Deadrise (43 page)

"What the hell is going on?" Susan exclaimed as she and Matt came running down the dock, gear in hand.

"Listen." Mac said, holding up a hand for them to be silent. The screams of agony could still be heard, as could the wailing siren of the zombie horde. "Let’s get going. I want to head south along the shoreline and get a better look at what’s going on over there."

Matt, Susan and Mac began to don their flak vests but Rick continued to look through his binoculars.

"The door to their boathouse just opened up…There is a boat coming out." Rick said. The boat was about half the size of theirs, designed for fishing and water skiing and little else. All three figures on the boat wore white robes with the hoods pulled over their heads, their faces lost in the folds. The purring of their engine spread across the water, drowning out the agonizing wails.

"Do you think these guys escaped from the house?" Susan asked.

"They didn’t appear to in any hurry getting to the boathouse." Rick said.

"And no deadfucks followed them back either." Mac said.

"You don’t think they are superzombies do you?" Susan asked. Matt cringed at the mention of them yet was chilled by her words.

"Don’t you even say that Susan!" Rick snapped.

And could she blame him? They had all dealt with the wicked and evil monsters firsthand. Not to mention Ron. How could she forget Ron? Rick must still be devastated by the horrific death of his brother. To become infected like that, your body mutating before your very eyes…Her mind reeled at the thought of it. Ron did the right thing by taking his own life. Her father’s death had been tragic, and although only a week had passed, Matt had seen to it that her father would never walk the earth as one of those flesh-eating piles of garbage, giving her and her family some kind of closure. Plus it had been such a whirlwind experience since then that it seemed so long ago.

The boat moved two hundred feet out onto the water slowly, almost cautiously before their engine quieted and the boat came to a stop. The two hooded men in the back shouldered their AK-47’s and raised binoculars to their eyes, peering at the home base.

"We're not the only curious ones." Mac said.

Matt grabbed his radio and alerted David of the situation.

One of the white robed men with binoculars began to slowly turn and survey the shore around the rest of the lake. The all watched silently, practically holding their breath as he slowly turned and set his field glasses upon their location. He paused, looking closer, lowered his glasses and looked with the naked eye before raising the binoculars to his eyes once again.

"We’re spotted." Rick said.

"Rick, get this boat moving!" Mac snapped, lowering his binoculars and grabbing his rifle. Less than a minute later they were pulling away from the small wooden dock. Mac was riding shotgun while Matt and Susan crouched down behind the rear seats, M-16s at the ready.

"Should I head out and greet them?" Rick asked.

"Not directly. Get a few hundred feet out from shore then swing due south and see if they follow. But keep a good distance." Rick did as instructed. And as expected, the smaller craft angled to intercept them. Rick increased the speed to prevent them from being cut off and the intercepting craft was forced to run parallel with them, over one hundred feet out but angling closer by the second, using the eastern shore on the left to hedge them in.

Mac knew that they could easily outrun the smaller boat so he urged Rick to hold his present speed. When the craft was about fifty feet out Mac stood and waved his hand over his head, a universal maritime greeting. One of the white robed men stood and waved back, pulling the hood back from his face and smiling, the other one had his weapon lowered and appeared non-threatening.

"What do you think?" Mac called to Matt and Susan. They exchanged nervous glances.

"What do you think?" Matt asked back.

"Something feels funny about this." Mac looked back to see that the man had stopped waving and both of them stood with their AK-47’s lowered to the deck while the pilot focused wholly on his task.

"I don’t like it either. I say we get back home." Rick looked frazzled with stress. The man on the boat waved again and the pilot began to angle his craft closer. "What the fuck is he doing?" Rick’s knuckles were white on the throttle control as he exercised all of his willpower to keep from pushing it to the maximum.

"STAY BACK! STAY BACK!" Mac hollered, motioning for them to keep their distance. But the man waved back as the boat came to within thirty feet.

"Rick, PUNCH IT!" Matt barked, giving Rick all of the incentive he needed. He pushed the throttle forward and the deep, powerful roar of the engine hummed throughout the boat as the larger craft surged ahead. Immediately the man stopped waving and raised his gun, took aim and squeezed of two wild shots that slapped harmlessly into the water twenty yards ahead.

"Take cover!" Mac yelled, crouching behind his seat while raising his weapon to return fire. His M-16 fire selector was set to single shot but he thumbed it forward to 3-round burst, sending a quick spray that chipped the bow point of the pursuing craft.

Matt followed Susan to cover behind the deck seats just as incoming fire zipped over their heads. Matt laid his weapon across the back of the cushioned seat, hastily aimed at the pursuing craft and fired a 3-round burst.

Rick pushed the throttle further while snatching quick looks over his shoulder at their attackers. The powerful engines on his own vessel were quickly outdistancing the smaller boat and they pulled directly behind him to avoid his large wake. A bullet whizzed past him and the windshield in front of him shattered.

Susan squeezed off another burst from her M-16, keeping her head as low as possible yet still high enough to see what she was aiming at. To her surprise she was rewarded to see one of the white robed men jerk with the impact of a bullet and fall back with his hands clutching at his throat. Her celebration was cut short, as the top of the seat she crouched behind was ripped apart with gunfire. She flattened herself to the deck as shredded wood and foam cushion settled around her.

"Susan! Are you OK?" Matt looked to his fallen wife.

"I’m OK!" she called back.

Just then, an odd tingling sensation filled Matt’s head, and his ears began to ring. He turned back to the battle, and as if in slow motion he could see something tiny, like a bug, rapidly approaching his head.

It’s a bullet!

But even as the thought was registering he saw a brilliant flash and a white-hot explosion of pain gonged through his skull…

"MATT! OH MY GOD NO! MATT!" Susan screamed as her husbands limp form crumpled to the deck beside her. She rolled him onto his back, screaming again when she saw the stream of blood running down his forehead and smearing his face. But then she saw the mangled dent at the bottom edge of his helmet. It had deflected the bullet, but the impact had caused it to cut his head open. "Matt?" she shook him, her eyes blurring with tears. He let out a painful groan in response, his hands automatically reaching for his blood covered face.

"How bad is it?" Mac crouched down beside her. Susan pushed the helmet back from his forehead to expose the deep cut caused from the indented helmet.

"The bullet ricocheted off the helmet." She said, a smile of joy coming to her face. "He’ll need a few stitches."

"The lucky bastard! I bet it rang his bell pretty damn good. He’s probably got a concussion." A sly grin crossed Mac's face.

Across from him another bullet chewed into the padded seat cushion with a spray of debris. Susan instinctively lowered herself to cover Matt while Mac raised and fired back, squeezing off half a dozen 3-round bursts. One of the bursts caught the second gunman square in the chest, sending him sprawling back and tumbling out of the boat into the water.

"I GOT YOU! YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Mac hollered at the top of his lungs. The smaller pursuing craft immediately began to slow down and bank away hard towards the eastern shore.

They were near the center of the lake and Rick slowly began to turn back toward home, easing back on the throttle. He looked back over his shoulder at the other craft, now over half a mile behind them. The driver was standing, searching the water for his fallen comrade.

The radio crackled with David’s voice. "Is everybody ok?"

Rick took his radio from the dash. "Copy, David. Everyone is ok."

Mac had turned his attention to the house the attackers had come from. Now that they were in the middle of the lake he could easily see into the large yard and the mansion set back in the forest.

At first he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He blinked and did a double take, but nothing had changed. He looked down to Rick and saw that he had lowered the radio and was staring with a tense, wide-eyed look on his stubbly face. He killed the throttle but kept the motor running and the boat eased to a halt.

"Why did you stop?" Susan asked from the floor. She had removed Matt’s helmet and wiped the blood from his eyes with a hand towel from her pocket and was now compressing it against the wound. Matt was wincing in pain.

"My God..." She heard Rick gasp in a horrified voice.

"What is it?" She put Matt’s hand on the compress and peered towards shoor.

What she saw staggered her.

The entire back yard of the estate was full of zombies. There were literally hundreds of them packed to the back walls of the mansion itself, the only exception being the bonfire that burned in the center of the yard, which all the zombies avoided. Along the roof, set at ten-foot intervals and running parallel to the ground were six long posts extending twenty feet out over the horde of zombies. Hanging by chains from each post were crucifixes with naked human beings attached to each side, a man and a woman per crucifix. They were held to the crucifix by what appeared to be a large stakes driven through the center of the wrists, forearm and bicep. It was impossible to determine how the feet were attached because the crucifixes hung low enough that the zombies were able to reach the victim's bottom half with outstretched arms. The zombies swarmed around the crucifixes in a feeding frenzy, ripping and tearing at the lower torso and legs of the victims. All of those on the crucifixes were now dead, but the zombies continued to devour their still warm flesh.

Now they knew the source of the screams echoing across the lake earlier.

"There are people out on the balconies." Mac blurted, finally reaching for his field glasses.

"Rick what going on?" David asked over the radio again. "Why have you stopped?"

"What the... What the..." was all Susan could mumble, unable to take her eyes from the carnage.

"More of those white robed bastards." Mac said, looking through his binoculars. There were five of them wielding AK-47 assault rifles on the second floor balcony and five more on the third floor balcony. Also on the third floor balcony was another man wearing a red robe. Tied down on a platform before him was a naked woman. From here Mac could see her disemboweled stomach, the splayed, gutted rib cage. The man in the red robes raised his blood-splattered arms and pulled back his cowl. He was Caucasian, his head bald and his face and mouth smeared with blood. Mac couldn’t make out his facial features to well, but the man seemed to be staring right back at him. Then, ever so slowly, he raised his arm and pointed straight at them.

"Holy fucking shit." Rick was looking through his own binoculars. "Holy FUCKING SHIT!" There was no hiding the shock in his voice.

"That’s not…what?" Susan mumbled, the true weight of the…
Unholy
thing she was beholding smashing her like a sledgehammer. At the same time a small, rational part of her brain was thankful that she was not looking through binoculars like Rick and Mac; what her naked eye could discern from half a mile away was more than enough to scar her forever.

"Rick, baby? Why have you stopped?" Jennifer’s voice crackled over the radio.

The sound of his wife's voice pulled Rick from his daze and he lowered the glasses and took the radio.

"Get in the house! Right now! If anyone but us returns you kill them!" Rick said over the radio.

"What?" Jennifer sounded confused.

"Get into the house! We are on our way back!" He dropped the radio and returned to the wheel.

"What’s going on?" Matt tried to sit up but his head exploded with white-hot pain and he slumped back to the deck with a moan. Seeing Matt try to sit up gave Susan’s rational mind a reason to look away from the carnage that had captured her attention. She knelt down beside Matt, taking the bloody rag and wiping the fresh blood from his face. "What’s going on?" he managed to get out between clenched teeth.

"I’ll tell you later." She said, more for her own sake than his. The scene was still imprinted on her mind, replaying over and over but the worst part was that a sick and twisted part of her wanted to stand back up and look some more.

As the boat sped for home, Mac looked back to the other boat, which had stopped near the far eastern shore. The sole remaining white robed man was bent down, probably examining his fallen companion who lay in the back of the boat. Susan had nailed that one through the throat. There was no way he could still be alive. It was only a matter of time before his corpse arose as a zombie. The one that Mac had shot in the chest and fell in the water would become a zombie as well, bobbing in the water until his torso split from the foul gasses in his guts and he sunk to the bottom, wandering about underneath the water. Mac wondered if fishes eating from the zombie’s corpse would be affected by the plague, becoming zombie fish? That was something he didn’t want to think about. Just as he was turning his eyes away from the other boat he saw something large and dark flash out of the water on the lakeside of the boat. It was on the back of the boat and tackling the robed man into the water on the far side before Mac could look back and focus properly.