On this map, there are places crossed out in dark permanent marker. Take Springfield for example. Scribbled over it, scrawled by a hand that hadn’t spent much time writing or learning their alphabet, is EMPIRE PARK, and nearby are other smaller places with the same crooked letters written over their proper name.
I am near Aurora. This place is called Freeland now. This is the distant outpost I see, I’m guessing. I think about avoiding it. It seems most of these outposts are crawling with men and women from the District. Some of them have recognized me, but they never lived to tell anyone about it.
I am tired, and I do not wish to sleep on the hard ground this early morning. Because I have recently seen and killed a zombie, I am on edge. So I continue walking up this road. As I get closer to the outpost, I see the looming walls built of scrap metal and stacked junk cars. I see two snipers’ nest and wonder if the men and women in them have their sights currently trained on me.
I weave in and out of blockades. From behind the walls, a column of smoke rises. The air is sweet with the smell of cook-fires, roasting meat. Hardly any smell of disease and death here. Freeland is looking more and more like a good place to hunker down for the day.
I know the risks, but my exhaustion and fear are too much to bear.
As I come upon the gates, a light shines on me. I wear the hood of my cloak up, and my right hand is inside my important pocket, fingering the locket, thinking of Darlene and Junior. My son’s name was Herbert Junior, as I’ve said earlier; he was named after one of the many people dear to my heart that I’d lost on my journey to San Francisco and Haven, but Herbert Junior wasn’t too fond of his name. This change came around the time he started school. He said he didn’t like the name, but we knew the truth. His classmates made fun of him. I get it, I really do. I know all about getting made fun of. The name Freddy Huber comes to mind. He was my mortal enemy in high school and, unsurprisingly, still was when I came back to bury my mother a decade later.
“State your business,” a gruff voice says from behind the light. I pull my hand out of my pocket and hold both of them up to show I’m not dangerous. The truth is, if you’ve survived this long in zombie-land, then you’re definitely dangerous. You’d have to be a dummy to not know that.
“Just looking for a place to stay for the day,” I say.
The guard looks at me like I’m stupid. It makes me want to punch him in the face. If he wasn’t up in that tower, I probably would. Then again, that might be a bad idea. I really could use a bed right now. According to the road bandit’s map, the next town not ravaged by zombies is a few miles away. If I were in a car, I’d flip these guards in their watchtowers the finger and be on my way. Alas, I am not. I’m walking.
The most recent car I had…well, that didn’t end in my favor. Let’s just say driving an old Ford Focus through a sea of zombies is not the brightest idea I’ve ever had. Get enough blood and guts gunked up in the grille and mechanical failures are bound to happen.
“What’s your name?”
“Jack.”
“Well, Jack, you have to pay the toll to get in,” the gruff voice says, and judging by the way he speaks, I think that’s total bullshit.
“Thought this place was called Freeland,” I say and point to the sign. “Or can’t you read?”
The light clicks off. My eyes take a moment to adjust, but when they do I see I’m not dealing with the kind of guy who can take jokes. I can also tell this guy isn’t with the District. You can see the crazy in District peoples’ eyes. Can practically smell it on them, too. Seeing how this guy isn’t one of my mortal enemies, it’s safe to say that I’d rather save my energy and not knock his teeth in.
Besides, he currently has an assault rifle pointed down on me. I feel no fear. I’ve had many guns aimed in my face. Hell, I’ve even been shot once or twice. Got the scars to prove it.
“What’s your price?” I ask, sighing.
“What do you got?”
I reach into my pocket and feel around. I pull out a handful of batteries. “Got double and triple A’s, got nine-volts, lithium ion, Energizer, Duracell, you name it.”
“Give me four double A’s,” the guard says, “then I’ll let you in.”
In my hand, I only have two double A’s, and that’s all I’ve got. I hold up a finger, saying I need more time.
“No funny business,” the other guard says. “We’ll shoot you.” The quiver in his voice tells me he won’t. Can never be too sure. I’ve been surprised before.
I dig in a different pocket. My hands are fast. I drop the batteries back in the good pocket and pull out four duds I kept for exactly this purpose. People love their fucking batteries in the apocalypse, and these are the batteries I used in an old Walkman. Played Hot Rocks by the Stones until the batteries practically coughed and Mick Jagger’s voice faded to a dull whine. So yeah, they’re duds, but this asshole all high and mighty on his watchtower with his assault rifle doesn’t know that.
I hold them in my palm.
“Throw them up,” he says, obviously meaning one at a time. I let all four go at once. He catches one, maybe two, and the rest make the sound of gunshots carrying across the empty road behind me as they bang off the wood planks of the sniper’s nest.
“There’s your toll. Let me in,” I say.
The gruff voiced guard is too busy trying to find the other two batteries so I glare at his pal across from him. The guard practically melts at my death stare. I don’t often look at my reflection these days, no reason to really, but the last time I did, which was a couple days ago, I almost spooked myself. I was kneeling down over a stream, about to fill up my canteen when I saw my face as clear as day in the slow running water. My eyes are sunken into my head and there’s blue-purple rings beneath them that make me look like quite the walking corpse myself. My beard is much too long and unruly. Same goes for my hair, which is long enough that it lays flat and out of my face, easy to slick back. There’s gray in both my hair and beard. Wrinkles around my eyes from squinting so much. If you shaved my beard, you might see wrinkles around my mouth, too. Those are from laughing. When Darlene and Junior were still around, when Haven was working like a well-oiled machine and Norm and Tim and Abby and Carmen and Eve were heading the council with me, it was almost like the world was normal. We laughed a lot in those days. I don’t laugh much now, not anymore. They’re all gone, and here I am, paying my way into an apocalyptic town with batteries. Amazing how life can change so drastically, so fast.
So my features are enough to spook this guard into opening the gates. He takes a handle in his hand and starts cranking it fast. Tires spin up there, rubber grinding against rubber, metal screeches and the gate opens slowly, exposing the sleepy town within.
No people are out on the streets. I don’t blame them, the sun is barely up. I see an old brick building that looks like it might’ve been a convenience store many moons ago, a post office, the faded USPS logo a blast from the past, a gas station, a bank that has been converted into an armory. I walk through the threshold of the opening.
“First sign of funny business,” the gruff voiced guard says to me, “and I shoot your face off. We mean it.”
Very hospitable, I think as I ignore him.
I travel the dusty road, taking it all in. It’s not much; Haven looked a thousand times better than this place. But it’s something. It’s a slice of civilization, what I’ve been longing for ever since the downfall of the world came and went. They called it The End when it happened. Entire countries collapsed in the blink of an eye. The disease spread so fast—Like a raging wildfire, an old acquaintance of mine named Pat Huber once told me—that humanity truly had no hope. Fifteen years later, and I still don’t know why I was among one of the few humans who weren’t affected by the disease or why the zombies haven’t rotten into piles of dust. Whatever disease they cooked up in the Leering lab was really potent.
We didn’t know much about it when it happened—and I’m not trying to be clandestine he
re. I’m not trying to say I was apart of some secret government organization that was studying the disease or anything like that, though I did have a pretty gnarly shootout with said government organization. They are called Central—were called Central. I didn't leave any alive.
Anyway, I was a writer, not a soldier or a cop or some macho douchebag you usually see in zombie movies. I wrote horror novels, but my bread and butter were zombie books. I don’t write anymore. At least not physically. I do, however, make up stuff in my head all the time, to pass the time. Mostly a fictionalized version of what happened to Haven, an alternate ending, if you’re into DVD extras, an ending where the District never storm Haven’s gates and take everything from me, an ending where Darlene, Junior, and I live happily ever after, where Norm and Tim and Abby and her husband Mike and Darlene’s sister Carmen and her mom Eve do the same.
Back to the disease. Like I said, we didn’t know much about it when it first broke out. Over the years, I discovered more. There was a woman who came to Haven who had been affiliated with the US government. She worked in the CDC. They were tasked with finding a cure after Central failed to weaponize it. The disease affected, by their estimates, nearly half of the world’s population. What she meant by affected was that the disease killed them and brought them back as undead nightmares. The other fifty percent of the world’s population, especially in the beginning, were caught off guard. The disease is easily spread through a zombie bite.
So this other half of the population had been unprepared as most of us undoubtedly always are. They were bitten by loved ones on their deathbeds, they were attacked while looting grocery stores and pharmacies, they were gunned down by the military by accident, by bombs in larger US cities and foreign countries.
But who knows if that woman was telling the truth? I don’t even remember her name.
All I know for sure is that the outbreak originated near my hometown of Woodhaven at the Leering Research Facility and that I’m still here while seventy to eighty percent of the population is probably either dead or a zombie.
So I got a lot of shit going against me, but that’s nothing new.
Jack Jupiter knows adversity. Like I’ve said, I’ve seen it all, taken down warlords, saved the fucking world.
Still walking, I turn a corner and what I see causes me to stumble to a stop. Well, at least I thought I’d seen it all.
Three
It’s not a zombie or the one-eyed man—as much as I wish it were him. It’s never that easy.
It’s actually a downed plane. One of those big military types. I’ve only ever seen one in the movies, but they’re bigger in real life than they are on the big screen. This one is a weather-faded green and big enough to haul a couple tanks. Probably. I really don’t know. Crumbled brick and rubble gather at the plane’s nose. It crashed into this poor building. I wonder how many people died during the incident. Too many, I’m sure.
What’s weird about all of this—besides the fact that the crash is still here—is that the plane isn’t some abandoned accordion of metal. It looks lived in.
To confirm my hypothesis, a group of men stumble out of a makeshift door just under the broken wing. Coincidentally, the piece of metal that was the wing is now a ramp and these guys nearly fall over the railing. They’re laughing and patting each other on the back. I watch from about twenty feet away. I have my cloak on, hood still up, and I’m in the shadows. Even if I was stark naked and the sun was beating down on me, I don’t think these men would notice.
They’re drunk off their asses. Spent the whole night hammering down flat beer and old whiskey. I envy the sense of camaraderie and togetherness these men share. It’s something I once had with Norm and Abby, and, of course, my wife.
Now they’re off the ramp and heading toward a building at the end of the street. It’s a three story brick place with a swinging sign over the door. I can’t read it. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.
Although it doesn’t take someone with perfect sight to realize that’s the town motel. A place for weary travelers and warlords.
I look back to the downed plane. I now notice the sign in one of the windows. It reads: THE JET in a cursive letters, a pub, the local watering hole. Funny how society tries to hold onto the things of the past.
Then part of me is thinking, Well Jack, that’s exactly what you’re doing…
I try to ignore that part of myself.
I could really use a drink, though. Places like that always accept batteries and the other types of useful trinkets I keep in my pockets. I can go in there and find out about this place, maybe even find out about the District this far east. Haven’t heard of them in a while. People out here either don’t bend their knees to crazy warlords or they’re just too stupid to care.
At least, I hope.
I cross the quiet street and head up the ramp, into the corpse of an military airplane.
Four
Batwing doors. It’s like an old west saloon. As I push them open and the current of upbeat piano music runs over me, I resist the urge to throw my cloak back to reveal the pistol on my hip and spit tobacco into a brass spittoon with a resounding ding. Yeah…I’ve seen way too many Westerns.
Couple things wrong with that scenario anyway. First, I like to keep the pistol on my hip a surprise. It’s a last resort, if you will. When you’re trekking through miles of zombie country, the last thing you want to do is draw more of the bastards toward you by pulling the trigger of your hand cannon.
Lessons learned in the wasteland.
Inside the bar, the atmosphere isn’t as sleepy as the town, but it’s not very lively, either. I’m not surprised to see they’ve extended the interior of the plane, knocked out a back wall and built around it. Other than the metal walls and floor, this place is quite the standard Western saloon. In Illinois, I might add.
There’s a pretty bartender behind the counter. She’s got short dark hair and sharp cheekbones. Her blue eyes glow in the low light. She smiles at me. I wonder if she works for tips and just what the heck people tip her with. I smile back and she looks away as soon as I do it. It’s been too long since I’ve smiled at another human being. Zombies don’t give a shit whether my smile is as idiotic as it feels on my face. Apparently pretty bartenders do.
I survey the room.
Always do that. Weed out any threats.
The place is mostly dead, though, like the world. In the back right corner a couple of men sip from mugs with heavy eyes. Even the piano player to my left hits the keys with as much force as a ghost. At the bar is a man who has not starved. His girth causes the stool beneath his massive behind to creak and groan with the slightest movements. He’s the liveliest patron in here, and that’s also really not saying much. The bartender pours another beer into this guy’s mug. It doesn’t froth, as flat as ever. The man gulps it down regardless. My experience with beer is, after you start feeling a buzz, your taste buds go ‘Aw, screw it!’ and you can down as much beer as possible without noticing that bitter taste .
I walk up to the bar and take a stool three spaces down from the guy. A couple signs hum behind the bartender, an old neon Bud Light and a Heineken. The Bud Light is the more vibrant of the two with its red, white, and blue—America’s beer, right?
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asks. She speaks in a cutesy voice I know is not the voice she uses outside of work.
“What do you got?”
“Name it.”
I’m not much of a drinker. As I’ve said, after Darlene and Junior died, I drank more than any man who still has a functioning liver should. I’ve had enough.
I lean over the bar and peer down. It is a sound that has drawn my attention, the hum of a refrigerator. It’s a sound I haven’t heard since Haven. Our budding community had running electricity, running water, central air and heat in some of the compounds. We were spreading, too. It was the council’s goal to bring San Francisco closer and closer to what it once was with every generation. We had
something good. I had something good.
The sadness strikes me hard, and I feel my eyes filling with tears. I look down at the floor, bringing the back of my hand up to swipe at them. Little moisture. Damn it, keep it together, Jack.
I thought I’ve gotten better at that—putting it to the back of my mind. It just never stays there. Comes sliding up behind you, like a legless zombie.
“You looking at the fridge?” the bartender asks, snapping me out of whatever haze I’m currently in. Suddenly, I’m self-conscious. She’s close to me, too close. It’s been a long while since I’ve been this close to a woman, and she smells nice, like perfume and mouthwash. I can’t imagine what I smell like. I’ve been on the road for two years, but it’s been about a week since I’ve slept under a roof or had a shower. Sure, I rinse off whenever I find a body of water, but that’s not enough to get rid of the funk clinging to me.
“Yeah, I am. You have any old cans of Coca-Cola in there. I’m willing to pay.” Been fifteen years since the Coke factory’s made a fresh batch, but that doesn’t bother me. When you live off of old cheese and stale crackers, a flat Coca-Cola is a treat.
The bartender smirks. “Not much of a beer drinker? It’s rare for someone to ask for a pop.”
“Not anymore.”
“Let me see what I can muster up for you.” She turns and makes a big deal about swinging her hips. I roll my eyes. The girl will do anything for tips, it seems.
Then she bends over and I direct my attention to the Heineken sign, wonder if the Heineken execs are smiling down from heaven at this unnecessary advertisement. The fridge’s door closes. I can feel the bartender’s eyes on me.
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