Z-Burbia 4: Cannibal Road (8 page)

“What’s up?” I asked, wishing I had brought a pistol with me. I looked over and saw Stella held hers down to the side of her leg and could see she was ready to bring it up and start firing if anything fucked up happened.

“Folks won’t roll down the windows or step out so we can make sure they’re okay,” a man named Gary Wilkes said. “We been knocking and they just say they’re fine.”

“Hello in there!” I shouted. “Could you roll the windows down please?”

The driver’s window on the double cab truck rolled down a fraction of an inch.

“All good here!” a man said. “Just ready to keep rollin’.”

“Who’s supposed to be in these?” I asked Stella. “Do you have the driver list?”

“Didn’t bring it with me,” Stella said.

I looked at Critter’s folks and they all shrugged.

“Great,” I sighed as I looked at the truck. “What’s your name?”

“Uh...Bob,” the guy said.

“Okay, Bob. Can you hop on out so we can just do a quick health check?” I asked nicely. “We need to make sure no one in the truck was bitten by a Z. You understand, right?”

“We’re good,” Bob said as he rolled the window back up.

Fucker.

“Bob!” I yelled. “Open the fucking truck, please!”

“Nice use of please,” Stella smirked.

“Thanks,” I said as I started to step towards the truck.

I made it all of a foot before the door swung open and the road erupted into gunfire.

Three of Critter’s people went down hard, their bodies riddled with bullets. I instinctively dove at Stella and covered her with my body as I shoved her towards the side of the road and into the high grass. We rolled and rolled down an embankment and came to a painful stop against a group of pines.

“You okay?” I grunted.

“Yeah. You?”

“As good as can be,” I replied.

The sound of the truck engine roaring back to life reached us as we scrambled back up to the road. The driver’s window was shattered and blood dripped down the side of the door as the truck roared past us. Two wheels were on the road and two were on the overgrown shoulder as it dodged past the convoy. People still taking care of their business had to dive this way and that, pants down around their ankles, to keep from being run down.

“That’s not one of ours!” I shouted, but I think people figured that out.

“JACE!” Stella yelled as she shoved me back into the grass.

The Volvo zipped past only inches from us as we fell back on our asses. All of the windows had been shot out and I could see only two people inside, one of which I’m pretty sure was no longer living.

“What the fuck?” Stella shouted as she got to her feet, lifted her pistol, then lowered it again as she realized she was just as likely to hit one of our people as she was to hit the Volvo.

“They must have hijacked the cars when we were stopped back on the detour,” I said.

“Ya think?” Stella snapped. “We should have been prepared for that.”

“Well, doesn’t look like they’re getting far,” I said as the truck reached the haul truck, swerved one way, then the other before slamming into the giant rear tire of the huge machine. I could see John standing on top of the haul truck, his sniper rifle to his shoulder. He gave a quick wave and I waved back. “Yay for snipers.”

The Volvo only went a little farther before taking a sudden lurch towards the left and drove off into the grass. We lost sight of it, but then the sound of crunching metal and glass filled us in on the car’s fate.

A bunch of us raced up to it and found the car smashed into a large oak tree, its front crumpled. Steam and smoke hissed from under the mangled hood, but that wasn’t what got our attention.

“Damn,” Greta said from my side. “I guess that one turned fast.”

“Hey, why are you out of the Explorer?” I snapped. “It’s not safe out here!”

“Not safe in there,” Greta said as she pointed at the Z that was busy munching on the driver of the Volvo. “Sucks to be that guy.”

“The one being eaten or the one doing the eating?” Buzz asked as he came up to us, his pistol out. “Wouldn’t want to be either of them.”

He moved past and put a bullet in the head of the Z, then in the head of the dead driver, who would have come back in just a few minutes anyway.

“The passenger turned fast,” I said. “That’s not good.”

“Turning times have gotten weird lately,” Buzz said as he holstered his pistol and walked back to us. “Whatever makes us turn is accelerating the process.”

“How very unfortunate,” Kramer said. “That does not bode well for the survival of the human species.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be up in the haul truck?”

“Oh, am I?” Kramer said. “I figured since my guards left that I was free to come out and see what all the commotion was.”

We could hear Critter cursing and shouting. Then he joined our large group of looky-loos. His arms gesticulated this way and that as he frothed at the mouth.

“YOU POSSUM ASS SUCKING MORONS!” Critter yelled at a pair of men that tried to duck away, but just weren’t fast enough. “YOU HAD ONE FUCKIN’ JOB! ONE JOB!”

“Someone’s getting fired,” Greta smirked as she turned and walked away. “I’ll be waiting in the Explorer. Let me know when it’s time to get moving again.”

“Come on,” Buzz said as he grabbed Kramer’s arm. “Back to your cage.”

“You realize you are talking to a man with seven PhDs and over two thousand patents?” Kramer snapped. “I do not need to be manhandled like a child!”

“Do you realize you are talking to a man that doesn’t care whether you live or die?” Buzz replied. “Personally,y your science crap doesn’t impress me. These days, all I need is God and I’m good.”

“You’re one of those religious nuts, are you?” Kramer sneered.

“Nope,” Buzz said. “Just a man of faith that has been tested again and again since the dead started to walk the Earth. And that faith has gotten me a lot further over the years than science has.”

“You think science hasn’t helped…” Kramer started, but stopped when Buzz smacked him in the back of the head. Hard.

“Save your breath,” Buzz said. “I’m not stupid. I just have room in me to believe in both faith and science. Try it sometime. You’d be surprised what worlds open up to you.”

“Damn,” I said to Melissa. “Your brother has gone all guru and shit.”

“Cram it up your poopchute, Long Pork,” Buzz called back to me.

“Hey! I was giving you a compliment!’ I snapped.

“Hard to tell with you sometimes,” Buzz replied as he basically dragged Kramer back to the haul truck.

“It is hard to tell sometimes,” Melissa said from my side.

We got up to the haul truck and Buzz forced Kramer to climb into one of the shelters while the rest of us walked to the side of the road where Stuart stood over a bleeding man that didn’t look like he had much longer to live.

“Not highwaymen,” Stuart said as he nudged the guy with his boot. “At least not the ones Critter was used to. From what I got out of this guy, it sounds like new gangs were starting to move across the mountains.”

“Gangs? What gangs?” I asked.

Critter knelt down next to the dying man and ripped open is bloody shirt. The man’s chest was scarred by all kinds of crappy tattoos and burn marks.

“Son of a bitch,” he sighed. “I didn’t think the idiots had the balls to come this far. Thought they’d always stay on the other side of Knoxville.”

“Care to tell the rest of us what that means?” I asked.

Critter stood up and shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked down I-40.

“Cannies,” he said.

We all waited for more, but Critter just kept staring at the road ahead of us.

“I’m going to speak for everyone and say that we’re gonna need a little more info than that,” I said.

“Well,” Critter replied as he turned his attention on to me. “It used to be that from Knoxville to Nashville it was nothin’ but cannibal gangs. They never came this close to the mountains because I kinda made it worth their while to stay away and they didn’t know the coves and hollers like us mountain folk do.”

“Hold on,” Stuart said. “You knew there would be cannibal gangs and didn’t bother to tell us?”

Critter shrugged. “I’d figured they’d wiped themselves out. Can’t be no survivors left for them to eat, so they had to have turned on each other by now. I guess some got bold and moved into the mountains looking for new food sources. Gotta give them credit for makin’ it this far.”

We all just stood there, stunned by the revelation.

“Okay, let’s put aside the fact you are an idiot, Critter,” Stella said. “How many gangs are we talking?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Critter said. “There were about half a dozen last time I checked, but that was a couple years back.” He held up his hands before anyone else could speak. “Now, in my defense, I did tell Lourdes and her soldier folk about them. I figured if they were still a threat that Lourdes would have sent someone to tell us. When we didn’t hear nothin’ I assumed it was all good.”

“Or maybe Lourdes and her people ran into some trouble and couldn’t get someone back to warn us,” I said. “That’s a possibility.”

“Nah,” Critter said. “The canny gangs ain’t smart enough to take on Lourdes. They’d be a pain in the ass, that’s for sure, but ain’t a one of them got the skills that those PCs have in their pinky fingers.”

I looked up at the haul truck.

“There may be someone that can shed a little more light on this situation,” I said. “Can someone help me up into the haul truck?” I waved Stumpageddon and winced at the pain in my collarbone. “Can’t quite do it myself.”

***

I was sweating pretty hard, and had swallowed a ton of pride, by the time I sat down across from Kramer in one of the shelters bolted into the haul truck’s bed.

“You have the look of a man in need of information, Mr. Stanford,” Kramer grinned. “I’m glad to see one of you came to your senses and realized that I am here to help, not hurt.”

“I’m not going to kid myself that that is true,” I said. “But maybe something you know can help, even if I suspect your intentions overall are far from charitable.”

“Well, I admit they certainly are not entirely charitable,” Kramer. “That would be saying that I lack the motivation of self-preservation. I’d be a liar if I said I came to you fine people forother reasons than to just prolong my life.”

“What’s on the other side of Knoxville?” I asked, done with the banter. “Critter says it used to be controlled by canny gangs. Is it still?”

Kramer smiled and eased back into the plastic chair he sat in. “Control is such a subjective word. There are many degrees of control. Control of movement, control of one’s environment, control of those around you, self-control- all very subjective, indeed. One could argue that I control this conversation by having information you need, yet I am sure you would say you control the entire situation by keeping me captive. Which version of control dominates? Which one is supreme over the other? I am your prisoner, but you are at my mercy.”

“You want to talk mercy?” Stuart growled as he stood by the door.

“Ah, then the physical threats begin,” Kramer said, “which I cannot match. The tables turn and the position of strength is revealed.”

“Is it possible for you to just answer my question?” I asked. “All your jabber, jabber, jabber is giving me a headache.”

Stuart snorted.

“Shut up,” I smirked. “I see the irony.”

“Your question was what? If there are cannibal gangs to the west of Knoxville?” Kramer smiled. “That is easy to answer: yes.”

“Okay, now we are getting somewhere,” I said. “Critter also believes they have probably eaten themselves down to nothing. Is that true?”

“Down to nothing? Oh, heavens no, son!” Kramer laughed. “Those gangs are thriving! From a strictly anthropological view, I would say they are quite possibly the strongest culture I have seen sprout up from this nightmarish landscape. They have adapted as needed and taken that adaptation to new heights. No, no, no, Mr. Critter is quite mistaken. The cannibal gangs are far from down to nothing.”

“Great,” I responded as I looked over at Stuart. “Not exactly what we were prepared for.”

“We can get through,” Stuart said. “We may not have known we’d be dealing with thriving canny gangs, but we knew we’d be dealing with plenty of crazies. These’ll just be the first.”

“Don’t underestimate them, Gunnery Sergeant,” Kramer said. “They are crazy, yes, but they are also not stupid. The ones that have made it this far in life are wily like any true predatory scavenger. They are like packs of hyenas. Get enough of them together and even a lion cannot scare them off.”

“Fine,” Stuart said. “Then give us details. We need to know how many of them there are and where they camp out. Do they hunt at night? Do they hunt during the day? Are they armed or use vehicles? Or have they run out of ammo and fuel? Spill everything you know and you get to live another day.”

“Gunnery Sergeant Stuart,” Kramer sighed. “You do not need to keep threatening me. How many times must I state that fact?”

“I could give a fuck,” Stuart said. “Keep stating it all you want. I’m going to keep threatening you because I want you to know that you only have a future with us because I allow it to happen.”

“How very democratic of you,” Kramer smirked. “I’m sure your fellow survivors would love to know that’s your attitude. Do they have a future as well because you allow them to?”

“Blah blah blah,” Stuart said. “Just tell us what you know.”

“Fine,” Kramer said as he coughed and tapped at his chest. “May I have a glass of water first, please?”

“No,” Stuart stated.

“My throat is parched and I could use something to…” Kramer started, but didn’t get to finish as Stuart moved forward and punched him in the nose.

“Feel that blood trickling down the back of your throat?” Stuart grinned. “That should wet your whistle.”

Kramer grabbed at his face as blood poured from around his fingers.

“Dude,” I said to Stuart before I found a rag and handed it to Kramer, “now his voice is going to be all nasal and annoying.”

“Your concern for my wellbeing is admirable,” Kramer said as held the rag to his bleeding nose.