Floodwater Zombies (38 page)

“Wait!” Major Grundy yelled, wide eyed and sweating profusely. “Don’t shoot!”

The things choked and grunted and swayed in their stance as the walkers in the background continued lumbering closer. The closest wall of stiffs adjusted their objective and turned back for the water while others languidly took their place, continuing a haunting symphony of drawn out, hollow sounding moans.

“They can’t come this far!” Hooper said, pointing his gun to the sky. “We’re just out of their reach!”

“It’s the sun!” Rachel said, pressing tighter against Rory and Grundy. “It’s drying them out!”

Kourtney screamed. Her head snapped back as the naked woman yanked on Kourtney’s pony tail.

Hooper whirled, elbowing Grundy in the back of the head and shooting the woman in the face. She tumbled down the hill, taking out other ghouls like dilapidated bowling pins on her way back into the water. She didn’t get back up, but the others did. “Huddle closer!”

They bunched up into a tighter ball, rubbing elbows and butts as rotting limbs tiredly reached for them from all sides. The corpses in front slowed to a stop. Death moans rolled from their rancid breath and smelled like curdled milk.

“Why can’t they get us?” Alex cried, squished in the middle like a baby elephant when the herd encounters a pride of famished lions.

“They can’t go that far from the water,” Rachel yelled, pulling her arm back from the scraping claw of an elderly man wearing a frayed clergyman suit.

“Not without the rain!” Rory said, striking the hand of a young red-headed girl in bloody scrubs with the butt of his gun. Her cracked lips peeled back and sneered. Then she vomited on his shoes.

Spoiled moans floated from the living dead, saturating the area with a burning odor that blurred the air like gasoline. Like the others before them, the front row on both sides of the hill gave up and hurriedly retreated for the water. A new row of sleepwalkers quickly took their place, surrounding the survivors with darkened eyes and splintered teeth.

“They’re getting closer!” Kourtney yelled, aiming her dad’s revolver at the twisted face of a young man wearing a tuxedo t-shirt.

“No, they’re not!” Hooper replied, quickly contradicting himself by kicking an old woman in the chest and sending her somersaulting backwards down the hill.

A loud gunshot made everyone jump. The gun kicked in Rachel’s hand as the bullet found the forehead of a bald man sporting a torn black suit and maroon tie. He jerked backwards and fell to the ground. The other stiffs tripped over his crumpled body, fighting with each other to take his front row seat.

“Oh, fuck it!” Grundy sneered. “Kill
em
all!” He clenched his teeth and repeatedly pulled the trigger on the black nine-millimeter, carving out some breathing room. The others followed suit, unloading what precious little ammo they had left into the bloated mass before them. Black goo sprayed the air with each slug that found its mark. Alex pressed his hands to his ears and closed his eyes.

“I’m out!” Kourtney shouted, bringing the butt of her gun down onto the face of a middle-aged housewife in dirty jeans. When the decrepit housewife regained her wits and lunged at Kourtney, Rory blew the thing’s face off.

Grundy glanced down and inhaled sharply, quickly stomping his black combat boot down onto the head of a small boy missing both legs and crawling closer. The head crunched beneath the heavy boot like an ostrich egg, squirting sticky goo in all directions.

Rob’s .38 special began dry-firing in Rachel’s sweaty hand. “I’m out!”

The gunshots puncturing the morning light began to wane as Hooper, Rory and Grundy began picking their targets more carefully, unable to afford a single errant shot. The sun finally found the flesh-eaters, illuminating every jagged gash and festering sore in dazzling color. They looked even more hideous in the sunlight, which Rory didn’t think was possible.

“Get tighter, people!” Grundy ordered.

The six survivors filed together, like straws in an old-fashioned soda-jerk dispenser, as the bloated cadavers stumbled from the water and trees, their numbers predictably refusing to die. Alex put his hands to his ears again as the chilling groans grew ever louder.

Rachel snatched her arm back from a man in a gray suit with a withered carnation still pinned to his left lapel. Rory blew a hole through the man’s forehead with one shot and quickly took aim on a North Dakota State Patrolman but Hooper reached out and yanked the cop to the ground before Rory could pull the trigger. Alex screamed and backed into a little girl wearing a springtime lavender dress and in desperate need of a new playmate. She latched onto Alex’s arm and pulled. Rory brought his gun around and removed her right eye, freeing Alex to scramble back to his mom’s side.

Rachel watched Hooper through terror filled eyes. “What’re you doing?”

The state trooper grunted and tried getting to his feet. Hooper pushed him back to the ground and stomped on his head several times, spraying their shoes and legs with more slime. When it was clear the thing was dead, Hooper reached down and grabbed the cop’s nine-millimeter from its holster and popped the clip. “It’s full!”

Major Grundy unloaded on the row of corpses climbing the hill from the side with the boat at the bottom. Most of the slugs didn’t get back up. With the cop’s gun in his left hand, Hooper addressed the macabre concerns on the other side of the hill. Gunshots peppered the air around them, startling a flock of crows into flight from a group of nearby Oaks.

Rory’s gun went dry first, soon followed by Grundy’s and Hooper’s.

Hooper threw the trooper’s gun into the horde and pulled out his station issued weapon. “Well, that was fun while it lasted,” he said, taking deliberate aim and firing headshots one at a time until his gun clicked dry.

“Now what?”
Kourtney cried.

Grundy swung his heavy boot around with a high leg kick that found the head of an old lady wearing a beige dress with white tassels adorning the pockets. The boot connected with a loud crack that sent the old bag of bones hurtling sideways, her skirt flying up over head. “Start kicking!” he yelled, gasping for air and cocking another leg kick.

Rachel grabbed Rory’s arms and turned him to face her. “I just want you to know that…I never stopped...”

“Oh no, you’re not saying any last words!” he said, cutting her off and staring into her eyes that were so much bluer with the daylight. “We are going to get out of…”

Her lips pressed against his, smothering his retort and catching him by surprise. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled tighter as he kept his eyes on the surrounding carnage, his heart pounding in his chest. The dead things had taken a heavy toll, one he was tired of paying so he shut his eyes and hugged Rachel back, kissing her like a last visit before the long walk to an electric chair. Their lips mingled in the early morning light, the chorus of the dead all around them. Grudgingly, they parted and both inhaled deep breaths of rancid air.

Rory wiped dried blood from her ashen face and stared into her puffy eyes.

A smile slid across her wet cheeks. “I just want to make sure you know that I...”

“Big Bird 217 to Omega Delta-One, copy?”

Grundy snatched his radio. “Bout
damn
time!”

“Copy that, Delta-One.
Three
klicks
out, over.”

Hooper grunted loudly, kicking a short man in his protruding beer belly, driving the man backwards and knocking loose the man’s brown toupee. Grundy yelled out when a fat lady grabbed his shoulder. He spun around and landed a superman punch right in her chops. She stumbled and regained her footing, spitting broken teeth to the roadway before shuffling closer.

“Shit!” Grundy bellowed
,
shaking his hand through the air like it was on fire. “I think I just broke my hand!”

Rory pushed Rachel aside and drove his fist into the nose of a skinny man about to grab Alex. The man’s face crumpled around Rory’s hand, which pulled back wet and smelly. He wrinkled his face and shook the goo from his hand as a silver haired man bear hugged him from behind. The Silver Fox opened his mouth wide and dropped both rows of decaying
chompers
onto Rory’s neck. Just before they punctured his skin, Alex shot the man in the eye, spinning him to ground where he slowly got to his knees. Rory kicked him in the head, shattering the man’s skull. Rory turned to Alex, who was still pointing his BB gun. “Nice shot, A-man!”

The moans grew louder.
Closer.
More of the cannibals hobbled from the floodwater and surrounding woods, moving in with a slow, yet determined, pace. Grundy elbowed a middle-aged soccer mom in the face, knocking her jaw to the ground. “This could be lights out London,” he panted.

“Wait!” Kourtney screamed. “Listen!”

Everyone pressed together, putting less than three feet of space between them and the extending fingertips of the reaching ghouls. The buzzing in the air grew louder.
Closer.

“It’s the bird!” Grundy said, stretching a smile across his drawn face. His hand reached into a breast pocket and pulled out a mirror, which he used to reflect the eastern sun.

Rory turned back to the things, which were running out of steam just in the nick of time. Less than five more feet and most of the corpses would have hit pay dirt. The ones in the front turned back for the water, choking and grunting and puking along the way.

Hooper planted a boot in the face of a fat guy managing to get closer than the other
shamblers
.

“Hurry, T-Bird!”
Grundy screamed into his radio.

Static flashed and then went silent.
“Copy that, Delta-One. Big Bird is ten-ten on your side.
Over.”

The Air Force helicopter lowered above them, its steel blades fanning the trees and their hair and clothes. Two men, dressed in dark green jumpsuits and holding machine guns, crouched in the open doorway and began picking off stiffs like it was just another day. One by one, the rotting corpses jerked to the ground and water without getting back up. The soldiers nailed headshots with pinpoint accuracy while the sunglass clad pilot kept the HH-60 rescue chopper hovering fifteen feet off the ground.

The pilot steadied the yoke, examining the sickening scene with a solemn expression gripping his face.
“I tried to come earlier, Jack, but that was a negative,”
he said thickly over Grundy’s radio.

“Just get us the hell
outta
here!” Grundy barked into the radio.

“That’s a big ten-four, over.”

The six survivors exhaled a collective breath as the dead fell around them. Their tight huddle loosened while a fresh breeze swept through the trees, briefly taking the smell of death with it.

“We made it, baby,” Kourtney muttered
over and over
, hugging Alex with everything she had.

Grundy chuckled as they made room for the chopper to touch down. “That’s some ankle bracelet.”

Rory followed the Major’s gaze to Powder Blue’s hand.
“Souvenir.”