Dead Lost

by Flint Maxwell

  The men, women, and children inside are hesitant, looking me up and down. I see in their eyes that they wonder if they can trust me. I understand this, especially considering how I look. But there’s no time to ease them into an escape. It’s now or never. A war is being fought outside. Zombies are running rampant. Guns are going off like fireworks on a Fourth of July night.

  “Go!” I shout, my voice serrated and harsh. “Get out of here. Run as far as you can.”

  A woman steps through first. The others seem to gather around her. She looks to be in her fifties, long, matted brown hair with a touch of gray, harsh wrinkles around her eyes and mouth—a woman who has spent more time out in the sun than anyone should.

  “We can fight,” she says.

  “No,” I reply. “Get out of here. You’re free.” Anger comes up my throat like bile.

  “Monster!” a boy says from behind an older man. Before I turn around, I notice the boy wears a dirty, blood-stained burlap sack.

  The zombie he has pointed out doesn’t get to break the threshold of the barn before I put a single shot between its eyes. It falls back, arms out, yellow eyes dimming to black, the sweet black void of death. Of peace.

  “We are going to fight. There is no denying it,” the woman says. “If you do not have weapons for us, we will take pitchforks and rakes.”

  My mouth is a grim line. I’m resisting the urge to bite my lips into shreds. There is no convincing this woman.

  Listen to her, Jack, Darlene’s voice says. She knows what she’s doing.

  And now I’m really starting to question my sanity. For real this time.

  “Fine,” I say. “Those who can fight, fight, but someone has to lead the children to safety.”

  The man next to the boy in the burlap sack steps forward. As he does, I see his arm is not around the boy because that arm is not there at all. It is missing at the shoulder, a puckered red wound with jagged scars.

  “I will.”

  I nod at him, hoping he sees the admiration in my eyes. Turning back to the woman, I say, “If you can get to that U-Haul, there’s an entire armory inside.” I’m pointing out the other door where the zombies have come from. The front of the U-Haul is barely visible. More guards have come out from the house, relegated to the porch as the thirty or so zombies push forward. I don’t see Lilly. I don’t see Bilbo. This worries me more than I care to admit.

  The woman nods and turns to the rest of the people. “Revenge,” she says.

  The others echo her in a soft voice I can barely hear over the intermittent sounds of gunfire.

  Then, to the man, “Be safe, Bob, and godspeed.”

  He nods and touches the woman lightly on her forearm. “Children, with me,” he says. The five children, ranging from probably eight to thirteen years old gather behind him.

  They begin to stream out. I go through the door, raising a hand as I peek around the corner of the barn. “I’ll cover you,” I say.

  Only a handful of zombies too stupid to find all the action mill about in the yard by the truck. The closest of these is a shirtless man with a bloated right side. He is looking toward the road. His jerky movements remind me of C-3PO from Star Wars. I suck in a harsh breath, aim, and pull the trigger. The gun recoils, but my aim is true—as it almost always is. A small explosion of red on the zombie’s head lets me know I’ve hit my mark. He falls lifelessly to the ground in a bundle of gray skin and twisted bones.

  “Go!” I yell.

  The woman takes off. She moves surprisingly fast for someone of her age. Then again, this is a woman whose most recent years revolve around pulling a tractor that weighs a couple of tons in the beating sun. She’s going to be tough, no doubt about it. Still, I can’t shake the uneasy feeling in my stomach.

  I think it’s because Lilly and Bilbo are nowhere to be found. The farm is big, but it’s mostly flat. I would be able to see them… Unless something bad has happened.

  Here I go caring again. Not good.

  I don’t allow myself to harp on the thought. Mostly because a zombie has caught sight of the few men and women who’ve taken off for the U-Haul. I aim down and shoot. The first two drop dead, clean headshots, but the last one is off. I strike its neck. A fountain of blood pours from the wound. The zombies don’t notice, don’t care.

  I aim again. Can’t let them get too close. One of the men has already noticed it and has slowed down. Fear is doing its age-old trick on this man, freezing him up.

  Just as I’m about to squeeze the trigger, a horse bursts into my field of vision. Lilly is still on his back. Bilbo slices through the scene like a bolt of lightning, barely visible. She clobbers the zombie’s head with the butt of her gun and yanks on Bilbo’s broken reins. He shudders to a stop, rears up on his hind legs. Lilly dismounts quick and slaps him on the rump, then takes cover behind the truck with the freedom fighters. She is breathing hard, but somehow finds the strength to wave the men and women toward the spot where all the weapons are.

  I spin around and check my left. It’s all clear. Bilbo is running in my direction. The guards don’t bother wasting their ammo on a riderless horse, and for that I’m grateful. He slows when he reaches me. I grab him by the reins and guide him behind the barn.

  Now, scanning the horizon, I see the one-armed man with the children. He leads them to the far fence and the trees beyond. They are specks. I just hope no zombies coming from those dense woods spot them while they are there.

  “Bilbo,” I say, my voice loud. The horse’s eyes roll crazily with fear. “Run toward them! Run toward them and help them to safety!” It’s my turn to smack him on the backside. He takes off in the direction of the man and children. Will he make it? I don’t know, and I don’t have time to watch. I have to get Lilly and the others out of this war zone.

  Spinning back around to face the truck, a barrage of gunshots rock it back and forth on its shocks.

  thwap-thwap-thwap

  creak-creak-creak

  The last woman coming out of the back of the truck, clutching a rifle to her chest, is cut down by some of those bullets. She falls face-first, her lower body half-hidden behind the wrong side of the U-Haul. She twitches as the bullets hit her. One of the men yells out, “Claud!” and springs forward to try to grab her, but the older woman in the lead grabs his collar before he can do anything stupid. It hurts my heart to see the pain on his face, to see the tears streaming down his cheeks. I know all too well what it’s like to lose your loved ones.

  But I shake it off. Have to.

  Lilly sees me and points above her head. I follow her finger. She is pointing to the roof. Two men holding long rifles have taken up residence behind the house’s thick chimney. They pop out from behind their cover and blast off a few shots in revolving turns.

  I wait for one, pull the trigger. It’s not a headshot, but it takes him in the chest. He drops his gun; it goes sliding down the shingles, twitching the closer it gets to landing on the grass below, and then the man quickly follows after it. Like he’s diving for dear life.

  He lands no less than three seconds after his rifle does. It’s about a three-story drop, and he’s missed the grass altogether, hitting the concrete walkway to the front porch instead. The sound his head makes as it cracks against the hard surface is satisfying. And a little gross.

  I’m waiting for the other guard to pop out.

  He doesn’t. Not after his partner has been cut down by me.

  Still, the others on the opposite side of the truck are blasting at it, turning the metal into Swiss cheese. They seem to have an unlimited supply of ammo in the house.

  Since the man on the roof is no longer shooting, I see this is my chance to regroup with Lilly.

  Running as fast as I have in a long time, I get there just before the man on the roof musters up the courage to shoot. A barrage of bullets chase after me, spraying chunks of grass and clumps of dirt in my wake.

  “Thought you were gonna cower over there all day,” Lilly says. I can’t tell if
she’s joking.

  “Hardly,” I reply. “We gotta take those people on the porch before they decide it’s a good idea to surround us.”

  “We’re pinned down,” the older woman says. The others—three men and two women of varying states of malnutrition and sickness—aren’t talking, just looking back and forth to one and another in utter terror.

  I nod at her. Yeah, we’re pinned down, but this isn’t anything new to me. I’ve been pinned down before, had my back against the wall, no way out, all that bullshit, and somehow always managed to get myself out of it. Right now is no different.

  “Grenades,” I say. “There’s a box of grenades in the truck.”

  Before Lilly can ask what the hell I’m going to do with the grenades—Blow us all to hell?—I turn toward the back of the truck and I take off, hoping for Darlene or Junior’s voice to help get me through this. Needing their voices.

  21

  Shots follow me the entire three steps it takes to slip into the back. I have to avoid the corpse of the woman named Claud. Even in my haste, I note the lifeless expression in her eyes, the long rivulet of blood that flows from her nostril and the corner of her mouth.

  Death.

  All around us.

  The zing accompanied by the heat of one of the shots in my direction almost throws me off balance. A step to the right and I’d be sporting a fresh bullet hole in my throat, lying right next to Claud.

  Inside the back, I army crawl toward the stacked crates. Shots riddle the metal, dinging. Each one is just inches away from me. Dying sunlight streams through the holes. I slide one of the racks the assault rifles hang on between me and them. The rack thunders against my side whenever a stray bullet catches it. The pain in my ribs causes me to suck in sharp breaths through my gritted teeth, but it beats the hell out of getting shot.

  Once I reach the crates, I wait for a lull in the gunfire before I even attempt to grab a handful of grenades. I mean, it has to stop sometime, right? They have to reload. No endless clips in this wasteland.

  Sure enough, the moment comes. I strike the open box fast. Splinters dig into my flesh, but it beats the hell out of bullets digging into me. I grab a grenade then dive back to the metal floor, landing with a bone-jolting crash. On my way out, I don’t take my time. I’m practically sprinting on my hands and knees—if that’s at all possible.

  As soon as I fall out of the back, I hear a snippet of conversation over the gunfire from one of the men, “—never make it,” he says.

  I drop to the grass and slide around the side, squatting next to them by the U-Haul’s large tires. “Never make it?” I bring one of the grenades up to eye level and pull the pin. This isn’t the first time I’ve handled grenades—there was a time in Washington DC I had to pull the pin on one of these suckers to get out of a sticky situation.

  They all look at me with sheer and complete terror, as if I just cut the wrong wire while disarming some sort of bomb.

  I stand up, not afraid to get shot. The sudden urge to get rid of this thing in my hand is overwhelming. So I do.

  For what seems like a long moment—but can’t be any more than a second—the shooting stops. All is quiet on this farm, the zombies are not even snarling or dragging their dead limbs behind them like the trains of wedding dresses.

  Then—

  An explosion that I’ve not heard in a long time. The truck rocks with the force of it. For a second, I think it’s going to fall over. Men scream only to have their yells cut short by fire and rage. The heat of the blast singes me through my pant legs, at my exposed ankles near the space beneath the U-Haul.

  Then—

  All is quiet again except for the ringing in our ears. I am struck by the horror of what could’ve occurred had Doc Klein been successful and carried out Central’s plan. On a much, much larger scale.

  “Nice throw,” Lilly is saying, her voice muted.

  “Thanks.”

  The aftermath of the explosion comes after my reply. The weary and pained voices of Bandit’s guards, the sounds of jaws working and teeth gnashing into flesh, the greedy slurps, lapping tongues.

  “Okay,” I say to the rest of the group, but they don’t look like they’re hearing me. They look lost in their own horror, the battle-shocked faces of soldiers. “Let’s clean this place up.”

  I roll off the truck and am not surprised to see both Lilly and the leader of the freed people on my right and left.

  Smoke hangs low over the front yard and the porch, which has caved in, one pillar completely blown away. It came down on two or three of the guards. All that is visible of them are their boots, like three Wicked Witches crushed beneath Dorothy’s house in Munchkin Country. Other guards were ripped apart by the explosion. Here, is a man huddled in the fetal position, a large wooden stake sticking through his gut and out his back. There, is a younger man face-down on the charred walkway, his body ripped in half, the intestines and vital organs hanging below his ripped and burned shirt like blood-red hoses, his legs are elsewhere, by the low bushes beneath what’s left of the porch, which are currently burning. Two zombies have a tug-of-war with these legs for a moment as Lilly, the woman, and I are dumbstruck with terror and disgust, then they decide to just dig in, each ripping away the flesh as easily as if the skin were made of wrapping paper.

  Lilly has a hand over her mouth. I don’t know if she is about to scream or vomit.

  At the end of the walk is Paul’s body. Four zombies are feasting on him. They have ripped a large cavernous hole in his midsection. One of these zombies is currently on fire, not giving a shit about it, not feeling any pain. The other zombies are soaked in his blood.

  I didn’t like Paul and had even killed him, but no man deserves this fate. I raise the rifle and let off four shots. Each one takes a zombie in the head. The burning one falls back and smolders in the grass after a moment.

  Lilly jumps at the sounds of the shots.

  Of course, there are other zombies feasting as well. It seems there are more than there was in the barn, like they’ve been drawn to the farm by the chaos and sounds of war.

  The woman turns to me and says, “They’ll be more men inside. Bandit doesn’t fight unless he has to.”

  “For a guy named Bandit, he sounds like a pussy,” Lilly says.

  The woman nods. “Of the worst sorts.”

  “I’m Lilly, by the way.” She sticks her hand out to the woman. For a moment, the woman just stares at it as if she doesn’t know what the hell Lilly is doing, like handshaking is some alien concept.

  Finally, she takes the hand and shakes it. It’s awkward. “I’m Suzanna. My friends used to call me Suze. Now, no one calls me anything. It seems I have almost forgotten my birth name.”

  “Jack,” I say, then it’s my turn to shake her hand. And yes, it’s quite awkward, like holding a deboned fish. “I don’t mean to sound like a dick—”

  Lilly cuts me off. “Not an easy feat for you.”

  Real funny, Lilly, but I’m not in a joking mood. Haven’t been for two years. I glare at her and continue. “But I think it’s better if we get to know each other after we clear this place full of rotters and District guards.”

  Suzanna nods and turns forward to face the battlefield. The others, I see, are sheepishly sticking their heads out from around the truck, their own guns held high. I hope none of their fingers are on the triggers because the slightest thing seems like it’ll make them jump. Getting a bullet in my ass is not at the top of my priority list at this moment. Or ever.

  I don’t lead the way so much as the other women are keeping pace with me. At the foot of the steps, in the burning bushes, a weak voice begs for death. “Kill me. Kill meeee.” His face is a bloody mess, teardrops of red run down his cheeks.

  I give this man what he wants, pulling the trigger and ending his suffering. Better than what he deserves.

  Lilly and Suzanna break off. Lilly takes out the shambling zombies with a few pops of her rifle, shots I hardly hear or notice anym
ore; while Suzanna and the others club those zombies who are feasting on the dead.

  We regroup at the steps. I nod toward the house and direct Suzanna and the others to surround it. Suzanna nods, bloodlust in her eyes. She wants this man named Bandit to suffer. I don’t blame her. After directing the men and women to their spots, she comes up behind me.

  “I’m coming in,” she says.

  I shake my head. “It’s not safe.”

  “Don’t tell me what’s safe and what isn’t. This man and his followers have tortured me—us—for longer than I know. I will see his blood spilt if it’s the last thing I do.” Once she stops talking, her breathing revs up in intensity, nostrils flaring, chest rising and falling rapidly. She means business. I can see this in her eyes just as well as I can see the bloodlust. Who am I to deny her of this? Something tells me she wouldn’t listen regardless.

  I step aside and sweep my hand out. “I’ll be honored to follow you,” I say as I reach into my cloak and pull out a fresh clip, ejecting the nearly empty one. I put this one in my pocket now. You never know when you’ll need more bullets—just one can separate you from life and death. This is not a Norm-ism as you might think it is; this is something I’ve picked up on my own journeys, from my own experience.

  She nods and heads up the steps. The porch creaks beneath our weight. For a moment, I think it’s going to cave inward and the road will end here. We’ll be buried beneath the hot rubble like the soldiers to my right. And would that be so bad? Certainly better than going out by way of zombie. It doesn’t happen, though. We keep going.

  Inside of the house, it is fairly normal once you get past the stars of glass on the rug and the few limbs that have made their way through these broken windows.

  “Split up,” I say, pointing Lilly to the left, Suzanna to the right, and me up the stairs.

  As I take the bottom step, I hear Lilly scream. A gun goes off and my heart freezes in my chest upon hearing it. Luckily, nothing else freezes. I spin around and see a large, hulking man—who would put both my old friends Herb and Kevin (the professional bodybuilder) to shame—run over Lilly like a running back. She takes most of the hit on the shoulder. It spins her in a circle before she crashes to the carpet, glass crunching beneath her body. This angers me more than I care to admit. My own bloodlust burns in my eyes. I feel it smoldering. I raise my gun and let a burst of shots loose, but the man known as Bandit is too fast. He disappears through the doorway, not bothering to throw it open. Instead, he goes through the wood. Shards spray in all directions. A cloud of saw dust masks his escape.