by Bible, Jake
“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 off 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.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I say. “Thanks for the sunny info.”
“Oh, that’s just a fraction,” Big Daddy says. “But I’ll wait until you’re better so I don’t break that brain of yours.”
“Too late.”
Elsbeth doesn’t come over right away after Big Daddy leaves. She sits there, her eyes boring holes into my skull, until I throw up my hands.
“What?” I say. “Are you going to spend all day staring at me?”
She hops down from the railing and walks slowly over to me. When she gets to my side she looks down on me. I have no idea what the expression on her face means until I see the tears welling up. Then she throws herself against me and hugs me until I cry out. Some of the kids stop playing and spin about, their eyes on me, worried.
“All good,” I gasp. “Keep playing.”
They do; they’re kids.
“Elsbeth?” I say. “Hard to breathe. Crushing bones. Ow.”
“Oh, stupid me,” she says and lets go quickly. She starts to smack herself in the head then freezes, forcing her hands to her side. “I was scared.”
“You didn’t look scared,” I say. “You looked pretty fucking impressive.”
“Not fighting,” she replies, shaking her head back and forth quickly. “When you were dying. I almost killed you.”
“You saved me,” I say. “You stopped the bleeding. That was a Desert Eagle. It took out a good amount of my side.” I’ve had a chance to look at the wound; I’m not exaggerating. There’s a lot less of me on my left side than my right. “You were my hero.”
Elsbeth keeps shaking her head.
“The doctor lady said that you were ‘fected. She wasn’t nice to me about it.”
“That’s just Dr. McCormick. Not exactly a huggy kind of lady. What did Reaper say?”
A small smile creeps onto Elsbeth’s face and I’m glad to s
ee it. “He says I could be a medic person. If I want. John says he wants me to be a snipper person.”
“Sniper,” I correct, “not snipper.”
“Yes, sniper person,” Elsbeth continues. “Platt says I’m scary enough to be whatever I want. Is that a mean thing? I can’t tell with Platt. He frowns so much.”
“What does Leeds say?” I ask.
“He says he’d be happy to have me,” she smiles. “After some training. He calls me rough around the edges.”
“You are that,” I say. “So Special Forces, huh? You’re suited for it.”
The smile fades from her face. “But I have to pay for it.”
“You what? Pay for it? What does that mean?”
“Leeds and Big Daddy say the training comes with a price.”
“Oh. And what’s the price?”
“I have to show them where the rest of the cannies are,” she answers. “The ones I know about. They say cannies are too dangerous to keep around.” Her eyes tear up again. “Does that mean they’ll kill them? They ain’t all bad people. Just hungry people. Can I just tell them where the bad ones are? The sick ones?”
I shudder at the thought of what she defines as “sick.”
“You tell them what your conscience feels is right,” I say. She’s puzzled by this. “You know that feeling you get when you do something you know is bad?”
“You mean when Pa would hit me for being stupid?”
My heart nearly breaks. “No, that feeling inside you. You also get a feeling when you do something good. Like when you saved me. Do you remember what feeling you had then?”
“Yeah,” she nods, “it felt right. I had to save you.”
“Or what?”
“Or my guts would turn squishy and I’d feel all- Oh! That’s my cons-, that’s my cunsh-, that’s what you mean?”
“Yes, your conscience,” I say. “It helps you know right from wrong. Good people, like you, have a strong one. At any time you could have left me and Stuart to die. But you stayed.”
“You’re my friend,” Elsbeth says. “Stuart is my friend now too. I didn’t want you to die.”
“Well, there you have it,” I say. “Follow those feelings and you’ll do what’s right. We’ll help the cannies we can, and let Leeds handle the ones we can’t.”
She nods. “Okay.” She looks out at the front yard. I can see her focus go past the kids to the rows of fences and wires. And the ever present Zs beyond. “They keep coming because the life is here. The people and the animals. They won’t ever stop coming.”
“No, they won’t,” I say, “but we’ll manage them. We’ll fight them.”
“Until we can’t.”
“Yep. Until we can’t.”
She turns and hugs me again then runs down to the kids, joining in the game. She is instantly “It”, a role I can see she loves as she runs about, chasing the other kids, the sun shining down on her.
“I think she’s adopted us,” Stella says as she takes the seat next to me where Big Daddy had sat just minutes before.
“Have we adopted her?” I ask, looking at my beautiful wife.
“As long as she doesn’t try to eat us,” Stella smiles at me. “Yes. We have.”
“Good, because she needs us,” I say.
“And we need her, if you’re going to get yourself fucked up like this again,” Stella says. “Which I expressly forbid to happen.”
“Fine by me,” I say and reach for her hand. She takes it instantly.
We sit there for a long while, watching the kids play, watching our son fail at flirting, watching life keep going. People come by now and again to see how I’m doing. People I know and don’t know. There is hope and expectation in their eyes. I hope I can live up to both.
Life will never be easy. But when was it ever, really?
Just another day on the Farm. One day we’ll have to go back, but until then, Z-Burbia can wait. I’m cool right where I am for the moment.
Z-Burbia 2: Parkway to Hell
Jake Bible
Copyright 2021 Jake Bible
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Chapter One
“Your guess is as good as mine,” James ‘Don’t call me Jimmy’ Stuart says, as he lowers the binoculars and looks over at Weapons Sergeant Sammy “John” Baptiste. “But I don’t think they’re part of Vance’s group.”
“No, they aren’t,” John replies, moving his eye from the scope of his M110 sniper rifle. He looks over at Stuart and frowns. “Those aren’t crooks. That’s not crime, that’s business.”
“Business?” Stuart asks, looking into the binoculars again. “What business could they possibly be in then?”
John returns his eye to the scope and they both study the building across the street and above the ruined golf course. The Grove Park Inn. From the early 1900s right up to Z-Day, the GPI was the place for the affluent to stay when vacationing in Asheville, NC. Everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to President Barak Obama stayed at the GPI. Artists, actors, diplomats, masters of industry, all called it a temporary home at one point or another. Now the five story stone, brick, and wood luxury inn, is home to a different element, an unknown element.
Z-Day hit Asheville the same day as it hit the rest of the world. No one knows what caused it. A virus was ruled out because of the simultaneous occurrences of the undead rising from graves, beds, morgues, and battlefields. Some said it was a comet that came too close to the Earth’s atmosphere; others said it was God’s wrath on the wicked.
Whatever caused it, the result was the same: the dead rose and were hungry. Hungry for the flesh of the living. The apocalypse was on; and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina couldn’t escape it. Civilization broke down as the living dead multiplied exponentially. A bite meant sickness, death, and then undeath. And those that died of “natural” causes rose as well. Soon the undead outnumbered the living. The world as everyone knew it ended and a post-Z world hunkered down and hid in the shadows.
The undead, or Zs, could hear, could smell, and could see the living. Movement and sound attracted them; the smell of flesh drove them into a frenzy. It was a shambling, slow-moving frenzy, but get enough of the Zs in one place and a herd would form, surrounding any living that were unlucky enough to be caught.
Survivor pockets emerged, some good, some not so good. The Farm, Whispering Pines, Critter’s Holler, were just a few of the good pockets; places that humanity set up to survive in. Most of Asheville was uninhabited (by the living, at least) except for isolated individuals and groups of cannies. Cannibals. Everyone has to eat sometime.
Stuart watches the men and women that patrol the back balconies and massive porch of the Grove Park Inn and tries to figure out what category they fit in: good or bad. They all sport various automatic rifles. Not standard military issue and not just hanging out at the local Wal-Mart. Highly customizable, Stuart counts no less than six different types being carried by the armor-clad men and women, mostly versions of the Ares Defense Shrike, though.
“Mercs then?” Stuart asks.
“No,” John replies, “too uniform. Look at the gear. Except for the weapons, they all have the same gear. Same body armor. Shit, man, they even have the same boots on.”
“Private contractors then?”
“That’s my guess,” John says. “You say they were there when you were running from Vance and his goons?”
“Affirmative,” Stuart says. “Patrolling the Inn just like now. I only had a minute to observe them, but didn’t think too much of it. I figured they were with Vance.”
“But they obviously aren’t. Which isn’t good.”
“Because if they could hold the Grove Park against Vance and his people, then they are not something we want to tangle with,” Stuar
t says.
“Oh, I’d love to tangle with them,” John says, “but not before we have more intel. They stink of private contractors.”
“Blackwater then?”
“Who fucking knows? I don’t really care who they are, just who has hired them.”
“Maybe they’re on their own. Not hired out to anyone. If I ran a private military company, I’d want all of my resources and assets for myself. Screw the clients. Z-Day changed commerce like that forever.”
“Unless someone has enough resources to make a job worth it,” John says, “and that scares me.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“We better get back to Whispering Pines and check in,” John says, slowly scooting back from the rhododendron bushes they are hidden in. “Captain Leeds and Long Pork will be back soon.”
“Maybe,” Stuart nods, “if they figured out what was wrong at the gas transfer station.”
GAS STINKS, MAN.
Or to be more specific: natural gas. Did you know they add that dead meat smell to it? That way if there’s a leak way out in the middle of nowhere, they can spot it by the circling buzzards overhead. Kinda cool.
Know what’s not cool? The natural gas infrastructure I am currently staring at. I haven’t a clue what I’m looking for, I just know that the flow of gas has stopped and we need it to rebuild Whispering Pines. Not a single person has refrained from reminding me that my idea to blow the fuck out of Whispering Pines two months ago, was probably what caused the gas transfer station to shut down. Some failsafe kicked in and the lines went dead. It was the last vestige of civilization post-Z. Shit may have sucked with everything else, but at least we could count on the gas to flow and the water to be hot. Oh, and the gas furnaces to run during those super cold nights.
Yes, we might have been a little spoiled in Whispering Pines when it comes to apocalypse amenities. But we aren’t spoiled now. There’s barely a single dwelling left in the entire subdivision. Crews are there sorting debris into useable and non-useable piles. In between the Z attacks, that is. Quite a bit of the fortifications surrounding the neighborhood were damaged, which means stray Zs are coming in all the time.