“Thanks,” Norm says when he’s free. He’s bloody. He’s bruised. One eye swollen. Like Eden all over again, I think. “But you still owe me that Slim Jim.” Then he bends over and starts coughing.
Slim Jim. Cupcake.
I rush back over to where Darlene is.
“Cupcake,” I say. My voice is hoarse. “Cupcaaaake.”
“No, Jack, don’t look,” Darlene says. She’s huddled over Cupcake’s body. His bloody body.
“CUPCAAKE!” I shout, the effort burning my vocal cords. My chest tightens as I look at the dead dog in front of me. Another dead family member. Then the tears come, slow at first, a thunderstorm seconds later.
“Cupcake,” I whisper.
Darlene turns and hugs me tight — dull pain comes with the force of her arms. Her insane haze breaks and we sob together.
I bring a bloody hand up to wipe my face. Eyes close. World goes dark.
Thump…thump…
“Cupcake?” My voice is breathless.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
“CUPCAKE!”
He turns his bloody face up at me, straining, ears flowing out behind him like long, black hair. Darlene and I part. Against every twinge of pain and protest in my body, I run forward, nearly falling on my face on three occasions. Cupcake’s tail continues to wag. Slow but steady, like a beating heart.
Ninety
Cupcake’s beaten up pretty bad, but I think he’ll be okay. Tim and Norm embrace each other, exclaiming in mutual shared pain. Tim has torn his singed shirt and wrapped it around his torso, to keep the flapped-open skin and blood in place. It’s gruesome, but I think he’ll be okay, too. Carmen kisses Darlene on one cheek and doesn’t even say Yuck!
Abby pats me on the back.
Norm hobbles over to me. “We did it, little bro,.”
“We did,” I answer.
I bend down and speak softly to Cupcake. “It’s all right, boy, we’re gonna fix you up.”
“I can’t believe I did that,” Darlene says, breathless, looking at the ruined front of the building.
“I second that,” Abby says.
I grab her around the waist, inhaling her sweet, smoky scent. “You did what you had to do. I’m proud.”
She grabs my hand, then we kiss.
We reach the outside and the air is cooler out here. The zombies coming toward the flames never see us, nor do they care.
Darlene tells me she loves me and I tell her I love her, too.
Cupcake’s whines grow into soft barks. A good sign.
We move on. As a family. Beaten, broken, but still alive. Still together.
Haven’s repaired fences loom in the morning haze. Muted sunlight rises in the distance.
“Hey!” a man says. “Hey! It’s them! It’s them!”
Tim waves. He doesn’t get his arms up very high, but he does.
Carmen waves, too, jumping up and down. “Hey!” she calls back. The thought of them mistaking us for zombies crosses my mind — we look pretty messed up.
We’ll be all right.
Darlene, whose hands have been hovering around my waist out of fear of me losing my balance and falling over with Cupcake in my arms, squeezes me, pulls me closer. We smile at each other. There’s both relief and love in her eyes.
The entrance screeches as the fence swings open. We are not greeted by soldiers, but by Eve herself. Tabby and Olive are behind her. Her face is a mask of tears. Carmen sprints the rest of the distance and jumps into her mother’s arms. It makes my body go weak; it makes me want to cry myself.
Darlene doesn’t rush.
Eve and Carmen part. Eve stares daggers at her eldest daughter. “I can’t believe you defied me,” Eve says.
Darlene doesn’t answer. They keep on staring. Everyone is staring now. I’m starting to get uncomfortable.
Eve’s face melts. She breaks into a wide smile. “But I’m so proud of you. Of all of you.”
Now they rush into each other’s arms. Crying, kissing, telling each other I love you.
Norm and Abby and Tim laugh.
Mike is there at the fence shortly after. He hugs Abby. They kiss.
“Let’s get you guys fixed up,” Eve says once the reunion is over. “You all look horrible.”
“Thank you,” I say. “For the offer, not for saying we look horrible.”
They all laugh. I crack a smile.
We head through the entrance back into the settlement. As I pass over the threshold with my fiancé at my side and Cupcake in my arms, a thought crosses my mind, an eery one that explains so much.
What started in Woodhaven ends in Haven.
I look up to the rising sun and smile. Cupcake manages to bark softly, as if to say it’s okay. Darlene smothers us in kisses, her tears dampening my face.
It’s finally okay.
Whatever watches over us, know I’m grateful.
Epilogue
Darlene and I married on what we believed to have been July 30th of the year 2017. As I write this, I’ve been a husband for two months, and news just came in from one of Haven’s doctors that I’ll be a father sometime next year.
Yes, Darlene’s pregnant.
I would be lying to you if I said tears aren’t dripping onto this paper. But I’m not sad. I’m a happy man, truly happy — finally.
We’re still very much in love. Legions of zombies, scores of mad men and women, and thousands of miles of travel couldn’t come between us. And nothing ever will.
Our wedding took place on a beautiful day. We married on a beach — cliché, maybe, but we could’ve gotten married at a drive-thru wedding chapel somewhere in Vegas and it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. The ceremony took place on the coast of the park, not far from where we built a nice home. Norm was my best man. Tim, Cupcake, and Mike, my groomsmen.
Yes, Cupcake is okay. The same doctor who told me of Darlene’s pregnancy fixed him up. Now, Cupcake walks with a limp, but his barking and tail-wagging is as strong as ever.
Abby and Carmen were co-maid of honors. Eve, Tabby, and Olive were bridesmaids. It seemed like the whole compound came to see us get married. So many people, in fact, we ran out of chairs. People didn’t mind sitting in the sand. It was a perfect day.
My hearing came back enough for me to listen to Darlene say, I do.
And we kissed before the priest could finish saying, “You may now kiss the bride.”
The audience erupted into applause.
Norm laughed and said, “Don’t use your tongue. For God’s sake, be civil!” Then he went, “Ow!” I’m assuming Abby leaned over and hit him because the crowd laughed.
It really was perfect.
Darlene had never looked so beautiful, and aside from our first kiss, this one on our wedding day was my favorite.
Tim and Norm live down the street from us. Abby has her own place, too — Mike is a frequent visitor. They are very much in love. I can see it. Abby says she doesn’t have nightmares anymore. Neither do I.
Norm was made head of security. He has this really sweet job where he’s in charge of the fence that protects us. You should see how happy he is now that he gets to act like a dick again and get recognition for it. It’s awesome. Yes, the zombies are still a problem. We’ll always need fences. But it’s okay.
And Eve has truly accepted me. If there was any doubt before, it was all gone after the wedding, where she called me Son.
I know, I know. I’m getting teary-eyed again thinking about all of this.
Now, Cupcake comes to me, limping. He sticks his head on my thigh. I’m at my writing desk. Yes — I’ve started writing again. People around here don’t care much for the Johnny Deadslayer stories, but they like my haunted house books, and Eve and a group of her middle-aged friends feign over my romances. One of my wedding gifts to Darlene besides this huge diamond ring I found in a jewelry store not too far from Haven was to read those dreaded romance novels she was so crazy about. I kind of liked them and then tried to write my
own. They’re not too bad.
“You wanna go outside?” I ask Cupcake.
He whines again.
I get up, my knees and back cracking. Cupcake follows me to the door. The sun is going down over the water, painting the waves with gold. Our house is near the shore.
Cupcake, still limping, tears out onto the sand.
Darlene stands near the ocean, her hands protectively over her stomach. Cupcake reaches her and she bends at the knees — slowly — and scratches him behind his ears. Cupcake’s tail bats sand in every direction. I walk up to them, my heart swelling with love and adoration.
“You finished writing?” Darlene smiles up at me.
“For tonight,” I say.
We both look out over the water and to the endless blue in the distance — this quiet, quiet world.
“I love you, Darlene Jupiter,” I say.
“I love you, too, Jack,” she says.
Cupcake barks.
“And we both love you, too, Cups,” I say. He sits in front of us, watching the waves. I put my arm around Darlene’s shoulders.
“I think it’s a boy,” she says.
“You do?” I say. “How do you know?”
“I don’t. I just have this…this feeling.” She smiles again.
God, she’s beautiful.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she answers. “I’ve already picked out a name.”
“You did?”
“Herb,” she says. “Herb Jupiter.”
I turn to her, my stomach fluttering. “I love it,” I say.
“Me, too.”
Cupcake barks in agreement.
We watch the sunset as a family.
I know the zombies are still out there and the world may have ended, but my world is right here, all around me in this place called Haven.
And as long as I’m with them, everything is perfect.
Dead Lost
Jack Zombie #6
Let’s not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear.
Barack Obama
One
Wrong.
Staring the dead man in his face, that is what I’m thinking.
Wrong.
He comes toward me on the dark road. I stand somewhere near the faded yellow line, barely visible this night.
I hold a sword in my hand, a weapon I’ve picked up from one of those weird, novelty medieval shops. A long broadsword you might see in an epic fantasy movie. Well, when they were still making movies, that is. I don’t think one has been made for close to fifteen years. I don’t think one will ever be made again.
The blade is easy enough to wield, especially for a schmuck like me who’s not very practiced in the art of swordplay.
The zombie makes these noises, this low growling in his throat. I can’t tell if his teeth are rotten from chewing all that dead flesh or from chewing a bunch of tobacco.
Doesn’t matter.
He’s close enough for me to smell him.
I take a big whiff—mostly involuntary.
After all these years around zombies, I’m still not used to that awful smell of decay and bile and death. It's easier to stomach, I guess, but not one of my favorite scents, that's for sure. It's easily the worst part of being on the road. Aside from the loneliness.
I swing down hard.
Lucky for me, though, the sword is sharp and it cleaves through the zombie’s head like a hot knife through butter.
Brains and a mist of blood spray toward me. I don’t even flinch. I’ve been covered in so much zombie gunk, it’s a permanent part of my wardrobe now.
The dead guy’s mouth opens in a confused gape. Think about a fish out of water, rubbery lips moving for that sweet water-oxygen or whatever the fuck it is that fishes survive on.
Somewhere beneath my thick and graying beard, a smile spreads on my face. It’s times like now that I wish I'd kept count of how many of these dead or undead bastards I’ve put back into the ground. With the fun—fun, now that I look back on it—I’ve had with Molotov cocktails and grenades, that number is sky-high, no doubt.
The zombie falls forward, two cleaved sides of his head sliding down my blade. I’m going to have to clean it again. With his eyes so far apart, he kind of does remind me of a fish. He falls forward. Usually, as per our seemingly arbitrary pop culture rules, killing the brain kills the monster, but sometimes, a particular asshole-ish zombie will twitch or moan before it crosses over to the afterlife. I’ve grown to expect this.
What I don’t expect is for this asshole to swipe at me with hands that are much too strong for a dead zombie. He latches on to my shirt collar and pulls it down beneath where my cloak is tied. Sure, that’s all good fun, and I wouldn’t mind much under normal circumstances, but he grabs my necklace along with my collar.
Dead weight is heavy weight, and I can’t stop it from pulling the small silver chain from my neck. It makes this clink that carries in the silent surrounding forest. For a long moment, I think it’s the actual sound of my heart breaking.
This chain and the pendant attached to it is special. More special than I thought anything in my life would be to me right now.
The chain pops and I feel it slither off my neck. When it’s completely gone, it’s like I’m missing a talisman, my only form of protection in this fucked-up world.
Of course the zombie’s head is leaking black, gooey brains and the necklace is lost in all this. I have one pair of gloves, leather, real durable, real nice. It’s not worth it to get them all ruined and gummy.
I’ll have to dig through the gore with my bare-fucking-hands. Awesome.
Looking at the zombie’s oozing head, I think of what Humpty Dumpty might have really looked like when he fell off of the wall and busted himself into a bunch of pieces. I think of a smashed, infected egg, black yolk, and a rotten embryo running out of it.
I really don’t want to have to dig through this.
But I know I will.
For the little piece of my dead wife and son I have left, I will do anything.
Two
After digging through the mess, not even gagging once—shit, I’ve seen it all…brains, guts, and even zombies hung up by their spinal cords—I walk onward.
A lot has changed since the last time you’ve heard from me. Nearly fifteen years have passed.
For those of you who don’t know me well, my legal name is Jack Jupiter. God, it’s weird to think of myself as Jack Jupiter again. It’s been over two years since someone has called me that.
The world, as you might have guessed or known, has ended. A disease, a plague, an Armageddon, whatever the hell you want to call it, has swept across our globe. It started fifteen or sixteen years ago just outside of my hometown, Woodhaven, Ohio. A place that has long since burned down. A place I do not miss in the slightest.
I’ve traveled the United States with my family (a blood relative and a few adopted members) in pursuit of a cure and survival. I’ve failed. Eventually, I found a safe place in San Francisco called Haven. I helped keep it safe. I settled down, got married, and started a family. I don’t know what I was thinking. In hindsight, it does not seem possible to have a family when the dead walk and hunt us like animals. But I figured I’d survived this long, how much harder could it be to keep my family alive? How much longer could I keep us together?
Thirteen years, that's how long.
That was when Haven was attacked, when a group of demented killers calling themselves the District stormed our gates.
We’d been living in peace for so long we never expected that. We were blinded by our own hubris. My wife Darlene’s throat was slit right in front of my son and I. Then my son was shot in the back of the head. Herb Jr. was only thirteen when the one-eyed man pulled the trigger at point blank range. My own son’s blood dotted my face.
The one-eyed man has left me alive. He wanted me to live with this, wanted me to suffer.
Big mistake. He should’ve killed me.
For six months a
fter their deaths, I was in a haze. I drank until I blacked out every night, drank with the intent of killing myself because I was too cowardly to do it any other way—like bite down on a barrel and pull the trigger or dive headlong into a pit of the squirming, starving zombies.
Then something clicked. I realized I didn’t have to sit around feeling sad for myself. Of course, I miss Darlene and Herb Jr. more than anything and there’s times—usually in the dead of night when all is quiet and my mind runs a million miles an hour—where I don’t think I can keep being strong, but I know I have to. I could go out there and find that one-eyed man. I could take down his brainwashed followers, the District. I could do it all because I’m Jack Jupiter.
And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
There is something else, too, something else keeping me going.
I scoured the destroyed remains of Haven for nearly a week as I looked for my brother Norman, and my apocalypse-adopted sister Abby. I did not find their bodies. Part of me thought they might’ve been completely devoured by the zombies who’d been attracted to the flames and sounds of gunfire, and that still could be the case, but I don’t think so. Deep down in my heart, I know they are somewhere out there. They are survivors, and they weren’t there when the other leaders of Haven and I were put on trial in front of the rest of the survivors, when Darlene and my son were taken from me.
Yes, I think they’re out there. Where, though? I have no idea. Currently, that is not my greatest concern. My greatest concern is revenge. It is all that fuels me, all that keeps me putting one foot in front of the other.
The sun is coming up by the time I see the distant outpost. I take a map out of my important pocket, a map I took off of a man who tried to rob me on the road. One look at myself and I can understand why he had thought I was an easy target. One look at the caved-in face of this particular road bandit, and you’d understand why it is not wise to mess with me. Anyway, the map this man had was a crude rendering of the surrounding Midwestern states. I am somewhere outside of what used to be Chicago, about fifty or so miles. Chicago was where Darlene and I used to live. Then my mother died and I was brought back to Ohio for her funeral, and then, of course, everything spiraled out of control and fifteen years later, here I am.
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