Deadrise (38 page)

"I’m sorry." He broke the kiss, his face flushing red with embarrassment. "I don’t know what I was thinking."

"Yes you do." She said with a smile. "You needed someone. We both needed someone. And we found each other." She kissed him again, long and full of passion. When their lips finally parted his grief was completely forgotten. In its place was pure desire. He looked into her eyes and saw that same desire shining back at him. She was at least five years older than him and right now he couldn’t think of a woman he found more beautiful. "Let’s go inside." She stood and pulled him to his feet.

"I--I mean I’ve never…" He stammered, his face flushing with embarrassment again. She just laughed and pulled him close, kissing him again.

"I have." She said, and ran her hand down his stomach and gave his erection a slight squeeze through his pants. A slight moan of pleasure escaped his lips and she kissed him again before leading him toward the house…

Chapter 41

Monday, June 25, 2001

Rainbow Lake, UT

9:01 PM

Zack had spent the entire day in the water. Fifty yards out from shore, huddled against a large wooden diving platform held afloat by barrels and anchored to the bottom, watching his friends and their companions go about their tasks. Staying on the far side and huddled close he was impossible to see from shore. Not that any of them had paid much attention to the lake. Even the sentry up on the third floor of the house rarely scanned the water, and only for a moment or two. Only the dog had showed any sign of suspicion. It ran down to the lake several times, sniffing the air and looking out in his direction. Zack had even felt the slightest psychic touch, the dog's sixth sense searching out danger. But even the dog had finally given up, returning to the humans as they busied themselves with unloading the vehicles.

Once dusk had settled, Zack dared leave the cover of the diving platform and swam slowly and quietly to shore. He went as far as the wooden dock that extended out from the boathouse. He swam under the dock almost to the shoreline and came to a halt, listening... He could hear the humans talking among themselves. He titled his head to hear better, trying to pick out individual voices…Matt and a second later Susan.

Zack slowly came out from under the dock, slithering out of the water on his belly, moving up until he could see them. His enhanced night vision easily picked them out in the darkness as they sat around the deck in folding chairs.

He heard the crackle of a radio and they all grew silent. Matt spoke on the radio. Another voice came back…Jenkins. Suddenly one of the men stood up and screamed

"THOSE FUCKING BASTARDS! LET HIM DIE WITH A LITTLE DIGNITY!"

Zack searched his memory for the man’s name…there were shadowy glimpses of him from the bus and Summittown…Rick! Rick threw a can of beer and stomped away toward the house. A few moments later another man stood up…Zack had no memory of him what so ever

"ZEKE? HERE BOY!" The man whistled and slowly walked toward the house.

He was calling for the dog. All of Zack’s senses went on alert as he quickly scanned around for the dog…but there was no sign of it. He had seen it wander off into the woods about an hour before nightfall and not since. He turned his attention back to the group of people, keeping his sixth sense alert for the dog.

He watched Matt and Susan stand and walk to the house. Seconds later they were followed by another man, a soldier that Zack remembered from before…Mac. He drained a can of beer and said something to two younger people still sitting then turned to the house. He recognized the teenaged boy as David, but the dark haired young woman sitting next to him was a stranger. He watched Mac close the back sliding door of the house. Zack looked up to the third floor; there was no sign of the woman who had been on sentry duty. But he could hear the sound of crying from up there, at least two people.

He looked back to David and the girl. They were talking. Zack couldn’t make out their words but he defiantly heard his own name spoken by the boy. Now the boy was crying and the girl was holding him. Zack could smell their tears; almost taste their salty tang in the air. The faintest grumbling of hunger pulled at his stomach but he pushed it away. A new scent had caught his nostrils. The girl, he could smell her sex as she became aroused, the pheromone enticing him…stirring him. Zack crawled a few feet forward, the fire in his blood coming alive at the scent of the woman’s arousal. They were locked in a kiss. Zack crawled a few more steps closer. He was past the beach and onto the tall grass of the back lawn. Its thick scent wafted through his nostrils, heavy and pungent, but underneath it he could still smell the woman. During his metamorphosis his genitals had not disappeared, they had simply retracted into his abdomen and were covered by a shield of bone and muscle; but they were perfectly extractable, and fully functional. Vile, perverted visions of how he would ravage her body before he ate her brains swam through his mind as he crawled closer…closer.

David and the woman broke their embrace and walked toward the house. Zack curled his legs underneath him, preparing to pounce. His blood hammered in his ears, his erection painfully hard. His hunger had returned as a gaping hole in his stomach that couldn’t be sated. The prey was over one hundred feet away and less than twenty feet from the house, but he knew he could overtake them. He flexed his muscles and began forward for the kill when he suddenly felt the dog’s psychic presence touch his mind, zero in on him and lock on like radar.

Zack raised his head and peered around. He could sense the dog coming from the forest, less than one hundred yards away. He let out a low snarl and quickly slithered back into the water. He was one hundred feet out when the dog come running up to the waters edge, staring at him. Zack met its stare, noting the keen intelligence in the Black Labs eyes. For several long seconds they stared one another down, the mental electricity between them rising to a sizzling charge. It let out a loud bark, and a psychic blast of ferocity came with it. Zack easily deflected it with his own mind shield, but the point was made never the less. If given a chance, the dog would kill him. It would tear out his throat and his guts and his balls and his--

Movement from the third floor sentry post! Two figures: both of them carrying rifles. One of them activated a searchlight, the 6" wide beam lancing through the darkness as high into the sky as Zack could see. The beam swung across the water, arcing for his position. He quickly and quietly slipped beneath the water, sinking several feet down. As the powerful light played over the surface above, Zack felt his natural defensive instincts emerging, and his cautious apprehension was quickly replaced by deadly resolve. Visions of mating and feeding on the girl flashed through his mind again, followed by more rampant bloodshed as he ran through the house, slaughtering all of them before they knew what was co--

STOP!

He closed his eyes and sank deeper, struggling to regain control of his raging temper. If only the growing hunger in his gut would cease its endless gnawing! The beam from the searchlight was still sweeping the waters surface above, and he could still sense the dog there at the waters edge.

Zack admitted defeat.

He turned and swam south, staying within twenty feet of the shore. After two hundred feet he surfaced for air, dove underwater again and swam another two hundred feet, swimming close enough to shore to stand up out of the water.

He was surprised to see a dozen zombies staggering north along the beach. As soon as he emerged from the water they turned and started to lumber towards him.

'BACK!'

He held his hand palm out as he gave the mental command. The drones instantly turned away and continued along their former path.

Zack felt out with his senses. Besides these drones there were another fifty stumbling about deeper into the woods. And they were all moving north, towards Matt.

Another scent caught his nose, a rustle in the darkness grabbing his ears, a swish in the shadow alerting his eyes. There was a man out there, moving among the zombies. For a moment Zack thought it might be a superzombie but he would have sensed its psychic vacuum. He reached out for a gentle mind scan but surprisingly his mind was blocked with white noise. He probed harder but the static resistance increased in intensity, annoying more than paining him. He cut the scan and sniffed the air again to make sure he had identified the scent properly… Yes, it was definitely a man. His hunger suddenly flared, and he found himself licking his lips. Crouching low to the ground, Zack moved into the forest, becoming one with the darkness…

Chapter 42

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

Rainbow Lake, UT

12:03 AM

Matt came awake to the sound of gunfire and for a moment he just lay there, staring into the darkness, thinking it was all a dream. Then he heard a gunshot… And another… And another…Susan was already sitting up in bed beside him. He glanced at the clock. Just past midnight. He’d been asleep less than two hours. Another gunshot. He could also hear a dog barking furiously.

"Déjà vu…" Matt muttered aloud, pulling on his pants and grabbing his gun. Susan chuckled from the other side of the bed. Just as they finished dressing they heard screaming coming from inside the house! Moments later there came a pounding on the bedroom door.

"MATT! SUSAN! ZOMBIES IN THE PERIMETER!" It was Mac. "ZOMBIES IN THE PERIMETER!"

"WE’RE COMING!" Susan hollered back. Matt opened the door and ran down the hall. They had taken a bedroom on the first floor, near the master bedroom. He came out of the hall into the foyer. A wide, carpeted stairwell leading upstairs was straight ahead, the kitchen and sliding doors to the deck on his left, the main living room to his right. Mac stood in the open sliding glass doorway, his M-16 shouldered. He began firing into the back yard as Matt and Susan came up behind him. Matt looked over Mac’s shoulder onto the deck. Someone had turned on the back deck lights, and under the bright halogen glare Matt could see zombies pouring out of the forest to the south of the house. Mac dropped three of them in quick succession before looking back at Matt and Susan.

"How did they find us?" he asked Matt with a bitter smile.

How indeed? Matt looked out the door again; the nearest zombie was just forty feet away. He started to step out onto the deck when he saw a flash from somewhere in the forest and before he could register what saw he heard the bullet whiz past his head. It smashed into the back wall of the kitchen. He saw another flash just as he registered what the first one was. Another bullet zipped by, this one sounding closer than the last.

"Take cover!" He managed to blurt and pushed Susan away from the door as he fell to the floor for cover.

Another bullet shot through the open door into the kitchen. It chewed into the bar, sending a spray of wood splinters across the kitchen. Matt quickly crawled to Susan. Still holding his ground, Mac returned fire, his face set into a grim sneer. Between shots Matt could hear the dog barking.

"Into the garage." Matt said. They crawled across the kitchen and opened the garage access door on the back wall. The garage was dark and quiet and smelled of motor oil and WD-40. "There’s a tool room in the back with a door and window that looks onto the deck."

They entered the tool room and looked out the window. There were at least thirty zombies lying dead on the lawn but more of them were still stumbling out of the forest. Matt looked to the left, searching for Mac, but he was no longer visible in the sliding patio door.

Susan slid the window open and stuck the barrel of her weapon out, sighting on a zombie. She closed one eye, and squeezed the trigger, watching the zombies head come apart like a melon. A smile spread across her face and she targeted another.

Matt moved to the back door and opened it up, stepping far enough back so to be unseen by anyone in the forest. But right now he didn’t need worry about anyone in the forest because there was a pair of deadfucks standing right outside the door!

Matt let out a small yelp of surprise and raised his weapon. The two zombies looked at him and raised their arms in excitement; one of them even appeared to be smiling. Matt snapped off a quick shot that caught the lead zombie in the throat, sending it stumbling back onto its ass. The second zombie took one step into the garage before Matt put a 5.56 MM shell right through its forehead. It fell back, arms spread wide as the first zombie slowly climbed to its feet, oblivious to the gaping bullet hole where its throat used to be. Matt quickly put a bullet through the side of its head, blowing off the better part of its skull and dropping it to the ground. Matt stepped over the corpses to the doorway, took aim and killed another. And another.

It was over in less than a minute.

As quickly as it had begun, the flood of zombies from the woods stopped.

Matt nodded to Susan and slowly stepped out the door onto the back patio deck. She moved to the door to cover him. He looked to his left and saw Mac step out of the cement stairwell at the north end of the deck. Matt kept his gun trained on the forest.

"I saw a sniper." Jennifer called from the third floor balcony. "I took a couple of shots but I don’t know if I got him or not."

"Maybe it was a superzombie?" David said from the second floor balcony. Samantha and Scott stood beside him.

"Maybe it was Zack?" Mac said.

"I haven’t seen the flash of his gun since I fired at him. Hopefully I nailed the son of a bitch right between the eyes." Jennifer said.

"If it’s a superzombie it won’t matter." Susan said.

"You’d figure a superzombie would attack." Mac said. "It knows it’s fairly indestructible and it could easily charge the house and engage us."