Z-Burbia 4: Cannibal Road (7 page)

“What is it?” I asked as I got out of the Explorer with Elsbeth, leaving Stella and the kids inside.

The first rule of the convoy was that someone was behind the wheel of a vehicle at all times. Critter was bending that rule by standing in the driver’s seat instead of seated and ready to get moving, but I wasn’t going to be the one to quibble with the old coot.

“Trees down,” Critter said. “Looks like they were uprooted by a storm.”

“So it’s not a trap?” I asked.

“Oh, it probably is,” Critter grinned as he eyed the mountainside to our left. “But they ain’t gonna attack until they know our weak point. We gots enough guns to keep them back for now.”

One thing we were counting on was that Critter was positive the highwaymen were out of ammunition. He couldn’t say for certain, but he hadn’t had a shoot out with any of the small gangs in a long while. Last time he got into a tussle with some of the highwaymen, he said they’d been using bows and arrows.

But no bullets. We all hoped he was right.

“Can’t the haul truck just mow down the trees?” I asked. “Run them over and keep going?”

“Sure,” Critter said as we watched men scramble ahead of the haul truck to start clearing the road. “But that truck would make such a god-awful mess of those trees that none of the other vehicles could get through.” He let out a low whistle. “And you ever see what those giant tires can do to a hunk of wood? It catches it right and we’d have a million splinters shootin’ back at us. Don’t know if you noticed or not, Long Pork, but my Jeep ain’t got no top on it. That wouldn’t be too much fun for me, now would it?”

“Are you afraid of a little toothpick rain?” I smiled.

“You afraid of my boot up your ass?” Critter replied.

“Point taken,” I nodded. “So we just wait? You think I should send runners down the convoy to give everyone a heads up? Good chance for people to stretch their legs and have a piss break before we get going again.”

“Sounds like a good way to go since the radios ain’t workin’ too well,” Critter nodded. He let out a whistle and pointed at two men with rifles that were busy watching the mountainside. “You boys! Head down the line and let folks in on what’s happenin’, will ya? Move your asses and get back up here!”

The men nodded and hurried past us and down the convoy, stopping at each vehicle to give a quick update. Or I assume that was what they did since I lost sight of them in seconds once they went around the curve.

Moving the trees wasn’t as easy as it should have been. They were huge, old oaks and that wood is dense and heavy. It took a dozen men with ropes to maneuver the first tree far enough so that it could be shoved off the road and go tumbling and crashing through the smaller trees below. The second tree was a lot bigger than the first.

I leaned against Critter’s Jeep and watched everyone else work, since Stumpageddon wasn’t exactly up for lumberjack duty. Even if I wanted to put a cool axe or hook attachment onto my stump, I still had the healing collarbone to deal with. No leverage because of the minor issue of the pain. Not to mention the fact that Reaper would kick my ass if I ruined all the work he’d done to keep me from losing the last half of my right arm. He and Dr. McCormick had wanted to amputate all the way up to the shoulder so there was less stress on my fracture, but I vetoed that.

I’d grown fond of Stumpageddon and didn’t want to lose the whole arm. Having half an arm was shitty enough, but taking it all was unthinkable.

“Long Pork!” Critter snapped. “What you think’ about?”

“Life with one arm,” I said as I patted Stumpageddon.

“Well, good for you,” Critter snorted. “Now get your head out of the clouds and pay attention.”

“What for?” I asked.

“The attack that’s comin’,” Critter said.

That’s when I noticed he had picked up his rifle and was studying not the mountainside to our left, but the drop off to our right.

“You see something?” I asked. Then I looked around and realized I was standing by Critter’s Jeep alone. “Hey, where’s El?”

“Down in there,” Critter nodded towards the drop off. “Girl heard somethin’ and just took off. You were too busy gettin’ lost in that head of yours to notice.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said. I truly was sorry since the spacing off thing really was a pain in my ass as well as everyone else’s.

“Well, as long as your little trips to outer space don’t get me killed, then I could give a crap about your sorry,” Critter said. “But hows about you pay the fuck attention right now?”

“Will do,” I said and walked back to the Explorer as Stella rolled down the window. “Critter says Elsbeth heard…”

“I know,” Stella said. “I saw her take off down the mountain. Here.”

She handed me a 9mm Beretta and smiled. “You going to be able to shoot that left handed?”

“He can shoot it, but can he hit anything?” Greta asked.

“The love and support is overwhelming,” I said as I took the pistol then stared at it. “Uh, could you rack the slide for me?”

“I already did,” Stella said. “There’s a round in the chamber, but the safety is on. Be sure to flick that off before you start shooting.”

“I know about the safety,” I mumbled as I walked away. “Don’t need to tell me how a gun works.”

I got back to Critter’s Jeep and saw he was smiling at me. I hate it when Critter smiles at me.

“What?” I snap.

“You’re like a little kid that needs his meat cut up,” Critter chuckled. “Man can’t handle a pistol on his own, what kind of man is he?”

“The kind that’ll put a cap in your ass if you don’t shut the fuck up,” I growled.

That made Critter chuckle even harder. He didn’t stop until we heard the first scream. Then a second one.

“I think our girl found company,” Critter said, his rifle to his shoulder. “Let’s hope she can handle things on her own.”

“Up top!” John shouted from the haul truck as I heard his suppressed rifle cough out a couple of shots. “Zs!”

And he wasn’t shitting us sideways. There were a fuck ton of Zs about to come tumbling down on our heads.

“Fuck!” I yelled as I turned to the small part of the convoy I could see behind us. “Get ready!” I tried my walkie, but only static came out of it. “Fuck!”

The mountainside to our left was not quite a sheer cliff, but it was close enough so that the undead that came at us barely set a foot on the ground. They fell from above, their mouths open and rotted hands reaching for some tasty, tasty people meats.

The first few splatted just short of the convoy, but the rest started smacking the tops and sides of the vehicles, causing all kinds of havoc.

“Mother fuckers!” Critter shouted as he ducked and dodged the falling corpses. It took him all of two seconds to realize that it was a waste of bullets to shoot the fuckers, so he dropped the rifle and picked up a baseball bat that had spikes driven through the end.

“Hey!” I shouted at him as I jumped out of the way of a Z that exploded all over the road. “That’s the Bitch!”

“Long Pork, I ain’t never gonna call nothin’ a stupid name like that,” Critter grinned as he steadied the bat by his shoulder and then took a swing, ripping the head off a Z that came falling right at him. “But I ain’t gonna let a sweet design like this go to waste neither.”

Fair enough.

The Zs kept coming, but luckily, gravity did most of the work for us. Now, I know Zs aren’t too bright, what with the lack of a living brain and all, but rarely do you see them get all lemming and shit and go for a suicidal leap. So I wasn’t too surprised to see some living faces peering down at us when I looked up at the top of the mountainside.

I gave them a quick wave. Okay, not so much a wave as a couple shots with my 9mm. They ducked back from the pistol fire and I was feeling pretty good about myself until the rocks started raining down.

Yep. Rocks.

My first thought was that they must have run out of arrows at some point. Second thought? Fuck! Falling rocks!

“Sons of bitches,” Critter snarled as he slammed the Bitch into the skull of a Z that was crawling at him over the windshield of the Jeep. A rock smacked his shoulder and he snarled, giving me a look of pure hurt rage before he dropped the Bitch and picked his rifle back up. “You gonna throw rocks in a gun fight, ya fuckers? Fine!”

He unloaded his rifle at the men above that were busy tossing rocks down on us, but it made no difference since those fuckers had gravity ontheir side. They could stand way back from the edge and just let the rocks fly. Fuckers.

Fuckity fucker fuck fucks.

I attribute all the cursing to the fact a rock nailed me in the forehead. Fucking hurt, man. Otherwise, I’m such a mild mouthed fella.

“We’re clear!” Stuart yelled from the haul truck as the beast of a machine roared back to life and started to lurch its way up the road as the last tree was shoved from the road. “Get moving!”

Those with rifles on top of the haul truck kept firing at the mountainside, trying to take out some of the still falling Zs as well as keep the rock-throwing fuckers back. I dodged it all as I raced back to the Explorer while Stella yelled at me to move ass. I jumped into the empty passenger seat and just had the door closed when she floored it and sent us chasing after Critter and his Jeep.

“What about Elsbeth?” Greta asked.

There was a loud thump from the top of the Explorer and suddenly Elsbeth’s face was looking in at us upside down from my window.

“I’ll move,” I said as I rolled the window down and scrambled into the back seat with Greta and Charlie.

Elsbeth did this flip spin thingy and was comfortably in the passenger seat before I even got my seatbelt on. She smacked her hands on the dashboard and gave us all a wide grin. She was pretty much covered in blood from head to toe.

“Haven’t had a good killin’ time in a long while,” she said as she clapped her hands together. “Fun, fun, fun!”

“Were there a lot of Zs down there?” Charlie asked.

“Zs? Nope. No Zs,” Eslbeth replied. “Just lots of stupid, stupid men. Came at me with sticks and rocks. Kinda felt bad for them and I said so. They didn’t listen. Should have listened.”

“Uh...if you were down there, then how did you get on top of the Explorer?” Greta asked, looking from the drop off to our right and then up at the roof of the car. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Trees go up,” Elsbeth said. “Elsbeth comes down.”

Greta just shook her head.

“How much farther is it?” Stella asked. “We need to get off this road and back onto the interstate.” Rocks continued to rain down on us and one smacked into the windshield, sending cracks spider webbing this way and that. “Because I am done with this shit!”

Stella rolled her window down, grabbed a pistol stashed next to her and started firing up at the mountainside.

“FUCKERS!” Stella screamed.

“MOM!” Greta yelled. “STOP!”

We all yelled at her to stop, but she couldn’t hear us over the gunfire. When the pistol clicked empty, she casually handed it to Elsbeth, who was sitting there giggling like it was the best thing she’d ever seen, and then let out a long sigh.

“I feel better,” Stella said.

“You just wasted a whole magazine,” Charlie snapped. “That’s ammo we can’t get back!”

“But damn if it didn’t feel good,” Stella replied.

“See? Everyone needs killin’ time,” Elsbeth said.

“I don’t think I actually hit anyone,” Stella said, “but who fucking cares, right?”

“Fucking right,” Elsbeth nodded. She pointed at the stereo. “We need tunes. Tunes are good.”

“Yes, we need tunes,” Stella said and hit the power button. A Johnny Cash CD started playing and soon Elsbeth and Stella were singing along to the Man in Black, drowning out the sounds of rocks and falling Zs.

The kids both looked back at me as if their mom had completely lost her mind. Which she may have. In the apocalypse, you gotta find your bliss where you can, so I just shrugged and started singing along.

“This family is so fucked,” Greta said.

“No shit,” Charlie agreed.

***

It took us an hour to get back onto I-40, and we had highwaymen on our ass the whole way, so we didn’t risk stopping the caravan until we were down out of the pass and onto the straighter stretch on the Tennessee side.

“Hold up!” Critter barked over the radio. The interference was gone since we had no mountains and ridges between us anymore, but the signal sounded weak and I had to wonder how long we could rely on the walkies for communication.

The convoy came to a slow stop and Critter began barking orders for his men to go up and down the line and take inventory of the damage. We may have made it out of the mountains alive, but it didn’t mean we hadn’t taken some bad hits.

“Come on,” I said to Elsbeth. “I want to see what the problems are.”

“You need me to come with?” Elsbeth asked, her feet propped up on the dashboard as she relaxed back into her seat. “Why you need me, Long Pork? You’re missing an arm, not a leg.”

“I’ll go with you,” Stella said.

“Cool,” I grinned. “Charlie can get in the driver’s seat in case we have to take off fast.”

“Charlie drives just fine,” Elsbeth agreed. “Get your butt up here and take the chair.”

Stella and I got out of the Explorer and smiled at each other.

“She’s in a funny mood,” I said.

“I think she’s glad to be back in the action,” Stella said. “It keeps her mind off Julio.”

“True,” I agreed. Losing Julio had been hard for her no matter if she wanted to admit it or not. “Nothing like killing some crazies and Zs to keep one’s mind off tragedy.”

We walked along in silence the rest of the way as I studied the damage to the trucks and SUVs from the Zs and the rocks. People were out of their vehicles and doing the same while also taking the time for bathroom breaks along the side of the interstate. Supervised bathroom breaks, of course, since the grass was pretty high and no one wanted to accidentally squat on a Z and have their ass bitten off.

Critter’s people had things pretty much under control until we reached the last two vehicles. Eight men and women had their rifles up and pointed at a double cab pickup and Volvo station wagon.