Z-Burbia: A Zombie Novel by Jake Bible Read Free Book Online Page B

Zs.”
    “Weaponizing? What for? There’s no one to fight. Are they gonna use the Zs against other Zs? Zs don’t fight each other. This doesn’t make sense.”
    “Sure it does,” I say, tired of looking down into the lake of undead. I roll over onto my back, which makes my leg feel better, and look up at the blue sky above us. “Resources are finite. That includes armaments. If you wanted to lay siege to a place , you’d need a lot of resources to do it. You have to have more resources than the place you are laying siege to. You have to be able to wait them out.”
    I turn my head and see Jon watching me, waiting for me to go on. I do.
    “But in this day, no one can afford to waste all of their resources at one time. The key to survival post-Z, is conservation of resources. So you look for a resource that is not only plentiful, but renewable. And the only resource like that anymore is?”
    “Zs,” Jon replies. “You don’t mean?”
    “Yep,” I answer.
    “They are coming for us,” Stuart says. “I didn’t know it before, but I know it now. When I saw that lake empty and those guys building the wall around it , I figured at first it was for us.”
    “That they’d come and take Whispering Pines and throw us in there,” I say.
    “Yeah,” Stuart nods. “But the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. Why keep us alive? They’d have to feed us and give us water. It goes back to a waste of resources.”
    “You knew we’d find this?” Jon asks. “And you still brought us here?”
    “I had hoped we wouldn’t find this,” Stuart says, shaking his head. “And I didn’t want to bring you. But after talking with Brenda-”
    “Who else knows?” I ask.
    “No one in Whispering Pines,” Stuart replies. “Unless Brenda told someone. I told her I’d keep it secret until everyone absolutely needed to know.”
    “So you talked to Brenda and she changed your mind about coming back alone,” I say.
    “She said that you two would be the best to bring and help figure this out,” Stuart nods. “Padre here can look and see what the structural integrity of the wall is. Maybe find some weak spots. Maybe see if it has a dual purpose.”
    “Dual purpose?” Jon asks. “Like what?”
    “I don’t know,” Stuart says. “That’s one of the reason you’re here.”
    “And I’m here why?” I ask. “You have always known I’m full of shit and just winging it, Stuart. You’ve never come out and said so, but I’ve guessed that you don’t think very highly of my position in Whispering Pines.”
    Stuart looks at me for a long time. Long enough for me to grow uncomfortable.
    “I’ve stopped trying to figure you out, Jace,” he finally says. “You don’t fit any mold I know of. I’m a military man and I like everything to fit perfectly. Everything in its place and all that. But you are all over the place.”
    “Thanks?” I smile.
    “You can seem like the laziest asshole in Whispering Pines, but then you show these bursts of creativity and industry, and all of a sudden, we have a new innovation in the neighborhood. Wi-Fi communication. You spearheaded that. The gate structure. That was you. And the razor wire and fencing is quite possibly the simplest, most genius use of natural topography I have seen.”
    “I didn’t come up with any of that,” I say. “Those ideas have already been invented. I just put them into use.”
    “No, what you did was search through that wild, information hoarding brain of yours and found solutions, and then,” Stuart said. “And post-Z, solutions are as valuable as bullets.”
    “More so,” Jon says. “You can run out of bullets. There’s always a solution.”
    “Not always,” Stuart says. He points towards the lake of the undead. “But I’m really hoping there’s a solution to that. I’m counting on it.”
    We watch the lake for a long while, each lost in our thoughts. Unfortunately, this internal focus screws us. I know Stuart’s senses