Dying Days 3 (15 page)

They cleared a space around Abby's prone body, but she'd been mangled beyond recognition. A female zombie was biting a chunk from her left shoulder, while a male creature, erection ready, was opening Abby's legs wide.

Darlene disconnected his head from his body with a brutal swipe, and then kicked the female in the face, before Eric smashed her head in with the rifle.

John bowled over two more as they came around the corner. "What happened?"

"She was ambushed. They lured her near the house, and then attacked. Holy shit." Darlene saw seven or eight more coming down the street. "They suckered us."

"We need to get her back to the stilt houses and patch her up," Eric said and bent to lift her. "She'll be fine once we clean her up."

John put a hand on Eric's shoulder. "She's gone, and we need to get out of here. There are more of them coming, and they're likely to circle around and get behind us."

Eric wiped the blood from her face. "We made love last night. Finally. I told her I loved her, but she never said it back. She just smiled." John was pulling him off but Eric was still staring down at her. "I thought I'd never find love again, after Jessa."

"If you don't snap out of this, you'll end up in heaven with both girls," Darlene said and instantly regretted it. She turned Eric to her. "We need to leave. Would Jessa and Abby want you to die?"

"No," he whispered. He closed his eyes and Darlene could see his face harden. When he opened his eyes, he was pissed. "Let's get out of here. But I'm going to kill as many of these fuckers as I can, as we do, if you don't mind."

"Not at all. In fact, I plan on joining you."

John was already down the street and starting the dune buggies.

Darlene began the retreat, just as zombies came at them from both sides, but she was too quick for them. Her machete dug into necks and, when she couldn't cut through in one shot, she kicked at their knees and tried to put them down long enough they could escape. Although, she now saw for every one they didn’t kill, it would eventually show up again.

They were like slow ants, sweeping in from all sides, out of thin air. Darlene's arm was tiring from swinging the machete and she started kicking and punching as she moved. She had the insane thought her ant analogy made no sense, but right now she needed to keep fighting and retreating.

An arrow went by, slicing through a zombie face and dropping it.

"Don't waste your arrows, since you can't get them back," Eric yelled. He was bringing the fight to the zombies and Darlene was getting worried.

"Back up, Eric. We need you alive," Darlene yelled. If he didn't start moving in their direction, she was going to have to force him, and with so many undead surrounding them, it might mean the death of both of them.

"Where did they suddenly come from? This is nuts," John said. He jumped off the buggy and began clearing a path with his own machete.

"What are you doing?" Darlene asked, getting up near the buggies. "We need to drive out of here."

John sliced through two zombies. "They're blocking the road. We won't get ten feet before they fall on us. We need to open this up. Help me clear the street in front of us. Eric, can you keep our backs covered?"

"They're all going to die… again," Eric shouted with a hysterical hitch to his voice.

Darlene was getting worried, but there was immediate work to do. She hoped Eric's impending breakdown would hold off long enough to get back to safety.

She took a swing at a female zombie and the zombie put up an arm, blocking the machete. Darlene could see the anger in its eyes, but it was also smiling. Its mouth opened and a groan escaped. Darlene chopped again, severing the hand.

"Brains," the zombie said in barely a whisper and then began to laugh.
Holy shit, she's making a joke
, Darlene realized.
She's toying with me and freaking me out
.

Darlene feigned a strike to her left and when the zombie moved to block, she reversed the machete and buried it in her neck. She pulled it out, spattering gore, and kept chopping as the zombie fell.

"It's dead," John shouted to her. "Watch your back."

Three zombies were reaching for her and Darlene had no room to maneuver the machete, so she ran right into one, clothes-lining another in the throat, and putting some distance between them. She was panting and her arm hurt. "I can't do this much longer," she said between gasps. "One of us is going to make a mistake."

"Get back to the buggies. They're coming faster than we can clear them," John shouted. He fought his way to the lead buggy just as Eric got next to him.

Darlene had three between her and her ride. She wiped the sweat from her hands onto her wet shirt and attacked. She brought one down with a downward sweep of the machete, and shouldered the one to her left out of the way. The remaining one got a hand on her shirt and yanked it, but she managed to slam the butt of the machete into its forehead until it released and fell to the ground.

Her t-shirt was ripped, her bra showing. She climbed into the buggy and covered up, her body covered in sweat and every muscle hurting. As much as she was in shape, she was still nowhere near in perfect form. Battles like this would drop the last of her extra weight, though, if she survived.

Darlene was still breathing heavily as John took off, weaving between the zombies on the road, and trying not to run over the prone ones.

A glance back showed Eric was right on their bumper, and his eyes were vacant. "Are you alright?"

Eric didn't answer, staring straight ahead and following their route like a robot.

John cut left and right, gaining speed as he drove. A zombie fell against the buggy and Darlene kicked him off.

They got onto A1A and headed north.

"Holy shit," Darlene said when she saw the horde moving in their direction. There must be a hundred zombies, and she was reminded of the survivors coming up from Orlando and them all ending up being undead.

Eric came up right behind them, blocking her view.

"He's a little too close," John shouted. "If I have to stop, he's going to crash into us. What's his problem?"

"He's like… well, he's like a zombie right now. Abby dying has hit him pretty hard. The adrenalin of the fight is now gone and replaced by the reality of the situation. I feel bad for him. He finally found someone he liked, and now she's gone."

"I feel sorry for Abby," John said.

"Obviously, but with death so close at every turn, it doesn't have the same impact, does it? When Griff took his own life, we didn't dwell on it. Shit, it made sense after his kid's died. That's pretty sad, but true. We've grown accustomed to it. We've lost so many people since we've been at the stilt houses, I've lost count. I can't even remember some of their names or faces. People wandering off, people coming and going, and people dying before our eyes. It's all a kick in the balls but now part of the fabric of our lives. While we still live."

"You're quite the poet," John said. "Seriously, he needs to get off my ass."

There were still zombies in the road and coming from both sides, but they were singles and no immediate threat to get to them, but there were just enough John wouldn't be able to stop and yell at Eric.

"I'll slow him down," Darlene said and turned around in the buggy and knelt on her seat.

"What are you doing?"

"Keep your eyes on the road."

Eric was still in a daze, and his buggy was only inches from their rear end.

"Eric! Yo, Mister White!" Darlene yelled. He glanced up at her but didn't slow down. Darlene put her hands on her bra. With the wind whipping, her shirt, already shredded, was in danger of flying off. She didn't care.

"What are you doing?" John asked.

"Eyes straight ahead. Just drive." Darlene waited until Eric glanced at her again, then lifted her bra and exposed her boobs. "See anything you like, Mister White?" she yelled.

"Holy shit, did you just flash him?"

Eric began laughing and drifted the buggy back.

Darlene sat back down and grinned. "You're welcome."

"There's something wrong with you," John said and grinned. "And I like it."

Chapter Twenty Eight

Frank didn't know where the buggies had gone but he kept running, easily dodging zombies in the road. Even when they were a distant speck on the road ahead, he didn't stop. Every zombie they'd passed was following them at a shuffle.

His heightened senses would help him locate them, and he was sure they hadn't gone too far. He'd find them. There were at least three of them, and he hoped there were more. He wanted to eradicate every last one of them, and crack their bones and feed on the blood and enjoy their pain.

The sun was dropping by the time he got to Marineland, a series of buildings that, in better times, had served as a marine animal research facility. Now it was just a bunch of torched buildings and blackened palm trees lining A1A.

Frank went to the beach access and stared out over the ocean. He had to admit the sun dropping over his shoulder cast a nice glow in the sky, and he remembered trips to Maine with his parents, as a kid, watching the fishing boats on the water and the smell of the ocean and fish as it was hauled from the boats to the docks. Childhood memories now feeling like they happened yesterday.

He could compartmentalize each thought and image, with ease, into neat folders of his mind, and pull them up at will. While he had no time for stupid past recollections, he didn't want to lose them. They were part of who he was, and part of the magic he'd become. Without the past, Frank had no future. At least, it's what he told himself as he refused to delete thoughts like a computer memory card.

Frank closed his eyes and extended his mind into the sea and smiled when he could actually feel fish just off the coast. There were three zombies being tugged by the tide, just past the breakers, and Frank didn't think they would ever make it to shore. Fish had nibbled large chunks of their flesh. A group of black-tip sharks was out there, scores of them hugging the shoreline. Frank could feel their power as they fed and fucked and moved gracefully in the water.

He was the land equivalent. The deadliest predator left walking the planet, and he needed to flex his might and do something more important than wandering and breaking necks. But what? Frank was sure it would come to him as his brain kept developing and growing, maturing with each passing minute. For now…

A1A was filling with zombies, still marching in a maddeningly slow pace. He estimated seventy-five within sight. Hundreds more coming up the road and from the ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway. Frank didn't feel the pull like they did, but he knew he'd had it at some point. It was what led him from Canada to Florida in the first place. Was there a final destination in mind? They didn't keep coming south and walk to the Keys and wander into the ocean and Cuba and points south. They hung around in Florida, and he was sure other southern States. Maybe Mexico and into South America?

Enough of the thinking. It was time for action again. Frank walked down the wooden ramp to the beach and across the sandy parking lot, crushing skulls as he moved. He waded into the center of the group before him and began his assault, going through the motions. He wondered what serial killers felt like after getting past the first six or seven victims. Did it all start to feel the same? Did each subsequent kill start to bore them? Did they have to ramp up the excitement? Frank wasn't physically tiring of this, but mentally he was somewhere else. It was a step to the left and another broken neck, then a step to the right and another one. Over and over, muscle memory taking charge.

Frank went around the bend to the north after snuffing the un-life out of another walking corpse and stopped. His senses went haywire for a second and he almost passed out. He'd need to better control it.

There were living persons in the area, quite a few. Maybe even the ones he'd followed. Not that it mattered. Before the sun came up tomorrow, this entire area would be leveled. He could see lights near the beach, a path leading between the dunes. He started following it but stopped when he realized he was walking down a dead end street, with houses to his left and the beach to his right, over a dune.

Frank kept moving up A1A for a better look, coming to a small bridge that spanned a dried up riverbed between the Intracoastal and a path that used to cut through to the ocean before the stilt houses were built, changing the flow of water.