Floodwater Zombies (37 page)

The Major turned to Hooper and sighed, inspecting them further and looking as if he had no idea what to do next. So he took another long drag and released it. “How many
ya
lose, Sheriff?”

Hooper’s eyes thinned.
“Too many.”

Grundy snorted, resting a hand on the butt of the nine-millimeter tucked inside a camouflaged holster strapped to his right thigh. “Tell me about it. Five of us came in on a raft four and a half hours ago.” His eyes dropped to his boots.
“Dark as hell, too.
Caught a rough current and tipped over on a tree stump or something. We hadn’t even gotten out of the water yet when two of my men got hit by those...” He glanced at Alex and changed his track. “We’re from Bismarck, and even with our GPS we got more lost than a June bug on Christmas!”

Alex giggled softly while Murphy rolled his eyes.

“I saw that Private!” Grundy snapped, tapping ash from his smoke onto the road.

“Good for you,” Murphy mumbled.

The Major arched a tall eyebrow at him. “What’s that? Speak up, Private!”

Murphy cleared his throat.
“I said, I smell…glue.”

Grundy’s face wrinkled.

“Bismarck?” Hooper said, creasing his brow. “What about the Minot Air Force Base?”

“Oh they’re here,” Grundy said, looking to the parting clouds.
“
Keepin
just as busy as the rest of us.”

“We know the lake,” Rory said, resting a foot on the driver’s seat. The old lady’s hand flopped against his ankle. “We can get you out of here.”

Grundy held up a gloved hand, smoke rising in wispy trails from the clove cigarette clutched between two long fingers. “We’ve got it covered, son.”

“How bad is it that way?” Hooper asked, nodding towards the other side of the hill.

Grundy chuckled.
“Bad with water or bad with the walking dead?”

Hooper shrugged. “Both.”

“Bad,” Grundy said gravely, one eye drooping a little more than the other. “But don’t worry; you just stumbled upon an official pick up spot.” He looked to the sun, rising just above the eastern horizon. “Soon as the sun comes up, a helicopter is going to land on that hill right there.” He pointed to the top of the hill with the two fingers holding his smoke.

“Are you serious?” Rachel said, clapping a hand over her heart.

“Chicken shits won’t send anyone in till it’s completely light out,” Murphy said, checking his watch. “But we should be airborne in twenty minutes, which couldn’t come soon enough. I am cold and wet and in dire need of a plateful of chicken and biscuits.”

Grundy blew smoke Murphy’s direction. “Quit your
bitchin
, soldier.”

Kourtney covered her mouth with a hand as tears slid down her face. “It’s over,” she sniveled, looking up to the others. They met her hard stare and started laughing.

Murphy watched their emotion filled group hug with tired eyes. A smile finally slithered across his bristly face. “I know how
ya
feel. I’ve got a new little baby girl and the sweetest wife in the whole wide world
waitin
on me back home, and for a minute there…” He dropped his head, his bottom lip quivering. “I thought I’d never see my beautiful girls again.”

Rachel wiped tears of joy from her cheeks and smiled. “How old is your little girl?”

Murphy discreetly wiped a tear away with a gloved hand and smiled brightly. “Tabby is four months old,
mam
, and cute as the dickens.”

“I’ve got a wife
waitin
on me back home I was kind of hoping to never see again.”

“Major!” Kourtney gasped with a light laugh. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

A wide smile crept across his chiseled face. “You don’t know my wife.”

They stared at him for a second before bursting into laughter, which made it tough to hear the tall man with a pony tail rush from the water behind them. Rory saw the smile fade from Grundy’s face first. The clove cigarette dangled from his bottom lip just before falling to the ground. Out of Rory’s peripheral vision, he saw someone come around the boat and snatch Murphy with two long arms. Murphy screamed
,
his arms pinned beneath the man’s bear hug as his heels scraped along the ground. Grundy yanked his gun from its holster and took aim. Just before the fiend stepped back into the water, Grundy pulled the trigger. The tall man dove
in,
Murphy still wrapped in his bony arms, and disappeared into the cloudy water, cutting Murphy off in mid-scream.

Grundy’s black boots beat the pavement, power walking past the boat to the water’s edge. “What the hell,” he mumbled blankly, aiming his gun into the water. A cardinal sang its song from a nearby Birch, its bright red standing out against the tree’s white bark. “Those goddamn things!” Grundy gritted his teeth and unloaded his entire clip into the water, making it jump.

Hooper nudged Rory to help Kourtney down from the boat. “Let’s get the hell
outta
here!”

Grundy spun around on his thick heels, turning his back to the water. “I’ve lost my entire team!” Tears slipped over the edge of his puffy eyelids and rolled down his shiny cheeks. He didn’t try to hide the drops and grabbed the radio attached to his shoulder.
“Omega Delta-One to base!
Over!”

Static pulsed from the speaker, and then went quiet.
“Copy, Omega.
Over.”

Grundy pressed the button again, veins bulging in his neck and forehead. “Where’s my fucking bird?” he informally screeched, letting up on the button.

More static took the line, followed by a few seconds of total silence that seemed to last for minutes. Another burst of static emanated from the radio.
“Big Bird in route now.
ETA fourteen minutes.
Over.”

Grundy released a tired breath and brought the radio back to his mouth. “
Well
tell
em
to haul balls. We’re getting our asses kicked down here!” He lowered the handset and raised it back to his lips.
“Over!”

“Copy that, Delta-One. Wings are a
flappin
and a
clappin
. Hold steady for two-minute brief.
Over.”

Grundy slapped the handset back onto his shoulder and pulled out another cigarette and lit up. “
Fucksticks
,” he mumbled, flicking the Zippo shut and trading it for a new clip in his coat pocket. “They have no idea what the hell is going on down here,” he said, slapping the clip in and chambering a round. “Probably think we’re all crazy as a bunch of shithouse rats. Well, I’ve got news for
em
…”

“Oh fuck,” Rory said dully, staring at the dead things creeping from the water.

“Get up the hill!” Hooper yelled, jumping from the boat to the pavement.

Rory hopped over the edge of the boat and planted a solid landing. He helped Rachel down as dozens of the things slowly – almost cautiously - waded out of the shallow water. Kourtney jumped down next and fell to her butt. Hooper helped her up as Grundy backpedalled, swinging his handgun from carcass to carcass. An Asian man, already missing half his face, craned his neck forward and hissed like a spooked cat. The cigarette fell from Grundy’s trembling lips, his eyes tight and angry. “
Goddamnit
, what are you?” he screamed. The pack of rotting corpses replied with a wave of hollow moans that anyone with half a brain could understand - the food chain had flipped.

“Come on, Major!” Hooper shouted, running with the others up the slippery blacktop.

Grundy removed the rest of the Asian’s face and turned the gun on a man with a frizzy Amish beard. His straight-cut suit was black and soiled, without a collar or pockets, his round hat long gone. The man aimed eyes, occupied with only the gleam of an unsatisfied craving, at Grundy. Curled claws snatched at the air as it limped closer. Grundy took his finger off the trigger and swallowed hard before turning to catch up with the others. At the top of the hill, they turned to see the ghouls pass the beached ski boat. The tattered rabble struggled with the hill’s steep incline, literally looking dead on their feet, but steadfast in their voracious pursuit.

“I thought they couldn’t get out of the water!” Rachel cried, aiming the .38 at a naked old man with strips of gray flesh dangling where his ball sack used to hang.

Grundy’s forehead wrinkled. “They can’t get out of the water?”

“Not for long,” Rory said, searching the sky for a sign of the helicopter. “That’s the theory anyway.”

Hooper turned to the Major, his chest rising and falling beneath his black t-shirt. “How many clips you got?”

“One,” Grundy panted. “We lost most everything when the boat flipped.”

“Great,” Hooper murmured, turning back to see the things pass the hill’s halfway point. Their progress was eerily conservative but the hill wouldn’t take long to conquer, even at this sluggish paced. The sun finally began splashing a golden light upon the tops of some nearby pines, turning their darkened branches a bright green.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Rachel said heavily, staring past them with alarmed eyes.

Everyone turned to see more of the dead emerging from the other side of the hill that rolled back down into the floodwater. The stiffs shuffled closer, dressed to the nines and closing in from both sides of the hill.

“Don’t shoot until you have to!” Hooper shouted, swinging his gun from one side of the hill to the other with his left hand. “Make every shot count; we’re low on ammo!”

“Call the damn helicopter again!” Kourtney shrieked over the growing death moans. Alex buried his face in her stomach, the BB gun in his hand providing him little comfort. She held him with one hand and her dad’s gun with the other. “I don’t know if I’ve got any bullets left!” She took aim on a fit looking man in a three-piece suit climbing faster than the rest of the ragged horde.

“Hold your fire, people!” Grundy yelled, widening his stance and readying for a shootout.

Kourtney’s finger reluctantly eased off the Colt .45’s silver trigger. The flesh-eaters closed the gap with each limping stride, reaching with both arms (the ones that still had both arms) and groaning louder and louder. The fit man in the lead slowed to a stumbling crawl, coughing up a tar-like substance that splattered against the smooth blacktop and smelled like baby poop. Less than ten feet from the group of huddled survivors, the stiffs in the lead came to a complete halt. The survivors huddled tighter, forming a ball of human flesh while mangled hands snatched at them from both sides of the hill.

“Shoot now?” Rachel screamed, shakily pointing the .38 at a naked female who was so close, Rachel could see what looked like a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls tattooed along what was left of the skin covering her skeletal ribcage. The pasty female snarled and grunted, baring broken teeth.

“Jesus Christ!” Kourtney screamed, pressing against the others.

Just when Rory was about to pull the trigger, the front row of corpses on both sides of the hill turned and headed back for the water, puking up more black goo along the way. New rows of decaying fiends eagerly took their place and closed in, anxious for a warm meal and unperturbed by their comrades’ malady. Their stretching fingertips stopped just short of their target, making Rory and the others squeeze together even tighter. The smell was putrid and made their eyes sting. The corpses were so close that loose tendons and veins were clearly visible through decayed patches riddling their craggy bodies. Suddenly, they pulled their claws back and began rocking on their heels, hacking up wet globs of sludge with violent convulsions.