“You’ll have to kill us all if you’re gonna get to him, Pat,” Abby says.
I smile.
I don’t want to jump the gun, but it’s safe to call these people my friends, I think. Even if it’s the shortest friendship of all time. Zombie apocalypses have a way of doing that.
Pat lowers the gun, shakes his head. “You’re all crazy. You know that?” He sticks it in the back of his waistband. “Fine, do what you have to do, but leave me out of it. When I’m right, when this little bastard is the cause of your demise because you’re stuck dragging him around like a two-legged dog, I’ll be there to say I told you so. Now get that damn barricade built.”
He leaves the weight room. As I watch him go, I see Miss Fox looking on with a pained expression. Her whole world is crumbling.
“There’s a first aid kit in the cardio section,” Abby says after a moment of silence. “Nothing much. Band Aids, gauze, disinfectant. We can wrap up the wound, try to splint it. I don’t know.”
“Let’s get it,” I say. I look to Kevin and Isaiah. “You guys keep an eye on him?”
They both nod.
“Fuck that man’s barricade,” Isaiah says loud enough for Pat to hear.
Pat watches from near the drinking fountains at the top of the steps. The shadows from the moderately-high pile of gym equipment we’ve put together shroud his face, but they don’t hide the venom in his eyes.
21
“Shit,” Abby says.
She throws a bunch of balled up papers and other useless junk from an open drawer at a desk near the back of the cardio area.
It’s so desolate up here. From where I stand, I can barely see the group. Kevin looks huge even from here. He kneels near Ryan. Isaiah paces back and forth with his arms crossed. Miss Fox has her head in her hands. I reckon she’s crying but I can’t hear her sobs over the pounding from the first floor, from the snarls and clawing dead hands against the metal doors.
“Where is it? Where is it?” Abby is saying. She looks up at me with wet eyes. “He’s a dick, yeah, but we can’t just quit. We can’t just let him die. Like, not even try.”
“I know,” I say.
She slams the top drawer closed, then rips open the one underneath it. A handful of stopwatches bounce off the rubber floor. A box of blue Bic pens falls next.
“He needs medical attention,” I say. “Band-Aids and Neosporin aren’t going to save him.”
It’s sad, but it’s true.
Besides, there’s a bigger problem here.
“How? By killing all those things outside, driving right up to the hospital? Killing all those people I know, the ones who went to my school, the teachers, mailmen…my friends?”
“No,” I say. “We need to get rid of Pat.”
She stops, looks up at me with a frown on her face. “Like…kill him?”
I don’t answer immediately. I let the silence hang there for a moment. See, I don’t know if that’s what I mean when I say we need to get rid of Pat. He’s unstable, that much is true, not to mention that he’s a complete and total asshole. Now that Abby’s put words in my mouth, I think to myself that maybe it isn’t actually a bad idea. We could make it look like an accident, a suicide or something. Even jump him and throw him to the flesh eaters. You know, just in case the world is righted sooner than we think.
I realize I am angry, I am just out for blood so I don’t tell her any of this. Instead, I say, “Look what he did to Earl. That wasn’t human. That was something only a monster can do. Now he’s holding us hostage.”
She stands up straighter, still a head shorter than me, but looks me dead in the eyes. “He stepped up, that’s all he did. Pat isn’t a bad man. I’ve known him for almost three years. He’s here five days a week. It’s the predicament we’re in. It’s changing us. Besides, if we…do that to Pat, it makes us as bad as he is.
“Ryan can be saved. He’s not dead yet — yes!”
She smiles as she pulls out a blood-red first aid kit. It looks like it’s older than the both of us combined, but when she opens it up, the contents are new. Probably some yearly mandated law to keep it updated or something. There’s a handful of bandages in all different sizes, some aspirin, cloth tape, wet wipes, cortisone ointment, peroxide, gauze pads, tweezers, a thermometer, purple latex gloves, and a little booklet straight from the seventies. There’s also a flashlight and spare batteries. Where the heck was this thing when Freddy Huber decked me in the face?
“Come on,” Abby says.
A sliver of hope fills my chest. The first aid kid is more stocked than I’d imagined. If we could keep him alive for the night, I’m sure the help will come in the morning. But the problem is, what if someone else gets hurt or sick? It doesn’t matter, I guess, because I don’t plan on staying the night here. I plan on sleeping with Darlene, like I always do — after I save her.
Still, I keep my mouth shut as we approach the group again. Not much has changed except for Ryan is awake now. He looks delirious, near death.
Kevin stares at the floor, sitting cross-legged.
“We got the kit,” Abby says. “Miss Fox, come over and help us.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Pat says, walking over to us from his sentry post near the drinking fountains.
Ryan groans. He shakes his head back and forth. Sweat drips from his face. “No, no…” he says.
Miss Fox drops down to one knee and starts rummaging through the kit. She pulls the tiny bottle of peroxide out from beneath the bandages.
“Stop it,” Pat says to her.
“We ain’t killing him,” Isaiah says.
“It’s pointless!” Pat screeches. “Look at that leg.”
My hands clamp Ryan around the shoulders, pressing him up against the wall.
Pat stands over us, gun raised.
Downstairs, the sounds of the dead are amplified. A metal bar falls over, bounces.
“They’re in!” Isaiah says.
I get up to see for myself. Through the grates in the guardrail, I see the shadowy figures of people laboring stumbling over the debris barricade. Another of Kevin’s makeshift barriers falls over, a group of snarling freaks with it. The weight was too much, and instead of trying to find a way out of here, we are now just sitting ducks. Thanks a lot, Pat. Your good measure has killed us all.
A man in a suit — or what was once a man — leads the way. One of his eyes is completely gouged out, a river of blood trickles from his ducts. A large chunk of ear is missing on his left side. His necktie is as ruined as his sunken-in face.
More follow his lead.
They can’t use the steps, no way. I think this because they couldn’t figure out how to open the front doors. They had just knocked against the glass until they accidentally triggered the handicap automatic door opener.
I look over to Ryan. He’s started screaming. His mouth is nothing but a black cave with white stalactites for teeth. Miss Fox pours the peroxide on the wound.
Pat has the gun out in front of him. His arm shakes — no, his whole body shakes. I think he might pull the trigger, I really do.
But Kevin shoots up from my side. He whizzes past me. Pat catches the big guy lumbering over out of the corner of his eye and lowers the weapon. All he can do is stare with wide eyes.
“I need to clean the wound, Ryan, honey,” Miss Fox is saying in a soothing voice. “It’ll be better once I clean it.”
Kevin drops down, puts two big mitts against Ryan to stop his bucking.
“Towel,” he says to Abby. “Give me a towel.” He then leans his forearm across Ryan’s chest like a safety bar on some demented rollercoaster. The towel turns into a ball in Kevin’s hand, then when Ryan opens his mouth to scream again, he shoves it in.
The screams are still loud but muted. I risk another glance over the guardrail. The creeps file in like ants heading to a picnic.
“Come on,” Isaiah says. He has a dumbbell in hand — twenty pounds — and he cocks it back behind his head and throws the
thing like it only weighs five pounds.
The guy with the missing ear takes it full in the face. When it hits him, it doesn’t explode his skull into a million gushy pieces. It just stuns him, and he stops for a second. He even looks down at the shiny metal of the dumbbell.
“Need more weight than that,” I say.
Isaiah rolls his arm in a circle. “You try heaving that shit,” he says. “I’d like to keep my rotator cuffs intact.”
“Well, I’d like to keep my guts,” I say.
I pick up a five-pound plate, throw it like a Frisbee, aiming at the guy with the bitten ear. I miss terribly, and the plate goes flying into one of the doors that still has most of its glass.
The glass explodes in a burst of glittering shards. Hands and legs and dead faces pop through.
“Nice one, Jupiter,” Isaiah says. He has another dumbbell, and he waits until the things are almost at the first step where Earl’s body lays.
“Wait,” I say to Isaiah. “Don’t. You have to look away. Look away.”
“Huh?”
And just like I expected, the things don’t keep coming once they stumble upon Earl’s body. I think I even see one of them smile, but I know it’s just my imagination.
“Aw, hell no,” Isaiah says.
He throws the dumbbell anyway. He’s bent down picking another one up before the first one hits. “Stay away from him, you assholes,” he screams.
I grab his arm. “Stop, we might need those if they break through the barricade.”
“We have a gun!” Isaiah says. “Shoot them, Pat. Shoot them!”
“Shut the hell up,” Pat says.
I look at him and he doesn’t even notice what’s going on. He’s too invested in whatever Miss Fox is doing to Ryan’s leg wound.
Down at the bottom of the steps, Earl is nothing but a squished head and an open, torn-up body. The zombies are all on their knees, clawing at the flesh, lapping at the sea of blood. Their hands are rakes. They’re up to their elbows in organs and guts. A low rattling comes from the back of their throats as they open their mouths to dig in to what was once the old man.
Isaiah stands there with his mouth hung open, waiting for Pat to do something. When he doesn’t, Isaiah turns back to the pile of dumbbells and chucks them down the steps. He’s like a rapid-fire, machine gun. Blurs of gray. Shiny plates fill and leave his hands. Screw the rotator cuffs.
Most of the dead don’t notice when the dumbbells hit them, or when the plates bounce off of their skulls. They’re too invested in the dinner they’re smearing all over the steps.
The last thing Isaiah throws is a pink weight that weighs about three pounds. It barely makes it to the horde, bounces off a step then lands in the middle of Earl’s open stomach.
Three heads pop up to follow the trajectory of the weight. A woman with a face of mostly red snarls at me looking at them over the fence. Her teeth are mostly gone. I can’t imagine she’d have much success in the feast going on down there, and maybe she’s smart enough to realize that, too. Because she stands up all slow and deliberate, fresh blood running off of her chin, and looks me right in the eyes.
Each step is laborious and pained, but she moves up the stairs without much difficulty. Her snarling grows louder, then she’s pushing up against the treadmills and ellipticals, making them creak.
I look to Pat, feeling a mixture of hate and anxiety. It would really be nice to have that gun in my hand right about now, but we’re trapped up here and all I have are a couple dumbbells too heavy for me to lift, a dude about to die, and stir-crazy partners.
Ryan’s towel falls out of his mouth, and the screams cut through the air.
“Shut him up!” Pat says.
Kevin tries to hold him as Abby fumbles with the towel. There’s a disgusting look on her face as she picks it up. It’s covered in blood and spit. Miss Fox wraps the leg tight, red already seeping through the gauze.
“Yo, Pat, a little help here,” I say.
He turns, mouth half-open and ready to make a snarky comment, but looks past me at the shambling woman. When I turn, I see more than the woman. Now a couple more have joined her. The people snacking on Earl don’t even look up. Innards stretch then snap between their teeth. Guts hang from the corner of their mouths.
The three coming up the step have found the fresh meat. Hands beat the plastic casing of the treadmill. They’re stronger than I originally thought because I’m leaning up against the other side of the treadmill and each time they hit it, I’m pushed a fraction of an inch forward.
Ryan’s screams are to the point of glass-shattering. Miss Fox fidgets. “Almost done,” she says. “Hold on, honey.”
“Kevin, help me!” I yell. “I can’t hold it by myself.”
Isaiah helps, too, but only by throwing things at the shambling corpses. The short distance must be easier on his arms because I hear bones shatter, then a body roll down the steps.
Kevin comes over, presses his big shoulder into the treadmills.
“We could really use that gun,” I say to Pat.
But he doesn’t answer. He just stares wide-eyed at the kid on the ground. The one who doesn’t look like much of a kid — or a human, for that matter — anymore. He looks like he is dying, and so will we if we don’t do anything.
Screw this, I think. I don’t owe these people anything. I will not be killed by their own stupidity. I will not go down with this sinking ship. If help was going to come, it would’ve already come by now. I have Darlene to worry about, not Pat Huber and Ryan the douchebag janitor.
“Abby! Take me to the roof,” I yell.
She arches an eyebrow, but otherwise ignores me. Her hands are on Ryan’s arm which is slick with pus and blood.
“Abby, come on! We aren’t going to defend this place, we have to go.”
“I’m with Jupiter,” Isaiah hollers. He grunts as he throws a twenty-five pound plate like a frisbee. I don’t see where it lands, but I hear the snarls rip through the air at the bottom of the stairs as if he disturbed their dining experience. He turns to Kevin: “Let’s go, big guy. We need to get out of here. Can’t hold that all night,” he says.
Veins bulge from Kevin’s biceps. I rush over to help while the rest of them get ready to go.
From around the corner, a man with a dislocated jaw shambles up the railing. He reaches a hand out toward me. His jaw opens to expose bloody teeth. Then he falls. Right over the railing, about thirty feet and lands on his stomach with a splat near the running track. Something shoots off his face, dancing across the rubber floor.
I watch this all with laser focus. I don’t know why, but it entrances me. When whatever it is stops spinning, I see it. It’s his jaw, completely unhinged, disconnected from his face. He turns over to look up at me hanging over the railing.
Bloody hands reach toward the ceiling. A sound like a broken sprinkler escapes the gaping, black hole.
I thought I was a horror writer, I thought I was the architect of nightmares.
I was wrong. This is truly a nightmare — one I had no hand in creating or controlling.
22
“What about Ryan?” Abby asks.
They’re all standing now. Kevin still has his back pressed up against the stairway barricade. Every five seconds or so, his soles squeak from the dead pushing, trying to get in.
“Leave him,” Pat says. The way he speaks chills me.
“No, don’t leave him,” I say. “Kevin, can you carry him?”
Kevin nods.
I may have told Abby that whatever happens to Ryan is out of our hands now, that the real problem was Pat, but I’ve never been so wrong. After seeing the zombie without the jaw, seeing the things eating Toby’s corpse, eating Earl’s, I know I’ve never been more wrong. We can’t let that happen to Ryan. He’s a dick, but not even someone like him deserves a fate as terrible as that.
“T-Tell my mom I’m gonna stay the night at Robbie’s. Tell her I’m gonna miss dinner,” Ryan murmurs. His head rolls f
rom shoulder to shoulder. He’s sweating more now. Delirium is settling in.
“We will, Ry, we will,” Abby says, trying to comfort him.
“I’ll try to run. I won’t hold you guys back. Please, just help me. I don’t want to die like Earl. Please,” Ryan says.
“I got you, kid,” Kevin says. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Wait, everyone grab a weapon,” I say.
I walk over to the small cache of dumbbells and barbells. I grab a ten pounder that has a hexagonal shape on each end. Sharp and hard. The others follow my lead. Everyone except Kevin and Pat. Miss Fox holds a dainty, pink two pounder. Isaiah has a twenty. Abby picks up a weighted bar, you know, one of the shorter ones with the rubber padding and colors on each end. It can’t be more than eight pounds.
“Lead the way,” I say to her.
Abby takes a deep, shaky breath. Blinks fast.
“On the count of three,” I say to Kevin because as soon as he moves, that barricade is going to topple over and the dead are going to spill over it all, hell-bent on feasting on us.
He flexes his whole body as he gives one last shove backward. “How ‘bout on the count of two! Can’t hold it much longer.”
“One…two…three…now!”
He dives out of the way of the falling exercise equipment. Then he scoops Ryan up like a baby. Abby points us toward the aerobic area. She runs faster than I’d expect her to run.
I don’t see the dead, but I hear them. Their hands scratching at the plastic, knocking the weight plates together. I risk a glance. There’s about five of them who made it over the barrier. The noise is drawing more, and they lumber up the stairs, still hungry. The zombies coming up the steps wear masks of blood over their mouths. It’s almost sickening, almost enough to make me keel over and vomit.
If this is how the world is now, will I ever get used to it? I don’t think so, but I think about Darlene and how the only way I’ll be able to survive is with her by my side. I couldn’t go on without her. She’s the reason I haven’t given up yet. She’s what gives me hope.
“Jack! Come on,” Isaiah says. One of his hands grips my bicep. I didn’t even realize it. I was transfixed, just standing there, staring at the carnage, at the freaks.
Jack Zombie (Book 1): Dead Haven Page 11
