Makes me think of the dead mother on the back patio. She’s probably happy she didn’t make it this long. Everything is a hand-me-down now. I get up from the chair because I know if I stay in it much longer, I’ll drift off to sleep.
Sleeping when you’re supposed to be on watch is never a good thing. It’s a thing that gets you into trouble. Though I know there’s a good chance we won’t get into trouble—even if I do doze off for a catnap—I’ve learned it’s not worth the risk. There’s hardly any room for mistakes nowadays. You mess up, you die. You mess up, you’re sporting a fresh bite wound that’ll kill you in short order, the disease spreading through your bloodstream, shutting down your central nervous system, seizing up your organs. Then, boom, you’re dead and getting up and walking around, even though you shouldn’t be. And you have a hankering for flesh. Mostly human flesh, but I’ve seen a zombie chow down on an animal from time to time. Nowadays, you don’t see too many animals where the bulk of the population used to be. Animals have this instinct about them, this second-nature, this way of sensing things.
I go in the dining room. It’s a nice setup: big table, solid wood, carvings of leaves up the legs. Definitely not something you’d see in a hand-me-down store. There’s a layer of dust on the tabletop about as thick as building insulation, except for a couple of parts around the edges where the dust has been wiped clean by momma zombie walking aimlessly around the house for over a decade.
Imagine that. Being trapped in your house, doomed to wander around the same six or so rooms for that long. If that’s not hell, I’m not sure I want to know what is.
There’s handprints, too; I look closer to see them.
I also notice that one of the chairs is tipped over. The wallpaper is peeling. Cobwebs hang from the corners of the ceiling, big ones. There are pictures on the walls, too.
I deliberately avoid looking at these.
At a distance, I can see they are family portraits; happy times, moments forever frozen by a flashbulb and some technology that will have died out in another fifty years. If I look at these pictures, I’ll end up getting sad, and getting angry, too. I don’t know who I’d be angry at, either. The government for fucking up this world, for trying to turn a disease into a weapon, or whatever the hell they were doing, when they should’ve made sure that it was completely eradicated? Or maybe the mom for turning? Or maybe for myself for still being here, still trapped in this hell? I don’t know.
So I walk through the dining room. I’m in a little den. It’s about the size of my apartment in Chicago—an expensive apartment, at that. But relative to the rest of the house, this room is pretty small. Computer in one corner. Big bookshelves filled with stuff I’d never read on two walls.
More pictures.
Since the room is smaller, I can’t hide from these. I see the mom and the dad and the two kids. They’re at some theme park. Disney-something, maybe, I don’t know. Having a good time. Smiling. The little boy is missing a front tooth; so was one of the skulls I’d seen upstairs.
And even after all these years of rotting, the mom looks vaguely familiar, too. Becoming a zombie hadn’t completely wiped her uniqueness away. She’s been stuck inside, that’s why. Didn’t have to brave the conditions or fight other zombies for meat.
My stomach does one of its famous lurches, feels like I’ll either throw up or starve.
I have to get out of this place.
So I do. Don’t look at the walls. Try thinking of anything else besides what this family once was. But my imagination hasn’t died; I can hear their ghostly voices. Laughing at Dad’s joke in the dining room. The clacking of the computer keyboard in the den. Mom talking about her trip up to the mall, and the great deal she got on her designer handbag.
I almost scream so I can drown these voices out. Because I know what’s happening. I know where my mind is going. And I can’t help it now. It’s too late.
I’m thinking of Darlene. I’m thinking of her voice. Her sweet laughter. I’m thinking of her and Junior at our dinner table, us holding hands and saying grace for the food we were able to grow, for the canned beans some poor Havenite had scavenged in San Francisco. I’m seeing Darlene’s smile. Her perfect white teeth. I’m seeing Junior’s smile, and I’m seeing Darlene’s smile in his smile, the way the corners of their mouths curl up in the same mischievous way. The way he was missing one of his front teeth just like the dead boy who used to live in this house.
Then the room darkens, and I feel like I’m spinning, like I’m trapped in some terrible time-loop, and I’m seeing the red smile across Darlene’s neck after the District bastards slit her throat right in front of me. I’m seeing the way her blood sprays, the way it coats the blade, the way the District men and women who’d attacked us are grinning. I’m seeing the one-eyed man sauntering over, putting his boot on my son’s back, and pulling the trigger of his gun. Hearing Darlene’s raspy, airy gasps drowned out by the roar of the gunshot. Seeing the one-eyed man flip Junior over with the same boot that had stamped his back. Junior’s lifeless eyes.
I’m back in the foyer now. Back in my seat. The gun shakes in my hand, and there’s tears streaming down my face, getting lost in my beard.
I should’ve never left the damn chair.
Eleven
My mind is going a million miles an hour. The house is quiet for the most part. Every so often, it’ll creak and groan; that’s the earth swallowing the structure up, millimeter by millimeter. In another fifty years, the place will probably be half-buried. That is if the walls stand that much longer.
I’m still thinking of Darlene and Junior. Still thinking of the one-eyed man, which turns my thoughts toward Norm. My brainwashed brother.
I’m going to save him. I know I am.
I just have to find him.
As I’m deep in thought, I hear something. My ears are attuned to the apocalypse. They’re sharp, pick up every little noise. Lilly snoring lightly in the room down the hall. Abby tossing and turning in the stripped bed upstairs. The direction the wind blows outside. I hear it all.
And now I hear footsteps. Soles scraping on concrete.
I stand up. Hold the gun tighter. The door in front of me has a small window at the top. I’m tall enough to get a clean look if I stand on my tiptoes, but I’m smart enough to not stand directly in front of the door—it’s a weak point. If someone is out there with a shotgun, they’d blow the door down, as well as put a hole in my stomach the size of my head.
So I stand to the side, where I’m still protected by the house’s siding, and stand tall to get a look out on the street.
Can’t see much. It’s dark as hell out there. Abby’s truck is in the driveway, probably twenty or so feet away from the front door, and I can’t even make out its shape.
So I stand flatfooted again and listen.
Hear nothing.
My heart isn’t beating out of my chest like it would’ve been fifteen years ago. I’m pretty cool, calm, and collected. It took a while for me to get like this, but here I am.
Still listening. Still hearing nothing.
I begin to think I might’ve hallucinated it. I wasn’t exactly in my right mind after my stroll through the house.
Then I hear it again.
“Jack?” someone says from behind me. Makes my skin want to jump from my bones. It’s Lilly. Her short hair is up in cowlicks, and her eyes are narrowed from sleep. “Everything okay?”
I put my finger over my lip.
Her eyes widen. She knows.
I point outside and then walk my index and middle finger across my other palm. She nods. We stand in silence for a long moment. No sounds outside but the whistle of the wind.
Abby comes down not long after Lilly has joined me. Abby, like me, has that sixth sense one only develops in the apocalypse.
She doesn’t speak. We talk with our eyes. She walks slowly into the living room, and peers out the window through ratty curtains.
We stand like this for the better part of fi
ve minutes, though the seconds tick on for an eternity.
Then: “Nothing,” Abby says in a normal voice. “You just need sleep, Jack. Your mind is playing tricks on you.”
“Maybe she’s right,” Lilly adds.
“Whoa! I never thought I’d see the day,” Abby replies with a smirk. Lilly just shakes her head.
“No, I swear I heard something. Footsteps. Sounded like a zombie shuffling around out there,” I say.
“Could’ve been,” Abby says, “but if they were out there, they’re gone now. Bastards aren’t careful; I think we would’ve heard them by now, if they were still out there.”
I’m skeptical. I’m exhausted. It feels like I’m going to pass out pretty soon, whether I want to or not.
“What if it’s not zombies?” Lilly says. She sounds scared, though she’s trying not to look it.
“Then we kill them,” Abby answers. “Pretty simple. But you saw the town… Ain’t no one here anymore.”
Lilly peers out a window over a rubber tray full of shoes—Nikes, slip-on flats, leather dress shoes—and looks out on the driveway.
“The truck,” she says. “We should move it.”
Abby rolls her eyes. “No.”
“What if someone notices it?” Lilly says.
“No one to notice it,” Abby says. She turns to me. “Jack, go on to bed. I’ll keep watch for a couple hours.”
I sigh and nod. Have to find myself a place to sleep, though. In reality, I can sleep just about anywhere because I have slept just about anywhere. Once you get used to constantly being cooped up in a vehicle, or sleeping on the hard forest floor, anything with a cushion is a luxurious, five-star hotel experience. Still, I have to avoid places with pictures, with mementos, or my mind will start going off on its depressing tangents, and sleep will never come to me.
“I’m serious about the truck. I think we should move it,” Lilly is saying.
“Well, if someone’s out there, it’ll just draw more attention…” I say.
Abby throws her the keys, and Lilly snags them out of the air. “Be my guest,” Abby says. “Park it next door or across the street, I don’t care.”
Lilly nods and opens the door slowly. It creaks like a haunted house’s hinges might creak.
I’m not sticking around.
I turn and step over the threshold of the living room. Maybe I’ll pull the cushions off the couch and go sleep in the laundry room. Probably nothing of note in there.
Then Lilly is gasping, and Abby is saying, “Shit,” and the street outside is lit up like the Fourth of July minus the various colors. It’s just bright, white light. Surgical. Sterile.
Abby drops to the floor. She has her sixth sense to thank for that. I would drop too, but Lilly is just standing in the open door frame, looking out into the light streaming in. Floodlights, I think. We have company. And not the undead kind.
I start running. Legs pumping to cross the distance. Because I know what happens next. I’ve seen it a million times, been a part of it a million more.
Whoever’s outside will be looking for first blood.
This is when the first shot goes off, the boom from some kind of rifle.
The shot is coming for Lilly—I know because she’s standing there, making herself an easy target.
And I’m moving on pure instinct, hoping it’s not too late.
Twelve
It’s not.
But it’s close.
I throw myself into Lilly, tackling her in the side. We fly across the doorway, land amongst all the shoes as the bullet thumps into a nearby wall. A Nike jabs me in the kidney, but it beats sporting a bullet wound there.
“Come out!” a voice says. A man’s voice. High-pitched, as if he’s more scared than we are, which I guess is the truth, because I don’t think we’re scared. At least I’m not.
I’m calculating our escape route. It’s the only thing I can do. No sense in getting hung up on near-death experiences. You have so many of them in the apocalypse that they’re almost as common as going hungry for a few days—or breathing, even.
Abby says, “Out the back.”
I nod. That’s where my mind was going. Through the backyard, we can loop around and see exactly what we’re dealing with. Fight back.
We’ll have to, if we want to get the truck back.
“Let’s go,” I say.
We army-crawl through the house. No more gunshots are coming our way for the moment, but you can never be too careful.
Once we turn the corner from the hallway into the kitchen, I get up on my haunches.
“Shit never ends, does it?” Abby says.
“No, it never does,” I answer.
Lilly is breathing pretty hard. Comes with the territory of almost getting cut down by a bullet, I guess. I slide the door open, check my right and left with my gun aimed. See nothing. Wave the rest of them forward.
As I do so, more floodlights blink on. They’re so bright that I feel my retinas burning away. Instantly, I bring my hand up to cover my face.
“You are surrounded, my friends.” That same voice again. “There is no escaping. Put your weapons down and your hands up. It will make things a lot easier.”
My eyes begin adjusting to the brightness. I see the lights are coming from the surrounding houses, like they’ve been there a long time. That’s not all I see, though. I see scores of silhouettes. People standing in front of the lights so they’re backlit. All of them are holding weapons. Big rifles. Big guns.
Abby and I glance at each other. She’s shaking her head.
She throws her gun, and it clatters on the patio concrete.
I do the same.
Lilly isn’t holding a weapon, so she just puts her arms up.
“Good choice,” the man says. He sounds like he’s everywhere, like his voice is coming from a speaker system.
We’re beaten. For now.
Thirteen
I hate not putting up a fight, but what choice do I have? We’re surrounded. There must be fifty people out there, with weapons. They’re standing rock-still, too, like trained soldiers. Killers. Whoever this guy is on the speaker, he must have them trained as well as circus animals.
“Step forward,” the man says. “And go around the house to the front.”
I’m thinking there’s our chance.
“If you so much as step the wrong way, I will have my men shoot you,” the man says. “So don’t think about trying anything funny.”
It’s so bright out here that it might as well be the middle of the day.
Reluctantly, we go around the side of the house, through the fence, around the garage, and these people keep their eyes and guns trained on us the whole way.
“In the street, please,” the man says.
We go in the street.
Then I hear it, the sound from earlier. The scraping of soles on the rough concrete. The man whose soles are scraping is the same man who’s been speaking over the speakers. I only know this because he is holding a microphone, his voice amplified high above us.
He is old, much older than me. Maybe in his sixties. Maybe younger. You never really know for sure these days.
He is rail-thin. The hair on his head is thick and gray. He has a perfectly trimmed beard, also gray. He wears suit pants and a belt with a gold buckle. His shirt is clean, brand-new, like he wore it off the rack and out of the store. Suit jacket with a checkered pattern. Though he’s skinny, his face isn’t gaunt, like is so common with other survivors. He may not be eating a lot, but he’s getting proper nutrition.
Makes me hate him all the more.
“Hello,” he says in the same voice as the one over the speakers, only this time it is a lot quieter. “My name is Bruce. You have stumbled into my town.”
“I didn’t see your name on the sign,” Abby practically growls.
“I didn’t think it proper to defile the sign, my lady.”
“I’m not your lady,” Abby says. “Not even close.”
&nbs
p; “My apologies,” the man says and gives us a bow.
“You’ll apologize for that, but you won’t apologize for nearly blowing my head off?” Lilly now says.
“Oh, my dear! I didn’t— That was an—” His face is getting red and his lips are slick with slobber. “That was one of my overzealous followers. I do apologize. Believe me.”
Lilly snarls, shakes her head like she can’t believe we’re in this shit again. But it seems like we’re always in this shit. That’s just how life is nowadays.
I look out to this man’s overzealous followers. They don’t look too overzealous to me. In fact, they’ve barely moved since we’ve come out here in the street. It’s like they’re not even breathing. Just standing there with their heavy assault weapons aimed at us, dying for a reason to move, to pull the trigger and blow our heads off.
I’m not nervous. Not scared. Been there, done that, right?
I turn to the old man. “Well, Bruce, what do you want from us? We don’t have much in supplies, though it looks like you’re not doing too bad in that department.”
Bruce smiles. He has rotten teeth in his mouth. They’re jagged and chipped, like he might’ve been a street fighter in his past life. It’s not a pleasant smile—doesn’t do too well in the way of trust. Neither does surrounding us with a bunch of men and women with rifles and forcing us out of the house we were squatting in.
I actually count myself lucky. Most people would kill us before questioning us.
“I just want to break bread with my guests,” Bruce answers, that sly smile still on his face. “Is that too much to ask?”
“Yes,” Abby says. “It is.”
“Why, dear—?”
“I’m not your dear.” Abby grimaces. Flexes her hand into a fist. She doesn’t have her hook on, but I can tell she wishes she did so she could slit Bruce’s throat right where he stands. Wouldn’t be a smart decision, but Abby isn’t one to think things through when she’s angry.
Back in the day, Norm and I had to hold her back many times. Since Norm isn’t around, it’s up to me to calm her down.
The Dead Collection Box Set #2: Jack Zombie Books 5-8 Page 44
