“Holy shit-t-t-t.” Smith said as Peter struggled to get the Guardswoman flipped over. Whitley was an average sized woman — specifically, smaller than him or most of the men he was used to manhandling — but the water made everything awkward. And beyond her waterlogged clothes, she probably had the better part of a couple dozen pounds of weapons and gear strapped on.
“Keep swimming.” Peter ordered.
“Is she okay?” Smith asked, his teeth audibly chattering.
“Keep swimming.” Peter repeated. “I can’t tow you both out of the water, and you’re already slow as it is.”
“S-s-s-orry.”
Whitley was unconscious when Peter finally got her flipped over. For a moment he was afraid she was drowning — dealing with that while still in the water was quite tough — but then she spluttered water out of her mouth and he saw her nostrils flare. Her eyes opened, but they were unfocused and lacked the usual intent spark he was used to seeing in her gaze. She was out of it.
“Shit.” Peter muttered, hooking one of his arms beneath her armpits so he could pull her along. With her on her back, and with his support and propulsion, she was now more or less floating. He kicked with his feet and pulled with his remaining arm, making for the shore. Whitley hardly moved except for the tattoo of violent shivering tremors he felt running through her. Her weight slowed him down, so it was good they were almost out of the water.
“But getting out won’t be enough.”
Peter thought tiredly, and with more than a small amount of real alarm, as he kept swimming.
“Got to get to some shelter, get some heat going.”
Under ‘normal’ circumstances, he’d build a fire as soon as they hit the shore. But with zombies roaming around, a house or some sort of building was more or less required. And there was no telling what they might run across while looking for something; or if they’d hold out long enough to get there.
He felt his feet finally touch ground. Two more strokes got him to a depth where he could more practically try to walk instead of swim; or, at least, wade. Peter put his boots down and powered out of the water toward dry land with drawn out steps that took far too long. As he emerged, he felt the breeze cutting through him like a cheese grater on steroids. Even though he knew, intellectually, the water had actually been sapping more heat more quickly out of his body; feeling the gentle wind on his wet clothes and skin felt a
lot
worse.
By now he was starting to shiver more strongly.
“Minutes, maybe.”
he told himself as he dragged Whitley out of the water with one hand on the collar of her uniform shirt.
“Minutes to find heat or it’s over.”
He scanned the area, trying to focus though the quivering of his muscles; even his head was jittering unsteadily as his neck muscles took up the rapid involuntary motion in an attempt to generate heat.
The shoreline had a scattering of sand, some of it even white, but was mostly mud and scrub underbrush. There was a line of loose vegetation maybe twenty-five or thirty feet inland, and beyond that to the southwest some he saw a few building roofs that looked to him like regular houses.
He also saw three zombies; two upstream of his position, and a close one a little south. All had noticed his emergence and were pulling themselves around to pursue. Peter staggered to the water’s edge, dragging Whitley, before releasing her and reaching for his AR. Getting the weapon unlimbered seemed to take forever; his fingers and arms were stiff with cold, and the strap kept catching on his utilities.
Peter finally got the assault rifle into place against his shoulder as the nearest zombie crossed the line of what he thought of as the ‘danger close’ distance for zombies; maybe ten feet away. Only seconds, a few final staggering steps from actual contact. Peter laid his cheek against the wet stock and looked through the scope. It was waterproof, and the dot glowed red just as always; though now it was jumping and swaying about epileptically as he tried to aim at the zombie’s face.
His first shot missed, which didn’t really surprise him too much. The cold really was taking a toll on him, and his aim was going to suck. But then the second shot missed, and the third and fourth as well. The zombie was only a couple of feet away. His stiff fingers found the selector lever and flipped the weapon into burst mode, and he compressed his finger on the trigger several times.
Bullets spat from the barrel, and still they missed. Splashing off to his left alerted him to what was probably, he hoped, Smith making landfall, but even if it was another zombie Peter was already busy with this one. He couldn’t understand how he was missing, especially with the zombie right atop him.
“Holy shit!” he blurted as his numbed reactions registered the zombie was, in fact,
right
on him. The thing’s dead arms were outstretched, fingers already gripping down as it reached for him. Peter swayed backwards half a step and shifted his hands. The left rotated the AR around horizontally while his right dropped to the holstered M45 on his belt.
The zombie rammed into his outstretched rifle, and Peter shoved violently with his arm as he struggled to latch onto his pistol. The zombie stumbled back, but its hands got a grip on the AR-15 to either side of his own hand. Peter shoved again, this time releasing the weapon, but the zombie was leaning forward for a step and shrugged off his attempt to push it away.
As Peter’s hand left the weapon, the zombie was the only thing holding it up. A human might have tried to bring it to bear, or maybe dropped or thrown it aside; but the zombie didn’t even seem to notice it had it in its hands. He noticed absently some of its teeth were missing, having been knocked out and broken off; but the jagged stumps and others that remained more or less intact would be quite sufficient to bite very effectively.
“Gunny!” Smith shouted.
The M45 finally came free of the holster. Peter fell backwards as the zombie reached out further for him. The AR was starting to drop from its grasp. The Marine got the pistol up as he hit back first in the water lapped sand and mud, gasping against the impact as his pack was driven against him and he tried to point the gun. He didn’t think he had time to fool with the sights, so he just let his left hand curl around his right on the weapon’s butt and squeezed the trigger.
His shot ripped through the zombie’s midsection, a little low and to the left of center point. As usual, the zombie ignored this; but the forty-five caliber round did rock the zombie off balance as it leaned down for him. Instead of collapsing straight down atop him, it sort of stumbled to its knees across his legs. The AR hit the mud to one side as the zombie finally released it fully.
Adjusting his aim, still not using the sights, Peter put another bullet into the creature’s sternum, then a third into the hollow just below its neck. That one seemed to screw up its ability to fully control its head, and the zombie’s skull sort of sagged back a little like a doll with nothing but cloth to support it once the child playing with it removed its hands.
Peter finally felt like he could take the fraction of a second to try and aim properly. He lifted the pistol a little more and cast his eye down the sights. All three dots — two at the back and one on the end of the barrel — lined up with the zombie’s mouth and he fired a fourth time.
A gout of gore erupted out the back of the zombie’s head as its mouth caved in under the impact of the slug. He tried to yank his legs clear, but it was already more or less on them; and as it folded down ended up sprawled right across his lower body. Peter shifted and scrabbled backwards through the water and mud hastily, wary of the zombie somehow still retaining the ability to bite or injure; but it didn’t move as he pulled himself clear.
“F-f-f-uck!” he stammered.
“D-d-d-ude.” Smith said as he emerged from the water. Peter glanced at him. The Guardsman was unslinging his weapon. A thought finally bubbled up from his leaden thoughts, and Peter’s eyes widened some.
“W-w-w-ait!” he blurted as Smith aimed at the zombie Peter had just shot. The other man either didn’t hear or couldn’t process the order in time, because he fired anyway. A bullet smacked into the mud several feet from the zombie; thankfully inland from where Peter and Whitley lay.
“B-b-arrel’s d-d-amaged-d-d.” Peter stuttered, trying to force his voice to cooperate as he struggled upright. “Heat, w-w-ater.”
“W-w-hat?”
“W-w-warped it.” Peter answered as he rose to his knees, trying to control every part of his body’s — including his jaw and tongue and throat — need to incessantly shake. The zombie he’d shot wasn’t moving, but he kind of wanted to shoot it in the head again anyway. The problem was, even from this close, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to. The adrenaline was combining with the cold to really set his muscles jittering.
“How?” Smith demanded.
“Hot from shooting.” Peter said. “Cold water. It’s not true now.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” the soldier swore.
“Pistol.” Peter pointed his own at the downed zombie and put another bullet through what was left of its skull.
At least, that had been his goal. The slug opened up a sizable divot in the mud. The next did the same, but on the opposite side. Peter drew a deep breath and closed his left hand around his right on the pistol’s grip; that took him two tries as well. When he had both hands in place, he leaned forward and down, and fired once more. This time he managed to hit the zombie’s skull, but he was sure it was by luck more than anything else; his arms had spasmed just as he’d fired.
Ignoring the scattering of brains and bone that produced, he started reloading the now empty weapon. Only muscle memory was pulling him through even the most basic activities now; hundreds and thousands of lifetime hours drilling the ebb and flow of the actions into his body. The cold was a physical thing, making itself felt deep within him.
He fumbled through finding the magazine release on the pistol, through finding a fresh magazine for it in his equipment harness, and through getting the replacement loaded in. The nearly empty one fell; his coordination wasn’t up to catching it, but he ignored it for the moment.
Smith had his pistol — a nine millimeter Beretta from the armory at Clay back in Atlanta — out and up by the time Peter was finished with his reload cycle. The soldier was shooting at the other two zombies in view. Peter lifted his own weapon and joined him. The pair of hungry threats were only fifteen or twenty feet away, and beyond the usual zombie stagger not doing anything defensive, but it still took Peter and Smith combined over a double handful of shots to bring the targets down.
“R-r-r-eload.” Peter said, picking up the magazine he’d dropped. With the rifles useless, he was down to only the pistol and didn’t want to leave a magazine for it he could reload with fresh bullets if he didn’t have to. There was no telling what was going to happen now; but he didn’t want to throw any possible resources away.
“N-n-ow w-w-hat?” Smith stuttered they both fumbled with their pistols.
Peter got the partial magazine tucked away and a full one slotted into his M45, then managed to put the safety back on before he jammed the pistol back in its holster. It took him four tries before the weapon was put away, and three to push himself up from his knees. His body really didn’t want to cooperate with what he wanted,
needed
, it to do.
“Help me with Whitley.” he got out, reaching down and trying to lift her. He wasn’t in the shape he’d been in when he was younger, but he wasn’t a soft civilian either. Whitley wasn’t that heavy, nor was she terribly large; but he was having trouble getting her lifted off the ground. She was still out of it, and he could see violent shuddering rippling through her body. Her teeth were audibly chattering; the sound was like wind-up joke teeth at a Halloween party.
Smith staggered over and took her other arm. Between both men, they got Whitley upright. Her head lolled around on her neck in a manner that struck Peter as dangerous, but he couldn’t do much to help that right now. It was taking an enormous amount of his willpower to hold her and himself upright without dropping her. If the worst she suffered from all of this was whiplash, that was fine. He looked around again as he got her arm draped around his shoulders, holding it there with one hand while he got his other around her waist so he could grip her belt.
“That way.” he nodded with his head. “S-s-straight for that roof there.” Peter added when he realized Smith wasn’t watching him, and even if he was the Marine’s head gesture was so spastic to have indicated anything in the western half of the continent.
“T-t-they t-t-train you f-f-f-or t-t-t-his?” Smith stuttered as the two of them stumbled away from the Mississippi.
“F-f-for what?”
“Cold.”
Peter shrugged, though the motion was indistinguishable from his shivering. “N-n-no.”
“S-s-shit.”
“I kn-kn-know what to do.” Peter said as they left the river behind and their soaked boots found dry dirt instead of damp sand and mud.
“W-w-what?”
“Fire.” Peter said. “G-g-get warm.”
“D-d-didn’t n-n-need you to t-t-t-ell me that.” Smith got out as they started climbing the rise at the edge of the ‘beach’.
Peter tripped over the ground as his feet started to cooperate less and less. He stumbled down to one knee with a curse, but he managed to keep from falling all the way over. Or from dropping Whitley. Which was notable considering his fall had dragged Smith down on the other side of the Guardswoman, and made him sway toward Peter as he was pulled off balance.