Floodwater Zombies (19 page)

Logan responded with a long scream, frantically scooping both arms through the water like the devil himself was after him. Hooper and Myer rushed in up to their waists and grabbed the diver’s arms. Logan screamed bloody murder as they towed him to shore. The water pulling on his body and oxygen tank caused Hooper and Myer to struggle finding traction. Johnson looked like he was going to help but decided to stay out of the way at the last second. When they finally cleared the water, Rory’s eyes widened and Rachel inhaled sharply.

“What the fuck, man!” Woody
shrieked,
his eyes as big as a barn.

Logan screamed as the old lady hanging onto his ankle bit down into his calf muscle. Mossy blotches stained her once yellow dress – now riddled with jagged holes and leaches. Hooper and Myer gasped, dropping Logan’s arms like they were poisonous snakes.

Rachel tugged on Rory’s arm, pulling him closer to the tree line behind them. Woody subconsciously followed, passing the picnic table and tents, unable to tear his eyes from the grizzly scene.

Hooper stumbled backwards and stepped on his shades, crushing them into the sand. “What in God’s name?”

Logan wailed loudly, kicking at the woman’s head with a flipper. “Get it off me! Get it off me!”

Her cracked skin and long fingernails paralyzed Hooper. Bare spots in her scalp where patches of gray hair were missing only added to the horror. Like everyone else, the sheriff tried to breathe and register the impossibility of it all at the same time to no avail. The old lady’s curled toes dug into the sand, giving her better leverage on the howling diver.

“Holy shit!”
Deputy Johnson panted, finally yanking his sidearm from its holster and drawing a bead on the rotting corpse.

Hooper stuck his hand out, his chest rising and falling. “Don’t shoot!”

Johnson shifted from one foot to the other, pointing the gun with shaking arms. “What?
Why not?”

“Kill it!” Woody bellowed.

Hooper sprang into action. “Grab her legs!” he cried, snatching a kicking limb, his face contorting when he made contact with her clammy, gray skin. Somehow he held on, pulling and grunting until his face turned red. Her teeth refused to release Logan’s leg, which was already missing three or four chunks of rubber wetsuit and flesh. Hooper looked up, gasping for air. “Myer!” he yelled over Logan’s cries.

Deputy Myer stared at the morbid scene, his eyes bugging out of their sockets. His lips moved but nothing came out.

“Myer!”

The deputy’s eyes blinked over to the sheriff.

“Grab the other leg!”

Myer looked to the leg and hesitated.

“Deputy!”
Hooper shouted through gritted teeth.

Myer bent over and took the slimy limb in both hands. The old lady’s teeth immediately released the diver and snapped at Myer. He dropped the leg and jumped back. She hissed at Hooper and yanked her slippery leg from his hands, causing him to tumble onto his butt. The thing immediately turned Hooper’s direction, crawling on its belly. The sheriff used his legs to push himself backwards. She snarled at him one more time and kept crawling towards the water. Logan rolled in the sand like he was on fire, grabbing his bloody leg and clamoring in pain.

Johnson danced back and forth with a nonplussed look covering his face, his gun still trained on the lady nearing the water. Her dress slid off in the sand, exposing large splotches of decay covering her spiny back. Her insides were dark and smelled like spoiled cheese.

“Should I shoot it?” Johnson cried.

“Shoot her!” Rory screeched, his adrenaline pumping so hard he couldn’t feel Rachel’s fingernails digging into his arm.

“Rory, please!” she begged, trying to stop him from going any closer.

Hooper got to his feet and pounced on the naked lady, driving his knee into the back of her neck with a loud crack. She released a blood curdling scream that echoed throughout the pine-clad hills. He rode her thrashing body while she tried grabbing him with bony fingers.

“Get her arms!” Hooper ordered, snatching the cuffs from his belt.

Rory turned to Woody. “Stay with Rachel!” he said, pulling free of her death grip and rushing over to help. He jumped on the woman, wrangling one frail arm behind her back while Myer secured the other. She resisted with surprising strength and a series of wet sounding grunts, her jagged teeth gnashing at them like a saltwater crocodile.

Hooper slapped a cuff around one emaciated wrist and clicked it tight. “Bring the other one back,” he panted, readying the other cuff. “We’re going to find out what the hell this thing is.”

Myer tugged on her arm, fighting to bend it closer to the silver cuff. She squirmed and spit up black goo. Myer grunted and pulled harder. There was a loud snap as her pasty forearm broke in two, sending Myer face first into her bare bottom with a squishy smack. He squealed in horror and quickly jumped off of her writhing body.

“
Sonofa
…” he trailed off, wiping a thick slime from his face that smelled like baby poop. He grimaced. “I’m infected!”

The old lady screamed so loud that Rachel covered both ears with her hands. Like Woody, her round eyes nervously patrolled the water, waiting for more of them to surface. The corpse struggled madly beneath Hooper’s and Rory’s weight. Rory grabbed the dangling limb and Hooper cuffed it. They got up at the same time, avoiding her gnashing teeth like professional crocodile hunters. When she started using her legs to push herself closer to the water, Hooper grabbed her beneath two squishy armpits and dragged her back to the lifeless fire pit. He dropped her to the sand and took a step back, watching in horror as she choked and thrashed, desperate to free herself of the handcuffs.

“Believe us now?” Woody asked, staring at the thing.

Hooper wiped water from his flummoxed face, trying not to let the insanity of it all stop him from doing his job. He opened his mouth to speak and made no sound, unable to find the right words.
Any words.

“We should leave,” Rachel suggested. “More will be coming!”

“I don’t believe it,” Myer said dully, trying to catch his breath.

“
Sonofabitch
, I’m bleeding
bad
!” Logan yelled, curled onto his side and squeezing his leg with both hands.

“Should I shoot it?” Deputy Johnson yelled, still aiming the gun at the old woman.

Hooper shot his palms out. “No! I want this thing alive!” he said, glancing back to the water.

Myer followed the sheriff’s gaze to the lake, wiping his hand on his pants. “What about Hudson? Where’d he go?”

Hooper shook his head and turned back to the old woman.

She flopped in the sand and threw up more of the black liquid, her skin stretching where her arm had broken.

Rory’s eyes narrowed, getting his first good look at one of the things in the daylight. “What the hell is it?”

Myer glanced up to him, still wiping his face. “Before I turn, I just want you to know I’m sorry I doubted you, Rory.” He looked to Rachel and Woody. “All of you. I just didn’t think…”

He trailed off as a putrid smell filled the air around
them,
stinging their eyes and making them gag. The woman screamed again and tore the skin around the broken bone in her forearm, releasing her from the metal constrictions. Her clawed hand fell to the sand and, like an injured tarantula, tried crawling to the water. Hooper was so repulsed, he narrowly avoided the senior’s other hand, which snatched through the air at him, the handcuff swinging wildly around her bony wrist. He jumped backwards and she quickly gave up, deciding to make another break for the water instead. Her good arm - and her stub – dug into the sand and pulled her along her stomach.

“Grab her legs!” Hooper yelled, taking a leg and dragging her away from the water.

Rory snatched the other limb and helped pull. She screamed and clawed at the wet sand, grabbing her own stirring hand along the way. They released her at the fire pit and watched her sink her teeth into the hand and tear off what little meat there was and hurriedly began chewing. When she swallowed, her body rejected the rancid meat and she threw up again, spitting twisted chunks of her own flesh into the sand.

Rachel gasped. “Oh my God!” she said, clapping a hand over her mouth and dry heaving.

A flock of geese, returning from their winter down south, flew by overhead, honking and flapping their way to the other side of Lake Darling. The six Minot residents watched the old lady’s thrashing fade with the geese. The craggy hand slipped from her good one and dropped to the sand with a wet thud, becoming just as motionless as its owner.

“What the hell is going on here, Sheriff?” Johnson wheezed, still aiming his gun with trembling hands.

Hooper took his ball cap off and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I…I don’t know, but...”

“There’ll be more of them!” Rachel shrieked. “Let’s leave now while we still can!”

“It’s okay. They got it under control,” Woody said gently, wrapping an arm around her.

Hooper glanced to the water and turned back to the old lady, who had gone into a tranquil fetal position. Her body twitched a few more times as thunder rumbled off in the distance.

Woody craned his neck to see over the picnic table. “Is she dead?”

“I don’t know, but whatever this
thing
is, it’s coming back with us,” Hooper said, his chest hammering inside his t-shirt.

Johnson wrinkled his freckled nose. “Why?”

“To find out what the hell it is.”

Deputy Myer looked out over the gray lake and returned his attention to the wrinkled lady. “It’s water-based,” he said blankly.

The group of horrified onlookers slowly rotated their heads to him.

Hooper narrowed his eyes. “What?”

Myer took a step closer and knelt down next to the unmoving body. “She needs water to survive, like a fish.”

Johnson snorted. “More like a shark!”

“Lower your gun, Deputy,” Hooper told him.

Reluctantly, Johnson lowered his sidearm but didn’t holster it.

“And like a fish,” Myer continued, studying the old woman through thoughtful eyes. “She can survive out of water for a short time but then she has to get back in.”

Hooper wrinkled his face and turned to scan the lake, obviously wary of more visitors. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“He could be right,” Rory said. “You saw how bad she wanted to get back in that water. The other ones were the same way last night. They came out just long enough to grab someone and pull them back in.”

A burst of lighting fractured the southwestern horizon. Thunder cracked again, this time louder as the gray sky above darkened further.