Jack Zombie (Book 2): Dead Hope Read online

  There is no answer. The world is quiet. Not even the bugs buzz or the birds chirp.

  I hear a grunt, a soft scream. Wood clunks against skull. It causes me to snap my head in the direction of the noise, but it comes from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I don’t know if I’m looking north or south, east or west.

  I walk on, the machete leading me at a low angle, a precautionary measure. I don’t want to end up shish-kebabing Norm.

  “…take that…you…piece of…shit,” he says. I see a flash of wood. A flash of blood. Brains.

  The thing’s eyes no longer blaze yellow. Now, they are dying, the fire inside of them going out.

  “I told you to stay in the car,” Norm says.

  “When did I ever listen to you?” I reply.

  “I didn’t need your help. It was just one. I could handle it.” Norm’s face is a blur. I can barely see the machete in front of me let alone him.

  “Better safe than sorry,” I say. Besides, it’s almost never just one. They travel in packs, like ravenous animals.

  “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here. We should be at Eden by the time the sun goes down. I can’t wait another day.”

  He walks past me, leaving a thin line in the fog, thinner than the one he would’ve left six months ago. We are all suffering from this life on the run. Sleeping in a crammed Jeep, eating processed foods, drinking warm water and soda. Running. Killing. Sometimes I think it would be easier being one of the monsters, aimlessly shambling about looking for food, moaning, groaning. I realize this would mean giving up. I don’t want to give up. If there’s one thing I can take from my strained relationship with my mother and brother, it’s never give up.

  I follow after Norm, heading back to the car. We will probably sleep for another hour or two, then hit the road and look for food and signs of Eden. I know we are close, I can feel it. I even dream about it. In my dreams, the walls are a hundred feet tall. There’s electricity and running water that is always hot. I never have to pick up a gun again, I never have to bash in someone’s head who might’ve once been a father or a mother or a priest. Then, of course, I wake up. These last few nights I’ve waken up to Darlene’s quiet sobs. She cries for a sister in San Francisco, a mom and dad in Milwaukee. I don’t know what else I can do to comfort her. Darlene is a realist, she knows the chances of their survival are slim, but I pray for them every night. I pray for her. For me. For the whole world. And I’m not even religious.

  “Norm,” I whisper.

  The fog has begun to clear up the slightest bit. I see the outline of the Jeep, its boxy, black shape. I don’t see Norm, and luckily, the machete is by my side because I bump into his back.

  He has stopped in the middle of the field, and he is not holding his baseball bat any longer. That is in the tall grass, lost somewhere. No. Norm is pointing his gun. It all hits me at this moment: the thumps of their rotting hands against the metal and glass, the gurgling moans, and the screams.

  The yellow eyes flicker on and off like lightning bugs as they shamble about. There are at least ten of them.

  I grab Norm’s arm. He is rigid yet shaking. If I could see his face, I would see a wild mixture of fear and excitement. “Don’t shoot,” I say. “Abby will handle it.”

  And sure enough, Abby does.

  The Jeep’s engine roars to life, the lights turn on, barely visibly through the fog. She doesn’t stomp on the gas. She just eases it, and the lights grow brighter as she comes toward us. Instinctively, I back up. When I bump into something, my heart nearly explodes, the adrenaline and fear bursting out of me. I turn around, raising the machete. Six months ago, I would’ve swung, buried the blade into whatever was behind me, man or dead man. Now, I don’t. I don’t want the blood on my hands. There are few survivors of this plague or reckoning or whatever the hell this is, and the thought of accidentally killing someone who isn’t already dead sickens me. There may come a time when I’m wrong, when I should’ve swung first, asked questions later, but it’s not now.

  This time, my enemy, the thing that spooks me is a tree, one seeming to stretch into the clouds, as old as Time itself. Way to go, Jack.

  I turn back around as I hear the sound of the revving Jeep. Abby has sped up. The lights bump and jump as she goes over the uneven landscape. It is coming right for Norm and me.

  “We gotta move,” I say to Norm.

  But he doesn’t. He is waving his hands, “Stop! No!”

  Somehow, he knows his surroundings, knows we are right by the tree line even in the fog. I think it’s some kind of sixth sense he gets from being a former Army grunt. Either that, or he’s just a crazy son of a bitch.

  Abby doesn’t stop. In fact, she speeds up.

  I dive out of the way, throwing the machete, knowing I just might’ve signed my own death certificate because I won’t find it in this tickling, tall grass, but if the Jeep rolls me over and breaks my legs or straight-up kills me, then I’m even worse off.

  Behind me, at least I think it’s behind me, it’s Jeep versus centuries old tree. By the sound of the glass breaking, metal screeching, I think it’s safe to say the tree has won. I glance to my right where I see the faint glow of the red brake lights, and about fifty feet away the group of dead walking toward the crashed Jeep.

  This is when the engine cuts off. I hear something whistle and exhale a great burst of pressure, then all is quiet except for the snarls of the monsters.

  I stand up. Surprisingly, my foot knocks into something in the grass. I pick it up. It’s the machete. I raise it above my head like a sword.

  I told you it’s never just one.

  3

  The fog has cleared enough for me to make out their faces. They have been dead a long time. They are squishy, runny. Most of their skin has rotted off to the point of determining whether they’re male or female damn near impossible. It doesn’t matter. My machete comes for their head regardless of sex, race, age, or occupation. I am a regular open-minded killer of the dead. New Age Slayer is what I call it. If you’re already dead and you’re still walking, and you have a hankering for human flesh — especially my human flesh — then I will defend myself. Plain and simple.

  A man wearing overalls and still carrying most of his weight in his middle lunges at me first. His teeth have been rotten longer than he has, that’s for sure. I jab the machete at him. This is another lesson I’ve learned the hard way. One time, as I swung down on a creep like I was a medieval executioner, the blade lodged in her head. I am not strong. I am a string bean and the force of my swing was not enough to reach the creep’s brain. She kept coming, kept snapping her jaws at me like one of those chattering teeth toys. Darlene had to help me that time, and she is not too fond of killing these things. It’s too messy.

  So Overalls is soft enough that I don’t need much force. It’s in and out like a thumbtack popping a balloon. He drops, all four-hundred pounds of him, into a heap. As he hits, his guts deflate. A wave of black, inky blood douses the tall grass. Six months ago, I might’ve lost my lunch seeing that but not now.

  Next in line is something more akin to a skeleton wearing a dress that might’ve once been something you put on for church — Sunday’s finest is what you’d call it — before The End. I raise my leg and kick her in the sternum. I’m practically kicking thin air. Her arms flail out as she stumbles backward, a dusty groan escaping her mouth. In less than two seconds, my machete, still slick with Overalls’s brains, collapses her cranium.

  “Want more?” I shout to the surrounding dead, my arms out like I’m Russell Crowe in Gladiator (minus fifty pounds of muscle). “Come on!”

  Their glowing eyes seem to flicker in the fog. Behind me, I hear Norm’s grunts, the sounds of his baseball bat clobbering their heads. It’s a good sign. When Norm is locked in the zone, he’s like Barry Bonds out there. Each crush of his baseball bat is a home run.

  The fog dissipates, showing the dead in all of their disgusting beauty. Lumps, knobs, bones sticking out of fl
eshy and unusable arms, tattered clothes, melted skin. I’d be lying if I said my stomach isn’t clenching.

  “Jack!” someone says. I instantly recognize the voice, even through the Jeep’s glass. It’s Darlene. I risk a glance at the crashed vehicle. Most of the windows are intact except for a large crack through the windshield. The glass is tinted. I can barely make out the white moon of her face, the distressed look in her eyes. “Jack!” She beats on the window as if to break it. She’s trapped in the car, surrounded by death, and it’s up to me to bust her out.

  The dead stream out from the woods. Locusts of the Plague, of the Apocalypse, come to pick the bones clean of all Earth’s sinners.

  I am frozen, the weight of the situation pressing down on me. I have to save Darlene.

  Norm’s gun cracks. Two quick shots. Two lightning flashes. Deafening booms. I see a spray of blood. We are getting overrun. When he drops the bat and picks up the Magnum, I know things have taken a turn for the worst.

  Shit.

  Something grips at my shoulder, causing me to jump. I turn back around, unfrozen, and I’m face to face with a young man who has died young and will always be young, even as time goes on. That is, until I shove my machete under his chin, poking a hole in the top of his head where a lava burst of scrambled brains spew out and roll down the sides of his face. The light in his eyes immediately fizzles out. I pull the blade free as easily as I lodged it in his head. The next swing decapitates an old woman. Her head rolls off in the grass, mouth missing lips, dentures chomping nothing but air. I stomp on her head, ending that freak show fast.

  Darlene, I think. Gotta to get to Darlene.

  Norm shoots two more times.

  “Jack, come on!” it’s Abby. She’s on top of the Jeep, pointing the Glock at me. She shoots twice and two dead drop.

  I, with the help of Abby, have cleared a path to the car where the back of Darlene’s head is pressed up against the window facing me. I run to the Jeep, throw open the door. She tumbles out, but I catch her.

  She’s crying. I hate when she cries. The only way I can get her to stop is by taking her into my arms and kissing every inch of her face. But certain circumstances do not let that happen. The real problem is when Darlene is frightened, when she cries, she freezes. And in this world, that's a certain death sentence.

  “Go, Darlene!” I shout. “Run.”

  She takes one look at the dead piled up, making a body-shaped path through this abandoned field, and her eyes widen in terror. A bald corpse in nothing but his underwear sees us, and lumbers away from the crumpled hood of the Jeep. I give Darlene a little push, nothing terrible or violent, just something to get her engine primed and ready to go. She takes off, clumsily but fast. Abby jumps off the roof of the Jeep, and in mid-jump, puts a bullet through the eye of the underwear-wearing corpse. His head jolts back and he stumbles over the tree’s root, gone to the fog.

  “I got her,” Abby says as she lands. She’s a thin thing, thinner since all of this shit went down, so I don’t hear her land. The Glock looks like it weighs more than her.

  I point to the road on the far side of the field. There’s a small pond shimmering in the morning sunshine. “Get to the lake! I’ll get Norm and the weapons,” I say. I didn’t even think to say these words. We always know living with the dead means our lives can take a turn for the worst at any moment. We prepare for this stuff. It’s almost a reflex. Second nature.

  I lunge into the Jeep. Through the tinted glass, I see Norm. A group of the dead surround him, closing in on him, slowly backing him up against the driver’s side door. He has the smoking Magnum in one hand, the baseball bat in his other. His gray shirt, already dingy with months on the road, is soaked through with sweat. I reach in the Jeep where our gym bag of weapons sit on the front seat, grab it and pull it out. The dead around the front of the car haven’t noticed me.

  Norm shoots one in the face, stripping it of its left side. It falls in a bloody spray.

  My hand finds the door handle of the back seat. I push it open with a grunt. It’s not easy. The Jeep’s doors are heavy, and like I said, I’m a weakling.

  “Norm! Let’s go!”

  He looks at me, this crazy look is in his eyes, like he’s going to try to take all of them on by himself. Believe me, he probably could, but I love my older brother and I’m not going to let him do something stupid. The baseball bat swings, cracks a short, fat guy on the top of the head. Norm raises the bat again, but my voice stops him mid-strike. “Norm, I can’t do this without you.”

  He looks at me, and the crazy mask he is wearing vanishes.

  “I’ve gone my whole life without you, man. I can’t lose you again.”

  Blood speckles his uneven beard, his forehead, and almost the entire front of his shirt.

  “Come on!” I shout.

  The crazy look invades his features again. He squares up to me, raises his weapon. My mouth opens in a protest, something like Please, don’t shoot, but it’s lost in the sound of the gunshot. The glass behind my head shatters, showers over my hands which are laced against the back of my neck. I slowly turn, my heartbeat pounding in my chest. A corpse lays in the grass a mere foot away from where my legs hang out of the Jeep. Its head is a mess of blood and brains and bits of bone. I turn back to Norm as he crawls over the backseats. “Thanks,” I say.

  “Don’t mention it,” he says, a smile on his face.

  Then we are out of the car and running toward the pond, where Abby and Darlene are little specks on the horizon, barely visible through the now vanishing fog.

  4

  We regroup at the pond. Dead fish float belly up near the surface. Darlene watches them as if they are hypnotizing. I squeeze her hand and say, “It’s okay,” even though I know I’m lying.

  It’s not okay. We have just lost the car and barely survived. I think about maybe going back there when the fog clears, but there are too many zombies and the car crashed into that old tree pretty hard.

  So we shoulder on.

  As the sun slowly burns us overhead, we spend much of the day walking, but I am tired come a couple hours past noon. I don’t know the exact time, I just know it’s time to rest. I haven’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. If I take the watch during the middle of the night, I usually sprawl out in the back of Norm’s Jeep while one of the others drive.

  But we are so close to Eden I could practically smell the orange groves and taste the clean, alive air. Or so that’s the image in my head from the countless nights I’ve dreamed of the place.

  Norm looks over his shoulders at me. I’m walking gingerly as if I’m maneuvering through landmines, the bag of weapons hanging off my shoulders and my machete in hand. His face goes from pissed-off to brotherly concern in a matter of seconds. Abby and Darlene follow his gaze.

  I must look pretty bad because even Abby looks worried, and lately, nothing worries Abby.

  Darlene stops, her shoes breaking a twig that sounds much louder in my head than it actually is, then she’s on me.

  “Oh, Jack,” she says. “Are you feeling all right?” The back of her hand goes up to my forehead, feeling for a fever. I’m not sick, it’s just hot outside. Florida weather is nothing like Ohio weather. My shirt sticks to my sweaty skin, there’s moisture trickling down the back of my neck. It’s not the wheels and mobility of Norm’s Jeep that I miss now; it’s the air conditioning. God, I’d kill for some air conditioning.

  “I’m okay,” I say. “Don’t worry, let’s keep going. Gotta get to Eden today.” Even I can hear how weak I sound.

  Darlene grips my hand and squeezes. “Let me take the bag. I can carry it, Jack.”

  She’ll have to be carrying me pretty soon.

  “You sure you don’t wanna rest, little brother? Take a break, maybe a nap. Eight hour power nap, yeah?”

  “No,” I say. “I’m fine. Gotta get to Eden before sundown.”

  Though we left the zombies behind in the field, we are never safe. When the sun goes down and the
ir yellow eyes glow viciously with hunger and rage, you do not want to be caught around a horde. If we stop now, who knows how long we’ll be walking after dark? I can’t have that. I must keep this group safe, I must keep Darlene safe.

  But my body says otherwise.

  We go on for another half-hour, walking along a long stretch of road. In the distance, I see the varying ups and downs, the farmland next to it, and much, much farther, I see a town. I know it’s actually not that far, it’s just my tired eyes playing tricks on me. Still, this realization doesn’t help me much.

  I seem to stare straight ahead for hours.

  None of us talk. There’s a time and a place for talking and it’s not now, can't let any dormant dead things in the surrounding forest know where we are.

  The sun is halfway down as Norm turns around to look at me. Him and Abby are about a hundred feet ahead of Darlene and I.

  I look up to the sky, sarcastically thinking Wow, time flies when you’re having fun.

  I’m not too out of it to know it’s nowhere close to nine in the evening. The darkness overhead is a storm brewing. Gray and black clouds swell, pregnant with rain and thunder and lightning. We will have no choice but to find cover. It looks like it’s going to be a hard one, too.

  Norm points to a farmhouse. It’s on a stretch of farmland which hasn’t been farmed in the better part of a year. Beyond this wooden fence that runs the length of the balding patch of land, crops litter the field like trash, looking as unenthused as I feel. The farmhouse is a squat two-story building. Its red brick chimney sticks up into the air like a middle finger. The roof is also red, though I don’t think that was its original color. Maybe brown or black. Age and muggy weather have made it rusty, and now it’s the color of the chimney. The lawn is overgrown. There’s a bicycle leaning up against the porch with its handlebars turned at a neck-breaking angle, grass threatening to swallow it up. But beyond this, there is a large tree with all of its leaves. It’s the most alive thing I’ve seen in a long time. It is a beautiful tree.