High Water (8 page)

As though the opening of the door had let in the signal, Liz’s phone chirped. She held it up to Pete. As usual, Walter was far from convivial.

Side door

It was going to have to do. Pete nodded at Liz, but they started at a scream of terror and a litany of curses coming from the dark directly below. A fusillade of gunshots lit the area to reveal at least a half a dozen infected. They were closing on a cop who was brandishing his pistol, his face frozen in hysterical panic. Several more shots were followed by the hair-raising cry of the unfortunate officer. On the other side of the park, a dropped flashlight lit a group of infected cruelly tackling a cop into the pool. Splashes rendered an array of shadows across the back wall.

A hand fell on his shoulder. Liz was pointing at the front door. Only a minute into their operation, two of the not so special-weapons-and-tactics officers had reconsidered the mission. The cops retreated to the entrance, pumping shotgun rounds into the darkness. Their body language reeked of frantic desperation. Before they made it to the door, an infected partygoer slammed into them from the side, spilling one over. The officer’s gun clattered across the concrete. More infected materialized out of the darkness, and the cops died.

With the doors wide open and the police entering the fray, the park had come alive. The building was haunted by shadow-born ghosts who were fearless when stalking the uninfected in murderous packs. Goosebumps stippled Pete’s skin, and he found his hands were shaking.

“What next?” Liz yelled over the sound of horrendous fighting. An errant beam from a flashlight flickered across her face.  Her expression was one part stubbornness, one part will-to-power.

Her strength was a knife that cut through his fears.

“We should move!” he shouted. Realizing that the authority’s next step would involve something more drastic wasn’t hard. Nor was imaging what an escalation would look like. High explosives would do the trick. Or a dumpster-full of thermite dropped from a helicopter, even better a nuke from orbit. Dangerous and dreadful as the ground might be, they couldn’t stay where they were.

Liz recognized the danger too, and pointed at one of the slides. She yelled into Pete’s ear, “The yellow slide. We can make the run down it and get pretty close to the door. Maybe we can just climb up this,” she motioned to the panels that abutted the wall of the top of Slide Mountain, “and run down the slide!”

“The fucking
water
slide!” he emphasized the penultimate word. Liz gave him a disgusted look, shouted something inaudible about “the damn water” and whether he had a better idea.

He did not, and shook his head. That was all Liz needed to begin climbing to the apex of Slider Mountain. With strength and finesse, she found handholds on the various valves and pipes routing water to the slides. Pete waited for her to climb a few feet before starting up trying to follow her path. The equipment was covered in a rotten slime, making it hard to grasp. They struggled up for a minute, dropping down to the top platform of Slider Mountain.

“Yellow slide,” she shouted, pointing at one of the dark tunnels. Like the others, it was a perfect circle of pitch black, a damp maw into shadow. Liz didn’t hesitate as she ran and flung herself into the darkness of the slide disappearing feet first.

Pete did hesitate. His brain was still trying to process the deafening sounds of firearms and bloodshed. It was likely that the slide went directly into the pool below. Didn’t Liz know that? He pictured plunging them both into the lukewarm water, the protozoa running rampant through his body.  He’d turn into another foaming-at-the-eyes monster.

The sound of bare feet slapping against a metal stairway caused him to turn around. The infected man, a strong looking white guy with a receding hairline, seemed just as surprised to see Pete. With a high pitched yelp, the man engaged.

They couldn’t afford to have one of these infected follow them down the slide. Keeping his assailant at bay, Pete played a waiting game. He wasn’t going to outdo his opponent with strength, not after fighting a half dozen of the infected. He needed an advantage. A long, wound up right hook gave Pete the time to block on the outside of the man’s arm, putting him slightly past his opponent’s body. With a smooth motion, he hooked the man’s forearm with the blocking arm and nestled it tightly in the crook of the opponent’s elbow. The man flailed, but was unable to strike Pete forcefully with the other arm. The opponent’s lack of leverage was the aim of the technique, one he had learned a few years ago as a blue belt. Squatting into the action, he used his free hand to bear down on the man’s trapped arm. His opponent’s elbow popped like a cork on New Year’s Day. The scream was ground with raw agony and the noise made the hair on Pete’s neck stand on end.

A cold frustration swept through Pete, some barbarous awareness that the tormented cries weren’t helping them stay stealthy. He had to finish it. Sweeping the man’s leg, he guided him to the ground, and wrenched the broken arm in a completely different direction. Pete thought of bending a plastic straw back and forth until it gave out. He let go of the limb. The screaming continued as the man rolled around on the platform, trying to escape Pete’s pitiless savagery. Slamming a foot down on the man’s neck brought a sharp crack and then silence.

Pete shook. He wasn’t sure if it was from the bonfire blaze of adrenaline in his veins, the ragged edge of his endurance creeping ever closer, or something happening in his heart. It was something dark. Realizing that he had already been away too long, he mimicked Liz and plunged into the slide feet first.

The gunshots and cries were immediately muffled by thick plastic walls. Thankfully the water was off for the night. Without the water jets on,  he occasionally had to propel himself downward with his feet in an awkward crabwalk. Wet heat seemed insulated inside, and before long, Pete was drenched in another coat of sweat. A dehydration-induced headache started to push from behind his eyes, he longed for cool water, but he knew better. There was no water within a dozen miles he’d be willing to drink until it had every microbe boiled out of it over a scorching blue flame.

The friction of the slide burned his ass and the winding meant he had no idea where the canal was going to dump him out. The way plunged downward, only to twist and continue downward again. The roof disappeared after the embankment finally leveled out. He was relieved to see Liz crouched at the end of the slide. She was trying to meld into the darkness, keeping an eye on the hunched figures that skittered by. Shadows sought out the battle raging elsewhere. Fortunately, the slide did not end in the pool. Pete was silently grateful that his girlfriend had worked in an epic shithole like Tahitian long enough to know that.

Pulling himself into a crouch, he crawled over and put his hand into Liz’s. She squeezed his fingers tightly. Pete recognized that she had stayed in hiding, waiting for him to finish the fight, when she could have run. The trust she had for him pulled at his heart. He knew they were closer than ever to getting out of the nightmare.

Their goal was the locker room door about ten yards away. Gunshots were becoming less and less frequent with their side of Tahitian seemed dim and quiet. The action was wandering elsewhere. Still, the prolonged break in the gunfire scared Pete more than the gunfire itself. He wordlessly put three fingers on her shoulder, removing one finger at a time. They both simultaneously leapt up to sprint for the door, hand in hand. A loud screech from somewhere behind them told Pete that they had been seen.  He pulled Liz even faster, the door only feet away. He grasped the handle to find that it was locked.

Liz didn’t wait for him to say anything, she already had her keys out. A mad mantra of “MY JACKET, JACKET, JACKET, JACKET,” came from their pursuer. Turning around, Pete put his swollen hands up on guard. Out of the darkness came the small girl with pigtails, one eye completely cut in half.

“Back for more?” he asked her. Pigtails sneered. But the girl wasn’t careful, making it easy for Pete to throw a kick before she could close in. Pigtail’s knee buckled, but she hopped toward him, throwing herself into a counterattack. He guessed correctly that she would throw a wide right punch. With her right arm rendered harmless by a quick block, he stepped sideways between her legs. Crouching into the movement, he then delivered a devastating uppercut. Pete rose to give extra propellant to the punch. The result was an explosion of blood and teeth that threw Pigtail’s head back and brought her a few inches off the ground. She landed in a heap, her jaw radically askew. Pigtail wailed in pain while she tried to move her head. A bloody chunk of her tongue had sliced off by her teeth and tumbled out of her mouth to the floor.

Pete gasped, feeling the swollen tissue of his fist searing. The pain was hot needles driven into his knuckles by a ball peen hammer.  Pain was his body’s advice for him to stop fighting. A click from behind told him that the door was now open. Clutching his injured fist, he stepped backwards through the portal just as more figures ran out of the darkness. As soon as he was inside the dimly lit corridor, Liz slammed the steel door shut. The click of the door handle and hammering of fists on the door indicated that it had successfully locked behind him.

They both paused for a moment, trying to catch their breath. Pete tried to flex his right hand. His pinky was definitely broken.

Liz bear hugged him before they could start moving again. For another silent moment, they stayed that way.

“We’re okay, we’re okay, Liz,” Pete said, hoping it was true. She nodded and broke away. Together they hustled through the empty locker room, its confines cool and clammy. Next they passed into the hallway leading to the external door. It was closed.

“Fuck it,” he said, and he slammed open the door’s push bar with his foot. The door’s opening let through a clamor of sound and light. A noisy commuter train’s passing only yards away turned into a screech as it hit its brakes. He hoped they knew better than to stop.

Walter was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s not here!” Liz yelled over the sound of the train. “Let’s go back to your car,” she shouted and began to pull Pete in the direction of the main parking lot.

At the end of the alley opposite the main parking lot, a pair of headlights flashed once and then went dark. Thrilled, Liz and Pete exchanged grins. As they ran up, he saw that the front windshield was cracked. Someone sat calmly in the driver’s seat, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

Pete opened the door to hear Walter remark that, “This ain’t a fucking taxi.”

Relieved, Pete laughed, “Good to see you too.” A recognizable odor hit him as he slid over to let Liz into the back seat. “Why does it smell like bong water in here?” Pete asked without hesitation.

“Broke Challenger.”

“You what?”

Walter shrugged. “Sorry.” He gestured to the foot-well of the passenger seat. A mess of broken glass lay gleaming in the dark.

“Dude, why did you have the bong in the car? Are you serious? What the fuck?”

“I already said I was sorry.”

“Goddamnit Walter.” Pete sighed and rubbed at his eyes.

“You all look terrible,” Walter said casually. His spare way with words was one of those constants, like the procession of the equinox.

“Well thanks, Walt,” Liz said sarcastically. He was right, though. They were both smeared with sticky blood slowly drying and stippled in bruises of varying colors.

“It’s all relative. You should see what it looks like in there,” Pete said, trying to forget that his favorite bong was a goner. “How did you stay hidden?”

Walter grinned, his eyes lighting up in the darkness. “This light is flattering on me.” Laughing, Pete and Liz clapped him on the shoulders and set to putting on their seat belts.

After so much turmoil, so much pain and violence, Pete felt his mind slide back into a more relaxed state. Two of his favorite people in the world were here and they were all safe, at least for the moment. The hope soaring in his chest was intoxicating, the thought of safety and security a balm for his soul. He didn’t dare vocalize thoughts of escape, but couldn’t put his finger on the reason why. He realized that neither had anyone else.

When they were strapped in, Walter put the car in gear and hit the gas. He looked expectantly at them in the rear view.

“So what’s the deal?”

“Something’s in the water, Walter. The pool concert turned into a fucking bloodbath,” Pete explained, feeling like that summed it up.

Liz added, “The cops that showed up are probably all dead.”

“Not probably. Check this out,” Walter said, rolling into the main parking lot.

The poolside massacre had been horrific, but under the bright lighting the parking lot seemed worse. More than one car fire sent pillars of smoke into the air, the dancing flames lapping at the vehicle fuel supplies. A naked man with a gruesome exit wound in his shoulder whaled on a man in uniform laying facedown. Cruising past and around some abandoned vehicles, the Cutlass passed another squad car with an officer slumped over the hood. The unfortunate man’s head had been pulverized, his brain lying in a pink mound at his feet.

“Holy mackerel!” said Liz in awe.

Walter frowned into the rear view mirror. “Who says ‘holy mackerel’ about a brained cop?” Pete smiled in spite of the circumstance. He looked to Liz, but she continued to stare out the window silently.