Floodwater Zombies (28 page)

“Hey!” Hooper shouted, sprinting to them before someone’s gun went off and let the whole world know they were here.

But Rory didn’t wait. He threw Mick’s cart wheeling legs aside and pounced. Mick reached up and tried scratching Rory’s face. Before Hooper reached them, Rory grabbed Mick’s extended arm, swung a leg around and pulled the arm backwards between his legs. Mick screamed in pain as his arm hyper extended at the elbow. His body twisted, desperate to find a position on the floor to ease the tension in his arm. Hooper bulldozed Rory off Mick before the arm snapped. They tumbled to the floor and crashed against a narrow table displaying an impressive model sailboat. The boat teetered on its wooden stand, the sails fluttering with the sudden jolt. Woody caught the mast and steadied the vessel before grabbing the loose .38 and tucking it into the back of his waistband. Quickly, he returned both hands to the shotgun and glanced to the front window where a skeleton, with nothing left but loose strips of skin, began banging into the window. Kourtney snapped her head around and inhaled sharply. The thing was literally skin and bones, making it impossible to tell if it was male or female. Thunder vibrated the rows of liquor bottles behind the bar while a half a dozen festering walkers meandered around the sodden lot behind Skin and Bones.

Rory turned back to Mick with a scowl. “You’re lucky he stopped me,” he said, getting to his feet and adjusting his gun belt.

“Fuck you, Rory!” Mick cried
,
favoring his arm and letting Doc help him to his feet.

Hooper stepped between them. “Everyone just take it easy!”

Mick turned to Woody. “
Gimme
that gun back!”

Woody backed away, the hammering on the window growing louder.

Hooper shook his head. “Mick I promise you, you’ll get that gun back when you’ve sobered up and settled down. I know you can shoot and we need your shot, but if we don’t work together then you’re right…” He trailed off and looked over his shoulder at the things stumbling through the rain.
The things that used to be perfectly normal dead people.
The things that, for one God forsaken reason or another,
had been given
another chance at life. “We are going to end up like those things out there.” He spoke softly and after a few quiet seconds turned back to Mick. “But don’t write us off just yet. We’ll shoot our way to higher ground.”

Mick’s face crumpled. “And when the bullets run out?
Then what,
Kojak
?”

Hooper’s Adam’s apple bobbed one time. “We’ll make it.”

Mick giggled like he had just received a winning lottery notification from someone in Nigeria.
“Right!”

Rory pushed past Woody and Hooper and headed for the front of the bar.

“Nice arm-bar,” Woody said under his breath as Rory passed by.

“Yeah, real nice!
You’ll get yours, Jean Claude Van Dam,” Mick hollered.

Air burst from Rory’s mouth, making his lips flutter. “Nice reference, Grandpa,” he said over his shoulder, not bothering to take his eyes from the deceased populace outside.

Mick shook Doc off him. “Get the hell off me, old man!”

Rachel stepped in front of Rory, her face dripping with concern.

He sighed and dropped her heavy gaze. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She took his hand and spoke softly. “He’s just upset, Rory. We all are, but you’re scaring Alex.”

His eyes found Alex in a booth across the bar, peeking over his mom’s shoulder with wide eyes. Rory turned back to the window where six or seven shambling cannibals seemed more focused on keeping their legs moving than anything else. At least the little girl in the pink dress and Skin and Bones were gone. He released another long breath and sat down at a square table, letting his unfocused eyes hover on a greasy menu tucked between a silver napkin
dispenser
in the middle.

Mick dropped his head and massaged his arm. “It
ain’t
right,” he sobbed.

“Pull
yourself
together,
Micky
,” Doc hissed. “We’re going to need you. We’re going to need all of you.” His eyes bounced from person to
person,
refusing to move on until he was satisfied each one understood him. “Panicking now will get you a one way ticket to the front of the meal line! You got me?” His night eyes swept across the room and returned to Mick, who nodded just as slowly as the others.

Rachel took a seat with Rory and began chewing on a pinkie. “Do you think they’re in town, too?”

Rory looked up and met her worried eyes. He saw his mom and dad in there...panicking with seven or eight walking stiffs pounding on the windows. His parents’ house was a no gun zone and the thought made him shudder. His dad, Steven, was no hunter. Not much of an athlete either. He’d never stand a chance against those things. His mom on the other hand could outrun them – as long as she wasn’t wearing heels and didn’t get cornered. But at least they had Scout. Scout would rip those wrinkled bags of bones to pieces. Rory dropped his eyes to the wood veneer running across the table. “No way
those things could
make it all the way to town, not at the pace they’re moving.”

“Yeah, but, what if they’re coming out of the river?”

Rachel and Rory snapped their eyes to Woody and stared at him with stoic faces, the kind of faces that had just received grave news like someone in the family didn’t survive a car accident. Rory dropped his face into both hands and began rubbing, trying to flush the horror from his mind like sleep in his eye. “You had to say that, didn’t you?”

Woody pulled a chair out with a long screech and sat down, banging his head on the small light hanging above the table. “Dammit,” he groaned, massaging his forehead with one hand while gripping the shotgun with the other. “Who hangs things so goddamn low?” he grumbled.

Mick pushed past Doc and Hooper and slid into a booth near the restrooms. Woody leaned in closer to Rachel and Rory, his tangled hair swinging across his eyes. “We have to prepare ourselves for the worst, bro. This lake feeds into the Mouse River and if...”

Chapter Fifteen

A few hours later almost everyone was asleep, or looked asleep. Mick was definitely fast asleep. His heavy snoring gave him away, but how anyone could sleep with those things out there, Rory didn’t know. The thunder had abated but the rain and lightning refused to go quietly. Each searing pulse of white light engraved a new image into his mind that no amount of time could ever buff out. In the future - if there was a future – they’d have to work hard creating new memories to ever have a chance of not waking up in the middle of the night covered in a cold sweat and screaming at the top of their lungs. Even if they made it through this madness, it would haunt them until their dying days. They were damaged goods now.

He turned from the window and stared at the dimpled ceiling, knowing he needed some sleep. Rachel stirred next to him on the pool table they had turned into a makeshift bed with old blankets to soften the heavy slate beneath. They bunched up coats for pillows and even though they were a good three feet off the ground, the smell of stale beer wafting from the floor was overwhelming.

“Can I ask you a question?” Kourtney asked.

Hooper turned from the front window and met her full pupils.

She fidgeted on the blanket they had spread across an elevated stage, where there was just enough room for a three piece country band to jam until last call on the weekends. Empty soda cans, candy bar wrappers and the crowbar sat around them like a cheap picnic. “Why haven’t you ever asked me out?”

Hooper glanced at Alex, curled up on an old blanket in a booth across from them, and leaned his head against the wood paneled wall. “I’m too old for you.”

She laughed and quickly covered her mouth. “What are you, thirty-five?” she whispered. “That’s like three years older than me.”

“I wish,” he chuckled.

“Seriously, Ryan, I know you like Alex and he idolizes you.”

Hooper smiled and spun a darkened flashlight on the blanket in front of him. “He’s all right. Kind of a loud mouth but
what’ya
gonna do?”

Kourtney grinned and lightly elbowed him in the arm. “And I know I’ve caught you stealing a glance or two when I’m busy with a customer.”

His face fell. “What?” he laughed.

“Yeah, a girl knows how to use a mirror.”

Rory glanced at the large mirror behind the bar and smiled.

“If we’re going to die I think I have a right to know,” Kourtney said.

“We’re not going to die.”

She studied him in the pale moon light creeping through the window. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys who loses interest in a girl as soon as he sleeps with her.”

Hooper’s gaze inadvertently dropped to the perky breasts hiding beneath her Doc’s Bar and Grill tank top. He cleared his throat and turned back to Alex. “I just…didn’t want to screw things up.”

She cocked her head and stared thoughtfully at him, her long brown ponytail dangling over her toned shoulder.

He lowered his voice. “Listen, I like you
guys…
you, Alex and Doc. And I like coming in here…”

“But?”

He took a drink of water and sat up straighter. “I didn’t want this place to become one of
those
places you have to scratch off the list because of something that had gone south in the past.”

Her jaw hanged in the air. “So…you never thought about it?”

Reluctantly, he met her eyes again. A short laugh escaped his lips. “Of course I have. You’re a beautiful woman with a great kid, but…” He trailed off with a grin sliding across his face. “But you know I have a boat out here at the lake and there aren’t many holes in the wall like this one.”

“It’s the
only
hole in the wall out here, unless you count the burger stand at the marina.”

“And I don’t want to screw that up either. I like their burgers.”

She chuckled and shook her head, growing silent. The rain beat against the roof, almost drowning out the rolling death moans outside. “What makes you so sure you would have screwed anything up?”

“Precedent.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Ryan, Becky was six years ago. You have to stop being afraid to live your life again. She moved on and you need to do the same.”