Jack Zombie (Book 3): Dead Nation

by Flint Maxwell

  Grady puts his thumb up. “Good idea.”

  Jacob gets in the Hummer and in a blink of an eye, he spins it around, tires kicking up rubber smoke. He pulls a maneuver I didn’t think was possible, parallel parking and doing a five-point turn in two points. All that crap you heard in driver’s education rolled up into one amazing feat.

  “Told you,” Jacob says, hitting me after he gets out. “I’m that good.”

  “All right,” Grady says. He pulls a pair of sunglasses out of his breast pocket and puts them on. Billy snickers. For some reason, I think Billy probably does that every time Grady puts these on. They’re not very flattering.

  Grady just shrugs and says, “Can’t look cool if you’re dead. City sunlight can be harsh.”

  Sunlight is sunlight and even though he looks like a dweeb, I guess I understand his logic. Darlene would kill me if she ever saw those sunglasses on my face. They’re the type she’d call ‘douchebag shades’ and I can’t say I don’t agree with her.

  “Best we get going before you won’t need those sunglasses,” Jacob says.

  There is a long stretch of road ahead before the buildings start to scrape the sky and shroud us in shadow. The road is choked with cars. Bumper to bumper traffic. A brown Sebring’s windshield is drenched in blood. I have to double-take because the blood isn’t on the outside. There’s no body or zombie laying nearby.

  No, the blood paints the glass from the inside. As we walk by, I’m the only one whose head turns to look at this gruesome scene. A bullet hole stars the glass on the driver’s side, yet the glass hasn’t shattered. I see the gaunt face of a man in a business suit. A chunk of his head is gone, the blood and brains long since congealed. No big deal, I tell myself. I’m used to this now.

  “What about Mother?” I ask to Grady. I need something to take my mind off of death.

  “Hm?” Grady says.

  “When did she come to your village?”

  “She was one of the first,” Jacob says, turning to me. “Grady, Mother, another woman who’s been dead a few months, my wife, and I were the founders. Well, I don’t know if we can call ourselves founders.”

  “It was Mother,” Grady says. “I took care of her.” He smiles. “I don’t look it, but I worked in a nursing home. Mother was there much longer than I was, but she was the brightest. And as the disease spread, and folks came to take home dear old granny and grandpappy, no one came for Mother. I’ve been divorced since ’03, and I don’t have kids. My mom died when I was thirteen of a heroine overdose, father was never there. I had no one, not even friends, really,” Grady says. His smile has disappeared.

  I feel for the man. I know what it’s like to be alone, maybe not to his extent, but before I met Darlene, ‘loner’ would’ve been an apt term to describe me.

  We are now walking across a small bridge where the highway — also full of unmoving cars — stretches miles below us. A strong sense of vertigo hits me, making me feel queasy. Almost as queasy as when I looked into the bloody car.

  “So I took Mother. I took her out of the home and the day I took her was the day a fire ripped through our little town. My apartment complex was one of the first buildings to go. So now I really didn’t have anything. I took one of the handicap vans and Mother and I hit the road. She told me to stay away from the big cities. She told me our safety depended on it. The rest is history.”

  “Not really,” Jacob says. “We met each other on the road. Not far from our little village. Mother started having the dreams — ”

  “She always had the dreams,” Grady says.

  “You guys gonna yap all day, or are we gonna actually haul some ass and hit that hospital?” Billy asks.

  “Hate to agree with him, but he’s right,” Sean says.

  I’m curious about the dreams. That’s all that seems important to me right now.

  “It’s not far,” Grady says. “The faster we go the more apt we are to make a mistake.”

  Grady stops.

  Everyone keeps going, even Jacob and I.

  “Besides,” Grady says looking over the bridge, and we aren’t even halfway across the overpass when he stops, “we’re almost there.”

  He points to a large building with a globe hanging crookedly off its facade. MERCY GLOBAL HOSPITAL is written below the globe in an electric blue. I imagine at one point in time the sign glowed before the electricity went out. It’s a few blocks away.

  “How the hell do you expect us to get down?” Billy says.

  “Yeah, Grady, we don’t have wings,” Derek says.

  “We jump,” Grady answers.

  32

  “Just kidding,” he says, smiling at our uneasy faces. “We climb down.”

  I look over the side at the crooked cars on their flat tires, at the trash blowing gently down the interstate. It’s got to be at least thirty feet to the ground.

  Grady unslings his pack, unzips it, and starts rifling through the contents.

  Billy tilts his head back and says, “You gotta be kidding me. I’m not Spider-Man, man!”

  “It’s easy,” Grady says.

  He pulls two rolled ropes out of the bag. They’re black, and on one end is a clip, I’m assuming to be clipped to a harness or something he probably doesn’t have. On the other end is a metal claw. This is so much like a gadget you’d see in a heist movie, I almost want to burst out laughing.

  “Your love of extreme sports is going to end up killing us,” Sean says. “First the parachuting in Richmond, the rock climbing in that cave…and now this?”

  I wonder just how far these guys go back.

  “Hey, you’re still alive,” Grady says. “And it was fun as hell, wasn’t it?”

  Sean rocks his head back and forth, weighing his options. Then a smile breaks out on his face and says, “Hell yeah, but that’s not the point.”

  “So just trust me,” Grady says. He walks to the handrail, loops the claw end through it two times and pulls the rope hard enough for the metal to screech against the concrete barrier. “Perfectly safe.”

  “Why don’t we take the long way?” Sean asks. His face is pallid, maybe even squeamish. “I mean, we can walk and live.”

  “Or we can repel down and be out of here in two hours instead of six. Plus, our friends would love for us to go the long way.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  Grady stands on the concrete edge. “Stand up here,” he says.

  “No, thanks, I don’t like heights,” Sean says.

  So, I do. The wind whips through my hair. What was thirty feet now seems like hundreds. Grady points beyond the bridge, over husks of crumbled buildings and flipped cars. In the distance, I see movement, and as I narrow my eyes, I realize it’s zombies — hundreds of them all milling about like mindless farm animals. I jump down real quick, my voice shaky, “Yeah, let’s repel down.” It’s been awhile since I’ve seen that many grouped up. The only thing separating us from them is really just a stretch of blacktop. And I don’t like that at all.

  “Yeah, bro,” Billy says. “Grow a pair.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Grady shouts. He tosses the other claw to Billy and says, “Tie it up and lets get some medicine.”

  Billy smirks and elbows his brother.

  “How about you, Jack?” Jacob asks me. “You ready for some fun?”

  No, but what choice do I have? Run from the dead by myself? Hell no.

  “Let’s do it,” I say.

  “I’ll go first,” Grady says, “then you guys, but let me show you how it’s done.” He smiles and winks, then unrolls a harness. It’s one of those harnesses that you step into and wear like a pair of shorts. He pulls it on seamlessly. Then he is on the edge of the bridge, probably looking down at the sea of rusting metal and dead bodies from thirty to forty feet up. I get that feeling like I’m falling just by looking at him.

  I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like once it’s time for me to put the harness on. I’m breaking out into a sweat just thinking about it. I
mean, one wrong move, one slip, and I’m splat on the pavement. They’ll have to pick me up with a spatula. Damn, if Darlene finds out I died bungee jumping off of a bridge she’ll kill me.

  “Whoo-Hoo!” Grady says, and he doesn’t ease his way down like I think he’s going to. He just kind of drops, kicking his legs against one of the concrete pillars. It’s so quiet up here I hear my breath hitching. Hell, I hear Grady’s breath, and the scrape of his boot soles against the rough surface. It takes him about ten seconds before he’s down. He stands on top of a Mustang that rear-ended a Kia. The door is still open. My skin prickles, feeling both excruciatingly cold and warm, at the thought of the driver still being inside of the Mustang’s cabin. The image of the red-drenched windshield a half mile back up the bridge comes back to me in a flood of blood, kind of like that scene in Kubrick’s The Shining. Except, seeing it for real and seeing something like that on the silver screen is way different. But I’ve been thinking that way since this whole zom-poc happened.

  “That easy!” Grady shouts up.

  I snap my head to the other guys. Grady shouldn’t be shouting. I don’t know what the population of D.C. was before The End, but the thought of millions of zombies coming our way while we’re trapped on a bridge is not a pleasant one.

  Billy raises his hand and holds up three fingers, nodding at me.

  “Just ignore him,” Jacob says as he pulls up the rope. I’m already stepping into the harness the twins set up not too far from the one Grady repelled down. The metal loop brushes up against my skin. It’s ice cold. I feel my heartbeat. Steady, but hitting my chest hard.

  “Piece of cake!” Grady shouts again.

  Sean is already harnessed up. He climbs to the edge, gives me a nod — all business, it says — and falls down.

  “That’s it! C’mon!” Grady says.

  I think he must be lonely down there with nothing but dead cars and dead people. Before I even look at Billy, I raise my own hand and hold up four fingers. This makes the twins chuckle. Sean pats me on the back as I check the harness and make sure it’s secure. I step onto the edge, but I’m nothing like Grady. I sit my ass on the concrete and ease myself down, eyes closed.

  “Yeah, that’s it! Keep going, Jack!” Grady says.

  The ground goes out beneath my feet and I’m dangling thirty feet above the road, on a thin line. I’m practically zombie bait. My foot catches the pillar, and then it gets easier. I slowly repel down.

  I open my eyes, Jacob and Sean’s faces get smaller and smaller. I look down and though the road and the crashed Mustang seems like miles away, it does get closer. Once I’m past the thick overhang of the bridge, and my head is low enough to actually peek under it, I see exactly what I don’t want to see.

  They are not far.

  Not far at all. And they seem to have come from nowhere. Poof.

  Reflexively, my hands, which are death-gripped to the rope, go for the SIG in my holster. Big mistake. I’m knocked off balance, and the whole world spins. My stomach lurches with the movement. I scream out, and as I scream, mainly out of the sudden weightless feeling, the SIG is a blur of steel.

  “Zombies!” Jacob shouts.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Sean says.

  Grady has moved back up to the Mustang, his AR15 in hand. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! We can outrun them.”

  But a shot goes off. Not good.

  I’m trying to right myself as the lead zombie’s head explodes simultaneously with the gun’s blast. I’m relieved and pissed at the same time.

  I grab the rope, get my balance, and start to climb back up. It’s almost impossible, but I’m making leeway.

  Two more shots. Not from below…from above.

  Double shit.

  Ahead, no zombies drop. They are not misses, though, because two dead men wearing tattered business suits go over the bridge and land with a wet plop. One hits the road. The other —

  Triple shit.

  An alarm wails through the air. The other hits a minivan parked crookedly off the shoulder. How the hell the car battery still has enough juice in it to sound the alarm, I don’t know, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that in the quiet, dead city we have basically just let everyone know — dead or otherwise — where we’re at. Not to mention all the dead at the end of the overpass.

  And this mission was supposed to be easy. So much for that.

  Sean aims his pistol as he swings back and forth on the rope.

  “Kill the alarm! Kill the alarm!” I shout down to Grady, not even worried about the fact I’m still dangling like a worm on a hook.

  Now, a sea of dead sweep up the roadway. Again, it comes from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It’s an actual solid wave, a mass so disgusting and bland and gray and bloody, I think to myself how it can’t be real.

  Sean squeezes the trigger, drops a few, but it makes no difference. We’ll need a fucking rocket launcher to even make a dent. “Grab my bag, Bill!” he shouts. “The bag! The bag! I’ve got — ”

  But Billy ignores him, or doesn’t hear him. It’s too late. “More on the bridge! Help, Jake!” he says. His pistol pops off three more shots. I can’t see up there very well with the sun beaming down on us, illuminating every gross and dead thing with fire, but I hear the grunts, the sounds of meat mashing against a blunt object.

  “Overrun,” Jacob says, struggling. “Gott — gotta go over. C’mon!”

  Suddenly, the rope lurches and twangs. Jacob, who is not a small man by any means, slides down it until he crashes into me. No harness. Up on the bridge, zombie heads pop over the edge, their yellow eyes searching for lost meals, mouths open and dripping with gunk and blood. They snarl and growl. Rabid.

  Billy has done the same thing. He now shares the rope with his twin brother. He aims the gun up and shoots at the zombies looking down at us.

  At the same time the shot goes off, so does the alarm. Way to go, Grady.

  “We gotta go,” I say. “We gotta get the fuck off this rope before they surround us.”

  Grady pumps lead into the oncoming crowd. The shadows beneath the bridge are lit up with bursts of lightning. Two rows of shambling dead drop, are trampled under foot, tripping others. But most keep going. The allure of fresh meat, bright lights, and explosive sounds are too much.

  They don’t know any better.

  No one is on the bridge to feed us the rest of the rope, so with my gunless hand, I grab my knife off my belt, and I saw at the harness. I figure it’ll break easier than the rope, which looks to be entwined with some sort of metal.

  “Let go, Jake!” I say.

  The old man shakes his head, blubbers something. His face is beat red.

  The dead are getting closer. I can smell them right under us.

  “Drop now or drop when they’re below with their mouths open!” I shout.

  This convinces Jacob. He screams as he drops. The hood of a car pops and then Jacob groans. I see him scrambling up, aiming his weapon.

  Now the harness is more exposed. I saw at it with the speed of a jackhammer. It’s not easy, but I get through it. It’s my turn to scream.

  Then, as has been the case since I stepped into the harness, all sense of gravity leaves me, and I’m falling.

  It’s about a ten foot drop.

  I hit the same car Jacob hit and I hit it hard. No time to feel pain. Time to run, time to get the hell out of here.

  And the dead shambling toward me — toward us — look a lot more scarier this close.

  33

  I don’t have time to catch my breath. I’m up in a flash, already searching for my pistol and unslinging the M16 off of my back at the same time. I could just leave the SIG and take off, but any and all bullets go a long way, especially when you’re trapped.

  Especially when zombies are coming after you.

  I find it.

  Jacob takes longer to get up. He’s wobbly. Not okay. As I’m bent down and picking up the handgun, I grab him by the collar of his shirt and pu
ll with all my might. Veins pulse and coil beneath the skin of my forehead. My face gets hot.

  “Let’s go!” Grady shouts. He pulls the trigger of the AR15, cutting up another row of dead. But they are legion. They keep coming and coming.

  We’re about twenty seconds away from being swallowed up whole by these motherfuckers, and that’s not counting whether or not more are coming from behind us.

  “Stuck,” Sean wheezes.

  I look up at the twins dangling, kicking their feet. Fuck.

  Billy drops down, screaming as he falls, but he mostly lands on two legs, his eyes wide, the cockiness scrubbed from his features, replaced with fear.

  A zombie breaks away from the pack, arms outstretched. It walks as normally as any of us, and that unnerves me. With the M16 set to three round burst, I aim him down and pull the trigger. A fountain of brains explode out from the holes I put in the bastard’s head and he collapses.

  Sean cries.

  Fucking repelling off a bridge, what a terrible idea. Might be quicker, but now look at us. We either run and lose one of our own or we stay here and die together.

  Fuck this.

  I let the M16 drop from my grip so it hangs around my shoulders and I aim the SIG at the zombies coming for us on the highway. I drop three with practiced ease.

  “Don’t move,” I say up to Sean.

  Grady and Jacob have broken rank, the bastards. They’re gone. It’s just me and Billy looking up at this piece of meat who happens to be apart of our group and Billy’s twin brother.

  “I’m gonna catch you, bro!” Billy shouts.

  The dead on the bridge are getting braver. Greasy hair hangs down as they lean over the edge. One long-haired, former man — the hippie type — hangs the farthest. And before I can even pull the trigger of the SIG, the zombie’s smeared John Lennon glasses fall from his face and clatter off of the same smashed car in front of me.

  “Hold on!” Billy shouts.

  He shoots once and misses. A puff of dust explodes from the concrete. Pebbles rain down on Billy and the cars.