Cities of the Dead: Stories From The Zombie Apocalypse (4 page)

And, anyway, Paul had tons of canned food and bottled water in his basement, enough to last a couple of months, I’d guess, if he didn’t have to share. He gave us a couple of cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and some canned peaches to take back to the rest, and when the zombies in the back moved on to wherever it was they go when they get tired, Carla and I slipped back out and made our way back to the pub.

“Hey, food,” Steve Douchenozzle said after we got back in and put the cans on a table.

Kyle used to say this was the Zombie Apocalypse. I don’t know. Zombies, sure. Apocalypse? I don’t know what that means, not really, anyway. End of the world kind of stuff, but the world’s not exactly ending. Sun comes up every day, just like it always did. Out there are other people just like me, just like my group, hiding in some building waiting for someone to figure out just what happened and make it better. That’s probably what my Dad is doing; probably why he didn’t come back like he said: he’s out there trying to fix this. He’s good at fixing things and he was in the Army before he met Mom, so he knows a thing or two about fighting.

I just hope he’s not mad at me for locking myself out of the house
.

Killing C
ountry Music

Nashville, Tennessee – Day 117

Chase Montgomery had come to Nashville with his discount-store acoustic guitar, broke-down pleather cowboy boots and Levi’s jean jacket when he was nineteen years-old, intent on becoming the next country music star. In the fifteen years since then, he’d written thirty-nine songs, cut two self-released albums, played uncountable honky-tonk gigs, and killed four of the biggest country music stars. Three of them with head shots from over fifty yards.

For the first time in his life, Chase felt like he was doing what he had always been meant to do. That it was killing zombies didn't phase him. In fact, it never occurred to him that the one thing in the universe he was apparently cut out to do was to rid the world of the undead. Had you asked him several months earlier, he’d have told you he was still destined to be a country music great, but he might have also snorted out a laugh and added, “The greatest undiscovered country music writer, ever.”

Chase had ended up like 99.9% of the star-seeking wannabes, working in the service economy at a job that was flexible enough to allow him a part-time music career. But the job washing and prepping new cars for delivery had turned into a sales job, and that had turned into a manager’s position, and before he realized what had happened to his career has a country musician, he was a married man living in the suburbs with a wife and two little girls. He also had an American Vintage Reissue of a 1957 Fender Stratocaster with a maple fret board, a 1959 Les Paul designed Gibson, and the Washburn acoustic-electric he'd bought a few months after moving to Nashville, his first name brand guitar. He also had two banjos, a mandolin and a collection of amps and other equipment that he played in his sound-proofed garage on Saturday nights with friends with similarly de-railed country music careers: the Suburbs Garage Band.

That had all changed in January, after Los Angeles had been quarantined. Nobody in, nobody out. The California Army National Guard had been deployed in a perimeter around the city and the Air Force flew combat air patrols over it twenty-four/seven. Some sort of plague, said the papers.

But then it hit New York City, Philadelphia, Detroit, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and dozens of other cities in February. While there were still newspapers to read and cable news networks to watch, the word was that the world was quickly succumbing to a fast-moving strain of highly-contagious influenza. Moscow had been surrounded by the Russian Army. Paris was burning. China had closed its borders. The plague spread rapidly and cities across America imposed martial law, interstate travel stopped and by mid-March downtown Nashville was empty.

Chase’s neighborhood in the suburbs had closed to outsiders before the electricity failed, but only just barely, with everyone linking together fences hastily bought at home supply stores and placed in desperation. Since then, they’d had packs of zombies come shuffling up the streets trying to get in, but they were dispatched fairly easily. Everyone had a gun, and everyone knew how to shoot. After a couple of weeks of pooling food resources, Chase’s group of friends had decided to form foraging parties, and they had made every-other-day raids on some shopping center or such, somewhere, shooting up hordes of zombies and making off with whatever non-perishables they could before the sounds of gunfire attracted too many of the undead.

It was on one such raid that Chase had killed Treat Hemingway, a legendary Nashville session guitarist and songwriter. He’d penned nineteen number one singles and co-written fourteen others, and had played guitar in studio or on tour for just about every country music star of note.

“Wow, that’s Treat Hemingway,” Chase said as he stared through a pair of binoculars down Hillsboro Pike. “He’s a freaking zombie.”

Chase adjusted the focus on the binoculars. Treat was standing with a horde other zombies, all of them with blood spatter on their chest and arms, mucus drool foaming out of their mouths. The skin on some of them was peeling off, exposing cheek or finger bones. A few had the deformed mouths of what Chase termed "super-biters." The gang of undead shifted and shuffled in an asymmetrical pattern in the parking lot outside the Bluebird Café, a vision that was more unreal than undead seen through the glass lenses. Chase pulled them from his eyes.

“Who’s Treat Hemingway?” Randy Mills asked, shifting his Remington rifle in his hands and raising it up to look through the scope.

“Dude in the purple-and-white plaid short-sleeve button-down shirt, with all the leather cords around his left wrist,” Chase said. “He’s mine.”

Chase unslung his Winchester Model 70 and sighted down through the scope at the cluster of walking dead.

“But who is he?” Randy asked.

“Just one of the more successful songwriters in the history of country music. Guy’s written like twenty number one songs for everyone from Garth Brooks to George Strait to Sara Evans. The guy’s like the golden goose, fart’s out hit singles while reading the paper during his morning dump.”

“You know him?”

“Not really. Met him in the Bluebird six or seven years back for a songwriter’s night; gave him a song,” Chase said, placing the crosshairs on Treat’s forehead. “Never heard from him.”

“Which song?”

“Tears in My Whiskey.”

“Damn, that song should’ve gone number one ten times over,” Randy said, placing his crosshairs smack-dab in the middle of Treat’s chest.

Right then the mezzo alto whine of ATV engines began forming in the distance, rising to a crescendo a few moments later as the four- and three-wheelers rolled down the side road and turned onto the main pike artery. They stopped and grumbled in the middle of the street, the sound of mechanical panthers purring in syncopated four-four time. Chase took his head away from the scope and glanced over at the group.

Gottlieb waved at him to join up while Percy pointed back toward the area of the Whole Foods market that had been the object of the raid, and to the large crowd of zombies moving toward the small motorcade.

“Let’s go, gentlemen!” Gottlieb yelled, turning and also pointing to the approaching gaggle of undead.

Chase nodded once and looked back through the scope at Treat Hemingway, for a moment almost feeling sorry for the … thing. Chase pulled the trigger and felt the stock snug sharply into his shoulder, watched Treat’s head explode in a spray of gray matter and pink mist. A half-second later, Randy’s Remington sounded off and the zombie just to the left of Treat’s collapsing body jerked violently around as the side of its skull was blown off. Both men lowered their rifles and regarded each other.

"How is it you always get the famous ones?"

Chase shrugged. "You didn't know who he was."

"True. But I'll bet Gott and Percy do," Randy said. "You've got talent or luck or something."

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” Chase said, striding quickly toward the waiting ATVs.

That night, Chase couldn’t get the thought of killing Treat Hemingway out of his mind. Chase had killed dozens of zombies, but Treat was the first one he’d killed that he had known as a person. Not known, personally, as a person, but known as a person he had actually met. Famous in Nashville in the behind-the-scenes way certain rich-and-powerful people in any industry are: Treat Hemingway could make-or-break your career if he cared to. It wasn’t until after Chase had killed Treat that Chase realized how much Treat had lived a life Chase would have loved to live: wrote when he wanted, recorded when he wanted, toured when he wanted, and wasn’t in any way, shape or form in the public eye, forced to give interviews or photo ops or make appearances to assure his success.

People would die for that kind of artistic freedom.

A couple of days later, Chase was riding shotgun on the back of a four-wheeler, his Winchester laying idle on his lap, his eyes roving the scenery for undead. The sound of engines brought the zombies out in the way a hit song could fill a dance floor, and neither Chase nor any of his friends could figure out why. Somehow, they knew the sound of machines and knew that meant living humans. Dogs barking, birds chirping, the wind rustling the branches of a tree, none of that attracted notice.

“There’s a ton of ‘em up here just milling around in the parking lot,” Gottlieb said over the walkie, after the convoy had come to a halt and the vehicles had been hidden. “Must be two-hundred of ‘em.”

Chase looked around at the others in the group. “Shit, do we even have two-hundred rounds of ammo with us?”

Chase had ten rounds for his Winchester; a clip in his Sig Sauer P226. And, he had a Gurkha knife he hated to use because of the blood spatter: zombie blood stank with a smell not unlike that of skunk spray. After a second, the others in the party each gave an indication that the size of the zombie grouping was more than they could handle. Killing a zombie with a gun required a head-shot, and nobody could make a head-shot easily. The chances worsened dramatically if either the shooter or zombie were moving, and all bets were off if both were.

Chase pressed the walkie button, “Forget it, Gott, that’s more than we can deal with today. We’ll have to find something to raid on the way back.”

“Okay, we’re coming back,” Gottlieb said.

But he and Randy Mills didn’t come back. The group overstayed its agreed-upon wait time by ten minutes, certain that the two would make it back. After half-an-hour, most in the group were bordering on the fear that the zombies had somehow tracked them to where they waited. Chase looked around at the group, felt the nervous uncertainty of fear spreading through them. The world was quiet. Zombies were quiet.

“Well, I’m going to go see if I can find out what happened to them,” Chase said.

Barney Stilton sagged with disbelief. He was the fifty-four-year old regional manager for a shoppers club store chain, and it had been his idea to try to infiltrate the regional distribution center that was the target of the day’s operation. His idea meant he should go with Chase.

“I’m with you,” Barney said, stepping off the ATV and walking over to Chase. “If they somehow got in the building, they might need my help getting out.”

There was a long pause among the remaining men, each of them searching for a reason to step forward, for a reason not to. Nobody liked leaving the safety of the larger group and its envelope of firepower. Travis Cheadle nodded and stood up off the seat of his Arctic Cat TRV 700 and nodded at Cal Bosworth to move up to the driver’s position. Travis tapped the magazine of his FN P-90  machine gun.

“We might need something with a little volume if we’re going to get them out of there,” Travis said.

Chase shrugged at the rest of the group. “Alright, move off down the road to the next intersection, if it’s safe. We’ll be on the walkie, but listen for the calls, too.”

The three men moved away from the little caravan, picking their way cautiously through the trees and undergrowth of the woods between Old Hickory Road and the distribution center. For whatever reason, zombies tended to stay near areas with buildings, avoiding wilderness. Not that the stretch of woods Chase, Travis and Barney were stepping through was wilderness; it was merely undeveloped land in suburban Nashville, waiting for someone to turn it into a housing development, shopping center or nature preserve. Half-way through they heard the low growling of the ATV engines as the rest of their party rode off to the next rally point.

Barney gave Chase a quick glance, and Chase put his right pointer finger across his lips: stay quiet. They came to a stop on the edge of the woods and each man took a knee, weapon at the ready. Across an acre of asphalt behind a ten-foot high chain-link fence sat the regional distribution center. Milling around the loading dock were zombies, scores of them, some of them wearing the uniform of the chain store.

“Didn’t you guys close down operations before the plague struck here?” Chase asked, scanning the landscape through his binoculars.

“Yeah, why?” Barney asked.

“There’s ten or twenty people down there wearing your store’s uniform,” Chase said, pausing his scan on a woman who had likely been in her twenties before turning undead, her long brown hair caked with grime, her red shirt torn and stained, her face ashen, the skin taut. She might have been pretty, once.