Jack Zombie (Book 2): Dead Hope

by Flint Maxwell

  “I’m gonna kill each one of ‘em,” Spike says. “Make you watch as the walls is painted with their blood. How ya like that, pard? With the girls, I’m gonna go real slow, make it painful, so that even when it’s your turn, you hear them screaming in the afterlife.” Spit sprays from his mouth as he talks. The toothpick falls and is lost in a pool of dark blood on the table.

  “This isn’t about them, it’s about me. I disrespected you, they didn’t.”

  Norm chuckles then says, “Me, too…” in a weak voice.

  That one thing I learned from those Westerns is that a gunslinger won’t refuse a gunfight.

  Never. Not if you’re a true gunslinger.

  “Now I’m gonna make you pay, pard-na!” Spike bellows. He raises the blade in one hand and grabs Norm’s face with the other. The knife presses up against Norm’s ear, and he’s screaming. It’s a sound of a dying man, and it ices my blood. A trickle of red falls down Norm’s neck. His features bunch up in pain.

  “I challenge you!” I shout. My last hope. “I challenge you to a gunfight. Like the Wild West.”

  Spike lets the blade drop from Norm’s face. He turns slowly to look me square in the eyes.

  “You fancy yourself a cowboy, right?” I ask. “Then prove it. Prove to me you’re not just playing dress-up because it’s the end of the world.”

  Spike narrows his eyes. His pupils are like steel. “I ain’t gotta prove to you a damn thang.”

  There’s a moment of silence lingering between us as we stare, face to face. I know he must have cameras in here. I know Butch Hazard and his crew of soldiers are just beyond the doorway waiting to bust the door down at the first bad sign of things not going in Spike’s favor. I know this and so does Spike.

  “Not to me, then,” I say. “Prove it to your right-hand man and your legion of soldiers. Prove it to the people of Eden. Make them respect you instead of fear you.”

  “Fear is respect,” he says, his tone taking on that of someone who is not getting their way.

  “Well, I guess you’re not only crazy, but you’re dumb, too.”

  He shoots up from his leaning posture.

  Darlene stares at me, not even breathing. I look to Norm and he’s exhaling a great sigh of relief as he tries to rub the side of his head on his shoulder, unsuccessfully. Then Spike is up and walking back around the table, blade in hand. The spurs jingle. I am reminded of a dog with a bell on its collar, and I can’t help but smile.

  “Think that’s funny?” he says.

  Next thing I know, his leg comes up and he boots Tony’s chair — with him still in it. And Tony topples over, not even able to flail his arms for balance. The metal bangs against concrete with a sharp crack, and Tony moans out in pain.

  But that is the least of my worries.

  Spike grips the arm of my chair, spins me halfway around to meet him. The legs scrape the floor like nails on a chalkboard. Darlene screeches.

  “No! Leave him alone!” she yells.

  I can’t even turn my head and give her a reassuring look, or tell her everything is going to be okay like I have been telling her our entire relationship. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe she’ll finally open her eyes and realize everything isn’t okay.

  “Oh, I’m gonna leave him alone. He’ll need to be left alone,” Spike says. The normal voice is creeping out again, almost whiny.

  He has that big knife in hand and he swings down on my head. I feel a crack, a sickening crack, and warm blood runs down my face.

  He swings again.

  “Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting him!” Darlene says.

  Crack.

  “Darlene,” Abby echoes. She turns toward my fiancé with a look that says, stop it before he hurts you too.

  Spike is laughing maniacally. He smiles wide. His teeth are much more rotten this close up. So are the wrinkles in his skin. Probably from hours in the sun, probably from age. I don’t know for sure. I just know he’s not the most handsome fellow.

  He hits me over and over again.

  I pass out to the sounds of Darlene’s shrieks and Spike’s mad cackles.

  38

  I awake to quiet.

  I haven’t gotten too much quiet these days. Was it all a dream? The room is almost pitch-black, somehow darker than it was when my eyes were closed and I was lost in the deep, dark pools of sleep. The rough straw mattress and hard concrete bed remind where I’m at, but the smell of the slop bucket solidifies it.

  My head feels like it’s on fire.

  I rub at it, feeling the dried blood and the knot. The feeling doesn’t go away.

  I make a move to get up. My entire body is sore, and not the good kind of sore you get after a tough workout, the kind where you can barely sit on the toilet without thinking, Fuck, I’m never running again and Good job, Jack! No, this hurt is the kind of hurt I’d expect someone who somehow survived getting hit by a Mac truck to feel. Pain filling every nook and cranny, man.

  “Kill me,” I try to say, but it comes out in a hoarse whisper. Now I’m realizing how badly I want water. I wonder how long I’ve been out. The bars on the little sliver of window offer no daylight or moonlight, just black sky and damaged hopes.

  “Tony,” I say, knowing his cell was close to mine before. Then I speak again, this time the word coming out cleaner. “Tony!”

  No answer.

  I go back to sleep. I dream of Darlene and Norm. Their dead bodies on fire beneath the forgotten and rusty roller coaster.

  I wake, hearing a thud.

  Sunlight streams in through the small window, flitting back and forth. Shadow. Sunlight. Thud. Thud. Shadow. Thud.

  I rub at my eyes.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  It continues like an alarm clock. My body is still sore, but my mind is even worse off. I can’t help but thinking of Darlene and Abby and Norm and Tony, even Herb. If I could just lay here for the rest of my life — which I don’t think will be much longer — I’d probably be better off.

  But I can’t.

  Johnny Deadslayer wouldn’t. He’d find a way out.

  Something wet falls from above me, causing me to stop mid-thought.

  Thud. Thud.

  Whatever hit me is warm and is dripping down my face. I raise my hand and swipe at it. I look at my fingers. Whatever it is is sticky and red. My heart skips a beat for a moment as I think to myself that it’s blood.

  But it can’t be blood.

  Thud. Thud.

  A fainter thud.

  The sunlight drifts in and out of the small cell that has been my home for too long.

  Thud.

  I turn my head to look at the window.

  Now my heartbeat has stopped because what I see on the outside, dangling by a frayed rope, is enough to ice me over completely.

  It is Tony.

  His face is frozen in a snarl. The only smile I see on him comes across his neck, and it’s a deep smile, a red smile. A slit throat.

  Thud-thud-thud.

  Blood sprays with each hit.

  I am standing on the bed now, and my knees go weak, threatening to give out and have me tumble all the way to the piss-soaked, hard floor.

  There is also a bullet hole in Tony’s head. It is dark and almost perfectly circular. Part of my mind tells me the hole is still smoking as if he has just been executed, but I know that is only my brain playing tricks on me. A thin stream of blood runs from this hole, zigging and zagging down the bridge of his nose then his mouth then finally falling off of his chin in thick, red drops.

  “Tony,” I say in a whisper.

  Around his neck is a sign which looks to be written in his own blood. I TELL LIES AND NOW I’M DEAD.

  This is my fault. I never should’ve opened my mouth about Spike’s past. Oh, God. It hurts. A choked sob escapes my throat. If he would do that to Tony, what would he do to my Darlene or my brother or Abby?

  I shake my head. No, I can’t think like that. I have to be strong. I have to be Johnny Deadslayer. />
  Rest in Peace, Tony.

  The gates rattle down the corridor. A line of light shoots down the hallway as hinges creak. Boots thud against the concrete, keys jingle, and I almost mistake them for Spike’s spurs, but I know better than that. He wouldn’t subject himself to the cells.

  Sunlight catches Butch’s face. “Up, Jupiter,” he says.

  In one hand he has a nightstick, and in the other he has his Desert Eagle.

  “Where’s Darlene?” I say.

  “Don’t worry about her, she’s safe.”

  I stand up, knowing the drill. If I even breathe wrong, I’m taking a nightstick into the gut or the butt of the Eagle to the temple.

  “I see you got the present Spike left you,” Butch says. “It was messy, let me tell you.” He leans forward, brings the hand with his gun in it up and whispers, “I told you he was crazy.”

  “When’s my shootout?” I ask. “When do I get to put a bullet in his head?”

  Butch stares at me, incredulous. Then he speaks the way a man speaks to a cute puppy, that soothing, comforting tone. “Oh, Jack, you can’t be serious. Did you really think he was going to give you an honest chance to kill him?”

  “Y-Yeah,” I say.

  Butch smiles, lifts his eyebrows up. Sweat drops from his buzzed hair and falls down the sides of his face. “Nope, buddy. Sorry,” he says and chuckles, his face going serious. “Now turn around. And if you mess up one time, Jupiter, just one little display of funny business then I’m breaking both of your arms. If you want to have any chance of surviving in the Arena, you don’t want your arms broken.”

  There is a time and place for rebellion, and this is not it.

  What the hell is the Arena? I almost ask, but don’t.

  He cuffs me and he’s not fragile at all.

  Then, he throws a burlap sack over my head that smells like rotten potatoes, and leads me out of the cell, like a pig to the slaughterhouse.

  39

  We ride on a horse and buggy, the steady clop-clop of the hooves and the creaking of the wooden carriage confirm that for me.

  I hear whispers.

  “Is that him?”

  “The Zombie Killer?”

  “The Carnivore?

  “He will put an end to that psycho Spike.”

  “He’s come to free us.”

  “I think he deserves whatever Spike gives him!”

  “Be quiet, you old kook!”

  It’s the whisper of a thousand people, all combined into one.

  “ATTENTION CITIZENS OF EDEN, WE WILL BE GATHERING AT THE ARENA IN ONE HOUR. ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY. ANYONE CAUGHT OUT IN THE STREETS WILL BE SWIFTLY DEALT WITH.”

  It’s the loudspeaker, but not Butch’s voice behind it. Someone else’s. Someone much more robotic.

  “ATTENTION CITIZENS…” it continues.

  We go on, the hooves clopping and the wheels creaking. We stop ten minutes later. There are no more whispers.

  Someone grabs me hard by the arm, making the bullet graze bark out in pain. A hand rips the burlap sack off my face.

  I am in a room that might’ve once been a locker room. There’s rows of lockers, most of them are empty and open, but the smell of sweaty socks and gym equipment is full. Butch stands in front of a dusty chalkboard, a soldier on each side of him holding their AR15s.

  “All right, Jupiter, this is how it’s gonna be,” Butch says.

  Another soldier is behind me. He sticks a key into the cuffs. I hear a click and all the pressure around my wrists is gone.

  Butch reaches in his waistband, brings out an old Western revolver, the kind I’d call a Colt Peacemaker but would probably be totally wrong because all I have to go on is my wealth of old Western movies I’d watched as a kid. Butch spins it on his finger. He throws it at me, the gun twirling in the air, catching gleams of overhead light.

  I reach out and grab it, cooly, calmly. Like I’ve been doing this for years.

  Butch and the soldiers take to laughing.

  Just for the hell of it, I point the weapon at Butch.

  Butch freezes up, the soldiers’s laughter stopping as abruptly as it started. I cock the hammer and pull the trigger.

  Nothing.

  A dull click.

  I’m smart enough to know he wouldn’t give me a loaded gun, but I pop the cylinder out anyway. There are six bullets inside. I aim the pistol again, and pull the trigger.

  Nothing.

  More laughter.

  “It’s a dummy,” Butch says. “Just like you.” He belts out another great burst, and the soldiers follow suit. “When the time is right,” he says, wiping the tears from his eyes, “we’ll get you hooked up with sound effects and smoke, so you don’t die looking like a complete pussy.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I ask.

  “It’s all a set up,” Butch says, “I told you that. Spike may be unstable, but he ain’t playing with fire.”

  My grip on the gun gets tighter. I feel the metal biting into my skin, drowning out the pains on my right arm. “I’m not surprised. Where’s Darlene? Where’s my brother and Abby and Herb?”

  “Don’t worry about them. You’ll see them soon enough. Well…maybe not Herb. Spike sent him to the dungeon.”

  “The dungeon?” My stomach roils. What kind of sick…never mind. I know who I’m dealing with now.

  One of the soldiers snickers.

  “It’s where we round up the stray zombies. We set a trap about a quarter mile from the gates. They pool up, it’s real — ah, never mind, Jupiter. Makes no difference to you. You’re gonna be dead. But don’t worry, you’ll see your friends soon enough.”

  “I want to see them now,” I demand.

  Butch grins. “In Eden, you get no say. It’s another country — hell, another world — far as you’re concerned.”

  The hopelessness turns to sadness. I think of Darlene, how we are still not married. My brother with his own missing appendage, and Abby a girl who never got to live a normal adult life. It’s all sad. Too sad..

  “In all seriousness, Jupiter, it’s out of my hands. I don’t like you, I don’t like your cunt-bag brother or the feisty bitches you associate yourself with, but I respect you and I respect them. Too often in these wastelands, people just bow down to the guys with big guns and numbers. You, Jack Jupiter, you gave us a little fight, you made it interesting. We still win in the end, but man, I doubt I’ll find any other assholes like you.”

  I don’t say anything. In fact, I’m not exactly sure what to say. Thank you for respecting me but still ending my life, maybe? No, I just nod and look down at the prop gun in my hand.

  “Then let us go,” I say. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”

  “I can’t,” Butch says.

  “Why not?”

  “In about thirty minutes, you’ll see,” he says, that familiar smile on his face. “Until then, I say clear your head. When I was carving up towel-heads in Baghdad, my C.O. would have our platoon meditate. Now that was the most pussy shit I’d ever heard at the time, but you know not to backtalk your Commanding Officer if you want your tour to go peachy, so we all did it, and boy, let me tell you it is one of the greatest things a soldier can do. You don’t hear the explosions or the cries of pain, you don’t think about your wife and kid back home, missing you. None of that bullshit. You don’t think about anything at all. And when you come to, you’re only focused on the task at hand. In my case that was blowing out the brains of a few sand niggers, but it doesn’t matter if you’re doing that or if you’re killing zombies, or just trying to survive. Trust me, Jupiter.”

  The soldiers on his sides have gone stone-faced. No doubt, Butch makes them do the same bullshit. Meditate…get real. Maybe back in the real world but not now.

  “We’ll let you be,” Butch says, he opens the only closed locker on the top row. In it is a complete cowboy get-up, a few shades too dark to be Woody from Toy Story. Fucking great, really. “Put this outfit on, clear your head, but any funny shit
, and my men standing guard will do worse than knock your lights out?”

  He leaves, and when the door closes, I immediately start looking for an escape.

  No luck.

  I sit down on the floor, my head throbbing, my heart hurting, and I picture Darlene. It’s my own form of meditation. She is the only thing that calms me these days.

  And I wait.

  40

  I sit there for what feels like fifteen minutes. There is one window in this room, and it is a lot like the window in the cell I have spent God knows how many nights in — a small sliver with bars on it.

  I am trying to fit into this smelly, way too-starched, plaid shirt as something taps on the glass. My stomach clenches with the memory of Tony swinging by a rope, a bullet in his head, blood leaking down his face. I can’t look because I know it will be Darlene or Abby or Norm. I don’t know where I’m at. I could be on the basement level and Darlene could still be swinging lifeless with a noose around her neck. That’s just the way this world works now. Screw the basic laws of physics. Screw logic. Those things go out the window when people catch a killer virus, die, and come back craving brains and human flesh.

  But the tapping grows more persistent.

  It’s not the meaty thud of a body hitting the outside wall. No, this is the tapping of a finger, someone trying to get my attention.

  I go against my stomach’s wishes and I look up to the small window. There, beyond the small pane of glass, I see Herb’s big, smiling face. My own face breaks into a smile. It’s great to see someone familiar…someone that’s alive.

  “Jack! Jack!” he shouts, his voice much too loud. He is laying in the dirt and grass, I see the blades tickling his face. He is covered in blood and muck.

  “Shh!” I say, my finger up to my lips. That smile disappears. Now’s not the time for fairy tale reunions.

  “Jack! I came back. I told ya I would! I got out of that stupid, smelly dungeon and into the lab! Doc Klein told me to run as far away as I could, but I came to help you, Jacky! Help you!”

  “Herb, you have to be quiet they’ll hear you.”