“You’re a reporter?”
“Yeah, a newsman. I plead guilty to all charges, ma’am.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Why?”
Halverson didn’t like the sound of this conversation. He knew where it was going and it could become an uncomfortable situation for him. He was having second thoughts about having taken Reno aboard.
“Because Chad’s a reporter too,” said Victoria. “Isn’t that a coincidence?”
“Oh yeah?” said Reno. “Are you a newsman?” he asked Halverson.
“I write articles for magazines.”
Reno pulled a face. “I never heard of you.”
“That makes two of us. I never heard of you either.”
Reno snickered. “Then you must not read the Times. Like a lot of other people.”
“The world’s full of journalists I never heard of.”
“You got that right.” Reno noticed the two damp moneybags lying on the deck near the wheelhouse. “What are those?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” said Victoria.
“An occupational hazard.”
“Why do you want to know what’s in those bags?”
“I was hoping there was some food in them. I’m starving.”
“Join the club.”
“I guess not, huh?”
“Right. There’s no food in them.”
Reno turned away from the moneybags. “I was working on a story about a murder on the beach when I was rudely surprised by those monsters.”
“They have the plague,” said Halverson.
“Whatever they have I don’t want any part of it. I saw them literally tear a woman apart in the parking lot and eat her. I’m not kidding.”
“Shit happens,” deadpanned Victoria.
Reno did a double take.
“Did they bite you?” asked Halverson, dreading the answer.
“No,” answered Reno. “They didn’t lay a hand on me. They couldn’t catch me. They run like juicehead klutzes.”
Halverson sighed with relief. He didn’t want to have to kill Reno. If the ghouls had bitten Reno, Halverson would’ve had no choice but to blow him away.
“Lucky you,” Victoria told Reno. “Now you’re screwed like the rest of us on this boat to nowhere.”
“What’s with her?” Reno asked Halverson.
Halverson raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
“Haven’t you noticed those things are all over the place?” said Victoria.
“That bad, huh?” said Reno.
“Look around you.” Victoria gestured toward the beach crammed with squirming, jerking ghouls bumbling into each other.
“It could be worse. We could be dead.”
Reno angled toward one of the moneybags. He leaned over it and started untying its neck. “I swear, these look like—”
He never completed his sentence.
Victoria clubbed the back of his head with the stock of a Mossberg pump shotgun that she had retrieved from a wooden chest in the sailboat’s stern.
Reno groaned and crumpled to the deck.
“Lucky for him we’re out of bullets,” said Halverson.
Chapter 5
“We’ve got problems,” said Victoria as she gazed down at Reno, who was lying motionless at her feet on the pitching deck.
“I noticed,” said Halverson, steadying the wheel.
“Keep your voice down.”
“Why? Is he still conscious?”
“I’m not sure.” She stooped next to him and examined his face. “How can I tell?”
“Look at his eyes. Do they look focused?”
“They’re shut.”
“Then open them. You didn’t kill him, did you?”
She winced and bit her lower lip in agitation. “I hope not.” She plucked open his eyelids with her fingers and scoped out his eyes. “They’re unfocused.”
“Then he’s out cold. Does he have a pulse?”
“How should I know?”
“Feel his wrist. Use your fingers, not your thumb.”
Applying pressure with her fingers to his wrist, she looked relieved. “He’s still alive.”
“You had me scared for a moment.”
“But we still have a problem. What are we gonna do with him? He must know those are moneybags that we have on deck.”
“Looks that way. You’ll have to tie his hands behind his back.”
“Where’s some rope?” she asked, casting around the deck.
“I think I saw some in the chest near the stern.”
Victoria retreated to the stern, opened the wooden chest, searched its interior, and located a coil of rope. She carried the rope back to Reno, rolled him onto his stomach, and tied his wrists together.
“I knew we never should’ve picked him up,” she said. “What are we gonna do with him?”
“Good question. If he really does know we have money, he’s gonna want some of it, no doubt.”
“We should have hid it before we pulled him onboard.”
“Well, we didn’t, so now we have to deal with it.”
“How?”
“For now we’ll have to keep him tied up until we decide what to do.”
“Then what?”
“We may have to cut him in on the loot.”
Victoria screwed up her face. “That could complicate matters.”
“What do you want to do? Kill him?”
“No.”
“Then we keep him tied up.”
“It’s always something.” She threw up her hands in frustration.
“It could be worse.”
“How? Look at all those zombies out there.”
“We could be dead.”
“Didn’t somebody just say that?”
“How many years do we have left to live, do you think?” asked Halverson.
“Not many.”
“How many days?”
“I have no idea.”
“How many hours?”
“Stop it! Why are you playing these mind games?” She clutched her head and retreated to the starboard gunwale.
“How many seconds?”
She held her hands over her ears to shut out his voice.
“I’m just trying to show you how stupid it is to worry about how much time we have left,” he said. “We have to play the hand we’re dealt one day at a time.”
“What is this?” she said, withdrawing her hands from her ears. “A lesson in the Zen of zombie apocalypse survival?”
Reno stirred on the deck. Groggily, he sat up, blinking his eyes as they became focused. He felt his hands bound behind his back.
“Why am I tied up?” he demanded.
“Guess?” said Victoria.
Reno nodded grimly. “So I was right. You two guys are crooks. Is that it?” He nodded toward the moneybags. “Those are two moneybags like I thought.”
“No, we’re not crooks,” said Halverson. “We found those two moneybags so we kept them.”
“Sounds like a fancy way of saying you stole them.”
“The people who used to own that money are more than likely contaminated with plague. What good is money to dead people?”
“Shouldn’t you leave that to the law to decide?”
“What law? There isn’t any law anymore, or any society, or any civilization, or any government.”
Halverson knew that wasn’t exactly true. A fraction of the federal government still existed holed up in Mount Weather just outside Bluemont, Virginia. But that was nobody’s business but his, as far as he was concerned. It was eyes-only intel that wasn’t to be shared with anyone outside the Agency.
“So you’re taking over. Is that it?” said Reno.
“The government isn’t gonna help us, so we have to fend for ourselves.”
“Why am I tied up? That’s what I want to know. What do you think I’m gonna do?”
“We thought you might want a cut of our take,” chimed in Victoria.
“
You thought right.”
“Then why should we untie you?”
“Because we’re all in this together. Tying me up isn’t gonna help your cause any.”
“He has a point,” Halverson told Victoria.
“I don’t think we can trust him,” she said.
“If you cut me in, you won’t have to keep looking over your shoulder for me,” said Reno.
“Unless you decide you want the whole nine yards for yourself.”
“That would be foolish of me.”
Halverson started when he heard scuffing below deck.
“What’s that noise?” asked Victoria.
“Is there somebody else onboard?” asked Reno, his eyes alert.
“Not that I know of.” Victoria turned to Halverson. “Did you search this boat when you boarded it?”
“I didn’t have time,” Halverson answered.
“It looks like we’re gonna have to share the shekels four ways now, huh?” said Reno.
Halverson heard someone trudging up the companionway.
Chapter 6
All necks craned toward the companionway entrance, save for Halverson’s. He stood on top of the companionway in the raised wheelhouse.
He knew something was wrong when he heard Victoria scream. One hand on the wheel, he turned around trying to see what the source of the commotion was beneath him.
He saw a woman with brunette hair that reached down to the middle of her back. She was facing away from him as she stepped off the companionway onto the main deck. Wearing turquoise sweatpants that hung loosely on her fat butt and a dark blouse, she shuffled toward Victoria and Reno.
“It’s one of them!” cried Victoria, backing away from the creature.
“Get away from her!” shouted Halverson at the brunette.
The creature turned around at his yell. She looked ten times worse from the front than she did from the back, realized Halverson. He could feel his gorge rise in his throat. He was entertaining second thoughts about having yelled at the creature to distract its attention from Victoria.
The thing held its mouth wide open, exposing its green fangs that were dripping saliva. The creature’s drooling mouth reminded him of the monster’s face in the movie Alien—all green fangs and drool. What remained of the rest of the brunette’s face was decaying ashen sere flesh courtesy of the ravages of the plague.
The brunette trained its white-filmed blue eyes on Halverson and headed up the companionway from the deck to the wheelhouse above, making straight toward him.
Halverson didn’t have much choice. He abandoned the wheel, dashed toward the stairs, and kicked the brunette flush in the teeth as the creature ascended the treads. The blow was sharp enough to send the brunette reeling. The creature tumbled backward down the steps and landed in a heap on the main deck.
But the creature, Halverson knew, wasn’t dead.
Halverson hadn’t kicked it hard enough to damage its brain.
He hurled himself down the steps, even as he watched the ungainly brunette struggle to its feet. Flying down the treads two at a time, he all but fell onto the deck and into the bulging stomach of the brunette, who had just managed to stand up.
Terrified of running into the creature and touching it, he pulled up short in time to avoid crashing into the necrotic ghoul.
The ghoul advanced on him, its jaws gaping.
Halverson reared back and launched a kick into the brunette’s plump stomach.
The creature reeled backward.
Halverson seized the opportunity to spring toward the shotgun that lay on the deck near Victoria’s feet. Knowing the magazine was empty he had no intention of shooting the Mossberg. Instead, he snagged the muzzle, grabbed it with both hands, and swung the stock at the ghoul’s grimacing, sneering face.
The creature caught the blow full in its face and staggered backward toward the starboard gunwale. Halverson pursued his advantage.
He charged after the backtracking stumbling creature, swung the shotgun a second time at the thing’s head, and felt in his arms the shock of the impact of the hard polymer stock against the left side of the ghoul’s skull.
With satisfaction he heard the muffled crack of cheekbone as his arms vibrated with the shotgun in his hands. He still wasn’t sure he had destroyed the creature’s reanimated brain.
Stunned by the vicious blow to its skull, the stupefied creature nevertheless continued to stand.
It might drop dead any minute, decided Halverson. But he wasn’t taking any chances.
He delivered a tae kwon do kick into the creature’s sternum that sent the ghoul stumbling backward and flipping head over heels over the gunwale, down past the side of the hull, and into the blue green mottled ocean below.
Halverson pelted to the gunwale and peered over it into the undulating waves.
For a moment the brunette’s protuberant turquoise-panted buttocks stuck out of the water as the creature lay prostrate on the surface, but, as Halverson had suspected, not for long. He knew ghouls could neither swim nor float.
This one was no different from its fellows.
It sank.
Chapter 7
“I wish I could’ve helped,” said Reno, “but I’m tied up at the moment.” He made a show of trying to move his bound hands toward Halverson.
Meanwhile, with no one at the helm, the sailboat was yawing to port on account of the gusting wind.
Halverson bolted up the companionway to the wheelhouse. He lost his balance and slammed into the companionway’s balustrade as the sailboat pitched wildly. Pain flared in his shoulder that smashed into the wall on his left.
Grimacing, he grabbed the bannister and braced himself in the heeling, lunging boat. As the boat’s violent movement subsided, he dashed up the steps, snared the wheel, steadied the boat, and hove on course.
Sea spray flew off the ocean into his face as he directed the boat northward, parallel with the shore.
Off to his right he could see ghouls crowding and jostling each other on the bluffs that overlooked the Pacific Coast Highway. If it had been two weeks ago before the pestilence had struck, he wouldn’t have been able to believe his eyes at what happened next. But after what he had seen in the last few days, not much of anything surprised him.
The ghouls started walking off the bluffs and either slid and rolled down the rocky sheer dirt palisade that was studded with green and yellow Quasimodo agaves or plummeted off overhanging cliffs that projected over PCH like frowning brows.
And the ghouls kept coming. Hundreds at a time commenced their descent past the Mediterranean fan palms that stood silent sentry on the Santa Monica bluffs.
After the creatures rolled to the highway or plunged to it, they got to their feet and resumed their trek to the ocean, whether their falls had broken their legs or not. In fact, many of these creatures now trudged with decided limps or dragged their legs that stuck out behind them at unnatural angles.
It was not an infrequent sight to see legs with compound fractures on creatures that were wearing shorts as they halted across the asphalt roadway.
Several creatures even suffered broken necks, Halverson realized as he watched ghouls with heads that dangled on their shoulders or on their chests as they marched seaward.
“This can’t be happening,” said Victoria, watching the spectacle unfolding on the bluffs. “It’s impossible.”
“Not in this best of all possible worlds, huh?” said Reno with a snigger.
“Whoever thought we’d live to see this day?” said Victoria, wide-eyed as she contemplated the palisade.
At that moment Halverson caught sight of movement in the water ahead of the prow. It was another great white breaking the ocean’s surface.
Halverson all but gagged at what was attached to the shark’s dorsal fin. The pudgy brunette ghoul was holding onto the fin with one hand as the fin sliced through the sea. Grimacing and spewing saliva and seawater, the ghoul seemed to be gazing in Halverson’s direction as it rode the wave
s on its back.
As water rushed over it, mouth gaping, the ghoul turned toward the great white, rolled onto its stomach, and bit into the shark’s flesh.
The great white veered sharply and accelerated through the water.
The shark’s abrupt turn caused the brunette’s legs and stomach to swing in front of the great white’s snout. The great white jerked its head toward the brunette’s protuberant belly, opened its maw wide around the stomach, ground down on the putrescent fatty flesh, tore a hole about a foot in diameter out of the stomach, shook the clump of flesh in its large, sharp teeth, then spat the decomposing viscera into the ocean.
What intestines remained in the brunette’s mutilated belly unraveled into the ocean and dragged along beside the shark.
Meanwhile, the ghoul recommenced biting the shark’s back.
“Jesus,” said Reno, watching the gruesome spectacle play out in the ocean. “Anyone want to bet on who’s gonna win this one?”
“You’re sick,” said Victoria.
“You gotta have a sense of humor when everything’s going to hell. This is like Jaws meets Night of the Living Dead.”
“Betting on the winner isn’t my idea of funny.”
“What if I pretend I’m Tony Bennett and sing ‘I Left My Entrails in Santa Monica Bay.’”
Reno started humming “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
“Things are sick enough as they are, without your help,” said Halverson.
“Are you two married or something?”
“What makes you think that?” asked Victoria.
“You’re both jumping down my throat like a tag team in a wrestling tourney.”
“Try to think before you open your mouth next time and we won’t.”
“Let’s face it. We’re fucked,” said Reno. “If we don’t unwind somehow, we’re all gonna blow up and have strokes. Cracking silly jokes helps me unwind. You need to chill out.”
“How can I with you making me sick?”
The brunette ghoul’s dark entrails were spooling out all along the starboard side of the sailboat. There seemed to be a hundred feet of them, Halverson noticed at the helm.
Victoria could not take it any longer. She rushed to the portside gunwale, leaned over it, and threw up into the ocean.
Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series Page 57