by Bible, Jake
“Get inside,” Stick says through gritted teeth. “I got this.”
“We can get you in too,” Cob says. “You aren’t done-”
“Get. Inside,” Stick says. “I. Got. This.”
Cob doesn’t argue and crawls on his belly to the door that leads into the kitchen. Elsbeth and I follow, looking back only as we get to the threshold and Cob gets the door open. Stick is pulling grenades from his vest. He catches my eye and smiles, and then waves.
“Nice to meet ya, Long Pork,” Stick says. “Don’t make it all a waste, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” I say as Elsbeth pulls me inside and kicks the door closed.
“Out back,” Cob says. “We can’t stay here.”
Then I see the two women crouched by the island in the kitchen. They stare back at me, their eyes wide with terror. It’s Cheryl Best, one of the HOA Board members and her partner, Lacy.
“Come on,” I say. “You need to get up and get out now!”
“Go!” Cob shouts at the women as they just huddle there in the dark. “Ah, fuck it!” He shoots out the glass doors and shoves Elsbeth and me through.
I look past him when we hit the concrete patio just as the kitchen wall explodes. I’m blinded by the flash, but not before I see the fridge rocket into the two women, crushing them against the counter. A geyser of blood spurts up into the flames and then I’m flying back as the air is sucked from my lungs.
My ears are ringing and I can barely breathe as I roll over, coughing and struggling to get my bearings. I see Elsbeth on her hands and knees, Cob pulling at her to get up. Beyond that, I see legs. Lots of legs.
“Zs,” I croak, then get my voice back. “Zs!”
Cob, spins, his M-4 to his shoulder instantly, and fires in short, controlled bursts. I stagger upright and Elsbeth pulls at me, her face a striated mess of cuts and slashes. We back up, Cob with us, his rifle firing, firing, firing, click. He lets it fall to his side on the strap and pulls his M9 Berretta, opening fire on the Zs with the semi-automatic pistol, taking careful shot after careful shot.
Head shots each time, killing every Z he hits. But it’s not enough. There are too many coming for us. We can’t back up fast enough and Cob’s pistol clicks empty. In the time it takes him to let the magazine drop and slap a fresh one home, the Zs have covered the ground, shuffling over the burning debris from Cheryl’s kitchen.
Cob keeps firing until the last second when they overwhelm him, then he pulls two grenades from his chest and yanks the pins free.
“GO!” he screams at us.
We do, as fast as our wounded bodies can take us. Elsbeth and I, limping, staggering, falling, half-running away. We get to the next yard (no fence, yay!) and I trip, hitting the ground hard. Cob goes up in a burst of fire and flesh behind us. The Zs around him become charred mist. All I can do is look at the sprinkler I tripped over, sitting there in the lawn, set against the backdrop of flame and death.
Who keeps a sprinkler out in their lawn? You aren’t allowed to water lawns in Whispering Pines. Not anymore, at least. Total waste of water. Brenda is going to have a shit fit when she finds out about-
“JACE!” Elsbeth screams. “GET UP!”
I realize she’s been pulling at me and pulling at me and I’ve just been sprawled there, my eyes and mind on the sprinkler.
“GET UP! GETUPGETUPGETUPGETUP!”
“I’m up!” I shout as I grab her and yank myself to my feet. “This way!”
I have an idea. And I hope it’s the right one.
Zs are still after us. No, let me rephrase that- flaming Zs are still after us. Those that survived Cob’s sacrifice burn as they moan and hiss, ever on the hunt for flesh, flesh, flesh. But they’ve been slowed. So have Elsbeth and I. Exposure to back to back explosions can do that to a body, but we have some space. It should be enough to get us to where we need to be.
“This way,” I croak, my throat raw from the smoke and from yelling. “That house. There.”
Elsbeth helps me to the front door and I kick over a potted plant, looking for a spare key. There isn’t one. Of course not, he’s too fucking smart for that. Any man that locks his door during the zombie apocalypse isn’t just going to leave a key out front. That’s crazy talk.
No worries. Elsbeth puts her boot through the side window next to the front door, reaches in and unlocks the bolt and handle. We hurry inside and slam the door behind us, both resting our back against it. I don’t have any fantasies that we are safe, but I need a quick breather. From the harsh gasps coming from Elsbeth, I can see she does too.
“Okay, this way,” I say and take her by the hand, pulling her up the stairs.
“Where are we?” Elsbeth asks. Then, “Isn’t this the house we were just in?”
“You have no idea how right you are,” I laugh, surprising Elsbeth and myself with the sound.
Upstairs is a bathroom and two bedrooms. One is the master bedroom and the other is usually used as a guest room if the house isn’t occupied by a family. Which this house isn’t. But instead of a guest room, there is something else.
“Oh…,” is all Elsbeth can say as I shove the door open and she gazes at the walls of weapons before her. “Is this Santa’s house?”
“Is it…what?” I shake my head. “Never mind. Grab what you can and let’s get going.”
“Why don’t we stay here?” Elsbeth asks.
I go to the window and point at the flames and smoke just down the street. “Because this block is going up soon. We have to get to Phase Two. The fire won’t be able to spread because there’s nothing to burn between here and there, just asphalt and dirt. Plus, there’s a back way out by my house.”
Elsbeth is confused, I can see it as the firelight flickers across her face. She shakes her head.
“No,” she says, “we go to your house, but we don’t leave. We stay.” Her eyes are almost manic and I wonder what is going on in her head. “No more running.”
She scoops up a courier bag from the floor and starts filling it with pistols, extra magazines, and ammo. Her hands are flying, seeming to know exactly what to grab. There is way more to this young woman than I know. She hands me the bag and I sling it over my shoulder, taking out one of the pistols and slapping in a magazine.
She fills another bag then slings that over her shoulder. She goes to the walls and ignores the row upon row of rifles, instead focusing on the rack of blades. She grabs up a sword of some kind. A tactical short sword? Fuck if I know what it’s called, but it has a blade about twenty inches long, curved and wider at the end than at the hilt. The hilt itself is black with knuckle guards protecting the grip. There’s a second one and she takes that.
I realize she doesn’t have The Bitch anymore. When did she lose that? Did she have it when we rappelled down from the field? It’s all such a blur.
“Here,” she says, tossing me a modified pickaxe. The thing is bigger than a normal hatchet with a wide blade on one side and a rounded spike on the other. It’s surprisingly light, but still feels solid and sturdy. “Now we go.”
“I don’t exactly take kindly to looters,” Stuart says as we step into the hall and almost run right into him. He’s shirtless and the lower half of his torso is wrapped in dirty, bloody bandages, tightly wound around his belly and back. His face is gashed and his arms are covered in cuts, but he stands there strong, his jeans covered, legs not seeming to be a problem.
“Jesus, man,” I say, “it’s good to see you.”
“Likewise,” he nods. “Hello, Elsbeth. Ready to kill some Zs then?”
She nods.
“Give me five seconds,” he says and ducks into his armory. He comes out quickly with a Kevlar vest on and several bandoliers of shotgun shells across it. A black Mossberg 500 rests against his shoulder (Stuart has shown me that one a few times. It’s a favorite of his).
“Where to then?” he asks.
“His house,” Elsbeth says and starts for the stairs.
“Then this way,” Stuart sa
ys, motioning to his bedroom.
We get to his back window and I see a rope ladder dangling from the sill.
“As soon as it all went to shit, I made my move,” Stuart says. “Been under armed guard at Dr. McCormick’s since Wall Street got here.”
“Vance,” I say, “his name is Edward Vance.”
“Yeah, I know,” Stuart says. “He made that clear. I just keep calling him Wall Street. It pisses him off.”
We climb down into his backyard and crouch low. He takes the lead and motions for us to follow. I have a clear look at his wrappings and see a nice, fresh stain where his wound is. The bastard just never calls it quits.
We dash from house to house, checking our rear constantly to see if we are being followed, but we stay Z free until we get to the hillside that leads down away from Phase One and to the entrance of Whispering Pines and the gate. Stuart holds up his hand and we stop.
Vance’s people are everywhere. Bikers ride this way and that, people are shouting at each other in the chaos as trucks drive up the road, their beds filled with either armed men or what looks like barrels of water.
“Why not just turn on the hoses?” I whisper. “Each house has garden hoses on both sides. That’s part of the fire plan.”
“One of the first things Wall Street did, was to shut off the main water supply,” Stuart says. “Water is life and it’s hard to fight and argue when you are dying of thirst. He’s been rationing it out. Whispering Pines is a prison camp, Jace. He never wanted it for himself. He wanted it to keep people he finds locked up.”
“Fuck,” I say.
“You got that right,” Stuart nods, “follow me.”
He leads us away from the hillside and to a thicket of trees by the last house on the ridge. He doesn’t even pause and slips into the trees, his body melding with the shadows. Elsbeth follows without hesitation and I do too, but I’m lost as soon as I’m past three trees. I feel a hand take mine and Elsbeth pulls me along behind her. The ground begins to slope and soon I’m struggling not to slip and slide my way down.
Then we stop and I see we are at one of the rock walls that line this part of Hwy 251, making it unnecessary to put up any fencing or razor wire.
“Now what,” I ask. But Stuart answers me quickly with a length of rope he pulls from underneath a clump of blackberry bushes. One end is already tied to the trunk of a pine tree, the other end he tosses over the edge and down to the road.
“We’re going outside?” I ask.
“We’ll skirt the perimeter and come in via your escape route,” Stuart says. He sees the look on my face. “What? You thought that was a secret? Please, Jace, I’ve had plenty of time on my hands to map every single way in or out of Whispering Pines. You did a piss poor job of hiding that path. It’s protected, I’ll give you that, so I never mentioned it since it was secure, but hidden?” He just shakes his head, grabs the rope and starts to climb down.
I follow and Elsbeth is right behind. We go a few yards then flatten ourselves against the rock and peek around at the gate. No one is manning the watchtower; they’re all a little busy with the fire, and from the sounds of gunfire, busy with Leeds and his men.
“Go,” Stuart whispers and shoves me forward.
I crouch/run/flail my way past the gate and over to some thorny bushes that are almost as deadly as the Zs. At least they give us cover as Stuart and Elsbeth join me. We stay low, but move as fast as we can up the road and around to Sixth Avenue. Before Z-Day we always joked about Sixth Avenue. It’s not much of an avenue; more like a potholed street with single wide trailers lining each side. We move past trailer after trailer until we come to number 14.
Stuart certainly wasn’t lying about knowing my escape path. He expertly finds the “hidden” head of it and scrambles down the large rocks and boulders, into the ravine behind my house. He just as easily navigates the “randomly” strewn razor wire and is up the other side of the ravine before I’m even down the first part. I know I’m holding up Elsbeth, but she waits patiently, watching our backs, as I painfully clamber up the other side and lean my back against my fence.
Sounds echo around us, caught in, and amplified by the rocks of the ravine. I try not to flinch, but with each gunshot, it gets harder and harder. I know what’s happening to me: shock. I feel my jeans and my hand is sticky wet with blood.
“What now?” I ask.
“Get inside,” Stuart says, “wait and watch.”
“Then?”
Stuart shrugs. “You’re the thinker. I’m just the soldier.” He pushes the tops of three boards and the bottoms swing out. “After you.”
I crawl underneath into my backyard and keep crawling until I’m at my patio door. I slowly turn the knob, knowing I’m being overly cautious since there’s no way anyone can hear it with the noise going on. We all get inside and stay low.
Elsbeth crawls to the water dispenser in the corner of the kitchen and puts her mouth right up against the spigot. She drinks deep and then nods at us. We each take a turn and I sigh at the soothing wetness against the desert my throat had become. Sitting there, water dripping from our chins, we look at each other in the gloom. I know they are looking to me for a plan, but I don’t have one. I was relying on Leeds and his men. I was relying on Big Daddy and the force coming from the Farm. I was relying on something other than myself.
Not the best idea in the zombie apocalypse and I realize my mistake, as I look around my house, the familiar shapes of furniture just hanging out, like they were waiting for me to come home.
“Phase One is going to be a lost cause,” I say finally. “That means they’ll be heading this way soon.”
Stuart nods in the dark. “So not much time then.”
“What you thinking, Long Pork?” Elsbeth asks. She taps my head gently. “You have some good thinks in there?”
I sit there, trying to sort through my thoughts when several large explosions rattle them free. The explosions also rattle the house and pictures fall from the walls, shattering on the carpet and vinyl.
“That,” I say, “is a great idea.”
“Not following you,” Stuart says as another explosion rocks Phase One, the blast felt all the way over here.
“What do you think is causing that?” I ask.
“Could be the small store of C4 in my pantry,” Stuart says.
“Oh,” I reply. “Yeah, well, maybe, but I’m thinking a bit more mundane.” I look over at the stove and smile. “For everything we’ve lost since Z-Day, what has been a constant that’s never let us down?”
Stuart follows my gaze and nods. “Take it all down?” he asks. “Leave them nothing but ash?”
“Might as well,” I say, “it’s all gone to shit anyway. Whispering Pines is over, right? All signs point to yes. Rebuilding Asheville will need to wait. We have to burn it to the ground first.” I look about the place I have called home for so long, even pre-Z. “Time to start over.”
“Time’s wasting,” Stuart says, “we have to hurry.”
Elsbeth looks back and forth. “What is happening? What are we burning to the ground?”
“Everything,” I say. “Thomas Wolfe was right. You can never go home.”
Chapter Nine
It takes us longer than we’d like, as we go from house to house, turning on the gas stoves. Those that don’t have gas ranges do have gas hot water heaters. I let Stuart sever those lines, since I don’t think my skills are up to it. Would suck to blow myself up prematurely.
Elsbeth’s job is to take the small amount of liquid fuel we can scavenge from the houses (gasoline, kerosene, fucking citronella lamp oil, etc) and pour lines going from the front doors of each house to a central spot at the end of my cul de sac. We’re breathing heavy by the time we meet back at my house.
“Yours too then?” Stuart asks.
“No,” I shake my head, “it’ll cut off our escape route.”
“Lucky you,” Stuart replies.
“Hey,” I snap, “you think this pla
ce will last long when everything else goes up? Do you? You’re a fucking idiot if you do!”
“Don’t fight,” Elsbeth says quietly.
“I get ya,” Stuart says. “I do. No problem. You’re right. It’ll catch as soon as Tran’s house goes up anyway.”
“Right,” I say, “Tran.”
Stuart looks at me, his brow furrowed. “Tran didn’t make it then?”
I shake my head, realizing he doesn’t really know anything. He’s been dealing with Vance this whole time, in his own hell.
“He killed himself,” I say. “He couldn’t take it.”
“Couldn’t take it?” Stuart asks. “Oh…was it his wife? Or the kids?”
“All of them,” I say. “We got swarmed.”
“Shit,” Stuart says, shaking his head. “Poor guy.”
“Listen,” Elsbeth says. “I hear people? Do you hear people?”
We go silent and then can hear it.
“Jason Stanford!” Vance shouts. “I know you’re here somewhere! Come on out, Jason!”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” I say. “He’s an idiot.”
“Time to get back to work,” Stuart says. He looks at Elsbeth. “You know what to do then?”
“Kill,” she says, “and don’t stop killing. Then run.”
“Save yourself,” Stuart says. “Find the others if you can. Warn them.”
“You will come too?” Elsbeth asks, looking from me to Stuart. “You will run with me? After the killing, right? Save yourselves too?”
“Sure,” I say.
“You bet,” Stuart nods.
We are such liars.
“JASON! PLEASE!” a woman screams.
“That’s not Vance,” I say and crawl to the front window for a look. “Holy shit…”
Stuart looks past me to the street. “Doesn’t change anything,” he says, “we’re all fucked anyway, Jace. Stick with the plan. This ends tonight. Hear me?”
“But look, man,” I say. “Look at them all.”
Standing down the street is Vance and his people. Many have Zs on catch poles, while others have our neighbors tied to lengths of rope, their hands behind their backs, their feet only loose enough so they can walk. Bikers are riding every which way, swirling in and out of the groups, kicking out and laughing at the neighbors, staying well clear of the Zs.