“You calling me fat?” Lilly scowls.
My mouth gapes. She really threw me a curveball there.
“I—uh, no,” I say, looking her up and down. She’s quite fit, if I’m being honest. Pretty, too. I suddenly feel gross for checking her out.
“Relax. It’s called a joke, Jack,” she says and she smiles at me. “I’m coming. We’re not splitting up. We need each other now more than ever.”
She’s right, so I nod. If we fall from the walkway, at least we’ll fall together, right?
No more wasting time. We take off across the warehouse floor, our soles slapping the concrete, weaving in and out of monolithic pieces of machinery that look both complicated and dangerous.
We reach the ladder. So far, the door remains shut. I hear more voices outside, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. I just catch snippets and syllables.
The ladder feels sturdy enough, but again my fear comes flooding back. I think of Pat Huber. I think of falling off the roof of the Woodhaven Recreation Center.
If I fall now, there’s no bushes to cushion me. If I fall now, I’m busting my head open like Pat Huber did.
I hesitate about halfway up. Lilly is just below me and she punches me in the ass, telling me to hurry. I swallow down the fear.
It’s funny. Zombies, crazy, gun-toting assholes—they barely frighten me. But falling a couple stories onto concrete, maybe even winding up landing on one of those machines…that scares the hell out of me.
I take a deep breath and climb the rest of the way, imagining that below is not a sea of bone-crunching floor, but a nest of pillows instead.
It doesn’t work.
Still, I reach the walkway and pull myself up. Thankfully, it doesn’t sway under my weight, and when Lilly steps onto it, it stays solid enough.
She pushes past me, runs along the metal grate, toward the window. I follow her. I’m really trying to do my best not to look down. Somehow, I think this is even worse than when I was in Chicago on that scaffold however many stories up. If I fell off that, I’d have had a long time to accept my fate, accept that I’d splat against the sidewalk and die pretty much instantly. But if I fall off here, it’ll happen quick. I probably won’t die, but I’ll be severely injured: broken legs, punctured lungs, twisted arms, that sort of thing. I’ll lie there in pain, unable to move, until the assholes outside come in and put an end to my misery.
So yes, much worse.
We don’t fall, though. I reach the window with my gun in hand. The window is locked, sealed somehow.
“Fuck it,” Lilly says. She takes the gun from my hands.
I’m surprised at how easily she does so. Either I’m very weak, or she’s really strong. Regardless, she drives the butt of the weapon through the glass. It shatters instantly, offering us a decent view of the street below.
“You do the shooting,” she says. “About time for you to get on my level.”
She hands me the gun. I take it, pull the hammer back, and start to get to work.
Below us are five figures. They’re standing out in the open, perfect targets. The leader, I presume, heads the group. He clutches a big rifle I’ve never seen before… and in this wasteland, I’ve seen quite a few different variants of weapons.
I aim for him, my finger resting on the trigger, but the sound of the broken glass brings their attention to me.
As he’s raising his own rifle, I’m thinking, I’m fucked. No way in hell I’ll be able to outshoot this guy.
And while I’m thinking this, the atmosphere around us erupts with sounds of gunfire, and I look down at my trigger finger, wondering if it’s moved.
Thirteen
I haven’t pulled the trigger.
And neither has the asshole with the crazy rifle.
But I’m looking at him when his head explodes like a melon dropped from a skyscraper. His cheek peels away, teeth spraying from his open maw. A misty cloud of crimson shrouds the rest of his head, and he falls dead on the pavement, his rifle lost among the gore.
“Nice shot!” Lilly yells.
“Not me!” I call back.
Another shot cuts one of the confused men down. Takes him right in the middle. He doubles over and clutches at the wound, blood seeping out between his laced fingers. His gun clatters to the road, also forgotten.
I catch movement out of the corner of my eyes.
Abby and Roland.
They race across the sidewalk, Abby blasting with the gun she has.
Crack, crack—two more shots, and two more men drop. There’s one left standing, and Roland rushes him like a bat out of hell. He spears him in the gut, taking him down. It’s a vicious move I didn’t think Roland was capable of.
I turn to Lilly, saying, “We gotta get down there,” but she’s already gone.
I rush after her. The two of us basically slide down the ladder. We run back across the warehouse floor and go out the door we’d first blocked with the chair.
I have the gun and I aim at Roland and the other man. They’re on the ground, flailing. A wild fistfight ensues. I take aim with the intention of backing Roland up, but it’s dark out here and they’re both wearing dark clothes.
Limbs fly every which way. They roll. With each punch, meat collides with meat. I’m not sure which fist is whose.
“Roland!” I call. “Move!”
But it’s too late. An explosion comes from the tangle of limbs. Roland cries out in anguish, and the man he was fighting with begins to cackle crazily.
“No!” I shout. “No!”
And then I’m running across the parking lot, toward the road, with my gun raised. I squeeze the trigger—this time I’m sure I squeeze the trigger.
The man takes the first bullet in the neck and the second in the head. Lilly grabs me before I can fire a third.
“Don’t, Jack. He’s dead,” she says.
But I think, Who? Who’s dead?
The answer is pretty evident once Roland pushes the corpse from his body. Slowly, he gets on his knees. He coughs, bloody spit splats against the road, landing on the faded yellow line.
We run over to him. My hand is out to help him up, but he waves it away weakly. Red runs down his forearm, twists at his wrist, and drips from his fingers.
Abby, Lilly, and I stand around him, waiting for him to get up. It takes nearly three minutes before he rises to his knees. By then, I see just how bad the wound is. He’s been gut shot.
Norm always said that was one of the worst ways to go. You don’t go quick unless the slug hits a vital organ. You go slowly and painfully, bleeding everywhere, losing consciousness, grueling minute by grueling minute.
“Shit,” Abby says. “Roland.”
She’s right. She speaks for all of us. Lilly and I, we stay silent, unable to move our lips. Mine are numb, and my eyes are filling with tears.
After a while, Abby looks at me. “What do we do?”
“I’m f-fine. I’m fine,” Roland says. “Just g-give me a minute.”
I find my voice. “Roland, man, come on, let me help you up.”
He looks at my extended hand, disgusted, as if he doesn’t want to accept the fact that he’s dying. But he is. It’s the truth.
He’s pale, and his eyes look like they’ve sunken in a couple more inches. He takes my hand. His flesh is cold; it brings chills to my own skin.
“We need to move him,” Lilly says. “Somewhere not out in the open.” She bends down and takes Roland’s other hand.
He looks up at her, smiling. “Do you know how pretty you are, ma’am?” he says. “Prettiest gal I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”
“Thank you, sir,” Lilly replies.
Roland’s going delusional already, I think. I’ve seen it before. Herb was the same way, on that beach by the lake. I remember he saw one of his family members and heard music.
Together, Lilly and I move Roland across the road and the sidewalk, to the parking lot of the darkened warehouse. Abby follows us, sweeping the area with he
r gun.
“Think that’s all of them?” I ask as we set Roland down against the brick façade.
Abby doesn’t look at me when she speaks. “Think so, but you never know.”
“You good out here?” I ask her. “Watch Roland while Lilly and I go inside.”
“I’m good. If I need you, I’ll holler.”
But Abby never does. She can handle herself just fine.
Lilly and I enter the dark warehouse. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, but when they do, I see shapes in the darkness. Stacks of boxes, more conveyor belts, broken down cardboard as far as I can see. This must have been the packaging place. They would have made the product next door and then run it over here using a forklift, and packaged it up for shipping.
“Lantern,” Lilly says.
She takes it off the wall and turns the knob. The place illuminates with a dim glow.
I point to the back right of the building. “Loading dock,” I say. “Gotta be over there. Only place open enough to park that truck they were riding in.”
“May be more.”
I look at Lilly and she shrugs.
“What?” she says, “I’m hopeful.”
As we walk across the warehouse floor, I stop at something that doesn’t look like it was here when the place was up and running. It’s a bank of radios, much like the one I’d, by some miracle, heard Abby’s voice on, coming out of Chicago.
“District,” I growl, picking up one of the headphones.
My fingers brush the padding and it feels warm, like someone had just used it—like someone had just called for backup. I don’t say anything, though. I like to think I’m hopeful, too.
“Yeah?” Lilly asks.
“I think so. I haven’t seen equipment like this except when it’s owned by the District.”
“Fuck, they’re really all over the place,” Lilly says, shaking her head.
“Not out west. Not as much, at least.”
“Not yet,” she corrects.
“Not ever,” I say. “C’mon.”
Together, we walk toward the loading dock. There’s a large, shuttered door that is open about three feet. Lilly and I bend down and lift it up. The rattling sound it makes rivals the gunshots earlier.
Sure enough, a hulking shadow sits behind this door. The military truck. Lilly raises the lantern for a better view, and yes, it’s the same one I’d seen earlier, the ancient, gas-guzzling dinosaur that can be heard from a mile away.
Next to it is a beat down pickup. The doors are rusted, and the windshield is cracked, but I know it’ll be quieter than the military vehicle.
“Not exactly the jackpot,” I say, “but close enough.”
Lilly smiles at me as we walk toward it. A layer of dust covers the hood, like it hasn’t been driven in a long time. This isn’t a good sign, but we can make it work. Hopefully.
I go around the hood, trailing a finger through the filth, toward the driver’s side door. It opens with a sound like a screaming animal. The overhead light comes on. Dim, but working. This is a good sign. It means the battery’s not completely shot.
I’m about to slip into the driver’s seat to search for the keys, when I see a dark shape rush out of the shadows.
It holds a pipe above its head.
And it’s coming right for Lilly.
Fourteen
“Watch out!” I shout.
Lilly turns and slides slightly away from the pipe’s descent, but it’s too late. It catches her across the shoulder. She cries out, stumbles backward, and hits the pickup truck with enough force to rock it on its shocks and possibly dent the hood.
The dark figure is not a zombie, but a man. He’s snarling and slobbering like a zombie, though. His face is gaunt. A nasty scar runs from his ear to down below the collar of his shirt.
I raise my gun, about to end him, when rough hands grab me over the shoulders, pulling me backward.
The gun falls from my grip. Shit. I hear it clatter on the concrete, and it sounds like it’s lost under the truck.
“Ab—” I begin, but the person behind me throws me forward, and I bang my head against the rusty truck door.
A hot pain burns there. Blood flows down from my temple, cool and smooth.
For a moment, I think I’m going to pass out. I think this asshole has got the best of me, but then I hear Norm’s voice.
He tells me to kick backward with as much force as I can muster.
Now, I’m not a dirty fighter. Believe me. That’s never my intention. But when it comes to life or death, I will gouge someone’s eyes out if I have to. I’ll kick below the belt, I’ll pull hair and bite and scratch. I don’t care about honor and respect. It means nothing if you’re dead. This person, whoever grabbed me and threw my head against the door, they think the same way. Believe it. In the wasteland, there’s no such thing as honor. There is only survival.
Jack, listen to me! Norm shouts in my head again.
So I do. I heed my dead older brother’s advice. I’m on my knees, blood dribbling on the concrete in front of me, but I lean forward and kick back with my right leg. It seems pointless. I don’t have much leverage, not enough to inflict any damage…at least I don’t think.
Luckily, however, the person behind me is a guy. And luckily, my boot connects with his most prized possessions, right below the belt.
I feel his stuff shift beneath the force of my hit just before he howls in pain. Whatever weapon he’s holding drops to my right.
I waste no time in locating it.
Like his friend, he also held a metal pipe. If he would’ve done what I think he intended, my head would’ve been nothing but a bloody pulp if I hadn’t listened to the ghostly voice of my brother.
Putting the pain in my head to the back of my mind, I reach for the pipe and shoot up on wobbly legs. The world around me grows dimmer, and I’m feeling lightheaded from the sudden burst of energy and adrenaline, but it’s do this or die.
And I don’t plan on dying today.
The man who grabbed me is a big motherfucker. Easily as big as Herb was, and Herb was one of the biggest dudes I’d seen. Except, where Herb had muscle, this guy just has fat, like he eats everything in sight—the zombie diet. His head is shaved to the point that he sports only a dusting of gray stubble on top, and he’s ugly. Caveman forehead, square jaw, flat nose. Grimacing, he shows his teeth. Not many of them left, and the ones that hang around his gums are yellowed.
I aim for those teeth as I swing across, a professional tennis player with a game-winning backhand.
Crack!
I shit you not, the pipe bends with the force of the blow. Teeth and blood spray out of his mouth, part of his cheek and lips tear away in a red mess. He stands there for a few seconds, looking at me like he’s surprised I’d have the audacity to do such a thing.
He sways, not down for the count yet. I decide now’s as good a time as any to bring the pipe down on his head.
My blow is not as hard as I think it ought to be, but it does the trick. The big guy collapses, unconscious. I turn around, ready to take the other guy down.
He’s wrestling with Lilly for the gun I dropped. They’re on the floor. He’s on top of her, pinning her arms with his knees. I rush at him loudly, my soles slapping the floor, me grunting and spitting, yelling words and obscenities.
He turns his head, finally pries the gun from Lilly’s fingers, and aims at my chest.
Not even thinking, I launch the pipe at his face, full-force.
The noise the collision makes fills me with a queasy feeling. It’s a meaty crack, as if someone fell from the top of a high building and landed on their head.
Instantly, the man’s face splits down the middle. Blood pours from the wound. He throws the gun from his hands, and it careens through the air and lands at my feet. I pick it up and blow the dude’s head off. He’s fired backward, off of Lilly, and he hits the military truck hard, his brains and blood painting it.
I spin on the other guy. He’
s still unconscious, but I’m in the heat of battle. I don’t even care that he’s not currently a threat. All that matters is survival.
Survive. Survive. Survive.
I pull the trigger.
There is only a click from the gun. I’m out of ammunition, and this guy lives. The thought crosses my mind to pick up the metal pipe and beat his brains in, but it’s a fleeting thought.
I’m not that much of a monster, am I?
I guess that’s debatable.
As I calm down, I go over to Lilly and help her up. “You all right?” I ask.
She rubs her shoulder where the dead guy hit her with the pipe. “Gonna bruise like a bitch, but yeah, I’m okay for now.”
“Good. Help me find some rope so we can tie him up.” I point at the big unconscious fellow. He got off easy, that’s for sure.
Together, we search around the loading dock for something to use to bind him. In the military truck, I find some bungee cords. It’s not as secure as I hoped for but it’ll work. Besides, I’m hoping we’ll get out of here before this guy wakes up. I hit him hard enough that he probably won’t wake up for a while. Hell, he might not even wake up at all. With all the noise we caused, I don’t doubt some straggling zombies will find their way over here. They’ll get a few meals if they do… whether this guy will be a part of said meals is up for debate.
As I tie him, Abby comes in. “You okay?”
“Oh, wow,” I say. “She makes an appearance.”
“You’re a little late, Ab,” Lilly says.
Abby looks down and sees the guy with his head blown off and then follows the trail of blood to the other unconscious fellow. “Oops,” she says. “I was trying to keep Roland conscious. You guys okay?”
“Could be better,” I say. “But we got a ride out of here, I think. If not this pickup, then the military truck will do. How’s Roland?”
Abby puts her gun away and scratches just above her hook. “He’s…uh, he’s not gonna make it.”
“I didn’t think so,” I reply.
As much as it hurts, I know it’s the truth. He was gut shot. Without proper medical attention, which is all but out of the question, Roland is not going to pull through.
The Dead Collection Box Set #2: Jack Zombie Books 5-8 Page 62