Z-Burbia 4: Cannibal Road (20 page)

“What doesn’t make sense is why they’d send Zs in to kill us,” Charlie said. “Don’t these fucks want our meat? If Zs bite us or kill us then the meat is tainted.”

We turned and looked at him.

“What?” he asked. “It’s a valid point.”

“You going canny now?” Greta smirked.

“Shut up,” Charlie frowned.

“Can we focus on the Zs, please,” Stella said.

“These fatties are the biggest, the baddest, and the most brutal killers to come out of the apocalypse!” Mr. Flips continued. “They have eaten hundreds, killed hundreds more, and are unstoppable! Can the Stanfords make it past twelve of the scariest creatures on Earth? We shall see!”

The spectators were cheering, jeering, booing, hollering, and some were singing. Singing.

“We are the cannibals, my friends! And we’ll keep on eating until the end!’

Jesus…

“Four of us, twelve of them,” Stella said as the Zs started to walk towards us.

None of them was in a hurry, which was surprising, but then they weren’t used to their prey getting away, so why hurry?

“What’s the plan?” Stella asked.

“Take out the legs,” I said. “They are too big and strong for us to kill outright. And we want to avoid those spikes and blades and shit. Hit them below the knees and their size will take them down.”

“The bigger they are, the deader they fall,” Charlie said.

“Ready?” Stella asked, tucking her pistol away and grabbing her baton with both hands. “Spread out.”

We spread ourselves across the road and eyed the Zs. All we had to do was each take down three and we could just keep going. If they were crippled, they couldn’t pursue and that’s all that mattered.

“Come on, Dozen!” Mr. Flips yelled. “IT’S FEEDING TIME!”

Apparently, that was their cue because the twelve massive Zs came at us hard as Mr. Flips’ words echoed between the walls. My intellectual curiosity wondered how they had trained and conditioned the Zs. It seemed counter to everything we’d known about the Zs. If they could be trained, what was really going on up in those rotting brains of theirs?

“Get out of your head, baby,” Stella said. “Kill time.”

“Right,” I nodded as I held my baton tight enough to make my knuckles pop.

Next tune was Iron Butterfly and that always kick ass song of theirs, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” I totally love “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. The long, seventeen minute version, not the radio edit. The radio edit is just annoying because it doesn’t really capture the spirit of the…

“Jace!” Stella snapped.

“Sorry.”

The Zs didn’t divide themselves into four groups to take us each on, but instead ran straight for Greta. Whether it was conditioning or instinct, they saw her as the weakest one for some reason. Yeah, bad move.

Greta was on the far right side and ran towards us; drawing the Zs our way then she juked and ran back towards the wall, forcing the Zs to turn quickly in an awkward arc. I wanted to scream at her that she’d get herself trapped by the wall, but in seconds, she was running past and ahead of the Zs. The fucking stupid undead morons all turned their backs on the rest of us in order to chase after Greta.

My girl was brilliant.

“Now!” I shouted and ran towards the closest Zs.

Stella and Charlie were right there with me and we didn’t hesitate for a single second as we began to smash the backs of the Zs’ calves, ripping rotten flesh and cracking long dead bones.

I took out the left knee of my first Z and it toppled over right there on the spot. I sidestepped it and whacked another Z, shattering its lower leg in a mess of black blood and grey flesh. Yellow bone poked out of the calf and the entire bottom leg came right off when the surprised Z tried to turn around and get me. Fucking dipshit pivoted on its broken leg. It collapsed next to the first Z I’d crippled.

An undead hand reached out and grabbed me by the ankle and I nearly fell on my face. My instinctive reaction was to reach out to stop my fall, but I had my baton in my hand, so instead, I jammed the point into the skull of the second crippled Z, killing it instantly, and stopped myself from taking a face plant.

That brief hiccup gave one of the other Zs still standing time to close the distance between us and it was its putrid hands that I felt on my shoulders as I tried to get my balance and right myself. Did I scream when I felt those hands? You bet your fucking ass I did!

“Stella!” I shouted as I tried to twist and get free. “Stella!”

With only one hand, I was basically helpless because if I took my weight off the baton, I’d just collapse onto the two Zs at my feet, one of which was still undead and kicking. I tried to kick loose of the hand that gripped my ankle, but I could tell it was not going to give anytime soon.

“Stella!”

“Hold on!” she yelled.

The Z that had my shoulders was trying to get in at my neck and I basically shook and shuddered as if I was having a seizure to keep its jagged teeth from ripping into my jugular. I could hear the crowd cheering and cheering, their voices rising in anticipation of something.

Whack!

I began to tumble backwards as the weight of the Z that had me started to fall. I pushed hard with my legs so I wouldn’t just crumple underneath. The added force of my body, with the top heavy musculature of the Z, sent its torso bending back so fast that I could hear and feel its spine snap right above its pelvis. It bent in half and I landed on it hard.

This meant that those glass shards and hunks of metal in its chest went right into my back.

“Mother fucker!” I yelled as Stella pulled me free almost instantly. “Fuck!”

She spun about and smacked a Z across its iron jaw. No, seriously, the fucking thing had iron bolted to its jaw. The monster’s head whipped about, but because of the iron coupling around its neck, the blow didn’t snap anything, except Stella’s baton.

“Fucking asshole!” she yelled then shoved me out of the way as she planted a foot on the shoulder of the Z I had just been almost impaled on, grabbed its still moving hand and pulled with all her might. The arm yanked free and she turned to the iron jawed Z and went to town.

All I could do was stand there and stare as she beat the ever loving undead shit out of that thing. With the saw blade arm gripped by the bicep, Stella shredded the leg tendons of the iron jawed Z, sending it to the road.

“Jace! Behind you!”

I turned and ducked as two arms swiped over my head. The saw blades on the fucking thing’s arms took off the last few hairs I had left on my head (I hadn’t had a chance to shave my scalp in a while because of all the busy staying alive and shit). I could feel blood trickling down my scalp as I rolled and tumbled across the road and out of the thing’s reach. The wounds on my back screamed in protest and I felt what had been small slits tear and rip into larger gashes.

Fun.

“Go right!”

“I am!”

“Your other right!”

“Thisis my other right, asshole!”

“Oh, sorry! Go left!”

“Just shut the fuck up and let me kill these fuckers!”

“I’m ahead! I’ve killed three!”

“I just killed four!”

“So much for taking out their legs!”

“Fuck their legs! These fucking pieces of shit done messed with kids from Whispering Pines!”

“Whispering Pines, fuck the what!”

So...sounded like the kids were doing just fine.

I got to my feet, as Stella was about to be tackled by a Z behind her, her attention so focused on slashing and slicing the Z before her with her new weapon.

“Look out!” I screamed as I ran and tackled the Z about the waist, taking a couple spikes to my chest.

Luckily, the angle didn’t let the spikes go deep, they mainly scratched across my pecs adding to the assortment of minor wounds that I was covered in.

With the Z on the ground, I avoided the sharp crap on its back and planted my knee right on its spine, grabbed the iron coupling about its neck and used that as a handle to lift and smash, lift and smash, crushing the fucking Z’s head into the dirt covered pavement of Cannibal Road.

I’m sure there’s a country song in there somewhere.

The crowd went silent.

Slowly, painfully, I got to my feet and looked about in a panic to see what had happened. There was Stella, her saw blade arm gripped in both hands, chest heaving. Charlie and Greta were up against the wall and I thought two Zs had gotten them, but they shoved the undead beasts away and the corpses fell to the ground.

We acknowledged we were all still okay with a couple nods, and then glanced up at the walls.

“Well...that was surprising,” Mr. Flips said. “And slightly disappointing.”

The crowd was still deathly quiet and I did my best to ignore the ominous silence that enveloped everything as the last notes of Iron Butterfly echoed through the road.

“Come on,” I said. “We keep going.”

“Folks, we have just witnessed something never done in the history of Cannibal Road,” Mr. Flips announced. “We’ve had contestants evade the Deadly Dozen and just keep going, we’ve had contestants turn around and run their asses off until they were caught and killed, we’ve even had contestants off themselves out of pure cowardice and terror.” He paused and took a deep breath. “But we have never had one of the Dozen killed, let alone all of them taken down by a family of survies. It’s a sad, sad night here on the road.”

The silence started to turn and soon the spectators were booing and hissing at us. Then the rain of stuff came down. Pretty sure, there was human waste in the rain of stuff. As well as rotten this and rotten that.

As disgusting as it was, I had to wonder whom these people were that they brought rotten stuff and shit with them. How does that even work? “Hey, Bob, you got your bag of shit for tonight?” “You know it, Steve! Hit the Fergusons’ outhouse this morning. And, guess what? Found a dead skunk by the side of the road!” “Dude! Gimme some of that skunk!” “Get your own fucking dead skunk, Bob! You’re always trying to take my rotten stuff! FUCK YOU, BOB!”

Or something like that.

So...plenty of gross crap came falling on our heads.

“Keep going,” I said. “We keep going.”

There we were, four Stanfords, three with batons and one with a severed Z arm covered in saw blades, pistols tucked away in waistbands. We were filthy, coated with Z blood and the shit that was being thrown at us, but we didn’t stop. We kept going.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Mr. Flips announced. “I have just been handed a note that says we are deviating from out normal routine and getting right to the individual gang portion of the show! This is highly irregular, but here on Cannibal Road, we like to think we are flexible and open-minded. Change is not something to fear, but to embrace. Am I right?”

The spectators changed their tune from booing us to cheering for whatever change was about to happen. The rain of shit didn’t stop, though.

“I have here a top hat filled with the names of our illustrious gangs!” Mr. Flips continued. “I will draw one of those names out of this fine piece of millinery, which came from my own collection, I might add. I hope you lovely folks are ready to get down there and get dirty with the survies! And, speaking of getting dirty, if we could stop throwing poop, that would be great. It’ll just make it worse for our own people. Alright?”

The rain of shit slackened, but did not stop completely. It became more of a drizzle of shit; a slight mist of feces; a soft poop shower.

“Thank you, one and all!” Mr. Flips called out. “And now, the moment you have all been waiting for the past minute!” The man stopped talking for a moment, but we kept running, hoping that there was an end to the gauntlet of insanity. “The Jackals! It’s the Jackals, folks! Bungee Betty and her crew will be the first to try to capture, alive hopefully, the four survies making a break for it right this second! Let’s wish Bungee Betty luck as she tries to secure her gang’s meals for the next week!”

The next week? Jesus, how many people do they eat in a month? How many people have they eaten in a year? If a family of four will only feed one gang for one week, that’s some serious cannibal menu planning math there. Fucking A.

“I Love Rock And Roll” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts started to play. Which I thought was kind of cheating since no one can hear that song and not want to sing along. Total psychological warfare.

“Jace!” that gravelly voiced Bungee Betty yelled. “Jace! Come back, Jace!”

I risked a glance over my shoulder and nearly crapped my pants. Behind us were about ten people, all stripped to the waist with brown body paint covering their torsos. From their necks to the tips of their fingers, they were painted to look like they were covered in fur.

However, that was the easy part to deal with. The really, truly, seriously fucked up part was that they wore real dog heads as masks. Some of them had just the snouts strapped around their mouths, with more brown paint covering the rest of their faces, while others had actual dog heads split open and yanked down over their own heads.

Who fucking does that?

In the lead was a woman dressed in a brown rubber suit. A fucking rubber suit. Like a latex gimp suit, but no gimp mask, just more fucking brown paint. She held a long bungee cord in each hand, but instead of the classic black hooks, it looked like she had added razor sharp barbs.

Awesome. Just. Fucking. Awesome.

Charlie glanced back as well and frowned.

“Why the fuck is she dressed that way?” he asked. “That makes no sense.”

“Because the rest of this fucking nightmare makes soooooo much more sense,” Greta snapped.

“Just run!” Stella growled.

We ran.

But we were exhausted from the past few days, from the long walk out of Knoxville, from the fighting already tonight. We were at the ends of our ropes. My legs burned from the exertion of just keeping up a slow, steady jog. I tried to push harder, run faster, but I just didn’t have it in me. From the way my family kept at the same pace, I knew they didn’t have it in them either.

“Jace! Just stop, Jace!” Bungee Betty shouted. “It’ll all be over…”

I didn’t stop, but Charlie did. He pulled his 9mm and fired, putting a bullet right between Bungee Betty’s latex covered breasts. The pistol clicked empty and Charlie shook his head as he hurled the empty weapon at the rest of the Jackals. I slid to a stop and grabbed at Charlie’s arm, but he refused to move.