A bloody hand reaches down, breaking my peripheral vision. The M16 is ripped off of me, the strap snapping. A boot stamps me on the back, causing the bruise I spoke of earlier to go from forming to formed.
“This is our city, asshole,” the man says.
“It’s the dead’s,” I say through gritted teeth. A pebble has pressed itself into the corner of my mouth. I taste dirt and bird shit — don’t ask me how I know what it tastes like, I couldn’t tell you.
“No, the dead are just overgrown rats and cockroaches,” the woman says.
A little pressure is taken off my spine, but not enough for me to make a move on this guy.
“There ya go!” the man says. “I knew you had it in you!”
I don’t know even know anything about these people. I don’t know how large they are, how much they’re packing. Anything. But I do know this man is heavy. The apocalypse has treated him well.
“You have the rope?” the woman says.
“Now Steph, you think I’d really forget that?” the man says. “What kind of brother do you think I am?”
“A shit one,” Steph, the woman, says under her breath, but loud enough for us all to hear it. Great, this is exactly what I need. Family drama while our lives are on the line.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” the man says.
“You don’t hear a lot, Danny,” Steph says.
Danny scoffs and then I feel ropes against my wrists. He pulls them tight, causing the blood in my arms to pulse.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Steph says.
“Why don’t you just ask me?” I say as the man drags me up to my knees. Now I see Billy is the same way, hands tied behind his back. Take away his gun and all the fire goes out of him, making the reddest part of him his beard. His eyes swell with water, and looking at him makes me feel a mixture of things — pity, sadness, anger. Anger because he’s not the man I expected him to be, the backup I needed. No, that’s not a fair thought. He’s just lost a brother, and I’ve been down that road for a time when I thought I lost Norm. He got it worse, too. He actually saw his brother torn to pieces.
“No, but we’ll take him back before we…” Danny trails off and looks into my face with his black and glassy eyes. “Before we feast.”
All bravery goes out the window. The way he speaks, I can tell he means it. I can tell this human being could chew on my liver and sip on a blood and guts smoothie all while discussing such trivial matters as the weather. At least with the dead, there’s no morale, they don’t know if what they’re doing is right or wrong. I mean they’re dead for crying out loud. This guy and gal, well, they’re not. They’re just hungry. That means these people are worse. So much worse.
“What about Redbeard?” Steph asks.
Danny turns away from me, a snarl on his face. “What about him?” she asks.
Down below, the woman still chants. “Fresh…red…meat, fresh…red…meat!”
I think I’m getting sick to my stomach. My guns are out of reach, my hands are tied behind my back, and the only place I can run to is a three story drop onto concrete. Things ain’t looking up. Ain’t looking up at all.
“What’s your name?” Danny asks Billy.
Billy’s head is tilted. He’s looking at the rooftop. Sweat drips from his hairline. The wind blows, tossing his hair. He doesn’t answer.
Danny walks closer to him, but angles his body so I’m still in his peripheral vision. Besides, the woman stares at me like I’m a piece of meat, licking her lips, eyes wide. Not like she’s attracted to me or anything, but like I’m an actual piece of meat.
“I said, what’s your name, friend?” Danny says.
“Billy,” Billy says, his voice a whisper.
“And your buddy here is Jack Jupiter, right?”
“I’m Jack Jupiter,” I say. I make note to project my voice, to make it heard over the whipping of the cold wind and the woman’s sickening chants below.
“I’m not talking to you,” Danny says.
“Y-Yeah, that’s Jack Jupiter,” Billy says.
“The Jack Jupiter? Slayer of cannibals and Edenites?”
My heart drops. What the hell?
“Yeah, that’s him,” Billy says.
“There,” Steph says, “that’s settled. Let’s eat them.”
Danny turns to face her. Their eyes are off of me for the time being. But each of them are wearing Billy and I’s guns over their shoulders. Steph has a pistol in her hand — not mine — and one tucked into her waistband. Point is, I’m weaponless and they’re not.
“What have I told you?” Danny snaps. He raises his hand and backhands the woman with enough force to jerk her head to the left, tussling her brown hair. When she turns back to face her brother, she looks five inches shorter. There’s a trickle of blood that rolls down the corner of her mouth.
“I-I don’t know,” Steph says, slurring the words like a drunk.
“We are lions. The ones below aren’t. But they respect us and worship us and we have to keep their respect. Which means?”
“We have to feed them,” Steph says.
“Exactly! Do you really want to have to hear the Tunnel Woman repeating that God-awful chant?”
So I’m glad they hear it, too. I’m glad I’m not totally crazy. It is God-awful.
Steph shakes her head.
“Good girl,” Danny says and cups his sister’s face in his hands. He wipes away the blood then sticks the finger in his mouth.
I swallow down this morning’s breakfast. The sight of a man sucking on someone’s blood just has a way of making you queasy, I guess.
What happens next happens so fast I can barely comprehend it. Danny, a big grin on his face, his lips red with his sister’s blood, takes Billy by the throat. Billy’s eyes light up, all sadness goes out of them. Now, they’re replaced with alarm. I find myself getting up, heart hammering. Faintly, out of the corner of my eye, I see Steph pointing my SIG at me. How she got it, I don’t know and I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter.
“FRESH…RED…MEAT! FRESH…RED…MEAT!” comes from below, shrieks of joy. Over the edge, I see the faint shadows of arms extended up to the heavens, they are cast against the adjacent brick wall. But there’s more than the group who chased us. Now, there is a whole army.
“FEED US! FEED US!”
I think of talking zombies. I think of crazy people. I think of death.
“FRESH MEAT! FRESH MEAT!”
Billy chokes under the hands of Danny.
“Don’t move!” Steph says to me, but I keep going. A shot goes off, sending a chunk of concrete spraying up at my face. I have no hands to shield it, so I turn away, tripping over my feet and hitting the rooftop hard. I scramble up.
But it’s too late.
Billy is on the edge, screaming now. I barely hear the screams over the chants, over the shrieks and calls from below. I’m in a nightmare. I’m in hell.
“NO!” I shout.
Danny says, “Yes!” and Billy falls over the edge. For a split second that feels like an eternity, he is suspended over the crowd, his lips pulled back and revealing a death grin, his eyes all but pools of blackness.
Then, he drops.
Now I’m up, not following his descent, but going for Danny, who is close to the edge, watching what he did.
The splat saves Danny’s life. It is the single most disgusting and disturbing sound I’ve ever heard. My knees turn to water and I drop to the rooftop again before I can reach the man who threw Billy over.
The chanting has stopped.
Now, they’re cheering.
I lied — that’s the most disgusting noise I’ve ever heard.
Forty
Steph is on me. She chops down with the butt of the pistol, hitting me between my shoulder and neck. My whole body quivers. I feel like I’m stuck with pins and needles.
I can’t move.
But I’m screaming. I don’t know how. But I am. “WHY? NO! WHY?”
“
We had to,” Danny says. He sounds so far away. I’m at the bottom of the ocean and he is the bloodthirsty shark hovering near the surface, smiling at me with big, sharp teeth. “We had to.”
“Spare him the philosophical bullshit,” Steph says. She sounds closer. I can’t see. I can’t see much of anything. The day is getting dark, dark, dark. I have to get home before the dark. I have to get back to Darlene, let her know I’m okay, see how Abby is doing. If she’s sick and getting better. If her hand has grown back like a lizard’s tail —
No. That can’t happen.
Got to get the medicine. Got to find Jacob and Grady and Sean and Billy. Hummer. Bridges. The zombies with their yellow eyes and bloody, smiling faces.
No not billy billy is dead
“I’m too hungry to hear you prattle on about that,” Steph is saying.
Billy.
I hear them ripping his flesh. I hear them fighting over his limbs. Pulling him apart. Lapping at his blood, their stomachs grumbling, craving more. Inside of my head, I’m screaming because my vocal cords no longer work. It hurts. My brain feels like it’s on the verge of exploding.
Billy.
The rooftop is gone. I am feeling weightlessness. I hate it.
“He’s not heavy,” Steph says. “Carry him yourself.”
“We gotta help each other,” Danny says. “It’s not far.”
The sun is gone. Oh, no, the sun is gone. They’ve killed the sun and it’s gone. Darlene is gone. We will never get married and she’ll hate me no matter how much she says she loves me. And Norm, he’ll laugh because I failed.
Should’ve took me with you, little brother. I’m not meant to babysit. I’m meant to kill.
Kill.
Kill.
Death.
I’m dying.
A door closes, rusty hinges squeaking.
“Just slide him down the steps,” Steph says.
Danny is grunting.
The smell is soap. I smell soap and polished floors. I’m not dead. Through blurry vision, I see white tiled ceilings. A desk. A door to my right marked PRIVATE.
Danny grunts.
My head. My head and my neck. And my knee. It burns and cools. I’ve scraped it. I’m dying.
“He’s coming to,” Steph says. “It’s easier if he’s not awake.”
“Hit him again.”
My eyes shoot open. The blurriness goes away. I’m in a small hallway. In front of us is a tunnel covered with debris and garbage, beyond that, more steps. I blink once, twice. Steph invades my vision, dried blood at the corner of her mouth, looking haggard and starved.
Looking hungry.
The butt of the SIG is above me now, too.
I see it coming down — hear the CRACK before I feel it.
Then I feel it.
Blackness.
Forty-One
“You sure he ain’t dead?”
A voice.
One I recognize, I think. Steph. The girl who hurt me.
My head throbs, my knee throbs, my neck throbs, but what hurts worse than all of this is the fear.
“He has a heartbeat, doesn’t he?” another voice. This one I definitely recognize. This one is Danny. I think of Billy going over the edge, the sickening crunch and splatter of his bones. The squelching of hands and faces plunging into his gore, of fabric ripping. Did I dream it? Was that all it was, a horrible nightmare?
“If he’s dead, let’s just eat him.”
“He’s not dead!” Danny again.
I’m trying to open my eyes, but it’s not happening. I’m trying to move my arms, but that ain’t happening, either.
“I’m hungry. You gave them food, and they’re nothing but prawns. Look at them,” Steph says, “like animals. Like the fucking Sick.”
“You would eat like that, too, if you lived off of garbage,” Danny says.
“Where are they? They were supposed to meet us at four!” Steph whines, but the whines are stopped fast.
Who? What is this, a dinner date?
“Look at his eyes! Look! He’s not dead. They’re twitching!” Steph shouts.
Somehow, she sounds disappointed. She’s going to be really disappointed when I get up and fight my way out of here.
“I already told you that,” Danny snaps. Then, in a quieter voice, “Hey there, big guy. Glad you’re all right.”
“Oh, my God, Dan! Look at them!” I hear her tap on glass. “Mutilating the zombies and eating. They really are savages.”
“Again, you would do the same if you were in their position.”
She laughs. “They’re killing each other now!” She sounds fully amused, like she’s at the zoo watching monkeys fight over a banana.
Welcome to the jungle, I think.
Danny ignores her.
“You want to open your eyes, Jack? You want me to help?” And as he says help, cold and rough fingers scrape across my eyelids. The light hits me like a nuclear bomb. I see dirty glass, sunlight streaming through it. I blink on my own. Motes of dust float around the room.
“Wh-Where am I?” I ask.
My voice is sandpaper.
I look around the structure I’m encased in with just my eyes. Can’t turn my head. Glass. There are dead plants lined in rows all around me. Rotten strawberries and shriveled peppers hang over white bins that stand and stretch the length of the room with countless legs. They look shrunken, deflated, like the rest of the world. They smell old and sweet. Dead. I can see buildings surrounding us. I’m back on the roof — roof, Billy, my mind says, whirling — and I’m strapped to a table. Four leather straps, thick, across my shoulders, stomach, shins, and my head. I can’t move, but I’m not paralyzed.
“We call it the Buffet Table,” Danny says.
“Stupid name,” Steph says. She is at the far end of the room, leaning over blackened leafs, her hands pressed up against the glass, shielding her eyes from sour sunlight.
“No one asked you,” Danny says, turning away. I make a move, thinking I can break out of the straps. I’m about as strong as a piece of chewed gum, not the Incredible Hulk I think I am sometimes. I get nowhere. The metal buckles rattle and the table wobbles on both legs. That’s about it. Damn it. But what did I really expect?
Danny chuckles. “You aren’t going anywhere, except,” he points to his stomach, “here.”
“You don’t want me. I got a bunch of things wrong. I’ll just upset your digestive system,” I say.
Danny grins. Shark teeth. “Not likely.”
“I mean, you guys seriously can’t find something better than human to eat? There’s gotta be chickens and cows out there somewhere, you know, that survived.”
“I’m a vegan,” Steph says, turning toward us. She shrugs. “Like, besides people. Plus animals are cute. People aren’t. They just taste really, really good.”
Danny shrugs half-heartedly. “She’s right. We do taste absolutely delicious.”
I take it these types of people were doing this long before the virus hit. Just secretly. You know, at some dinky shed deep enough in the woods where no one can hear their victims scream. It’s horrifying. Truly horrifying.
“I just don’t get it,” I say. “You know who I am, and yet you still think it’s a good idea to do this to me,” I say.
“Don’t get too full of yourself,” Danny says. “Leave that to me.”
Steph bursts out laughing. I, for one, am not a fan of stupid puns, especially when the pun’s subject is me being someone’s dinner. Steph wipes her eyes. “God, laughing just makes me hungrier. How long has it been?”
“Too long,” Danny answers. He looks into my eyes. Each time he does it I try to lie to myself that I’m strong, but truth is, this bastard unnerves me far more than someone like Spike or Butch Hazard did. “We don’t know you for any other reason than being a killer of our own people.”
“Who are you talking about?” I ask. “I’ve killed tons.”
Not true, but I try to make myself sound a little scarier because I
think somewhere deep inside them, they are frightened. Then again, I might just be an idiot.
“We’re everywhere,” Danny says. He puts a hand on my arm. It’s cold and sweaty — I don’t know how. My body ripples with goosebumps.
“Yeah, and so is your name,” Steph says. “That’s all the rest of the group from I-95 talks about. Jack Jupiter, this. Jack Jupiter, that. Truly, it’ll be a pleasure to eat you.”
I guess my brain isn’t as right as I thought it was. The hit in the middle of my forehead and on my neck messed me up worse than it feels, somehow. The massacre on I-95, the massacre I created, had been blacked out from my memory. But I had to do what I had to do. That’s what this world is all about. You have to survive. Sometimes, you have to kill to do it, and that’s what I did. I don’t think these assholes would understand. You don’t have to eat humans to survive. They’re not zombies.
“See, we have a friend,” Danny says.
Steph comes over from the window, rustling the dead leaves which sounds an awful lot like charred papers rubbing together.
“I wouldn’t go that far, Dan,” she says.
He ignores her. My eyes strain to read her face, but I can’t because of the strap across my forehead. It’s like I’m about to be airlifted to the hospital.
“He is someone we’re acquainted with, someone who sought us out. And he should be here pretty soon,” Danny says.
My mind starts rolling with the possibilities of who it might be. And I’ll admit, being a former author of horror books, my mind starts digging up pictures of Spike with his face blown open and Butch with his chest bubbling red.
But I know who it is. This is exactly what I get for being merciful. A group of people who want to devour my family and attack us. I fight back, which I’m sure anyone would do in that situation. I keep one of them alive, I give him medicine and a knife for protection, and let him go. I spare him and it comes back to bite me on the ass…possibly literally.
Not funny.
The door begins to open, as if right on cue. These hinges don’t squeak, they’ve been used regularly. I wonder how many stragglers were left in the city, how many people were taken off the streets by these cannibals. The thought sickens me.
The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4 Page 53