Jack Zombie (Book 2): Dead Hope

by Flint Maxwell

  “Start barricading,” Tony says.

  Abby and I exchange a glance. The darkness is almost total and we barely can see the whites of our eyes let alone the guns in our hands, but we both know barricading is a fool’s game. We both know this from experience. You can’t keep the zombies out. The most you can do is fight or give up, and we damn sure aren’t giving up.

  Tony tiptoes around the corner into the living room, Brian at his heel. They make way too much noise as they try to drag something out. I know this because the creaking increases from outside, as if the zombie out there ahead of all its friends is rocking back and forth in excitement. An excited puppy trying to find a way into the overflowing garbage can.

  “They ain’t gonna get in, are they?” Herb asks me.

  “No,” I say. “We won’t let them in. We won’t let them hurt you.” But if I really believed that I wouldn’t be shaking.

  “Promise?” he asks.

  “Yes, pinky promise.”

  Herb smiles as his massive pinky engulfs mine.

  “Now go hide,” I say, then turn and grab Darlene. “You ready?” I ask her.

  She doesn’t answer immediately. There’s a long pause while more snarls creep through the cracks in the door. “Yes,” she says. “But only because you got some rest, and because it gets us closer to Norm.”

  I smile at that.

  Family is family.

  I don’t have to ask Abby if she’s ready. She’s already holding her gun, arms tensed, body in battle-ready position. She, like me, is a zombie slaying professional. We know what is to come. We know no barricade or walls can separate us from the dead.

  With Herb behind us, chattering, sticking to the shadows, we move toward Brian and Tony. I am in the lead, Darlene behind me and Abby behind her, almost how we were in Woodhaven as I led them out of the inferno and into Norm’s Jeep.

  But this is somehow different. I get a bad feeling about this, like somehow this is just the beginning of the storm and not the end like it was back in my old hometown.

  The two get a barricade up fast. They’ve not only stacked the couches, but they’ve also stacked a love seat, a recliner. Tony is working on covering the windows as the glass breaks. It comes from the recreation room. There is a large pool table in the middle, the green felt covered in dust and cobwebs. Pool sticks line the wood-paneled walls, and mounted on these walls are the victims of hunter’s game: deers and bears and some fish.

  The window that has broken is one of two long panes of glass, green curtains bunched up on either side. Limbs poke through as does faint moonlight, painting the rotten skin in a pearl-like glow. Broken glass rips down the side of an arm. No blood spills from the wound. Seeing it causes my own blood to freeze up in my veins. I feel Darlene going rigid against me.

  Whatever blood is in these zombies has since been boiled out of them by the scorching Floridian sunshine. I see a gleam of white bone. Then I see a face. Long, matted hair frames this face. One eye glows bright yellow, the other is dimmer, almost cataract. I will never get used to seeing this, I will never fully get rid of the fear that comes with staring down a zombie. One that is especially close and ready to eat you.

  So I aim the Magnum straight ahead, and squeeze the trigger.

  That helps a little.

  26

  The zombie’s face explodes in a mess of pink and gray brains. The flash from the muzzle lights this up in excruciating horror.

  The fear is back. Everything I’ve ever seen in a horror movie or imagined while reading or writing a book goes out the window.

  This is real.

  This is terrifying.

  Once the shot’s echo fades in my head, I hear the faint shrieks and squeals from Darlene.

  “Steady,” I tell her. “Steady.” But not even my voice is steady. A deaf person could hear that.

  At this same time, the couch and love seat start to shift. There’s more on the front porch now. I know from experience, they can push a door open with enough force. It’s only a matter of time.

  “Other side,” I shout to Brian.

  “Window’s too far up,” he says over the snarls. “They won’t be able to — ”

  “Brian, listen to him!” Abby says.

  “If there’s enough, they’ll find a way in,” I say. I don’t say that we have to find a way out.

  Two more make their way in through the window. And two more shots sound. One from me, and one from Abby. When I turn to her, my ears ringing, she is still looking at Brian, the gun raised in her hand.

  “Brian, go!” I yell. “Before more get in.”

  Tony has his back to the barricade on the front door. Above us, over all the racket, the moans and groans, the breaking glass, I hear Herb’s soft and deep cries.

  Don’t worry, big guy, we are going to get out of this. Just hold on.

  Tony lurches forward. The creak of the door’s hinges come first, then the leaning of the couch and the love seat. The door is locked, but I see the wood swell outward.

  The wood starts to splinter. Each crack brings a gasp up from Darlene’s throat, and a skitter in my heartbeat.

  As I aim down the Magnum, seeing the sight jitter in sync with my shaking hands, I wonder if it's my fate knocking on the front door.

  27

  Darlene looks to me, her big, puppy dog eyes — now even bigger on her gaunt face. They all look to me. I am their leader and they want to know what we should do.

  The door is broken open now, and from the wound spills the dead. The moon seems brighter. The room has grown hotter. I smell earth and decay and rain in the air.

  There is only one thing we can do, and that’s fight.

  “Jack?” Darlene says. “Where are they coming from?”

  I have to be strong for this woman who has stolen my heart.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I say. “We are gonna kill them all.”

  She grips my hand, her touch like a buzz of electricity both jolting me out of my hopelessness and spurring me forward.

  Fight. We have to fight.

  “Tony, outta the way!” I shout. And with a slight shove, I guide Darlene toward the steps. “Go get Herb. Abby and Brian, watch our flanks!”

  Abby and Brian scurry across the hallway. Abby pauses and her gun cracks. I don’t see the zombie she’s shot, but I hear its lifeless corpse thumping the carpet.

  Darlene stands on the steps to the second floor, looking at me differently than before. With a look of admiration, of pride.

  I smile the slightest bit, an alien emotion in a time like this, but one I can’t help but portraying. “Go get Herb, Darlene. We’re getting out of here.”

  She nods, turns and runs up the stairs.

  “She’s right. Never seen so many out here. Something is off,” Tony says.

  Damn right. It’s been off for half a year.

  Tony has his pistol, and he is not hesitant about the pulling the trigger.

  My own weapon shudders in my hands. I feel the power surging through my body.

  One zombie’s head explodes, then another, and another.

  With our combined shooting, the door completely blows off.

  The shots stop, and vibration runs through my hands and forearms. My own wound burns, but I hardly notice it over the adrenaline pumping through my body. The little bit of sleep I got definitely helps.

  Behind us, Abby’s gun blasts in intermittent bursts. Brian’s does, too.

  There is a pile of dead zombies laying over the couch, which is also riddled with holes. Stuffing floats in the air like summer snow. I smell death, not even the smell of gunpowder can drown that out. There is dark blood splashed on the walls of the earth and mud-color wallpaper. A trail of guts and brains on the ceiling, drops swelling then falling. A pool of red grows larger and larger by the second, not even the hallway runner can absorb all of it.

  Inside of my head, I hear this terrible eeeeEeeeee noise that I don’t think will leave me for an hour, hell, maybe even a day. My eardrums w
ere not ready for tonight.

  Tony says something to me, but his voice is distant and swimmy. I read his lips, basically, and my brain fills in the rest with a cheap imitation of his gruff voice.

  “The path is cleared, let’s get the fuck out of here,” he is saying.

  I nod.

  “Darlene! Come on!” I shout, or at least I think I shout. Right now, the feeling I’m stuck with is having earbuds in with the volume all the way up while trying to carry on a normal conversation.

  Through the hole in the wall, more zombies shamble from the dead grass and crop field. I estimate we have about two minutes before another swarm of them hits the porch.

  “The Dodge,” Tony says.

  His voice comes to me in waves. Sometimes muted, sometimes really loud. I’m like a frayed A/V cable.

  I shake my head. “No, we attack Eden now,” I say. There’s too much adrenaline going through my body to lay low.

  “Jack,” Tony starts to say, but is cut off by Herb’s heavy footsteps banging the steps.

  Herb has his hands over his eyes, his head slouched. Darlene is behind him, guiding his large torso with her small hand.

  “Jack, we are not ready,” Tony says. “We are outnumbered, outgunned, injured…” He is looking at me like the teacher who just caught you cheating on a big math test. That look of accusation and betrayal.

  “I am ready. I am going. You and Brian can do whatever you want. You don’t owe us anything.”

  “I’m in,” Brian says. “After what Butch did to my Tammy, I’d go even if the only weapon I had was a fork.” I imagine the adrenaline is pumping through him, too.

  Herb peeks out from beneath his hands and nods his head. “I don’t wanna go back, but I will for you, Jack. You protected me from them now I’ll protect you.”

  The way he speaks makes me want to cry. Why anyone would do anything for Jack Jupiter is beyond me. So I smile, hoping no one sees the tears brimming in my eyes, and pat him on the back.

  Abby is smiling as she says, “You already know I’m in…even if Norm is an asshole. Maybe they knocked some sense into him, and I want to live to see that.”

  I chuckle. “Doubt it. He’s stubborn.”

  Darlene says, “I go wherever you go, Jack Jupiter.”

  Then everyone looks at Tony. His long beard sways as he shakes his head. He sighs, turns toward the bullet-blown hole in the wall and strokes his beard. “Fine,” he says. “Staying here won’t do me no good.”

  A smile breaks across my face.

  Humanity may be slowly dying, evaporating from the face of the earth, but there’s humanity here, right now, in this shitty farmhouse.

  The dead don’t care for humanity. They still come.

  Small triumphs are never as cut and dry as they are in the movies.

  I am tired, my wound hurts, I am missing my brother, and I am in a strange place surrounded by zombies. Yet, somehow, I am all right. I am with family.

  So I lead the way to the outside, through the hole Tony and I made with our guns, and I think to myself that I am Johnny Deadslayer on a mission to save his captured brother from beyond enemy lines.

  But as I step out onto the porch, carefully so as not to step in brains or guts, I am bathed in bright, blinding headlights.

  Butch Hazard is on the loudspeaker again, his voice grating and haunting, “Sometimes life is a bitch,” he says.

  28

  The truck is the cause of the bright, white headlights. I am shielding my eyes, the pistol still in hand, and Darlene cowering behind me. But there is more than the trucks. I see four red lights hovering in the distance like glowing, red eyes. I think of some great beast lurking in the shadows. They are the trailers of semi-trucks, parked a ways off the road. One of the trailers are open. Zombies stream out from inside. Son of a bitch, I think. That son of a bitch flushed us out with zombies —

  That thought is banished once I hear the steady beep-beep-beep, and those red eyes get closer. It’s a sound I haven’t heard in the better part of a year, a sound I didn’t know I missed until hearing it just now. The other trailer backs up through the field.

  A few of the dead scramble. Just a few. We could take them. The bulk of the zombies are piled up behind us.

  “Welcome to Hell,” Butch Hazard says.

  Then, as if on cue, a flame lights up in his hands, so does the hands of his soldiers — and he made sure to bring more this time, their guns trained on us. I notice his shoulder is patched as is the bite mark on his hand.

  Butch tosses the flaming whatever at the house behind us. Glass shatters as what he throws meets the siding. Fire licks up the side.

  “Fire!” he yells to his soldiers.

  I involuntarily clench up as I step totally in front of Darlene, Abby, Herb and the Richards.

  “Excuse the pun,” Butch says as more fire engulfs the house. The back of my head feels singed. I am sweating. My heart racing. We have no choice but to step forward.

  A zombie shambles toward us, orange light glinting off of its yellow eyes. Tony raises his gun to put it down, but a burst of shots rips from one of the soldier’s weapons. Bullets thump the soft earth just inches away from Tony’s feet, sending a spray of dirt and grass in every direction.

  “Nope,” Butch says. “No weapons. Put ‘em down!”

  Darlene is shaking behind me. I wish I could hold her and tell her it’s all going to be okay, but I can’t because I don’t know if that will be the case. Reluctantly, one by one, we drop our weapons.

  Brian doesn’t throw the silenced pistol out in front of him. “You bastard!” he yells, then he takes off running.

  Tony makes a grab at him but misses.

  In the glow of the firelight, Butch’s harsh face raises into a smile. “Well, would you look at that,” he says.

  The soldiers’s guns crack, shooting at Brian’s feet as he rushes forward. But he’s not scared. He keeps running.

  “Brian!” Tony yells, and goes after him.

  As if there is an invisible wall, Brian stops about ten feet in front of Butch. I can do nothing but sit here and burn.

  The dead bushes are on fire, now. Heat radiates off of them in waves. Herb squirms behind me. He wants to run. I can practically feel the springs in his large legs readying themselves for a mad dash to freedom. I turn around and put my hand on his forearm. His eyes are wide and he looks at me like I’m a zombie, not a friend. I shake my head.

  He closes his eyes tight. A drop of sweat or maybe a tear rolls down his cheek.

  “Slowly,” I say. “We’ll walk slowly, our hands up.” I feel like I’m being forced to walk the plank on some pirate ship, the fall below is the field in front of me. Otherwise known as death.

  “We can’t just leave them,” Abby says. “Not Brian.” Her mouth is a thin, bloodless line on her face. She wears a dazed, traumatic look.

  “I know,” I say. But as if no one else notices the house is on fire, I point to the side where the flames have burned the bushes to a pile of ash and are now working their way up the porch guardrail. “We have to get away from the house before it collapses.”

  I lead the way, creeping down the porch steps, which are already dancing with small flames.

  “You remember me?” Brian shouts at Butch. “Do you fuckin remember me?” He has the pistol trained on Butch’s head. But Butch doesn’t seem to notice, or care. He looks tired, fed up.

  He blinks slowly then turns his head, sighing. I am close enough to hear his voice without the megaphone. He squints at Brian. “No, kid, I don’t remember you.”

  “You took my Tammy,” Brian says, his voice choking up. “You took her from me and she was pregnant.”

  Butch arches an eyebrow.

  Tony is on Brian’s side. He grabs his arm, tries to pull him away from the truck with its blinding lights and army of assault rifle toting soldiers. “Brian,” he says. “Let’s — ”

  “Ring any bells, soldiers?” Butch asks, leaning backward.

  A mus
tached man, wearing the familiar camouflaged outfit as the ones in Sharon answers. “Yeah, boss,” the man answers. “The blonde. Remember? The doc said the kid would’ve made it — ”

  “Oh, yeah!” Butch says. He starts laughing. Great, belly-shaking laughs. The kind of laughs you’d hear Santa Claus belting out on Christmas. Except, Butch isn’t an old and jolly fat man. He’s a stern-faced killer. The laughter escaping his throat is about as alien as Darlene with a gun. “Yeah, I remember her. She was a pretty young thing. If she wasn’t pregnant, I might’ve kept her for myself.”

  Brian lunges, but now Tony has both hands on him, holding him back.

  Where we are standing, we see this perfectly. For Abby, maybe too perfectly. She lunges too, but I grab her before she can do anything stupid. The center of attention might be on Butch Hazard and Brian, but the soldiers aren’t dumb. Half of them have their weapons trained on us. Where the large semi-trucks are, there’s more soldiers. Their guns raised.

  “You’ve all been summoned to Eden,” Butch says. “So cool it, kid. Drop the gun and quit being an idiot.”

  “Fuck Eden,” I shout. If I’m going to die, it’s going be on my own terms.

  “Yeah, fuck Eden,” Brian echoes.

  Butch laughs, looking at me. “Just like your brother,” he says. “You know, he’s still alive…barely. He held tough for awhile before he gave this place up. Only lost a few teeth. Maybe has a ruptured spleen. I don’t know, really, we don’t let the doctor utilize his talents on garbage.”

  It’s like a stab straight to my heart. I suspected torture, but I had no confirmation. My body starts to shake. I’m a rocket on the launchpad. The fire is burning through me. “I swear to God if you hurt — ” I begin, but Brian cuts me off.

  “This ain’t about them,” he says, making a move at Butch, breaking free from his father’s grip. But Butch is there, he wraps both hands around Brian’s neck and both of their faces start to turn red.

  Butch Hazard is a man of war. He’s planned this out. No doubt Norm had given him all the details in order to spare his fingers. I don’t blame my older brother for this, either. I would’ve cracked much earlier than he did. Thinking of Norm all bloodied and begging for mercy causes me to grit my teeth.