This time I’m greeted with a fist to the gut. I double over and drop my gun. It goes clattering out of reach.
I look up with tears in my eyes, wheezing and trying to catch my breath. There’s this big, lumberjack-looking motherfucker in front of me. His fists are about as large as a couple of bricks, and he brings them both down on the back of my neck, right at the top of my spinal cord.
The pain is immediate and immense. I hit the cold floor face-first, taste the dirt and grit on the concrete.
Behind me, hands grab under my armpits.
“Hold ‘im there, hold ‘im!” the lumberjack motherfucker is saying.
I’m in pain, yes, but I’m still mentally sizing these assholes up. Two of them that I know about so far.
Now I’m up off the floor, and my head is spinning. I’m still wheezing. Can’t catch my breath.
Lumberjack cocks back another fist. He’s about eye level with me. I see in his windup that he means to knock my brains out. Means to shatter my teeth or my face or both.
The guy behind laughs. He thinks this is the funniest thing he’s ever seen in his life. Really, though, I’m betting he’s just batshit insane. Most of the District soldiers are. They’re all hopped up on that hippie cult stuff. Broke the first and most important rule a long time ago: don’t drink the Kool-Aid, man. Ever.
The lumberjack’s fist lets loose. I wish I could tell you that I slip away from the guy who’s holding me. I wish I could tell you that the lumberjack misses my face and clobbers his buddy’s.
I can’t.
But I do manage to move enough for the blow only to catch the side of my head, the hard part. If you’d asked Darlene a couple of years ago which part of my head was the hard part, she’d have told you it was the whole thing.
The guy’s knuckles crack against my skull. A high-pitched ringing fills my ears, and the filtered light coming in through the dirty windows above dims nearly to blackness. I’m pretty sure I have a concussion. Wouldn’t be the first time. Certainly won’t be the last; unless I die right here, which is not my intention.
“Hold ‘im still,” the lumberjack wheezes.
He’s gritting his teeth so hard that I’m pretty sure he’s about to grind them to dust. Or at least crack them, along with my head. There’s blood on his knuckles, and it shines bright among all the darkness. I’m hoping it’s not my blood. I’m hoping I made this bastard bleed with my hard head.
The next punch comes for my gut again. I flex my abdominal muscles…well, what abdominal muscles I have, which—spoiler alert—aren’t much.
The little breath I managed to hold in my lungs explodes out from my mouth. So does some blood. I feel something shift beneath my shirt. A rib, maybe. I try to double over, but the guy holding me won’t let that happen.
“Piece of shit street scum,” the lumberjack says. “Rebel-traitor-bastard!”
I start laughing. I don’t know why. It’s not funny. What’s happening to me is sad. All these years surviving, and I’m about to let Paul Bunyan bring it all to an end.
Maybe a few months ago, I’d be glad he was beating the shit out of me. Glad that I could at least still feel something—you know, back when I was depressed and too afraid to do myself in.
But that’s not the case anymore. I have something worth living for now. I have my brother, out there somewhere. I have the one-eyed man to kill.
I can’t die.
But I can’t stop laughing, either.
“Shut your fucking mouth!” the lumberjack says, and hits me again in the stomach.
I wheeze and gasp, spray some more blood on the concrete, but I’m laughing, too.
Maybe I’m actually losing my shit. Maybe my mind has officially snapped. It’s long overdue.
Still, in the back of my possibly crazy mind, I’m wondering where the hell Abby is. Why she hasn’t saved me.
She must’ve been attacked, too. I don’t hear her, and I haven’t heard any gunshots or any scuffling sounds of a struggle. Then again, I’m pretty far gone. My ears are still ringing, and the taste of the blood in my mouth is overwhelming, dampening all my other senses.
Except for the sense of pain, of course.
Lumberjack hits me with a right hook. Rocks my jaw.
“Yeah, I’ll make you shut the fuck up,” he says. “How about I crush your fucking larynx?”
Big word for such a big oaf, I think.
He cocks back again, aims for my throat.
Okay, enough is enough.
Still laughing, I push off my feet. Since the guy is holding—and unknowingly supporting—me, he makes this a lot easier. He basically lifts me up, too stunned to think about dropping me before I do what I do.
Which is kick the lumberjack right in the midsection. Hard.
He isn’t very tough. Looks can be deceiving, I guess. He drops to his knees, head bent, clutching his stomach.
His partner decides letting me go is now his best course of action.
Big mistake.
I spin on him, hit him with my fist. I connect with the side of his head. Not what I was aiming for, but I’m all woozy. Luckily, this guy isn’t as big as the lumberjack. If this was the animal kingdom, the African Savanna, he’d be the annoying hyena, waiting to pick at the scraps left behind by the lions.
Now, I’m not saying the lumberjack’s the lion, the king of the jungle, because he’s not. That’s me. I’m the fucking lion.
The one hit is probably enough. My knuckles rattle, crack, splinter, you name it. Maybe they’re broken. Maybe not. They’ll definitely be bruised when I get out of this. Because I am going to get out of this.
The hyena sways on his feet. He’s about to fall over. I decide to give him one for the road, the knockout punch. It’s a left hook on the bridge of his nose. I feel the cartilage give way, and blood spouts from his nostrils. He cries out and falls backward into the pallets stacked high with gas and oil drums. He’s out cold.
Perfect timing, too, because the lumberjack is up and saying, “I’ll kill you, you piece of shit.”
“Good luck.”
He comes at me fast. His steps are thunderous, shaking the whole warehouse. I’m a matador. Where’s my red cape?
The adrenaline is the only thing keeping me standing.
I slide to the right and slip behind him, swinging, all in one smooth motion. I give my sore knuckles a break, and crack the back of his head with my elbow, sending a jolt of pins and needles up my arm. He’s got quite a hard cranium, but I swear I hear a hollow thunk when I make contact.
His momentum carries him forward too hard and too fast. The sprawled-out hyena, a steady pool of blood dripping from his nose onto the floor probably saves me a lot more pain. The lumberjack’s boots slip, and he slides about five feet before he comes to a crashing halt at another pallet.
His problem is that he’s too big, too heavy, and his momentum causes the whole stack of drums to topple backward. The sound the drums make is louder than gunshots, echoing off the walls and damaging my eardrums all the more. But he’s down for the count, no chance he’s getting back up.
I find my gun beneath a pallet, pick it up. Norm would be so proud of me right now.
Right when I’m about to pull the trigger, Abby screams.
Well, she doesn’t scream. Abby isn’t a screamer. If she was in a horror movie, you’d never hear her wail and shriek like a stereotypical damsel in distress.
No.
She screams out a curse word.
I can’t really understand what it is, but it sounds an awful lot like ‘FUCK!’ Maybe even a ‘FUCK YOU!’ I don’t know, but I do know the next thing I hear. It is impossible to mistake.
Gunshots. One, two, three.
And they hit the drums of highly flammable fuel.
3
What goes through my mind is simple: Shit.
A perfectly normal reaction to gunshots fired in a place full of flammable substances. I’ve seen enough action movies to know that this won’t end well.
This place will probably blow sky high.
I follow the sound of the shots. The place isn’t that big, but it’s a maze of pallets and stacks of drums. I weave in and out of these, my heart hammering. Not for me, not really. But for Abby. She can’t die, not after she’s finally free from the District.
I see a skinny man in a flak jacket. His beard hangs almost to his belly button. I rush up to him and clobber him in the back of the head with the butt of my rifle. His knees go out and then he crumples to the floor. I take his handgun and slip it into my waistband.
Then I find the guy who’s shooting like an idiot. He’s fat, and his face is ruddy with color and sweat. He reminds me of a melting candle. I don’t know how he’s fat. You hardly see any fat people nowadays, with food so scarce and all; you only ever see fat zombies, stuffed with human and animal flesh and rotting organs. I guess working with the District has its benefits.
I catch this glimpse of him from the side, my back against more pallets of oil. He’s just blasting off in the general direction in front of him, not really aiming at anything in particular. Only a matter of time before he—
The shooting stops, the shots echoing through the entirety of the building, but I hear something else. The rushing of liquid.
Shit. The gas is soaking the floor. One unfortunate spark, and this whole place goes up in flames.
The fat guy is reloading.
I have to stop him before he kills us all. So I whistle.
He’s fumbling with the magazine as he looks up. I make myself very visible for him. No surprises here.
The way he looks at me, you’d think he might be seeing a ghost. I suspect that’s what he thinks I am. I mean, I’ve seen my reflection. I don’t look the way I used to, as if that was ever really good in the first place. My beard and hair are too long, my eyes are sunken in, my body is mostly skin, bone, and a few places where I’ve achieved wasteland muscle, which is an unhealthy type of muscle one develops in their arms and core from the constant swinging of heavy objects into the rotten heads of countless zombies (the whole lack of proper nutrition doesn’t help much, either). So yes, I’m pretty haunting.
And unfortunately for this fat guy who thinks it’s a good idea to shoot at a stack of barrels filled with gas and oil, I’m the last thing he sees.
I pull the trigger of my rifle. Unlike this asshole, my shot is true. I’m conservative when it comes to spending bullets, so one shot and this guy is looking up at the smoking hole in between his eyes. Blood drips down from the wound. He stumbles and falls into the pallet pretty hard. As he does, the weakened part of his skull cracks open. I’m reminded of an egg. His brains slosh out in a wave.
I rush over to him, careful not to slip in either gas or blood, both of which are about a quarter inch thick on the concrete. I grab his rifle and take it apart, pocketing the detached magazine. Spare ammunition always comes in handy.
I turn the corner. I don’t hear Abby anymore, and it’s just hitting me that maybe this fat guy wasn’t totally hopeless with his scattershot approach. I mean, yeah, it got him dead, but there’s a chance he actually hit something. Like Abby.
Suddenly a million scenarios are whirling through my mind. Like maybe she’s been hit and she’s bleeding out as I’m standing here with my thumb up my ass. Like maybe she’s been fatally hit, like in the head. Or maybe—
I turn the corner, and the answer is right there in front of my face.
A flood of relief courses through me. After all these years, after all the depressing shit I’ve seen, all the people killed, all the ones I cared about gone, there is a ray of hope shining on me right now.
It’s a small ray, sure, but a ray nonetheless.
Abby is alive, but another District goon is behind her. He’s big. Not ‘big’ in the sense of fat, but ‘big’ in the sense that this guy must’ve found a hobby in bodybuilding after the world ended. The veins bulging from his bared forearms and biceps are about as thick as the barrel of my rifle.
“Take another step, and I blow her head off,” he says.
“Don’t you know who that is?” I ask.
I’m trying to buy myself some time, trying to size this guy up. I think I have a shot at his head, which is about as big as the rest of him—steroids will do that to you, I guess. But he’s not very tall, and his head is about level with Abby’s. With one slight jerk, I could miss and blow Abby to hell with him. It isn’t worth the risk.
Then again, I’ve been in worse predicaments. The memory flashing through my head now is one of Doc Klein, the crazy bastard who took Darlene hostage, who used her as bait so he could dispose of me and know I would no longer be in his hair, no longer try to stop him from blowing the world and all the zombies and disease straight to hell. I pulled the trigger and blew his head off in Central’s base, off the lake where Herb died.
I was young and brash—and a little stupid. I’m smarter now. At least I think am. I know that the chances of me doing that again are slim. Very slim. Lightning never strikes the same place twice.
“Yeah, I know who it is. And I know who you are. You’re my meal ticket. My way to the top of the totem pole. I bring you both in, and I’m a fuckin’ star. I’m the Overlord’s right hand man. I’m a king,” he says. “Maybe I could even get on the Black Knights. Oh, man—”
“That’s lovely,” I say. “That positive thinking. But I have news for you: we’re not going anywhere. All we want is some fuel. You stand down, you get to live.”
“You’re not in a position to negotiate, Jupiter.”
“Wow, you weren’t lying. You know my name and everything.”
Abby says, “Jack, probably not the time to be a sarcastic asshole…”
The guy nods. “Yeah, Jack.”
He’s got a murderous grin on his face and a finger on the trigger. That makes me uneasy. He says he wants to bring us in and get his reward, so that means he won’t kill us, right? Sure. But that doesn’t mean he won’t hurt us. Smack us around a little, shoot me in the foot or the leg. Maybe have his way with us.
Yeah, I know, ‘Jack, maybe that’s a long shot,’ but I really wouldn’t put anything past these District people. They’re all kinds of messed up.
Plus, he’s hyped; the adrenaline’s coursing through him. One false move, and Abby’s dead. Not hurt. Dead. Bullet to the brain. I know this and I don’t like it at all.
This is when the backdoor bursts open, and Lilly screams our names. “Jack! Abby?”
Perfect timing, I think. Not.
That murderous grin on his face transforms into a snarl. He looks at me like this is all my fault, like I should’ve told him that our backup could show up at any moment.
The guy presses the gun harder against Abby’s temple. She grimaces in pain.
Running footsteps echo.
“Lilly, no!” I shout, but she doesn’t slow down.
I drop my gun and raise my hands up to show the guy I’m not trying any funny business.
Lilly bursts around the corner of the pallets, her rifle raised. As soon as she’s in clear view, the guy takes the pistol away from Abby’s forehead, and pulls the trigger.
Lilly yells out, “Fuck!” as the bullet sparks off of the concrete. The dry concrete, thank God.
“Stop!” I tell him. “Do you want to blow us all sky high?”
His gun is still aimed past my shoulder, in Lilly’s direction, his other forearm is pressed up against Abby’s throat. She’s turning a dark shade of red.
But not for long.
With the gun no longer pressed against her temple, Abby sees her opportunity. She’s fast. Really fast. Age hasn’t slowed her down at all. If anything, she seems more vicious than I’ve ever seen her. Then again, back in Haven when we were running things, we stayed away from combat for the better part of thirteen years. We lived comfortably—well, as comfortably as one can live while surrounded by millions of zombies.
Her leg flies back between the guy’s legs, hits him square in the testicles. It might be
a low blow, but when it’s life or death, low blows don’t mean a damn thing. She connects so hard that I swear I hear his balls pop; it sounds like logs in a campfire.
He howls in pain and squeezes the trigger again. I dive out of the way, feel the bullet whizz past my arm. It hits the concrete.
Sparks.
The spark catches the gasoline on the ground, and a rip-roaring wall of flame blossoms in front of me, between Abby and I. It comes up to waist level, so I can see what Abby does next. I almost wish I didn’t.
With her hook, she reaches behind her head. Luckily, over the roaring of the flames, I can’t hear the noise the guy’s eye makes as Abby stabs into it with the sharp point. But I do hear his screams. They’re terrible.
He stumbles backward. Drops the gun. His eye hangs from its socket, the optic nerve thick and rubbery, swinging back and forth like an out of control yo-yo. A sheen of blood pours from the socket.
“You fuckin’ bitch! You fuckin’ piece of shit!” the guy’s shouting. “I’m gonna rip your face off, I swear to God!” He hits the back wall, and smears a bloody handprint there.
That’s his last signature, I think, because Abby is on him again, slashing the hook in front of her. The bloody edge tears the guy’s throat out, and he can’t do much of anything anymore besides wheeze. And die.
He drops to his knees, clutching his throat with one hand and trying to put his eye back in its socket with the other. It’s a sad sight. I’m almost glad he can’t fully see himself.
Abby kicks him in the chest, and he falls backward, convulsing on the floor. Then he doesn’t move at all. He dies.
Now Abby runs through the flames, which have spread pretty far, which are heating up the barrels, which probably have enough oxygen trapped within to cause them to explode. We need to get out of here.
She stumbles past me, and I grab her before she can fall. Her hook drips blood that sizzles when it hits the floor and the flames.
“Lilly?” I yell.
“Here,” she yells back.
“We need to get out of here before it blows,” I say.
Dead Judgment Page 2
