Z-Burbia (Book 3): Estate Of The Dead Page 2

  Dawn light crests over the ridge of the cove the chopper is tucked away in, lighting up the man and his friends. Like the woman, they are all covered in blood. One of them is carrying what looks like a doll’s arm. But as Dell watches blood drip from the end, he quickly thinks it didn’t ever belong to a doll.

  He knows for certain when the woman carrying the arm jams it into her mouth and starts chewing.

  “Holy fuck,” Dell says. “I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

  He starts to lift the chopper, but it tilts wildly, unbalanced on one side. Dell looks over and sees that a whole crowd has snuck up on him while he was busy watching the woman and the people behind her. A blood covered, gore smeared mob has the skids pinned as they surround the chopper. Dell thinks he can get some lift and maybe shake them off, so he pulls up on the stick.

  He’s wrong.

  Everything goes to shit fast and the chopper begins to spin wildly. The rear rotor slams into the part of the mob that aren’t caught in the skids, spraying the landscape with blood. Dell tries not to puke as guts splatter the windshield. He fails.

  The tail catches on a short pine and the chopper tips, sending the main rotor into the ground. The blades snap in half as the helicopter spins and falls to its side. Stunned, covered in his own sick, and terrified by the insanity about him, Dell pulls his pistol, kicks the side door open, and hauls himself up out of the smoking chopper.

  The area around him is covered in blood. But that doesn’t stop any of the people from stepping right through it on their way to him.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you fucks?” Dell shouts as he empties his pistol into the mob. He sees the slugs rip open chests and hit legs and he watches the people fall. Then he watches them get back up. He keeps pulling the trigger, the sound of the empty pistol echoing along with the moans and groans of the mob.

  Dell fumbles at his belt, trying desperately to find the extra magazines for his pistol. His hand finds one just as a hand grips his ankle. He screams and looks down. Below him is the first woman. Or half of her at least. The bottom half is gone and all that is left are intestines hanging from her torso.

  “Holy fuck!” Dell screams as the woman starts to climb his body.

  He ejects his spent magazine, tries to get the fresh one in, but fumbles it. It falls and smacks the woman right between the eyes. She hisses then opens her mouth wide and chomps down onto his leg. Dell screams as he feels her teeth tear into his flesh, going right through the pants leg.

  He pulls his arm back, ready to punch her in the face and knock her off him, but his arm is caught. Dell looks over his shoulder and the blood drains from his face as the piss drains from his bladder. The last thing he sees is a mouth of bloody teeth.

  ***

  “Command!” Foster yells. “Where the fuck is the chopper?”

  “No go, Foster,” Bedford replies. “We lost contact with Dell. Secure yourself and the cargo. It could be a while before we can get you out of there.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Foster yells. “I am going to have your ass for this, Bedford!”

  “I know, boss,” Bedford replies. “But we have- HOLY FUCK!”

  The com goes dead leaving a slight ringing and a hiss of static in Foster’s ear.

  “Command? Command? Bedford, do you read me?” Foster calls. “Bedford! What the fuck is going on there?”

  There is no reply.

  “Uh, boss?” Zorn says. “We have company.”

  Foster turns her attention back to the facility and frowns. “I thought we terminated the staff.”

  “We did,” Zorn replies. “After they went all ape shit we put them all down.”

  “Some got back up,” Joe T replies. “Jesus, I killed that guy myself. Look at the placement on his chest.”

  A couple dozen staff members, moaning and groaning, shamble their way towards the Team. Most of them are covered in blood from the chest wounds they received when they were shot. It doesn’t even faze them.

  “Boss? Orders?” Zorn asks.

  “Take ‘em out,” Foster replies as she opens fire.

  The staff begin to shudder and shake like a grotesque, country line dance. Then they fall. The Team all wait, their rifles still up. Every one of them have their senses set to high, their guts telling them it isn’t over. And it isn’t.

  One by one, the staff begins to rise.

  “Not possible,” one of the Team members says. “Not fucking possible.”

  “Don’t say something isn’t possible when you are watching it happen,” Foster snaps. “Head shots. Now.”

  The rifles bark and brains fly. The staff drops again. The Team waits. This time they don’t get back up. The Team keeps waiting. Still no movement.

  “I’ve seen this movie,” Joe T says, “it doesn’t end well.”

  “I want a supply check now!” Foster orders. “We are on our own until we hear from Command.”

  The Team takes stock of their ammunition and supplies. No one is pleased.

  “Orders, boss?” Zorn asks Foster.

  She starts to answer but is interrupted by one of the girls on the ground.

  “We kill the soldiers because they hate us, they hate us…”

  The singing is stopped by Foster’s boot to the girl’s face. But others start to stir and take up the refrain. Foster’s face scrunches up with rage.

  “The girls on the ground shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up!” Foster screams in the cadence of the nursery rhyme. “The girls on the ground shut the fuck up or they get a bullet to their heads!”

  The girls on the ground shut the fuck up. And stare at Foster.

  “That’s not creepy,” Joe T says.

  No one moves. Foster watches the girls and the girls watch Foster.

  Then…

  “The girls on the ground get up and walk, get up and walk, get up and walk,” Foster sings. “The girls on the ground get up and walk, all the way back inside.”

  The girls on the ground get up and walk back to the facility without question.

  “What the fuck is going on, boss?” Zorn asks.

  “They’re conditioned,” Foster says. “Early stages, by the looks of it.”

  “Why?” Joe T asks.

  “If we hadn’t crashed Kramer’s party then he would have let them go,” Foster replies. “Brainwashed sleepers set back into some of the wealthiest families on the planet. The song is a trigger. He was just getting them compliant.”

  “We can make them do anything?” one of the Team members asks.

  “None of you make them do shit,” Foster says. “Watch their asses and make sure they don’t try to kill us again.”

  “Are we going back inside with them?” Joe T asks.

  “For now, yes,” Foster replies. “We clear the facility and hunker down until Command can send a chopper. Try to find the communications room. We need to see what the fuck is going on that had Bedford so spooked.”

  “He didn’t sound spooked at the end,” Joe T says.

  “He sounded dead,” Zorn adds.

  “No assumptions,” Foster says. “We secure the facility. Make it ours. We are now in Plan B.”

  “We had a Plan B?” a Team member asks.

  “We do now,” Foster replies.

  ***

  Z-Day plus thirty.

  “Foster? Do you read me? Foster come in.”

  “Huh,” Foster mumbles, pulling herself from a deep sleep. She checks her watch and sees she was out for only an hour, the longest straight stretch of sleep she’s gotten in weeks. “What the…? Bedford?”

  “Yes!” Bedford nearly shouts in the com. The com Foster hasn’t been removed from her ear in thirty days. “You’re alive!”

  “What the hell, Bedford?” Foster snarls as she rubs the sleep from her eyes. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Staying alive,” Bedford says. “Not the easiest thing to do these days.”

  “Tell me about it,” Foster s
ays. She, along with the girls and the rest of the Team had watched the news reports until every station started to blink out one by one. “Is there even anyone left out there?”

  “I don’t know,” Bedford replies. “I just got back into headquarters. We’ve secured most of the floors including Command. You’re the only Team that has responded.”

  “Jesus,” Foster sighs. “There were eighty Teams out on missions across the world.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Bedford says. “Doesn’t mean they’re all dead, just means none of them are answering.” Bedford takes a deep breath. “Listen we’re coming to get you.”

  “Thank God,” Foster says. “What’s the ETA on the chopper?”

  “No chopper, I’m afraid,” Bedford replies. “We have a convoy of Humvees heading your way. I just gave the order. ETA is two days. Just hang tight and stay on the com.”

  “Two days?” Foster says. “From DC to Asheville? That’s an eight hour drive.”

  “Not with the way the roads are,” Bedford says. “Every major interstate is clogged. Takes forever to clear room. They are using back highways and side roads. I’ll send you exact extraction coordinates when they get closer. For now just do whatever you are doing to stay alive.”

  “Roger that,” Foster says, “and hey, Bedford?”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “It’s good to hear your voice,” Foster says.

  “You too, boss.”

  ***

  “Brittany just ate my ass!” a girl yells, her arms up in the air as she stands over the slumped form at her feet. “Game, set, and match, beeyotch!”

  “That’s enough, Carly,” Foster says as she walks into the workout room. “I need everyone’s attention.”

  “Yes, Ms. Foster!” twelve teenage girls say in unison as they all step in line, even the one from the floor who is busy rubbing the bruise that is quickly forming on her right cheek.

  “What’s up, boss?” Zorn says from the side of the room just before he pops a cracker with peanut butter into his mouth. “We gugga go hone nah?”

  “Yes,” Foster says.

  This gets Zorn’s attention quickly, as well as the attention of the few other men that are busy lounging against the walls of the workout room. “Where’s Joe T?”

  “Killing zeds,” a Team member answers. “A horde just showed up outside. He’s with Cooper and LeRoy clearing them out.”

  “Good,” Foster says. “We are all going to go help. Time you girls learned how to handle the new world. I have two days to get you ready so that we get out of here alive.”

  One of the girls pulls a large knife and flips it around the back of her hand before tossing it across the room where it sticks in the wall right between the heads of two Team members. “Not a problem.”

  The two Team members close on the girl, pissed at her little stunt, but she is quickly surrounded by the rest of the girls. The men back off without hesitation.

  Foster can’t help but smile.

  “That’s my girls,” she says. “What’s our motto?”

  They all start singing the nursery rhyme, but with newer words. “The world can suck my big fat dick, big fat dick, big fat dick,” they sing in unison. “The world can suck my big fat dick ‘cause the dead ain’t gonna get us!”

  “Fucking A right,” Foster nods. “Now let’s help Joe T kill some zeds. Watch your backs, watch your sisters’ backs, watch my back.”

  “Yes, Ms. Foster,” they all say as they sprint for the door.

  ***

  Z-Day plus thirty-two.

  Foster kneels by the side of the road, hidden in a thicket of rhododendrons. Behind her, concealed by the dense foliage are the rest of her Team and her girls.

  Her girls.

  That’s how she has come to think of them over the past thirty-two days. Once she realized how suggestible they were, she took advantage quick and made them hers. Unless someone with a will stronger than hers comes along, she has twelve girls ready to kill or die for her. A handy thing to have in the zombie apocalypse.

  She has a hard time coming to terms with the whole idea of the dead coming back and walking the Earth, but that’s the reality of things. The world is in ruins and she has no intention of going down with it. All she has to do is get her girls into the Humvees then keep them safe during the travel back to headquarters.

  Not that they can’t take care of themselves.

  Whatever Kramer had planned for them, it included combat. All Foster had to do was add some discipline and focus to their conditioning and she had an instant fighting unit ready to do whatever she wanted. For a person like Foster it was side by side with winning the lottery.

  “Engines,” Joe T says as he nods to the north and a bend in the road. “Here we go.”

  Within seconds, a convoy of six Humvees come into view, each with a manned .50 caliber machine gun on top. Foster stands and moves to the side of the road and the convoy comes to a stop next to her. None of the men manning the guns even glance her way, their eyes locked on the surroundings, watching, waiting, careful.

  “Hey, boss,” a woman smiles from the driver’s seat, “you’re a damn good sight to see.”

  “Torres,” Foster nods. She turns and gives a low whistle. The Team and the girls all hustle from their concealment and load up into the Humvees. It takes less than five seconds. Foster hops into the passenger seat of the lead Humvee and nods. “Get us the fuck out of here, Lourdes.”

  “On it,” Lourdes says, “but we’ll have to circle around Asheville. We drew a herd with us as we came down from Weaverville. They were just hanging out on one of the roads, like they were having a fucking block party or something.”

  “How many?” Foster asks.

  “Couple hundred,” Lourdes says as she puts the Humvee into gear and hits the gas. “We got by fine, but no way we can backtrack directly.”

  “Fine,” Foster says, “just drive. We’ll get around them.”

  The convoy drives.

  They spend an hour trying to get turned around. The GPS in the Humvees still work thanks to the magic of satellites, but the little black boxes can’t show them where the zeds are. Or what roads are blocked with debris. There is a surprising amount of debris crossing the roads.

  “This isn’t right,” Foster says, “this feels deliberate.”

  “My gut has the same feeling,” Lourdes nods. “What’s the call?”

  A bridge lies ahead and the convoy starts to cross it. Foster’s Humvee is the first across and comes around an immediate turn in the road. Lourdes slams on the brakes to avoid ramming into an eighteen wheeler that is parked lengthwise, blocking them.

  “Get ready!” Foster shouts into the com. She barely has the words out before gunfire erupts everywhere. “Fuck!”

  “Fucking ambush!” Lourdes yells as she grabs her rifle and shoves the door open.

  She sprints towards the side of the road and dives into the brush just as a man comes out, a double-barrel shotgun in hand. She rolls and comes up fast, her fist nailing him in the balls. He grunts then is dropped as she sweeps his legs. Quickly relieved of his shotgun, he finds the barrels pressed up against his chin.

  “Idiot,” Lourdes says as she pulls the triggers, turning the top of his head into a grey matter and blood fountain.

  “Return fire!” Foster yells as she jumps from the Humvee. “Find cover!”

  But there’s no cover for the five Humvees on the bridge; they are sitting ducks. The .50 calibers open up, firing indiscriminately, but soon go quiet as one by one the men behind them are taken out. It was something Foster was worried about. Sport hunters in the apocalypse. They can’t fight, but they can shoot. The Humvees, and everyone in them, are sitting ducks.

  “Girls!” Foster screams into the com. “Girls! JUMP!”

  “But, Ms. Foster,” one of them replies.

  “Don’t fucking argue!” Foster snaps as she puts a bullet between the eyes of a man running at her. With an axe. Really? Moron. She watches him fal
l and her mind takes in his appearance: dirt covered, torn clothes, emaciated. Survivors. Scavengers. The dregs of the apocalypse.

  Only took thirty days to go completely to shit.

  The girls don’t argue and the Humvee doors fly open. Foster turns just in time to see the twelve girls briefly hesitate then leap from the bridge into the churning waters below. She can’t watch long as she feels a bullet burn past her cheek. She spins and drops the offender.

  The fight lasts for another fifteen minutes before voices come over the com.

  “Clear!” Joe T shouts.

  “Clear!” yells Zorn.

  “Clear!” Lourdes adds, as do a handful of other voices. Much less than what they started with.

  Foster sprints to the bridge and looks down into the water.

  “Girls!” she shouts, tapping at the com in her ear. “GIRLS!”

  ***

  The water laps at her face. Cold, bracing, constant.

  Carly wipes the mud from her eyes and looks about. She has no idea where she is or how far she has floated downriver. Maybe the convoy is only just back around the bend. Or maybe it’s miles away. A quick glance up at the sky tells her she jumped at least three hours earlier. But were those three hours spent floating or resting or half and half?

  She doesn’t know.

  What she does know is she hurts. Hurts badly. She can feel cracked ribs, a swollen jaw, there’s a lump the size of Texas on the back of her head, and she looks down at her right leg as it floats in the shallows of the river, there’s a hunk of white sticking up through her pants. She knows what it is; she fears what has happened; she braces for what she must do.

  Carly Michelle Thornberg reaches up and grabs a branch that droops out over the water. She takes a deep breath, counts to three, and then pulls herself up and out of the river.

  The pain is white hot. It envelops her and she fights to stay conscious. She loses.

  The water laps at her face. Cold, bracing, constant.

  Carly opens her eyes once more. The sun has gone down and her entire body is racked with shivers. Her teeth chatter so hard she’s surprised she didn’t bite her tongue off while she was passed out. The moon is out and the light glints off the white bone that protrudes from her pants. She knows she can’t stand, but she also knows she doesn’t have the strength to pull herself free of the water without moving her leg.