The Jack Zombie Collection: Volume 1, page 21
Next in line is something more akin to a skeleton wearing a dress that might’ve once been something you put on for church — Sunday’s finest is what you’d call it — before The End. I raise my leg and kick her in the sternum. I’m practically kicking thin air. Her arms flail out as she stumbles backward, a dusty groan escaping her mouth. In less than two seconds, my machete, still slick with Overalls’s brains, collapses her cranium.
“Want more?” I shout to the surrounding dead, my arms out like I’m Russell Crowe in Gladiator (minus fifty pounds of muscle). “Come on!”
Their glowing eyes seem to flicker in the fog. Behind me, I hear Norm’s grunts, the sounds of his baseball bat clobbering their heads. It’s a good sign. When Norm is locked in the zone, he’s like Barry Bonds out there. Each crush of his baseball bat is a home run.
The fog dissipates, showing the dead in all of their disgusting beauty. Lumps, knobs, bones sticking out of fleshy and unusable arms, tattered clothes, melted skin. I’d be lying if I said my stomach isn’t clenching.
“Jack!” someone says. I instantly recognize the voice, even through the Jeep’s glass. It’s Darlene. I risk a glance at the crashed vehicle. Most of the windows are intact except for a large crack through the windshield. The glass is tinted. I can barely make out the white moon of her face, the distressed look in her eyes. “Jack!” She beats on the window as if to break it. She’s trapped in the car, surrounded by death, and it’s up to me to bust her out.
The dead stream out from the woods. Locusts of the Plague, of the Apocalypse, come to pick the bones clean of all Earth’s sinners.
I am frozen, the weight of the situation pressing down on me. I have to save Darlene.
Norm’s gun cracks. Two quick shots. Two lightning flashes. Deafening booms. I see a spray of blood. We are getting overrun. When he drops the bat and picks up the Magnum, I know things have taken a turn for the worst.
Shit.
Something grips at my shoulder, causing me to jump. I turn back around, unfrozen, and I’m face to face with a young man who has died young and will always be young, even as time goes on. That is, until I shove my machete under his chin, poking a hole in the top of his head where a lava burst of scrambled brains spew out and roll down the sides of his face. The light in his eyes immediately fizzles out. I pull the blade free as easily as I lodged it in his head. The next swing decapitates an old woman. Her head rolls off in the grass, mouth missing lips, dentures chomping nothing but air. I stomp on her head, ending that freak show fast.
Darlene, I think. Gotta to get to Darlene.
Norm shoots two more times.
“Jack, come on!” it’s Abby. She’s on top of the Jeep, pointing the Glock at me. She shoots twice and two dead drop.
I, with the help of Abby, have cleared a path to the car where the back of Darlene’s head is pressed up against the window facing me. I run to the Jeep, throw open the door. She tumbles out, but I catch her.
She’s crying. I hate when she cries. The only way I can get her to stop is by taking her into my arms and kissing every inch of her face. But certain circumstances do not let that happen. The real problem is when Darlene is frightened, when she cries, she freezes. And in this world, that's a certain death sentence.
“Go, Darlene!” I shout. “Run.”
She takes one look at the dead piled up, making a body-shaped path through this abandoned field, and her eyes widen in terror. A bald corpse in nothing but his underwear sees us, and lumbers away from the crumpled hood of the Jeep. I give Darlene a little push, nothing terrible or violent, just something to get her engine primed and ready to go. She takes off, clumsily but fast. Abby jumps off the roof of the Jeep, and in mid-jump, puts a bullet through the eye of the underwear-wearing corpse. His head jolts back and he stumbles over the tree’s root, gone to the fog.
“I got her,” Abby says as she lands. She’s a thin thing, thinner since all of this shit went down, so I don’t hear her land. The Glock looks like it weighs more than her.
I point to the road on the far side of the field. There’s a small pond shimmering in the morning sunshine. “Get to the lake! I’ll get Norm and the weapons,” I say. I didn’t even think to say these words. We always know living with the dead means our lives can take a turn for the worst at any moment. We prepare for this stuff. It’s almost a reflex. Second nature.
I lunge into the Jeep. Through the tinted glass, I see Norm. A group of the dead surround him, closing in on him, slowly backing him up against the driver’s side door. He has the smoking Magnum in one hand, the baseball bat in his other. His gray shirt, already dingy with months on the road, is soaked through with sweat. I reach in the Jeep where our gym bag of weapons sit on the front seat, grab it and pull it out. The dead around the front of the car haven’t noticed me.
Norm shoots one in the face, stripping it of its left side. It falls in a bloody spray.
My hand finds the door handle of the back seat. I push it open with a grunt. It’s not easy. The Jeep’s doors are heavy, and like I said, I’m a weakling.
“Norm! Let’s go!”
He looks at me, this crazy look is in his eyes, like he’s going to try to take all of them on by himself. Believe me, he probably could, but I love my older brother and I’m not going to let him do something stupid. The baseball bat swings, cracks a short, fat guy on the top of the head. Norm raises the bat again, but my voice stops him mid-strike. “Norm, I can’t do this without you.”
He looks at me, and the crazy mask he is wearing vanishes.
“I’ve gone my whole life without you, man. I can’t lose you again.”
Blood speckles his uneven beard, his forehead, and almost the entire front of his shirt.
“Come on!” I shout.
The crazy look invades his features again. He squares up to me, raises his weapon. My mouth opens in a protest, something like Please, don’t shoot, but it’s lost in the sound of the gunshot. The glass behind my head shatters, showers over my hands which are laced against the back of my neck. I slowly turn, my heartbeat pounding in my chest. A corpse lays in the grass a mere foot away from where my legs hang out of the Jeep. Its head is a mess of blood and brains and bits of bone. I turn back to Norm as he crawls over the backseats. “Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t mention it,” he says, a smile on his face.
Then we are out of the car and running toward the pond, where Abby and Darlene are little specks on the horizon, barely visible through the now vanishing fog.
4
We regroup at the pond. Dead fish float belly up near the surface. Darlene watches them as if they are hypnotizing. I squeeze her hand and say, “It’s okay,” even though I know I’m lying.
It’s not okay. We have just lost the car and barely survived. I think about maybe going back there when the fog clears, but there are too many zombies and the car crashed into that old tree pretty hard.
So we shoulder on.
As the sun slowly burns us overhead, we spend much of the day walking, but I am tired come a couple hours past noon. I don’t know the exact time, I just know it’s time to rest. I haven’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. If I take the watch during the middle of the night, I usually sprawl out in the back of Norm’s Jeep while one of the others drive.
But we are so close to Eden I could practically smell the orange groves and taste the clean, alive air. Or so that’s the image in my head from the countless nights I’ve dreamed of the place.
Norm looks over his shoulders at me. I’m walking gingerly as if I’m maneuvering through landmines, the bag of weapons hanging off my shoulders and my machete in hand. His face goes from pissed-off to brotherly concern in a matter of seconds. Abby and Darlene follow his gaze.
I must look pretty bad because even Abby looks worried, and lately, nothing worries Abby.
Darlene stops, her shoes breaking a twig that sounds much louder in my head than it actually is, then she’s on me.
“Oh, Jack,” she says. “Are you feeling all right?” The back of her hand goes up to my forehead, feeling for a fever. I’m not sick, it’s just hot outside. Florida weather is nothing like Ohio weather. My shirt sticks to my sweaty skin, there’s moisture trickling down the back of my neck. It’s not the wheels and mobility of Norm’s Jeep that I miss now; it’s the air conditioning. God, I’d kill for some air conditioning.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Don’t worry, let’s keep going. Gotta get to Eden today.” Even I can hear how weak I sound.
Darlene grips my hand and squeezes. “Let me take the bag. I can carry it, Jack.”
She’ll have to be carrying me pretty soon.
“You sure you don’t wanna rest, little brother? Take a break, maybe a nap. Eight hour power nap, yeah?”
“No,” I say. “I’m fine. Gotta get to Eden before sundown.”
Though we left the zombies behind in the field, we are never safe. When the sun goes down and their yellow eyes glow viciously with hunger and rage, you do not want to be caught around a horde. If we stop now, who knows how long we’ll be walking after dark? I can’t have that. I must keep this group safe, I must keep Darlene safe.
But my body says otherwise.
We go on for another half-hour, walking along a long stretch of road. In the distance, I see the varying ups and downs, the farmland next to it, and much, much farther, I see a town. I know it’s actually not that far, it’s just my tired eyes playing tricks on me. Still, this realization doesn’t help me much.
I seem to stare straight ahead for hours.
None of us talk. There’s a time and a place for talking and it’s not now, can't let any dormant dead things in the surrounding forest know where we are.
The sun is halfway down as Norm turns around to look at me. Him and Abby are about a hundred feet ahead of Darlene and I.
I look up to the sky, sarcastically thinking Wow, time flies when you’re having fun.
I’m not too out of it to know it’s nowhere close to nine in the evening. The darkness overhead is a storm brewing. Gray and black clouds swell, pregnant with rain and thunder and lightning. We will have no choice but to find cover. It looks like it’s going to be a hard one, too.
Norm points to a farmhouse. It’s on a stretch of farmland which hasn’t been farmed in the better part of a year. Beyond this wooden fence that runs the length of the balding patch of land, crops litter the field like trash, looking as unenthused as I feel. The farmhouse is a squat two-story building. Its red brick chimney sticks up into the air like a middle finger. The roof is also red, though I don’t think that was its original color. Maybe brown or black. Age and muggy weather have made it rusty, and now it’s the color of the chimney. The lawn is overgrown. There’s a bicycle leaning up against the porch with its handlebars turned at a neck-breaking angle, grass threatening to swallow it up. But beyond this, there is a large tree with all of its leaves. It’s the most alive thing I’ve seen in a long time. It is a beautiful tree.
Darlene shudders next to me. “Creepy,” she says.
“Yeah,” Abby agrees.
They must not notice the tree.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Norm says, a sarcastic smile on his face. “We’re only staying until we all get rested, then we’re back on the road. Who knows? Maybe the previous owners of this place left us a car or some honest-to-God food. I’m sick of eating old Twinkie’s and stale potato chips.”
“And bugs, don’t forget bugs,” Abby says, a disgusted look on her face.
Yeah, Norm has been eating bugs. It was a habit he picked up in his military travels. Some foreign country or other where dinner’s main course is grasshopper soup and eating beef, pork, or chicken is frowned upon. I won’t knock it, but I won’t try it, either. I understand where he’s coming from. We haven’t had meat in awhile, and men need their meat. During the fall of American civilization, when there were more people than zombies (this was just a very short time, looking back) you could still find a pound or two of frozen hamburger, chicken breasts, a nice pot roast. Cook them over a fire, get some buns, barbecue sauce or ketchup and mustard, and enjoy. But now, every working freezer has probably stopped.
So yeah, a man needs his meat, even if it is bug meat, and Florida has a lot of bugs.
“Hey, if you guys ate some once in awhile, maybe you wouldn’t be so weak,” Norm says. “I mean, veggies can only take you so far.
Abby rolls her eyes.
Darlene is looking at me, ignoring all of this banter. “Jack, you don’t look all right,” she says. “Really.”
“I’ll be okay once I get some sleep,” I say.
I, and the rest of the gang, were lucky to not catch the virus that killed most of the world, but we’re never lucky enough to catch a full eight-hours. That kind of shit catches up to a guy, no joke.
“Then let’s go,” Norm says.
5
The wilted crops watch us as we walk up the long, winding gravel driveway — or at least it seems like it. I can’t complain. I’d much rather deal with dead crops than dead people.
Norm leads the way, the baseball bat in hand, but his Magnum not far off. One of the rules I’ve brought forth from my old zombie book (Sitting on dusty, abandoned shelves at a local bookstore near you!) is never shoot a zombie if you can bash its head in. They are attracted to sound. This is something I learned the hard way back in Woodhaven when I was still trying to get a feel for these creatures, still testing the waters. And like in my book The Deadslayer, this proved to be true, among other things: zombies craving human flesh, can only kill them by severing the brain, the putrid stink of rotting bodies, and much, much more.
Norm goes up the stairs first. I am right behind him. Any other time, I’d be there neck in neck with my older brother, but he has the gun while Abby has the other, and I’m pretty beat.
I glance over my shoulder at Darlene. Her fingers are up to her mouth, her teeth working on the nails she once cared so much about. I smile at her, letting her know it’s going to be okay.
The front door isn’t locked, but it’s cracked. This is a good sign. If it was locked, whatever dead things inside of it would still be here.
Norm pushes it open the rest of the way, eases it really. The hinges squeak. I’m not hit with the smell of rotting carcasses. Thank God for small favors, right? But I am hit with the smell of someone else’s house. You know what I’m talking about. The smell of home cooked meals and cheap candles from Bath & Body Works, and maybe even cigarette smoke and dog piss. A smell that hits you full-force once you enter, but then disappears about five minutes later only to resurface when you’re back in the comfort of your own house, peeling your clothes off while the shower is running, and you’re thinking, How the hell did I stomach that stench for so damn long?
It’s that kind of smell, and in this farm house it’s the smell of decaying potatoes, old manure, and maybe rotten eggs and other foods leaking out from behind the closed doors of a refrigerator long since defunct. These are not pleasant smells, either, but I inhale deeply. It’s so much better than dead bodies.
“I think it’s clear,” Norm says.
I lean back to Abby and Darlene, give them a nod, letting them know they can come in. They do and they stay in the foyer area, closing the door to the outside world.
We aren’t even inside and he thinks it’s clear, that’s how good we’ve gotten at this. We are human after all. Humans adapt. I swear my sense of smell is heightened, I can see better in the dark, and I’m almost impervious to fear — almost. That’s cool and all, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the old way of life. Staying up in an air conditioned house, writing, watching TV shows and movies that were once regarded as fiction but have since become the real world, eating whatever I like at whatever time I wanted it (Craving cheeseburgers? McDonald’s is open twenty-four hours and it’s just down the road). What I miss most of all is the docility. How people weren’t always so high strung all the time. You could walk around (at least around my neighborhood in Chicago) without having to worry about people robbing you for your car, your food, your weapons, or your women.
I miss not being a killer. I miss my mother, too, and it’s not that if she was still alive I would go see her; it’s just that it was nice knowing she was still here, and I could talk to her whenever I wanted to, even if that was only on birthdays and Christmas.
We walk inside, past the little foyer area where the mud caked on the boots next to the door has turned into piles of dust. There’s a coat rack with light jackets, workman’s gloves, a John Deere hat, then we are in a hallway. There is a washing machine with a load of moldy, mildewy clothes still inside of it. Pictures of Christ on the walls, behind these pictures, a striped wallpaper of earthy colors: brown, a red clay, land-green. Norm takes the left, I take the right.
The right is a family room. The left is the kitchen. There’s more though, this place is huge. Apparently farmers make bank and I definitely pursued the wrong career by going into writing. Doesn’t matter any more, though.
Darlene trails behind me, grabs my hand. We walk together in this strange house, both of us on edge, our eyes narrowed, looking for any sudden movement, our breathing low so, we can hear every creak and groan.
Inside of the family room is one of those wrap around couches. It stretches wall to wall. There’s a folded blanket over the arm. Pillows in the corners, picture-perfect, like a display couch. A film of dust covers the blank screen of the television. It’s got to be around fifty inches, and it will most likely never be watched again. There’s a large cobblestone fireplace that takes up the bulk of the right side of the room, the type of fireplace I always wanted when I was younger. On the mantle is a framed picture.
They are this house’s last owners. God knows where they are now. I take one off of the mantle, the smallest one. The frame is golden and jagged. This was a happy family. An older man in a button-up shirt and black slacks, the shirt tucked in, with his arm around a woman in her mid-fifties wearing a flowery dress, both with deep suntans, both looking like they’d never worn formal wear in their entire lives. Next to them, locked at the elbows is a pair of twins, young men in their caps and gowns, perfect white teeth on their faces. A billowing water fountain is behind them in the shape of an open rose bud. The little stenciled date in the corner of the picture says FSU 2013. They graduated from Florida State. This moment, frozen in time, is now in my hand, and I feel like crying.
