’s fast. Almost unbelievably fast. I’m reminded of a gunslinger whipping their weapon from their holster, hand a blur, lightning-quick. Coincidentally, the pen is a gunmetal gray. She was using it to write poems in her journal on the way up the highway.
She stabs down, her thumb jammed against the push button. Darlene is not strong by any means. If anything she is frail, but she stabs the pen into Blade’s neck at about a thousand miles per hour. A blossom of red wells right under his right ear. He screams out. I am not expecting this. Not expecting this at all. I thought it was a distraction, some diversion to free me up enough time to grab my gun and work. I didn’t expect Darlene to do…to do this
I take my opportunity because I know what happens next —
The gun explodes, a thunderclap through my auditory canals. The bullet goes cleanly through the van’s sliding door. A cloud of red dust and smoke drifts up from the hole.
The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4 Page 40