Floodwater Zombies (44 page)

“Yes?”
Don snapped, demonstrating his heightened lack of patience. The sound of a spoon stirring cream or sugar into a coffee mug in the background broke the awkward silence that followed.
“Connor?”

“You’re not going to believe this, boss, but Mr. Hopkins…” He trailed off to swallow, his eyes taking one last sweep around the room, just to be sure he wasn’t missing something so blatantly obvious that Don would never let him live down. “Mr. Hopkins is gone.”

The spoon stopped rattling against the porcelain mug. Connor cringed as the large clock on the wall grew louder. His eyes bounced from the empty tables to the open cooler doors.

“Gone?”
Don finally blurted.
“What do you mean
gone
?”

“I mean, he’s not in C2 so I checked all of them. He’s not in any of the coolers down here.”

Don paused, once again giving the floor to the ticking clock and buzzing lights above.
“That’s impossible!”

Connor mopped his brow with his hand and began pacing. “Believe me, I know! I had him all ready to go in a blue suit and yellow tie before I left yesterday. I thought maybe you moved him!”

“Well of course, I didn’t move him! Where am I going to take him?
To the drive-in?”
Don scoffed, making Connor hold the phone out.
“I’ll be right down!”
Don shouted, hanging up before Connor could reply.

“Man,” Connor groaned, staring at the phone’s screen and leaning up against Mary’s table. He slipped the cell back into its holster and took the clipboard from her bloated belly, flipping through pages and shaking his head. “Woke up in a great mood and I don’t know what the hell happened.”

The mosquito repellant wormed its way into Mary Hanson’s dead brain, poking at her neurons with a sinister finger that could only belong to the Devil himself. Synapse explosions rippled through her body, sending electrical signals bolting through her nervous system, triggering her bloodshot eyes to pop wide open beneath her horn-rimmed glasses. She stared at the cracked ceiling without blinking, her hands - riddled with brown liver spots - still folded across her chest.

“I mean, this
ain’t
like losing someone’s dinner reservation, for God’s sake,” Connor mumbled, flipping back to the front page.

Mary sat unmoving, focused upon the humming light above, taking it all in. Her blue eyes were no longer blue, blackness had taken them instead. The light flickered, as if trying to flee the evil before it. Then she blinked, awareness creeping into her body like rigor mortis had done just hours ago. Quietly, she sat up behind Connor and stared straight ahead without moving a saggy muscle. Her glasses slid down her pasty nose, covered with a thick application of non-
thermogenic
make-up that won’t crumble or blotch on dead skin. A dry tongue peeked out from her pale, pink lips and slowly went back inside its hole.

“He was right here!” Connor insisted, scratching his head. “Boy, oh boy, oh boy...” he grumbled, resigning to rub his forehead. “We are in the doghouse now.”

Mary turned her freshly styled head to Connor and studied him with sunken eyes.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said, turning back to C2’s open door. “What a cluster-fuck,” he moaned as Mary grabbed him from behind and buried her dentures into his skinny neck. He didn’t even have a chance to scream before blood started squirting from his jugular like a lawn sprinkler on a hot summer’s night. Connor saw Mary’s librarian shoes wrap around his waist and things suddenly made a whole lot less sense. The clipboard slipped from his fingers and clattered to the shiny floor as he struggled with the firm grip around his neck, shocked not only by the fact that Mary was alive, but by her strength as well.

Chapter Twenty-Six

White spots danced across Rory’s field of vision when he saw the old man tear a chunk of Rachel’s flesh from her neck with his teeth. The intruder threw his bald head back and chewed, dripping blood onto his yellow necktie while Rachel lay twitching on the living room floor with blood gushing from her neck like a fountain. Rory stopped breathing, watching the events unfolding before him in slow motion. He blinked, the only action he could force his body to take, as the man went back down for another bite and tore a hole in one of Rachel’s milky white cheeks. The stiff glanced at Rory out the corner of his bloodshot eye and growled as he chewed, like a dog when someone stands too close to their food bowl.

Rory gathered himself and snapped out of it, yanking his gun from its holster. His finger wrapped around the trigger and pulled five times, sending the old coot tumbling. Rory rushed to Rachel’s side, the gun still in his hand, and slid to his knees. “Rachel!” he finally spoke, setting the gun down in her blood and cradling her head. He stared into her panic-filled eyes, her body trembling in his arms. “Rachel?” he said faintly, his voice cracking.

She stared at him with frightened eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but only blood came out. Her hand found his arm and squeezed tightly.

“It’s okay, just relax,” he said, pressing his hand against the jagged wound in her neck, which only seemed to make the blood spurt from her cheek that much faster. “Shit!” he said, glancing to the old man’s crumpled body. He turned back to Rachel, who was growing paler by the second. The pooling blood slowly crawled across the wooden floor and found his knees. He gasped at its volume and turned to the open front door. “Help!” he screamed, his pulse pounding thickly in his temples. He turned back to Rachel, trying to catch his breath and figure out his next move.

On his knees, the engagement ring inside his front pocket felt as big as a shoebox. His mind reeled faster as Rachel squirmed on the living room floor. He screamed for help again. Then his cell phone started ringing, reminding him that he even had a cell phone. Carefully, he set Rachel’s head down in the crimson pool, turning her blond hair red, and dug the phone from his pocket. It was his boss, Sheriff Hooper. Rory managed to hit the talk button but couldn’t find his speech.

“Hello?
Rory?”

Rory panted into the phone, his chest rising and falling. “H-Hooper,” he stammered.

“
Rory, listen to me! Turn on the news; there are outbreaks happening all over the country! It’s just like at the lake but these bodies seem to be reanimating from hospitals and morgues, even some graveyards.”
The sheriff took a deep breath and yelled something to someone in the background and then returned to the phone.
“I don’t think they’re waterborne.”
Quiet took the line.
“Rory?
You still there?”

Teardrops rolled down Rory’s cheeks, diving into the bloody pool below. “She’s dead,” he whispered.

A thunderstruck silence followed. Someone in the background yelled something about the Internet being down. More voices called out frantic words that Rory couldn’t understand and didn’t care to.

“Who’s dead?”

Rory inhaled a deep breath that made a high-pitched wheezing sound. “Rachel,” he said grimly. “One of those…
things
got her.”

Someone yelled something about a key to the machine guns. Hooper didn’t answer them. The silence was as contagious as whatever was causing the dead to come back to life out there.

“Jesus Christ,”
he whispered.
“
Lunderman
!
Cole! I want you both at Allan’s Funeral Home right now!”
There was a commotion like someone knocked over a vase and then Hooper’s heavy breathing came back on the line.
“Rory?”

Rory stared at Rachel through helpless eyes, studying her from head to toe and back again. She had closed her eyes and stopped twitching and he was all but certain she had also stopped breathing. He squeezed her hand without response. Grudgingly, his hand left hers and disappeared into his pocket. The ring came back out with his hand, clear snot streaming from his nose and stretching to the floor.

“Rory?”

With one hand, he cracked the box open and stared at the chocolate diamond inside, the jumpstart all but gone. With two bloody fingers, he pulled the ring from its red velvet cushion and let the box tumble into the pooling blood. He held the brown diamond up to his eyes, its significance now lost. He cradled the phone in his shoulder and, with both hands, slipped the ring onto her finger.

“Rory!”
Hooper shouted.

“Yeah,” he replied softly, setting her hand down and studying it in the gray light coming through the windows.

“Listen to me,”
Hooper said between deep breaths.

The diamond sparkled in Rory’s eyes, sending the image of a nicely renovated starter home flickering through his reeling mind. Sunbeams streamed through large windows and landed on a beautiful baby girl in Rachel’s arms. Scout nudged Rory’s hand with a cold nose. His heart fluttered as their baby girl cooed softly from
Rachel’s loving
arms. She turned to him and smiled brightly. His smile faded when he noticed her broken teeth and the bloody hole where her right eye used to be. He squeezed his eyes shut, so tight the white spots returned like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

“Deputy Callahan!”
Hooper yelled, jerking Rory from his thoughts.

“Yeah,” Rory sniffled.

“Did you hear what I said?”

Rory didn’t respond.

“
I need you to get over to my house and bring Kourtney and Alex here to the station right now. They won’t answer the phone which means they’re probably out back in the pool. You are my closest man!”

The mere mention of the swimming pool sent a stabbing pain through Rory’s chest. He saw his father again, covered in blood with that evil grin slipping across his insidious face.

Hooper lowered his voice and spoke gravely.
“Do you understand me?”

Rory nodded, staring blankly at Rachel’s body.

“Rory,
goddamnit
!
Do you understand me?”

“I’m leaving right now.” He hung up and traded the phone for the gun, wiping it on his shirt and smearing blood across it as he pictured himself reliving the nightmare all over again. The one they had just barely survived the first time around. Except this time, Rachel and Woody wouldn’t be there. This time, no one would stand a chance. He turned his blurry gaze to the dead man and pointed the gun at him. “Fuck you,” he whispered, shooting him three times in the back. The body jerked with each slug and grew still again. Tears spilled from Rory’s eyes, making the man’s fuzzy image that much harder to believe. Rory shut his eyes and cringed with the images flipping through his mind at breakneck speed. He saw himself taking the easy way out (although there was nothing easy about anything anymore). In another jerky flash, Rory saw himself stick the gun into his mouth and pull the trigger, splattering his brains against the olive-colored living room walls.