Clickers vs Zombies (7 page)

The four creatures had completely forgotten about Cathy and Wendy. They were swarming over Melissa, eating her from the looks of it. Giant claws plucked chunks of meat from her ravaged body. Cathy was almost frozen to the scene, rapt in its gruesome violence, but Wendy snapped her out of it. “Go!” The younger woman said, slapping her shoulder. Cathy started and resumed her climb, Wendy behind her. And as they made their way back to civilization, Cathy began to laugh maniacally. She really couldn’t help it. She’d heard of people losing their sanity when faced with extreme life-threatening situations and had always dismissed them. Obviously it really happened because she was laughing now and she couldn’t control herself. She couldn’t stop laughing. After all, it was funny when you stopped to think about it.

Their team building session had proven to be completely successful. She and Wendy had worked as a team and saved themselves. In doing so, they’d had to sacrifice the life of Melissa to save the group, but isn’t that what the exercise was about?

Wendy must have been on her wavelength because Cathy could hear her laughing too. “We reacted to the environment! We worked together as a group and in doing so, we saved ourselves. And we got rid of some dead weight in the process!”

This made Cathy laugh harder as they continued their climb. By the time they reached the top of the trail, which ended at a two lane highway that wound through the hills that overlooked the ocean, they were laughing so hard they had to stop and rest. And by the time the Santa Catalina Police car pulled up five minutes later, their temporary insanity had completely taken over.

South Pacific Ocean

They were seven days out at sea from the pickup in Australia. At the rate they were going, they’d reach home—Newport Beach, California—in about two days. Perfect timing.

Kyle Hodge reclined at the rear prow of the boat and closed his eyes, letting the sea smell wash over him. They’d been cutting a leisurely track through the Pacific for the past two weeks, embarking on a round-about fishing trip that was part leisure, part business. His brother-in-law, Hank, was up above, manning the wheel. His sister Carrie, Hank’s wife, was down below in the galley with his girlfriend, Melody, preparing lunch and probably talking about how fucked up things were going to be when they got back. It figures. Women always talked about how fucked up things might get. So long as they didn’t do the actual fucking up, things were going to be fine.

Sitting at Kyle’s side was a large ice chest with today’s catch—a nice sized yellow-fish tuna. He’d caught it earlier that morning. Their previous catches from the past week resided in the large freezer below deck. Once back home they’d arrange to have the fish transported to a place Kyle knew of where he’d have time to properly gut and prepare it, then he’d arranged to have a couple of them stuffed and mounted. He’d already arranged that end of the deal with his contacts back home.

Hank could deal with the delivery of the heroin.

They’d received the heroin in Australia, on the north side of the continent, through Hank’s usual contact who was a first tier broker. Upon arriving in Australia, they’d taken quick possession of 100 kilos. The street value was ten million dollars. Once delivered to Hank’s contact in Newport Beach, they would receive ten percent. Split four ways, ten percent of ten million bucks was a lot of money.

Kyle took a deep breath, gazing out at the ocean. This was the second such delivery they’d made in the past six months. He was also determined that it would be his last. He wasn’t a dope smuggler. This is not what he’d signed up to do. But with a job layoff from two years ago thanks to the shitty economy brought on by shitty business practices and shitty politicians, it had been hard to find a job in his line of work. Kyle was a DBA—Database Administrator. Unless you wanted to move to India, jobs as DBAs were hard to come by in the States. He was overqualified for everything else he applied for, and under-qualified for other things. And he lacked the financial resources to return to school to earn a degree in another discipline. As a result, he’d been forced to work at jobs that paid half of what he used to make. And with this lack of funds, he was now in danger of losing his house, his car, and going to jail for failing to make timely child support payments to his ex-wife. The court system didn’t care if you were underemployed. Ex-wives didn’t give a shit either. Both wanted their money.

He didn’t join this operation to get rich. He just needed enough money to keep the wolves at bay and buy him enough time to tide him over until things got better.

Movement in the water caught his eye and Kyle leaned forward, squinting. Fishing had been great so far. Hank said it was probably on account of that tsunami/earthquake, which had happened two weeks ago and had almost destroyed their plans. They’d been two days out from their journey when it hit. By the time they reached their destination in Australia the worst of it was over. Thankfully, due to the turmoil, they’d been able to make their transfer and pickup that much quicker. Who said natural disasters were a bad thing?

Kyle’s pulse quickened as he frowned. He reached down to where he kept his binoculars and brought them up to his face. He adjusted the lenses, trying to get a sense of what was going on.

There was a lot of activity and it was too far away for him to discern what was happening. Kyle put the binoculars down and frowned. Shortly after they’d set forth from Australia and began heading back, Hank mentioned that he thought things were different in the water. “It’s probably due to the earthquake,” Hank had said. The two of them had been fishing on the starboard side, reels constantly bending with whatever happened to snag onto their baited hooks. “Animals can sense that shit. Remember that tsunami that hit Indonesia and Thailand? Right before the first waves hit, people reported that the birds took off, animals started heading inland, even the fish started acting up. That’s what we’re seeing here.”

“The tsunami hit last week, though,” Kyle had said.

“Don’t make no difference,” Hank had said. He’d been leaning back in his seat, strapped into his harness for the next big catch. “They’re probably still freaked out. They’re more sensitive to this kind of thing.”

If that was the case, they’d been feeling it for the past week now. In addition to the influx of seagulls there was also more dolphins, whales, sharks, marlins, and other fish. They’d observed them swimming past their boat as if on some migratory quest. Melody had commented one night that it almost seemed like they were fleeing from something. “What could they be fleeing from?” Hank had asked. They’d been hanging out on the top deck, lounging in deck chairs drinking beers. Carrie and Hank were smoking some Thai stick which they’d brought along with them from California—a good few ounces. Kyle hadn’t smoked pot in years and indulged for once after Carrie told him he was being a wuss. Whatever. She didn’t have a lot of shit hanging over her head like he did. “They’re swimming like something’s chasing them.”

“There
is
something chasing them,” Melody had said. “The tsunami waves.”

“Now I know you’re full of shit,” Carrie had said.

Melody had turned to her friend. “I’m serious. Think about how it affects the sea life. It’s gotta fuck with them in some way, right? Water pressure and all?”

“That only works with us,” Hank retorted.

“Yeah, but if the water is thrown off balance like that, it creates waves of increased and decreased pressure as the waves move along the ocean floor. Some fish live way deep in the surface, so deep that if they ascend higher up, they’ll die. Other fish can’t live that deep because
they’ll
die. So when shit is off balance like that, they know it. And that’s what we’re seeing here—the wildlife fleeing what they sense to be something unnatural to their habitat.”

Hank turned to Kyle. “Your woman’s full of shit, Kyle.”

That had been last night. Now as Kyle scanned the ocean with his binoculars, he saw a very peculiar thing far off in the distance.

He focused in on the object. Way off in the distance there was a white line along the tip of the horizon. The foaming of the sea? The approach of a giant tsunami? Further up and a tad bit ahead of this line was what appeared to be a dark cloud that Kyle immediately recognized as a huge flock of birds.

The birds were heading straight their way.

Kyle lowered the binoculars. “Hank! Carrie and Melody! Come up here! I think you should see this.”

Hank climbed down from the upper deck. “What’s going on?”

“Take a look at this,” Kyle said, raising the binoculars again.

Carrie and Melody were approaching from below deck. Hank called out to them. “Carrie, can you head up deck and get my binoculars, please?”

A few minutes later Hank and Kyle were gazing out at the ocean through their binoculars. The women were staring out at sea, hands held above their eyes to cut out the glare. “Looks like the most gigantic flock of seagulls I’ve ever seen,” Carrie said.

“They’re flying so far away!” Melody sang. She laughed, then quickly stopped as she realized the others weren’t laughing.

“Fish still zooming by?” Hank asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Kyle answered.

“I think what we have way out there is the biggest goddamn school of dolphins I’ve ever seen,” Hank said. He removed the binoculars from his face to stare out at the sea. “Probably five miles out?”

The first wave of birds was much closer. They could hear their frantic cries. Kyle felt a primal sense of dread settle in his belly. He looked at the others, who seemed more awed by this freak of mother nature than afraid of it. “Um, guys, I don’t think this is a good thing. In fact, I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”

“You get a bad feeling about everything, Kyle,” Melody protested. She snatched the binoculars out of his hands and looked through them. A moment later she gasped in surprise. “Wow! Will you look at that? Jesus!”

Hank still had his binoculars glued to his face. “That’s some shit, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Melody agreed.

“What is it?” Carrie asked. “Let me see!” Melody handed the binoculars over to Carrie, who took a quick look. “Oh wow!” she said. She looked for a moment, then tore her eyes away from the lenses to look out at the ocean again.

“I’ve never seen dolphins move that fast,” Hank said in awe. He was watching the scene through his binoculars very carefully.

“How many of them are there?” Kyle asked.

Hank turned slightly to his left and began a slow scan to the right. He whistled in amazement. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said, “but that line of…that mass of dolphins…or whatever they are…it spans as far as I can see.”

The pit of dread grew heavier in Kyle’s belly. “We need to get out of here,” he said.

Hank and Carrie weren’t paying attention to him. Their gaze was frozen to what was heading their way. “It’s
dolphins!
” Carrie said, her voice taking on a tinge of excitement. “I can
see
them! Some of them are actually
leaping
out of the water!”

“Dolphins do that, honey,” Melody said, standing between Kyle and Carrie, her gaze directed toward the sky at the approaching line of birds. The wild frantic cries of the gulls was more discernable now.

Kyle looked down at the water in their immediate vicinity. While the yacht was trotting along at a leisurely pace, he could see traces of movement in the ocean as fish of a variety of sizes zipped past. Could fish swim that fast? Kyle wasn’t sure, but he was astounded by the activity broiling around them. It seemed that every form of aquatic sea life was in a mad rush to escape whatever was heading their way. He heard a loud braying honk. Turning in the direction of the sound, he sighted a large black hump rising out of the water—a whale. It vanished beneath the surface again, swimming fast.

“I really think we need to get the hell out of here,” Kyle said, hating the panic in his voice.

Hank set his binoculars down. His features were grave, his blue eyes showing a hint of fear and worry. “I think you’re right, hombre.” He handed his binoculars to Melody and dashed toward the ladder that led to the upper deck. “Carrie, I need you and Melody to tighten our belongings below deck! Kyle, get those reels in now!”

Kyle didn’t have to be told twice. He reached for the rod—Hank’s fiberglass Pinnacle—and began to reel the line in. Melody and Carrie set the binoculars down and scampered back below deck. A moment later Kyle felt the motor of the yacht rev up. The nose tipped back at a slightly higher angle as the thrust of the engines propelled them forward much faster just as the birds began flying over them.

Their frantic cries were deafening, a sea of clamor that mirrored the sea they were flying over. Kyle got the first line up quickly, noting that the bait of shrimp Hank used had gone unmolested. He grabbed his own rod and began to reel that one in.

Kyle didn’t know shit about boats. He had a feeling that large ocean cruisers could go at a much faster speed than the yacht Hank was currently piloting. He was pretty sure they could reach speeds of fifty miles an hour or more—or whatever the equivalent was in knots. He had no idea how fast they were traveling now, but they had to go faster. The birds were passing them quickly. Kyle got his line up, then grabbed both fishing poles. He looked out at the ocean and gasped in terror at what he saw.