Chapter 12
There were five zombies standing between me and the man who could help Marilyn—not including the one Spense found splashing around in the swimming pool, but it didn’t look like he’d be getting out of the pool any time soon.
I flipped open Marilyn’s phone and hit redial. I wasn’t getting any closer to those things than I had to. They were gnawing on everything: the poor kid, each other, the tree trunk.
“Rick, this is freaking me the hell out, man.”
Yeah. Understatement. And Spence didn’t have one of those things nibbling on his elbow (my hold on Marilyn had slipped).
I stopped myself, feeling as disgusted by my thoughts as the carnage around me—things? Like Marilyn? Was she a thing now too? She was making the same soft moans as the other...zombies...although from her it sounded less frantic, more satisfied.
I could tell when the doctor picked up on his end in the tree, because now I could hear the moaning in stereo. “Is that you, Marilyn’s Boyfriend, the pale guy who doesn’t exfoliate?”
“You mean Marilyn’s husband, Rick?” I ignored his comment about my skincare regimen. Exfoliation, whatever that is, was the kind of thing that Spense talked about with Marilyn during half time.
“Whatever. Where are you?” he barked.
“Yeah, we’re here—”
“—Did you bring the guns?”
“Uh.” I looked at Spense. He was hefting his baseball bat like a guy who’d never played a day of little league in his life. “Well—we’ve got it covered.”
“Then, if you’re here, you see what’s out here. Get me out of this tree!”
“Tell me how to help my wife first.”
“Take care of my patients first.”
“You mean like take care of them?” I said in my best New Jersey accent.
“I mean like kill them. Dead.”
All right then. Since I wasn’t positive Spense and I could actually accomplish that, and the doctor was literally up a tree, I said, “I’m not the one stuck in the tree surrounded by zombies. I think I’ll be the one making the terms here.” I sounded tougher than I felt, but Spense gave me a double thumbs up, so I thought I must be on the right track.
“Quit stalling, Ron. She needs help now. I can sit in this tree longer than Marilyn can go without the serum that only I can give her. Keep arguing and then see what happens to her.”
I was contemplating my next move when the skin on the back of my neck prickled. It was that uncomfortable sense you get when you are being watched. In the air, there was a faint scent of surf wax. But we were nowhere near the beach.
“What the—” Spense must have sensed something too because he whipped around. “What the hell!”
I spun around and behind us, not two feet away, was a lanky dude in baggy board shorts. He looked to be about mine or Spense’s age with sun-bleached hair and a glazed look in his eye. He took a shambling step toward us and I frantically backpedaled, trying to get me and Marilyn away.
“Spense, watch out!”
And that was when Spense flipped out. He started wailing on the guy. He swung the bat over his shoulder and thwacked the surfer across the chest, pounding his ribs again and again.
“Would you cut it out?” the surfer guy said with more annoyance than actual pain. He’d brought up his arms to deflect some of the blows. Wait…was this guy actually talking back to us?
Spense didn’t seem to notice. He arced the bat over his head and brought it down with full strength on top of the guy’s head. I definitely heard a crack, but the dude just stood there, dumbly blinking at us.
“Uh, man.” I edged toward Spense. The guy still hadn’t moved. Not even to crumble and fall over. “Spense, I don’t think he’s a zombie.”
“Then he should be on the ground.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
I squinted, trying to get a better look at the guy. He was shadowed. The florescent light from the pool filtered through the landscaping and cut patterns through the lawn chairs.
“Hello…Hello.” The doctor, momentarily forgotten, was still yelling at us in stereo. I think I mumbled “hold on” into the phone. “HOLD ON!” he shrieked, and I switched off the phone.
I kept looking at the blinking guy, but I couldn’t make out any blood. A blow like that should have at least split the skin on his temple. But there was nothing. He looked perfectly healthy. His skin had this weird glow. Nothing supernatural or anything. I mean, he wasn’t phosphorescent. Just really…I don’t know what you would call it. Well scrubbed?
I remembered the effort Marilyn put into applying sunscreen. Every day, 45 SPF. Sun damage, she explained. It was a killer for women living in LA. Looking at this guy, it just didn’t make sense. No one who surfed in Southern California should have skin that looked like this. I got this uncomfortable feeling low in my stomach.
I looked down at Marilyn, who was still lazily gnawing on the inside of my arm. And then I looked back at surfer dude.
This wasn’t good. Surfer dude might not be acting like the others, but his skin sure looked like Marilyn’s.
Spense reached forward and poked the dude with the tip of his baseball bat.
And the guy’s eyes instantly focused. “Not cool, dude.” He grabbed Spense by the throat and then flung my buddy in the air. Spense flew, like a flailing human Frisbee disk, ten feet before he landed with a sickening thud.
He didn’t move.
“Spense!” I rushed toward him with Marilyn still heavy in my arms. Behind me, I could hear the doctor shriek.
The so-not-human surfer dude with the great skin and killer throwing arm was advancing toward the tree. One of the zombies had stumbled away from the others, maybe attracted by all our noise. And it got the same treatment as Spense. Flung into the air over the surfer dude’s shoulder. It bounced to a landing not fifteen feet from us.
The zombie had no problem getting up.
It shook its head, more disoriented than usual, and took a few stumbling steps in no particular direction. It started to turn towards all the commotion at the base of the tree.
And in that moment Marilyn decided to raise her head from chewing on my arm and moan. It was a sweet, delicate “mmmwwa,” which I took to mean “quit it with all the motion, Rick.” I must have been irritating her with all my twisting around.
I shoved her face back into my arm and jerked my head back toward the zombie. Had it heard her?
The zombie tilted his head, its eyes skimming over me and resting on Marilyn. In that moment, I swear its dead eyes brightened. Probably just the reflection from the pool lights bouncing off its retinas, but it still looked damn creepy. My arms tightened around Marilyn. I tried to calm my beating heart, to keep my breath from coming out in pants. I was probably ringing the dinner bell for the damn thing, but I still couldn’t control my body.
I stared at the thing, willing it to turn away. But it didn’t. It started shambling our way.
“Ryan!” the doctor screamed. A quick glance at the tree and I saw that the surfer was dispatching the zombies one at a time, plucking them away from the base of the tree and flinging them aside. The guy squatted, seeming to check on the robe-check boy. He pried the phone from kid’s hand and looked like he was scrolling through the sent texts.
“You’ve got to save me. If he gets me, he’ll kill me. And you’ll never be able to help your wife!” The doctor was trying to claw his way further up the tree, out of the reach of all the things with great skin that were after him.
What was I supposed to do? There was a zombie shambling our way. I did a double take. More than one. I could feel the sweat dripping down my back as I counted…three…four…five. The other zombies had been thrown in our direction, and were now more interested in us than the doctor. Could I not catch a single break?
How was I supposed to take out five zombies, stop something superhuman with Marilyn hanging off one arm, and still protect my best friend?
I kicked Spense. ?
??Wake up, buddy. I need you. I can’t do this by myself.” Spense was always there to get me out of trouble, but now he just groaned and twitched. “Spense!” I screamed at him.
“Riick?” Marilyn lifted her head, the first lucid word from her since the incident with the knife.
“Oh, thank god,” I whispered and brushed a quick kiss into her hair. There wasn’t time for anything else. My palms were damp, and she nearly slipped as I jumped to resettle her higher in my arms.
“Marilyn, I’m gonna need your help here.” I jogged as long as I dared to across the lawn away from both Spense and the tree. Back to the place where Spense had dropped his baseball bat.
“Come on, baby.” I set—okay, more like dumped—Marilyn onto the ground. She barely moved, her eyes still unfocused. I waved my bleeding arm in front of her face, which perked her up a little. She leaned forward, smacking her lips. I cast a quick look over my shoulder and the zombie pack had nearly reached Spense. He lay on the ground, unmoving. If this didn’t work, I’d just left my friend totally unprotected, at the mercy of five inhuman things ready for to shred him for dinner.
Here went nothing. I shoved my arm right next to Marilyn’s mouth and then jerked it away right before her teeth chomped down. And like a champ she moan-whined. Loud.
Glancing up, I saw the lead zombie tilt its head toward this new sound. And after a few unsteady steps, it changed course, now heading away from Spense and toward me and Marilyn.
I was so distracted that I didn’t notice Marilyn. She’d managed to sit up and scoot herself toward me. I felt a sharp sting as her fingers dug into my torn muscle. “Ah,” I yelled as I yanked her hand away.
“Mmwwaarrrhhh,” came a garbled noise from the pack.
Well, at least now the rest of the zombies were headed in our direction. I grasped Marilyn’s outstretched hand, careful to keep the rest of my body at a distance, and folded her fingers around the Taser. “I don’t know if you can understand me anymore, but if anything comes near you, taze it.” She didn’t respond. But I didn’t have any more time to repeat my words. The first zombie was only a few shambling steps away.
I sucked in a couple of deep breaths and hoped they were clearing my head rather than clouding it. Was I really about to do this? I got to my feet and gripped the baseball bat. “AAAAAGGGGHHHHH,” I yelled because even computer programmers need battle cries, and I hurled myself towards the zombies.
My pulse was banging in my ears as my bat connected with the first zombie. There was a wet splat, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t think too much about what I was doing or where the bat was connecting. I just swung and swung. I put all my strength into those blows, stepping over the first downed zombie, and then hauling it until I reached the rest of the pack.
Crack, crack, crack. Sweat was dripping into my eyes, but I wasn’t seeing anything. Not really. My mind flashed through images of Spense and Marilyn. Spense passed out, hopefully nothing more serious. And Marilyn laid out as serious zombie bait. If any of them got past me, they would go straight for her. So I kept swinging. For my wife and my friend. I couldn’t let them down.
I felt the zombies’ hands tearing at my shirt, their fingers searching for soft places. I twisted and feinted. I screamed in their faces, my adrenaline flowing like a rip tide. I used my bat and my elbows and the hard edges of my feet. Anything that could hammer against their bodies. And they fell, one at a time, until I was the only one left.
I heaved in breaths, barely able to balance on my two feet. I stumbled, nearly tripping over a downed zombie, before I leaned over and braced my hands on my knees. The air just wouldn’t enter my lungs fast enough. I was sucking in oxygen before I’d really finished exhaling. Blackness seeped into the edges of my vision, and I blinked viciously to keep it at bay.
I knew I wasn’t finished.
I found the strength to tilt my head up and glance toward the tree. At the base the surfer had the doctor in a choke hold. Both were looking at me.
The surfer leaned in close and whispered something in the doctor’s ear. I was too far away to hear any of the particulars. Besides, my ears weren’t really functioning all that well. All the blood whooshing. But the doctor looked terrified. I could see the tendons in his hands straining as he frantically tried to pry the surfer’s hands from his throat. His eyes locked on mine as he mouthed, “Ryan. Help.”
Good grief. I was trying to save a guy who couldn’t even get my name right.
I took a strained step forward. “Stop.” My voice sounded hoarse, weak. The surfer didn’t take any notice. I tried again, more forceful, as I stumbled closer to the pair. “Let him go.”
“Can’t do that, Ryan.”
Oh, for crying out loud. But I didn’t even have time for an eye roll because surfer dude jerked his hands and I heard a loud pop. The doctor slumped to the ground and it dawned on me. Board shorts had just snapped the doctor’s neck.