Fuck, fuck, fuck.
The dirt beneath the concrete pieces of this wall press under my fingernails. My boots struggle for purchase, but I find it. I’m thinking Spider-Man, Spider-Man, be fucking Spider-Man. The pistol with one shot left is in the holster. I feel it sliding. I’m halfway up the wall, now. The blood pulses in my head. The dark ground looks so much farther down then fifteen or twenty feet. I think if I fall, not only will I get torn apart by zombies, but I’ll probably splatter the pavement. The zombies will have to slurp at my liquid guts.
I know that won’t happen, not really, but my brain is teetering on the edge of sanity while the fate of my life all rests on my fingers’ and toes’ shoulders…if that makes sense.
“Hey! Hey!” Klein shouts. “Help me!”
I’m trying, but I don’t say that. I need all my oxygen going to my brain, not escaping my lungs. The zombies pass under me. A few stragglers brush against the embankment, reaching their hands up. I’m too high, thank God.
“Please! Please!” Klein is saying.
The zombie growls rev louder.
I keep going, moving slow and deliberate. One wrong move and —
I slip, my right foot going out from beneath me. All the pressure goes to my hands. I feel a nail rip off, warm liquid slip down my knuckle. Not only am I smelling the earth and soil between the concrete slabs, but I’m smelling my own fear. I scream out, the toe of my boot searching for the groove it was just resting on. I can’t look down, either. If I look down I’ll see the jagged, dripping teeth, the sloughed off flesh, and the yellow eyes. If I see that, I’ll panic, I’ll slip.
I’ll die.
“Hey! Hey!”
“Shut up! Or I’ll just leave you there!” I shout at him.
He does.
The dead below grow louder. They might not think much, but they’re thinking I’m going to drop. My boot finds the groove. So sorry, assholes.
Sink or swim, baby.
Darlene. Norm. Abby. Herb. I have to swim for them. Not for myself. Not for Klein. Nobody, but them. So I climb, ignoring the rip-roaring pain in my fingernails, the glass in my lungs, the dead below that might as well be death spikes. In one last great burst of energy, I grab ahold of the edge of the brick wall. Wet grass brushes my dirty skin. My other hand grabs the edge now. I’m breathing ragged. My head is pounding. I spare one last glance over my shoulder at the dead below. They have swallowed the surface. Falling down, I wouldn’t hit the concrete at all. I’d land on a sea of mushy zombie skulls.
I pull my body up and exhale. I take a moment to rest — a very short moment because there are a few stragglers up here. One zombie sees me, or smells me, I’m not sure. She’s quick for a dead person. I’m still on my back as she lunges. I kick up, grunting as she bears her dead weight on me. Her chest squelches like mud beneath the soles of my boots. With a scream, I flip her over my head. Black spittle rains down on my neck and the side of my face. She falls for less than a second, sinking like a stone. The splatter of her body hitting the other zombies below is worse than anything I can remember hearing. It brings me to a gag, and I don’t dare look down at the aftermath. I pick myself up, wiping my face clear of the zombie venom.
The bridge is about twenty feet away to the left. My arms and the insides of my thighs are on fire. Climbing that wall with the dead right below me worked muscles I never even knew I had. I’ll feel it in the morning for sure. And yes, I’ll still be around to see the sun rise with human eyes.
I unholster the gun. One bullet left, not much, but it could save my life if it comes down to it. A zombie missing much of its right shoulder spots me coming toward him. He bumps into the metal guardrail and falls flat on its face. I stomp its head into goo with a scream then I hop the rail. Now, I’m on the road that leads to the bridge. There are three zombies ambling about, clueless.
I see the metal claw of the ropes still burrowed into the concrete. There’s Sean’s messenger bag as well. The spark of hope in my chest turns to a full-fledged wildfire. What could be in the bag? I’m betting weapons.
Thank God.
Ignoring the burning in my legs and arms, I begin to run. Brains and bloody-gunk splishing and splashing off my shoe. A raggedy-clothed zombie doesn’t even see me coming as I barrel into his back, sending him over the bridge.
Splat.
Then the curious groans of the zombies bunched up on the street below. In the struggle, the others turn their yellow eyes to face me, but I’m ready for them. I don’t let them rush me. No, I rush them.
I go for blunt force trauma as opposed to wasting my last bullet.
The butt of the gun smashes across a teenager’s snarling smile. Now he has less teeth. He goes stumbling backward and I help his momentum with a kick to the chest. I feel bones snap and rattle beneath my sole. The zombie’s arms pinwheel all the way over the railing where it finally backflips to its fate.
Zombie, meet road. Road, meet zombie.
The other three don’t wait their turn. They’re hungry, and they attack. A shirtless woman with the skin of her torso completely ripped off shambles to me. Jerky movements. Breastbone and ribs wriggling. Black spittle running from the corner of her mouth. Another closes in on my left side, backing me up to the part of the railing the metal claw is wedged against. This one is quicker, less emaciated than the woman. He was once a biker, I’d put my life on that assumption. A red bandana is stuck to his head. The handlebar mustache he wears on his upper lip is slick with blood. I swing at him with the butt of the pistol. Crack. His skull opens and putrified brains ooze out from beneath the bandana. Golden eyes flicker, sputter, then die as the thing drops into a lifeless heap at my feet. I’m dazed as I watch this, so dazed, in fact, that I don’t even see the zombie claw swiping at my face until the last possible second. I shift, slipping on my heel which is already slick to begin with, and crash into the concrete barrier.
The zombie woman without a chest pushes up against me like she’s about to give me a kiss — in a way, that’s exactly what she’s going to do. A kiss of death. Before I know it, trying to push her off of me, another zombie is joining in on the fun. I’m flailing my arms, trying to block them from drawing blood, whether it’s by bite or scratch, I’m on the edge here. My legs kick out, hitting nothing but thin air. The smell of their dead breath is like a fog. It dulls all of my senses by sending them into overdrive. My eyes and nostrils burn. My lungs fill with horrid air, feeling like they’re about to spontaneously combust. The zombie pressing on my right wears glasses, much like Doc Klein’s glasses — thin, wiry frames. One lens is cracked in the shape of a jagged lightning bolt. As he presses his face closer to me (I’m able to push the emaciated woman away with my right forearm), snapping his jaws, thin lips stretched over cracked teeth, I block him with my left. Something jingles behind me, something scrapes concrete. I’m dimly aware of it being the hook embedded into the low barrier. With my right hand, I reach for it. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t bear to look at this rotted man, his hair standing up in gray tufts, his cheekbones poking through his face, teeth still full of meat chunks.
The claw is cold in my hands, but as my fingers close around it, a warm burst of lightning (hope) surges up my arm. I shout something unintelligible, meaning to sound cool and awesome, but really just sounding like a frightened jackass, and the claw comes down on the zombie’s head. Three of the four hooks embed themselves into his cranium. Blood runs from the new holes and into his eyes, dulling the glowing yellow embers. Then, right before me, his eyes turn white, as if they’ve rolled back to get a peek at his dead brain. He falls slack at my feet. I yank the claw free. Now it’s the woman’s turn. My breathing is raspy. I taste the death and decay and the tangy, slightly rusty tinge of blood in the air. I’m scared out of my mind, I’m pissed and I’m tired, but I have to do this. If I’m going to save the Doc, I have to.
The woman is already on her way back, in the world-famous Frankenstein pose. I don’t know what would happen if I let her press in
to me again, let her force all that dead weight into my sternum. I might pass out. So I don’t let it get to that point. I can’t.
The dripping hook slicks the rope it’s attached to with gore, and I grab the goriest part, unfazed. Cocking my elbow back, I snap the rope at the zombie woman’s face with all the strength I have left in my body. And it turns out to be the right amount. Her head explodes. I’m not that strong. No, her head was just mushy to begin with.
I exhale a great burst of breath and wipe my face clean of this woman’s infected-yellow brains.
Behind me, the chorus of growls hits its highest note. Except, it’s not music to my ears at all. I turn around to see Doc Klein hunched on his knees.
I snap my head back to where I came from. There’s more zombies. Always more. They move in a pack. I have to work fast.
“Klein!” I yell.
He doesn’t answer me. My cupped hands go to my mouth. They’re slimy with zombie brains. I do my best to ignore the texture and smell.
“Klein!”
He looks up. He’s clutching a bag to his breast, trying not to lose his balance as the zombies rock the trailer back and forth with their collective mass.
My hands begin working, pulling the rope up over the overpass. My fingers have never moved so fast, not even when I used to write shit like this.
“I’m gonna toss you the rope!”
“I’ll never make it!” he shouts back.
“Not with that attitude,” I say.
Doubt at a time like this? That pisses me off.
He is about fifty feet away from the bridge and the drop is maybe twenty or thirty feet.
He pushes his glasses up on his nose. “The probability of me making the swing is almost ten-thousand to one,” he says. “Given the centripetal force needed for me to gain enough momentum — ”
“Shut up!” I yell back. “Now’s not the time for scientific B.S.”
“But the odds,” he says. I see his shadow quivering.
Pretty soon, as the zombies stack up, pressing into each other, what will happen is the dreaded meat mountain. They’ll pile up enough for the stragglers to crawl up the mass of bodies. I’m hit with a picture of the hatch on the roof of the Woodhaven Rec Center. There was about a quarter of the zombies there than there is here. I risk another glance over my shoulder while I coil the rope around my fists. The zombies are closer to me than Klein is now. I have to take care of this.
“Hold on!” I shout.
“The odds!” he screams. “The odds, the odds!”
“What do you think your odds will be once they flip that trailer?”
He says nothing in return. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
The lead zombie breaking the plane of the bridge was once a kid. He still wears a backpack. His eyes sag low on his ashy face. I almost don’t want to do it, but I know a bite is a bite, doesn’t matter who it’s from. My hand fills with a chunk of concrete and I beam it at him, hating myself.
He drops to the road, head cracked open, brains sliming out…dead. Then, he’s lost under the shuffling, dirty feet of the zombies. They flatten him. I look back to the reserve of crumbled concrete. There’s two pieces left. Fuck. My eyes keep scanning, but it’s hard to think with the low moaning in the back of my mind. My heart flutters as it catches a hunk of black in the blacker shadows. Dimly, I recognize it as a bag — Sean’s bag…I’d forgotten about it. Maybe there’s enough ammo for me to brain all of them.
My legs go into overdrive, shaking all feelings of pain. I pick the bag up.
Nope, no gun, no ammo.
A smile spreads across my face. I probably look like a maniac, because through the fabric of the bag, what I feel is better than a gun or bullets.
It’s a grenade.
Fifty-One
It’s not what I expected a grenade to look like at all. It’s not green. It’s black and small. There are no grooves. It doesn’t look like a pinecone. If anything it looks like a smoke bomb, the type you would’ve seen the high schoolers tossing into the festival’s crowd at the Woodhaven Fourth of July bash…never again.
I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? I throw the duffel bag at the opposite end of the bridge. Insurance. No need to burn up the goods with myself.
Part of me wants to bring the grenade up to my mouth and bite the pin and pull it free with my teeth. Knowing me, I’d probably just blow my face off.
And the dead don’t care for style points. Not at all. Who cares if I look cool?
So I take the grenade and hold it out to the side as far away from me as possible and pull the pin out. I squeeze the lever with every ounce of strength in my body. Don’t blow up, don’t blow up, for the love of God, don’t blow up. Then my grandmother’s voice is shrieking in my head just as she shrieked at Norm and me one Fourth many years ago when we were playing with firecrackers.
“You’re gonna blow your fingers off! Maybe even your hand!”
Not mine, Grandma.
I throw the grenade into the crowd of zombies, turn and run as far as I can down the overpass, slimy fingers plugging up my earholes.
It takes three seconds before God’s wrath in the form of a little, metal egg singes the back of my neck and pushes me flying through the air, the rope still in my hand.
The explosion is so loud, I can barely think, but I’m thinking, Grandma, if my fingers get blown off and I can’t flip you off in the afterlife, I’m gonna be pissed.
Fifty-Two
The explosion’s echo pulses in my eardrums. The afterimages of bright yellow and orange tattoo the back of my eyelids. I’m facedown, eating concrete. I turn around at precisely the wrong time. A demented storm cloud has burst overhead.
Luckily, my reflexes aren’t lacking and I put my hands up to shield my face from the red and black rain, the body parts — hands, legs, arms, chunks of torso. Teeth and bones and debris rattle against the road. Zombie hail. Death hail.
All of a sudden, my heart drops, my body with it. I’m sliding through red sludge. The bridge has collapsed, the road tilting. The concrete crumbles. I hear the chunks of rock cascading downward, then the slam of the bridge on the road, which is so hard it rattles my back molars. Sounds of zombies squashed beneath the bulk. I’m sliding, sliding. The rope is in my hand still. I see the end of the road and the beginning of the highway. The crushed cars, the husks of pulverized meat and bodies. The zombies who’ve survived the worst of it, who’ve been pinned to the ground at the waist, still reach up with greedy hands. Anything for a meal, I guess.
They’re like people worshiping to the heavens and I’m the gift God has bestowed upon them. I’m the Last Supper.
I close my eyes, trying to figure what will be worse, getting ripped apart by dead teeth or landing in the heap of mutilated corpses.
Please, God, make this as painless as possible. Please help Darlene get through me never coming back. Please let Abby live out the rest of her life in peace. Let Norm find love. Let Herb thrive.
Please —
Then, there’s a metallic clink. It’s quiet, so quiet. And my hand, the one with the rope once coiled around my closed fist and now unraveled, burns with pain. Knuckles rub together. Skin strips off.
The zombies groan in anticipation. Now, those groans are tapering away. I look up the length of ruined bridge, seeing the wire frame beneath the surface sticking up, rusty orange and red, and I see the gleam of bright silver snagged on this wiring. It’s the rope’s claw and I’ve never been so happy in my life. I almost yell out, “Thank you, Grady!” but ultimately don’t because I’m too busy screaming.
Careful now. My other hand strikes the rope and clasps around it. Probably not careful enough. I feel the collective breath below me, dead lungs pumping in and out unnecessary air. I smell it’s putrid stench. A car is buried in rubble. Zombies look like smeared bugs on a windshield. I turn my back on it all, the hell below, the chaos. And I make like the old Batman television show and I climb up the rope, except this is no stage tric
kery. This is real. My hands are slick with my own blood and sweat. I’m shaking. I almost slip in the guts slimed up the rippled concrete. Body parts roll down by me and I don’t know if they’ll ever stop. Out of my peripheral vision I see Doc Klein still on the semi truck’s trailer. He’s curled into a ball, his hands covering the back of his neck. The zombies around him have thinned. Not enough to get down and turn tail to safety, but enough for him to maybe better his odds.
I get to the top of this particular mountain, reaching the crack in the bridge where it snapped. There’s about ten feet of room left on this overpass. I don’t like being up here. I don’t know the extent of the structural damage the bridge sustained, but I’m betting an exploding grenade never helps it. Not one bit. Now I’m diagonal to Doc Klein. The distance from him to me is farther, but the rope will reach. If it doesn’t, then I’ll get down there and clear a path for him. I might not survive and it might be totally stupid, but that’s what I’ll do.
Mainly, I think this because I know the rope will reach. This damn rope. If I never marry Darlene, I’m going to marry this fucking thing. It saved my life more than once.
“Klein!”
He looks up with wide, white eyes. A few zombies turn to the sound of my voice. Fuck them. Klein looks like he’s seen a ghost. “But th-the odds!” he says.
“Screw your odds! I’m throwing you the rope and you’re getting out of there!” I shout back.
He stands up. I’m expecting him to give me more crap about his odds, and if he does, I’m going to tie the rope into a noose so I can hang him, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tightens the strap around the messenger bag and edges the trailer. I can tell he’s trying not to look at the monsters below him, the ones whose fingers are shaped like dripping claws, who slap and scratch at the metal just for a chance at chewing on his guts, their features lit up by the flaming bodies below.
The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4 Page 58