Floodwater Zombies (2 page)

He smiled as the marina’s three lights came into view. He had always wondered what Annie looked like naked and tonight he was going to find out. Tonight, his family was going to become stronger than ever. He should stop at Doc’s and pick up something to celebrate with, maybe a fifteen dollar six-pack of PBR. Annie would like that. Plus, it would make the forty-five minute drive back to town go that much quicker.

Lightning ripped across the sky and for a split second Connor could see all of the lake houses anchored in the tall pines. The thunder that followed came quicker and vibrated the steering wheel in his hand. He pulled out his phone and checked the screen, deciding he had time for a quick one on the way home after all, storm coming or not. Normally, he didn’t like being around people who could talk back, especially drunk ones, but he was dying for a cold brew.

It hadn’t always been like this. There had been a time when he actually enjoyed the company of the living. In fact, there was even a time when he had almost gotten married. But two and a half weeks before the big day, Cathy had left him for someone else. Someone named Michelle. Said it wasn’t him, it was her. So he ended up getting a cat instead.
Balmer
was nine years-old now and the only breathing female in his quiet farmhouse on the outskirts of town.

Sometimes he felt lonely living all alone in the house his parents had left him, and sometimes he felt like others were getting too close. Connor spent a lot of time sipping hot coffee – or cold beer – from his front porch, watching the town of Minot creep ever closer. Cigarette after cigarette, the new outlet malls, snap-together houses, and Chuck E. Cheeses inched closer with an unsettling determination. He figured his father must be rolling over in his grave. Connor snorted and eased up on the throttle as the two dock lights turned his face nearly as pasty as Dale’s.

After docking Don’s boat in its slip, he tied up and headed down the wooden dock for the golden cargo van with
Allan’s Funeral Home
scrolled in large curling letters across its side. The parking lot was shrouded in shadows and lonely enough for his mind to begin playing tricks on him. He saw Annie Dixon standing with her head tilted down, just outside the tree line by the van. She watched him through the tops of her hollow eyes as he climbed the steep lot. He couldn’t tell if her face was so pale from the moonlight or the embalming fluid he would be pumping through her veins later on tonight. She raised a bony finger and pointed it at him. He dropped his eyes to the ground and stepped over a fallen ice cream cone, which had surely brought some child to tears earlier in the day. When hen he looked up again Annie was gone. He quickened his pace and chuckled lightly. “Yep, I need a beer.”

Lightning flashed behind him, sending a jagged bolt straight down into the water, producing a bloodcurdling sizzle upon contact. Connor hunched his shoulders and stumbled forward as a large burst of warm air ruffled his hair from behind. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, regaining his balance and turning to see a patch of bubbling water near the dimly lit dock. He stepped closer, his oily hair hanging limply in his face, and squinted at the wispy smoke trails rising from a round section of simmering water that reminded him of a giant witch’s pot, cooking up neighborhood cats and dogs.

He swept his hair back into position and watched the smoke vanish into the night sky. “What the hell?” he mumbled, glancing back to the parking lot where a single light cast a yellow hue over a dusty pickup with a beat up trailer that had been there for months. He turned back to the water and scratched his head. “Weird shit, man,” he said under his breath, watching the water settle much quicker than his racing pulse. A few seconds later, the water glassed over again like nothing had ever happened.

He shrugged and hurriedly turned for the van, not seeing Dale Walters open his blue eyes beneath the murky water. Nor did Connor see the lids pop back on Connie
Oberman
- the town’s head librarian for the past fifty years. Or Tim Elgin, the high school football coach who suffered a heat stroke last summer when temperatures crossed the one hundred degree mark and he insisted upon practicing anyway.

Chapter Two

Rory poured Cocoa Pebbles into a big red bowl and glanced at the clock on the microwave again. He groaned, not believing he had slept to almost noon. Part of him – a big part – had wanted to just keep on sleeping, which was easier than waking up to face the fact that moving back in with his parents wasn’t some bad dream after all. He was just glad his dad was at work and unable to bust his balls in person. His mom he could handle, his dad was another story.

“You’re just now eating breakfast?” his mom asked in a high voice, waltzing into the kitchen in a sweat-stained red t-shirt, shiny black leggings and running shoes. She snatched a paper towel from a roll hanging beneath a cupboard with glass doors and mopped sweat from her forehead. Her long, blond pony tail swung back and forth as she dabbed at her glistening neck.

“This is lunch,” he said, pouring skim milk into the bowl too fast and spilling cereal onto the granite countertop.

“Uh-huh,” she replied flatly, grabbing the coffee pot and emptying the last of the thick brew into a coffee-stained mug.

“How can you drink that after going for a run?”

She returned the pot to the burner, where it sizzled, and turned it off.
“Keeps me regular.
Why pay a hundred bucks for a colonic when you can just drink Starbucks?”

Rory took a seat at a round table in front of the French doors, catching a brief glimpse of a German
Shepherd
darting across the grass after a brown squirrel on the other side of the pool. “Okay, that’s way too much info. I’m getting ready to eat here.”

She leaned against the counter and smiled at him over the steaming mug. Suddenly, the German
Shepherd
went galloping the opposite direction with three squirrels hot on his tail. “So where are you going to apply for a job today?”

He grimaced and shut his eyes, escaping into a world of solitary darkness. It was going to be a long summer, probably the longest summer since he broke his ankle playing softball in college.

She tucked a loose strand of blond hair behind an ear and blew on the black coffee. “We talked about this before you moved back home.”

“Oh brother,” he said under his breath, quickly stuffing a spoonful of the chocolaty cereal into his mouth before saying something he would later regret.

“If you don’t like the jobs here, Rory, you shouldn’t have moved back.”

“What was I supposed to do, Mom? I
got laid
off. Everyone in the newspaper industry is getting laid off,” he said, his bed head suddenly making him feel vulnerable to attack.

“Then why do you keep sending resumes out to newspapers?”

“Because you never know,” he said with his mouth full, nonchalantly smoothing his short brown hair.

Laura took a ginger sip of the steaming brew and swallowed.
“Any word from the
Daily News
?”

He shook his head and kept munching. “Minot’s paper is the probably last place hiring right now.”

Her eyebrows lifted into her shiny forehead. “I told you not to go for a Journalism degree, didn’t I? That was fifty thousand dollars down the drain.”

“Yeah well, sometimes
ya
gotta
hit rock bottom to find out who you really are.”

She laughed sharply. “Well, welcome to it, kiddo! This is your floor.”

Rory shoved another spoonful into his mouth, deciding it was possible he hadn’t survived a recent car accident and this was his living Hell.

“Have you talked to Rachel yet?” she asked, further confirming his suspicions.

“Mom,” he started, pausing to swallow. “I’ve been back for two days.”

“Well, you should call her. When was the last time you two even talked?”

He wiped milk from his chin with the sleeve of his black
Night of the Living Dead
t-shirt and thought back to the last time he had talked to Rachel - really talked to her. He couldn’t believe it had already been three years. It seemed like just yesterday he was sitting in his Honda Accord in his parent’s driveway, ready to pull out of this town forever.
“Last chance,”
he had said hopingly into his cell phone. In the long silence that followed, he could hear her faint sobs.

“I just don’t get why we can’t do a long distance thing for awhile,”
she had sniveled.
“Maybe after I’ve been out there to visit, I’ll change my mind.”

Anger had coursed through his veins at her suggestion because he knew her better than that. He knew she’d never leave this town. This town wasn’t just her home, it was her world and she had never expressed much interest in anything outside of it. Not counting Kirkwood Mall in Bismarck anyway. No, long distance relationships were for people too afraid to face reality and cut the cord, people who enjoyed throwing good money after bad. Rory didn’t want to become
that guy
, constantly calling and texting and emailing. Always checking up on someone he was getting to know less and less with each passing day.

“I’m sorry,”
Rachel had finally said into the phone, her voice little more than a quiver. With the wind knocked from him one last time, he had simply hung up. Hung up and drove away with tears in his eyes, embarking upon a new life in Charleston, South Carolina he wasn’t so sure he even wanted anymore.

He had seen Rachel a handful of times since, usually over the holidays or a summertime visit. But their passing exchanges had always been limited to awkward small talk until going their separate ways again, each left with a bag full of
what ifs
rattling around inside their heads.

Laura stared at him over the mug and narrowed her eyes.
“Rory?”

He turned to her, his eyes dialing back into focus. “She’s dating someone else now,” he said flatly.

A short burst of laughter ruffled her lips. “Yeah, that foul mouthed new DJ on 102.9 The Weasel.”

“The Wolf.”

“Whatever. Last week I heard him call a church and tell them he was possessed and needed an exorcism.”

Rory snorted, blowing milk out his nose. “
What?
” he said, wiping his face with his
shoulder.

“The pastor tried to exorcize him right there over the phone. I bet the poor man about had a heart attack.” She paused to take another sip, her unfocused eyes loosely aimed at a blue toaster sitting on the counter. “Rachel can do better than that.”

Rory stopped chewing, willing his mom not to say it, to just leave it alone.