Dead Series (Book 2): A Little More Dead: Gunfire & Sunshine (4 page)

“Holy shit,” Paul
gasped, collapsing onto the hot sand.

Curtis hopped down
from the truck, wiry arms spilling from a Jack Daniels cut-off that didn’t look
new. Hanging his thumbs from his jeans, he stared at the red mess just offshore.
“Well, I guess now we know who wins in zombie vs. shark.”

Wendy snatched her
gun from the towel, pulled it from the holster and shot into the water until
the magazine clicked dry. “I never thought I’d miss being a stripper!” she barked,
stomping to the pickup, climbing inside and slamming the door shut.

Curtis turned to
Paul with a creased brow. “She was a stripper?”

Paul fell back onto
the sand and stared at the blue sky above, too tired to speak. Every muscle in
his body hurt, his heart at the front of the pack. He’d almost died three times
today and was afraid of taking another step in this world. They would’ve been
better off staying in Iowa and freezing their asses off for the rest of winter.
He cost his wife and best friend their lives and for what? This? Blowing a long
breath out, he threw an arm over his eyes to block out the sun, withdrawing
into the darkness coiling behind his eyelids. In the end, it didn’t matter where
they went or where they didn’t and he was a fool to think otherwise. Everywhere
was poisoned. This was as good as it gets and at least they had hot showers and
cold beer for their last few miserable days on this Godforsaken planet.

“What a
bloodbath,” Curtis muttered.

A shadow slipped
over Paul and he pulled his arm away to see Sophia standing in the sand,
blocking out the sun. long dark hair flowed behind her as a breeze tickled a white
dress he’d never seen. She was breathtaking and when she spoke, the sound of
her voice warmed him from the inside out.

I know this is hard, Paul, but you made it here for a
reason. Keep fighting.

For a moment, her
words didn’t register. He was too caught up in her ethereal presence and airy
voice. His eyebrows slowly dipped. “Reason?”

Sophia looked at
him as if he were a child, her dress flapping violently in the wind. Floating
backwards, her dead toes dangled just above the sand, oily hair hanging limply
in her face. She pointed a long skeletal finger at him. Cracks slithered
through her flesh and when she spoke there was an ominous tone in her voice.

This is where it all begins.

“Wait!” he cried,
reaching for the dress he didn’t remember her owning. “Where what begins?”

In a slow moving
vapor, she faded into the distant horizon and was gone.

“What the hell,
motherfucker?” Curtis barked, slapping Paul’s hand from his jeans. “You tryin
to grab my stick or somethin, man?”

Paul blinked
Curtis’ silhouette into focus and pulled his hand back. “I…”

“That’s the last
time I save your life.” He spit into the sand. “Fucking faggot!”

Paul watched him head
for the truck and then turned back to the horizon for one last glimpse of the
woman he couldn’t live without. But just like everything else, she was gone and
never coming back.

Chapter
Four

S
tarting the
engine, Curtis put it in gear. “Can’t leave you two alone for five minutes
without getting yourselves killed. Surfing? Really? In the world we now live in?”

“Did you see us
from the house or something?” Wendy asked with water dripping from the tip of
her nose.

“No.” Stepping on
the gas, he peeled across the packed sand. “Stephanie told me you had some bud back
on that boat so I wanted to go grab it real quick.”

Paul twisted
around in the passenger seat, face warping. “Are you insane? You left Cora and
your sister alone with Troy to go get some bud?”

Curtis shrugged. “Basically,
yeah.” The F-150 picked up speed, spraying water back into the ocean. “Don’t
worry, Troy is fine but I need to get high soon or I’m going to kill someone. I
can’t handle all this shit completely sober and I’m not even kidding. Sober was
bad enough in the old world, but this world?” He shook his head. “Fuck that
shit, man.”

“We can’t leave
them alone with him, Curtis. Are you out of your mind? After you just ripped on
me for going surfing, you leave your sister and Cora alone with someone who’s
been bitten?”

“Relax! I said
he’s fine, Hasselhoff.”

“No, he’s not. We
have to go back!”

Curtis
white-knuckled the wheel as beach houses and quaint shops glided past in
colorful splashes. He exhaled and lowered his voice. “He actually looks better
to tell you the truth.”

“
Better
?” Paul gasped. “There is no
better
after you get bit. There’s only
worse, and it’s only a matter of time before he turns and tries to kill someone.
What don’t you get about that?”

Curtis looked at
him for a second or two before turning back to the sand. “That what happened to
your wife? She
turn
?”

Paul sank into the
seat and rubbed his face, trying to figure out how this led back to Sophia.
Eventually, all roads led back to her.

“So what happened?
You just let her wander off with a pack of dead heads?”

He didn’t answer.

Curtis’ eyebrows
went up. “You shot her?”

“Of course he did,
Curtis,” Wendy snapped, leaning between them. “She tried to kill him which is
why we should go back! I hate to say it, but Troy is about to…”

“We’re not going
back!” Curtis pounded the wheel. “Steph has a gun and this won’t take long and
I had to get out of that fucking house for a few minutes. Okay? So just shut
the fuck up and enjoy the view.” Rubbing his tongue over his front teeth, he shook
his head and got into the gas. “Fuck!” He pounded the wheel again and grew
quiet, clenching his teeth so tightly Paul thought they would splinter. Curtis
was a ticking time bomb and Paul didn’t blame him. He remembered watching
Sophia slowly shrivel away and cringed when he thought of how he threatened to
kill Dan if he didn’t stop talking. Curtis was like that now.

Angry.

Hostile.

Dangerous.

Paul ran a hand through
his wet hair and stared straight ahead, his mind trying to wrap itself around
something entirely too big for one man to handle. He’d cheated death three
times today and maybe Wendy was right. Maybe something was keeping them alive
and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Sometimes he was glad
Sophia was dead. “Those two were working together to keep us from getting to
our guns.”

Curtis turned to
him. “Who?”

“They wouldn’t let
us get out of the water.”

Curtis looked back
to the stretch of beach unraveling before them. “Working together? What do you
mean? Like velociraptors?”

Paul arched an
eyebrow at him. “Yeah, Curtis, like velociraptors.”

“Bullshit, those
stragglers are just as dumb as they are in the movies.”

“I wouldn’t be so
sure about that, and I’d stay away from the fat ones because they’re super
fast.”

Curtis glanced at
Wendy in the rearview mirror. “Oh, you don’t gotta tell me, sweetheart. We came
across our fair share on the way down from KC.” He rubbed his chin. “Why do you
think that is that anyway?”

“Probably a muscle
mass thing,” Paul replied. “Their fat is deteriorating first and their muscles
are lasting longer than the skinnier corpses.”

“Seriously?”

“I don’t know,
Curtis. Do I look like a scientist to you? All we know for sure is the fat ones
are fast and all of them – to a small degree – seem to, somehow, be regaining
some of their cognitive ability.”

“Now you sound
like a scientist.” Curtis shook his head. “I just wish we could find someone
with a cure, someone who could fix this.” A forlorn sigh squeaked past his lips
as he stared straight ahead through faraway eyes.

The truck’s
air-conditioning pimpled Paul’s skin and he couldn’t stop thinking about what
just happened and what it meant for them down the road.

“Did you get a flu
shot this season?”

“Hell no, that
stuff only makes ya sicker. Why?”

Paul shook his
head as Curtis studied him through thin eyes.

They passed a
woman’s body lying beneath a colorful beach umbrella and Curtis pushed in a CD
and turned it up, joining Garth Brooks for a slow one in a twangy voice that
was anything but in tune. “You know a dream is like a river, ever-changin as it
flows. And a dreamer’s just a vessel, that must follow where it goes…”

Paul glanced over
his shoulder at Wendy, who looked even more frightened than when the shark was
circling them. He couldn’t stop the smile he felt playing on his lips and turned
back around while Curtis sang loud and proud. It was an awkward moment and Paul
chose to suffer through it, just like Dan did when Sophia died.

Slowing the pickup
down, Wavy Gravy appeared off in the distance, leaning to the left and half in
the ocean. Paul sat up straighter in the front seat as memories came back on an
angry wave: last night’s margarita’s, Wendy’s kiss, and those things after the
anchor came loose. Bodies littered the sand and water around the expensive
fishing vessel and Paul released a drained breath. The last thing he wanted to
do was step back onboard that boat but they needed the bag of guns hiding under
the couch. Brock went out of his way to give them to Paul and he wouldn’t turn
away from a gesture that just might save their lives, Cora included.

Curtis turned off
the stereo and listened to the surf. “How long did it take anyway?” he asked,
staring at the boat. “For your wife to turn?”

“A few days, but
my buddy, Dan, turned in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. That’s why we
need to get back to the house.”

“We will.” Curtis put
it in park and looked at Wendy in the mirror. “How much bud ya got anyway?”

“I don’t know. A
half a pound or so.”

His eyes
gravitated to the plump breasts trying to escape her red bikini top. “It’s not
schwag, is it?”

“No, Curtis, it’s
not schwag. And my eyes are up here.”

He smiled and got
out.

Paul shook his
head and followed, drawing the gun from the holster strapped around his wet
board shorts. Cautiously, they approached the boat, scaring away some birds
picking at the bodies in the sand that he half expected to reanimate at any
second. It was a bloody massacre that smelled like death warmed over. Inside
Wavy Gravy it was even worse. Piles of bodies, warmed by the sun, blocked the
narrow walkways. Holding his breath, Paul scaled a few stiff corpses and grabbed
the black duffel bag from under the folding couch seat while Wendy bagged up
the food in the kitchen.

“What the hell?”
Curtis picked a DVD case up off the coffee table. “Were you guys watching
Fools Gold
?” He held the movie up, folding
his brow.

Wendy snatched it
from his hand. “Yeah, and we’re going to watch it again. You got a problem with
that?”

“Actually, I…”

“Good! It’s
settled then,” she said, bagging up the other DVDs and somebody else’s iPod she
danced with Paul to the night before.

Carefully stepping
over more bodies in the tiny living room, Paul headed for the broken sliding
glass door with the duffel bag hanging from a shoulder and his face turning purple
from lack of oxygen. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Back beneath the
sun, he drew a deep breath and holstered his weapon, clearing his lungs of the
rot inside. Hopping down into the sand, he hiked the bag up his shoulder and stared
at the bloated people lying in the sand, wondering who they were and where they
came from when a man in a torn tuxedo came slashing around the front of the
boat and seized Paul’s arm. His heart jumped. The duffel bag slipped to the
beach as he backed into the boat. Balling the tux into his fists, Paul held the
man at bay while Curtis put a gun to the side of the groom’s head and dropped
him with a deafening blow, spraying Paul with cold blood.

Curtis stared down
at the man, a black Glock hanging in his hand and the ghost of a grin tugging
at his lips. “Told you I was going to kill someone if I didn’t get high soon.”

Paul stretched his
jaw, trying to clear the ringing in his ears. “If you don’t stop shooting right
by my head I’m going to kill you next.”

“Oh, that’s the
thanks I get for saving your life again, princess?”

“I had it under
control!”

“Didn’t look that
way to me.”

Paul’s eyes rose
over Curtis’ shoulder and widened as a mangled bride in a bloody wedding dress
shambled out from the back of the boat. A bloody veil hid her face and before
Paul could warn him, she wrapped Curtis in a cold embrace and buried her hidden
sneer in his neck. Sprinting over, Paul stuck the barrel of his gun against her
forehead. The bride shrieked so loud he saw stars before squeezing the trigger
and covering Curtis in blood and brains.

Curtis staggered
back in the sand, cupping his ear. “Motherfucker!”

“Now we’re even!”
Paul snatched up the duffel bag and headed for the truck with Wendy right
behind him.

“Even? You still
owe me two more saves!”

The black F-150
flew down the sandy shoreline, spraying water back into the ocean on one side
of the racing pickup like a Ford commercial where everything is puppy dogs and
rainbows. Curtis passed a smoking joint to Paul in the seat next to him.

Paul waved him off
and Curtis handed it to Wendy, who wet one side before bringing it to her lips.

Curtis exhaled a
rolling plume that made him cough. “Damn, girl, you weren’t kidding. That’s
some good shit.”

 
Paul put on his seatbelt. “Hey, how about
slowing down a little before you kill us? Last time I checked the hospitals are
all closed.”

“Relax, grandma,
I’m a professional driver. Remember?” Curtis gave it even more gas, stepping on
Paul’s last nerve.

“Wait. Doesn’t
NASCAR test for weed? How can you get baked all the time?”

“I buy someone
else’s urine,” he replied as if Paul were a complete idiot. “They don’t search
you during a test.” He cracked his window and took the joint from Wendy. “God,
I miss it,” he sighed. “All that work, and for what? This?”

Paul cringed,
realizing Curtis mourned the loss of his NASCAR job as much as Paul mourned the
loss of his wife and maybe that was why he was such an asshole.

Curtis hit the
joint, making the cherry glow. “So what’d you do before this, Jonny Depp?”

Paul leaned
against his door and sighed, fogging the glass and debating whether or not he
had the energy to even answer. “I worked at a radio station.”

“No shit? In Des
Moines?”

He nodded,
watching amazing beach houses that no one would ever step foot inside again
whiz past in pink and turquoise streaks. It was such a goddamn waste. He could
just imagine what this idyllic coastal town would look like in five years.

Overgrown.

Weathered.

A little more
dead.

Just like him.

“So what’d you do?
Sell commercials and stuff? Clean the restrooms?”

“He had his own
morning show on a rock station,” Wendy replied, leaning between them. “
Paul to the Wall
.”

Curtis started
laughing, coughing out clouds of smoke. “
Paul
to the Wall
?” He shook his head and took a long drink of water. “So what
happened? Pandora stick ya in with the VCRs and flip-phones?”

Paul’s eyebrows
drew together. “What happened? The zompocalypse happened, idiot!”

Curtis grunted. “Well
lucky us, I’ll be sure to call you if I need any fart jokes or crank calls when
the next horde pushes through.” Glancing at Wendy in the mirror, he pressed on
the gas pedal. “But first we need to get back and check on Troy-boy. Hopefully
he’s feeling better.”