The jack zombie collecti.., p.8
The Jack Zombie Collection: Volume 1, page 8
Isaiah turns to leave.
15
Isaiah’s sneakers squeak on the honey-colored basketball court. He moves at a jog until he comes up on the white curtain between the track and courts. It parts, chains jingling, knocking some dust bunnies free.
Set in the brick wall, a square window of thick, frosted glass distorts the images outside. I see a picture-perfect sunset. Orange and purplish pink. Cotton candy skies. There’s a building on this side of the gym adjacent to the massive parking lot dotted with cars. It’s a church, and part of me wants to yell out to Miss Fox so she can get her religious ass over there, but I don’t think yelling is a good idea at this point.
I don’t see any more zombies outside. The rec center is pretty big, and the crowd seemed dense by the front and side doors. Maybe there’s a chance over here. Maybe we can get out. Maybe I can get to Darlene before they get to her. Will she still love me knowing I’m a murderer? I don’t know. But I’m willing to find out.
Above the door, in bright-red letters reads: EMERGENCY EXIT ALARM WILL SOUND IF DOOR IS OPENED.
“Isaiah, wait up,” I say. I need to stop this before it gets out of hand.
He pauses, wheels around to face me with the gun lowered. I flinch, seeing the dark steel.
“Now what?” he asks.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to open the door. The alarm is gonna sound. That’ll just bring them over here if they’re not over here already.”
“The electricity is off, dummy. Did it go off when you and the chick went out the other one?”
“No, it didn’t…” I say, but that one looked ancient in comparison to the one we stand at now.
“What about the backup generators…dummy?” Kevin says.
“Those generators concentrate on what’s important,” Isaiah says. “Lights, refrigeration systems, air conditioning. The alarm ain’t going to sound.” He pauses at the window, cups his hands around his face, gun still in the right one. “Looks like a beautiful day to me.”
I hang back a few feet. I’m on the rubber track. It’s dark over here, no emergency lights like the ones in the cafeteria and the front desk area.
“Seriously, man, it’s not a good idea,” I say. “I was just joking. You don’t have to prove your manliness or anything like that. Let’s go back to the cafeteria and come up with a plan.”
Kevin is even farther behind me. Abby’s on my hip, she digs in her pocket for the key and tosses it to Isaiah.
I look at her sideways. “Really?”
“I want to get out of here, too,” she says. “And he has the gun.”
I can’t argue with that.
Isaiah leans up against the cross handle, sticks the key in the hole, and unlocks the bar with a snap. With his free hand, he swipes it over the stubbled hair atop his head. I see his knuckles flash white through his skin as he grips the gun.
“Here goes nothing,” he says.
His sneaker catches the track with a squeal as he backs into the door. It opens.
So far, no alarm. No zombies, either.
I’m struck by how quiet it is outside. No sounds at all except for nature. Birds tweeting. Wind rustling leaves high in the trees. Isaiah’s ragged breath.
More importantly, no death rattles from the freaks.
It’s a peaceful — almost eerie — moment. I try to take it in. There’s not been a time in my life I can remember where I’m fully conscious and I don’t hear the sounds of cars rolling down the road, the horns honking, people arguing.
There’s never been this much silence. I take a half-step across the threshold. I’m scared, I’ll admit it, but I’m also intrigued. Did I see what I saw in the lobby? Did Toby really get ripped apart by a zombie cop, and did I shoot one of them by the dumpster? I think I did. Or is it just my writer's imagination out of control?
Darlene. I think of Darlene. There’s no time to second guess what I saw or didn’t see. I have to get to her, even if this is all some fucked up hallucination. Right now, that’s what it seems like. Just my imagination in overdrive, coping with the death of my mother, Freddy Huber’s punch, and the reappearance of my brother.
Then I hear it. Then I see it.
My brain doesn’t fully comprehend what happens at first. It’s too busy trying to soak up this still, and possibly, dying world.
A faint red light dances above the frame. I’m about three feet out of the opening.
Kevin goes pale. Abby plugs her ears. All the lights flick on in the rec center. A scoreboard buzzer goes off, signifying the end of a game no one was playing on one of the courts. The red flashes speed up, and the alarm sounds just like the sign warned us it would.
The power has come back on for the time being. The worst possible time, too.
Isaiah looks a little frazzled from the alarm, but he turns to me and shrugs. “Ain’t nothin out here. I’m going home.”
“But they’re drawn by sound,” I say, thinking of Johnny Deadslayer’s radio alarm going off as a herd of zombies passed outside the house he takes refuge in, thinking of how all the zombies turned at the same time and broke down his door. But I made that up like I could be making this up.
I don’t know. I just don’t know.
“Fire department will be here soon, kid. I wish you the best.”
Behind me, Kevin and Abby are scrambling to turn the alarm off. The door was new, but the alarm wasn’t. All it is is a giant bell perched up above the frame with a small hammer ding-dinging at a million miles per hour.
Isaiah spreads his arms like a man who’d been locked away in a prison for thirty years as opposed to a man trapped in a gym for less than two hours. He closes his eyes, inhales deeply. The wind blows, billowing the edges of his loose-fitting shirt.
In the trees, it looks like a great monster shakes awake from its slumber, disturbed by the emergency exit alarm.
But there’s no monster. Only a flock of birds that fly from the branches.
“Get that alarm off!” Pat shouts. Him and his little group of invalids follow him from their campsite on the last basketball court, probably discussing ways on how to assassinate me.
Wow, I am going crazy. First, I think it’s a prank, and now I think I’m important enough to be assassinated.
Kevin jumps as I turn my head. When he lands on the rubber track, the whole ground seems to shake.
The alarm continues; it’s definitely real.
“Seriously, shut that thing off!” Pat says again.
Miss Fox puts a hand over her mouth, tilts her head up at Pat. He’s sweaty again.
“It’s driving me crazy!” Pat says.
“I’m trying!” Kevin’s deep voice rumbles over the sound of the dings. He jumps, and I hear a loud thwack and him sucking in breath through his teeth. Because it’s silent. The big bastard actually punched the bell until it shut up.
No one says anything for a moment.
Pat wears that same conniving smile that never seems to leave his face. “Where are your precious zombies, Jupiter?” he asks, squaring up like he might hit me.
“Leave the kid alone, man,” Isaiah says.
“He bullshitted us. They all did. The little whore who works here, and that big buffoon,” Pat says as if he never saw Toby get ripped apart, as if he thinks this is all one, big practical joke. But did he? Did I?
Is this bullshit?
Pat gives Isaiah a death stare, then he grabs me by the collar. “Give me the gun! I’m gonna teach this pipsqueak who to bullshit.”
Isaiah stands there with it in hand. I see him out of the corner of my eye, like he’s actually contemplating letting this dick-bag put a bullet in my brain. There’s no way he is. Just no way.
“I told you you motherfuckers is crazy. You know what, let’s just forget all of this, go back to our cars, back to our families, and get on with our lives,” Isaiah says. “What do you say?”
Pat’s face goes a shade whiter. Maybe he’s not as crazy as he looks.
Even if he lets go of me, I’m punching him in the face the first chance I get, zombies or not.
Then there’s that sound. At first, I think it comes from the back of Pat’s throat, but the sound echoes, doubles, triples. They aren’t human sounds. They aren’t sounds that come from someone that’s alive.
They’re the gurgles of the dead ringing in my ear the same way they rang in my head when I wrote about them.
Limbs wrap around the bricks, arms and legs searching aimlessly. Then a face. It’s a face of someone slightly recognizable like maybe I saw him at the grocery store, maybe he was a suggested friend on Facebook.
I just don’t remember his profile picture having so much blood in it.
16
The lights sputter. Flicker. They go off.
Pat lets go of my collar, his jaw dropping open.
“Aw, shit, man,” Isaiah says.
Behind me, Abby screams.
“Get in,” I say.
Isaiah is about twenty feet from the door, but the dead cut off his escape route back into the building.
“Move!” Pat says, then shoulders me out of the way. I go barreling into the door frame pretty hard. It hurts, but I’m in shock so I hardly notice. It’ll hurt worse later. Pat reaches for the handle.
“No!” I yell.
“There’s no time,” he says.
He might be right.
Isaiah raises the gun toward the crowd. It’s thick with distorted faces, shiny blood, and crooked limbs. Each zombie has a sickening, ashy quality to them. They look like that because they’re dead. Because this is real. Because I’m not going crazy.
The gun goes off, and the leader of the crowd goes down in a spray of blood and pallid skin.
Pat pulls the door closed.
I’m reliving Toby all over again. How I tried to save him. How I failed. I don’t want it to be like that, so I ram my own shoulder through the crack, wedge myself between safety and death. I have no weapons, no plan, and the forest of zombies grows thicker by the second. They’re attracted to the sounds. With Abby and Miss Fox’s screaming, it’s a wonder the whole dead world hasn’t shown up yet.
“Come on, Isaiah!” I say.
He still aims the weapon toward the crowd to my right, but on my left, there’s even more. The only place uncovered with them is the church across from us. If we run there’re too many fences to climb, barriers to get past, and how long until more of them show up? Zombies shamble down the pavement, dragging broken legs and feet, moaning, mouths shining with red.
Isaiah catches my eyes.
“So be it, kid,” Pat says. “I’m closing the door.”
It’s funny, really. I was the one who tried to convince Pat, and now he’s going to live and I’m going to die. I’m going to get eaten by the townspeople of Woodhaven. What a way to go. Make sure they have a closed casket at my funeral, just like Mother!
“No, he’s not,” Kevin’s voice booms.
“Hey, asshole,” Pat says.
I hear the dull thud of Kevin’s massive mitts hitting the steel door.
“Come on,” Kevin says.
Isaiah turns to run, the crowd right on his heels. A straggler reaches out, barely snags the loose hem of his sweatpants as she falls to the asphalt. She’s a fat woman, and even in death, her face looks hungry. It’s not enough to bring Isaiah down with her, but it’s enough to trip him up.
He stumbles, and the gun goes sprawling off the pavement, sliding toward the encroaching crowd to my left.
Fear seizes my throat. We’ll need that gun, even if we’re outnumbered, we’ll need it. As I reach out and grab it, a vomit-smelling dead man lunges at me. It’s as if when the zombies see potential meals, they speed up — not an attribute in my zombie fiction, even I’m not that sadistic.
I grab the weapon, and Isaiah grabs me as I stumble forward. Something falls from my pocket, and I feel my heart break when I realize it’s the keys to my rental car. They skitter across the asphalt like it’s ice, now lost in a sea of dead flip-flops.
Kevin yanks us both before I can even think of trying to get them back, then pulls us through while pulling the door shut with his free hand.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Abby says. She jingles her keychain, fumbles with the right one, then finally sticks it into the lock and clicks it secure.
This changes my plans of escape. The motel isn’t that far from the rec center, but I damn sure wasn’t planning on walking. I will have to if it’s the only way. To save the girl of my dreams, I would do anything. Just hold on a little longer. Please, God, let Darlene hold on a little longer.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I say to Isaiah.
He’s sweating, breathing hard, chest rising and falling in a stuttered pattern. “I-I don’t know, man. It seemed safe. They weren’t there, then they were. What the fuck are they? Are those really…zombies?”
“Yes,” I say with one hundred percent surety. I turn to Pat. I want to be pissed at the guy, but if I were in his position, I would’ve done the same, so instead of going off on him, I just say, “Now do you believe me?”
He shrugs. “Something’s up, sure, but zombies? C’mon, Jupiter, that’s just bullshit and we all know it.” His face tells me something different. He’s in denial. Rightfully so. “No such thing as the dead coming back to life, no matter how many times you write about it in your stupid, fucking books.”
“They were dead, man,” Isaiah says. “I looked them right in the eyes. Just blank. Dead, man. Fuckin dead.”
Pat snorts.
“This ain’t funny, dude. We almost lost the gun. And there’s about a million of those things out there. They ain’t playing around, either,” Isaiah says.
We all stare at each other. There’s an odd silence for a moment until it’s ruined by the sounds of thumping fists and gurgling moans. I see their shadows pass under the door. They thunder against the metal. It sounds like a storm.
I start to back away, the rest of the group following me.
We get to the basketball court entrance before we split up again.
“Crazy,” Pat says before he turns down the dark hallway.
I walk across the cafeteria. Everyone stops there. Chairs scoot across the tile. But I keep walking. There’s an indoor soccer field adjacent to the cafeteria made of turf. I walk to the door and open it. The ground is soft, almost like real grass. I slide down the safety wall and onto the field, then take my shoes off.
“I need to get out of here,” I say to myself.
Darlene is a strong woman, but she wouldn’t know what to do to a zombie if the things could talk and tell her. She’ll be scared, frightened, hopeless. Those things outside, call them zombies or not, are deadly, and I need to get to her, need to protect her before it’s too late.
And I know it’s not too late. Darlene and I have this connection. I don’t want to sound cliché or too lovey-dovey (like one of her vomit-inducing romance books), but we don’t have two hearts, we only have one. We are connected at this spiritual level. If she died, I believe I would feel it. Instead, I just feel anxiety and worry from both of us.
She is still okay. She has to be.
Please, God, if you let me get out of here alive, and you let Darlene be okay, I promise I’ll start going to church. I’ll stop saying swear words. I’ll stop eating red meat and watching porn.
There’s hardly any light above me. Just one emergency backup that casts shadows. I don’t know what I was expecting. A harp, maybe an angel coming down from the heavens to assure me it’ll be okay. Instead of clouds, this place smells like a locker room. Like sweaty gym socks.
I really, really need to get out of here.
I get an idea. Nobody gets anything done by sitting around and sulking. I shoot up and head out of the soccer field.
Abby and Kevin are sitting at their table. She has her head down, while Kevin is messing with his phone. The screen is lit up, and he’s swiping something. A flutter of hope freezes my heartbeat. Maybe he’s getting service.
“Working?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Piece of shit cell phone.”
Behind me, something rattles.
“Damn it,” Isaiah says. He holds the Coca-Cola vending machine by each side and rocks it back and forth. “After the shit I went through I think I deserve a drink. But no, the backup generator ain’t gonna send no power to the vending machines, is it? Just my luck.”
“Break it,” Abby says.
He raises his eyebrows. “What?”
“Yeah, just break it. The manager isn’t going to yell at you. The sheriff is dying, or already dead. You won’t get in trouble.”
“Girl’s right,” Kevin says, not looking up from his phone. “I think your crime will be forgiven under our circumstances.”
“You’re right.” He grabs a chair, picks it up, and uses the legs to shatter the glass. One hit was all it took. He grabs a Coke in one hand, and a couple more in the other. “Anyone want one?”
I raise my hand, and he tosses me one.
Kevin shakes his head. “End of the world or not, carbs are carbs.”
We all laugh, but it’s not a laugh you’d expect from a group of friends all having a good time. It’s a shaky laugh, one I think we let out to help keep our sanity.
Abby takes a bottle of water.
“We get saved and someone asks who broke the machine, y’all gonna have my back when I blame Pat?”
More of that uneasy laughter.
“That cop got any other weapons?” Isaiah asks.
“Just a nightstick,” Abby answers.
“Shit, is that him right there?” Isaiah says.
Isaiah sits across from me. I’m facing the broken vending machine. He faces the front doors. My mind says no that can’t be him. I locked the door.
“Look,” Isaiah says again, holding up the hand that has the Coke in it.
I turn around.
The front desk is almost completely shrouded in darkness. Only a sliver of daylight peeks over the trees across the rec center and comes in through the small window. There’s a silhouette standing at the desk. It’s impossible to tell who the person is, but I see the utility belt around the shadow’s waist. The head is crooked, leaning away to the right, and there’s a lump on its neck. Like a towel, I’m thinking. Something about his eyes, too. They glow faintly.
