The Longest Road (Book 1)

by Thompson, A. S.

  “Fine, whatever,” Stella says as she closes the front door. “Why’s your bike in the front yard?”

  “It followed me home and then collapsed there,” I say.

  “Smart ass.”

  The walk is pleasant, as it has become a nice late summer evening. The sun is still up, but the air has turned and a hint of fall wafts by. We only have to walk a couple blocks before we get to Brenda’s house. We can all hear Preacher Carrey bellowing inside.

  “Jesus, what did you do?” Jon whispers.

  “I let him live,” Stella says and barges inside without knocking.

  I shrug. Jon shrugs. We follow.

  The scene before us is one of wild chaos. It’s as if a carnival barker had decided never to wash his clothes, himself, or anything he lived in/on/near. Then, for good measure, decided to take a bath in Old Spice. Preacher Carrey paced in front of us, his hands gesticulating, his wispy white hair standing on end, and his eyes rolling in his head over and over and over and-

  “There she is!” Carrey shouts. “The harpy of the dell!”

  “Is that an official title?” I ask.

  “Don’t remember that being in the scripture,” Jon says, “and I think I’ve read it all.”

  “It’s in the unabridged version,” I reply.

  “Oh, I just have the Cliff’s Notes version, skips all the begats and gets right to the sodomy and rape,” Jon smiles.

  “You…you!” Carrey says, his finger leading the accusatory way across the room at Stella.

  I instinctively get in front of her, but Carrey leans around me, reaching with that finger, as if he could burn her at the stake with its touch.

  “You are not welcome in my house!” Carrey shouts. We all wince at the noise.

  “I thought it was God’s house?” Stella asks calmly. Too calm. I know that calm. Not a good calm. I wish I could get away from that calm, but, too late for that.

  “You dare blaspheme?” Carrey snarls.

  “How exactly am I blaspheming?” Stella smiles. A calm smile. Yikes! “Please, do tell, Preacher. How have I blasphemed?”

  “Your unclean presence is blasphemy enough!” he screeches.

  “That’s not a reason,” Stella says, and then looks at Brenda. “Are we done here? He’s just going to keep saying that. We’ve all been here before.”

  “I call an embargo on your water!” Preacher Carrey yells, his hands above his head, his eyes doing that rolling, rolling, rolling thing.

  “Preacher, please,” Brenda pleads. “Be reasonable. There are children and elderly to think of.”

  “Then you should have thought of them before you took up with this lot!” Carrey yells, his arms sweeping towards us.

  “Lot?” Jon smirks. “I think you have your parables mixed up, Mr. Carrey.”

  “You do not lecture me in the ways of God!”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” Jon replies. “Pretty sure God will sit you down and lecture you on his own, in his time.”

  “Embargo! EMBARGO!” Carrey leaves.

  “Who runs Bartertown?” I whisper. Jon tries not to laugh, but ends up snorting snot out his nose.

  “Oh, my God, you two,” Stella scolds. “You’re worse than the kids.”

  “People, people!” Brenda cries. “We need to resolve this!”

  “Fine,” Stella says and clocks Carrey. The man drops to the floor, his mouth bloody and his eyes wide with surprise. She closes on him, shoving me out of the way. “No embargo or I gut you myself, you sanctimonious asshole. I will hunt you down and kill you no matter where you run to. You leave my family alone, you leave the children alone, and I let you live. Cross me again, and I string you up by your balls, and then lower you to the Zs on the other side of the gate.”

  Carrey stares at her for what feels like several minutes, but is only a few seconds.

  “Okay,” he says quietly and gets up. “Okay. God will have your reward waiting for you in the afterlife. I have done what I can.”

  “Uh, so no embargo?” Brenda asks.

  “No,” Carrey says and leaves.

  “Well, that couldn’t have gone any better,” Jon says. “Can we go now?”

  “No,” Brenda says, looking at me and then at Jon. “Stella can, now that’s taken care of, but not you two.”

  “Good,” Stella says. “I’m going to go take a long bath. In the water I just kicked ass for.”

  “Mind your rations,” Brenda says as my wife leaves and waves. I’m pretty sure there was a middle finger in the wave. “Did she flip me off?”

  “No, not at all,” I lie. “So what do you need from us?”

  “Carl has alerted me to a serious issue,” Brenda says, motioning for us to sit down.

  We do and wait. She waits. We wait. There is a lot of waiting.

  “If this were even remotely suspenseful, I’d be dead,” Jon says, “but it’s just boring and wasting my time. What do you need, Brenda?”

  “Carl has found an issue with the grid,” Brenda says.

  “I gathered that from your last statement,” Jon says. “And the issue is…?”

  “We are losing half the grid in the next few weeks,” Brenda says. “There were some miscalculations with the battery capacity and, well, to make a long story short, we need to scavenge more batteries if we want to keep the grid at full capacity.”

  “Maybe cutting back isn’t such a bad idea,” Jon says, holding out his phone. “I’m not particularly keen on having this thing tethered to me. Do we really need Wi-Fi communications? Or power so kids can play Xbox and adults can watch BluRays? It is the apocalypse you know.”

  “Keeping the traditions of society is how we keep society alive,” Brenda counters.

  “A good sharp stick is how we keep society alive these days,” I say, but regret it as soon as I see the anger on her face. This is obviously something she wants done. And when Brenda wants something done…

  “Let’s say we agree,” Jon says. “Why us? Why aren’t you talking to my wife? She’s Head of Scavenging. It’s her crew that will go out.”

  “Because we need her and her crew to go out looking for food,” Brenda says. “Stubben has informed me that this year’s crops are not up to par. We will need to supplement with canned goods and other found food.”

  “What has Tran said?” I ask. Tran is my Vietnamese neighbor. His accent is so thick that we mainly communicate with nods and hand signals, because I suck at accents. “He’s Head of Food Service.”

  “He’s also a Chatty Kathy,” Brenda says. “I tell him and the whole subdivision knows. I can’t have that.”

  A Chatty Kathy? Tran? Now I feel real bad for not being able to decipher what he says. God, I suck as a neighbor.

  “I need you two because-” she points at Jon, “-you are head of construction and will know what to look for. And you-” my turn for the pointing, “you are our problem solver. Between the two of you, I know you can get all the batteries we need.”

  “Last time we saw batteries, they were all the way in town,” Jon says. I shiver. “I would rather decline the invitation to go into town.”

  “Stuart will be with you,” Brenda states.

  That does make me feel better, but not by much.

  “Three of us? That’s all?” I say. “I don’t think so.”

  “You will be safe with Stuart,” Brenda says, and motions towards the front door as if our time is through. “He’ll be in touch in the morning.”

  “Oh,” I say as I realize our time actually is through. “How early?”

  “Yeah, how early?” Jon asks. “I like to sleep in on Thursdays.”

  “Is tomorrow Thursday?”

  “Hell if I know,” Jon shrugs. “Let’s say yes so we can sleep in.”

  “What’s this we? Are you staying over? I’ll have to call my mom to see if it’s okay. She doesn’t like it when-”

  “Gentlemen!” Brenda shouts, and then covers her mouth and lowers her voice. “Gentlemen, please. It has been an exhaust
ing day and I still have plenty of work to do before I turn in.”

  “Our bad,” Jon says. “We’ll be ready.”

  We walk a block before we speak.

  “You feel good about this?” I ask.

  “Fuck no,” Jon replies. “It stinks. I don’t like it at all.”

  “Why the secrecy?” I wonder. “Why didn’t Carl tell us himself? You’d think he would…”

  “We’ll talk with Stuart in the morning,” Jon says. “Before we leave through the gate. Once on the other side, I’m not making a peep until we are back, safe and sound.”

  “I hear that,” I say as we stand in front of my house. We both know we won’t be able to not talk. Talking is our thing. Talking quietly, of course. “Catch ya in the morning.”

  “It’ll be an adventure!” Jon says. “A shitty adventure.”

  “Night, man.”

  “Night.”

  I watch him walk off, and then turn and head inside. I find Stella sitting on the couch.

  “I thought you were gonna take a bath?” I ask.

  “I just said that to screw with Brenda,” Stella replies. “I wouldn’t waste water like that.” She watches me for a second. “What? What happened after I left?”

  “I’ve been given a mission,” I say and sit next to her. “I have to leave in the morning with Jon and Stuart. Apparently we need batteries or the grid goes down.”

  “So why isn’t Melissa going out?” Stella asks.

  “Jon asked the same thing,” I reply. “Brenda gave us some bullshit answer.”

  Stella is quiet for a while. She leans against me and sighs. “Who can we trust the most?”

  “Why?”

  “In case I need allies,” Stella says.

  “Allies? You’ve been reading too much John LeCarre from the school library,” I laugh. Then I stop. “Tran and his family. Stubben, maybe? Melissa, of course.”

  “Short list,” Stella says.

  “Everyone else is in too deep with Brenda. Or Mindy, which is the same as being in with Brenda.”

  “Tran and maybe Stubben. Great,” Stella says. “I may call off school until you get back. Hole up here in the house.”

  “That could raise red flags,” I say.

  “I’ll just say that Carrey is in one of his manic wild phases,” Stella answers. “Which he kinda is.”

  We sit quietly for a long time before Stella gets up and takes my hand. “Let’s tell the kids lights out and go to bed.”

  “Good idea,” I say. I really hope her idea of going to bed is my idea of going to bed. “I’ll be right up. Let me double check the doors.”

  Our little subdivision used to be a never lock your doors kind of place. But this is post-Z Whispering Pines. Even with the gate and all the fortifications, I still make sure all the windows are shuttered and the doors are barred. Once I know the house is secure, then I’ll only wake up like twelve times at night, instead of an anxious twenty times.

  First, you have kids and never sleep when they are little. By the time they are old enough to take care of themselves in the morning, or even better, sleep later than you do, the damn zombie apocalypse comes and ruins everything. I doubt I’ll get a good night’s sleep for the rest of my life. And I have a night or two out in the wasteland of Asheville to look forward to. Joy.

  Chapter Two

  Whispering Pines didn’t just happen. It took a lot of sweat and blood to secure the subdivision. Mostly blood. We started with nearly eighty households. We now have less than thirty. The crap Brenda was spouting about us not having enough room, is bullshit. We have plenty of room.

  As for resources…

  As the gate opens for Stuart, Jon, and myself, I look back up the hill towards Phase One (where Jon lives; Stuart too) and then over to Phase Two (where I live), and think of how long it took us to get things right. Whispering Pines is in the French Broad River basin. This is good. It means it’s on a plateau, but not like a flat table top.

  The back of Phase One butts up against a fifty-foot limestone cliff. At the top of the cliff is a long, wide meadow. The meadow is filled with row after row of steel fenced razor wire interspersed between long and various ditches. Think World War One battlefields and you get the idea. There is a deck built into the cliff at the top so that sentries can watch twenty-four hours a day for Zs. They do come, and they always get caught in a ditch or the razor wire. None have ever made it to the end of the cliff.

  Part of Phase One and all of Phase Two is surrounded on two sides by a 100-yard deep ravine of huge rocks and boulders. Gotta love natural erosion. The ravine sides are covered in steel fencing and razor wire also. If the Zs make it into the ravine, they never make it up the sides.

  Hwy 251 and the French Broad River front the gate side. And I’ve already explained the advantages to that.

  Now, the steel fencing and razor wire was my idea. It’s the reason I’m head of Engineering, even though I have no training whatsoever. When it comes to structural work, I defer to Jon. But ideas and design? I have a knack for it. Most everything (except for the gate) is steel: the fencing, the razor wire, the steel beams holding both. The reason being? Easy clean up.

  Generally, we weave our way through the hidden paths of the razor wire and put down any Zs that are caught. A quick stab through the brain and they are dead. But when a horde tries to get through the wire, then it gets messy. We lost a few people thinking the Zs were caught and they could just go along, one by one, and put them down. Doesn’t always work like that.

  Edna Strom is Head of Z Cleanup and I worked with her to come up with a simple solution if the Zs are too much to handle. Fire. We burn the fuck out of them until they are either completely dead, or so burned they are incapacitated and easy to pick off. We don’t have to worry about the fire spreading, since the ravine is all rock and the meadow above Phase One is pre-scorched so the flames don’t spread.

  The only problem is the smoke. It’s also why I insisted we figure out how to create a sustainable electric grid for Whispering Pines, instead of burning wood or using other means of power. Electricity doesn’t send up smoke signals to the world. When we do have to burn through the Zs, we make sure to put that fire out, specifically killing the smoke, ASAP.

  There are more than a few factions out in the hollers and coves that would love a chance to come take us out. So far, we’ve stayed under their radar because we are so close to Asheville and the main population of Zs. The yokels stay clear of the city, as far as we can tell. And I don’t blame them. If we didn’t have Whispering Pines, I would have packed up the family and booked it way out into the country.

  But we do have Whispering Pines and I keep looking over my shoulder as we quietly walk away from the gate and the safety it represents.

  “You don’t find this fishy?” Jon asks Stuart.

  “I find everything fishy,” Stuart whispers. “It’s why I’m still alive.”

  “Why us?” Jon asks, more a musing than a question. “I mean, we should be back inside the gate while the scavenger crew handles this. Melissa can be discreet. A select team could keep it all quiet. No need to send us.”

  “You two have skill sets that will make this more efficient,” Stuart answers. “Yours, Padre, is technical. And yours, Jace, is creative. Between the two of you, we’ll get what we need and get back home tomorrow. Hopefully without talking too much and getting us killed.”

  He was right about both parts. Jon will know what batteries we need and what we don’t. And, being the problem solver extraordinaire, I will figure out how to get them back to Whispering Pines. Doing both without getting killed, is what Stuart is for.

  Not that we aren’t capable of defending ourselves. I’ve been outside the gate more times than I can count, which is the exact same number of times I didn’t want to be outside the gate. To keep myself protected, I have the following: Silver Slugger in my right hand. Strapped to my back are a compound bow and a quiver of twenty arrows (Not barbed! These arrows are razor sharp, b
ut can be easily pulled from a Z). I also have a .45 Smith & Wesson with a suppressor (gotta stay quiet in the apocalypse). Slung across my shoulder is my courier bag with canteens of water, some dried food, and a first aid kit.

  Jon is similarly outfitted, but he’s carrying a steel pipe he’s sharpened at one end. He didn’t name his pipe. He just calls it a sharpened pipe. Looks kind of like a metal bamboo spear. Four feet long and heavy, he uses it to kill Zs, plus to pretty much crack and break anything he wants. Handy. He also has a pistol, but his is a 9mm Berretta with a suppressor (he made both of ours). No bow or arrows. Jon is a horrible shot with a bow. More likely to kill me than a Z. Not that he’s much better with a pistol.

  Stuart is, well, loaded. He has at least three pistols on him, several throwing knives, two huge Bowie knives, a machete strapped to his right leg, a compound bow with arrows, a crow bar with the straight end sharpened to a point, two courier bags with supplies, and various other bits and pieces of equipment. It looks beyond heavy, but he hasn’t even broken a sweat as we hustle around a curve in Hwy 251.

  Which brings us face to face with our first set of Zs. We knew it wouldn’t be long. They are everywhere when this close to the urban center.

  Six of them, all crouched and feeding on something. We don’t know if it’s human or animal. In general, about 90% of the time, the Zs won’t eat animals; they prefer us delicious homo sapiens. But their food source has gotten pretty scarce, so we have seen a few feast on whatever poor, unfortunate varmint they can catch.

  As we creep closer -Silver Slugger in my hand, pipe in Jon’s, the machete in Stuart’s- we see that the meal is human. And still struggling. I take a deep breath and try not to gag, as I watch steaming bits of offal get shoved into the ravenous maws of the Zs. They are so busy feasting, they don’t sense us until we are on them.

  Six Zs against the three of us isn’t much of a match. I bring SS down hard on one Z and immediately yank it back, black blood dripping from its spikes, and nail the next Z. Both drop dead as their brains are pierced by SS’s spikes. I flick it to the side like a Samurai sword and the blood splatters across the cracked and weed infested asphalt.