Dead Lost

by Flint Maxwell

  Dead Lost

  Jack Zombie #6

  Flint Maxwell

  Copyright © 2018 by Flint Maxwell

  Cover Design © 2018 by Carmen Rodriguez

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions email: fm@flintmaxwell.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work.

  This one is for all of the Flint-Stones out there

  Want to find out how the zombie apocalypse ends the world? Sign up for Flint Maxwell’s mailing list and receive your free copy of Test Subject 001!

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  Let’s not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear.

  Barack Obama

  1

  Wrong.

  Staring the dead man in his face, that is what I’m thinking.

  Wrong.

  He comes toward me on the dark road. I stand somewhere near the faded yellow line, barely visible this night.

  I hold a sword in my hand, a weapon I’ve picked up from one of those weird, novelty medieval shops. A long broadsword you might see in an epic fantasy movie. Well, when they were still making movies, that is. I don’t think one has been made for close to fifteen years. I don’t think one will ever be made again.

  The blade is easy enough to wield, especially for a schmuck like me who’s not very practiced in the art of swordplay.

  The zombie makes these noises, this low growling in his throat. I can’t tell if his teeth are rotten from chewing all that dead flesh or from chewing a bunch of tobacco.

  Doesn’t matter.

  He’s close enough for me to smell him.

  I take a big whiff—mostly involuntary.

  After all these years around zombies, I’m still not used to that awful smell of decay and bile and death. It's easier to stomach, I guess, but not one of my favorite scents, that's for sure. It's easily the worst part of being on the road. Aside from the loneliness.

  I swing down hard.

  Lucky for me, though, the sword is sharp and it cleaves through the zombie’s head like a hot knife through butter.

  Brains and a mist of blood spray toward me. I don’t even flinch. I’ve been covered in so much zombie gunk, it’s a permanent part of my wardrobe now.

  The dead guy’s mouth opens in a confused gape. Think about a fish out of water, rubbery lips moving for that sweet water-oxygen or whatever the fuck it is that fishes survive on.

  Somewhere beneath my thick and graying beard, a smile spreads on my face. It’s times like now that I wish I'd kept count of how many of these dead or undead bastards I’ve put back into the ground. With the fun—fun, now that I look back on it—I’ve had with Molotov cocktails and grenades, that number is sky-high, no doubt.

  The zombie falls forward, two cleaved sides of his head sliding down my blade. I’m going to have to clean it again. With his eyes so far apart, he kind of does remind me of a fish. He falls forward. Usually, as per our seemingly arbitrary pop culture rules, killing the brain kills the monster, but sometimes, a particular asshole-ish zombie will twitch or moan before it crosses over to the afterlife. I’ve grown to expect this.

  What I don’t expect is for this asshole to swipe at me with hands that are much too strong for a dead zombie. He latches on to my shirt collar and pulls it down beneath where my cloak is tied. Sure, that’s all good fun, and I wouldn’t mind much under normal circumstances, but he grabs my necklace along with my collar.

  Dead weight is heavy weight, and I can’t stop it from pulling the small silver chain from my neck. It makes this clink that carries in the silent surrounding forest. For a long moment, I think it’s the actual sound of my heart breaking.

  This chain and the pendant attached to it is special. More special than I thought anything in my life would be to me right now.

  The chain pops and I feel it slither off my neck. When it’s completely gone, it’s like I’m missing a talisman, my only form of protection in this fucked-up world.

  Of course the zombie’s head is leaking black, gooey brains and the necklace is lost in all this. I have one pair of gloves, leather, real durable, real nice. It’s not worth it to get them all ruined and gummy.

  I’ll have to dig through the gore with my bare-fucking-hands. Awesome.

  Looking at the zombie’s oozing head, I think of what Humpty Dumpty might have really looked like when he fell off of the wall and busted himself into a bunch of pieces. I think of a smashed, infected egg, black yolk, and a rotten embryo running out of it.

  I really don’t want to have to dig through this.

  But I know I will.

  For the little piece of my dead wife and son I have left, I will do anything.

  2

  After digging through the mess, not even gagging once—shit, I’ve seen it all…brains, guts, and even zombies hung up by their spinal cords—I walk onward.

  A lot has changed since the last time you’ve heard from me. Nearly fifteen years have passed.

  For those of you who don’t know me well, my legal name is Jack Jupiter. God, it’s weird to think of myself as Jack Jupiter again. It’s been over two years since someone has called me that.

  The world, as you might have guessed or known, has ended. A disease, a plague, an Armageddon, whatever the hell you want to call it, has swept across our globe. It started fifteen or sixteen years ago just outside of my hometown, Woodhaven, Ohio. A place that has long since burned down. A place I do not miss in the slightest.

  I’ve traveled the United States with my family (a blood relative and a few adopted members) in pursuit of a cure and survival. I’ve failed. Eventually, I found a safe place in San Francisco called Haven. I helped keep it safe. I settled down, got married, and started a family. I don’t know what I was thinking. In hindsight, it does not seem possible to have a family when the dead walk and hunt us like animals. But I figured I’d survived this long, how much harder could it be to keep my family alive? How much longer could I keep us together?

  Thirteen years, that's how long.

  That was when Haven was attacked, when a group of demented killers calling themselves the District stormed our gates.

  We’d been living in peace for so long we never expected that. We were blinded by our own hubris. My wife Darlene’s throat was slit right in front of my son and I. Then my son was shot in the back of the head. Herb Jr. was only thirteen when the one-eyed man pulled the trigger at point blank range. My own son’s blood dotted my face.

  The one-eyed man has left me alive. He wanted me to live with this, wanted me to suffer.

  Big mistake. He should’ve killed me.

  For six months after their deaths, I was in a haze. I drank until I blacked out every night, drank with the intent of killing myself because I was too cowardly to do it any other way—like bite down on a barrel and pull the trigger or dive headlong into a pit of the squirming, starving zombies.

  Then something clicked. I realized I didn’t have to sit around feeling sad for myself. Of course, I miss Darlene and Herb Jr. more than anything and there’s times—usually in the dead of night when all is quiet and my mind runs a million miles an hour—where I don’t think I can keep being strong, but I know I have to. I could go out there and find that one-eyed man. I could take down his brainwashed followers, the District. I could do it all because I’m Jack Jupiter.

  And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

&n
bsp; There is something else, too, something else keeping me going.

  I scoured the destroyed remains of Haven for nearly a week as I looked for my brother Norman, and my apocalypse-adopted sister Abby. I did not find their bodies. Part of me thought they might’ve been completely devoured by the zombies who’d been attracted to the flames and sounds of gunfire, and that still could be the case, but I don’t think so. Deep down in my heart, I know they are somewhere out there. They are survivors, and they weren’t there when the other leaders of Haven and I were put on trial in front of the rest of the survivors, when Darlene and my son were taken from me.

  Yes, I think they’re out there. Where, though? I have no idea. Currently, that is not my greatest concern. My greatest concern is revenge. It is all that fuels me, all that keeps me putting one foot in front of the other.

  The sun is coming up by the time I see the distant outpost. I take a map out of my important pocket, a map I took off of a man who tried to rob me on the road. One look at myself and I can understand why he had thought I was an easy target. One look at the caved-in face of this particular road bandit, and you’d understand why it is not wise to mess with me. Anyway, the map this man had was a crude rendering of the surrounding Midwestern states. I am somewhere outside of what used to be Chicago, about fifty or so miles. Chicago was where Darlene and I used to live. Then my mother died and I was brought back to Ohio for her funeral, and then, of course, everything spiraled out of control and fifteen years later, here I am.

  On this map, there are places crossed out in dark permanent marker. Take Springfield for example. Scribbled over it, scrawled by a hand that hadn’t spent much time writing or learning their alphabet, is EMPIRE PARK, and nearby are other smaller places with the same crooked letters written over their proper name.

  I am near Aurora. This place is called Freeland now. This is the distant outpost I see, I’m guessing. I think about avoiding it. It seems most of these outposts are crawling with men and women from the District. Some of them have recognized me, but they never lived to tell anyone about it.

  I am tired, and I do not wish to sleep on the hard ground this early morning. Because I have recently seen and killed a zombie, I am on edge. So I continue walking up this road. As I get closer to the outpost, I see the looming walls built of scrap metal and stacked junk cars. I see two snipers’ nest and wonder if the men and women in them have their sights currently trained on me.

  I weave in and out of blockades. From behind the walls, a column of smoke rises. The air is sweet with the smell of cook-fires, roasting meat. Hardly any smell of disease and death here. Freeland is looking more and more like a good place to hunker down for the day.

  I know the risks, but my exhaustion and fear are too much to bear.

  As I come upon the gates, a light shines on me. I wear the hood of my cloak up, and my right hand is inside my important pocket, fingering the locket, thinking of Darlene and Junior. My son’s name was Herbert Junior, as I’ve said earlier; he was named after one of the many people dear to my heart that I’d lost on my journey to San Francisco and Haven, but Herbert Junior wasn’t too fond of his name. This change came around the time he started school. He said he didn’t like the name, but we knew the truth. His classmates made fun of him. I get it, I really do. I know all about getting made fun of. The name Freddy Huber comes to mind. He was my mortal enemy in high school and, unsurprisingly, still was when I came back to bury my mother a decade later.

  “State your business,” a gruff voice says from behind the light. I pull my hand out of my pocket and hold both of them up to show I’m not dangerous. The truth is, if you’ve survived this long in zombie-land, then you’re definitely dangerous. You’d have to be a dummy to not know that.

  “Just looking for a place to stay for the day,” I say.

  The guard looks at me like I’m stupid. It makes me want to punch him in the face. If he wasn’t up in that tower, I probably would. Then again, that might be a bad idea. I really could use a bed right now. According to the road bandit’s map, the next town not ravaged by zombies is a few miles away. If I were in a car, I’d flip these guards in their watchtowers the finger and be on my way. Alas, I am not. I’m walking.

  The most recent car I had…well, that didn’t end in my favor. Let’s just say driving an old Ford Focus through a sea of zombies is not the brightest idea I’ve ever had. Get enough blood and guts gunked up in the grille and mechanical failures are bound to happen.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “Well, Jack, you have to pay the toll to get in,” the gruff voice says, and judging by the way he speaks, I think that’s total bullshit.

  “Thought this place was called Freeland,” I say and point to the sign. “Or can’t you read?”

  The light clicks off. My eyes take a moment to adjust, but when they do I see I’m not dealing with the kind of guy who can take jokes. I can also tell this guy isn’t with the District. You can see the crazy in District peoples’ eyes. Can practically smell it on them, too. Seeing how this guy isn’t one of my mortal enemies, it’s safe to say that I’d rather save my energy and not knock his teeth in.

  Besides, he currently has an assault rifle pointed down on me. I feel no fear. I’ve had many guns aimed in my face. Hell, I’ve even been shot once or twice. Got the scars to prove it.

  “What’s your price?” I ask, sighing.

  “What do you got?”

  I reach into my pocket and feel around. I pull out a handful of batteries. “Got double and triple A’s, got nine-volts, lithium ion, Energizer, Duracell, you name it.”

  “Give me four double A’s,” the guard says, “then I’ll let you in.”

  In my hand, I only have two double A’s, and that’s all I’ve got. I hold up a finger, saying I need more time.

  “No funny business,” the other guard says. “We’ll shoot you.” The quiver in his voice tells me he won’t. Can never be too sure. I’ve been surprised before.

  I dig in a different pocket. My hands are fast. I drop the batteries back in the good pocket and pull out four duds I kept for exactly this purpose. People love their fucking batteries in the apocalypse, and these are the batteries I used in an old Walkman. Played Hot Rocks by the Stones until the batteries practically coughed and Mick Jagger’s voice faded to a dull whine. So yeah, they’re duds, but this asshole all high and mighty on his watchtower with his assault rifle doesn’t know that.

  I hold them in my palm.

  “Throw them up,” he says, obviously meaning one at a time. I let all four go at once. He catches one, maybe two, and the rest make the sound of gunshots carrying across the empty road behind me as they bang off the wood planks of the sniper’s nest.

  “There’s your toll. Let me in,” I say.

  The gruff voiced guard is too busy trying to find the other two batteries so I glare at his pal across from him. The guard practically melts at my death stare. I don’t often look at my reflection these days, no reason to really, but the last time I did, which was a couple days ago, I almost spooked myself. I was kneeling down over a stream, about to fill up my canteen when I saw my face as clear as day in the slow running water. My eyes are sunken into my head and there’s blue-purple rings beneath them that make me look like quite the walking corpse myself. My beard is much too long and unruly. Same goes for my hair, which is long enough that it lays flat and out of my face, easy to slick back. There’s gray in both my hair and beard. Wrinkles around my eyes from squinting so much. If you shaved my beard, you might see wrinkles around my mouth, too. Those are from laughing. When Darlene and Junior were still around, when Haven was working like a well-oiled machine and Norm and Tim and Abby and Carmen and Eve were heading the council with me, it was almost like the world was normal. We laughed a lot in those days. I don’t laugh much now, not anymore. They’re all gone, and here I am, paying my way into an apocalyptic town with batteries. Amazing how life can change so drastically, so fast.

 
; So my features are enough to spook this guard into opening the gates. He takes a handle in his hand and starts cranking it fast. Tires spin up there, rubber grinding against rubber, metal screeches and the gate opens slowly, exposing the sleepy town within.

  No people are out on the streets. I don’t blame them, the sun is barely up. I see an old brick building that looks like it might’ve been a convenience store many moons ago, a post office, the faded USPS logo a blast from the past, a gas station, a bank that has been converted into an armory. I walk through the threshold of the opening.

  “First sign of funny business,” the gruff voiced guard says to me, “and I shoot your face off. We mean it.”

  Very hospitable, I think as I ignore him.

  I travel the dusty road, taking it all in. It’s not much; Haven looked a thousand times better than this place. But it’s something. It’s a slice of civilization, what I’ve been longing for ever since the downfall of the world came and went. They called it The End when it happened. Entire countries collapsed in the blink of an eye. The disease spread so fast—Like a raging wildfire, an old acquaintance of mine named Pat Huber once told me—that humanity truly had no hope. Fifteen years later, and I still don’t know why I was among one of the few humans who weren’t affected by the disease or why the zombies haven’t rotten into piles of dust. Whatever disease they cooked up in the Leering lab was really potent.

  We didn’t know much about it when it happened—and I’m not trying to be clandestine here. I’m not trying to say I was apart of some secret government organization that was studying the disease or anything like that, though I did have a pretty gnarly shootout with said government organization. They are called Central—were called Central. I didn't leave any alive.

  Anyway, I was a writer, not a soldier or a cop or some macho douchebag you usually see in zombie movies. I wrote horror novels, but my bread and butter were zombie books. I don’t write anymore. At least not physically. I do, however, make up stuff in my head all the time, to pass the time. Mostly a fictionalized version of what happened to Haven, an alternate ending, if you’re into DVD extras, an ending where the District never storm Haven’s gates and take everything from me, an ending where Darlene, Junior, and I live happily ever after, where Norm and Tim and Abby and her husband Mike and Darlene’s sister Carmen and her mom Eve do the same.