“Now what?” I say.
“Look,” Abby says. She leans forward and points through the dusty windshield. In the shimmering heat beyond the fence, settled at the base of one of the mountains — which are a lot bigger the closer you get — is a small crop of buildings. I hadn’t seen it before. My heartbeat races. There’s still life inside of me.
It’s a town.
“That’s it,” Norm says.
“How do we get over?” Abby asks. “I really don’t think I can climb and walk in this heat. I bet that metal is a million degrees. It’ll cook our skin before — ”
I shift into reverse, hating myself, but I see no other way. Abby’s right. We’ll never make it on foot.
Norm chuckles, leans back and says, “Buckle up.”
“Oh, God,” Abby says. I have this menacing look on my face. You have to. Because I have to be crazy to want to do this, but what other options are there? I don’t want to die in the desert, man. I don’t want to die anywhere. If we don’t do anything, that’s a sure thing. If I do what I’m doing now, there’s a chance we make it.
That’s all you need sometimes, is a chance.
Herb gives me a look. I think he’s going to protest, but he doesn’t.
I back up about one hundred feet, look at Norm and Abby and smile at them. “I love you guys,” I say. “If this doesn’t work out — ”
“Shut up, Jack,” Abby says. “I got enough of that sentimental crap back at the village. I don’t need anymore.”
“I agree with the little lady,” Norm says. “This is going to work. We’re going to be just fine.”
Herb is smiling. “I love you, too, Jacky!”
I smile at him, but there’s no joy in it. I’m scared. I’ll admit. Scared to death. “Thanks, Herb,” I say and I mean it. I really mean it.
I shift into gear, grip the steering wheel tight, and slam on the gas pedal. A cloud of dust and dirt kicks up behind us, almost choking us out and blending us in with the landscape.
We all scream. We all hold our breath. We plunge toward the fence.
Forty-Seven
The sound the fence makes is not encouraging. I am no longer holding on to the wheel, but I’m pressing the gas. The fence buckles. It’s not like the movies. This isn’t a clean breakthrough. There’s problems.
I hear the wheels spinning, but we aren’t getting anywhere.
“Ease up,” Norm says.
The windshield cracks down the middle. Metal scratches at the hood. Herb has his head between his knees.
I stop pressing the gas pedal. We are tilted, two wheels on the driver’s side in the air, two wheels on the ground and fence crumpled beneath us.
“Well, I guess we walk,” Abby says.
Herb stares blankly at the broken fence. I get an idea, a bit of hope puffing up my chest. “Herb,” I say, “start dancing!”
He tilts his head at me. “Huh?”
“Dance, man!” I say.
Norm squints.
“I don’t have no music,” Herb says.
Realization starts to dawn on all of their faces almost instantaneously. I start humming a tune. Nothing in particular, but it has a rhythm.
Norm turns around. “Uh, Jack, we got trouble.”
I follow his gaze. A cloud of dust kicks up across the desert. A car. Two, maybe three of them are coming toward us. The black suited Central guys come to get revenge, come to stop us from ruining their plans.
“Herbie! C’mon!” I shout and start humming again.
Norm and Abby join me, echoing my tune almost perfectly, but they both eye me like I’m delusional. Maybe I am. We start rocking side to side, snapping our fingers. Herb dances, a big goofy smile on his face.
Bah-dum-dum-bah-bah-
He really gets into it.
“Herb, watch me!” I say. “Mimic what I’m doing.” I start rocking side to side. I bump the steering wheel and then the seat. Everyone else does what I do. Herb scrunches his face up in concentration. We keep humming.
I can hear the roar of the coming engines. In the vast desert wasteland, the sound carries. But they are close and despite my humming, my throat seems to be getting tighter and tighter. Herb squints at me, then mimics my movements. The Jeep rocks back and forth. I hit the gas. Weightlessness. Solid ground. Tires eating dirt, crunching metal.
“Yeah!” Abby says. “Way to go, Herb!”
The Jeep takes off, goes right over the crumpled fence as if it were made of cardboard instead of metal. We have since stopped humming.
“Good job!” Norm says, clapping Herb on the back.
“Why’d you guys stop the music?” Herb asks. He’s completely oblivious to what just happened, how he completely saved our asses. Where would I be without him, where would I be without my family?
So we start humming again, and I think it makes the pain and scariness of this situation ease a little. Then, as the cloud of dust and the speeding cars behind us grow farther away, I feel better. On the horizon is the town and beyond that is the shimmering blue lake and the mountains around it. I press the gas harder, not bothering to look back. Darlene, I’m coming for you.
Forty-Eight
“I don’t like this place,” Herb says as we are riding slowly through the dead streets of this ghost town. I don’t like it, either, and one glance and Abby and Norm in the backseat tells me they’re bugged out, too.
Faded wooden buildings stand vigil on both sides of us. I wish I could drive faster, but the narrowness of the streets and the unfamiliar territory prevents me from doing that.
“What the hell is this place?” Norm asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer.
“Hurry up,” Herb says. I can hear his teeth chattering. Before we entered the town’s limits, the sun was burning bright in the sky. Now, not so much. Now it seems everything is shrouded in shadow.
“Turn down that road,” Norm says, pointing between what looks like a stable and what might be a blacksmith’s place. I only think this because of the anvil sitting under an awning. There’s a bird’s nest in between the boards, but it doesn’t look like there’s been birds there for centuries.
I stop the Jeep. We are at a crossroads. This isn’t an Army tank. I can’t go ahead and plow through buildings like they were iron fences. Besides, I don’t know how well the Jeep is hanging on, or how much damage going through the fence actually did. I could swear now that we’re stopped that I hear a faint ticking sound from the engine, but I could just be paranoid.
“What are you waiting for?” Norm says. He’s leaned forward between Herb and I, his breath hot on my face. “Go that way.”
I point at the dashboard. The gas needle is getting dangerously close to E. Then what? We walk and wait for those goons from Central to mow us down? I don’t think so.
“Well sitting here ain’t doing us no good, either,” Norm says.
We are quiet for a moment. I can’t even hear our breathing. “Can’t see the lake from here,” I say.
Norm says, “Just go right.”
I look to where he’s pointing at the desolate street and I get that bad feeling again, but when I look left, the feeling doesn’t disappear. So I turn the wheel right. Abby gives me a reassuring look.
The Jeep creeps down the road as we go by store fronts with their windows knocked out or so dusty they are the same color as the wood or the sandy roads. I’m in a Western movie. Pretty soon a tumbleweed is going to blow out in front of us and then I’ll really lose my head.
“Can we dance again?” Herb says. His voice sounds hopeful. I look at him and see how ashy his skin looks and how far his eyes are bugged out.
“No, we have to be quiet,” Abby says. “In case there’s bad guys around.”
Herb nods. “Like Doc Klein, right, Abby?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Dread fills my stomach. Yeah, Doc Klein is a bad guy. No way around that. The bastard has done the unthinkable. He’s taken Darlene from me, he’s harmed my family — there’s n
o coming back from that. But I don’t say this. I can’t break Herb’s heart. He likes Doc Klein. He doesn’t get it, he never will.
When no one answers Herb’s question, he says, “Yeah, I gets it. I do. You guys don’t like Klein because he did something bad. But he’s my friend and I love him. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be eated. That has to count for somethin, don’t it, Jacky?”
I turn my head to face him and nod. It does count for something. Herb has become family. Without Klein, there is no Herb and there’s probably no Abby, either.
The Jeep eases onto another road and we’re facing the mountains again. They obscure the view of the lake with its deep blue water, but I know it’s there. I can smell it. In this ghost town, where it’s as dry and mummified as an Egyptian corpse, I think you could smell water a mile away.
“Herb,” I say, feeling like I have to assure him, like I have to make him feel better, “it’s going to be all right.”
“The hell it is,” Norm says. The sounds of skin slapping against skin comes as soon as the last syllable escapes his lips.
“Can it,” Abby says.
“Ow,” Norm whines.
I do my best to ignore their little exchange and focus back on the road while trying to sort my thoughts, but my thoughts aren’t on the end of the world; they’re on Darlene and they’re on revenge.
It goes right over Herb’s head and he says, “Really, Jacky, you aren’t going to hurt Klein, are you?”
The steering wheel gets slimy beneath my palms. Darlene’s eyes float up in my mind’s eye again — pained, haunted, scared. I can’t lie to Herb. I just can’t do it. I owe him that, right? I owe him the truth. He is my family after all and to lie to him would mean breaking the sacred trust that comes with love. Because I’m going to kill Klein, plain and simple.
“Herb, I — ” but a noise cuts me off. I slam on the brakes. The wheels grind to a halt.
Gurgling. Moaning. Rattling.
“No…” Abby says.
I look up the road and I hope it’s just a desert mirage, but I know it’s not.
It’s zombies. And a hell of a lot of them.
Forty-Nine
“Go! Go!” Abby yells. I almost want to turn around and say What the hell do you think I’m doing?
Had to pick the right. We couldn’t have gone left.
Norm loads his pistol. Abby checks how many rounds she has left. I see this because I don’t trust the shattered rearview to guide me through the dusty, abandoned streets of the old mining town. I turn to look over my shoulder. It’s a habit from the former world and old habits die hard, I guess.
On my right, Herb no longer looks African American…he’s almost as white as a ghost. He screeches.
It’s zombies. I’m telling myself I can get away from them easily enough. Just go back the way we came.
As I hit the gas pedal to reverse on out of here and back to safety, the ticking in the engine goes full-blown hammer on anvil. Then the Jeep coughs a black cloud of exhaust, the steering wheel locks up, and the vehicle lurches and stops. It’s like a brick to the face. So there’s no engine humming. It’s just our breathing and much too close down the road, the rocking, jagged-boned corpses with their blazing eyes.
Norm wastes no time in freaking out. In turn, it freaks me out and probably freaks out everyone else. I can’t really explain it. He comes between the two front seats and squeezes me up against the door as he takes my spot. He jimmies the key and stomps on the locked gas pedal.
Nothing. And each second we waste, the zombies get closer.
Until you are in the desert, sitting in a broken car with abandoned, dusty wooden buildings looking down on you while a legion of zombies get closer and closer to devouring your flesh, then you’d know what I’m feeling. It’s what I’d equate to drowning. Being stuck between a rock and a hard place. And when you see your big brother, who is normally cool and calm, freaking out and jerking the key in the ignition almost hopelessly, you know things are fucked.
“Norm,” I say. It’s time for me to step up. It’s time for me to lead us back to safety, dead Jeep or not. “Stop. We have to fight.”
The lake isn’t too far. We can run there. We can get the high ground. We can save Darlene. We can stop Central.
Norm looks at me, his eyes wide and a touch of wetness to them.
“It’s okay,” I say, reaching down to my pistol, drawing it and pulling the slide back. “We can do this.”
Realization washes over his features. The haunting of Eden still gets him from time to time. It takes a moment for him to come back to his old self, but he does. He narrows his eyes and looks through the fractured windshield. Then he melts again and he’s back to jimmying the key in the ignition, stomping on the gas.
I don’t have time for this. I get out, sucking in the hot, dusty air. The zombie’s stench hits me like a ton of bricks. I raise my gun and fire into the crowd. Abby crawls out next, begins pulling the trigger, dropping zombie after zombie. She’s still got it. One look at her face, the sheer will of determination written on it, and you could see she has a personal vendetta against these pus-bags. She shoots until her gun jams and all that you hear besides the rolling shots over the distant mountains is click-click-click. She pulls a clip free from her pocket while holding her gun against her chest with her left hand stump. Locks and loads. Quick, too. I’m honestly impressed. I shoot until I hear the same clicking. The zombies fall one after the other, but the density of the packed meat doesn’t seem to thin.
I’m reloading, breathing hard, biting my tongue with intensity.
“On your left!” Abby shouts out and before I can turn to see the steady stream of zombies, she lifts her gun and aims right at my head. As I turn, I’m frozen by the sights of these monsters. These aren’t the fat, wet, and runny zombies from D.C., zombies plump on the millions of citizens.
No. They’re like mummies. With each step they take, dust cascades off of them. I think it’s probably their bone dust. Their jaws are frozen in a perpetual snarl. Teeth yellowed by rot and the beaming sunshine but still as sharp as ever. Three of them come for me and Abby pulls the trigger. The lead zombie’s head explodes like a piñata, except instead of candy, it’s powdered brains that come out.
I drop the remaining two, but by this time, as I’m turning back to the group coming down the road, I see they’ve advanced much too quickly. Or time has moved way differently out here in the Mojave than it did on the East Coast.
Gritting my teeth, I unload the rest of the clip into the moving mass of bodies. Zombies drop until my gun clicks again. I reach into my pocket for more ammunition and my heart plummets. My pockets are empty. I’m out of bullets and there’s about thirty more of the fuckers coming toward us.
“Norm!” I shout.
He dutifully ignores me, focused on the Jeep’s steering column. His head is ducked under it and he’s messing with wires. Herb is in the front with his eyes jammed closed and his voice high as he hums the beat to some tune I’ve never heard in my life. It’s out of place in this graveyard.
“Norm! Give me your gun!” I shout again over the roar of Abby’s shots and the death rattles, moans, and groans from the crowd of zombies.
Abby answers for him, tossing me her gun.
The closest zombie is about ten feet from me. I blow half of his leathery face away, revealing a powdery pale pink like an un-chewed piece of gum beneath the rotten flesh. The smell is almost choking me out now. I wish I could smell the water of the lake or the even the old wood of the buildings. Anything but the sickening sweet yet somehow scorching-hot smell of death. I aim at the crowd again. Their arms outstretched toward us, lips peeled back in a snarl. They don’t bleed or drip. There’s no gunk. Nothing runny. They’re dry and somehow I think that’s worse. It makes it seem less real, like I’m stuck in a movie or one of my own books. I shoot until my hand vibrates and my lungs burn from screaming, until I feel the condensed heat in the palm of my hands.
But it seems the
y never stop coming. Now I can’t see the road beyond the mass of bodies. The sun seems to get dimmer than before. I look from Abby to the gun. She shakes her head. There is no more ammo. We might as well be on a lifeboat surrounded by sharks.
“Norm!” I shout because I know he still has shots left. But I look at the crowd of zombies again, how they’re getting closer and closer and my lungs seem to shrink with each step they take toward us and I realize twelve or fifteen bullets won’t make a difference at this point. It’ll scratch the surface, but in the end, we’ll be outnumbered. We always are.
Now, we have to retreat. I head toward the Jeep to get him and Herb out, but Norm is still messing with the ignition. He’s dripping with sweat. Veins bulge from his forehead and his arms.
“C’mon…you…fuckin…bitch!” he says.
“Norm! We have to run. Let’s go!” I say.
Of course, he doesn’t listen to me. When has he ever?
Just as I reach in to grab him from the open driver’s side, a sound comes from down the street…from where we were going to run. It’s the sound of tires eating dirt, squealing. A glint of sunlight off a tinted windshield. A cloud of dust.
Fuck.
Central has caught up to us, but should I be surprised? It was only a matter of time. And should I be surprised that things are only getting worse? No. It seems to always be the case, I think.
Then, I hear another sound. One that catches me completely off guard. The engine purrs to life. The body of the Jeep vibrates beneath my touch. Norm laughs like a maniac.
“Oh, baby, I love you so much,” he says while he pets the steering wheel. But by this time, the first zombie has made it to the other side of the ride — Herb’s side. The glowing yellow orbs focus on him. He sees this and scrambles to the back, sticking out like a sofa.
I reach in and grab him, give a yank on his sweat-soaked shirt. The stench of body odor hits me and it’s so much better than rotten corpses. Herb goes easily enough. He’s like a rag doll and his body slides across the leather until I pull him out of the Jeep completely.
The Dead Collection Box Set #1: Jack Zombie Books 1-4 Page 72
