The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4

by Flint Maxwell

  He runs over to her, hugs her, but this time it’s a little more gently than when he hugged me. He does the same to Abby, but Norm, he backs off, recognizing his injuries.

  “Where’d you get a gun, Herb?” Darlene asks.

  He looks down at the pistol, which is probably huge in my hands but looks like a water pistol in his, like it’s a slithering snake. “Doc Klein gave it to me. He came and busted me out of that nasty prison cell. He hurt the guard real bad. Not killed him just beat him up and he said to me, ‘Herb, things are going to get very bad. I am leaving to D.C. Spike is gone and that may be good, but now we are weak. If we don’t get out, the Carny’s are going to get us. I’m going to do some good in this world. You can come with me. Time is short. Do you understand, Herbert?’ I nodded my head real slow. I understood, all right. I understood real well. But I said no, I was gonna come look for Jacky and you, Darlene. All of you. You’re my friends.”

  Darlene pats him on his arm, and he smiles again.

  “When I told Doc Klein that I was gonna go out there and look for you and he said, ‘God bless’ just like my auntie used to before every meal — ‘Dear lord God Jesus, bless us. Bless this food,’ but me and the Doc weren’t eating. No, we wasn’t. Then I heard the guns and smelled the fire and came back and hid in the dungeon because I was scared…” he looks down at his feet. “Real scared. Said I’d go out there when I didn’t hear it no more.”

  “Well I’m glad you stayed put, Herb,” I say. “We’re all here. A little beat up but here, and now we can get the h-e-double hockey sticks outta here!”

  The momentary sadness passes and he beams again. “I knew we’d find each other, Jacky! I just knew it!”

  “Guys,” Abby says from somewhere across the room. I can barely see her shrouded in the shadows. “Guys, we hit the jackpot.”

  I hobble over there, Darlene, Herb, and Norm in Herb’s arms following me. Abby stands in front of a large supply closet, stacked with medicines: Oxycodone, prednisone, Moxifloxacine, Diazepam. There’s jugs of purified water. Boxes of food. Bandages. First-aid kits. You name it.

  “Grab it all,” I say, knowing we have a long road ahead of us. “Everyone grab as much as we can and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Herb claps a hand over his mouth. “Aw, Jack said a bad word!”

  I just shake my head, smiling.

  In a warehouse not far from the lab, are rows and rows of cars. Most of them have been stripped for parts, and others have been taken and driven by the smarter of the Edenites — I know this because of the car sized hole in the fallen garage door and the skid marks on the gray floor.

  When I see the warehouse and how ransacked it looks, I almost lose hope. There is not much choice left, but the flames are getting hotter and soon, if we don’t get the hell out of here, we are going to burn.

  Herb points to a minivan sitting on two flats. The body is rusty, it’s baby blue paint peeling and flaky, but it’s big and roomy.

  “Where are the keys?” I ask.

  “Gonna need them,” Norm says, then he wheezes a burst of painful laughter. Back in the lab, he downed a bottle of ibuprofen and took some other pain pill I couldn’t even pronounce. And there’s one thing I know about drugs you can’t pronounce: They usually have the trippiest side-effects.

  More gunfire rips through the air in the middle of the abandoned amusement park, but it’s far off, muted by distance.

  “Keys are in there,” Herb says. He points to a metal box on the wall. Its cover already hangs open. The keys inside of it sway back and forth as if a ghostly breeze is in the warehouse. “I’ll go get ‘em. Number 19,” he says, pointing to the 19 written in white paint on the corner of the windshield.

  “That’s if they’re still in there,” I say under my breath.

  Abby hears me and chuckles. “Nobody wanted that piece of shit,” she says, smiling. It looks foreign on her swollen face.

  Herb comes back beaming like always, the tiny keys dangling from his oversized pinky.

  “Wanna drive?” I ask.

  The smile vanishes. “I-I never drove before. Not since my auntie — ”

  “Herb, it’s all right,” Norm says. “I’ll help you. Just none of us are fit to drive right now. You gotta help us out a little while longer.”

  “Yeah,” Darlene says, “You’re our hero, Herb.”

  He smiles again. “I’ll do my best.”

  As he walks by me, I clap him on the back.

  We load up the van, file in, and buckle our seat belts. The van’s engine sputters for the first couple turns, but roars to life on the third try. It is the charm, I guess.

  Herb guns it out of the warehouse, the flat rubber slap-slapping on the desolate and destroyed streets of the abandoned amusement park.

  By the time we pull through Eden’s broken gates, our headlights washing over stooped and starving — yet otherwise happy — former citizens, the flames have begun to paint the sky with their orange glow. Part of the roller coaster whines, creaks, then falls over. It’s chaos. Maelstrom. Another version of The End.

  No one tries to stop us. No one jumps on the car. Most of them have weapons, probably having broken into one of the various lockups. But no one shoots at us, either.

  Herb drives. He hasn’t driven in years. Norm in the front seat, guiding him, telling him when to brake and when to speed up. It’s just how you’d imagine a worried father teaching his son to drive. But Herb does fine.

  “Herb, how would you like to go to D.C., and see your friend Doctor Klein?” I ask.

  His eyes get huge in the rearview mirror. “Would I?” he shouts, then sighs, shaking his head. “But I don’t know how to get there.”

  “Don’t worry, Herb, we’ll find our way,” I say.

  He smiles, nods at me, and focuses on the open road.

  Abby, Darlene, and I are in the backseat. The trunk is stuffed full of medicinal supplies, non-perishable foods, and as many stray weapons as we could find. We are set for the foreseeable future.

  I glance up at the dashboard and see the gas tank is half-full, not half-empty — that’s just the kind of guy I am right now.

  We are heading north to find Doctor Klein, to save the world. We can do it. I know we can.

  As the trees go by in a dark blur and the distance between us and Eden grows, I hear Darlene’s soft snores. Not long after her snores taper off, I fall into the blackness of sleep. And I dream of our wedding again, but this time it’s not gruesome. The only people in attendance are the ones I care about: Norm, Abby, Herb, and my future wife.

  We kiss when the priest tells us to kiss, long and deep. I wake up shortly after, and I kiss her for real. It’s beautiful, and in a world full of death, it’s life.

  Dead Nation

  Jack Zombie #3

  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

  One

  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 wa
nted. 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 something,” 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.”

  Two

  “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. S
o 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.

  Three

  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.