The Buzzard Zone

by Kelly, Ronald

  Only a few Biters roamed among the stones of the cemetery, looking like the opening scene of Night of the Living Dead. Jamie and Jake took turns with the slingshot, bringing the zombies down with well-placed headshots if they wandered too close or got a whiff of fresh meat. The sound of ball bearings penetrating their skulls was no louder than someone popping the top on a Coke can—effective, but quiet enough not to draw the attention of other Biters.

  After the excavation was finished, the bodies of the two women, wrapped in patchwork quilts, were laid in their individual graves. Words and prayers were said over them. Then their remains were covered over in earth, their bodies hidden, but their memories painfully present among the fourteen mourners.

  Abe crouched and stuck the wire ends of the plastic bouquet in the fresh soil of his wife’s grave. He spoke quietly—too quietly for the others to hear—then got up wearily, as though all the strength and spirit had drained from him. Abe walked over to Levi, who shook his hand.

  “You sure you won’t come with us?” he asked the elderly scientist.

  “I can’t leave her,” Abe told him. “Not yet. I love you and your family, but Agnes was my family. The only family I had left.”

  “I know it’s hard. But remember what she told you… what she wanted you to do.”

  Abe nodded. “I will. It’s the only thing that will make me want to get out of bed in the morning.”

  The two looked over at Agnes’ grave. Avery stood there, head lowered, staring at the rectangular patch of earth as though trying to read something there. He held the compound bow in one hand and wore the arrow quiver slung over one shoulder. “My boy is taking it hard. He thought a lot of her.”

  Abe smiled sadly. “Agnes was teaching him how to shoot the bow. He was a damn good pupil, too. He could pretty much hit the target as well as she could.”

  Guilt creased Levi’s face. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t have done something… you know, to have prevented…”

  The old man clamped a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It was her doing and hers alone. She was determined to get her sister back and she accomplished her objective… even though the outcome turned tragic.”

  Abe went from one to the other, saying his goodbyes. Then he joined Glenda and, together, they walked toward her Kia Spectra.

  Levi walked over to James and shook his hand. “Thanks for everything, hoss.” He motioned toward his side. “Sorry I ruined your t-shirt.”

  James smiled. “It wasn’t a silver bullet, so the Wolfman survived. Besides, if the ill-fated jock had shot him in the nards, you’d have been a goner.” He poked him playfully in the center of his abdomen.

  Levi laughed. He looked to where Glenda was helping Abe into her car. “Take good care of him, will you?”

  “Definitely,” the writer assured him. “He just needs time to grieve. After that, we may just take a little road trip up to Durham. Duke University has some of the best research facilities in the country. Lots of sterile white labs and expensive toys and… and we’ll have zombified test subjects coming out the wazoo. Abe will be like a geek at a comic book convention.”

  “Are you willing to leave Casa de Newman?”

  James shrugged. “I think Glenda and the boys need a change of scenery. They’re developing a bad case of cabin fever. That and having to read my books over and over and over again for lack of anything better. It’ll do us all some good. Who knows? Maybe we’ll start our own mad scientist fraternity.”

  “If you do go, be careful,” Levi advised. “There’s a lot of crazy shit going on out there on the road.”

  “You take care, too. Avoid the interstate. The last time Jamie and I scouted it, I-26 was wall-to-wall cars, even the shoulders and median. Looked like a fifty-mile parking lot. I’d take Highway 25 north to be on the safe side.” He watched as Big T hobbled toward the clutter of vehicles, the crutches seeming diminutive and inadequate for his massive frame. ”I hope he finds his parents. If you get up there to Asheville and find out that all those high-browed bohemians and hipsters have turned into bug-powered cannibals, and you get yourself in a bind, remember what I said before. When in Rome, do as the Vanderbilts do… or did.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Come on, boys,” James called to his sons. “To the Batcave!” A moment later, they were in the Spectra, waving from the windows, heading home to North Edenburg.

  Levi turned to the others. “Are we ready to go?”

  “I reckon so,” said Nell. She nodded toward a quartet of Biters, who were making their way awkwardly through the grave markers toward them. “We’d better go before they get here. Don’t want to draw a crowd like we did back at Angela’s house.”

  “No, ma’am.” He walked over to Avery, who still stood at the foot of Agnes Mendlebaum’s grave. “Are you alright, son?”

  The sixteen-year-old turned and smiled, although his eyes failed to share the sentiment. “Right as rain, Daddy-O.” Avery regarded the grave again, then plucked an arrow from the quiver. The head had traces of blood on the edges of the blade and Levi recognized it immediately. When they had returned to the Childress house the following morning to loot for supplies and ammunition, Avery had placed the heel of his boot between Nathan’s dead eyes and, with some effort, pried the arrow from the roof of his mouth. Now the boy turned the arrow thoughtfully between his fingers and then plunged it, point-down, at the head of the grave, forming a makeshift marker. It was an odd gesture in Levi’s way of thinking, but then, that was just Avery for you.

  As the boy joined his twin brother and headed for the truck. Levi paused at the rear of the Ram and appraised its new addition. While prowling the Newmans’ neighborhood they had found an on-bed camper in someone’s back yard, sitting on concrete blocks. It didn’t fit the Dodge perfectly, but it would do. He opened the back door. Boxes of canned and dried food, as well as cases of bottled water and soft drinks filled the interior. On the front seat of the truck were thirty pages of uncontaminated lot numbers that Abe had written down by hand, to help them on their journey. They had also found three crates of shotgun shells, as well as handgun and rifle cartridges at the Childress house. That cache had joined the supply of ammunition in the Yukon’s cargo hold.

  As the thought crossed his mind, he looked over at the big SUV. With the absence of the Mendlebaums, Big T had vacated the bed of the Dodge and chose to ride in comfort with Kate. From the smiles on their faces and the easy way they related to one another, Levi could tell that they enjoyed one another’s company. That suited Levi just fine. Tyrone was a good-hearted man, ten times more suitable for his daughter than that asshole she had been married to before.

  He gave them a thumb’s up. Big T did the same, while Kate grinned and blushed a bit. Levi waved to Billy, who was helping Enolia into the passenger seat of the Mercedes, while Jessie buckled up in the back. The Cherokee simply nodded in acknowledgement. Billy Tauchee was still something of a mystery to him. Quiet and reserved, almost overly polite at times, always appraising the people or situation around him with a mixture of vigilance and suspicion. While dependable, the man was difficult to read. Levi wasn’t a hundred percent sure about Billy. He wasn’t anything like those he had grown up with, that was for certain.

  He climbed into the cab of the Dodge. Nell was flipping through a Rand-McNally atlas, determining the best route to Highway 25. “Ready to go, darling?” he asked, sticking the key in the ignition.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “You’ll need to take Route 64 northeastward to 25.” She returned her attention to the atlas and Levi noticed that she had it turned to a map of Florida. He couldn’t help but smile. Although they had never been, Nell had always wanted to visit the Sunshine State. It’s a possibility, he thought, after we get through with our business in Asheville.

  “We’re ready back here,” Avery said. The boy had a whetstone in his hand, sharpening the blade of a Rambo-sized Bowie knife. Jem sat silently beside him, reading a copy of Midnight Rain, signed by the au
thor himself. Jem had traded with Big T—a Rolex watch he had found in a pawn shop in Gatlinburg for the grey fedora. The teenager had taken to wearing it canted sharply to the side, not out of a sense of over-exaggerated style, but to hide most of the burnt side of his head and the ugly hole where his left ear had once been.

  Starting the truck, Levi pulled out of the shade of a thick-leafed magnolia tree and headed down a paved lane toward the main road. Soon, they were away from the shadows and the cold slabs of gray stone, the bright October sunshine warming the interior of the truck and lightening their hearts, if only for a while.

  Chapter 20

  They headed north along Highway 25. The heavily-developed area of Henderson gave way to rural farmland and stretches of dense forest. The highway itself was clear, with only a few wrecked and abandoned cars along its two-lane thoroughfare, but none in a position to hinder or stop them. The highway cut through several small towns, all densely inhabited by Biters. As they drove through, the zombies would lurch toward their vehicles, but they ignored them and continued on, leaving the hoards frustrated and snapping at the autumn air with their bug-infested teeth.

  In the Yukon, Kate and Big T’s conversation gradually drew to tense silence. Kate could tell that Tyrone’s thoughts were occupied with whether or not he would find his parents alive. He stared through the windshield pensively, as though trying to see ahead to what they would discover when they reached the city of Asheville. She understood his concern. Her mother and father meant the world to her. If something should happen to them—or, heaven forbid, they should become infested by those nasty, black parasites—she didn’t know how she would handle it or what she would be forced to do. She didn’t even want to dwell on the possibility. She knew Tyrone didn’t want to either, but he had no choice.

  Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, Kate reached out with the other and took his hand. The freckled paleness of her skin stood in stark contrast to the deep brownness of his. “You okay?’ she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” he said, still staring straight ahead. “It doesn’t hurt near as bad as yesterday.”

  “I’m not talking about your leg. I’m talking about your folks.”

  Big T swallowed dryly. “I can’t seem to get them out of my mind.”

  “Tell me about them,” she urged.

  He smiled. “My dad is a forklift driver in a tool and die shop. Been with the same company for going on thirty years. He’s a big guy… even bigger than me. Mama calls him her ‘gentle giant’.”

  It was Kate’s turn to smile. “Like you.”

  Big T snorted. “Oh, I’ve got my faults. Got a hellacious temper when I’m riled. You should’ve seen me on the football field. They called me the Mangler.”

  Kate laughed. “No… I can’t see that at all.” She squeezed his huge fingers and he squeezed back. “Tell me about your mom.”

  A pained expression shown in his eyes. “Now, Mama… Mama’s my world. Always has been. I reckon I’m what you’d call a genuine ‘mama’s boy’.” He sighed deeply. “She’s had problems, though. Suffered from depression on and off since I was born. Tried to commit suicide once, when I was thirteen. Took a bunch of pills. We got her to the hospital in time to pump her stomach. She was never right after that… emotionally crippled, I reckon you would call it. Sometimes she would just zone out and sit like that all day long, not talking or responding to anybody. It was hard to watch her go downhill like that and not be able to do anything about it. I reckon that’s why I left after graduation. Just couldn’t stand seeing her sink lower and lower.”

  “That’s understandable,” she offered.

  “Well, it ain’t to me,” he said angrily. “I shouldn’t have turned coward. I should have stayed to help Daddy with her.” He suddenly looked frightened. “What if we get there and they’re dead? Or, worse, what if they’ve turned?”

  “We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

  Big T shook his head. “I don’t know if I could do it… you know, do away with my folks. Even if they had turned into one of them.”

  Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, she thought to herself, but she did it anyway. “If you can’t, I’ll do it for you.”

  He turned and looked at her, a little puzzled. “I’m not sure what to think of that… a sweet thing like you offering to do such a thing.”

  A blush bloomed in her freckled cheeks. “Is that what I am? A sweet thing?”

  “You are to me.” Their fingers entwined and they smiled at one another in a different way than they had before.

  “If it comes down to it, we’ll take care of it together,” she told him. “Deal?”

  He still looked troubled, but nodded. “Deal.” The big man turned his gaze back through the windshield. “Could you do me another favor, too?”

  “You name it.”

  “Call me Tyrone from now on. What kinda dumb-ass name is Big T for a grown man to carry around?”

  “Just what I’ve been asking myself all along,” she said with a smile.

  They continued down the road, their conversation fading. But this time the silence was a comfortable one.

  They approached the wide channel of the French Broad River around three in the afternoon. The bridge loomed in the distance—concrete and gray steel, stretching three hundred yards across, from end to end. Its framework rose a good fifty feet toward the sky, twelve feet higher at the very center.

  Levi eyed the structure uncomfortably. The bad thing about bridges was the confinement they brought once you began crossing them. Nowhere to escape to, except the muddy water of the river forty feet to either side, if something was to go wrong.

  Nell sensed his concern. “No other way to go but straight across,” she said. As they grew nearer, she studied the paved stretch that ran through the bridge’s center. “Looks clear enough. There are a few cars. And there’s a gas tanker parked smack dab in the middle, but it’s only in one lane. We ought to be able to get around it just fine.”

  “I still don’t like it,” he said. “But I reckon we don’t have much of a choice.”

  He slowed the truck, stuck his hand out the side window, and motioned forward. The Yukon and Mercedes behind him flashed their headlights in acknowledgement. As he began moving forward, he noticed a couple of Biters at the entrance of the bridge.

  “Want I should pop ’em as we drive by?” asked Avery eagerly.

  “No point in it,” his father told him. “No need to waste bullets unless we absolutely have to.”

  They drew steadily nearer. The two spotted them and started stumbling toward the truck. Levi intended to knock them down or run them over, if they got in the way. Then, suddenly, as they reached the point where the earth sloped away to the banks of the river below, the sunken and decayed heads of three dozen Biters appeared. The crowd struggled and scrambled to make it up the steep embankments on either side of the bridge. Their eyes were angry and bloodshot, their teeth swarming black with tiny, black parasites.

  There was a thud at the passenger door. Levi and Nell looked to see a Biter there, jogging alongside the truck, tugging at the door handle with an emaciated hand. His other hand struck the side window, which, fortunately, was up instead of down. The blow didn’t crack the glass, but left a nasty reddish-brown smear swarming with frantic black motion.

  “These bastards have it bad,” Avery said. “They’re full up with those filthy black boogers!” He unshucked his .357 from its holster. “Mama, roll that window down a crack for me, will you?”

  Nell did as he asked and leaned toward Levi, covering her ears. Avery leaned forward over the seat, placed the muzzle of the revolver an inch from the Biter’s forehead, and fired. The zombie dropped in his tracks, but his hand still clutched the door handle. They dragged him another fifteen feet before his fingers finally relaxed and let go.

  “We’ll get across the bridge and put some distance between them and us,” Levi suggested. “Then we’ll be on our way.”

  He pre
ssed on the gas and increased his speed. A chubby teenaged boy in an Aéropostale t-shirt and jean shorts tottered toward them. Beside him was a small redheaded girl about five or six years old, dressed in a stained pair of Disney Princess pajamas. Whether the child was the boy’s little sister or not couldn’t be determined. They were both in such an advanced stage of decomposition that any family resemblance was lost in patches of putrid gray flesh and denuded bone.

  Levi gunned the engine and struck the boy. He flipped end over end and hit the left-hand support of the bridge entrance. His bloated body deflated a bit and a noxious explosion of methane exited every orifice of his body, as well as some that abruptly appeared when the skin of his abdomen and chest burst open. The little girl stepped clumsily upon the bumper of the Dodge and began to scramble up the grill. Levi stamped on the brake, dislodging her. Then he traded the brake for the accelerator and ran her over. He grimaced as the tires went over her, snapping youthful bones and flattening flesh and organs.

  As he started across the southern end of the bridge, he looked in his rear-view mirror. The Yukon kept up the pace, barreling through the lurching Biters, knocking them on their asses or grinding them underneath its oversized tires. Once a frail, old woman—naked, her baggy flesh tinted an ugly bluish-gray—climbed onto the hood of the SUV and crawled toward the windshield like a lizard on its belly. As she licked and gnawed on the glass, Kate braked hard. The sudden deceleration caused the woman to slide back down the hood and fall in the path of the Yukon. Kate shifted her foot back to the gas pedal, sending the vehicle lurching forward.