The Jack Zombie Collection: Volume 1, page 12
Screw this, I think. I don’t owe these people anything. I will not be killed by their own stupidity. I will not go down with this sinking ship. If help was going to come, it would’ve already come by now. I have Darlene to worry about, not Pat Huber and Ryan the douchebag janitor.
“Abby! Take me to the roof,” I yell.
She arches an eyebrow, but otherwise ignores me. Her hands are on Ryan’s arm.
“Abby, come on! We aren’t going to defend this place, we have to go.”
“I’m with Jupiter,” Isaiah hollers. He grunts as he throws a twenty-five pound plate like a frisbee. I don’t see where it lands, but I hear the snarls rip through the air at the bottom of the stairs as if he disturbed their dining experience. He turns to Kevin: “Let’s go, big guy. We need to get out of here. Can’t hold that all night,” he says.
Veins bulge from Kevin’s biceps. I rush over to help while the rest of them get ready to go.
From around the corner, a man with a dislocated jaw shambles up the railing. He reaches a hand out toward me. His jaw opens to expose bloody teeth. Then he falls. Right over the railing, about thirty feet and lands on his stomach with a splat near the running track. Something shoots off his face, dancing across the rubber floor.
I watch this all with laser focus. I don’t know why, but it entrances me. When whatever it is stops spinning, I see it. It’s his jaw, completely unhinged, disconnected from his face. He turns over to look up at me hanging over the railing.
Bloody hands reach toward the ceiling. A sound like a broken sprinkler escapes the gaping, black hole.
I thought I was a horror writer, I thought I was an architect of nightmares.
I was wrong. This is truly a nightmare — one I had no hand in creating or controlling.
22
“What about Ryan?” Abby asks.
They’re all standing now. Kevin still has his back pressed up against the stairway barricade. Every five seconds or so, his soles squeak from the dead pushing, trying to get in.
“Leave him,” Pat says. The way he speaks chills me.
“No, don’t leave him,” I say. “Kevin, can you carry him?”
Kevin nods.
I may have told Abby that whatever happens to Ryan is out of our hands now, that the real problem was Pat, but I’ve never been so wrong. After seeing the zombie without the jaw, seeing the things eating Toby’s corpse, eating Earl’s, I know I’ve never been more wrong. We can’t let that happen to Ryan. He’s a dick, but not even someone like him deserves a fate as terrible as that.
“T-Tell my mom I’m gonna stay the night at Robbie’s. Tell her I’m gonna miss dinner,” Ryan murmurs. His head rolls from shoulder to shoulder. He’s sweating more now. Delirium is settling in.
“We will, Ry, we will,” Abby says, trying to comfort him.
“I’ll try to run. I won’t hold you guys back. Please, just help me. I don’t want to die like Earl. Please,” Ryan says.
“I got you, kid,” Kevin says. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Wait, everyone grab a weapon,” I say.
I walk over to the small cache of dumbbells and barbells. I grab a ten pounder that has a hexagonal shape on each end. Sharp and hard. The others follow my lead. Everyone except Kevin and Pat. Miss Fox holds a dainty, pink two pounder. Isaiah has a twenty. Abby picks up a weighted bar, you know, one of the shorter ones with the rubber padding and colors on each end. It can’t be more than eight pounds.
“Lead the way,” I say to her.
Abby takes a deep, shaky breath. Blinks fast.
“On the count of three,” I say to Kevin because as soon as he moves, that barricade is going to topple over and the dead are going to spill over it all, hell-bent on feasting on us.
He flexes his whole body as he gives one last shove backward. “How ‘bout on the count of two! Can’t hold it much longer.”
“One…two…three…now!”
He dives out of the way of the falling exercise equipment. Then he scoops Ryan up like a baby. Abby points us toward the aerobic area. She runs faster than I’d expect her to run.
I don’t see the dead, but I hear them. Their hands scratching at the plastic, knocking the weight plates together. I risk a glance. There’s about five of them who made it over the barrier. The noise is drawing more, and they lumber up the stairs, still hungry. The zombies coming up the steps wear masks of blood over their mouths. It’s almost sickening, almost enough to make me keel over and vomit.
If this is how the world is now, will I ever get used to it? I don’t think so, but I think about Darlene and how the only way I’ll be able to survive is with her by my side. I couldn’t go on without her. She’s the reason I haven’t given up yet. She’s what gives me hope.
“Jack! Come on,” Isaiah says. One of his hands grips my bicep. I didn’t even realize it. I was transfixed, just standing there, staring at the carnage, at the freaks.
Fingernails dig into my skin, and he pulls me. I almost drop the ten-pound weight I hold in my hand like a hammer.
The dead lumber toward us. They’re only about five feet away when Isaiah nearly yanks me off my feet.
Abby is in the lead. She’s almost to the fence that separates the aerobic area from the basketball spectator stands. Pat is behind her, Miss Fox behind Pat, and last is Kevin with Ryan in his arms.
Abby weaves through treadmills.
“Around the corner,” she says. “It’s a service stairway.” Snarls crawl up my back, almost drowning out Abby’s voice.
“Jack, watch out!” Abby says.
I turn around to see a zombie with his nose half-ripped off, lunging at me. I don’t even think. I just act, let the dumbbell come down on its face. There’s a sickening crunch of bones shattering. My shoulder is nearly ripped out. A pinch in my back travels from my ass to my neck.
But No-Nose drops like a sack of bricks.
Bash one head in, two more take their place, I guess, because an old woman and an old man, both more like skeletons than recently dead people don’t even take notice to their fallen comrade. A hand goes for my throat.
I fall over, losing my weapon. Rotten skin and dusty bones fills my nostrils, then the damn thing opens its mouth. My forearm goes up to block the thing’s bite. Problem is my forearm is bare.
One bite and I’m the next nameless corpse. What a bittersweet irony that would be. The writer becoming the monster he writes about.
I drive my elbow into its neck. The one on top of me is the man.
His wife joins in on the fun. This is not how I picture my first threesome.
I use my other arm to try to fend her off, but somehow she’s stronger than he is. Fresher maybe, too.
Isaiah screams.
There’s a crack that follows that scream. I’m showered in a cloud of dust and brains. Some wet stuff, too, like blood or God knows what else. Another crack.
The old guy drops on me, unmoving.
“Come on,” Isaiah says.
He pulls me out from beneath the lifeless corpses, but more are on the way. I can’t sit around stunned. I have to move.
Their eyes are yellow, some are red. All are dead.
“Come on, you assholes, we can’t wait around all night,” Pat says.
He has his gun raised, but he won’t fire. There are too many, not enough bullets. He might be a good shot, who knows? He knows he can’t drop all twenty or so that come up the steps.
I cross the gate and slam it shut. It’s only about waist high, but it might slow the bastards down. We weave through a maze of stationary bikes and treadmills. Dead TVs hang above us, watching this carnage unfold with black-screened eyes.
The gate bangs open not long after I’m through.
Abby and Pat turn the corner, knifing through the top part of the basketball stands.
I’m sweating, I can feel it, but something else leaves my skin, too. It’s dread. I really hate heights. This rec center is full of heights. Who knows how high up we’ll be, and if we’ll ever really be high enough to get away from these things?
Isaiah throws his dumbbell in one last-ditch effort to slow them down. It whistles by my head, nails a woman in her stomach. She doubles over and falls. The others take no notice of the momentary roadblock.
They aren’t stopping.
All I can do is turn back around, and run.
Kevin and Ryan turn the corner that Abby and Pat have just turned. Isaiah and I are right there. I go first. There’s a clatter. Kevin’s deep voice rings out. “Fuck,” he says.
I trip over the big guy like he’s a fallen boulder. Ryan sprawls out in front of him curled up in a ball, moaning, grabbing at his leg which just kind of hangs there like rubber.
Isaiah slows up before he’s the next victim in this dumbass pileup. He hops over Kevin, clamps a hand around the big guy’s forearm and tries to pull. With me he had no problem, but Kevin probably weighs twice what I weigh.
I scramble up and try to help.
My eyes bulge out of my face as I pull with all of my might.
Kevin shakes his head, lifts his face up. He wears a mask of red over his left eyebrow, even more blood on the floor where he hit.
He pushes himself up, dazed.
The snarls grow louder, that dry clicking noise in the back of the zombies’ throats. A gray-skinned girl is the first around the corner. I swear her eyes light up when she sees the meal at her feet. She wastes no time in dropping down on Kevin’s bare legs.
Her mouth clicks open. Black spit rolls from the corners of her lips in thick, ropy goops.
I kick out and hit her square in the face. Her hair flies back as if she’s being electrocuted. The spit sprays, dotting the white walls to my right.
“Go! Go!” I say to Kevin.
But he moves like a drunk.
Isaiah kicks another one in the chest. Sends the bastard over the railing to our left and into the bleachers where it gets tangled.
“Too many!” Isaiah shouts. “Go, we have to go!”
I try to block it out, try to deafen myself to the guy’s logic, but sometimes I’m too stupid for my own good.
I kick at another’s head. It falls in a spray of blood and brains, the soft, mushy skin not standing a chance. One grapples at me, but I see it from the corner of my eyes and dip, throwing an elbow into its back, sending it to the bleachers with its friend.
“Jack! Come on!”
Teeth are inches from my face. My fist goes up, hits the man under his jaw. His runny, black eyes close with the force of it.
“Kevin!” I yell.
But it’s too late.
He screams out as one of the things dig into his calf. Tendons and skin pop and snap.
A ringing fills my head. It’s not real. None of this can be real.
In one last kick, I free up enough space for me to back out, to hop over Kevin’s body. The rest of them fall down on him. They cover him like ants on a dropped piece of food.
I get about ten feet away from the carnage, from the spraying blood and the crunching sounds of jaws working at his flesh, when he lifts up. This muscular man I once called a friend in high school actually does a half-pushup with about ten dead bodies crawling over him.
It doesn’t last long.
He falls back to the floor with a crash.
The look he gives me will probably give me nightmares for the rest of my life assuming the rest of my life lasts as long as I want it to.
It’s a look of pain, of defeat.
Kevin reaches an arm out toward us as he lifts his head, then drops, his bloody face bouncing off the linoleum.
Isaiah has Ryan in his arms. “Come on, man!” he shouts.
The last thing I hear as I crawl up the steps are Kevin’s dying screams.
He dies a hero.
23
Pat’s face almost fills the opening at the top of the metal ladder. Behind him is an expanse of black sky dotted with white pinpricks of light. I love the stars. They remind me of Darlene. The late nights in Chicago where we get drunk off cheap wine and sit on the balcony, looking at these very stars. Even in the winter when her body keeps me warmer than any fire.
I’m smiling as I think this, as my heart aches for her. I’m trying not to think of her in some back alley covered in trash and blood with inhuman hands digging into her insides. It’s a hard job. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die. There have been a few occasions tonight where I’ve had that feeling, except it’s not my childhood or my memories. All I see is Darlene’s smiling face. So beautiful. So perfect.
“Nuh-uh, drop the kid,” Pat says, bringing me back down to earth. He’s not talking to me, he’s talking to Isaiah.
“What the fuck do you mean drop him?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“This is a human life we’re talking about,” I say. “He might be one of the last ones for all we know. We have to keep him alive.”
“What did I say about talking back to the man with the gun?” Pat says. He flashes the pistol which gleams in the starlight. “And there’s seven billion people on this planet. You think Ryan the janitor is going to be one of the last ones? You think the fate of the human race is going to have to rely on this shit-stain?”
“Man, fuck your gun. I’ll come up there and beat your ass right now,” Isaiah says.
“Patrick,” Miss Fox says in her most motherly voice. “Let them up!”
Pat’s face drains of all color.
“Yeah, shit-stain,” Abby says from the roof. She’s not visible.
He exhales a deep breath, then rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says as he moves out of the hatch. Thank God, because those snarls and choking, gurgling sounds drift up the hall. It’s haunting.
Isaiah goes first. He hangs Ryan over his shoulder like a backpack. “You gotta hold on, kid,” Isaiah says to him. Ryan moans something that isn’t decipherable, but his hands clasp together around Isaiah’s neck.
“I’m right behind you,” I say, then turn my head away from the two, watching the corner, waiting for one of the dead to lunge at me. I won’t hesitate anymore. I am changed. I am Johnny Deadslayer. I am a twisted creation from the depths of my own imagination.
Nothing comes. The coast is clear. I shamble up the ladder, careful not to let Ryan fall off of Isaiah’s back. There are only about ten steps. It doesn’t take us too long to reach the cool, night air.
Abby closes the hatch, stands over it like it’s an animal she just accidentally hit with her car. “You don’t think they can climb up the ladder, do you?”
I shake my head. “If they can’t figure out how to pull the lobby doors open, I think we’ll be okay.”
I almost tell her that according to my rules, there’s not a chance in hell they can, but this isn’t my fictional world.
Her mouth forms a thin line. “I hope so, I really hope so.” Something about her face tells me she doesn’t believe a word I say.
With the sounds of the horde secure behind the hatch, it hits me how quiet it is outside, how still and…empty.
The darkness is a complete black for as far as the eye can see in front of me. No streetlights are on. No headlights driving down the road. All we have is God’s natural light above us, and it’s not much.
There’s a smell in the air. A rotten smell.
“Now what?” Isaiah says.
He’s lying on his back. Ryan is next to him, unmoving, but making soft whimpering sounds through his nose. The leg wound spills blood at a steady rate. The gauze is almost soaked through.
Miss Fox rummages through the first aid kit a few feet away from the both of them. I’m standing, breathing calmer than earlier. Abby is next to me, pacing a few feet back and forth. Pat’s back is to us all. He looks out toward the darkness, where, far up the road, is the Leering Research Facility — Pat Huber’s former place of employment, first, thanks to a fire and now, thanks to the dead rising.
“We wait up here,” Abby says, answering Isaiah. “What else can we do?”
I nod.
“Shit,” Isaiah says, then he does a sit-up, straining. “None of y’all was bit, were you?”
I pat myself down, then shake my head. If I was bit, I think I’d know.
“Nope,” Abby says. “Never got close to them…wait a minute — where’s Kevin?”
I shake my head. I hoped this wouldn’t come up, that everyone would’ve forgotten about him because it hurts to say this out loud. “H-He didn’t make it, Abby.”
“What? You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I was,” I say.
“The damn things fell on him. He tripped carrying Ryan, and they were on him faster than I could believe,” Isaiah says.
I bow my head, pinch my nose. “We tried, Abby. We really tried, there were just way too many of them.”
“A couple seconds longer and we wouldn’t have made it, either,” Isaiah says.
She sniffles, then explodes into a sob. “God, why? What the hell is going on? Why is this happening to us? I’m not a bad person. We aren’t bad people, are we?”
“Don’t question God,” Miss Fox snaps. “We are beneath him. We have no right in questioning his motives.”
I think she’s right, but I keep my mouth shut. Doesn’t matter why this is happening or who had a hand in it. It’s happening, and all we can do is survive. I have to, God or not, for Darlene.
“It wasn’t God or the Devil,” Pat says. His back is still facing us and he talks in a quiet voice. “This is man-made. We did this.”
“What? How you know?” Isaiah asks.
Pat turns around. His face is still white, gun still in his hand. “It was an accident,” he says.
“You think it was an accident?” I ask.
Pat shrugs. “They were studying a virus…at Leering. I worked on the third floor, dealing with animal testing mostly, but I heard the rumors. Test Subject 001. They said she came back to life — except she was supposed to be a he and the project head was batshit crazy. When things went south, one of the researchers made it out of the decontamination chamber with a bite wound. He went a few places, spreading the virus before he could be quarantined, not thinking in his right mind.” He sighs. “Yeah, I heard the rumors, but I didn’t believe them. Then there was the fire. Fires happen from time to time. There was talk of rebuilding, of renovation. That fire was an accident, I was sure, especially when they shut us down. You know, all kinds of batshit things make the rounds at Leering, and so far none proved to be true…until now.
