The jack zombie collecti.., p.9
The Jack Zombie Collection: Volume 1, page 9
“No, God, please, no,” I say.
Kevin looks away from his phone.
I explode up. This is my fault. I should’ve done what needed to be done in that room. I had the gun. I had a broken broom handle. He practically begged me to do it.
But I couldn’t.
“He’s turned,” I say, my voice more shaky than I intend it to be. “I was going to put him down, but I wasn’t sure if he’d turn. I needed to be a hundred percent sure. And I thought the door was locked…” I’m babbling again.
Abby, Isaiah, and Kevin freeze next to me. I was right. I didn’t want to be, but I was right all along.
“You mean he’s one of them,” Abby says. She speaks like she doesn’t want to believe it, like she’s oblivious to the rules of zombies. Her tone is almost like Pat’s was.
“Stay back,” I say to them, filling my hand with the gun.
I’m going to do what I should’ve done the first time.
17
As I get closer, I have to make sure he’s really turned before I put a bullet through his brain. It’s too dark, so I move until I’m able to tell. By this time, Sheriff Doaks lunges at me, and I’m not quick enough. A pair of gnarled hands grip me around the collar. We topple over the front desk, hearing the unmistakable sound of the gun clattering off the tile and being swallowed up by the darkness.
I can’t even scream because his dead weight lands on my stomach, driving all the breath from my lungs.
Isaiah jumps in and grabs the sheriff by his shoulders, pushing him away from me. The air fills my lungs quick. I take a deep breath before trying to claw myself away in the opposite direction. Doaks is on his hands and knees. The towel fell off during our little trip over the desk, and now the bite mark shows. It’s black and blue and red. I see some foam around the edges. Pus, too. The sight is bad, but the smell is worse, even worse than it was in the athletic room.
I see Abby and Kevin stop then start backing up out of my peripherals as we watch this zombified version of Doaks crawl toward us.
Isaiah isn’t scared, at least I think he’s not. He’s breathing heavy and fast, staring at the sheriff on his hands and knees with a look of pure hatred.
Doaks lunges again, except this time I’m prepared for it.
Isaiah slides out of the way, throws a punch into the back of the dead guy’s head. It doesn’t do much but speed him toward me. I raise my leg up, not to kick, but to keep him away. It’s enough to send him into the glass partition separating the entrance and exit.
“Quick, give me something to bust his head!” Isaiah shouts.
The front of the rec is pretty bare. Everything that had weight to it is pressed up against the doors in a heap of junk.
I scan the pile real quick, see a set of twenty-five pound weight plates stacked up against the legs of the waiting area couch.
Doaks is in between me and the pile, and Isaiah is too busy. He won’t even take his eyes off the thing. I don’t blame him, not since what happened outside. One false move and you could be on the pavement getting devoured. We saw it first-hand.
Doaks grapples at me, but I dodge it easily. He gets nothing besides air, moaning as he does it. When I pass him, the smell of his rotting flesh is almost enough to make me pass out right then and there, but I don’t.
I grab the twenty-five pounder. It’s heavier than I’d think twenty-five pounds was, but then again, I’m kind of a weakling.
“Here,” I say.
Isaiah takes it, raises the plate above his head. His arms bulge with muscles. Veins dance. He brings it down on Doaks’s face. It’s not a clean hit. Instead, the metal scrapes the side of the face. Skin peels off of him like those string cheeses Mother used to pack in my lunchbox everyday in fourth grade, except a lot more moldy and gross.
Twenty-five pounds sounds like a thunderbolt when it hits the tiles, then it sounds even louder when it rolls into the glass partition, taking a chunk out with it.
Outside the moans get louder.
Kevin keeps shuffling away with Abby behind him.
Isaiah is frozen, and so am I.
If we had the gun, this could be over.
“Kevin! Look for the gun!” I shout. “It fell somewhere behind the desk.”
“I’m not getting near that thing,” he says, and I’m assuming he means Doaks, who stands by the desk.
Then Doaks advances on us with only half a face. I can see the cheekbone, part of his nose cartilage all glazed over with a bloody, thick sheet. He’s basically mutilated, yet he keeps coming.
“You gotta hit him harder than that,” I say over Doaks’s death rattles.
“Be my guest, buddy,” Isaiah says to me over his shoulder. “Seriously, a weight plate? You couldn’t find anything more practical than that?”
I pick up another twenty-five pounder, this time I don’t pass it off to Isaiah. This is my moment. This is where I save the day, all my deepest and darkest fantasies are going to be lived out. I am Johnny Deadslayer. I’ll have to be if I want to get to Darlene. What will happen when the gun runs out of bullets? What will happen when the only weapon I have handy is some blunt object?
I’ll have to smash some brains in, that’s what.
Doaks advances.
“Do something, you big oaf!” Abby says — I’m assuming to Kevin.
I throw the weight at Doaks’s feet.
Nothing.
I barely got it there.
I am not Johnny Deadslayer.
A chunk of tile shatters. Dust wafts into the air.
A small chair is wedged under the couch. I pry it free and point it legs first at Doaks. Some of the barricade falls behind me. The moaning seems to increase.
Doaks hits the legs, but they don’t slow him down. In fact, he’s stronger than I initially thought he’d be. He drives me into the brick wall near the doors. Something circular and metal digs into my back. I hear a beep-beep, then the sounds of motors whirring. The door next to me clicks over and over as it cracks open about half a foot, then closes, blocked by most of the stuff we stacked up here and the tied jump ropes. God forbid a handicapped person can’t open the doors when the power goes out. Really, it was only a matter of time. If one of us didn’t hit the button in here, then one of them would’ve out there. If we would’ve kept quiet long enough for the Army to show up, we might’ve survived.
Oh, well.
Shuffling feet scrape across the lobby carpet. The death rattles fill the air. A hand pops through the crack in the doors, then a face with its flesh melting off the bone. Teeth snap like an angry dog.
Thanks, backup generator. Really, thanks a lot.
Doaks’s hands swipe at my head. A finger brushes my cheek. I know a scratch will do it, too. I’m lucky he just tickles me.
“Shit,” Isaiah says. He picks up another plate, raises it.
A whistle sounds above.
“Hey, ugly!” Pat yells from upstairs.
I look up to see his face shrouded in darkness. He holds something silver and bulky in his hand.
“Not you, Jupiter. I’m talking to your friend.”
Doaks’s neck creaks as he looks up, fresh blood spills from the wound.
Pat smiles. I see the flash of his eyes, the gleam of his white teeth. Then the gleam of the dumbbell as it comes careening over the side. It all happens so fast: the splat, the spray of scarlet and bones, and the lack of force pressed up against me.
Doaks drops harder than the dumbbell. I see the 75 etched into each end of it, covered in sticky blood.
I’m covered, too. Droplets roll off of my face, down my nose and onto the mess on the floor. “Thanks,” I say to Pat, shaking my head. I never thought I’d willingly thank a Huber in my life.
“Yo, that’s nasty,” Isaiah says.
I glance over my shoulder. The teeth are still snapping in my direction through the crack in the door triggered by the handicap assistance button.
“We have to barricade the doors again,” I say.
Isaiah throws his shoulder into the couch, trying to drive the thing back into the lobby. I hear more moans, more death rattles. The group from the outside is now inside the lobby. I risk a peek and see about fifty bodies all stumbling and bumbling about. It’s definitely a fire hazard because the sign on the wall, in the background above this snapping freak’s head says the lobby can only house thirty people.
Isaiah grunts as the couch starts to slide forward. Knuckles and elbows and hands beat on the glass. Soon it won’t hold, no matter how many couches and jump ropes we use. I slide over, careful not to slip in the goo and brains from the thing that used to be Doaks and start pushing my hands up against the couch.
A sweat breaks out on my forehead. I’m grunting, trying to will myself to get stronger, but it’s no use.
The knocking grows rapid. To my left, I hear glass break.
They’re almost in, and we’re almost screwed.
18
The group just stands there.
“Any help would be nice,” Isaiah says — grunts, actually.
Nobody moves until Pat moves.
When Miss Fox raises a finger, points to the wall at the mess that was once Doaks, she screams. It seems to motivate the zombies. They push with a force that Isaiah and I can’t match. We almost fall.
“We have to fight!” I say to Isaiah.
He just shakes his head, already knowing it to be true. “Ain’t got much to fight with.”
“Freddy, we have to fight,” I say to them. “Grab a weapon.”
“No way,” Ryan, the janitor says. “Those doors open, and I’m gone, I’m running all the way up to Northington to check on my mom and dog.”
I grit my teeth as a weight plate drives into the heel of my shoe. “Be my guest,” I say. “But good luck, because if this many are attacking us, think of how many are out there just waiting for a snack. The festival brings in like twenty-thousand people. Do you like your chances out there on your own? At least wait until we can group up and fight our way out together.”
Ryan’s face goes a little pale at that. He knows I’m right.
“We fight,” Pat agrees, and again I never thought a Huber would agree with me. He holds a barbell in one hand. It’s a shorter one, mainly used for working out your biceps. It has grooves in the middle for your hands. Not too heavy. Not too light. A genius idea. “Everyone go get a weapon,” he says, then looks at Miss Fox with her head in her lap as if she’s going to be sick. “Yes, you, too, Fiona.”
“We can’t hold it much longer, man,” Isaiah says.
“Everyone go get weapons!” Pat’s voice booms.
They rush up the steps. A few moments later, they’re back. Kevin holds a barbell, one of the big ones used for benching and squatting. I think they weigh close to fifty pounds, and he holds it like it weighs five. Abby has a kettle bell in each hand. They don’t look heavy, but they look hard enough to smash a skull. The old basketball player has a couple of the colored dumbbells that virtually weigh next to nothing. Ryan has a broomstick, go figure, but the end looks sharpened to a very fine point. Kind of surprising, and also kind of alarming. Like how long has this creep been sharpening a broom stick, and for what unholy reason? Miss Fox slinks back behind the rest of them, empty-handed.
“Ready?” I shout as if we have a choice. “We let go, then you and I get armed, and we defend this gym.” I know the gun is somewhere nearby and my fingers itch to use it, but I also know it would be a bad idea. I’m inexperienced. Untrained. An XBOX controller is not a gun, I’m old enough to know that. Besides, together we can hold this group off without bullets.
“Ready,” Isaiah says.
I spring forward away from the doors, Isaiah follows. I’m about five steps away before I turn around and look at the carnage. Arms and legs and faces poke through the fractured glass. The doors swell as if they are about ready to explode. The rattles from deep in the back of their throats get louder. “Cover us!” I run up the steps, not looking over my shoulder — too afraid to look over my shoulder.
The weight room looks like it’s been ransacked. Plates and bars are on the floor, scattered. A couple of benches are overturned. A treadmill belt looks to be off its track. The ellipticals are stacked against each other like fallen dominoes.
I find one of those twisted barbells with the grooves for your hands.
Isaiah picks up a set of dumbbells, scooting them over to the edge of the guardrail, ready to drop them on the crowd when they break in.
Me, well, I run back down the stairs, of course. I don’t want to, but I have to. Even if we all die, I don’t want to die afraid. I don’t want to die knowing that everyone here knew I was afraid. I want them to see me fight until the end. I want to die fighting my way to Darlene, and I’m ready to die for her. I just hope she knows this.
People scream, and I’m not sure exactly who it is. It’s like a conglomeration of all the survivors’ screams.
“They’re coming!” Pat says. “Stay calm!”
Glass shatters. Something that sounds like the couch toppling over and rolling a few feet follows. Then comes the moans, the rattles, all amplified tenfold.
“Heads up!” Isaiah says. He throws over a fifty-pound dumbbell. A fat woman with a Nike visor take the brunt of the weight on the side of her head and left shoulder. She falls to the floor like a heap of bricks. The rest of the dead walk over her as if nothing happened.
Next goes a thirty-five pounder which misses badly.
They keep coming.
Isaiah now comes down the stairs with two of the curled barbells in hand.
Kevin grunts as he swings his barbell into the face of about five of those things. The blur of metal is nauseating to look at, and the spray of blood even more so.
Pat is near the front desk, and he’s raising his bar like a wizard raises a staff, bringing it down on the soft skull of the woman who’d been hit with the fifty-pound dumbbell.
My heart lifts a little when I see the doors. Out of the six, only two are breached beyond repair. The glass is gone and most of the barricade is scattered about, but we can barricade it again. Another good thing about this is that it constricts the flow of zombies to only two doors. Against the backdrop of the waning, yellow sun, I see there’s a lot more than I expected, but if the other doors hold and we continue to fight, we can hold out for a little while.
My first swing is a large miss. I aim for the head and wind up hitting the hard torso of a guy about my age. He has a smeared American flag painted on his face. Blood runs from his eyes, and his features don’t change when the metal connects with his chest. The hit was hard enough to crack the sternum, and as a matter of fact, I do hear a crack, but it’s as if I never touched him.
He keeps coming.
Behind him, three more are walking in my direction. I cock the barbell back again, this time like a man throwing a javelin instead of a baseball player swinging a bat. The end of the dumbbell is round, but it’s still metal. And I crack Face-Paint square in the forehead. His skull splits open. Pink goo oozes from the wound, and he stumbles around like a drunk, before falling over.
Wow, I really did it, and I’m laughing. I’m officially in one of my own damn books. How surreal. How freaking surreal. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream.
Abby rushes past me. “Look out,” she says, both kettle bells in hand. She pirouettes over the crumpled body of Face-Paint. A rush of wind slaps me in the face, followed by a smell of sweat and death.
The kettle bells come together. It’s a dead man sandwich on iron bread. The old dude who was about three steps from tearing my throat out doesn’t have a face anymore. A spurt of blood flies at me, one that I barely dodge. Then the old zombie crumples to the floor.
More bodies walk over him, their tennis shoes and flip-flopped feet stomp out the rest of his brains. A guy in a cowboy hat Frankensteins toward me — you know, arms out, mouth hanging open, dead noises coming from the back of his throat — and I swing the barbell up with a metal uppercut. His teeth turn to powder, and he’s lifted off his feet. It’s not bloody or messy, but it’s enough. He falls next to his old friend, unmoving.
More glass shatters. The ones who can’t fit in through the broken entrance doors now try to squeeze in through the barrier we made against the four exit doors.
I rush over there, giving Abby a nod. She nods back, spins, and cracks a woman in a bloody tank top.
Kevin grunts; it echoes high in the rafters. He swings the barbell like a great knight wielding a sword. Metal clashes against tile and wood, and most importantly, skulls.
A rotten smell is in the air, and at that moment I long for Darlene’s cherry-scented shampoo. Hell, I’d even take her morning breath over the graveyard of piling bodies in the lobby.
“Push them toward the doors,” Abby says somewhere away from me.
Isaiah runs over to me. He has the gun, now. “I’m gonna shoot them!” he yells.
“No bullets,” I say. We’ve come this far without them, we can keep going.
A face pokes through the shattered window. Black spit oozes from the corners of their mouth. It is a man, maybe age thirty, but it could also be a woman with short hair. At this point, I’m not sure because they all look like each other. They all look dead.
Isaiah nods, then he flips the gun around and starts hammering that gross face with the butt of the gun. A squishy, squelching sound follows.
“Now you got the idea,” I say, raising the barbell, poking it through the crack. It’s like playing a horrid game of pool and the heads who stick their hungry, emaciated faces near the window are the cue balls. Blood sprays here, blood sprays there, and the bodies fall. Still, the doors swell as the bulk of the townspeople press against the frames and the couches.
I glance over my shoulder at the carnage behind us. Lots of bodies lay in pools of blood and sprinkled brains. It looks like a battlefield.
