Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (7 page)

“Thanks ever so much.”

“Well I did!”

Jake kept his eyes moving. “It doesn't work
like that.”

“It should,” Kat mumbled.

He grabbed another quick look over the
dumpster. “Really? You're gonna pout? Now?”

“I'm not pouting.” Kat crossed her arms under
her breasts.

O'Connor continued scanning the area. “You
can be so lazy sometimes.”

“Yeah well... you have weird hair,” Kat
said.

“Huh?” Jake glanced at her, confused.

“It's all, you know, sticky-out. Like one of
those guys from Anime cartoons.” Cho pointed at his head. “And you
don't even style it. I mean, when we first met? I thought you just
spent tons of time on it or something, but most days you don't even
touch a brush. So how—”

“Can we focus for a minute?” Jake asked
firmly, giving her a sharp look.

“No need to get huffy,” Kat pouted. “Jeez.
Try to give someone a little fashion advice and—”

“Kat!”

Cho raised one hand in a pacifying wave.
“Okay, okay! Focusing now. Zombies in front, even
more
zombies behind. Too many to fight, and not much room to run. What
does that leave us?”

“Distraction?” Jake replied.

“Bingo.” Kat grinned. “Ninja 101: use
distraction to conceal your movements when faced with a lack of
cover.”

Jake gave the parking lot another once-over.
“I have an idea.”

“You're not using yourself as bait, so get
that out of your head right now,” Kat snapped, taking a firm
handful of the front of his shirt.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” he
assured her loftily.

“Oh. Well, that's alright then.” Kat released
her hold. “What's the plan?”

Picking up an empty Jack Daniels bottle that
lay beside their dumpster, Jake nodded toward the far side of the
Dairy Freeze. “See that Dodge Charger over there?”

Kat took a look across the lot. “You mean the
red one? With the racing stripes?”

“That's the one.” Jake nodded and waggled the
bottle. “I hit it with this. It'd a safe bet whoever used to own
that midlife crisis-mobile set the alarm when they got out, so
it'll start squawking. Now, even if the battery's dead, the sound
of this breaking should focus the creatures away from us, and
they'll probably move in that direction. Then we leapfrog behind
the cars on
this
side till we get to the street, cut left
into the nearest house, and go through the backyards to the next
block.”

Cho considered that idea for a moment. “I
like it. It's all sneaky-sneaky. I'm good with sneaky.”

Jake shoved his crowbar into its holder on
his back as Kat quietly sheathed her sword and pulled one of her
knives. Since he wasn't good with a blade, the writer opted for
trusting her to take out the odd stray ghoul if they encountered
any. While Jake still had his bulky Hammer pistol, firing it would
announce their presence to every zombie for blocks and that would
put them up Shit Creek.

Kat nodded that she was ready and Jake
counted down from three on his fingers. Keeping low, he
guesstimated the distance to the Charger, wound up, and hurled his
bottle over the dumpster blind in a long arc hoping for the
best.

He needn’t have worried. Jake's throw sent
his bottle smashing into the Dodge's windshield and, right on cue,
its obnoxious alarm began blaring immediately. Three dozen heads
turned to face the noise. Three dozen mouths dropped open, allowing
thick black fluids to begin rolling over three dozen gray jaws, and
three dozen dead sets of necrotic vocal chords vibrated with rancid
air pushed through three dozen decomposing throats. The impromptu
zombie choir began stumping raggedly towards the source of the
noise and, even after all they'd been through, the awful song of
the dead chilled O'Connor and Cho to the marrow of their bones.

When the first creatures reached the Charger,
they began beating on the hood and front quarter panels, leaving
shallow dents smeared with blood from smashed knuckles and
shattered fingers. Vile brown fluids splattered across red paint,
creating the visual equivalent of the devil's own rancid candy
apple, and the frenzied dead clustered about the squawking vehicle.
Some began clawing and beating on its windows, spider-webbing the
safety glass in dozens of places before shoving ruined arms inside
to clutch at the seats. As Jake and Kat watched, one particularly
enthusiastic zombie pressed itself face-first through the remnants
of the broken driver's window. The creature ignored the sharp edges
that shredded its flesh, shearing much of its face away down to the
naked skull, in its maddened attempt to find the nonexistent human
inside the car causing all the commotion. Moments later more of the
windows shattered inward and the interior of Charger was swarmed by
the zombie crowd.

Cho nudged O'Connor with one elbow and
crouched low; the pair bolted from their dumpster to take shelter
behind the first vehicle at the opposite end of the parking lot. It
was an old 1970's circa Bronco still possessing the original paint
job, a color which could only be termed “Doo-doo Brown”. From there
the two humans began scurrying across gaps between the cars,
skirting months-old refuse, discarded personal items, and the
occasional splintered human bone. Jake kept one eye on the crowd
still battering the poor Dodge, which now looked decidedly worse
for wear with all the zombies scrambling to get inside. Much like a
clown car in a circus, now that he thought about it. The ones maybe
as big as a Mini Cooper that fifteen or twenty white-faced, clowns,
all sporting ridiculously loud costumes and walrus flipper-sized
shoes squirmed out in a seemingly endless stream of red-nosed
creepiness. He'd never liked clowns much. Not after reading Stephen
King's
IT
. Pennywise was one twisted son of a bitch.

Kat froze momentarily, then leapt back to
encircle him with her arms, took him to the ground, and swiftly
rolled them both under the rear of a small box truck. They ended up
with Jake on the bottom, back flat to the asphalt, a rather large
rock poking him uncomfortably under his right kidney, and Kat
straddling his hips. Her hand shot up, cupping over his mouth to
stifle any protest, and she leaned down to breathe in his ear.

“
Stragglers...”

Cursing mentally, Jake froze. Kat didn't move
a muscle either, only her eyes. They repeatedly swiveled from left
to right as he lay beneath her, and he heard five sets of uneven
footsteps move by their hiding place. Now five zombies weren't that
big of a problem but dealing with them, or attracting their
attention, would most definitely alert the small horde slowly
wrecking the still blaring Dodge to the fact that there were living
humans in the immediate area. That would once again put Jake and
Kat directly up Shit Creek, sans the benefit of anything resembling
a paddle.

“
They're close...”
It was easier for
Jake to hear his own pulse pounding in his veins than Kat's breeze
of a voice in his ear. Daring to tilt his head back slightly on the
pavement, O'Connor was able to view several raggedly, clothed pairs
of legs shuffling woodenly by the tailgate. Despite the noise
generated by the Charger's car alarm, the ghouls seemed indecisive
about joining the writhing mass tearing the auto apart. One of the
creatures actually stopped while the others moved toward the
moaning crowd, and stood alone turning slowly round and round in
place. It seemed to be searching for something, but why? When the
zombie took a step towards the box truck and bumped against the
rear door, Jake's free hand gripped reflexively at Cho's
leather-clad hip.

Her voice wafted.
“Easy...”

The thing bumped into the rear door
again.

“
Wait...”.
Kat's eyes never left the
creature. She relaxed against Jake and removed her hand from his
mouth.

While tried not to panic, O'Connor's jaw
clenched and ground his teeth together. The zombie was close now.
Almost within arm’s reach. Even though it hadn't seen them, the
ugly bastard had sensed something. Jake began to swivel his arm up
and forward, bringing the Hammer pistol along in his shaking fist,
but Kat's left hand intercepted the motion and pressed it back to
the ground.

“
Trust me...”
she breathed. Kat's hand
slid up his arm, over Jake's shoulder and chest, down his tensed
stomach, and finally she pushed her fingers just under the
waistband of his pants. They couldn't move any lower, again,
because unlike all the baggy-crotched morons who walked around with
saggy, clown-style pants to show off their underwear prior to the
zombie outbreak, O'Connor always wore a belt. Doing so held his
pants up so he could beat feet if the situation called for it. Like
say, when he was being chased by a shit-ton of drooling, smelly,
dead cannibals who wanted to tear into his ass like a fat kid would
a value-sized box of Zingers. That being the case, Kat retracted
her fingers and slid her palm down
over
his pants.

Jake's eyebrows shot up and he wrenched his
gaze from the zombie's legs to give her a look that clearly said,
What Do You Think You're Doing?, which Cho ignored. She spared him
a glance and a quick grin before fixing her eyes on the creature
once more.

Then her hand began roaming.

Now, impending death aside, any heterosexual
male will tell you that when a sexy woman gets it in her mind to
distract you, and she puts her mind to it? Nine times out of ten
she is
going
to succeed. That was the epiphany Jake had as
he lay there on the grimy asphalt between the legs of said sexy
woman, with a zombie not five feet away. The creature bounced off
the tailgate again and Jake tensed. In response, Kat began doing
something quite distracting with her hand. Jake closed his eyes and
engaged in a conscious effort to calm down. He was certain if he
didn't, with a hungry corpse almost close enough to spit at and
Kat's touch working on him like a Viagra cocktail, his heart was
going to explode like the head of that guy in
Scanners.
He
couldn't actually move away either because, again, zombie nearby,
and he damn sure didn't want to make any noise. So he kept still
and suffered in silence.

Suffered. Yeah, right.
Jake's
back-brain laughed, before noting for the thousandth or so time how
Kat reminded him of Lzzy Hale, the lead singer and guitarist of
Halestorm. But with short, blue hair. And a weakness for all things
Hello Kitty. He'd always had a thing for Lzzy Hale.

He took a good, long look at the woman above
him and shivered. Whether in pleasure or fear, he couldn't tell.
While yes, on a scale of one to ten Kat was a solid thirteen, Jake
honestly thought she was more than a bit insane. The expression on
her face was decidedly lustful however, as she slid lower and moved
her hand against him, staring all the while at the zombie just
beyond the tailgate. Her lips parted and her cheeks flushed in
anticipation of... Sex? Violence? Both? Jake wasn't sure. Even more
disturbing, while he had been a ghostwriter before the dead began
walking, he didn't have words to express how much he wanted her at
that moment. Thoughts of puppies, baseball, and apple pie weren't
cutting it in the slightest. Even worse, his body had turned
traitor on him, betraying his thoughts via a hormone-driven
physical reaction.

Kat knew it too. Her eyes were hooded as she
watched the unsuspecting creature just feet away and her hand
gripped Jake firmly. There was unquestionably chemistry between
them, and chances like this came along once in a blue moon. She
focused on the sensation of his upper torso pressed against her
breasts, the feel of him in her hand, the smell of his messy hair
as they lay barely hidden from the hungry corpse. Focusing on these
things, Kat slowly reached back to her right boot where she pulled
the long knife she kept sheathed there. If the zombie bent down it
would see them, momentarily at least. Then she'd have that blade in
the thing's brain by way of its nearest eye, if only for
interrupting some truly epic heavy petting.

To Jake's relief, the zombie finally stopped
banging itself against their box-truck and staggered towards the
Charger. Moments later, the creature was lost in the crowd of its
smelly brethren. Kat managed to keep from pouting and, after giving
Jake a final squeeze that drew a hissing breath from his lips,
nodded towards the opposite side of the box truck. She made darned
sure to brush a line of skin down her torso, and the inside of one
leather-covered thigh, lightly against Jake's cheek as she did so.
After taking a deep breath and getting his pulse under control
again, he followed her from under the truck.

“What the hell, Kat?” Jake demanded quietly,
pressing his back against the side of the truck.

Cho gave him a questioning shrug.

Exasperated, Jake turned away and adjusted
his pants. “It's a good thing we didn't have to run! I wouldn't be
able to!”

“Hey, kept you from freaking about the
zombie, right?” Kat asked, making her knife disappear and drawing
her sword.

“There are better ways, dammit!” He hissed as
they began moving from car to car again.

Kat sniffed. “Not as much fun though.”

Jake attempted to come up with a suitable
reply as they scurried across the street and vaulted a privacy
fence surrounding the nearest house, but found he was at a loss for
words. That seemed to happen to him a lot when Kat was nearby.
“Alright, but next time? Just massage my temples or something.
Jesus...”

“Tell me that wasn't fun,” Kat replied, and
raised one eyebrow with a naughty grin. “I mean, it was pretty
obvious. What with—”

“We're not having that conversation,” Jake
insisted as Cho trotted up to the home’s back door and began
working on the lock, which she opened in nine seconds flat. Jake
holstered his Hammer automatic, pulled his crowbar, and they
skulked inside.