Steady, Jack. Steady, I tell myself. Nothing I haven’t seen before.
But that’s not exactly right.
I’m the first through the opening, and I come out on a fallen piece of rock that the bomb knocked out of the wall. I look down. It’s better lit here, and I wish it wasn’t.
I’m standing fifteen feet or so above a subway car. Below us are dozens of zombies, most of them crisped; their clothes are singed off, or baked into their flesh. Very few have hair or visible skin left. They’re just bags of pus and rot. A flash fire probably came through the tunnels, and cooked them. Fifteen years later, they’re still here.
The subway train has been knocked off its tracks. It snakes along the platform, stuck in the piles of rubble that were once pillars. Farther on, the dull silver of the cars disappears into the blackness of the tunnel. The stone walls are scorched, parts of the metal train crumpled and deformed.
I see three people in the cars through the gouges in their roofs. Milling about. One is screaming. Another stares blankly out the windows—not at me, but at the zombies. They look on with the resigned gazes of those who have come to accept their damnation.
Seeing these people deflates the last bit of hope I have within me.
“Move on.” The guard pokes me in the back.
“You’re in car three,” the other one says. “The traitor’s in four.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see this younger guard going over a sheet of paper on a cracked clipboard.
“What about this one?” the bigger guard asks, looking at Lilly.
“Throw her in,” Helga says. “The Overlord doesn’t care for her.”
The guard with the clipboard looks up, raises an eyebrow. His eyes find the bearded guard.
The bearded guard shakes his head. “I’m not doing that. I don’t want—”
“Want what?” Helga says in a mocking tone. “Want the Overlord to flay you?” She barks laughter. It’s a terrible sound. “He doesn’t care for this one. Trust me. And the blood will get the zombies riled up. When’s the last time they were fed?”
The way she speaks of them like they’re pets sickens me.
“Been a while,” the younger guard admits.
“Do what you want,” the bearded guard says, “but leave us out of it.”
Helga nods and grabs Lilly roughly around the arms. “C’mon, sweetie.”
Lilly struggles as Helga brings her to the edge of the stone platform.
Abby lunges, but the guards hold her back.
I almost break free—I feel their grip slipping—but then I feel something up the back of my head. The guard’s pistol. Steel. My vision blackens for a moment, and my legs go weak. I slump to the platform, but the guard holds me up.
“Lilly!” I try to shout, but I’m tasting blood in my mouth again, and it doesn’t taste good.
“Stop it!” Abby says. “Stop it, you bitch!”
Helga laughs. Now the only thing keeping Lilly from going over the edge is Helga’s grip.
Lilly sways, kicks, throws her head back wildly and hits nothing.
The zombies, I see, have taken notice of our voices. Their heads turn collectively. The glowing yellow of their eyes search us out up here like dim spotlights. One nearby opens its mouth to make that dreaded rattling noise, and a burst of worms and maggots crawl out from between charred lips. They slap down onto the fractured floor, are stamped beneath the feet of the crowd. Bodies push up against the stone. I feel it rock against their collective pressure.
“Stop!” I shout. “Stop it!”
Helga loves it. Loves it all. She’s not stopping. She never would.
With Lilly by the arm, her sleeve riding up and exposing the reddened flesh beneath, Helga dangles her out over the platform. Lilly only has one foot planted on the stone. The other foot hovers over nothing but thin air.
The zombies raise their arms, and cry out for a fresh meal in their groans of death.
23
I feel all of our bodies tense up, even the guards’.
“Say ‘bye’, Lilly,” Helga says.
But Lilly doesn’t say that. She moves quickly to the left, pirouetting like a ballerina. Helga, in all her overconfidence, isn’t prepared for this sudden movement, and she stumbles forward as Lilly leans back and catches the open hatch with her hip for balance. Lilly raises up her right leg and kicks out. The bottom of her shoe hits Helga in the lower back, and the old, haggish woman pinwheels for balance.
The younger guard leaves Abby unattended to try and grab Helga before she can go over the edge.
He is too late.
Helga screams for the entire thirty or so feet. I hear her hit the ground; the zombies are smart enough to have moved out of the way, to clear a path for their meal. I hear Helga scream louder as the dead tear into her with jagged teeth and gnarled hands. How she survived the fall, I don’t know.
The guard who tried saving Helga peers over the edge. He looks like he’s trying to turn away, but just can’t. Then he vomits. He spews right onto the crowd below, right on Helga’s mutilated corpse.
“There,” Lilly says. She’s just standing here, her face flushed, bits of her short hair spiked from the confrontation. “Now you have a reason to lock me up. I killed a Knight; you saw me do it. That’ll surely get the Overlord’s goose, won’t it?”
All is quiet for a moment between us and the guards. I wish someone would talk, because I don’t want to hear the chewing sounds, the ripping sounds, the death sounds any longer.
I get my wish, but not in words.
Abby erupts in laughter.
Lilly’s stony expression breaks, and she begins laughing, too. I can’t help myself, it’s as contagious as the plague that turned the monsters below. I laugh, too.
“Jesus Christ,” the bearded guard says. “You guys are fuckin’ crazy.”
24
The bastards didn’t live up to their promise. My balls were still intact, and Abby’s and Lilly’s breasts went untouched by any blades.
They throw me in car number three. The girls go in one together, number four. I’m sharing mine with an emaciated man in the corner seat. He looks at me with something like hunger, which makes me uncomfortable, but I don’t show this.
“You climb out, you got nowhere to go,” the bearded guard says above me. He’s looking down the makeshift opening he threw me down. It’s about eight feet off the dirty subway floor. The edges are sharp, like jagged blades; even if I could jump up there, my fingers would be cut off. “The zombies are riled up now, and, in case you didn’t notice, Helga didn’t have too much meat on her bones.”
I take my gaze away from the bearded bastard above me and look at the man across the way. He’s still eyeing me, but his gaze looks hazy, like he’s imagining I’m a roast chicken, maybe even a full-course meal.
I don’t like it.
I scan the sub for a weapon to grab when I break out of the duct tape. There’s not much. The seats are still bolted to the ground. No handlebars are free. The glass hasn’t broken, miraculously—it’s just dirty, covered in soot and smeared blood.
The bearded guard’s footsteps recede, and the sub lurches as he lifts himself from its surface with a rope ladder, which he pulls up with him once he reaches the stone platform at the top.
I peer to the left and see the crowd of zombies dispersing from where Helga landed. They move gradually, like the rolling waves of a vast ocean. Closer they come. Closer and closer. I realize I am on exhibit, an animal trapped in a cage.
This is the most fucked up zoo ever.
Through their swaying bodies, I see what is left of Helga. The answer: not much.
Really, all that is left is a red stain on the cement, ripped clothing, and a ring that gleams in the low light, though it is half submerged in her blood. The zombies have even eaten her hair, ripped her scalp clean off her head.
A few of the dead hang back. Wet tongues licking still-glistening bones. Fire-frozen fingers stir around what little guts are left.
/>
I do not feel sorry for Helga.
The man across the way barks. This is such an odd sound over the muffled drone of the zombies. He has brought both feet up from the floor, and he’s hugging his chest.
“Sorry?” I say. “I didn’t quite understand that.”
He barks again.
“Okay,” I say, thinking it’s probably best to ignore this guy for the duration of my stay, which I believe won’t be long.
I stand up and begin looking for a way out of this shit-hole. Not long after, I find a raised lip of steel, and use it to saw the duct tape away.
There’s one problem solved. Just a million more left.
The end of the car is sealed off from the connecting car, number four, where Abby and Lilly are. At the wall, I knock a few times and shout their names.
“Can’t hear ya, Meat,” the emaciated man says.
“Did you just call me ‘Meat’?”
The guy nods. His tongue doesn’t glisten as he swipes it across his cracked lips. “That’s what you are. Meat. Whether it be me that eats ya, or the motherfuckers to your left, we’re all somebody’s dinner.”
“I don’t think you realize that eating people isn’t a normal thing,” I say. “The world may have ended a long time ago, but there’s still enough food out there for us.”
“Ain’t no meat. Not out there.”
“Not in here, either.”
The man stands up. He probably weighs a hair over a hundred pounds. I’m not a spring chicken either, but I know I’d easily win this fight.
“I really don’t want to waste my energy on you, friend,” I say. “I need to save the bit I got.”
The man grins. He’s missing a good amount of teeth, and those he isn’t missing are rotten and shrunk to the root. I doubt this guy saw the dentist much even before the zombies took over.
“I’ve been saving my energy for the last six months,” he says.
“Six months? They left you in here that long?”
He nods. “Scheduled to be killed soon, I reckon. The Overlord was to see to it himself, but I’m hearing that he’s gonna send his right-hand man to do the trick. I like that better.”
Right-hand man. That would be my brother.
“Things have changed,” I say. “The Overlord is on his way as we speak, for me and the gals over in the next car.”
He may not be coming for sure, but I hope he is, so I can kill him and get Norm back on my side.
The man’s smile disintegrates. In his eyes, there is a primal fear.
The Overlord’s reach stretches far, apparently right into the human soul and psyche. The boogeyman wasn’t real before the apocalypse; now he is. And he only has one eye.
“So I’m guessing your death is gonna really suck,” I continue. “Maybe the right-hand man was going to go easy on you—certainly easier than the Overlord—but now things have changed. Thanks to me, the Overlord is coming, and you’re probably going to have your rotten intestines ripped out of your gut, and wrapped around your throat before you’re hung by them. After he rips out your eyes and fucks you with a jagged piece of glass, or whatever it is the Overlord does during his executions. I don’t know. Haven’t been part of one yet.” I pause for effect.
I like what I see. It’s nice watching the guy crumble.
“If you eat me, imagine what the Overlord and his goons will do to you. Man, I don’t even want to think about it,” I say.
The guy sits back down.
“There you go. That’s the right idea,” I say.
It almost saddens me, seeing the effect the Overlord has on people, the fear he instills in them. It’s stupid. He’s just a man.
Now I walk over to my cellmate, stick out my hand. He looks at it, but not like it’s appetizing.
“I’m Jack,” I say. “Jack Jupiter. If you wanna live, I think it’s important that we team up and find a way out of this place.”
It takes a moment for him to take my hand, but he does. We shake. His brow furrows as he searches for something inside of his mind. A name, probably. It’s been so long since he’s had to use his own that he’s forgotten it.
I can relate; sometimes I don’t even remember when my birthday is. There’s certainly no celebrations nowadays. The cake, the candles, the balloons…forget about it.
After another beat or two, the man says, “I’m Haley. Roland Haley.” He smiles again, and I think it’s because he has remembered his name, but I’m wrong. “So you’re the Jack Jupiter, huh?”
Fifteen years ago, my ears would have perked up at this comment. I’d think this guy had read one of my books; maybe he was a fan of pulpy zombie novels, or maybe he was even clamoring for the werewolf book that I’d promised my few Facebook fans after the last Johnny Deadslayer release.
I’d inevitably be wrong, of course. As you know, not many people read my books back then. None today, I’m sure. Plus, this isn’t fifteen years ago. I’m not known for my pulpy post-apocalyptic novels with the plucky, take-no-shit protagonist Johnny Deadslayer. Now I’m known for better things. Things I eventually lost.
“Lotta talk about you,” Roland Haley says. “Them guards were talking about you just yesterday. Said the Black Knights were out and on your trail. I didn’t believe they’d catch you.”
I shrug. “They did, but it was all a part of the plan.”
Roland’s nostrils flare as he snorts laughter. “I don’t believe it was. Neither was throwing that bitch Helga over the edge of the platform.”
“Not part of my plan, at least,” I say. “I can’t speak for Lilly.”
Though I’m pretty sure she didn’t plan on that. She took a chance, and it paid off for her and us. Except I was fully expecting the guards to keep their promise of genital mutilation.
So far, so good.
That’s not to say they still won’t, but I think they’re pretty shook about what happened to Helga, and probably agree that it’s better to leave our fates up to the Overlord and Norm.
The thought of Mason Storm’s reaction to Helga getting ripped apart by zombies brings me satisfaction. He hasn’t found out yet, otherwise he’d be paying us a visit. Maybe the guards are too afraid to tell him, don’t know how to say it.
“Plan or no plan, it was pretty damn impressive,” Roland says. “You keep good company.” His eyes light up again, and I see hope in them. It’s good to see. “You really think you can get us out of here?”
“I’m Jack Jupiter, aren’t I?”
When in doubt, fake it until you make it. It’s worked well for me so far, and Roland doesn’t know that I pretty much have no idea what I’m doing until I start doing it. Even then, I’m sometimes still not sure.
Roland nods.
“So you’ve been in here six months,” I say. “You’ve seen a lot. You may not realize it, but you have. I need a rundown. Times the guards come in, which guard’s the nicest, which one is the meanest, zombie patterns, if they get fed or not. All that crap.” I’m staring at this old, weathered man like a teacher would stare at a bored student who’s close to failing.
He blinks back. “I—uh, I don’t know much about zombie patterns, but they feed us once a day. Water bucket’s over there.” He points behind me. “Cameron is the nicest, but that’s like saying a hammerhead shark is the nicest. He’s the younger one. Skinny guy. But I don’t like Bryan, or ‘Bry’. He’s a dickhead, the one with the beard and the round belly like he’s eight months pregnant, but I think that might be personal preference.”
I nod, roll my fingers in a ‘go on’ gesture.
“So, you want at the Overlord, huh?” he asks. When I don’t answer immediately, mainly because I’m stuck thinking about what he did to my family and to Haven, he goes on. “ ‘Cause that’s what I hear from the guards. I heard you took out one of their gas operations. It was a big blow to the Overlord; he’s trying to get the jet planes up in the air. He’s trying to build an army, you know?”
“Of course.”
“And you t
ook down their Chicago gig. That one really pissed him off. The Chicago gig was supposed to be one of the best.”
I shrug. “That one wasn’t my idea, either. All credit goes to the crazy brunette in the car next to us. As for the gas operation, really, we just needed fuel for our ride. All the explosions and deaths were accidental.”
For the first time, Roland’s cheeks show some color. He’s rosy beneath his papery skin. “I like you, Jack Jupiter. Sorry I called you ‘Meat’. Last time I had a roommate, he tried to eat me.” Roland lifts up his shirt, shows me a bite mark under his ribs that hasn’t completely healed. It’s a violent purple and red, like it’s infected. I choose not to tell him that. “I know what you’re thinking,” he continues. “But my last roommate wasn’t a zombie, so I’m not gonna turn on you, or nothing like that. He was just a pissed off soldier, half-starved and fully crazy. He was in the Pits before he was brought here. They mess you up big time in the Pits.”
“I don’t even wanna know,” I say. “But I do wanna know how you got here.”
The zombies continue thumping and bumping against our glass window. I hear the hissing of trapped air escaping from their throats, smell the tang of death. The car rocks ever so slightly. If the windows were covered, and I didn’t have to see their terrible faces, I could probably get used to this. The swaying of the subway car is actually quite relaxing.
“I stole a loaf of bread,” he says finally, and he looks like he has just told me he’s murdered someone. The guilt on his face is overwhelming.
“Bread? That’s it?”
Roland nods. “During a festival in Crayton—er, well, what used to be Gary, Indiana. I put up a helluva fight, but—” he motions to his protruding ribs, his twig arms, “when you look like this, you can’t really put up too much of a fight.”
“They’re executing you for that? For stealing bread?”
He nods. “Crazy, right?”
“More than that.” I shake my head. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. We’re getting you out of here.”
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