Dead Judgment
Jack Zombie #7
Flint Maxwell
Copyright © 2018 by Flint Maxwell
Cover Design © 2018 by Carmen Rodriguez
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions email: [email protected]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work.
For Laura Kingsley, editor extraordinaire
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“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
1
Rewind a month ago and ask me if this is how I’d expect the day to go.
My answer: It’s not.
But life is full of surprises, isn’t it?
I’m walking down a hill with a flare in my hand—a lit flare in my hand. Behind me, a swarm of the dead follow. The sight of fresh meat reinvigorates them.
I agreed because we need gasoline, otherwise our trip was going to be cut very short. I’m somewhere in Indiana, near the Illinois border. That’s how far we got before Abby’s truck started to warn us that we’d be walking soon if we didn’t find a Speedway somewhere to fill up.
The problem? There’s no Speedways anymore. No Circle Ks, no BPs—none of that stuff.
Luckily for us, Abby had joined a murderous cult called the District, and they have their own gas operations in nearly every state on the East Coast. I felt like dying when Abby told us this. Nearly every state? The whole East Coast? The District is much bigger than I thought.
Now we’re outside of one of these operations. It’s dusk, the sun is sinking behind leafless trees. A chill in the air prickles my skin…well, that, or the fact I’m currently shepherding a horde of zombies to the front gates of this place.
Talk about a suicide mission.
Oh well. It’s all in the name of revenge.
I walk backwards now, the flare held low so the lead zombies can see it. Get them going, and the rest usually follow. I can’t risk thrusting the flare above my head and getting spotted by District snipers, shot dead before I’m even a hundred feet from the gate. That is, if they haven’t seen me already. No shots yet though, so maybe not.
Lilly charts my progress from the tree line with the scope of her rifle. Abby is in the truck, a ways from the entrance of the place. As soon as I’m close enough—
The truck revs to life, and the plan is in motion. There’s no going back now.
“Shit,” I mumble, and nearly trip over my own feet.
If I did, the zombies would be all over me. I catch myself and turn toward the gate. I’m running now. The truck blasts by, a burst of cold wind blowing my too-long hair from my brow. Abby’s ride is a behemoth, one of those Ford F-150s they used to advertise nonstop during football games and the like, the kind that could tow a hundred dead elephants, and still somehow get thirty miles to the gallon. The gates are thick metal, but that’s not a problem for Abby’s truck. It plows through them, ripping them off their hinges with a shriek of steel.
I’m grateful for this, because the zombies turn their attention to the chaos ensuing behind me. Voices shout from inside the gates. I think I hear a gunshot; can’t be sure, though, there’s too much going on.
This is my cue.
“Hey, assholes!” I shout at the zombies. “Hey!”
Slowly, their heads turn in my direction. Yellow eyes glow in the darkness, and in these yellow eyes, I see hate and pain and hunger. It’s my worst nightmare.
Every day in this apocalypse is my worst nightmare.
“Go get it!” I throw the flare into the compound and run away from the horde.
As I’m running, of course I trip, and as I trip, a straying zombie thinks I look mighty delicious. Maybe this one has evolved beyond falling for cheap tricks such as the old flare routine. I don’t know. What I do know is that he’s on me quicker than a dead bastard like himself has any right to be.
I kick upward, hit him in the soft belly with the sole of my boot. The flesh there squishes and threatens to pop. I really don’t feel like finishing this mission in a pair of gut-soaked socks, so I decide my best course of action is to draw my revolver. As I do this, gunshots burst to my left. Bullets take the zombie in the head, sending a spray of brains to my right. He drops dead, his skull mutilated.
I raise my hand to the trees, toward Lilly’s vantage point. “Thank you!” I shout.
Then I’m scrambling up and following the rest of the zombies into the compound.
It’s chaos inside. Men and women are running from their posts, guns in their hands. It’s amazing what fifty or so zombies will do to a group of people. Dust kicks up on the path ahead. That’ll be Abby’s truck.
I take cover behind the thick support beams of a nearby watchtower as gunfire erupts, going off like bombs. A man falls near the opposite tower and screams as a zombie pins him down. His throat is ripped away in meaty shreds. Another zombie sees this opportunity of flesh and doesn’t hesitate. Soon, five or so of the dead bastards are feasting on this District soldier. I can’t see it so much as I hear it. The gush of blood, the ripping of hair, the cracking of bones. Now the silence of death.
I shake the queasy feeling from my gut. It’s not an easy task. I have to move; if I don’t move soon, Abby will be pinned down.
Who am I kidding? Abby can handle herself.
I spin out from the shadows of the watchtower and scan the camp. Large drilling rigs are set up all around this fenced-in piece of land. I wonder if the District knows what they’re doing when it comes to drilling for gas. Doubt it. The groundwater around here is probably contaminated from their ignorance. But I guess it doesn’t matter as long as they get what they need. There’s not many people left to drink the water, anyway.
Past the drills is a long building. A few guards are fighting off the oncoming wave of zombies there. This is where the gas is kept, Abby told me.
I make my move toward it, running fast, keeping my head low. I’m maneuvering through the battlefield, just waiting to be shot down.
As I approach the building, I catch the faint whiff of gasoline. It reminds me of the old world, of filling up at the local station, and this faint smell brings on a strong sense of nostalgia.
Then a guy’s getting his scalp chewed off, and that about slaps me in the face and reminds me that shit has changed.
Shit has changed a lot.
2
Everything I do, I do for my lost son and wife.
“Hey!” a man shouts.
He’s running at me fast, stomping through spilled guts and flayed flesh. It makes this terrible noise that churns my stomach.
Everything I do.
Even when I kill.
Up comes my pistol. Two quick squeezes of the trigger, the power in my palm, the jolt up my arm. The first shot hits him in the chest. Slows him down. Only slows him down. I see that he is wearing a bulletproof vest beneath his button-up shirt when the bullet tears the cloth away and leaves a smoking hole. The next shot misses because there’s a zombie on my right. Out of my peripheral vision, the zombie’s tongue hangs from its mouth all the way past its clavicle, as if someone got a grip on it and tried yanking it free without much success.
Now this
is a bad enough sight on its own, this zombie’s dead, lolling tongue, but you add a pissed-off District soldier to the mix, and that makes things worse.
A lot worse.
He raises his weapon, some sub-machine gun that could tear me to shreds in a blink of an eye, and I know I have to act fast.
My blood is boiling, the adrenaline is pumping. Thinking fast is exactly what I’m good at. Of course, I haven’t always been. Many years in this fucking nightmare have sharpened that particular aspect.
So what do I do?
I think fast and grab the zombie’s tongue. It’s cold as ice, cold as you’d expect a corpse’s tongue to feel. It squishes between my fingers like putty.
Since I’m basically out in the open without any cover, I pull—the most dangerous part of a zombie, mind you—toward me and drop to the ground.
Bullets eat away the rotten flesh, spray me with cold, gelatinous blood.
But I’m still alive—in desperate need of a shower, yeah, but alive.
This idiotic District guard wasted his whole clip on the zombie. He fumbles in his pocket for another one. Before he can even get it out, my pistol rips a hole in his head. Right between the eyes. No body shots anymore, I tell myself.
Surviving in the wasteland is all about adaptation.
The zombie grunts something that might be: ‘Hey man, what about me?’
I swear I’m going crazy, because that’s what I’m imagining in my head. What’s even crazier is that I reply to the dead bastard.
“I didn’t forget about you.” I squeeze the trigger again.
His head explodes like a squeezed grape. This close, shooting a zombie is never fun. You get covered in its brains and diseases.
The zombie drops.
Across the way, Abby’s Ford is getting eaten alive by bullets, but the rounds bounce off the metal, barely leaving a ding in the paint job. The thing is armored, and I’m thinking to myself, Fucking District.
The door opens. Abby has an assault rifle. She sprays at a wave of zombies. They drop, and behind them, a group of soldiers trying to keep the building from being compromised eat the rest of the bullets.
“Jack!” she shouts. “C’mon.” She waves me in with her hooked hand.
In case you’ve forgotten, Abby had her left hand cut off right around the wrist. She was bitten. One of the few people I’ve known that’s been bitten and still lived to tell the tale. She may have lost a hand, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the other option.
I look down at the zombie I just killed, step over it.
That’s the other option.
Cross the way toward the Ford. I stop at the guard I disposed of. Take his machine gun. I don’t know what the hell it’s called. My brother Norm would—though he might not tell me, since he’s currently under the control of the man who took my family away. Brainwashed by some asshole calling himself the Overlord.
I guess it doesn’t matter if I don’t know what this gun is—I know its purpose. I know what will happen if I pull the trigger and some unfortunate soul or zombie is in my line of fire.
It’s a beautiful thing.
It’s a terrible thing.
But it’s our way of life now: kill or be killed. Kill or be eaten.
As I cross the battlefield toward the Ford, I notice the gunfire has stopped. The only sounds besides the constant ringing in my ears, are screams from the dying, and grunts from the dead as they feast. Hardly any of the zombies mill about. They may be dead, but they’re not entirely stupid. They know when it’s dinnertime.
To my right, about half a dozen rotters have a hold on each one of this skinny guy’s arms. He’s the rope in a gruesome game of tug-of-war. Pretty soon I hear this terrible rip and an even worse scream.
I decide to look elsewhere. I don’t need to see; the mental picture that I painted solely based on the sounds of his arms being ripped off is good enough. Sinew. Bones. Blood. Always blood. The way his face pales as that blood spurts out of him and the ground drinks it up like a sponge.
Yeah, no thanks.
“We go in, I go right, you go left,” Abby says.
I nod.
She switched out her fake hand, which is made of two metal pincer-like things that allow her to grab stuff, attaching a gleaming metal hook. I see that this gleaming metal hook is no longer gleaming. It’s red and black with blood and diseased brains. Dripping.
Seeing this, I know I’d follow Abby anywhere. She’s a badass.
Maybe in the old world, people might’ve given me shit for letting a woman lead. People would’ve made some distasteful comment about making Abby get back in the kitchen or something like that, and maybe the old Jack Jupiter would’ve chuckled, but the new Jack Jupiter would punch that person right in the face—
Actually, probably not, but only because Abby would beat me to the literal punch.
She knows how to lead. I trust her with my life. So many years ago, we’d trekked across what was once called America, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her.
So now, I know, is no different.
“I’m guessing maybe a dozen more. Crazy fuckers brainwashed and ready to give their life for this gasoline,” she’s saying. “Let Lilly know.”
I nod again. Turn and fire a shot into the air. Just one shot. A couple of zombies turn their face toward me. Blood-smeared. Yellow eyes. But that’s all they do, since they’re in the middle of feasting. No sense chasing down a meal when there’s a fresh one right in front of you, right?
Lilly fires a shot in return. We wait for her so we can regroup.
None of the zombies bother us, they just go on picking their victims apart. Most of the people have stopped screaming now. Most.
One poor guy has his entrails draped over his face. His arms are flailing all around, beating at the zombies. They don’t care. Don’t give two shits. About two minutes later, the guy is no longer flailing. He’s dead, and the zombies are filling their rotten bellies with his flesh.
Someone else is saying “Please! Please!”
The next time he says ‘please,’ one of the dead take a chunk out of his throat, and his voice turns all watery, like his lungs are filling up with fluid. With blood.
“Pretty gnarly,” Lilly says as she approaches.
“Ain’t seen nothing yet,” Abby replies, and offers a smirk that isn’t very comforting.
I don’t know what would be comforting right now.
“Here’s the plan,” Abby continues. “Jack and me are gonna go in through the front door. He’s going left. I’m going right. I want you to post up outside near the back. If all things go as planned, whoever’s in there will make a run for it. If they do, I want them dead.”
Lilly looks a little apprehensive at the mention of the word dead. I put a hand on her shoulder and give her a reassuring squeeze, letting her know she can do it. She’s strong.
She, of course, shrugs me off.
“Dead? I don’t know about that, Abby,” Lilly says. “I can put a bullet in their leg, maybe disarm them, but I don’t know about killing.”
“They deserve it,” Abby says. “Trust me.”
Lilly nods. She still looks a little apprehensive. Her face is pale, and her eyes are looking everywhere but us.
“Go on,” Abby says, “we’ll cover you.”
Lilly nods and goes. We cover her, but there’s no reason to. The zombies don’t even notice, and all the soldiers out here are dead or in the process of dying.
“You ready?” Abby asks.
“Just like old times, eh?”
She nods. “Yeah, but we’re stronger now. Should go better.”
I say, “You’re right,” but know that’s probably not the case. Rarely do things ever go right in the apocalypse. Rarely.
The front door is a tall slab of gray metal. There’s no doorknob, just this long, thick latch that looks like it would give a chainsaw trouble.
Abby says, “Cover your ears.”
I don’t. My ears are
so messed up these days, I know it doesn’t matter.
She aims for the hinges opposite the latch. Puts nearly a whole clip in them until the door is covered with holes, and the latches are nothing but jagged nubs of metal. The door falls forward and swings crookedly.
We enter through a dark corridor. Quiet.
“Up ahead, to the right,” Abby says.
Times like these, I’m surprised at how slow my heart can beat. Back in the day, my heart would be thumping out of my chest; now it’s as smooth as if I were relaxing on a beach somewhere. Like Haven.
We come out on the warehouse floor. The place is huge, bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. There’s a strip of smooth concrete in the middle, and on each side of this strip are pallets, stacked twenty feet high with drums of gas and oil. These pallets run the length of the warehouse, I’d guess about a hundred or so feet. That’s a lot of fuel.
The place seems empty. No bad guys. Still, we are smart enough not to completely discredit the idea that they’re hanging around. Vermin always stick to the shadows, don’t they?
So I go left, and Abby goes right. I round one of the pallets and see a shopping cart. This brings a smile to my face. The shopping carts you see nowadays, fifteen years after the zombies claimed the world for themselves, are rustic artifacts from another age. This one is all gleaming steel. Even the lug nuts in the middle of the wheels sparkle. There’s a rubber mat on the inside of the cart with circular impressions. This is how they transport the drums of gas and oil. I find that funny. No forklifts, no professional equipment—a true testament to how far this world has fallen behind.
But the smile fades when I hear footsteps behind me.
I spin fast.
Nothing there.
I’m in the maze of pallets, and it’s dark in here, the only light coming in through windows on the roof of the warehouse.
Footsteps again, this time to my right. I spin once more, and there’s nothing there. I turn back around.
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