by Jake Bible
“That sounded pretty damned unanimous,” Stuart says as he claps Critter on the shoulder. “Bet you didn’t see that coming when you started your speech.”
“I hate you, Long Pork,” Critter says as he glares at me. “You know that, right? I’ll get you for this.”
“Hey, you’re in charge now,” I grin. “You can always order me to be dragged behind one of the RVs.”
“I might just do that,” he says.
“You will not,” Stella snaps. “Don’t you even try.”
Critter keeps grumbling as folks stand and approach him. There’s a lot of hand shaking and back slapping, but I don’t pay too much attention to it as I see Elsbeth slowly make her way from the building.
“You think she’ll be alright?” I ask Stella.
“You’re worried about El? When I just reamed you out in front of everyone?” Stella laughs. “You are fucked up, Jason Stanford.”
“No argument there,” Greta says.
“It’s a documented fact,” Charlie adds.
“Fuck you all,” I smirk. “You suck.”
***
It takes two more days to get everything together so we can head out on the road. Fifteen RVs with miscellaneous vehicles interspersed to act as flanking guards and also to block any attacks. One of the vehicles is Critter’s Jeep, which he insisted he would drive, until he was told by everyone that as leader he had to be in one of the RVs.
He was not happy, to say the least.
Everything is distributed evenly amongst the RVs based on how many occupants there are. If anyone gets separated, they’ll have a fighting chance to keep going for at least a little while. However, with a total of fifteen RVs, all armored and outfitted for combat travel, it would be pretty surprising if anything can separate us.
But, hey, surprising is the theme of the apocalypse apparently.
At least that’s what I’m thinking as we only get a half mile down the road and the convoy has to come to a stop. It was decided that I would ride up in the second to the front RV with my family. We also have Stuart, John, Elsbeth, Reaper, and all the Fitzpatricks, including Melissa. Critter is up in the front RV with Lourdes and that’s where the order to stop comes from over the radio.
“What you got, Uncle Critter?” Buzz asks over the radio.
“A bit of a snag,” Critter says. “Looks like we have a bunch of cannies that want a word with us before we go.”
“Cannies?” Buzz asks. “Just run them down.”
“Well, that was my first thought, but they’re waving white flags and shit,” Critter replies. “I believe they’d like a parlay.”
“What? Are we pirates?” I laugh.
“Jace wants to know if we’re pirates,” Buzz relays.
“That was a joke,” I say then see Buzz’s smirk.
“Tell Long Pork to get his butt up here since they want to speak with him directly,” Critter replies and I can hear the smile in his voice. “Don’t know what that boy did, but we ain’t goin’ nowhere until he fixes it.”
“Shit,” I mutter.
“Come on,” Elsbeth sighs. “I’ll go with you.”
“We’re all going,” Stella says then looks at the kids, “except for you two. Stay put.”
“Yeah, not a problem,” Charlie says.
“You couldn’t make me go out there,” Greta adds.
“I’ll stay with them,” Melissa says. “I have had my fill of cannies.”
“And Pup will still be in the driver’s seat,” Buzz says, “in case we need to move fast.”
“Then let the parlay begin,” I sigh. “Awesome.”
We all leave the RV and make our way to the first one where Critter and Lourdes are waiting. I glance back and see a PC settling themselves on top of each of the RVs, their rifles and carbines at the ready.
“What did you do?” Critter grins at me as we proceed towards the crowd of post-apocalyptic misfits that block the road.
“Mr. Stanford! Jace!” a man says from the front of the crowd. He’s dressed in ratty cargo shorts and a torn tee shirt, but with a spotless top hat covering his head. He takes the hat off and bows. “It is nice to meet on much friendlier terms.”
I don’t really recognize the man, but I do recognize the voice.
“Mr. Flips?” I ask.
“The one and only,” Mr. Flips replies as he dons his hat once more. “It was a little dark when we met first so I am not surprised you didn’t realize who I was right away.”
“What the fuck do you want?” I snap. “You can wave those white flags all you want, but you fucking put me and my family into Cannibal Road! I should let the PCs shoot the fuck out of you!”
The white flag waving stops and I see nothing but fear as the canny group turns its attention to Mr. Flip.
The cannie announcer swallows hard and clears his throat. “Yes, well, you would be within your rights.”
“Don’t get him started on rights,” Critter grins then steps forward. “Hell, don’t bother talkin’ to the fool at all. Apparently, I’m the idiot in charge around here, so say what you need to say to me.”
“Ah, well, alright, mister…”
“Critter. Ain’t no mister in front of it,” Critter says. “I ain’t as fancy as someone called Mr. Flips.”
“What do you want, Flips?” I ask.
“We’d like to come with you,” Mr. Flips replies as he gestures to the crowd of about thirty cannies behind him. “Some scouts have returned from their outings and informed us that you have quite an angry hornet’s nest looking for you. Unfortunately, they will have to come our way to get to you. While not all agree, and the majority has stayed behind, I came to the conclusion that it would be better to join you on the run than stay behind and hope we meet mercy.”
“Ain’t no mercy for cannies,” Elsbeth says.
“No truer words have been spoken,” Mr. Flips nods.
“We do not have the room or resources for this many people,” Lourdes says. “Even if we agreed to have a bunch of killers join our ranks.”
“More true words,” Mr. Flips replies. “But we wouldn’t be a burden on you at all. We have our own vehicles and supplies. We would just like to benefit from your expertise and the safety numbers provide.”
“Fuck you,” Stella says.
“I’m going to have to agree with my wife, Flips,” I shrug. “She does have a point there.”
“We’ll train behind you and won’t mix with your party unless we are invited,” Mr. Flips says. “And every person here has sworn they will no longer consume human meat. No harm will come to a single hair in your convoy from us. This I can swear on my life.”
“Give us a second, will ya?” Critter asks and motions for us to take a few steps back and huddle up. “What do y’all think?”
All eyes fall on me.
“Hey, I’m not in charge,” I say, but keep speaking before the insults fly my way. “Yet he makes an argument about the safety in numbers thing. We are bound to lose a percentage of the convoy at some point. Having the cannies with us may mean they are that percentage instead of us.”
“We keep them as decoys?” Stuart asks. “Let them take the heat when we get attacked?”
“They ride in shitty pickups and motorcycles,” I say. “If anyone will be targets it’ll be them first.”
“How democratic of you,” Lourdes smirks.
“When in Rome…” I reply.
“Then they come with,” Critter says. “We don’t trust them, we don’t let them out of our sight, and we don’t ever let them catch us off guard. We do this and eyes are open from the get go.”
“Sounds like a plan, boss,” I say.
“Damn right,” Critter says and turns back to Mr. Flips and his canny crew. “Y’all can come with, but we will be watchin’ you. You make one wrong move and it’s all over. There will be no warnin’ and no second chances. You’re joinin’ a bunch of folk that know how to kill and puttin’ some cannies down will not make half of us blin
k.”
“As it should be,” Mr. Flips says and bows again. “We thank you for your kindness.”
“It ain’t kindness, it’s about the numbers like ya said,” Critter frowns. “Now get your people ready because we are moving out now. You get left behind and that’s your fault, not mine. Ya hear what I’m sayin’?”
“Loud and clear, Critter,” Mr. Flips nods, and then lets out a loud whistle. The sounds of engines roaring to life make us all jump and pistols and rifles are lifted instantly. Mr. Flips holds his hands up. “My apologies! I have a flair for the dramatic! We’ll fall in line as soon as you pass!”
Several shitty pickups and motorcycles, just as I predicted, roll out of the woods on each side of the interstate. The crowd of cannies hurries off to their respective rides, leaving us alone with Mr. Flips.
Critter steps forward and offers his hand. “No second chances. Not a one.”
“Deal, sir,” Mr. Flips says as he shakes Critter’s hand.
“And one more thing,” I say as I point at the motorcycle riders. “No goggles.”
Everyone looks at me.
“What? I hate goggles,” I say. “They just fucking drive me crazy.”
“They need them to keep the bugs out of their eyes,” Mr. Flips frowns. “But if it is a nonnegotiable term then I’ll…”
“They can keep their stupid goggles,” Critter says as he shakes his head at me. “This is why you ain’t in charge, Long Pork. Sayin’ stupid shit like that.”
“Worth a shot,” I say quietly.
A truck pulls up and Mr. Flips nods to us, and then is helped up into the bed with quite the post-apocalyptic posse.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Critter says.
“My words exactly,” Mr. Flips smiles down at us.
“Jesus. What have I done?” Critter sighs as he stalks back to his RV.
We all return to our RV and take our seats as the convoy moves out. The kids’ eyes go wide as we drive past the cannies while they wait their turn to take up the rear.
“Uh…,” is all Charlie can say.
“No shit,” Greta adds. “A major fucking uh.”
“Yeah, we have some new friends,” I say. “Always nice to make friends in the apocalypse.”
“If you say so,” Greta replies. “Mom?”
“They promised not to eat us,” Stella shrugs. “Stuart and Critter think they’ll make good decoys if we get attacked.”
“Oh, well that’s cool,” Greta says and then relaxes instantly. “We don’t need friends, but decoys are always good.”
“Totally,” Charlie agrees.
“We’ve raised monsters,” Stella sighs.
“At least we still have them to raise,” I say.
That brings the mood in the RV down a notch and I instantly regret saying the words.
But they are true.
I have my wife and kids with me. We’ve been driven from our home, nearly eaten, and yet here we sit in a fucking armored RV, rolling down I-40 on our way to the great unknown that is the post-apocalyptic world we live in.
“This thing have a CD player?” I ask. “Can we have some tunes while we go?”
“Yeah, hold on,” Pup says from up front. “Here we go.”
The surround sound speakers were pulled out because of weight, but there are still two speakers up front and I can’t help but smile as Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild” starts up.
“Nice,” I say and close my eyes.
“Is there any Jay-Z?” Charlie asks.
“Or Katy Perry?” Greta shouts over the sounds of the sixties anthem.
I drift off as the kids start to bicker over what music to listen to next. For once, I can give two shits about them fighting, I’m just glad they are alive and we are putting distance between us and Cannibal Road, even if we are taking a little part of it with us.
A hand slips into mine and I don’t have to open my eyes to know whose it is. As sleep takes me, I am perfectly happy with my last conscious thought being that if I were to die while holding my wife’s hand, that would be all the freedom I’d need.
That’s all the freedom I’ve ever needed.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Jake’s Law: A Zombie Novel
Jake Bible lives in Asheville, NC with his wife and two kids.
Jake has a record of innovation, invention and creativity. Novelist, short story writer, independent screenwriter, podcaster, and inventor of the Drabble Novel, Jake is able to switch between or mash-up genres with ease to create new and exciting storyscapes that have captivated and built an audience of thousands.
He is the author of over a dozen novels, including the bestselling Z-Burbia and Mega series for Severed Press.
Find him at jakebible.com. Join him on Twitter and Facebook.
1
April, 15, 2015 Florence State Prison, Florence, AZ –
The cloying stench of death and the reek of the unwashed dying permeated the air. It clung to his clothing and seeped through the bandana covering his mouth and nose in a failed attempt to stifle the foul odor. A century of death and decay wept from the limestone walls like a miasma, joining this new source of foulness. Levi Coombs fought down the nausea gripping his stomach and grabbed the legs of the body, while Howard ‘Ax’ Axleman wrestled with the corpse’s arms. Together, they flung the corpse onto the cart as they would a bag of manure. The body meant little to either of them. He was a convict like them, and cons meant nothing to anybody, people who society had disaffiliated, dismissed, and discarded. After three years behind bars, Levi had lost all respect for his fellow man and his fellow inmates. He had seen the worst society had to offer, all crammed onto a few acres tucked away out of sight behind high walls and razor wire, guarded by men with guns.
“Whew! He’s ripe,” Ax commented, wiping his hands on his pants and wrinkling his nose beneath his handkerchief mask.
“He didn’t smell much better alive,” Levi said. “Bastard’s farts stank up the entire cell block.”
Ax chuckled. “Yeah, Andrews was a piece of shit, all right. Still, it’s a nasty way to go.” He paused before glancing up at Levi. His brown eyes peering over his handkerchief looked troubled. “He might be the lucky one.”
Levi glanced down at the corpse. The raw, ragged wound in Andrews’ neck where a Staggerer had ripped out a fist-sized chunk of flesh might have killed him, but he was a dead man anyway. Like most of the population, Andrews had the Staggers, coughing up his lungs and crying like a child for his dead momma. The neat round bullet hole in his head had been added shortly after death by one of the few remaining guards to prevent Andrews from turning zombie like the others.
“None of us are getting out of here alive,” Levi said. “The guards had rather see us dead than outside roaming free.”
As they rolled the cart down the corridor, the squeaky wheels created ghostly echoes reflecting from the walls in the nearly deserted cell block, sounding like the moans of the dead. A few residents peered warily through their unlocked cell doors but elected to remain inside, choosing the relative safety of their cells over the freedom of movement. Just outside the cell block door, they dumped Andrews’ body unceremoniously onto the growing pile of corpses ripening in the sun, disturbing the flies crawling over the bloated flesh. The flies rose from the corpses in a dark cloud, buzzing obscenely.
Andrews was the last body in Unit 8, at least so far. Death had become so prevalent, so expected, that no one in the unit held out much hope for their chances of survival. Most of them simply waited for their inevitable death. Levi wasn’t that complacent. He wasn’t going to join the pile of cremated corpses.
A guard stood outside holding a red plastic can of gasoline in one hand and a 9 mm Colt Carbine in the other. He eyed the corpses and the two men with equal disdain.
“Stand back,” he yelled, waving the barrel of the Carbine at the two men.
Levi raised his hands as a gesture of submission and stepped back. Ax did
the same. Both knew better than to argue with the guards. No one questioned whether a corpse was a Staggerer or a con who had failed to obey a guard’s orders quickly enough. The guard emptied the two-gallon container over the pile of corpses, backed away several yards, and pulled a road flare from his back pocket. From past experience, Levi knew what was coming and retreated to the open door of the Unit 8 cell block. He glanced at the death house next door where legal executions had once taken place. Now, anywhere would suffice. Any execution carried out by a guard was legal. No one questioned their reasoning. No one cared.
The guard struck the flare on the concrete sidewalk and tossed it onto the stack of corpses. With a sudden whoosh, the bodies became a blazing funeral pyre, to be cremated without fanfare or ceremony, simply trash to be disposed of on the rubbish heap. The guard, his duty done, turned and left, walking past several blackened stains on the concrete from previous pyres. He paid no more attention to Levi or to Ax. His fellow guard in the tower at the corner of the wall had them in his sights. To the guards, the two cons were just pieces of meat awaiting disposal.
Levi was used to such callous treatment. When he had arrived at the Florence State Prison in 2012 as a three-time loser, he had been shoved into a cage and quickly forgotten. Living among thieves, murderers, rapists, gang bangers, and drug dealers, he had become as hard and as unyielding as the concrete surrounding him and as sharp as the razor wire running atop the walls. He had fought with guards and with fellow inmates, but mostly he had fought with himself. One thing only had saved him from descending into the dark pit of oblivion – the wild mustangs.
Training and caring for the wild mustangs the Bureau of Land Management brought to the prison had kept him sane. Breaking and riding the feral horses, even in the small dirt enclosure allotted to them, had given him his only taste of freedom, his only contact with a living creature pure and unsullied by man’s dark desires or his need to screw over one another. Now, the mustangs were gone, released when the Staggers hit the state. The authorities had seen to the freedom of the animals but kept the cons inside to die.
Levi didn’t know what the Staggers were, nor did he care. Rumors flew in a prison like toilet paper in a riot. Everyone had his tale to tell. All he knew was that people became sick, died, and came back to life. At first, they stumbled around like drunks, thus the name Staggers, but as time passed, they became fast, deadly killers consuming human flesh. The infirmary was full of the dead and the dying and only one overworked doctor remained on duty. Sick cons remained where they were, and the harried doctor came cell-to-cell checking on them when he could.
