Dead Lost

by Flint Maxwell

  This catches my ear more than anything else. Expanding? Nazi Germany and Hitler’s plans for world domination come to mind, not for the first time.

  “Heard they got a couple of jet planes up in the air on a test run,” Chip says.

  Paul nods. Judging by his lax expression he’s heard this one. I haven’t. Fear stirs my insides, my stomach roiling greasily. Jet planes? Fighter jets? Jesus Christ, where does it end?

  “Oh well,” Chip says. “Nice to meet you, Bruce.” He waves a hand and steps back from the truck. “You go on in. Unload in the garage. The boss’ll be out in no time.”

  I raise a hand, subconsciously lowering my voice even though it doesn’t matter. Chip and his buddy, along with the rest of the District here, will be dead before the sun sets. “You, too,” I say.

  The other guard pulls the fence open and Paul eases his way up the sloping gravel drive. It’s about a quarter-mile long, probably a bitch to shovel in the winters.

  “Jets?” I ask.

  “I’m not answering nothing for you, you piece of shit,” Paul says, not bothering to look at me.

  I nod.

  As we go up this drive, we pass the tractor. The zombies are still there, tethered to the front grill and tied to one another, but the humans are gone. I don’t see any of them around at all. A barn stands near the left corner of the house. I’d bet anything that is where they keep their human prisoners, like livestock. To the left of the barn, parallel to the driveway are stables and the garage. There are two horses leaning out of those stables, big and well-fed. The roof is patched and the wood is old.

  Now that I have a front view of the farmhouse, I see just how nice it is, like one of those mansions so common in the South. It has a wraparound porch spotted with furniture. The paint job looks fresh and the outer walls are cleaned. The front yard is mowed in diagonal stripes all the way to the side of the half-plowed field we had seen from our forest vantage point. To our left and slightly behind us now is the windmill and a small pond with a rowboat in it. This brings back memories of the Mojave Desert and Central and Herb, but I push them out of my mind. Have to focus on the task at hand. There’s no room for screwing up.

  I wish I could ask Paul more questions, but he won’t answer, especially now that we’re inside the gates and he knows if I shot him, the entire brigade would be on me in a matter of seconds. I mentally list off the threats on the farm. So far I’ve seen the two guards at the gate with their weapons, a few men on the porch with rifles, and then the man who was once behind the tractor. Nowhere to be seen is the head honcho, the one Lilly calls Bandit.

  What is it with the world ending and everyone taking on these lame monikers? I should call myself Jack Deadslayer just to fit in.

  Paul turns off the driveway and onto a paved road branching around the various structures. He stops near the garage and the parked Lincoln and shuts the engine off.

  “I hope you have a good plan,” he says. His voice is chilling, quiet. “They are going to sniff it out as soon as they see you. You ain’t District. It’s written all over your face.”

  “Just like Chip back there sniffed me out?”

  “They put him on the wall for a reason,” Paul says. “Like the pawns in chess, man.”

  He has a good point. A sinking feeling in my stomach hits me. I try to ignore it.

  Three guards are walking toward us. The garage opens with a sound of clanking machinery. I haven’t heard a garage open in a long time, didn’t know I missed it until now.

  “Don’t say anything you’ll regret and you might live to see another day,” I say to Paul. “Now get out.”

  He does and then so do I, putting my gun back in its holster. It wouldn’t look too good if I got out holding my revolver with a white-knuckle grip, would it?

  “Pauly!” one of the guards says with a smile on his face. The other two are already looking me over, confusion wrinkling their brows. These are the type of scared men I have seen following the District over the past two years, and it’s that fear inside of them that makes them dangerous.

  “Who’s that?” one asks, pointing at me.

  “Duane’s replacement,” I say coolly, but my right hand is ready to strike for my gun, while my left hand is itching to reach backward and pull my sword free. I don’t have it. I left it in the back of the truck, it’s just that old habits die hard.

  As I’m rounding the hood, I notice out of the corner of my eye that Paul has stopped. He raises his hands, and this is where the sinking feeling present in my stomach bottoms out, and a spike of nausea hits me like a freight train. I almost double over with cramps, caused by fear, no doubt, but I can’t because before the words leave Paul’s lips, I have my hand on the butt of my revolver.

  “He kidnapped me and killed Duane! Kill him! Kill him!” Paul screams, then he drops out of sight to the ground below, using the U-Haul as cover.

  18

  The first shot belongs to me, and I aim to kill. That’s something Norm has tattooed on my brain. You don’t waste your ammo, don’t pull the trigger, unless you mean to blow someone’s—or something’s—head off.

  So that’s what I do. I don’t feel guilty about it, not anymore. There was a time when I felt guilty about killing, a time when I hated the fact that I had to do it in order to survive. For as long as I was in Haven, behind the safety of those walls, I didn’t kill another man. That was for nearly fourteen years. Then the one-eyed man came and did what he did and I was forced on to a collision course of rage and vengeance. I don’t have any reservations as I pull the trigger. Especially when it comes to District soldiers. I told Lilly we have to be better than them, but that was a lie, a front. I was just trying to calm her down.

  There’s no point in staying on your high horse when survival is all that matters.

  The first guard’s face peels away and he drops to the ground, his head a bloody mess. The other one is not so slow. The smile he wore when he greeted Paul is gone, replaced by a savage grin of murderous intrigue. His assault rifle barks and sprays bullets at me. I dive back, taking cover behind the truck. Metal whines and the U-Haul bounces with the shots. To my right, I hear voices, thunderous footsteps. More guards are streaming out of the house, one, two, three.

  One by one, I pick them off.

  C’mon, Lilly, this is the sign! I’m thinking as more shots blast the grille of the truck. I have two shots left in my revolver before I have to reload.

  Another guard bursts out of the front doors, nearly trips over the bodies of the already-fallen. I shoot him, one slug to the chest and he goes flying into the screen, taking it off one of its hinges so it now hangs crookedly.

  The shots to my left have stopped.

  For the moment, all is quiet except for the groaning of the zombies, now enamored by all the noise, and the ringing in my ears. Then a shot hits much too close to my feet. A spraying of gravel nearly sends shrapnel into my arm. I spin around, see the guards who opened the gate running up the driveway, Chip in the lead.

  One shot left.

  Pressing my body up against the truck, I suck in a deep breath and close one eye. It’s a long shot and pistols aren’t known for being the most accurate weapon at a distance, but I don’t have a choice.

  My last bullet takes Chip in the stomach. He drops, dead. His buddy isn’t too far behind him, though, and I need to reload.

  What do I do?

  “You’re cornered, man!” the guard from around the front of the truck says. I hear shouting near the other side of the house, coming from the back where the field extends.

  I back up.

  “C’mon out and face your judgment,” the guard says.

  No fucking way, I think. I throw the passenger’s side door open, dive in and grab the assault rifle I’ve stored in between the seats.

  Just as I’m about to pop back up and shoot through the bullet-starred windshield, the driver’s side window erupts in a deadly rain of glass. My automatic instinct is to cover my face and eyes, but I q
uickly realize having to pick shards of glass out of my flesh is a lot better than being dead. As I move my hands, I see the long barrel and the shit-eating grin of the guard.

  “Told ya, man,” this guard says. “Now I gotta give you your judgment. Better me do it than the Bandit. He’s a—”

  But the guard doesn’t get to finish. His throat bursts. An exploding fountain of red flies from a fresh hole below his right ear as thunder echoes behind me. I turn around, and through the passenger’s side window is Lilly on Bilbo’s back, the gun resting in the crook of her arm, the scope raised to her right eye.

  Oh, thank God.

  She waves a hand and then turns Bilbo around. They race along the fence, out of my view. I go out of the driver’s side door, glass biting into my palms and forearms.

  Another spray of shots behind me and I hope that it’s Lilly taking out the other gatekeeper. No time to look. I need to beeline to the barn and set those people free. Easier said than done, of course. I take off and before I’m even three steps away from the truck, I hear someone say, “Hey, asshole!”

  Shit, I forgot about Paul.

  19

  Paul is holding one of the assault rifles from the back of the truck. I hadn’t even heard it open. I guess I wouldn’t have with the shooting and all.

  He opens his mouth to spout off his bad guy nonsense. Before he gets a word out, I shoot him in the gut.

  He grunts, the words dead on his lips. The sandy color of his shirt, which is already stained with mud, now darkens with the color of his own blood.

  “When will you assholes ever learn? Don’t monologue. Don’t even try to monologue,” I say.

  Sure, anticlimactic, but that’s life. There’ll be enough climaxes in the future.

  He drops to his knees, still holding the wound, trying to keep his guts from falling out. It’s a sad sight, really. I don’t relish it or anything like that. Maybe Paul wasn’t such a bad guy, maybe he could’ve turned had he been given a second chance. I don’t know. But I do know he pulled a gun on me and I do know he was going to flay my horse and cook him for dinner.

  I look at him as the life slowly goes out of his eyes.

  Clopping of hooves. Lilly is coming up behind the truck on Bilbo. She sprays shots off toward the house. Over their echo she shouts, “Go, Jack! I’ll cover you!”

  I don’t linger.

  Running as fast as I can, I rush to the barn. There’s a lock on the doors. I don’t have time to think about anything besides breaking it.

  I shoot at the padlock and it falls to the dirt, sending a cloud up around my boots.

  The doors burst open, one of them hitting me harshly in the chest, almost as harshly as the smell hits my nose.

  Zombies.

  “Fuck,” I say.

  There’s half a horde inside of the barn. I was wrong. I looked in the wrong—

  “Help us!” a woman shouts. She’s in the back of the barn, her fingers gripping the bars of a cage. Inside are about a dozen people: men, women, children. They are dressed in dirty clothes, ragged, barely hanging on to their emaciated bodies. What kind of world are we living in where they cage humans and not zombies?

  I stumble back as a rotter lunges at me. Rather than waste any of my ammunition, I club it over the head with the butt of the gun. The blow makes a sound like two bowling balls colliding, but it’s not enough to kill it. It just falls backwards and bounces off the shambling bodies of the other zombies. There are about thirty of them. Not all of them have noticed I’ve involuntarily given them their freedom, and those who haven’t are too distracted by the fresh meat they can’t get to in the cage.

  I keep backing up as the zombies stream out of the barn. The only way I can reach the people is by going around the whole building. There has to be another entrance to the human’s side, a back door, otherwise there’s no way they can get those people in and out without moving all thirty or so of the zombies at once.

  Fear tastes terrible in my throat, almost as bad as the dead stink. Another lunges at me, two stick-like arms with loose flesh dangling from the bones swiping at my torso. I jump back. This zombie isn’t even close. As it stumbles forward, I swing downward as if my rifle was a sledgehammer, and this time I get enough power in the swing to bust the creature’s head wide open. Inky-black blood spills from the wound and the zombie twitches. The others don’t care. They’re unabashed by my feat of strength; all they care about is tearing me apart, chewing on my flesh. I break away from the pack as more gunfire erupts behind.

  Only a select few keep their glowing eyes on me and fewer follow. The sounds and wide open space in front of them is much too enticing.

  I round the back of the barn. There’s another door here. The paint on the handles is worn away, and a thick chain and padlock snakes its way around them. I aim and turn my head, pull the trigger. The sound is monumental, thump-thump-thump on my eardrums. Some blood may be trickling down the side of my face. Whatever, no time to worry about that.

  Once the gun smoke clears, the handles reveal themselves to be obliterated. I push the chain out and yank the doors open. The people inside have tears in their eyes; they’re scared. So am I. Damn it, I am.

  I’m with you, Darlene says.

  So am I, Dad.

  It’s Junior’s voice now. It hurts to hear it, but it’s so sweet.

  I’m so proud of you, he says. Don’t give up.

  Fighting back tears, I say, “Stand back,” and aim at the cell’s lock mechanism.

  A young man with dark hair and a swarthy complexion says, “Look out!” and before I can turn around and see what he’s pointing at, cold fingers wrap around my neck. The clicking of a dislocated jaw opens near my ear, muted by the never-ending reverberations of the gunshots that got me into the back of the barn.

  Guess one of the dead followed after all.

  It falls on me. I’m not sure if it was once a male or a female, but I feel long, greasy hair slapping down the front of my chest. Chances are it was a female. The gun drops from my hand, clatters off the dirt floor of the barn. The sound is muted, but I couldn’t hear it anyway with the groaning right next to my ear. The breath of this beast is putrid, and suddenly, I feel the rough texture of a saliva-less tongue touching the right side of my jaw. Fear freezes in my gut and I get the sensation you get when you’re coming up your basement steps in the dead of night, when you’re sure there’s something at the bottom, some beast, some monster—maybe a zombie?—waiting for you to stumble just once so it can pounce on you and drag you deep into the darkness where no one can hear you scream. I get this sensation and more.

  My knees buckle because the zombie has fallen on my back, putting all of its dead weight on my shoulders. You would think I could handle this, but nothing weighs more than dead weight. Nothing.

  I begin to fall.

  Inside of the cage, the people are clamoring, some of them are screaming, calling for help.

  I have to do something. I can’t let it all end here, now, on some farm run by the District with a guy named Bandit in charge. No, I’m better than that, better than this.

  Fight, Jack! Darlene says in my head. Fight, damn it!

  Reaching inside of me for that inner strength, I find it has retreated to the bottom of my soul, farther than it has been since Darlene and Junior were brutally murdered. My fingers brush this strength, the tingling of it running through the tips.

  If I could just—

  My hand reaches back. I imagine I am drawing my sword, only now I have to ignore the clamping jaws of some unholy creature in the process. My fingers find the zombie’s stringy hair. I pull with all my might. My intention is to flip it over my shoulder, but death and disease have not been kind to the zombie’s scalp and as I yank, I feel more than I hear its scalp give way. My clenched hand is in front of my face, and knotted between my fingers are clumps of hair, mottled with dirt, with blood, with disease.

  Cold lips brush against my neck. Then teeth.

  Would it really be
bad to die now? Would it really be bad to reunite with my family, with all those who I’ve lost?

  Fight, Jack!

  Fight, Daddy!

  Real voices or not, they’re right. I have to fight.

  I lean my head away, but that can only go so far. I have to do something else and I have to do it fast, before this monster rips a chunk out of my neck and ends me for good.

  20

  I do.

  With the beast still on my back, the proverbial monkey, I rush forward. Each step is a pain and I’m afraid I won’t build up enough momentum to shake it.

  But I do.

  Nearly falling on my last step, I ram myself into the cage. The solid steel beams rock me in the face, and to an outsider watching me do this, I probably look like the biggest idiot who has ever set foot on the planet.

  Doesn’t matter.

  The explosion of the zombie’s skull is both satisfying and revolting. What feels like a cold, diseased egg cracks on top of my scalp. Thick liquid and pus rolls down the sides of my face, and the dead weight crushing my shoulders somehow gets heavier.

  A couple of the people inside the cell squeal at what has just happened.

  I roll over and shake what’s left of the corpse off of my body. The adrenaline coursing through me is enough for my muscle memory to take over now. I spring up and shake the brains and gore off. Unsurprisingly, most of it is as black as tar and as disgusting as only the insides of an infected, reanimated corpse can be.

  I don’t even have the urge to vomit as I look over what’s left of the zombie. There’s a mission to complete. Each second I spend feeling bad for myself, or sick, is another second closer the bad guys get to becoming victorious.

  I pick up the gun, shake it a few times. Thick globs of brain fall from it. Then turning to quickly scan the door, making sure there’s no zombies coming in for another surprise attack, and seeing there isn’t, I aim down the lock mechanism and squeeze the trigger. The door practically pops open as sparks fly and thick, acrid smoke fills the air.