“Space worms!” Ned laughed. “What you been smoking, Sheriff?”
None of the others laughed with him, and he looked to Max, blank-faced. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Serious as my cancer, Ned, but that’s another story. Now where the hell was I?”
“Space worms,” said one of the women.
“Ah, right, thanks. So these space worms hatch and somehow take over their victims’ minds, basically turning them into bloodthirsty zombies, although we call the screamers.”
“We call them chompers,” said Ned.
“Whatever. Let me finish. Last night, I think that everyone who survived was drunk, or had enough alcohol in their systems to repel the space worms, maybe even kill them once they got in our systems. Show of hands, who got drunk last night?”
Everyone raised their hands, and Ned glanced around. Max cocked an eyebrow at him, and the big man reluctantly raised his hand as well.
“That only solidifies my theory. Alcohol saved us from being taken over, and alcohol can still save the screamers, make them normal.”
“So…” Ned frowned, and Max could see his mental wheels turning. “We’ve got to get the chompers drunk?”
“Yeah, basically,” said Max.
“That’s so rad,” said someone in the crowd.
“Incoming. Chompers headed our way across the ice!” said one of the lookouts.
“Alright,” said Ned, pulling up his pants by the belt loops. “You all know the drill.”
“Ned?” said Max. “We can’t kill them, they can be saved.”
Everyone watched them like a game of ping-pong.
“Thought you weren’t here to take over shit.”
“I’m not.”
“Then what you doing telling us what we can and can’t do?”
“Ned, respectfully, cut the shit. The screamers are still people. We need to try and save as many as we can.”
“Why don’t you go out on the ice and show us how?” said Ned, grinning.
Max grinned right back. “Stefan!”
“Yeah, Sheriff?”
“Get me my Super Soaker.”
Chapter 18
Wet T-shirt Contest
Max and Stefan skated out onto the ice armed with their Super Soakers, pumping them as they went. The crowd of defenders watched pensively from their posts, ready to skate out onto the lake and dispatch the screamers if they happened to tear the two lawmen apart. If there was evidence that Max’s strategy was working, however, the others were to skate onto the ice with liquor bottles and help.
At least a dozen screamers were out on the ice, and among them were four children. The largest group came from the alley next to the Mirror Lake Inn across the lake, and another group was emerging from the park. They meandered at first, wandering aimlessly and looking tired, but once they laid eyes on Max and Stefan, they came alive. Screams tore from their throats, and Max winced as the sound echoed through the town.
“Here goes nothing,” said Max. He and Stefan started gaining speed.
“That’s all you’ve got?” said Stefan. “Man, your punchlines suck.”
“Alright, how about…Let’s get these screamers fucked up?”
“Lame.”
Max started skating faster, and Stefan paced him. The screamers charged across the ice, but their eagerness caused them to slip, and they lurched and jerked to keep their balance.
“Alright, what you got then?” said Max.
Stefan did his best Dirty Harry impression: “Let’s put these space worms back in the tequila bottle.”
“Damn, that is pretty good.”
They surged across the ice, skating at full speed. They had enough force to take a screamer off their feet and fracture their head on the ice, but they weren’t out for blood. Super Soakers at the ready, they rocketed toward the screamers, breaking apart and coming in at an angle for a quick getaway.
“It’s party time!” Max yelled, and he shot the first screamer that came in range right in its gaping mouth.
The monster choked and gagged, its scream turning into a gurgle. Max didn’t wait to see what happened; he went right down the side of the line, spraying the streaming jet of vodka into the frothing, open-mouthed screamers as if they were college kids on spring break bound and determined to hate themselves in the morning. Stefan did his part, and they met at the back of the group and skated in wide circles, eyeing the screamers. The group had stopped howling, and most of them were now thrashing and twitching on the ice. Max and Stefan had missed four others, and they were now skidding to turn around and give chase.
“I think it’s working,” said Max. He eyed the shoreline, hoping against all hope that he would see Piper.
“Let’s take out those other four before their goddamned screaming lures more here,” said Stefan.
“No.” Max grabbed his arm before he could go. “That’s what we want.”
The voices of the remaining screamers continued to echo through town, and Max pulled Stefan along. “I’m going to lure the screamers away from the ones we cured. Look, they’re coming around. Get the kids first and lead them back to the restaurant and tell the others to get their asses out here. We’re liberating this town tonight.”
“Good luck,” said Stefan before skating a big circle around the approaching screamers.
Max yelled, “Come on, you maggots!” and started skating toward the screamers to cut them off from Stefan.
It worked, and Max led them around the lake while his deputy led the newly liberated townsfolk across the ice. Others came out from the lodge to help, and a large group skated out to meet Max.
On cue, the horrific answering call of other possessed people in town tore through the dark night.
“What’s the plan, Sheriff?” said John O’Connor.
Max glanced around at the hockey players, who donned the newly filled Super Soakers they had grabbed out of the Bronco.
“Just like prom night, John. Try and shoot your load into their mouth,” said Max.
“Eww!” said one of the young women.
John and a few other men laughed.
“These limp dicks will probably just get it in their hair,” said another woman.
“You people are nasty,” the grossed-out girl responded.
“Sorry, thought it would lighten the mood,” said Max. “But that’s about the gist of it. Stay a safe distance from the screamers and squirt the liquor right down their hungry throats. Takes about a minute or two for them to come around, so we need to cure them in groups and lure the others away.”
“Sounds easy enough,” said John.
“So does pissing in a toilet bowl, John, but I guarantee you’ve hit the rim. You kids need to stay focused out there. Get too close and you’re dead. Every squirt has got to count.”
“Oh, my, god, can you stop saying that?” grossed-out girl whined.
“There’s really no other way to say it,” said Max. “So, settle down, Sister Margaret.”
He glanced at the defenders, seeing fear in the eyes of many. “Come on, let’s free the people.”
More screamers had begun to shuffle out onto the ice. Max kept an eye out for Piper’s pink nightgown, but he didn’t see her anywhere. More than twenty of the infected started toward the four screamers following Max and the gang, and more groups were beginning to join them from all around the lake.
“Attack formations!” Max ordered the hockey players as Stefan joined them and came to skate beside him.
“I bet you’ve always wanted to say that,” said Stefan with a grin.
The hockey players followed his command like a well-trained team and rocketed toward the screamers in a large W formation. Max unleashed a jet of vodka as the screamers drew near, hitting one and then another in the mouth before ducking under a swatting hand and coming up to blast a third. The hockey team kept a distance like Max told them to, and when they skated past, they left the screamers wetter than Cancun. Dozens of them hit the ice, writ
hing and thrashing as the worms disconnected and snaked their way out of their host’s bodies.
More screamers charged onto the ice, and the team made another pass, liberating even more of the townspeople. But the revived needed to be gotten off the ice, and so Max ordered half the team to start ushering them back. Grossed-out girl took the lead in the cleanup, looking ashen and shaken from being so close to the action.
Soon hundreds of screamers were descending on the frozen lake, and the defenders skated wide circles around them, herding the writhing mob into a circle at the center of the lake. They had the screamers right where they wanted them, but the water guns were starting to go dry.
“Who’s out of ammo?” Max called.
More than half the group responded.
“If you’re dry, get back to the lodge and reload. The rest of you just keep doing what you’re doing, and keep the screamers corralled!”
“I gotta reload,” said Stefan.
“Hurry up,” said Max, grabbing his backup soaker and squirting a screamer who got too close to his face.
The man, whom Max knew to be the local hardware store manager named Charlie Sprigg, went down like a bag of bricks and started seizing and foaming at the mouth. It was then that Max noticed the gash in the back of his head. He skated around and looked more closely and blinked when he saw that it was a gun wound. Charlie stopped twitching as the worm snaked out of his mouth, and Max drenched it with booze. The rest of the worms didn’t make it far; they lay on the ice, chopped into pieces by the defenders’ sharp ice skate blades.
The defenders reloaded and returned to the fray, and over the next half hour, nearly three hundred people were cured of the terrible plague that had turned them on their own kind. A third of them, however, had sustained grave injuries during their time as a space worm zombie and lay dead on the ice, no longer kept alive by the worms that abandoned them.
“Dad!” one of the hockey players cried, and Max watched him skate over to such a man.
A few of the others helped him get his deceased father back to the lodge, and the fighting continued. Skating around the zombies took its toll, however, and the defenders began to tire. But the screamers seemed to have an endless well of energy, and they now poured onto the ice from all over the lake.
“There’s too many of them!” said Stefan as he skated by.
A scream ripped through the snowy night, and Max spun around to see one of the girls go down beneath a thrashing horde of screamers. The men skated to her aid, breaking the tight circle they had been maintaining, and all hell broke loose.
Max frantically sprayed and checked the screamers as they converged on the defenders. Other skaters went down, and Max called for a retreat. He shoulder-checked a female screamer, sending her careening into two others and taking them down with her. Max sprayed the screamers as he skated through the maze of reaching hands and gnashing teeth. His soaker suddenly sputtered and died, and with a growl he batted a screamer in the head and grabbed ahold of one of the skaters who had been taken down.
“Retreat!” he called out to the others, pushing the man he had rescued and fighting through the screamers to get at the hockey players fighting to break free.
Stefan skated by a second later, his armor shimmering in the moonlight. He carried two soakers and unleashed a steady stream of liquor into the faces of the horde. Max followed close behind, body-checking any who got too close and pulling the hockey players to their feet. When the crowd finally parted, and the screamers had been fought off by Stefan’s valiant attack, Max saw that the girl who went down had been torn to shreds.
“Back to the lodge, now!” Max cried.
A bloodcurdling scream answered him. Max homed in on the sound, and found Piper standing on the deck of Mirror Lake Inn and pointing at the stars. The horde of screamers suddenly abandoned their attack and began shuffling back across the lake toward Piper.
“What the hell’s going on?” Stefan asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ve got to get to her before they do. You got any juice left?”
Stefan pulled one of his soakers off his shoulder and handed it to Max. “I’ve got your six.”
Chapter 19
To Have and to Hold
Max raced across the ice at speeds he hadn’t been able to reach since college. He and Stefan skated wide of the horde and came in at an angle toward Mirror Lake Inn. He hit the snowbank and hurriedly untied his skates, then raced up the hillside. A staircase led up to the deck, and Max took the snowy steps two at a time in his quickly soaking socks.
“Piper!” he yelled, lowering the soaker and taking aim.
Suddenly, the window beside him exploded outward, and a fat screamer barreled into him, slamming him into the side of the deck. They both went over, and Max fought to gain the top as they descended six feet to the snowy lawn below. Max landed on top and shoved the barrel of the soaker in the fat man’s mouth and let loose. He jumped off the big man and looked up through the gap in the deck. To his horror, Stefan was fighting hand to hand with half a dozen screamers, including Piper.
“Stefan!” Max cried and raced back up the stairs. He reached the top and sprayed the first screamer he saw. Piper got a face full of whiskey and cried out like a dying animal before falling to the deck in convulsions.
Max stared at Piper, his heart swelling. It was going to be alright. He had given her the cure. Any minute now she would come out of it, and—
“Max!”
He jerked his head toward Stefan, and to his horror, he watched as he was pulled back through the busted window.
“Let him go, you bastards!” Max unleashed a heavy stream of whiskey through the window, but the dark shapes soon disappeared, and Stefan’s screams stopped.
Max turned and glanced at Piper, who was beginning to come around, blinking heavily. He looked out over the lake, and his head dropped when he saw that the horde had stopped. Piper had lured them to the inn, but now that she had stopped screaming, they just stood there on the ice, one hundred strong, staring at Max.
“Max?” Piper sounded terrified. “Where am I? What happened?”
“Piper…” He fell to the floor of the deck and hugged her, holding her tight. She winced when he touched her raw wrist, shaved clean by the handcuffs. It was green and oozing now, and smelled worse than it looked.
“Come on, babe, let’s get you out of here.” Max picked her up and glanced at the broken window. Choking down his sorrow and self-loathing, he ushered her down the steps.
The screamers watched him with blank white eyes. Max crept back over to his skates and put Piper down, watching the horde as he tried to shakily put his skates back on. Once the task had finally been accomplished, he took Piper’s good hand and led her out onto the ice. She regarded the screamers with terrified recognition. Her eyes were wild, her red hair disheveled and knotted with duct tape. Her nightgown had more than one bloodstain running down the front.
What did they make you do?
“Easy now,” said Max as they walked out onto the ice. “I’ve got you.”
He took her up in his arms and started across the ice. The screamers watched him for a few heartbeats before suddenly erupting in unison. They screamed like demented sports fans from hell and surged across the lake after him as he skated wide. Max wasn’t going to be able to get around the horde as it fanned out and cut off his path to the lodge, and with Piper in his arms, he dared not try to go too fast. This ice hadn’t been smoothed out by a Zamboni; there were ridges and bumps, and the snow that covered it didn’t help things. He was forced to steer toward the shoreline two hundred yards from the lodge. If he could put in there, he might have a chance of outrunning the screamers.
Max hit the shore and spilled Piper onto the snowbank. He fumbled with his skates as the horde closed in.
Fifty yards…
He got the right skate off and started on the left.
Forty yards…
The left skate’s laces got knotted when he tried to p
ull them free.
Thirty yards…
Max cursed and pulled at the laces, snapping them in half.
Twenty yards…
He chucked the skate at the screamers and took up Piper in his arms, but he slipped on the ice beneath the snow and went down.
Ten yards…
Max turned on the horde and pulled his pistol, taking aim at the closest screamer’s head.
A cry like Piper had made suddenly stopped the screamers in their tracks, and Max’s arm shook as he held the gun three feet away from the screamer. The man’s eyes closed and his lids fluttered. Piper cried out, holding her head, and a flash like a memory in a dream played behind Max’s eyes.
It was time for the second phase…
Max didn’t know how he knew that, but he thanked his lucky stars when the horde turned and followed the hell-borne cry coming from the other side of the lake.
Footsteps approached, and Max whirled around and pointed his gun at the assailant.
“It’s me!” said John, skidding to a halt with his hands up, looking terrified.
Max put the gun away and took up Piper, who was whimpering and murmuring like a child having a bad dream.
“She needs more liquor,” said Max.
“Looks like she’s had enough,” said John with a halfhearted laugh.
“Watch my back,” said Max, shouldering past John and heading for the lodge.
In the distance, that terrible call lured the screamers to it, and Max shuddered. He didn’t know what they were up to or what exactly the second phase was, but he knew it wasn’t good.
Chapter 20
Hangover from Hell
Max managed to get Piper back to the lodge and put her down on a dining table. She was still babbling and clawing at the air. John had been thinking ahead and rushed to Max’s side with a bottle of tequila.
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