“You shot him!” Abby screams. “You monster, you shot him!”
Pat scrambles away from Isaiah.
I hold the dying man’s head in my arms. I’ve just met the guy, but this hurts. I think of his kid in California, of all things he’s going to miss. Again, this should be me, and that thought wrenches my heart.
Isaiah smiles, blood lining the teeth. “I deserve this, I guess,” he says. “All them people I shot and killed overseas. I deserve this.” He looks over to Pat who is now inches from toppling off the roof.
“No,” I say to Isaiah, “you don’t. You aren’t going to die.”
He looks at me with a cold calmness in his eyes, then he nods. “Yeah, man. I am.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Pat says. “I was aiming — ”
“For me, yeah, I know,” I say. The bastard. Of course I know this. Save your breath.
My hands find the bullet wound. I press down on it, trying to stop the blood, but there’s so much. It’s seeping between my fingers, warm and sticky.
Isaiah is right, he’s going to die.
“Look!” Miss Fox says. “Look, they’re coming for us!” She shrieks as she points behind me and Isaiah. I risk a glance, and a few of the feasting beasts have turned their dead heads toward the sound of the gunshot.
Suddenly, Isaiah starts to move in my arms. He grunts as he pulls himself up. I want to hold him down, not let him do what I think he’s about to do, but he slips from my grip as if he were made of sand, and I am too stunned.
He stands like one of them, hunched over and bloody, his teeth bared.
“No,” I say. “Isaiah, don’t!”
He takes one look over his shoulders and says, “Get off the roof. Go back home, stay safe, and live, man. Live!”
He plunges into the mob of monsters. A sea of arms takes him. The last part I see before he’s gone are the whites of his eyes.
26
We all stand with our mouths open, hearing the squelching of limbs ripping, of soft screams, of stirring guts.
Abby is the first to make a noise, and it’s the sound of her quiet sobs.
“Well, let’s get the fuck off this roof,” Pat says. “Freddy sacrificed himself for us. Let’s go!”
“How?” Miss Fox asks. “How are we going to get off? Sprout wings and fly away?”
Abby breaks into the conversation. “We can go back through the hatch,” she says, and when she raises her head, I see the gleam of tears in her eyes. At least she’s trying to be strong, I think to myself.
“Won’t work. The whole place is overrun,” Pat says. “I don’t know how many bullets are left, either. I’m a scientist, not a soldier!”
“You shot the soldier!” Abby says.
I hardly hear any of this. There’s a rage pumping through my body, causing my ears to ring. I see a flurry of red at the edges of my vision.
I’ll show you how you can get off the roof. I’ll show you, Pat. We’re all dead anyway, right? The whole fucking world has gone to hell. Right right right?
These thoughts race through my head as my feet pound the rooftop. I’m sprinting in about three steps, coming at Pat like a middle linebacker. I don’t even care if he shoots me. All I want is revenge.
At the last second, he realizes what I’m doing. His eyes explode open, his mouth turns into something resembling an O. My hands are out in front of me, hands that have done no wrong, hands that have only killed people in stories, in video games, but now they’re ready, eager even, to take a real life.
It all happens so fast. My hands crash into his chest. The gun spins out of his grip, whirling and flipping in the air. Faintly, I hear it clatter to the roof, but why is it so faint?
Where is the surface I stand on?
Suddenly, it’s taken out from beneath my feet, and I’m falling.
We’re both falling.
Abby screams, and like the sound of the clattering gun, her screams get more distant the farther we fall. Pat’s face is a distorted mess of pain, his graying hair flies out in waves. He’s still sweaty, the moisture ice-cold. Now both of his hands have gripped me during our shared ride down to the concrete parking lot. And somehow, the bastard manages to smile as we ruffle through the short shrubs. I hear his head clunk. I feel his bones break and shift underneath my own.
I black out. My head goes fuzzy. I see my brother at my mother’s funeral, I see Darlene crying over a woman she only met one time, and I see myself not crying at all until I’m in the
(parking lot)
bushes. I hear laughter and lover’s whispers in the dark. I smell pancakes in the morning, see them on the skillet in the shape of a tiny heart. I hear
(gurgling)
(bubbling)
(snarling)
life and death.
Darlene.
My eyes open. It takes less than a second to snap back to reality.
Pat is still beneath me, but he’s almost not Pat anymore, and in a couple minutes, he’s not going to be anything resembling Pat at all. If I don’t get a move on, I’ll see what the zombies do to him firsthand.
His glazed eyes stare up at me. That same smile I thought I saw on the way down is on his face. He’s no longer breathing, and if he were, he wouldn’t be breathing much longer. His head split down the middle, brains leak out like pink stuffing in a Thanksgiving turkey.
The dead walk toward me with their arms out and their hands frozen into claws by rigor mortis. Rattles escape their throats. It’s only a few of them at first, those close enough to hear the knock of bones on pavement, but their interests peak, and like any creature starving for food, they get excited. Their excitement alerts the others shuffling around the abandoned cars. There are no parking lot lights on. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know the faint moonlight casts eerie shadows over the zombie’s faces, and that doesn’t do much good in the way of bravery.
Still, I stand up. My lower back shoots with pain. I can’t stand straight at first and there’s a bruise already forming on my sternum, and when I take a deep breath, my lungs wheeze, causing me to double over with coughs. Blood covers my shirt — whose blood it is, I’m not sure, but I hope, and think, it’s not mine. There are small green needles from the bush we landed on in my hair. An array of scratches from the branches on my arms and legs. A different yet equally terrible pain goes through my thigh. I look down to see a purple gash. It’s shaped like — I have to squint in the darkness to see it.
A key?
A key!
I have since lost the keys to my car, and I parked way too far in an attempt to burn some extra calories. How stupid. So seeing Pat’s key is like a sign from God.
I have to act fast.
I look down to his smiling face. “You son of a bitch,” I say. In the pocket of his gym shorts, a sliver of metal sticks out through ripped fabric. “Let’s see what a big shot like you drives.”
I pull the key free, ripping the fabric wider and exposing his milky-white thighs which are covered in an even coat of black hair. The remote start has the Cadillac emblem emblazoned on it, silver on black. I see four buttons: lock, unlock, start, and panic.
I scan the parking lot for the Cadillac. The dead are coming in a thick wave. They’re yellowish eyes glitter in the night. About seventy-five feet from where Pat and I landed is a two-door coupe. It’s black and slick as hell. Must cost about sixty grand, but I guess that’s what a job destroying the world will get you.
I press the panic button. It takes a moment, and for a second, I think it’s not going to work or maybe it’s not his car after all. But the lights start flashing yellow and white. A horn cuts through the collective snarls of the zombies coming for me, and as they register the bright lights and terrible noise, they spin around and shuffle in the Cadillac’s direction.
I let out the breath I was holding in, that sharp pain going through my chest and lungs.
“Jack!” someone calls. I look up to see Abby’s face floating above. �
�You’re alive?” she asks. “Thank God!”
I pat myself the way a cop might frisk a sketchy-looking suspect. “Yeah…I think I am.”
“Is Pat?”
“No.”
“Oh, thank you, Lord. Thank you twice!” she says, but she’s quickly cut off by Miss Fox’s shriek. “Shut up!” she yells to the old woman, then turns back to me. “Yeah, we could use a little help.”
“Workin’ on it,” I say in a loud whisper. “How are you up there?”
“They’re eating Isaiah. Some have broken from the pack and are heading toward the sound of the car,” she shouts. “But they won’t stop coming from the hatch.”
“Stay as far away from them as you can. Go hide behind those air units. I’ll think of something!”
My head goes back to the parking lot. The dead have swarmed the car. They’re clawing at the rolled up windows, banging the metal, snarling at an empty front seat. It’s kind of funny, I think with a smile on my face, Pat probably double parked to give his sweet ride as much room away from other cars as possible and now zombies are junking it up. I pry my eyes away from them. There are three other cars on my side of the parking lot, none of which immediately offer me any help, and mine is the farthest away.
The clock ticks so I’ll have to make use.
One of the cars is a van, and I don’t know what will be in the back, but I shuffle to it, feeling pain each time my feet hit concrete. There are no back windows, it’s just a solid slab of black metal. I go around the front, trying both of the doors. Unsurprisingly, they’re both locked.
I’m going to have to break them, and sadly there’s no way to break a window without it being loud. I pick up a piece of broken concrete, then take off my shirt. The Cadillac’s alarm continues to blare, but I think even the sound of shattering glass will trump it. I wrap the shirt around my hand holding the concrete.
I hear a splat. A sickening sound, like a bag of wet laundry hitting the ground, landing on a sea of eggshells. I look up just in time to see a thin man with an arm half-hanging from his socket step off of the two-story roof. He seems to fall forever, his dangling arm fluttering like a streamer, then he lands in almost the exact same spot as whoever fell before him.
Another follows — this one an obese woman. She faces the chirping Cadillac, I can see the longing look on her face, pure curiosity over the sights and sounds of the car, wondering whether it’s a potential meal or not. She hits and the spray of blood speckles the van’s windshield. I turn my head back to the window.
I cock my hand back with the shirt wrapped tight around my knuckles. I imagine Freddy’s face where my reflection is, then Pat’s. They’re similar enough for me to barely notice the change, but I realize I’m slowly going crazy. At least I know I am, now.
The glass shatters after two punches. I’m running mostly on rage and adrenaline, and I’ve only got a few seconds before my body starts screaming in pain from the fall I took. When I open the door, the inside light comes on. There’s a steady dinging from the dashboard. An aroma of paint and stale body odor smacks me in the face. The first thing I see besides the brushes and cans in the back is a ladder.
I’ve hit the jackpot.
I climb inside to see how long the ladder is. It’s not long enough to reach the roof, I’m sure, but if Abby and Miss Fox hang from the edge they’ll be able to get their footing and climb down — a much better choice than the way I went. I hit the unlock button and start to climb out of the cabin. As I do, my shoulder bumps the sun visor above the steering wheel, and something falls, cold against my skin before jingling on the van’s floor.
I look down at it, my eyes wide. This surprises me more than the ladder.
It’s a spare set of keys.
27
I hold them in my hands. They’re surprisingly cold on this hot, July night. Abby and Miss Fox are up on the roof, stranded, but the dead are falling off. Soon they’ll be able to escape, or at least hold out until more help arrives. I can leave them right now, go get Darlene, maybe even come back for them.
Open your eyes, Jupiter, something inside me screams.
They have the gun up, at least I think. I don’t how many shots are left, but if worst come to worst and they can’t hold the dead off, they can save two bullets for themselves.
I take a deep breath, now catching the faint odor of cigarettes in the van. The thought leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
No, I’m not like that, I’m not Pat, I’m not Freddy. I am better than them.
I hop out and run around back, pop open the back door. The ladder is one of those metal jobs that slides out as opposed to stands on two legs.
I can do both — save them and Darlene. I can. I promise I can. I’m not a Huber.
Another zombie falls from the roof. I follow its descent and look down at the aftermath. There’s a pile of squirming bodies not far from where Pat and I landed. Blood runs down the pavement to a sewer grate. A red river. I have to fight down a feeling of sickness in my stomach, then a twinge of pain in my lower back.
The ladder is halfway out of the open van. Pat’s Cadillac still screams its shrill alarm, and I’m faintly aware of the other dead walking into the parking lot. Attracted and distracted by the noise but for how long?
Another splat.
Miss Fox screams on the roof, barely audible. I’ll have to run the ladder a little ways down the building as far away from the pile and the Cadillac as I can manage without drawing more attention to myself.
“Jack!” Abby screams. She sounds panicked.
“Hold on, I’m coming — ” I begin to mutter under my breath, but something barrels into me, knocking my head against the edge of van’s roof.
A hissing noise fills my ears, like a leaking tank of propane.
Idiot, I think to myself, you’re such an idiot. You deserve to die.
Warm, clammy hands touch my bare back. My heart shudders in my chest as I think a million different things at once: Why are these hands warm? Am I not the only alive man in this town? Has someone come to save us?
I turn around, the hope in my heart blazing, but what I see quickly extinguishes all of it.
28
We had landed so hard on the ground, Pat’s head split down the middle like one of Fred Flintstone’s bowling balls. I had thought him to be double-dead, no chance at coming back like the rest of them. Besides, he said he’d avoided the virus, that some of us would be immune.
Guess he was wrong.
His eyes glow yellow. Blood pours down from his exposed brains like red syrup. I smell the decay on him. But I see that same flicker life in his burning stare — the look of having one last meal.
He leans on top of me, sending my head crashing into one of the ladder’s legs. It hurts, but I hardly feel the pain. I flail my arms around like a drowning cat, then cross them over my face to prevent Pat from taking a chunk off of my nose.
He snarls, but I kick forward. The blow strikes him in the middle, sending his weight off of me. It gives me enough leeway to scrabble into the van. I can’t close the door because of the ladder, but now I have the higher ground.
The cabin light is on. The dashboard chimes, warning me I have multiple doors open.
Pat is up now, his face a twisted mess of rage. He begins to crawl into the van. I grab the ladder and push with all my strength — which isn’t much, I realize as the ladder smacks him in the face and drives him back a few feet.
He grips the metal legs, letting out a growl that is so inhuman that it causes the hair on the back of my neck to stand up in hackles.
“Shit,” I say.
I still have the van’s keys in my pockets, so I hop into the driver’s seat and pop the key into the ignition. My strength may be nonexistent, but I doubt he’ll be able to hold on to the van once I get it going. Another idea pops into my head — one of the killing two birds with one stone things except it’s more like killing one dead dude with a van while I use the extra height of the vehicle to set the ladder on
its roof thus getting Abby and Miss Fox out of harm’s way.
A peachy plan, indeed.
The van purrs to life. I waste no time shifting the gear into drive. Its headlights automatically flip on, bringing terrible detail to life from the pile of splattered bodies a ways in front of me.
Abby is out from her hiding place on the roof, Miss Fox slumping next to her. She jumps up and down, waving her arms. In one hand is the unmistakable shape of the gun.
She thinks I’m leaving them, abandoning them for the dead. To get under them, I cut the wheel to the right, heading for the front entrance. Our barricades have long since vanished, now looking more like the debris of a small, war-torn town. I see more zombies amble around the inside, dark shadows in the faintly lit rec center.
A man shuffling in the middle of the lot, unsure of which way to go — the blaring alarm of the Cadillac or the shiny new noise of the van — turns his head to look at me barreling toward him. Half of his jaw hangs near his chest. It seems to be only connected by a few strands of slimy, red strings. There’s muck under his eyes, but no surprise in them as the headlights wash over his ruined clothes. The van flattens him. He goes under the wheels, causing everything in the van’s back to jump; the metal ladder rattles, paint cans jingle.
In the rearview, Pat still hangs on. The dead eyes staring at me. I slam on the brakes before crashing into the front doors. A dull thud hits right below the radio. Pat — along with everything else inside the van — lurches forward, but the dead, hungry look on his face never changes.
I throw the gearshift into park but keep the car running. Before I get out, my eyes are caught by what slid up front. It’s a hammer. The wood handle is worn, and the metal is rusty. I pick it up.
It’s not a gun by any means, but it’ll do the trick.
Some of the dead have broken off from the Caddy, now intrigued by the sight of the van.
A gunshot goes off as I climb out of the cab. My knees pop with pain. A thunderstorm of a migraine brews from the back of my head to my eyes. Concussion, maybe. A budding hemorrhage, perhaps.
Jack Zombie (Book 1): Dead Haven Page 14