by Bible, Jake
“Damn,” I said. “That’s a long time to hold out against the Zs.”
“The Zs? That what you call them?” he asked then nodded. “Makes sense. But the zombies haven’t been the problem. The people have.”
“Those orange crazies?” Charlie asked.
“Them? Nah,” Manchester laughed. “They’re easy. I toss them some ramen now and then and they leave me alone.” He pointed at all the Vols memorabilia and sighed. “This used to be a popular place for the college kids. Those Orangies aren’t all college kids, since they do like to recruit, but a lot of them were. They leave me alone out of Tennessee pride and respect, I guess.”
“Lucky you,” Stella said. “Thank you again for letting us stay here last night. We will be gone in just a few minutes.”
“Not out front,” Manchester said. “You have to go through the alleyway. Once you get out there, you run like hell. Keep going until you hit 18th. Then you turn left, and keep running until you get up to the railroad tracks. Follow the tracks. That’s your best way out of Knoxville.”
“We have some friends we need to find,” I said.
“Don’t bother with them,” Manchester replied. “Take care of yourselves. You want out of Knoxville as soon as possible. Not safe for outsiders here.”
“Doesn’t seem safe for anyone,” Charlie said.
“We’ll be fine,” Manchester said as he glanced quickly up at the ceiling. “There’s a lot of insanity, but in that, is order. I know how it works, but you don’t. Get to the tracks and get out of town. Do not stop for anyone. Do not stop for anything. Even if you hear your friends calling your names, you keep going. Some groups keep ‘em alive to lure ya in.”
“Groups?” Stella asked.
“Groups,” Manchester nodded. “The Orangies, the Professors, the Sisters. And don’t get me started on the Orderlies.”
“Yikes,” I said. “Which ones made the billboards?”
“The Sisters,” Manchester said. “Sorority Village. Stay away from there. They don’t like men folk and they’ll take the women to recruit or eat.”
“Eat?” I asked. “So they are one of the canny gangs?”
“Canny gangs? Oh, you mean Cannibal Road,” Manchester replied. “The Sisters may eat folks now and again, but they aren’t one of the Cannibal Road gangs. That’s a whole other mess of trouble. Do what I told you and get to the tracks, and get out of town. Stay to the tracks.”
“Yeah, okay, thanks,” I replied. “We’ll get out of town.”
Manchester shook his head. “Y’all think I’m crazy. I’m not. You want to see crazy? Stay on 18th and go check out the medical center. The Orderlies will show you crazy.”
“I think we’ve had our fill of the local color,” I said. “We’ll turn at 18th and get to the tracks.”
“Good deal,” Manchester smiled. “Now, I hate to ask it, but y’all have got to leave. I need to do some repairs and clean up so if the Orangies come by they’ll see things just how they like them.”
“Sure thing,” I responded as I looked towards Stella and gave her the “time to get the fuck out of here” look. She gave me the “no fucking shit” look. “Thank you for your kindness. Good luck, Mr. Manchester.”
“Good luck to you as well,” Manchester said as he stepped out of the way so we could file past and into the back hallway.
We got to the emergency exit and Elsbeth took point. She opened it slowly, peered outside then smiled back at us.
“Clear,” she whispered and we followed her outside into the morning light.
I wouldn’t exactly call where we were an “alley.” It was more like a dirt trail behind a bunch of buildings. Which meant the space was narrow and we had to walk single file to keep from banging into old trashcans and piles of trash.
One of those piles of trash had a hand sticking out from it. We didn’t stop to see if the hand was attached to anything, living or undead.
Elsbeth kept us going at her steady pace, which for the rest of us was like a forced march/sprint. We Stanfords were a sweaty mess by the time we reached 18th and found ourselves facing a good sized group of Zs to the right. In the exact direction, we needed to go.
“Go left and circle around?” I whispered to Elsbeth.
“We can make it,” she whispered back.
We both looked at Stella and she nodded.
“Get us through,” I said to Elsbeth.
It was a bit of an undead picnic we stumbled upon, so luckily, the Zs were occupied eating some unlucky bastard and didn’t take notice as we crossed the street and put as much distance between us and them as we could. Step by careful step, we inched our way down the sidewalk.
It would have all been good, except Greta took a look over at the munching Zs just as we passed them and gasped.
“No!” she shouted and started to run across the street. Right at the Zs. “NO!”
“Greta!” I yelled as I chased after her.
That got the Zs’ attention and all of them stopped in mid-bite, turned their heads slowly towards us, and hissed. Flesh hung from jagged teeth, bits of bloody clothes and skin stuck to the putrid cheeks of the monsters. It was a scene we’d all been witness to a hundred times, so I was confused as to why my daughter was screaming her head off and going after a group of Zs we had been only seconds from skirting around.
Greta started screaming as she lifted her 9mm and fired.
One after the other, Z heads exploded and undead bodies dropped. Greta emptied her pistol, ejected the magazine, slapped in a new one, and was already firing again before I could catch up to her.
“Greta!” I yelled. “Stop!”
But she didn’t stop until she’d emptied the second magazine and stood in front of a pile of unmoving Zs. She tucked the pistol into her waistband and started to claw at the corpses to get at what they had been eating. I tried to pull her away, but my one arm was not match enough for her teenage fury.
“Stop!” Elsbeth snapped as she pushed past me and grabbed Greta by the arm, yanking her back three feet in one move. “Stop it!”
“Greta? What is wrong with you?” Stella spat. “You could have been killed! Or gotten us killed!”
Greta’s eyes were wide and filled with madness. She barely registered that any of us were there as she struggled against Elsbeth’s grip. All she wanted to do was get back to that pile and free whatever victim was underneath.
“Ah, shit,” Charlie said as he looked at the pile. “I know those cowboy boots.”
We all looked at the blood-caked cowboy boot that stuck out from under a Z. It didn’t mean a thing to me, but it meant something to Charlie. And obviously meant something to Greta as Charlie pushed between her and Elsbeth and took his sister in his arms.
“So sorry, Sis,” he said. “I am so, so sorry. I know how this feels, trust me.”
“What is going on?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Stella said. “I think that’s Jordan Jensen. He was kinda her boyfriend.”
“Oh...crap,” I said.
“Nobody’s boyfriend now,” Elsbeth said. “Just meat.”
She knelt down and pulled the Zs off of the body. I was glad Greta had her face buried in her brother’s chest, because no one should have had to see what Elsbeth uncovered.
The boy was mangled almost beyond recognition, but I could see a resemblance to the kid Charlie had pointed out to me back in Critter’s Holler. His throat was ripped out and he was missing his entire abdomen, plus a few ribs. His body cavity looked like it had been scooped out with a shovel and what should have been inside was outside and spread all about. The Zs had really gone to town on the poor boy.
Elsbeth took a blade and shoved it through the boy’s temple so he wouldn’t come back. She wiped the blade as she stood and looked down the street.
“Can’t use this way no more,” she said as she pulled out her other blade. “We keep going across until we can cut up to the tracks like the Mr. Manchester man said.”
“Manchester
said not to keep going,” I replied. “Or we run into the medical center. Apparently, that is a bad thing.”
Elsbeth pointed up the street at the large quantity of Zs that had started to fill the road.
“That is a bad thing too, Long Pork,” she responded. “I can see that bad thing; I can’t see the medical center bad thing. We keep going until we can cut up. If we get to the medical center, we deal with that bad thing when we see it.”
“Jace, we can’t stay here,” Stella said. “We have to go.”
“I know,” I said. “I just hate to be walking right into a nightmare.”
“Already there, Long Pork,” Elsbeth said. “The nightmare doesn’t stop. Ever.”
She certainly wasn’t wrong there.
“Fine. Go,” I said.
Elsbeth took off between the buildings as Stella pushed Charlie and Greta after her. I brought up the rear and risked one last look at the dead boy, then up the street at the very large gathering of Zs.
“Fucking assholes,” I muttered as I ducked between the buildings and stayed close to my family.
The buildings started to get further apart and we suddenly found ourselves looking out at a wide parking lot and a couple of tall, white buildings. My guess was that we found the medical center just like we weren’t supposed to.
“Those are some clean buildings,” Charlie whispered as we looked at the stark white walls across the parking lot. “You ever see buildings that clean since Z-Day?”
“Nope,” I replied. Stella shook her head, but didn’t say anything as she was busy holding Greta to her as my daughter struggled not to sob. “Somebody must really like power washing in the apocalypse.”
A large sign said “Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center” in big capital letters, but it was the ten bodies hanging from the sign that really got our attention.
“Are those...?” Stella asked as she gently pushed Greta from her and peered across the parking lot.
“Critter’s men,” I said. “I think that one in the middle is Gary Wilkes. Shit.”
“They turned,” Elsbeth said. “They’re Zs now.”
That was obvious by the way that the bodies twisted and thrashed as they hung from thick chains threaded through their chests and thighs to keep them in place. The less than tactful part of me wanted to go up to the one on the end, pull it back and then let it fall against the next one like those desktop clackers. That would have been cool.
But not cool. Totally not cool. No one in their right mind would do that.
Still...
“Jace,” Stella hissed. “Get out of your head.”
“Right. Sorry,” I replied. “Can we go around?”
Elsbeth was busy studying the surroundings and plotting our route, which was obvious by the way she held her mouth and had her eyes narrowed. We’d been around the woman enough to know the way her mind worked.
“We go there,” Elsbeth said and pointed to the northeast corner of the first big building. “We run fast to the corner and then wait. If no one sees us, we run across that road and keep going to the railroad tracks. Everyone ready?”
She took off right away without waiting for an answer. We struggled to keep up with her, as she was still faster than fuck even in a weird crouch run. I’m not sure why we were crouch running, since anyone could see us whether we were running upright or with our bodies bent over. But Elsbeth was crouch running so we crouch ran too until we got to the corner of the building and stopped.
The Zs dangling from the sign saw us though, and their hisses and moans filled the air. Being veterans of the zombie apocalypse, we knew it was only a matter of time before their noises drew more Zs to us. We had a very small window of time to get from the medical center to the railroad tracks or we’d end up cut off like before.
Unfortunately, that window of time went out the window as soon as a side door opened up and five people dressed in surgical scrubs stepped out.
“Patients shouldn’t be roaming around,” a man said. His face was obscured by a surgical mask and his head was shaved except for random spots where hair was left in the shape of crosses and dyed red. All the others had the same stylish hairdos going on as well.
Red crosses. Are you fucking kidding me? The crazy fucks (I don’t think I was assuming much by calling them that) had left spots of hair on their heads in the shape of red crosses? Sure. Why the fuck not?
“Time for your medicine,” a woman said, as she pulled a large bone saw from behind her back and shook it menacingly at us.
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Stella said as she pulled her pistol and shot all five between the eyes. Their bodies dropped to the ground and their perfectly clean scrubs soon did what they did best, soaking up the blood that poured from the corpses’ heads.
“Well, that handles that,” I said. “Now we run!”
We didn’t hang around for the next rotation of nutjobs to show up and proceeded to throw all caution to the wind. In other words, we ran our asses off. We booked it away from the medical center and out onto Laurel Ave. Elsbeth took the lead again and steered us towards 20th Street. She turned up that street and we passed Highland Ave then Forest Ave and were about to hit Grand Ave, which was the last street before the railroad tracks, when suddenly, we were cut off by several cars coming to a screeching halt in front of us.
Now, let me make this clear, because it is important to understanding the whole Knoxville experience. The streets were not clogged with cars like in Asheville. Someone had taken the time to make sure vehicles were pulled to the side or had been removed completely. Even back in Asheville we didn’t bother moving all the abandoned vehicles until Lourdes and her PCs arrived. Even then, we only moved them from the main arteries.
However, Knoxville’s abandoned cars were arranged in an orderly fashion. All parked in spaces along the streets or in parking lots and driveways. Not a single Prius sat sideways with its doors open and a desiccated corpse hanging out like half the cars in Asheville.
That was why the bright pink, bright green, bright red, bright yellow and bright blue compact cars that stopped in front of us had no trouble zooming down the street to head us off.
“Hey!” a woman yelled from her bright pink Volkswagen Jetta. “Those ladies are now pledges! Back away, guys, or we’ll cut your balls off and feed them to you!”
The woman stepped from her car and my mouth dropped. She had to be at least in her mid to late fifties, but she was dressed like a sorority girl on meth: mismatched knee high leather boots with thigh high multi-colored striped socks. Short shorts that didn’t exactly leave anything to the imagination, and a tight blouse tied up around her boobs so her less than flat belly could pooch out.
Oh, and did I forget the AK-47 she held and pointed right at us? Sorry. Yeah, she had one of those and it was painted pink to match her car
The drivers of the other cars all got out and weren’t dressed nearly so out of place slutty, but they still were a shock. None of them was under fifty. No way, no how. Miniskirts, pleated khaki capris, half-tees, hair done up in ponytails, pigtails, tucked under a Hello Kitty trucker cap. They were women trying to wear girl’s clothing as their post-apocalyptic uniform.
Oh, and another for the record: pretty sick of the post-apocalyptic uniform thing going on in Knoxville. That shit was annoying as hell pre-Z. It was a million times more annoying as I stood with my hands up and jaw hanging open.
“I like your hat,” Elsbeth said as she pointed to the woman wearing the Hello Kitty trucker cap. “I had one of those once. I lost it somewhere. Can I have yours?”
“Shut the fuck up, pledge!” the woman yelled then looked to their leade r.I assumed she was their leader since her car was in front and she started talking first. “Should I mow them down, Bitsy?”
“Only if the men don’t step away nice and slow,” Bitsy replied. She reached back and unceremoniously pulled a wedgie from her ass. “Hear that, males? Back away from our new pledges or we kill you all.”
“I heard,
” I said, “but I’m not sure my ladies want to be pledges. Can they think about it for a day or two and get back to you?”
Bitsy cocked her hip and waved her rifle around as if it wasn’t a deadly weapon that could go off at any second. Firearms safety was not her number one priority. That was obvious.
“You the funny man who thinks he’s in charge?” she asked as she stepped towards me. “You the frat president? That you, douchebag?”
“Frat president?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure those guys hated it when people called their houses ‘frats’. Would you call your country a cunt?”
The other women lifted their rifles and the sound of slides being pulled back echoed through the street and against the railcars that were only a football field’s length away across the road.
“Chill, ladies, chill,” Bitsy said, her voice a whiskey gravel mixed with insulin sweetness. “Mr. President is just being funny. Is that your thing?”
“That’s my thing,” I said and glanced at my wife, daughter, and Elsbeth. Not saying Elsbeth is mine That was just the order in which I glanced at them. “Know what else is my thing? Keeping my family together. So, if you don’t mind, we’re going to follow those train tracks out of town. You can hijack the next group of survivors for your pledge week, okay?”
“Not okay,” Bitsy said. “Duffy?” The one in the capris stiffened. “Poof-Poof?” The miniskirt smiled. “Sleenie?” Cut-off jean shorts with most of her ass hanging out. “Take them.”
“Boys over there!” Duffy yelled, her rifle jabbing forward as if she was trying to fend off a wild tiger or something.
“Yeah! Over there!” Poof-Poof echoed.
“I could just gut shoot ‘em,” Sleenie said as she twisted her hips, obviously working on her own wedgie problem. “Let ‘em die in the street or get ate by the zombies”
“No gut shooting,” Bitsy said. “Just load the ladies up.”
Elsbeth started to move, but Stella held out her arm.
“No killing, Elsbeth,” Stella said. “Wait.”
“Uh-oh,” Bitsy said as she sneered at Stella. “I think there’s another hen that thinks she’s top of the roost. That’s my job, sweetheart. I rule Sorority Village, so don’t get no ideas in your head.”
