Woody stepped closer and knelt down next to the large man’s soggy body. “He worked on his dad’s dairy farm just outside of town,” he said softly, squinting at the clear indentation of the flashlight in the side of Jake’s head. “Until he hung himself last month.”
Rachel clamped a hand over her mouth. “What?”
“He committed suicide?”
Woody nodded solemnly. “Apparently, Suzie Medford dumped him for some dude she worked with at Home Depot.”
Deep creases lined Rachel’s forehead. “But…that’s impossible,” she murmured.
Rory cautiously inched closer, gripping the broken flashlight tighter and getting a better view of Jake, who’s thick neck looked like it was about to pop a tightly wrapped Windsor knot in a black necktie. “If he died last month, then how…”
“I don’t know,” Woody cut him off.
Rory poked the man with the Maglite. The man’s flaccid body rocked back into place like a bag of potatoes. “Well, he’s dead this time for sure,” he said, gesturing with the flashlight to the trail. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Woody got to his feet and opened his mouth but nothing came out. He turned to Rory and Rachel and swallowed hard, his face nearly as white as his necklace. “They’re really dead aren’t they?”
Rory turned, still backing to the woods with Rachel.
“Kate and Ashley? Clutch?”
Rory was about to nod somberly when Jake sat up. Rory stopped, jerking Rachel’s momentum to a reluctant halt. “Run,” he whispered.
Woody frowned. “What?” He turned to follow Rory’s gaze. “Oh shit,” he said dully.
Jake sat there, blankly staring out across the lake. Then he began coughing up what looked like raw sewage into his lap, his torso jerking with each blobby discharge. Rachel pulled on Rory’s arm, her nose wrinkling at the rancid smell. Jake vomited again and turned to them with vacant eyes.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Woody mumbled.
Movement drew Rory’s eyes to the lake where five heads were slowly emerging from the black water. Wet hair clung to their peeling faces. Two fat men led the way, their bloated bellies poking through dress shirts where the buttons had popped off. Their suit coats were tattered and torn with pockets of moss. A teenage boy in a purple suit and yellow tie lagged behind them, followed by two little old ladies wearing long dresses - one with polka-dots, the other a paisley print.
Jake grunted and sprang to his feet. Rory widened his stance and cocked the flashlight back in his hand. Rachel finally managed a scream. The man, unsteady on his feet, sneered at Rory and turned for the water, quickly disappearing into the darkness. The other water-walkers paid him no attention and plodded closer. The elderly woman in the polka-dots dress barred her teeth and screamed. An owl screeched back from a nearby fir tree as her casual demeanor suddenly morphed into a sprint.
The fact that she had lured them into a false sense of complacency flitted through Rory’s mind. “Run!” he yelled, gripping Rachel’s sweaty hand and taking off like a bat out of hell.
Woody was quick to follow. They dashed past the picnic table and passed the tents. Rachel tripped over a metal stake sticking out of the ground and fell. One corner of Clutch’s green tent collapsed with her. She screamed in pain. Rory skidded to a stop in the dirt and helped her up, not wasting even a second to look back. Woody blazed past them without stopping while Rory threw Rachel’s arm around his neck and helped her limp towards the darkened tree line. She had lost a flip-flop and was moving slow. Too slow. He worried her leg was broken. He worried more that the stiffs would be on them before getting out of the fire’s dwindling light.
The leaves and branches tore across their faces and arms and couldn’t have felt better. Rory was convinced they wouldn’t even make it this far. He squinted through the shadows, searching for Woody but not stopping his scrambling feet. Rachel tried to keep up, hobbling and grimacing every time she put weight on her leg.
“Pssst!” rang out.
Rory slowed and turned to see Woody crouching behind the same blackberry bush. He frantically waved them over with one hand while holding a finger to his lips with the other.
“Check this out,” he whispered.
Rory and Rachel knelt down, trying to catch their breath. Carefully, Rory peeled a branch back to see the two fat men on their way back into the lake. The two old ladies and the teen stood in front of the fire, scouring the tree line with hollow eyes that glowed in the fire’s light. They scanned the area, sniffing at the smoky air like ravenous wolves. Their dripping wet heads bobbed back and forth across the flickering campsite. Polka-Dots suddenly stopped moving, and began sniffing the air more feverishly. Then she stopped and slowly turned her grisly gaze to the blackberry bush. The other wretched things noticed she was onto something and turned their haunted stare to the bush as well. Almost on cue, they started creeping closer, coughing and choking with each shambling step.
“Oh crap,” Rory mumbled.
The fat men vanished beneath the water’s surface just as Paisley Print screamed so loud it gave Rory the chills. She stumbled closer to the tree line and threw up without bending over, coating herself in a black goo. Her labored pace began to wane. Wet hair dangled limply across her pallid face. She glared at their hiding spot with her chest hitching. Polka-Dots stopped next to her. Paisley reached for the bush and barred her teeth. Polka-Dots tried to scream but only a whimper came out. Paisley turned back for the water. The teen followed, lumbering his brown dress shoes into the shallows with uneven steps.
Polka-Dots bent over and puked, her body twitching in the moonlight. She looked up, staring right at Rachel, Woody and Rory. Rory could hear Woody swallow dryly. The old lady drew her split lips back and sneered. She took another step closer to the woods, determined not to give up, and stopped to release another eruption of black goo from her broken mouth. She took three more languid steps before turning back to the lake with a jerky gait, moving much slower than it had been. She staggered into the crater in the sand that Clutch had made and nearly fell. When the water hit her feet, her stride began to even out. Within ten seconds, she slipped beneath the water and disappeared with the rest of the ghouls.
The quiet resumed its place in the night, the crickets and frogs and loons acting as if nothing had ever happened. Rory’s pulse hammered in his temples.
Woody turned to him with saucer-sized eyes. “What the fuck was that?”
Rory gently let the branch swing back into position and released a deep breath.
Rachel whipped her head around behind them as if she had just heard something. She stared into the shadows for a moment before turning back to Woody. “Believe us now?”
Chapter Eight
The cell phone’s screen splashed an eerie glow across Rory’s face. He looked up and shook his head. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose onto the cell’s bright screen as he hit the power button, plunging his face back into darkness.
“Damn,” Woody whispered, pacing in anxious circles. “We’re dead. The no signal thing always happens just before they get you.”
Rory stuffed the phone back into his pocket. “We’re not dead. We just have to get back to the cars.”
“Oh yeah, right!” Woody laughed a little too loudly. “And how many of those things are going to be hiding in the woods waiting for us?” His eyes jerked from tree to tree, now seeing the same imaginary dead people that Rory had earlier.
Rachel sat on a decaying river birch, gently rubbing her leg and staring at a honeysuckle bush with unfocused eyes. “Our friends are really dead,” she said faintly, to no one in particular.
Rory stared at her, still not fully believing it himself. “Let me see that,” he said, kneeling next to her for a closer look at her knee. It was swollen and sticky with blood and she winced when he tried to touch it. “Can you extend it?”
She did with a grunt, grimacing with the pain that shot through her leg.
“It’s not broken,” he sai
d, not one hundred percent sure that was a correct assessment. It didn’t matter if it was broken or not. They had to keep moving before those things came back, and God only knows how many there really were. “It’s not much further to the car.”
“This cannot be happening,” Woody said, with one leg propped up against a thick Sycamore and watching them with glassy eyes.
Rachel looked up at him. Fat teardrops rolled down her dirty cheeks, her eyes pleading for a hint of reality. “What are they?” she whispered coldly.
Woody’s eyes remained unfocused, staring past them into the woods where they had just left their scent. “Zombies.” His hand whizzed through the air and slapped his thigh, punctuating his statement with a startle and leaving a bloody mosquito with its stinger still in his leg.
Rory’s mouth gaped, still snatching big gulps of the warm air around them. He chuckled lightly and actually had to work at keeping it from turning into rolling laughter. It was obscene. “Zombies don’t live underwater.”
Woody’s dark eyes snapped over to him. He held Rory’s bewildered gaze for a moment and then, once again, returned his interest to the trees. That was all the argument he needed. They had all seen the same thing: zombies come out of the lake and zombies go back into the lake. In fiction, there was a discernible set of rules when it came to the undead but this wasn’t fiction.
Rachel wiped sweat from face with her hands, smearing blood and dirt across her forehead. “There are no such things as zombies,” she said stubbornly.
Woody’s face stiffened. “Did they look like park rangers to you?”
Rory honed his gaze. “Wait a minute, how did Jake Fletcher get in the lake?”
Woody paused to consider the point. “That’s a good question. He must’ve rose from his grave and stumbled to the lake.”
“Maybe something’s attracting them to the lake,” Rachel suggested.
Rory rested his hands on his hips and sighed. “Doesn’t make any sense. How’d Jake get out of his coffin?”
Woody shrugged. “Maybe he used his super powers to bust out. Or maybe grave robbers unknowingly let him out.”
“Who cares?” Rachel whispered. “Let’s just get to the cars.”
“Well, we can’t go to the cops.” Woody pushed off the tree and began pacing the weedy trail, his brain in maximum overdrive.
Rachel and Rory turned to him with disbelieving eyes. “What?” they said in unison.
“If the cops come back to that campsite, they’re gonna find roaches from those joints all over the place, not to mention all of the empties lying everywhere.”
Rory shook his head like someone had just slapped him. “Who cares? People are dead, Woody. You think they’re going to mess with writing us some misdemeanor tickets for weed?”
“There are no bodies. We have no proof.”
Rory opened his mouth to argue but Woody beat him to the punch.
“And what if those…things don’t come back?” he continued in a whisper. “What if there’s no sign of em? No sign of Clutch or Kate or Ashley? The cops are going to think we are wasted. I mean, listen to our stories.” His eyebrows pulled closer together. “Zombies? Really?”
“We are going to call the police,” Rachel said sternly.
“They’re going to think we’re crazy!”
“Don’t be stupid, Woody! Our friends were just killed!”
“I’m just saying that…”
“Woody!” she cut him off, shooting him the evil eye. “We are going to call the cops.”
Woody held his hands up in surrender. “All right… but that’s what would happen in a movie. In a movie, we’d get arrested and then the power’d go out while we’re locked in jail. Next thing ya know, all the cops are dead and a bunch of stiffs come shambling by and start reaching through our jail cell bars.”
“This isn’t a movie!” she shrieked, sending an echo zigzagging through the thick trees.
Rory cringed with the outburst and interlocked his fingers behind his head.
Woody sighed and lowered his voice. “I’m just throwing it out there.”
“Enough,” Rory said, helping Rachel to her feet. “We’ll try the phone again at your car. Either way, we’ll drive to Doc’s and figure things out there.”
Woody wiped sweat from his face with both hands. “They’re going to think we’re nuts.”
Rory started for the parking lot, carefully helping Rachel limp down the shadowy trail. “I’m not so sure we’re not.”
Chapter Nine
“Jeez, Dad, have another cigarette why don’t ya!” Kourtney said, over the dishwasher.
“That’s a good idea. I think I will,” he said, coughing into his fist again and making his beer belly bounce like a water balloon. “Thanks for the reminder.”
She rolled her eyes, her hands working the glassware up and down spinning brushes that vibrated the stainless steel sink. “That cough is horrible!” Her brown ponytail bounced over her shoulder as she pulled the pint glasses from the brushes and dunked them through a sink of cool rinse water. As she went to set them on a drying rack, she noticed Rob and Mick staring down her v-neck t-shirt. She paused. “Enjoying the show?”
Their eyes jerked to hers and quickly returned to the Miller High Life bottles on the bar in front of them. Doc let out a laugh that slid into another succession of wet sounding hacks.
She flipped a switch on the washer, silencing it in mid-spin. Gary Allan’s Smoke Rings in the Dark swooped in and serenaded the small Monday night crowd from a tired Wurlitzer, lit up like a robot in the corner next to an outdated Golden Tee and a stand-up Asteroids in perfect working order. A burst of laughter erupted from four women, planted around a square table near a large window up front, busy gossiping about their coworkers at Trinity Health. “I mean, if she even thinks about looking at me, I’ll know it! My gaydar came from the Apple store, sister. It’s top of the line!” one of them blurted, producing another eruption that briefly trampled upon Gary.
Kourtney dried her hands on a white bar towel stuffed into her belt. “Sounds like you’re about to cough up a lung.”
“Well then turn up the stereo!” Doc bellowed, taking a drink from a red draft of Killian’s.
Rob and Mick chuckled.
“Now that’s funny right there! I don’t care what anyone says,” Mick said, doing his best impersonation of Larry the Cable Guy.
“Git-r-done,” Rob drawled out the corner of his mouth.
Kourtney lowered her head, ignoring them and peering at Doc from the top of her eyeballs. “You need to quit.”
Doc waved a hand through the air. “My momma didn’t raise no quitters!”
Rob and Mick laughed louder and clanged their bottles together before drinking.
“He’s on a roll tonight, Kourt!” Mick laughed. Brown curls poking out from his frayed Harley Davidson ball cap bounced with each rolling chuckle. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
“Here, here!” Rob smiled, lifting his bottle into the air and then taking another long swill. He swallowed with a sigh. “Besides,” he frowned, adding more wrinkles to the ones courtesy of too many Marlboro Reds and summertime rides on his Harley without sun screen. “Isn’t it bad enough we have to go outside to smoke in Doc’s own bar?”
She kept her eyes fixed on her father. “Those things are going to be the death of you yet.”
“That or his shitty drivin,” Mick snickered.
Rob’s face suddenly turned serious. “Did you know that texting and driving kills more people nowadays than smoking does?”
Doc lifted his bushy eyebrows and pointed a crooked finger at Rob. “See? The man knows, Kourt.”
Kourtney tucked the towel into her belt and rested her hands on slender hips. “That is not true.”
Rob nodded confidently. “Saw it on Yahoo.”
She folded her arms, covering the Doc’s Bar and Grill logo on her tank top. “You saw it on Yahoo?”
Rob took a long drink and swallowed. �
��That’s right, but I don’t go on there anymore though, too many racists.”
Mick choked on his beer and began coughing. “Racists?”
“Oh yeah, they pepper in racists comments after almost every story on Yahoo. And it doesn’t matter what the story is either,” Rob said, tightening his gray ponytail. “It could be a story about a great white shark attacking a surf contest and they’ll get on there and blame it on the blacks.”
Mick arched a skeptical eyebrow at him. “They will?”
Rob nodded feverishly. “They tear people apart left and right on there. Bunch a snarkologists.” He shook his head and rapped tight knuckles on the bar. “That’s bad energy, my friends.”
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