Jesus.
The beer suddenly feels like it’s going to come back up. I’m starting to get sweaty, clammy. I think of Carmen being tortured.
A silence settles over us. I load my pistol.
Then, it must be the beer, but Tim says, “You know how mad I was when I found out about you and Christine?” Tim asks Norm.
I arch an eyebrow. Christine? What the heck is he talking about? I suddenly want to get out of my own room.
“Mad enough to hit me,” Norm says. He sighs and looks at the bare wall where a mirror should be. His eyes are distant, hazy with memory.
“I did, didn’t I?” Tim says. “Wow, that was so long ago.” He smiles again. “I was mad, but mainly heartbroken. I never stopped thinking about you.”
“Me, either,” Norm says. He glances at me, sees me looking on with wonder and curiosity in my eyes, and he blushes. Quickly, he composes himself into my hard-ass older brother who I’ve grown to love over this past year. “Let’s not bring up the past, Tim. Let’s forget about all that stuff.”
Tim drains his beer, mumbles something in agreement. “What happened with Christine, though? Did she have the baby?”
What the hell? I can’t contain myself any longer. “Baby?” I say.
“Norm smiles uncomfortably and sighs. “Well, no, she didn’t. She had an abortion.” He puts his hands up as Tim drops his jaw in amazement. “Not my idea. It was all hers.”
“Wow, too bad,” Tim says.
“Doubt it matters anymore,” Norm says. Takes a drink, then, holding the bottle by the neck, swishes the contents around. “Christine is probably long gone by now.”
“I wasn’t,” Tim says.
“Miraculously,” Norm says.
“Wait…” I say, “baby?”
Norm nods. “Yeah.”
“Uh, elaborate,” I say.
Norm sighs again as if he’s about to dive down a bottomless pit. “Well, remember that conversation we had at the Richards’s farmhouse.”
I nod. “The one where you told me where you left, yeah,” I say.
“I left out some important details,” Norm says.
Tim chuckles. “If you didn’t tell him about Christine then that’s a huge understatement.”
Norm waves him off. “Well, I didn’t leave because Mother found out Tim and me were playing hide the sausage while she was at work.” He shrugs. I’m not amused with that term. Kind of gross, especially when it’s your brother talking about his sex life. “Mother’s feelings didn’t bother me. I was who I was. Yeah, I was a little ashamed, but even back then I knew it wasn’t the end of the world. But still, I was a dumbass kid. What did I do after I gave into my repressed homosexuality? Well, I went and tried to erase what I’d done by banging a chick.”
My jaw drops. “What the hell…” I say, but it barely comes out as a whisper.
Norm nods. “Yep. You remember Christine? You gotta.”
I do. She was quite the looker back in high school, coveted by all the meathead jocks. And somehow, my older brother scored with her. Crazier than zombies.
“Well, we both had a few beers and one thing led to another. Can’t say I enjoyed it. Just made me all the more confused.”
“Good to hear,” Tim says. “When I found out, it broke my heart. I’d been considering leaving for art school for a long time. We had that nasty fight, you remember?”
“Yup, like an old married couple,” Norm answers. They both chuckle. “You said you hated me. Christine went to live with her grandparents, and I joined the Army without telling you. God, I was stupid.”
“Still are,” Tim says, chuckling. “The past is the past.” His words slur a bit now. Then he turns to me, a peculiar little smile on his face — the face of a man who thinks his life ends tonight. He lifts his beer up. “A toast. A toast to the future and to killing Walter again.”
“Cheers,” Norm says.
“Cheers,” I say.
We’ll need more than a simple toast to protect us.
“We’re fucking shit up and getting Carmen back tonight, baby!” Norm hoots.
Abby and Darlene come in, holding weapons. Mike is behind them, head swiveling. He looks nervous. It’s only a matter of time before Eve sends guards to stop us.
Good luck, I think.
Darlene tilts a rifle to the ceiling. She looks so odd with such a big weapon. “Let’s do this,” she says.
67
One look at the weapons and I’m surprised. We have AR15s, pistols, three grenades, and enough rounds to fight a war with.
Which is exactly what we’re about to do.
We look around at each other. The buzz from the beer suddenly seems to wear off. There is this odd calm over us, as if we’re all aware of what comes next — what can come next.
The end.
The end of us.
My hands tremble as I take my weapons. We each get AR15s, a pistol. I grab a machete. Tim takes the grenades.
“Just know,” I say as I swing the AR’s strap over my shoulder, “that whatever happens tonight, I love all of you.”
“Yeah,” Norm says.
“Me, too,” Abby answers.
“Family,” Darlene says.
“Family,” I repeat.
We all are nervous, worried. Just when we thought we could settle down, we are thrust into another war.
The last one, Jack. One more and then the rest of your life starts. Get Carmen back. Save the day. You can do it, right?
“Hell yeah,” I say quietly to myself.
I lead us into the hall, expecting a blockade of Eve’s guards.
Nothing.
Mike lets us pass. He looks especially tall and thin tonight. “I’ll cover for you guys. If they’re coming, I’ll stall them.”
“Thank you,” I say.
We keep going.
Abby stops. I hear her rushing footsteps retreating. I turn in time to see her jump into Mike’s arms. She plants a kiss on him, long and beautiful. When they part, Mike’s eyes are big. “Wow!” he exclaims.
“I’ll be back,” Abby says.
Darlene smiles at me.
I’m happy for them. Mike’s okay in my book.
We leave the complex.
68
So here we are. Darlene, Abby, Norm, Tim, Cupcake, and me. We all have weapons (except for Cupcake, of course) and we stare back at the entrance, which is swarming with people. One raises a hand and waves to Tim.
It wasn’t hard to get out of here, not as hard as I expected. Then again, I still have Eden on my mind. It wasn’t that long ago that we were stuck in that rotten place where the only way out was burning it down.
Eve is no Spike or Butch Hazard.
We were stopped by a grizzled looking fellow, one I hadn’t recognized yet. He wore a rifle over his shoulder, like me. Once he recognized Tim, the harsh look on his face faded away.
“Where ya going?” he asked.
“Cort, where do you think?” Tim answered.
At that moment, with all those eyes staring around at us, all those people with their guns, I was glad to have been reunited with Tim, all shocks of him and Norm’s past aside.
The man named Cort backed away, hitched his pants up, and readjusted his rifle. Darlene, who was standing slightly behind me, didn’t tremble or squeak out something like Let’s get outta here. No, she stood her ground and again I remember feeling a large sense of pride at how far she’d come.
“I probably shouldn’t let you do that, Tim,” Cort said.
I could picture Norm’s response, something like, Well there’s six of us and one of you, but there wasn’t just one of him; there was a whole score of people working on the fence, guarding it from the zombies, cleaning up debris and bodies, scrubbing away blood. We were the ones who were vastly outnumbered.
Then Tim did something that surprised us all. He crossed the distance between Cort and him and he put his arm around the grizzled old man who vaguely reminded me of Zack before he was ripped in
half by that merchant’s bomb. Cort hugged him back, patting him hard on the shoulders.
“Be careful out there,” Cort said as they parted. “All of youse, be careful.”
Tim nodded.
“And bring Carmen home, damn it. Bring her home for all of us,” Cort said.
Darlene stepped forward and spoke. She said, “We will. We’ll bring her back and we’ll kill all of those people. They won’t bother us again.”
Us.
Now we are staring at an abandoned mall, which the clergymen have made their base. Tim lead us, never complaining.
It’s a big place, this mall.
Our trek through the dead city took most of the day. We only had to kill a few zombies. No bullets were spent.
It’s dark out now. The moon shines.
We are standing on the opposite side of the street, under the cover of a car dealership. On the brick side of the dealership, written in chipped paint, they proclaim: BAD CREDIT? NO CREDIT? NO PROBLEM!
The mall is fenced off. The fences stretch the length of the roads. Out of sight to the right and to the corner of the street to the left, where a gas station — which one, I’m not sure — sits deserted and half-exploded.
“Now what’s the plan?” Norm asks Tim.
Tim stares on with an intensity I’ve never thought possible on his face.
There’s a water tower jutting up from beyond the fence. It’s painted white, but on the large sphere at the top, there is blood-red letters that read: HE WILL SAVE. Again, I’m reminded of Eden, of the graffiti in the town of Sharon that said for us to hide our fingers. It causes a ripple of fear to go up my spine.
“Tim?”
“I don’t know,” Tim answers. “I’ve never s-seen this place. Only heard of it. I didn’t think it would be so big.”
I lean out from the cover of the building.
“Jack,” Abby hisses, but I don’t heed her warning. I need to get a better look at the setup, I need to see how penetrable their fortress is.
In the sickly moonlight, I do. The fence around the outside of the mall’s parking lot looks to be professionally installed, like it was there long before the dead rose. But in the front of the mall’s entrances, there’s a jagged fence made of sharpened tree trunks and other type of debris. We can blow it open. Tim has grenades. They’re a last resort, but there’s no way we’re climbing over any of these fences without either getting speared to death or caught by the red robed bastards. Might as well make a grand entrance.
“Jack,” this time it’s Darlene.
I turn to her. She’s ghostly white in the moonlight.
“Let’s blow the fence down,” I say.
Tim and Norm both bark laughter. Abby looks at me like I’ve really gone off the deep end. Maybe she’s not wrong.
“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said,” Norm says.
“You have a better idea?” I ask.
Norm chuckles. “Yeah, dumbass, I do. We survey the fence, look for any weak points. We don’t want to get noticed. Not when we’re outnumbered.”
My eyes scan the rest of the group. Darlene and Abby shrug. Even Cupcake looks like he’s nodding. Well, maybe I am a dumbass.
“All right,” I say, “Not a bad plan.”
“Damn right,” Norm says, and he leads us out from behind the car dealership and to the fence across the road. I have my rifle in one hand and a blade in the other. Both weapons feel like they’re going to slide from my grip.
69
Zombies. Always zombies.
“Fuck,” Norm says.
“Way to go,” Abby says. “We should’ve listened to Jack.”
“Back, go back!” Tim shout/whispers.
Truth is, I don’t think any of us can move. We’re bolted to the concrete, and in my case, the grass closest to this section of fence.
Darlene mentioned the stench before we’d gotten there, but the curiosity won out and dragged us closer to the low, buzzing noises of the zombies.
Curiosity killed the cat and all that.
Now we stare through the cracks between the fences at twenty — no, fifty — zombies shambling around a walled off section of this abandoned mall’s parking lot. In the moonlight, the red and pink of the spilled guts shine. The zombies who are eating the open bodies of these faceless victims do so greedily. They dig their hands, some missing fingers, into the hunks of meat, creating a squelching musical score in the night air.
A sacrifice, I think, getting a bad taste in my mouth. I think I’m going to be sick, but I can’t look away.
The smell is even worse. It’s sharp, like expired food that’s rotted away in a broken refrigerator for the whole length of an Arizona summer.
“Jesus Christ,” Tim says. “See? I told you, they’re sick.”
That they are. Some of the zombies who aren’t eating move around, their hands and rotted faces pressed up against the fences, trying to find a way out. I lean closer, waiting to find some kind of method to the madness, and as I’m looking through the crack in the fence, the stink and rot washing over my face, a zombie with one yellow eye slams into the covered chain link, rattling both it and my heart.
I nearly fall on my ass, but Darlene is there to catch me.
More zombies come over, the curiosity and allure of fresh meat too strong. Cupcake starts to bark, not soft barks, either, but loud, killer barks that could honestly wake the dead, and no doubt gives us away.
“Shut him up!” Norm hisses.
I drop to my knees and grab Cupcake in a hug. He reluctantly wags his tail and whines. Darlene grabs his muzzle. That whine comes from between his clamped maw. He’s shaking. I’m shaking. We’re all shaking.
Then, a spotlight clicks on and shines through the cover, undoubtedly showing our shadows.
Shit.
Shelves of brightness paint our faces. This time, I fall and scramble in the dirt. Darlene and Abby are both there to help me up. Norm says, “Run!” under his breath.
We do.
70
We run through thick brambles with thorns that whap at our faces and clothes. I have to pick Cupcake up and plow through the bushes. He’s so scared, his bladder lets go. I’m hit with a little of the urine but manage to hold him out in front of me while he finishes the job. Then, in my arms, he looks up at me with those human eyes, guilty.
I think I manage to tell him it’s okay, but I’m not sure. I’m winded. Norm and Tim are ahead of us. Darlene and Abby are right behind me.
We come out on another deserted street, this one going downhill. We are looking at an old garage, also deserted. The glass is broken in. I put Cupcake down and he tears off after Norm and Tim.
A few seconds later, we’re opening up a glass door and we’re all inside, out of breath. My head whirls. That was close, too close.
“They see us?” Abby asks.
“Don’t think so,” Tim answers. He takes a seat on a stack of large tires and shrugs off his pack of weapons, ammo, and grenades. Norm goes over to him and swipes blood off of his face from a cut below his eye. “Thanks,” he mumbles.
Norm looks at Tim longingly, then he says, “Screw this, let’s go home. Let’s give Eve what she wants.”
I feel like I’ve been sucker-punched. “What?” I ask, unbelievingly.
“I said, let’s get the hell out of here. It’s bad enough we don’t know what the fuck we’re getting ourselves into, but it’s dark on top of that, and these psychos keep a million zombies caged up like goddamn farm animals. Screw this, Jack. We can come back with help tomorrow. That Cort guy will help us.”
I shake my head at Norm. “No,” I say, dimly aware of Darlene deflating and stepping away from me.
“Yeah,” Tim answers. “We’re here and we’re going to save Carmen.”
I smile at him.
He reaches out and takes Norm’s hand. “Really, Norman, I’m all right, I promise.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Norm says. “We can come back in the morning. They’re
on alert now.”
This whole conversation, Darlene looks like each word is another nail in her coffin. I try to put my arm around her waist and pull her close, but she pulls away farther.
“Fine,” I say to Norm, “If you want to go back, go ahead!” There’s anger in my voice. Good. I am angry.
“Stop it!” Abby says. “This isn’t a time to fight. You’re not teenagers anymore. We’re a team, we’re family, which means Darlene’s family is family.”
Cupcake barks quietly in agreement.
“Carmen is family,” Abby continues. I’m nodding. “Norm, you’re the toughest asshole I know. You lost a finger in Eden, you almost lost your life in Mother’s village, and you saved our asses in the Mojave. This,” she motions behind her where the water tower marks the spot we ran from, “is nothing compared to that stuff.”
“Yeah,” I say, stepping forward, trying to tell myself Darlene isn’t crying behind me. Haven’t I broken her heart enough? Now Norm has to? “We have to stick together. We can’t do this without you, Norm.”
“Then don’t,” he answers. “Don’t and come back home with us.”
The way he says home makes my heart break. Home. We’ve finally found a home, one worth staying in, but we’re not out of the woods yet. We’re never out of the woods, it seems.
“Norm…” I say.
“I’m sorry — ” Norm begins.
“Can it, Norman,” Tim says. “We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to save Carmen and kill every last one of those robed bastards.”
Norm looks at him with wide eyes. Cupcake barks a little louder this time as if trying to get our attention. “Tim, no.”
“I’m sorry, Norman, but I’m here to help. Not turn tail and run back home to my mommy,” Tim answers.
Norm exhales a large breath. “Fine, but if you get hurt or I get hurt — and there’s a big chance that will happen, that we’ll all die — then I’m going to kill you, Jack. And if you somehow survive this, I’m going to haunt — ”
Jack Zombie (Book 5): Dead End Page 16
