by Mark Justice
Jubal began shooting zombies.
Randy Minear was?rst. He and Jubal had played little league baseball together down at the city park. Randy had been an amazing short stop. He still moved pretty quick, faster than any of the walking dead Jubal had seen. He was almost on Jubal before the shotgun was raised. The blast removed most of Randy’s head, splattering bone and brains and gore onto the undead behind him. The headless corpse toppled backward, causing several of the zombies to trip and become tangled up.
Jubal took a few steps back to give him some room to maneuver. As he did, he pumped another round into the chamber of the Mossberg. Seven shots to go. Then he had the other shotgun on his back and the Glock in his belt.
A nude?gure struggled past the mass of zombies on the?oor, rolling over the other bodies and landing in front of Jubal. The dead thing stood and he recognized the decaying form of Margie Gilmore, the?rst woman he ever saw naked. When he was 13, he had chased a baseball into her backyard. After he retrieved the ball, Jubal glanced at the sliding glass door and saw Mrs. Gilmore-the mother of his friend Kent-standing there in the nude. Her breasts were quite large and sagged more than a little. Jubal didn’t care. He was frozen in place, blushing over his entire body as he stared at the brown areolas and incredibly large nipples. She held a drinking glass in one hand and she used the other to rub her belly, which served to direct his eyes toward the unkempt thatch of black hair below her navel. Jubal managed to get his body moving then, and he sprinted back to the city park. He never told anyone about the encounter, perhaps because he found it both disturbing and arousing, and he took care to stay far away from Mrs. Gilmore after that.
Now she was within a foot or two of him. The thought of her touch made his stomach do a nauseating?ip. He pointed the Mossberg and removed the left side of her head. Her right eye stared at him as she toppled to the?oor.
Six shells left in this one, Jubal. Choose wisely.
Three of the disgusting creatures squeezed through the door, two pushing the one in front. Jubal didn’t recognize any of them. All three tripped over the two bodies on the?oor, and one of them?ew through the air and struck Jubal before he could?re the shotgun. He was knocked onto his back with the zombie on top of him.
It had been a man of medium build. His face was pockmarked by the ruptured boils, and the familiar odor of disease threatened to choke Jubal. The thing swiveled its head toward Jubal’s neck and snapped its jaws. It made a tuneless humming sound, just like Jubal’s father had done when he puttered around in the garage.
The shotgun was pinned between them, its barrel aimed across Jubal’s chest. He worked his left hand up against the zombie’s side and shoved at the snapping monster. Beneath the creature’s t-shirt, the?esh shifted and rolled like the meat on a roasted chicken. As soon as he had enough room to move the Mossberg, Jubal squeezed the trigger. The recoil threw the zombie into the air and drove Jubal’s right elbow into the hardwood?oor. He felt something crunch in the joint and a searing jolt of pain exploded in a white?ash that threatened to drive him to unconsciousness.
The zombie wasn’t dead. That thought was enough motivation to force Jubal to his feet. His vision swam in and out of focus, but he could see the creature also struggling to stand. Part of its chest and left shoulder were missing. The humming had turned into an angry howl. At least it sounded angry.
Jubal brie?y wondered if the dead things felt anything, whether anger or fear. He decided he didn’t care. He switched the shotgun to his left hand and ended the creature with a headshot.
He had used four shots and there were still so many of them trying to pour in through the door. The pain from his right arm was excruciating. He thought retreat might be a prudent course. He pumped a shell into the Mossberg with a one-armed gesture.
Just like a movie hero.
Cold, dead hands closed on his neck from behind.
How-?
He spun around, though it meant turning his back on the others. The zombie turned with him, so he assumed it was a child or a small woman. He still couldn’t see it but at least he knew how it got the drop on him. The picture window in the living room had shattered. It must have happened when he was down on the?oor. He had almost blacked out and his ears were ringing from the shotgun?re, so he wouldn’t have heard it.
He used the barrel of the Mossberg to swat at the thing on his back. His effort had no effect.
Something tore into the?esh at the base of his neck. Jubal screamed and threw his body against the wall. The grip on his neck loosened and he spun around. His attacker was a girl, probably 13 or 14 years old. Her long blonde hair was braided into pigtails.
Jubal’s blood decorated her lips.
He screamed again as he shoved the tip of the barrel under her chin. He pulled the trigger, and the ceiling was painted with the contents of her skull.
Oh sweet Jesus, it bit me!
He backed toward the hallway, keeping his eyes on the advancing dead.
He kept the shotgun level in front of him. With his right hand he felt around on the back of his neck. The pain in his arm made him whimper.
The wound was small, but it was deep and the edges were ragged. His body went cold.
Am I going to change?
He didn’t know if Fiona had been right when she said Jubal was immune to the disease. Even if he were, would the immunity hold up to a direct bite? He imagined the virus or bacteria or whatever it was making its way through his bloodstream, tweaking him as it went along, soon to materialize as ugly, pus-?lled blisters. The next step would be his induction into the dead army.
No fucking way. It wasn’t going to happen.
If it came to that, he would take Fiona’s way out. He would never become one of those things.
Several of the monsters had worked their way past the bodies on the?oor and were getting close to him.
“Motherfuckers,” Jubal said. He started toward them.
He shot the?rst one in the head.
“Fuck you.”
Two more of the things approached, taking its place. One of them was Patty from the diner. Her smile had been replaced by a hungry grin. Her black tongue played across her swollen lips in a disgusting parody of seduction. Patty hadn’t even been sick two days ago. Was this plague working faster the longer it was in the air?
He did another one-handed pump to ready the shotgun.
“Sorry, Patty.” The blast tore through her face and removed the back of her head.
A crazy thought entered his mind: No more Wednesday special.
Laughter welled up in his chest, the crazy kind that you couldn’t let out. Once it took root it would never stop. He jacked another shell into the chamber and killed Patty’s companion.
The?rst shotgun was empty. He dropped in on the?oor and swung the other Mossberg off his shoulder.
The next zombie through the door was Mr. Handley, his high school math teacher. Handley had given Jubal a particularly hard time in school, apparently owed to an old encounter Handley had with Jubal’s dad. It wasn’t hard to pull the trigger this time.
A shadow fell across the?oor.
Jubal whirled to see two teenagers-a boy and a girl-nearly upon him. He had forgotten about the broken picture window.
There was no time to pump the Mossberg. Jubal swung the shotgun like a ball bat. He knocked the girl to the ground. He struck the boy in the face, driving the zombie to its knees. Jubal hammered at the creature again and again until the thing’s head was pulped and it lay unmoving. He pumped another shell into the chamber, praying the barrel wasn’t ruined.
The girl was twitching on the?oor as if she were in the throes of an epileptic seizure.
He stood over her and?red the shotgun.
The barrel seemed to be in good shape. The girl’s brain matter was spread around her like an unholy aura.
There was no movement near the picture window, so he turned back to the front door. Some of the creatures must have moved on. Only two remained in the doorway. The larger
of the two, Damon’s old friend Red, shoved his way past the cute cashier from the Amoco station. Red held his arms in front of him,?exing his?ngers, seemingly anxious to get a grip on Jubal. The dead man made hooting sounds that sounded like some great ape.
Jubal raised the shotgun to pump in another shell. He was covered in blood and other bits of his former neighbors, and his right arm was screaming at him. The wound on the back of his neck didn’t hurt anymore, but it throbbed in time with his pulse.
He sprayed Red’s head across the room. Bits of blood, bone and brain spattered the walls, dotting the Amoco girl, who hungrily licked the gore off her lips with a long gray tongue.
After he blew the Amoco girl away, he walked to the broken picture window and took a peek outside. In the middle of the street, the zombies had a screaming teenage girl pinned down. Her distressed cries reached a fever pitch when one of the larger zombies tore her arm from its socket with a loud pop. An arc of blood squirted straight up from within the swarming mass of dead. The girl’s screaming was muf?ed, then gone. The fresh glistening blood that had splattered the zombies looked like wet red paint.
There was nothing Jubal could do for the girl now. He wondered if she had been the last living townsperson besides himself. It sure seemed like it. The dead were walking everywhere. Jubal never knew the town had so many people. He’d never seen this many at the monthly town meeting-ever.
Several zombies wandered about in Jubal’s front yard. One was amusing itself by repeatedly skewering its?nger on the long needles of one of Ma’s favorite cacti.
Jubal stepped back into the house and reloaded the Mossbergs. As he worked, he happened to glance up at a shelf on the wall next to the TV. There sat an old picture, one that had been there so long that Jubal had stopped noticing it until now. It was of himself as a child with his mother and father standing proudly behind him. His Dad had his hand on Jubal’s shoulder. Everyone was smiling for the photographer and looking quite happy.
They had been happy.
Jubal took the picture down and removed the photo from its frame.
Rubbing his neck, which had stopped bleeding, he went to the kitchen and put the picture along with some non-perishable food into a sturdy grocery bag. He would have used his backpack, but that was in his bedroom and he wasn’t about to go in there ever again.
The picture reminded him of something he hadn’t thought about in a long time. He went to his mother’s bedroom and opened her closet. Moving aside dresses and blouses, Jubal reached to the back corner and felt the item he had been searching for. The closet smelled of his mother’s perfume and it made him dizzy with memory, so he quickly pulled the item out and slammed the door closed.
In his hands he held his father’s Tango-51 sniper ri?e. He wondered if there was extra ammunition for it in the closet but he couldn’t bring himself to open that door again. Once was enough. He’d keep the memories trapped there. They were of no use to him now.
There was a thud. Something large was moving down the hallway toward the bedroom.
He leaned the ri?e against the bed near the grocery sack and slid the Glock from its holster.
A lone zombie, its face ruined by disease, saw him and lurched toward him. It moaned hungrily.
Jubal shot it in the head.
A gray-green goo streamed against the hallway wall as the thing fell to the?oor.
Jubal listened for more intruders but didn’t hear anything except for the ones outside, voicing their strange mewlings and groans.
He went to the bedroom’s front window.
Zombies wandered the property, blocking his path to the cruiser. One was sitting in the dirt of the front yard, staring into the face of a severed head, mumbling to it. The head didn’t belong to the teenage girl that had been attacked in the street. It was someone else’s.
“Fucking horror movie,” Jubal muttered as he slid the window open.
He poked the Glock out, aiming at the seated zombie. He pulled the trigger and made a hole in its forehead. Toppling over, the zombie lay still as the severed head rolled back and forth in the dirt.
The other zombies looked around, wondering where the shot had come from.
Jubal pulled back into the room so they wouldn’t see him.
After a moment, he glanced out and saw the zombies standing around the one he’d just killed, staring. One of them kicked the severed head into the street.
Jubal shot them in quick succession, with ammunition to spare. Grabbing the sack, and quickly glancing around the room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, he exited the house through the open window.
With three guns strapped to his back, the Glock and grocery sack in his hands, Jubal squatted down and moved quickly towards the cruiser. He unlocked the car using the keyless entry. As he swung the door wide, several of the zombies moaned loudly, having?nally taken notice of him.
Jubal shot at the nearest one, but missed. He shoved his equipment and supplies into the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel, slamming the door closed behind him. He turned the car on and it roared to life.
The gas gauge read half. That would get him well out of town and hopefully to a station along the highway.
Something slammed against the driver’s side window. Jubal turned to see Doc Mitchell with his dead face pressed against the glass. Slime oozed from his lips.
Jubal showed the doctor his middle?nger, then stepped on the gas.
Doc Mitchell spun around and fell on his ass in the street as Jubal sped away.
“That’s what you get for being such a lousy fucking doctor.”
The zombies wandering the streets of Serenity proved a worthy obstacle course. When Jubal couldn’t maneuver around them or nudge them aside with the car, he drove straight over them with a satisfying bump. He had to use that tactic sparingly, as long as he needed the car.
As he rounded a corner, he slammed on the brakes.
Previous to this moment, every zombie Jubal had ever seen had either wandered aimlessly or attacked like a rabid animal.
The cruiser faced east. Spanning the road ahead of it was a line of zombies standing at attention. Behind this row was another. And another.
Jubal put the car in reverse as other zombies joined the formation, and as, all at once, they began to move.
Like a dead army.
Jubal turned the car around and sped back down the road, knocking aside any stray zombies in his path.
They were bad enough as feral beasts of the dead, but this new thing seemed even more unnerving. Organized zombies.
It struck him that he was leaving town for good, a town he had loved and hated (but not really). Serenity was his home and he was going to miss it. And he was going to miss all the people who had made it a home. Who had made his life worth living. Ma, Damon, Fiona, Pops Perez and the rest. All gone now. All dead.
Was his life worth living anymore? Was he alone in a world of zombies, or were things okay in Texas or up north? Out east? He wouldn’t know unless he found out for himself. Who was responsible for all this? There were so many questions. And Jubal wanted concrete answers. Not rumors, theories and half-remembered snatches of dreams.
He took a side road west, which led to Highway 285. He knew he couldn’t go north. That way was blockaded, unless the zombie army had gotten to the soldiers. Maybe he could go south.
But Jubal didn’t reach the highway.
Ahead of him stretched regiments of zombies, all facing west, all in?le. They trudged along, keeping in perfect step with each other. They must have come from other small towns in the area.
There were thousands of them.
Something glinted in the bright blue sky.
Jubal stopped the car and looked up through his windshield.
Some sort of silver vehicle, like an airborne jet-ski, buzzed over the army of zombies. At one point it hovered in place. Then it buzzed around again, herding the undead towards the west-towards Nevada. It was too far away and Jubal wished he had remembered bino
culars so he could have a better look. But it was close enough to see the color of the rider’s clothing.
Red.
For a brief moment he thought it might be some new military craft. Then he recalled the dream, the half-remembered details suddenly and sharply in focus.
The?gure in crimson strode across a sea of dead bodies, waving a silver staff, urging the corpses to rise and obey him. As the cadavers struggled to obey, the man in the robes turned to look at Jubal. It wasn’t human. The head was too tall and very thin, as if a giant had squeezed it between its?ngers. The eyes were black, deep set between the angular cheekbones. There was no nose to speak of and the mouth was nothing more than a cruel gash. Behind the creature, yellow mist billowed and rose like stage fog in a magician’s show. Jubal knew it to be poison, a foggy messenger carrying the plague of the dead army.
He snapped to full alertness. He wasn’t sure how much of the memory had actually been in his dreams, or if his subconscious had embellished the scenario. He quickly decided it didn’t matter. The dream-the memory — had the feeling, the texture of truth.
And if it were true, the implication was monstrous. It meant this wasn’t an accident. It meant there was a design here, a hand responsible for the death of all he had ever known and everyone he loved.
And if it wasn’t true, Jubal decided he didn’t care. He had endured more than any person could rightfully expect in a lifetime. It was time for a little payback.
He stepped out of the car, leaving the engine running.
He estimated the dead army was less than two hundred yards away. The odd?ying machine that carried the red-robed?gure darted over the lurching creatures, looking as harmless as a?re?y from this distance. There seemed to be no reaction to Jubal’s presence. They either didn’t know he was there or they didn’t care.
That was about to change.
Jubal calmly removed the sniper ri?e from the cruiser. His father had purchased the Tango-51 though the sheriff’s of?ce, so he could get the professional discount. He had called it the?nest ri?e ever made. Jubal ran a hand over the green and black?nish. His father had taught Jubal to always care for his weapons so he would be able to rely on them. Jubal had followed that advice. It was close to two years since the gun had been?red and Jubal had cleaned it afterward, as he always did. He knew it would?re accurately. He slid back the big bolt action and made sure it was loaded. He didn’t think he would need more than one round.
