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

by Flint Maxwell

  “Throw it,” he says. He does a good job masking the waver in his voice. But I hear it. I guess I’m attuned to it because I’ve been there so many times before. I know exactly how he’s feeling. I’m the guy who was once trapped on a roof of my hometown gym, cornered by a psychopath and zombies, the guy who was thrown into an arena to duel a Brooklyn cowboy, the guy whose dick was almost the main course at a cannibal dinner party.

  I’ve seen it all. I’ve done it all — gotten through it all.

  This, well, this is going to be a piece of cake.

  I hope.

  Fifty-Three

  I throw the rope. It seems to float through the air for an eternity, going and going, untouched by friction like a meteor hurtling through outer space. I don’t think it’ll ever get there.

  Then it does. The heaviness of the rope clangs against the metal trailer. I take the hook and wrap it around what’s left of the bridge’s railing. The pulley idea and creating enough leverage to easily pull Klein up to me went out the window with the explosion of the grenade. Now, I’ll have to use my brute strength…yeah.

  Klein grabs the rope and starts tying it around his waist.

  “When I say ‘Go’ you jump as high as you can and you Tarzan over to the bridge,” I shout, tugging on the rope to make sure it’s secure, heart beating frantically in my chest. “Keep your legs up, don’t let them grab you!” I’m trying not to think of the weight of this situation. This is the man who can supposedly bring an end to the plague, who can put the dead below us where they belong. If I fuck up and he dies… No, I don’t even want to think about it. In a sense, the weight of the continental United States — maybe even the world — is on my shoulders.

  Stop, Jack.

  The rope tightens as I give it a tug. We have to move fast. The grenade explosion will no doubt drive more traffic to us. Dead, or maybe even what’s left of the cannibals. There’s really no time for a full safety check. The only thing we have to go on is hope…and a fraying rope.

  “Okay,” I say, gulping. “Go!”

  Klein’s chest rises and falls as he takes a breath loud enough for me to hear over the ringing in my ears and the death rattles of the dead.

  Then, he goes. Screaming.

  Both of my hands are on the rope. The coating of blood and guts isn’t doing much to dull the burns. I’m gritting my teeth, looking at Klein as he swings through the night air through slitted eyes. He kicks out. Didn’t listen to me. His shoes clobber a couple zombies in the face, slowing his momentum. It causes more tension on the rope and more fire in my palms. I swear I can smell my flesh burning. I swear I see little puffs of white, skin smoke. I scream out, too.

  Metal grinds into the concrete.

  The chorus of the zombie shouts, screeches, and rattles increase. It’s enough to drive a man insane. But we hang on. Klein, literally. I feel the rope twang as his weight reaches the bridge.

  “Climb!” I shout. “Climb!”

  He can’t reply. This is not a man you’d see climbing ropes. This is a man you’d see behind a computer, skinny, weak. But, my God, he tries. If I can just meet him halfway.

  I pull and pull, hand over burnt hand. Blood fills my mouth. I’d opened it to yell and my jaw clamped on my tongue. Veins bulge and pulse from my arms, now wired with the type of muscle you can only get from bashing zombie after zombie.

  My lungs catch fire, burning worse than my forearms and fingers and palms.

  Klein screams as a zombie snatches his foot. I’m pulled forward, heels gritting against rock and rubble, wedging against the embankment. Fuck. I want to let go. All the pain in my body, the agony, it’s shouting for me to let go, to drop this man I’ve never met.

  No. I won’t.

  “Fuckkk!” I shout.

  The extra weight disappears. I’m pulling so hard, the top of Klein’s head materializes out of what seems like thin air. The rims of his glasses sparkle in the moonlight, his lazy eye peers at me. I let go of the rope and claw at his shoulders. His collar bunches up in my fist.

  I pull and pull.

  Scream and scream.

  He reaches the edge. White knuckled hands dig into the concrete. He’s grunting, yelling, bellowing. Blood runs from his fingernails. I reach his belt running right above his ass and give another great yank. His screams are cut off as the breath whooshes from his lungs.

  He’s safe, I’ve got him. I’m scrabbling, pulling him closer —

  He screams and bucks from my grip. The messenger bag that was cinched around his shoulder almost skin-tight has snapped or come undone. I don’t know, all I do know is Klein has let go of the bridge’s edge and now has the bag in hand as he dangles over a sea of starving zombies and as my arm slowly tears from its socket.

  “Drop it!” I yell. “Drop it, I can’t hold you up by myself.”

  He starts to swing. “I-I can’t,” he says, the words choked. I feel tendons slowly unraveling and popping somewhere deep within my shoulder.

  But then the thought is gone. Klein flings the bag over the edge and his skinny arm smacks the concrete again. Blood droplets fly in slow motion, some dot my face. It’s the least of my worries. I pull him the rest of the way. We both collapse to the small stretch of blacktop — what’s left of the bridge. I’m breathing hard. We both are.

  A few seconds pass, and when I get my breath back, I say, “Fuck you, man. Really. Fuck you.”

  Klein just laughs like a maniac.

  Fifty-Four

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Klein says after the laughter is done. There’s tears in his eyes. Tears of fear and pain and happiness. He’s up on his knees, now, hugging me. “Thank you! Thank you!”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” I say, shoving him off of me. Now’s really not the time. We aren’t out of the woods yet. “You almost got us killed over…what, a fucking bag?” My voice sounds harsh.

  Klein recoils.

  “This isn’t — this isn’t a just a bag!” he shouts, clutching it to his chest like it’s his favorite stuffed animal. With his other hand, he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  “Whatever, man,” I say.

  I look over the edge of the overpass. Most of the zombies, in their collective disgustingness, have migrated to the ruined end of the bridge. They can still get up here if enough of them pile up. We don’t want to linger. We’ve — I’ve — gone through so much bullshit in the last few hours that the sight of the looming skyscrapers, the dark tower of the Washington Monument — all of it — makes me sick, physically ill in the pit of my stomach.

  I start walking toward where I flung the duffel bag, hoping the contents are secure — all the medicine and whatever else Grady and Jacob scavenged from Mercy Globe Hospital. I unzip it. There are countless bottles of pills, there’s vials of clear liquid, yellow liquid, blue liquid, there’s antiseptics, syringes, masks, tapes, there’s names I can’t pronounce, mainly ending in -cillin. Pretty much anything they could get their hands on and would fit in the bag, they grabbed. It makes what we took from Eden look miniscule. I hope it’s enough for the village, enough for Abby and anyone else who falls ill. Through all of this, I hear a faint jingling. My ears prickle at the sound. It’s the set of keys for the Hummer. If the day was clear and bright, I think I might be able to spot the vehicle sitting at the end of a long line of stalled and forgotten cars.

  Klein drones on about his precious bag. I’m ignoring him, imagining a warm bed, but at the same time dreading the news I’ll have to bring back to the villagers.

  Then something Klein says snaps me out of it.

  He says, “This bag is how I’m going to put an end to all of those…those things.”

  Fifty-Five

  I try to ask him about what’s in the bag, but he’s not having it. His mouth moves a mile a minute. Blabbering about this and that, how the cannibals almost caught him and on and on. We get to the Hummer faster than we have any right to, only seeing two zombies on the way. Luckily, I only had to dispatch one and it w
as barely recognizable. Half of its body was trapped beneath the tires of a minivan. I was able to destroy the brain by way of metal claw.

  Yeah, I kept the rope.

  The Hummer remains untouched. It’s a gleaming, black hunk of metal almost indiscernible from the rest of the cars in the pale moonlight. Except this one revs to life and paints the road with its high beams as I turn the ignition.

  Klein goes on about the communicability of the disease, the mass numbers of extinction, and so on. Things I learned from the 'media' right after we left Woodhaven, before the shit really hit the fan. I do my best to block it out but can’t. So I say, “Doc, you ever have a wife or a girlfriend?”

  His face goes rigid and he turns away to look at the Potomac River rolling by us. We weave in and out of stopped traffic. “I…yes,” he says.

  Then it hits me. I’m such an asshole. Not everyone was ‘lucky’ like us, not everyone survived the disease. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “She divorced me in ’93. I’ve no time for…other women,” he says, his voice fogged by the remembrance of lost times.

  I chuckle, shaking my head. I really need some sleep. “In that case,” I say, “she ever tell you that you talk too damn much?”

  He shuts up.

  The rest of the journey is smooth. We pass a few zombies, stragglers from a late-night roaming pack. Luckily, in the utter darkness of the world, I see the faint glint of their yellow eyes long before my high beams catch the raggedy, blood-stained clothes. I swerve easily enough on the now open road, leaving the zombies to hunt for food they might never find, leaving them to rot.

  Fifty-Six

  I pulled off the road to sleep for a few hours. I wouldn’t have made the rest of the drive otherwise. Klein didn’t protest and he is still fast asleep. The morning sun peeks through a haze of purple-black clouds. It’s the second most beautiful thing in this horrible world. The first being my Darlene.

  Klein and I are both covered in dried blood. We smell like zombies, the stench of death clinging to us like cheap cologne. The duffel is safe in the backseat where people I could’ve once called friends sat with me a little less than a day ago when we were heading to the nightmare that was Washington D.C.

  It’s amazing how fast things change. That’s why I saved the man in the passenger’s seat, clutching his bag tight, holding on to it for dear life.

  I will never understand this world where bags are more important than living. Messenger bags full of secrets. Duffel bags full of medicine. I wish I could.

  And I wish I could sleep.

  I slow the Hummer down to a smooth forty-five mph, hoping I don’t doze again but feeling pretty good. We are safer in the light and I am more awake in it.

  I look over to Klein again. “You lucky son of a bitch,” I say under my breath. “You owe me one. You owe me one big time.” The messenger bag is slightly open. I see white papers, the printed word. I can’t help but be drawn to it. The mystery. The intrigue.

  I think about peeking into the bag then think better of it. No. I’ll find out in due time. But no matter how much I tell myself I didn’t see the words written at the top of the page, that I didn’t pry into someone else’s business, I did.

  They said: MOJAVE DESERT, and below that, CONFIDENTIAL.

  We are cresting a hill. My mind is on Darlene. I’m beaming. Seeing her cancels out all of the bad.

  We are almost at the top. I’ll be able to look down into the valley. I might even be able to see the small home Darlene and I shared two nights ago like a couple of people in love. Thoughts of them again, my group, my family: a healthy Abby, Herb’s good smiles, Norm’s crude jokes, Darlene’s kisses.

  Then I see it. The faint smoke. The flickering flames. The bandstand is gone, Jacob’s cabin along with most of the others are gone. Consumed by flame. Mother’s blazes. There is running shadowy figures as small as ants from here. Some of them glow. Some of them are on fire. Then there’s a noise dulled by distance and glass windows — steady, muffled pops. Gunshots.

  Oh, my God.

  My heart deflates, physically hurts. A hand goes to my chest. It grabs my blood-mottled shirt. I gasp, almost forgetting it’s my hand and not the hand of a ghost.

  Froggy’s hole-riddled face and dying grin hover in front of me. Him saying he would haunt me, him saying he’ll get me.

  And my last thought before I stomp on the gas pedal is Please, God, don’t take Darlene from me. Please let my family be alive. Let them hold on.

  Please.

  Dead Coast

  Jack Zombie #4

  To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  One

  Fire rages.

  Doc Klein no longer sleeps in the seat next to me. He’s up now, clutching that damn bag to his chest, his eyes practically bulging from behind his thin, blood spattered glasses.

  I step on the gas pedal harder. I feel the floor beneath it, the thrumming vibrations of the Hummer’s engine going into overdrive. The road ahead of us is now lit up with golden sunshine. The grass has that fresh Spring-green color. Trees going by in a blur have sprouted new leaves, and with them, a new lease on life.

  But not for me.

  “Watch out!” Doc Klein yells. His finger points at what’s beyond the dusty windshield. My heart no longer hammers in my chest. It’s frozen. That weird feeling of zero gravity hits me, like I’ve reached the apex and soon I’ll fall.

  I see Klein point at the curve in the road and the metal barrier blocking the asphalt from the forest.

  I saw it a long time ago. If we go around the curve, it’ll add an extra ten minutes to our trip. I don’t have ten minutes to spare. Hell, I don’t even have ten seconds. My family is in danger, in the middle of a war zone. I have to get to them, now.

  “You’re going to kill us!” he shouts.

  “Not likely,” I answer.

  I look to my left and see the black smoke rising, the inky black smoke, and I know then that time is an illusion.

  Klein screams now, turns in his seat so it looks like he’s spooning with the messenger bag. My hands grip the steering wheel so hard, I’m making new impressions on it.

  At the last possible second, I ease up on the gas.

  It makes no difference.

  The metal barrier is a blur as it goes up and over the windshield. I’m dimly aware that I’m screaming now, too. Glass tinkles. Metal crunches.

  The Hummer moves through the trees at around thirty mph. I’m careful to avoid the really large and thick ones. A metal barrier is nothing compared to Mother Nature — she’d surely sign my death certificate and not bat an eye while doing it.

  “Holy shit, you’re a mad man! They said I was crazy but you are truly — ” Klein babbles.

  “Can it,” I say. I don’t need to listen to any bull crap. I need to focus.

  The landscape slowly descends. Soon, we’ll be in the part of the forest where Croghan and some of the other Wranglers and I were attacked by zombies. The same part where Abby was bitten.

  Abby, I think, a queasy feeling invading my stomach.

  “What’s happening?” Klein demands. “Talk to me! Talk to me!”

  “Shit’s happening,” I say.

  “If you saved me just to kill me…I don’t get it!” A cluster of trees rise from the hill, blocking my view of the village in front of us. There’s no way I can go through them.

  “Damn it,” I say, stopping the car and throwing it into reverse. I turn to look over my shoulder and Klein grabs me.

  “Talk to me!” he says. “Please!”

  “No time.”

  “A man who rushes only rushes to his death,” Klein says.

  Screw that.

  The Hummer’s tires kick up rocks and sticks and dirt.

  Klein grips harder. “Talk to me!”

  “My family is down in that village,” I say, cutting the wheel. “And I’m stuck in the fucking woods with Bambi and a cry
ing doctor.”

  “Jack,” Klein says, and the way he says it causes me to hit the brakes…well, that and the fact I’m driving a Hummer and not a wood-chipper. “If the village is under attack — ”

  No, Klein, don’t you dare say it. I have the urge to punch something. I feel trapped inside of a small box — claustrophobic, belittled. “If you tell me it’s too late, Klein, I swear to God I’m going to break your nose.”

  Klein shakes his head. He shows no fear and rightfully so. Who would be afraid of me? It’s the reason I’m in this mess in the first place. Trying to scare Froggy into being a better person. Laughable. Hilarious.

  Now look at me.

  “I wasn’t going to say that,” Klein says. I believe him. “I was going to say if you are outnumbered, it’s probably not your best bet to announce your arrival such as this way. Are you going to drive this behemoth into the flames, get out of the car with your pistol, and hope for the best?”

  I’m at a loss for words. He’s right. I look down at my hands on the steering wheel. They’re no longer clenched, now they’re loose and shaking.

  “Will you help?” I ask.

  Klein looks at me with intense eyes. For a moment, I think I do see fear, but then it’s gone. “You saved me, didn’t you, Jack?”

  I nod. “I had to.”

  “You didn’t have to do anything,” he says. “None of us do. That’s the beautiful thing about life. Everything is a choice.”

  I look away at the endless trees separating me from the village, but through the dense woods, I see the flames, moving bodies, and the smoke.

  “I’ll help you, Jack,” he says. “Then I’m on my way.”

  I nod. “Thank you.”

  He gets out of the car, slinging the messenger bag over his shoulder. I get out after him. I still have the pistol in my holster, the one that only has a bullet left and is covered in dried zombie brains. It’s not much, practically nothing at all, but it’s all I have.