Z-Burbia 3: Estate Of The Dead (7 page)

The sentence ends abruptly with a cry of pain as Elsbeth punches her across the face. She grabs Brenda’s shirt and yanks her close, their noses almost touching.

“Shut. Up,” Elsbeth snarls, “or you walk.”

Brenda almost can’t help herself and I can see her mouth start to open in response, but the look in Elsbeth’s eyes is not a look you argue with. Brenda’s mouth closes quickly and she swats at Elsbeth’s iron grip.

“Let her go, El,” I say. “It’s over.”

Elsbeth lets the evil bitch go and leans back into the seat. I just turn and look out the windshield.

We head down Hendersonville Rd at a steady pace, all eyes on the sides looking for more stragglers that could impede our progress. While we were busy fighting the horde, Shumway was busy texting his intense displeasure at us not being there yet. It sounds like the situation has deteriorated quickly.

I’m sure each of us has some image of how bad the situation is at the power plant, since we’ve all been living this nightmare for years and we aren’t new to the horrors of the zombie apocalypse. But as we turn onto Long Shoals Rd and get about a quarter mile along we see just how wrong all of our expectations
are.

“Oh
, my God,” Brenda says, her voice small and childlike, not like her usual bitch bluster.

“I’ll second that,” I say. It’s probably the first (and last) time I
’ll ever agree with Brenda Kelly again.

The road is swarmed. It’s shoulder to shoulder covered with Zs. They are packed so tight I don’t know where one ends and another begins.

Melissa slams on the brakes, which normally would have elicited protests from anyone riding in the truck bed. This time there’s only stunned silence as we all look at the wall of undead before us.

Then it turns, that wall of
undead, almost as one. And looks right at us.

“Move,” I whisper.

Melissa keeps staring ahead, her hands gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles pop.

“Mel,” I say, my voice a little stronger
, “get us out of here.”

“What about the plant?” she asks as she’s already shifting into reverse.

“The plant’s lost,” I say, “just go.”

“We’re going to leave them?” Mindy asks.

My guess is she’s thinking out loud. There’s no way, not with the number of Zs we are staring at, that anyone can possibly think we have a chance of getting through to the power plant. And even if we did, then what? We get trapped along with Shumway and his crew?

It’s over.

“It’s over,” I say. “Back to Whispering Pines. Back home. Now.”

I look behind us and see Stuart, Julio, and the PCs all crouched down in the truck bed, ready for what comes next. Which is Melissa speeding backwards and then hitting the brakes and cranking on the wheel. The truck spins about and we are pointing towards Hendersonville Rd once more.

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 coming 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 bitch
iness 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. Lik
e
clos
e
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
,
fiv
e
, 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.