The Dead Collection Box Set #2: Jack Zombie Books 5-8

by Flint Maxwell

  The fence creaks with the sound of rusty hinges opening. They come up a gravel driveway that cuts through the entire property.

  It is now that Lilly screams out and falls. I don’t know what happens. Now I see her; now I don’t. Bilbo rises on hind legs, neighing. Then he takes off, moving faster than I’ve seen him move.

  “Lilly!” I shout. My guts have turned to jelly. I’m thinking the worst as I run toward the spot where Lilly has fallen, where her screams are coming from. Darlene comes to the front of my mind. How many times had I ran after her because of the screams on our way to Haven? Too many times. This is why I wanted to take this journey alone.

  The grass rustles and the sound of hands beating the ground fills my ears. Lilly wrestles with a zombie. It is only the torso of a man. The guts and meaty tubes hang out a little farther than the knob of his spinal cord. He has no hair and a drooping tribal tattoo that was once on his upper back obscured with dirt and dry blood.

  I plunge into the tangle of limbs and try to pull the zombie off of her, but it’s strong. The chance of a hot meal always makes them work harder.

  My hand closes around cold, dirty skin. I pull with all my might, but my fingers slip off of whatever part of this dead man I’ve grabbed, and I fall backward on my ass with a bone-jolting thump.

  “Fuck,” I mumble.

  The zombie growls and roars and gnashes rotten teeth. Lilly no longer screams out of fear. As I scramble to my feet, I see her on her knees, fending off the rabid monster with her forearm and raising her right arm high above her head. In it, she holds a rock no bigger than a fist. She thrusts it downward.

  I put my own arms up to shield my face from the spray of blood. The zombie’s head caves in with a sickening crunch. All it took was one hit, but Lilly continues to hit it, and hit it, and hit it. Until all that’s left of this zombie looks like a large, chewed piece of watermelon gum attached to a bloody neck.

  “I can handle myself,” Lilly says.

  “I wasn’t much help anyway,” I say. Walking over to her, I offer her my hand. She looks at it like it’s some alien object. Then I look at her own hand, seeing how it’s covered in blood and brains and tiny dots of white skull, then pull my hand back.

  “Gotta get your hands dirty sometimes,” Lilly says.

  I grimace. “Doesn’t mean I like to.” I still help her up, but avoid her hands and offer her the crook of my arm.

  “Where’s Bilbo?” she asks when she’s standing.

  “Ran,” I say. I scan the horizon. I’m tall yet it’s still hard for me to see over the rises in the land. I catch a hint of his dark mane near the silo. “Looks like he’s found the food. I hope it’s all right for him.”

  “It’s fine. A little expired feed never hurt anyone,” Lilly says. She swipes drops of blood off of her face. The way she says it, I’m not sure she really means it. I’ve personally found some expired food and not felt my best after I ate it. I’m a sucker for Reese’s Cups…even ones fifteen years past their expiration date that are essentially nothing but chocolatey dust. Still, I suppose expired feed is better than nothing for Bilbo.

  Probably.

  We go to the silo and set it up so he can just eat out of the bag. He seems to grimace at the taste of it at first but warms up enough to empty the first bag in what is quite possibly record time. Lilly opens the second bag and says, “Might as well eat up. We still got a ways to go.”

  She’s changed since her encounter with the zombie near the gate. She seems…guarded, overtly cautious. I can’t blame her, but I wonder if it’s because she’s been sheltered in Freeland for however long without the dangers of zombies lurking around every corner.

  But the thought of her striking the zombie again and again makes me shiver beneath my cloak in the hot sun.

  Bilbo continues eating. He doesn’t polish off the last bag, though, and judging by the expression on his face, he doesn’t particularly like the taste of expired feed. I doubt there’s much in the way of nutrients, but it has to be better than eating grass, right? I don’t know, I’m not a horse.

  We sit in silence, the shadow of the silo stretching over us. It’s a hot fall day, hotter than it has any right to be. It’s in this silence that my stomach begins to growl; so far, I’ve learned to ignore this as well as the pangs of hunger constant in the apocalypse, but then I realize it’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I’ve had anything to eat. I think the last bit of sustenance I’ve had besides a few nips from my water skin is the whiskey I drank at the bar before everything turned to hell with Brandon and his District goons.

  My stomach rumbles again. Absentmindedly, my hand clenches it beneath my cloak. Lilly is looking at me out of the corner of her eyes. She is in the light now, the sun basking her, streaking her short, dark hair with oranges and yellows.

  My stomach ripples once more, and this time, I can hardly take the pain. I stand up and walk over to the saddle, where my cloak rests. Bilbo is not tethered to anything. I figured he deserved a break as much as we did. He seems to enjoy the sun warming his skin beneath all that shiny hair, but he’s as tired as the rest of us and doesn’t venture far. He’s always only a few feet away, staying away from the taller grass because he can smell the blood of the zombie Lilly crushed. After that incident, I did my best to scan the field for more. I didn’t find anything besides the zombie’s lower half that was still somehow twitching like a dog in the midst of a nightmare. It was by a well all but hidden in the grass. The stench coming up from the deep darkness was abysmal, so I covered it. No need for one of us to accidentally fall in and break our leg. Actually, I think the smell would kill you before you realized you’ve even broken your leg.

  From my cloak, I take out a wrapped package of cheese. It’s homemade stuff I bought at a different outpost about two weeks before I came upon Freeland. It tastes like a boot and smells even worse, but my hunger wins out.

  I turn around to offer a piece to Lilly, knowing she’ll probably refuse because she’s used to better eating in Freeland, but as my eyes search for hers, I see that she’s sleeping. Out cold.

  I sit down against the cool stone of the silo and rest my head. The idea of sleep is nice, but I know I can’t doze off right now. I’ll stay up for another hour, maybe two, then I’ll wake Lilly. We have to keep watch over one another. If we don’t, the next time we wake up a couple zombies might be chewing on our insides. Or we might not wake up at all, at least not as humans.

  I eat as much of the cheese as I can stomach before its sour taste is too much to bear. Besides, I need to save it for later. Who knows how long it’ll be before we discover food?

  Who knows—

  An idea comes to mind, one that is slow to hit me because of the exhaustion I’m suffering from.

  I go over to Lilly and rouse her awake. She moans, “What?”

  “I’m going up to the house, take a look around. Can you go in the silo until I come back?” I ask. I won’t be able to watch her while I’m inside even though I don’t think I’ll be inside for long.

  “Yeah,” she says sleepily. Then she opens her eyes fully and it seems like she’s been wide awake this whole time. In her normal, not sleep-heavy voice, she says, “You better not leave me, Jack. If you do, I’ll find you.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you until I get some sleep.” Plus, I need to know where that car is and Lilly is the one leading me.

  She smiles and closes her eyes again as I help her up and guide her to the silo. Inside, it’s cool and dark, the perfect place to sleep on this warm day. Bilbo comes inside, too, sniffs around curiously at the feed bags, one empty and the other half-full. Now that he’s here, I decide to shut him in with Lilly, too. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. He doesn’t care much. He’s not like a dog that’ll whine and bark and draw attention to us. I’m grateful for that. Not to mention that Lilly won’t be in there alone.

  As I make my way up to the farmhouse, I feel pretty awake. It’s the thrill of the mission that reenergizes m
e. I’ve always hated scouting abandoned buildings because you never know exactly what you’ll find; you just know it’s usually not going to be anything good.

  There are tire tracks in the gravel, thick ones left from a tractor, I think. I don’t know how long ago, but if they’re still there, I think it hasn’t been as long as I originally thought. My hand goes to the sword on my back. No. That won’t do. I pull my pistol out of its holster. Again, better safe than sorry.

  The front porch creaks beneath my weight. The wood is old and moldy. I smell mildew and rot. At the door, I tap the butt of my gun against the wood three times. A few chips of red paint, like dry blood, flake off and drift down to my boots.

  My heartbeat is surprisingly calm, but an iciness has begun to course through my body. It’s anticipation. It’s fear.

  I hit the door to alert any zombies inside. Wait a few moments. Nothing happens, nothing comes. Still not knowing if entering is safe or not, I push the door open anyway. It creaks loudly, the noise echoing in the vast emptiness.

  I take a step forward.

  The inside of the farmhouse is covered in blood. It hasn’t even gotten the chance to dry yet.

  The hall runner squishes beneath my feet. It is red, but I don’t think it was originally that color. Bloody handprints smear and streak the drywall. Some of the frames that once hung in the hall are on the floor, face down. Others are still hanging crookedly. Pictures of a happy family near a lighthouse, near a beach, graduation photos, piano recitals, high school basketball team photos. I don’t study these closely. There’s no need to because the people in these photos are gone, long gone. I remember back to a time when I entered an abandoned house with Darlene, Norm, and Abby. There were pictures just like these sitting on the living room mantle, pictures I picked up and looked at. The feeling that invaded me then was one of sadness, of dread. I don’t need more of that in my life.

  So I avoid the pictures and walk down the blood-soaked runner. At the end of the corridor, on my left, a staircase winds up to the second floor. An old suit of armor stands guard near the railing and the first step. It’s dusty, dented, as if it has seen many battles. I pause and run my hand over the helmet. Grittiness comes off, sticks to my finger tips. This could be useful, I’m thinking, then chuckle at the idea of me riding around on a horse in a suit of medieval armor. If that ever becomes a reality, the world is truly over.

  Around the staircase and through another door, I see a bathroom. A smear of blood greases the hardwood, hardly visible in the low light. Through this door, the hardwood ends only to be taken over by carpet. The carpet, originally white, is now pink. Streaks of blood here, streaks of blood there. The television is big, but it’s busted and glass is embedded into the floor. I step around it, scanning for more signs of blood. Of course, there is, and my pulse quickens. With anticipation? With fear? I have no clue. All I do know is that I’m drawn to the gore, to the macabre. The need to know what happened here on this farm weighs heavy on my mind. I know I won’t be able to search the house for supplies without knowing for sure that no monsters are lurking around the corner.

  But these days, it seems monsters are always lurking around the corner.

  Through this family room I go. I guess there’s not much of a family left here, but oh well. Two windows are on each side of the television. Covering the glass are bags of sand, like it’s a war zone.

  Now on the threshold of the kitchen and dining room, I catch a smell. My nose must be used to this particular stench because I don’t smell it until I’m near the dinner table.

  To my left, the smell is coming from a dark hallway. I’m nearer the front of the house now. There’s a bathroom in this corridor, but the door’s closed. I reach for the doorknob, feel something crusty caked to it. Pulling my hand away from the brass and leaning back into the light in the dining room, I see red flakes.

  Blood.

  Probably against my better judgment, I continue on. The bathroom door opens soundlessly. I hold my breath and raise my gun, ready to put a bullet into the brains of anything that moves.

  Nothing.

  It’s empty except for a sink and a toilet and a small hand towel hanging on a rack between the two. There aren’t even signs of blood inside. Whoever was trying to make it here must not have had the strength to turn the knob.

  I turn away from the bathroom and plunge down into the darkness. A door on my left. I open it and look inside. It’s the garage. There’s a car inside—a Ford truck, extremely old. The idea of trying it to see if it works crosses my mind, and I’m halfway down the two concrete steps that lead to the garage floor when I see that there’s a mess of pipes and wires and rusty metal hanging out from beneath it, as if some giant beast has gouged the underside with even bigger, killer claws. There’s some tools around the other side, socket wrenches, pliers, an entire tool box. Whoever was here before us was trying to fix it up. Without much luck, it seems.

  I turn around and go back into the house.

  Around this last corner, there is one room. Beneath the smell of death and rot, there is something I haven’t smelled in a long time. It’s Hawaiian Breeze, it’s Downy.

  This is a laundry room. If I could just hold onto the smell of freshly washed clothes for a little longer, I’d be the happiest man in the world, but I can’t.

  Death wins out, like it always does in the end.

  The door is cracked. The crack isn’t wide enough for me to stick more than the muzzle of my pistol inside. As I lean closer, the mixing scents of death and detergent blast me.

  It’s too dark inside to see what lurks inside. There’s no sound, though, and that’s good.

  Fear is trying to paralyze me. I don’t let it.

  I am the Jack Jupiter that has lost everything, who has nothing else to lose. Nothing to fear. Right?

  I take a deep breath, and instantly regret it as that terrible smell finds its way onto my taste buds and for the smallest of moments, I can actually taste the death.

  I push the door open. It creaks on old hinges just as the front door had earlier. As if this couldn’t get any more creepier. Gray light from this hallway I stand in floods into the laundry room, painting the blood on the walls with an eerie glow.

  And there’s a lot of blood on the walls.

  It sprays upward in a starburst of red. Drops have congealed on the ceiling, hanging there, waiting for the right amount of vibration or heat to make them fall. I have to put a hand over my mouth and stifle the gagging.

  Flies buzz around as the door moves. Maggots squirm over a sunken in face.

  I am looking at a corpse. Not a zombie. The corpse of a woman. Her hair was once gray, I think, but the old blood stuck to the stringy strands has turned it nearly black. I can see exposed brains from a hole in her head. It’s a bullet wound, and I would know this even if she wasn’t holding a shotgun in two pale-gray hands connected to arms so frail that you wouldn’t think an old woman like this would be able to lift the weapon high enough to hit herself in the head in the first place.

  But she did, and here I am dealing with the aftermath.

  Well, there it is, mystery uncovered. On her arm is a bite mark. I’m guessing from the half-zombie Lilly bashed to a second-death. Probably a son or a grandson who got bit and decided to take a bite out of granny. Granny couldn’t live with the fact of coming back as a monster so she put a bullet in her own brain.

  Case closed.

  I search the rest of the house. Don’t find much of anything useful. Some Spam, a few cans of vegetables, and some hydrogen peroxide. I take it all.

  Better than nothing.

  Eleven

  When I go outside, the first thing I hear is the splintering of wood. A spike of alarm jolts my tiredness away. On the far side of the field, a group of zombies have gathered, moaning, groaning, pushing up against the fence. The fence is cracking.

  I rush to Lilly and wake her up. She jumps to her feet, already knowing the drill. I’m thankful for that.

  “
I’ll grab the stuff,” she says and darts into the silo, disappearing amongst the shadows.

  I’m doing my best to try to calm the horse down, who has now noticed the zombies traversing through the tall grass. Once my hand brushes his mane, that seems to do some good and he stops bucking.

  “Lilly!” I shout. Time is short. The zombies are halfway across the field, like a sea of disease and chaos. Fear tightens my chest and I’m realizing Bilbo is calming me down as much as I’m calming him down.

  “Coming,” Lilly calls back. She bursts through the doors of the silo holding her bag and Bilbo’s gear. “I’ll saddle him up.”

  I point to the wave of zombies. “No time.” I say. “Just have to outrun them far enough to gain some ground.” This is no time to panic. I’ve taken part in this rodeo many times before. A horde of zombies is nothing new. It’s times like these that I’m grateful for them being the slower type, and not the freaking sprinting zombies that were popular in living dead flicks in the early 2000s. If that were the case, I don’t think there’d be a human left alive on this planet. We’d all either be in some zombie’s stomach or zombies ourselves.

  Lilly points to the back gate we’d entered in. I shake my head. The back gate is compromised. Right now, the zombies haven’t passed it, but by the time we get to it, we’ll be on a collision course with death.

  “Then what?” she asks, her voice urgent. I take my bag and sling it over my shoulder. Then I put Bilbo’s reins around him like a dog leash. He’s not particularly fond of this, but we don’t have the option to do it the right way.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  He whinnies and his eyes bolt to the side to get a better look at the zombies. Closer now. Always closer now. I can smell the pungent scent of their disease.