Z-Burbia 4: Cannibal Road (13 page)

“It was pretty shitty, yeah,” I said as my wife helped me to my feet. My shoulder was on fire and I couldn’t hide the wince. I copped to the pain before Stella could even ask. “I must have slept in one position all night. Should stop hurting once we get moving.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to be so easy,” Greta said as she stood close to one of the front windows. “The street is full of Zs.”

“How many?” I asked as I slowly and carefully rotated my right shoulder.

“Fifty, at least,” Great said.

“Looks like more than that,” Charlie said as he stepped up next to her.

“I said at least fifty which implies there could be more,” Greta said.

“Stop,” Stella warned.

The kids shut up.

“We go out the back,” Elsbeth said. She was holding a bucket and looking about the diner. “What should I do with this? Don’t seem nice to leave a bucket of piss for those people upstairs since they were kind enough not to kill us or eat us last night.”

“Right neighborly of them,” I said with a thick southern accent.

Elsbeth stared at me, holding out the bucket. “You deal with it, Long Pork. I need to scout the alley out back.”

“There’s an alley out back?” I asked as I took the piss bucket from Elsbeth and set it on the floor. Might as well take care of my needs. “Alleys are always good.”

I relieved myself and then wondered what to do with the piss. While everyone was busy doing other things, I casually scooted the bucket under one of the tables and slowly inched a couple of chairs in front of it.

“I saw that,” Stella said. “Just go dump it down one of the drains.”

“It’ll stink up the plumbing,” I said.

“Then use your big brain and figure something out,” Stella snapped, “but leaving a full piss bucket under that table is not a solution.”

“Okay, okay, jeez,” I said. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Bring it with,” Charlie said, “as decoy scent.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I replied. “Maybe we could fill up some water balloons with piss and lob them in different directions if we get cornered.”

The three women in the room stared at me as if I had gone insane while my son started looking through drawers and behind the diner’s front counter for balloons.

“What?” I asked.

“We are not bringing piss balloons with us,” Stella said. “Even if they might come in handy, we can’t risk them breaking and one of us stinking of piss.”

“Plus, how are you going to fill them?” Greta asked. “Did you think of that?”

I looked at Charlie and he looked at me then we both looked at Elsbeth as she stood there laughing instead of scouting the alley as she said she would.

“Piss balloons,” she snorted, shaking her head back and forth. “Long Pork and Long Pork junior. You two are funny.”

“So no piss balloons?” Charlie asked.

“No piss balloons,” I said.

Which meant I had a bucket of piss to deal with still.

“Just leave it,” the man’s voice said from the shadows. “I’ll clean it up.”

I set the bucket down and peered into the shadows of the back hallway.

“I’m Jace Stanford,” I said as I held out my hand and started to walk towards him. The distinct sound of a pump being racked on a shotgun stopped me. “And you get to stay a mystery.”

“Manchester,” the man said as he slowly walked forward. His dark skinned face was crisscrossed with white scars and there were obvious rope marks across his throat. “My name is Manchester. This was my diner and I have been here since the first day.”

“Damn,” I said. “That’s a long time to hold out against the Zs.”

“The Zs? That what you call them?” he asked then nodded. “Makes sense. But the zombies haven’t been the problem. The people have.”

“Those orange crazies?” Charlie asked.

“Them? Nah,” Manchester laughed. “They’re easy. I toss them some ramen now and then and they leave me alone.” He pointed at all the Vols memorabilia and sighed. “This used to be a popular place for the college kids. Those Orangies aren’t all college kids, since they do like to recruit, but a lot of them were. They leave me alone out of Tennessee pride and respect, I guess.”

“Lucky you,” Stella said. “Thank you again for letting us stay here last night. We will be gone in just a few minutes.”

“Not out front,” Manchester said. “You have to go through the alleyway. Once you get out there, you run like hell. Keep going until you hit 18th. Then you turn left, and keep running until you get up to the railroad tracks. Follow the tracks. That’s your best way out of Knoxville.”

“We have some friends we need to find,” I said.

“Don’t bother with them,” Manchester replied. “Take care of yourselves. You want out of Knoxville as soon as possible. Not safe for outsiders here.”

“Doesn’t seem safe for anyone,” Charlie said.

“We’ll be fine,” Manchester said as he glanced quickly up at the ceiling. “There’s a lot of insanity, but in that, is order. I know how it works, but you don’t. Get to the tracks and get out of town. Do not stop for anyone. Do not stop for anything. Even if you hear your friends calling your names, you keep going. Some groups keep ‘em alive to lure ya in.”

“Groups?” Stella asked.

“Groups,” Manchester nodded. “The Orangies, the Professors, the Sisters. And don’t get me started on the Orderlies.”

“Yikes,” I said. “Which ones made the billboards?”

“The Sisters,” Manchester said. “Sorority Village. Stay away from there. They don’t like men folk and they’ll take the women to recruit or eat.”

“Eat?” I asked. “So they are one of the canny gangs?”

“Canny gangs? Oh, you mean Cannibal Road,” Manchester replied. “The Sisters may eat folks now and again, but they aren’t one of the Cannibal Road gangs. That’s a whole other mess of trouble. Do what I told you and get to the tracks, and get out of town. Stay to the tracks.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks,” I replied. “We’ll get out of town.”

Manchester shook his head. “Y’all think I’m crazy. I’m not. You want to see crazy? Stay on 18th and go check out the medical center. The Orderlies will show you crazy.”

“I think we’ve had our fill of the local color,” I said. “We’ll turn at 18th and get to the tracks.”

“Good deal,” Manchester smiled. “Now, I hate to ask it, but y’all have got to leave. I need to do some repairs and clean up so if the Orangies come by they’ll see things just how they like them.”

“Sure thing,” I responded as I looked towards Stella and gave her the “time to get the fuck out of here” look. She gave me the “no fucking shit” look. “Thank you for your kindness. Good luck, Mr. Manchester.”

“Good luck to you as well,” Manchester said as he stepped out of the way so we could file past and into the back hallway.

We got to the emergency exit and Elsbeth took point. She opened it slowly, peered outside then smiled back at us.

“Clear,” she whispered and we followed her outside into the morning light.

I wouldn’t exactly call where we were an “alley.” It was more like a dirt trail behind a bunch of buildings. Which meant the space was narrow and we had to walk single file to keep from banging into old trashcans and piles of trash.

One of those piles of trash had a hand sticking out from it. We didn’t stop to see if the hand was attached to anything, living or undead.

Elsbeth kept us going at her steady pace, which for the rest of us was like a forced march/sprint. We Stanfords were a sweaty mess by the time we reached 18th and found ourselves facing a good sized group of Zs to the right. In the exact direction, we needed to go.

“Go left and circle around?” I whispered to Elsbeth.

“We can make it,” she whispered back.

We both looked at Stella and she nodded.

“Get us through,” I said to Elsbeth.

It was a bit of an undead picnic we stumbled upon, so luckily, the Zs were occupied eating some unlucky bastard and didn’t take notice as we crossed the street and put as much distance between us and them as we could. Step by careful step, we inched our way down the sidewalk.

It would have all been good, except Greta took a look over at the munching Zs just as we passed them and gasped.

“No!” she shouted and started to run across the street. Right at the Zs. “NO!”

“Greta!” I yelled as I chased after her.

That got the Zs’ attention and all of them stopped in mid-bite, turned their heads slowly towards us, and hissed. Flesh hung from jagged teeth, bits of bloody clothes and skin stuck to the putrid cheeks of the monsters. It was a scene we’d all been witness to a hundred times, so I was confused as to why my daughter was screaming her head off and going after a group of Zs we had been only seconds from skirting around.

Greta started screaming as she lifted her 9mm and fired.

One after the other, Z heads exploded and undead bodies dropped. Greta emptied her pistol, ejected the magazine, slapped in a new one, and was already firing again before I could catch up to her.

“Greta!” I yelled. “Stop!”

But she didn’t stop until she’d emptied the second magazine and stood in front of a pile of unmoving Zs. She tucked the pistol into her waistband and started to claw at the corpses to get at what they had been eating. I tried to pull her away, but my one arm was not match enough for her teenage fury.

“Stop!” Elsbeth snapped as she pushed past me and grabbed Greta by the arm, yanking her back three feet in one move. “Stop it!”

“Greta? What is wrong with you?” Stella spat. “You could have been killed! Or gotten us killed!”

Greta’s eyes were wide and filled with madness. She barely registered that any of us were there as she struggled against Elsbeth’s grip. All she wanted to do was get back to that pile and free whatever victim was underneath.

“Ah, shit,” Charlie said as he looked at the pile. “I know those cowboy boots.”

We all looked at the blood-caked cowboy boot that stuck out from under a Z. It didn’t mean a thing to me, but it meant something to Charlie. And obviously meant something to Greta as Charlie pushed between her and Elsbeth and took his sister in his arms.

“So sorry, Sis,” he said. “I am so, so sorry. I know how this feels, trust me.”

“What is going on?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Stella said. “I think that’s Jordan Jensen. He was kinda her boyfriend.”

“Oh...crap,” I said.

“Nobody’s boyfriend now,” Elsbeth said. “Just meat.”

She knelt down and pulled the Zs off of the body. I was glad Greta had her face buried in her brother’s chest, because no one should have had to see what Elsbeth uncovered.

The boy was mangled almost beyond recognition, but I could see a resemblance to the kid Charlie had pointed out to me back in Critter’s Holler. His throat was ripped out and he was missing his entire abdomen, plus a few ribs. His body cavity looked like it had been scooped out with a shovel and what should have been inside was outside and spread all about. The Zs had really gone to town on the poor boy.

Elsbeth took a blade and shoved it through the boy’s temple so he wouldn’t come back. She wiped the blade as she stood and looked down the street.

“Can’t use this way no more,” she said as she pulled out her other blade. “We keep going across until we can cut up to the tracks like the Mr. Manchester man said.”

“Manchester said not to keep going,” I replied. “Or we run into the medical center. Apparently, that is a bad thing.”

Elsbeth pointed up the street at the large quantity of Zs that had started to fill the road.

“That is a bad thing too, Long Pork,” she responded. “I can see that bad thing; I can’t see the medical center bad thing. We keep going until we can cut up. If we get to the medical center, we deal with that bad thing when we see it.”

“Jace, we can’t stay here,” Stella said. “We have to go.”

“I know,” I said. “I just hate to be walking right into a nightmare.”

“Already there, Long Pork,” Elsbeth said. “The nightmare doesn’t stop. Ever.”

She certainly wasn’t wrong there.

“Fine. Go,” I said.

Elsbeth took off between the buildings as Stella pushed Charlie and Greta after her. I brought up the rear and risked one last look at the dead boy, then up the street at the very large gathering of Zs.

“Fucking assholes,” I muttered as I ducked between the buildings and stayed close to my family.

The buildings started to get further apart and we suddenly found ourselves looking out at a wide parking lot and a couple of tall, white buildings. My guess was that we found the medical center just like we weren’t supposed to.

“Those are some clean buildings,” Charlie whispered as we looked at the stark white walls across the parking lot. “You ever see buildings that clean since Z-Day?”

“Nope,” I replied. Stella shook her head, but didn’t say anything as she was busy holding Greta to her as my daughter struggled not to sob. “Somebody must really like power washing in the apocalypse.”

A large sign said “Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center” in big capital letters, but it was the ten bodies hanging from the sign that really got our attention.

“Are those…?” Stella asked as she gently pushed Greta from her and peered across the parking lot.

“Critter’s men,” I said. “I think that one in the middle is Gary Wilkes. Shit.”

“They turned,” Elsbeth said. “They’re Zs now.”

That was obvious by the way that the bodies twisted and thrashed as they hung from thick chains threaded through their chests and thighs to keep them in place. The less than tactful part of me wanted to go up to the one on the end, pull it back and then let it fall against the next one like those desktop clackers. That would have been cool.

But not cool. Totally not cool. No one in their right mind would do that.

Still…

“Jace,” Stella hissed. “Get out of your head.”

“Right. Sorry,” I replied. “Can we go around?”

Elsbeth was busy studying the surroundings and plotting our route, which was obvious by the way she held her mouth and had her eyes narrowed. We’d been around the woman enough to know the way her mind worked.

“We go there,” Elsbeth said and pointed to the northeast corner of the first big building. “We run fast to the corner and then wait. If no one sees us, we run across that road and keep going to the railroad tracks. Everyone ready?”