“Paul!”
He winced with her rise in volume and spoke in a choked voice that sounded like someone else. “They’re outside the boat.”
His words turned her to stone. “What do you mean?” Someone started hammering on the sliding glass door and Wendy covered her mouth to stop a scream but was a second too late. Paul scanned the bedroom, trying to clear the fog of sleep from his head so he could remember where the guns were. He started for the nightstand on his side of the bed just as the sliding glass door gave with a loud crash. Wendy screamed again. He made it to the nightstand, figuring the locked bedroom door would buy them a few minutes before smashing in as well. Pulling the drawer open, his brow folded. Outside of some ChapStick and Kleenex, there was only the Leatherman.
“What the hell is going on, Paul?” Wendy shouted, hurriedly throwing on her tennis shoes.
“The anchor must’ve come loose,” he replied, grabbing the Leatherman and scrambling to the porthole window.
“What? How?”
He squinted through the elevated window, gut twisting into knots at the sight of some nearby beach houses soaking up the morning sun. “We drifted to shore,” he said, opening the multi-tool to the lone blade hiding behind a can opener inside.
Wendy pulled at her hair. “Oh my God!”
“Where’re the guns?” he asked as the first sloppy fist pounds reached the bedroom door, making them both jump. “Wendy!”
Her wide open eyes slowly rotated to him.
“Where are the guns?” he repeated, yelling when a rotten hand broke through the porthole window and grabbed him by the hair. Startled, Paul dropped the knife to the floor and clutched the slimy wrist in both hands, fighting to keep the thing from yanking him through the tiny window and skinning him alive. He could smell the thing’s rancid breath when it coughed. Pulling on the arm, wet flesh peeled off in his hands.
Wendy grabbed the small lamp on her nightstand but it didn’t budge. She broke the brace connecting it to the stand and smashed it over the hand, catching Paul in the forehead in the process. The hand slipped just enough for Paul to break free. He grabbed the knife and stabbed at the arm until it retreated from the room. More glass broke in the main cabin and the boat tilted sharply to the right. Wendy stumbled into Paul as the pounding on the door grew in number.
“What’re we gonna do?” she cried, frantically looking around the room.
Paul searched the room with her, already knowing the bag of guns and ammo were stowed under the pull-up couch. He could also see their personal handguns hiding in a top kitchen drawer, useless to them now. The wet hacks and groans sounded like they were already inside the room, making it difficult to think. The clock ticked loudly inside his mind, headache and panic doubling his vision. Everything in the room was bolted down to prevent sliding around in rough seas and they couldn’t even barricade the damn door with the dresser. Shit!
“Don’t tell me we don’t have any guns in here!” Wendy yanked her nightstand drawer open and threw an empty M&M’s bag and two condoms to the floor. “Shit!”
Paul stepped inside the small bedroom closet as the undead pulverized the door behind him. There had to be something they could use. His head snapped back around at one particularly strong blow, positive the door would give right then and there. When it didn’t, he turned back to the closet and started rifling through the contents inside. Clothes flew out first, followed by some boots and stray tackle.
“There has to be something!” Wendy insisted, helping him dig.
Paul stepped back and looked up to the small vent letting light through the ceiling. As with the porthole window, only a cat or a small dog could escape that way. His eyes scoured the room, searching for a hidden door or compartment that didn’t exist. The primal grunts in the hallway got louder. Paul backed into a wall and slid down to the blue carpeting, pulling his knees to his chest. He wouldn’t be going back for Sophia’s pictures after all. She would remain alone on that hill forever and no one would even know her name. She didn’t deserve this.
“Damn,” he said under his breath, rubbing his face. How could he have been so stupid? Shoes and hats and Penthouse magazines flew from the closet and landed at his feet as Wendy continued her futile search. He didn’t have the heart to tell her what she already knew. Suddenly, she stopped digging and turned to face him. “What’re you doing?!”
He stared at her through watery eyes with nothing left to say. His face said it all. He had failed everyone else and now it was her turn. There was no escape from this scourge and he was a fool to think they could outrun the inevitable, their complacency a cruel death sentence.
A loud Hawaiian shirt slid from Wendy’s fingers to the floor along with her hope, crumpling at her feet. “How can this be happening?” she asked, no longer flinching with the crashing blows against the door. Stopping her hunt, she joined him on the floor against the wall, tilting with the boat as it shifted in the sand. Her sad eyes gravitated to the jiggling doorknob. “How long do you think it will hold?”
A long exhale sunk his chest, the knife hanging loosely in his hand. “Not long.”
Tears cascaded down her pallid cheeks as reality, once again, set its grubby meat hooks in and squeezed. “I don’t want to end up like one of those things,” she said, her voice faint and frightened.
Paul wrapped an arm around her, ignoring the blood running down his face from the gash in his forehead. “I’m sorry, Wendy. I really am.”
She dropped her head onto his shoulder and cried. “Without you, I would’ve been dead a long time ago. This is someone else’s fault.”
He pulled her against him as another rotting hand reached through the window and snatched at pieces of air.
She watched it through blank eyes. “At least you’ll have someone waiting for you.”
“You’ll have someone too,” Paul responded on auto-pilot, not wanting this conversation to be their last. Those things would like that too much.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“What about your dad?”
She lifted her heavy head from his shoulder and met his eyes. “My dad was a convicted felon. I doubt he’ll be waiting for me at Peter’s gate.” She stopped for a sniffle. “I’ll be lucky to make it there myself.”
He rubbed her arm, his eyes rising to the bony fist clawing at the air, the blasts on the door spreading to the walls. This was their swan song and it might just be the darkest one played yet.
“I wish I had the chance to know you better, Paul.”
He turned and lingered in her eyes for a moment, trying to find the right response but her sudden kiss bailed him out. Her hand slithered around the back of his neck and pulled him close. She kissed him hard, the sweet taste of lime still on her lips from last night’s margaritas. Overcome with feeling, he kissed her back, hating himself for taking solace in her warmth. She broke the kiss for air and stared into his eyes, the mangled hand writhing in the background. A splinter shot from the door and landed at their feet. The symbolic nature of that tiny piece of wood did not escape Paul. It was the warden, come to walk them to the chair. Another splinter landed next to the first. His eyes searched the room. There had to be something. Anything.
Another splinter.
Dead man walking.
Wendy brought the back of his hand to her lips and kissed it as if he were made of glass. “Thank you for staying with me after Sophia and Dan. You didn’t have to do that and it says a lot about you.”
He ignored her attempt at some brave last words, mind spinning. There was nothing in the room to save them, turning their newfound fortune into their tomb. The mangled arm pulled free from the window and was quickly replaced by the owner’s angry face. Torn strips of flesh revealed the man’s high cheekbones and nose cartilage. He stared straight ahead and didn’t notice them at first, slowly sniffing at the air. They watched his head jerk back with each snuffle, repulsion hardening their faces. Paul bit his tongue until the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. If this was
a bad dream, this was the time to wake up. The man stopped sniffing and, slowly, turned their way. Paul watched the thing’s cold dead eyes peel back in its rotting head. The middle-aged man’s partial nose twitched up and down at them, internalizing his next move. Wendy buried her face into Paul’s shoulder, refusing to let this be one of the last things she ever saw but it was too late for that. The thing hissed like a pissed off cobra and jerked free of the window. Paul was about to blow out the breath he’d been holding when the man’s arm returned and started frantically grabbing at the air with a renewed spirit.
A huge body blow to the door made Wendy scream. More splinters fell to the floor, sticking from the thin carpeting at awkward angles. Each fist pound fed Paul’s voracious headache, fueling the storm behind his eyes. He turned to Wendy and lifted her chin with two fingers. She looked up at him through bloodshot eyes, the light coming through the vent above glistening off her colorless cheeks. “We would’ve been good at this.” He nodded to the writhing arm. “Killing these bastards.”
She stared at him for a few seconds longer and then hugged him hard. He squeezed her back and closed his eyes, bracing himself for the door to give at any second. He wondered how long it would take to die beneath their gnashing teeth and ripping claws, how long he would have to watch them eat his organs and limbs before his soul left this fucked up world. It was weird. They say your life flashes before your eyes just before you die, but that wasn’t true. Instead of his youth turning into a man, he saw Sophia’s face clear as day. Her warm smile numbed his pain, lifting his hope and drawing louder grunts from out in the hallway.
Everything is about to change, she said in a voiceless whisper that easily cut through the demolition going on around him. The boat shifted and Paul relaxed into the vision pulling at him. She was so beautiful, just like the day they met.
You will lead them back from the dust and decay.
A lump settled into the back of his throat at the thought of leading anyone anywhere. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. The door rattled. The hand clawed. Sophia’s reassuring nod finally coaxed the words from his lips. “Lead who?” he said, reaching for her as she drifted backwards.
Wendy followed his fixed gaze across the room, forehead wrinkling.
Sophia blew him a soft kiss that landed on his cheek at the exact same time the bedroom door broke into pieces.
Chapter Forty-Six
A baseball bat-sized piece of wood shattered Sophia’s image and landed on the carpet. Wendy scooted back against the wall as rotten faces peered through the jagged gash in the top half of the door. Paul’s heart raced. He wanted to shoot each and every one of them so bad it hurt. They had it coming. Any semblance of humanity was long gone, replaced with the acidic notes of darkness and death he longed to extinguish.
The door shook.
The arm wiggled.
Wendy pressed against him on the floor. “I’m so scared.”
He stroked her hair, glaring at the bastards snarling at him through the broken door. “It’s okay. I’m here with you and I’m not going anywhere.”
Another piece of the door broke off and Wendy shrieked as cracked hands reached inside and jerked at the knob.
“Look at me.”
She stared at the reanimated, her body shaking as badly as the thin boat walls preventing their escape.
“Look at me!”
She turned to Paul, her eyes filled with terror.
“I will see you again.”
Wendy weighed his words with great care. “You promise?”
He nodded his head yes and a high-pitched shriek went off in the living room. Wavy Gravy tilted hard to the left. A man in red swim trunks pushed to the front of the pack and stepped over what was left of the door, stumbling inside the room. Paul sprang to his feet and raised the knife. “Come on, fucker! Let’s go!” The man took him up on the invitation and hobbled closer. Paul jumped forward and drove the knife into the swimmer’s head. The blade glanced off his skull, sending him teetering back into the others trying to squeeze through the broken door. Unfazed by the knife, he came back for more. Paul spread his legs and was about to pull the trigger on another arcing right when a gunshot rang out and the man’s head exploded all over Paul and the dresser next to the door. His heart skidded out of beat like it just blew a tire at ninety miles an hour. He wiped the blood and brain matter from his face, wondering if he was infected. Another gunshot went off and the writhing arm in the window went limp. Motionless, it hung in the room as a bony elderly woman climbed over the dead swimmer. She got halfway over him and her head exploded like it was made of watermelon. Another earsplitting round blasted through the closet and put a hole in the wall just above Wendy’s head. She covered her ears and screamed. Another gunshot shattered the flat screen TV.
“There are people in here!” Paul shouted, taking Wendy to the ground and shielding her with his body. “We’re still alive!”
A man yelled something out in the living room and the shooting stopped but the zombies didn’t.
“We’re in the bedroom!”
The bullets started flying again, this time slower, more methodic. The head disappeared from the shoulders of a teenage girl and her body fell on top of the others. A man with a white beard – a cross between Santa and Kenny Rogers – appeared in the doorway while his dipshit friends migrated toward whoever was shooting outside. Santa flinched when a round struck him in the shoulder but he kept reaching for Paul and Wendy like some gruesome superhero, undeterred by such petty things as bullets. Paul and Wendy scrambled backwards, watching the man slide head first down the pile of bodies and spill into the bedroom. The things out in the hallway shuffled out of view or crumpled to their death with head shots.
Clumsily, the bearded man started getting up. Running on pure instinct, Paul raced around the bed and speared Santa’s head with the knife as hard as he could but the blade bounced off his skull like it was made of porcelain. The man seized Paul’s leg, squeezing so hard Paul thought his bones would shatter like fine china. He stabbed harder and faster to no avail. Wendy rushed over to help, stomping on the man’s face with an unbridled rage. Paul switched his aim from the man’s head to his neck, repeatedly stabbing like his life depended upon it. Wendy planted her foot on Santa’s face and held him down while Paul cut the man’s head off with the Leatherman. The man finally stopped moving, his beard turning red. Paul threw the head into the closet with a guttural scream and wiped the blood from his eyes.
The shooting and the moans and the wet sounding hacks and grunts stopped at roughly the same time. Paul’s chest rose and fell in the silence that followed, a far-off ringing filling his ears. He traded a cautious look with Wendy, blood and guts covering their faces. More gunfire brought him and Wendy diving to the floor. They huddled together on the blood-stained carpeting and when the shooting stopped, a man’s deep voice called out.
“It’s safe now. You can come out!”
They sat up, Wendy trembling in his arms like she had hypothermia.
“I don’t believe it,” she said faintly, fearful of waking the bodies next to them. “We’re still alive.”
Paul helped her up and then crawled over the fleshy stack of stiffs, seeing bony hands move beneath him, feeling them latch onto his ankles and wrists. But none did. Out in the hallway, they stepped over more of the fallen, inching toward the morning light coming through the living room windows. In the kitchen, Paul grabbed his gun and handed Wendy her pink one. They strapped on and he motioned to keep her weapon holstered. There was no need making anyone nervous. If the voices calling to them from outside wanted to shoot them, they would have by now.
Squinting against the daylight, Paul stepped through the broken patio door and raised his hands, irritated by his vision’s inability to focus in on the three strangers staring down at them from the backs of three tall horses.
“Holy shit, would you look at that!” a younger man with sandy blond hair said, ogling Wendy. “We just saved Kate Upton! T
his must be my lucky day.” His devilish grin drew Paul’s ire.
The woman next to the man shifted in her saddle, her wavy hair cascading over her bare shoulders in chocolate rivers. “Are you okay?”
Using his hand as a visor, Paul surveyed the dead bodies scattered on the beach. Wavy Gravy tilted with another wave coming to shore.
“Forget to drop anchor?” The blond man laughed, causing his black horse to stir a little. “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…”
Paul glared at him in the sunlight. “It came loose.”
“That’s why we stay on land,” the other man said, his voice as deep as his eyes were warm. He slipped his rifle into a leather scabbard that looked like a prop from an old John Wayne movie. “My name’s Troy, and this is my sister, Stephanie, and my brother, Curtis.”
“I’m Wendy and this is Paul.” Wendy stepped out from Wavy’s shadow. “Thank you for…” She gestured to the bodies littering the sand, “this.”
“You’re the first people we’ve seen in days,” Stephanie said, holstering her sidearm.
Curtis rested his shotgun on his saddle and gave Wendy a coy wink. “Yeah, sorry we almost shot ya.” His eyes darted to Paul. “Next time scream louder.”
Troy jerked his chin down the coastline, the wind ruffling his wavy hair that was as rich brown as his sister’s. “We’ve got food and water a couple miles down the way.” He eyed them closely while drinking from an old western canteen. “Unless you’d rather stay here.”
Paul and Wendy exchanged a hesitant glance before he thumbed behind him. “We’ve got some stuff inside.”
Troy strapped the canteen to the saddle. “We’ll come back with the truck before dark. Hop on.”
☠
Arms wrapped around her slender waist, Paul clung to Stephanie as her horse raced down the beach with the smell of vanilla floating from her hair. Her thin black tank top allowed him to feel every muscle in her well-defined abs and when she looked back at him with a pretty grin he changed his grip. The beach houses they galloped past were beautiful but the way Wendy held onto Curtis overshadowed them. Paul didn’t trust the man, but, after saving their lives, he would for now. What choice did he have? The horses slowed to a trot and eventually stopped in front of a tall beach house taking up a huge lot.
A Little More Dead Page 25