Zombie Attack! Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Devan Sagliani

  “You can use the bedroom next to the one Xander slept in,” Felicity said. “That way you will be close to each other.”

  “Does it have a bathroom in it?” I asked.

  “Yours does,” she said. “Why?”

  “I think I broke the one in here,” I said, turning to Benji. “Don’t go in there.”

  “Good night,” he said, standing up. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  “I think I’m going to call it a night as well,” Jackson said.

  “You feeling okay?” Felicity asked with a note of fresh concern in her voice.

  “Better than okay,” he said with a sad smile. “I’d say this is the best I’ve felt in years and I have you all to thank for it.”

  “Thank you so much for letting us stay here,” I said, trying to show my appreciation. “It was very kind of you.”

  “It’s not a problem. In a lot of ways I was waiting for you. Now I can finally relax knowing that she will be taken care of if anything happens to me.”

  “You’re really sick then?”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you, Jax,” Felicity said fiercely. “You are going to be fine.”

  “In more ways than I can explain,” he said to me, ignoring her. He put his hand on my shoulder and stared into my eyes. “Take whatever you want. I mean it. I have more than I will ever need. I have been very blessed in this life. I never understood that before. I wasted so much time on so many useless things in this forgettable world. I wish I could do it all over again.”

  “You’ve brought a lot of happiness to people all over the world with your music,” I said, and I meant it. “Kids like Benji. You have a wonderful gift.”

  “They never tell you that it comes with a curse,” he said cryptically. “It was nice to meet you.” He walked over and kissed Felicity on the head. A single tear escaped from her eye and rolled down her cheek, just like the way Demi Moore soundlessly cried in movies.

  “Sweet dreams, angel,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

  He turned and walked out of the room, back down the long dark hallway full of awards and honors, disappearing out of sight.

  “I guess that just leaves you and me,” I said. “You feeling tired?” She shook her head no. She seemed to lose all interest in her fajitas. “Me neither. Must have been the nap. What do you want to do now?”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said in a voice just above a whisper.

  “Do what?”

  “Act like everything is okay. I know the bathroom isn’t broken. You figured out what’s wrong with Jax. Admit it.”

  “I guess I did,” I said. “The trash can was full of used needles and bloody cotton balls. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together with that kind of evidence. You want to talk about it?”

  “It’s not his fault,” she said. “Drugs are a big part of the music industry.”

  “You mean like they are in Hollywood?” I didn’t know if I was stepping over the line. I hoped I didn’t sound condescending.

  “Exactly. So now you know why I am here. I came here to try to help him get clean, before the zombies took over the whole world.”

  “Why didn’t he just go to rehab?”

  “He did,” she said, letting out a big sigh. “We met in rehab, actually. In Malibu.”

  “I don’t remember you going to rehab,” I said. “What were you addicted to, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “It’s fine. I was taking prescription pills. A lot of them. It started out as a way to get through long days on the set, but before I knew it I was taking something every hour just to get by. I had several doctors giving me almost anything I asked for. I’m lucky I didn’t end up like Michael Jackson.”

  “Isn’t that the kind of thing the tabloids would have a field day with? Under-age actress checking into Betty Ford?”

  “My agent worked hard to keep it out of the news,” Felicity said. “She told everyone that I was suffering from exhaustion. We canceled the Disney movie I was supposed to be shooting in Fiji. She threatened to sue anyone who let it out. They wanted me to go on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. My mom wouldn’t have it. She said I needed to be away from the cameras, that they were part of my disease. She was right. I checked into the in-patient rehab program and stayed there without television or computer or any contact with the outside world for thirty days.”

  “That doesn’t seem so long,” I said.

  “It felt like an eternity,” she confessed.

  “Were all the people there celebrities like you?”

  “No. That’s what made it so hard. Most of them were just rich kids with drug problems caused by boredom and privilege. There were a few housewives, a CEO who snapped under the pressure and started shooting junk, and a horror author strung out on speedballs.”

  “Anyone I would know?”

  “Probably.” She shrugged. “I know it doesn’t really matter now but I don’t feel comfortable naming him.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. Force of habit. Go on.”

  “Jackson was the only other famous person there,” she said. “The others didn’t treat us all that well, to be honest. They were pretty nasty. Detoxing off drugs can really bring out the worst in you.”

  “What would they do?”

  “They’d throw stuff in my face when we were holding outside sessions,” she explained. “Stuff they’d read in a magazine about my father dating girls my age, or about my little sister’s death. They’d talk about my mother and call me names, or quote lines from movies I’d been in. It got really bad. At one point I honestly wanted to kill myself.”

  “That’s awful,” I said.

  “It really was,” she agreed. “Jackson was the only person who treated me well. We’d sit up all night talking, just like this sometimes. He even threatened to hurt a guy who made sexual advances toward me. He was like my guardian angel.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “His drug of choice is heroin.”

  She nodded. “He was doing one of those huge concert tours across America. This was before he was famous. Seven big name bands touring together. A different city every night. He was filling in for another guy who had overdosed and almost died. You’d think the band would have learned its lesson. Instead, the bassist introduced Jax to the needle just so he’d have another buddy to party with on the road. By the time he got home he was totally strung out.”

  “So he checked into rehab?”

  “Eventually,” she said. “He was court ordered into it after an incident down on Skid Row where he almost died trying to shake down a dealer for more dope. The guy stabbed him and left him in the gutter. Missed his kidney by about a half an inch or he would have been a goner.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I never knew.”

  “It’s not a story he usually tells. He claims he lay there almost bleeding to death for a long time. He doesn’t remember much except waking up in an ambulance, handcuffed to a gurney. He swears he saw my face floating above him, but I think he just says that to make me laugh. He’s a performer at heart. He’s always on, you know?”

  “You got clean. So why couldn’t he?”

  “I had a great support system,” she said. “People talk all this trash about my mom pushing me into Hollywood, but she’s been really great. They forget that she was a single mom with no help from my dad, trying to give me and my sister a good life. I begged her to try out for commercials when I was a kid. She didn’t push me in any way. If it were up to her, I would have stayed in school like a normal kid.”

  “The tabloids really make it seem the other way,” I agreed.

  “After I got out of rehab, no one would hire me,” she said. “They said I was an insurance risk, like I was going to eat a bottle of Tylenol in my trailer and overdose. There were some dark times when it looked like my career was over. I mean, one day I was starring in a movie with Johnny Depp and the next I was washed up.”

  “I thought you said no one knew you went to rehab
?”

  “The media might not have known,” she said with a twisted grin, “but the studios have better people working for them. These aren’t TMZ rejects. We’re talking former police detectives and private investigators. They knew even before I checked in. When you’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie, you don’t want any risks.”

  “Is that how you ended up on reality television?”

  “Pretty much,” she admitted. “My agent had several offers from unscripted shows and low budget horror movies. Star Dancing was the only one on prime time on a major network. It was supposed to be my comeback vehicle, but we all know how that turned out.”

  I nodded. It was just when the zombie outbreak was taking off in California. Most people still thought it was only something that affected homeless people and the perpetually poor. Star Dancing was being filmed in Hollywood. Seven couples were matched up. Sports heroes from basketball and football were paired with famous writers and celebrity chefs and political pundits and movie starlets. An all-star panel of celebrity judges weighed in every week. These included a famous choreographer who had worked with Janet Jackson, as well as the stereotypical nasty celebrity with the English accent who never liked anyone.

  Ewan Crowley had earned his success working with the Royal Ballet. He was both feared and loved by American audiences for his vicious attacks on the shows performers, as well as his cunning word play. It was almost impossible to earn a compliment from him. As the season wore on, his behavior grew increasingly erratic, driving ratings through the roof in the process. One week he brought a linebacker to tears with his razor sharp tirade. The next week, he scolded a national news anchor for her choice in wardrobe. Rumor was the studio executives were constantly receiving complaints about him and threats of lawsuits. He was single-handedly responsible for their ratings spike and he knew it.

  So when in the final month of the contest he walked on stage during the middle of Felicity Jane’s tango performance with her partner, famous opera singer Mario Antonio Puccetti, everyone thought he was just pulling another of his stunts. That was until he severely bit Mario in the neck on live television. The video went viral overnight. Millions of people saw it, people who would never watch a show like that in the first place. A month later Z-Day was announced and shortly thereafter the internet went down.

  “So you stayed in touch with Jackson after you got out?” I said, trying to change the subject. Her eyes had glossed over with the dark memory of her televised catastrophe.

  “I did,” she said. “Like I told you, he was a big brother to me. He was living in Studio City, working on his own album. That’s all he did those days—just record tracks and go to meetings. I was nearby, just over the hill, so we’d go to meetings together. He got signed from those early recordings and went on to make his album.”

  One of the most celebrated albums of all time, I remembered. In under a year, Ever Rest’s first album was bigger than Appetite for Destruction. Growing up, there wasn’t a kid on my block that didn’t know the lyrics to every song. We even memorized the music video and tried to recreate it at home while listening to him.

  “The song Calamity Jane is actually about me,” she said with some embarrassment.

  “Wow,” I replied. I was kinda at a loss for words. It was hard to imagine being part of something so massive. “So how did he end up back on drugs then? I mean, it sounds like he was doing so well without them.”

  “He’s an addict.” She sighed. “Like I said, it’s a big part of the rock and roll lifestyle. There are only so many times you can turn down drugs before that little voice in the back of your head tells you that you can get away with partying just a little bit. That’s all it takes; just once and you are hooked again.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. I couldn’t relate like she could. I didn’t really understand what drove people to put poison in their bodies that would kill them. Maybe it was because I had this great family life with my dad and Moto. Maybe Jackson didn’t have that kind of constant reassurance. It just seemed nuts to throw away all the good fortune and talent he was given on getting wasted.

  “I think he did it because he was lonely,” she said wistfully. “Out on the road all the time, no support system, no one to really love you. It takes its toll for sure. When he got back, he called me and confessed everything. He said he had a stash up here and that he was trying to wean himself off.”

  “Why didn’t he just go back to rehab?” I asked. “It worked once. Wouldn’t it work again?”

  “He thought he could do it on his own,” she said. “He was embarrassed. He had a real hard time admitting it to me. A lot of guilt and shame goes along with being an addict. It’s hard to understand if you’ve never had this kind of problem. People just think, well why doesn’t he stop using? It’s not that simple. His body is so used to the chemicals he’s been putting into his system that if he were to just go cold turkey, there’s a good chance he would die.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “I’ve always wondered.”

  “Most people don’t realize,” she said. “Plus it’s painful. His body wants more and more and he is giving it less. That’s why he’s so sick. He was supposed to be stepping down, but then Z-Day happened and it’s not like he can just go to his dealer. He’s been using more than he’s supposed to be using, hiding it from me, and now he’s almost out.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” I said, feeling bad now that she had to explain all this to me.

  “No,” she said. “You didn’t pry. I offered. It feels good to be able to talk about this with someone. I am glad you are here.”

  “Me too.”

  “You wanna take a walk outside?”

  “Is that really safe?”

  “It has been,” she said. “Usually I just stay on the patio and look out at the ocean. It’s really pretty with the light from the moon hitting the water as the waves roll in.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said, standing up.

  We walked outside and sat on the patio. The moon was almost all the way full. It was huge and white, putting off a soft light illuminating everything below. Looking out over the ocean I saw what looked like a man jogging along the water’s edge. There didn’t appear to be anyone chasing him.

  “What’s that?” I said, pointing at him.

  “I’ve seen him down there before,” Felicity said. “Just jogging along like nothing ever happened.”

  “Maybe that’s his way of trying to get back a piece of his old life.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  Without saying a word, she reached over and took me by the hand. We sat in silence, watching the man disappear from sight in the distance. Being with her felt easy, like being totally at home. I could see why Jackson would want her with him while he battled to get sober.

  “I’m tired now,” she said after a while, standing up and stretching like a cat. “Time to go to sleep.”

  I got up and we walked back inside, locking the door behind us.

  “Thanks for listening.”

  “No problem.” I shrugged.

  She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, walking down the hall.

  I stood rooted in place for a moment, distracted by her unexpected display of affection. Slowly, I forced myself to head back down to my guest room. I locked the door and sat on the bed, daydreaming about possibilities until sleep finally took me under.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I remember having bad dreams all night, but couldn’t remember what they were about for the most part. Maybe it was the “Jamaican” chicken trying to fight its way back out. Maybe it was the feeling of dread that had come over me shortly after I locked myself in for the night. I tossed and turned for a while, trying to fight off a string of nasty thoughts with little success. I thought about my brother dying, about the bodies piled up at the school we visited, about Joel and Tom. No matter how hard I tried, I could not seem to calm my mind. Eventually
the dark emptiness of sleep pulled me under all the way.

  I had a series of overlapping, graphic dreams early in the morning before waking up. They slipped one into the next—like watching several short movies on fast forward as I fought to wake up. The last thing I remembered before getting up was running on the beach with Felicity. We were serenely holding hands while zombies in the distance surfed on huge metal pieces of a jumbo jet they’d pulled apart and taken right out of the sky, mid-flight. That part was kinda like a cool music video.

  Benji was in the dream too, dressed just like a tiny version of Jackson. I was worried about him so I chased him up the beach and back into the house. He locked himself in the guest bathroom, trying to hide. I knocked down the door in time to catch him shooting heroin in his arm.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he told me. “It’s just a little death to even me out.”

  I looked down to where he had put the needle in and saw that the skin around the mark was dying and turning gray. Soon it began to spread up his arm and across his body until he had the same complexion as the walking dead. His eyes turned solid black and he let out a roar as he transformed all the way into a zombie. The last image I remembered was him lunging at me while I stood rooted to the ground in total shock.

  I woke with a start, sweating in spite of the room being cool. The sun was up, and it had to be late. I couldn’t believe I’d actually slept in after tossing and turning all night long.

  Almost immediately my dreams faded away, leaving me grasping to remember what they were. I shook my head to wake up and went out toward the living room. Benji was sitting on the sofa looking completely catatonic. It reminded me of Tom after Joel got shot.

  Man, I thought. That seems like years ago instead of just days. Time is moving way too fast.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer me.

  I heard the toilet flush and Felicity came out of the bathroom. Her eyes were red raw from crying and she still had streaks of makeup on her face. She threw herself into my arms and hugged me, sobbing so hard that her whole body shook.

  “What is going on?” I asked. “Who died?”