The Dead Collection Box Set #2: Jack Zombie Books 5-8

by Flint Maxwell

  That’s the other option.

  Cross the way toward the Ford. I stop at the guard I disposed of. Take his machine gun. I don’t know what the hell it’s called. My brother Norm would—though he might not tell me, since he’s currently under the control of the man who took my family away. Brainwashed by some asshole calling himself the Overlord.

  I guess it doesn’t matter if I don’t know what this gun is—I know its purpose. I know what will happen if I pull the trigger and some unfortunate soul or zombie is in my line of fire.

  It’s a beautiful thing.

  It’s a terrible thing.

  But it’s our way of life now: kill or be killed. Kill or be eaten.

  As I cross the battlefield toward the Ford, I notice the gunfire has stopped. The only sounds besides the constant ringing in my ears, are screams from the dying, and grunts from the dead as they feast. Hardly any of the zombies mill about. They may be dead, but they’re not entirely stupid. They know when it’s dinnertime.

  To my right, about half a dozen rotters have a hold on each one of this skinny guy’s arms. He’s the rope in a gruesome game of tug-of-war. Pretty soon I hear this terrible rip and an even worse scream.

  I decide to look elsewhere. I don’t need to see; the mental picture that I painted solely based on the sounds of his arms being ripped off is good enough. Sinew. Bones. Blood. Always blood. The way his face pales as that blood spurts out of him and the ground drinks it up like a sponge.

  Yeah, no thanks.

  “We go in, I go right, you go left,” Abby says.

  I nod.

  She switched out her fake hand, which is made of two metal pincer-like things that allow her to grab stuff, attaching a gleaming metal hook. I see that this gleaming metal hook is no longer gleaming. It’s red and black with blood and diseased brains. Dripping.

  Seeing this, I know I’d follow Abby anywhere. She’s a badass.

  Maybe in the old world, people might’ve given me shit for letting a woman lead. People would’ve made some distasteful comment about making Abby get back in the kitchen or something like that, and maybe the old Jack Jupiter would’ve chuckled, but the new Jack Jupiter would punch that person right in the face—

  Actually, probably not, but only because Abby would beat me to the literal punch.

  She knows how to lead. I trust her with my life. So many years ago, we’d trekked across what was once called America, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her.

  So now, I know, is no different.

  “I’m guessing maybe a dozen more. Crazy fuckers brainwashed and ready to give their life for this gasoline,” she’s saying. “Let Lilly know.”

  I nod again. Turn and fire a shot into the air. Just one shot. A couple of zombies turn their face toward me. Blood-smeared. Yellow eyes. But that’s all they do, since they’re in the middle of feasting. No sense chasing down a meal when there’s a fresh one right in front of you, right?

  Lilly fires a shot in return. We wait for her so we can regroup.

  None of the zombies bother us, they just go on picking their victims apart. Most of the people have stopped screaming now. Most.

  One poor guy has his entrails draped over his face. His arms are flailing all around, beating at the zombies. They don’t care. Don’t give two shits. About two minutes later, the guy is no longer flailing. He’s dead, and the zombies are filling their rotten bellies with his flesh.

  Someone else is saying “Please! Please!”

  The next time he says ‘please,’ one of the dead take a chunk out of his throat, and his voice turns all watery, like his lungs are filling up with fluid. With blood.

  “Pretty gnarly,” Lilly says as she approaches.

  “Ain’t seen nothing yet,” Abby replies, and offers a smirk that isn’t very comforting.

  I don’t know what would be comforting right now.

  “Here’s the plan,” Abby continues. “Jack and me are gonna go in through the front door. He’s going left. I’m going right. I want you to post up outside near the back. If all things go as planned, whoever’s in there will make a run for it. If they do, I want them dead.”

  Lilly looks a little apprehensive at the mention of the word dead. I put a hand on her shoulder and give her a reassuring squeeze, letting her know she can do it. She’s strong.

  She, of course, shrugs me off.

  “Dead? I don’t know about that, Abby,” Lilly says. “I can put a bullet in their leg, maybe disarm them, but I don’t know about killing.”

  “They deserve it,” Abby says. “Trust me.”

  Lilly nods. She still looks a little apprehensive. Her face is pale, and her eyes are looking everywhere but us.

  “Go on,” Abby says, “we’ll cover you.”

  Lilly nods and goes. We cover her, but there’s no reason to. The zombies don’t even notice, and all the soldiers out here are dead or in the process of dying.

  “You ready?” Abby asks.

  “Just like old times, eh?”

  She nods. “Yeah, but we’re stronger now. Should go better.”

  I say, “You’re right,” but know that’s probably not the case. Rarely do things ever go right in the apocalypse. Rarely.

  The front door is a tall slab of gray metal. There’s no doorknob, just this long, thick latch that looks like it would give a chainsaw trouble.

  Abby says, “Cover your ears.”

  I don’t. My ears are so messed up these days, I know it doesn’t matter.

  She aims for the hinges opposite the latch. Puts nearly a whole clip in them until the door is covered with holes, and the latches are nothing but jagged nubs of metal. The door falls forward and swings crookedly.

  We enter through a dark corridor. Quiet.

  “Up ahead, to the right,” Abby says.

  Times like these, I’m surprised at how slow my heart can beat. Back in the day, my heart would be thumping out of my chest; now it’s as smooth as if I were relaxing on a beach somewhere. Like Haven.

  We come out on the warehouse floor. The place is huge, bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. There’s a strip of smooth concrete in the middle, and on each side of this strip are pallets, stacked twenty feet high with drums of gas and oil. These pallets run the length of the warehouse, I’d guess about a hundred or so feet. That’s a lot of fuel.

  The place seems empty. No bad guys. Still, we are smart enough not to completely discredit the idea that they’re hanging around. Vermin always stick to the shadows, don’t they?

  So I go left, and Abby goes right. I round one of the pallets and see a shopping cart. This brings a smile to my face. The shopping carts you see nowadays, fifteen years after the zombies claimed the world for themselves, are rustic artifacts from another age. This one is all gleaming steel. Even the lug nuts in the middle of the wheels sparkle. There’s a rubber mat on the inside of the cart with circular impressions. This is how they transport the drums of gas and oil. I find that funny. No forklifts, no professional equipment—a true testament to how far this world has fallen behind.

  But the smile fades when I hear footsteps behind me.

  I spin fast.

  Nothing there.

  I’m in the maze of pallets, and it’s dark in here, the only light coming in through windows on the roof of the warehouse.

  Footsteps again, this time to my right. I spin once more, and there’s nothing there. I turn back around.

  This time I’m greeted with a fist to the gut. I double over and drop my gun. It goes clattering out of reach.

  I look up with tears in my eyes, wheezing and trying to catch my breath. There’s this big, lumberjack-looking motherfucker in front of me. His fists are about as large as a couple of bricks, and he brings them both down on the back of my neck, right at the top of my spinal cord.

  The pain is immediate and immense. I hit the cold floor face-first, taste the dirt and grit on the concrete.

  Behind me, hands grab under my armpits.

 
“Hold ‘im there, hold ‘im!” the lumberjack motherfucker is saying.

  I’m in pain, yes, but I’m still mentally sizing these assholes up. Two of them that I know about so far.

  Now I’m up off the floor, and my head is spinning. I’m still wheezing. Can’t catch my breath.

  Lumberjack cocks back another fist. He’s about eye level with me. I see in his windup that he means to knock my brains out. Means to shatter my teeth or my face or both.

  The guy behind laughs. He thinks this is the funniest thing he’s ever seen in his life. Really, though, I’m betting he’s just batshit insane. Most of the District soldiers are. They’re all hopped up on that hippie cult stuff. Broke the first and most important rule a long time ago: don’t drink the Kool-Aid, man. Ever.

  The lumberjack’s fist lets loose. I wish I could tell you that I slip away from the guy who’s holding me. I wish I could tell you that the lumberjack misses my face and clobbers his buddy’s.

  I can’t.

  But I do manage to move enough for the blow only to catch the side of my head, the hard part. If you’d asked Darlene a couple of years ago which part of my head was the hard part, she’d have told you it was the whole thing.

  The guy’s knuckles crack against my skull. A high-pitched ringing fills my ears, and the filtered light coming in through the dirty windows above dims nearly to blackness. I’m pretty sure I have a concussion. Wouldn’t be the first time. Certainly won’t be the last; unless I die right here, which is not my intention.

  “Hold ‘im still,” the lumberjack wheezes.

  He’s gritting his teeth so hard that I’m pretty sure he’s about to grind them to dust. Or at least crack them, along with my head. There’s blood on his knuckles, and it shines bright among all the darkness. I’m hoping it’s not my blood. I’m hoping I made this bastard bleed with my hard head.

  The next punch comes for my gut again. I flex my abdominal muscles…well, what abdominal muscles I have, which—spoiler alert—aren’t much.

  The little breath I managed to hold in my lungs explodes out from my mouth. So does some blood. I feel something shift beneath my shirt. A rib, maybe. I try to double over, but the guy holding me won’t let that happen.

  “Piece of shit street scum,” the lumberjack says. “Rebel-traitor-bastard!”

  I start laughing. I don’t know why. It’s not funny. What’s happening to me is sad. All these years surviving, and I’m about to let Paul Bunyan bring it all to an end.

  Maybe a few months ago, I’d be glad he was beating the shit out of me. Glad that I could at least still feel something—you know, back when I was depressed and too afraid to do myself in.

  But that’s not the case anymore. I have something worth living for now. I have my brother, out there somewhere. I have the one-eyed man to kill.

  I can’t die.

  But I can’t stop laughing, either.

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” the lumberjack says, and hits me again in the stomach.

  I wheeze and gasp, spray some more blood on the concrete, but I’m laughing, too.

  Maybe I’m actually losing my shit. Maybe my mind has officially snapped. It’s long overdue.

  Still, in the back of my possibly crazy mind, I’m wondering where the hell Abby is. Why she hasn’t saved me.

  She must’ve been attacked, too. I don’t hear her, and I haven’t heard any gunshots or any scuffling sounds of a struggle. Then again, I’m pretty far gone. My ears are still ringing, and the taste of the blood in my mouth is overwhelming, dampening all my other senses.

  Except for the sense of pain, of course.

  Lumberjack hits me with a right hook. Rocks my jaw.

  “Yeah, I’ll make you shut the fuck up,” he says. “How about I crush your fucking larynx?”

  Big word for such a big oaf, I think.

  He cocks back again, aims for my throat.

  Okay, enough is enough.

  Still laughing, I push off my feet. Since the guy is holding—and unknowingly supporting—me, he makes this a lot easier. He basically lifts me up, too stunned to think about dropping me before I do what I do.

  Which is kick the lumberjack right in the midsection. Hard.

  He isn’t very tough. Looks can be deceiving, I guess. He drops to his knees, head bent, clutching his stomach.

  His partner decides letting me go is now his best course of action.

  Big mistake.

  I spin on him, hit him with my fist. I connect with the side of his head. Not what I was aiming for, but I’m all woozy. Luckily, this guy isn’t as big as the lumberjack. If this was the animal kingdom, the African Savanna, he’d be the annoying hyena, waiting to pick at the scraps left behind by the lions.

  Now, I’m not saying the lumberjack’s the lion, the king of the jungle, because he’s not. That’s me. I’m the fucking lion.

  The one hit is probably enough. My knuckles rattle, crack, splinter, you name it. Maybe they’re broken. Maybe not. They’ll definitely be bruised when I get out of this. Because I am going to get out of this.

  The hyena sways on his feet. He’s about to fall over. I decide to give him one for the road, the knockout punch. It’s a left hook on the bridge of his nose. I feel the cartilage give way, and blood spouts from his nostrils. He cries out and falls backward into the pallets stacked high with gas and oil drums. He’s out cold.

  Perfect timing, too, because the lumberjack is up and saying, “I’ll kill you, you piece of shit.”

  “Good luck.”

  He comes at me fast. His steps are thunderous, shaking the whole warehouse. I’m a matador. Where’s my red cape?

  The adrenaline is the only thing keeping me standing.

  I slide to the right and slip behind him, swinging, all in one smooth motion. I give my sore knuckles a break, and crack the back of his head with my elbow, sending a jolt of pins and needles up my arm. He’s got quite a hard cranium, but I swear I hear a hollow thunk when I make contact.

  His momentum carries him forward too hard and too fast. The sprawled-out hyena, a steady pool of blood dripping from his nose onto the floor probably saves me a lot more pain. The lumberjack’s boots slip, and he slides about five feet before he comes to a crashing halt at another pallet.

  His problem is that he’s too big, too heavy, and his momentum causes the whole stack of drums to topple backward. The sound the drums make is louder than gunshots, echoing off the walls and damaging my eardrums all the more. But he’s down for the count, no chance he’s getting back up.

  I find my gun beneath a pallet, pick it up. Norm would be so proud of me right now.

  Right when I’m about to pull the trigger, Abby screams.

  Well, she doesn’t scream. Abby isn’t a screamer. If she was in a horror movie, you’d never hear her wail and shriek like a stereotypical damsel in distress.

  No.

  She screams out a curse word.

  I can’t really understand what it is, but it sounds an awful lot like ‘FUCK!’ Maybe even a ‘FUCK YOU!’ I don’t know, but I do know the next thing I hear. It is impossible to mistake.

  Gunshots. One, two, three.

  And they hit the drums of highly flammable fuel.

  Three

  What goes through my mind is simple: Shit.

  A perfectly normal reaction to gunshots fired in a place full of flammable substances. I’ve seen enough action movies to know that this won’t end well. This place will probably blow sky high.

  I follow the sound of the shots. The place isn’t that big, but it’s a maze of pallets and stacks of drums. I weave in and out of these, my heart hammering. Not for me, not really. But for Abby. She can’t die, not after she’s finally free from the District.

  I see a skinny man in a flak jacket. His beard hangs almost to his belly button. I rush up to him and clobber him in the back of the head with the butt of my rifle. His knees go out and then he crumples to the floor. I take his handgun and slip it into my waistband.

  Then
I find the guy who’s shooting like an idiot. He’s fat, and his face is ruddy with color and sweat. He reminds me of a melting candle. I don’t know how he’s fat. You hardly see any fat people nowadays, with food so scarce and all; you only ever see fat zombies, stuffed with human and animal flesh and rotting organs. I guess working with the District has its benefits.

  I catch this glimpse of him from the side, my back against more pallets of oil. He’s just blasting off in the general direction in front of him, not really aiming at anything in particular. Only a matter of time before he—

  The shooting stops, the shots echoing through the entirety of the building, but I hear something else. The rushing of liquid.

  Shit. The gas is soaking the floor. One unfortunate spark, and this whole place goes up in flames.

  The fat guy is reloading.

  I have to stop him before he kills us all. So I whistle.

  He’s fumbling with the magazine as he looks up. I make myself very visible for him. No surprises here.

  The way he looks at me, you’d think he might be seeing a ghost. I suspect that’s what he thinks I am. I mean, I’ve seen my reflection. I don’t look the way I used to, as if that was ever really good in the first place. My beard and hair are too long, my eyes are sunken in, my body is mostly skin, bone, and a few places where I’ve achieved wasteland muscle, which is an unhealthy type of muscle one develops in their arms and core from the constant swinging of heavy objects into the rotten heads of countless zombies (the whole lack of proper nutrition doesn’t help much, either). So yes, I’m pretty haunting.

  And unfortunately for this fat guy who thinks it’s a good idea to shoot at a stack of barrels filled with gas and oil, I’m the last thing he sees.

  I pull the trigger of my rifle. Unlike this asshole, my shot is true. I’m conservative when it comes to spending bullets, so one shot and this guy is looking up at the smoking hole in between his eyes. Blood drips down from the wound. He stumbles and falls into the pallet pretty hard. As he does, the weakened part of his skull cracks open. I’m reminded of an egg. His brains slosh out in a wave.

  I rush over to him, careful not to slip in either gas or blood, both of which are about a quarter inch thick on the concrete. I grab his rifle and take it apart, pocketing the detached magazine. Spare ammunition always comes in handy.