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

by Flint Maxwell

Two yellow orbs hang in the darkness.

  Croghan falls forward, the zombie falling with him. But that doesn’t matter.

  I have a clear shot. I have —

  It’s too late.

  Flesh rips. Skin snaps. Croghan screams, the sound shrill and piercing…the sound of a dying man. I shoot once. The bullet blows the zombie’s head almost clean off, cutting off the screams and cutting off the death rattles that came from the back of the monster’s throat.

  “He’s been bit! He’s been bit!” Norm says.

  He is on his knees.

  “Oh Lord, p-p-please,” Herb is saying behind me, sobbing his thundering sobs. Then, “La-la-la-la.”

  I hear the clapping footsteps of the Wranglers who must’ve just caught wind of what happened. A gunshot in the zombie apocalypse can really only mean one thing. Death is on the horizon, whether it comes in the form of walking corpses or crazy humans, it’s here.

  My head is thrumming. I’m seeing red. I’m confused. I feel vulnerable. This isn’t supposed to happen. We aren’t supposed to let our guards down. And here we are, Croghan bleeding out onto the dark grass, the group and our defense scattered.

  Abby screams, now, and I’m spun back around.

  There is more. Zombies pour out of the woods. Ten maybe fifteen of them. I aim and fire, taking one emaciated skeleton in the jaw, knocking it down a full three-sixty degrees.

  “Run!” I shout at Darlene.

  Herb is frozen, his muscles bulging. Darlene sees the the dead surrounding them and turns and grabs Herb’s hand. She pulls him and you wouldn’t think this small woman would be able to drag the three-hundred pound frame of Herb away, but she does.

  The smell of gun smoke hangs heavy in the air. It’s almost as heavy as the smell of death and decay.

  “Hold on, man!” Norm is saying. He is crouched down by Croghan, holding the wound on his neck, blood gushing out of it in waves. His gun comes up, cracks three times. Three zombies fall each time his finger squeezes the trigger. “Just hold on! Just hold on!”

  They say the earth rotates at over a thousand miles per hour, but we don’t feel it. Right now, I do. The trees are a blur. The golden eyes are a blur. Darlene and Herb disappearing down the slope of the hill with grocery bags full of ammunition and medicine are a blur. My legs are weakening. My aim is off.

  I shoot once and watch the bark of a nearby tree explode when it should be the gray and red brains of a diseased corpse.

  Abby aims her weapon at the one I missed. There’s a rifle burst of shots and the zombie falls into a bloody heap. The Wranglers take the ones closest to the path. The older man with the beard, Jacob, and his wife swing low with their own rifles. Two zombies collapse at the knees and the married couple begin beating the zombies’ skulls in until the heads look like raisins. Now nausea replaces the fear. I’ll never get used to this.

  There is shouting. Gunshots. Screams. Death rattles. Death shrieks.

  “Jack! Jack!” someone says, but it sounds very far away as if I am under water or at the end of a mile-long hallway. I’m trying to catch my breath, though I haven’t moved. The loamy forest floor comes up to meet me. I am falling.

  My knees burn as rocks dig into my flesh. A zombie lumbers over to me, quick — or maybe I’m just moving in slow motion. It was once a woman. Her hair sways in muddy clumps. Skin is tight enough against her cheekbones that the sharpness of her skull pokes through the gray flesh. My sweaty hands scrabble at the metal of the pistol. She’s getting closer, closer, closer.

  Oh, God.

  Her eyes glow like a car’s high beams. Death has never been so near.

  Finally, I get ahold of the gun. Point, aim, fire. The slug sends her flying back into the tree line minus a head. I take a deep breath, inhaling the coppery blood.

  Something grips my arm. I feel my heart do one of those kickstarts and the feeling I get whenever I jolt myself awake from a falling dream invades me. It is not a good feeling at all. I think a zombie has grabbed me and is ready to take a chunk out of my shoulder when I spin around and see Abby’s face twisted in fear, blood speckling her brow. My heart doesn’t calm down. Not yet.

  “Let’s go! Let’s get out of here! There’s too many!” she’s yelling, and she’s right.

  I look around and it’s as if I’ve been slapped across the face. I can hear everything in perfect clarity, every crunch, crack, squelch, and gunshot amplified. I see it all, too. The blood, the entrails hanging from gashed open stomachs, the jagged bones poking through pallid flesh, the sunlight looking on like a frightened eyeball, half-closed by the darkening horizon, too afraid to see and too afraid to look away.

  Abby pulls me up. Behind her are the trees they came out of, to my right is the slope Darlene has disappeared to. The Wranglers buzz around like worker bees, unaware of any and everything that is not zombie killing.

  “Norm!” I shout.

  He perks up, still holding the wound on Croghan’s neck. Croghan, meanwhile, jerks and twists, screeching in pain. “Oh God it hurts it hurts oh god,” he says.

  Norm looks down at him and shakes his head. At first glance, he is in almost as much pain as Croghan. But he recognizes there’s not much he can do for him. A bite is fatal, one especially on the neck. You can’t cut off your head to stay alive. My stomach lurches. I feel sick again.

  Norm stands up, his pistol smoking four zombies in the blink of an eye. The lost finger on his right hand hasn’t slowed him down one bit. It was all mental. For that, I am glad.

  As he rushes over to us, avoiding the corpses of the dead and the living alike (two Wranglers have since bit the dust and one zombie is down the path with what looks like an arm dangling from its mouth) Norm points behind Abby and I.

  “Look out!” he yells, aiming.

  I turn just in time to see a man whose face looks like a lump of dried clay, shiny maggots squirm around his right eye socket where an eyeball should be, teeth broken and sharp, lips peeled back by rot. He falls on Abby.

  She screams.

  The fog invades my brain. I’m in that long, dark hallway hearing her shout.

  A chunk of Abby’s arm disappears and it is replaced with a fountain of red and stringy tendons. She screams like she is on fire. It is the loudest sound in the forest, louder than the death snarls and gunshots — and louder than my own screams.

  I’m quick, as quick as I can be. My gun comes up and blows the zombie’s other eyeball away. It goes skipping across the beaten path, leaving a trail of black blood in its wake.

  Abby is bucking. Her gun is gone, lost in the wild grass. With her good arm, she squeezes the wound. I hold her as she convulses, my heart racing faster than my mind.

  She is going to be okay, she is going to be okay, I’m thinking.

  But that logical part of my brain — my own worst enemy — tells me what I thought earlier…a bite is fatal, Jack. It’s always fatal.

  Sixteen

  I scoop her up into my arms just as the horde of undead close in around us. The Wranglers have lost the battle. We have all lost the battle.

  Now, most are feasted upon, their guts hanging out of their bellies, their faces chewed away. I hear a young man shout, “Please, GOD!” and his voice mutes as four zombies come down on him.

  I weave through limbs and blood and corpses staring up at the dark sky with lifeless eyes. I’m not running down a picturesque hillside any longer; now, I’m running through a battlefield. World War III.

  “Darlene!” I’m screaming. “Darlene!” all while Abby’s life force pours from just above her wrist and down the front of my shirt.

  More Wranglers are rushing toward me as I’m rushing toward the valley. They are armed with weapons. One man has what looks like a homemade flamethrower made out of duct tape, a lighter, hairspray, and one of those E-Z Reachers immobile people often use.

  “Darlene!”

  Abby’s eyes are clouding over, she looks like she has cataracts — What an odd sight, I think to myself, she’s not old
enough for that, then I realize the insanity of that thought. She’s okay, she’s okay, she’s gonna be okay.

  Darlene stands at the base of the hill near the fences and spikes pointing at me. I’m running so fast the wind is whipping through my hair. People are actually getting out of my way.

  “Darlene — ”

  I stumble and fall, but I turn my body so Abby doesn’t hit the ground first. We go sliding down the dirt. Pebbles scrape my back. Mud cakes my elbow. She is already smelling sick, like bile and heat and death. It floods my nostrils, overwhelming the smell of the forest and the earth.

  Gunshots explode behind me at the top of the hill. Someone says, “Die, you bastards!” and then machine gun fire chases the words.

  Another person shouts, “Fall back!”

  “No!”

  More gunfire.

  Norm bends down. He’s trying to take Abby away from me.

  “Let go, Jack! We gotta move! We gotta move!” he yells.

  People screaming now. My heartbeat thud-thudding.

  Somehow, I manage to bring myself up with Abby still in my arms.

  “Mom…mommy,” she says. “I’m sorry, I’m s-s-sorry.”

  “In here! In here!” someone says.

  I look up and see the older man and his wife standing in front of an open door. The man is waving us in. Herb and Darlene aren’t too far off. Norm grabs me by my elbow and pulls me along the rest of the way, which is about a hundred feet. Once we are past the fences, their metal gleaming in the dying sunlight, the older man named Jacob leads us to what looks like a cabin. It’s far. My legs are burning, joints screaming, but I keep going. I have to.

  There is light inside. And as I run in, holding Abby’s blazing body, I realize how sweaty I’ve become.

  “Abby?” Herb says, poking his head out from the front door of the building. “Abby, no!” He starts crying. Darlene is right there with him, thank God.

  I take her and lay her on the table across the room. The older man clears a few textbooks off by way of swiping the back of his hand over the surface and sending them scattering to the floor. Abby whimpers. She sounds like she is dying.

  “Fuck,” Norm says. “This is too much. I’m going back out there.”

  “No, don’t go, Norm!” Herb says.

  Norm doesn’t.

  Outside, I faintly hear the sounds of gunfire, but it’s intermittent. I think the battle is over and we won. How many casualties there are, I don’t want to know. Does that mean we really lost?

  “Turn away, Herb,” I say. “Think about your auntie and your brother. Think about all the good things.”

  His sobs soften, but he won’t turn away. He can’t.

  “Oh, my God. What happened?” Darlene says.

  “Shit happened,” Norm answers. “Shit happened real quick.”

  “Help me hold her,” the old man says.

  “Oh, Jacob, not in here,” his wife says. Her face is drained of all color, she’s shaking. I can’t imagine how I look. If I look as bad as I feel, I’m sorry for whoever lays eyes on me.

  “What do you expect, Marge? Do you want me to wait until we are able to get to the med center? If we don’t do something quick — ”

  “Just do it!” I shout. “If it’ll save her life, just do it.” I hear my voice as if through a speaker. It’s like my soul and consciousness has left my body and observes this gruesome scene from above.

  “There’s no anesthesia,” Darlene says. She starts shaking her head then her hands start going through her hair. She’s pulling it, kneading it.

  “What choice do we have?” I say. “If we wait — ”

  “She dies,” Jacob says. “Now help me hold her down!”

  “Momma, I didn’t mean to,” Abby says. “And the cat…Simba, I threw him off. He died. He died. L-Like me.”

  Darlene is by the table now, her arm is draped across Abby’s neck, pinning the top half of her to the wood. With her other hand, dirty and grimy with blood, she pets Abby’s dark hair. “Shh, now, honey,” she says. “Shh, it’s going to be okay.”

  Jacob runs around the room. His wife Marge bouncing from one foot to the other. Jacob knocks aside more books and chairs and a small card table in the corner until he finally stops. The racket inside is almost as loud as the one on the outside. “Here it is,” he says, on his knees looking under a small cot. He pulls a scabbard out, handling it by a frayed leather strap. He unclasps the holder and pulls a blade free. A very sharp blade. “Margie, get me the vodka out of the top cupboard! Quickly!”

  Marge looks as if she’s been kicked in the ass. She waddle-runs into the next room. I hear the rattle of pots and pans. A glass breaks. The noise of it shattering echoes throughout the cabin.

  One more gunshot goes off outside of the walls. I think it is the last one. I hope it’s the last one.

  Marge comes back with a clear bottle of some cheap vodka. It is about half-full. I am oddly reminded of Ben and Brian Richards’s world famous absinthe. Boy, we could use that now.

  “Okay, hold her down,” Jacob says. “Where was she bit?”

  “Can’t you fucking see?” Norm shouts. He is still by the cracked door, still wanting to go.

  I smell fire in the air, see the dancing shadows of flames on the cabin’s floor.

  “Her wrist,” I say, trying to wipe away the blood.

  Jacob can’t see. The bite is not pretty. Abby’s entire arm looks as if it has been painted in red. The teeth marks are not normal teethmarks. The zombie who bit her had a smile like broken glass.

  “All right,” Jacob says. He pours vodka onto the blade then onto Abby’s arm.

  She screams bloody murder, the sound loud enough to rupture ear drums and shatter mirrors.

  “I’ll have to cut higher. She won’t lose the whole arm, at least I don’t think,” Jacob says. “Now hold her. Hold her!”

  “Oh please, Lord,” Herb says. He is standing in the corner, one large hand hovering over his brow, trying not to look at the horrendous scene playing out across the room and failing.

  “Have you done this before?” Darlene asks. “Please say you have. Please.”

  Jacob shakes his head.

  Then, like a butcher with a hunk of beef, the blade hand comes down, and Abby screams again. Not a clean hit. The blade comes down once more.

  Then again.

  And again.

  We all scream with her.

  Seventeen

  The detached hand hits the floor and rolls. Abby cries deep, wracking sobs. Darlene has taken to crying too, but she still holds Abby down from bucking.

  “Hand me a towel,” Jacob says. “Hand me a towel now!”

  His wife is quicker this time. There is blood everywhere. Some has sprayed across my face and my clothes, dotting me with misty drops. I feel queasy. This beats anything I’ve seen on a zombie, hands down. But it’s not the amputation that gets me the most; it’s the fact that it’s Abby, the sister I never had, the girl who got me through the chaos of Woodhaven and who stood by my side while Darlene was knocking on death’s front door.

  I realize I am crying. Tears stream down my face, warm tears. My hands are shaking. Abby’s screams are dull. The colors of the cabin — what would normally be a rich mahogany is gray. The red rug on the floor is gray. The blood spurting from Abby’s wound, soaking the towel, is gray. The world seems darker now.

  “Jesus,” Norm says behind me, very faintly. “I’m g-gonna step outside. You want to come, little brother?”

  I turn to face him and shake my head. “No.”

  “Herbie?” Norm asks.

  “Abby,” Herb says. “My poor Abby.”

  “C’mon, big guy, she’s going to be okay. Let’s get some fresh air.”

  “B-But the zombies,” he says.

  “They’re gone. It’s fixed,” Norm says.

  The two of them leave, closing the door. The flames outside have been put out. I smell the smoke on the wind. I hear the clamor of voices, not death rattl
es. The battle is over.

  Looking at Abby, I know we’ve lost.

  “Is she really going to be okay?” Darlene whispers. Blood runs from the corner of her eyes like teardrops.

  “Yeah, she is,” I say. I’m sure of myself. I know she is. And if she’s not, then I’m going to make sure of it.

  Jacob takes a deep breath.

  Abby has passed out, her eyelids fluttering. Her hair sticks to her forehead in sweaty clumps. I reach up and brush it away, the tears welling up again in my own eyes. Each day I go on in this wasteland, this zombie-ravaged world, my heart breaks. And a heart can only break so many times before one gives up. But I can’t. I can’t. If Abby dies, I have to go on because she would want me to, she would want all of us to.

  “I can’t say for sure,” Jacob says. His wife hovers, her hand over her mouth. Jacob pulls his belt from his pants and ties it around Abby’s stump which begins just above where her wrist used to be. Then he starts unrolling gauze from a nearby desk drawer. “Got to stop the bleeding, but this isn’t enough. She’ll need better medical attention, cauterize the wound…and maybe,” he looks up to the ceiling, “she’ll need a miracle.”

  “Are you a doctor?” Darlene asks.

  Jacob chuckles. It’s an odd sound, one completely devoid of humor. “Not even close. I was a garbage man before the world turned. Now, I build things here in our little village.”

  “How’d you know to cut the arm off?” she asks.

  “Darlene,” I begin to say. “Not now.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Jacob says. He begins wrapping the wound. “A story for another time, perhaps. We got to get your girl over to the med center if it’s all clear outside. Have Phyl take a look at her. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  I stand up, and the movement causes Abby to stir. She doesn’t open her eyes, but mumbles something I don’t understand.

  “Let’s move then. Now,” I say. “I can carry her. How far?”

  “Across the village,” Jacob says. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

  I shake my head. “You’ve helped enough.”

  “No, no,” he says. “I’m helping. Life is the only thing that matters in this godforsaken world.”