Z-Burbia (Book 2): Parkway To Hell

by Jake Bible

  “He told me that if I wanted to know more about Foster I should go with him,” she says. “I did want to know more. That lady is in my dreams.”

  “Yeah, you said that. You said she was singing. What does she sing?”

  Elsbeth shakes her head. “I don’t know the song.”

  “You don’t remember your dreams?”

  “I don’t remember the song,” she says quietly. “I remember my dreams. I don’t want to, but I do.”

  “What did Mondello say?” I ask. “About Foster?”

  She shrugs. “Not much.”

  “Well, he had to have said something,” I push. “You two were in the car for a while together.”

  “He was driving fast,” Elsbeth says. “Because we were being chased. He didn’t say a lot. I asked questions, but he told me to be quiet. I don’t think he was a very good driver.”

  “Huh, okay,” I nod. “Hold on. You did want us to come after you? You did, right? You wanted us to rescue you, right?”

  She shrugs again.

  “Elsbeth, come on,” I snap. “You can’t be telling me you actually were planning on going with him all the way to Charlottesville.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Nothing for me here.”

  “What about me? What about Stella and the kids?” I ask. “We’re here!”

  “You gave me up,” she says. Ouch. That smarts.

  “Okay, true, you get that one,” I say and hold up my hand before she can speak again. “But what about Julio? He would have thought you were kidnapped or worse. If you hadn’t come back we would have all assumed you were dead.”

  “Maybe it’s better to be dead,” she says.

  “No, it’s not!” I shout, my voice bouncing up and down the tunnel. “It’s better to be alive!”

  “I don’t know that,” she says. “The dreams I have…”

  “What about them?”

  “If that lady that sings to me is real, then what else is real? What if my dreams are real?”

  “Dreams are just our subconscious exercising itself,” I say. “That’s all. Some can be real, in a way, but it’s mainly just symbols and stuff. It’s how our subconscious stretches its legs.”

  “Sub...sub…subconscious? I don’t know that.”

  “You know how you are thinking right now?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she nods. “I’m thinking of hitting Mondello in the face. Because I don’t want to hit you in the face, but I want to hit someone’s face.”

  “Okay, well thanks for not hitting me,” I say.

  “I still might.”

  “Great. Well then thanks for the warning. Can we get back to the subject?”

  “You asked what I was thinking. I told you. That’s the subject.”

  “Not gonna argue that,” I say. “The subconscious. It’s the part of your mind you can’t hear thinking. If you are thinking about punching me, then the subconscious is what put that thought there. It’s the deep part of your brain.”

  “Deep? Like a hole?”

  “Yes, kinda,” I reply. “People do say they bury things deep in their subconscious so they don’t have to think about them.”

  “That’s dumb,” she says. “You don’t bury anything in your mind. Your mind is in your head. If you bury something in your head, like a shovel or a knife, then you die. But you don’t come back, so maybe that is what the people mean? Bury something in your head so you die and don’t come back?”

  “No, no, that’s not it,” I say. I can see her getting frustrated so I back off. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to the bottom of it all later. Just know that your dreams are just dreams; they aren’t real.”

  “They feel real,” she says. “They make me cry sometimes. I don’t like to cry.”

  “I know. I don’t like to cry either.”

  We stand there a little longer then she grabs me and hugs me so hard I’m actually afraid she’s cracked a rib. I take the discomfort and hug her back, glad to be on her good side again.

  “I’m family?” she asks, finally letting me go. “You came to get me because I’m family?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly why I came to get you,” I say. “It’s why we all came to get you. You’re our crazy canny girl. Life would be boring and suck without you.”

  “I’m not crazy,” she states, fire in her eyes. “And not a canny anymore.”

  Fuck.

  “No, you’re right. Sorry. I just meant that you are who you are and we love you for it. It’s all good. When the others get here, we’ll hop in this SUV and roll on down the mountain back home. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Stuart says from back in the tunnel, Critter thrown across his shoulders. The man doesn’t look too good; too pale, even taking into account the dim light.

  “Daddy!” Greta yells and rushes into my arms. Stella and Charlie are right behind her. We all hug and it’s the best feeling in the world.

  Greta pulls away first and jumps at Elsbeth, wrapping her arms around her. Stella smiles at me and we all give her a huge hug, wrapping her up with Stanford love.

  “Sorry to cut this love fest short,” John says, “but we aren’t out of the woods yet.”

  “We aren’t in the woods,” Elsbeth says. “We’re in the mountain.”

  “That is both true and observant,” John nods. “But what I mean is, do you hear that?”

  We all go quiet and listen.

  Yes, I think we do hear that.

  The shuffling of feet and the low moans of Zs reach our ears. It sounds like a lot of feet.

  “The tunnel amplifies the sound, right?” Charlie asks. “There aren’t as many as it seems? Right? Hello? Right?”

  Man, I wish I could tell him he’s right. But as the things start to reach the dim circle of the SUV’s dome light, I realize he’s wrong. Very wrong.

  “Tell me you brought guns,” I say to John and Stuart.

  “We brought guns,” John says. “But it’s gonna get close in here. We’re just as likely to shoot each other.”

  “Fuck,” I swear. “So we crush skulls?”

  “We crush skulls,” Stuart nods, setting Critter down against the SUV.

  “He going to make it?” I ask.

  “Maybe,” Stella says, “he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Shit,” I reply.

  “Help me get him inside,” Stuart says.

  I grab Critter’s legs as Stuart crawls into the backseat of the SUV. He pulls, I lift and push, and we manage to get Critter settled. Damn, for a skinny guy that’s leaking blood, he’s fucking heavy. It’s that dead weight thing.

  Speaking of dead weight…

  “You guys got Sleeping Beauty taken care of?” John asks.

  “Good to go,” Stuart replies. He has a rifle in his hands and he turns it around like a bat as he ejects the magazine, letting it clatter to the ground. John does the same thing. I look at them and frown.

  “Have an extra?” I ask.

  “Here,” Elsbeth says, handing me a tire iron. “It was in the car.”

  “Great,” I nod. “Thanks. What are you going to use?”

  “Me,” she says then walks towards the Zs.

  “Right,” I say. “How stupid of me.”

  The Zs see her first and they groan and hiss, all closing in on her. Elsbeth takes two down with well placed elbows then kicks out, knocking one back into the others, creating a domino effect. None are hurt, but they get tangled in a knot of undead arms and legs.

  “Get in the SUV,” I yell at Stella and the kids.

  “But, Jace!” Stella cries.

  “Do it!” I shout. “We’ll be fine!” But I don’t really know that; there are a lot of Zs and more and more seem to be coming.

  How? I thought Mondello said they had cleared the Parkway. Or maybe he said they were clearing the Parkway. Damn, I need to listen better. Which is something Stella is always saying, so I’ll just keep that self-admission to myself. No need to let her score spouse points. She
’s already way ahead.

  John and Stuart rush the Zs, with me right behind. I glance back for a brief second and see Stella and the kids jumping into the SUV. The door closes. And the dome light goes out.

  Ah, fuck me…

  “Open the door!” I yell. “Stella! Open the door!”

  She does and the light comes back on. Just in time for me to see three Zs coming at me. They don’t seem to have a problem seeing in the dark. It’s part of the whole Z thing. Dead grey eyes, but with night vision! It’s an undead trade-off. I look back at Stella and give her the thumbs up as she turns the dome light on manually and closes the SUV’s door.

  I take the tire iron and jam the pointy end through a Z’s eye socket. I yank back and the thing drops, black blood oozing from its skull. The other two Zs are too fast and I can’t get the tire iron back up before they are on me. One grabs me and I spin about, letting it stumble against the tunnel wall. The other grabs my shoulders and comes in for the neck bite, but this time I am able to get the tire iron up. Over my shoulder, I shove it into the thing’s mouth and out the back of its head.

  It stumbles back, its hands swatting at the iron as the metal bounces up and down in its mouth. I guess I didn’t hit brain or sever the spinal column because the fucker is still up and moving.

  “Gimme that,” I say and pull the tire iron free.

  It brings the Z with it, though, and I lower my shoulder and ram the thing, knocking it away. I go in for the kill, but hands snatch my shirt and I stumble, nearly falling right into the Z’s mouth. I slip to the side and come down hard on my hip, letting out a little cry. The Zs rush me, seeing easy prey on the ground, and I kick out, sweeping their legs.

  This is good because of the knocking them down part. But bad because now I’m under a pile of Zs. You take the good, you take the bad…

  My arms and the tire iron are free so I get to the stabbing. I plunge the iron into a Z’s skull, pull it out, plunge, and repeat. Over and over I do this until the pile on me stops moving. Maybe I can play dead and just wait this fight out? No? Fuck. Okay, I’m up!

  Elsbeth is doing her berserker fast kill thing, while John and Stuart do their military kill thing. Many Zs are crushed and killed. I jump into the fray, ready to add my boring, normal suburban kill thing to the fight. And, of course, I slip on some stray intestines and fall hard on my ass. The smell of shit is overwhelming and for a split second, I think I crap my pants. Then I realize it’s the shit from the intestines I slipped on. Phew. Don’t want to die with crap in my pants. Or live and have the kids know I crapped my pants.

  Stuart reaches down and pulls me to my feet while smacking a Z in the head and knocking it aside. I nod my thanks and swipe at a Z coming at us. Its skull caves in and a new smell is added to the shit and blood smell that is filling the tunnel. That’s the problem with being in a tunnel, or any enclosed space, when fighting Zs: the smell. You think you get used to it, but you don’t. There’s some primal response to the stink of death and decay. It makes your gut clench and your balls shrink. Or other parts shrink if you do not have the testicles.

  Ignoring the stankety stank, I bring the tire iron down again and again, smashing skull after skull. John is rocking it, taking Zs down left and right. Stuart is kicking ass too, sending the undead to the Big Sleep in Hell. And Elsbeth is Elsbeth, so her body count eclipses ours.

  Yet -and that gut clench gets worse as I realize it- we aren’t making a dent in the numbers. Z bodies are piling up around us, hindering our ability to move around, but more and more keep coming. I don’t know how many there are since the lighting is less than adequate to say the least. But I keep fighting; I keep swinging; I don’t stop.

  At least until Stuart calls out, “Get back to the SUV! There’s too many!”

  “We can do this,” John protests, but his attacks are obviously getting weaker and weaker as he favors his wounded shoulder, his left arm almost useless at his side.

  “No, we can’t!” Stuart yells. “Move! Get in there!”

  John starts to protest again, but I grab him, pulling him back to the SUV. “Don’t waste time arguing! Come on!”

  Charlie opens the door and we scramble inside. Charlie jumps into the far back seat, and I join him, as John pushes Critter’s legs aside and gets in to the mid-back seat. So many fucking seats in these things. Stuart opens the other back door and hops in, shoving Critter in between him and John.

  “He say anything yet?” Stuart asks Stella, who is sitting in the driver’s seat with Greta in the passenger seat.

  “No, he’s been out the whole time,” Stella replies.

  We watch as Elsbeth continues to fight the Zs, somehow managing to keep from getting surrounded. She spins and kicks, punches, grabs, twists, cracks, breaks, snaps, kills. She’s a dervish of violence, whirling in every direction at once. But even she is human and the Zs are just too much.

  The horn blares and we all jump.

  “Greta!” Stella shouts, shoving our daughter’s hand away from the wheel. “Jesus! You nearly made me piss myself!”

  Elsbeth turns to us, her eyes wild and filled with menace.

  “Come on!” Greta shouts through the windshield. “El! Get in here!”

  We all watch the conflicted thoughts fly across Elsbeth’s face. She jams an elbow into a Z’s cheek, crushing the rotted flesh and bone. She throws another over her back, snapping it in two as it hits the pavement. Yet another goes down as she slams her fist into its skull over and over. And her eyes are watching us the whole time.

  “Elsbeth!” Stella yells. “Stop it! Get in the car!”

  She keeps watching us.

  “Tell her she’s family,” I say.

  “What?” Stella asks.

  “Tell her she’s family,” I say. “That’s the only way she’ll get in.”

  “Elsbeth! You get your butt in here right now, young lady!” Stella shouts, her hands cupped to her mouth. We all cover our ears. “You get in this SUV with your family this instant! Don’t make me come out there and get you!”

  Stella actually grabs the door handle and starts to open the door, but Elsbeth is at the side of the SUV in a flash, a wide smile beaming at my wife.

  “I’m family?” she asks.

  “Damn right,” Stella says, shoving over to let the young woman in. “And you better start acting like it and listen to me when I tell you to stop killing zombies and get your ass in the car.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Elsbeth nods and smiles.

  “Haven’t we been through this before?” Charlie whispers. But his version of a whisper is like a quiet yell.

  “Hush,” I say, “she has trust issues.”

  “Shhhh,” everyone says.

  “What?” Elsbeth asks. “The Zs know we’re here.”

  “Yeah, they do,” I say as we watch the things begin to surround the SUV. They swarm us and soon we see nothing but open, rotted mouths and decayed flesh. “It’s like that time we went to the wildlife park and the llamas surrounded the car wanting alfalfa pellets.”

  “No, Dad, it’s not like that at all,” Greta says.

  “Should I turn out the light?” Stella asks.

  “No, leave it on so you can see this,” Mondello says as he hooks his arms over Charlie’s head and pulls back, the wire tying his wrists together digging into my son’s throat. “Now, let’s talk about getting me out of here.”

  Mother fucker!

  Chapter Ten

  “I count two pistols aimed at your noggin,” I say, so close to reaching out and grabbing Mondello by the throat. But if I do he could pull back and snap Charlie’s neck. “Said pistols are in the hands of men who know how to use them.”

  “Your point is made, Mr. Stanford,” Mondello says. “But no matter how good they are, the way my weight is balanced even if they miss your son and only hit me, well, young Charlie will die. I’ll fall back and it will be all over.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I say. “I’m thinking maybe not.”

  “
Don’t kill him,” Elsbeth says. “He knows more about me.”

  I look at Mondello and he has a cat that ate the shitty canary grin on his face.

  “What do you know?” I ask. “Tell us.”

  “And lose leverage point number two? I don’t think so, Mr. Stanford.”

  The Zs get more aggressive, their hands –and heads- slamming harder and harder against the SUV. The vehicle starts to shudder under their mass. We don’t have forever to negotiate with Mondello. Soon we’ll be trapped forever in this fucking polyester upholstered piece of crap. Not that it’s actually upholstered in polyester; fuck if I know what it’s upholstered in. Probably some super secret military fiber that lets you get blood stains out while keeping that new car smell.

  “So what do we do?” I ask. “Where do we go from here?”

  “That’s for you to figure out,” Mondello says, taking a quick glance out the window. “Someone will need to clear a path for us.”

  “For us?” Stella asks. “No. No, you will not take my son with you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Stanford, but that is the only way this works,” Mondello says. “I have to take your son or you will kill me the second I’m outside the SUV.”

  “Are you paying attention?” John asks. “There’s like a hundred Zs out there.”

  “Where’d they all come from?” Greta asks quietly then looks at us. “Sorry. I was talking to myself.”

  “They probably came from the pens,” Mondello says. “We had holding pens stationed along the Parkway. Easier just to contain the zeds than slaughter and dispose of them. Throw some meat inside a fence and they walk right in.”

  “But then you have pens filled with Zs,” I say. “What then?”

  “Security,” Mondello says. “They can be released strategically if a convoy is being chased or under attack. We use them against highwaymen.”

  “Did you just say highwaymen?” Stuart asks. “I just want to be clear that I heard that part.”

  “Of course I said highwaymen,” Mondello says. “Your friend Critter Fitzpatrick here has one of the most notorious crews in the area.”

  “One of?” John asks. “Who are the others?”

  Mondello shrugs. “Hard to say. They come and go quickly due to the nature of the job. Most don’t last long. They are eaten by zeds or killed by other crews. Some even have tried to venture into territory they shouldn’t. If anyone is caught stealing or robbing in Charlottesville they are hanged on the spot, quartered, and their body parts are put on public display.”