by Bible, Jake
GRETA DOESN’T NEED light to know the color of the gunk that splatters across her face as she crushes the skull of a Z that lunges for her. It’s black. It’s always black. She ducks to her left and lets another attacking Z rush past her. It quickly gets tangled in the razor wire to hers and her brother’s backs and starts to shred itself as it struggles to get loose.
“Down!” Charlie shouts as he swings towards Greta.
She ducks as Charlie’s hunk of deadwood whooshes over her head and slams into the face of a Z that had gotten caught earlier. The force of the blow, coupled with the sharpness of the razor wire and the softness of the creature’s neck, results in a very messy decapitation. Charlie kicks the snapping head down the hill at the other Zs as they come at the siblings.
“Use the fence!” Charlie shouts.
“I know!” Greta replies as she sweeps the legs out from under a Z and watches it tumble into others.
“Get them caught in the wire!” Charlie yells, ripping the jaw off a Z with an uppercut blow.
“I know!” Greta replies again, this time as she brings her deadwood flat against the chest of a Z, caving in its softened ribcage. It slows it down enough for Greta to use her momentum and spin completely around, increasing the force of her hit as she nails the Z in the temple. Its entire head crumples under the force and rotting brains spill out from the shattered skull.
“If we trap enough we can use the razors against them!” Charlie shouts.
“I KNOW!” Greta screams. “SHUT UP!”
Charlie uses his elbow to shove a Z to the side as he kicks another in the knee, shattering the thing’s leg. It crumples and Charlie brings his wood down hard on the Z’s skull, silencing it forever. The limp body rolls down the hill towards the other stilled corpses.
The Z that Charlie had knocked aside reaches for him, but he ducks under the arms and rams it in the chest with his shoulder, driving it up against the wire fence. The monster struggles, struggles, then breaks free as most of the putrid flesh from its back tears off in drippy strips. But Charlie uses its forward momentum, and good old gravity, against it and sticks out his leg, easily tripping the Z.
It falls face first into the dirt and Charlie brings his wood down on the back of its skull. The first blow just shoves the Z’s face into the soft earth, but the second blow splits bone and the thing stops moving.
Charlie is barely able to get the hunk of deadwood up in time to fend off another attacking Z. It grips his shirt and tries to pull him forward, but he jams it in the chest with the end of the deadwood and shoves it away. The sudden loosening of the Z’s grip sends Charlie stumbling backwards and he screams as his arms are sliced by the razor wire behind him.
The fresh blood sends the remaining Zs into a frenzy and their usual shambling attacks turn quickly into a full on rush. Greta steps forward, not wanting to have a repeat of what happened to Charlie happen to her, and kicks out with her right leg, nailing the first Z in the gut. Soft, fetid intestines spill out around her foot as the Z’s belly splits open. She swallows the gorge that rises in her throat and concentrates on keeping her traction as she almost loses her balance when her gore slicked foot comes back down.
The Z snarls at her and lunges, but gets tangled in its own guts as they spill from its midsection and slide around its legs. Greta bashes the thing’s head in before it can get free of its bowels. Greta’s gorge wins this time, she turns her head, and projectile pukes against a small pine tree.
“Sorry,” she says to the pine as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
“They keep coming!” Charlie yells.
“I know!” Greta replies.
“Oh, don’t start that again!” Charlie laughs. It’s a strained, almost maniacal laugh, but it must be contagious because Greta joins in with him.
The Zs don’t know that the sounds they hear are two teenagers laughing at the insanity of everything; they just know food is in front of them. And they lunge, their ever present hunger pushing them towards death, whether the teenagers’ or theirs.
“OH, SWEET GOD,” LOURDES says as she reaches the scene of the massacre in front of the gates. “What have you done?”
“Get back, woman!” a man shouts. “We know who you are! You better listen or you go down like your frei...”
Lourdes has her rifle up and firing before he can finish. She barely aims, just shoots at the head shaped shadows that line the top of the gates. Screams and cries of pain tell her she hits her marks. The fact that there’s no return fire tells her she hit every mark. Her last few shots kill the spotlights that glare down at her.
Covered in Z gore, the Fitzpatricks come rushing up behind her.
“Damn,” Buzz says. “Didn’t really need us, did ya?”
“We still need to get inside those gates,” Lourdes says. “And then deal with the fuckers behind them.”
“I can do it,” Porky says as he eyes the logs that make up the structure before them. “I like climbing.”
“He does,” Pup nods. “My brother can climb a tree faster than a possum with a hound on its butt.”
Stella, gasping for air, stumbles up to Lourdes, Buzz and Pup, as Porky runs to the gate and begins his ascent. He’s halfway up when a face peers over the side. Lourdes puts a bullet right between the face’s eyes.
“Jesus,” Buzz says. “Maybe they weren’t gonna hurt him.”
“You really want to take that chance?” she asks, sweeping her arm about at the corpses that litter the road.
The corpses...
“Ah, shit,” Pup says then looks at Buzz. “Pardon my language.”
“Daddy’s dead, Pup,” Buzz says.
“But he still wouldn’t like me cussin’,” Pup says.
Buzz gives his brother a sad smile and nods.
A couple of the corpses start to wiggle and shake.
“They’re coming back,” Stella says. “Oh, God, they’re coming back.”
Lourdes pulls her baton as Buzz and Pup turn their rifles around, butts down.
By the time the gates slowly creak open, the refugees that tried to reanimate are silenced for good. Buzz, Lourdes, Pup, and Stella stand there with silent tears streaming down their faces.
Then a high pitched scream echoes from the pines to their left.
“GRETA!” Stella shouts and runs towards the sound.
“Stella! Wait!” Lourdes yells, but it does no good, the woman is gone into the darkness of the woods. “Shit!”
More screams fill the air.
“I got this,” Buzz says. “Take my brothers inside there and kick some ass! I’ll make sure the Stanfords are okay!”
BRANCHES WHIP AT HER face, but Stella doesn’t care. Her babies are in trouble, her little girl is screaming! With each piercing shriek, something dies inside Stella until she feels like a hollow shell of the woman that just seconds ago rushed into the woods without a second thought.
“GRETA!” Stella screams, knowing her voice will attract more Zs, but not giving two flying fucks of a shit. “GRETA!”
Stella rounds a turn in the hillside and slides to a halt, her mouth open at the scene before her. She tries to walk forward, but her legs won’t move; they are frozen to the spot. Without warning, her knees buckle and she falls onto them, her hands out in front of herself so she doesn’t completely face plant.
“Mrs. Stanford!” Pup yells behind her.
“Stella!” Buzz shouts.
The two men nearly run over her as they come around the turn. The rifle in Pup’s hand clatters to the dirt as he stares at the carnage that covers the area.
“What the holy hell?” Buzz whispers.
The two Stanford teenagers are busy slamming their wooden weapons down over and over and over.
“Greta?” Stella says. “Charlie?”
Charlie stops and gives his mom a maniacal smile. He straightens up and points his weapon.
“Greta, stop,” he says. “Mom’s here.”
Greta freezes, her hunk of dea
dwood raised over her head, and looks to where Charlie points. At their feet is what once was a Z, but is now a demolished pile of bone and pulpy flesh. Some of that flesh drips off the deadwood and onto Greta’s face and she casually wipes it away.
“Mom!” Greta shouts as she runs forward and dives at her mother, wrapping her arms about Stella in a chest crushing embrace.
“Hey, Mom,” Charlie says as he walks over to them. “Greta lost it there for a minute.” He shrugs. “I may have gone with her a bit.”
“Did you two...?” Buzz asks then stops and shakes his head.
“Kill them all?” Pup finishes for his brother.
Charlie looks over his shoulder at the Z corpses that litter the ground and hang from the fence. He shrugs.
“Yeah,” he says, “I guess we did.”
“You guess you did?” Stella cries. “You guess you did? My, God, I thought you two were dead when I heard Greta scream! Get over here!”
Charlie kneels and lets his mother pull him against her and his sister. Stella can’t hold it together and begins to sob uncontrollably.
“My babies,” she whispers, “my sweet, sweet babies.”
“Uh, Buzz?” Pup whispers. “We need to get back and help Ms. Torres.”
“Give it a minute,” Buzz says. “We are needed here right now. I sure ain’t one to hurry a mama bear when she’s huggin’ her cubs.”
Pup nods and smiles at the Stanfords then reaches down and picks up his rifle. He puts it to his shoulder and watches the area, his eyes looking deep into the shadows, keeping the hugging and crying family safe from any more harm.
For the moment.
Chapter Six
“That’s quite a story,” I say, handing John a bottle of water as we all sit on the long porch of the Biltmore House. “All of the Zs came from Atlanta?”
“Not all,” John replies. “Most of them were probably picked up along the way in Athens then in Greenville/Spartanburg. The Consortium has been hoarding them for years.”
“Hoarding hordes,” I say, shaking my head. “I guess after what Mondello said, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“What about other groups then?” Stuart asks, leaning forward in his chair. “Lourdes has mentioned that there are quite a few more enclaves like Atlanta across the country.”
“I don’t know,” John shrugs, “we didn’t hear much about them. They are out there, but I don’t think there’s any unity between them. More like the city/states of Italy.”
“The what?” Melissa asks.
“The city/states,” I reply for John. Because I can’t help being the know it all. And my shoulder fucking hurts so I need to talk, to do anything to get my mind off it. “Italy used to be made up of city/states that each had their own king. Florence, Naples, Venice, Rome, etc. Each had its strengths and weaknesses, but all had armies. They worked together when it came to foreign countries like France invading or Spain. Unless it was more advantageous to work with the invaders. Naples was notorious for that. Working with the French, working against the French, working with the French. Blah blah blah.”
“Great,” Stuart nods, “that info doesn’t help us at all.”
“But it gives us perspective,” I counter. “As we all know, history repeats itself. We learn from the past and we’ll be able to predict the future.”
“So what are we in this future?” Melissa asks. “France? Pardon me, but I don’t want to be French.”
“Don’t you mean pardonne moi?” I grin.
“Fuck off, Stanford,” Melissa smirks.
“So who do we work with then?” Stuart asks, looking at John.
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I hear there’s Boulder, Kansas City, Salt Lake, Portland, and probably others.”
“What about New York or LA?” Melissa asks. “They aren’t players?”
“They don’t exist,” John says. “That much we know for sure. The populations were too big. The Zs wiped everything out and there’s no way anyone can get in and secure those places. Not that they’d want to. I heard a rumor that LA was torched. They burned it to the ground.”
“Nuclear?” Stuart asks.
“Don’t think so,” John answers. “As far as I know no one has gone nuclear. Not yet.”
“And that’s what that is?” Melissa asks, nodding towards the pack far down the porch, away from all of them. “A nuke?”
“No, no,” John says. “It’s spent uranium wrapped in a very large amount of C4. A dirty bomb.”
“But not the only one,” Stuart says.
“Probably not,” John agrees.
“Having that makes me think Atlanta wasn’t going to go take muffins to the other cities,” Stuart says.
“Why?” Melissa asks. “Why bother?”
“Resources,” I say, “and control. The Consortium is not made up of Boy Scouts. It’s not a non-profit organization. They had Mondello in their pocket and he was the, and I use the term lightly, President of the United States.”
“But why not send Zs into the cities like they are doing to us?” Melissa asks.
“Because that’s a lot of distance,” John says. “And the cities are prepared for herds of Zs. What they aren’t prepared for is radiation and their people dying brutal deaths from that.”
“Salt the earth,” I say.
“Jesus,” Stuart says.
“Holy shit,” Melissa nods, getting it. “They blow one of these up and the city is dead in what, months?”
“Yeah, about close to that,” John says.
“Then the place is contaminated and now new folk can’t move in and rebuild,” Melissa says. “It’s like poisoning an ant hill or wasps nest.”
“Exactly,” I say.
“Huh,” Elsbeth grunts as she sits on the porch rail. She’d been so quiet I forgot about her. “Why do we have one?”
“What?” John asks.
“Why do we have a bomb?” Elsbeth asks again. “Why take it? What do we need it for?”
“In case,” John says and frowns. “I voted against, so did Reaper. But Platt...”
“Platt’s an old soldier,” Stuart says, “not as old as me, but old enough to know a deterrent when he saw one.”
“Deter what?” Elsbeth says. “They have already won.”
“I don’t know if they’ve won or...,” John begins but stops as several loud explosions echo across the estate.
We all get up and look towards the north, but the house blocks our view. We scramble inside and race through the house to the other side. Many of the sisters join us as we run upstairs to a row of north facing windows.
Asheville is on fire. We can see huge flames licking the darkness of early morning sky. Another explosion goes off then another. We’re all thinking it, but I’m the one that voices it. Since I can’t keep my mouth shut.
“We can’t rebuild this,” I say, “Asheville is lost.” A trillion thoughts flood through my mind, but the main one is. “Whispering Pines.”
“I can’t tell where the fire is exactly,” John says. “It may not be that close.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “It’s not like the fire department is going to put out those blazes. It’ll spread and wipe everything out that can burn. And considering the dry summer we’ve had, that means it’ll burn all the way to the river.”
“My lord,” Melissa says, “what do we do?”
“That is something to talk about,” Cassie says as she joins us. Reaper is right behind.
“Platt?” John asks.
“He’ll make it,” Reaper nods, “thanks to Antoinette. She’s still in there, watching his vitals. I told her I’d do it, but she is pretty focused. Like she’s been waiting for this.”
“She has,” Cassie says. “We all have our specialties. Antoinette studied surgery. Unfortunately for her, none of us has had more than a few scrapes that needed stitches. I’ve never seen her so happy.”
“Yep,” I nod, “you are Elsbeth’s sisters alright.”
“What doe
s that mean?” Elsbeth scowls.
“Just that y’all have a different definition of ‘happy’ and ‘unfortunately’,” I smile, hoping she doesn’t punch me.
“True,” Elsbeth nods.
Far off are the sounds of rifles. They stop then start again then stop. We all stand by the window and face the burning glow of Asheville.
“I have to assume that’s Lourdes and her PCs,” Stuart says. “Hopefully, they are the buffer between the Zs and Whispering Pines.”
“Wish we had communications,” John says, “that would make things easier.”
“You’re soldiers,” one of the sisters (Stacy? Tracy?) says, “use your radios.”
“Jammed,” John replies, “not a single signal.”
“Hmmmm,” Cassie says and looks at the other women. “We knew the Wi-Fi went down...”
“What is it?” Elsbeth asks. “You know something. Tell us. Now.”
“Us, sister?” Cassie smiles. “What us would that be?”
Elsbeth just glares. Cassie holds up her hands in apology.
“My bad. I was playing,” Cassie says. “Audrey reported men setting up equipment on top of the BB&T building. Right in the center of town.”
“The jammer,” John smiled, “if we can take that down then we can coordinate everyone again.”
“The Consortium will be listening, I’m sure,” Cassie says.
“Let them,” I smile, “they can hear what’s coming for them.”
“I’ll go,” Stuart says.
“I’m in,” John nods.
“I will go too and kill the jammer with my bare hands,” Elsbeth says. “I liked my Wi-Fi.”
“Some of us will go as well,” Cassie says. “Let me speak to my sisters. The rest will accompany you to Whispering Pines.”
“Wait...what?” Melissa asks. “How? The roads are full of Zs. I know you ladies are badass and all, but not take-out-a-million-Zs badass. No offense, meant. I’m all for strong women.”
“We don’t need roads,” I say, “we have the French Broad.”
“That was our plan,” Reaper says, “before Platt got so bad. We were going to float into Riverside Park down across the highway from Whispering Pines. We still can.”