A Little More Dead (29 page)

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! This
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.

“This is where you live?” Wendy panted,
marveling at the three levels of balconies.

Troy hopped off his horse and towed it
to a black gate that had to be at least seven feet tall. “This is home,” he
said, unlocking the gate with a large skeleton key.

“For now,” Stephanie added, steadying
her horse while Paul climbed down.

“And the best
part?
No anchors.” Curtis shot Paul a playful grin before jumping down into the sand.

Inside the fence, they left the horses
untied in a shaded area with cushioned patio furniture and a massive fire pit that
could double as a hog spit. Paul noticed Wendy’s eyes light up at the surfboards
leaning against some palm trees to the right. Troy locked the gate behind them
with a loud
clink
, prickling Paul’s
nerves. Troy grinned at him. “Don’t worry, nothing is getting in here.”

“Yeah, or out.”

“Hey, you’re free to leave anytime you
want, pretty boy. Don’t let the door hit
ya
in the
ass.”

Paul turned a pointed glare on Curtis
that brought a wide smile to the man’s tanned face.

“Curtis,” Troy grumbled. “Don’t be an
asshole.”

Curtis shrugged. “How do we know they’re
not going to kill us in our sleep?”

“You just saved our lives,” Wendy laughed.
“Why would we kill you?”

Stephanie snorted. “You haven’t heard
his singing yet.”

“Come on,” Troy said, leading them up a steep
staircase. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Inside the three-level home, walls of
glass let in massive amounts of light that warmed the entire place and made
Paul nervous at the same time.

“The glass is hurricane proof,” Troy
said, reading Paul’s mind. “Those things couldn’t break in even if they got
past the fence.”

“Which they can’t,” Stephanie added,
going into an open kitchen.

Paul moved to a window looking out
across the front yard to see a huge black pickup dwarfing a new Corvette Stingray
out in the driveway.

“All work and no play
makes
Curtis a dull boy.”

Paul turned to Curtis, wanting to smack
the cocky grin from his face. Instead, Paul went into the living room and dropped
onto a thin couch with straight lines, a sigh pushing past his lips. His adrenaline
receding, lethargy seeped into his bones. “How long have you been here?”

“Long enough to
know we’re all fucked.”

“Come on, Curtis,” Troy said, keeping
his eyes on Paul.

Curtis laughed and there was no
disguising the contempt in his voice. “Oh yeah, let’s throw a parade because we
found two people!
Whoopty
fucking doo! Now it’s five
against five million.”

“Don’t pay any attention to my younger
brother. He gets grumpy when he’s out of weed.” Troy sat in a leather armchair with
studded seams and linked his fingers behind his head, a cut-off Chevy t-shirt
showing off his bulging biceps. “We’ve been here for a week; came down from
Kansas City after we lost power.”

Stephanie crossed the room and passed
out some water, grapes and power bars. She was a tall drink of water with oily
jeans clinging to her long legs like body paint. “Almost froze to death in the
process.”

“Thought we were
the last normal people on the entire planet.”
Troy took a
long drink of water before telling Wendy and Paul about the people they’d lost
along the way and the numerous times they’d nearly died themselves. Curtis stripped
off his shirt, revealing his tattoos and chiseled abs, and shared the ghastly
parts with such detail it made the hairs go up on Paul’s arms. The conversation
eventually drifted back to former occupations – Curtis raced stock cars in the
NASCAR
Xfinity
Series (NASCAR’s minor league circuit)
with his older brother Troy as his crew chief. Stephanie, she told them, was a
personal trainer and a part-time cheerleader for the Kansas City Chiefs. She
stopped her tale when Paul slipped upstairs and went out onto the top balcony
for some fresh air.

Pinching his eyes against the bright
sun, he leaned against the railing and watched the waves explode onto the beach.
This house must’ve sold for millions and no one was here to stop them from
taking it. It was uncanny but this is who they were now.

Thieves.

Pirates.

Cheats.

Paul had cheated death and cheated Sophia
and he blamed the wind for the tears in his eyes. He hung his head and ran a
hand through his clean hair, insides twisting. Everyone was dead and the only
connection he felt to anyone in the world was a busty stripper he met last week.