Z-Burbia 4: Cannibal Road (30 page)

“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.

The first casualty Levi had witnessed in Unit 8 was Big Moose Callahan in for rape and murder. He fell ill and died within six days, hacking up his lungs like a TB patient. Before they could remove the body, Moose came back to life, attacked a guard, and ate his face. After that, all hell broke loose. The sick were separated from the healthy. Every cough sent men scurrying in the other direction.

Of the almost 4,000 convicts in the Florence State Prison, fewer than three hundred remained. The cons near the end of their sentences, or those deemed safe for early release, had been freed a few months earlier, leaving only the hardcore criminals. Since then, Levi had been attacked twice. He bore a livid scar on this right side where a shiv made from a toothbrush had almost punctured a kidney. The doctor had stopped the bleeding, stitched the wound, and returned him to lockup. Now, he carried a weapon of his own, a sharpened piece of copper tubing ripped from one of the bathroom sinks. Only one person had threatened him since, and his body had been burned with the Stagger victims.

A pall of black smoke, reeking of scorched flesh and gasoline, billowed around his face. He brushed back his long red hair and coughed. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he told Ax.

Ax rolled his eyes. “Sure. Why don’t you just ask a bull for the key?” he said, hitching his thumb at the retreating guard.

Ax’s sarcasm annoyed Levi, but he let it slide. “I have a better idea,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling.

Ax stared at him. “What?”

Levi shook his head. The best secret was the one only one person knew. “I’ll show you tonight in the cafeteria.”

He paced his small cell the remainder of the afternoon. The door wasn’t locked. He could have walked the length of the entire cell block if he wished, or wandered onto the yard. The remaining cons could now come and go as they pleased within the confines of the prison, but few chose that option. The guards were trigger happy, and one stumble could turn a fall into death sentence. One cough could invite a bullet to the head. Having a barred metal door to shut if someone turned zombie was another reason most remained indoors.

That evening, in the much shorter than usual chow line, Levi took his place behind a con named McHugh, a great hulk of a man with a nasty disposition and a reputation for hurting people for pleasure. He didn’t like McHugh, and McHugh didn’t like anyone. He was taking a chance getting so near the quick-tempered con, but tonight the risk was worth it. As they shuffled down the food line, McHugh loaded his tray with double helpings of everything, growling his displeasure at the hapless servers who cowered from him. Levi placed nothing on his tray. His stomach still reeled from the stench of the dead. He remained close behind McHugh, following him down the serving line. As they neared a table, Levi raised his empty tray, slammed the corner of it into the back of McHugh’s head with all his might, and then shoved the stunned man forward into the space between tables. McHugh, dazed by the unexpected blow, dropped his heaping tray of food and stumbled around groaning, banging into tables and reaching out blindly to maintain his balance.