Z-Burbia: A Zombie Novel (27 page)

But no one likes a tragedy, especially me. And the surest way to turn tragedy into triumph?

“EVERYONE HIT THE FUCKING DECK!” Leeds screams as he, Reaper, John, and Platt kick through the boards of my fence, their M-4s up and ready. “DOWN NOW, YOU STUPID FUCKS!”

Don’t have to tell me twice. I dive for the dirt as burst after burst of rifle fire explodes over me. A couple people cry out, not having listened (you should always listen to the guys with the guns), and I hope there’s no friendly fatalities. I turn my head and watch as Z head after Z head is pierced by expertly placed bullets. I don’t see a single body shot as Leeds and his team clear the yard.

“Get up, Long Pork,” John says as he grabs my elbow and yanks me to my feet. “There’s more coming, we gotta go.”

He’s right, I can hear the Zs and see their shadows through the flames and smoke.

“People! If you want to live you will follow us now!” Leeds shouts.

Those not seriously wounded help those that are and we stagger our way to the ravine, following Leeds and his men. It takes them all of five seconds to put the Zs in the ravine down. As soon as the last one falls, the back of its head splattering against the rocks,
we all scamper down the rocks and up the other side. Well, I don’t really “scamper” as much as cry like a baby with each agonizing step.

John and Platt take lead and clear us a path, making sure every single shot counts, as we come up out of the ravine and into the path of yet another horde of Zs. They are really coming out of the woodwork tonight. Z after Z drop as the team mows them down. Leeds and Reaper step up when John and Platt have to reload, keeping a constant stream of lead pouring into Z heads. The rest of us play back up, smashin
g and bashing skulls as hidden Zs come at us from the sides.

Neighbors fall, their wounds to
o much for them, but we get them up, holding them by the waists, by the arms, slinging them over our shoulders. Okay, by we I mean Stuart and Elsbeth and a few others that aren’t all fucked to shit like me. I kinda just stumble in a daze, yelling, “There’s one!” and “Over there! Look out!” I do my part.

Straight down the middle of Sixth Avenue we go, a swath of undead corpses left in our wake, until we hit Hwy 251. We all look around. Not a Z in sight. Oh, wait, there’s one. John takes it down. Now there’s not a one in sight.

“I’d like to rest now, please,” I say, my head spinning. A black fuzz has encroached on my vision, constricting my sight. The world around me is inside a dark tunnel and I can hear people talking to me. Hell, I can see their mouths move, but fuck if I know what they are saying.

“I’m just gonna sit down,” I say to the faces in front of me. “Just take a load off. I’m tired.”

Then the tunnel closes and the darkness takes me.

Chapter Ten

The black becomes grey becomes light that filters between my eyelids. I squint and blink, bringing the world into focus as soft fingers stroke my cheek.

“I hope this isn’t Heaven,” I say, my throat scratch
y and raw, “because that means you died too.”

“Maybe it’s Hell and I’m here to kick your ass
forever for going off on some stupid suicide mission?” Stella says as her face comes into focus. “Did you think of that?”

“Anywhere you are, no ma
tter the amount of nagging, is Heaven to me,” I smile. Ow, smiling hurts.

“Good answer,” she says and leans in and kisses me lightly on the lips.

Again with the ow.

“Can I sit up?” I ask, honestly not knowing the answer.

“No,” Stella says. “Dr. McCormick says you need to be still for a few more days.”

“A few more?” I ask. “How long have I been out?”

“Six days,” Stella says. “But I don’t know if ‘out’ is the right word for it. You were raving for a couple days as you burned off a fever. Then there was the day you kept insisting you were fine and fell out of bed at least, oh, I don’t know how many times.”

“Eight,” Greta says from a chair in the corner of the room. “Hey, Daddy.”

“Hey, Baby Girl,” I smile. More ow. “I’d give you a hug, but I don’t think my arms work.”

“Mr. Stillwater finally sedated you so you could sleep and stop being stupid,” Stella says.

“Mr. Stillwater? Who’s that?” I ask.

“Reaper,” Charlie says from the doorway. A pretty girl is standing right behind him. I know her. What’s her name? Oh, Jennifer, right.

“Those guys are so cool,” Charlie says. “John showed me how to take out a Z from two hundred yards!”

“He showed him,” Greta laughs
, “but he didn’t hit anything.”

“I was close,” Charlie frowns. “With some m
ore practice, I’ll be all snipery snipe like. Plink, plink, plink. Down go the Zs, from a very safe distance.”

“And what have you been up to, my love?” I ask Stella.

Her face clouds over and she looks out the window at the gorgeous day. I follow her gaze and see we are at the Farm. I’d know that view anywhere. She turns back to me and purses her lips.

“I’ve been sitting in on the tribunals,” Stella says. “Which have turned out to be completely worthless.”

“Tribunals?”

“For Brenda Kelly and her cronies,” she answers. “We’ve been deciding if they deserve to be punished for colluding with Vance.”

“And I hope the answer was yes,” I say, “because she was in league with him for sure.”

“Unfortunately, there’s no way to prove that,”
Stella says. “Vance is dead. His people are either dead or scattered to the wind. There is no actual evidence of her collusion.”

“What about Stuart? He said he knows she had this all planned with Vance. That they were going to turn Whispering Pines into a prison camp.”

“Yes, he was very clear on that when he spoke,” Stella says, her eyes locking with mine. “But it’s he said, she said. Literally. No one could provide hard evidence.”

“Okay, so there’s no evidence that she colluded,” I say. “I hope, at the very least, she’s being tossed out on her ass. She deserves a bullet to the head, but a walk out there with the Zs is
fine by me.”

Stella doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, what is happening to her?”

“You won’t like this,” Stella says.

“Oh, I’m sure, but tell me anyway.”

“She was re-elected as HOA Board Chair.”

I try to swallow, but my throat is closing up. I look about and see a glass of water, I reach for it, but Stella gets there first and puts the glass to my lips. The water is sweet, but not sweet enough to wash the sour, bitter taste from my mouth.

“I’ll kill her myself then,” I say when I can speak again. “I won’t even make it clean. I’ll gut her and toss her outside the fences. Let the Zs have their way.”

“Jace,” Stella says, her eyes going to the kids. “The HOA voted. Stuart is raging pissed, but even he understands that. We are nothing if we just toss the rules and laws to the side. She was tried, she was found not guilty, and the HOA voted. It’s done.”

“I didn’t vote,” I say.

“I did,” Stella says. “For us. I voted against, and it was close, but people are scared and don’t know what the future holds.”

“Better an evil you know than an evil you don’t, is that it?”

“That about sums it up.”

“Fuck me,” I whisper. I rub my forehead and close my eyes. “This is fucking great.”

I can feel sleep pulling at me again and I yawn. Then my eyes open and it’s suddenly night. A small candle is lit on the bedside table and I can see someone sitting in the shadows in the corner.

“Hey,” I say, just to be polite.

“Hey,” Stuart replies. “It was my turn to watch you.”

“I need watching?”

“Yeah, you do,” Stuart laughs. “You are a shitty patient. Did you used to sleepwalk before then?”

“Before
then what?”

“Before the Great Burning of Whispering Pines.”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then y
ou’ll have to watch yourself from now on,” Stuart says. “Because your subconscious has taken up a new hobby and it involves random wanderings. Not the best thing in a world overrun by Zs.”

“Yeah, I can see the downside,” I say. “How are you feeling?”

“Like an old man that’s had the hell beaten out of him,” Stuart says. “But I’ll survive. It’s what I do.”

“Thanks for letting me in the club,” I say. “Surviving is right up there on the list of good shit.”

“Amen,” Stuart says. “You want me to get Stella then? It’s like 2am, but she told me to fetch her if you wake up.”

“No, no, let her sleep,” I say, trying to push up on my elbows. Ow, ow, ow. Everywhere on my body. Ow.

“Don’t bother,” Stuart says. “Your nocturnal travels have pretty much put your recovery back a few days. Stay still. That’s Dr. McCormick’s orders. Reaper’s too. I’d listen to him more, he can kill you with his pinky.”

“Don’t fear the Reaper,” I chuckle.

“She told you about Brenda then?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What are we going to do about that?”

“What can we do?”

Stuart shrugs. “That’s the 64 million dollar question. I don’t think anything can be done. We just wait and watch. She’ll show her true colors again. She only won the Board Chair again because there are more mindless sheep than thinkers in our bunch.”

“Why was there even a vote?” I ask. “Whispering Pines is gone. Burned to the ground.”

“The houses, yes, but the neighborhood is still there. Everyone plans to rebuild. It’ll be different, but still home. Oh, and the Church of Jesus of the Light is still standing. Preacher Carrey refuses to leave. He’s still there, waiting to yell at us for our sins when we get back. So, it’ll feel just like home when we rebuild.”

“I’m guessing Big Daddy had a say in that,” I say. “He still wants to rebuild Asheville, doesn’t he?”

“Not sure,” Stuart says. “You’ll have to ask him. I’m an outsider right now. He’s friendly, but not saying a word to anyone. I have a feeling he’s waiting for you to be up on your feet before he makes any announcement.”

“Okay. Whatever,” I sigh. Then the yawns come again. “Fuck. How can I be so tired?”

“You got your ass turned inside out,” Stuart says. “Elsbeth saved your life by cauterizing that gunshot. It kept you from bleeding out. But whatever she used was less than sanitary, even if it was red hot. Dr. McCormick and Reaper spent a few days cleaning that wound, just to keep gangrene from setting in. I think it was a lot closer than Stella wants to admit.”

“Yeah, this is about as close as I’ll get to knowing how a Z feels,” I say. “Ugh.”

“Just go back to sleep,” Stuart says. “I’ll tackle you and toss you back to bed if you try to go for a hike.”

“Thanks.”

It’s just a matter of seconds and I’m out again.

This pattern goes on for a few more days before I start to sleep normally. My first day out of bed I spend on the front porch of the big farmhouse, the sun warm on my face. I sit there in one of the rocking chairs and watch the kids running about, playing tag and make believe. Except for Charlie. He’s busy off to the side sitting with Jennifer. I know we’ve had the “Talk” already, but it may be a good time for a refresher course. The zombie apocalypse is no place for accidents of the teenage libido kind.

“First team is going back today,” Big Daddy says as he takes a seat next to me. “Julio’s leading, with Master Sergeant Platt and Sergeant Baptiste as escorts.”

“First team?” I ask.

“To see what can and can’t be salvaged at Whispering Pines,” Big Daddy says. “Gonna need a full inventory before the rebuild starts. It’ll take Melissa and her team a long time to scavenge what’s needed as it is, no point in wasting that time by not having a comprehensive materials list.”

“Why are you pushing this so hard?” I ask. “I know you can’t have everyone stay here on the Farm permanently. There’s too many of us. But we could spread out to the other farms and ranches.
I say let Whispering Pines go.”

Big Daddy shakes his head. “That Brenda Kelly won’t let it go. She’s like a pitbull, that one. As soon as I saw how resolved she was
, I decided to back her.” Big Daddy smiles. “Keep your enemies closer and all that bunk. Pardon my French.”

“I’ll let bunk slide,” I smile. “So you aren’t really supporting her?”

“I’m supporting you, Hoss,” Big Daddy says. “What I said before, the plan to make Asheville something again, is still a good plan. Whispering Pines is part of that, even more so now.”

“How do you mean?”

“What we learn from rebuilding Whispering Pines we can apply to Asheville,” Big Daddy says. “And with that Special Forces team around, we’ll have a better chance at salvaging things. They’ll lessen the loss of life.”

“But not stop that loss.”

Big Daddy shrugs. “It’s the world we live in. People are going to die. Big herds of Zs will come at us, up from Atlanta, over from Charlotte, down from Virginia. It’ll take them a while with the terrain, but we’d be fools to think those Zs won’t eventually make it up into our mountains. They have all the time in the world.”

“Okay, so we rebuild with Leeds and the boys watching our backs,” I say. “Critter never said where they came from.”

“Fort Bragg,” Big Daddy says. “They were up here for training when it all went down. They didn’t even bother to try to go back. They hunkered down and have stayed off the radar until now.”

“Lucky for us,” I say. “Hey, where is Critter? I’d like to have a word with him.”

“He’s off doing Critter things,” Big Daddy says. “Which I sometimes try not to think about. He’s my brother and all, but I’d say we are two sides of the coin when it comes to morals. What’s this word you’d like to have?”

“Why the hell he took off, leaving us to fend for ourselves,” I say bitterly. “The guy just ran.”

“That he did,” Big Daddy nods. “Ran to the river, swam across it, ran all the way to that Humvee then drove his butt right here. Then he drove me and the boys to his ‘garage.’ It took us all four of the Humvees he had, plus the three pickups and six cars, to get everyone back here safe and sound. So when you have that word, make sure it’s thanks.”

“Damn,” I say
, “I will.”

I watch him and can see he has more.

“What?”

“Critter and I had us a long talk before he took of
f to his place,” Big Daddy says. “And Julio and Leeds confirm it.”

“Again, what?”

“They don’t think Vance is alone,” Big Daddy says. “I’m not 100% sold on it, but they have a theory that Vance was part of something bigger. That maybe Asheville was his territory and there are others like him out there, staking claim to theirs.”

He lets that sink in. I don’t like the sinking it does in me.

“What? Some type of cabal?” I ask.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Big Daddy says. “Critter thinks more than a few of the crime bosses may have survived. Makes sense. If Vance can carve out a place
, then why can’t others?”

“What does that mean for us?”

“It means we watch closely. Not just for Zs, but for signs of other organizations. Maybe from Atlanta or Charlotte. Maybe from over in Knoxville. Or as close as Greenville and Spartanburg. Critter is convinced. I’m leaving that element up to him. We have rebuilding to do. That’s our worry right now. If there are other mad men out there, then Critter will let us know.”

“Great,” I say. “Just great.”

Big Daddy nods then gets up. “Yep. Listen, we’ll talk more later for sure.” He looks past me to the end of the porch. “I think someone has been waiting to see you.”

I follow his gaze and see Elsbeth sitting on the railing. She is watching me intensely.