Floodwater Zombies (7 page)

Clutch took another gulp from a can of Icehouse, a thick leather cuff strangling his beefy wrist while the fire glinted off silver hoops in his ears. He swallowed and tapped cigarette ash onto where the dirt met the sand, letting his eyes bounce around the circle of friends. Satisfied he still had their attention, he returned his solemn gaze to the campfire. The meditative flames quickly lulled his vision from focus. “And she was never seen again,” he said heavily, taking a long drag off the smoke and flicking the butt into the fire, shooting sparks up into the moonlit sky.

Rory accidentally traded a quick glance with Rachel. She rolled her eyes making Rory stifle a laugh. When he looked back up, Ashley was staring at him over the rim of her wine glass, her long blonde hair blurring in the fire’s wavering heat between them. She took a slow sip and swallowed, her smoky eyes sparkling in the light as her finger gently rimmed the edge of the glass. Rory took another drink and turned back to Clutch.

 
“Over the years,” Clutch continued in a hushed whisper, his unfocused eyes boring into the fire. “People out here - walking their dogs, or fishing, or…
camping
- began reporting these loud, wailing screams off in the distance. Horrible, blood-curdling shrieks.” He cringed, as if the horrid events were replaying against the flames. “So loud, their echoes made it difficult to pinpoint where they were coming from.”

Kate took a sip of her red wine, gazing at Woody and tucking a long strand of auburn hair behind an ear. Rory checked to see if Woody noticed, but he was too busy hanging on Clutch’s every word.

Clutch set his beer can into a built-in cup holder on the lawn chair’s arm and surveyed the woods around them. “To this day,” he said slowly, clasping his hands together. “They say you can still hear her screams at night, but if you do, don’t go looking for her,” he said gravely, turning back to the others.
“Unless you
wanna
be the next one…to stand in the corner.”

Rory’s eyes darted around the circle while a symphony of frogs, crickets and locusts filled the dead air with Lake Darling’s night song. A fish jumped nearby (probably a walleye judging by the large splash) and sent ripples marching across a long sword of moonlight cutting the water in two. Clutch pulled another Marlboro Red from his pack and lit up. He exhaled a trail of smoke into the sky like a werewolf howling at the moon. Rory wondered if he smoked as much as he talked.

Kate rapidly shook her head, like she had just taken a heavy right from
Wladimir
Klitschko
. “Wait…that’s it?”

Clutch tucked the lighter and smokes into the chair’s other cup holder and stared blankly at her. “That’s it.”

Ashley pulled her yellow sundress down and curled her legs up on the chair. “I’m so freaked out right now,” she said in a tight voice, hugging her knees.

Woody began canvassing the thick trees bordering the campsite, looking like he had just heard something for real this time.

Rachel tilted her head and gawked at Clutch through slits. “
But if you do…don’t go looking for her
?”

Clutch winked at her and made a clicking sound with his tongue. “That’s what they say, hot-stuff.”

“Okay, umm,” Rory said, pausing to clear his throat. “I’m pretty sure that entire ghost story was
The Blair Witch Project
.”

Clutch’s eyes landed hard on him, making Rory wish he would have just kept his mouth shut. He twisted in his chair under their weight. “
Ya
know,
the movie?” he said, digging in deeper.

Clutch slowly shook his head. “That’s the local legend, my friend,” he said softly, taking another pull from the can.

Ashley lowered her legs and laughed sharply.
“Local legend?
Aren’t you from Nebraska?”

“Guy I work with at the station told me about it.”

Rory pretended like he didn’t just find out Ashley wasn’t wearing panties and turned back to Clutch. “Yeah, the whole kid standing in the corner of the house in the woods with the lost campers…that’s the Blair Witch,” he said, glancing to the others for help.

Ashley and Kate looked at each other and shrugged. “Is that like
Paranormal Activity
?” Ashley asked.

Clutch’s glassy gaze remained fixed on Rory. “No, that’s a true story, dude.”

Rory laughed. “You mean like the one you told us on the way out here about the giant crocodile living in this lake?”

 
Clutch leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, the crickets filling the awkward silence before he spoke again. “Don’t make things weird between us, Rory. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Mark!” Rachel gasped, slapping his knee. “What the hell!”

A surprised laugh escaped Rory’s lips. “I’m not trying to make things weird, dude, but you just described the entire plot of...”

“Oh I forgot,
Mr. Big Shot Movie Reviewer
,” he grumbled, leaning back in the chair. “How dare I question your expertise?”

Rachel clapped a hand over her breast, spilling some of her wine. “Mark, what is wrong with you?” she said icily.

Clutch’s face slumped. “Babe, please don’t use my real name in public. I told you I sometimes get death threats from
nutbags
who don’t get their song played.”

“Don’t be so rude!” She turned from him with a scowl and brushed a bug from her legs.
“So embarrassing.”

Rory snorted, thankful for the campfire camouflaging his ruby face, and took a long drink, hiding behind the can for as long as possible. He swallowed and released a wistful sigh, gazing at the stars which were so much brighter away from the city lights. “Man, I could go for sending out a tweet right about now.”

Ashley laughed. “Are you
jonesing
that bad, Rory?”

“Or one tiny Facebook post; just a little
somethin
to take the edge off.”

Rachel giggled and shook her head.

Rory sat up straighter. “Even if it was one of those dumb captions like,
in order to be someone, you must first be yourself.”

Kate laughed and choked on her wine, nearly falling over backwards in her chair. “I hate it when people post stupid shit like that!”

“Or how about,” Rachel said, taking a deep breath. “
Some people feel the rain, others just get wet
.”

Ashley laughed out loud. “Or…
to the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world
,” she said overly serious.

“Yeah,” Woody said excitedly, leaning forward in his lawn chair. “Or something like,
no matter how carefully you choose your words, they’ll always end up being from someone else’s heart
…”

The laughter faded and everyone turned to him with scrunched up faces, absolute silence stealing across the flickering campsite.

“What?” Ashley laughed.

Clutch tipped his hat back and scratched his head while Kate developed a case of the giggles.

“No wait!” Woody said, taking a deep breath and resetting. “
No matter how wide a river, a bridge always runs through it
.”

Rory tried not to laugh and snorted.
“Nope.”

“
An eagle soars highest when the mountain glistens from afar…
”

 
“Wrong,” Rory replied flatly, shaking his head. “Not even close. You just ruined the whole thing.”

Woody frowned and leaned back in the chair. “You just ruined the whole thing,” he grumbled under his breath, returning his attention to the campfire, which gladly picked up the slack in the conversation.

Kate inhaled a wheezing breath and slapped Woody’s knee, making him jump. “You’re so weird!”

Rory leaned back in the chair and cracked his back. He stared longingly into the night and sighed again. “Everything I see reminds me of Facebook. If only I had my phone.”

Kate cocked her at him.
“Really, Rory?”

Clutch chuckled, his jaw line looking even sharper in the orange light. “Wow, you need some help, dude! Hey Kate, you
wanna
frisk us for cell phones again?” A sly grin crept across his cheeks, like the awkward silence creeping across the group of friends. “I mean, just to be sure.”

Kate and Ashley traded glances and began twisting their hair around their index fingers, neither knowing how to respond.

“Okay, I’m done here,” Rachel muttered, finishing her cabernet in a single gulp and getting up. “Anyone need one?”

Everyone shot a hand into the air at the same time. They paused to look around the ring before erupting into a rolling bout of laughter. A loon cried out from across the lake as if yelling at them to keep it down.

“I’ll help you,” Ashley said, joining Rachel at a worn-out picnic table.

Rachel clicked on a battery-powered lantern, lighting up a portable grill, buns, chips, marshmallows, two Ziplocs stuffed with homemade brownies, empty beer cans, and an old leather football littering the table’s surface.
Graffiti, mainly pot leaves and bulbous mushrooms, poked out where it could.
Ashley moved a beer bong from the top of a large cooler taking up half a bench and popped it open.

The conversation around the campfire subsided into a lull that can sometimes even sneak up on the drunk and stoned. Crickets chirped off in the woods while hundreds of frogs croaked along the muddy banks. A massive throng of locusts, hiding in the tall trees above, joined in the chorus, orchestrating a symphony of rising and falling buzzing.

“So did you really get high with Eric Church?” Kate asked.

“Once,” Clutch grinned. “And you’ll never believe what happened.”

“What?” Kate and Woody replied at the same time.

Rory glanced behind him to the picnic table, admiring Rachel’s firm backside in the jumping light while the group’s chatter drifted a thousand miles away. He still couldn’t believe it had been three years. He had hoped she would have gained weight or a trout-pout from too much lip filler, but she looked better than ever. Not that it mattered. He couldn’t sit around ruing the day he had left her and this town in his rearview mirror. Some things just
weren’t meant
to be. Plus, if she had decided date this Clutch guy, she had obviously lost her mind.
But those shorts…
He cringed for letting his eyes wander for too long and turned back around to find Clutch staring right at him.

Clutch lifted his eyebrows until they disappeared beneath the bill of his cap. “You all set, bro?”

Rory shifted in the lawn chair and jiggled his empty can. “Just
waitin
on that beer,” he smiled.

Clutch nodded somberly.

“What if we turned around and we were completely surrounded by flesh-eating zombies?”