Floodwater Zombies (32 page)

Doc followed Rachel, Kourtney and Alex through the door behind the bar. Rory stopped in the doorway and turned to see an old man swim through a corner of the broken window like an eel. Once inside, the man quickly got to his feet. Bony hands shot out his tattered coat sleeves and clamped down on Hooper’s shoulders from behind. Hooper screamed in pain as long fingernails dug through his black t-shirt. He tripped over his own feet and the man fell on him in a rolling ball of splashing water.

Rory took aim with the silver .357 as the old man raised his head back, exposing two rows of yellowed teeth. The gun kicked upward in Rory’s hand and the man’s head splattered against the jukebox. The storm raged outside the broken front window, drowning out someone’s screams in the back of the bar. Hooper scrambled to his feet and started moving. Two ladies popped out of the water and tackled him into two tables, which folded beneath their combined weight, sending them hurtling into the rising water. Rory leaned over the bar with the gun and blew a hole through the back of the old lady’s gray hair. She slammed into the water face first, giving him a clear shot at the young brunette about to rip Hooper’s nose off. Hooper pressed his hands against her throat, barely keeping her snapping jaws from sinking into his face. Her pink sweats made Rory blink.

“Shoot her!” Hooper choked out, extending his arms and pushing with everything he had.

Rory closed one eye and stared down the barrel when Powder Blue suddenly exploded from the water and hissed like a wet cat. Rory swung the gun around and shot her one time, taking off her left arm. She twirled backwards into a booth and got back up, leaving the arm behind. Rory whipped the gun back to Hooper and took a deep breath, drawing a shaky bead on the brunette trying to suck face with him. The gun jerked in Rory’s hand and the Magnum’s substantial bullet blew a tennis ball-sized hole in the
Asteroids
arcade screen. Rory tightened his grip and fired again, this time taking off the left side of the brunette’s head.

Hooper threw her lifeless body to the side and got to his feet as Powder Blue threw herself over the bar and fell to Rory’s feet with a splash. He tried to step back but her arthritis-twisted fingers had already found his ankle. She tightened her grip and pulled her gaping mouth closer to his leg. He screamed and kicked like hell, unable to shake her painful grip.
 

A young man in a black suit jumped up, blocking Hooper’s route to the bar. The man lunged and Hooper punched him in the face. The stiff crumbled into the pooling water and got to his knees but before he could get back up, Hooper blew a hole through the back of his head, sending him back into the murky water where he came from.

Rory shot Powder Blue in the head and tried ripping his leg from her barbed clasp but only succeeded in dragging her with him.

 
“Come on!” Hooper cried, rounding the bar.

“My leg’s stuck!” Rory said, dragging the dead lady through the water as he reloaded. Hooper knelt down and pulled at the senior’s pruned fingers, which refused to release Rory’s ankle. Rory dropped two bullets into the water and hurriedly slid two more into the chamber. With a flick of the wrist, he snapped it back into place and scanned the bar.

“Jesus Christ!” Hooper yelled, veins bulging in his neck and forehead as he pulled with both hands. “Stop moving, Rory! I can’t get a grip!”

“I’m not moving! Just get it off me!” he yelled over the rushing water.

Hooper gritted his teeth, his face turning red. “What the fuck?” he cried, unable to detach the deceased.

Rory’s head jerked to three men and two women swimming through the serrated opening in the front of the bar, gliding across the surface like water moccasins. Rory took three shots that missed and ceased firing, knowing he had save ammo and wait for a better shot. The things crashed into the stools on the other side of the bar and got to their feet, moving much faster than the stiffs had been shambling in the parking lot. Two more corpses were quick to follow.
Then three.

“Hurry!
They’re all over the goddamn place!” Rory turned the gun on an elderly man in a red
Shriner’s
suit crawling over the bar, his funny little hat with a tassel long gone. Rory squeezed the crescent moon-shaped trigger and decapitated the old fogey. The gun swung around and found a young boy about Alex’s age, missing an eyeball and his nose. Rory removed the kid’s other eye with one shot. The boy spun into the cloudy water as a black lady with short hair and a shiny green dress jumped up onto the bar and snarled, exposing pointy teeth and a rotten tongue like the horror version of
Coyote Ugly
.

There was a loud snap as one of the dead lady’s fingers broke off in Hooper’s hand, sending him falling backwards into a row of liquor bottles. “Fuck this!” he said, getting to his feet and drawing his station-issued weapon.

Rory squeezed his trigger, rotating the gun’s chamber one click, igniting the gunpowder and blowing the black lady off the bar. She flew into a man wearing a long sleeve button down with a bolo tie. The two stiffs toppled into the water and out of sight.

“Hold still!” Hooper yelled, emptying his clip into Powder Blue’s forearm. He lifted his boot and brought it down hard, snapping her arm in two with a loud crunch. He ejected the clip into the water and sinuously pulled a new one from his belt and slammed it home in one continuous motion. With both hands, he took aim with his weapon and backed to the door with the porthole window. “Cut it!” he yelled to Rory, holding the wooden door open with his foot and nodding to someone in the back. “Get up those stairs!” He returned his attention to the bar and began dropping soggy stiffs like he was going for the high score on an old-school
The House of the Dead
arcade game.

Rory snatched a knife from a cutting board and began sawing what was left of the skin and tendons until finally breaking free of the old lady’s dead weight. He backpedalled towards the door, swinging his gun from corpse to corpse without shooting, the old lady’s bony hand flopping around his ankle.

“Go!” Hooper yelled, shooting a decorated city cop right between the eyes.

Mick was the first one up the spiral staircase and out the rooftop door. With Alex in tow, Kourtney climbed the curving steps that seemed to go on forever like a bad dream in an
Alice in Wonderland
movie. At the top, she burst through the door, half expecting Mick to be pushing on it from the other side, and fell onto the roof. Mick helped her to her feet while Alex held the door for the others.

“Is it clear?” she yelled over the hammering rain.

Mick scanned the rooftop with Rob’s .38 in his hand. “I think so.”

She glanced to a large block of metal vents occupying the middle of the roof. “Go check the other side, just to be sure!”

Mick nodded and quickly disappeared. Alex squeezed her leg hard when someone’s head started bobbing up the steps with a loud clanging noise. She pushed Alex behind her and prepared to slam the door shut if she had to. Disheveled salt-and-pepper hair appeared as Doc rounded the steps with a chair in his hand banging against the black iron railing. He reached the top, gasping for air, and spilled out into what was shaping up to be another gray morning. Kourtney waited for Rachel, Rory and Hooper to emerge before slamming the door shut. Doc wedged the back of the chair against the door’s handle, sinking the chair’s legs into grooves running through the roof’s metal flashing.

He pulled on the door which opened three or four inches before the chair caught. “That should hold
em
for awhile,” he panted, resting his hands on his knees and squinting through the rain at Kourtney and Alex. “You okay?”

Kourtney nodded, scanning a short wall rimming the edges of the roof. The heavy rain gushed out rectangular drains and spilled over the edge like waterfalls to the flooded ground below. An old antenna - rendered useless when analog TV went the way of the VCR - leaned at an awkward angle in one corner.

“We’re clear!” Mick shouted, coming around the large kitchen vents and tucking his gun into the front of his jeans.

Lightning flickered, reflecting off the barren rooftop. There was nowhere to take shelter from the unrelenting storm and no way down. Not with those things inside. Kourtney and Rory leaned over the short wall and saw four of the things go swimming along the side of the bar, heading for the front. His heart clenched when he saw how they cut through the water like snakes on oil. Alex leaned over the wall and his mom pulled him back before he could catch a glimpse of anything else that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Hooper strained to see Rory through the driving rain. “Thanks,” he said, trying to catch his breath.

Rory bent over and rested his hands on his knees without responding, focusing on the dead hand clasped around his ankle and resisting the urge to vomit.

After a few more breaths, Hooper spoke again. “That was Kristy Piper.”

Rory tipped his head up.
“Who?”

Hooper took a deep breath.
“The one in the pink sweats.”
He nodded downstairs. “I was just out at her place on the other side of the lake, investigating a string of broken mailboxes.”

Doc’s brow folded.
“When?”

“Two days ago.”

Lightning split the sky, lighting up Doc’s dour face. “
Sonofagun
,” he said dully.

“She must’ve just turned,” Rory panted.

Hooper nodded. “
Which means those things are all over the damn place.
”

Alex wrapped himself tighter around Kourtney’s leg, his BB gun still in hand.

The gray light added ten years to their faces, cutting dark wrinkles through pale skin. Hooper shook his head and dropped it. “Damn, that was some lights out shooting!” He laughed and crouched down on his haunches, exhaustion and shock finally catching up to him. “I thought I was dead meat there for sure,” he said thickly, closing his eyes and tipping his face back to let the rain wash over him.

“Thank PlayStation,” Rory replied flatly.

Hooper turned to Rory and wiped water from his face.
 
“I tell you what, we get out of this alive and you got yourself a fulltime job as a deputy if you want it.”

Rory slowly lifted his head, rain streaming from the end of his nose.

Doc grunted loudly. “I don’t know about all that. He just blew a hole in my
Asteroids
machine!”

“Dad!”
Kourtney scowled. “Who cares?”

“I do!” he snapped. “I paid twenty-five hundred bucks for that thing!”

“Enough!” Kourtney blurted. “What do we do now? We’re surrounded,” she said in a defeated tone.

“Shit!” Mick bellowed, throwing his hat to the ground and kicking it across the roof. “We’re screwed!”

“Wait!” Rory said, creeping to the front of the bar and peeking over the wall. The others followed, watching stiffs squeeze between the sputtering boat and the broken window, slipping inside the bar like wet noodles.

Rory ducked back down and turned to face the others. “The boat,” he whispered. “It’s still running.”

Doc swept wet hair out of his face and shook his head. “How we gonna get to it without those things climbing all over us?”

Rory pulled his gun out. “How’s everyone doing on ammo?” he asked, ejecting the .357’s cylindrical chamber and sliding in wet bullets from his pocket.