Z Plan (Book 3): Homecoming

by Lerma, Mikhail

It didn’t move. He crept closer to it.

  “Rise and shine, fuckbag,” he taunted it.

  There was no change in its status. Cale kicked its foot and waited for it to stir.

  “Come on. Breakfast is waiting,” Cale teased.

  From his position he could see that this body wasn’t going to be a threat. It had been dispatched long ago. Cale relaxed and let his rifle hang loose on the sling. He checked closer on the corpse. Its decomposition made it impossible for him to identify even a gender. Its face had been completely removed, leaving muscles, bone, and its eyes exposed. Bits of the back of its skull were embedded into the electrical pole next to the body.

  “Wow,” he exclaimed. “Someone really did a number on you.”

  Rotted brains seeped through the jagged hole in its cranium. Cale imagined that whoever it attacked, had grabbed it and run it into the pole with exceptional strength. This creature hadn’t stood a chance.

  He heard a groan behind him and quickly turned around, weapon ready. In an instant he lined up his shot and took it. An undead woman in a hospital gown recoiled back and hit the ground. She’d suffered an amputation of her left arm. By no means a clean amputation. Dried flesh hung from the stump, and serrated bone protruded out. Having dealt with the threat he returned to his expedition.

  The alleyway was deserted, save for the occasional body. Many of the business’s back doors had been broken down or were completely missing. He crossed street after street until he ran out of alley. Cale had reached the edge of town and had found no vehicles. He reemerged onto the main road and prudently looked around. A sign beckoned him to “Have a nice day!” and “Do come back!” The sign twenty feet beyond it informed him he was leaving the Princeton city limits. Trees once more framed the curvy road. The sound of the wind whipping through the trees and his own footfalls kept him company as he walked.

  Silently he played out scenarios in his head. He’d arrive at his mother-in-law’s home where Lauren and Marie would safely be hiding. Or he’d stop in his home town and check on his brothers before pushing on to where he and Lauren lived. He envisioned her keeping Marie safe in their basement. Cale knew that none of these scenarios were logical, it was unlikely Lauren would be able to do it all on her own. She’d need help. Maybe his brothers, Tristan and Jacob, were with her. It was a stretch, but he refused to be pessimistic about it. He missed all of them so much.

  To avoid upsetting himself he searched his mind for a happy memory. He pulled one from deep within. It had been the fourth of July. His brothers had come to stay with them for the weekend. Lauren was only a few months pregnant then. The sun hadn’t quite set yet so they were firing off what remained of their stash. An artillery shell launched out of its sturdy cardboard tube, bursting into a dazzling collage of colors in the sky. “Big One” was written down the side of the tube.

  “Dibs on the next one,” claimed Jacob.

  “Nope,” argued Tristan.

  “Come on, you two,” Lauren reasoned with them. “We’re taking turns. And the next one is mine!” she shouted, snatching the lighter and running by them mischievously. Cale and his brothers laughed.

  Only the laugh Cale heard was real. He stopped in the road and listened again. There was another chuckle from up ahead and around the bend.

  “Shit,” he whispered as he ran to the tree line on his left.

  The dying foliage left him few options of concealment. He had no choice but to low crawl to a vantage point after taking cover behind the trunk of a fallen tree. Cale pulled his rifle sling from around his body and wrapped his arm in it. Making sure to keep the muzzle out of the dirt, he crawled. Cale felt like a turtle as he slowly moved, trying not to make any noise. He kept his face pressed to the dirt and his body low. As he got closer, he could hear muffled voices.

  He tried to make out what they were saying but then they stopped. Cale peered up over the trunk of the tree. He could see around the curve. Three figures stood in the road, amongst bodies that were lying. Maintaining a low profile he readjusted his sling and rested his rifle on the trunk of the tree. He used his scope to get a more detailed look at the men. Their faces were rotted and ashen, however, there was something odd about them. They looked fuller than normal somehow. Like their faces were decaying but their bodies were exempt.

  One grunted and pointed behind another. A fourth infected approached. It walked straight for the one it was closest to, with its arms stretched out and teeth chomping. What Cale witnessed didn’t make sense. The bulkier one lured it toward the other two. Then all three began shoving it in a circle, passing it around like immature school children, laughing as they did. Then the one that had grunted produced a knife and killed it.

  “What the fuck?” Cale whispered in shock.

  “You don’t see it?” asked Zach who crouched on the ground beside him.

  “What’re they doing?” asked Cale.

  “Come on buddy,” Zach said. “You’ve got all the pieces. Now put it together.”

  The undead men exchanged high-fives.

  “They really are different?” inquired Cale.

  “No,” Zach replied discouraged. “Look at them,” he encouraged. “What do you see.”

  “What do I see? I see smart infected,” retorted Cale.

  “Do you now?” said Zach rhetorically.

  Cale didn’t need to look at him to know he was wearing his trademark smirk.

  “Enlighten me,” snapped Cale annoyed.

  “Most of the zombies you see are wasting away,” he explained. “Their bodies don’t pull nutrients from the people they eat. They just keep decomposing. These three look awfully well fed Cale. So my question to you is: What kind of infected doesn’t decompose?”

  “What?”

  Cale hated imaginary Zach’s cryptic nature. The real Zach would’ve just said what he was thinking.

  “That’s dumb. All of them decompose,” argued Cale.

  “Precisely,” smiled Zach. “So if they aren’t decomposing they’re…” Zach trailed off letting Cale come to the point on his own.

  “Not dead,” finished Cale. “But their faces”

  “Did you ever see the old Scooby-Doo episode?” questioned Zach. “The one where the guy dressed up like a phantom zombie to rob a bank?”

  Cale thought for a moment.

  “Yeah, he called himself the Creeper didn’t he?” offered Cale.

  Zach chuckled. “Well, he was actually the bank manager, but yeah.”

  He put together what Zach was getting at.

  “So,” he began. “Say you want all the resources a town has. Food, water, fuel, and whatnot. How do you ensure you won’t have competition?”

  “By scaring the competition away with a tale so frightening that no one would dare attempt to scavenge your turf,” continued Zach.

  “Shit,” whispered Cale.

  “You mean ‘jinkies,’” joked Zach.

  “Right,” smiled Cale. “So everything: the tags, the cars, new clothes, weapons sewn to hands. That’s all them.”

  “Looks that way. What you have here are three living, breathing humans wearing masks,” explained Zach.

  “Except they aren’t masks,” said Cale gravely. “They’re wearing faces taken off of the infected.”

  Cale recalled the corpse in the alley being completely faceless. He watched through his scope as one of the men bent down with a knife in hand and cut away the creatures face. He held it up like a prized trophy as his comrades laughed and cheered. Was this better or worse, he wondered.

  He could hear a radio crackle. The transmission was garbled but the leader seemed to understand it. After ending his conversation with whoever was on the other end, he gave a thumbs up to the other two and they spread out. Cale watched as he and one other man pretended to be dead on the ground while the third played an infected standing in the road. Someone had tipped them off, but to what. Cale didn’t move as he watched them. Within a couple of minutes he could hear voices coming down the road fro
m Princeton.

  “Pa, ya saw em. We should jus git back to Mama.”

  Bobby was still arguing. And Pa was still ignoring him. Bobby opened his mouth to follow up on his plea before Pa hushed him.

  “Shh,” he said softly.

  Pa pointed to what he thought was an infected in the street. Bobby fell silent. The man was facing the north, with his back to Pa. Pa endeavored to creep up, but just as he reached the man, the man spun around and bit into Pa’s throat. He ripped it out and spit the chunk of flesh on the pavement. Pa stumbled back, holding his throat. Every few seconds blood would jettison out. He’d be dead within the minute.

  Bobby ran toward his father to help. The man drew a pistol and the boy raised his hands in the air, bewildered.

  “Stop right there, son,” he ordered Bobby. “What did ya take?”

  “N-nothing,” confessed Bobby.

  “Bullshit,” accused the man. “You came through our town and didn’t take a thing?”

  “We was lookin for somebody,” Bobby explained.

  “Well I guess you’re done looking,” he replied arrogantly.

  Cale knew what was going to happen next. He wasn’t going to allow it. Cale’s weapon recoiled and the man dropped to the pavement choking on his own blood. Cale had shot him in the chest. Bobby watched, horrified. The man’s compatriots each sat up to see what had happened.

  “Bobby, run!” shouted Cale as he stood up.

  Without hesitation, Bobby turned tail and ran like a bat out of hell. The two men jumped to their feet. The smaller of them reached for something behind his back.

  “Don’t move!” barked Cale as he stepped onto the road.

  “You shot Frankie, you son of a bitch!” the man ignored Cale’s warning.

  Cale’s rifle recoiled again. The man’s head split open, spilling its contents on the road. His body slumped to the ground, his handgun still clutched in his hand.

  “Get down!” he ordered to the leader.

  Cale thought he could see the man calmly smile behind the dead face he wore as he knelt down onto the road. He was much larger than the other two. He laced his fingers behind his head and cautiously watched Cale.

  “What’s he smiling for?” asked Zach.

  Cale didn’t know. He held the man at gunpoint, giving Bobby time to get away.

  “What’s your name?” asked the man.

  His mask remained motionless as he spoke.

  “I’m the guy with the gun,” stated Cale.

  “My name is Damian,” he confessed.

  Why was he sharing this? Cale didn’t like that, despite having a gun pointed right at him, he looked like he was smiling. Or was it the mask?

  “Shoot him,” Zach whispered into Cale’s ear.

  “Those men you just killed are Frankie and William,” he continued.

  “Kill him!” urged Zach. “Kill him and walk away!”

  “And what about him?” Cale nodded to Pa’s body. “What was his name?”

  The man looked at Pa’s body.

  “He was a thief,” he replied.

  “Oh yeah?” Cale said. “What’d he take?”

  “Shoot him!” demanded Zach.

  “Don’t know, but no one ever comes this way empty-handed,” the man informed him.

  “I did,” retorted Cale.

  “Bullshit,” he sneered. “All that gear and you expect me to believe none of it is ours?”

  Cale wasn’t going to argue with him. Even if the man was wrong. He’d be dead soon.

  “Yours, theirs, mine. Doesn’t matter,” said Cale coldly as he eased onto the trigger.

  “They were my brothers,” the man interjected quickly.

  This caused Cale to pause.

  “You’re a dead man,” he added.

  Cale was flabbergasted. He had a rifle pointed at his face and he was still making threats.

  “Well dumbass, I’m the one with the gun,” Cale retorted.

  “Yeah, and you were so busy playing commando, that you only saw three of us,” sneered Damian.

  Only three?

  “Shit,” sighed Cale as another man rose out of the tall grass to his left.

  Before Cale could react he heard a sound like a string slicing the air. His left arm erupted with immense pain and he felt pressure on the strap of his backpack. Cale stumbled back and realized what had happened. An arrow had been shot clean through his left arm and was meant to penetrate his chest. Luckily it had hit the buckle on his pack and stopped. The man with a bow pulled another arrow from his quiver. With his left arm immobilized Cale began firing wildly at the men who quickly took cover in the ditch. Cale’s goal was to keep them back and he fell back into the opposite ditch.

  “Damian let’s go!” the archer shouted.

  Cale stopped firing and took up a defensive prone position in the grass. He could see the two men retreating. Cale waited to see what they’d do. Dirt bike engines growled from a few yards away. The archer jumped his white motocross bike into the road, followed by Damian on a pale-green one with the Grim Reaper painted on it.

  “I’ll be back for you cocksucker!” Damian called to Cale before he and the archer raced down the road to the west.

  After the sounds of their motorcycles had faded, Cale let out the cry of pain he’d been holding back.

  “Oh fuck. Shit,” Cale whimpered as he assessed his arm.

  Every micro-movement was like peeling the flesh from his arm. He grabbed the tail end of it.

  “Ah God,” he cried as pain jolted his arm.

  He pulled on it slightly.

  “Fuck!” he shouted.

  “Stop!” objected Zach. “You’re doing it wrong.”

  “What?” Cale demanded.

  “You’re suppose to push it through,” he explained.

  “That’s with broadhead arrows!” shouted Cale. “The fucking plastic fins won’t go through!”

  “Fine,” Zach replied. “Do it your way.”

  Cale took a series of deep breaths in preparation. He felt light headed. His courage was fleeting.

  “Do it!” shouted Zach.

  Cale shouted and yanked it out. Immediately blood began flowing from both entry and exit wounds. He wrestled off his pack and pulled out a shirt. Cale removed his riggers belt. He controlled the bleeding by wrapping the shirt around his bicep, then used the belt to hold it in place after looping it around his arm. He cinched it tightly. This brought his hemorrhage under control, but the pain was still intense. He rummaged through his bag and produced another shirt. He called on his combat life-saver training, and though it took many attempts, he fashioned himself a sling and swath for his arm.

  “Not bad,” ribbed Zach.

  “Not bad? My rifle is fucking useless now,” he replied angrily. “I can’t hold it like this.”

  “But you’re alive,” Zach pointed out. “And hey, it was your left arm. You’re right handed!”

  Cale rolled his eyes. He slipped the rifle over his head and began the task of slinging his arm. Once that was taken care of he recovered his backpack and put his rifle onto his back. He’d have to either use his knife or handgun now for defense. Cale rocked himself up to his feet and approached the three corpses in the road. He didn’t bother with Pa’s body but instead investigated the two men. The first one, who the other had called Freddie, was dead due to the gunshot wound to his chest. Cale reached for his mask.

  “What are you doing?” asked Zach.

  “Seeing what kind of people I’m dealing with,” he answered.

  He flipped the skin mask and revealed a dirty faced man. He was maybe around thirty years old. On his neck he had a tattoo of a pair of scales.

  “Think he’s a Libra?” Zach joked.

  “Not likely,” Cale searched his pockets.

  He had a few loose rounds of ammunition. It wasn’t the right size for Cale’s pistol, so Cale took his. The rest of Frankie’s pockets yielded no results.

  He moved to William’s body. His blood had alrea
dy begun to coagulate on the pavement. Grey matter speckled the ground. There was no use removing his mask. His pockets were mostly empty, save for a picture. Four men in motocross jackets posed in front of a trailer. On the trailer was their team name “The Horsemen” and below it four horses. One white, another was on fire, the third was black, and the last was a pale-green horse skeleton.

  Immediately Cale recognized Frankie. His jacket had “Famine” embroidered on it. The other three had “War,” “Pestilence,” and finally “Death.” Judging by Death’s build, he was looking at Damian without a mask.

  “They apparently took their team sports very seriously,” suggested Zach.

  Cale looked at the tattoo of a sword, blade pointed up, on William’s neck.

  “These guys were their own mascots,” added Cale.

  He dropped the picture onto William’s chest and entered the ditch the two men had jumped out of.

  “Where are you going?” asked Zach who still crouched by William.

  “If those two took off on their horses,” Cale used his right hand to air quote the word “horses.” “Then its safe to assume these two’s are still here.”

  “Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?” called Zach as Cale walked through the grass.

  “No, but it’s got to be like riding a bike right?” he retorted.

  “You can’t ride with one arm,” Zach lectured as he caught up to Cale.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Cale stopped. “I can’t ride anyway.”

  Even though Cale was no expert mechanic, he could see that the fuel lines on both bikes had been cut and the tires had been slashed.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, kicking over the bike with flames on it.

  The other was flat black. A muffled moan from a few feet away startled him. With his good arm he pulled out a knife and waited for it. It called out to him again. He pinpointed its direction and moved toward it. Cale would be better off taking care of it now rather than letting it gather others and follow him. Another groan. He was very close now. Cale walked onto a scene he’d have never imagined.

  An undead girl was nude and had her arms and legs bound to stakes in the ground. A slip of duct tape covered her mouth. She was infected, but hadn’t been for very long. Bruising around her pubic region told Cale she’d been raped, both before and after her death. Used condoms were scattered around between her open legs.