Fireworks? Yeah, a pretty useless plan, I guess.
I look over the edge to where the motel’s sign stands high in the dark about a football field and a sea of flesh-eating monsters away. It still glows, but no longer flickers. None of the rooms have their lights on, not even the room Darlene and I stayed in. This hurts to think about. Maybe she left. Maybe she’s dead. I know she’s afraid of the dark. She wouldn’t have the lights off with monsters everywhere.
Then the rational part of my brain kicks on. Of course, I know she wouldn’t keep the lights on. That would only bring more attention to her.
I sigh and turn away, looking down the length of the roof.
Something catches my eye. Something so weird that it forces me to stand up.
It’s two lawn chairs and they are angled toward the middle of the town square where the large cache of fireworks would’ve been set off to signify the end of the festival and another year of independence. People were up here. Probably a dad and his son, or a boyfriend and girlfriend, only wanting to enjoy a show on a night off from the steel mill or the diner.
This also hurts to think about because it could have easily been Darlene and me. We might be zombies, but at least we would’ve been together.
As I look more closely, my feet spur me forward on their own accord. A dark stain draws my eyes. I know what it is before I’m close enough to confirm it.
It’s blood.
Blood. Always blood. The whole town is drowning in blood.
This blood is fresh and sticky.
I limp toward it, saying in a soft whisper, barely heard over the rising moans of the dead, “Oh no oh no oh no.”
I see the hair first. Blonde hair, hair that looks just like…Darlene’s. Then a hand, a pale hand with her fingernails painted. They’re an emerald green.
I stop before I can see the face, my heart stopping with me. I don’t want to see the face. I don’t want to see my fiancé dead, her features twisted and distorted by disease.
But I have to.
I step forward, still far away, not knowing if I can get any closer.
It’s not Darlene, but it’s someone who I do recognize. A woman who was once the most popular girl in high school, the same class as I was. Prom queen, Homecoming queen, head of the student council. It’s Bella Dawson, and ten years hasn’t really changed her much, only her violent death has. Her throat has been ripped out, leaving a jagged, red smile in the skin. Her eyes are no longer blue; now, they are rolled back, bloodshot whites. Blood stains her fingers and hands from when she probably tried to stop whatever did this to her. I never liked the girl, but it’s sad to see her in this state. She was Freddy Huber’s girlfriend. I don’t know if they were still together, I know he still lives at home, he never got married, he’s a momma’s —
A sound stops me dead in my tracks. It’s a soft mushing sound.
My heart leaps to my throat, now kickstarting into overdrive.
It’s the sound of a feast.
As the dead man looks up at me from behind the concrete box, his eyes blazing with yellow fire and his mouth dripping red, I nearly piss my pants.
It’s Freddy Huber.
35
It’s like he recognizes me. The look he gives is of pure hatred. The others, like the ones from the recreation center and the ones currently trying to figure out how to climb the ladder that leads up here, always look hungry.
But Freddy Huber must be full.
He doesn’t look much different than when I saw him yesterday. He’s dressed a little nicer, wearing a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt now crusted with his old girlfriend’s blood and guts, but his hair still stands up in that awful cowlick, and his face is still gaunt from the sickness that eventually turned him into a zombie
For a second, I’m back in high school, back in the locker room after gym class my sophomore year. He’s got me cornered in the last row of lockers, the row that has no exit at the back like the other rows, only an entrance. Now, it’s not a locker, just two stories, a crowd of the dead, and the hard blacktop keeping me in the clutches of this demented asshole.
He lumbers forward, groaning.
Run! I tell myself. Run before your head is drowning in toilet water. Run before he bloodies your nose!
“No,” I say aloud. The sound of that word is like an angel’s harp to my ears. “No, Huber. You’re not winning this time.”
Without even thinking, I rip the lighter out of my pocket — thank God it’s still there — then I put the Roman Candle’s wick between my thumb and forefinger. The lighter strikes but doesn’t catch.
Huber is closer, bloody saliva dripping from his mouth like a rabid dog. A spark of flame shoots outs from the Bic, but a strong wind follows it, blowing it out, and in turn, blowing Huber and the half-eaten Bella Dawson’s stench full-force into my face.
I flick the lighter again.
This time, the wind doesn’t blow. This time, the lighter sparks and catches.
The wick sizzles, sending sprays of sparks in every direction. Freddy looks at it like a gullible man looks at a hypnotist’s watch. Then the wick is gone, vanished into a puff of gray smoke. As the smoke wafts into the air, and I feel the charging blast thrum through my fingers, the heat on my face.
Just as Freddy snaps from hypnotized back to his primal, dead self, he opens his big, fat mouth.
I aim the Roman Candle dead center.
The first fireball shoots out at what seems like a hundred miles per hour. It’s bright blue like a ball of electricity.
First shot: Bulls-eye.
Second shot: Bulls-eye.
So is the third, the fourth.
An array of colors burns inside of his mouth. Scarlet red, electric blue, dragon green, sunshine yellow. His flesh smolders, melts right in front of me, dripping like candle wax.
His eyeballs turn to pools of liquid inside of their sunken sockets. Fire burns through his cheek, showing me teeth never properly cared for. He stumbles backward, moaning and groaning…but this time the sounds are different, this time they’re pained, perhaps. I know it’s just my imagination, but I think the real Freddy — the one that’s not a zombie — is still in there, and that Freddy is screaming.
I drop the Roman Candle and it goes off a couple more times, sounding like thunder cracks.
Freddy chokes on the fire, and I stand up as straight as my broken and beaten body will let me. “It’s over,” I say as I kick him square in the chest. “Fuck you.”
His arms flail out. The parapet catches him in the back of his knees, and he falls off the roof almost exactly like his father had fallen off the recreation center.
But I don’t go over with this Huber.
The splat of his corpse is both mortifying and equally satisfying, better than any punch I could’ve thrown. My own knees are weak, and I find myself collapsing. A choked sob escapes the back of my throat. Soon, the moans and shuffles from the horde below me start to fade. They are going to him.
I have to see it.
It takes almost all the strength I have left, but I grab the edge of the low wall and pull myself up. The horde surrounds Freddy Huber. He is the flaming center of the dead circle for just a second. The bright fire is a distraction for a moment but not long enough.
The horde splits up. They are back to their aimless lumbering, their unanswered grunts and moans of death. They head toward the alley, destroying my only means of escape.
I look to the motel. Re-killing Freddy Huber was just a small victory, winning the battle, not the war. I still need to get to Darlene, and I will by any means necessary.
The pain in my body pulses, reminding me I won’t be able to jump from roof to roof or swoop down from the heavens and save the day.
Above me, the white glow of the motel sign seems to dim.
“Darlene, I’m — ”
A whine slices through the air, cutting me off. I snap my head to the direction of the sound — or where I think it came from, it’s so loud it sounds l
ike it’s coming from everywhere. When I see the bright streak of fire shoot from the alley, I know I’ve looked to the right spot.
It pierces the night sky with streaks of red. Another follows soon after, exploding a beautiful blue.
I hear Abby laughing down below. “Happy Fourth, you bitches!” she yells.
In one motion, despite the pain, I’m hunching over the parapet, looking over the edge, down to where she stands. The firework display hangs out of the door, and she rips the rockets off the rack and lights them like clockwork. Three more blast off into the air.
The dead who were encroaching the alley are dumbfounded. All their heads turn to the fire in the sky. Most of the group starts to lumber away to the bright lights. They move like a heard of drunken buffalo, but they move nonetheless.
“Abby,” I hiss. She barely hears me over the whistle, whine, and explosion of the fireworks.
“Come down!” she says. “Fast!”
Another rocket explodes to my left. The town square lights up like Times Square.
“Darlene,” I mutter.
With all the pain in my body, I force myself to grab the rusty metal of the ladder. I swing my legs over and step down as fast as I can. About fifteen seconds later, I’m on the concrete ground.
The smell of fire is in the air.
“They worked,” Abby said. “You were right.”
“I told you,” I say.
She brings the flame to another wick, but I stop her before she lights it. “Wait, let me do this one.”
I grab the rocket with a hand that’s covered in dry blood. It’s a thick green one with PHANTASTIC printed on the side. The alley is clear enough for me to walk almost to the end. I don’t want to get too close, but I’m about three feet from the sidewalk, looking at the square, seeing all of its corners. Seeing Freddy Huber who’s nothing but a charred piece of meat. Behind him is Nini’s Gardens with a red, white, and blue array of flowers in the windows. Next to that is the Barn Door Diner, an antique shop called Relics of the Past. In the middle of the square are a few small trees, a fountain where dead, devoured citizens hang from the edge. There’s a couple benches. Dead bodies hang over those, too.
I don’t aim for any of these as I strike the lighter.
I aim for a telephone pole — it’s a large, looming piece of wood, shaped like a capital T behind Nini’s Gardens. On each side of the wood are two rusty, gray transformers connected to a bunch of wires that run the length of the town, more wires branch off from it in a perfect square. These wires, in turn, run the length of the town. The concept called Domino Effect flashes in my mind.
The transformers are far but I know I can hit them with the rocket. Somehow, I just know.
I light the wick.
The sea of dead shift like calm waves, their heads tilted up to a flaming sky.
Abby must see what I mean to do. Her hand touches my shoulder right where the sleeve has ripped. Her skin is surprisingly cold and clammy.
“Jack,” she says.
I’m picturing the town burning, picturing me putting an end to this place once and for all.
“I have to,” I say.
The thought of Darlene gone to the square to look for me crosses my mind, and of survivors hiding in these buildings, but I know that’s not the case. Darlene would stay put if she was okay, and I know there are no survivors in Woodhaven, especially not in the square.
Everyone but Abby and I are dead. A harsh realization. The truth.
The town is dead, and I have to bury it, I have to put the final nail in its casket.
The rocket explodes forward, its whistle muted by my own destructive thoughts.
We are showered in an array of sparks from its back end. The dead follow its line of flight with an almost human curiosity.
The rocket hits the transformer in an explosion of purple light. Fire follows shortly after — Hellfire, I think to myself.
A few wires disconnect, spraying sparks of blue and orange. One whips the flower shop, more snap the air like angry snakes. A lick of flame crawls down the rotten wood of the telephone pole until it splinters and collapses. Burning debris showers the garden center. Some of it breaks through the roof, and it doesn’t take long for the patriotic flowers inside to crinkle and wilt under the resolve of the flames. Everything blackens and turns to ash before my eyes.
Glass breaks. Smoke pours out.
All the while, the horde moves toward this chaos.
Flames don’t crawl this time; they sprint from building to building, jumping the gaps the way Olympic athletes jump hurdles. The diner is the next structure to catch. Then the antique store. Then the bank.
A few of the dead go up in a blaze, running into the crowd.
The rest is history.
36
With the town burning, the dead distracted, Abby and I run to the motel.
There are still dead stragglers, but they are too enamored by the dancing flames consuming the square to pay us any mind.
The motel is about half a block from the square. We hobble up Main Street, through the pools of blood. We tiptoe over the ruined bodies of people I faintly recognize, of people Abby whispers soft prayers to. It’s like we are walking through a WWII battlefield.
There’re not many dead — roaming or otherwise — at the motel, not anymore. I can see room 111 where Darlene and I stayed the past night with its curtains drawn. I pick up my pace as I round the corner of Main and break onto Second. Abby grabs my shoulder and says, “Wait,” in a whisper.
A group of zombies lumbers out from behind a row of parked cars. A bunch of guys who were probably drunk before all this shit went down, maybe ten years older than me and dressed in the Woodhaven Going-Out Attire — blue jeans, plaid shirts, trucker hats with their favorite beer company’s logo embroidered on the front. Except, blood stains their clothes like it’s this summer’s hottest accessory. One of the guys’ insides dangles from an open gash in his chest. A shiny, fist-like organ. I swear it’s the guy’s heart. It bounces up and down like a large medallion.
I want to kill them, too. Want to put them out of their misery, but we let them pass. As I stare at them laboring on toward the flames that will no doubt turn them to piles of ash, I see the curtains part slightly from the corner of my eye. Someone looks out onto the street. My breath catches, heart drops like I’m at the top of a roller coaster’s biggest hill and about to plunge down.
“Dar — ” I almost shout, but Abby wraps her hand around my mouth, cutting my stupid burst of excitement off.
One of the dead stop — the one with his heart literally on his sleeve — and looks toward us with gold eyes. A long moment passes before he turns back toward his comrades and starts walking again.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “That was stupid.”
Once the group of dead is completely out of sight, I cross the parking lot and go to the door, my heart pounding in my chest.
I knock once, softly.
“Darlene,” I whisper.
The door cracks. No light escapes the room.
Instead, a flash of metal pokes out, and I stare down the barrel of a gun, looking into the black hole of the muzzle. Now the roller coaster I felt like I was on has derailed. It was all for nothing. I didn’t think my heart could break anymore than it already has.
But it does.
It can’t be Darlene because as far as I know, Darlene does not have one of these.
37
“Room’s taken, buddy,” a gruff voice says from under the cover of the shadows.
The barrel of the gun pushes out farther. It’s a Magnum, something Clint Eastwood would carry around with him in Dirty Harry.
“Darlene. I’m looking for Darlene,” I say, and I don’t know how I speak. Maybe it’s because this wouldn’t be the first time I’m staring down the wrong end of a gun, maybe because I’ve seen the dead rise, maybe because I’ve done my fair share of killing — both dead and alive — and it’s time for me to be judged.
Or maybe I really am a changed man.
I push the door open.
Abby tries to grab at my shirt sleeve, but it’s too late. She misses.
The flames billowing up behind me paint the room — as well as the man standing in front of me — in a sickly, orange glow. There are two packed suitcases on the bed Darlene and I made love on no less than a day ago. The sheets are still half-splayed out on the shag carpet. A faint smell of cherry — Darlene’s shampoo — is in the air.
It takes me a moment to realize who the man is that stands in front of me, but it takes me almost no time at all to realize who the woman sitting in the chair on the far side with her knees drawn up to her chest and a paperback romance novel shaking in her hand is.
It’s Darlene, and the man who is now lowering his Magnum in front of me is my older brother — and at one point in my childhood, my arch nemesis — Norman. My body begins to shake, the steady vibrations of a rocket about to explode.
I shove past him. “Oh my God! I can’t believe it,” I say. Darlene is in my arms in less than three seconds. I kiss her long and deep. Tears roll down her cheeks, dampening my face. Her body shudders with sobs. Happy sobs.
“I knew you wouldn’t let them get you. I knew it!” she says, almost blubbering.
I hold her for just a moment longer. I never want to let her go, never again.
“Shh!” Norman says. “Get in, get in!”
“Why did you have to try out the gym? Why? Why?” Darlene says. She’s bawling now, hitting me in the chest with her barely-clenched fists. It hurts, the physical toll of my journey catching up with me, but I don’t care. She could shoot me, and I’d die happy.
“I kept her safe for you, little bro,” Norman says in a hushed whisper. He locks the deadbolt, then goes to look out the window. “Jesus, what did you guys do? Was that you shooting those freaks? Where’s the gun? We need all the firepower we can get right now.”
Dead Haven (Jack Zombie Book 1) Page 18
