by Ricky Sides
There were numerous disappointing setbacks and tragic losses, but the Arkansas group did make progress in their goal of gathering more people. Well, that is another story, best left for another day.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Z-Burbia.
Chapter One
People that move to a subdivision do so for only a couple of reasons. Ours were price and location. Great price for the size of the house and great location since it was just on the edge of Asheville, NC, down by the French Broad River. Once the dead began to walk the earth, the price didn’t matter so much anymore. It was all about location.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are part of the Appalachian Mountain range, a range that stretches from Georgia up to Maine. Our neck of the range is in Western North Carolina, specifically Asheville, known as the Paris of the South because of its eclectic mix of arts, music, and vacation possibilities. A long time destination for those that think outside the box, Asheville is surrounded by hollows (hollers), coves, gaps, and valleys, filled with generations of hard working North Carolinians that, while free thinking and independent, aren’t known for their outside the boxedness. Conservative through and through, most are used to making it on their own in the best of times. Come the apocalypse? That conservative pragmatism kicks into overdrive and sure comes in handy.
This makes for an interesting dynamic in the region. You see, when the dead began to rise from their graves, morgues, funeral homes, and other places, urban dead are supposed to stay dead, they pretty nearly wiped out the progressive, freethinking population of Asheville. Well, wiped out the living population; the undead population is growing and thriving. Let’s hear it for undead progress! This left a few urban survivor pockets (Whispering Pines being one), surrounded not only by a sea of undead, but by multiple groups, families, factions of rural survivor pockets hell bent on getting, taking, and scavenging what they can from the ruins of Asheville.
Good times for all.
So, I stand in front of my bathroom mirror, razor in hand, wondering what will become of my family, as I hear a stray gunshot here and there from outside our two-story, 2700 square feet, cookie cutter house. The image in the mirror is of a forty-year old man, blond-red beard, soon to be bald head (okay, balder head since growing hair hasn’t been my forte for years), six feet, 200 pounds, exhausted, and semi-malnourished. Yeah, I’m a peach.
Another gunshot goes off and I set the razor down. Normally, I’d yell from the bathroom at the kids to find out what is going on, but that was pre-Z (pre-zombies). In today’s world, you keep your mouth shut and stay quiet. Noise attracts the undead. We take the whispering part of Whispering Pines, very seriously nowadays.
So I’m a little more than alarmed as to why I hear gunshots. Guns are noisy. We’re an arrows, spears, slingshots, and other quiet projectiles kind of subdivision. This was signed into the covenants by the HOA (Home Owners’ Association) Board and ratified at one of our first post-Z HOA meetings.
“Jace?” Stella asks from the bedroom door. “Have you heard anything?”
Stella Stanford, my beautiful wife and mother of my two children (boy: Charlie, sixteen, and girl: Greta, thirteen), the rock that I rely on, and asker of the obvious.
“You mean other than the gunshots?” I ask as I grab a shirt and pull it on before coming out of the bathroom.
“Don’t be an asshole,” Stella says. “Have you heard anything over the Wi-Fi?”
Wi-Fi, you ask? Oh, we have it. No internet, since the apocalypse ruined that, but local Wi-Fi which helps us all stay in touch in the neighborhood.
“I haven’t checked my messages,” I reply. “Hand me my phone.”
Stella crosses her arms and gives me a stern look.
“Please?” I ask. “Sorry for being an asshole.”
She hands me my phone and I see a text from Jon Billings, my best friend in the neighborhood and Head of Construction. Jon is one of the few people I truly trust in Whispering Pines. Everyone else we watch with caution and keep at a friendly distance. Makes it easier to shove a crowbar through their heads if you don’t get too attached.
“Bums down by the gate,” the text reads. “You coming? You know Brenda is going to want you there. I’m sure she’ll pick apart any ‘weaknesses’ she sees in the gate.”
“Who’s shooting?” I text back.
“The bums,” his reply comes quickly. “Where the fuck are you, Hoss? Get your butt down here. Brenda is already trying to redesign the entire gate structure. Jesus…”
Jon is also a minister which cracks me up when he texts. He saves all his cursing for texts to me. No one has a clue, otherwise.
“On my way,” I text back.
“Bums,” I say to Stella. “I need to bike down ASAP.”
“Brenda?”
“Yep. Brenda,” I nod as I grab my socks and hurry to the garage. I throw on my sturdy, steel-toed work boots and snag my mountain bike.
I barely wave at the inquiring faces of my neighbors as I speed by, focusing on the twists and turns, dips and rises of the neighborhood. I race down the last hill towards the gate that is set at the entrance to Whispering Pines, blocking all access to the neighborhood from the former State Road Hwy 251. I say “former” because there really isn’t a “state” anymore, and I’m pretty sure the DoT has lost its jurisdiction during the apocalypse. Or maybe not. They could be planning to re-paint the yellow lines next week for all we know.
“There you are, Hoss,” Jon says as I brake to a stop by him. “Brenda thinks we need more spikes on the outside, because spikes are apparently a deterrent to starving bums.”
“Jesus,” I mutter.
“Hey, Lord’s name and all that?” Jon smiles.
“Smart ass,” I smile as I walk past him to the watchtower sitting to the side of the fifty-foot gate.
“I am sorry for your situation, folks,” Brenda says, trying to whisper and shout at the same time which comes out as some grotesque croak. “But Whispering Pines is a gated community and we are not taking new residents at this time. You will need to move along please. Again, I am sorr-.”
Whomever she’s talking to replies with a pistol shot. Splinters of wood explode from the post next to Brenda’s face.
“Where is Stuart?” Brenda hisses. “These bums need to be dealt with!”
Bums are what we call the stragglers that come knocking on our quite impressive (if I do say so myself) gate doors. Survivors that have somehow managed to stay alive while avoiding the Zs and the not so friendly groups of people out there. We’ve been seeing less and less over the months, but they do show up. It isn’t hard for them to spot a beacon of living in the darkness of the world around them.
James, “Don’t Call Me Jimmy”, Stuart, is suddenly at my elbow, looking up at the watchtower with his usual look of pissed off and slightly surprised that everyone else isn’t as pissed off as he is. Five feet and eight inches, late fifties, tight crew cut, wiry and strong, Stuart is a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant. Head of Defenses (not to be confused with Head of Security, God forbid!) he sees anyone without the proper training and understanding of military tactics as a pain in his well-trained and tactical ass. Pretty much that means all of us.
“Gates are holding,” Stuart says without looking at me. “What’s she bitching about then?”
Stuart likes to end questions in “then” sometimes. It’s a strange affectation, but since he can kick the living shit out of me with his perfectly trimmed mustache, I don’t question it.
“Bums,” I say.
“Bums,” Jon echoes.
“Padre,” Stuart nods to Jon.
“Yes, my son?” Jon smiles. Stuart doesn’t smile back. “Right. Hey.”
Stuart sighs with amazing discipline and skill and climbs the ladder into the watchtower. We follow. Once up there, he takes a key ring from his belt and unlocks the steel locker bolted to the watchtower floor.
“How many then?” Stuart asks as his hand hovers over the open locker.
“Eight,” a mousy man answers, looking from Brenda to Stuart to me to Jon and back to Stuart. “Three adults and five kids. Look like they’ve been running nonstop. Didn’t think much of them until they started shooting.”
“Let us in!” a dry voice cries from below. “Please!”
“Kids?” Stuart asks, his eyes finding Brenda’s as he pulls an AR-15 and magazine from the locker. He slaps the magazine home and stares.
Brenda Kelly is our HOA Board Chairperson. Short, fat, ugly as sin, she took control of Whispering Pines in the first few days of the apocalypse, giving some semblance of order in a world that went from normal to “HOLY SHIT I’M GOING TO GET MY FACE EATEN!” in less than twenty-four hours. Despite her lack of everything that makes a human being decent, she does make one damn good administrator. Once you get past that lack of human decency part. That’s a tough one to get past, believe me.
“We don’t have room or resources,” Brenda states, her whisper like the hiss of a hidden viper. “You know that, Stuart. Resolution 856 was very clear on the subject of no new residents allowed. You were there for the vote, Stuart. Do I have to get---”
“Shut up,” Stuart says. “I know the resolution. Just wanted to be clear before I do my job.”
There are two sentries posted to the watchtower at all times, but they defer to Stuart when it comes to discretionary violence. Stuart is very clear on this point: no one kills the living except him, unless they are defending themselves. I have wondered more than a few times how many people Stuart has killed in his years as a Marine. I’ve personally witnessed him kill no less than fourteen souls since the apocalypse started. I can’t even count how many Zs he’s killed.
On that subject, let me explain that the Zs we are talking about are your classic, shuffling, shoot the brain, zombies. The freshly turned ones have some more mobility than the veteran undead, but really can only break out into a half-run at the best. Kind of like a power-walking grandma at the mall. They can be outrun. But, as always, it’s about numbers. And the Zs out number our asses by an easy twenty to one. Okay, okay, I’m being delusional. They outnumber us by fifty to one. I just hate admitting that. What? Fine, fine, 100-200 to one. Sheesh.
“Hello, folks,” Stuart says as he peers over the watchtower. “I am sorry to be rude, but it has been decided that we cannot take on more residents. I am going to ask you to leave. Please comply. Non-compliance is not an option.”
“Fuck you!” a man shouts. “Let us in, old man! We have kids here! We’re fucking starving! Stop being assholes!”
Stuart sighs and puts the rifle to his shoulder. “I am not going to warn you again, sir. I am sorry, but you have to leave now. All that noise you are making is bringing the Zs your way. We try to avoid that.”
I risk a look and see that Stuart is right, as all of us had expected. From both ways of Hwy 251, the undead are shambling their way towards the small group of bums. If Stuart doesn’t take the people out, then the Zs are going to. None look too fresh, which means about a three feet a minute shamble rate. Ten minutes before they’re on the bums.
“Is that our old mailman down there with the Zs?” Jon asks, peeking over with me. “Guess I won’t have to get him a Christmas present this year.”
“For a man of God, you sure are a callous bastard,” I whisper to him. He just shrugs.
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” Stuart grumbles.
“Sorry,” I say. Jon just shrugs again.
A gunshot goes off and we all, except for Stuart, hit the floor of the watchtower. I count three shots as Stuart returns fire. Jon and I glance up at him and see he is looking over his shoulder at Brenda. She nods. Five more shots.
“Those were the kids,” Jon says as he gets up and walks to the ladder. “Children.”
He doesn’t make eye contact with anyone as he descends and grabs his own bike, pedaling off up the hill back to his house.
“Brenda,” I say, looking directly at her, “really?”
“How will we feed them?” she asks. “This has already been decided.”
“Gonna need to clear the road,” Stuart says as he hands the rifle to one of the sentries. “Clean that and store it. I’ll be back to check to make sure it’s cleaned properly. One speck of dirt and you’re outside the gate.”
The sentry nods, his hands shaking as he takes the rifle.
Stuart looks to me as he takes his phone from his pocket and starts to send the text for his defensive crew. “You in for some Z killing?”
“I guess,” I shrug. “I’m already down here.”
Back home I have a great baseball bat that I’ve stuck spikes through and wrapped in duct tape. I call it the Silver Slugger. Stupid name, I know. But I left that in my hurry to the gate, so once down on the ground, I arm myself with a crowbar taken from one of the huge racks of melee weapons that line each side of the gate.
Stuart and I wait only a minute before his defensive crew is there, armed with their own weapons of various sizes and styles. Axes, steel pipes, more crowbars, sharpened to a point baseball bats, even a sharpened cricket bat and a couple of hockey sticks. The crew keeps changing, but their objective never does: keep the road and perimeter clear of Zs so they cannot ever overwhelm Whispering Pines. It’s a full time job.
We all silently nod to each other and wait for Stuart’s signal. The man stands by the gate and listens, then, almost imperceptibly, nods. The gate is unlatched, unlocked, unbarred, and unbraced, and the right door is shoved open just enough so we can slip through. As soon as we are out, it closes behind us and will not be opened until we are done clearing the road and have checked for bites. A bite is death, for the bitten and possibly for the entire neighborhood. Can’t have that.
I count at least thirty Zs coming at us. Most heard the gate open (a part of the engineering I’m still working on; the damn thing is so heavy it’s near impossible to keep the hinges quiet) and are shambly shambling their way at us. Stuart points with four fingers at the four members of the crew to his left and they head left, straight at the Zs. He points four fingers at the four members to his right and they move out. Just him and me are going at the Zs directly in front of us.
I get in close to the first one so I can shove my crow bar through its eye and into its brain. I place a foot against the Z’s chest and push, freeing the crow bar and sending the now really dead zombie into the group behind it, tangling them up in oozing, undead limbs. Stuart is right with me, using the same move, since he’s the one that taught it to me.
Stuart’s philosophy on killing Zs is to go through the eye whenever you can. It’s an easy and direct route to the brain. If we were using bullets, it would be where we’d aim, so if you have a weapon that can affect the same result, then use it. Plus, cracking skulls not only will tire you out as you raise your arms over your head again and again, but it makes noise. I think we’ve already covered that noise is bad.
Stab, stab, stab we go, making our way through the throng of Zs. But, as is the zombie way, more keep coming from both directions. Luckily, directly in front of us, about twenty yards away, is the bank of the French Broad River. We don’t have to worry about more Zs coming from that way. And Whispering Pines is behind us, so we’re good there. That just means we watch our left and right. Stuart splits left, I split right. More stabby stabby.
A half an hour into the slaughter, Stuart raises a fist over his head and whistles quietly. The gate opens again and a new wave of Z killers comes out as our crew retreats up against the gate. We check each other out, making sure we have no bites, and then are let back inside Whispering Pines as the second crew starts its shift of stabbing.
I collapse on a patch of grass by the watchtower, as Stuart takes a seat next to me. He hands me a canteen and I take a couple of long drinks.
“Thanks,” I say, handing it back.
Stuart just nods and we sit quietly as a third crew assembles and waits for their turn. The gate opens, they stream out, a few minutes go by and the second crew com
es in, dripping with sweat and gore. Stuart does a quick count and nods as he sees the whole crew there.
Then a scream goes up.
“Shit,” Stuart says and all eyes fall on him. “Sorry, folks. No more rest. Time to go out in full force.”
We all know what that scream is, someone got careless, or were surprised, and ended up taking some Z teeth to their flesh. We all wear long-sleeves and many have leather on, but even still, a hungry Z is a formidable biter. Their jaw strength seems to increase once they rise from the dead, which makes no physiological sense, but is still a reality in this surreal world.
We all pour from the gate and get to work. We have to be fast because a scream and the smell of fresh blood can carry on the wind for a mile. Did I mention that a Z’s hearing and sense of smell increases too? Yeah, they do. It’s scary as shit. So the key is to wipe out the Zs and get the unfortunate wounded taken care of before we end up with a mob, or a horde, or the dreaded stampeding (a shambling stampede, given) herd of Zs at our gate.
Someone drags the wounded woman inside the gate while crews one, two, and three, move fast through the Zs left. Ten minutes and we’re done, leaving the rotten corpses to the ever efficient Edna Strom and her Z cleanup crews.
“Inside and strip down,” Stuart orders and we all follow, as we catch our breaths and begin to undress once inside the safety of the gate. “Double and triple checks, people.”
We go through the motions of inspecting each other’s naked bodies. No modesty is allowed in the apocalypse. You have to be cleared by three people before you get the okay to grab your clothes and make your way home. It’s a noble walk of shame, but still pretty shameful, as your nether regions are on full display for the neighborhood to see.
“Looking good, Dad,” Charlie says as he comes jogging up to me. “You really should work on your ass tan. No one wants to see those white buns.”
“Thanks, bud,” I smile. “Way to make your old man feel good about himself.”
Charlie leans in. “Mom’s pissed. Just a heads up. She didn’t think you were going outside the gate.”
