Z-Burbia 5: The Bleeding Heartland (2 page)

Huh, I probably should have thought about that before I said what I said. Live and learn, right?

“Once we get him moved into an RV, you should go help,” Stella says.

“Yes, ma’am,” Stuart says, and I can hear the smile in his voice.

“Hey!” I growl. “No flirting with my wife, asshole!”

“Jesus Christ, Jace,” Stella sighs. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Yeah, Long Pork,” Stuart grumbles. “Shut the fuck up.”

Oops. Back to Long Pork. It all goes bad so fast in the apocalypse.

There’s more tugging on my legs, then I hear Stella say a few prayers before she gets to work with the grass. God bless my wife.

***

The zombie apocalypse is certainly not short on sensory stimuli.

From sounds to sights to touch to taste, it can be overwhelming. Especially the smells.

Now, I have smelled some seriously rank stuff since the dead started to walk the earth a few years ago. Things rotting, things burning, more things rotting, even more things rotting, and then there’s the things rotting. Rotting things is top of the list. Actually, it pretty much is the list.

Until now.

Being stuck in an RV with people coated in their own puke and poop has just replaced the smell of rotting what the fuck ever.

Rotting things have a smell that’s finite. You know eventually it will fade away. But sick folk? Not so much. Each smell is warm and living. Those smells say to your nose, “Hey nose! Don’t get too comfortable and used to this because in about three seconds we’re going to blast you with a new fresh and funky wave of olfactory annihilation! Huzzah, nose! Huzzah!”

The worst part of it all? The moaning.

Not that I’m a moaning virgin (whatever a moaning virgin might be) since I do live in the zombie apocalypse, and those undead fuckers sure do know how to moan. But, as with the smells, the living are different. Z moans sound empty, hollow, and, well, dead. They tend to all meld together into a monotonous chorus of zombie despair. Whereas, (good word, whereas. Whereas, whereas, whereas, whereas. I could say it all day)…

What was I saying? Oh, right, the sounds of the living. They aren’t dead, so they don’t tend to meld together. The living have individual voices. Some are high and squeaky, some are low and deep, some are just flat and empty. Many people, many voices.

“Shut up, Jace!”

“Will you be fucking quiet, Long Pork?”

“One more word, and I shit in your mouth!”

“Someone kill me. Just kill me. I can’t listen anymore.”

Shit. I was talking out loud again.

“No shit, Dad,” Greta says from my side as she takes my temperature. “You haven’t stopped talking since you got in here.”

Her voice is muffled since she has a cloth wrapped around her face. I can almost smell something floral coming from her.

“Lavender,” Greta says. “And you’re still talking out loud. Maybe just stop thinking, okay? You need to rest anyway.”

Rest? Who gets to fucking rest in the apocalypse? I haven’t rested since I lost my arm. And that rest was forced on me and boring as all fuck.

“Shut him up!”

“I’m going to rip your tongue out, Stanford!”

“If we all stick to the same story, then no one will know we smothered him to death!”

“Yeah, making friends as always, Dad,” Greta says as she looks at the thermometer. Even in my weakened state, and with the towel covering most of her face, I can see her blanch. “Fuck.”

“How bad is it?” I ask.

“What? Oh, it’s good,” Greta says. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“Liar,” I say. “What’s my temp?”

“High,” Greta says. “I’ll be right back. I need to get more alcohol to sterilize this and check on the next person.”

“You’re going to tell Dr. McCormick what my temp is, aren’t you?” I ask. “What is it, Greta?”

“One-oh-four,” Greta says. “It’s going up, not down.”

“Open a window,” I say. “It’s cold as fuck out there. That’ll cool me off.”

“Speak for yourself, asshole!”

“I’m already freezing here!”

“I say we just bash his head in. Bish bash the little bitch.”

Bish bash me? Are cannies in here too?

“Yeah,” Greta sighs. “And they can hear you. Whatever this is, it’s hitting the whole convoy, including the cannies.” She pats my shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” is all I say. What else is there to say?

“NOTHING!” everyone shouts.

Okay, gonna stop thinking now.

“THANK GOD!” they shout again.

***

Fever dreams, man. Fever dreams.

A person’s mind can really make up some weird shit when it’s being cooked at one hundred and four degrees. Add the surreal existence the zombie apocalypse affords, and hoo-doggy, you got yourself some seriously fucked up brain magic.

That’s what I call dreams now. Brain magic. I just made it up. Like this second. I just made it up this second.

Huh ... no one is yelling for me to shut the fuck up. Maybe I’m actually talking in my head. That has to be a good sign.

My throat is raw as hell, and I push myself up onto my elbows and look around the RV. Pretty much all the furniture has been stripped out to make room for all of us to lie down. All I see are long lumps in the dark that must be my fellow stricken. There are some murmurs and some snores, which tells me it’s late into the night. I must have fallen asleep at some point.

In fact, I know I did because of the fever dreams. I’d tell you about them, but they have already faded. All I remember are the sounds. The moans and groans of the undead; the slapping of their putrid hands on the side of the RV; their broken nails and bony fingers clawing at the doors.

I can almost still hear the noises, making me think maybe I didn’t dream them. But in my dreams there weren’t gunshots. Now that I’m awake there are plenty of gunshots.

Gunshots?

Oh, fuck me…

I hear one of the doors open, and the moans and groans of the undead get louder.

“Wake up, people!” Porky Fitzpatrick yells. “We are under siege and getting out of here now!”

Lights come on as Porky starts up the RV and guns the engine. People pry themselves from their own fever dreams and start looking around, their glazed eyes, and glazed minds barely able to focus on what’s happening.

I can focus. It’s the blessing/curse of having an active, never fucking shuts up, mind. When push comes to shove, I can push and shove my mind to behave and focus on the crisis at hand.

“What’s the situation, Porky?” I ask as I try to crawl my way around the stirring sickies so I can get to the passenger seat. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” Porky says. “Lourdes and the rest are trying to hold them off, but there’re just too damn many of them, pardon my French.” The Fitzpatricks don’t really cuss, so “damn” is a big deal coming from Porky’s mouth.

“Which way are they coming from?” I ask as I climb into the passenger seat. I look down and realize I only have a blanket on me. Nothing else. It’s a clean blanket, though, so I got that going. Take the pluses where you can.

“They’re coming from the East,” Porky says as he slides open the driver’s window, picks up a machete from the floor of the RV, and hacks away at half a dozen Zs clawing at the door before he pulls his arm back in, and slams the window shut. “Too dark to see for sure, but looks like a pretty big herd.”

“That’s like the sixth herd we’ve come across since we left Nashville,” I say.

“Eight,” Porky says as he switches on the headlights and turns off the interior lights. “You’re forgetting the two small ones we dodged after Louisville.”

“Right,” I say quietly as I look out the front windows of the RV at the swarming Zs. “They’re everywhere.”

“Yep,” Porky nods.

“Who’s still out there?” I ask.

“Just Lourdes, her military contractors, John, Stuart, Critter’s guys, and Mel,” Porky says. “My brothers are starting up the RVs along with some of the cannies.”

“The cannies?” I ask. “Seriously?”

“They had to ditch their vehicles,” Porky replies. “Nothing smaller than a full size pick up will get through these things now. And they all know how to drive like pros.”

“Yeah, cannies are good apocalyptic drivers,” I nod. “I’ll give them that.”

“Your family is in the RV up ahead,” Porky says, reading my mind. “Buzz is driving that one.” He picks up a radio and puts it to his mouth. “Buzz? You read me?”

“Loud and clear, brother,” Buzz replies. “You ready?”

“Ready,” Porky says. “Lead the way.”

The RV in front of us lurches, then turns to the left and shoves a small pickup truck out of its way as it breaks from our wagon train circle. I watch as quite a few zombies are crushed between the RV and the pickup. More than a couple of rotting heads pop right off their rotting necks and fly up into the air. Guts splatter everywhere, and Porky turns on the windshield wipers as a few squirts of green pus zigzag across the glass in front of him.

“Yuck,” he says.

“True dat,” I reply, and wrap the blanket around me tighter. I shiver and shudder as a wave of nausea washes over me, but luckily I keep both ends stoppered and just close my eyes until it passes.

“If you need to throw up, best you stick your head out the window,” Porky says.

Dead hands reach up and smack against the glass to my right.

“Yeah, probably not gonna do that,” I reply. “I’ll use a bucket.”

“Buckets are all full,” someone says from behind us. There’s a clunk and a splash as Porky hits the gas and our RV follows behind the first. “Okay, now there’s an empty one.”

A dripping bucket is handed up to me, and I can see Porky struggle to keep himself from vomiting.

“It’s probably safe to crack your window,” I say to him.

“Praise Jesus,” he mutters as he mouth breathes and rolls down his window a couple of inches.

Porky barely navigates us around a Charger covered in primer and spray paint. He nudges it out of the way a little, then falls in behind the first RV. Everywhere the headlights shine, all I can see are Zs. There have to be thousands of them. Luckily, because of the open land, they aren’t all densely packed together like they’d be in a city. There are thick clumps here and there, but mostly they are spread thin.

Except that the movement of the RVs is giving them purpose and direction (other than just the ever-present drive to eat our sweet, sweet flesh), and as we work our way across the rough ground of the field, the density of the Zs starts to increase. Clumps become large groups, which become small hordes, and soon I can see the gauntlet of Zs we are going to have to drive through.

“I know,” Porky says, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that his skin looks like it’s gonna split. He picks up his radio. “Hey, Buzz?”

“I know, I know,” Buzz replies over the radio. “We’ll need to get side by side until we hit the road. Better protection that way.”

“Except for the RVs on the outsides,” I say, but shut up as Porky gives me a “gonna tear your lungs out your throat” look. Melissa is the one that’s perfected it, but apparently all the Fitzpatricks are versed in the art of that glare. “Sorry.”

“I heard him,” Buzz says. “He’s right, but there’s nothing we can do. Come up on my left. Everyone else join, alternating sides until we’re lined up.”

Porky swerves and thumps over a good eight Zs. We can hear their bodies crunch and pop from under the RV. For a few feet there is a loud scraping, but then it goes away as whatever was hanging on is shaken loose.

As we get up next to Buzz’s RV, I give him a wave, but he only scowls at me. I do see Stella in the passenger seat, and I assume Charlie and Greta are somewhere else inside. Stella’s hands are gripping the dash as she leans forward and stares out the windshield at the ever growing herd.

“We’re climbing up,” Lourdes’s voice says over the radio. “Don’t slow down. We can grab the ladders and ride on top until we get clear.”

“Going to be a cold ride,” Buzz says.

“Better cold than eaten by Zs,” Lourdes replies.

“Amen, sister,” I say, and give a thumbs up.

“No one can see that, Jace,” Porky says.

“Oh, right,” I smile, and return my thumb to its not up position. Which I guess is down. I, uh, put my thumb down. Yeah, I think I’m still a little feverish.

There’s a loud crunching noise, then the sound of screaming over the radio, which is quickly cut off.

“Dammit!” Buzz shouts. “We just lost two RVs!”

“We can’t leave them,” someone yells over the radio.

I get up and slowly wind my way between the people and the puke buckets until I get to the back bedroom. I slide the partition open and see quite a few more people lying on the floor, the bed having been removed. But my attention is drawn to Critter as he stands at the back window, rifle in hand, and eyes locked onto the scene from behind us.