The Legend of Jimmy Headshot (Shingles Book 6) Read online

  Seriously, the goddamned idiot used Mom’s birthday, as if that wasn’t the first thing someone would try. With security like that, my money was on the killer clowns.

  There was only a single box of five shells, but that was okay. I only needed enough to cover my ass from here to the shed.

  With my parents grieving and Darlene still giving her dolls the rapt attention of a retarded squirrel staring at a pile of glitter, that left me to my own devices—just how I liked it.

  I headed back to the kitchen for some recon at the back door. All clear outside. Not surprising, considering our back yard was fenced in, and Armageddon had just barely begun, but it was never too soon to start being careful.

  I let myself out, making it a point to close the door behind me. No walking corpse was going to snack on my innards because I was too dumb to remember that I wasn’t born in a barn.

  Sitting about twenty yards away was our shed, and in it was the weapon I’d been dying to use ever since I’d gotten the inspiration to build it. But first I had to get there.

  I chambered a round and scanned the yard through the visor of my BMX helmet. All clear from what I could tell. Things were far from quiet, though. Screams and cries for help pierced the air, seemingly from all directions.

  “Keep yelling, assholes,” I muttered to myself. “Gives the enemy someone else to focus on.”

  As expected, there was nothing standing between me and the shed. An easy run, for a kid like me anyway. Dad would have been winded by the time he reached it. I’d need to keep that in mind. Father or not, if he slowed me down, I’d drop him like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.

  I casually reached for the door handle, then stopped myself short. Stupid! Those days were gone. From here on out, I needed to remind myself that the monsters could very well be under my bed or in a locked shed that hadn’t been properly cleared yet. Fuck that. I’d laughed at enough stupid deaths on The Walking Dead to know better.

  Bracing the gun against my shoulder, I pulled the door open and jumped back, half-expecting a horde of undead to come pouring out as if they’d decided that garden tools were just as tasty as brains.

  All clear. The twelve-by-six space was empty. Well, not entirely empty. I had to step around Dad’s riding mower to get to where I needed, sparing it a quick glance. Sure, it would be fun as all hell to run down zombies on something like that, but it simply wasn’t practical. Leave that shit to the drunken rednecks looking for a hand-job from the icy fingers of mistress death herself.

  There! Hanging in the corner, covered by a dusty tarp, was my special baby. At its core, it was the Louisville Slugger my parents had bought for my short-lived Little League career. Little did they know then that its true calling was bigger, better, and a lot sharper.

  I uncovered it and allowed myself a few moments to bask in its glory. All those hours in that stupid metal shop class, then sneaking out here at night to work on it. It all paid off. The handle was wrapped in paracord for extra grip. I’d fashioned an old circular saw blade as a cross guard, designed to sever any zombie fingers stupid enough to grab hold of it.

  The barrel of the bat was the true work of art, though. Forget barbed wire. Yeah, it looked cool as fuck, but what the hell was that going to do to a zombie? No. I wanted maximum kill power combined with ease of extraction.

  Four heavy-duty masonry nails protruded from it, one at each compass point—a single wicked edge that could puncture a rotting skull and then be pulled free with no fuss or muss. Fuck that whole pincushion of nails noise. The more there were, the more chance of it getting stuck and your face being torn off while you worked to pull it loose. None of that for me, thanks.

  To top it off, I’d grafted the blade from my old Boy Scout knife to the far end—turning it into a bayonet for those times when I didn’t have room to swing for the fences.

  It was a thing of beauty, a weapon of legendary proportions. As such, much like the mighty Excalibur, it needed a name. So, painted on one side in bright red letters was S.P.A.Z.—short for Suck Prick, Asshole Zombies.

  Yeah, it was a shitty acronym. Sue me. It fucking looked cool. That’s what counted. Let the nerds worry about naming it something in Elven or Klingon. I had better things to do.

  I grabbed hold of SPAZ, enjoying its comforting weight in my gloved hand, and prepared to return to the house, but I hesitated. There was plenty else in the shed that could be useful, and I probably owed it to my parents to at least give them a fighting chance. I mean, they had clothed and fed me all my life. Yeah, they’d almost certainly screw it up, but I’d sleep well knowing I’d tried. If they couldn’t hack it afterward, that was their problem. I wasn’t their goddamned babysitter.

  Unfortunately, between the shotgun, my armor, SPAZ, and the extra tools I grabbed, I was weighed down pretty heavily for the trip back.

  A pity, because I was only halfway across the yard when I heard a voice call out to me.

  “Jacob? Is that you, Jacob? Come over here. I need your help.”

  3

  THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

  Shit!

  “I said come here, boy. I could use some help.”

  I turned to find our next-door neighbor, Mr. Raymond, standing at the fence, beckoning me over.

  He wasn’t a bad guy, an older fellow who mostly kept to himself. The only time he ever lost his shit was if you made the mistake of stepping on his prized grass.

  Yeah, there was that one time I came home early from hockey practice and caught him sneaking out of my grandmother’s bedroom with his pants unbuckled. But I didn’t hold it against him. Maybe he liked the smell of mothballs.

  At that moment, though, I could see there was only one scent he was likely to become acquainted with soon—gunpowder. His face was deathly pale, and his eyes were red-rimmed, making him look like some sort of wrinkled albino weasel. This wasn’t the result of a weekend-long bender. He looked sick, and I had a sinking sensation I knew what had caused it.

  “I’m not feeling too well, Jacob.”

  “No shit.”

  “I was hoping maybe you could convince your dad to give me a ride to the emergency room.”

  “Won’t help. The roads are going to be clogged with traffic.” I placed all the items from the shed onto the ground, slowly, so as not to spook the poor old bastard. “Anyone stupid enough to drive right now might as well have ‘meals on wheels’ stamped on their forehead. As for the hospital, that’s the worst place to be because that’s where it’s going to spread the fastest. Doctors and nurses either won’t know or will refuse to believe what’s going on. Rather than burn the bodies, they’ll pile them in the morgue until enough of them wake up to overrun the place.”

  “What in Sam Hill are you blabbering about, boy?” He began to cough, a wet rattle that told me he didn’t have long. “Mind your elders, boy, and do as you’re told.”

  Instead, I lifted the shotgun and took aim. “Who bit you?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Ain’t nobody bit me. I mean, Mrs. Wilson’s damned cat got me the other day when I was feeding it, but that’s all. Goddamned ungrateful feline. Why do you ask?”

  Wait. Her cat?

  That meant the virus, or whatever was causing this, had already mutated to other species. Or maybe it had originated with them and jumped to us. Fuck it, that was for the eggheads to worry about. Still, knowledge was power. That, and I didn’t particularly like cats to begin with.

  “Thank you, Mr. Raymond,” I said, lining up my shot. “Tell Grandma I said hi.”

  “Tell her? What happened to...”

  I cut off his question with a pull of the trigger. The gun went off, kicking like a mule and knocking me quite thoroughly on my ass. Damn it! Even with all the padding I was wearing, that still hurt, albeit not as bad as that time Cindy Harrisburg kicked me in the nuts while we were playing soccer.

  I’d need to remember to brace myself better next time someone had to be ventilate
d. Speaking of which, I climbed back to my feet, took a quick look around to make sure I hadn’t attracted any undead attention, then made my way to the fence.

  A peek over the top confirmed that Mr. Raymond wouldn’t be re-animating anytime soon. The top of his head was missing, and his brains were spread out behind him, fertilizing his precious grass. In some ways, I think he would have liked that.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  As a rule of thumb, once society finally shits itself, get ready to kiss all your nice amenities goodbye. Electricity, flushing toilets, refrigerated meats—all of it will be gone. Those too accustomed to easy living will be up shit’s creek without a paddle.

  But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t use it while they’ve got it.

  Before heading back to the living room, I stopped in the bathroom to drop a celebratory deuce for having saved Mr. Raymond from a fate worse than death. Call it one last hurrah while we still had access to running water and soft toilet paper.

  Of course, my fuckhead of a sister had to ruin even that.

  “Hurry up, I gotta poo,” she whined from the other side of the door, just as I was squeezing out a loaf dedicated to Grandma’s memory.

  “Fuck off.”

  “I have to go!”

  I debated shooting her through the door. Hell, it would have been a kindness on my part. After all, she had about zero chance of making it across the street alive, much less surviving the coming weeks.

  “I’m telling Ma!”

  “You do that,” I replied, savoring the sound of her feet stomping off coupled with the satisfying splash from below.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I stepped out of the bathroom to find both my parents waiting. Dad was still red-faced and puffy-eyed. Fucking sentimental pussy.

  “What was that noise from the backyard?” he asked, although the sight of me with his shotgun should’ve been enough for him to draw his own conclusions.

  “Mr. Raymond was bitten,” I stated. “I took him out before he could turn and...”

  “Wait a second,” Mom interrupted. “Took him out? What do you mean by that?”

  “What the hell do you think I mean? I did him just like Grandma...only a bit messier, if you get my drift. Don’t worry. The old geezer didn’t feel a thing.”

  At the mention of my grandmother, Dad broke down into tears again. Fucker was starting to seriously embarrass me. Once we reached a defensible location, I’d have to ask Mom if she’d ever fucked the mailman. With any luck, I shared DNA with someone other than this crying mama’s boy I called my father.

  “Are you telling me you...you killed...?”

  Enough of this shit. It was time to take charge. I rounded on Mom, causing her to back up a step. “Are you fucking dense or what? You saw what tried to get in here, what bit Grandma...oh, stop your fucking blubbering already...and if you took two seconds to turn on the goddamned news, you’d see what was going on out there. This isn’t a hoax or some fantasy. It’s the motherfucking zombie apocalypse and...”

  “Ooh, you said a bad word,” Darlene scolded from behind my parents.

  It was all I could do to not blow her stupid face off her even stupider head, but that would have set Dad off again. As tempting as it was to just leave these losers behind, I was smart enough to know they could be useful...for now.

  My dramatic speech ruined, I decided to get to the point, and what better way to ensure I had my parents’ attention than by chambering another round.

  Click!

  “Listen up and listen well. From here on out, the rules change. You want to live, you do as I tell you. You eat when I say to eat. You sleep where I tell you to sleep. If you need to piss, you ask me for a hall pass.” I stared both of them down. “And if I tell you to cave some fucker’s skull in, you’d better do it, or I swear I will come down on you like the wrath of God.”

  My dad apparently rediscovered his balls at some point during my rundown because he pointed a finger at me. “You listen here, Jacob Perkins...”

  “Oh yeah, and that’s another thing.” I locked eyes with him until he looked away, establishing me as the big dog here. “Jacob Perkins doesn’t exist anymore. He died this morning, along with the rest of this sick world.”

  I smiled as I considered my well-loved gamer tag.

  “You can call me Jimmy Headshot.”

  4

  EAT OR BE EATEN

  “What am I supposed to do with this shovel, Jimmy?”

  You mean besides digging your own grave? “Use it as a weapon, Mom. Swing the sharp edge hard enough, and it’ll be lights out for any zombie. But you have to aim for the head.”

  “Are you sure they’re actual zombies? Maybe they’re just sick and...”

  I stopped in the middle of the street. We were less than half a block from our house and already it was starting. “You know what’s sick? Me. I’m sick and tired of listening to your questions. Stop trying to rationalize this. You saw what tried to get in the house. It had no eyes. It was missing half its fucking face. People that sick are usually not busting down doors to sell you whatever shit they’re peddling. I don’t care how far behind they are on their monthly sales quota.”

  So far, so good, as far as not being swarmed, but if we kept talking, that was going to quickly change. The screams I’d heard earlier had fallen silent. It was far too much to hope the victims had turned the tide and won. No. Most likely half of them were rotting in some undead dude’s stomach while the rest were getting ready to reanimate and start the cycle all over. It was the nightmare version of the food chain, and we were at the bottom.

  Well, some of us anyway. “How are you holding up, Dad?”

  “This sledgehammer is heavy.”

  Fucking pansy. “That’s kind of the point. It’ll smash skulls like they were made of glass. A crushed zombie head equals a dead zombie.”

  “But I thought you said they were already dead.”

  “I mean really dead, as in don’t get back up and try to take a bite out of you dead.” I would’ve reminded him what happened to Grammy, but if he started crying again, I was surely going to lose my...

  Shit! Movement registered in my periphery, and I spun to check it out. I’d be damned if any undead dickheads were going to sneak up on me. It was a false alarm, though. A couple of squirrels were playing around in the grass. I caught sight of their tails just as they darted away, probably to celebrate the end of the world by fondling their nuts or something.

  Mom and Dad both let out hysterical little shrieks at seeing me react so quickly. Useless as tits on a bull, those two.

  The only one being blissfully quiet was Darlene, which was a minor miracle in itself. It had been pointless to give her a weapon. She was only seven, and a particularly dull-witted seven at that. The little putz could barely butter toast without screaming for help.

  That was fine, though. We could always use her as a distraction in case we ran into a herd of undead, so the rest of us—a.k.a. the useful ones—could escape. Sadly, just as I was turning back around, ready to lead us on again, she decided to end her silence.

  “Carlene!” Her shrill voice pierced my skull as if it were a fifty-caliber slug. “I forgot Carlene!”

  “What the ever-living fuck is a Carlene?” I snarled.

  “She’s my doll.”

  Darlene and Carlene?! My mouth dropped open. Was she for real? Her arms were already full of fucking dolls. She was a veritable walking graveyard of naked Barbies, Disney Princesses, and cheap dollar store knockoffs.

  “You already have lots of dollies, sweetie,” Dad pointed out.

  “But Carlene is my favorite!”

  I turned back and pointed an accusing finger at her. “If she was your favorite, then why the fuck didn’t you bring her with you?”

  “I neeeeeed her!!!!” My sister’s words cut through the silence of the street like a hot knife through an eyeball.

  It was several seconds before her voice finally stopped echoing through my brain, but when it did,
I heard something far worse—the sound of dragging footsteps.

  Shit! They’d found us.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I considered my options. Four shots left in the gun, but using them would end up making even more ruckus than my little skeeve of a sister—if just barely. We needed to end this quickly and quietly. It was time for SPAZ to make his grand debut.

  “I need to go get Carlene!”

  I’d just pulled out my zombie killer of choice when the pitter patter of stupid feet caught my ear. I spared just enough of a glance over my shoulder to see Darlene running back toward our house, presumably to get a doll that was almost certainly smarter than her.

  “Darlene!” I could tell from Dad’s body language that he was getting ready to bolt after her.

  Pathetic and predictable. “Hold your ground.”

  “She’s just a little girl. She’ll be killed.”

  “So will we if you run off half-cocked. Look!”

  I pointed toward four figures that shambled into view from one of the nearby yards—the Curtis place, if I recalled correctly. And lo and behold, Ma and Pa Curtis were leading the way, followed by their twin sons, Abel and Abraham. They didn’t appear as if they’d been dead for long.

  “Let’s break up this family for good,” I barked. “Mom, Dad, you take the parents. Remember, aim for their heads. I got the twins.”

  “But Darlene...”

  “Forget Darlene! She made her choice. Now we have to make ours. I, for one, choose to live.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I knew the Curtis twins from school. We were in the same grade, but that didn’t make us friends. Bunch of sanctimonious assholes, but then what did you expect from a family who named one of their kids Abel?

  Great choice there, by the way, naming a child after the world’s first murder victim. Nice to see he was living up to his namesake.