The jack zombie collecti.., p.6
The Jack Zombie Collection: Volume 1, page 6
“That’ll do for now,” I say.
“Here, follow me,” Abby says, looking to Kevin. They go back behind the desk, then disappear into the shadowy corridors.
I lend a hand to help Miss Fox up. She’s an older woman. Fifty, maybe pushing sixty with a homely face; the kind of face that would welcome a total stranger into her home for a glass of water and freshly-baked cookies. She won’t be much help in barricading the door, but she’ll be even less help if she’s just sitting here in the way.
She takes my hand, tears in her eyes, no smile on her face. A blank slate. A woman who’s seen too much in too short a time. “This is God’s wrath. This is His fury,” she says. Her voice is chilling.
Still, I shake my head, do my best to ignore her. We walk past the front desk, under the walkway that leads to the second floor weight lifting room, across the track and into the cafeteria area. There’s three Coca-Cola vending machines, a snack machine, and a coffee machine. The lights are bright, like hospital bright. Floors are spotless and shining.
I pull out her chair for her, which slides easily along the tile, and she sits down.
No one else is in the cafeteria area.
“Just stay right there, and I’ll go get you some water and fresh rags,” I say.
She nods.
I walk back to the doors. The festival-goers hit the outside glass. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Heads and faces smeared with blood. Others totter back and forth, bumping into each other like aimless cattle.
On the floor in the lobby, Becky has her face in Toby’s stomach, almost buried completely. I think of a pie eating contest in hell and what it would be like, and the only image that pops into my head is what I’m seeing right now.
I pause at the front door, not looking at the tragedy occurring in front of me, but looking past it.
There’s more than I thought.
A lot more.
They move with the mentality of a hungry pack of wolves.
I just want to survive. I want to go back to Chicago.
It’s in this lull I remember Darlene’s not here. She could be back at the motel. She could be dead. Or she could be a zombie. God, the thought is enough to make me double over. I feel tears stinging my eyes. To think of her dead or as a zombie, it’s just too much.
She’s the reason I am the man I am today, the reason I’m no longer scared, the reason I’m moderately successful. Not Woodhaven. Not my mother or my long-lost father.
Darlene.
She’s also the reason why I can’t lie down and curl up into a little ball.
My fiction has become a reality, that’s true. Johnny Deadslayer wouldn’t quit, and neither will Jack Jupiter.
I straighten up and wipe the tears away with the back of my hand. Two men carry over a cracked-leather couch near the stairs to the second floor. They set it longways against the four doors that comprise the exit. One of them, a black man with a basketball player’s physique, drops his end with a clatter. The other — the young janitor kid — does the same.
“Aw, what the fuck?” the black guy says. “She’s eating his throat, man. Oh hell, no.”
Another man, old, but in decent shape, wearing a basketball jersey with the number 19 hanging off the back in frays, says, “Don’t look.”
It’s too late not to look. You see it once, it burns into your brain. They both know it because they’re quiet now, and they’re still staring. It’s at this moment that I notice the silence in the building. Like everything clicked off at once. The air conditioner isn’t humming.
The lights flicker. My eyes go up to the ceiling. From the ceiling, hangs large lights in rows of ten or maybe fifteen. They’re like spotlights hung upside down. Each light clicks off one after the other until the only light in the place comes from the sun outside.
Then the air starts to blow, though not as strongly. From where I stand I can see the red glow of the Coca-Cola vending machine. A few lights stuck on the walls around the building turn on.
Back up lights. An emergency generator.
This is even worse — it means the power went out. Maybe around the whole block, or the whole town…hell, maybe the whole world. Darlene huddled up in a ball in the pitch-black crosses my mind, her hands over her ears to block out the moaning of the dead.
I grind my teeth. Can’t let this get me down anymore.
Looking outside, I mentally prepare my escape route. There’s maybe a hundred people jammed together in the rec’s small parking lot. It’s only a fraction of what the festival usually gets.
Miss Fox will have to wait. I turn and run to grab the other couch. Resting on the brick wall is the sweaty middle-aged guy. He’s scrolling through his iPhone with a twisted look on his face, mashing his fingers against the touchscreen and muttering, “C’mon, you goddamned piece of shit. C’mon!”
“If the phone lines are down, I think the cell towers would be, too,” I say.
He ignores me.
“I’m Jack.” It comes out stilted and awkward. I’ve never been too good at talking with people I don’t know. “We could use a little help.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says.
I linger, expecting more.
He moves the phone away from his squinted eyes and says, “Damn it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Pat. And no, I’m not helping. I don’t plan on sticking around.”
“Believe me, I want to leave, too. I got a fiancé, but it’s too dangerous — ”
He cuts me off. “Yeah, yeah, save it, kid. I get that you’re scared. I just don’t give a shit.” He’s frowning. It reminds me of someone, but I don’t know who.
“Whatever,” I say, turning toward the other couch.
“Whatever,” Pat echoes, trying to mimic my tone.
I scoff, then the black guy and I lift up the other couch and drag it toward the two entrance doors. Abby shows up with a cart full of weight plates. She wheels them over to me. I stack forty-five pounders near the legs of the couch so none of those things can push it over the tile. I don’t know how well it’s going to work, but it’s all we have.
The old man comes back. He has jump ropes draped around his neck like scarves.
Abby smiles, takes the jump ropes, and wraps them around the handles of each pair of doors. It’s not much, but Abby must’ve been a girl scout because she ties a complicated knot that I know I’d never be able to untie without a pair of hedge clippers.
Abby looks pale and near death. “My mom,” she says. “Is she going to be okay?”
I nod. “Yeah, she is. Don’t worry.”
I’ve always been a good liar. Sometimes, I can even convince myself. So I have no problem convincing her. Truth is, I don’t know if anyone is going to be okay. Not even Darlene. I push the thought away again.
She smiles, then goes back to tying her jump rope knots.
Most of the doors are covered by various workout equipment.
Through a crack between one of the couches and the glass divider, I see our ravenous cop has finished with Toby’s stomach because most of it is gone. Now she works on his face. Bits have been chewed away already. His teeth stretch up to his nose with the absence of his upper lip. One of his eyes hangs from the socket near his ear on a tangled optic nerve.
Most of the carpet is stained red. There’s blood on the community cork board. A sign for a lost Chihuahua is almost completely drenched, soggy and falling from its thumbtack.
There’s another scream from inside of the rec. Not Miss Fox’s.
The scream came from behind the front desk. It’s Kevin. Doaks must’ve turned already. We’ve been infiltrated. We’re screwed.
I turn to run toward my old friend.
Abby Cage says, “Wait up!” from behind me.
The offices behind the desk are a maze. Sounds seem to echo off every wall.
I see a ray of sunlight cast across the hallway floor. A blast of heat hits me. The screams are louder.
I reach a white room. The sheriff is passed out on the table, bloody towels still stuck to the wound on his neck. Every few seconds, he turns his head back and forth and clamps his eyes shut tight, wrinkling the skin, making him look much older. He hasn’t turned. He’s not locked in, either. I pull the door closed, hoping it locks automatically, knowing it doesn’t.
Where is Kevin?
I don’t linger much longer. I follow the heat and dwindling sunlight streaming in.
Around the corner at the end of the hall, an emergency exit is open. One of the zombies has Kevin’s arm in her blood-slimy hands.
Yellow eyes bear into my soul, freezing me to the spot.
“Help me!” Kevin says. “Don’t just stand there. Help me!”
11
I unfreeze, but the woman doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, she just opens her mouth. Blood lines her teeth. Clumps of saliva hang from her lips. She moans like a person suffering from the worst case of the flu.
I’m scared as all hell, but I plunge my hand in the tangle of limbs. For a second, I go numb all over my body. I think of Darlene. I think of the life we could’ve had together. The kids, the house, the vacations, the white-picket fence.
Then my fingers close around the woman’s arm. Her skin is burning hot. I pull with all my might. Kevin breaks free, falls to the ground and starts scrambling away.
Abby grabs him around the waist and pulls — a futile effort. That’s all well and good except now I’m the zombie’s sole focus. I try to let go, to turn and run, but she weighs about a thousand pounds.
Dead weight.
We topple over. I hit the carpet with a lung-exploding thud.
Spit drips onto my cheek. I smell that road kill scent of death.
“No!” Abby screams.
I hear what sounds like a stampede coming for me. Then something whizzes by my face. It’s a size fifteen Nike. The toe connects with the zombie’s face. A few teeth fly out of her mouth along with her whole body being lifted off of me. She goes crashing into the wall, half hanging outside into the beautiful July day.
I get up fast.
It’s times like these I wish I was stronger. Which is why I was in the gym in the first place. Losing most of my life, being picked on and ridiculed in high school can have a damaging effect on the kid, one that bleeds into his adult life. I, Jack Jupiter, am a prime example.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Abby asks me.
I nod, wiping my face off with the bottom of my shirt. I am dazed.
“Holy shit, did I kill her?” Kevin says. “Fuck, I killed her.”
His voice is usually deeper than the ocean, but now he sounds like a kid in the throes of voice-changing puberty.
“No, they are already dead,” I say. “We have to remember that.”
“Oh God, I’m a murderer,” he says, then turns back to look at me. “This never happened. Anyone asks, this never happened.”
The zombie’s up against the wall like a crumpled piece of trash. There’s a checkmark branded on her forehead. More blood runs near the wound — it’s her blood this time.
Abby echoes my thoughts. “I-I think she is dead…”
“We need to be thorough,” I say. “Go get me scissors, or a knife. Something sharp.”
“Uh, guys…” Abby says.
Too late.
She points to the crumpled woman. I turn to follow her gaze.
That death rattle fills the air. A hand reaches out to grab at us. Kevin is quick, but I’m not. That’s what sitting around playing video games and writing gets me. One hand grabs my ankle, then the other wraps around my calf.
I try to shake her off me. It doesn’t work. Instead, I fall to the floor. Kevin is on me, about to yank me to safety like he did in the lobby.
But the zombie is determined, and apparently, hungry.
Two gunshots ring out in the small hallway.
My eardrums feel like they’re about to explode. I scream, closing my eyes but don’t hear myself.
When I open them, Doaks stands shakily, the towels still wrapped around his neck. He holds his gun out in front of him. A wisp of smoke flutters into the air and his arms wobble one last time before he lets them drop to his side.
This dead woman is now missing a chunk of her head. Blood drenches the pale walls; it rolls down the cracked emergency exit door in round droplets.
“Now, she’s definitely dead,” I say to Kevin.
Doaks takes a breath then promptly falls down on the floor at Abby’s feet.
She yelps.
The gun bounces off the carpet and rolls toward me. I pick it up.
Kevin grapples the sheriff, starts taking him to the athletic trainer’s room, leaving us. Abby’s face is a mask of tears. She’s red. Her hair is no longer in a tight ponytail, strands hang over her forehead into her eyes.
I don’t know what to say or do to comfort her. Really, what are my options? So I don’t say anything at all. I go toward the emergency exit.
“Help me move her outside before more show up,” I say.
Abby nods.
I grab her feet. Abby grabs her arms.
“This is not how I expected my day to go,” Abby says. “Why couldn’t this crap wait for another month and a half?
“What’s in a month and a half?” I ask, grunting with the zombie’s weight.
“When I move out of this hellhole.”
We go through the door.
I drop my end of the dead woman. We are too late. Part of the crowd has already moved from the front to the side where this emergency exit exits to. They are drawn by sound. Basic primal instincts keep them going. What sound is better at attracting the dead than freaking gunshots?
I don’t intend to get devoured today, so I pull the pistol out of the waistband of my gym shorts.
How hard can it be to shoot a gun? I’ve never done it, not except for video games when there’s assisted aiming and, most importantly, no consequences.
So I pull the trigger, unsure of where to aim, just knowing it’s into the crowd. When the gun cracks, I pull the trigger a second time for safe measure.
“Oh, God,” Abby says from behind me in a muted voice.
The nearest green dumpster is drenched in brains. Spots of red and bits of flesh stick to the metal bin like paint. Fireworks of death on a green canvas.
One of the dead is down while the others trample its lifeless corpse. The other shot went wide, hitting a young man in the chest, driving him back a foot, but not doing much to slow him down.
The sight sickens me and excites me at the same time.
I raise the gun, not knowing how many bullets are left, aiming at the closest zombie, which is a man in a tank top. I imagine it’s Freddy Huber, my vivid imagination kick-starting. Hopefully this will soften the guilt.
I don’t get to pull the trigger. Abby grabs the back of my arm and pulls me inside before the dead wash over me.
Another five seconds and I would’ve been a meal.
She slams the door, pulls out her trusty key, and locks it.
“What are you doing? Trying to get us killed?” she says. “If they get in, we’re dead. You said it yourself!”
I say nothing. I know my reasons. Crazy as they may be. I thought I could clear a path, I thought I could get to Darlene.
Kevin is standing around the corner, he holds a broken broom handle, muscles flexed. He relaxes a bit when he sees us, but still somehow looks like King Kong.
“The sheriff,” he says, “he’s mumbling, and he’s talkin’ about the end of the world again. I-I think he’s gonna die.”
12
Doaks does look like he’s going to die soon, and there’s nothing I can do to help him. The room is quiet, except for the slightest buzz of cool air escaping from the register under a sink counter. Cool air that does nothing for us.
The power is still off. Everything on is running on the backup generator, and the temperature suffers from it.
Doaks smells the way my grandpa smelled in his hospital bed three days after his stroke, the day he died.
His eyes are wide open. He studies Abby, Kevin, and me like we’re works of art on display at some museum. He looks at us, but I’m not sure if he really sees us.
“It…it hurts,” he says. “She bit me and…and it hurts bad.”
I lean closer, part of me still thinking this is just some cruel prank. I’m covered in blood enough as it is so it doesn’t matter to me as I reach out to move the towels off his neck. They don’t come easily. It’s like they’re glued to his skin. Dried blood snags on the fabric. Doaks winces as I pry it free. A ripping noise fills my ears, and I smell rotting flesh. Old, spoiled chicken breasts you forgot in your car on a ninety-degree day after a trip to the supermarket.
I’m curious. I want to see if it looks like I’d imagined, like the bites in my zombie novel. But I’m also disgusted. Let’s call it morbid curiosity.
Abby squirms and shuffles away behind me. Kevin makes an “Ew” sound.
“They don’t die…” he says.
The wound is gruesome.
“S-She was just a kid!” Doaks screams, and he does half of a sit-up with the shake in his voice. “She was just a kid, and I shot her…three times. B-But she k-kept coming. She wouldn’t die. All I wanted to do was get through that damn festival. I didn’t want to kill anyone. What was I supposed to do?”
I know how he’s feeling because I am in the same boat. Doaks is a danger as long as he’s left alive. I will have to put him down before he can turn. I don’t want to.
I have to.
Doaks eyelids flutter. I see the pain on his face, hear it in his voice. “She died…they all died. I felt their pulses. They weren’t breathing. Then…then they rose. All of them. She bit me. The little girl bit me. Her teeth were like…were like a bear trap. I couldn’t get her off of me. I-I panicked. Then she bit Fred and Stacy. The florist lady. Mayor Gunther got it, too. I couldn’t do my j-job, I had to…had to run. There were too many. The whole town…dead. Dead!” He screams and shakes, pain wracking through his body.
“It’s okay,” I say. But somehow the way Doaks describes it is worse than I thought. It’s not okay. This is real, and it’s not okay.
