Z-Burbia Box Set | Books 1-3 [The Asheville Trilogy]

by Bible, Jake

  “Take it,” she says, “finish the job.”

  “You take us captive and then hand me a pistol?” I ask. “Are you high?”

  “What are you going to do, Mr. Stanford? Shoot your way free? You aim that 9 at anything other than those zeds and your head will be mist. Poof. I’m not too worried.”

  “Do it, Jace,” Leeds says.

  “Jesus,” I say as I start to take the 9 with my bandaged right hand and wince.

  “Hurt yourself?” Foster asks.

  “I always do,” I say as I take it with my left hand and walk up to the pile.

  The Zs all hiss at me, their broken bodies straining against the debris, trying to get at me. Being brand spanking new, several of them actually manage to shift some concrete; they’re always strongest just after turning. I count eight Zs. Maybe there are more in the pile, but I can’t see them.

  I don’t hoo and haw. No need to waste time. It’s not like I haven’t had to put down Zs before. The 9 feels weird in my left hand, but I steady it and take aim. Then fire.

  I fucking miss.

  The second shot doesn’t and I walk from one Z to the other, take careful aim, and fire. All eight are dead in less than a minute. I eject the magazine and hand the empty pistol back to Foster.

  “Afraid I’ll use one of the remaining cartridges on you?” she smiles.

  “Just thought I’d slow you down,” I say. I watch her slap the magazine back into the pistol and rack the slide in a blink. “Or not.”

  She raises the pistol and aims at my forehead. I don’t even have time to think before shit gets crazy. There’s a cry behind me, a few grunts, some slamming and scuffling, then Leeds is next to me, a pistol in his hand pointed at Foster’s forehead.

  She doesn’t even glance over at him; her eyes are fixed on me.

  “How’s this going to go?” Leeds asks.

  “I don’t know, Captain,” she says, “you tell me.”

  “I’d prefer if it went easy. No one else needs to get hurt,” Leeds says. “Sorry about your men there, but shit happens these days.”

  “Those weren’t my men,” Foster says. “Those were just some poor suckers that signed on with my employer. Simple labor here to do a job. They probably have families or loved ones. I don’t know, I don’t care.”

  “So back to my original question: how is this going to go?”

  Foster just watches me. She is doing this weird thing with her mouth, like she’s sucking her teeth. I can see her running her tongue up under her lip. What the fuck? People are weird.

  “Would you like to meet my employer?” she finally asks. “Could be a good thing for you and yours.”

  It takes me a second to realize she’s asking me, not Leeds.

  “Oh, uh, sure,” I say, “beats getting shot in the face.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” she smiles. Why is it whenever military folks smile, it gives me the creeps?

  “Is your employer here,” Leeds asks, the 9 steady in his hand, never wavering.

  “Oh, hell no,” Foster laughs. “He leaves the sweating to the slaves.”

  “Slaves?” Leeds asks.

  Foster shrugs and then the 9 is gone. I blink and it’s in the holster on her belt.

  “Captain? If you please?” she says.

  Leeds lowers the pistol and PCs converge on him, but Foster holds up her hand. They stop instantly. She holds out her palm and Leeds places the 9 in it without a word.

  “Let’s take my car,” Foster says, “I’ll drive.” She looks over at one of the PCs and the woman hurries off. “You’ll like my car. Custom made for this job.”

  In a minute, everyone parts as a rigged out four door Jeep Wrangler comes pulling up. I would have thought a hard top would be more practical, but this Wrangler has the soft top down. Probably makes firing the fifty caliber on top a little easier. On the front bumpers are two miniguns, you know the ones that look like small Gatling guns with the rotating barrels? Yeah, those. I can see ammunition belts feeding under the hood.

  But the cool thing (yes, I said cool), is that the entire Jeep is ringed with blades. They look like blades from a sawmill, which they probably are, that have been welded onto the frame just at waist level. I can see the front has a reinforced grill with heavy bars and spikes. The back has the ubiquitous spare tire, but also a wide panel of steel. I can’t quite tell what that does.

  “Hop in, boys,” Foster says as she gets into the driver’s seat. “Mr. Stanford, you can ride up front with me. The Captain can ride bitch in the back.”

  I get in and so does Leeds. He’s instantly sandwiched between two men that must weigh eight hundred pounds between them. Food shortage hasn’t been an issue for these boys. Damn they are huge. Foster barely waits for the doors to close before she’s pulling away. Cowboy gives her a nod and she nods back, as she runs up onto the curb and skirts around a ton of machinery.

  “The crew was busy retrofitting some generators for natural gas when you flipped the switch,” Foster says. “A few minutes before or a few minutes after, and it would have all been good. But your timing was perfect. The guys working on the retrofit were vaporized. Those zeds you put down were standing fifty feet away.”

  She looks over at me, and I give her a weak smile.

  “You like blowing shit up, don’t you Mr. Stanford?”

  “I don’t set out to do it,” I say. “Just seems to happen around me.”

  “Just seems to happen,” she says as she barrels towards a swarm of Zs. “Interesting way to put it.”

  We get closer and closer to the Zs, but she takes a right just before we hit the swarm. We speed down a hill, take a hard curve, and then speed back up another hill, zigzagging our way through the Haw Creek area of Asheville. I haven’t been in this area since before Z-Day. Dozens and dozens of Zs are wandering about in front yards and fields as we zip along the winding road.

  “Where are we headed?” I shout over the wind that is whipping past us.

  “FOB,” she says.

  “Oh,” I nod, “what does that mean?”

  “Forward operating base,” Leeds says from behind me. “I have a feeling where that is.”

  “Do you?” Foster asks as she looks at him in the rear view mirror. My stomach clenches as she keeps looking at him while taking a hairpin turn. “Enlighten me, Captain?”

  “You’re the folks at the Grove Park Inn,” Leeds says.

  “That’s you guys?” I say. “I really thought that was Vance’s people.”

  “That slimy fuck?” Foster laughs, looking back at the road. “My employer wouldn’t let him anywhere near the place. That guy was batshit fucking nuts.” She shrugs. “But he had his uses. Guy knew how to round up zeds, that’s for sure. My job has gotten a lot harder since you killed him.”

  “He kinda forced me to,” I say.

  “Oh, I’m sure he did,” Foster says. “I don’t doubt that one bit. Still, makes my job harder.”

  “And what is your job?” Leeds asks.

  “Keep the party rolling,” Foster says. “Whatever it takes.”

  Leeds nods, obviously understanding what that means. I, on the other hand, am in the dark as usual.

  We pull off the road and head up a steep, switchback of a gravel road.

  “Wait,” I say. “How are we getting to the Grove Park from here? Haw Creek doesn’t connect. There’s a mountain in the way.”

  “You call these mountains?” Foster laughs. “Please. Try spending a winter in the Wakhan Corridor. Then you’ll understand what mountains are.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leeds stiffen. It’s subtle, and most wouldn’t notice, but I do. So does Foster. How? I have no idea.

  “You putting the pieces together, Captain?” Foster asks.

  “That was quite a mess,” Leeds says, “took some serious clean up. The Chinese weren’t happy.”

  “Shit gets messy in the field,” Foster says. “You of all people should know that.”

  We keep climbing
and climbing as the gravel road turns to dirt then becomes more of an idea of a road than an actual road. Like a wide trail. Then that is gone. I do see tire tracks in the mud and grass that we bump over, so I know this isn’t the first time Foster has gone this way.

  Then we hit a crest and look out over all of North Asheville. The view is incredible, and sad. There is so much destruction evident from up here. I’m blown away at how much of the city is just gone; rubble on the ground. Sure, I’ve scouted a lot of it, but seeing it from up here is another thing. The scope of it is breathtaking.

  “Asheville hasn’t fared so well,” Foster says, “but better than a lot of places. It was called the Paris of the South, right?”

  “Yeah, it was,” I reply.

  “It should just be called the Paris of the World, now,” she says, “considering what Paris looks like.”

  “You’ve seen Paris?” I ask, turning to her. “Post-Z Paris?”

  “Yes, Mr. Stanford,” she says as she cranks the wheel and follows a ridgeline that is barely as wide as the Jeep. “I’ve also seen Berlin, New York, Los Angles, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Cape Town, Beijing, and quite a few other places.”

  “How?” I ask. “By ship?”

  Foster furrows her brow. “You do realize zeds can’t fly, right, Mr. Stanford? And just because the dead walk the earth, doesn’t mean airplanes stopped working?”

  “Right. Yeah.”

  Yes, I feel stupid.

  Down the other side of the mountain we go. Foster turns off the trail and I swear we are going to plunge to our deaths, but the Jeep stays upright as we merge onto a lower trail. Winding, winding, winding down we go. Good thing I don’t get motion sick. Then we come out into a backyard behind some mansion and I know where we are.

  “Town Mountain Road,” I say. “I guess you found a short cut.”

  “Yep,” she says, “lot less zeds up here.”

  We get out onto the road and weave past massive houses that would have gone for millions pre-Z. Now they stand empty. Well, except for that one with the Zs banging on the huge picture window that looks out over Asheville. Guess that dinner party didn’t go as planned.

  Instead of going down Town Mountain, and into Asheville, Foster goes higher up. I’ve taken this route before, back when half of Merrimon Ave, the main artery into North Asheville, was under construction and I wanted to avoid the traffic pile up. Soon we are at Webb Cove Road with the Blue Ridge Parkway off to our right.

  And there are people working on the parkway. What the fuck?

  “I would have just taken the parkway to here, but you kinda blew up the on ramp,” Foster says. “Or enough of it that we will be a good two weeks behind.”

  I hear Leeds snort behind me and look over my shoulder. He just shakes his head.

  “Something on your mind, Captain? If so, please share,” Foster says, “I’d love to hear it.”

  “Where’d you start?” Leeds asks.

  “Right here,” Foster says. “Asheville is blessed with more access points to the Blue Ridge Parkway than any other city. Seemed like the natural place to begin.”

  “So BOP is in Charlottesville then?”

  “There abouts,” Foster says, “but I’ll leave that for my employer to explain.”

  “BOP? Charlottesville?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll leave that for her employer to explain,” Leeds says.

  We weave down Webb Cove Road and then connect to the smaller roads that eventually guide us right into the Grove Park Inn. We have to work through more than a few checkpoints, but no one even glances at Foster. They just raise the gates and let us through. When we pull up to the front entrance, there is a man dressed in jeans and a plaid work shirt standing there, waiting for us.

  We hop out of the Jeep, flanked by the muscle men, and he walks up to us.

  “Foster,” the man says, “are these the people giving us the troubles?”

  Foster looks at me. “This one was the issue,” she says. “Mr. Stanford was playing with toys he shouldn’t have been.”

  “Mr. Stanford, you have cost me a good amount of resources and labor,” the man says. “Maybe we’ll figure out a way you can pay that back.”

  “And why would I do that?” I ask.

  “Jace,” Leeds warns. I look at him and he shakes his head. “Not the time. Just listen.”

  “And you are...?” the man asks Leeds.

  “Captain Walt Leeds, US Army Special Forces Team Cobra, sir,” Leeds says, giving the man a salute. “At your service, Mr. President.”

  “Mr. President?” I ask, my jaw dropping. “What the fuck are you talking about? This isn’t the President of the United States.”

  “I am now,” the man says. He holds out his hand. “Anthony Mondello, former Secretary of Homeland Security.”

  I look at Leeds, then at Foster. They just stare back at me.

  “You people have got to be shitting me,” I say.

  Chapter Four

  The Fitzpatrick siblings crouch low, letting the convoy of trucks and Humvees pass on the road. They wait until the sound of the engines is a distant rumble, and then come out from their cover, the large, farm-bred men looking to their smaller sister for guidance.

  “They’re going to the Farm,” Blanchard “Buzz” Fitzpatrick says, his eyes narrowed and huge muscled arms quivering with adrenaline. The twins, Jonah “Pup” Fitzpatrick and Jeremiah “Porky” Fitzpatrick, nod in agreement.

  “I know,” Melissa Fitzpatrick replies, her eyes cast towards the Farm and the vehicles. “Go back?”

  “Daddy and everyone else will be there,” Pup says. “They can handle them.”

  “Did you get a good look?” Buzz asks Melissa.

  “Not really,” Melissa says. “But they looked military. Pretty sure I saw some rifles and maybe Kevlar vests.”

  “So back, or on to Asheville?” Buzz asks. “We need to decide now.”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Melissa whispers. “I don’t know. We’ll be way behind them. They take the Farm and we’ll be walking into a shit storm.”

  “We could be the deciding factor,” Porky says. “We may be the numbers Daddy needs to beat these people.”

  “Assuming they’re going to fight,” Melissa says. “Maybe they ain’t.”

  “You believe that?” Buzz asks. “With them guns they had?”

  “No,” Melissa answers, “just a thought, though.”

  “I say we go back and help,” Pup says. “That’s what Daddy would want.”

  “Yeah,” Melissa frowns. “True.”

  “So back then?” Buzz asks.

  “Against my better judgment,” Melissa says. “Back.”

  “RIGHT THERE,” JOHN says, pointing ahead to a thick covering of pine trees, “they need to work on their hiding skills.”

  “Yes they do,” Elsbeth agrees as she points above them, “and work on their not getting found skills. That’s Critter and they don’t even know it.”

  By the time the men have their guns up and pointed at John and Elsbeth, it is already too late. John just shakes his head and laughs as he walks up to the men.

  “Boys, you may be good out in your holler, but your city stealth leads something to be desired,” he says. “We could smell your cigarettes a couple blocks back.”

  “And I told you not to smoke while I was gone,” Critter says from behind them. “Fucking morons. Half pay and rations for all y’all.”

  “Aw, come on, Critter!” one of the men complains. “You said to wait here and that’s what we done. We waited. Can’t blame us for smoking.”

  “I can and I do, dipshit,” Critter says, smacking the man upside the head. “Because it was the smoke that got ya caught.”

  “Good to see you, Critter,” John says, holding out his hand.

  “You too, sniper boy,” Critter says, shaking John’s hand. “And you as well, miss.”

  “Miss what?” Elsbeth asks. “I didn’t miss anything.”

  Critter just l
aughs. “No, cain’t say you miss much at all.” He hooks a thumb back over his shoulder. “If you’re looking for the captain and Long Pork, then you missed them, though. Looks like some private soldiers have them all trussed up. I followed as far as I could, but the Zs are thick over east. I did see a Jeep head up Haw Creek road. Not sure where it was going.”

  “Private soldiers? You mean PCs?” John asks. “Black body armor?”

  “Yep,” Critter nods. “And all kinds of gear. They’s got guns I only seen in magazines.”

  “What’re PCs?” Elsbeth asks.

  “Private contractors,” John says. “I think I know where they’re going. But it’ll be a hike.”

  “You seen ‘em before?” Critter asks.

  “I have,” John says. “Stuart and I did some recon yesterday. They’re part of the group holed up in the Grove Park.”

  “Grove Park?” one of Critter’s men asks. “That means we have to get through downtown. It’s gonna be dark soon. No way, man. No fucking way.”

  “Scared little boy,” Elsbeth says, then turns and walks off towards downtown Asheville.

  “She said it,” John smiles and follows.

  “Grow a pair, will ya?” Critter snarls at the man. “The rest of ya better too. Long Pork and Captain Leeds need our help.”

  “What’s in it for us?” one of the other men asks.

  “You get to keep your tiny nuts,” Critter says. “You lookin’ for more, are ya?”

  “No, sir,” the man replies quietly.

  “Didn’t think so,” Critter glares. “Now get to steppin’, boys. That girl is gonna out hike y’all.”

  STELLA AND I WOULD bring the kids to the Grove Park Inn every Christmas to see the gingerbread house competition winners. It was a big thing pre-Z; Food Network did a special each year and the winners would be on Good Morning America. There were some seriously cool gingerbread houses. And some seriously bad ones.

  The best thing was the people watching. We’d take a walk around, see the houses, then grab refreshments and park it in the lobby to watch all the families that only venture out of their hollers once a year. It was quite the eye opening anthropological study. More than a few of those family trees didn’t have many branches, if any at all. It was snobby of us, but damn it was entertaining.