by Cedric Nye
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, but 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.
Jon spears one through the skull and pulls back hard, spinning about and cracking another across the jaw. The thing collapses, but the brain hasn’t been damaged, so it gets back up and comes for Jon. It’s kind of faster than a normal Z and I think about this for exactly 35 seconds before Jon obliterates its head with a mighty swing of the pipe.
We both look at our handy work, and then at Stuart. The guys is nudging the severed heads of his two Zs. The things are still chomping at him even without bodies. You have to kill the brain. He mumbles something and then splits both heads with his machete. The guy still hasn’t broken a sweat.
“H-h-h-help m-m-m-me,” the half-eaten victim at our feet whispers. “Pl-pl-pl-pleeeeeeese.”
Stuart helps him with the tip of the machete through his eye.
“Hopefully, one of the teams will find these guys before they stink up too much,” Jon says. “Should we go back and let them know at the gate?” Stuart stares at him like he’s lost his mind and his balls. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Didn’t sound like much thinking going on,” Stuart says. “Let’s move.”
I shrug at Jon and he just rolls his eyes. We move.
The shitty part of going into town is that we have to walk past neighborhood after neighborhood of empty houses. Most we have scavenged clean and marked. Some we haven’t. I think about going through the unmarked houses, just to see if we can maybe cut our trip short, but Stuart nixes that idea. He thinks Carl has already had Melissa go through them all. He knows where we are heading.
The dark, blank windows stare at us like the sad portals into the souls that have been lost forever. There is more than just the danger aspect that keeps me from going outside the gate. I hate thinking about the way it was. I hate thinking about all of the people that didn’t make it. I mostly hate thinking that I may have met some of the former occupants of these empty dwellings- and stabbed them through their eyeholes.
That part bums me the fuck out.
“You cool?” Jon asks, knowing my tendency towards melancholy. “Not gonna eat the Silver Slugger there, are ya?”
“That would be a shitty way to kill myself,” I smile. “And I’m fine.”
“Shhh,” Stuart scolds.
“Still don’t like this,” Jon whispers. “My gut is all twisted up and shit. This feels wrong.”
“It always feels wrong,” I say. “Whenever we leave the gate, I feel like I need to take a long, runny shit.”
Jon laughs, but stops as Stuart turns a death glare on him.
The road twists and turns for a good mile before we get to the cross street that will take us up into town. We have a good three miles of road to cover before we get to Merrimon Ave, the main artery for North Asheville. And they are a shitty three miles.
First, we have to get past two churches. The funny thing about Z-Day? It happened on a Sunday. Or at least it became known that it was happening on a Sunday. This meant that many folks were in church when the first real reports came through. And those folks stayed in church to pray and be close to God. Staying put on Z-Day? Not the best idea. One bite became two became four became twelve, and so on and so on.
Instead of clearing out the churches, teams from Whispering Pines had chained the doors and blockaded the windows. After some time, the Zs that were inside stopped trying to get out. They just gave up and went dormant. At least until they caught a whiff of fresh meat walking by.
I look to my right, just before we get to the first church (Baptist, of course) and catch movement. It is brief and quick, but I know I’m not imagining it.
“Hey,” I whisper, getting Stuart and Jon’s attention.
I point my eyes in the direction I saw the movement. They both look and scan the area, their senses on high alert just like mine. Stuart nods and points. I follow his finger and see the shape semi-hidden behind an oak tree. I take off my bow and nock an arrow, sighting along the shaft at the form.
Then I see movement behind it, deep in the trees. And more movement behind that. Quick, fast. Not Zs. Not Zs!
“Stuart,�
� I whisper.
“I see them,” he says. “You catching any signs of metal?”
He’s asking if I think they have firearms.
“Too far to tell,” I answer.
“Keep moving?” Jon asks.
“They haven’t gotten us yet,” Stuart says. “We’ll stay on mission until they engage. I can’t get a clear look at them, so I don’t know if they are hostiles or just curious.”
I keep my bow aimed at the movement and sidestep along with Jon and Stuart. After a few yards, I don’t see any more movement and I lower my bow, but keep my eyes on the spot. Stuart is scanning the road ahead of us and Jon is looking side to side. It ain’t always about the Zs in the apocalypse. The people, man. The people...
We pass the church and I can hear the Zs inside, clawing at the doors and windows, their moans echoing through the cracks in the siding. I have to wonder if the people we saw got them worked up. We all keep our eyes on the church, scanning for weak spots that could turn a creepy annoyance into a flood of oncoming death. Best estimate? Close to a hundred parishioners in there.
We get a quarter mile away before I begin to relax. Not that I let my guard down, just ease the tension in my arms and shoulders. I put the arrow back in the quiver and sling my bow over my back. I take SS from the hook on my belt with my left hand and keep my right close to my pistol. Guard still up, tension easing.
However, tension doesn’t ease for long as we come to the second church on our Yellow Brick Road from Hell. We all stop in our tracks. I glance over my shoulder, but don’t see anyone following. This means I can look at the shit in front of us at my leisure.
“Someone let them out,” Jon says finally, voicing what Stuart and I are already thinking. “Who would do that?”
“Wrong question,” Stuart says. “I want to know why. You don’t go up to a building filled with Zs just for kicks. This was a deliberate action.”
“Maybe some nut job just wanted to get into the church,” I offer.
“Look,” Stuart points. “See the chain on the sidewalk? Bolt cutters did that. You know many nut jobs that just happen to have bolt cutters?”
Stuart crosses the street and approaches the church.
“Fuck,” Jon whispers. We both follow.
Stuart kneels down and touches the cut chain, while Jon and I keep our eyes on the church, waiting for the Zs to come shambling out from the shadows.
“This was just cut,” Stuart whispers, his head swinging back and forth, eyes scanning our surroundings. “Cut today. Maybe yesterday, but my guess is sometime this morning.”
“Then where are the Zs?” I ask.
Stuart shakes his head and stands up. “Don’t know. Let’s go.”
“That rhymes,” Jon says.
“It does,” Stuart replies.
My gut clenches at Stuart’s words. He doesn’t glare at Jon for the stupid joke. That means he’s worried. I don’t like it when Stuart gets worried.
Then he makes my gut feel worse by walking towards the church doors.
“Uh, Stuart?” I ask quietly. Very quietly. “Where are you going?”
“Only more than a couple reasons someone would cut that chain,” Stuart answers. “And one of those reasons is to get inside the church.”
“Then it stands to reason that they already found what they needed,” Jon says. “So let’s go find what we need and leave it be.”
“After I take a look,” Stuart says.
Now, this is the part where someone gets killed. Every movie, book, comic book, TV show, has the macho tough guy walk into the dark, and then the guys that aren’t so macho follow and usually one of those not so macho guys gets his head ripped off, or his balls eaten.
“Coming?” Jon whispers, taking me from my thoughts of getting my balls eaten.
“No,” I say, “can I wait out here?”
“By yourself?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Stuart hisses, “and move ass.”
We do and we do, getting right on his heels, weapons ready.
Three seconds. Three long seconds it takes for my eyes to adjust to the gloom inside the church. Unfortunately, my nose doesn’t have the luxury of adjusting. A couple years of being a Z pen means a stench that can only be gotten rid of by a cleansing fire. And even then, the stink that soaked into the earth will have a half life of about a million years.
Jon just gags while I think of all the ways to describe the smell.
“It’s like someone ate the ape house at the zoo and shit it out,” Jon says.
Stuart is ignoring us and leaning, kneeling, sniffing, and, oh, God, tasting, his way through the church. He’s halfway up the pews when he freezes. Jon and I instantly go back to back, our eyes searching for the threat.
“Fuck. Me,” Stuart says and waves us forward.
We look into the row of pews he’s next to and see layers of bones. This isn’t anything unusual in the zombie apocalypse. Bones are lying around all over the place. But both Jon and I see what makes these different: the ends of the bones have been cut. Like by a very sharp meat cleaver.
“Someone was feeding them?” Jon asks. “Why would someone feed them?”
“Another good question,” Stuart says. “Only thing I can think of, is…”
He turns and hurries from the church, squatting in the dirt that used to be a nice, well-kept lawn. Just weeds and rocks now.
“Fuck,” Stuart says. “Double fuck. I’m an idiot. How did I miss this coming in?”
I want to go to him and say it’s all okay and that everyone misses something sometime, but I don’t know what he’s missing. Jon and I wait until he finally looks at us, his eyes steely and hard. Well, steelier and harder than usual.
“Let’s keep going,” Stuart announces. “We’ve lost too much time.” He looks at us. “And silence from here on out.”
Neither of us argue.
The street is buckled and torn up in many places. Nature has decided to take back what was taken from her. Tree roots, massive weeds, water damage, it all has taken its toll. We navigate through the uneven surface without even a glance. Infrastructure is an anomaly; disrepair is the norm. It’s close to half an hour before we get to the next sucky part of our journey: the interstate.
Before us is an overpass that spans four lanes coming and going, or going and coming, depending on your direction of I-26. All lanes are choked with vehicles, most with their doors wide open; ghosts of the occupants that fled on foot. The trouble with the interstate, is that it is a huge part of former society. Which means it is a natural place for Zs to gather.
No one knows why, but the Zs like to be where they think they should be. Absent stimulus or prey, they mainly hang out, or shuffle along slowly, their undead legs taking them through a routine that’s lost in the rotten recesses of their memories. Another sad result of post-Z life.
“Where are they?” Jon asks.
I look about and wonder what he’s getting at, and then notice that the interstate is sans Zs. Zs don’t just follow routine, but also the path of least resistance. The interstate affords them both. On any given day, there should be hundreds below us weaving and lurching between the cars. Today, there are none.
“The cars are empty too,” Stuart says.
“Jesus,” I say, “someone let the trapped ones out? Zs couldn’t do that, right?” I look at them, not even bothering to hide my fear. “Right?”
“Zs can’t do that,” Stuart says. “They can’t cut chains either.”
“Oh, fuck,” I whisper.
“What the hell?” Jon asks. “Someone’s gathering Zs? Is that it? Creating a herd?”
Stuart looks at Jon for a second, a brief hint of suspicion clouding his face. I catch it, but it’s gone so fast that I have to wonder if I wasn’t just seeing things.
“Could be. Could not. I don’t know,” Stuart says. “Come on. We have to keep moving.”
“You keep saying that, but you keep stopping,” Jon shrugs. “Just sayin’.”
The silence below us is almost as bad as having a thousand Zs down there. To think that someone took them, moved them, herded them away, makes me shiver. What is the end game there? Is there some mad Z collector taking up residence in the area? Is this some new fad with other survivors? Like silly bands? Or Pokemon? Gotta catch ‘em all…?
At least we don’t have to hunker down and crawl to stay unseen by the Zs. That’s usually how you get across the overpass, on your hands and knees. If you’re spotted when there’s a few hundred below, they come straight for you. Up the embankments, up the exit ramps, however they can get to you. It gives you only a short amount of time to get from one end to the other before being boxed in. And even if you get across, you still have to deal with the fact that you have a herd of zombies on your ass.
So, despite the uncertainty of the recent discoveries, yeah, I’m stoked, I don’t have to crawl or worry about a Z herd.
“Bob and Fam aren’t home,” Jon says once we are across and back in the neighborhoods again. “That’s weird.”
Jon raises his hand to shield the sun from his eyes so he can see through the living room window of the house next to us. Always, whenever anyone comes by here, they see Bob and his family up against the glass. It’s a newer house and the double-paned, extra insulated, front window, has refused to break no matter how long Bob, his wife, and two kids smack at it. There has been discussion at HOA meetings about putting them out of their misery, but it never gets enough votes. I always half expect someone just to come do it. The lack of Bob and Fam makes me wonder if someone hasn’t finally done it.
“No Bob,” I say and shrug, “that is strange.”
That look is back on Stuart’s face, but now I see worry, not suspicion.
Movement. Again.
“Hey,” I whisper.
“Whispers carry farther than just speaking in a low, quiet voice,” Stuart informs me.
“I know,” I say in a low, quiet voice. “Just thought you should know we have company again.”
“Same then?” Stuart asks.