Floodwater Zombies (22 page)

Rory leaned forward and squinted at the blurry road unfolding in the distance. “Just make it to Doc’s and we’ll use their landline.”

Hooper tried the car’s radio again, keeping his eyes on the road for the most part. He spit more codes into the receiver and let up on the button. More static replied. He spoke again, this time in normal person talk –
normal
with a strong hint of extreme anxiety – and released the button.
More static.
More swear words. He slammed the handset back into its cradle and leaned back. “How can everything be down?”

Woody turned to him, his face sliding like a slow moving avalanche. “Maybe these things are everywhere. Maybe everyone at Doc’s is already dead.” He turned back to the road, pausing to swallow. “Maybe the entire country is dead.”

Hooper shot him a frown and returned his attention to the slick highway without a word.

Rachel glanced behind them again. “Maybe we should just keep going. Get as far away from the lake as possible.”

Thunder cracked above them, rattling the car’s dash against the windshield. Rory plucked a leaf from Rachel’s short locks and pitched it onto the floor. “We
gotta
get to that phone.”

“He’s right, Rachel,” Hooper said calmly. “People live out here and they’re going to need help. Plus, I couldn’t see with two wipers, let alone just one. We’ll be lucky to make it to Doc’s without ending up in a ditch.”

The rain drummed on the roof and road with a relentless ferocity, forcing him to maintain a painstaking crawl. The four grew silent, dripping with water and unabated despondency. The shock of witnessing people die was heavy, making each breath a struggle, each thought a rigorous labor.

Rachel sighed loudly. “How many guns do you have in this thing?”

Hooper found her eyes in the mirror and snorted, returning his gaze to the curving highway ahead.

Lightning split the sky, illuminating the gray afternoon outside the window. The lights inside the bar flickered. Doc turned to Alex and wrinkled his brow. “What’re you
drawin
now?”

“It’s a graveyard, Grandpa. And those are tombstones,” he smiled proudly, pointing a green magic marker to some tall slabs with undecipherable epitaphs scribbled across them.

Doc puckered his leathery brow and ran a hand through his grizzled hair.
“Tombstones?”

Alex nodded and went back to work with the marker, coloring in the graveyard’s plush green grass. “They’re all the people who died from smoking.”

Doc’s face slumped in the bar’s dim light with Motley
Crue’s
Dr.
Feelgood
oozing from the old Wurlitzer. He shook his head and exhaled a long breath. “Oh, that’s nice,” he muttered, going through the door leading to the office in back. Thunder cracked and the lights flickered again. Mick and Rob glanced around the yellowed ceiling, turned to each other and shrugged.

“This going to be fun to ride home in,” Rob snorted, taking a long swig from his bottle of Miller High Life.

Kourtney ruffled Alex’s blond hair with one hand and nonchalantly slipped him a folded dollar bill with the other. “Nicely done,” she whispered, kissing him on the top of his head.

Alex slipped the bill into his front pocket without stopping the green marker.

“If
ya
ask me, you’re
lettin
that kid watch too many cartoons,” Mick said, gesturing to Alex with his bottle.

“Yeah well, no one asked you,” Kourtney said, placing a lime on a plastic cutting board.

“That SpongeBob will mess you up, brother,” Rob said, adjusting his long, gray hair into a tighter ponytail. “Have you seen the cartoons kids are watching these days?”

Mick chuckled.
“Bunch of talking banana pirates and shit!”

Kourtney stopped cutting and shot him a look.

Mick cleared his throat and tried again. “I mean, bunch of talking banana pirates and
stuff
,” he said, smiling at Alex, who paid no attention and kept working on his morbid masterpiece. Lightning cracked again, lighting up the soggy parking lot.

“Whatever happened to the days of having real people in cartoons? Like
Scooby-Doo
and
The
Jetsons
and
Captain Cavemen
,” Rob asked, taking another swill from his bottle.

Mick pulled his eyebrows together and rubbed his thick mustache. “Technically, I don’t think Captain Caveman was a real person.”

Rob turned to him and raised his eyebrows. “Well, what the hell was he then?”

Mick shook his head making brown curls softly bounce beneath his worn trucker hat.
“Not sure; a guinea pig or a
turd
or
somethin
.”

Rob twisted on his barstool. “But you admit he was a Captain, right?”

Mick cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You got me on that one, partner,” he said, cheering Rob with his bottle.

“Do you guys want a cross or an angel?”

Slowly, they rotated their heads to the seven-year-old seated around the corner of the bar.

“For your tombstones, I mean,” Alex grinned, patiently awaiting their decisions.

Mick swallowed hard. “
Somethin’s
off with that kid,” he mumbled.

Rob took a slow pull from his bottle, keeping a wary eye on Alex the whole time. “I don’t like the way he looks at me.”

Alex yanked his cap gun from its holster and pointed it at them. “Cross or Angel?” he asked slowly.

Rob smiled weakly. “Personally, I like crosses.”

Kourtney slammed the knife onto the cutting board. “Alex
Gintner
! You stop pointing that gun at people or I’m going to take it away.”

He frowned. “It’s not even real, mom.”

“I don’t care. Pointing any kind of gun at people is a bad habit.”

Reluctantly, he stuffed the gun into its holster and returned to his drawing.

Mick leaned in closer to Rob and spoke out the corner of his mouth. “Bet he grows up to be a serial killer.”

“I heard that!” Kourtney said, sliding the limes into the end compartment of a long, plastic garnish tray. She crossed over to them and leaned on the dark wooden bar, still clutching the knife inside a closed fist. “Maybe you two should be talking about how you’re going to find jobs instead of cartoons.”

Mick stared at her thoughtfully. “You don’t know what Captain Caveman was either, do
ya
?”

She tried not to laugh and wiped her hands on a white towel hanging from her belt. “I know you two are about as nutty as a Baby Ruth bar,” she said, turning to flip through a pile of receipts next to the cash register.

Rob stared longingly at her firm backside stuffed into a pair of tight fitting, black jeans. “Hey, somebody’s
gotta
keep you company until all those working stiffs get here.”

Kourtney laughed sharply, stapling some receipts together.

“Yeah, just think how much business you’d lose without us,” Mick added. “No one comes in here before four o’clock.”

She turned around and both men tore their gaze from her butt and pretended like they were watching the dusty TV behind the bar.

“That’s not true,” Kourtney said
,
slipping the receipts into a bank bag and zipping it shut. “You guys aren’t the only ones without jobs out there.
Unfortunately.”

Rob looked around the empty bar. “We are today!” he laughed.

“Hey mom?”

“Yeah sweetie?”
Kourtney said, pulling liquor bottles from a cardboard box and plugging gaps in the rows of bottles behind the bar.

“How do you spell
bereaved
?”

She stopped in her tracks, a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand, and wrinkled her brow.

“Man, we
gotta
find a new bar,” Mick whispered.

Rob nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe one with strippers instead of kids.”

“Or at least a flat screen TV.”

Rob chuckled. “Hell, I’d settle for an updated
Golden Tee
.”

The bell hanging from the front door’s elbow jingled as the door burst open, making everyone jumped. Their heads snapped around to see Sheriff Hooper, Rory, Rachel and Woody soaking wet and out of breath. The storm raged behind them, drowning out Eric Church’s
Smoke a Little Smoke
seeping from the jukebox. Lightning flared, lighting up the lines of driving rain. Kourtney’s eyes gravitated to the shotgun in Woody’s hands. Water dripped from its barrel as the glass door slowly shut behind him, bringing Eric back to life. Lightning flickered across the front window, lighting up Mick’s and Rob’s bewildered faces.

“What the
sam
hell?” Mick mumbled.

“Need you to lock this door and the one in the back right now,” Hooper ordered, scoping the lonely bar with wide eyes.

Kourtney frowned, shoving the box of liquor bottles to the side. “What’s wrong, Ryan?”

He crossed over to the bar and dropped a black duffel bag on it with a grunt. “No time to explain, just lock
em
!” he panted, grabbing Mick’s beer and draining it.

 
Mick watched him with his mouth hanging open and raised a finger into the air. “Umm…”

“Oh, don’t even tell me!” Kourtney said, snatching a buoy keychain from an anchor-shaped hook on the wall next to the cash register.

Doc came back through the wooden door with five sleeves of red Solo cups in his arms. “Don’t tell you what?”

“It’s the boogey man, isn’t it?” Alex asked, trading his magic marker for his cap gun.

Kourtney dashed past Doc and came around the bar, fumbling through the keys on her way to the front door. Doc’s eyes did a double take on the shotgun in Woody’s hands. He ran a hand through his slick backed hair and swallowed hard. “Oh sweet Jesus,” he gasped, the color leaving his face.

“What’s wrong, Grandpa? Are you feeling short of breath?”

Doc watched his daughter lock the front door. “You could say that, A-man,” he wheezed.

“Mom, Grandpa’s having a heart attack!”

“No I’m not, Alex!” he snapped, coming out from behind the bar. “What happened?”