Jack Zombie (Book 2): Dead Hope

by Flint Maxwell

  “But you won’t hear me through the glass.”

  “I do, Herb, I hear you.”

  “You do?” he says, cocking his head. “That’s great! Really! Remember when we met, it was a Thursday — ”

  “Yes, I remember, Herb, but listen, we don’t have much time. I need you to help get me out of here.”

  Herb’s eyes drift from the window to the grass. He starts plucking the blades and chewing on his bottom lip.

  “Herb?” I repeat.

  “I can’t, Jack. I want to, but I can’t. I may not be the smartest fella, but Butch is a mean old man and he’s guarding the door to the Arena with the whole army and if I get caught then Spike will know and he’ll cut my finger off. Oh, God! I don’t want my fingers cut off, Jack! How will I be able to play the guitar like my mammy taught me?” His face screws up, his head starts shaking with dry sobs. “Then I have to help Doc Klein escape. He says he’s been listenin on the radio and there’s a man out there who knows the cure to the z-zombie germ and his talents are wasted here in this crazy theme park. He wants to help the world, Jacky! And I want to help you! I just want to help you!”

  A cure? Yeah, right, that’ll be the day.

  I look him dead in the eyes and say, “Herb! Get ahold of yourself! What is going on? Where are they taking me?”

  He looks up at me, a gleam in his eyes. “I-I don’t know what to call it. It’s…it’s like a show.”

  “Good, Herb. Good. Keep going. Where’s Darlene and Abby and Norm?”

  He smiles. “They are fine, Jacky. I just got back from seeing them. The doc is looking them over and then they’ll be at the show, too.”

  “He didn’t hurt them anymore?” My eyes begin to water. It’s almost too good to be true. “Herb, please tell me that’s the truth.”

  Herb nods his head excessively, if he does it any harder, I swear his eyes are apt to fling from their sockets. “No. No more. Spike said he doesn’t care about them. He only cares about you. Doc Klein talked about it in the lunch room while I was working on the bodies. I heard him, I did! He says you royally p-i-s-s-e-d him off. Made him look stupid in front of Butch and the soldiers. Said they don’t respect him no more and he feels like their respect is winning — no — waning already. Then he told the people that live here that you were one of those mean, old, nasty Carnivores. But I said, ’No, he ain’t!’ then I heard him talkin ‘bout the cure in Washington D.C!”

  A smile creeps across my face, and somehow even that small gesture hurts me. I’m just hurting all over the place. “Thank you, Herb. That is really good to hear about my friends,” I say. “Now tell me what I’m getting into and how the H-E-double hockey sticks I can’t get out of it.”

  “You’re welcome, Jacky,” he says with a big grin on his face. “Okay, they make all the citizens sit in the big place with the dirt floor, you know, where the dirt bikes go vroom vroom and there’s hills and old stands that used to sell hot dogs but don’t sell nothing no more.” He frowns at that.

  I know exactly what he is talking about with Eden being an abandoned amusement park and all. I remember those days at a local fair or carnival where I’d be walking with Norm and the sound of the dirt bikes ripped through the air and the smell of diesel and exhaust almost choked me. I loved it. They came from the track where all the rednecks would gather around in their Confederate flag shirts, Budweisers in hand. I never got to experience it. Norm wouldn’t allow me — or rather he was too busy hanging with his friends and chasing the girls, which is odd to think about now knowing he’s gay. I guess it was all for show. Plus, I saw the arena from my cell window. That’s good.

  “They did it with Alex and Tom. It was bloody, Jack, so bloody I had to cover my eyes like my auntie would make me do at them scary shows when the monster killed the good guys. Spike’s the monster, Jacky. He is. Lawd, he is.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll be okay.”

  But my voice is breaking up. I can’t lie to myself. I can lie to everyone else. Not me.

  “I know you will, Jack, I just know it!” Herb shakes his head and puts his hands together as if he is about to pray. I’m expecting him to start giving me a spiel about the Lord up in the Kingdom of Heaven, how with God all things are possible, but he doesn’t. “I know you’ll be because I made sure of it, Jack. I did!”

  “Herb, not so loud — ”

  He snaps his head to the left.

  Somewhere deep in the maze of hallways, I hear the clank and rattle of a door opening and closing.

  “Oh no oh no oh no,” Herb says. He starts to get up. I can’t see much, but I catch a glimpse of boots quickly coming into focus. They are brown boots and they are dotted with drops of blood. Herb starts screaming out, “No, I’m sorry I’m sorry — ” while he tries to scramble up, but that boot strikes him in the ribs. He is a big guy, but he retreats into the fetal position like a man being attacked by a bear.

  “Sneaking out, are we?” It’s Butch. “Tsk, tsk, Herbert. Spike will not be pleased. He might even have to take one of your fingers, maybe a toe.”

  “No! Not my toesies! Please!”

  “Herb!” I shout. “What was it? What did you do?”

  He looks at me as the boot strikes him again, causing his face to bunch up in pain. I think I hear a crack of steel-toe against bone, maybe even breaking it.

  “Stop it, you bastard!” I shout.

  Butch starts laughing that laugh that I’ve grown to hate more than any zombie. He kicks him again and again. But Herb looks up, tears flooding his eyes, blood trickling down his mouth, and he says, “Salvation comes from the heart.” And as he is ripped up from the grass, he taps his chest on the left side.

  Great, nothing like some religious babble before I die. Salvation comes from the heart, what the hell does that even mean?

  “Remember Sal, Jacky! Remember Sal — ” Then he is screaming again, crying out for his auntie and his mammy, saying, “Please don’t take my toesies. Please! Please!” his voice fading.

  Then it’s Butch, “All right, Jack, time’s up. No more of your bullshit.”

  The door out of this place starts to open up. I think it’ll be Butch with his AR15, ready to beat the ever-loving snot out of me, teleporting like some evil wizard, but it’s not. It’s just another soldier. For a moment, I think I could take him. He is probably younger than me, his face patchy with a wiry beard. I’m guessing twenty, maybe twenty-two, definitely closer to Abby’s age. He snarls at me, baring teeth that have definitely been adorned with braces his parents paid for in the old world. It’s an empty gesture, and my confidence soars. Yeah, I can definitely take him, then I can get to Darlene and Norm and Abby, save the day. Just like Johnny Deadslayer.

  “No need for that funny business,” the kid says. He has his gun raised, pointing straight at my heart.

  Kid. He can’t be much younger than me and I’m calling him ‘kid’ like I’m an eighty-year-old asshole. Funny what the end of the world does to you.

  “I know you’re thinking you can take me, and you’re probably right, but there ain’t no point in doing that. It’ll just end bad for the both of us. We know about you, we know you’re a smart ‘un. So don’t prove us wrong.”

  The fire goes out of me as fast as it came. Still, in the back of my mind, I hear the dull thuds of Butch’s boots clobbering Herb as he cries out.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I don’t plan on dying in this fucking get-up.”

  The kid flashes a smile. “Ain’t your Sunday’s finest, that’s for damn sure.”

  Butch comes in from out of the shadows. “Nice job, soldier!” he says.

  “Sir, thank you, sir!” the kid replies.

  Butch turns to me. “I know you didn’t plan on that little powwow with Herb, but it’s gonna cost him a few fingers, maybe even a hand. So I want you to think about that. Now, are you ready to die, Jack Jupiter?”

  “Hell no,” I say.

  “That’s too damn bad. You’re gonna die whether you’re
ready or not.”

  I smirk at Butch and his soldier and say, “Good luck.”

  41

  By the time they put the hood on me, the sun has gone down. They guide me to the horse and cart again, cuff my hands and throw me on a bed of straw. I land funny on my back, smashing my head, which aggravates every ache in my body.

  Time goes by in a pain-induced haze.

  Now, someone forces me up. “What’s with the hood over my head?” I ask. “I know where we’re at.”

  “Intimidation,” someone says. I recognize it as the soldier from the locker room, the kid.

  Beneath the sack, I roll my eyes.

  Then, I feel a gun in my back, and a different soldier tells me, “It’s showtime.”

  I cannot see much beyond dim light coming through the cloth. I smell dirt and mud and my own fear draped all over me like it’s cologne. I hear a constant drone of babbling voices, of a crowd settling in to their seats before the show starts. When the dim light grows brighter and the heat from them is baking, the crowd picks up their decibel level. Beneath my feet, the ground changes from concrete to dirt.

  Someone cheers to my right, and shouts my name, but the cheer is quickly cut off. To my left, someone else cheers. This one is not cut off. More people chime in. The noise begins to sound like the rolling and crash of tidal waves to my ears. It’s a small portion of the people, most of them seem too scared to do much of anything, but it helps ease the fear.

  The gun’s pressure on my back vanishes, then a hand grabs the sack on my head — along with a handful of my hair — and yanks. White floodlights blind me. It takes a long time for my eyes to adjust.

  The arena is a large circle of dirt. Stadium seats surround me, rising above the ten foot wall between dirt and seats, three-hundred and sixty degrees. There is people in almost everyone of those seats. My guess is around a thousand of them. I never thought a thousand people would’ve survived.

  I am at one end of the dirt circle, dressed in my cheap cowboy outfit, and at the other end, raised on a platform, sitting in a makeshift throne made out of what looks like bone, is Spike. He gets up, his dark eyes blazing at me from across the way, which can’t be much more than two-hundred feet. He is wearing the same outfit he wore when he bashed my head in, except now he looks rested, shiny, and new. On each hip, slung low, are the heavy, old-school revolvers. They shine.

  “Jupiter,” someone says from behind me.

  I find that I am frozen in place. Even in the heyday of my writing career, the biggest event I did was around two-hundred and fifty people, and they were all spread out in a college auditorium, which didn’t make it intimidating at all. Now compared to this —

  Someone walks up behind me.

  The ice thaws, and I turn to see my own gun belt in the hands of a middle-aged soldier. This belt only has one revolver. The leather is cheap and plastic-looking, something you’d get at a costume shop, and the gun is so obviously fake. They didn’t even bothered to remove the orange cap at the end of the barrel. The soldier starts putting it around my waist, moving my cuffed hands out of the way. I turn and see the empty look in his eye, this is a man who doesn’t care what the hell happens today. Maybe I can use that to my advantage. “Good luck,” he says, and walks back to the entrance we came through. Him and his partner pull a barred door across the threshold, locking me in here with piles of dirt and a madman.

  I turn back, look down at the gun belt. I barely feel it around my waist. It must weigh about two pounds.

  “Jupiter! Jupiter! Jupiter!” some of the crowd starts chanting.

  With the belt clasped and my fake pistol hanging from my hip, I smile to the crowd and a small section of them start screaming louder. I look for Darlene or Abby or Norm, even Herb, but all I see are faint shapes and outlines with the floodlights distorting their features.

  Feedback from a microphone.

  I cringe, my heart taking a great leap inside of my chest.

  “Quiet! Quiet!” Spike says. He is standing on his throne of bones, his hat tipped back so he can see each and everyone of his people.

  The crowd’s noise begins to simmer down to a faint drone — faint enough for me to hear my heartbeat hammering.

  “Those of you who cheer, why do you do so?” His Southern drawl is gone. He sounds normal, maybe even educated.

  “Because you’re a dick!” someone shouts, but who it is, we’ll never know. A few people answer that voice with cheers. One of the soldiers behind me chuckles.

  “Quiet!”

  They do this time, completely — perhaps sensing how unstable Spike is. After all, he has two guns, and they have none. If he just starts firing into the crowd…

  “Now, y’all gathered here today because we gonna bring a traitor to justice.” The fake accent is back and worse than ever, amplified by the microphone.

  This is answered by a few cheers. Not many. Things aren’t looking too terrible for me. He wouldn’t kill me in cold blood, not with more than half the crowd on my side.

  “Strike that,” Spike says, “Traitors, plural.”

  I feel my blood pressure rising. The pain in my head and the wound from the bullet graze starts to throb with my heartbeat.

  “Jack Jupiter is no hero. Jack Jupiter is one of the Carnivores and so is his ragtag bunch of assholes.” Spike lowers the mic, expecting the crowd’s reaction, and boy, does he get one. A domino effect of gasps ripple through the crowd.

  “BOOO!” someone shouts. “Kill him! Kill him!”

  Okay, odds are no longer in my favor. Not a big deal. I can still dig my way out of this…I think.

  “Yes, it is true,” Spike says, sweeping his hand out to the crowd. The lights are really growing hot now. I’m sweating, shaking, you name it. I really don’t want to die looking like Woody from Toy Story.

  “We all know the Carnivores are ruthless.” He takes his hat off, holds it on his chest, says, “Rest in peace to the Chekov family. We all know about that, I don’t think I need to remind y’all about how the Carnies ate them for dinner.”

  The row closest to me is full of people bowing their heads. Some of the others stare at me as if I am the devil.

  “Jack Jupiter here took part in the robbery two days ago in Sharon. Y’all know the one I’m talkin ‘bout, the one which coincidentally killed Mel Francis and Dan Carnegie. Now we ain’t got no medicine, and Sharon is lost. Can’t step foot there without gettin shot at by Carnivores.” He flips his hat back on his head, grimaces at the crowd. “Now, I don’t know ‘bout y’all, but I get pretty bored all cooped up in here like chickens in a cage waitin to be slaughtered! I lose sleep thinkin there’s bastards like Jack Jupiter and his gang killin our people and takin our medicine and food just because they can! I think it’s time we get some revenge.”

  The crowd erupts.

  “Bring him here!” Spike shouts.

  One of the soldiers walk up behind me and nudges me forward. I don’t hesitate. With the crowd booing and jeering, I am no longer frozen. There’s a time and a place to freeze, and this is not it. I walk, Spike’s screwed-up face getting closer and closer.

  He holds a hand up. The soldier’s grip around my arms squeezes me tighter and I stop.

  Spike looks away from me with his blank, dark eyes and scans the crowd again. “See, I’m fair. Jack Jupiter has a gun on his hip. So do I. We are going to do it like they did it back in the day. Back in the Old West. Whoever’s fastest on the draw walks away the winner. I’m gonna show each one of y’all here tonight that ain’t no carny a match for me.”

  The crowd cheers again. They love this stuff. I can see it in their eyes now that I’m closer. It’s funny that when the world goes to shit, the people go with it.

  “But first we’re gonna have fun with Jack Jupiter.” Spike cocks an eyebrow, “I mean, after all, he could win the shootout. Not likely, but possible, right? So we gotta get some of that sweet revenge, don’t we?” He looks to one of the dark tunnels in the circle where the microphone’
s cord disappears to and he motions to someone I can’t see. “Bring ‘em out! Bring ‘em out!”

  I look on with wide eyes, knowing exactly who he is talking about.

  They are in cages like animals. The cages are on wheels. Each one of them has a burlap sack over their heads like I had, but they are not cuffed. They are too beaten for them to fight back. That much I can see.

  “Darlene!” My breathing speeds up. I feel like I’m looking down on this terrible situation, helpless.

  “Jack? Jack? Jack!” she screams. “Help me!”

  “Many of you have heard about the rumors of what goes on in Dr. Klein’s lab. I’m going to tell you the bulk of those rumors are untrue,” Spike says, the accent gone. I wonder if he consciously does this or if it’s just a sign of his insanity. “One of them is true. We are working to develop the zombies into soldiers for your protection, and so far our efforts have taken great strides in the right direction, but without test subjects to use our experiments on, we will never know. As is common in all experiments, there are failures. But here in Eden we still have use of ‘em.” A smile splits his harsh face in half. “Tonight we find out if that’s true!”

  The crowd is quiet. They are as stunned as me.

  One of the soldiers shifts uncomfortably to my right. I don’t see him, but I feel him.

  Butch walks the dirt between the cages. He looks at me.

  “Let them out,” Spike says.

  Butch takes keys off of his belt, and starts jimmying the locks.

  “Now before y’all get squeamish,” Spike says, “remember these are the same people who massacred our own in Sharon, the same people who may be the reason your mom or dad or husband or wife dies from a fever or a bad cut! Even your kids! Remember, people! Remember!”

  With that, he drops the mic and sits down on his chair, which is not actually made of bones — not human bones, at least — but ivory instead.

  First, Norm hits the dirt, a dust cloud billowing around him. He struggles to get up to his knees. As he does. Butch rips the burlap sack off of his head. My heart breaks looking at my older brother’s face. It is swollen and blue. There are cuts crusted with blood. One eye is shut completely. Still, just like he did back in the interrogation, exploding zombie head room, he smiles with a few missing teeth.