“You do?” I ask.
“Yeah, Klein asked down in the storage right after you left…” Norm says.
“Goddamn it,” I say, more pissed than scared now. We are outside of the church so it’s okay to swear. “He might be gone by the time we gear up,” I say.
“Trust me, Klein is smart, but he ain’t that smart. Getting to the West ain’t gonna be easy at all, big brain or not,” Norm says.
I nod, taking a shaky breath. I’m starting to realize I’ve been blinded by anger, by betrayal. I’m so glad my brother is here to talk some sense into me. I don’t know how I survived Eden or D.C. without him, really.
“Father Michael has weapons and food and new gear. We have medicine and a car. We will be fine, Jack. Just calm down a minute while we get ready,” Norm says. He has his hand on my shoulder. I feel his warmth blazing through my shirt.
I nod. “Okay, but I’d like to move out before sunrise.”
“Sure thing, little bro,” Norm says.
Twenty-Six
Darlene doesn’t even spare me a glance as I walk up the blackened carpet. A few candles are burning, eating away at the darkness. Outside, the sky glows with soft light. Sunrise can’t be more than an hour away.
I’m following Norm and Abby into the dank hall that leads into Father Michael’s storage area. He lights the torch at the top of the steps and shadows dance on the walls.
“You really know how to pick ‘em,” Abby says.
“You met Klein in Eden, didn’t you?” I ask, feeling defensive. It’s not my fault I look for hope wherever I can get it.
Abby nods. We are going down the steps. She looks so different minus her left hand. “I met Doctor Klein, yeah,” she says, “but I never met that man we saw back there…that was someone else.” Her voice is like the cold edge of a blade touching my spine.
“Yup,” Norm agrees.
The door to the storage area creaks open. The smell of dirt, mold, and dust fills my nostrils. Norm lights another torch.
“Wow!” Abby says, looking at the corner of the room where the weapons are stockpiled. It’s not as good as Grady’s armory back at the village, but it’s pretty close. It makes what I was left with in Woodhaven all those months ago look like a squirt gun in comparison. “We could beat Armageddon with all this stuff,” she says.
I don’t smile like she’s smiling. This isn’t a time to smile. But I do nod and say, “We may have to.”
Twenty-Seven
We load everything into the Ford SUV and we even give Herb a handgun, just in case. This town is unknown to us and the fact that we haven’t seen a zombie the whole time we’ve been here just unsettles me. It makes me think shit is really about to hit the fan. That’s another thing I’ve learned in this apocalypse: Shit constantly hits the fan.
Darlene seems happier toward me, but I can see the weariness on her face. She’s sick of this, sick of it all. She told me on the highway a couple days ago. I’m sick of it all, too. I really am. But there’s no escaping it. It’s lurking around every corner like the zombies and their radioactive-looking eyes.
We get into the car. Abby smiles. She’s even jittery, in fact. She loves it because she’s been out of the game for too long. The idea of her going through zombie brain-smashing withdrawal crosses my mind and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Herb won’t hold his gun. I see him put it on the floor and look at it from the corner of his eyes as if it were a large spider. Norm hits him on one knee, which seems to be inches away from his broad chest in the smaller SUV. “Don’t worry, big guy, it’s all going to be okay,” he says.
“I’m not scared,” Herb says.
This surprises us all. I’m sitting between Darlene and Abby. Darlene was looking out of the window at the rising sun while Abby was trying to strip and clean her pistol with her one good hand, and now they both tense up and face forward. Me with them.
“What? I’m not,” Herb says. “Doc Klein doesn’t scare me.”
Well he should, I almost say, thinking of Klein and his devil horns.
“He’s my friend,” Herb continues.
Norm and I exchange a glance in the rearview mirror. A friend or not, Klein has it out for him.
“You remember where the airfield is?” I ask. “For sure?”
Norm turns the wheel and eases the SUV down the winding brick road and unto the smooth pavement of Butain’s city streets. “Think so,” Norm says. “It was somewhere out past a red barn.”
We are quiet for the moment as the SUV rolls through the dead town. Shuttered windows look on from the sides of residential streets. A car is crashed askew into a telephone pole, the wires sagging down on top of its roof. There are scorch marks on the windows from when this place had electricity, I think. All four of its tires are flat. Two of them are missing hubcaps. Lawns have overgrown to look like jungles. I see a dog slinking between two spilled trashcans, its ribs jutting out, its eyes crazy and starved. Darlene sees it, too, and I hear her low moan of pity. We were always animal lovers too busy to have pets of our own. Stray dogs basically kill me.
I wish Norm would drive faster. I don’t need to see the grand tour of this depressing town. I’ve seen many depressing places in my time on the dead roads. Butain is nothing new, but before we know it, we’re going to look up and see a plane flying through the air and soon after that we’ll see fire. I don’t want that. Thing is, we have to drive slow because the roads look as if a war had been fought in the middle of them.
We are coming to the city’s business district, following signs that say: TO 76 with an arrow pointing this way then that way. The businesses are equally depressing. Shattered show windows. Scorched facades. Cars jutting out of doorways and walls. Skeletons stripped of every last bit of meat.
Darlene turns her head away from the window and buries her face in my shoulder. I stroke her hair.
Abby, on the other hand, looks out the windows with wide eyes and something written on her face that resembles hunger.
We get on the stretch of country road out of the city limits something like five minutes later. Five minutes of silence and dark images passing us by, things I don’t even want to tell you about.
As we drive up the road, I hear Herb’s breathing getting faster. He is scared. We all are.
Then as we take a curve, passing a flipped John Deere tractor, I see it, the barn. It’s a bright red and I try not to notice that it’s the color of blood. Beyond it, we can see the airfield. Large airport hangars stand tall and vigilant against the orangish sky, shuttered.
Norm slows the car to a crawl. My eyes flick to him. I’m enamored by the airport hangars and the speck on the horizon that is Klein’s car; so enamored, in fact, that I don’t notice the passing herd of zombies in the middle of the road.
Twenty-Eight
“Shit,” Norm says.
Herb doesn’t go ‘Aw!’ and point at him. His teeth are chattering too bad for him to do that. Darlene grips my arm hard.
The herd cuts through the middle of the road and it’s like being stuck at a railroad crossing where a mile-long train has stopped traffic for half an hour.
In the gap in the packed meat of the zombies, I see red skid marks. Klein, in all his infinite wisdom and luck, must’ve punched the gas to beat the train and clipped a couple of the leaders.
Now, some of them have stopped, their yellow eyes glare at us — somehow bright in the rising sun. This is definitely a nightmare. Pinch me, I must be dreaming. God can’t be this cruel, can he?
More zombies turn their heads. The movement is very rickety, like a rusty hinge, and their yellow eyes blaze. Herb has taken to whimpering. I bring a hand up to my throat to make sure it’s actually not me and I don’t know it. There’s no vibrations underneath so it must be Herb.
Norm looks over his shoulder at the empty road behind us. I put my hand on his arm and shake my head. “We can’t,” I say. “Klein is getting away.”
“Let him!” Norm says. “Look at them!” H
e points out the windshield. The zombies have started to lumber toward us. Raggedy, blood-stained clothes whip in the morning breeze. Crooked arms and legs move like broken clocks. Their death rattles and grunts are loud enough to be heard through the glass. Actually, their collective dead voices are loud enough to be heard halfway around the world, I think. I can smell the decay on them, the rot, like old earth and worms. These are seasoned zombies. These are not freshly turned humans. They are rotted almost to the bone. Emaciated. Starving.
“If Klein gets a plane — ” I’m saying.
“I know what will happen!” Norm shouts. “I don’t give a shit.”
While we are sitting here arguing, they are getting closer. They don’t seem smart at first glance — they’re not supposed to be smart — but I think there are certain features and survival instincts wired into their dead brains or something because they’re not coming at us in a straight line. No, they’re circling around the SUV, cutting us off from all angles. More stream out from the surrounding trees. Now I can’t see the road at all, just hints of yellow paint that belongs to the double line.
I feel like I’m choking. Abby, Darlene, and I are pushing closer and closer together as the dark shadows do the same.
“Fuck this,” Norm says. He shifts into reverse.
“No,” I say.
“I’m not going to be the one to kill us,” he says.
The first zombie clunks into the back of the SUV. I hear the soft shatter of glass — one of our taillights.
“Let me drive,” I say.
“I’m the driver!”
“Now’s really not a time to argue about this,” Abby says.
She’s right.
Norm snarls at her first then he snarls at me. “Fine,” he says and we begin to switch seats. It’s about as graceful as two full grown men can make it — which is to say it’s not graceful at all.
Bloody hands beat on the windows. One zombie, its tongue lolling out about two miles long, climbs on the hood of the car. For a second, I think we are stuck here. I think they will keep pressing and pressing up against the frame until they create some type of zombie garbage smasher and the Ford is turned into a compacted cube with us still contained on the inside somehow.
Then I look down at the gearshift and I see the glowing red ‘P’ and the unlit ‘D’ and I stomp on the break, switch to ‘D’, and then stomp on the gas with all of my weight.
The SUV lurches forward.
With all that horsepower under the hood, you’d think we’d plow right through the zombies. We don’t. There’s too many and we don’t have enough momentum going for us. What we need is a big plow attached to the front fender, maybe add some medieval spikes to the plow and just gut all these dead bastards.
Herb has taken to screams again as a zombie smashes his face against the glass, blood-stained teeth and blackened gums streaking down the window. Herb fumbles for his gun, his hands shaking wildly. All the while I’m still pressing down on the gas. “Stop him!” I say to anyone who’ll listen.
The tires start kicking up smoke. It’s smells like burnt rubber. Then the SUV jumps and something goes under the tire — an unlucky zombie. And the smell of burnt rubber is quickly changed to the smell of cooking meat and innards. The tires don’t grip the road any longer. But it’s like we’re driving on ice now, slipping and sliding. But it’s not ice and it’s not banana peels beneath our tires; it’s blood and brains and rotten flesh.
“Go!” Abby shouts. The jovial quality to her voice is now gone. I think she’s woken up…truly woken up and realized this isn’t some dream or fantasy we are living it. This is real life. It’s a harsh realization, one I still have trouble coming to. But you have to. You have to wake up. It doesn’t get easier; the fear is always there, deep in your psyche, like it is in mine right now.
We aren’t going forward so I reach down and shift to reverse. My hands slip on the steering wheel and the gearshift. I’m not trembling anymore. Now, I’m vibrating.
Herb says, “Don’t worry, Jack. I’ll be b-brave. Just like you told me to, Jacky. I’ll be brave.”
I turn, my face a mask of horror, as I see Herb raise the pistol we gave him for protection. The zombie on his window’s side has morphed into three more. They are snapping their teeth and clawing against the glass.
“Herb, no!” I shout, reaching out to grab the gun from him, but it’s too late.
The pistol booms and inside the confined space of the Ford, it sounds like the bombs that went off in last night’s dream. I think my ears are bleeding. I jam my eyes closed and as I open them, I see one of the zombies’ faces explode into a mess of red and black goo and the twinkling cascade of broken glass.
My ears are ringing, not bleeding — I reach up and swipe a finger in my ear canal, almost involuntarily — yet I can still hear the zombies’ groans of death from the outside. It, along with the stench of a thousand rotting corpses, hits me. Sucker punches me, in fact.
Now, Herb is screaming because what looks like forty cracked and twisted arms shoot into the Ford’s cabin. Some of the bone shows through, a grim yellow, and all of the skin is rotted, pockmarked and festering with sores and pus. Herb pushes away as far as he can, but he’s a big man and he doesn’t get far. I’m reaching out to him and grabbing him. With all of my might, I yank.
Zombie fingers grip at his sleeve.
I see Norm lean over us, his movement a blur, and his gun registers shots that never seem to end. The zombies leaning into the shattered window are replaced with different zombies. Their faces and skin and smell are no different. They’re all horrible, nightmarish. Herb manages to crawl over the back seat, and over Darlene and Abby’s screaming and yelling, one of them says, “Ow!” and Herb disappears into the trunk, his legs sticking up, boots scraping the Ford’s ceiling.
I have my own gun in hand, but now I pick up Herb’s, and I’m shaking so bad. Two guns are better than one. I’m bound to hit something.
I pump lead into the tide of zombie faces, not even missing one time, actually. My eardrums are shot. My eyes are blinded by the flashes from the muzzle, but I squeeze the triggers until the car’s stink is replaced with the smell of gun smoke and until I see daylight through the fallen bodies. It’s not much daylight — just a hint, really. Enough to make me drop the guns on the front seat and let Norm and Abby take over shooting duties.
Faintly, I see Darlene shift in the back and grab Herb, shake him, but that’s all I see, and all the time I can spare to give up. She’s all right. Herb’s all right. No time to worry now. The dense forest of walking carcasses begins to clear in front of us. There are still zombies on our left. They bump and smack the sides of the SUV, rocking it and causing the shocks to groan.
I stomp on the gas.
They are so packed on the side, one zombie’s arm rips off with the motion of the Ford. I almost throw up looking at it, I swear to God. The fingers still wriggle and a white knob of bone juts out, shiny with blood, both red and black.
I look away and slap it on to the floor, feeling like I’m in dire need of a shower.
“Watch out!” Abby screams.
Her and Norm have been thrown back against the seats. Abby points ahead. She’s pointing at more zombies. I grip the wheel tighter. I have momentum. I have speed. I’m coming at them like a bowling ball and they’re the lone pins. Their eyes flicker with yellow, but it’s like they never see me coming. Their mouths hang slack-jawed as the Ford smacks into them. It’s about four zombies. I didn’t get a good look at their clothes or features, and quite frankly, I don’t care. All that’s left of them are blackish-red smears on my cracked windshield.
Twenty-Nine
The engine is so loud. Still, I hear Herb’s cries over the growling. Norm crawls into the front seat.
“You okay?” he asks. “Everyone okay back there?”
Three weak yeses come from behind me.
“You okay, little bro?”
I nod, never looking at him. I’ll be hon
est. I’m too afraid to take my eyes off of the road now. Too afraid another pack will jump out from the trees and trap us again. That was too close. Way too close. But I guess it always is, isn’t it?
“I was sure you were going to turn tail or at least do something stupid like open the door and make a run for it,” Norm says. He then bends down and picks up the guns. He examines Herb’s closely, breathes on the chrome, fogging it up and wipes it on his shirt. “Glad you didn’t. Very brave move.”
“Thanks,” I say.
The SUV is traveling at about sixty on a road where we should probably only go forty to forty-five. The airfield is in sight. I can’t hold back now, but I’m aware of the slapping sound of something under our back left tire. I don’t even want to think of what body part is stuck in our wheel ruts.
Darlene’s blonde head bobs in the rearview mirror. I realize I’m still gripping the wheel tight because my palms are burning. I want nothing more than to pull off to the side of the road, let go of this steering wheel, and go back and comfort her and Herb.
But I can’t.
The world hangs in the balance.
Norm reloads the pistols, holsters Herb’s, and puts mine in the middle console. “Maybe we shouldn’t have given Herb a gun,” he says to me in a quiet voice.
Outside of the windows, the fields and trees are going by in a blur. I pick up speed, but I still won’t take my eyes off of the road, not fully. I’ll glance here and there, or look out of the corner of my eye.
“No, it was fine,” I say.
“I don’t know,” Norm says, running his finger along the black muck on the edge of the broken window.
“If it wasn’t for Herb, we’d still be trapped,” I say. And it’s true. If it wasn’t for Herb, I would’ve never had to start shooting the zombies and they would’ve never cleared the road enough for me to drive forward. It was a perfect distraction. A very dangerous distraction, true, but still perfect.
The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4 Page 67