The car rolls. We are thrown around like rag dolls, only restrained by the loose seat belts cutting across our chests and hips. I take to screaming, too, but I can’t hear it over the sounds of crunching metal and chaos. The airbag blows out of the steering wheel, punching me in the face harder than Freddy Huber has ever punched me. Blood spurts from my nose. It trickles down my lips and into my mouth, tasting faintly metallic.
Then, all is quiet except for a warbled drone from the dashboard.
The faint smell of fire reaches my nose. I feel like passing out, but the smell brings me back to attention.
I see an arm next to me. A stream of blood flows down it like rain down a window pane.
“Oh,” I say, “my head.” My voice sounds so weak that I think I’m dead. Maybe I’m a ghost, maybe this is the afterlife.
“Your head?” Abby says with a tang of sarcasm. “What about my head?”
I look up, and there’s a gash on Abby’s forehead like a lightning bolt. Blood rolls from it, but doesn’t drop down her cheeks. It falls upward where her hair is splayed out in suspended animation. That’s when I realize what has happened. We landed on the van’s roof.
“You okay?” I ask, trying to sound manly, trying to sound in control, but knowing this is all my fault.
Her answer comes in the form of a clicking seatbelt, then the thud of her body hitting the ceiling of the van. She crunches a bit of glass with her elbows as she crawls forward through the windowless passenger door.
“Well, okay then,” I say under my breath, and start looking for my own seatbelt.
“Jack, hurry up!” Abby says. “They’re coming.”
I already figured that, but I choose to keep my mouth shut.
“The van’s on fire,” she finishes.
“Well, fuck.” My fingers start moving faster. Never in my life have they felt so much like sausages. Finally, I find the red button which releases me from this metal prison and drop to the ceiling.
“Do you see the guns?” Abby yells.
I stop, take a look over my shoulder and scan the interior as quick as I can. There’s not much left of anything in the van. Mostly just dented metal and ripped upholstery. It’s like looking inside of a garbage disposal.
“No!” I shout back.
Her bloody arm reaches out to me and pulls me the rest of the way. We are in a parking lot. It takes me a moment to realize that, then a moment longer to realize what parking lot we’re in, and then another moment to realize the army of the dead with their glowing, yellow eyes are practically licking their lips as they lumber toward us.
The lit sign to my right reads Eddy’s Drug Mart, a family-owned drug store which is a lot like a more expensive Rite Aid. Greasy, black smoke billows up around the sign. It comes from the overturned van now spewing flames.
Abby still has a hold of my arm as I get off of the pavement. There are no cars in the parking lot aside from the one I stole from the rec center, but we did manage to knock over a small lemonade stand with a sign that reads: SUPPORT THE LOCAL GIRL SCOUTS BUY FRESH-SQUEEZED LEMONADE ONLY $0.25 A CUP!
Sorry, Girl Scouts.
A few bodies are strewn to my left and right, their faces indistinguishable, nothing but a mess of chewed skin. I can’t help but think how much they resemble Hamburger Helper. Abby grips me tighter and pulls.
“Come on, through here!”
And we are running. Well, she’s running and I try to do something that mimics running, but my ribs are definitely broken and my head feels all woozy.
She pulls me toward Eddy’s front entrance, which is going to be locked, I just know it. If I recall correctly, Eddy was an old man last time I was in town, always complaining about ‘those damn high school kids comin’ in and stealing my candy and soda pops!’ If Everson is still alive then Eddy certainly is. There’s no way he would’ve left it unlocked during the town’s biggest celebration, either.
Abby pushes it, and whaddya know? It’s locked.
She doesn’t let that slow her down. She picks up a rock from beneath a flower bed and cocks it back behind her head. The glass shatters on the first blow, sending large chunks to our feet. With her other hand, she pushes through the opening and clicks the lock. At first glance, you’d think Abby has done her fair share of breaking and entering.
“The motel,” I say, feeling not only pain in my ribs but also my heart as I slowly realize the chances of us surviving this dip to zero with each shambling, zombie step coming from up behind us. “I need to get to the motel.”
She ignores me, and throws the door open. Above her, a bell chimes, signaling her entry. Something tells me Mr. Eddy won’t be there to eye her suspiciously from behind his front counter.
“Abby!”
“Look behind you,” she says.
I do.
The burning van has attracted what seems to be the whole fucking town. Skin hangs from their faces. Blood stains their clothes. They sway like drunks. Some of them have spotted Abby and me — they don’t care for fire — they only care about the food. I will fight every last one of them to get to Darlene. I am so close, I can smell her cherry-scented hair.
I see the Girl Scouts who were there to sell lemonade. Their faces are ashy, but for the most part clean. You might not think they were reanimated corpses if you didn’t see their guts hanging from their stomachs, trailing out behind them like wedding gowns they’ll never get to wear when they grow up.
Beyond this group, there are more. Dare I say the whole county? They bump shoulder to shoulder, moaning and groaning, dripping with death and looking like a horror movie’s worst nightmare, and that’s saying something coming from a man who makes a living writing this crap.
Two of them are about three feet closer than I’m comfortable with. It’s a man and woman, and something about the way they walk together tells me they were once married before all of this crap went down. So does the matching American flag shirts. If they decided to walk a little faster and maybe lunge, they would have one large helping of Jack Jupiter for dinner this evening.
I’m not offering, so I follow Abby into the drug store.
“Help me,” she says. “They’ll break through the glass eventually, and I don’t know how much time we are going to need. Once the fire burns out or the van explodes, they’ll be knocking on the door.”
Inside, the store hasn’t changed at all. There are rows of small shelves containing all sorts of bare essentials: toothpaste, toothbrushes, bread, peanut butter, soap, hairspray, brushes, milk and cold drinks on the far side. But closest to us, is a magazine rack full of Time, Life, Cosmopolitan, Us Weekly, those weird tabloid magazines, which today read: Is the President an Alien? Page 3! next to a picture of a man in a suit and tie with the face of some kind of blue reptile which is obviously fake.
Abby and I grab the magazine rack and slide it across the tile floor. It makes a ferocious squeaking sound that has me wanting to scrape out my eardrums with a fork and an even more ferocious burst of pain in my arms and ribs. Other than that, it works.
“They’ll push it over,” Abby says, “if enough of them come this way. But it’ll hold while we regroup.”
I nod, hoping she’s right. I’ve been trapped enough today.
The couple bang on the door, rattling its hinges. The fire must be more entertaining because after a minute the banging stops, and I hear them scuffle away. “Let’s get you bandaged up,” I say. “You look like you’ve just been in a car…well, never mind. That was my fault. I didn’t even see the float there.”
“I’m okay,” Abby says, walking over to the aisle where the dishtowels are. She throws me one then starts wiping away the already drying blood from her forehead.
“I think there’s some peroxide right down there,” I say, pointing. “Been awhile since I’ve been in here.” I look to the door which is almost completely covered by the magazine display, only offering a little slice of the parking lot and surrounding street. Through that slice, the outside looks and sounds
like the world is ending.
“Not much has changed,” Abby says.
“Still think there’s that Coke machine behind the counter, you know, the one that only costs a dime and gives you the glass bottles?”
Abby shrugs, then turns back to the peroxide.
“I’ll go look,” I say.
The front counter is a relic of the 1950s. It’s made of old wood and there’s a window built in the front of it, showcasing a bunch tobacco and cigarettes. The register is a dinosaur, one where you punch in the price of the item instead of scanning a barcode. It’s both cool and unsettling to see. Sure enough, the Coke machine is there, also prehistoric. But man, I’m thirsty and nothing tastes better than a cold Coca-Cola when you’re thirsty.
As I walk around the counter, I say to Abby in a raised whisper, “I can’t believe Darlene is all right.”
“She might not be, Jack. Don’t get your hopes up too much.”
Her words are like bullets to my heart. She’s right. It might not even be Darlene, might be some other survivors waiting for their guardian angels to show them the way to safety.
Abby must realize her bluntness because she says, “But if it is Darlene, which it very well could be, then she’s safe for the moment. It’s us I’m worried about.”
I find a dime in the leave-a-penny-take-a-penny tray, then I put it in the Coke machine. The gears or whatever is inside the machine whir and an ice-cold, glass bottle of Coca-Cola fills my hand. I pop the top with the machine’s built in bottle opener.
“I’m sure there’re a lot of people trapped, waiting for this thing to blow over,” Abby continues. “And those are the ones who are smart enough to not try to take these things on.”
“Zombies,” I say. “No need to be coy about it. George A. Romero hit it right on the head.”
I’m looking at a display behind the counter. It’s shrouded in darkness, the colors muted but unmistakably red, white, and blue. A cardboard Uncle Sam points at me with a speech bubble coming from his mouth. It says, “Uncle Sam wants you to celebrate the Fourth of July with Phantastic Phantom Phireworks!”
“Whatever. The only problem,” Abby says, “is that we aren’t smart enough to just hole up until help arrives, and I’m okay with that. I don’t want to end up like my mother. I want to get the hell out of this town. We just need a distraction less dangerous than a burning van.”
“Distraction,” I say, reaching out and grabbing a thick, red rocket. “I think I found our distraction.”
“Huh?” she says.
She comes up the aisle to where I’m standing.
“Fireworks,” I say. I turn to her and see her looking at me with an arched eyebrow. For a moment, I feel like my older brother who was obsessed with fire and explosives like the rest of the kids we grew up with in our neighborhood.
“Fireworks, really?”
“It’s not much, nothing like what the town has stored up for tonight, but it’ll distract them enough for us to get a clear shot to the motel.”
This, I’m sure of.
“We need guns and knives, Jack! Weapons, not distractions.” Abby shakes her head.
“There’s gotta be a way out the back, and I know there’s an old ladder that goes up to the roof,” I say, grabbing a few of the bottle rockets in one hand and a fistful of Roman Candles in the other.
“Not the roof again. Jack, don’t you ever learn?”
“Grab me a lighter,” I say.
She frowns.
“Will you just trust me for once?” I say, a smile on my face.
34
Through the back door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, is an array of shelves. On them, sits boxes of the stuff that is sold in the front. There is a small table and two chairs, an ashtray in the middle of it filled with old butts, and a deck of cards near one of the chairs. There is also a door. It is a looming metal door, with green paint that is now peeling and scratched in places — claw marks from a dog Mr. Eddy must’ve kept back here…or the thieving high school kids. In the door is a small window. The window is fogged over, but I see the brick building on the other side of it. The bricks belong to the family practitioner, Doc Hudson, who like his father before him and his father’s father before him, is the Woodhaven town doctor. I only know those bricks because every time my mom tried to bring me here for my routine checkup — after one too many bad experiences with booster shots and finger pricks — I would break out of her grip and go running down the alley. In ten years, I really doubt much has changed, especially the ladder that runs up the side of Eddy’s Drug Store. Nothing much ever changes in Woodhaven.
Abby’s shoes slap the floor behind me.
I stop at the door, standing on my tiptoes to get a better view through the foggy glass. “Lighter,” I say.
Abby hands me a cheap, plastic Bic which I pocket. It’s dark outside, but from what I see, there’s no movement. The van fire must be a pretty good distraction…for this side of the town square, at least.
“Wait,” Abby says just as I grip the door handle. “What’s the plan? I don’t know the plan!”
“Oh,” I say, “I thought it was pretty self-explanatory.”
“Sorry, I’m not a smart guy like you. Just give me the gist.”
“If there’s nothing out there, we try to sneak to the motel — ”
“With no weapons,” Abby says with a frown on her face.
I pat the Roman Candles in my hand.
She brings up a hand and pinches her nose, then she stalks off back out to the front of the store. A moment later, she comes back with two broom handles, their bristles detached. Unlike the late Ryan’s broom handle, these aren’t sharpened.
“Here,” she says. “It’s not much, but it’s better than fireworks.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “You ready?”
“No,” she says.
I push the door open.
The air is hot and stuffy. A typical July 4th weekend in Woodhaven, Ohio. A thick smell of garbage pummels my nostrils, but as I look to the metal cans to the right of the back door, I notice they’re empty. The smell I smell is death, and it hangs all around us. I’ll never get used to it. I can faintly hear their moans, their questioning, hungry moans, then the scuffle of dead feet over the pavement. I try to not picture two of those feet belonging to Darlene.
I point to the left where the ladder is. Even in the faint glow of the moonlight, I can see the specks of orange rust on the metal.
We walk.
Abby stops abruptly, and it takes me a second to register why she has.
A slow-moving horde passes by the entrance to the alleyway. Their faces are fixed on something, not looking toward us, but seeing them like that — so close, so determined, like a pack of wild animals roving the streets for meat — almost stops my heart in my chest. I don’t know I’ve walked backward until my heel bumps the trash can and the lid falls and clangs off the concrete. It sounds like a truck smashing into a gong in the stillness of the night.
I turn to try to steady it, to try to stop the vibrations, but that only makes it worse. The car accident has stripped me of what little grace and balance I had before and when I grab the can, I only knock it into the other and send it rolling down the alley. It could probably be heard in Indiana, it’s that loud.
Abby looks at me, her face drained of all color. “Shit,” she says under her breath.
The horde stops. In one motion, they all turn their infected gazes toward us. Their mouths are open, letting out deep groans — hungry groans.
“Go! Go!” I say. The adrenaline coursing through my veins is not enough to vanquish the impending doom hanging over us.
We can get to the ladder and climb up it before they get to us if we hustle. But my arms and legs are beaten — maybe even broken — and I’m not as fast as I used to be.
We run, looking like two armies charging head to head in some great battle.
“We aren’t going to make it!” Abby shouts as the dead get closer and closer. I hear
her footsteps stop then start retreating. I can’t look back. I’ve crossed the point of no return, and just as I reach out to grip the flaky rung of the ladder, a dead hand snags my arm. It belongs to a woman of about forty — eternally forty, now — whose mouth hangs wide open. Sludge pours from her moving mouth.
I rip my arm away from her grip, then acting on full instinct, kick out with my leg. A burst of white, hot pain ripples through my bones, but it sends the group stumbling back. I have enough room to climb up the ladder, and boy, do I climb fast.
“Hey!” Abby shouts. She is trying to distract the group from me. I see her in the doorway of the drug store, one hand wrapped tightly around its handle. The horde couldn’t care less about her. She’s too far away. The real meal is right under their noses.
“Stay put!” I shout. “I’ll find a way.” But really the only thing I think about is survival.
Flakes of orange and black drift from the rungs with every hurried step. Most of the fireworks haven fallen from my grip, cascading down to be stomped by the dead.
I reach the top, breathing hard, then I take a look down to the alley. About thirty of the dead are grouped there, their hands up to the sky, gnarled fingers opening and closing as they hope for me to drop.
Not going to happen. My feet have touched the surface of the roof, now.
For the moment, I am safe, but I am that much farther away from reuniting with Darlene.
I turn around to look at where I’m at, to see if the roof has changed much since I was a scared eight-year-old who didn’t want to get his shots. It hasn’t besides the concrete boxes with their fans slowly whirring inside of them. I guess Eddy or his descendants finally sprung for some central heating and cooling. The roof seems to stretch for almost a full block, but I think I am just suffering from shock.
The parapet comes up to the middle of my thighs. Not safe if I happen to pass out, but if I sit down with my back to the brick, I’ll be okay. I just need to catch my breath, need to regroup. I crawl away from the ladder. The cool bricks chill my sweaty back through my shirt. I lost most of the fireworks. All I have left is a tube of Roman Candles, and the Bic Abby gave me. There are not enough fireballs in it to take out thirty of the bastards, and there’s no Army helicopter to signal.
Dead Haven (Jack Zombie Book 1) Page 17