Z Walkers: The Complete Collection
Page 12
How could she yell at him when he looked like that?
All around them, the groaning started. Louder than before, it made the hairs on her arms rise, and Sara spun around, her eyes widening as she saw them approach. They came out of everywhere: alleys, cars, buildings. Like one brainless herd, the infected lumbered toward them, some faster than others, all no doubt drawn by the gunshot and the prospect of a good meal.
"R-Run," she stammered, adrenaline flooding through her as those awful cannibals approached. "Run!"
Neither man needed to be told twice. They took off in the direction of their original route, the biggest collection of infected people she'd seen so far traipsing behind them.
"No more detours!" Hank shouted, and she swore she saw him glare at the teen—finally. "And no more fucking guns!"
Collin said nothing, but he did manage to pick up his pace, outrunning Hank and Sara by a good ten feet.
Brat.
***
Hank couldn't feel his legs.
Since he'd seen Susie… like that… he hadn't really felt much of anything, but right now, he couldn't feel his legs. Somehow they'd continued to move with a mind of their own, pumping up and down, propelling him closer and closer to the marina.
There were a lot of them—the infected. It seemed Collin's gunshot had brought them all out of the woodwork, and the new arrivals joined in in the chase with all the rest of them. By the time the ocean was in sight, the crowd of groaning flesh-eaters had grown substantially.
What he could feel were his lungs. With each painful breath, a hot sting seared through his body like nothing he'd ever felt before. He hadn't run this much in his life, and maybe all those commercials about getting in shape and staying fit into adulthood had some merit to them.
Too late now.
When they hit the wharf, the feet of three terrified individuals pounding on the polished wood, dismay ran through him when he realized there were just as many infected here as there were in the city. Picking at trashcans, stumbling out of gift shops and restaurants, they all turned their attention toward the oncoming attraction. Arms raised, nostrils flared, and beady eyes honed in on him, Sara, and Collin as they raced for the docks. The non-infected were faster, sure, but there was much they could do if the horde overwhelmed them. Sheer numbers alone would be their undoing.
"What's the boat called?" Collin shouted, completely forgoing his stance on quiet. Idiot kid. Hank should have left him at the school. In fact, he should have let those infected pick him off earlier this morning, back when he and Sara were pushing them all out onto the front lawn. Then Susie would have been alive.
Sort of.
Not really.
He swallowed thickly, though no amount of saliva—and he didn't have much to give—could put out the fire in his throat.
"Gloria," Sara wheezed back, descending the great wooden steps out to the docks. There they were. Rows upon rows of boats, some looking like they were worth a million—minimum. "It's not too big. Probably down at the far end."
There were only a few infected on the docks, while the majority had taken up residence on the wharf. And they were all headed toward the trio now. They could easily swarm the boat, capsize it, and ruin all of their efforts.
He staggered down the first stair, the herd practically nipping at his ankles, and then stopped. Collin and Sara kept going, jogging down the dock. The sun had become blinding all of a sudden, its rays warm as they bounced off the water. It was in that moment, as he inhaled the ocean air, his lungs still aching and his throat still burning, that he knew he wasn't going with them. He was supposed to go with Susie. They were supposed to be together forever.
Biting down hard on the insides of his cheeks, he climbed back up onto the wharf and faced the herd. Head raised up high, he cupped his hands over his mouth, and then started screaming.
That certainly got their attention. Finding an opening through the crowd, Hank started to run, hooting and hollering as he went, bringing with him the majority of the swarm that had followed down to the marina.
As he ran, he heard Sara shouting for him.
"What are you doing?" she screamed from the docks, a hand up to shield her eyes as she watched him. He paused only for a moment, feeling alive for the first time since the hammer clobbered Susie in the head.
"Get on the boat!" he shouted back. Behind her, Collin seemed to be scrambling onto a small, though spacious enough for two people, white boat. "I'll lead them out of here!"
"Hank!"
No. He wasn't going to listen or argue or reason. This wasn't a reasonable situation. There was no time for logic—because logic dictated that he ought to stick with the others and get in the boat. But he couldn't do that. He couldn't go on without here, without Susie, without the love of his rather mundane life. Instead, he turned and ran, bringing with him the herd.
"I'm coming, baby," he whispered, looking up to the blue skies. "See you soon, Susie."
He barely felt it when they closed in on him. Eyes closed, all he saw was her face—and that was enough to block out the pain.
Forever.
***
"What the hell is he doing?!"
Collin didn't care what the hell he was doing. If Hank wanted to be the hero and run off into the sunset after his dead wife, all the power to him. Who was Collin to judge him for that? All it meant was one less mouth gobbling up their supplies, which now, unfortunately, consisted solely of whatever Sara was carrying in her backpack. After all, he'd dropped his bag at the convenience store when the freaks took hold of it, leaving behind all his treats and his dignity.
All that had happened was that they got the jump on him. Collin had been so wrapped up in defacing the place that got him picked up by the cops that he hadn't noticed the freaks loitering. And damn, did those particular freaks move fast.
If he hadn't thought he was about to die, he wouldn't have shot the gun. He wasn't an idiot. Hank, on the other hand, was an idiot—in the most non-judgmental way possible. All three of them could have made it to the boat. The Gloria stood before them in all its glory: a twenty-foot masterpiece of a yacht, with two decks and probably a pretty sweet galley below. Maybe there'd be beds. Hopefully a kitchen.
Oh, and gas. As long as there was enough gas to get them the hell out of this harbor, Collin was good with everything else.
"You want to leave or what?" he shouted back when he spotted Sara still standing at the edge of the dock, her back to him as she watched the herd descend on Hank. She turned, reluctantly almost, and jogged toward him. The look on her face was less than impressed, but it wasn't like he was unused to it by now: every time she glanced his way, the bitch of a personal trainer seemed unimpressed with him. Whatever. At least she was kind of hot still, even covered in sweat and stinking of fear.
"We'll need to push them into the water," she informed him as she closed in, nodding at the freaks loitering around the boat and on its rear entry deck. Floating just on the surface, it seemed like a good spot to sit and dangle one's feet in the waters—the freezing, dark waters.
"I'm not touching any freak—"
"They can't swim," she snapped. She then pushed by him and threw her bag onto the ship. Collin's eyes followed it, hoping that there were at least a few chocolate bars in there. Then, much to his surprise, she started shoving freaks in the water. She moved fast, obviously thanks to her physical fitness, and used her elbows and shoulders to go for a freak's bloody midsection. They all fell, one by one, like dominos into the brisk water. Not once did they scramble for balance, but he figured they probably didn't have any to speak of anyway.
"Now get on the boat!" Sara growled, and without hesitation, Collin made the leap of faith for the Gloria. Once onboard, he helped her trip and push the remaining freaks off, and while Sara went for the controls, he untied the boat from the harbor. More freaks wandered down the docks, headed toward the sound of a revving engine, but it only took her a minute or two to get the boat pulled out and away.
"Spare keys were sitting on the hooks over there," she said without him needing to ask. Collin found a few other silver keys waiting for him, and he wondered what else they might open. The boat itself was lavishly furnished—any kid's dream. Swanky furniture. A sunbathing roof. Diving board. As he descended into the depths, he did indeed find a tiny kitchen and a few narrow bunks.
What he liked best, however, was the way the boat chugged away from the shore. The water was a little choppy, sure, and he felt like he was ready to vomit about seventy percent of the time, but at least there weren't any freaks.
Right?
Panicked, Collin did a full sweep of the ship, checking closets and busting down locked doors. Sure enough, they were alone—just him and her on the open ocean.
Unfortunately, the "her" part of the duo remained unimpressed that she was stuck with him. She didn't have to say anything: he could see it in her eyes, the way she watched him with contempt. It wasn't his fault Hank sacrificed himself to the herd.
He grabbed her bag, annoyed, and wandered out to the deck, hoping to bask in the mid-afternoon sun with a mouthful of chocolate.
Unfortunately, that dream would have to wait. There was no chocolate to be had. As Collin settled on the dry deck, the wind burning his cheeks while the Gloria whizzed along the coastline, he found nothing appetizing in Sara's bag. It was all health food crap and bottles of pills. The pills he could get high on—maybe—but being drugged out in the Age of Freaks probably wasn't the best idea.
Or it might be the best idea he could have ever had. At least a good high would help him forget everything he'd seen. Forget Claire, the girl at the pharmacy he'd been dying to ask out. Forget his parents, who were barely speaking to him or each other. Forget that he'd might never see his friends again. Forget that the Leopard Gecko he took such good care of was probably starving to death in his tank.
Fuck.
Tears lined his eyes, but he didn't need to brush them away—the constant breeze did that for him. Sniffling, he tossed Sara's bag aside, ignoring the way the contents spilled across the deck.
"Collin!"
He ignored her, in no mood for a lecture, but when she called for him again, this time more urgently, he gave her a half-hearted look over his shoulder.
"Something's wrong with the motor," she shouted from an open window from the steering room. "Can you check it out?"
The boat shuddered forward, as if for added effect, and he nodded, hoping she wouldn't see the tremble in his lips.
Unfortunately, by the time he found what he assumed was the engine room at the very front of the ship, the motor—or whatever the hell was smoking up a storm—had well and truly shit the bed. Too hot to touch, Collin stood by helplessly as it sputtered and groaned, and then shut off completely. The yacht lurched to a stop, sending him tumbling forward into the searing hot metal.
The burn on his hand was too much for him. Enraged—with everything and everyone, himself included—he grabbed a fire safety ax that had been propped up on the wall, its handle red to make it easier to see, and went to town on anything he could get his hands on. The metal-on-metal sent painful vibrations up his arm, but he didn't stop. Screaming, crying, begging, he hacked at whatever he could touch, his eyes closed to stop the tears from falling.
That is, until water of a different sort started to fall. In his blind fury and anguish, he'd apparently started hacking into the side of the ship. His eyes fluttered open, and he realized he'd missed the motor by a mile—and had instead hacked a hole clear through the siding of the ship. Cold, dark water started to pour in through the thin slice.
"Fuck!" he screamed, loudly enough that his vocal cords ached. As water started to tickle his feet, he stepped back and hurled the ax at the hole. "Fuck you!"
FUCK.
***
Sara heard the disaster before she saw it. With the engine or motor or whatever ran the boat cutting out on her, she'd been in the process of climbing down to the lowest point of the Gloria to see if Collin had found the problem—or caused it.
She breezed by the sleeping bunks and the ridiculously well-equipped kitchen, at the back of her mind completely unsurprised that this would be the kind of boat a guy like Gary owned, and headed down a pair of stairs to the CREW ONLY room. The door was open, and inside she could hear Collin screaming, cursing.
Along with the sound of… dripping water. A steady stream of dripping water.
"What have you done?" she demanded, her eyes widening in horror as icy water trickled in through a slit in the wall. Already the boat had taken a half-foot of water in, and she'd barely sent Collin down to investigate ten minutes prior. "What… Why…"
This boat was supposed to be their sanctuary. Sure, she didn't want to share it with Collin—in fact, she would have gladly seen him go and distract the herd while Hank came with her. At least Hank wasn't a total sanctimonious little shit. And now, watching him stand there with his beet red face and his watery eyes, Sara definitely wished Hank was here in his place.
"I-I—"
She cut off his stammering, raising her hand to silence him. "Doesn't matter. Let's see if we can plug it up."
Together, they pulled stock from the kitchen, from the bunks, from the bathrooms, and from the rest of the shit. Each time they returned to try something the new, the water was higher, and the force behind the flow pushed out whatever they shoved in the crevice. Miles from the coast, there was no way they could swim to safety, and their search to the inflatable raft was fruitless: while the kitchen was immaculate, it was obvious Gary never took the boat out to sea, because none of the safety gear was where it ought to be.
And so they stood on a sinking boat, a literal metaphor for everything she'd been through in the last few days. Every time something seemed to be getting better, something else would happen that would knock her right back down the few rungs that she'd just struggled to climb.
"There's gotta be something!" Collin practically shrieked as he tore couch cushions from their place. "We can use these to float."
"Until they get soaked," she mused, seated on the edge of the boat. Down below, the water continued to pour in, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Just like things were with the first tidal wave of infected, Sara was helpless—and hopeless.
Collin remained frantic, right up until the last moment. He tried to come up with floating devices, only to have her shoot them down, her despair spiraling. Finally, when she feared the suction of the boat ducking beneath the water would drag her to the depths, she jumped off and swam as far from it as she could. Hopefully Collin would follow, but she wasn't holding her breath for him anymore—or so she tried to think.
At first, the water knocked the air out of her lungs. Frigid and rough, she struggled to stay above the surface, taking in a gulp of salty liquid every time a wave crashed against her face. Floatable contents from the ship slowly started to surface as she tread water, arms and legs moving in tandem to stay afloat—Collin included. She saw the teen's head bob up and down a good ten feet from herm and as much as she wanted to leave him, she knew she couldn't. Sure, he was an irritating little shit, but he was also just a kid.
"Over here!" she shouted, waving at him as best she could above the choppy water. He waved back as debris floated by her: paper, upturned pots, clothing. She sighed, watching as Gary's belongings floated by her, and muttered, "Sorry we sunk your boat."
But if the damn engine hadn't craped out on her, things might have been different.
It was then that Collin started screaming. Not quite the screaming she'd heard during his bout of rage while the boat was still afloat—no, this was something different. It was fearful, terrified.
"Something just nudged me!" he shrieked, though she could barely here him over the roar of the ocean. He started to swim toward her, and as he drew nearer, she saw he'd somehow acquired a blood
y nose. The red liquid dribbled down his chin and into the water, and it didn't take much for her to piece together what might have nudged him below the surface.
That and the terrifying dark shadows swimming below her, blacker than the water itself, and bigger than anything she'd seen up close before.
"Sharks!" she cried. "Find something to get on top of!"
His panic was palpable, but Sara tried her best to move smoothly through the waters, picking through anything she could find floating. Moments later, she came across their salvation: a bright orange piece of plastic crested a wave, and she realized immediately it was the inflatable raft. Forgoing all sense of stillness, she moved for it as fast as she could. When she turned over her shoulder to tell him, to beckon him nearer, Collin's head disappeared below the surface, his last scream echoing in her head—and if she survived this, it probably would for the rest of her life.
With shaking hands and chattering teeth, Sara went for the pull-string. As soon as she pulled it, the raft sprung to life, burying her in orange and forcing her below the surface. She swallowed huge gulps of water in her panicky race for survival.
If it wasn't the infected, apparently it was a shark looking to sink its teeth into her. At that point, as she flung her arms over the edge of the raft and struggled to get herself up, she wasn't sure which was worse.
Once she was in, she collapsed back, gasping for air, then rolled onto her stomach and wept, her cries drowned out by the crashing waves, miles from shore—and much farther from hope.
***
She awoke to the sound of an air horn, its unpleasant honk rousing Sara from a dreamless sleep. While the waves had been choppy, it had almost been like sleeping on a waterbed, and she figured she must have been out there for a few hours by the time she finally succumbed to exhaustion.
Blinking rapidly, she pushed herself up with care. The ocean had quieted down now, and the raft only rocked a little over each small curl of water. Her lips were agonizingly dry, her body sore beyond belief.