Dead Clown Barbecue (20 page)

About thirty feet away, Millie popped up to the surface and spat out a mouthful of water. "Are you okay?" she called out.

"I'm fine!" I shouted back, although I didn't really mean that I was fine — all I meant was "I'm not currently dead!"

We were screwed. Just as the spare tire would've proven extremely helpful, I found myself wishing that we were wearing life preservers.

"We've gotta swim!" Millie said, doggy paddling toward me.

If I'd had enough breath to say the whole thing, I would've said, "Where the hell are we going to swim to? There's nowhere for us to go!" Maybe an Olympic swimmer could get back to dry land, but I sure couldn't, and from the looks of Millie's swimming technique, neither could she.

About a mile ahead, part of the bridge was still standing, but swimming to it wouldn't do us a whole lot of good unless we could leap out of the water like a genetically enhanced Shamu.

Millie screamed.

Let me back up. You know the bridge that exploded and collapsed? You probably don't need me to remind you about this, but I'll do it anyway: the bridge was filled with zombies.

Which were now in the water with us.

Hundreds of them.

Though I was relatively clear of the living dead — at least there were none within immediate biting range — there were several of them in the water next to Millie.

She hadn't lost her guns, or at least not all of them. She pressed the barrel of a pistol against the closest zombie's forehead and pulled the trigger. Its brains burst out of the back of its skull, just the way they were supposed to, and bobbed on the surface of the water.

She fired again. Another headshot.

Unfortunately, swimming with one arm while shooting with the other wasn't working out for her, and one of the zombies chomped down on her elbow — not the meatiest nor most tender place to bite, but it sunk its teeth in deep and tore away a small piece.

Millie shrieked.

I gasped in horror.

Blood darkened the water. What if it attracted sharks? Even as I thought this, I knew that I should be worrying about the real and plentiful zombies and not some hypothetical shark, but still . . .

"Tony!" Millie screamed, as the zombie took a much larger bite out of her arm. "Help me!"

Let's review my attitude toward helping members of the opposite sex: when a woman calls me on the phone to beg for help, I can turn her down, no problem. When she shows up in person, I end up doing dumb-ass things like riding a jet ski to zombie-infested St. Petersburg.

So, what's my attitude when a woman is right there in person, but she's being eaten by zombies?

I've gotta be honest. I figured I'd say, "See ya, see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!" and swim the hell away. I mean, c'mon, what good is fifteen seconds of heroism if you're dead afterward and nobody is around to document your glory? But I didn't take the cowardly path. Instead, I found myself actually swimming toward her. I even shouted, "Don't worry! I'll save you!"

I regret to say that discovering I was not a chickenshit at heart didn't do Millie or me any good, since a moment later she disappeared beneath the water in a cloud of red. When she came back up, a zombie's mouth was latched onto her throat. She went under again, and when she came back up a second time the zombie was gone, as was most of her aforementioned throat.

So at that point, my only real chivalrous option was "Swim over there so you can die together in a romantic and tragic fashion." Not my kind of thing. Instead, I screamed a little bit as she lived out her last fifteen-to-twenty seconds of life.

I could've vowed that her death would not be in vain, that I would not rest until I saved her brother, no matter what it took, but I didn't know where he was or his cell phone number. So her death pretty much was in vain.

Worse than in vain, actually, because she'd made things a lot worse for me. I would've been fine if I'd ignored her call and just kept trying to call a taxi.

Ten minutes later, I was dead, too.

No, I'm kidding. This isn't being narrated by a zombie.

I paddled in place for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out what to do. If the planes came back to blow up more of the bridge, it was possible that I could get their attention, and they might call for a chopper or something, but most likely I'd have drowned by then.

I looked around the water, desperately seeking a plank of wood or a buoy or something,
anything
that I could hold to keep myself afloat.

But there was only one thing in the water with me that floated.

Zombies.

Had I taken the time to fully consider this plan of action, I probably wouldn't have done it, in which case I would have died and this story really would be narrated by a zombie. But I knew that my strength wasn't going to last much longer, and so I had to do this quickly.

When one is attempting to fashion a life raft out of zombies, there are a few important points to consider.

First, you don't want to get bit. That's your number one concern. If your zombie raft bites you, let's face it, you're better off drowning. Fortunately, a facedown zombie can't bite you, so if you're in relatively good physical shape, you can keep their teeth in the water and out of your flesh.

Second, you need about six zombies. This is based on my own personal experience and your mileage may vary. If you're particularly obese, you may need nine or ten, and if you're petite, you may need only three or four. But six worked for me, and I'm an adult male of average build.

Third, binding them together can be challenging, especially if you're adrift in Tampa Bay without any rope. I used shirts. Fortunately, most zombies, at least the ones who were wandering on bridges, are wearing clothing, so if you can tear off their shirts, you've got some makeshift zombie binding materials.

They do struggle. Be aware of that. But they don't struggle anywhere near as much as live humans would in this situation, so again, if you're in relatively decent physical shape and are consumed by the urge to survive; you should be able to handle it. And once you get two of them tied together (I won't lie; it's a real bitch) the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth aren't as problematic.

Yes, if you're brave, determined, strong, and a little insane, you too can construct a zombie raft. I'm not going to suggest that it was a
fun
raft — I mean, I certainly wasn't sitting there saying, "Look at me! I'm Tom Sawyer having a magical rafting adventure!" But it kept me from drowning.

The biggest downside? A zombie raft is very, very difficult to steer. Almost impossible. This means that if you wanted to float to, say, Tampa, which was still relatively safe, you might end up floating to, say, St. Petersburg, which was infested with zombies.

It would've been nice if Millie's brother was waiting at the shore in a motorboat. He could've grinned and pretended to check his watch and said "Hey, what took you so long?"

But . . . nope.

And that's pretty much where my story ends. I'm in St. Pete with no way out; no weapons, and no clue what to do. You probably thought I was going to get back to Tampa because of that part earlier where I said that the neighbor kid Kyle got some fingers bitten off a couple of days later, but I made that up. I'm not a very reliable narrator.

Okay. Well. I guess that's it. Sorry to leave you hanging like this. If anything changes, I'll let you know. I'll just add an epilogue or something.

* * *

Epilogue

Killed seven zombies without a gun. Yay me!

That leaves approximately three hundred zombies outside of this tiny pet store where I took refuge, (not including the zombie pets in cages inside the place) and if they got through the military barricade, they're getting through this weak door with a tiny little bell that tinkles when you come inside.

So there won't be another epilogue.

Sorry.

P.S.: Millie's brother says "Hi."

IMMUNITY

Believe me, I
howled
when that corpse — putrid meat dangling from its bones — sunk its teeth into the underside of my right arm. I won't say the pain was indescribable, since there are plenty of good descriptive words: excruciating, agonizing, unbearable, and so on. I'd seen friends, family, and strangers get bit, and even while they shrieked I'd never imagined it could hurt this much.

I pulled my arm away, leaving a strip of flesh in the zombie's jaws, and cried out for help. Not that it was necessary; my traveling companion Allen was right there. He shot the zombie in the head and it dropped. Then he looked at me sadly. "You know what has to be done."

No. No way. I'd been on the other side many times, but I wasn't going to let Allen murder me. I could fight off the infection. I knew I could. So before he had a chance to get over his moment of melancholy, I dove at him, tackled him to the ground, and pulled the gun out of his hand. Then I blew his brains out.

Heh. You didn't often see zombies shooting humans in the head.

Stop that. I wasn't a zombie. I'd never be a zombie. The others were weak. They succumbed to the infection because they believed what everybody said — you couldn't fight it. Well, I could fight it. I'd fight it and be stronger for the experience. I'd be an inspiration to The Bitten. A hero.

* * *

Not dead yet, so that was a promising sign. I'd been bit twelve hours ago, according to my watch, and I was the furthest thing from a shambling, mindless creature. The average time from bite to death? Two hours. But not me. Still alive and kicking, thank you very much. I was awesome.

* * *

Twenty-four hours. I didn't sleep during that time because that might've allowed the infection to overpower me, but I felt fine. My arm didn't even hurt.

I was immune.

Immune!

I was the key to humanity's survival! Whether it was something in my blood or my brain or whatever, I possessed the ability to withstand a bite from one of those things and not become one myself.

I needed to find people. There were scientists studying what was happening, and I could be the link to a cure. The zombies would eventually lose their spot at the top of the food chain, and life would return to normal. They'd build statues in my honor. Write songs. Name cathedrals.

I slowly walked through the forest, feeling pretty darn legendary.

* * *

The little girl screamed when she saw me. So did her mother.

I tried to tell her that I was okay, that I was immune, that I was humanity's savior, but my voice didn't work — it was merely a soft groan. I wanted to weep as I fed upon the little girl's flesh, but there were no tears, just hunger.

THE BIG BITE

The funny thing about a sixty-five-foot vampire is that once it reaches that size, the fact that it's a bloodsucking beast becomes kind of irrelevant. It's hard to be concerned about something biting your neck when it's flinging your automobile into the air.

Believe me, there was a lot of finger pointing amongst the city officials once that vampire began its rampage. "You shouldn't have locked him in the corner cell closest to the nuclear power plant!" the mayor kept saying. Well, yeah, with 20/20 hindsight that's a pretty obvious statement, but if the mayor had been standing right there when I locked that regular-sized vampire in the cell, would he have raised a fuss? Would he have even tried to subtly suggest that perhaps we should find a better holding spot? No. He would have been perfectly fine with the whole situation, and that's a fact.

They'd arrested the vampire for disorderly conduct earlier that evening. He wasn't doing anything vampiric — just got into a bar fight with a couple of locals. Once they shoved him in the back of the squad car, he started hissing and showing off his fangs, so they smacked him a good one (off the record) and discussed whether they should give him a holy water shower.

Thing is, you can't dispatch a vampire just for getting into a fight, so they followed proper law enforcement procedure and brought him into the station for processing. As soon as those two cops walked in, I knew they were escorting a vampire, because he cast no reflection in the mirror on the wall.

"That's a vampire!" I said.

The cops, Officer Barton and Officer Pack, got all pissy about that, as if I were suggesting that they didn't already know he was a vampire. Well, for all I knew, they
didn't
know, and I was providing useful information that might improve their personal safety. But they just glared at me, as if I'd said something stupid like "Hey, you're dressed like police officers."

"You're not going to lock him in the holding cell with the other prisoners, are you?" I asked. That earned me another set of glares, even darker than the first. I wasn't trying to say that I thought they were incompetent. I was just thinking ahead: If they put the vampire in the holding cell, and he started biting the necks of the eight other people in there, we'd have
nine
vampires to contend with. That's a lot of vampires. And six of them would've been drunken vampires, which I assume is even worse. So I simply wanted to make sure that they'd thought everything through. No big deal.

They briefly discussed where to put him. There was some concern that he might transform into a bat and fly through the bars, but Officer Barton said that if he belonged to that particular vampire mythos, he probably would've transformed already. So they took him to the corner cell and locked him up tight.

The proximity of the nuclear power plant hadn't caused many problems in the past. A few prisoners got headaches, maybe. One case of frothing at the mouth, though the frothing wasn't all that bad. A couple of weird lesions. Certainly nothing to make us worry about putting a vampire in that cell.

They locked him away and figured that was it until somebody posted bail. We assumed that at some point he'd have to return to his coffin lest the sunlight disintegrate him, at least that's what he kept hollering, but it was still relatively early and there was no rush.

Somebody did post bail, some guy named Lucian, so I went back to let our captive vampire out . . . and I came very close to wetting myself when I saw that he filled almost the whole cell! I called out for backup and waved my arms frantically. The vampire kept growing, getting bigger and bigger until he broke right through the concrete walls.