Clickers vs Zombies (36 page)

Jack stood near the edge of the boat, stunned. “Dave?”

But Dave wasn’t letting go. He was determined that Todd Perry receive his full wrath.

“Todd?” That was Peter, calling down to his boss.

Bob Thurman stepped forward. He cast an angry glare at Dave. “The guy was an asshole, but you didn’t have to Taser him! Jesus Christ, Dave!”

Dave didn’t say a word. He replaced the cartridge casually. Todd Perry moaned in pain on the deck.

“When this is all over, the Discovery Channel is going to hear about this,” Bob continued.

“Oh, are they?” Dave asked.

“You bet they are,” Bob sneered.

“Do you know what’s going on? Do you even think there’ll be a Discovery Channel left when all is said and done?”

“You’re insane,” Bob said. “Just you wait until—”

Dave raised the Taser at Bob and pulled the trigger, sending the electrodes into his bare chest and stomach. Bob became completely incapacitated as he began convulsing as electricity surged through his body. Bob fell forward. Jack, who had been standing near the edge of the yacht watching in stunned shock, stepped back to get out of the way and slipped. He fell overboard.

“Shit,” Dave said, releasing the trigger on the Taser gun. “Look what you made me do! I just lost Jack!”

There was a dim splash from below. Then, Jack started yelling. “Help! Oh, God help, get me out of here!”

“You piece of shit bastard!” Dave said, advancing on Bob’s motionless body. The electrodes were still fastened to Bob’s chest and the cartridge still had juice. Dave pulled the trigger again and Bob’s body shuddered and jittered, smoke rising from the burn marks that were starting to appear. There was a whiff of flame and then Bob’s shirt caught on fire.

“Fuck,” Dave said. He stepped back. It looked like Bob was dead.

The sound of footsteps behind him. “You crazy sonofa-bitch, what did you just do?”

Dave whirled around, ejecting the spent cartridge and slapping in a fresh one with all the skill of a master Taser gunslinger. Peter Oldsdale stopped up short and Dave grimaced madly, pointing the weapon at him. “Fuck off and die,” he said, squeezing the trigger again. The electrodes hit Peter’s bare chest. Peter yelled, leaped up, and tried to run away.

“Motherfucker.” Dave tried to give chase. The electrodes were still embedded in Peter’s chest and Dave pulled the trigger again, sending another series of electrical charges through to Peter, who screamed and fell to his knees. He curled up into a fetal position as Dave pulled the trigger again. This time Peter started convulsing. His feet beat a steady staccato on the yacht’s deck. His eyes rolled up, showing the whites.

Out in the ocean, Jack’s screams became more high pitched, then suddenly cut off. Dave stopped torturing Peter, stepped toward the edge of the yacht and cast a look down.

Jack was gone. All that remained was a rapidly spreading pool of blood.

Dave turned to Todd, Bob, and Peter. Todd was beginning to recover, but he was dazed. Bob was unconscious or dead and Peter looked completely incapacitated. Dave ejected the spent cartridge and slapped in another one. “Let’s see if these things like their meals cooked.”

Todd looked up at Dave and his eyes grew wide. He raised his hands up. “No! No, not again, not—
aaauugghhh!
”

“Take that!” Dave muttered, shooting Todd again with the Taser. He kept his finger on the trigger as electricity jolted Todd’s body, making him quiver and quake. A moment later he fell to the deck unconscious.

Dave dragged their limp, unconscious forms to the edge of the yacht and managed to get them over the side and down. They fell like sacks of meat. Then he watched as they floated in the water only to be devoured by the Clickers.

That had been almost twenty-four hours ago. Since then, Dave had caught the cliff-notes version of what was now a global event—that his fears had been confirmed. The world was ending, not just by the invasion of the Clickers, but by the simultaneous rising of the dead. To head back to shore would be suicide, especially if there were really zombies on land. The mayhem on land was undoubtedly worse there than it was here—according to the reports he heard, the crab-scorpion-lobster things were beaching themselves, scuttling onto shore and attacking people. Once dead, the people were coming back as zombies and turning even
more
people into zombies. It sounded like one of those Sy Fy Channel movies Dave liked to watch, only this was the real thing. Therefore, Dave opted to head out to deeper waters. With the yacht’s navigation equipment, he hoped he’d be able to spot any unnatural activity in the waters, allowing him to steer far away from it. The first few hours had been touch and go, and his stomach had been in knots as he navigated the vessel into deeper waters. But the further out he got, the less he saw of the creatures. Finally, at around eleven-thirty last night, he’d retired below deck, satisfied that he’d been able to steer himself as far away from the creature’s migratory pattern as possible. Once in the yacht’s cabin downstairs, he’d fallen into one of the beds and fell asleep.

Upon waking up he did a quick survey of his location and found he’d drifted about ten miles slightly off course. He’d turned off the engine last night and had let the yacht drift in open waters. After raiding the downstairs kitchen galley for food—a banana and some graham crackers—Dave had headed back up to the steering wheel and resumed his journey.

Four days was his estimate on being back in North Carolina. He’d tried radioing in to his Discovery Channel contacts, his agent in New York, he’d even tried calling his friend Jeff back in the Outer Banks. He was unable to reach anybody. This worried him, because what news was coming out of the scanners had completely ceased. Everything was dead. No information was forthcoming.

For most of the day, Dave wondered if the lack of news meant that civilization had collapsed entirely.

How can it go down so fast?
He thought.

Dave pondered this and other things on his journey west. He thought about his life, his career as a producer for the Discovery Channel’s programs he loved so much. What had happened off the coast of South Africa was tragic and horrifying, but Dave also knew that if he were on the other side of the fence—that is, a normal citizen at home who had an interest in watching the kind of material he produced for television—he would have killed for a chance to watch a special on what had happened. Those creatures, whatever they were, had been the ultimate killing machines. They’d killed one of his staff members. They were ferocious in their appetite for pretty much anything in the ocean. And they’d completely destroyed a Great White shark, a large one too, judging by the size of that dorsal fin Dave had seen.

So long as those things stay out there
, Dave thought. He wasn’t going to take the chance and get too close to the edge of the yacht the way Doug did yesterday. He was staying right in the middle of the boat. Of course, if a big one decided to smash its way in he was toast, but for now Dave really felt that the safest place was on the yacht. While the overwhelming desire to make sure his house was okay was strong, Dave already had a plan for that. He would cruise by slowly along the Outer Banks where his house was located. He would be able to see it from the ocean. And if things looked hairy, he was staying put.

No way I’m going to shore when there’s zombies around.

A series of splashes in the water caught Dave’s attention. Frowning, he peered over the steering wheel. Once again, it looked like the same patterns from yesterday. Schools of fish appeared to be fleeing from a large predator.
Probably another mass of those Clickers
, Dave thought. He turned around and looked back at the water behind him, trying to see what was going on. All he saw was a mad migratory pattern of large fish, including dolphins and porpoises, swimming like mad in a north west direction as if they were trying to escape something.

And then Dave saw something else. He stared at it, squinting in the sunlight. “What the fuck?”

Dave grabbed a pair of binoculars that were resting near the steering wheel. He brought them to his face, made an adjustment. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing, but when he finally realized what it was, he saw that it was heading toward him at a fast speed. “Holy fucking shit!”

Dave raced down to the deck, still clutching the binoculars. He stopped, sighted in on the object again, his breath held. It was amazing.

A giant dorsal fin was plowing through the water heading in his direction. It was clearly the dorsal fin of a Great White. Judging from the size of the fin, it was a monster specimen, one of the rumored behemoths he’d heard of but had never personally seen. Great White Sharks were rumored to grow as large as thirty feet in length with a total weight of four tons. One had allegedly been caught off the coast of Rhode Island in the late eighties, but that catch wasn’t verifiable by scientists. The biggest one Dave had seen during his career was a twenty-one footer off the coast of Australia. Dave was a very accurate judge of dimensions and weight, and judging from the size of that dorsal fin sticking out of the water, the shark it was attached to was close to thirty feet long.

“Where’s my cameraman when I really need him?” Dave said to himself. “Oh, that’s right. I killed you yesterday, Bob. You were being an asshole.”

That explained why the fish were racing to swim away. It was a phenomena Dave had witnessed before. Dave picked the binoculars up and watched again, mesmerized as the monster shark drew closer.

A moment later it was close enough to observe with the naked eye. Dave watched, spellbound as it swam past the boat. Its huge dorsal fin was easily five feet high. As the monster shark swam by the yacht, Dave followed its movement, at once awed and frightened by how close it was. He also realized his initial estimate of its size was way off. As the shark swam by the boat, Dave realized it was closer to forty-feet in length.
Oh my fucking God
, Dave thought.
I never thought I would see a shark this big, but this has to beat the cake!

Dave continued to watch the shark swim away, spellbound. It was clear to him that this was a Great White and not its extinct cousin Megalodon, which was believed to have surpassed the Whale shark in size. Whale sharks grew to about fifty feet in length; Megalodon’s were thought to exceed lengths of sixty-five. The specimen Dave had just seen swimming past his boat was in no way bigger than this fifty-foot yacht, but it was clearly forty feet. Definitely big enough to take the yacht down if it wanted to.

His awe was short lived, however, because the beast was clearly not a perfect specimen.

It was missing a large chunk of its mid-section. He could see it clearly as it swam past the boat, about fifty yards out. The wound was wide and gaping red. Even this far out, flies were buzzing over it, speeding along the surface of the water as the great beast swam at the top surface of the ocean.

What the fuck?
Dave watched, gap jawed as the beast swam out past the boat, away from the direction the fish were swimming in.
How can it be alive? How can it
—

And then the realization of what he’d just seen hit him.

The zombie shark turned around and began heading back toward the boat.

Dave’s face went ashen. “Oh shit.”

The beast was picking up speed. Dave dropped the binoculars and turned to run.

There was a splash and then a terrific
whump!
as something heavy with great strength behind it fell onto the side of the yacht with a terrific amount of force. The yacht tipped over. Dave yelped and fell, landing on his left arm. He felt his fibula snap with a resounding crack. There was no pain. What Dave was witnessing eclipsed all pain.

The monster shark had launched itself out of the ocean and landed on the side of the yacht. It had heaved itself out of the ocean and through the air at the yacht just like the shark in the movie
Jaws
. Things slid down the deck and bounced off the shark, falling in the ocean. Dave grabbed onto the deck chair that was bolted into the floor and kicked his legs, screaming. The monster shark gnashed its teeth together, chomping those things that slid into its massive jaws—it ate a pillow, several toolkits, a fishing pole, Doug’s wetsuit. Dave tried to scramble up as the yacht tipped into a dangerous angle.

“Oh fuck!” Dave screamed. His fingers were slipping. Looking into its eyes, Dave saw that this wasn’t just a gigantic Great White shark. This shark was clearly dead. It was often said that sharks have dead eyes—large, black, with an empty look to them. This shark had those eyes, too, only there seemed to be something else about this specimen that was different. Something lived in this great beast, this behemoth that had lived for decades in the deepest ocean, allowing it to grow to such a massive size in order to become the most feared predator of the ocean. Something lived in this shark that was clearly dead judging by the decay that was already beginning to set in to its skin, which was turning white and mottled and had a sheen of slime on it from rot. And whatever it was that lived in the shark, it was evil, and intelligent, and it wanted Dave.

“
Holy fucking shit, I’m about to be eaten by a zombie shark!
” Dave screamed. His legs kicked as he fought to maintain his grip.