No answer.
She looks over her shoulder at me and shrugs. About a second later, she bends down and pulls a spare key free from beneath a welcome mat. The door creaks like the hinges are completely made of rust. A faint smell of burning trash hits my nose. I look around the car, make sure there’s nothing sneaking up on us.
So far, there isn’t.
A shout causes me to bring my head up around, and I see a light flip on in the opposite side of the trailer — this side of town doesn’t seem to have lost power yet. I see Abby’s silhouette holding a rifle. But on the other end, I see another figure. This one is slumping, shambling along like one of the dead.
Abby’s mother, I think, giving me a terrible sinking feeling I’ve been hit with all day. I jump out of the van, the gun with God knows how many shots left in my hand.
31
I kick open the door like a police officer in one of the cop shows Darlene is so fond of. The thin wood almost shatters beneath my running shoe. A burst of cigarette smoke and old, unwashed dishes pummel my nostrils.
I am directly in the middle of them. One is a figure wearing a pink nightgown, graying hair in yellow rollers on her head, a face old and ruined from smoking pack after pack, backlit by the bright glow of a muted television. The other is Abby who is holding her father’s hunting rifle.
Abby’s mother turns to look at me, her yellowish eyes lighting up, a perpetual snarl on her face. She reaches her hands out, willing me to fall into her grip. I raise the gun.
“No!” Abby shouts. “Don’t. Leave her alone!”
I can’t. She’s about five seconds away from grabbing a hold of me. I slip out of the doorway, not watching where I’m going and fall over a chair in the kitchen. My weight carries me onto the kitchen table, flipping it over, causing an ashtray filled with butts and ash to cascade over my head.
Not smooth. Not Johnny Deadslayer smooth at all.
The gun skitters across the moldy linoleum. I faintly see it wedge under the refrigerator.
“Do something,” I wheeze as the woman gets closer. Rattles escape her open mouth. Black sludge drips from the sides of her lips, sludge that’s probably been building up in her lungs for who knows how long.
A hand closes around my ankles. I scrabble on the floor, knocking forks and plates and ash everywhere. “Abby!” I scream.
Her mother drops in front of me like a sack of bricks, teeth exposed, ready to clamp around the flesh of my calves. With my free leg, I kick at her, but she’s not going anywhere.
She’s hungry — hungrier than all the others.
I claw at her face. My fingers jam against the rough, wrinkled skin. Yellow fluid pulses from her nose, dribbles down her upper lip, threatening to coat me. I draw back.
It’s lost.
Either die by disease or die by teeth.
There is no —
A gunshot cracks, all but blowing my eardrums to smithereens. Inside the small, tin box of the trailer, it’s like someone set off a nuclear bomb.
My eyes reflexively shut. I scream, but I don’t hear my own voice, only feel the sound grating the inside of my throat.
Then it’s all over. As fast as it started, it’s over. When I open my eyes, I regret that decision.
Abby’s mom is splayed out on the checkered kitchen tile, what is left of her head resting on her bare, varicose-vein ridden arm. There’s a growing pool of blood coming up to my body like a high tide.
I’m too stunned to move.
I hear Abby’s sniffling.
I turn to look at her, all my senses coming back to me in a roar. The gun smoke. The cigarette smoke. The death. Vibrant red. Dull yellows of the plastic kitchen chairs. My own heartbeat thrumming in my chest. The slightly jagged sound of Abby’s mom’s final death rattle.
Abby holds the gun at her shoulder. I see it waver and shake, catching the glint of the sterile white light overhead hit the barrel.
“Abby?” I say, trying to get up, trying desperately harder not to slip in her mom’s blood.
She doesn’t answer.
I’m up now, making sure I’m not in the gun’s line of sight. I reach a hand out. Heat blazes in the rifle’s long muzzle. I push the barrel down so it points at the kitchen floor. Outside of the window, a figure passes lazily by. Another follows. I hear their moans as clearly as I heard them back at the rec center.
“Abby…Abby, we have to go. We have to go now,” I say.
She seems to take no notice. I grab her by the arms, give her a slight shake. Her body is as stiff as one of the dead. Her eyes are wide open, staring endlessly at the thing that used to be her mother.
A hand slaps the metal outside.
We both jump as if it’s a wake-up call. She looks at me, directly into my eyes, “What did I do?” she says. “What did I just do? I…I…”
“You saved my life,” I answer for her. “You had to do it, but right now we have to go. Is there a back door out of here?”
Tears roll down her face as she nods. “Yeah, yeah. Through the bedroom. But watch your step, there’s a drop — I shot my mom, holy shit, I shot my mom.”
“What do you mean watch my step? You’re coming with me.”
The growling outside grows louder. The gunshot drew them, damn it. There are only a few slivers of light between their dark shadows crowding the window.
“I can’t,” she says.
More slaps, these against the window.
“Yes, you can. You have to. What other choice do you have? Stay here and die?”
“What other choice do I have out there?” she yells back at me. “I’ll die out there, so will you! And your fiancé, she’s probably already dead. Like my mom! Like my fucking mom!”
The glass blows inward in a spray of shards.
I grab her by the arm.
She shrugs me off. “I’ll come, but you have to give me a minute.” Her voice is oddly calm amidst all the chaos. Pale limbs push through the rest of the glass, feeling around the wall with gnarled, arthritic-looking hands. The pool of blood has steadily taken over the entire small kitchen floor.
A face shows itself through the thin veil of curtains hanging over the broken window. It’s the face of a middle-aged man. He wears a trucker’s cap on his head, a ratty, black goatee on his face stained with bits of gray and red. He’s got the wild, infected look in his eyes. More of these eyes glow behind him and to each of his sides.
“Just give me a minute,” Abby repeats.
But we both know we don’t have a minute.
She bends down anyway. A hand reaches out to touch her mother’s. “I’m so sorry,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “I’m so sorry for never being there. I — ”
The sound of busting hinges cuts her off. They haven’t learned how to work a doorknob, but they know anything will budge with enough force. Abby raises her voice as if to shout over it as if the louder she speaks the less likely any of this is happening.
“I wasn’t the best daughter. I never listened. I always complained. Broke the rules…”
“Abby!”
The door falls onto the small section of shag carpet with muffled grace, but the dead push in. I grab the gun from Abby, but I don’t fire it at the first one who’s broken through. Instead, I raise the rifle up like a club and swing down on the man with the trucker cap. There’s a loud crack as his skull caves in and brains ooze out. My back barks with pain. I gave the blow everything I had. There’s no way I can do that again for twenty more. Plus, I need to conserve ammo to get to Darlene.
“Abby! Now!” I grip her fringed, rec center employee shirt.
“I love you, mom,” she wheezes as I yank her up.
A claw-like hand swings at her, missing by inches. The person who it belongs to — a girl with her blonde hair greased in blood — falls down on Abby’s mother with a wet splat. But her eyes never see the dead woman she landed on. No. They just focus on us.
We turn through a small doorway. Beads hang down from the frame, creating a very distorted pictur
e of Jesus. I plunge in. There’s a small bed in one corner without a sheet, a nightstand next to it, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts sits atop a Bible. The door I see looks like a closet, but I feel the warmth from outside blowing through the cracks, and I open it. Abby is too lost to help me. She looks around the room with nostalgia-tinted lenses, realizing she is going to have to leave all of this behind.
The door opens up to a bald patch of dirt. There’s another trailer across from us that looks almost exactly the same as Abby’s except for the Christmas wreath on the door. Don’t they know Christmas isn’t for another five months? My guess is, yeah, they probably do, and if I went in there, a tree would be up in the corner of their tiny living room like it’s been since 1985. Shadows shuffle around inside. Maybe I’ll leave their year long Christmas alone.
I have Abby’s forearm in my left hand, the gun in the other. I’m dragging her around like a tired dog through the park. She’s sniffling, not all here, but her legs still move. That’s all I can ask for.
I press my shoulder to the side of the trailer. A puff of rust escapes the space between two metal sheets. Even in this heat, I can feel the coldness through my shirt. I peek around the corner. There are two ambling corpses not smart enough to follow the others inside. We shouldn’t have a problem getting past them.
I turn to Abby. “Hey,” I whisper. “I need you right now, okay? I need you to be brave and smart.”
She looks at me with foggy eyes, like she’s just woken up. She nods.
“Abby,” I say again, snapping my fingers. “I mean it. We are going to make a run for the van. But it’s not safe, so if you are too slow and you stumble and fall, I might not be able to come back and save you.”
I sigh.
“Abby, you did good, okay? You did what you should’ve done. That wasn’t your mother.”
As if me bringing up her dead mom is a kick to the head, Abby’s eyes lose their glazed look. “I’ll be okay, Jack. Let’s go,” she says.
I look at her and nod, knowing she will be. Abby is strong, stronger than me. I give her the gun.
We turn and run for the vehicle. I get my hand on the door handle right when I hear the crack of skulls. Two quick thumps, then two bodies hit the ground.
Abby is in before me. Blood speckles her forehead and her face is red. I see her hands shaking as she sets the rifle between the two front seats. She gives me a nod, then says, “I knew them, too. The Butterfields. They used to babysit me when I was younger.”
My lips part to say something comforting, but she doesn’t let me. Besides, what could I even say?
“I didn’t like them much. Always put me to bed before nine.”
I start the car, hit the gas, and get the hell out of Trailerparkville.
32
The gunshot that killed Abby’s mother did more than just attract a few of the dead. As I drive up the bumpy dirt road leading us onto the hill, I swerve back and forth like a drunk, trying to avoid the zombies. Their hands reach out to us, eyes lighting up as if the greatest meal they’ll ever have is locked behind the metal walls of the van.
The closer we get, the more there are.
I hit one, hearing its pained snarls and coins jingling in the cup holder to my right as the body rolls under the back left tire. Another one throws itself at the front of the van. I’m not driving fast, either. Fifteen mph. There’s no windshield to block us from the dead. So as I hit the bastard, I hope he doesn’t roll up over the hood and end up being another passenger.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he’s lost under the tires like his friend.
The hill isn’t as thick with the dead as the road which leads to the Dimlight Village. I turn right so I’m looking down the gradual decline and into the town square. If all things were normal, I’d be looking at a group of people laughing, dancing, having a good time.
But I’m not.
What I am looking at is a graveyard, a wasteland.
“Jack,” Abby says. Her voice is weak and shaky. “Jack, look at that.”
“Yeah,” I say. “So what?”
She inhales deeply. This girl is younger than me by almost a decade and somehow she makes me feel like I’m a kid again who’s getting yelled at for not doing their homework — Oh, Jupiter, what are we going to do with you? You won’t get anywhere in life if you never do your schoolwork, blah, blah, blah.
Still, she reminds me of a sister I never had. A sister — younger or older — would’ve always been there to be the levelheaded one. That much I always knew, especially when you grow up with Norman Jupiter as your older brother. Norman, who would have said, “Hey, Jack! Go stick your head in that bulldog’s mouth! What’s the worst that could happen?” with a huge smile on his face. Part of me hopes he is all right, while another part of me thinks it’s perfectly normal for the world to seemingly end while he’s back in town. What other way could it?
“We aren’t going to survive in that,” Abby says. “Saving Darlene is a suicide mission.”
She’s right, but I’m willing to commit suicide.
In the faint, red glow of the taillights, a few zombies shamble toward the car. I’m not worried. They move about as fast as turtles. One of them is even crawling, their legs now broken and worthless.
We have time.
Time to figure this out.
“Then we split up,” I say. “Go our separate ways.”
Abby’s features seem to melt off her face. She’s a blank slate. Her lips settle to a thin line. “No,” she says. “You didn’t leave me, I’m not going to leave you.”
Her answer makes me feel a little better. I know I can’t do this alone. I smile. “Then we fight our way to the motel.”
“I just wish I knew this wasn’t for nothing. I wish I knew she was — ”
She stops mid-sentence and turns her head to look out the broken windshield. Her mouth drops open.
“What?” I say. “What?” this time a little more frantic.
Her shaky hand raises to point ahead. I follow her index finger, and what I see fills my heart with hope.
Just as the first corpse reaches the tail end of the van, thumping it with rage, I throw the gearshift into drive and roll down the hill.
33
The sign which reads WOODHAVEN MOTEL glows bright white. It’s meant to catch the eye of weary truckers who drive down 76 with a deep longing for a bed and a hot shower. The next rest stop isn’t for another couple hours down the interstate. There used to be one a few miles from Woodhaven, but it has long since been turned into a junkie shoot up gallery. The truckers who routinely pass the town on their way to wherever it is they are going know their best bet for a decent meal and a good night’s sleep is the Woodhaven Motel…and, if I’m being totally honest here, their best bet for a midnight romp with Trixie or Delilah.
This sign meant to catch attention has been glowing steadily since Abby and I parked at the top of the hill, but now it flickers.
Not just shoddy electricity flickering. No. This is all out, Morse code flickering. Someone is there and someone saw our headlights in the darkness, and now they’re trying to catch our attention.
My foot is on the brakes as we coast down the hill. I hit a roadblock going about twenty mph and turn it into splinters of plastic. Orange and white dance off of the hood of the car. Abby muffles a scream, shielding her face. Me, I just take it. Johnny Deadslayer wouldn’t flinch.
The smooth pavement of the road is no longer beneath us. Now, the tires roll over the downed, mutilated bodies of the festival-goers. Each rotation is met with a noise of boots stomping in mud — squelch squelch squelch.
But I hardly hear it.
Blood sprays up in front and behind us.
Any other time, I’d be vomiting out of the driver’s side window, I’m sure. All I can think about is Darlene. Her eyes glowing in the dark like a cat’s. Her hair, so soft and always smelling of cherries, of life, not of the putrid stink of death all around us. She has to be alive
. Don’t tell me I’m getting showered in zombie blood for nothing. Life can’t be that unfair.
I am in a daydream, dimly aware of Abby’s shouts. To me, they sound like whispers.
“JACK!”
The scream shatters my longing for Darlene like a sledgehammer shatters glass. I turn to look at her and she’s pointing again, but this time not at the sign. She’s pointing at the parade float in front of us, two tires on the sidewalk, two tires on the road. I didn’t even see it. Had I been paying attention to the best of my ability, I don’t think I would’ve seen it anyway.
It’s one of those terrible paper-maché jobs the high school art club throws together after classes are out for the day. I know this because it’s a big, brown woodchuck with a football in its hand. Good ol’ Woodhaven Woodchucks. I remember seeing the art nerds back when I was in high school, but let’s be honest, I wasn’t cool enough to hang with them.
This float is sort of a tradition.
I cut the wheel at the last moment, feeling the tires slip out from my control. The road’s too slick with blood and guts. The van is too beaten up.
Abby’s screams pierce my eardrums, somehow louder than the sound of the squealing tires. The van careens off of the road, jumps the curb with a loud thud followed by a pop that can’t be anything but a blown tire. My hands are off the wheel now. I’m no longer in control.
The car rolls. We are thrown around like rag dolls, only restrained by the loose seat belts cutting across our chests and hips. I take to screaming, too, but I can’t hear it over the sounds of crunching metal and chaos. The airbag blows out of the steering wheel, punching me in the face harder than Freddy Huber has ever punched me. Blood spurts from my nose. It trickles down my lips and into my mouth, tasting faintly metallic.
Then, all is quiet except for a warbled drone from the dashboard.
The faint smell of fire reaches my nose. I feel like passing out, but the smell brings me back to attention.
I see an arm next to me. A stream of blood flows down it like rain down a window pane.
“Oh,” I say, “my head.” My voice sounds so weak that I think I’m dead. Maybe I’m a ghost, maybe this is the afterlife.
Jack Zombie (Book 1): Dead Haven Page 16
