Jack Zombie (Book 2): Dead Hope

by Flint Maxwell

  Herb bursts out in laughter.

  It’s really not that funny, but I find myself laughing with him. The world has been devoid of real laughter for too long. All those times I should’ve laughed but have been too depressed have been bubbling inside of me and now they’re boiling over. I can’t help it. Darlene laughs, too.

  The laughter eventually fades. Abby and the Richards’s below us must think we’re batshit crazy.

  Herb wipes his eyes. “Okay, okay,” he says, in a more serious tone. “I ain’t super smart in all aspects of life. I never learned how to drive a car real good for one thing. Almost fifty years old and I can’t remember what side of the double lines I’m s’posed to be on.” He chuckles. “But I’m good at sums and and science stuff. Couldn’t tell you a damn thing about the peri-odd-ik table, no — besides oxygen, that stuff we breathe, and carbon, that stuff that makes the soda pop bubble, but I can figure out how to make things mix together good to make medicines and potions, like the witches in those scary movies my aunt Maggie used to take me to when I was a kid. That was September 18th, 1977, last time I saw Auntie Maggie alive. It was a Sunday. She took care of me and Phil when my momma died. She died the year after on August 2nd, 1978. That woulda been… ” He brings a finger up to his forehead and squeezes his eyes shut until his face is a mess of wrinkles. “That woulda been a…Wednesday. Yeah, a Wednesday!” He’s smiling now, then he shakes his head and waves a hand. “‘Cuse me, I’m getting all remember-y.”

  Darlene pats his large shoulders again. “No, Herb, it’s all right.”

  I nod. Wow. Herb has a gift. One you would miss if you wrote him off as a mentally handicapped man. As I almost did.

  “I can do these things real nice,” he says. “That’s what Spike and Butch tell me. I can help them solve the problem…you know, the dead people.” His eyes jam shut again. “Gosh, I hate dead people. They’re all…runny and scary.” His eyes light up again. “Like those witches in the scary movies my aunt Maggie used to take me to when I was a kid!”

  “So what did he have you do?” I ask.

  Herb shies away again, goes into that mental cocoon.

  “It’s all right, Herb,” Darlene says.

  I asked Tony and Brian, but they didn’t know. They’d only seen Herb a handful of times. Matter of fact, they’d only seen Spike a handful of times, too. Butch is the guy who does the dirty work, who takes the blame when things goes wrong. Spike, I presume, is the king of the castle, the one the citizens of Eden bow down to, the one whose feet they kiss. But he’s also the mastermind, the evil madman who will burn down a village of uninfected just for a small bottle of aspirin, then that same night, he’ll sleep like a baby knowing he cured a couple of headaches. Yeah, I know guys like that. I’ve written about them all my life, dealt with them in high school — Freddy Huber would bash your brains in after gym class, but he’d be praised for making the game-winning touchdown pass later that same night.

  It’s a basic fact of life, I’m afraid. There’s assholes and the people they shit on.

  These are obviously just huge assumptions. I’ve never met Spike, but it’s safe to say any guy who sends out a task force of gunslinging Jugheads is not a stable man.

  “I don’t know, really,” Herb says. “They was having me work with this man. I really liked him. Real smart guy. Said he came from the CDC in Washington and I try to tell him I don’t listen to them CDs. Never did. My aunt Maggie left me a record player when she died. It worked before I had to leave home. I miss that record player…I miss my aunt Maggie.”

  He leans forward, huge hands covering his face, and what comes out of his mouth is nothing close to laughter. It’s sobs, deep, rumbling sobs.

  Darlene still has her hand on his back, and she looks at him, her eyes bulging. That mental telepathy: Do something, Jack! Help me!

  Then me responding with a left-hand scratch of my forehead which transitions to me pushing my too-long hair out of my eyes. What the heck do I do?

  Anything, Jack!

  Growing up in Woodhaven, I remember my mom working a double at the diner on my eighth birthday and bringing me a half-eaten piece of apple pie with a burning cigarette plopped in the middle as a candle — so yeah, I’m not the best when it comes to comfort.

  Jack, come on!

  Herb’s sobs ramp up to something rivaling the shifting of tectonic plates.

  I put my left hand on his knee, and he jerks at the touch. “It’s all right, Herb,” I say. “L-Let it out?” I’m looking at Darlene and she rolls her eyes. The motherly instincts come out. I would say all women are gifted with these instincts, but then I’ll think of my own mother and know that’s not true.

  Darlene wraps her arms around Herb. His sobs subside for the moment. It’s so funny seeing my small fiancé up next to him, but it is also sweet. Now I act on instinct, and I join the hug. Herb’s sobs stop. He pats me on the back with those big mitts, rattling my bones.

  “They-they wanted me to cut one of the dead guys’ heads open. They wanted me to cut his brain up,” Herb says.

  “Why, Herb?”

  He rubs his eyes. “I-I don’t know.” His voice is deep and commanding. No mental telepathy here, it’s obvious enough that I’m another few words away from poking the bear.

  “Because Spike is crazy,” Tony Richards says from the doorway.

  It startles me.

  “He’s crazy, yeah,” Darlene says, eyeing Tony, “we already know that.”

  “Everyone in this world is crazy,” I say. It’s a sentiment I’d defend with my last dying breath.

  “Not the kind of crazy y’all think he is,” Tony says. “He’s crazier than that.”

  “Well, putting Butch Hazard in charge of your security is pretty damn crazy, then kidnapping my brother is also pretty damn crazy.”

  “He wants to control an army,” Tony says.

  “Hope someone breaks it to him before he gets too far ahead of himself, but there’s not enough people left on the face of the earth for an honest-to-God army.”

  Tony chuckles and shakes his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  I tilt my head. “No?” I say it more like a question.

  “Not an army of living people, but an army of the dead.”

  24

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, shaking my head.

  That is crazy.

  “No, I ain’t,” Tony says. “Ask Brian. Hell, ask Herb here if he’s up to talking about it.” Herb shifts farther away from Tony at the sound of his name. “Butch is crazy, but Spike is crazier.”

  Someone creaks up the steps. In my fuzzed-brain state, I picture the golden-eyed monsters I thought I saw outside.

  A voice drifts toward us.

  It’s Brian. “So crazy that he needs put down. When Dad was shooting at him, we was so close.” He uses his thumb and index finger to showcase just how close. Then he snarls, reminding me of a rabid dog — thin, mangy…and hungry for a kill. “But Butch Hazard deserves worse than a bullet to the brain. I’m wanna make him suffer like he made me suffer.”

  Herb starts sobbing again. “Poor Tammy.” Blubbering. “I-I-I heard about her.” More blubbers. “S-S-S-She died on a Monday. I always hated Mondays.”

  Tony bows his head. “Yeah, poor Tammy.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry — ” I begin. I definitely am, but the curiosity is to great for me to let this one go.

  “She was my wife. My pregnant wife. We thought we were safe…” Brian answers, but the stern look on his face, the disgust, the pain, the hurt, doesn’t stay long. He screws up his features like a raincloud swollen with a storm, and he bursts. Sobs, deep, wracking sobs that almost rival Herb’s cut through the quiet farmhouse.

  Herb gets up from the bed and walks over to Brian. He hugs him, swallows him up in his large embrace. The two sob, first loudly then quietly while Tony Richards bows his head and closes his eyes. I am too tired to cry, but I feel a sadness. We have all lost others. Me, I lost
my mom and my friends in Woodhaven, I almost lost Darlene, and now I’ve lost Norm. Abby lost her mom, too — worst, she had to kill her own zombified version of her mom. She’s talked of other family, long-distance relatives she’s met once or twice in life, but she speaks of them like strangers. The point is, we all lost people, but we are still here and I don’t know if that is a gift or a curse sometimes.

  Once the crying subsides, Brian starts to talk. “I met Tammy three days after we arrived at Eden. By that time, it still had some of its grace left. Green grass in front of the lawns, flower beds (Mom loved the flower beds), and a sense of security we couldn’t find nowhere else. It smelled normal…you know, alive. We were all given jobs. Stupid folk labor, really.

  “I was one of Eden’s landscapers. Tammy would sit out on her assigned shelter’s porch, a sun hat on her head, always wearing a frilly, low-cut dress. I don’t throw pansy terms around like ‘love at first sight’ often, but that’s exactly what it was.” He sighs and looks out the window into the sunlight’s last fading rays. “Yeah, Tammy’s house was my favorite to ‘scape. I’d do my best work over there, and always take way longer than I needed to. Then it got to be that once a week wasn’t enough to see her. I’d sneak out past the compound’s mandated curfew, crawl into her bedroom window. She lived with a cousin, that was all of her family that survived. It wasn’t physical at first. We’d talk and laugh and tell stories of the lives we only lived a few months before, but the way we told ‘em made it seem like they were forever ago. Then it got physical, and she got pregnant. I wasn’t worried, you know, bringing up a baby in a shitty world like this one. I was ready for it. With Tammy by my side, I could do anything.”

  Darlene looks at me and smiles. I smile back.

  “But sometimes the timing ain’t right,” Brian continues. “Spike pulled a Hitler among the local government of Eden,” he says this while making air quotes with both hands. “And imagine if Hitler never lost World War II…that’s what Eden was. No more lawn mowing. Now you’re in the yard breaking rocks with a pickaxe, helping build them walls with tools you ain’t never heard off. The woman and men were separated, but…” he chokes up again. We are all watching him with dark eyes. He is the center of attention. The electricity is off, but he is in the burning spotlight. “But then Spike wanted more. He wanted to find out why these people came back after they died and how he could use that for his advantage. People were selected for experiments.”

  What? Experiments?

  Darlene has her hand over her open mouth, her brow wrinkling. It's the look she used to get whenever an animal died on screen in a movie or TV show. Or when one of her romance books deviated from the Happy Ever After trope.

  “Tammy was one of them. My unborn child was another. Two for the price of one that dickhead Spike got,” Brian says.

  I ball my hands into fists, ignoring the pain in my arm. Murderer runs through my head. Hate comes soon after.

  “Maybe he didn’t know,” Darlene says, trying to find a ray of hope in the sad tale.

  Tony puts an arm around Brian. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Point is, Butch Hazard knew. Butch Hazard knew everything that went on beyond those walls. Who was humping who, what you ate for dinner three nights ago, who’s constipated, and so on. He knew Tammy was pregnant. She hadn’t started to show yet, but the doctors in town had already put her on them vitamins for the baby — ”

  “Prenatal vitamins,” Darlene says.

  “Right,” Tony says, nodding. “Prenatal.”

  “Butch Hazard ripped her from my arms. He pointed a gun in my face, pistol-whipped me, knocked me out cold,” Brian says. “Her screams still echo in my head when it’s too quiet. It’s always too quiet.” His hands are shaking.

  Herb is now patting him. “There, there,” he says.

  Now, the sadness that had settled deep inside of me has caught fire, turning into rage, a boiling rage. Butch Hazard had done the same to me, had ripped someone I loved and cared about from my hands.

  “That’s terrible,” Darlene says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Brian says.

  “That son of a bitch has to pay,” I say. I feel a fire in my gut. A great blazing fire of rage. “He doesn’t get an easy way out.”

  “Tomorrow,” Tony says. “Until then, sleep. Rest your wound.”

  There’s so much adrenaline pumping through my body, I had forgotten about the bullet graze, and the mere mention of it brings me back to earth, the pain revving up from dull to almost unbearable. Tony is right. I have the luxury of a bed, and my fiancé next to me. I have to take advantage of it while I can.

  Besides, Norm is tough. Butch Hazard won’t be able to break him as easily as he thinks…at least I hope. And we all know where hope has gotten us so far.

  25

  I don’t wake to the sounds of joyous stomping on the roof or drunken laughter or clattering dishes, but to the sounds of screams instead. My own demented alarm clock.

  The darkness is full, there is no chance the sun will come up anytime soon. It must be three, maybe four o’clock in the morning. I look outside the window.

  Hundreds of golden eyes glitter in the yard below me. Maybe I shouldn’t say they glitter, that’s too cute. These are the eyes of the dead, of the rotting bodies. These are eyes that don’t work properly, that can’t see anything besides their next victims — food, flesh, brains.

  Darlene stirs out of bed. The covers once belonging to some long-dead person rustling. She wears a shirt that shows her belly button and a pair of panties. Any other time, looking over my shoulder at her as she glides over to me, I’d be in awe of her beauty.

  Right now, though, all I can think about is getting a weapon.

  They seem to come from everywhere. Zombie after zombie after zombie.

  “Oh my God, Jack,” Darlene says. “Am I still asleep?”

  I shake my head. I wish we were. I wish this was all a dream.

  “Let’s go! Battle stations, people!” Tony hisses from the darkness outside of the door. “They’re coming and there’s a helluva lot of them.”

  “Maybe we should let them pass,” Darlene says. Her voice is hopeful, but she knows as well as I know these things never just ‘pass.’ They can smell food a mile away, it seems. I grab Darlene’s hands. They are cold, clammy, and shaking. “Darlene,” I say, “listen to me. There’s a lot of them and not many of us.”

  “Jack — ”

  “No,” I say. “You can’t cute your way out of this. As much as I hate to admit it, this is the world we live in. And I love you, you know I love you. So much. I would be lost without you. I almost went crazy thinking about you walking around in Woodhaven like one of those…those things.”

  “Jack, I’m…I can’t,” she says.

  “You have to.”

  Brian steps in, Abby on his side. They have just woken up and part of me thinks they might’ve just woken up in the same bed. It’s none of my business, though. Definitely not the time.

  “What’s going on?” Brian asks.

  “A horde,” I say as I walk over to the chair my pants are draped over. As I’m pulling them up, I give Darlene a look, one that says no more messing around, no more being afraid. It’s time to step up.

  That includes me. I am not going to lose another one of my family members.

  “Wake up Herb and get ready,” I say.

  “I think he’s already up,” Abby says.

  I tilt my head at her. “Wait, what? That wasn’t you screaming?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Jack, do I ever scream like that?”

  I weigh that statement for a moment. No. Abby is one of the toughest gals I know.

  “So, yeah, Herb is up,” I say.

  “Why don’t we just leave?” Darlene asks. “Get in the car and leave!”

  “We won’t make it out there,” I say. “We can’t wade through a sea of zombies, you know that, Darlene. If it was just a few of them, yeah, I’d say we get out there and blow their brain
s out. But its not.”

  “Is it really that much?” Brian asks, still sounding half-asleep.

  I point to the window where the snarls of the dead drift up to us like a thick smoke. He walks over. “Holy shit,” he says. “It’s almost as bad as what we saw in Atlanta.”

  Darlene goes rigid next to me.

  I give Brian a look, one of those Come on, man, really? looks.

  He catches the glare and says, “Not bad. We can wipe them out. Easy.” But his voice is about as convincing as you’d think. Darlene doesn’t relax. I shepherd her out of the room and into the hallway.

  Tony has his silenced pistol in hand, and his sniper rifle draped over his back at the foot of the stairs.

  He is not surprised to see us. His eyes are distant. He is already focused on the impending battle.

  I have Norm’s Magnum and Abby has the Midnight Special. Darlene has the Glock, though she will only use it if she absolutely has to.

  I wish we had something better. An AR15, maybe…oh, well, I’ve fought with worse.

  Tony glances at Darlene coming down the steps with the Glock. “Careful with that thing,” he says.

  She looks back at him with a face that says, Really, man? It’s a pure look of disgust, the same look she gave a carny in charge of the milk bottle game at the Cook County Fair after he mocked her. You throw like a girl! It was before she clobbered him in the bridge of the nose with a fastball that would’ve made Roger Clemons envious.

  She is a very capable woman, if she puts the fear to the back of her mind.

  “I know how to shoot a gun,” she says. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Good,” Tony says.

  Abby, Brian, and Herb come down the steps after her. Herb is saying something to himself over and over again. A silent prayer, I think.

  Creaking from beyond the front door shuts him up, shuts us all up. We hardly even breathe. Boy, it never gets old, does it? No matter how many times I hear those terrible death rattles, the sounds of lungs no longer taking in air, of the oxygen sitting in their throats, I will never get used to it.