Floyd reached for one just as a swinging door in the back burst open. Both Mikki and he spun around. What had once apparently been the security dog growled menacingly at them. Rottweilers were scary-enough, ugly, drooly dogs when they were alive. The undead version was even less cuddly. Especially with mouth wide open and fangs bared to attack.
“Play dead!” Mikki shouted, as the dog leapt high into the air right at Floyd’s face. The two warriors unleashed a volley that blew zombie dog splatter all over the back walls. Each fired off four to five rounds in mere seconds. What was left of the hindquarters flew back and hit the door before dropping to the floor.
Wow! These guns were powerful! They would have to control themselves better in the future. They didn’t need a lot of shots to cause devastating damage.
“Good dog!” Mikki said, when it was all over. “Stay!”
The two busted up laughing. Floyd added, “Dog is not man’s best friend,” and they laughed some more. Grabbing the bolt cutters in his left hand, Floyd led the way out.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mikki hit the button and the secret door cracked open. It was dark but they could see Zeke still lying on the cot, so they didn’t want to disturb him by turning on the lights. Floyd had just put the bolt cutters down on one cot when Mikki tapped his arm.
He could barely see her eyes through the helmet’s dark faceplate, but he could tell they were wide open in terror. She pointed to the security monitors. They weren’t just off, they had been smashed. That was when he noticed the bathroom door was open but no light was on in there, either. The only light was coming in from the half-open secret door.
Floyd looked at Zeke and saw he wasn’t actually lying on the cot. It looked like he had tripped over something and fell face down on it. Most likely tripped over his Mini Uzi, which was on the floor just in front of him.
Floyd stepped on something as he headed over to Zeke. In the gloom, he could just make out a couple dozen shell casings scattered all over the floor. “Zeke, buddy! You OK?” he asked in a hushed voice.
He poked the old man with the tip of the shotgun and Zeke let out a soft moan. Thank God, he was still alive! What happened? Was there an intruder? Did he trip over himself in the dark and shoot himself in the ass? Did he have a heart attack and squeeze the trigger? Most importantly, would Zeke be alright?
Floyd moved one of the other cots next to Zeke and rolled him over onto it, checking for wounds. Even in the darkness, though, there was no mistaking what the problem was. Floyd jumped away just as Zeke tried to bite him.
“Holy shit!” Floyd cried.
“Zeke? Come on Zeke! You’re OK! You gotta be OK! You gotta be!” Mikki pleaded pitifully, all in vain.
Floyd could tell from the tremor in Mikki’s voice that she was on the verge of tears. She was sobbing. Out of habit, she trained her shotgun on Zeke’s head, but she couldn’t pull the trigger. He came at her, closer and closer, but she froze. She completely, totally froze.
Floyd did the deed from the side, just as what used to be Zeke lunged at her. The old man’s head vaporized right before Mikki’s eyes, then after a few seconds, the body dropped to the floor with a soft thud. Mikki had been right. Fresh zombies were indeed bloody and juicy.
The unspoken question hung in the air. How in the hell did Zeke go all zombie when he was locked in this room? If something got in, it was nowhere to be seen. And if he had gone out, how did he get back and shut the door?
The two just stood there. It was an incredibly sad moment. Mikki cried softly, eventually lowering her shotgun. Floyd when to the back of the room and turned on the light switch.
Bright light flooded the safe room, if they could call it that any more. Zeke had shut the light off so he could take a nap. It wasn’t on when he creeped out, so he hadn’t smashed it. But that led back to the big question, again. If he was asleep, what the hell had gotten him and how?
The thought of turning zombie in your sleep when you couldn’t defend yourself was Floyd’s and Mikki’s worst unspoken nightmare. They had routinely taken every precaution to prevent that. Now it seemed to have happened to Zeke, and they had no idea why. That scared the hell out of both of them.
Floyd and Mikki scanned every inch of the ceiling, floor and walls. They quickly looked at all the air vents. Nothing.
Then they heard it. An odd scuffling or scratching or something. Floyd thought it sounded like what had heard the other night, only it was a little louder and more intense. Then he saw it through the open bathroom door, back in the darkened room.
There was a hole in the wall about a foot around under the sink, where Floyd had thought he heard the sounds before. All at once, a river of rats started pouring out of the hole, their beady little eyes covered in white, gooey film. They weren’t terribly fast, but it was already too late for Floyd to shut the bathroom door before they started pouring out of it.
“Cover me!” Mikki shouted.
“What? Get the hell out of here!” Floyd ordered as he started firing at the onslaught of undead rats. This time, he was happy he could fire so many rounds so fast! Each shot blew away three or four of the foul little creatures, but there were more than enough coming out of the hole to take their places.
Mikki swept up the Mini Uzi from the floor and jumped across the room, grabbing the canvas bag Zeke had told them contained all his Uzi ammunition. There wasn’t time to grab anything else. Not even the precious Hello Kitty doll she had left propped up on her cot. Floyd backed his way around the open door, still firing as Mikki ran past him outside. She dropped a grenade as she went.
The two shoved against the door to slam it shut, decapitating a rat in the process. Its head went skidding off into a corner, the mouth still opening and closing, trying to bite anything within reach. Four other rats made it out whole, so Floyd and Mikki played Stomp-a-Rat until they won the game.
Soon after the door shut, they heard the grenade go off. The secret door would now stay locked. Forever.
Mikki pulled off her helmet and threw it on the floor. It bounced a couple of times before landing near the door. She started screaming. She was completely hysterical, tears streaming down her face. Floyd tried to grab her and hold her to calm her down.
“Rats? Zombie rats? Are you freakin’ kiddin’ me? What the goddam hell? Every time I get something I care about, it gets ripped away from me!”
Floyd wasn’t sure if she was talking about the computer with Doom on it or her Hello Kitty doll. He took a chance and said he’d try to find her another Hello Kitty doll.
Mikki went insane. She started attacking him, screaming and wailing on him with her fists. He put up his arms to block her blows.
“I ain’t talkin’ about no goddam doll! I’m talkin’ about Zeke! Goddammit! He was like the daddy I never had! Like the daddy I should have had! I just found my family and it’s gone! All gone! Just like that! What the hell?
“Is God just playing with us? Why take Zeke? He was a good man! A damn good man! And that was our shower, Floyd! Our shower! My one special place I wanted to remember! Goddammit!”
She collapsed and wept uncontrollably. Floyd caught her and knelt in front of her. He tried to think of something he could say that would comfort her, but no words came to him. A lot of good men and women had been taken by this plague, whatever it was.
He pulled her face into his shoulder, where she continued to sob uncontrollably. At least he had learned the answer to one of his unspoken questions. Their experience in the shower did mean something to her!
“I can’t tell you it’s OK, Mikki,” he said at last, in a soft, kind voice. “I can’t tell you everything’s gonna be all right. That’d be a lie, and you know it. All I can say is…I’m here for you. I’m here.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I’m sick of this goddam town, Floyd! Let’s head over to that nuke plant, grab whatever we can, and get the hell out of here.” She wiped her eyes, picked up her helmet, and headed out. “And Floyd,” she said
, stopping in the doorway, “Thanks, Floyd. For…everything.”
It was barely a whisper, but he heard it and knew she meant it. She pulled her helmet on and strode on up the street, pulling the wagon behind and scanning everything around her as she moved. She dared the world to try to come and get her. Just try.
Floyd followed along behind her, occasionally turning to scan the rear. “So what do you think we’ll find at the nuke plant?” he asked.
“Remember what Zeke said? He made special weapons for government security people at the nuke plant. We’ll never know what was in those lockers, but we can check out the nuke plant. If there’s anything like these here shotguns Zeke made for us, I wanna see what they are.”
When they came to a pet store, however, something inside caught Mikki’s eye. It wasn’t the littlest pet shop Mikki had ever seen, but it was close.
She left the wagon and headed inside, without saying a word. Floyd called after her, “Oh, please Mikki! Ain’t we had enough dogs for one day?” but she ignored him.
In the front was a wide open bin with about six kittens in it. Six, undead, filmy eyed, disease-ridden, disgusting little zombie kittens. As Floyd looked down at them, they looked back, their little mouths snapping open and shut. They made an odd noise. Not quite a meow, not quite a moan. More of a…“me-oan.” It was creepy to the max.
Mikki had headed down to a row of caged animals. Every one of them zombified. Some of them were dormant and frozen, curled up into a ball, but as soon as the kittens began me-oaning, they woke up. Soon the whole shop was full of weird animal noises and sounds of the undead banging against their cages. Fortunately, everything was locked up tight, so none of them could get out.
“How do ya like that?” Mikki mused aloud.
“I don’t like it,” Floyd answered. “Can we get the hell out of here now, please?”
“No Floyd, you don’t get it. That moaning. It’s the way them creepers communicate with each other. It ain’t just that creepers moan because they see somethin’ they want. They moan to call others. Some kind of collective mentality.”
“Collective mentality?” Floyd repeated. “Damn, girl. You have been readin’ them science books!”
“And what about this? How’d them puppies and gerbils and what-nots get zombified when they’re still in their cages? Ain’t no rat or bat or nothin’ else I can think of could get in there to bite ‘em.”
“OK, you’re right. That’s a good question. Very interesting. Now can we go?”
Mikki tried the door that led to the back but it was locked from the other side. She thought about blasting through the door with her new shotgun but decided against it. Floyd was buggin’ out too much already.
Braaack! Braaack!
What the hell? Could this day get any weirder? A zombie parrot squawked loudly while sitting on a perch in a cage over by the counter. Generally, birds never got infected. They flew away instead of getting bit, but they had mostly died off when the food chain got screwed up. Birds in cages, however, apparently were not immune to the infection.
“Braaack!” the thing squawked at him. “We’re all gonna die! All gonna die! Braaack!”
Yup! It just got weirder! Like a bad accident on the freeway, Floyd just had to look, no matter how much he really didn’t want to. He headed over and stared at the thing in the cage. As he got close, it tried to bite him, its beak dripping with undead white goo, but the cage held it safely inside.
If Mikki was right, these damn undead animal noises might well bring the more human kind running—or, shuffling, rather—in their direction. He headed to the door and took a peek outside. Sure enough, a few brain-eaters appeared in a couple of store fronts across the street. They froze momentarily when they stepped out of the shadows into the daylight, confused and conflicted between the prey they wanted and the light they hated.
As usual, the desire for prey won out and they started moving in Floyd’s direction, but they had paused long enough for Floyd to get off a few headshots. Zeke was right. This gun was highly accurate and effective, even at more than 20 feet.
“Time to go!” Floyd called back to Mikki. She was on her knees fiddling with something in her backpack. “Mikki! Whatever the hell you’re doing, now ain’t the time!” He fired of a few more rounds as more moaners appeared and headed their way. “Could use a little help here, goddammit!”
Suddenly, Mikki was at his side, but she didn’t join him in shooting. She used her red marker to write a big heart with F+M inside it on the outside of the door. “Yeah, that’s right! Floyd and Mikki was here, goddammit!” Mikki cried as she finished tagging the door.
Floyd ducked inside the pet shop again to take a quick look around. He didn’t want to be surprised from behind while they were still in the doorway. The animals were all still in their cages.
Wait a minute. Floyd coulda swore there were six kittens in the bin before. Now there were only five. “Shit!” he cursed, and ran out of the store. He’d rather face a hundred human brain-eaters than come face-to-face with one goddam zombie cat!
Floyd joined Mikki in a short shooting spree, then she grabbed the empty wagon and ran up the street as Floyd followed. A few seconds later and the pet shop disappeared in a ball of fire and shrapnel from a Mikki grenade. The two ran as fast as they could while the creepers in the street were disoriented or knocked over by the blast. Soon, they had left the remaining undead far behind. Brain-eaters didn’t tend to move fast uphill.
“Well, we’re back in the game, Floyd!”
“Helluva game, Mikki. At least you got to blow more shit up. Feel better now?”
“Much! You know it’s funny. All them old zombie movies. Creepers shufflin’ along, not movin’ very fast. And people just stand there. Stupid! I always wondered why they didn’t just run the hell away. It ain’t like no creeper’s gonna beat you in a foot race.”
“Well, wouldn’t be much of a movie if everyone just ran away from zombies for 90 minutes.”
“I guess. You hear that? No more moanin’. That’s another thing I noticed. If there ain’t no warm bodies around, creepers tend to go quiet.”
Floyd started laughing. “You know, for a girl who never graduated high school, you should have a doctorate in Zombiology. Or Zombology, or whatever.”
“How do you know I never graduated high school?” Mikki asked, shocked.
“Well, you…left home at age 12, and you been on the run ever since. Didn’t seem like you ever had the chance.”
“Well, you’re right there. I been screwed outta so many things in my life, Floyd. Even before this whole Creeper Carnival came to town. I don’t know why I ever believe in anything good anymore.”
“Well, I hereby grant you an honorary Doctor’s degree. You’re alive and as long as we stay alive, that’s good enough for me. And life ain’t all bad…Zombie cake?” Floyd pulled two Twinkies out of his pack and offered her one. Mikki smiled as she took it and ate it. Then they continued on their way back up the street, at a more normal pace, this time.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Before long, they were at the power plant. It was a surprisingly small building. Both Floyd and Mikki thought they were at the wrong place. They were expecting some kinda San Onofre or Three Mile Island with big cement-lined towers or something.
The place was locked up tight. They tried busting through the double glass doors in front, but whatever it was made of, the butts of their shotguns didn’t make a dent. Through the glass (or whatever it was), they could see all the lights were on inside. The building was far enough away from the rest of the town that the light apparently didn’t attract the brain-eaters. Otherwise, Floyd and Mikki would have found a crowd of them outside banging on the doors for all eternity.
“Hey, Floyd! Remember I said you oughta name your guns Bonnie and Clyde?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, now that we got out shiny new shotguns, that’s what we oughta name ‘em!
“OK, which one is Bonnie and which
one is Clyde?”
“Well, duh! You’re the man so you get Clyde. Ain’t that right, Bonnie? Let’s see what you can do, old girl.”
“I thought their names were Floyd and Mikki.”
“No, those are our names, dumbass.”
Mikki traded her drum for one of the box mags with anti-armor rounds. She took a step back and fired. She blew about a two-inch hole in the glass, or whatever it was, and a spider web of cracks extended another six inches or so around that. She hollered with delight and blew some more holes in the glass in a circular pattern. When she was done, she kicked in the center of a circle she had made in the glass. They bent down and crawled through the hole to enter the building.
They smelled it as soon as they entered. “That’s not a zombie smell,” said Mikki, as soon as they opened the door.
“It sure ain’t,” said Floyd. “That’s the smell of death.”
There was a security desk in the center of the first room. A rather large body was slumped over the panel. Mikki switched back to the drum mag of shot shells before they headed over to investigate.
The dead guy was wearing a security guard uniform. Collar was open, clip-on tie was lying on a panel of controls and monitors. He was surrounded by empty soda and water bottles, snack food wrappers, and other litter. There were two office chairs on wheels behind the desk but only this one was occupied. Floyd pulled the chair with the body out of the way and looked at the glowing panel. Most of the screens were camera monitors. No movement anywhere.
Mikki moved to the keyboard and tapped a few keys to open the latest emails on one of the screens. She scrolled down through a series of them, the last one dated over a year ago. About 50 emails sent in month, all with similar cries for help. “What the hell is going on?” “Where is our relief?” “Can you please send help?” “We need food and water.” The answers were all the same: stay put, don’t go outside, help is coming.
Floyd & Mikki (Book 1): Zombie Hunters (Love Should Be Explosive!) Page 12
