The shot hits him just below the nose. There’s a wet sound that’s masked by the starting of the truck’s engine, and then the zombie sounds like it’s screaming, like it actually feels pain. It stumbles back, face pulsing with dark blood, bumps into the other zombies, but they don’t give a shit. They keep coming.
I’m still trying to open the tailgate. I give it one last squeeze, give it everything I have. Ed suddenly appears on my right. He grips the handle with me. Together, we get it to pop open with a screech, the hinges sounding like they’re dying. My hand comes back all bloody, so bloody and sticky that my gun is practically glued to my palm.
I go back to the passenger’s side with Ed, not looking over my shoulder. I feel the zombies getting closer.
Lilly opens the door. I dive in on top of her, my heart hammering a mile a minute, my legs feeling like they’re inches away from being eaten, the zombies sinking their teeth into my calves or ankles. Ed piles on top of me, knocking the breath from all of us.
Abby slams on the gas pedal and I’m forced backward, entangled with Lilly. Really, I’m too big for this. My knees are pressed against my chest, Lilly’s elbow is poking me in the ribs, my head’s pounding, Ed’s screaming right in my ear.
“That was your plan?” Lilly demands.
“Wait for it,” I reply, and I climb my way up her and look out of the bloodstained back window.
The bodies lying in the bed slide out and hit the concrete with meaty thuds. The zombies trip over the corpses, but they don’t back up. They’ve just hit the fucking jackpot.
“Meals on wheels, my friends,” I say.
“Great thinking,” Abby says. “We still have a bit of a problem, you know. The whole fucking District is looking for us.”
We’ve run out of room in the warehouse, and I don’t think we can plow through the wall. The truck’s big, but it’s not that big.
She cuts the wheel to the right, slows to a stop.
“Switch me,” I say. “Let me drive.”
Abby eyes me warily. “Jesus, we’re really gonna die, aren’t we?”
But she slides over top, settles in the middle. Ed is practically smashed against the dash. We’re breaking all kinds of driving safety laws here.
I get behind the wheel, turn the truck around so I’m facing the garage door the zombies came through. They’re feasting, oblivious to the revving engine, helmets removed so they can eat.
I have an idea. I’m sick of hiding, sick of sneaking around. The District knows we’re here now anyway. We’ve got a vehicle. We’ve got weapons and ammunition. There’s four of us and a million of them, but weren’t the Greeks outnumbered just as badly at the Battle of Thermopylae? And they more than held their own.
“No,” I say. “We might not die yet, but it’s going to be pretty damn close.”
Lilly sees the fire burning in my eyes. She reaches behind her and grabs the seatbelt, clicks it.
“Fuck,” Abby says.
“What?” Ed asks cluelessly.
“Hold on,” I reply.
Thirty-Eight
The truck bumps over the corpses and the feeding zombies. The big tires smash heads and explode bodies. There’s a terrible sound, a squelching sound—that old faithful description—and blood spatters our windshield.
I turn the wipers on, spray the washer fluid. A blue-red smear streaks across the glass, giving me enough time to see the garage door we’re about to blast through.
The truck, sliding in the blood, finally grips the concrete. I’m able to keep the wheel straight. My jaw’s clenched, my face is prickling, and then—
Crack. The truck rips the door off its hinges.
I don’t press down on the brake, I keep my foot on the gas. Pedal to the metal.
I’m dimly aware of Lilly screaming, of the windshield cracked, of the side mirrors ripped off of the truck, of Ed white-knuckle gripping the bar above the passenger’s seat. Only dimly, though, because in front of us, down the road, is a blockade of cars, military-type vehicles and trucks as big as the one I’m driving now, all shining their lights.
These men and women lay in wait, their guns pointed directly at the truck’s frond end.
“Get down and hold on!” I yell, slowing the truck slightly.
“Fuck,” Abby says again.
“You’re crazy!” Ed adds.
I know.
The rifles erupt, sparks blasting away the darkness. Each round that hits the truck rocks the body with unspeakable force. The windshield shatters, bits of glass fall over our heads, embed into my face. One tire pops with a bang, and the truck falls to the left with a jerk. I almost lose control, but I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard that I’m able to keep the other three wheels on solid ground.
This is fucking crazy, I think to myself.
Crazy is what you need right now, Norm says to me. Crazy is why the Overlord is so successful, man. So you need to be even crazier!
I peek over the dashboard, but I don’t see much except for the men and women with their exploding rifles, the blockade getting closer and closer, and I think to myself, Be crazier. Be crazier.
“Jack!” Lilly shouts as I press down on the gas and the truck lurches forward.
Something in the hood rattles, a busted piece of engine. Behind, the muffler scrapes the road, grating.
“Hold on!”
My head is almost all the way up. I can see each gun muzzle looking at me, each explosion, each snarling face from the brainwashed District soldiers. We are traveling fast, but everything seems slowed down, as if I’m seeing it played at half speed.
I aim for the cars. Mercedes, I think. They’re the smallest part of the blockade, and I think the truck will be able to smash through them, move them out of the way easily enough.
The soldiers aren’t moving, though. It’s like an intense game of chicken. Who’s going to balk first?
Just before I collide with the Mercedes, three men dive out of the way. One isn’t fast enough.
I hear his scream as the blown front left tire, which is pretty much all rim now, catches his leg and breaks it into a hundred pieces…if he’s lucky. What probably happens is the rim slices through flesh and bone, and the poor bastard’s in need of a wheelchair now. I don’t know. I can’t see because the side mirrors are gone, but I’m certainly not looking back.
My main focus isn’t that guy’s leg, but the Mercedes in front of me. The speedometer says we’re going just above thirty miles per hour as I hit the car. I’m expecting a jolt, an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, you know, that old cliché, but instead, the truck raises up a few feet. Through the gaping windshield, we’re looking at the dark sky and the bright glow of the street lamps.
“Holy shit!” Abby yells as we come down on the other side with a shuddering crash.
Holy shit is right.
I used the Mercedes as a ramp. Crushed it like I’m actually driving a monster truck instead of a pickup.
For a few seconds, I’m so stunned that I can’t move, can’t press on the gas. Then a burst of shots rip at our back, punching holes in the metal. I imagine we look like Swiss cheese.
“Go, Jack!” Lilly screams.
And I do, the empty road stretching out before us.
Thirty-Nine
“What. In. The. Fuck?” Abby says to me. She’s staring daggers at my side, I see her out of the corner of my eye.
I’m too afraid to turn and look at her. She sometimes does this stare where I’m a hundred percent convinced that I’ll turn to stone if I look her directly in the eyes. So I don’t.
When she realizes I’m not going to turn, she smacks me upside the head.
“Ouch!” I say.
Then Lilly leans over and does the same thing.
“You’re crazy, Jack!” Lilly says. “You could’ve just gotten us killed.”
“I’m not gonna hit you, Jack,” Ed adds, “but I do agree with the ladies.”
We’re cruising along an old road that’ll
eventually lead me around the old town square, the place I burned down many years ago, at the onset of the disease. Not only are fear and adrenaline filling me up right now, but also a strong sense of remembrance.
Not necessarily good memories; I hated this piece of crap town, but memories nonetheless.
“I didn’t see any other options,” I say. “If we stopped, surrendered, we’d die anyway. We’d get tortured, I’m sure of it. Sometimes you gotta fight crazy with crazy—whoever’s craziest usually comes out on top.”
I turn down a road overgrown with trees, and in the distance, I see a large, shadowy building. My stomach twists with nausea. It’s the Woodhaven Recreation Center. The once electronic sign still sits by the road, its screen cracked and blank.
“But most importantly,” I add, “we didn’t die. We’re still alive. And we got Ed back.”
Ed shifts, squeezes in next to Abby and Lilly, forcing me up against the driver’s door. “And I thank you very much, sir.”
“With the whole fucking District on us,” Abby says. “Oh, and in the District’s capital, too.” She shrugs. “I guess we’ve had worse odds.”
I turn and grin at her. That steely look is gone from her eyes. She grins back.
That’s the Abby I know and remember. I won’t say the one I love, because I love Abby no matter what. Even after I heard her voice on the radio and I thought she was a brainwashed District warlord, my heart still overflowed with affection for her, knowing she was still alive, still (for the most part) well. I love this girl I met at the Rec Center all those years ago, who fought by my side under any circumstances; two-handed or one-handed, it didn’t matter.
Her eyes drift past me. She’s looking out the window, she’s seeing the Rec Center. Her flesh pales. Her grin vanishes.
“I know,” I say, “it’s nostalgic, isn’t it?”
“What?” Lilly asks.
I slow the truck down even though I really shouldn’t. But it’s one bad pothole hit away from falling apart. The gas tank must be leaking, because it’s gone down a quarter since I escaped the lab.
Pointing at the darkened building, I say, “That’s the place Abby and I met a long, long time ago.”
“Definitely not nostalgic,” Abby says. “I still have nightmares about Toby, the manager. He was the first one that got bit after Doaks wandered in. Remember?”
I nod.
It was the beginning of the end, that place. The years have not been kind to it. The roof, the very one I speared Pat Huber off of, has collapsed in on itself, probably from the constant years of heavy snow and no upkeep. Part of the brick façade is missing, crumbled. It looks like a ravaged corpse in its own way. Rotting.
We drive on in silence for a little while longer, save for the rattling of the engine and the grind of the rims on the asphalt. We’re heading deeper into town. I keep flicking my eyes up in the rearview, expecting to see a sea of headlights at our backs. The cavalry. They haven’t found us yet. I didn’t think there would be anyone out here, so close to the town’s square, because the square was ruined, and I doubt they’d build it up again. If anything, the population we need to worry about—the soldiers, the madmen—would be closer to the tower.
I cannot see the tower any longer, but I’m making a loop around the town limits. Soon, we’ll be back in view of it.
I’m hoping they think we fled, that we got a car and got the hell out. Not one of those people knows who I am, and I recognized none, which means they weren’t on the west coast when Haven fell. To them, I’m probably just a crazy rebel trying to save his friend.
You know better than that, Norm says. The Overlord, he’ll be expecting you. Your confrontation with him may have happened years ago, but he knew you’d be here. Trust me.
I do trust that voice in my head.
“We’re going back?” Lilly asks in disbelief, as I make a turn down a long-abandoned road. “Really?”
“We are. I’m so close, Lill, so close. I can’t give up yet.”
She frowns at me.
Abby is looking distantly out of the window, and it’s only now I realize we’ll be passing her old home, the trailer park.
The sign for Dimlight Village is gone, and the place doesn’t look like the poorest part of Woodhaven; it looks like the rest of the world. Mother Nature has taken over the road. Waist-high grass, fallen trees, and the distant husks of trailers that look more like headstones. This is the same place Abby shot her zombified mother on that fateful night.
Jesus, I’ve forgotten about that.
When I came back to my hometown all those years ago, I didn’t want to be here. I knew it was a risk. I know I’d see the faces of people I didn’t want to see. Now those faces are all gone, dead, zombified, but I still don’t want to be here, in this dreadful town that’s no longer a town. All it does is dredge up bad memories.
Abby does something I’m not expecting. It makes sense, though, completely in tune with who she is. She leans out the window and flips off the dark road and Dimlight Village beyond.
We drive past it, down the hill toward the town square. The big sign for the gas station is still standing, though it’s unreadable. I can barely make out a nine, part of the price of unleaded gasoline.
Memories, man. Memories.
Before I reach the bottom of the hill, I cut through another street. Here’s where the library sits—or sat. It’s nothing but ashes. I once had books in there, books that I wrote. I imagined the place burned with the rest of the town that July weekend; if not, the Overlord probably ordered it burned. He seems like the kind of prick who would torch books.
Up a hill, a left, around a flipped over SUV, and then I see it again. The tower, the black tower that was once Leering Research Facility. It’s on the horizon, and I’m filled with anticipation, horror, and, for some strange reason, excitement.
My eyes flick to the rearview mirror again. It’s been a while since I’ve done that… I guess because I was too enamored with seeing my old hometown finally dead.
This time, I do glimpse headlights. They’re not far on the road, just pinpricks for now, but gaining.
“People coming up behind us,” I say.
Abby loads her rifle. “No X-Games shit this time, Jack. This time, we bury bullets in their brains.”
“Or,” Lilly says, leaning forward and pushing Abby’s rifle gently to the floor, “we hide. We play this cool. Let them pass. I’m sure they haven’t seen us yet.”
I nod. “I think Lilly’s on to something here.”
We don’t need another reckless escape. This time, I’ll be a little more careful.
Until I get to Leering, at least. Then the bullets will fly.
My God, will they fly.
Forty
I parked the truck in an alley, killed the engine. It wasn’t going to make it much longer anyway. Honestly, I was surprised it got this far, far enough to give us the old home tour.
The convoy of District soldiers approaches. We are hidden behind trash cans and debris. The truck is, too, but it’s not completely hidden. There’s a chance they might see it, and we’re too close to really make a clean getaway.
I’m sweating, my palms slick, my forehead coated. A chill wind blows through the alley, bringing with it dark tidings.
The District vehicles pass by without stopping. One person in the back of a truck sweeps a spotlight from left to right, and we duck as the beam falls just above our heads.
That’s when I think we’re going to get caught, going to have to shoot our way out.
But the beam continues on without a hitch. We’re in the clear for now.
When the sounds of the vehicles are good and gone, I stand up from our cover.
“Close one,” Abby says. “Too close.”
“Isn’t it always?” I reply. Then I give the keys to Ed. “Get home to your wife and son and get the hell out of this place. Run this truck until it dies. Go as far west as you can.”
Ed smiles. “I’m grateful, Jack Jupit
er. I really am. And I wish you the best of luck.”
With that, he climbs into the driver’s side, the door creaking loudly. I say a silent prayer for his safety.
Lilly backs away from the firing tailpipe. “Now what?” she asks.
Ed pulls out and goes the opposite way of the vehicles searching for us. He waves. We wave back.
To Lilly, I say, “We walk to the tower and I kill the Overlord.”
“Geez, when you put it that way,” Lilly says sarcastically.
She frowns as Abby brushes past her and says, “A little exercise is good for you, Lill,” all while wearing one of her trademark fake-smirks.
“Let’s go,” I say.
We’re lucky to have come this far, and I don’t think we have much farther to go.
Forty-One
Our walk to Leering isn’t anything special. We stick to the shadows, move slowly. If we hear anything at all, we pause and wait longer than is probably necessary until we hear nothing at all. Then, as we get closer and closer to the research facility that is now the one-eyed man’s tower, the babble of voices washes over us.
We’re deep in enemy territory, the deepest we’ve ever been.
Leering burned down at the onset of the disease. I remember that. I remember hearing about the fire when I first got into Woodhaven for my mother’s funeral. It was always the subject of gossip, that place. People thought they were up to no good, kind of like an Area 51 thing. I once asked my mom about it when I was a little boy, and she told me they did experiments on animals there, terrible, gruesome things. It made me so sad. But hey, that was my mom for you.
I’m sure she wasn’t far off. Leering certainly was up to no good.
I would have these elaborate daydreams while sitting in class, my head propped up on my fist, my eyes distant and vacant, where I’d bust into Leering and save all the animals. Just go to every cage, no matter the creature, and undo their locks. Then I’d lead them out of that wretched place, to safety.
The Dead Collection Box Set #2: Jack Zombie Books 5-8 Page 71