Over on the side stood a big iron table with about a hundred small, burned-out candles in it. The pedestal that held the statue had a little wooden pocket in front with a bunch of small, dusty cards in it. Mikki grabbed them, blew off the dust, and looked at one.
It had a picture of Saint Margaret on the front and the story of who she was on the back. There was also a small prayer, “Saint Margaret of Antioch, pray for us to the God of Mercy. Protect us in our time of death and save us from the snares of the devil. We ask this through Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, in unity with the Holy Spirit. Amen.” But it was the story of the story of the saint’s life that really got to Mikki.
She couldn’t wait to tell Floyd about it when he came back. She sat down in one of the pews to enjoy a zombie cake with a bottle of water. She kept the cards in her hand, alternately staring at the picture of young Saint Margaret and the church decorations all around her.
It didn’t take Floyd too long to dig the two graves. He thought of dumping the two bodies in together, but he knew Mikki—and his conscience—would never let him do it. Besides, it’s not like he had to get home to a dinner party. He had taken off his armor and shirt and his chest was covered in dirt and sweat. He poured some water over his shoulders and down his chest to rinse away some of the grime.
Floyd was finally ready for the bodies. He didn’t really need help, but he was going to make sure Mikki did her share. It was the principle of the thing. As soon as he went inside, Mikki called him over.
“Wow, Floyd! You been workin’ out? I had no idea you were so buff!”
Floyd sat down beside her, a little self-conscious. He would have put his shirt back on if he hadn’t left it outside.
“Yeah,” he said, “Working out hard to stay alive every day.”
“Where’d you get that scar? Lose a bar fight?” She pointed to a curved, 10-inch scar that ran along the top of his left pectoral muscle and down the side.
“Ha! Nothing so dramatic. Pretty stupid, in fact. I was 11 and I fell off my bike.”
Mikki broke out laughing. “Fell off your bike? You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. I landed in the gutter where some moron had tossed a busted beer bottle. I went skidding along the pavement and ran right over it. Mom said I was lucky. Another few inches and it woulda sliced open my neck. That woulda been bad.”
“I bet! I saved you a zombie cake.”
“Thanks,” he said, taking the Twinkie.
“Hey Floyd, look at this!”
“Who’s that?” he asked as he chomped on the Twinkie, looking at the picture of a girl in long robes wearing a little gold crown, gazing up to heaven.
“Saint Margaret. Get a load of this. She died in 304 A.D. Was kicked out of her father’s house when she was a kid for being a Christian. I can relate to that. Of course, I left on my own, but still. She became a shepherdess until some creep tried to push himself on her and she refused, so he had her tortured. They tried to burn her and drown her but she wouldn’t die, so they cut off her head. She was only 15. And get this, she’s the patron saint of the dying!”
Floyd stared at her vacantly. This was obviously striking some kind of nerve in Mikki, but he couldn’t follow her logic. “So?” he finally asked.
“Don’t you see? Maybe this ain’t a coincidence that we ended up here. We can do a good thing by buryin’ that priest. And Saint Margaret was just a regular person, like us. They tried to kill her and they couldn’t, so they cut her head off. Just like a zombie!”
“So you’re saying she’s the patron saint of zombies?” Floyd unsuccessfully tried to stifle a snicker.
“No!” Mikki retorted, defensively. But maybe the patron saint of zombie hunters! Like you and me.”
Floyd sat in stunned silence as Mikki looked at one of the cards, realizing she was serious. He didn’t know what to make of that.
“Floyd, do you believe in God?” she finally asked.
“Yeah, I reckon I do. I been to church a few times. Was baptized when I was like 10.”
“I never been in a church before. I don’t know what I believe. I mean, if there is a God, where the hell has he been? Ain’t this his world? How’d he let it get so crazy with the dead walkin’ the earth and everything? What’s up with that? But if he ain’t up there, watchin’ over us, then how come we’re still alive? I know I shoulda been dead a bunch of times, yet here I am.”
“Bible talks about an apocalypse but doesn’t say what it is. Or when. Just that the Devil will walk the earth. I don’t know if the devil is making these dead people rise, or if some government experiment went crazy, or the Russians attacked us, or some evil corporation made a virus that got out of control. All I know is I shoot the damn things when I see ‘em.”
“I heard about the Rapture. People goin’ up into the air to meet Jesus. Maybe it happened and I missed it? I was a bad person Floyd. A really bad person. Were you a bad person?”
“I don’t think so. I ain’t perfect and I never went to church a lot, but I never cheated no one, never stole nothin’ and always tried not to lie.”
“No, you’re a good man Floyd. I reckon if the Rapture happened, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Well, I didn’t hear any reports of large groups of people flying up into the clouds, either. I heard reports of walking dead and that was so outrageous people didn’t believe it until it was too late. I’m sure if the Rapture came, we woulda heard something about it.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. But if that’s true, then where is the Rapture? Why the hell don’t it come yet and take us away from all this?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Mikki. I don’t have any answers. I’m just a guy trying to stay alive and make whatever sense I can out of this upside-down world where the dead walk and kill the living. Maybe some government big shot knows what’s goin’ on. Maybe he’s planning something to help, or maybe he caused this problem. I just don’t know. I got bigger things to worry about, like whether I’ll live to see tomorrow. Or whether you’ll do somethin’ stupid to get us both killed!”
Mikki was about to yell at him, but then she saw the smile on his face and realized he was poking fun at her. “Oh, very funny! Haha!” she said, tucking the holy cards into her bra. The face of Saint Margaret peered out from above the sheer pink lace.
Floyd was about to say something about how he didn’t think that was where you were supposed to put holy cards, but he stopped himself. What did it really matter anyway? If God was up there, He’d understand. If He wasn’t, then it did no harm. Besides, if He was up there, the two of them needed all the help they could get.
Mikki handed him one of the cards, saying, “Keep this on you, will ya, Floyd? I know it’s probably silly, but it will just make me feel better. If you don’t mind.”
Floyd wasn’t superstitious, but he saw she was pretty intense. For whatever reason, it clearly meant a lot to her. “Alright, Mikki,” he agreed, taking a card and putting it in his pocket.
“Thanks, Floyd. You are a good man, Floyd.”
“And Mikki?”
“Yeah, Floyd?”
“I want you to listen to me very carefully.” He took her head in his hands, brought his face close, and looked intently into her eyes. He spoke slow and sincere, so she would hear him clearly and know he meant every word.
“You are a good person, too, Mikki. Never forget that. Never doubt that. OK? You’re a real pain in the ass, but you are not a bad person. You just had a bad life with a lot of shitty stuff that happened to you. Alright?”
Floyd had never seen Mikki look so vulnerable before. Her bottom lip quivered. She was on the verge of tears, but wouldn’t let them come. Floyd placed his hand on her head momentarily to reassure her.
“Come on,” he said at last. “We got work to do. And hey, guess what? After we bury these two, we get to go shopping!”
Mikki looked up at him and smiled.
Chapter Seventeen
It was a little after three when Floyd fi
nished piling the last shovelful of dirt on top of the graves. The pair felt they should say a prayer or something, but neither really knew how, so Mikki read the prayer off the back of her holy card. She also had put a card with each of the bodies before dropping them into the ground. Floyd noticed that she took the priest’s rosary beads and put them in her backpack.
He chuckled to himself, thinking they should be hunting vampires instead of zombies, but he said nothing. Good thing the holy water in the church had dried out long ago or she probably would have filled all their water bottles with it.
He understood, though. The kid had been through hell and she needed something to believe in. So did he, truth be told, but Floyd didn’t know what to believe about anything anymore. And the one man who might have had some answers about God was buried in the hole he had just filled. What a shitty, shitty world.
Floyd took out a water bottle and poured it all over his head, chest and back. He caught Mikki looking at him with an odd look on her face. He suddenly felt naked, and once he washed the dirt away, he couldn’t get his shirt back on fast enough. He pulled out the map of downtown Groverstown that Zeke had given him. The old man had marked a couple places on the map, but there was only one that Floyd was interested in at the moment. The motorcycle shop.
Not that Floyd had visions of driving twin Harleys down the road with Mikki, two bad-asses on bikes. No, he was more interested in the clothing. Zeke had maybe given him the answer to a question Floyd had been pondering for more than a year, and he was excited to check it out. Once he’d armored back up, Floyd headed off down the road again, pulling the wagon and leaving the shovel, but not before Mikki drew F+M with a heart around the letters on the outside of the church door with a thick red marker.
“You ever been married, Floyd?”
He winced at the question. It clearly caused him some pain, but he answered anyway. Why lie?
“Nope. Was supposed to get married a while back. High school sweetheart. Wanted to wait till I had a good job. Bought a little house. We were about 23 when I finally proposed. Supposed to get married the next year. Then I found her in bed with my best friend who was gonna be my Best Man. Turns out he was her ‘Best Man.’ Never had much use for women after that.
“How about you? Ever had a boyfriend?”
“Ha! No way. Men kinda get intimidated when you tell ‘em you’re gonna cut their dick off and wear it on your belt like a lucky rabbit’s foot.”
“You don’t have a belt, Mikki.”
“Don’t need one…yet.” She said with a devilish smile.
”What about what’s-his-name? The guy you traveled around with before you met me. You said you buried him.”
“No, I shot him. Nice guy, but useless. Stupid and useless. Boyfriend? Ewww! No way! He got bit in the leg by a creeper and didn’t tell me. About 20 minutes later, he turns all creepy-ass zombie on me, so I blew his head off at close range. Got his brains all over me in the back-splatter. That’s why I cut off my jeans and T-shirt. Freshly dead creepers is still juicy and bloody. Yuck! You cain’t get that kind of smell out of clothes, neither.”
“And here I thought all along you were just tryin’ to be sexy,” Floyd joked.
“Now what in the world would give you that idea? I don’t let no man near me, Floyd. You know that. No man! But I figured all the men in the world was dead so who cares what I look like?”
“Then why do you always wear red lipstick and nail polish and stuff?”
“You really don’t understand girls, do ya, Floyd? I do that for me. Makes me feel all grown up.”
“Mikki, one of these days, you gotta look in a damn mirror. You are all grown up! No doubt about it!”
They walked for on about 10 more minutes until Floyd said, “Here it is!”
After parking the wagon outside, the two headed on in, shotguns ready. There was nobody in the main area of the store, which wasn’t surprising because the light streamed in through the broken front windows. But all the lights were busted out. Zombies weren’t smart and couldn’t figure out a doorknob, but they had enough intelligence—or more likely instinct—to throw things at something they hated, like light fixtures. Of course, their aim wasn’t too good, but they were relentless, so eventually they would smash any source of light they saw.
The motorcycles were in the back, where a sign said, “Showroom.” That room wasn’t lit, but they could see a couple rows of bikes through the double glass doors. There were push bars on the doors to enter the showroom.
“Well, I guess we need to check out this room first,” Floyd complained.
“No, we don’t,” Mikki answered.
She picked up a nearby chair and slid it down with one leg on each side behind the push bars. Now no one could push the bars to open the door from this side, and the chair jammed the doors closed so no one could open them from the other side, either.
“Works for me,” Floyd said.
Floyd was only interested in the front area of the store, which had circular racks of motocross clothing throughout the floor. A wide assortment of helmets, boots, gloves, backpacks and other gear lined the shelves on the walls. There was a sign that said, “Dressing Rooms,” to the right. Mikki headed in that direction with Lucy’s barrel leading the way.
Floyd followed her into the hallway, which immediately turned right. Flimsy curtains covered four dressing rooms on each side to offer some semblance of privacy. As she made her way down, Mikki pulled each curtain back with the shotgun barrel.
As she opened each curtain, Floyd could see there was nothing in the rooms. No clothes hanging on the empty hooks. No clothing on the floor. Nothing.
Nothing, that is, until they came to the last pair of dressing rooms. As Mikki threw open the curtain to the dressing room on her left, she was grabbed from behind by a creature in the other room. She screamed.
“Mikki!” Floyd yelled. He raised Ol’ Faithful, but couldn’t fire a shot. As she spun around with the zombie on her back, he couldn’t avoid hitting Mikki in the blast.
Soon, however, Mikki started laughing. Eventually, Floyd saw what was so funny. The brain-eater was wearing a gray jumpsuit and a helmet with full facemask. He was trying to bite Mikki, but couldn’t because his face was covered.
“Can you believe this shit?” Mikki asked. The creature might be wearing a helmet, but its neck was exposed. She threw the creature off her, deftly pulled her machete from its sheath, and sliced its head off in one smooth motion. It landed in Floyd’s arms as he held Ol’ Faithful. Mikki wiped the blade off on the thing’s clothes and re-sheathed it. Then she picked up Lucy from where she had fallen and blew past Floyd like nothing had happened.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Floyd called, tossing the helmeted zombie head over his shoulder. Didn’t Zeke say those raiders were wearing jumpsuits and facemasks?”
“Yeah, he did,” Mikki affirmed, coming back to the headless body. “Guess that’s why this guy’s wearing body armor.” She kicked the headless body in the chest with the toe of her boot. It made a dull thud that indicated there was a chest plate of some sort under the shirt. “He’s got a gun belt, too. No pistol in it, though. Guess I’ll call him ‘Woody.’”
“Say what, now?”
“Come on, Floyd. Remember Toy Story? Sheriff Woody, the cowboy? Runs around the whole movie with an empty holster like some pansy ass because they was too politically correct to give him a gun?”
“Woody, it is,” Floyd agreed. “Probably more of them in the showroom. I’m guessing they were here for the motorcycles.”
“How can this keep happening, Floyd?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Zeke said these guys was well armed. Real bad-asses. And those kids in the school. Where were the teachers? What happened to the parents? You don’t get bit by a creeper and get turned in 12 seconds. So how come all these people go zombie-ass at the same time. Like those army guys.”
“Well, the army guys pissed off a shitload of zombie bats, but the
re ain’t no bats around here.”
“I know. That’s what I mean. Something’s really wrong here, Floyd.”
“I agree, Mikki, but I don’t have a clue what it is, and we need to take care of ourselves first.”
“True enough. So what was you so hot to see in here, anyway?”
Floyd just smiled and led the way back to the main room.
Chapter Eighteen
“Ah! Robbie Nostromo! This is the brand Zeke said to look for.” Floyd held up a jacket. “Robbie was one of the top motocross racers back in the day. These clothes are supposed to be lightweight and tough as shit. See the raised bits of armor? And the tiny air holes? You can wear this in the worst heat and still feel cool, yet you can skid on your ass over rocks and asphalt and keep your skin on. This is what we need. Find one that fits and try it on.”
Floyd began peeling off his weapons belt and layers of armor. Mikki didn’t see any danger, but that meant nothing, so she kept her hands firmly on Lucy. When he got down to his undershirt, Floyd started looking through the motocross jackets hanging on the circular racks.
Mikki hesitated, still clinging to Lucy. Floyd read her mind and said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got the back blocked off and we have a clear view through the front windows. Just keep alert for trouble and we should be fine. Try to find at least two jackets and pairs of pants. Then we’ll get the other gear.”
“Hey, Floyd. What’s ‘keevlair’ mean?”
“Huh?”
“She showed him a label inside one of the jackets. “It says, ‘Made with keevlair.’ Ain’t those them elves who live in a tree bakin’ cookies?”
Floyd choked back a laugh and explained as nicely as he could. “No, those were the ‘Keebler Elves.’ It’s pronounced, ‘Kevlar.’ That’s the material that makes it so tough. It’s built into the jacket. Military uses it for body armor. Or, they did, when there was a military. Supposedly can stop a bullet.”
Floyd & Mikki (Book 1): Zombie Hunters (Love Should Be Explosive!) Page 8
