Floyd & Mikki (Book 1): Zombie Hunters (Love Should Be Explosive!) (12 page)

“There you are!” exclaimed Zeke, as they entered the room. “I was startin’ to get worried about you.” He looked as giddy as a boy in high school who got a peek into the girl’s shower. Floyd didn’t think a man with so few teeth in his head could smile that big.

“We can take care of ourselves, Zeke. Don’t you worry none,” Mikki reassured him, sincerely.

“Oh, of course you can! No doubt! No doubt, but um…” he paused, milking the moment. “Don’t you think sometime it would be nice to have a little help?”

“Whatcha getting’ at, Zeke?” Floyd asked.

The old man was about to bust a gut with excitement, but he paused one more moment for dramatic effect. Then he whipped off the blanket he had been using to hide his ever-so-super-secret project. “Voila!” he exclaimed.

Both Floyd and Mikki were stunned. Neither one had any words to express themselves. They just stood there staring as Zeke nearly peed himself with joy at their reactions.

“Son of a bitch!” Floyd said, at last.

“You like ‘em?” Zeke asked.

“Like ‘em? We love ‘em! Ain’t that right, Floyd? What are they?”

The two looked down at the table before them. There were two automatic weapons of some kind, painted all solid black. Both were laying on their right sides, pointing to the left, one above the other. Some kind of tube was mounted on the left side. They were rather short, but apparently powerful. What captured their attention most was that one had
Floyd
and the other had
Mikki
engraved in elegant gold letters on the stocks. Zeke even spelled their names right.

“AA-12 semiautomatic 12-gauge tactical combat shotguns,” Zeke explained, adding proudly, “Specially modified by yours truly. Fire rate is 300 rounds per minute. Basically as fast as you can pull the trigger.”

“Complete stainless steel construction, lightweight and totally waterproof. You can soak these babies in a bathtub overnight and they’ll still fire. No need to clean or lubricate. Fires slugs, shot, antipersonnel, or even anti-armor rounds. Scope is good for long range if you’re usin’ slugs or special ammo. Comes with standard eight-round box magazines. I got slugs in these.” He handed eight box mags to Floyd. “I got a few box mags of anti-armor rounds here. I figured Mikki would want those.”

“You figured damn right!” she asserted, taking six box mags. She noticed her mags all had a white stripe down the side while Floyd’s had a yellow stripe.

“Or…” Zeke paused dramatically, then opened a black box on the table and pulled out the ultimate surprise. “32-round shotgun shell drum magazines! Amazingly quick reload time. Just hit this button, drop a drum, and slide a new one back in!” He demonstrated the action in less than two seconds.

“I noticed you were both right handed, so I made a couple special modifications. You see this here sticking up out of the stock?” He pointed to the black tube. “High powered strobe light, but it uses special LEDs so it doesn’t chew up batteries. Takes CR2025 3-volt lithium watch batteries. They were pretty popular, so you should be able to find them in any abandoned store. Of course, I got a bunch of them for you right here. You see they’re flat, so you can carry a ton of ‘em in a tiny space with almost no weight. Should give you one or two hours sustained light or last you up to a year if you just flash ‘em every once in a while.

“There’s a thumb button on the handgrip and a switch just above it. Just hit the button with your thumb for a quick blast or flip the switch to use it as a flashlight. But don’t shine it at each other. It’s pretty damn blinding. I mounted it on the left so it’s on the inside as you hold up the weapon. That way, it won’t get caught on anything if you’re moving down a tight hallway or through hanging wires or something. Also doesn’t get in the way of the sight if you want to do a little long range shooting with the slugs. Shot shells are highly accurate and effective at up to 20 feet away or so.

“Of course, you noticed the names. The letters are 18 karat gold. More durable than 24 karat. The script is fine enough that it won’t be seen in the dark, or give you away to any enemies.

“And my favorite part! This was tricky. I know you like a shorter weapon, Floyd, and I know zombies get attracted to noise, so I developed a series of baffles to fit over the end of the barrel without adding too much length. You shoot this sucker and all anybody’s gonna hear is a puff of air.”

“A silencer?” Floyd asked.

“Not exactly, but yeah, it does the same thing. But don’t try to go cutting the stock on these, Floyd. The stock holds a series of springs that absorb all the shock. You can fire these babies one handed, or with one in each hand just like pistols if you like. No recoil whatsoever, and they’re pretty lightweight. I fitted ‘em with a bit of a wider strap so you can sling it over your shoulder any way you want to and hold it securely.”

“What, no laser sight?” Floyd asked, half joking.

“Thought about that, but no. Laser sights let the enemy see you in the dark long before you can see them. And we all know how zombies are attracted to light. Sorry I didn’t have a grenade launcher to add, Mikki. Then they would have been perfect.”

She leaned over, grabbed his face, kissed his nearly bald head and said, “They are perfect. Thank you, Zeke.”

Now it was Zeke’s turn to be speechless. For a moment, Floyd thought he was gonna cry. “I’m just glad to be doin’ something useful. I been holed up here for what seems like forever ‘cause of this bum leg.

“Oh, you are useful, Zeke!” Mikki insisted. “And you’re a good friend. These are damn amazing! Thank you. Thank you so very much!”

Mikki was so excited, she didn’t even play
Doom
that night. She spent the rest of the evening playing with her new shotgun, long after the two men had gone to bed.

She examined it from every angle. Tried every button. Practiced switching out the box mags and drums over and over again, building her expertise. She had never been given such a wonderful toy by anyone. She would never be annoyed by Zeke ever again, no matter what he did. Not by his jokes, his babbling, occasional dribble or Old Man smell.

“Lucy, old girl, you been replaced,” she said, leaving her old shotgun in a corner forever. When it was time for bed, she slept on the cot, wrapping her arms around the shotgun and her little stuffed Hello Kitty doll. The shotgun was unloaded, but ammo was on the floor within arm’s reach, just in case. She might be excited, but she didn’t want to roll over in the middle of the night and accidentally blow her own head off.

She looked over at Floyd as he lay sleeping, watching him breathe. So many emotions collided within her. Like a head-on, high-speed, double train wreck.
A young girl’s emotions is powerful things, but they ain’t always clear and they don’t often make sense.
She couldn’t say she loved Floyd, but she couldn’t say she didn’t, either. Love had never been a part of her life. She had heard of it, but had no real concept of it. She didn’t even know if she believed in it.

Mikki had never encountered anything resembling love. Just a bunch of guys trying to use her for their own selfishness, most of whom had lived to regret it. Everybody tried to use her. Nobody never gave a damn about her in her whole life. Nobody! Until now.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, she had Floyd and she had Zeke. Zeke was a bald-headed old fart, but he was a really, really sweet bald-headed old fart. Neither he nor Floyd had ever called her stupid or worthless or white trash or any number of other horrible names she was used to hearing. Neither one had ever judged her or told her she wasn’t good enough. Neither one of them would ever hurt her. For the first time in her entire life, she felt safe. For the first time in her life, she knew what “home” was. For the first time in her life, she felt like she had…a family.

Being the only people left alive probably in all the world kinda made you bond together really fast. You either got along with someone or you shot ‘em. And there were damn too few people left alive to go around shootin’ ‘em for no good reason.

Floyd was no pretty boy, but he was all man. She wasn’t even sure he was handsome, but there was something irresistible about him. He was such an interesting man! He was smart and he had a good heart. And he was a survivor. He and Mikki had that much in common.

He was also much older than her, but not old enough to be creepy. He didn’t even know her real age—no one did—but she was a strong, capable woman and that was all that mattered to him. Mikki had always looked young for her age, and that had always pissed her off. When she was really young, everyone said how cute she looked and wanted to baby her. Then her damn boobs started to grow, and that was all men would look at. Their eyes never seemed to rise above the level of her neck. From then on, men only saw her as a sex object.

But Floyd actually treated her like a person. If anything, he was afraid to look at her. That was so cute! For the first time, she actually wanted him to look. For the first time, she actually felt like a woman. For the first time, she wasn’t embarrassed by her boobs. For the first time, she actually…enjoyed them.

Her thoughts returned to the other night in the shower. She knew he would never have tried to touch her, and that made her want him even more. She knew she’d have to make the first move, so she did. Originally, she really had just wanted to play a prank on him by burning his ass in the shower, but when she saw the hazy outline of his body through that steamy shower glass and knew he was completely naked and vulnerable on the other side of that glass, something snapped inside of her. Something that had been buried so far deep down inside the deepest part of her, that she never even knew it existed.

Something she had denied ever being a part of her exploded out of its carefully guarded prison and overwhelmed her, consuming her mind and body with a desperate, passionate fury. She saw her chance and she grabbed it.
Damn hormones
, she thought again to herself with a smile.

After the initial surprise, he finally responded. Boy! Did he ever! A girl’s first time should be special and it was. Absolutely perfect!

She liked that he was so much older than her—that he was experienced and knew what he was doing. So much better than losing it to some immature, pimply faced teenage boy who didn’t know what the hell he was doing, finished in two minutes, and then left her alone wondering what the hell had just happened. And it wasn’t in the back seat of a car. Nope, every part of that momentous occasion was perfect and permanently imprinted on her brain. Wild, passionate, and yet…tender. It was like the most perfect first time possible that she could ever have dreamed of.

Hmmm.
First and last time, probably
, she thought, sadly. OK, moment of truth: she was
afraid
to do it again. What if it wasn’t as good the second time? How could it be as good as her most perfect first time ever? What if he got tired of her, or that turned out to be all he wanted?

She desperately wanted to know how he felt about it! Did she do it right? Was she any good? Or did she suck at it?

Ever since, he had acted as though nothing had even happened. That both hurt and reassured her. She wanted to ask him a million questions, but was afraid to know the answers. Would they ever even have the chance to do it again? Not much time for fooling around when you spend every moment of every day trying to keep some undead creepy thing from biting your ass.

At least she didn’t have to worry about being pregnant. She knew her body cycle extremely well and she wasn’t due to ovulate for another week. Not that she ever had to worry about becoming pregnant before, since she had never let any man near her. It was more of a survival thing. Creepers could smell fresh blood a mile away, and that meant they came right for her at a certain time every month. She had never read that in any zombie survival book!

Maybe Floyd was right that the guys who wrote those books didn’t really know what they were talking about. Come to think of it, how could they? Ain’t nobody wrote a book like that
after
the creepers actually took over. She pulled out her copy of
The Zombie Apocalypse Survival Handbook: How to Live with the Undead
and leafed through it again.

She reviewed the myriad of notes she had written on nearly all the pages. It was definitely dated. It didn’t have half the information she had learned over the last couple years. And a lot of it really was just plain wrong.

Maybe she should write a book! Call it,
Floyd and Mikki: Zombie Hunters
. She laughed hysterically to herself at the thought.
Yeah
, she yawned,
no one would ever buy a book with such a stupid title
. She threw the handbook into her backpack and drifted off to sleep.

Floyd and Mikki were gearing up for another run at the town. “Heading out, Zeke. If you don’t mind, I’m thinkin’ of pickin’ up some bolt cutters at that hardware store you told us about. Clip the locks off those lockers and see what’s inside. That OK with you?”

“Sure. Whatever’s in there ain’t doin’ nobody any good. And I don’t see as how any of our customers is likely to come back askin’ for ‘em. They missed their pickup date, anyway, so no refunds.”

The two men laughed at that. Then Zeke asked, “Hey, can you guys bring me back some more of them HoHos? I love me them HoHos.”

Mikki laughed and answered, “Sure, Zeke.”

Floyd loaded up the wagon with all the ammo for the new AA-12s, other than what Mikki and he already carried in their weapon belts or backpacks. He piled the new clothes, boxes of zombie cakes, food and other assorted new gear on the wagon, as well.

Floyd wasn’t planning on leaving right away, but he had learned long ago to be prepared. You never knew what the hell was gonna happen to blow all your happy plans to shit, but he knew his armored truck was the safest place around to store all this stuff. More than once he had needed to burn rubber out of a town. Besides, he had some rearranging to do in the cab and bed.

Mikki put on one of her other new jackets, but she kept the one she had worn yesterday. The shot from the booby trap had embedded itself into the fibers, so you couldn’t really see them unless you looked closely. Still, she just felt better about wearing a jacket that hadn’t already received a load of buckshot. After checking the security monitors, they loaded their new shotguns with the drum magazines and headed out to the truck.

They didn’t see any brain-eaters along the way. Kind of a shame, really. Floyd would have loved to try out the new shotguns, but the two had pretty much cleared out this area of town.

Damn! He was turning into Mikki, looking for some action. What an amazing, thoughtful thing Zeke had done for them, though. Even engraving their names on the weapons like that. Good man, that Zeke.

The truck held no surprises, either. Mikki scoured the area with her eyes, shotgun in hand, covering Floyd as he rearranged everything inside Freedom. He pulled out the food case, water bottles, emergency gear, and other crap they needed to have handy, and put the spare gear on the floor of the back cab. Then he replaced everything else with the snack food on top.

It wasn’t hot enough to worry about the chocolate on the HoHos melting in the cab while they were away, so they left the box on the front seat. Zeke had already eaten the other two boxes, and they’d pick up more for him on the way back. Floyd and Mikki could now leave at any time. The question now was, when?

They took more time on their second visit to the supermarket, picking up the last of the HoHos and zombie cakes and wandering the aisles looking for assorted canned food, crackers and whatever else had a long shelf life. They filled the wagon and left again, still with no surprises. They seem to have cleaned out this part of town pretty well, too.

After heading back to the truck to drop off half the food, they delivered the rest to Zeke at the safe room. He was thrilled to see more HoHos and thanked the pair profusely. He turned off the main light and laid down on the cot to take a nap, while Floyd and Mikki headed out to the hardware store. That was farther away in the northern part of town, past the motorcycle supply shop.

The trip there was, again, uneventful. Peering in through the broken glass of the storefront, nothing seemed to be moving. The raiders had clearly been here, or other looters of some sort. Whole rows of who-knows-what were empty, while other less immediately useful items remained on the shelves. Apparently, not many people needed bolt cutters in a post-apocalyptic world, because Floyd found four of them hanging on one wall. They were rather large, painted red, with black rubber grips on the handles. Moderately heavy, but sure to do the job.

Floyd reached for one just as a swinging door in the back burst open. Both Mikki and he spun around. What had once apparently been the security dog growled menacingly at them. Rottweilers were scary-enough, ugly, drooly dogs when they were alive. The undead version was even less cuddly. Especially with mouth wide open and fangs bared to attack.

“Play dead!” Mikki shouted, as the dog leapt high into the air right at Floyd’s face. The two warriors unleashed a volley that blew zombie dog splatter all over the back walls. Each fired off four to five rounds in mere seconds. What was left of the hindquarters flew back and hit the door before dropping to the floor.

Wow! These guns were powerful! They would have to control themselves better in the future. They didn’t need a lot of shots to cause devastating damage.

“Good dog!” Mikki said, when it was all over. “Stay!”

The two busted up laughing. Floyd added, “Dog is
not
man’s best friend,” and they laughed some more. Grabbing the bolt cutters in his left hand, Floyd led the way out.