Jack Zombie (Book 2): Dead Hope

by Flint Maxwell

  Butch shoots two times with the Desert Eagle. Two earth-shattering cracks. I am hit with a spray of rotten meat.

  I think I’ve been shot.

  Darlene is screaming.

  It’s all a blur.

  My left hand closes around the pistol I used to shoot Spike with it. It’s still warm and shiny with Salvador’s innards, but I get a good enough grip on it to point, aim, and fire once.

  The thunderclap from the muzzle is deafening.

  The first slug takes Butch in the middle of the chest.

  He hardly seems to notice. But his knees give out on him and the Desert Eagle in his hand falls to the dirt.

  A blossoming red rose shows through Butch’s dirty shirt. He looks down, his hand coming up to touch the blood, then he looks up at me. He does not look like he is in pain. He is smiling, perhaps relieved.

  “Nice shot,” he says, tottering then falling face-first into the dirt.

  “Thanks,” I say, “but I was aiming for your head.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  He is dead.

  The soldier with his gun trained on Abby moves the aim toward me, but I’m faster and he knows this.

  I don’t pull the trigger, though. I’m shaking. My blood pumping with adrenaline, my brain craving the kill, wanting to feel the power that comes from the gun just one more time.

  I refrain.

  “Don’t be stupid, man. Drop your gun and get the hell out of here. Don’t die for these bastards. Don’t die for this piece of shit place,” I say instead of killing him.

  His face goes pale, his eyes go wide, and he drops the AR15, turns tail, and runs — well, actually waddles.

  I push myself up from the dirt. There are no more jeers or cheers from the crowd. They look at me the same way they’d look at a sleeping lion trapped in a zoo exhibit — with fear, awe, wonder.

  I look back, and they start to disperse. Some even make like the last fat soldier and bolt.

  When they’re all gone or no longer looking at me, I let the menacing act drop and almost fall over. I can’t help it. Darlene is on me faster than I was on the gun, steadying me, whispering into my ear, “Jack, I love you I love you oh my god I love you. Jack, are you okay? Jack? Jack…”

  I’m so beat and tired and scared, I almost can’t say it back.

  But I do.

  “I love you, too.” And then I collapse.

  48

  We are like The Breakfast Club: An army jock, a pretty girl, a basket case, and a nerd. Except, imagine the Breakfast Club covered in dirt and zombie guts, sporting bruises like they’re this summer’s latest fashion trend.

  It takes me a minute to come to, but now I’m standing straight up, mostly on my own. Darlene’s arms are still around me.

  Outside the arena, the citizens are going crazy. I look up and see black, greasy smoke drifting in the air. Not so far away, I hear a car horn blaring.

  “We gotta get out of here,” I say.

  Abby looks at me and nods. It looks painful for her to do it.

  I turn to Darlene. Her face is dotted with blood, blood that I don’t think belongs to her, and she’s still the most beautiful girl in the world. I kiss her.

  “C’mon,” I say, heading over to Norm. He’s almost out cold, but he’s alive. Thank God.

  “Norm,” I say. He slowly turns his head up to me. His eyes are bloodshot, his neck is purple and growing blacker. To put it as simply as possible, he looks like shit. Still, my older brother, a man who I hated for leaving me to rot in a dead town almost fifteen years ago, manages to smile at me.

  And I smile back, extending my hand. He takes it and all three of us — Abby, Darlene, and I — help him up.

  We limp out of the arena, the sounds of chaos all around us, a little beaten, a little broken, but otherwise whole. I don’t give Spike or Butch Hazard a last look over my shoulder. They don’t deserve that.

  Let them rot. Let them all rot.

  49

  Seeing the streets buzz with people almost gives me a heart attack. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen streets this full. I wish it were under better circumstances, though. People have taken to busting out windows, flipping carts full of stale bread and rotten fruit, and lighting various buildings on fire. I’m reminded of Woodhaven. That is the tightrope Eden is balancing on.

  What’s even odder is that all of these people who are ruining this place have smiles on their faces, like they’re glad to be free from the metal walls holding them in. I almost grab at a man who’s running around with his shirt off screaming, “FREEDOM! FREEDOM!” and tell him that sometimes freedom isn’t all that nice, especially when you don’t know when your next meal will come, but I don’t. I barely have the energy. Besides, let them find out on their own.

  I’m done with Eden.

  We’re all done with Eden. There are bigger things on the horizon. Surviving. Thriving. Maybe even a cure.

  “Herb,” I say to Darlene. “We gotta get Herb.”

  She looks at me crooked, people streaming all around us, screaming, shouting, jumping for joy. “I don’t know — ”

  “We have to. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead…we all would.” My voice is harsh, but it gets my point across. I don’t think they understand so I pull the cure card. “He knows about a cure. He knows a way to beat this thing. Him and the Doctor — ”

  “Oh, Doctor Klein? He was such a nice man,” Darlene says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “He knows about something in D.C.”

  They eye me like I’m going crazy. I have to rally the troops.

  “Don’t you want the world to go back to the way it was? Don’t you want to have to quit worrying about zombies and demented cowboys and crazy army people? I sure as fuck do. C’mon, we’ve survived this long, we can help Herb and the Doctor.”

  Norm nods. He looks proud, proud to call me his younger brother. “I’m in,” he says. “I’m sick of aimlessly wandering. I want to do some good.”

  “Yeah,” Abby says. “He’s right.”

  “Darlene?” I ask, looking at her, trying not to notice the chaos slowly budding beyond her.

  “I can’t say no,” she says. “You know I always want to help, but Jack we are barely alive ourselves.”

  “I’m always alive as long as I’m with you,” I say.

  She breaks into a smile.

  “Oh, barf,” Norm says, chuckling.

  Darlene rolls her eyes. “Fine, Jack…as if I could really say no to you.”

  I turn to my brother who has been here the longest and ask, “Norm, you know where the dungeon is?”

  He looks up at me a little less dazed, his soldier instincts kicking in. “Yeah,” he says. “I know where it is. Follow me.” Somehow, he hobbles faster, and we follow. Rescue Operation: Herb Walker is a go, then it’s on to Rescue Operation: Planet Earth.

  The dungeon isn’t as much of a dungeon as it is a space-themed restaurant that never was. I can tell, even with the signs on the outside of the brick facade ripped off, leaving a dark ghost of the words that were once hanging there. Space something. What really gives it away is the domed roof. I’m instantly reminded of being a seventh-grader again and going on a class field trip to Cleveland and seeing the Great Lakes Science Center’s planetarium.

  “There it is,” Norm says. He is hunched over, out of breath despite the walk being about two minutes from the Arena. It’s a hot night, and the flames have been spreading. It’s almost impossible not to feel the heat.

  A burst of gunfire erupts into the air not far from where we are standing. I clench up and put my body in front of Darlene. She squeezes me.

  “I’m okay,” she says. “I’m tougher now. You’ve taught me well, Jack Jupiter.”

  I smile. As much as I want to believe it, I can’t. Deep down, when someone has a gun pointed in your face or a knife at your neck, no one is tough.

  We hear more gunfire and see the afterimage of the bursts in the night air. I see a man in Butch Hazard’s so
ldier’s camouflaged outfit. Three regular people are on him. I can tell they're regular people by the way their clothes hang off of their wiry and emaciated bodies. You’d think this soldier could take them, AR15 and all, but he doesn’t. The Edenites are on him like zombies on us, except they don’t eat him. Instead, they just stomp him, grab his rifle, club him with it over and over again. I don’t see the blood flying, but I swear I hear it pattering the concrete, even from all the way back here.

  It’s gruesome. Demented. I’d almost prefer to watch a horde of zombies on him instead. At least the zombies don’t know right from wrong.

  Almost.

  The urge to get out of here intensifies.

  Abby opens the door to the dungeon, snapping us all out of this trance we must’ve been in. The door squeaks its rusty hinges, and next thing I know we are plunging into total darkness, me in the lead. As I walk, I keep thinking to myself this is where Spike did his fucked up experiments on zombies. There’s probably an entire horde down here.

  There’s an iron door a little ways down a corridor. The window is blacked out with electrical tape. NO ENTRY is scrawled on the metal with red paint. I put my hand up to the rest of the group trailing behind me. “I’ll check it out,” I whisper.

  I go down the hall and grab the handle. For what seems like the millionth time in my life, I am met with a gun to my face.

  Except it’s exactly the gun I’m looking for.

  “Jacky!” Herb says. He lowers the pistol, and grabs me, squeezing me with all his strength — which is a lot, trust me. “Jacky! It worked! It worked! I heard them saying the mean old Mr. Spike was dead, but I didn’t believe it.”

  My words are choked out of me. “Herb, p-p-please let me go.”

  His eyes go wide. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just so excited to see you, Jacky!”

  I rub at my ribs. “Norm, Darlene, and Abby are outside,” I say, pointing to the door.

  “They are?” He smiles like a kid on Christmas morning. “Tell them to come in! Guys come in!” His voice is loud.

  The door cracks. It’s Darlene. She is radiant in the dim light, smiling. “Herb,” she says. “I’m so glad to see you!”

  He runs over to her, hugs her, but this time it’s a little more gently than when he hugged me. He does the same to Abby, but Norm, he backs off, recognizing his injuries.

  “Where’d you get a gun, Herb?” Darlene asks.

  He looks down at the pistol, which is probably huge in my hands but looks like a water pistol in his, like it’s a slithering snake. “Doc Klein gave it to me. He came and busted me out of that nasty prison cell. He hurt the guard real bad. Not killed him just beat him up and he said to me, ‘Herb, things are going to get very bad. I am leaving to D.C. Spike is gone and that may be good, but now we are weak. If we don’t get out, the Carny’s are going to get us. I’m going to do some good in this world. You can come with me. Time is short. Do you understand, Herbert?’ I nodded my head real slow. I understood, all right. I understood real well. But I said no, I was gonna come look for Jacky and you, Darlene. All of you. You’re my friends.”

  Darlene pats him on his arm, and he smiles again.

  “When I told Doc Klein that I was gonna go out there and look for you and he said, ‘God bless’ just like my auntie used to before every meal — ‘Dear lord God Jesus, bless us. Bless this food,’ but me and the Doc weren’t eating. No, we wasn’t. Then I heard the guns and smelled the fire and came back and hid in the dungeon because I was scared…” he looks down at his feet. “Real scared. Said I’d go out there when I didn’t hear it no more.”

  “Well I’m glad you stayed put, Herb,” I say. “We’re all here. A little beat up but here, and now we can get the h-e-double hockey sticks outta here!”

  The momentary sadness passes and he beams again. “I knew we’d find each other, Jacky! I just knew it!”

  “Guys,” Abby says from somewhere across the room. I can barely see her shrouded in the shadows. “Guys, we hit the jackpot.”

  I hobble over there, Darlene, Herb, and Norm in Herb’s arms following me. Abby stands in front of a large supply closet, stacked with medicines: Oxycodone, prednisone, Moxifloxacine, Diazepam. There’s jugs of purified water. Boxes of food. Bandages. First-aid kits. You name it.

  “Grab it all,” I say, knowing we have a long road ahead of us. “Everyone grab as much as we can and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Herb claps a hand over his mouth. “Aw, Jack said a bad word!”

  I just shake my head, smiling.

  In a warehouse not far from the lab, are rows and rows of cars. Most of them have been stripped for parts, and others have been taken and driven by the smarter of the Edenites — I know this because of the car sized hole in the fallen garage door and the skid marks on the gray floor.

  When I see the warehouse and how ransacked it looks, I almost lose hope. There is not much choice left, but the flames are getting hotter and soon, if we don’t get the hell out of here, we are going to burn.

  Herb points to a minivan sitting on two flats. The body is rusty, it’s baby blue paint peeling and flaky, but it’s big and roomy.

  “Where are the keys?” I ask.

  “Gonna need them,” Norm says, then he wheezes a burst of painful laughter. Back in the lab, he downed a bottle of ibuprofen and took some other pain pill I couldn’t even pronounce. And there’s one thing I know about drugs you can’t pronounce: They usually have the trippiest side-effects.

  More gunfire rips through the air in the middle of the abandoned amusement park, but it’s far off, muted by distance.

  “Keys are in there,” Herb says. He points to a metal box on the wall. Its cover already hangs open. The keys inside of it sway back and forth as if a ghostly breeze is in the warehouse. “I’ll go get ‘em. Number 19,” he says, pointing to the 19 written in white paint on the corner of the windshield.

  “That’s if they’re still in there,” I say under my breath.

  Abby hears me and chuckles. “Nobody wanted that piece of shit,” she says, smiling. It looks foreign on her swollen face.

  Herb comes back beaming like always, the tiny keys dangling from his oversized pinky.

  “Wanna drive?” I ask.

  The smile vanishes. “I-I never drove before. Not since my auntie — ”

  “Herb, it’s all right,” Norm says. “I’ll help you. Just none of us are fit to drive right now. You gotta help us out a little while longer.”

  “Yeah,” Darlene says, “You’re our hero, Herb.”

  He smiles again. “I’ll do my best.”

  As he walks by me, I clap him on the back.

  We load up the van, file in, and buckle our seat belts. The van’s engine sputters for the first couple turns, but roars to life on the third try. It is the charm, I guess.

  Herb guns it out of the warehouse, the flat rubber slap-slapping on the desolate and destroyed streets of the abandoned amusement park.

  By the time we pull through Eden’s broken gates, our headlights washing over stooped and starving — yet otherwise happy — former citizens, the flames have begun to paint the sky with their orange glow. Part of the roller coaster whines, creaks, then falls over. It’s chaos. Maelstrom. Another version of The End.

  No one tries to stop us. No one jumps on the car. Most of them have weapons, probably having broken into one of the various lockups. But no one shoots at us, either.

  Herb drives. He hasn’t driven in years. Norm in the front seat, guiding him, telling him when to brake and when to speed up. It’s just how you’d imagine a worried father teaching his son to drive. But Herb does fine.

  “Herb, how would you like to go to D.C., and see your friend Doctor Klein?” I ask.

  His eyes get huge in the rearview mirror. “Would I?” he shouts, then sighs, shaking his head. “But I don’t know how to get there.”

  “Don’t worry, Herb, we’ll find our way,” I say.

  He smiles, nods at me, and focuses on the open
road.

  Abby, Darlene, and I are in the backseat. The trunk is stuffed full of medicinal supplies, non-perishable foods, and as many stray weapons as we could find. We are set for the foreseeable future.

  I glance up at the dashboard and see the gas tank is half-full, not half-empty — that’s just the kind of guy I am right now.

  We are heading north to find Doctor Klein, to save the world. We can do it. I know we can.

  As the trees go by in a dark blur and the distance between us and Eden grows, I hear Darlene’s soft snores. Not long after her snores taper off, I fall into the blackness of sleep. And I dream of our wedding again, but this time it’s not gruesome. The only people in attendance are the ones I care about: Norm, Abby, Herb, and my future wife.

  We kiss when the priest tells us to kiss, long and deep. I wake up shortly after, and I kiss her for real. It’s beautiful, and in a world full of death, it’s life.

  Want to find out how the zombie apocalypse ends the world? Sign up for Flint Maxwell’s mailing list and receive your free copy of Test Subject 001!

  * * *

  Get Your FREE Story Right Here!

  * * *

  Want the next book in the series?

  * * *

  Jack Zombie #3, Dead Nation, should be released in April 2017. Click the link above to be the first to know when it releases!

  * * *

  Please consider leaving a review on Amazon. Reviews help awesome readers like yourself find books. Thank you!

  * * *

  *Read on for a preview of Book 3!

  Dead Nation Preview

  * * *

  Chapter 1-