Jack Zombie (Book 5): Dead End Read online

  DEAD END

  JACK ZOMBIE #5

  FLINT MAXWELL

  Copyright © 2017 by Flint Maxwell

  Cover Design © 2017 by Carmen Rodriguez

  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.

  For you, the reader -

  Thank you for listening to the voices inside of my head

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  “End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take.”

  J.R.R. TOLKIEN, THE RETURN OF THE KING

  1

  She stands in front of me, looking at the house. “Darlene?” I ask. She’s not moving, as still as stone. “Darlene?”

  Nothing.

  It’s the house she grew up in.

  Norm nudges me and shakes his head. “Give her a minute,” he says.

  The neighborhood’s silence is deafening.

  No zombies. No corpses. There’s not even much of a smell here.

  “I don’t have my key,” Darlene says. Her voice carries in the dead silence of the neighborhood. She sticks a hand out and grabs mine. Her hand trembles.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  We won’t need a key. No one does in this wasteland.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” Abby says.

  “Yeah, it is,” Norm says from behind us. “I’d love to see the inside.” He doesn’t sound like himself. None of us do.

  Nothing has been the same since Herb passed. Since you killed him, Jack. I’ve been teetering on the edge of depression. I can feel its claws on my back, trying to pull me down. But I can’t let it.

  God, I miss him. I wish he was here with us.

  Darlene takes two steps toward the porch and stops. We all watch, holding our breath. She turns and sits on the bottom of the stairs, puts her head in her hands and starts crying softly.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “We shouldn’t have come here,” she says. “We shouldn’t have come here at all.” She looks up at me, tears running from the corners of her eyes. “Why’d you let me come here?”

  A faint breeze rolls up the hill. Odorless.

  “Do you want to go inside?” I ask Darlene.

  “No,” she says.

  “That’s okay — ”

  “But I have to,” she says, cutting me off. She stands up, brushes off the seat of her dirty jeans, and faces the front door.

  Darlene climbs the steps. I admire this woman. I do. She is stronger than me, she really is.

  She reaches for the doorknob. Behind, Abby and Norm join us. We are all holding our guns — guns we picked up in a small town called Corcoran just south of San Francisco. Everyone is holding them except Darlene and normally I’d chastise her for such a slip-up, but I don’t right now. We are here for her. We won’t let anything bad happen.

  She turns the knob. The quiet gets heavier.

  The door’s not locked. It opens with a click and a creak.

  We step inside.

  2

  The house has a smell, one that is all too familiar. It’s death. It’s hot road kill. It’s dust and decay. It’s fear. Our fear. It makes me want to go back outside where the air is fresh and clean.

  Darlene doesn’t seem to notice. She stands on the foyer looking at the long, dark hallway. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, but when they do, I see what Darlene stares at. Norm closes the door behind us.

  I turn around fast and shake my head. He nods and opens it again, the dying sunlight drifting in, lighting up the golden-lacquered floors. We might need an easy escape. The house is as quiet as the city, but you never know. I like it when my brother and I are on the same page.

  Darlene moves forward. She moves like a woman who is very drunk — not on alcohol, but on nostalgia. She picks up a picture frame from the table running the length of the hall. The silver frame glimmers in the light. Her other hand, which should be filled with a gun, comes up to her mouth. She squeezes her eyes shut and fresh tears spill down her cheeks. I walk forward, ready to embrace her. The picture, I see, is black and white. A wedding photo. The woman is thin, but curvy. A full head of eighties-style blonde hair. Darlene’s mother. She looks like Darlene stuck in a different era. The man in his tuxedo has thinning hair but a full smile. These are people whose love oozes through the decades. The man’s eyes are the same as Darlene’s — a striking green. Next to where the frame was are more pictures. Darlene in high school. Darlene as a baby. Her sister in a softball uniform. Dad and Darlene the night of a school dance. I’m smiling, but it hurts to see this.

  Out of the corner of my eyes, which are tearing up, I see Norm and Abby split and peek into the various rooms branching off from the foyer.

  I pull the picture out from Darlene’s hand and I hug her tight. She sobs silently into my shoulder. Then we part and she says, “I have to keep going.”

  I don’t know what she means at first. I think she means in general because it’s a sentiment I’ve said many times before. We always have to keep going. The world is dead, but we aren’t.

  Except, that’s not what Darlene means. She means she has to keep going through the house. She has to keep torturing herself with this horrible thing called closure.

  I reach out to grab her gently by the waist, to pull her close to me and tell her it’s all right, she doesn’t have to keep going, her parents and her younger sister are in a better place, but I don’t because she’s already storming through the hall, footsteps muted on the rug. I go after her. But, as so often in my life, I’m not smooth. I nudge the table. The wood wobbles and two of the framed pictures fall over. One of them shatters and the sound is enormous in the house’s quiet.

  Norm and Abby are back in the foyer watching this unfold with large, round eyes.

  “Shit,” I say.

  “Good going, Jack,” Norm says.

  Abby shakes her head.

  Darlene hasn’t noticed. She disappears behind the corner at the end of the hall. I bend down to start picking up the large pieces of glass and just as I do, I hear something.

  It’s not a human sound…

  It’s a zombie.

  3

  Nobody screams or jumps or freaks out. We are past that stage, I think. If anything, the feeling that hits me is despair, not fear or excitement. Despair because of where we are at, because of who that gurgling death rattle will belong to.

  I look down the hall. We all look down the hall. The sound comes from upstairs, but we’re waiting. In the momentary quiet, I hear footsteps creaking on the wood floor, then a shadow, and finally the first strands of blonde hair.

  “What was that?” Darlene asks.

  I just shake my head. I don’t want to say what that is. Or who it might be.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Norm says and he turns toward the stairwell.

  “No!” Darlene shouts. The sound carries out onto the street.

  Footsteps above us now, more creaking. Then a scrabbling. Fingernails against the wood of a door, the rattling of a doorknob.

  “No?” Norm says, surprised. I get why he’s surprised
though. He doesn’t understand. Well, he does; it’s just sometimes Norm is dumb when it comes to heavy things like this. The zombie up there is most likely someone Darlene knows, but to Norm it’s a zombie. A zombie is always a zombie. The person the zombie was before they turned doesn’t matter. They may look like it, but they’re not them. Not anymore, no matter what.

  “No,” Darlene says softer now. She walks up the hallway, her head held high, unaware or not caring about the glass on the carpet. Some of it shatters and crunches beneath the running shoes she wears — crisp white Nikes she picked up in a Foot Locker. “I’ll do it.”

  I shake my head. “No, Darlene — ”

  “I’m going to be okay. I have to do this. If it’s Carmen or Mom or Dad, I have to do it. I can’t let them be like that.”

  I see the determination on her face. You can’t tell her no. I hate it, but I understand. She walks right past me, reaching into her belt to pull the .22 free. The chrome glitters, waning sunlight catching off the muzzle with her shaking hand.

  She shoulders past Abby and Norm, not saying a word.

  Meanwhile, the scrabbling gets louder, and the death rattles follow.

  4

  I stand there with this surprised look on my face. Abby and Norm do the same, except Norm looks more offended than anything. I’m not aware of the smell anymore. I’m used to it.

  “What are you waiting for?” Abby asks.

  “What?” I say.

  “You’re not going to let her do this on her own. You’re her fiancé for Christ’s sake!” Abby says. She’s right. This is when I move. I kick into gear and run after Darlene. When I get to the steps, she’s gone, disappeared into the dark shadows. I hear her walking.

  “Mom?” she says. “Dad? Carmen?”

  “Darlene!” I shout. My blood pumps fast. This is almost as bad as running from the zombies. Hell, it might be worse. I’m running to the zombies. That doesn’t happen too often, if at all.

  Darlene stops at the end of the upstairs. There’s a mirror on the wall. I see myself coming at her, the pained look on my face. I look horrible — too skinny, too dirty, too stressed.

  She reaches out to grab the doorknob. On the left and right are two more doors. One of the doors says “Darlene” in rhinestones glued to the wood. The other one says “Carmen.” This door where the noise seems to be coming from is a bathroom. I see where the carpet ends in the hallway and turns into the black and white tile from the faint light streaming in.

  “Darlene,” I say and reach out to grab her shoulder. She jumps at my touch.

  “I said I could do it,” she says. “I don’t need you to babysit me.” She pushes my hand away. I still feel her trembling. I’m not mad, I’m really not. I get it. Unlike Norm, I have a soft spot for this type of thing. I know he might be right to think zombies aren’t people anymore, but there’s no denying that they once were.

  So what I do is back off.

  I take a step back, the gun in my hand, ready to come up in the blink of an eye.

  Darlene reaches for the doorknob, fingers trembling, gun in her right hand. She doesn’t open the door immediately. She pauses and just stares at the wood, a look of longing on her face.

  The zombie behind the door growls louder. Something else, too — the sound of bones hitting a porcelain sink, the toilet rocking back and forth, clunky footsteps.

  “Darlene,” I say.

  But she doesn’t answer. She throws the door open and backs up, her gun raised.

  5

  The zombie spills out and Darlene almost trips over her own feet. The gun falters, ultimately drops. It’s times like these where I’ll occasionally freeze up. Right now, I don’t. I raise the gun and prepare to end this zombie’s suffering.

  It reaches out to us. I expect it to keep coming, but it doesn’t. I see a gleam of metal. Hear the twang of a rope. It’s tethered to the bathtub. Not going anywhere. Thank God. Still, it’s dangerous. I can’t —

  Darlene screams, “Dad! Dad!”

  Dad? God, I didn’t even recognize him. Now, I can’t pull the trigger.

  Footsteps thunder up the stairs. Abby yells our name. Norm says nothing.

  The zombie turns to me, realizing Darlene is out of reach. Arms outstretched. Dried blood on his face. Eyes two glittering gold coins.

  He swipes at me. Gets nothing but air.

  I hear a twang and the metal rings that hold the rope clinking together. He’s like a mad dog on a leash.

  The zombie gnashes its teeth. His gums are lined with dripping black sludge and the teeth are decayed, one good bump from all falling out. Under the man’s pallid flesh are rivers of black veins like inverted spider webs.

  He wears a t-shirt that says Warriors Nation on it. Bits of black sludge have dribbled down from his mouth and stained the golden basketball logo. His pants are jeans that are shredded near the thigh. His shoes are gone. He has one white sock on his left foot. Around his waist is a belt like something a weightlifter would wear during a particularly heavy squat. It’s padlocked on. He’s not going anywhere. Ropes dangle from his wrists as if his hands were tied at one point, but they weren’t tied with any concerted effort.

  This is Darlene’s dad, and I can’t believe it. And I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going through Darlene’s mind.

  Now I realize there’s an envelope hanging from her father’s shirt. It looks like it is stapled on.

  “What the fuck?” Norm whispers behind me. “Who would tie up a zomb — ” A slap cuts him off. Abby reminds Norm that sometimes he needs to keep his big fat mouth shut.

  On the envelope, written in bold letters is FOR DARLENE OR TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

  Darlene gets on her knees, much too close to the zombie.

  She snatches the envelope and backs away, staring at her father in horror. I give him a push with my forearm. He was too close to us. I didn’t like it, Darlene’s dad or not. He stumbles back into the bathroom. His chest felt gummy and soft beneath the Golden State shirt. I see blood or grease or something else soaking through the cotton. And when he hits the bathtub and falls into it, I grab the door handle and slam it shut.

  The note shakes in Darlene’s hands.

  Darlene brings her fist to her mouth and stifles a sob. A tear drops from her eyes and lands on the paper. The moisture absorbs instantly.

  Behind me, I hear the rope untangling and landing on the bathroom tile with a thump, then the footsteps and the hands beating against the door, more frantic now. The concept of food has jolted Darlene’s father into some sort of semi-awareness and that scares me more than anything else. Hungry zombies suck, but hungry zombies who you have some sort of connection to are the worst.

  “What does it say?” I ask, looking at Darlene and the note.

  She looks up at me and drops the paper.

  Abby picks it up. Norm watches all of this with an eyebrow arched. Abby’s lips move silently as she reads what’s written on it. I see tears beginning to well up in her eyes, too. Whatever is on that piece of paper, I’m not sure if I really want to know.

  “It’s my mom, Jack,” Darlene says, whispering into my ear. “My mom and Carmen.”

  “What?” I say, despite the dread knotting my stomach. “What is it?”

  “They’re still alive,” she says.

  The pounding on the door stops for a moment, and the house is terribly quiet.

  6

  Turns out, I do read the note. Rather, Norm reads it aloud to me. I notice while Norm is reading that his own voice shakes.

  “‘Darlene, what a terrible thing that has happened to the world. We were in church when we first heard about the incident in Ohio. Woodhaven was the town’s name and it seemed so familiar to me. I didn’t know why. By the time the realization hit, I had already called your cell four times. Ohio is dreadfully close to Chicago (I know, not really, but us mothers tend to overreact, don’t we?). Carmen told me I was being bananas and, of course, I’d thought I wasn’t. But deep down, I did, swe
etpea. I did. You remember how I wouldn’t let you go to the mall when you were sixteen because I was afraid you’d be abducted. Or how I wouldn’t let you go on your class trip when you were in the sixth grade to that camp, but I’d let you stay at the church lock-in with that terribly unpleasant nun? That was just me being overprotective. I know you’re grown now, but I still worry, Darlene. I think I’ll always worry. The virus hit the country hard. They were calling it the Mad Cat Disease over here because of the way it changes a person’s eyes — God knows why. The Army came, then the quarantines, and the riots and rampage. All the while, I couldn’t get ahold of you. When the news went dark and the government decided it was a perfect time to quit telling the few of us who survived what to do, I’d lost all hope. And it seems that when it rains it pours, doesn’t it? One morning I had awoken to your father coughing. Deep, hacking coughs that shook the whole house. With the coughs came, the blood, and then the nail in the coffin — the toxic black sludge. Dad was never a smoker, but I’d asked him regardless. I’d hoped he’d been sneaking the occasional cigar out in the garage while I was at work or maybe at the Thursday night poker games with Neal and Terry. But he just stared at the bedsheets, at the drops of black and red, and we both laughed. Laughed like crazy people, because we knew what it meant. I didn’t tell Carmen. She is old enough now to realize these things on her own, but I guess I couldn’t have told her even if I tried. Dad kept a gun in his study. He told me to get it. He’d seen what happened firsthand one morning at the grocery store in the early stages of the incident. Old Esther from down the street was standing on the sidewalk outside of the market, examining that morning’s fruits when a homeless man had attacked her like a rabid animal. No one helped, your father included. He said he was in too much shock, and Esther was probably dead before she hit the concrete anyway. Except, of course, she didn’t stay dead. So we knew exactly what it meant when your father started coughing and his face started losing all color (I had seen these things on the news) and he told me to get the gun.