I don’t see Norm. I hear him scream out. Abby dives into the backseat just as shots punch the body of the Mercury. Now the zombies are more than interested. They’re coming over to us. The sounds and sights of bursting muzzles too much to withstand. Besides, I think they’ve picked the corpses out in the road clean already. The rest of the group has reached the intersection. Their groans are loud. Amplified. Louder than the gunshots ringing in my ears, louder than Cupcake’s barking.
Darlene does more than tremble. She shakes. I hold her close while the bullets rock the shocks of the Mercury. I see a hand. I look down. The hand is followed by an arm then Norm’s head.
“Shit,” he says. I see a little blood sprayed across his face.
The gunfire has stopped. I risk a glance over the hood and see the clergymen are posted up behind a corner of a used bookstore.
“You hit?” I ask.
“Nope,” Norm says. “This ain’t my blood.” Then he grins and there’s murder in that grin.
The zombies stream into the middle of the war zone. The men are reloaded and start pumping iron into the zombies. I don’t see them get shot as much as I hear them get shot, the splat of brains, and the thud of meat hitting the brick road.
“We have to go,” Norm says. He points to the alleyway. I know he hates the idea of running, but we have no other option. Ammo is sparse and the dead are coming.
“No shit,” Abby says from inside the car.
I nod.
“When the shots stop,” he says.
Abby opens the door of the back passenger’s side. A bullet rips through the cracked window and glass twinkles down, showering us.
A shot smacks the brick, sending rust-colored dust into the air. Cupcake dances backward and yelps, then takes off running.
It’s the last shot as the quiet weighs down on me.
“Go! Go!” Norm says.
I grab Darlene’s hand and have to loop my arm around Abby’s waist to get her up.
We run down the road, parallel with where we are supposed to be going. Then the gunshots start up again.
They grow more and more distant as we get farther away.
Cupcake is a black speck on the horizon, and he’s running fast. Norm is behind him, the rest of us behind Norm. And Cupcake may be a dog, but he’s our leader right now.
31
We stop in front of a record store whose plate glass show window is like the jagged maw of some great beast. The shelves are turned over. Bins of vinyl are overturned. Posters on the walls of Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix hang crookedly. Take me back to a simpler time where the rock and roll was in the air and you didn’t have to worry about clergymen with assault rifles or zombies come to get their scheduled dinner.
Cupcake stops in the middle of the sidewalk. Flyers, old and weathered looking, that say BIG JAZZ FEST AUGUST 2016 DON’T MISS IT! are beneath his paws. He wags his tail. Despite all of this, despite being shot at and almost dying, the damn dog wags his tail. We could learn a thing or two from him.
We go inside of the record store. The smell is a pleasant one. It brings me back to my freshman year of college, where I’d hang out in a small store much like this one that smelled of incense and candles, the faintest hint of marijuana behind all of this. Beads hang from the door frame to the back room. There’s a purple peace sign facing us. Glass on the floor crunches on our footsteps. Cupcake lets me pick him up and over the glass. I set him down near the checkout stand which is riddled with peace pipes and little pot leaf designed trinkets. Ah, California.
“Wait for them to pass,” I say.
“Who?” Norm asks. “The zombies or the crazy popes?”
“Both,” I say.
“Or we could fight them,” Darlene says. She sounds complacent, almost dreamy.
I look at her — we all do — with our heads tilted.
“Well we can’t just sit here all night,” Darlene says. “My mom is out there. You heard the guy. Haven is a real thing.”
“Maybe,” Norm says under his breath. I reach out and punch him on the arm. He sucks in breath through his teeth, the chipped one sounding like a whistle. “Wouldn’t take what they said at face value.”
“It is,” Darlene says. “I can feel it.”
“Feel it?” Abby asks, her eyebrow raised.
Cupcake breaks away from us and starts sniffing around the various flipped CD racks, scattered band t-shirts, and weird — but awesome — sculptures of dragons.
“Yeah, feel it,” Darlene says. She crosses her arms and leans back on the wall, which isn’t wallpapered or painted but carpeted instead. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
I reach out and grip her hand. I know. And I know because I feel it, too. That overarching entity that is spurring us forward, guiding us. I know Darlene’s mom is alive. I just do. But I don’t want to get my hopes up like I got my hopes up about Klein. Getting your hopes up makes losing so much worse.
Norm and Abby are looking at her like she’s crazy. I’m not. Maybe we are crazy, maybe it’s a soulmate thing. I don’t know.
She squeezes my hand back and looks at me with a smile.
The first groans from the surviving zombies come in through the open window like a hurricane gust of wind. When we hear it, we all freeze up, but only for a split second. This, of course, isn’t our first rodeo. We’re experienced. And though the zombies can be scary, they’re not as bad when we are together.
32
We wait for them to go past.
I creep up to the window, much to Cupcake’s displeasure (he’s growling at me softly), and peek around the corner. Tattered corpses walk like drunks, swaying from side to side. Gunky black blood dribbles in their wake, leaving a Hansel and Gretel bread trail behind.
“Think it’s clear,” I whisper, looking to the other side of the street. It’s empty save for the downed corpses and crookedly parked cars.
“Where are the popes?” Norm asks.
“Don’t see them,” I say.
“Let’s go,” Darlene says.
I hold my hand up as if to say Chill.
Her face is flustered, and there’s something in her eyes. I’m not sure what. It’s either fear or murder. Bloodlust. She’s too cute for this.
“We’ll go in a few more minutes,” I say.
“What if something else happens in those next few minutes?” Darlene asks. “Like what if those men come back with more men and guns?”
“Then we kill them,” I say.
Abby nods.
“I just want to save my mom,” Darlene says. “I just want to see Carmen again. I want to hug them.”
“We will,” I say. “I promise.”
Time passes as it always does. It’s very quiet outside. There’s no radio broadcasts, no zombies, and no popes.
I don’t like it.
33
We leave the record store and take to the street again. The quiet presses down on us like storm clouds above, ready to explode. I feel an electric buzz in the air. I taste the sour tang of blood and death.
I’m in the lead. Darlene is behind me. The sun already seems to be going down despite it being the middle of the day. Norm, Abby, and I all have our guns drawn. Cupcake bounds up next to me, ears flapping, tail wagging.
We don’t talk. No need to risk anything hearing us. And our footsteps are as quiet as they can be. We lift them off of the road completely, so as not to scrape the concrete with our soles.
I see no signs of zombies. No signs of humans, either. The city is a big place, and we’re just on the outskirts now. I can’t imagine the mayhem closer to downtown.
Darlene holds my hand while we walk. I don’t tell her I love her or anything like that. I don’t have to. Cupcake is next to us.
“See it?” I ask, pointing up ahead.
Darlene looks from the cracked sidewalk to where I point. She smiles. It’s an uneasy smile, one of nerves. But she nods her head.
“Quiet, dummy,” Norm says from behind me.
Cupcake whines, looking back at Norm.
“You, too,” Norm says.
Abby hits him, and he winces.
There’s a sign up ahead, floating in the distance. I can barely make out the words, but I can make out enough to know it says GOLDEN GATE PARK. The trees are full. The grass is green. The sun shines over it.
I feel my chest filling with hope again.
Should I be weary?
I don’t know, but we walk on.
34
Cupcake barks like a rabid dog. He’s stopped in the middle of the road, standing over the yellow line, his hair up in hackles, his tail standing like an exclamation point.
“Shut him up,” Norm says.
The sun over here seems nonexistent, like there’s a line in the sky separating the good from the bad.
“Cupcake,” I say, my voice low but powerful. He momentarily stops barking and looks behind at me. His eyes glitter, but there’s fear in them. If he could talk, I wonder what he would say.
Darlene goes rigid. “Something’s wrong,” she says.
“Something’s been wrong for about a year,” Norm says.
“Good one,” Abby answers.
“No, what’s he barking at?” Darlene says.
“Beats me,” I say, and start walking over to him. He jumps up on his hind legs and presses his front paws into my chest. His claws dig into my skin through my sweaty t-shirt. It hurts, but I’m too confused to really feel the pain.
I’m confused because the street is pretty much empty. There’s no clergymen, no zombies, no animals. It’s a ghost town — Like the ghost town near the lake back in the Mojave, I think to myself and shudder. Cupcake continues whining. I look into his eyes and I see real fear there. It’s so human, I forget he’s a dog and I try to talk to him. “Well, what the hell do you see, Cupcake?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer back in words, of course, but barks. I swear he gives me a push with his front paws, too. It’s crazy.
The doubt comes creeping back into my mind now. The dog is more human than canine. He knows something is up when we think nothing’s up. He was right before about the zombies a few blocks over and he was right to lead us into the abandoned record store. I should trust him.
But we’re so close. The park is right there. A park that looks untouched by the apocalypse.
“Let’s go, Jack,” Darlene says.
Then I see it. I see what Cupcake is now barking his head off about. It’s tiny, but I see it because the clouds move — as if something is urging them to move — and sunlight glints off the muzzle of a weapon.
I don’t have time to think. I have to act.
I jump, diving toward Norm who stands out in the open like a dummy — not like a soldier.
The thunderclap of the gunshot rips through the air. Too late.
35
The bullet whizzes by my head. I clamp my teeth down so hard they feel like they’re cracking. And I scream. An almost evil sound.
Norm lets out an ooph as I barrel into him. We hit the road hard. Norm’s head bouncing off of the concrete, and my whole body flaring up in pain because Norm’s knee has hit me in the weakest spot of the male anatomy. All breath is driven out of my lungs.
A quick glance shows Darlene being held back by Abby in an alley off of the road. Thank God they’re smarter than me.
Through all of this pain, I reach up and pat Norm’s chest. He’s dry. No flow of blood. He talks, too. He says, “What the fuck?”
Cupcake barks madly again as another gunshot goes off. We’re sitting ducks. This is it.
But the shot clobbers the concrete, exploding bits of road in every direction. Then another one. And another one.
“Drop your weapons,” a voice says. It’s garbled by the megaphone it speaks from. I’m reminded of Butch Hazard and for a split second, I think he’s back from the dead, come to exact revenge on us for killing him and taking Eden down.
Norm’s face is pale. I see this as I scrabble up and try to grab him. A quick glance behind me shows Cupcake herding Darlene and Abby into the safety of the shadowy alleyway between a nail salon and an Asian diner.
“That voice,” Norm says, barely a whisper, barely audible.
“C’mon, Norm!” I shout.
My hand grabs his shirt and pulls. He shakes me off of him. “That voice,” he says again. His eyes are distant, entranced.
“Turn back or we have no choice but to shoot you,” the megaphone says again. I get a good listen this time and I’m a hundred percent sure that it’s not Butch Hazard come back from the dead…that’d be silly, right? In a world where the dead walk around and eat the living, that’d be the silliest thing ever. But I have to say the voice does sound vaguely familiar. It’s a male’s voice so it can’t be Darlene’s mom or her sister. It’s a voice I’ve heard before, that is definitely true.
“Jack!” Darlene says from the alleyway’s mouth. She is shrouded in shadow. I can barely see her expression but I know there’s fear written on her face.
Norm sits up.
“We will begin the countdown at fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…” the voice says. It seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
“Norm, let’s go!” I yell and I do so at the top of my lungs. We’re about to be shot. We’re about to die. I’m not even sure where my gun has gone. It vanished from my hand when I tackled my brother.
“Tim,” Norm says quietly. He looks down at his hands. A flush creeps up his neck, turning his deep tan a blood red. “That sounds like…like Tim.”
The knock on Norm’s head must’ve also knocked a few screws loose. He’s babbling like an idiot. Tim? Tim who?
I reach down to grab at him again before both of our brains are splattered against the glass window of the shoe store behind us, but he slaps my hand away with enough force to make me wince. It feels like a bee sting. A flare of anger invades me, mainly because Norm is acting so stupid. What can I do though? Can I just kick him up the road like an empty bottle? No. Norm would beat my ass before he let me do that to him. I consider just running for myself before the countdown —
“…Nine…eight…seven…”
ends. But that is only a passing thought. Nothing serious. I’d die before I left my older brother behind, before I left any of my family members behind, including Cupcake.
“I haven’t heard that voice in years,” Norm says. “Tim.”
“What, Norm? Come on, dude!” I say.
“Jack,” Darlene again, waving to me, waving us to the safety behind the Asian food joint and the nail salon, where the ancient garbage of mummified egg rolls and nail polish remover mixes horrendously and wafts toward us like a noxious gas.
“…three…two…one…”
“NORM!”
“Zero — ” the megaphone answers.
All I can do is close my eyes and hope they miss.
36
“TIM!” Norm shouts. He springs up so fast, you would never think the poor bastard rocked his head against the pavement. “TIM LANCASTER!”
I feel my knees go weak and watery. It hits me like a semi truck. Tim Lancaster? Holy shit. I knew I recognized that voice but it’s one I haven’t heard for many years. It’s not even a name I thought about until Norm told me the terrible tale of how he and our mother had a falling out all those years ago and he up and left us behind. The tale that revealed to me so much about my brother. How he was in love with this man who wound up leaving Woodhaven himself to go to art school somewhere in New York, who chose to embrace his sexuality instead of covering it up in the military where being gay is virtually the Eighth Deadliest Sin.
Norm runs up the street, waving his arms. I see his gun drop from his hand and clatter off the concrete. I’m standing behind my older brother as he gets smaller and smaller, disappearing down the slightly hilly landscape.
I look to the sign, gleaming in the sun over there, and see no one. Then I look to the alleyway where Darlene, Cupcake, and Abby stand in th
e darkness with their eyes wet and fearful, their mouths open — yes, even the dog’s.
I shrug at them. I don’t know if they see it. They look at me, but they don’t seem like they see much of anything. Their eyes are distant, focusing on the sounds more than the sights.
Norm’s boots stomping the pavement. The crackle of a megaphone, but no words. The soft whimpering coming from Cupcake. My own heartbeat pounding in my ears. The electric crackle of certain death in the air.
There’s no way Tim Lancaster is going to remember Norm after all these years. The gun is going to go off because Norm is just another crazy man running for their safe haven. Sorry, all the spots are full. No more room, amigo. Norm is just another body. He’s not a person.
But it turns out I’m all wrong. The megaphone crackles to life, and with it, comes words.
“Norm?” the voice says, the voice that is undoubtedly a man from our own hometown of Woodhaven, Ohio, thousands of miles away from San Francisco. A man who is almost a ghost.
“Tim!” Norm shouts again, his voice barely audible. He’s gone down the length of street fast. He’s coming up to a barricade in front of the sign. One I seem to just now be noticing. It’s made of junked cars, crooked dumpsters, and bags of sand. It really looks like a war zone down there just before the park’s sign. Then beyond that, a wall, a towering structure, fortified, strong, as pretty as a picture.
“NORM!” the megaphone cracks, and before anything else can be said, I hear the distant echo of the megaphone’s material hitting the ground. A great scratch of feedback slices through the air, and I’m reduced to clutching my head and covering my ears.
In the distance, a tall, skinny shadow comes out from near the trees. He holds his gun — something long and vicious looking like an assault rifle — at his hip and walks hesitantly toward the shadow that is my brother.
Then something clicks. It’s that great entity working its magic again, bringing us together, guiding us.
The two shadows converge on each other. It’s not malicious at all. They hug. Norm lifts Tim up in the air and spins him around a few times before he drops him. I see their faces come together into a kiss and I can’t help but smile. It’s beautiful. Sometimes this thing called life is so beautiful.
Jack Zombie (Book 5): Dead End Page 8
