I get up, noting the slight headache knocking on the inside of my skull, the kind that has the potential to go from a dull one to a migraine. I go outside. I check the string of cans and pots and pans I set up. They are still intact, nothing seems to have come to visit us in the night.
A few steps from the trailer, I urinate behind a tree. When I’m finished—and this was a long, relieving session—I stretch my arms high to the sky, my back and neck cracking pleasantly.
The sun peeks through grayish clouds, casting a heavenly glow down upon the forest. Looks like a storm is coming, though. Today won’t be all sunshine and rainbows; it rarely ever is.
In the little bathroom, I splash cold water from bottles I left outside on to my face. Take a gulp, swish it around my mouth, and spit. What I’d give for a toothbrush and some Crest. My breakfast is the rest of the cherries and some peaches. Not much, but enough to wake me up fully.
I sit back on the mattress. It groans beneath my weight. Lilly and Abby are still out. I figure I’ll let them sleep for a little longer. They need it. We’ve had a tough time since we left the city. We lost three people, three friends, and I still can’t totally wrap my head around how fast we lost all of them. Back to back to back.
Bored, no longer tired, I dig around the camper some more. Near the front, where there’s a modest bench one might consider a couch, I find some books. War and Peace and a Mitch Albom novel. I crack War and Peace open and read a few passages.
Outside, those brooding clouds finally break. Thunder shudders the camper, rattles the windowpanes. Then rain starts falling, beating and tapping on the metal roof.
I read a chapter of War and Peace, but my mind’s not really in it. It’s drifting, thinking of simpler times. These thoughts, however, drift to the present, to my goal, which is to kill the Overlord, to bring down his ‘empire’. I find myself getting angry. My face grows hot, the book shakes in my hand.
It’s time to move, I think. Time to wake up Lilly and Abby.
So I do.
Lilly rubs at her temple; she says she drank too much. I ask where the bottle of whiskey is, and Abby produces the empty from somewhere in the tangle of blankets on the mattress.
“You drank it all?” I ask. “No way.”
“Well…not all of it,” Lilly says. “And quiet down, would you?”
“Yeah, you had some, too,” Abby says, grinning.
She’s not hungover. She rarely ever gets hungover. She could outdrink Norm, if he were still around.
I gather our stuff, the rifles, the handguns, the rest of the cans and water, and I tell them to hurry up, that we have to get a move on. I’d like to be back on the road in an hour.
As I leave the camper, I hear Abby mutter, “Fun Jack’s gone. Now he’s all business.”
Lilly’s laughter follows me outside.
The rain has slowed, it’s a cold drizzle now. The wind slices through the trees and chills my bones.
I travel back toward the clearing where we left the truck, and as I’m rounding a corner, I hear rustling and a deep creaking. Instantly, I pull my gun out.
Seems we have some friends.
My heartbeat speeds up, but I’m not scared, not really. I’ve been through this kind of thing countless times.
A thick tree is in front of me. I approach it slowly, stealthily, and press my left shoulder up against it. I peer around the side, my gun pointed down, the sack of goods forgotten behind me.
Two zombies have found the truck. They have taken an odd shine to it. One is pawing at the hood with grimy hands, the other is on the side, rocking the truck back and forth, groaning, death rattling. The one on the side is a woman—was a woman. She looks well preserved, better than the zombies out west that have to contend with scorching temperatures for most of the year. The side of her faces me, and there’s a long, red, and gummy gash going up her cheek. Her teeth are yellowed and almost sharp. The ragged clothes she wears stick to the contours of her emaciated body.
I watch them for a moment. They’re nothing but brainless animals, brought on by the scent, hanging around for the curiosity. It would be criminal for me to not put them out of their misery.
As I slip my gun away and pull out my hunting knife, the woman zombie stops her relentless rocking and rounds the back of the truck, toward the bed. Here, she cocks her head. Her nostrils move as if she’s sniffing, but I hear no air being taken into her lungs. Next, she pulls herself over the tailgate. A good amount of water has pooled there, and her descent onto the bed is not graceful. There’s a splash. Meanwhile, the other zombie, a man with tufts of gray hair blowing wispily in the wind, continues pawing and scratching at the hood of the car.
I decide I’ve had enough.
Blade in my hand, I move out from the cover of the tree. “Howdy,” I say. “You’re both a little too close to my ride.”
The zombie near the hood snaps his head up at the sound of my voice. He pushes off the truck, the metal popping with the force, and wheels toward me, arms pinwheeling. The other zombie, the woman, doesn’t react at all.
I find that weird. Maybe when she died, she couldn’t hear. This opens up a whole can of worms I’m not entirely ready for. If a human’s blind when it dies, is it resurrected with new eyesight? What about paraplegic people? Does the virus give them newly found strengths and abilities? The ability to walk again? All these thoughts are running through my mind as the male zombie comes within striking distance.
But when I make my move, only one word fills my head: KILL.
I move slightly to the left, away from the truck, and the male zombie trundles past me. With a pivot and a downward thrust, I stab the blade into the soft meat atop the zombie’s skull. The little light in his eyes winks out of existence. His brain squelches, and dark blood sprays from the slit. I pull my knife free, kicking forward, sending the zombie into the mud. Then I’m spinning around again, ready to take the female zombie down, too…but she’s not there. She doesn’t give two shits about me.
My adrenaline pumps rapidly; I can hear and feel my heartbeat in my ears. Curiosity wins out.
I’m breathing hard as I walk to the truck bed, but my adrenaline is waning. I’ve gone over that first big hill on a rollercoaster, adjusted to the high speeds and breakneck pace. Still, I’m ready for more. The thrill, the adrenaline rush, but it doesn’t come.
What I see as I look into the truck bed makes me sick to my stomach.
The female zombie, so hungry for something, has taken to slurping the pooled water inside. At first, this confuses me…until I see her start licking the wheel well. Then it all clicks.
That’s where Roland died, where he bled out all over the truck.
I stand on my tiptoes, crane my neck for a better look. The water is a rusty red color, just the slightest bit of blood. This is beyond desperation. I almost can’t stand to look at it, I almost feel bad.
Killing her will be pretty easy, and that’s what I have to do. I have to put her out of her misery, let her rest instead of licking up bloody water.
Slowly, I creep around the passenger’s side of the truck, raise the blade, and—
Lilly and Abby come stumbling through the trees, shouting my name.
The zombie looks up with burning yellow eyes. Bugs squirm in her ears and in her hair. She turns to me, her dripping mouth open, and she hisses.
I freeze.
Good fucking job, Jack.
Twenty
I don’t freeze for long, but it’s just long enough for the zombie to get a grimy hand on my jacket. Her gnarled fingers bunched, her exposed wrist bone yellow and shining.
Before she leans forward and tries taking a bite out of me, I swing down with the blade and stab the zombie in the back of the head pretty hard. So hard, in fact, I almost pin her skull to the side of the truck.
I hear the metal screech and the dull vibration of the point coming through her forehead and meeting the truck’s rusty body.
“Oops, sorry,” Abby says. She stifles a
burp with the crook of her right arm and laughs.
“Jesus,” I say, “drinking again?”
She shrugs. “Found some vodka in the camper. You didn’t look through it very well.”
Lilly shakes her head in mock disgust. “I told her not to. She doesn’t listen.”
Abby drops the bags she’s holding and opens her arms to the grayish sky. “On a day like this? Please, I’d drink nonstop if I could.”
She’s got a point.
“Gimme the keys,” she says as she saunters passed me, lifting her bags and putting them in the truck bed, oblivious to the dead zombie there with my knife still jutting out the back of her head.
“You’re not driving,” I say. “Lilly, tell her she’s not driving.”
Lilly looks at me helplessly.
I turn back to Abby. “No way.”
“Why not? There’s no one on the road. It’s not like I’m gonna kill someone. I’m not even that drunk. I barely feel it,” Abby says.
“Uh, yeah…you’ll kill us,” I say.
I get behind the wheel, ignoring the rest of Abby’s pleas. She’s not making one lick of sense. Lilly slides in next to me. The rain drizzles on the windshield. The seat is a long bench, the kind you see in old cars and trucks.
Abby gets in last, smelling strongly of old vodka, which apparently becomes harsher with age. Usually you can’t smell vodka, not the good kind. I smell this vodka, though.
Key in the ignition, I pause for a second.
Lilly says, “What’s the hold-up?”
I don’t answer her because I’m thinking about how things are always going wrong for me, for us. I know as soon as I turn the key, the engine will choke, cough, sputter, and we’ll be shit out of luck once more. It’s the fear of that that’s stopping me, the fear of failure, I guess. An age-old fear.
Lilly reads my thoughts. She’s getting pretty good at that lately, the way Darlene used to be, the way a sober Abby is.
She puts her hand on mine and squeezes.
“It’ll be okay,” she says. “We can do this. We can.”
Slurring, Abby leans over. “She’s right. You know it, Jack.” Then she’s rubbing her head at the temples, the bottle of vodka sitting between her legs. “Man, getting a headache already.”
“That’s what happens when you drink the cheap stuff,” Lilly says. She turns back to me. “Come on, Jack. Let’s do this.”
She gives my hand one more squeeze, looks me right in the eyes.
She’s right. I know it. I can do this. We can do this.
I turn the key. The engine purrs to life. I shift the gear stick into drive and pull onto the path we used to drive up into the hills, leaving the woods, the dead zombies, and the safety of that Airstream camper long behind.
The truck started, we’re still alive, and as I look at the sky, the weather seems to be clearing up. These are all good signs. Right?
Twenty-One
The ride into Ohio is unbelievably smooth.
Abby passes out before we cross the state border; that’s probably one reason for the relative smoothness of the trip. She can’t drunkenly berate Lilly and I.
Lilly found a tape in the glovebox. It looked pretty worn, but there was no label on it. She popped it into the tape player, another blast from the past. I was sure it wasn’t going to work, but sure enough, it did. Some kind of upbeat country music. I normally am not a fan of the country genre…the beer drinking, the cheating, the tractor riding. But this particular tape was pretty great.
It’s still playing as we pass the sign that says, WELCOME TO THE BUCKEYE STATE!, all weathered and dented.
“Check the map,” I tell Lilly.
She unfolds it and presses it against Abby’s side for support. Abby snores away, not flinching in the slightest.
“Keep going on this highway and you’ll get to Woodhaven,” she says, running her finger up a line.
Woodhaven.
The name of the town I grew up in fills me with an odd mixture of nostalgia and fear. The last time I was there, I burned it to the ground. And now this one-eyed man has built it back up.
“Fate” is a word I mostly stay away from. I think everything has some sort of logical explanation. But this, me starting in Woodhaven and potentially coming to an end in the very same place, the town I hate, the town that would bring me nightmares, that’s just insane.
I guess, then, fate is insane.
“You can pull over and let me drive,” Lilly says. “I don’t mind.”
I shake my head, my hand gripping the wheel a little tighter, my foot pressing down on the gas a little harder.
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
Just then, Abby startles herself awake, in turn, startling all of us.
“Where are we?” she asks.
“Almost there,” I say, looking at how close to empty our gas tank is.
We have a little over a quarter of a tank left, and this is after filling up with the red cans in the bed twice. The truck’s nice, but it’s not too good on mileage, that’s for sure.
Seeing where I look, Lilly leans over. Abby takes another swig of the vodka, swishes it around her mouth, then gulps.
“How much gas do we have left? I can barely see with the glare,” Lilly says.
The sun has made an appearance in Ohio. Those days have always been rare.
“Not much.”
“What happens when we run out?” Lilly asks.
Abby barks a high, shrill laugh, a cloud of vodka vapor escaping between her lips. “We walk, sister. We walk.”
We don’t run out yet, but we’re pretty damn close. After a few hours of driving, a few hours which would’ve only been a couple, if the roads weren’t so choked with dead cars and destruction, we come upon landscapes and places I recognize. Towns I’ve driven through a thousand times before.
We skirt Northington and head southeast toward Woodhaven, off the highway. I’m going slow, afraid that the harder I press down on the gas, the more we’ll burn. At this point, I don’t think it matters. We are literally rolling on fumes.
We pass by a Walmart, the big, blue letters on the side of the building missing its ‘l’ and ‘m.’ We pass Summit Racing Auto Store. We pass the bowling alley where I had my first kiss. We pass bodies on the road. Skeletons dressed up like humans, in baggy, blood-dirty clothes. We pass ambling zombies.
A hill is on the horizon. I press down on the gas, the truck wheezing to get over it.
Lilly leans over and watches the needle with big eyes.
“Relax,” Abby says.
She ran out of vodka fifty miles back. She’d pulled a beer out of her bag earlier and looked at it, really tempting her fate—there’s that word again. The beer had gone over a long time ago. Drinking that, I think, would’ve been akin to poisoning herself…and not the slow way, like drinking alcohol normally is.
“Relax?” Lilly repeats. “You’re crazy when you’re sober, too, huh?”
Abby grins. “I’m not sober. Not completely. Probably never, actually. Alotta booze around, Lilly-my-dear. Plenty for me. You, too, if you weren’t so uptight.” She laughs again. “I say relax because even when you hit ‘E,’ the car’ll go for another thirty miles. I know we’re less than thirty miles away from Woodhaven. Easily.”
I look at her out of the corner of my eye. “I don’t think it works that way, especially with dinosaurs like this truck.”
Abby is right about one thing, though. We are less than thirty miles away from Woodhaven, from where I grew up. Hell, from where Abby grew up, too. Like me, she got out before she was in her twenties, though under vastly different circumstances. I can’t imagine what’s going through her head as she looks upon the landscapes, the familiar buildings, the woods, which are overgrown now and slowly retaking the highways that were once the death to many a tree. I think maybe I should ask her how she feels, and I almost do, but I know she’ll just retort with some sarcastic remark.
“Never thought I’d be back in this shit
hole,” she says, almost like she’s reading my mind.
“Me either,” I say.
That’s a lie. I always knew I’d be back. I was once a novelist, a storyteller. All my life, I’ve studied stories, I know the ins and outs, the expectations. Part of that studying came from watching movie after movie. I was always in awe at how an opening image would be brought back at the end. It was everywhere. ‘Coming full circle’ would be an apt way to put it. So, I guess, always in the back of my mind was the knowledge I would end up here. I would come full circle.
If not for the Leering Research Facility, the place that apparently released the weaponized virus, being so close to my hometown, maybe I wouldn’t be here. That’s not how the cards were dealt, however.
So here I am.
Home. Home again.
Twenty-Two
Outside of Northington, on the outskirts of Woodhaven, I see the large tower sticking up over the trees. It is black. In an odd way, it reminds me of the tower in Chicago, the one Abby helped us escape from, only smaller.
I believe I have dreamed of this place. I have seen it in my nightmares, and I am ashamed to admit it’s no less ominous in real life, a black monolithic finger jutting up toward the sky, something that belongs in Mordor. I don’t see lights or windows. No balconies.
The sun is going down, though, and we are still a few miles away. Maybe I’m just letting my imagination get the best of me. It does that sometimes. When I was a kid, you don’t know how many ghosts and ghouls I saw in my room once it was time for bed, how many voices I heard (‘Help me…hellllllp meee’).
I pull over, the truck’s wheels bumbling over the ruts in the road. If we push on any longer, the gas tank will begin guzzling itself, and we’ll risk being spotted for sure.
“Camp out here,” I say. “Don’t think we can get closer without alerting someone.”
“Probably already did,” Abby says. “If I know that bastard, he’s got a hundred eyes on us already.”
The Dead Collection Box Set #2: Jack Zombie Books 5-8 Page 65