My haggard reflection shows in the tinted windows. I raise my gun, finger resting on the trigger, thinking It just keeps getting worse and worse.
The window rolls down. It’s not one of the suits I see smiling at me with blood on his face — and I’d bet any amount of money it’s not his blood.
But it’s Norm.
“You need a ride, little brother?”
I drop the gun and start crying — tears of happiness, sadness, and relief.
“I can’t believe you had to do that,” Norm says to me. We are driving across the desert. I’m in the back with Darlene. Abby sits in the front seat.
There are tears still on my face. I’ve been shaking for the past few minutes. Darlene’s face rests on my chest. She strokes my forearm.
“Herb,” Norm says, shaking his head. He slaps the wheel and screams. “Damn it!”
The car slows. We are far enough away from the zombies and the burning mountain that I don’t feel scared.
Norm starts to sob. We all cry with him.
We have talked about Herb for the past hour. How he saved my life in Eden, how he loved his music, his Auntie, and most of all, his sweets. But he did more than save my life; he saved all of our lives in his own special way.
Now, Abby and Darlene sleep. Norm still drives. I feel myself starting to doze off, too. We are on a stretch of desert highway, the burning mountain and our failures and successes far, far behind us. There was a road map in the glove box.
Norm talked of how he took out ten Central agents with two bullets. I believe him. Darlene talked of her parents and her sister. I talked of the beautiful California beaches. We are heading toward San Francisco. I don’t know what we’ll find. I’m sure it can’t be any worse than what we went through. It just can’t. I have hope because the bombs have been stopped and Darlene is back in my arms. I do. Plus, I know Herb is watching over us. He will keep us safe.
Yes, our family is one short, but for those that remain, we continue to be strong. Because we have to.
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Afterword
This volume in Jack’s story was a tough one to write. Not only because of what happened at the end to Herb, but because it required a lot of editing. I went through about three more drafts than usual, and originally ended the book on another cliffhanger.
Oh, and to be completely honest, I was reading Stephen King’s IT while I wrote Dead Coast, and that book is amazing and almost unputdownable (not a word, I know). Seriously, if you haven’t read that book and only have seen the miniseries with Tim Curry (who does a masterful job) then you should go read that book. I won’t be mad if you don’t read mine and you read IT instead, seriously. It’s that good.
Anyway, not much is new in my life. I graduated college on May 14th, which was pretty cool. I’m going on vacation to Disney World pretty soon, which is also pretty cool. Yeah, I know, you probably don’t care. Does anyone even read these afterwords?
Okay, okay, I’ll get back to talking about Jack and the gang. I have at least one volume to go to wrap up Jack’s story. I have an ending in mind, but it’s probably going to change like everything does once I sit down and start typing. I almost always surprise myself. That’s the beautiful thing about writing and storytelling. I won’t give away any spoilers about Dead End (title subject to change), but I will tell you it will probably not be a fairy tale ending. I mean, there’s no room for fairy tales when zombies walk the earth, right?
I do have plans to continue writing in Jack’s world once I wrap his story up. I will probably do some spin-off stories with the secondary characters because they’re mostly badass, and Jack’s tired, man. He needs a break. Or he might die. Or he might live. Guess you’ll have to wait to find out.
If you’d like to give me suggestions on who you’d love to see get their own spin-off book — Abby, Norm, Darlene, Herb before the events of Dead Coast — email me at [email protected] and let me know. I’m very open to suggestions and love hearing from you guys.
Thanks for reading,
F.M.
May 28, 2017
Preview: Dead End
Chapter 1-
She stands in front of me and she looks at the house. “Darlene?” I ask. She’s not moving, as still as stone. “Darlene?”
Nothing.
Norm nudges me and shakes his head. “Give her a minute,” he says.
The neighborhood’s silence is deafening. I guess that’s a good thing. I was expecting California to be more like D.C., overrun with zombies and maybe even human cannibals. I’m glad it’s not. There’s not even much of a smell here. Of course, we aren’t across the Golden Gate Bridge.
The house we stand in front of sits in the middle of a row of houses on a rising hill, built into the elevated land. These are rich people houses, but I guess that doesn’t matter now. The only thing distinguishing them from one another are the colors of their doors and the size. Darlene’s parent’s house — the house she grew up in — is a pastel green. It reminds me of Easter, a holiday I haven’t thought about in a long time. It makes me wonder what the date is, how soon a holiday like Easter would be coming up. So much has happened in so short of a time that sometimes it’s all a blur. I’m twenty-nine years old now. My birthday was in July, a few weeks after what happened in Woodhaven, but I totally forgot. Darlene’s was a few months ago in December, near Christmas, a month we spent mostly in the forests, sleeping in Norm’s Jeep, one eye always opened.
Abby is the last to get out of the car Norm stole from the Central agents in the Mojave Desert. She walks right past Norm and me and stands next to Darlene. Her arm goes around Darlene’s shoulder and Darlene jumps at her touch.
This spurs me forward. I stand on Darlene’s other side. We all look at the house. It’s a pretty nice house. It makes where I grew up look like a cardboard box, but that’s not saying much, I guess. The pastel green door is on the left of the garage. Leading up to the door is about ten steps. The house is three floors, very tall, very narrow. The numbers on the mailbox read 68. We stand in the shade from a tree on the sidewalk.
“I don’t have my key,” Darlene says. Her voice carries in the dead silence of the city. She sticks a hand out and grabs mine. Her hand trembles.
“It’s okay,” I say.
“It’s a beautiful house,” Abby says.
“Yeah, it is,” Norm says from behind us. “I’d love to see the inside.”
None of us have been the same since what happened in the Mojave. Since losing Herb. Me, especially, considering I was the one who pulled the trigger on him. But I had to. He was suffering and if I waited any longer, he would’ve changed. At least, this is what I tell myself every night before I try to go to sleep. Sleep hasn’t been coming easily, though, and when it does come, my nightmares are horrifying. I wake up sweaty, holding back a scream, and squeezing my forearms with enough force to draw blood.
Darlene takes two steps toward the porch and stops. We all watch, holding our breath. She turns and sits on the bottom of the stairs, puts her head in her hands and starts crying softly.
I rush over and put my arm around her. “It’s okay,” I say.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” she says. “We shouldn’t have come here at all.” She looks up at me, tears running from the corner of her eyes, and says, “Why’d you let me come here?”
I’m at a loss for words.
What was I supposed to do? Say no?
Abby and Norm exchange a pained glance then l
ook at me. I shrug while Darlene continues sobbing, her head down now.
A faint breeze rolls up the hill. No smell comes with it. I feel hope for this city. Maybe they weren’t hit. Maybe they got out before it could get really bad.
Then where are all the people, Jack?
I don’t know.
“Do you want to go inside?” I ask Darlene.
“No,” she says.
I nod, stroke her hair. “That’s okay — ”
“But I have to,” she says, cutting me off. She stands up, brushes off the seat of her dirty jeans and faces the front door.
I’m quick to get up now.
With fresh tears in her eyes, Darlene climbs the steps. I admire this woman. I do. She is stronger than me, she really is.
Her shaking hand reaches for the doorknob. Behind, Abby and Norm come up the steps. We are all holding our guns — guns we picked up in a small town called Corcoran just south of San Francisco. Everyone is holding them except Darlene and normally I’d chastise her for such a slip-up because she should know it’s never quiet for long and death is always lurking around the corner even when you don’t think it is. But I can’t right now. We are here for her. We have our guns. We won’t let anything bad happen.
She turns the knob. The quiet gets heavier.
The door’s not locked. It opens with a click and a creak.
We step inside.
Chapter 2-
The house has a smell, one that is all too familiar. It’s death. It’s hot road kill. It’s dust and decay. It’s fear.
Darlene doesn’t seem to notice. She stands on the foyer looking at the long, dark hallway. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, but when they do, I see what Darlene stares at. Norm closes the door behind us.
I turn around fast and shake my head. He nods and opens it again, the dying sunlight drifting in, lighting up the golden-lacquered floors. We might need an easy escape. The house is as quiet as the city, but you never know. I like it when my brother and I are all on the same page.
Darlene moves forward. She moves like a woman who is very drunk — not on alcohol, but on nostalgia. She picks up a picture frame from the table running the length of the hall. The silver frame glimmers in the light. Her other hand, which should be filled with a gun, comes up to her mouth. She squeezes her eyes shut and fresh tears spill down her cheeks. I walk forward, ready to embrace her. The picture, I see, is black and white. A wedding photo. The woman is thin, but curvy. A full head of eighties-style blonde hair. Darlene’s mother. She looks like Darlene stuck in a different era. The man in his tuxedo has thinning hair but a full smile. These are people whose love oozes through the decades. The man’s eyes are the same as Darlene’s — a striking green. Next to where the frame was are more pictures. Darlene in high school. Darlene as a baby. Her sister in a softball uniform. Dad and Darlene the night of a school dance. I’m smiling, but it hurts to see this.
Out of the corner of my eyes, which are tearing up, I see Norm and Abby split up and peek into the various rooms branching off from the foyer.
I pull the picture out from Darlene’s hand and I hug her tight. She sobs silently into my shoulder. Then we part and she says, “I have to keep going.”
I don’t know what she means at first. I think she means in general because it’s a sentiment I’ve said many times before. We always have to keep going. The world is dead, but we aren’t.
Except, that’s not what Darlene means. She means she has to keep going through the house. She has to keep torturing herself with this horrible thing called closure.
I reach out to grab her gently by the waist, to pull her close to me and tell her it’s all right, she doesn’t have to keep going, her parents and her younger sister are in a better place, but I don’t because she’s already storming through the hall, footsteps muted on the hall runner. I go after her. But I’m not smooth. So often in my life, I’m never smooth. I nudge the table. The wood wobbles and two of the framed pictures fall over. One of them shatters and the sound is enormous in the houses quiet.
Norm and Abby are back in the foyer watching this all unfold with large, round eyes.
“Shit,” I say.
“Good going, Jack,” Norm says.
Abby shakes her head.
Darlene hasn’t noticed. She disappears behind the corner of the end of the hall. I bend down to start picking up the large pieces of glass and just as I do it I hear something.
It’s not a human sound…
It’s a zombie.
Chapter 3-
Nobody screams or jumps or freaks out. We are past that stage, I think. If anything, the feeling that hits me is despair, not fear or excitement. Despair because of where we are at, because of who that gurgling, death rattle will belong to.
I look down the hall. We all look down the hall. The sound comes from upstairs, but we’re waiting. In the momentary quiet, I hear footsteps creaking the wood, then a shadow, and finally the first strands of blonde hair.
“What was that?” Darlene asks.
I just shake my head.
“I’ll take care of it,” Norm says and he turns toward the stairwell.
“No!” Darlene shouts. The sound carries out onto the street.
Footsteps above us now, more creaking. Then a scrabbling. Fingernails against the wood of a door, the rattling of a doorknob.
“No?” Norm says, surprised. I get why he’s surprised though. He doesn’t understand. Well, he does; it’s just sometimes Norm is dumb when it comes to heavy things like this. The zombie up there is most likely someone Darlene knows, but to Norm it’s a zombie. A zombie is always a zombie. The person the zombie was before they turned doesn’t matter. They may look like it, but they’re not them. Not anymore, no matter what.
“No,” Darlene says softer now. She walks up the hallway, her head held high, unaware or not caring about the glass on the carpet. Some of it shatters and crunches beneath the running shoes she wears — crisp white Nikes she picked up in a Foot Locker. “I’ll do it.”
I shake my head. “No, Darlene — ”
“I’m going to be okay. I have to do this. If it’s Carmen or Mom or Dad, I have to do it. I can’t let them be like that.”
I see the determination on her face. There’s no telling her no. She walks right past me, reaching into her belt to pull the .22 free. The chrome glitters, waning sunlight catching off the muzzle with her shaking hand.
She shoulders past Abby and Norm, not saying a word.
Meanwhile, the scrabbling gets louder, and the death rattles soon follow.
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.
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Dead Coast: A Zombie Novel (Jack Zombie Book 4) Page 19