Z-Burbia 4: Cannibal Road (24 page)

“Yeah, yeah, Barfly loves this ride,” Bish Bash said. “He made the engine all vroom-vroom and the muffler goes ROAR. Pretty cool.”

I was about to turn away from the Bronco, since I had much more important things to think about, but something caught my eye. Hanging on the ignition was a bright pink bracelet. I knew that bracelet.

“Get to moving, Long Pork,” Bish Bash said. “You cain’t have the Bronco, so no need staring at it.”

“Bummer, I said. “Such a sweet ride.”

“Keep dreaming, Long Pork,” Bish Bash laughed. “You ain’t never getting in that ride. What you’ll be getting in is this shed.”

He pushed me into the door of the power shed and I had to bite my tongue to keep from mouthing off. Okay, I’ll admit the real reason I bit my tongue was because my jaw slammed into the closed shed door.

I stepped back and pulled the door open, then tried to not weep right there in front of Bish Bash.

“What the fuck happened?” I asked as I looked in at the mess that covered the shed floor. A mess that should have been a generator, but was instead just a pile of parts and a metal shell. “Who did this?”

“Tweaks,” Bish Bash said. “Last year. Got us bunch of tweaks that come through and said they could fix stuff if we let them live. All they did was tear things apart, and then take off in the middle of the night. Don’t know how they got out of the barns, but they did. Barfly was pissed.”

“Yeah, I bet he was,” I said. “Did you ever catch them?”

“Sure thing,” Bish Bash smiled. He lifted the right leg of his dirty jeans and pointed at the boot he revealed. “Got part of one of them right here.”

To say I was proud of myself for not puking on that human skin boot would be an understatement.

“Nice stitching,” I replied and turned back to the mechanical chaos that was the power shed. “I may be here a while.”

“Take your time,” Bish Bash said as he sat down against the wall and closed his eyes. “This is a way better gig than mucking out the pens, so take your time.”

“I don’t think Barfly is giving me much time,” I said.

“That’s your problem,” Bish Bash shrugged.

Yeah. That’s what everyone kept telling me.

***

Coated in grease and frustrated beyond words, I stepped from the power shed into the evening light and took a deep breath.

“All done?” Bish Bash asked as he yawned and stretched.

“Not quite,” I replied. “Have a nice nap?”

“Kinda,” Bish Bash said as he stood up and cracked his back. “I was having the crazy dreams. There was this woman and she had these…”

“RUNNER!”

“Oh, shit,” Bish Bash said. “That ain’t good.”

“What’s a runner?” I asked.

“Someone escaped,” Bish Bash said as he pulled a long knife from a sheath strapped to his belt. “You stay here.”

“Not a problem,” I said as I looked over my shoulder and back into the shit storm of parts I couldn’t make heads or tails of. “I have plenty to keep me occupied.”

Bish Bash took off running as cannies started shouting contradictory orders at each other. Weapons were grabbed and there was a considerable amount of shouting, which increased in volume and idiocy as soon as Barfly showed up.

“What the shit, peeps?” Barfly yelled. “Can’t a bro get a little nap without you peeps goin’ all crazy?”

He spied me standing there alone, and then saw Bish Bash. Out came the steel rod as he stomped over to the short man. Then out came Bish Bash’s brains as Barfly went to town on the guy’s skull with that wonderful hunk of steel.

Most of the cannies stopped in their tracks as they watched Barfly turn Bish Bash’s head into a dirty puddle of blood and brains.

“Now,” Barfly said as soon as he was done with Bish Bash. “One of you peeps needs to tell me what’s happenin’.”

“That crazy chick is gone,” a man said then took a couple steps back, obviously afraid he’d get brained next for bearing the bad news.

“Gone?” Barfly asked. “How? She was shackled like Frankenstein.”

I so wanted to tell him that Frankenstein’s monster was the one that had been shackled, not Frankenstein. People always mix that up and it’s sort of a pet peeve of mine that no matter where you go someone will always-.

“Dad!” Charlie called as he and Greta ran up to me. “There you are!”

“Where’s your mother?” I asked as I hugged my kids. “And what are you doing here?”

“Everyone took off when the yelling started,” Greta said. “The guards watching us just ran away. Fucking weird.”

“Apparently a runner is a bad thing,” I said. “Bad enough that everyone panics.”

We watched the chaos build as Barfly began to storm through the cannies, his steel rod taking down people indiscriminately.

“But where is your mother?” I asked again.

“Shit,” Charlie said. “There.”

A man and woman had Stella by the arms and dragged her from around a building. She was screaming at them to let her go, but they ignored her every word even as she tried to kick and bite them.

“Where’s Long Pork?” Barfly yelled then grinned when he saw me. “Get your ass over here, bro! Your lady bro got some splainin’ to do!”

Oh, fuck.

“Charlie, I need your help,” I said. “There is a small can of diesel in the shed. I want you to dump it out all over the generator.”

“Seriously?” he asked, a small gleam of mischief in his eye.

“Seriously,” I said.

“And do what?” Charlie asked.

I looked at the mess of generator parts that were scattered in front of the power shed. I had spent an hour tossing them out there just so I could make room to work inside. I spied what I needed and looked at my daughter.

“Greta, I need you to grab that cable there and that crank box,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to wire them together. That’s your job. Do it fast. As soon as Charlie is done dumping the fuel, you two pull the cable out of the shed as far as it will go. Get behind something if you can.”

“Behind something?” Greta asked. “Why?”

“Because when I give you the signal, you’ll turn that crank and it’ll send a spark through the cable,” I said. “Then shit goes boom.”

“What’s the signal?” Charlie asked.

“LONG PORK!” Barfly shouted. “Get. Ass. Here. Now.”

“You’ll know the signal, trust me,” I said as I jogged away. “Just be ready.”

I didn’t look back at my kids, afraid the looks on their faces would break my heart. They had to be scared shitless.

“Hold on!” I shouted at Barfly as he raised the steel rod above my wife’s head. “FUCKING HOLD ON!”

“You don’t tell me to hold on, bro,” Barfly said as I stopped a couple feet from where he loomed over Stella. “You don’t tell me nothin’ except why your lady bro here helped the crazy chick bro escape. I knows you are friends, so don’t deny it. Just tell me why and where the crazy chick bro has gone.”

“I didn’t do shit, Jace,” Stella pleaded. “I was helping over by the latrines. I turned to gag because of the smell and then someone knocked me down. The next thing I know, people are screaming and these two assholes are pulling me to my feet.”

“Hey,” the woman on Stella’s side said in a cultured British accent. “There is no need to be rude.”

Stella and I stared at the woman for a brief second, but let it go. We had much bigger things to deal with than figuring out why some British woman was with a bunch of backwoods cannies.

“She was holding this,” the man by Stella said. He held out a pink bracelet. “Where’d she get it if she didn’t help the crazy chick escape?”

“It was on the ground next to me!” Stella yelled. “Wouldn’t you pick it up too if you saw it there?”

Stella glanced at the bracelet then at me. She was quick about it, but that Barfly was quicker. The rod came down hard on Stella’s shoulder. Luckily, I didn’t hear a crack of bone, but I did hear Stella scream which was almost as bad.

“Your lady bro is lyin’,” Barfly said to me. “She’s hidin’ somethin’ from me, I can tell.” He leaned in and placed the tip of the steel rod under Stella’s chin. He wasn’t exactly soft and subtle when he pushed her head up to face him. “What are you hidin’, Mrs. Long Pork bro? Fill me in on the secret and I won’t crush you like I crushed Bish Bash.”

He pointed at the corpse with the pulped head.

“That how you want to be, lady bro? You want to be all Bish Bashed? I can Bish Bash ya all day long if ya want. That what ya want?”

“She doesn’t want to be Bish Bashed,” I said.

“Not talkin’ to you, Long Pork,” Barfly snapped. “Stay out of this, bro.”

“I don’t want to be Bish Bashed,” Stella said through clenched teeth. “I just want to get the fuck out of this crazy place!”

Then she spit in Barfly’s face.

Now, I totally understand why she did what she did, because I was close to that point also, but it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

“WAIT!” I yelled as Barfly brought the steel rod back. I grabbed his arm and yanked him away. “STOP!”

“Bro,” Barfly said as he looked at my hand gripping his arm. “Rude much, bro?”

“Don’t hurt her,” I pleaded. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, okay?”

“You will, bro?” Barfly asked, puzzled.

“Jace?” Stella asked, confused.

“Yep,” I replied, full of shit and desperate. “I know exactly what is going on, but you have to let my wife go, okay? Just let her walk down there to my kids. I’ll stay here and tell you everything.”

Since I would tell Barfly everything if I actually knew anything, I guess I seemed sincere and my ruse worked because he didn’t crack my skull open and he didn’t crack Stella’s skull open either. There was a pleasant lack of skull cracking.

The gang leader stared at me for approximately forever, and then pointed his steel rod right at a spot between my eyes.

“She’s not tellin’ me everythin’,” he said. “So you better get to the tellin’ or all the Stanfords ends up Bish Bashed.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” the man by Stella asked. “Bish Bashed?”

“I been sayin’ it, haven’t I bro?” Barfly scoffed. “So that’s what it’s called now.”

He let out a long, loud whistle and the crazy chaos of the camp came to a screeching halt. The more I think about it, the more I realize all of that chaos was just cannies running from one spot to another so they looked busy as usual. I don’t think any of them were trying to find the escapee. They just didn’t want to be caught standing around and suffer the business end of Barfly’s steel rod.

“Peeps!” Barfly yelled. “From now on when I crush skulls it’s called Bish Bashing! Y’all good with that?”

There was unanimous agreement. What a surprise.

“Get down to your kids, lady bro,” Barfly said to Stella. “But stay right where I can see ya, okay? Don’t go sneakin’ off?”

“You want us to stick with her?” the man asked.

“Did I say I wanted you to stick with her?” Barfly snapped. “No, bro, you stay here. May need ya to hold Long Pork while I Bish Bash him if he doesn’t tell me the truth.”

“Jace?” Stella cried as she was shoved away from us.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “Just do me a favor and hug the kids. Oh, and be careful with Greta. She has explosive diarrhea. Tell her that if she needs to go, she can just go ahead and go.”

“What…?” Stella asked.

I looked at Barfly and the two cannies. “I’m trying not to embarrass her too much, sweetie. Just tell her she can go when she needs to.”

“Man, I hate diarrhea,” the man said. “Remember that time we ate that Korean family? They were sick or something because like half the camp ended up with the shits.”

“That was something awful,” the British woman said. “Truly horrible.”

“Go,” Barfly said to Stella. “Get to yer kids, lady bro.”

Stella rushed off to the kids. They saw her coming, cried out, then ran to her. I watched as Stella kissed and hugged them then started to talk.

“What?” Greta shouted. “He said what?”

“Teen girls,” I grinned. “So touchy when it comes to bodily functions.”

Greta glanced my way and I smiled and waved at her. She just shook her head, and then led Stella away from the power shed.

“So...where were we?” I asked Barfly. “Oh, right, you were going to tell me all about this crazy chick that has you all worked up.”

“Nice try, bro,” Barfly laughed just as the rod hit me in the side.

I fell to a knee and winced, but didn’t cry out. Points to me for that bit of stoicism.

“Tell me what you know,” Barfly said.

I wanted to stall and wait for the explosion that was about to happen, but I knew I didn’t have time for that. I needed to make up something plausible, so I went to the only story I could think of that involved a crazy chick.

“So, I know this woman named Elsbeth,” I said. “She used to be a canny like you guys, but she redeemed herself after a couple bumps and hiccups.”

Barfly only stared.

“Well, she’s really good with blades and can fight like an animal when she needs to,” I continued. “In fact, there was this one time when I had gotten trapped…”

Smack.

“Ow! What the fuck?”

“We know all about you gettin’ trapped, Long Pork,” Barfly said. “She told us all about it. She likes to talk about you a lot. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I ain’t Bish Bashed ya yet. I know all this stuff. What I don’t know is where she went when you set her free?”

“Oh…” Fuck.

My brain about fried itself as it kicked into hyperdrive. Barfly had just confirmed that the crazy chick bro was Elsbeth. Okay. Good to know. He also said she talked a lot about me. What else did she talk about?

Smack.

“Fuck! Stop it!” I shouted.

Smack.

“DUDE!”

“Bro!” Barfly yelled. “Tell me where she is!”

“Fire!” someone shouted and we all turned to see where he was pointing.

The power shed.

Flames licked at the edges of the doorway and I frowned. It was supposed to explode, not just slow burn.

Oh, wait…

The fuel was an accelerant, but not an explosive. I wanted the power shed to go boom, but I forgot that I needed a boom part. Shit fuck.

My distraction/middle finger to the cannies was a bust without an actual explosive. Poop.

“What happened, bro?” Barfly snarled in my ear. “Why is my power shed on fire?”