Most of the car is scattered across the highway. Doctor Klein is nowhere to be found. Herb gets out of the van — the passenger’s side — and moves slowly across the road, about twenty feet from the blinking taillights. None of us say a word. I look from Darlene to Abby to Norm and they are all staring directly at the wreck.
This is not good. Not good at all.
We’ve been traveling for approximately four days up I-95, heading to Washington D.C., or at least hoping to find any signs of life — Doctor Klein or otherwise. This is not the sign I wanted. Our trip has not been smooth in the first place, much like most things after The End haven’t been smooth. One plus is no traffic, but a downside is the abandoned cars littered all over the roads. We have to keep bobbing and weaving through them, sometimes even going into the soft earth to get around. Each time we do that Darlene closes her eyes and starts praying we don’t get stuck. We haven’t yet. Thank God.
“I told you,” Norm says. “I freaking told you.”
His wounds have already begun to heal. Now the bruises on his body and face and under his eyes are a faint blue instead of red and black and puffy, but he has a lisp when he talks. Any time he says an ’S’ word — no, not meaning ’S’ word as in shit, though he does say that more than most people — there’s a faint whistle from between his cracked teeth.
“Guys,” Herb says. “Guys?”
“I told you as soon as we saw that pathway we should’ve turned around,” Norm says.
“Guys? Guys? I’m scared,” Herb continues.
Abby punches me in the arm. “Yeah, damn it, Jack! I don’t want to have to fight for my life again.”
“Don’t hit him,” Darlene says.
My mind is whirling. If we’re any louder, the whole dead state will start rushing at us. I don’t know what’s happened and neither do they. The world has ended and that sucks, but time to move on and quit being so pessimistic about everything. I survived Woodhaven, got out of there alive with my fiancé and my brother, then we survived Eden, got out pretty beaten up but otherwise whole. It’s time to stop being downers.
“Enough!” I shout. “Everybody calm down!”
“Calm down?” Abby asks. “Calm down?”
I turn to her. She’s frowning at me, her hair in a wild up-do from sleeping with her head against the window and headrest. “Yes, calm down,” I say.
“Jack — ” Darlene begins.
“No, uh-uh, we gotta quit being so negative.”
“But that’s Doc Klein’s car, Jacky! It is!” Herb says.
“A Honda Civic is a common car, Herb. White is a common color,” Norm says.
He’s bent, looking into our van’s cabin, tears welling up in his eyes. All the while, Norm is shaking his head.
“Just chillax, Herbie,” I say. “Don’t listen to Norm. Norm is a big, old meanie.”
Herb cracks a smile.
“Get back in the car, and Norm and me will go check. But Doctor Klein won’t be in there, I promise you,” I say, all with a honey-coated tone.
Herb nods. “Okay,” he says glumly.
“Norm, c’mon,” I say.
He sighs. “Anything to get me out of this shit-hole. You know this van’s got nothing on Shelly, right?”
Shelly was Norm’s now-ruined Jeep, abandoned outside of Sharon after Abby crashed into a tree and we had to make a run for it. “Yeah, I know. You’ve been saying that since we left Eden.”
“Cuz it’s the truth.”
I roll my eyes, then reach behind the back seat where our cache of weapons we took from Eden is, next to the sleeping bags supplied from a hardware store somewhere in the Carolinas. I grab two pistols and a box of bullets in case things go south.
“Herb, I want you to sit in the front seat and buckle up. Abby, get behind the wheel. If anything goes wrong, and I mean anything, I want you to throw it in reverse and get the fuck out of here, okay?” I say, whispering due to Herb’s aversion to swear words.
Abby nods. “Okay, but nothing is going to happen.” She leans closer, her voice low, “The poor bastard’s dead. Look at that wreck. No-one could survive from that.”
“Maybe he’s out in the woods somewhere hurt, you know?” Darlene says.
I picture the doctor lying under a tree, bloody, his legs broken, and how that would be such a sad and ironic way to go out. A doctor who can’t treat himself. I shake my head and the image goes.
“You comin?” Norm asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
Darlene grabs my face before I crawl out and kisses me. “For good luck,” she says.
I grin. “Won’t need it.”
“Geez, we need to get you two a couple of chastity belts,” Norm says once I shut the door.
I feign like I’m going to hit him and he stumbles backward, horror on his face. The wounds might be healing, but they still hurt.
When he realizes I’m not going to hit him, he snarls.
I just smile and say, “Two for flinching.” Then hand him the pistol.
“Whatever, man,” he says. “Be serious for a minute.”
I scoff. “Like you’re one to talk.”
We walk on. Gotta love that brotherly camaraderie.
The Honda Civic is pretty much unrecognizable. I wouldn’t have known the make and model had the trunk not still been intact, where a scraped H and CIVIC written in chrome shines in the hazy early afternoon light.
Glass crunches beneath our feet as we get closer. I find it getting harder and harder to breathe. Mainly, because there’s a chance that whoever was in this car was Doctor Klein and an even bigger chance that if he — or anyone, for that matter — was in the car, they’d be dead. Without Doc Klein, this man who has become a fabled legend to me over the past few days, I really don’t know what our next move is. We can keep driving around, weaving in and out of dead cars, trying to find our next meal, our next roof over our head, avoiding zombies and crazy cowboys. I don’t want that. I want stability. I want the old world back. With Doctor Klein, I think we can make that happen. I don’t know why I feel that way with all I have to go on being Herb’s love for the guy. Crazy? Maybe, but hope is what keeps up going. And with Doctor Klein there is hope.
“Look,” Norm says, pointing to the driver side door, which hangs off the car like a broken wing.
I close my eyes and bow my head. Quickly, I stand straight. I know they’re all watching me from the car. The moment I look dejected is the moment they lose hope. So I bend down and brush something off of my boot, readjust my pant leg, and act like Norm hasn’t just pointed to a set of bloody hand prints in the road or the dripping red liquid pooling into the door’s inside cup holder.
Someone is in there, all right.
Norm’s pace picks up, but when that happens he starts limping. I follow after him, my own limp showing slightly.
I hear the car door open behind me followed by Herb’s voice. “Is he okay, Jacky?”
I turn around and shout back, “I’ll let you know in a minute, Herb. Might not even be him.”
Abby tugs him back into the van.
Poor guy, if this does turn out to be Doc Klein then I don’t know how he will take it. I hate to see him upset, but what can I do? He just doesn’t get the brutality of this world now. He thinks there’s still good in people. There might be. But with most of the world dead, eaten, or walking around as zombies, the chances of stumbling across a group of good people are slim. I learned that the hard way back at Eden.
We all did.
“Shit,” Norm says. His voice is loud enough for them to hear back at the van. I cringe thinking of Herb’s heart breaking. “Little bro,” Norm says, this time quieter, “this ain’t good.”
And he shakily raises his gun.
AFTERWORD
None of this would’ve been possible without the support of my family, friends, editors, ARC readers, and fans who send me encouraging emails and Facebook notes from time to time. Thank you so much to all of you.
I’ve been
writing for a few years, now, and I’m so glad I kept going. I’ve never really been sure about what I wanted to do in life, and I’m still not entirely sure. But I do know that I’ll write for the rest of my life, whether I’m paid or not . So, my one piece of advice may be a little clichéd, but it’s tried and true.
Never give up. Be who you want to be and kick ass. And good things will happen.
Now, for those who are interested, here’s more information about the book and where the series is going.
Dead Hope was a lot more fun to write than Dead Haven, mainly because Haven was so personal. The town was based on my own hometown which I’ve mentioned before, and sometimes, there’s nothing you want more in life than to get out of that wretched place. So in Hope that’s exactly what I did. Made it all up. Though I’ve been to Florida, I’ve never had to deal with psychopathic cowboy impersonators, nor zombies…yet.
This book is what the apocalypse, in my eyes, is all about. Desolate world. Humans on their last threads of sanity. People who are a lot more dangerous than the monsters all around us. Yes, this book was fun. And so far book three is shaping up to be even more fun. Jack is on a rescue mission, and not to some small, hillbilly town. Nope, he’s in D.C., our nation’s capital — and if you think D.C. is bad these days, think how bad a zombie apocalypse would make it then times it by a hundred because that’s what I’m going for. I’m almost done with it as of this writing. I can’t wait to share it with you.
* * *
Thanks for reading,
F. M.
March 16, 2017
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Flint lives in the United States of America in a very cold and sometimes snowy state where the sports teams are consistently disappointing and the skies are never sunny. He loves zombies, anything post-apocalyptic, Stephen King, Star Wars, and sometimes a good love story. Not necessarily in that order.
* * *
Get in touch with Flint at:
* * *
Flint’s Author Page
or
Flint’s Facebook
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Free Story
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Read On
Book 3 Preview
Afterword
About the Author
Jack Zombie (Book 2): Dead Hope Page 21