The hole in the crowd is big enough for us to squeeze through…I hope. I reach back and grab Herb’s hand, still slick with blood, and I pull him. This time, he doesn’t come easily. He’s frozen by fear, and I can’t blame him. The emaciated and decomposed corpses that should be in the ground close in around us as soon as we get out of the bank. Abby whirls around, smashes the head of a squat woman from the top. I’m just able to see how her skull accordions and the yellow in her eyes sputter, ultimately going out. Then Abby takes the lead.
“To the left!” I yell. I’m dragging Herb more than anything. There’s a small alley between a livery and an unmarked building. Abby shoulders past reaching zombies, not even wasting the energy on bashing their heads in. I launch Herb forward. He goes willingly enough. “Get to Abby!” I shout to him.
He runs as fast as he can, but it’s not fast. Too many.
I raise the pistol now. I have to. A zombie with one ear and no shirt lunges at Herb and I blow its face off and down the road farther than the cowboy hat.
Abby has her hand out, waving Herb to her. I’m right on his heels. I swing at another zombie, catching it in its neck. Thankfully, the constant sunlight did most of the work for me. Its neck crumbles like a sand castle at high tide. The head bounces off the dirt road, winds up in a pile of glittery glass from one of Central’s cars.
Herb is almost to Abby. I sweep the gun over the crowd, gauging the threat level of the closest zombies. None are close enough to merit a shot. So I keep going.
We get to the alleyway. Abby is breathing so hard she can hardly talk.
“Do you see it?” she wheezes. She’s pointing down the alley, bent over, head up. I do see it. The shimmering blue surface of the lake and the mountains beyond that. It looks so pleasant. So cool.
“Pretty,” Herb says, looking at it all googly-eyed.
We can’t look at it for long because a dry death rattle comes from behind us. The zombies don’t care for beautiful sights that fill your chest with hope and make you think, even just for a second, that everything is going to be okay, that I’m going to save Darlene and kill Klein and save the world. They don’t care at all.
“Come on,” I say, leading the way past crates and barrels as old as God. We are going to get to that lake. We are going to save Darlene. We are going to stop Klein. We are going to save the world. Even if it kills us.
53
It’s about a quarter-mile away, but it seems so much closer than that. I can smell the water. Taste the freshness.
I come out of the mouth of the alley, risking a glance behind me, seeing Abby and Herb close by, the zombies getting smaller and smaller in the distance.
Then I come out onto another street where what looks like a farmhouse and more stables stand on the opposite side. Good. We hop the fence and it gives us more protection from the zombies. Another obstacle to slow them down. I’m smiling again, my legs pumping. We are going to make it, I think. We are going to actually come out of this alive —
“Jack!” Abby shouts.
Idiot.
My mind was lost in delusional fantasies. Life going back to some semblance of normality where we don’t have to worry about mad scientists blowing us all to hell or kidnapping my fiancé.
Herb screams.
Abby’s screams follow almost instantaneously. I’m frozen to my spot in the dusty road. The sunlight feels cold all of a sudden. My skin prickles. I know that scream.
What happens plays out in slow motion as times of great tragedy often do, and I’m helpless to the situation. Herb has fallen on the ground. A zombie clutches at his leg and uses the rest of his body to crawl up him. He convulses and bucks and kicks, but the zombie latches on tight. Abby makes a move at the zombie, and this is when I start to run back. I’m running faster than I’ve ever ran in my life, a scream bubbling up from the depths of my throat.
Herb cries and makes a noise unlike anything I’ve ever heard before in my life. It’s what I’d imagine Death sounds like. Not the act of dying, but Death — the shadowy, robed creature who haunts our nightmares, who does Time’s job. Then, everything after that is blacked out. My ears don’t pick up sound because all I hear is a ringing, as if someone had smacked me very hard on the side of the head.
I get to Herb.
I see the blood. It’s everywhere. It’s on the zombie’s mouth, its hands, its ripped, plaid shirt. My eyes sting with tears as I press the gun right into the zombie’s head and pull the trigger. What’s left of its brains splat onto the building. I swear the blood forms a skull as it drips down the facade.
“Oh, God,” Abby is saying. She has her stump up to her mouth. She’s got tears in her eyes, too. I can see this despite it looking blurry through my own teary eyes. My mind feels like it’s shutting down. Nothing seems real anymore. Not the sunlight, not the desert, the building with its bloody surface, the lake behind me, Herb, Abby. None of it.
But I look down at Herb and he’s bloody, really bloody. It could be from the his hands, right? From when he smashed the wooden countertops and splintered his fists. Yeah, Jack? That’s it. Right?
Right?
Right?
Herb clutches below his massive pectoral muscles. He’s shaking hard. He leans over to the side and gags. Retches. Nothing comes out but mucus-y spit. I cradle his head in my lap. God, I wish Darlene was here. I don’t know what to say.
Realization hits me hard. Everything comes into focus and I feel so terrible. I feel like dying, when, in reality, it’s Herb who’s going to die. Because I see the teeth marks. I see the chunk of flesh and shirt gone from where the zombie’s head was buried. The wound is flooded with red. I see a sliver of white bone. A rib.
“Ooh, it hurts,” Herb says. His voice is so low, I don’t hear him. I read his lips. “Ooh.”
A tear rolls down my face.
“Jack, help him!” Abby says. She’s frantic, shaking almost as badly as Herb is.
“I-I — ” I start to say, but Herb looks up at me. There’s a deep sadness in his eyes. There’s also a deep understanding in them, too, and I think that’s what hurts me the most. He knows. He knows he’s been bitten and there’s no coming back from a bite in the middle of the sternum. You can’t cut around the wound. You can’t amputate anything like we did to Abby.
“Come on, Herb. We gotta go,” I say, feeling hot acid coming up my throat. It’s all I can say. I don’t know what else could possibly be said at this moment. We do have to go. The zombies won’t stop because one of us has been hurt.
“But it h-hurts,” Herb says.
“I know,” I say, then turn to Abby. “Help me get him up.”
She’s frozen, looking at us in shock. I realize I’m soaked in his blood. I must look almost as bad as him. As I stand up, I get hit with a wave of dizziness.
“Abby, please,” I say again.
She finally snaps out of it and bends down to help me get Herb up. He clutches the wound. Fresh blood slips through his fingers. The zombies are about three-quarters down the alleyway. More are coming from up the main street, which still has tire imprints from the car chase. Norm leans on both us, each big arm wrapped around our necks and we guide him out of the ghost town and to the shimmering lake. I think about turning around and blasting the zombies who are following us so Herb can pass in peace, but I don’t know how many bullets are left, and I know I’ll have to use at least one bullet before this is all said and done. The thought alone almost freezes me again, but I can’t let it. I have to keep going.
54
The flat land starts to slope down toward the sandy shore of the beach. Rocks and shells and old bottles glitter in the sunlight. We are picking up speed. We’ve left the zombies behind us.
There is a flipped over boat half-buried in the sand, covered in a vegetation that might’ve once been green but is now a drab gray color.
“It hurts,” Herb is saying. “It hurts so bad and it burns, Jacky. It burns like fire.”
“It’s okay, big guy,” Ab
by says, but her voice is choked up. She sounds like she’s on the verge of breaking down, of dropping into the sand and sobbing.
“Y-You p-promise?” Herb says.
“I promise,” I answer. “Let’s set you down, okay, buddy? Nice and easy…there you go.” He plops into the sand, almost taking us down with him. Abby doesn’t sit. She stands and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, the gun still in it.
Herb’s face goes slack as if he’s zoning out. The lake is so peaceful. So beautiful. He’s not zoning out, not like he normally does. No, Herb is human and humans are entranced by beauty, and in a world where there’s not too much beauty left, this lake is a work of art. If it can numb the pain for him momentarily, then who am I to complain?
His skin feels hotter than before. It’s actually painful to touch. I don’t pull away, though.
“Can we go closer?” Herb asks.
“Oh, God,” Abby chokes. “Herb…”
“In a minute,” I say, my hand on his back. He feels like he’s about to fall over. “Just keep holding your chest, Herbie, okay?”
He looks away from the lake and nods at me, smiling slightly. “I see my auntie, Jack. I see her, do you see her, too?” His hand comes up from the festering bite wound and as it does blood dribbles onto the sand, which drinks the liquid greedily. “She’s glowing and she’s an angel. She…she has wings, Jacky. She does.”
“I know, Herb,” I say, “I know.” This is too much. I don’t know what to do. I need to get to Darlene, but I can’t leave him to die. God, my heart. It's gone. Now, all that’s left is an empty hole where it used to be.
Abby looks at me, tears streaming down her face, snot running from her nose. The sound of the small waves breaking on the coast is monumental, but I don’t hear any zombies or gunshots. Nothing destructive besides Herb’s ragged breathing. From where we are, I can see the red rock on the side of the mountain and it’s blood-red. Blood Rock. Not far, hazy in the distance, is the building Scott had told us about.
“Do you hear the music, Jacky?” Herb asks.
I can’t control him. He gets up, the movement is painful to watch. He almost falls on more than one occasion and I have to steady him so he doesn’t. Three steps later, he does fall and he lands on the sand with no noise besides a groan of pain.
“I can smell the water,” he says. “It smells so nice.” Then he looks up and his eyes focus on something only he can see and he says, “I’m comin, I’m comin.” There’s no stopping him. He crawls until he can’t crawl anymore and I’m there right by his side, guiding him.
“Herb, please,” Abby says. “Please just relax.”
“Gotta…see…Auntie,” he says.
He falls, his arms giving out on him, knees sliding in the sand.
“Oh, it burns,” he says, stifling sobs again. “Ooh. Owieeee.”
“Herbie, just rest, please,” I say.
The water reaches his boots when the tide comes in. I’m standing in the soft sand, sinking. Coolness invades my shoes, soaks my already sopping socks. Herb tilts his head up to me and my heart, which has been hanging on a broken hinge for the last God-knows-how-long, snaps off and falls in the black abyss now filling me. What it is that does this are Herb’s eyes. The deep, rich mahogany color they once were is gone. Now, they’re glowing with yellowish flakes. He is changing and there’s nothing I can do, nothing we can do.
“Okay, Jacky,” he says, “I’ll rest. Just for you.” He tries to smile, but it comes out more pained than anything. From the corner of his mouth, something drips. Not sweat. Not blood. But blackish saliva. The toxic sludge that is spreading throughout his body, replacing his blood, and stopping his heart.
We are quiet for a moment. I sit next to him. Abby sits on his other side. She won’t even look at him. I don’t blame her. It hurts. It hurts so bad I almost wish Central would’ve caught us back on the military base. I almost wish they would’ve killed us all then, put us out of the misery that would find us later down the road. I know I shouldn’t think like that, but I am. Can you blame me? My friend is gone, my fiancé is gone, Norm is lost. And we can do nothing but sit here and suffer.
The heat baking off of Herb’s skin is immense. The droplets of sweat on his arms fizzle and turn to steam. He smells sick. The body odor is gone, replaced with bile. He closes his eyes and his face wrinkles in pain. He grunts and holds the bite wound on his sternum until white knuckles show through his dark skin. I put my arm around him and pull him close.
“Don’t close your eyes, Herb,” I say. “Don’t close them. Don’t go to sleep. Watch the water. Look at the birds flying over the surface. Do you see their wings flapping, Herb?”
He lets out something a few decibels lower than a death rattle. He’s trying to hold on, he really is. Then he says, “Yeah, I see ‘em. They’re so pretty. They have wings like m-my Auntie.”
“Just keep watching the water. Keep looking at your Auntie. Okay? Will you do that for me, Herbie?”
He nods, and this time he smiles.
The tide hits us again, washing over Herb’s planted hands, soaking my pants and the tail of my shirt. The grayish seaweed on the upturned boat down the coast is gone, washed away. Abby sobs silently on Herb’s left.
I know what I have to do. I can’t watch him suffer anymore. I can’t let him turn. No one deserves that fate. No one deserves to be transformed into a monster, especially not Herb — the nicest, sweetest guy I think I’ve ever known.
I reach for the gun. Abby catches the glint of the sun off the metal out of the corner of her eye. She glares at me and her wet lips part as if to protest, but I think logic overcomes whatever she was about to say and she doesn’t end up saying it. I can’t imagine what I look like right now. I’m shaking so hard, I almost drop the gun. My teeth are clenched together. I have bitten the inside of my cheek and taste blood.
“Ouch,” Herb says again. His back convulses, muscles twitch. I lean behind him to make sure he doesn’t see the gun.
“Do you hear the music, Herb?” I ask.
“Uh-huh,” he says, still grimacing.
I start humming a slow, mellow tune.
“I-I like that,” he says. “It r-reminds — ” he doesn’t finish the sentence because he starts coughing. Hacking. Flecks of black sludge intermingled with red blood spray out of his mouth and hit the sand. The tide comes and washes it all away. Abby looks at him as if he’s an alien, something from the deepest depths of the lake. A bird caws and another bird answers back. Herb finishes his thought. “It…it reminds me of my r-records, Jacky,” he says.
“I know,” I say and I keep humming. Soon, Abby joins in. Herb sways with the sounds. I get up on my knees, never breaking the tune. With the gun in my left hand, I hug Herb on the right side of his body. One big, shaky hand comes up and gives me a squeeze on my shoulder. “I love you, Herb.”
“I-I l-love you, too, Jacky. Don’t stop hummin. My Auntie likes it, s-s-so do I.”
We hum and we hum louder and louder, but I know it won’t be loud enough to mask the gunshot.
“We both love you,” I say as Abby keeps humming. She’s not strong enough to say it herself. I think if she tried to talk, she’d sob loud enough to scare him. We don’t want that.
“I l-love you both, too,” Herb says. His head slumps, eyes flutter open and closed. Abby reaches out and gives him a squeeze on the shoulder. She won’t look at me. I don’t want her to.
“Keep watching the water, Herb. Keep watching your Auntie,” I say.
“I will, Jacky. I-I will,” he answers.
I lean down and kiss him on the top of his head. As sick as he is and with as much pain as he’s in, he manages to look up at me and smile. His eyes are almost completely golden. The whites are bloodshot. Black tears run from the corners of them.
“You’re a-all my bestest fr-friends,” Herb says.
I can’t handle it. I have to turn my head away. The tears are hot running down my face, and I don’t think they last long on my
flesh before the sun burns them away and they evaporate into steam. I take a deep breath, the gun still hidden behind Herb’s back, then I turn to face him again. The smile on his face vanishes, but his darkened teeth are still visible. He bares them in pain. I can’t let it go on any longer. Abby and I both know that.
“Keep watching, Herb,” I say, my voice choking up.
He turns toward the water.
I raise the gun so it’s pointed at the back of his head. I feel numb. The gun feels like nothing.
Same with the trigger. I pull it, not looking at him as I do, but looking at the water.
55
The shot echoes and rolls across the mountains. Birds take flight into the blue sky until they fade into specks.
Abby sobs.
Herb is collapsed face-first on the sand. The water washes over him, taking the leaking redness from the hole in the back of his head away as the tide rolls back.
I throw the gun as far as I can and I scream. I scream until my lungs burn, until I can no longer hear the pitch of my voice, just a droning, serrated nothingness. I’m on my knees in the sand, my back slumped, my head lowered. When I can’t scream anymore, I start apologizing over and over again. To who, I have no idea. Maybe I’m saying sorry to Herb. Maybe I’m saying sorry to myself. Maybe it’s to God. It doesn’t matter, though; what’s done is done.
Time passes as it does, but to me it feels like each second is an eternity.
56
Some of his blood coats my face. I feel it running down my cheeks along with the tears. It seems like the sun is going down, the air is getting cooler. The breeze blowing over the calm lake’s surface chills me.
Abby sits next to Herb’s body with her good hand on his back. Her body shudders with sobs.
Jack Zombie (Book 4): Dead Coast Page 15
