Jax and the Beanstalk Zombies (5 page)

A lone figure, too tall and thin to be Antoine, stood with its back to her in the flashlight’s golden glow. Zombie.

Stringy dishwater blond hair flowed to the middle of her back. A faded, floral print dress covered the zombie’s ashen skin. When she turned, clumps of snow white stuck between her rotting teeth.

Antoine!

“Don’t worry, love. It’s not me,” Antoine said from above her.

He perched like a cat on the seat of the huge chair, his shirt askew but he was otherwise unharmed. Relief rushed through her. She climbed the chair, Jax hot on her heels. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I am. I conjured a fluffy rabbit from my trusty hat.” Antoine held up a black top hat, which he collapsed and stuffed in his knapsack. “I then scurried up to safety. I’ve been watching your progress. Excellent swordsmanship, Jax.”

“We can talk about that later. Right now let’s get the hell out of Dodge.” Jax hopped from the chair to another piece of upended furniture. “If we can stay up here, I don’t think we’ll have any problems. They don’t seem to be climbers.”

“Brilliant, my boy. Brilliant.”

Feeling more confident by the second, Veronica stood up and looked down to where Antoine had abandoned his flashlight.

The female zombie stared right at her, smiled and giggled.

“Shit.”

Ignoring the nervous shake in her left hand, Veronica pivoted around to take a look at what had Jax’s attention. From the top of the chair, she could see all the way to the door. Everywhere she looked, zombies moved like mice through a crowded maze of giant-sized broken furniture and debris.

There were hundreds of them.

Chapter 5

As soon as they got down the beanstalk, Jax was going to kill Antoine. Slowly. Maybe with a spoon.

The zombies milled around below them, banging into each other and the furniture like bumper cars made out of rotting flesh.

There was no way in hell his mentor hadn’t known a horde of zombies was a possibility. The man researched everything to death–no pun intended. Antoine’s little secret had risked Veronica’s life. That was not acceptable. Anger burned a hole in Jax’s gut. “Okay, spill it, Antoine.”

“What do you mean?”

“About the zombies. What are their weaknesses?”

Antoine had the decency to look sheepish, his bushy white eyebrows raised. “Well then, they move more slowly in the daylight hours.”

“That’s why you insisted we leave at the crack of dawn.” The steel in Veronica’s voice did not bode well for Antoine once they made it down the beanstalk.

“Quite right. The undead are hungry at all times but especially once the sun sets. As I’m sure you’ve deduced, they’re attracted to light and noise. They don’t have the brain function to pick a leader, but instead have a pack mentality, attacking–as a group–whatever is unlucky enough to find itself in their path.”

Jax glanced down at his watch. “Noon. We have plenty of time, but I don’t feel like pushing it. Let’s go.” The zombies were everywhere in the gloomy space, but they kept their attention focused only on what was directly in front of them. “It doesn’t look like they climb very much. If we can jump from chair to chair, we can get to the door but once we’re in the hallway where there isn’t as much furniture, all bets are off.”

“We’ll figure something out.” Veronica moved up beside him, hesitated for a moment and then sailed over the open space between chairs. She landed easily on the next chair.

Antoine huffed and puffed before launching himself across the chasm. His feet touched the edge and he wavered. Jax held his breath. Even as pissed off as he was at Antoine, he’d throw himself to the stone floor before letting the zombies make dinner out of his mentor.

Veronica ran to the edge, wrapped her fingers around Antoine’s forearm and yanked him forward.

Antoine stumbled before regaining his balance and giving Jax a thumbs up.

The man must have nine lives in his back pocket. Jax set his jaw and raced across the wood chair. He whizzed over the abyss, refusing to look down or consider failure. Hanging in the open air with nothing between his toes and the zombies below, a single image overwhelmed him. Veronica first thing in the morning, stumbling blindly to the coffee pot, her eyelids at half-mast and her long ebony hair tangled. The most gorgeous woman in the world. The rubber sole of his boots landed with a light thud on the neighboring chair. He wobbled and went onto one knee.

“Smooth move, Mr. Stud Archeologist.” Veronica held out a hand, offering to pull him up.

“I aim to please whenever I’m on my knees.” He took her hand, but stood on his own power. “And when I’m standing up.”

She rolled her brown eyes, but her cheeks developed a distinctive pink tint bright enough to appear even in the dim light. “Let’s go.”

And they did, forming a conga line of determination to survive, brains intact, until they reached the doorway. The good news: the hallway, though lacking in furniture to run across, was practically deserted. The bad news: it wasn’t totally empty.

Five zombies stood in a clump by the partially opened front door. The walking corpses were all that stood between them and the beanstalk.

“Okay, I’ll distract them,” Jax said. “You two make a break for it.”

“You’re an idiot, Jax. There’s no way you can hold them all off.” She had that stubborn tilt to her head that never failed to turn him on. “I’m staying with you. Together we can come up with a workable plan.”

He turned and grabbed Veronica’s hip, pulling her to him. Her body’s soft curves fit perfectly against him, reminding him of the times he’d lain awake in their bed staring at the ceiling and marveling at how damn lucky he’d been to find her. Having to let her go had been life’s way of reminding him of his place on the other side of the tracks, where escargot forks didn’t exist and chickens lived in the front yard. But he’d be damned if he’d miss out on this chance to kiss her–maybe for the last time. His lips came down on hers before he had a chance to second-guess himself.

Almonds and heaven. That’s what she tasted like. He sucked on her bottom lip, gently tugging it. She moaned and it was all the invitation he needed to sweep his tongue into her sweet mouth. He put everything he could into that kiss. He told all his secrets and made all the promises he’d wished he’d given before, when his words still mattered to her. Hungry for more but knowing it wasn’t meant to be, he pulled away.

“Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t do it.” Her bottom lip trembled. Once. Just once. That was his girl, as strong as a mummy’s curse.

Jax pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “Babe, I got this.” He leapt from the chair, landing in a crouched position on the stone floor. He’d kept his knees bent, but pain shot up his shins anyway. He glanced up at Veronica’s beautiful face, dominated by her shocked expression. “I’ll see you at the beanstalk.”

He sprinted away, making as much noise as possible. He had to get the attention of every last zombie in the hall. Then Veronica could make it out. “Fresh brains! I got your fresh brains right here!”

The giggles rang through the hall and down Jax’s spine. He didn’t stick around to see if the zombies were following. He didn’t plan on letting them get close enough to feel their stinking breath on his neck.

Dodging broken furniture the size of redwood trees, he blasted through the hall. “Here zombie, zombie, zombie.”

Pivoting to the left, he kicked it up a gear. A table leg towered directly in front of him. He dodged right. Ignoring the burn heating up his lungs, he continued to taunt the rotting corpses giggling in the shadows. “Come and get me, you zombie fuckers.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when a nine-foot-tall zombie stepped into his path. This one wasn’t laughing. Its glassy eyes focused on Jax with an intensity that stole his breath.

He drew his knife as he inhaled and flung it as he exhaled. It hit the target, but the zombie didn’t go down.

The black knife handle stuck straight out of the zombie’s throat like a macabre Adam’s Apple. It bobbled as the zombie strode toward him.

Now unarmed, Jax took the lesser of two evils and spun on his heel. He sprinted away from the zombie, making sure to stay clear of the path to the front door. Enough time must have passed for Veronica and Antoine to have cleared it, but he could manage to give them a few extra minutes to be sure.

The heavy
clump
,
clump
,
clump
of the zombie’s feet slapping against the stone floor sounded behind him. Pushing his muscles to the max, he added an extra shot of tabasco to his pace. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. The zombie was gaining on him.

If he was going to make it out of here alive, he had to get this rotting corpse off his heels.

Sweat soaked his shirt and his lungs burned with the effort to stay ahead of the beast behind him. He spotted something shining up ahead. Instinct pulled him toward it.

A foot away, the object came into view–a gold coin the size of a hubcap. A man’s profile showed on the coin’s face–chubby cheeks, short curly hair and a laurel wreath wrapped around his head. It looked like a blown up version of an old Roman coin with dirt stuck in the mountains made by the embossing. Jax yearned for his archeology tools to brush away the debris.

A stinking hand ripping his t-shirt jerked him back to the shit storm surrounding him. Not giving himself time to think, he crouched, curled his fingers under the edges of the humongous coin and hefted it up.

His biceps strained under the pressure to lift it, but the adrenaline pumping through his veins gave him all the extra juice he needed. Letting out a shot putter’s groan, he twisted his body from the waist and swung his arms, aiming as high as possible.

The coin smashed into the zombie’s neck, snapping it.

Undeterred that his ear was now permanently resting on his shoulder, the zombie shuffled forward with his arms outstretched.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jax raised his arms straight over his head, muscles trembling from the effort, and slammed the coin down on the zombie’s skull.

Bone cracked and the zombie fell like a drunk after last call. Something gooey pooled underneath the coin, but Jax sure as shit wasn’t sticking around to find out what it was. He zipped toward the front door, dodging debris and pockets of giggling zombies.

Nothing in the world except for Veronica’s lips felt sweeter than the sunlight touching his face when he broke clear of the door and sprinted into the cloud trees beyond.

“Over here, Jax.” Veronica waved to him from a small clearing.

By the time he arrived at her side, only Antoine’s head was visible over the cloud ground as he descended the beanstalk.

“Thank God, you’re safe.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed so hard he lost the ability to take a deep breath.

Her silky hair slid against his cheek, and he wished for nothing more than to stay with her wrapped around him for the rest of his life. But as his mama said, if wishes came true then mermaids would walk and evil queens would never age. He knew full well wishes weren’t reality. Best just to make the most of this limited time with Veronica while he could enjoy it.

She released her death grip. “If you ever do something so stupid again, I swear I’ll feed you to the zombies limb by limb myself.”

“You know, if you want to touch all of my limbs, you just have to ask.” He covered his inner turmoil with a wolfish leer.

“Oh yeah?” She pressed her luscious body up against him, setting off all sorts of danger alarm bells that his hard lusting body overrode. Her leg hooked around his and before he knew it, he was flat on his ass with Veronica towering over him, hands on her hips and a smirk on her lips. “See you at the bottom.”

Quick as a pixie on speed, she took off down the beanstalk.

“Babe, you have no idea.” He stood, dusted the cloud fluff from his jeans and followed the only woman he’d ever loved.

Chapter 6

A blade of grass poked Veronica in the back of the neck, but she refused to move. Safe at last from the mindless, brain-eating zombies, all she wanted was to lie back in the prickly grass with her eyes closed and meditate until she no longer wanted to throttle Antoine.

She was going to be here for a while.