by Jake Bible
“I’m going to let you figure it out when we get there,” Cowboy says. “It should be eye opening.”
“And where exactly is ‘there’?” Leeds asks. “Must be important if we are wading through this swarm of Zs.”
Rotted hands and decayed faces push up against the side windows of the truck. I have to feel sorry for the guys in the bed. Sure, they have a canvas cover around them, but that’s not much protection when dealing with Z numbers like this. I haven’t seen this many Zs this packed together in a long time.
Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this many Zs. Well, not true. Vance had thousands jammed into the empty Beaver Lake. This is like that. A ton of Zs with no fleshless elbowroom.
“Right,” Cowboy says, his finger to his ear. He must have one of those com earpieces. Keeping the tech real in the apocalypse. Cowboy turns to the driver and points up ahead. “Stop here. They’ll clear a path for us.”
The truck slows and stops and we wait and watch. I stare out the windshield at the mass of Zs that have encircled us. Whatever momentum we were able to keep before is gone forever. There is no way we’ll get moving again with all the weight of those Zs pressing in on the truck. Why is it that I always seem to end up in a truck surrounded by Zs? Just two months ago, I was in a dump truck, not looking my best, and thought I was going to die there.
But, I don’t think I’m going to die here, at least not by the Zs. A rumbling starts to shake the truck, and then we all see it coming from a street off to the left: a massive earthmover. You know, one of those gigantic construction trucks that are like ten stories tall and shit. Okay, maybe not ten stories, but the thing is at least two stories high with a huge blade in front like for a snow plow. Which is exactly what it is when I see it work, but for Zs, not snow. The earthmover just pushes the Zs aside, clearing a wide path for our truck.
Our driver doesn’t waste any time and puts the truck in gear, hurrying into the cleared space before it fills up again. There is still a wall of Zs ahead of us, but the earth mover slowly turns, leading us down the road, clearing the way perfectly.
“I don’t think that is just for the Zs, is it?” Leeds asks.
“Not my place to say,” Cowboy replies. “I’m security, not construction.”
“So you were hired to protect the construction crew?”
Cowboy grins at Leeds. I don’t like that grin. There is nothing happy about it.
“You’ll get your answers,” Cowboy says. “Just not from me. Sit back, sit tight, shut the fuck up.”
“Captain, that advice you always give me? Yeah, you might want to take it,” I say. “You know, regarding the shutting the fuck up.”
“First smart thing you’ve said all day,” Cowboy says as he turns back around and faces the windshield.
That’s the last words any of us say while riding in the truck. I just sit back and watch the earthmover plow Zs out of the way. They go tumbling and rolling everywhere; Z guts splatter up on our windshield now and then when a particularly juicy one gets under the earthmover’s tires. Our driver seems to like it and laughs every time he has to spray the windshield and hit the wipers. Messed up. I clutch my wounded hand to my chest and just wait it out.
It’s only a few more minutes before the earthmover pulls aside, driving up over a lawn and nearly crushing the front of a brick house, and we speed past, through a barricade that is held open by more private contractors. Black body armor, baseball caps, black sunglasses, and heavily armed.
I turn to speak to Leeds, but he is intently studying our surroundings. I’m not going to disturb him, so I do the same. We are about a hundred yards from the on ramp to the Blue Ridge Parkway and that is where all the activity is centered. It looks like the staging area for a massive construction site, or would have, if it wasn’t for the smoke and scorched machinery. I’m guessing that’s my fault.
Several tents are set up across the street from the main parkway entrance and that’s where the driver pulls us up to. Five more PCs come walking out, rifles at the ready, centered around a woman dressed similarly, but obviously not one of the men. I don’t mean that because she has boobs, I mean that because it’s pretty apparent by the body language around her that she is in charge.
“Don’t move,” Cowboy says as he hops out and walks up to her.
She looks at him for a second and then looks over at us. The windows are tinted, so I know she can’t see into the truck, but when she takes off her sunglasses, I swear her ice blue eyes can see into my soul. You’d think by now I’d get tired of saying I have met the Devil, but in the zombie apocalypse, it is surprising how many Devils come out to play.
Her eyes study the truck and then she nods and steps over to the back passenger door; my door. It opens quickly and she takes me in with those eyes. It’s a split second that lasts forever, then she looks past me and fixes her gaze on Leeds.
“Captain,” she nods.
“Ms. Foster,” Leeds nods back.
“Ms. Foster?” I say. “This is the Foster in Tersch and Foster?”
“I am,” Foster replies. “Not the founding member. That was my father.”
Every single PC hangs his head for a moment and then looks back up. Jesus Christ, it’s a mercenary cult! But then, aren’t all military groups in a way? That’s why I quit Cub Scouts in third grade. Creeped me out.
“I see we owe you an apology for some damage we’ve done,” Leeds says.
“I think this guy here owes the apology,” Foster says, looking at me, waiting.
“Oh, right, yeah, sorry about that,” I say. “I was trying to figure out why the gas had been shut off.”
“So you decided to turn it back on? Thinking back on it, does that sound like a good idea?”
“Not so much,” I say to her, trying to smile. I think my lips get halfway up and stop. I can tell by the way she is looking at me that she thinks I’m having some sort of fit. I give up on the smile. “Any chance y’all can give us a ride back to my place? I know my people are probably worried.”
“Jason Stanford,” she says. “General bullshitter and expert in nothing. Defacto head of the Whispering Pines subdivision.”
“That would be Brenda Kelly, actually,” I say, “she’s head of the HOA Board.”
“Yes, she is,” Foster says. “But that doesn’t mean shit. Just that she’s in charge of the cowards in your bunch. I know what you did to Vance. Impressive. Needlessly destructive, but impressive.”
“Had some help,” I say, hooking a thumb at Leeds. “And I hope you don’t mind me asking how you know so much about me?”
She doesn’t answer, just steps aside. “Let’s walk. After you, Mr. Stanford.”
“He prefers to be called Long Pork,” Leeds says.
Oh, no he didn’t!
“Long Pork? Jesus, really?” Foster asks. “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”
I get out of the truck and follow as two PCs begin to walk over to a large pile of debris. Looking over my shoulder, I see Leeds right behind me and Foster behind him. I’ve seen him move and know she’s easily within grabbing distance, but by the way, she carries herself that also means Leeds is within her grabbing distance. Leeds glances at the debris pile and I follow his gaze. Then stop.
“Problem, Mr. Stanford?” Foster asks.
“Are those people? Pull them out of there, for fuck’s sake!” I cry.
“Too late for that,” Foster says, walking past us and to the squirming bodies pinned beneath the pile of concrete and steel. “They turned a few minutes ago. I was saving them for you.”
She unholsters a pistol and holds it out to me grip first. I look at it, a Beretta 9mm, and look at her.
“Take it,” she says, “finish the job.”
“You take us captive and then hand me a pistol?” I ask. “Are you high?”
“What are you going to do, Mr. Stanford? Shoot your way free? You aim that 9 at anything other than those zeds and your head will be mist. Poof. I’m not too worried.”
“Do it, Jace,” Leeds says.
“Jesus,” I say as I start to take the 9 with my bandaged right hand and wince.
“Hurt yourself?” Foster asks.
“I always do,” I say as I take it with my left hand and walk up to the pile.
The Zs all hiss at me, their broken bodies straining against the debris, trying to get at me. Being brand spanking new, several of them actually manage to shift some concrete; they’re always strongest just after turning. I count eight Zs. Maybe there are more in the pile, but I can’t see them.
I don’t hoo and haw. No need to waste time. It’s not like I haven’t had to put down Zs before. The 9 feels weird in my left hand, but I steady it and take aim. Then fire.
I fucking miss.
The second shot doesn’t and I walk from one Z to the other, take careful aim, and fire. All eight are dead in less than a minute. I eject the magazine and hand the empty pistol back to Foster.
“Afraid I’ll use one of the remaining cartridges on you?” she smiles.
“Just thought I’d slow you down,” I say. I watch her slap the magazine back into the pistol and rack the slide in a blink. “Or not.”
She raises the pistol and aims at my forehead. I don’t even have time to think before shit gets crazy. There’s a cry behind me, a few grunts, some slamming and scuffling, then Leeds is next to me, a pistol in his hand pointed at Foster’s forehead.
She doesn’t even glance over at him; her eyes are fixed on me.
“How’s this going to go?” Leeds asks.
“I don’t know, Captain,” she says, “you tell me.”
“I’d prefer if it went easy. No one else needs to get hurt,” Leeds says. “Sorry about your men there, but shit happens these days.”
“Those weren’t my men,” Foster says. “Those were just some poor suckers that signed on with my employer. Simple labor here to do a job. They probably have families or loved ones. I don’t know, I don’t care.”
“So back to my original question: how is this going to go?”
Foster just watches me. She is doing this weird thing with her mouth, like she’s sucking her teeth. I can see her running her tongue up under her lip. What the fuck? People are weird.
“Would you like to meet my employer?” she finally asks. “Could be a good thing for you and yours.”
It takes me a second to realize she’s asking me, not Leeds.
“Oh, uh, sure,” I say, “beats getting shot in the face.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” she smiles. Why is it whenever military folks smile, it gives me the creeps?
“Is your employer here,” Leeds asks, the 9 steady in his hand, never wavering.
“Oh, hell no,” Foster laughs. “He leaves the sweating to the slaves.”
“Slaves?” Leeds asks.
Foster shrugs and then the 9 is gone. I blink and it’s in the holster on her belt.
“Captain? If you please?” she says.
Leeds lowers the pistol and PCs converge on him, but Foster holds up her hand. They stop instantly. She holds out her palm and Leeds places the 9 in it without a word.
“Let’s take my car,” Foster says, “I’ll drive.” She looks over at one of the PCs and the woman hurries off. “You’ll like my car. Custom made for this job.”
In a minute, everyone parts as a rigged out four door Jeep Wrangler comes pulling up. I would have thought a hard top would be more practical, but this Wrangler has the soft top down. Probably makes firing the fifty caliber on top a little easier. On the front bumpers are two miniguns, you know the ones that look like small Gatling guns with the rotating barrels? Yeah, those. I can see ammunition belts feeding under the hood.
But the cool thing (yes, I said cool), is that the entire Jeep is ringed with blades. They look like blades from a sawmill, which they probably are, that have been welded onto the frame just at waist level. I can see the front has a reinforced grill with heavy bars and spikes. The back has the ubiquitous spare tire, but also a wide panel of steel. I can’t quite tell what that does.
“Hop in, boys,” Foster says as she gets into the driver’s seat. “Mr. Stanford, you can ride up front with me. The Captain can ride bitch in the back.”
I get in and so does Leeds. He’s instantly sandwiched between two men that must weigh eight hundred pounds between them. Food shortage hasn’t been an issue for these boys. Damn they are huge. Foster barely waits for the doors to close before she’s pulling away. Cowboy gives her a nod and she nods back, as she runs up onto the curb and skirts around a ton of machinery.
“The crew was busy retrofitting some generators for natural gas when you flipped the switch,” Foster says. “A few minutes before or a few minutes after, and it would have all been good. But your timing was perfect. The guys working on the retrofit were vaporized. Those zeds you put down were standing fifty feet away.”
She looks over at me, and I give her a weak smile.
“You like blowing shit up, don’t you Mr. Stanford?”
“I don’t set out to do it,” I say. “Just seems to happen around me.”
“Just seems to happen,” she says as she barrels towards a swarm of Zs. “Interesting way to put it.”
We get closer and closer to the Zs, but she takes a right just before we hit the swarm. We speed down a hill, take a hard curve, and then speed back up another hill, zigzagging our way through the Haw Creek area of Asheville. I haven’t been in this area since before Z-Day. Dozens and dozens of Zs are wandering about in front yards and fields as we zip along the winding road.
“Where are we headed?” I shout over the wind that is whipping past us.
“FOB,” she says.
“Oh,” I nod, “what does that mean?”
“Forward operating base,” Leeds says from behind me. “I have a feeling where that is.”
“Do you?” Foster asks as she looks at him in the rear view mirror. My stomach clenches as she keeps looking at him while taking a hairpin turn. “Enlighten me, Captain?”
“You’re the folks at the Grove Park Inn,” Leeds says.
“That’s you guys?” I say. “I really thought that was Vance’s people.”
“That slimy fuck?” Foster laughs, looking back at the road. “My employer wouldn’t let him anywhere near the place. That guy was batshit fucking nuts.” She shrugs. “But he had his uses. Guy knew how to round up zeds, that’s for sure. My job has gotten a lot harder since you killed him.”
“He kinda forced me to,” I say.
“Oh, I’m sure he did,” Foster says. “I don’t doubt that one bit. Still, makes my job harder.”
“And what is your job?” Leeds asks.
“Keep the party rolling,” Foster says. “Whatever it takes.”
Leeds nods, obviously understanding what that means. I, on the other hand, am in the dark as usual.
We pull off the road and head up a steep, switchback of a gravel road.
“Wait,” I say. “How are we getting to the Grove Park from here? Haw Creek doesn’t connect. There’s a mountain in the way.”
“You call these mountains?” Foster laughs. “Please. Try spending a winter in the Wakhan Corridor. Then you’ll understand what mountains are.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leeds stiffen. It’s subtle, and most wouldn’t notice, but I do. So does Foster. How? I have no idea.
“You putting the pieces together, Captain?” Foster asks.
“That was quite a mess,” Leeds says, “took some serious clean up. The Chinese weren’t happy.”
“Shit gets messy in the field,” Foster says. “You of all people should know that.”
We keep climbing and climbing as the gravel road turns to dirt then becomes more of an idea of a road than an actual road. Like a wide trail. Then that is gone. I do see tire tracks in the mud and grass that we bump over, so I know this isn’t the first time Foster has gone this way.
Then we hit a crest and look out over all of North Asheville. The vi
ew is incredible, and sad. There is so much destruction evident from up here. I’m blown away at how much of the city is just gone; rubble on the ground. Sure, I’ve scouted a lot of it, but seeing it from up here is another thing. The scope of it is breathtaking.
“Asheville hasn’t fared so well,” Foster says, “but better than a lot of places. It was called the Paris of the South, right?”
“Yeah, it was,” I reply.
“It should just be called the Paris of the World, now,” she says, “considering what Paris looks like.”
“You’ve seen Paris?” I ask, turning to her. “Post-Z Paris?”
“Yes, Mr. Stanford,” she says as she cranks the wheel and follows a ridgeline that is barely as wide as the Jeep. “I’ve also seen Berlin, New York, Los Angles, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Cape Town, Beijing, and quite a few other places.”
“How?” I ask. “By ship?”
Foster furrows her brow. “You do realize zeds can’t fly, right, Mr. Stanford? And just because the dead walk the earth, doesn’t mean airplanes stopped working?”
“Right. Yeah.”
Yes, I feel stupid.
Down the other side of the mountain we go. Foster turns off the trail and I swear we are going to plunge to our deaths, but the Jeep stays upright as we merge onto a lower trail. Winding, winding, winding down we go. Good thing I don’t get motion sick. Then we come out into a backyard behind some mansion and I know where we are.
“Town Mountain Road,” I say. “I guess you found a short cut.”
“Yep,” she says, “lot less zeds up here.”
We get out onto the road and weave past massive houses that would have gone for millions pre-Z. Now they stand empty. Well, except for that one with the Zs banging on the huge picture window that looks out over Asheville. Guess that dinner party didn’t go as planned.
Instead of going down Town Mountain, and into Asheville, Foster goes higher up. I’ve taken this route before, back when half of Merrimon Ave, the main artery into North Asheville, was under construction and I wanted to avoid the traffic pile up. Soon we are at Webb Cove Road with the Blue Ridge Parkway off to our right.
And there are people working on the parkway. What the fuck?
