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

by Flint Maxwell

  “I’ll take my chances,” I say. “We’ll camp out here and come up with a plan.”

  “I thought you weren’t a planner,” Lilly teases.

  “I’m not, but this…this operation will need a plan,” I reply.

  “Another campout,” Abby says, feigning excitement. “Can’t wait.”

  The woods just smell like Northeast Ohio. I don’t know how to explain it further than that. My writer’s brain is stumped. I’ve been all over the country, I’ve slept in ditches, drainage pipes, and in many, many forests, under the cover of many, many trees. None of them had reminded me of home, not like this.

  In Ohio, the tree trunks are more gray than they are brown. The way the wood has grown makes it seem like they possess dark, demonic faces—slitted eyes and open maws full of teeth. Worst of all, these eyes seem to follow us as we walk past.

  More and more, I feel like I have stumbled into a dark forest, the kind reserved for fairytales and fables. A witch with a house made of candy will invite us in for the night. A big, bad wolf dressed like my grandmother will try to eat us. That same wolf is going to huff and puff and blow our house down. I don’t know.

  Lilly says, “I don’t like this. I feel like we’re being—”

  “Watched, yeah. Welcome to Ohio,” Abby says. “This would all be a lot smoother if we had a few drinks.”

  I actually agree with Abby there. And wish we had a few more rounds of ammunition.

  Right now, the hunting rifle I took from the Airstream camper is slung over my shoulder, and I have a handgun in my back pocket with only a few rounds left. Abby and Lilly have assault rifles we took from the warehouse—not much ammo in them, though. That’s the way it is. We’re always low on something.

  I guess, the way I see it, I’m not here to fight a war with the District’s armies; I’m here to put a bullet in the one-eyed man’s face. Everything that happens before or after that doesn’t matter. So I don’t need an entire arsenal.

  “Watch out for zombies,” I say. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

  “No way they’re this close,” Abby says. She climbs over a fallen tree log, boots rustling branches. “Overlord wouldn’t let them this close to his precious kingdom.”

  Lilly snorts. “Kingdom. Jesus, this guy is ridiculous.”

  Abby shrugs, offers her good hand to Lilly, and helps guide her over the log.

  “Believe me,” I say, “this asshole is beyond delusional.”

  It doesn’t go over my head that I’m the same way, thinking I can waltz right into his kingdom and take him out with only a few bullets. But I have to try, and trying gives me a better shot than running and hiding.

  Need more confidence than that, little bro, Norm says. You’re gonna rip his other eye right out of its fuckin’ socket!

  “Jesus,” I mutter.

  Luckily, no one hears me. I say this because I’m also not delusional enough to actually think Norm is somehow communicating with me from the other side. That voice in my head, those fucked up words and fucked up pieces of advice, that’s all coming from my brain.

  We keep walking, winding our way through the sinister trees, staying relatively quiet.

  There are no zombies. Maybe Abby is right about the Overlord not letting them this close to Woodhaven. I hope not, though. That means there must be constant patrols on the town’s borders. That’s exactly what we don’t need, to be spotted by some brainwashed guards. I’d much rather deal with a few weakened zombies than that.

  As we plunge deeper into the woods, it seems I get my wish.

  From our left, a rattling comes. Strong, deep, and thrumming. I know before I even turn what I will see.

  Floating golden circles—the eyes of the dead.

  Twenty-Three

  “Nine o’clock,” Abby says. She steps forward.

  All three of us do, our weapons drawn. Me with my knife, Lilly with hers, and Abby with her hook raised by her ear.

  “Keep it quiet,” I say.

  “Hard to do,” Abby replies. I give her an exasperated look. “Okay, okay.”

  The zombie emerges from the shadows, twigs snapping beneath its feet. The knife I’m holding nearly falls from my grip as I get a good look at it.

  “What the fu—” I begin, but the zombie lunges forward, moving faster than I’ve ever seen one move.

  Abby and Lilly dive to the left and right respectively while I’m still standing in the middle, my weakening hand holding my knife.

  “Jack!” Abby yells from the ground. “Move!”

  But I can’t. I’m bolted to the forest floor.

  The zombie stops short and examines me, cocking its massive head. It stands over six feet easily, and beneath its orange inmate-looking jumpsuit, muscles ripple and dance. Its skin is gray, its mouth dripping with blackish saliva, and its eyes are somehow…alive.

  Deep within its chest, the rumbling death rattle fills our stunned silence.

  Then the zombie is done examining me. It puts out its muscle-corded arms and runs toward the place I’m frozen.

  Raise your blade, idiot! Norm says. Raise it now!

  Before this voice registers in my head, it’s too late. The zombie is upon me, stinking of death and chemicals.

  I’m thinking it ends here, right now—

  Then, suddenly a blur passes through the forest. Meat collides with meat.

  Abby? Is it Abby? Or Lilly?

  The zombie goes sprawling in the dirt, banging its head off of an exposed gray root. This momentarily slows it down, but I look away, toward Abby and Lilly, who are both still on the ground, as confused as I am.

  Who is it, then?

  The stranger gets up. A man, well-built, well-fed, stocky. His hair shines silver in the faint moonlight. He holds a cudgel in his hands. On its business end are dull spikes. It kind of looks like a mace.

  Now standing, the stranger raises the cudgel above his head and brings it down on the zombie’s. I don’t look away.

  I’m glad I don’t. Normally, such a blunt force hit would turn a zombie’s head into paste. A splatter of diseased brains and chunks of skull. Somehow, this one doesn’t.

  The zombie’s head barely caves in, and the man’s cudgel bounces back, reminding me of one of those strength-tester hammers at carnivals and fairs—see if you can ring the bell at the top and win a prize.

  The stranger brings his cudgel up again and again, grunting, nearly screaming. The repeating hits eventually win out. The zombie’s head cracks. Brains and dark blood shower the tree trunk behind it, painting the gray red and gross.

  Abby, Lilly, and I have huddled together. No longer do we hold our quiet weapons; now our guns are drawn, aimed at this silver-haired, blood-soaked stranger.

  Out of breath, forehead glistening with sweat and brains, he turns and faces us. Smiles. Somehow, after all this shit, he smiles.

  “Hello,” he says. “Nice to meet you. I’m Edward, but you can call me Ed.”

  As I’m about to open my mouth to talk—I have so many questions—the man ushers us north.

  “We have to go,” he says. “I fear there are more of them out here. Especially this late.”

  He turns and steps over the dead zombie, its head now looking like melted and hardened red wax. Frozen drips, odd shapes…wrong.

  Abby and I exchange a look. That look asks Can we trust him? but I don’t see how we really have a choice.

  “Come on!” the man called Ed says to us, waving us forward.

  Lilly steps in his direction, looks back, surprised.

  “Well, I don’t wanna run into another one of those,” she says as she points to the zombie.

  I guess it’s settled then.

  Abby and I follow her.

  Twenty-Four

  The guy brings us through the forest. We walk for a while without saying anything. Anytime one of us tries to open our mouths, he looks back and shushes us. This guy, I think, is the real deal. He’s not leading us to our deaths. He’s leading us to safety.


  I hope.

  We eventually come out of the dense trees into a field, closer to the Overlord’s tower than ever before. I still don’t see windows, doors, balconies, or even lights on it. It’s probably still a few miles away. A tower straight out of hell. From my perspective, however, it barely stretches above the trees in front of us.

  In the field stands a packed shantytown. Each hovel is made up of scrap metal, wood, dirt. The smell of the place is rank with garbage and dead bodies and an underlying scent of roasting meat. It’s a pretty gross mixture that brings a queasy feeling to my stomach.

  “This way,” Ed says. He motions us to a dwelling. When we reach it, he opens the door.

  The air is heavy with smoke and some kind of incense that smells like lavender. A better smell than outside, though that smell seeps in through the cracks of the building.

  We are greeted by a woman in shabby clothes, dirt smeared across her face. She holds a toddler on her hip, a boy. He, too, has smeared filth on his face, black on the bridge of his nose, hair clumped together, unwashed.

  “What took you so long?” the woman asks. “Ed, I was—”

  She looks at us, her eyes getting wide. Fear seems to have swallowed her tongue.

  “Don’t worry, my love,” Ed says. “They’re out-of-towners.”

  I think that’s funny. I’m anything but an out-of-towner when it comes to Woodhaven. The city had its grip on me for eighteen years.

  “Where from?” the woman asks.

  “West,” Abby answers.

  “Go on,” Ed says, “make yourselves at home. We have much to discuss.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, we do.”

  I lead the way to a ruined recliner, the cushions rat-chewed and spewing stuffing. When I sit down, the chair wheezes, and a puff of dust billows out from under me. Abby takes a seat on an equally beat-up pinstriped couch against the wall opposite the door. Lilly doesn’t move.

  “I’ll just stand,” she says.

  “Suit yourself.” Then Ed introduces us to his wife. “This is Meredith, and our son, Nicholas, but you can call them Mary and Nick.”

  I stand up, the chair wheezing again. “I’m Jack.”

  Rather than the gals letting me introduce them, they go about it themselves. We all shake hands. There’s fear in all of the strangers’ eyes. I don’t blame them, being this close to the Overlord.

  To Ed I say, “Thanks for saving us.”

  Abby snorts. “We coulda handled it.”

  I give Ed a look that says Don’t mind her, she’s like this all the time. He doesn’t catch my drift, though, and why would he? He doesn’t know me or Abby. Not his fault; not anyone’s. We’re simply strangers.

  Ed goes on. “I don’t think you could’ve, Abby. That was not a regular zombie.”

  “I could tell,” Lilly says. “It was like a bodybuilder.”

  I think of Kevin, of him basically sacrificing himself for me at the Woodhaven Recreation Center. He was a bodybuilder, a personal trainer, and one of my closest friends.

  “You think he died like that? All muscle and brawn?” Ed asks.

  Lilly and I look at each other. I shrug. I don’t know the answer to that, but I am interested.

  Abby says, “Yeah. Duh.”

  Ed smiles. He has nice teeth, they’re probably the best part about him. Though if he took a shower and got a new wardrobe not covered in dirt and filth, I’m sure he’d clean up pretty nice.

  “No, my friends,” Ed says, “that wasn’t a normal zombie. That was an experiment.”

  A flicker of understanding crosses Abby’s face.

  “You know what he’s talking about?” I ask her, my own face screwed up in confusion.

  “I…uh, yeah, I think so,” she answers me quietly.

  She’s understandably not too proud about her past with the District, the things she did, the people she hurt. I’ve tried telling her many times how it was necessary, how she did what she had to in order to survive, but she’s stubborn.

  “There was always talk of experiments…mutations,” she explains.

  “He’s building an army,” Ed says. “And you just saw one of his soldiers firsthand.”

  Twenty-Five

  We are offered food. None of us reject it, we are too hungry. The food isn’t good, of course, it never is, but it’s filling. Old bread, soup with chunks of mystery meat floating in the broth, and wine. The wine is the best part, bittersweet.

  We offer our own foods and drinks in return for their hospitality.

  Ed smiles and takes a can of Coke. “Wish they weren’t flat. Just once, I’d like to find a can of pop that fizzes and bubbles.”

  “You will, honey. One day, you will,” Meredith says (Mary to her friends, which we apparently are).

  Ed smiles at her with his big white grin. The toddler, Nick, sits quietly in his high chair, which looks homemade, as if Ed built it out of scrap wood, the same way the hovel was built.

  “That’d be nice,” Lilly says. “Still, these aren’t half bad. Sweet and filling. Like this soup. It’s delicious, Mary.”

  “Thank you so much,” Mary replies.

  Outside of the hovel, people are walking and talking. Somewhere in the distance, someone plays hip-hop from a boombox.

  “Okay, enough niceties,” Ed says. He puts down his fork, leans back, laces his fingers, and sets his hands on the table in front of him. “We have business to discuss.”

  I nod. “That we do.”

  “What are a few out-of-towners doing in the forests outside of Woodhaven?” Ed asks.

  Now Mary eyes us warily, like she doesn’t trust whatever words are about to come out of our mouths. Can’t blame her for that.

  “Woodhaven? It’s still called Woodhaven?” Abby asks.

  Ed nods.

  That’s surprising to me, too. Run by a guy known as ‘the Overlord,’ you’d think he would’ve changed the name to something like ‘Pinnacle City,’ or some lame shit like that. Woodhaven, I guess, is a strong name. Maybe he sensed that and decided it best to keep it that way.

  I don’t know. No one knows what’s going on in that monster’s head but himself.

  Ed’s looking at me. His eyes are a piercing blue color, the kind of eyes that have no room for dishonesty. So I figure it best to tell him the truth, exactly why we are here.

  “I’m going to kill the Overlord,” I say. “I’m going to get revenge for what he did to my family.”

  A long, drawn-out silence before Ed says, “That’s a mighty tall order.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Oh, I believe you, but if I had a battery or a bottle of water for every time I heard someone in this compound say they’re going to put the Man Upstairs down, we wouldn’t be living in squalor.”

  “Squall!” Nick repeats, smiling.

  “That’s right, son,” Ed says, and ruffles the boy’s messy hair.

  “The Man Upstairs?” Abby asks with disgust.

  “Like God?” Lilly adds.

  Ed shrugs. “Don’t know. That’s just what they call him around here.”

  “What he forces others to call him,” Mary corrects. “I once heard of him taking out a group of his finest men because they wouldn’t call him their god. This was before all the…mind control or what have you. Can’t say I believe much in that anyway.” Mary stands up and lifts Nick out of his homemade highchair. “Most of these people around here, the ones who work for him, who are given better conditions than us, they’re already bad. They don’t need mind controlled or brainwashed.”

  I nod.

  “Bad! Bad!” Nick shouts with glee.

  “Why do you guys live here, then?” Lilly asks.

  “Where else is there to go?” Ed answers. “He may be oppressive, but there’s at least some protection from the zombies out here.”

  “What about the experiments?” I add. “Aren’t you afraid—”

  Mary turns her head away and practically cries as Ed holds a hand up at me. Apparent
ly, it’s a touchy subject.

  “Mary’s brother…” Ed begins. “They took him a year ago. We…haven’t seen him since.”

  “Because he’s dead!” Mary shouts. “Dead!” She sets Nick on the rug beneath the table. “You want to know my opinion, Mr. Jack? I don’t want to live here. I don’t want to be oppressed, always worried that Eddy or my baby will get taken and experimented on. There’s miles and miles of free country out there. Beautiful places unsullied by the zombies.”

  “Now, Mary, I don’t think now’s the time—” Ed begins.

  “If it were up to me, I’d kill the Overlord myself,” Mary continues. “I’d kill him and feed him to the dead! But we are here now. We settled before things turned so bad, and now it’s too late to leave. They watch us. They hunt us down.”

  “How?” I ask. “There’s so many people. They can’t watch you all.”

  “I mean,” Lilly says, “we got in relatively easy, didn’t we?”

  Abby shakes her head. We all look at her, but she’s chewing her food slowly, for dramatic effect, I presume. I also think I know what she’s going to say. She swallows, washes it down with some flat Coke.

  “They know we’re here,” she says. “You think that big-ass zombie running at us in the woods was a coincidence?”

  None of us answer.

  “No way. I told you, Jack, they got eyes everywhere,” she continues.

  “She’s right,” Ed says.

  “Then why the hell would you invite us into your home?” I say. A subtle anger is building up in my chest, radiating outward across my whole body. “You shouldn’t have put yourselves in danger for us.”

  Ed smiles and turns to his wife and smiles even wider.

  Mary just rolls her eyes.

  “What?” Lilly asks. “What is it?”

  “It!” Nick repeats, and Lilly grins at him. He’s playing with a rock, the apocalyptic equivalent of a toy.

  “I think you should tell them, honey,” Ed says, “since you were so adamant that she’s a phony.”