The Z Club

THE Z CLUB

J.W. Bouchard

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

To learn more about the author visit:

http://www.jwbouchard.com

Be nice to nerds.  Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Bill Gates

I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum.

They Live,
1988

An isolated farmhouse.  Night.

The house was dark, which was to be expected as it was well past midnight, and the only sounds were the furnace kicking on (it was late November after all), and warm air passing through the house’s old vents.

Upstairs, the Carver family slumbered peacefully: Jack sprawled out on his back, snoring away, while his wife, Melinda, slept curled up in a fetal position on her side, facing away from him.

Down the hall, across from the bathroom, Katlyn, their fifteen-year-old daughter, slept soundly under her comforter, a Lady Gaga poster tacked on the wall above her bed.

At the end of the hallway, to the right, was Bobby’s room.  He had turned seven the day before, and a shattered piñata still sat on the floor at the foot of his bed, the guts exposed to reveal a respectable amount of candy.  Several empty candy wrappers littered the nightstand next to his bed.

There was a crash.  Loud enough that it tore through Jack’s snoring and whatever dream he was having.  He shot up in bed, silent and listening.  For a moment, there was nothing, but then he heard something fall and break.  Were they being robbed?  Way out here?  Last winter, a group of drunken teenagers had driven right into the ditch and Jack had been awoken by the sound of the doorbell at three-thirty in the morning to find a seventeen-year-old boy, his high school letter jacket soaked with blood from the nasty gash in his forehead, standing on the front porch.  So it wasn’t unheard of.  They lived on a dirt road, and the road often became treacherous after a decent storm.  Jack had lost track of how many times he had been called out to help pull someone’s vehicle out of the ditch during the rainy season.

But no one had ever tried to break in before; that kind of thing just didn’t happen around Trudy.

Jack slid out of bed and tiptoed to the bedroom closet, pushing aside a wall of clothes until he found what he was looking for.  He picked up the aluminum baseball bat that stood upright in the corner.  He stopped and listened, holding his breath until he could feel the blood pounding in his ears.  It was difficult to see, but he didn’t dare switch on the light.  Presently, that was one of two things he had going for him: the metal baseball bat and the element of surprise.

Jack crossed the bedroom, over to the door, wincing each time one of the floorboards creaked.  He put his ear to the door.  There was definitely something going on down there; from the sound of it, someone was ransacking the place and wasn’t the least bit interested in being quiet about it.

Or maybe a raccoon got in and is digging through the garbage,
he thought.  That had never happened before, but it was the most optimistic scenario his mind was willing to offer.

“What are you doing?”

Jack’s heart leaped in his chest and he nearly lost his grip on the baseball bat.  Through the darkness, he could just make out Melinda, propped up on her elbow, staring at him.

“Jesus, you scared the hell out’ve me,” he whispered.

Melinda’s eyes went to the baseball bat, her voice shrill when she said, “What’s the matter?”

 “I think someone broke into the house.”

“What?”

Jack put an index finger to his lips.  A moment’s silence was all the time Melinda needed to hear the commotion going on downstairs.

“Call the cops, Jack.”

“It’ll take too long.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

It was a reasonable question.  Finally, he said, “I’m not going to let them take all of our stuff.”  It sounded good; playing the macho hero guy, willing to put his life on the line to protect his family and his possessions.  But, really, he was holding out hope that it was nothing more than a family of wayward raccoons that had decided to stop by for a late night scavenging mission.  “I’m going to check it out.”

Melinda grabbed Jack’s cell phone from the nightstand.  “Well, while you play stupid, I’m going to call your brother.”

“Come on, Mel, don’t bother him.  It’s late.”

Melinda held the lighted display up so he could see it and said, “Get over it, it’s already done.”

I can’t believe it,
he thought. 
Being robbed and she
still
wants to argue about who’s wrong and who’s right.
 

Jack opened the door a crack and peered out into the hallway.  The stairs were to the left and then angled to the right at the landing, so he couldn’t see all the way downstairs.  He moved into the hall, walking to the staircase as quietly as he could with the baseball bat raised.

He took each stair one at a time, trying not to put his full weight on any one of them.  When he reached the first landing, he cautiously poked his head around the corner.  The front door was ajar.  Moonlight spilled in, forming a narrow path of light on the hardwood floor, and Jack saw a man kneeling there, hunched over as if he was examining something.  Despite the moonlight, Jack couldn’t get a good look at the hunched over man, but the man was moving his hands over something, which was accompanied by a sound like twigs being snapped in half.

Jack stepped into full view, raised the bat, and shouted, “Hey, asshole, what the fuck do you think you’re doing in my house!” 
Bet that’ll make him shit his pants,
he thought.

Slowly, the man sat up straight, and Jack could suddenly see what the man had been kneeling over: it was Meow Christopher, the Carver’s tiger-striped cat – or what was left of it anyway.  Most of Meow Christopher’s skin had been stripped away, and the white of the cat’s skull gleamed in the moonlight.  The man had broken the cat’s skull open and pulled away the fragments as though he had been peeling the shell off of a hardboiled egg.

Within a second, Jack felt himself pass through a gauntlet of emotions; traversing the spectrum from denial, to grief, to disgust, and finally settling on seething anger.  He raised the baseball bat higher and started down the stairs…until the kneeling man turned his face toward him.

Jack went rigid.  The baseball bat slipped from his hands.

That isn’t a man,
Jack thought, frozen in place as he stared at the train wreck that doubled for the man’s face.  One of the man’s eyes had been gouged out, leaving behind a sinewy mess that hung from the empty socket.  His lips were shredded and his nose had been torn away to flop against his cheek; all Jack could see were jagged teeth gnashing up and down inside a gaping black hole, stained red with Meow Christopher’s blood.

The man (
monster,
Jack’s mind insisted) lumbered to his feet.  Behind him, the door burst open all the way as more people shuffled through the doorway.  Their heads were tilted upward, gazing at Jack on the landing.  They shambled toward the stairs.

For a moment, Jack didn’t think he could move; that he would be helpless to do anything as the things came at him and he would end up a gutted sack of skin and bones like Meow Christopher.  But then something sparked in his brain, the connection was made, and he vaulted up the stairs.

Jack smashed through the bedroom door, slamming it shut behind him.

“What is it?” Melinda asked.  The cell phone fell from her hand, slid off the bed, and tumbled to the floor.  “What’s down there?”

Jack had his back against the door, putting his weight against it, breathing hard.  “N-not r-raccoons!”

“Jack, what are you talking about?  You’re scaring me!”

Jack looked at her, wide-eyed, as he struggled to find his bearings.  “C-cat…Z…z-zombies,” he stuttered.

“
What?
”

“The kids!”

Jack threw open the door and disappeared into the hallway.  Melinda watched in disbelief and confusion.  Less than a minute later, Jack returned, carrying Bobby in his arms and herding Katlyn in front of him.  He closed the door behind him and locked it.

Bobby rubbed sleep from his eyes.  Katlyn pushed hair out of her face and said, “Mom, what’s wrong with Dad?”

“Kids,” Melinda said, “I think your father has finally lost his mind.  It’s been a long time coming.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Jack said, eyes darting around the room before settling on the south window.  He rushed over to it, undid the latch, and threw open the sash.  “Okay.  One at a time.  Bobby, you first.”

Katlyn said, “Mom’s right.  You
have
gone crazy.”

Jack grabbed Bobby, carried him over to the window, and gently lowered him onto the roof of the porch.

“Come on, Kat.  You’re next.”

Katlyn shook her head.  “There’s no way I’m going out there.”

Jack tried to pick her up the same way he had picked up Bobby a moment ago, but she started batting at him with her hands.

“Stop it, Jack!” Melinda shouted.  “Bring him back in here
now
!”

There was another crash on the other side of the bedroom door.  It got Melinda’s attention.  Something smacked the outside of the door with enough force to make the frame shudder.

“Katlyn,” Jack said, “LET’S GO!”

At fifteen, Katlyn was old enough to have been scolded, yelled at, and grounded by her parents, but she had never heard her father sound so furious in her life.  Reluctantly, she walked over to the window and crawled out onto the porch roof.

Jack looked at Melinda and said, “Now you.”

“I’m not getting out of this –”

The bedroom door splintered at the center, and a face appeared in the opening.  It was Missing Nose Guy, gnashing his teeth together so they made a clicking noise.  He put his hands on the splintered opening, tearing out chunks of wood.

Melinda screamed and leaped out of the bed.  Jack had never seen her move so fast before.  Before he knew it, she ran across the room and climbed out the window, joining Bobby and Katlyn.

Jack was about to climb through the window himself, when he paused.  He went over to the door.  Missing Nose Guy had his head stuck most of the way through the hole.  Jack brought his leg back and then kicked it forward, smashing the ball of his foot squarely in the zombie’s face.  “That’s for our fucking cat!”

Jack climbed through the window and pulled down the sash.  Melinda, Bobby, and Katlyn were huddled together near the edge.  He joined them, peering over the side to the long drop below.

“It’s too high to jump,” Melinda said.  She had her arms around Bobby and Katlyn, holding them in a death grip.

Jack stared at the ground below.  It was almost winter, but they hadn’t gotten any significant snow.  He wished more than anything that instead of gazing down at cold hard dirt dusted with snow, he had been gazing at a two-foot high snow drift.  That would have cushioned the fall.  At least then they could have risked it.

From inside the house, they heard another loud crash, and the purpose-driven zombies flooded into the bedroom.  Jack hunched down next to his family, waiting in silence, praying that the zombies wouldn’t notice them and would eventually give up.

But Jack hadn’t ever considered himself a lucky man.  If anything, most of the time he thought he broke even; straddling that fine line between good luck and bad luck.

This time, the odds weren’t in his favor.  One of the zombies came close to the window, passed, but then did a double take.  It spotted them.

The glass shattered.  The zombies tried to climb through the window, ignoring the shards of glass that still clung to the frame.

“Jack?”

“Just give me a minute to think about this,” Jack said, glancing over the edge of the roof.  Was it doable?  He thought it was, but they might break some bones on impact.