“It’ll h-hel-huuu…”
“No, don’t. I’ll figure it out.”
Norm nods, smiles again, despite the agony he’s in.
I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back, but it’s too soft. I barely feel it.
“My l-l-little bro,” he says. He laughs, which quickly turns into hacking, blood spraying the front of his shirt and jacket, turning the steel zipper red.
“Don’t talk,” I say. “Don’t talk. Just hold on. I’m gonna fix you. I’m gonna get you some help.”
But logic is telling me we’ll get no help here. This part of the city is overrun with zombies. Who can help us?
Norm shakes his head. “I’m d-done.”
“No,” I say.
He nods, laugh-coughs again. “Hey…y-you fuh-fuh-finally beat m-me,” he says.
I wish I didn’t. A sob wracks through my body. I’m still holding his hand. I squeeze.
He doesn’t squeeze back.
He closes his eyes.
“Norm?” I say.
“R-Resssst,” he says.
I stare at him for a long time. Eventually, his chest stops rising and falling, and his muscles go stiff.
He dies in my arms.
Forty-Three
I don’t know how long I sit there with him. It must be a long time.
Someone calls my name.
I look up to the gate I came through, the metal bars just visible from where I’m sitting on the field. Through the bleariness, I see a collection of figures.
Zombies?
Probably.
No, they don’t talk, Jack. Don’t be stupid.
I know that I should get up, that I should fight, but I can’t let go of Norm. Letting go of him means he’ll be gone for good, and I’m not ready to lose more family. I’m not. I can’t.
I did. I have. I killed him.
“Jack!”
It’s Lilly. She is covered in gore and running toward me, hopping over the gate like an Olympic hurdler. Behind her are Abby, Nacho, Roland, and Mandy.
“We have to go. We have to get out of here!” Abby yells. “We’re overrun! Out of ammo!”
“The helicopter, Nacho,” Roland says. “Can you fly it?”
“Si, si!”
The gate rattles and groans as zombies beat against the metal.
The group stops short, looks at me with wide eyes. Abby brings her stump up to her mouth. I can just make out her trembling lips.
She turns away. “Norm,” I hear her say.
Lilly puts her arm around her.
I stand, then bend down to scoop up my dead brother. He weighs a lot, but I’m not leaving him here.
“I’m so sorry,” Lilly says.
Abby is crying. She pulls out from under Lilly’s hold and comes over to Norm and me. Her face is wet with tears as she wraps her arms around us both.
The others look on like casual attendees at a funeral, people who were only friends of the friends of the deceased. Because in a world like ours is now, this is the closest we’ll get to a funeral.
“I’m sorry,” Abby says. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
“I killed him,” I say. “I had to.”
“You didn’t kill him. The Overlord did.”
Behind her, the gates squeal as they begin to give beneath the weight of the zombies.
“We need to go, like now,” Lilly says. “Nacho?”
The small Mexican man nods and runs toward the helicopter.
“He knows how to fly it?” I find myself asking no one in particular.
Abby doesn’t answer because she’s staring at Norm, at the bloody rags that were once his clothes.
Lilly answers instead. “He was in the Air Force. Remember?”
I nod, but I don’t remember. My mind is not working like it did moments before.
The helicopter roars to life. A lot of time passes in what feels like no time at all. Roland and Mandy escort Abby and I to the helicopter. Lilly crawls in.
Mandy says something about the warheads still being armed, and Abby says “What can we do about it? As soon as they’re disarmed, the District will rearm them.”
Then Nacho is mentioning something about the weight capacity of the helicopter. The next thing I know, we are flying straight up as a mass of zombies pour through the gates and into the stadium, like river water from a broken dam.
Lilly is holding my hand. Norm lays in front of me, his eyes closed, his face no longer in pain.
At peace. Resting.
On the bridge, an army of headlights is fleeing west. Zombies crawl over the ruins of the streets like ants over an abandoned picnic.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the device Norm gave me. I think he meant to say ‘This’ll help’. But how?
Mandy’s eyes light up at the sight of it. “My God,” she says, having to shout over the roar of the helicopter. “That’s a key to the kingdom.”
I don’t know what she means, but I know I’ll find out.
Right now, I’m not okay. Right now, I don’t want to think about what lies ahead.
I look at Abby across from me, and try to smile at her. It’s not easy. Sometimes, I guess, you don’t get a happy ending.
I’ve lost my wife, my son, and now my brother.
Who else will I lose before this journey is over?
I look out the window as I hold my dead brother’s hand. The glass is starred by bullets, but still intact.
The city below us grows smaller, that diseased skyline fading…fading…
Gone.
Dead Last
Jack Zombie #8
So it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
One
A warning alarm blares through the helicopter.
Nacho curses loud enough to be heard over the chuck-chuck of the blades. I barely hear it because I’m holding on to my dead brother’s hand, my mind far away. His skin is cold now, so cold.
We have been flying for I don’t know how long. It feels like hours, but it might only have been minutes. All I know is that we left that ruined, radioactive city behind us a long time ago.
The stench of the zombies is still in my nostrils, yes, but that, too, is far from my mind.
At the forefront is Norm.
He is dead. He is gone.
I killed him. Stabbed him with a knife. Watched the life leave his eyes. It was only when he was on his way out of this world and heading into the abyss of the afterlife that he changed back to his normal self. His flinty eyes relaxed, and the corners of his mouth curled up into his perpetually sarcastic smile.
And then he bled all over me.
And he bled because of me.
Abby sits across from Norm and I. Roland is in the front passenger’s seat; Mandy and Lilly surround me. Lilly is looking out of the window, her hands over her ears.
The landscape below is scarred and burned and empty, yet it’s rising up closer and closer to meet us.
“I gotta put her down,” Nacho says in his thick Spanish accent. “We’re almost out of fuel. We’ll drop out of the sky and die if I don’t.”
“Field over there,” Roland says, pointing.
My stomach lurches as we descend.
The landing isn’t smooth. We come down roughly, everyone jostling around, me nearly falling out of my seat.
Above us, the whirring blades begin to slow.
“Any idea where we’re at?” Abby asks.
Nacho takes off his headset and turns. “I got latitude and longitude, but that means jackshit to me without a real map.”
I look around. We’re in an overgrown field. Some kind of farmland. I see no buildings on the horizon, but that’s not saying much, because the dark is heavy and closing in on us. Most importantly, I see no glowing eyes bobbing in the distance—the eyes of the dead.
It’s only a matter of time, though, before they come, drawn by the sounds of the helicopter, the rustling of the branches created by the windstorm the blades have made.
“We’re closer,” Lilly says. “That’s all that matters. We were lucky enough to find a way out of that shithole. And we’re alive.”
Most of us, I think, looking down at Norm.
I still remember, as if it only happened minutes ago, the night he told me the truth, the reason he left my mom and me and joined the army. How he was gay and had been too afraid to tell anyone, even his own brother, for years. I remember how it didn’t mean a damn thing to me. He was my brother no matter if he liked men, women, or aliens.
I remember standing on the beach next to Norm on a sunny day, the tide lapping calmly, the smell of sea salt in the air. I remember seeing Tim’s face—Timothy Lancaster, Norm’s best friend and lover for years. I remember him smiling, the adoration in his eyes. We were all dressed in tuxedos, simple black and white; the girls, even Abby, wore dresses of frill and bold colors. It was Norm and Tim’s wedding, officiated by a woman from Haven who’d been an ordained minister since the nineties. It was the second wedding at Haven in less than six months, the first one being mine. Cupcake sat between Darlene’s legs, wagging his tail whenever I looked at him. I remember how angelic and beautiful, how radiant, she looked. Her belly was swollen, pregnant with Herb Junior, and she rested both hands on it, watching the ceremony in peace.
I remember all the good times, and I remember all the bad times.
Like in any life, there is both good and bad, but that’s what makes a life worth living. To me, at least.
I hadn’t seen my brother in years, not since the Overlord, the one-eyed man, ravaged Haven and killed my wife and son right in front of me.
The others file out of the helicopter. I remain sitting for a long moment, just staring at Norm.
It’s Abby who comes in a few minutes later.
“We’re leaving, Jack. Heading east,” she says.
I nod.
Then she’s back in the seat across from me, looking down at Norm, too. She wears a somber smile on her face.
“Do you remember that Christmas when Norm got really drunk and sang karaoke in front of everyone at Haven?” she asks, her eyes hazy with the distant memory.
“Yeah.”
Of course I remember that. How could I forget? Junior was only three years old. He was sitting on my lap, dressed in a shirt that read ‘Santa’s Little Helper’. We—those of us ‘in charge’ at Haven—decided a Christmas party would be good to boost morale. Morale was always something we were worried about after the end of the world. In that year alone, we had three suicides and six others killed on supply runs.
“I didn’t wanna do it,” I say. “Throw that party.”
“Yeah, you were a real Grinch,” Abby says, smiling. “I thought, of all the people, Norm would’ve been the one who didn’t want to have it. He was always on us about supplies and energy usage.”
“I don’t think he would’ve if we hadn’t found that semi-truck full of beer.”
Abby rolls her eyes. “Oh, man. I almost forgot about that. Plus all the booze we’d already stockpiled.”
I nod, laughing. “It was fun.”
“What did he sing? I can’t remember.” She lifts her arm with the missing hand and the hook attached to the stump and motions like she’s drinking. “Glug-glug-glug myself, right?”
“Hey, I was no angel, either. We had all that gin, too, I remember. Ooh, boy, was that a headache the next morning.” I pause, trying to think of the song Norm sang.
A picture comes into my mind of that Christmas night. Norm is standing on the little stage we constructed for the singers and the game runners. He wears no shirt. A necktie is fastened around his forehead and rocks with him every time he busts out one of his silly dance moves.
The song coming through the speakers is…
“I got it!” I nearly shout. “It was ‘Play That Funky Music’ by Wild Cherry.”
Abby nearly doubles over with laughter; it’s a sweet sound in the grim silence of the world. I laugh with her. I never thought I’d laugh again.
“That’s it!” she says, wiping tears away with the back of her jacket sleeve. “He didn’t even remember the next day.”
“I wish we would’ve got it on video,” I say.
“Me, too.”
I look down at Norm. He is not smiling or laughing. His eyes are closed, his mouth and jaw are relaxed. He looks like he’s at peace.
I lean and place my hand on his cold chest, feel no heartbeat. I think it finally hits me then that he’s gone…really gone, never coming back.
“You did what you had to do,” Abby says. “You’re stronger than me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
I sigh. “No, it’s not. We’re both strong, and we both make each other stronger.”
A silence falls over us for a moment. Outside, I hear the others talking. Roland says something about being glad his feet are on solid ground again, how he was never much of a flyer, and Lilly says that flying is better than dying, which we certainly would’ve done had we stayed in the radioactive city.
“Do you have plans?” Abby asks.
I smirk. It feels false on my face. “Do I ever have a plan? That was more Norm’s territory.”
“True.”
I stand up, crouched in the helicopter. It wobbles beneath my steps. I go outside, my soles flattening the overgrown grass. We are not in Ohio, I can tell just by the air. Growing up there, I know the heavy cloud of depression that hangs around the Buckeye State all too well. But we are close, probably somewhere in Indiana.
The others stop their talking when I look at them, and they look at me like they’re waiting for me to speak. I’m their leader, and that frightens me more than I care to admit. Any time I lead, it’s usually to death. Time and time again, those who follow me die, and I remain standing and hating myself for it.
“I only want to do one thing tonight,” I say. “I want to bury my brother.”
“We’ll help you,” Lilly says.
“Yeah,” Mandy agrees. She is nothing but a large shadow in the distance, standing around with Roland and Nacho.
The other two voice their assent.
“Thank you,” I say.
We leave the helicopter behind after we search it and strip it of anything useful—which is not much. A few rounds of ammunition, a small handgun, and a flimsy roadmap.
I alone carry Norm’s body. The others follow me into the distant woods. I spend too long trying to find the perfect resting place for my brother, knowing I’ll never truly find the perfect place, because such a place doesn’t exist. But if we’re in Indiana, which I am pretty sure we are, that’s a start. Norm lived here many years ago, before the outbreak of the virus, and he lived here by choice, on his own free will, after he got out of the service.
Two large rocks lay in a clearing not far from a dirt road that is just past the field we landed in. The rocks glitter in the moonlight. My heart fills with hope and a deep sadness.
“There,” I say.
“It’s beautiful,” Abby says from behind.
Shovel-less, we’ll have to dig at the cold ground with flat rocks.
I say to the others, “You don’t have to do this. I can do it myself. He was my brother.”
But they all have stones in their hands, and Roland steps forward from their semicircle. He is a skinny man who looked on the cusp of death just hours ago as he rotted away in the underground prison, as the radiation and poison threatened to put an end to his working organs. He looks better now; healthier. Though it may just be the lack of light. Still, he’s smiling.
A smiling face can hide a thousand sicknesses, I think.
“Jack, you saved our lives. Without you, we’d be dying or dead in that prison. Your brother may not be our brother, but he’s close enough,” Roland says.
“Agreed,” Mandy says.
“Couldn’t have put it any better myself,” Lilly adds.
“Si, si,” Nacho says.
I look at Abby. She shrugs. “Don’t
expect me to get all sappy again. I’ve been doing that too much lately.” Doing her famous eye roll, she continues, “Yeah, it’s gonna be a bitch digging, but I’ll help, too.”
I am overwhelmed with emotions. I feel on the verge of tears, and I don’t know if I can hold them back. With my dead brother in my arms and the last of my living family, full of faces both new and old, I decide it’s best to just let my emotions do what they have to do.
So I cry. I cry right there in front of all of them.
And it’s okay.
Two
We dig a shallow grave. By the time we are done, our hands are sore and bloody.
Together, all of us, we lower Norm into the soil. I wipe blood and loose dirt away from his brow and I fold his hands over his chest. He looks different than how I remembered. He has no hair, his skin has wrinkled slightly with age, and his cheeks are without color, but he’s still my brother, still Norm.
Lilly helps me out of the grave.
Then, together, we bury him.
This takes until sunrise, and it’s a beautiful sunrise, the light purple-gold and resplendent. I think Norm would be glad to be buried on a morning like this.
“I could say a few things from the Good Book,” Roland says once the dirt is patted down, and the grave barely a visible scar on the land. “I memorized a few passages from my youth.”
I think to myself, Was Norm religious? Did he have a faith?
It’s a question I don’t know the answer to; Abby, either, judging by her silence. Thinking back, I recall Tim being religious—at least slightly—and as my brother and I grew up, we had our fair share of the Fear of God drilled into us. Did Norm follow that through in his adult life? I don’t think so, but I can’t say for sure.
Then another part of my mind asks if it really matters. God or no God, we all go to the same place; that I know for a fact, unless you have the misfortune of coming back as an undead monster, a zombie… and even then, who’s to say what becomes of our souls and consciousness?
So I tell Roland to go ahead. That it would be nice.
He smiles softly and steps forward. Then he begins reciting from his memory. I hear the words he speaks, but I don’t comprehend them. My mind is in a faraway place. The words, though, and the man’s tone with which he carries them, are sweet and powerful at the same time. Norm would’ve appreciated it.
The Dead Collection Box Set #2: Jack Zombie Books 5-8 Page 57