Jack Zombie (Book 3): Dead Nation Read online

  DEAD NATION

  JACK ZOMBIE #3

  FLINT MAXWELL

  Copyright © 2017 by Flint Maxwell

  Cover design by CRD

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions email: [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work.

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  You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.

  KURT VONNEGUT, CAT’S CRADLE

  1

  Most of the car is scattered across the highway. Doctor Klein is nowhere to be found and without him, this fabled savior of the world, we are lost.

  As I look at what’s left of it — a mutilated Honda Civic — I think to myself this is all a wild goose chase. I didn’t have a chance to meet the doctor back in Eden where we almost died, and I don’t think I’m going to ever meet him.

  Herb gets out of the van — the passenger’s side — and moves slowly across the road, about twenty feet from the blinking taillights. He stops. None of us say a word. I look from Darlene to Abby to Norm and they are all staring directly ahead at the wreck.

  This is not good. Not good at all.

  No, I can’t think like this. I have to have hope. Hope is what has kept us alive so long and what I think is going to continue to keep us alive.

  We’ve been traveling for approximately four days up I-95, heading to Washington D.C., hoping to find any signs of life — Doctor Klein or otherwise. This is not the sign we wanted. We wanted to catch up to Doc Klein. We wanted to find him alive and determined to end this plague. We wanted to offer him help. We wanted for him to gladly accept our help.

  We wanted…or I wanted?

  Maybe we stumble upon the Doc parked off the side of the highway, cooking up a nice meal of Eden leftovers. Maybe we recover the remains of that campfire, I don’t know. Signs of life. That’s all. Not signs of death.

  Not this.

  Our trip hasn’t been a smooth one, much like most things after The End haven’t been smooth. Sure, there’s no traffic, but a downside to that is the abandoned cars littered all over the roads. We have to keep bobbing and weaving through them, sometimes even going into the soft earth to get around. Each time we do that Darlene closes her eyes and starts praying we don’t get stuck. We haven’t yet. Thank God.

  “I told you,” Norm says. “I freaking told you.”

  His wounds have already begun to heal. Well, the wounds that are healable. His index finger will never grow back. But the bruises on his body and face and under his eyes are a faint blue instead of red and black and puffy. He has a lisp when he talks. Any time he says an ’S’ word — no, not meaning ’S’ word as in shit, though he does say that more than most people — there’s a faint whistle from between his cracked teeth. The finest drugs can’t fix a chipped tooth. And I’ve noticed he’s more quiet, more reserved. Sometimes I see fear in his eyes and that hurts me.

  Abby, Darlene, Herb, and I are in the same boat — bruised, scratched, sore. We didn’t get it as bad as Norm, but when the sun goes down and I’m sitting in the front seat of the van, on watch, I hear their collective sleep talk, the pleads for their lives, and the whimpers. Eden may not have left physical scars on any of us besides Norm, but it’s safe to say we’ll have plenty of mental scars.

  “Guys,” Herb says. “Guys?”

  “I told you as soon as we saw that pathway we should’ve turned around,” Norm says.

  “Guys? Guys? I’m scared,” Herb continues.

  Abby punches me in the arm. “Yeah, damn it, Jack!”

  “Don’t hit him,” Darlene says, looking up from the open notebook she is writing in, pen in hand.

  My mind is whirling. If we’re any louder, the whole dead state will start coming for us. I don’t know what’s happened and neither do they. The world has ended and that sucks, but it’s time to move on and quit being so pessimistic about everything. I survived Woodhaven, got out of there alive with my fiancé and my brother; we survived Eden, got out pretty beaten up but otherwise okay. It’s time to stop being downers because if we can survive all of that crap then we can survive seeing a wrecked Civic on the highway. Right?

  “Enough!” I shout. “Everybody calm down!”

  “Calm down?” Abby asks. “Calm down?”

  I turn to her. She’s frowning at me, her hair in a wild up-do from sleeping with her head against the window and headrest. “Yes, calm down,” I say.

  “Jack — ” Darlene begins.

  “No, uh-uh, we gotta quit being so negative,” I say.

  “But that’s Doc Klein’s car, Jacky! It is!” Herb says.

  “A Honda Civic is a common car, Herb. White is a common color,” Norm says. His voice isn’t convincing, but at least he’s trying. “Then again, I doubt there’s many white Civics that work. This has gotta be Klein’s car.”

  I take that back. He’s not trying at all.

  Herb comes to the van. If he had a tail, I think he’d be walking toward us with it between his legs. Tears well up in his eyes. All the while, Norm is shaking his head.

  I hate to see Herb upset and I hate to disappoint the group. I get it, I do, it’s really hard to be optimistic when the dead are chasing you and there’s no hope for humanity and all, but it’s during times like these that I remember there’s no Kardashians.

  Herb whines again, starts shaking.

  “Just chillax, Herbie,” I say. “Don’t listen to Norm. Norm is a big, old meanie.”

  He cracks a smile.

  “Get back in the van, and Norm and me will go check. But Doctor Klein won’t be in there, I promise you,” I say, all with a honey-coated tone.

  Herb nods. “Okay,” he says glumly.

  “Norm, c’mon,” I say.

  He sighs. I see that brief glimpse of fear in his eyes. He absentmindedly starts rubbing the covered nub of his index finger. Then he speaks and I can tell he’s trying to inject his usual confidence in his voice. “Anything to get me out of this shit-hole. You know this van’s got nothing on Shelly, right?” he says.

  Shelly was Norm’s now-ruined Jeep, abandoned outside of Sharon after Abby crashed into a tree and we had to make a run for it. “Yeah, I know. You’ve been saying that since we left Eden,” I reply.

  “Cuz it’s the truth,” Norm says.

  I roll my eyes, thinking maybe he’s going to be all right after all, maybe the shock of the past is numbing. I reach behind the backseat where our cache of weapons from Eden is, next to the sleeping bags supplied from a sporting goods store somewhere in the Carolinas. I grab two pistols and some bullets in case things go south.

  “Herb, I want you to sit in the front seat and buckle up. Abby, get behind the wheel. If anything goes wrong, and I mean anything, I want you to throw it in reverse and get the fuck out of here, okay?” I say, whispering due to Herb’s aversion to swear words.

  Abby nods. “Okay, but nothing is going to happen.” She leans closer, her voice low, “The poor bastard’s dead. Look at that wreck. No one could survive that.”

  “Maybe he’s out in the woods, you know? Hurt or so
mething,” Darlene says.

  I picture the doctor lying under a tree, bloody, his legs broken, and how that would be such a sad and ironic way to go out. A doctor who can’t treat himself. I shake my head and the image goes.

  “You comin?” Norm asks, voice wavering.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  Darlene grabs my face before I crawl out and kisses me. “For luck,” she says.

  I grin. “Won’t need it.”

  2

  “Geez, we need to get you two a couple of chastity belts,” Norm quips once I shut the door.

  Maybe a week or two ago I would feign like I’m going to hit him and smile and say, Two for flinching, joking around like brothers are supposed to do in stressful situations, but I don’t. Instead, I just grin and say, “Good one, Norm,” then hand him a pistol.

  He laughs. I hear no humor in it.

  We walk on.

  The Honda Civic is pretty banged up. The front end is squashed, as if a giant had stepped down on the hood. What the car crashed into, I don’t know. The trunk is mostly intact. A scraped H and CIVIC written in chrome shines in the hazy, early afternoon light.

  Glass crunches beneath our feet as we get closer. I find it getting harder and harder to breathe. Mainly, because there’s a chance that whoever was in this car was Doctor Klein and an even bigger chance that if he — or anyone, for that matter — was in the car, they’d be dead. Without Doc Klein, this man who has become a fabled legend to me over the past few days, I really don’t know what our next move is. We can keep driving around, weaving in and out of dead cars, trying to find our next meal, our next roof over our heads, avoiding zombies and crazy cowboys, but I don’t want that. I want stability. I want the old world back. With Doctor Klein, I think we can make that happen. I don’t know why I feel that way with all I have to go on being Herb’s love for the guy, and rightfully so. The Doc is the reason Herb is still alive and not some mutilated corpse back in Eden. I’m in debt to any man who has helped save one of my own. Am I crazy? Maybe, but hope is what keeps up going. And with Doctor Klein there is hope. Hope is a good thing.

  “Look,” Norm says, pointing to the driver’s side door, which hangs off the car like a broken wing.

  I close my eyes and bow my head. Quickly, I stand straight. I know they’re all watching me from the van. The moment I look dejected is the moment they lose that hope. So I bend down and brush something off of my boot, readjust my pant leg, and act like Norm hasn’t just pointed to a set of bloody hand prints in the road or the red liquid dripping off the steering wheel.

  Someone is in there, all right.

  Norm’s pace slows down. Before Eden, he’d be the first to sprint toward the chaos. Now, he’s reluctant. So I take the lead, limping, and my older brother follows.

  I hear the car door open behind me, then Herb’s voice. “Is he okay, Jacky?”

  I turn around and shout back, “I’ll let you know in a minute, Herb. Might not even be him.”

  Abby tugs him back into the van.

  Poor guy.

  Before I turn my head back to the wrecked car, Norm says, “Shit.” His voice is loud enough for them to hear back at the van. I cringe thinking of Herb’s heart breaking. “Little bro,” Norm says, this time quieter, “this ain’t good.”

  Don’t say that. Don’t say that. Don’t —

  And Norm raises his gun, shaking.

  3

  Whatever is in Doc Klein’s Honda Civic is not Doc Klein. Well, it might have been once upon a time, but now, to confirm this, I think we’d have to pull dental records. The squirming zombie in the driver’s seat looks like pulverized meat. Especially the face.

  I feel like vomiting…and I’ve seen some messed up things in my travels from Woodhaven to Florida. Things I can’t get out of my head, things that make your worst nightmares seem tame.

  This tops it all.

  The zombie is shirtless. It’s skin isn’t pus-y or shiny or wet. It’s like cracked and dried out leather, but not a tan color. It’s more like a moldy Swiss cheese. A drab, graying pukish color. It turns what I think is its head up to us.

  I only think its the head because the pulverized hump of what looks like a neck and shoulders is beneath it.

  The zombie spreads its lips. The teeth have been broken to nothing but shards — very sharp shards. A bit of black oozes around the corners of its mouth. Not much, just a rivulet. This zombie has been like this a long time, whether it’s been here very long, I’m not sure. The sunshine and warmer weather have zapped it of all its life (if I can even call it that). Every move is sluggish, even the slow rolling of its yellowish eyes.

  “Whoa,” Norm says. “That’s one ugly motherfucker.”

  I can’t look away from it. It moves and writhes, skin flapping in the breeze. There are bruises all over the body, large welts of black and blue and red. I think someone used our new friend here as a piñata.

  “Think it’s the Doc?” Norm asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “I’ll get Herb,” Norm says and moves toward the car. My arm shoots out and grabs him harshly around the bicep. He winces. I hate that. Norm would’ve never winced before Eden.

  “No, Herb doesn’t need to see this, Norm. Don’t be stupid. Even if it was Klein, how the hell do you suppose Herb would be able to tell?” I say.

  I let go of him and Norm’s eyes dart from me to the shifting zombie. He shrugs.

  “Yeah, exactly. I’m ninety-five percent sure it’s not. This thing has been here for weeks, maybe months. You saw the Doc, did he look anything remotely close to this less than a week ago?” I ask.

  Norm shakes his head.

  “Just help me put the poor bastard out of his misery,” I say.

  Norm snarls at me as he rubs his arm. “With a grip like that, you can do it yourself. I’m going back to the car. I’m tired. My body aches. And I’m sick of zombies, man.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” I say. I’m not going to pry, not going to make him uncomfortable. I just want him back to normal and doing that will get us nowhere.

  Norm claps me on the back. “You know I love you, little bro,” he says.

  “I know,” I answer.

  He walks back to the van.

  “Was it the doc?” Herb says.

  “Just a zombie,” Norm answers.

  I reach for something sharp to shove through this thing’s head. I find a thick piece of glass long enough to reach the zombie’s rotten brains. I pick it up carefully and shove it through one of its empty eye sockets. It screeches softly, then does something remotely close to a sigh. Maybe a sigh of relief. This thing is glad to have been put out of its misery and that’s sad. But it’s a sad world we’re living in.

  I head back to the van.

  Everyone watches me. Somber looks on their faces, except for Norm who just looks distant, like he’s not fully here. The highway is pretty trashed for what seems like a half mile. We’ll have to drive with two wheels on the shoulder and two in the grass. With this beat up van, it’s tough. We stopped off at a Jiffy Lube about fifty miles out of Eden and were able to fix two of the flat tires, complete replacements, but the other two are pretty bad. We aren’t getting good gas mileage, that’s for sure. Fifty miles on almost four flats does murder to your rims so when the van gets rolling, I swear I can feel the unevenness of the metal going up and down.

  Yeah, I hate the van.

  I just want to find the Doc and save the world. Is that too much to ask?

  I get back to the others and open the sliding door toward the highway’s shoulder side where a tangle of trees and bushes grow wildly.

  “You okay?” Darlene asks me. She is looking at my hand. I follow her gaze. My hand is bleeding. I cut it on the piece of glass when I shoved it into the zombie’s eye socket. The skin was tough to break and I had to put most of my weight into it, but I hadn’t noticed the glass bite back. It didn’t hurt until Darlene pointed it out. Now it feels like it’s on fire. I try not to show the pai
n on my face and wipe the blood off on the thighs of my jeans — yeah, I got out of that fake cowboy getup as soon as I could.

  “It’s just a cut — ” I start to say, but stop as I see how big Darlene’s eyes have gotten. “What? What is it?” It’s like I’m missing a finger instead of sporting a small gash.

  Abby beside her brings a shaky hand up to point behind me.

  Norm says, “Oh, no. Does this shit ever end?”

  I feel it on my neck, causing my to bunch me face up and squint my eyes closed. The metal is cold and harsh. Whoever is holding the gun behind me knows nothing about gentleness and why should I expect them to?

  “Drop your weapon, my friend,” the man says. “I don’t want to see anymore blood today.”

  That’s too bad, I think, because he is going to wind up seeing a lot of it — his own.

  From the other side of the highway, climbing over the wrecked and forgotten cars, coming at the van like a slow moving tidal wave is a group of people, all of them dirty, all of them wild. They hold weapons — mostly primitive things, like swords and sharpened sticks. One thin man holds a shotgun but it looks as ancient as the dead zombie in the Civic’s front seat looked. Another man has a hunting rifle. A squirrel shooter. And a woman holds a pistol.

  I think of rebelling, but Darlene catches my eyes and with that mental telepathy, tells me, Don’t be stupid, Jack. The chance of failure outweighs the small chance of success. I might be able to kill a couple of these bastards, but they will most certainly take down a couple of my group, too.

  I can’t have that.

  I drop the pistol and it clatters loudly as it hits the pavement, the sound carrying in the quiet of the abandoned highway.

  4

  “Get on your knees,” the man says, still behind me as he kicks the pistol out of reach. I go to my knees, bleeding and more blood pumping through my veins at an alarming rate. I can hear my heartbeat pounding my ears.

  “Please don’t hurt us,” Darlene says.