Z-Burbia 3: Estate Of The Dead Read online

  None of us say a thing as we speed away from the power plant. There’s nothing we can say or nothing we want to say. Better to internalize what just happened and lock it away deep down for a while.

  Better to just get home and then figure it all out.

  Chapter Three

  “Holy fuck,” Melissa grunts as she stops the truck.

  “I don’t think your daddy would approve of that language,” I say. She gives me a look and I shut up.

  “That must be the horde from the steakhouse,” Mindy says. “Right?”

  “No,” I say, pointing, “see the overpass? They’re dropping down from I-40. Look at them all.”

  We do.

  A banging on top of the cab pulls us all out of our shock. The back window slides open.

  “As fascinating as this is,” Stuart snaps, “we need to haul ass out of here.”

  “Where?” Melissa asks, looking over her shoulder at him. “We can’t go back.”

  “We go left,” Julio says.

  “That’s just medical offices and shit,” I say, “there’s no road there.

  “Don’t need a road,” Julio says, “just need to get moving.”

  “What’s on the other side?” Melissa asks.

  “The Biltmore,” I say. I give Stuart and Julio a hard look. “You want us to go onto the Biltmore grounds? It’s covered with Zs!”

  “True,” Stuart nods, “but we think there’s a trick to that.”

  “There is,” Elsbeth says, “they’re right. We should go there. Maybe the girls will help us.”

  “The girls?” I ask. “The ones you’ve been following? How do we know they’re not going to kill us and eat us?”

  Elsbeth glares. “Why? Because I was a canny, you think they are? You’re a bigot.”

  “I’m not a bigot,” I snap. “I’m just being cautious. We don’t know shit about...”

  “We have no time for this!” Stuart shouts. “They’re getting closer! Mel, punch it and get us up that hill and towards the Biltmore!”

  Melissa turns the wheel and aims for the drive that leads up to a huge parking lot for the medical office complex at the top of the hill. We drive parallel with I-40 and as we climb the hill, we can see more and more of what we are up against.

  Hundreds of Zs.

  No, no, let me back up because that’s just my fear trying to keep it together. We don’t see hundreds.

  We see thousands.

  A small squeak from behind me tells me Mindy Starling can count too. Good for her.

  “That’s a lot of death,” Elsbeth says.

  “No shit, girl,” Melissa says. “Oh, fuck!”

  Melissa slams on the brakes and my forehead slams into the dashboard. A little painful example of cause and effect. Even in the apocalypse, one should wear their seatbelt. Ouch.

  “Madre de Dios,” Julio says from the window. “Can you get us around? Over there. See!”

  The parking lot is swarmed with Zs. They’re scaling the other side of the hill that butts up against I-40. We can’t go forward except for a drainage ditch that Julio is pointing at.

  “Do it,” I say to Melissa. “Follow the ditch. Get us out of here.”

  The truck lurches forward and Melissa turns it towards the ditch. The swarm of Zs is almost on us and the PCs start to open fire, hoping to give us a little breathing room and a head start. The front wheels ram up and over the curb that borders the ditch and Melissa cranks the wheel to the left, hoping to give us the angle we need to avoid-.

  “Fuck!” Melissa shouts. “We’re stuck!”

  The truck bottoms out on the curb as the front end goes over, the undercarriage catching on the cement. She pushes her foot to the floor, hoping to get some traction, but the truck is rear wheel drive and those rear wheels are about a quarter inch off the ground.

  “Everyone up against the tailgate!” Melissa shouts.

  “Good idea,” I say, “that’ll redistribute the weight so the tires can touch again.”

  Then it hits me. The physics of what’s about to happen.

  “No! Wait!” I yell just as the rear tires touch asphalt.

  The truck shoots forward and everyone that wasn’t hanging on tight in the bed goes tumbling over the tailgate. I hear the thuds of bodies against pavement, but can’t focus on that. I have to focus on the line of trees that’s rocketing towards us. Or, I guess, we’re the ones rocketing towards the trees.

  “SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!” I scream and am joined by similar sentiments as the truck smashes into a couple of small pines.

  The trees snap in half and we keep going, but not very far, as we wedge between two larger pines. The truck comes to a jarring halt and steam geysers out from under the hood.

  “Everyone out!” I yell. “Go, go, go!”

  Elsbeth is already out of the truck and sprinting back up the hill.

  “El! Stop!” I shout as I race after her.

  “Jace! Where the hell are you going?” Melissa yells as she helps Brenda and Mindy out of the truck. Blood is pouring down her face from a nasty gash across her forehead, but she ignores the wound, her eyes locked onto me. “Get your ass back here, Long Pork!”

  PCs that didn’t fall out start moving the women the rest of the way down the hill towards a large iron fence at the bottom. The border of the Biltmore estate.

  I keep climbing, scrambling back up the hill to the parking lot. A wail of agony blasts across the landscape and I fear I know why. I know that voice.

  “No! NO NO NO!” Elsbeth screams as I crest the hill and see her kneeling next to Julio’s broken body.

  His head is at an unnatural angle and blood pools everywhere. She reaches for him, about to touch his face, but pulls her hand back. Stuart, busy helping two PCs carry another PC with a snapped leg, looks at me, down at Julio, and then over his shoulder at the parking lot swarm that has skipped horde status and gone right to a full on herd.

  “We have thirty seconds,” Stuart says, his face a rictus of pain and grief. “Don’t let her fall behind.”

  “Jesus,” I say as I crouch next to Elsbeth. “I’m sorry, El. I’m so sorry.”

  She pulls one of her blades and places the tip to Julio’s temple. I can see her strain with the effort to administer the final, killing blow. The stab that will make sure Julio doesn’t come back a Z.

  “I…can’t…,” she says, turning to me. Her eyes. Oh, God, her eyes. I’ve never seen more pain in my life.

  And that’s saying a lot.

  “I got it,” I say, “go with the others.”

  “No,” she says as she shoves the blade in my hand and stands up, her other blade drawn. “They pay.”

  I don’t need the blade, since Stumpageddon is in Mr. Spikey drag and all, and I try to hand it back, but she’s gone.

  “El! No!” I yell as she runs towards the herd of Zs. “God DAMMIT! COME BACK!”

  But she doesn’t come back. She dives into the herd and all I see is black blood and chaos. Limbs start flying everywhere, heads shooting up into the air, the moans of the Zs turn into a herd-wide guttural roar.

  There’s nothing I can do.

  I take El’s blade and make good on her final request. I plunge the steel deep into Julio’s brain. Blood gushes out around the metal and onto my hand.

  “Goodbye, man,” I say, “you will be missed.”

  Wiping the blade on my jeans, I slide it into my belt, stand up, turn, and look at the herd coming towards me. I can see the swath of destruction Elsbeth is wreaking on the Zs, but I can’t see Elsbeth. She’s lost in the death. I almost wonder if she hasn’t always been.

  “El!” I shout, but regret it as the front wave of Zs turn their attention away from the mad canny and on me. “Oh…poop.”

  This isn’t the point where I dive in after her. This isn’t the point where I say, “Fuck it” and sacrifice myself in one big, last blaze of glory. No, I’m not that guy.

  I turn and sprint towards the drainage ditch, leaping over the curb and co
ming down hard on the side of the hill. My feet almost go out from under me, but I manage a controlled slide down to the truck.

  Everyone’s gone. The truck is empty. No people and no gear.

  “Shit,” I say as I push forward towards the estate.

  I shove past small pines and thorny underbrush. Which brings me to one of my pet peeves about North Carolina: why the fuck does every fucking bush have to have giant, fucking thorns? What’s with this state? We have pitcher plants and Venus flytraps that are fucking carnivorous. And every last bush has thorns on it. It’s like we’re one nuclear radiation accident away from a plant uprising. It’s totally messed up.

  Said despised thorns tear at my clothes and my skin, leaving me slashed and cut to shit by the time I break free of the grove of pines and find everyone else.

  And, oh look, they have found some folks too.

  “Where’s our sister?” A tall, lanky brunette with a nasty scar across her forehead asks me as she shoves past my people. “Did you leave her?”

  “I…uh…she…well,” I stammer, “who are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the young woman says, “where is she?”

  I nod back over my shoulder. “She wouldn’t come with me,” I say. “She just went nuts and decided to take on the whole herd.”

  “Fucking A,” Stuart says.

  “You didn’t even try to stop her?” Brenda asks. Guess she has her bitchiness back.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I snap. “I couldn’t stop her anymore than I can stop that fucking herd!”

  “Stacy, Lacy, Tracy,” the brunette orders, “with me. Antoinette, Belinda, stay here and watch the people. If we don’t come back…kill them. They left our sister.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say as the brunette, and who I assume are Stacy, Tracy, and Lacy, run into the pine grove and up the hill. “Hold on!”

  I don’t know why, but I follow. Back into the fucking thorns. Fucking. Thorns.

  “Wait!” I yell. They don’t.

  They’re past the truck and running straight up the hill. No slipping, no stumbling, no hesitation. Their legs and arms pump and before I’m at the truck they are out of sight, up over the curb.

  I have to go hand over spike to keep myself from slipping back down, but I finally make it. And pretty much shit my pants.

  There’s nothing but Zs before me. And they are fucking close. Likeclose close. Reach out and touch someone close. But that’s not what has me wanting to make with the pants shitting. Nope. It’s the sight of five young women,five, taking on a thousand Zs.

  And winning.

  Okay, okay, maybe not so much winning as they aren’t losing. Which counts as a win in my book. Not that I’m a give everyone a ribbon for participation kind of guy. I’m not. But I’ll call not getting eaten right away after jumping into a herd a win. That’s fair.

  Zs turn, their noses smelling my man-stink, and I gulp. Time to get to work. No days off in the zombie apocalypse, folks. Gotta keep on with the stabby stabby and the slicey slicey and the…god, I’m tired. So fucking tired of this bullshit. It’s more than a man can take. I used to handle it. I used to be the big joker. Laugh it off and-.

  “LONG PORK!” Elsbeth screams. “HEAD OUT OF ASS!”

  Oh, right. I really pick the shittiest times to space off.

  Three Zs reach for me and I yank El’s blade from my belt, slicing their hands off at the forearms. I slam the spike into the eye socket of one then another, but don’t have time to get the third before it’s on me. It moves quickly, but trips over the curb, slamming into my chest and sending us both tumbling down the hill. We go end over end. Feet up, heads up, feet up, heads up, feet up, heads- OW! FUCK!

  My head slams into the rear bumper of the truck and stars explode in my vision. Vision that’s taken up by the wide open, very hungry mouth of a Z.

  “Fuck you,” I snarl as I put the spike to the son of a bitch’s temple.

  But the fucker shifts and the spike just glances off its skull, tearing matted hair and gray skin. It snaps at me, its jaws clamping onto my shoulder. I scream at the pain and shove as hard as I can, pushing the Z off me. Damn, those fuckers’ jaws are strong! I have never understood how they can be dead, but bite with the strength of a rabid pitbull. Fuckers.

  It rolls to the side then scrambles at me. The thing is pretty fast, so it must be recently deceased. I’m guessing by the farm attire that it’s a local that got caught up in the herd. That’s the dangerous thing about herds: they are self-perpetuating. They come down so hard on an area that they are able to add to the numbers quickly. And numbers that were overwhelming at first become mindboggling within days.

  My mind is pretty fucking boggled.

  The spike pierces the forehead of the Z and it stops dead (ha ha ha) a foot from me. I yank Stumpageddon back, which isn’t so easy with the connected shoulder feeling like I just got kicked by a horse, and the thing falls flat on its rotted face. Reaching back, I find the truck’s bumper and pull myself to my feet. My head and shoulder hurt like a motherfuck, but I shake the pain off (ow) and start back up the hill (ow). No way I’m leaving Elsbeth on her own.

  There’s even more. More Zs. More death. More blood. More everything. More rage? Yeah, more of that, too.

  The women work as a unit, even Elsbeth. They cut and stab and crack and snap and break and kill and kill and kill; swirling about each other in a complex ballet of flashing metal and raging war cries. Without having to think or coordinate, each woman knows when to duck, when to kick, when to pull back. They are a synchronized killing machine.

  “Get down, dipshit,” Stuart hisses from behind me.

  I’ve been around the man long enough not to argue. My body flattens against the pavement as he and the PCs open fire, taking out the periphery of the herd as it starts to close around the women. They don’t even look our way, just keep killing. Boots pass by my head and I glance up to see the rest of the women hurrying into the battle. Stuart and the PCs make sure their fire is aimed only to the sides, and the occasional stupid Z that wants to come right at us.

  In seconds, there’s a nice ring of Z bodies piled up on the pavement, slowing down the rest of the herd and keeping it from over taking us all.

  “Get your ass back here,” Stuart snaps as he grabs my ankle. I scoot back over the curb and smile. He doesn’t smile back. “You are such a pain in my ass, Stanford.”

  Oh, the last name treatment. He’s mad.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Get down there and make sure Brenda doesn’t do anything stupid. It’s only her, Mindy, and Melissa with Lenny.”

  “Who?”

  “The wounded PC!” Stuart snarls.

  “Oh.”

  I can never remember their names.

  “Get going!” Stuart orders. “Who knows what idiocy is going through that woman’s brain.”

  “What could she do?” I ask.

  “Do you really want to find out?” Stuart says as he resumes firing. “Go!”

  Once last glance at Elsbeth and the Super Chick Fighting Force, and I’m sliding (again!) down the hill, past the truck, and into the pines. Thorns, thorns, thorns, and free.

  Dammit, I hate it when Stuart is right about bad things.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I yell at Brenda as I watch her holding a pistol on Melissa. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Look in there!” Brenda screeches, pointing at the fields beyond the iron fence. “She wants us to go in there! Look at the Zs! They’re everywhere!”

  “You stupid cow,” Melissa snarls, her eyes locked onto the pistol. “You heard what Stuart said. The Zs don’t move! Look at them! They’re staked or something to the ground!”

  I look past Brenda’s bulk and see the hundreds of Zs spread out across the overgrown field. Melissa’s right, they are swaying and reaching and moaning, but aren’t moving from their spots. It is like they’re glued in place.

  “I think we should listen,” Mindy says quiet
ly. “Stuart is a smart man, Brenda. He knows Zs.”

  “And I don’t?” she yells. “I’ve been in this apocalypse just as long as he has! I’ve fought Zs! I know how to survive! And you don’t survive by going into a field that’s filled with Zs! That’s suicide!”

  The gunfire behind us stops and I start to look back that way. So does Brenda. That gives Melissa her chance and she takes it. Lunging forward, Melissa smacks Brenda’s hand, pushing the pistol down.

  Bang!

  “Oh!” Brenda yells as the gun barks in her hand.

  Melissa grabs her wrist and tries to take the pistol, but Brenda actually has some fight in her. I never knew. Not that I’m impressed. I’m not. The woman could fart the Star Spangled Banner out her tight ass and I’d still think she was a worthless blob of shit. But I didn’t know she could fight.

  Brenda’s heel slams down on Melissa’s foot, then her elbow slams back into Mel’s gut. It gives her the space she needs as Melissa stumbles back just a fraction of an inch. Brenda raises the gun and fires. But Mel is faster. Years of being in charge of the scavengers and having to go outside Whispering Pines on life and death runs has made the woman’s reflexes top notch. The bullet whizzes past Melissa’s shoulder as she dodges to the side. Without wasting a millisecond, she lets loose with a haymaker that makes my teeth rattle just from watching it connect with Brenda’s jaw.

  The fat cow spins about, staggers a foot or two, and then goes down on her hands and knees. Melissa kicks her in the ass, sending her forward onto her face. I rush forward and snag the pistol, tucking it into my waistband as I step away from the beached whale.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making fun of her because of her weight; I’m just trying to make it known how little humanity the wildebeest has in her.

  Which is insulting to wildebeests and whales I guess. My apologies to all wildebeests and whales. If they still exist.

  “I should kill her right now,” Melissa says as Brenda rolls onto her back, her eyes wide with a mix of fear and absolute hatred.