Floyd & Mikki (Book 1): Zombie Hunters (Love Should Be Explosive!) (22 page)

Floyd drove as Mikki played with the undead kitten some more. He did his best to keep his eyes on the road, but the thing was like a bloody accident on the freeway. As much as you wanted to keep going and ignore it, your eyes were drawn to it. You just had to look.

At least they had some real music to listen to now. Floyd had no idea how much he had actually missed that, until Mikki started popping CDs into the disc player. They flew down the road to
Ride of the Valkyries
.

Eventually, however, Floyd couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled over to let Mikki drive. He wasn’t tired of driving by any means, but he just wanted her to get rid of the stupid cat. She put Munch back in its bag and threw it into the back part of the cab on top of the pile of supply boxes.

It was a little after midmorning when Mikki took the wheel. They were making good time, taking turns driving during the day and night. Floyd had to admit that, when he didn’t feel like strangling her for doing something stupid or annoying, he really liked having Mikki around.

They passed what looked like an abandoned farm house off in the distance, out in the desert. A dirt road reached out to it from the interstate, like a long skeletal arm pointing the way. There was some kind of broken radio or water tower on one side and a fairly deep ditch on the other. The tower looked like a big golf ball perched on top of a turret, but the top half had fallen apart. This didn’t seem like a good place for a golf course or pro shop. For one thing, there was no grass.

The odd thing about the place was the chain link fence around the big square perimeter. Even odder was the crowd of human shamblers lined up around the fence trying to get in. The little kitten had actually alerted them to the farmhouse when it started to me-oan oddly, no doubt due to the presence of the other brain-eaters.

Floyd and Mikki had taken turns looking through the binoculars at the place from a safe distance. Why would anyone put up a big fence around a clearly empty farm house? And what in the world was attracting the creepers from all over God-knows-where to that fence? What made it some kind of zombie magnet? Neither Floyd nor Mikki had an answer, but neither was curious enough to find out. Mikki had wanted to plow through the creeper crowd just for fun, but Floyd didn’t want to have to pick more body parts out of the grill behind the plow, so they had just moved on.

According to the map, they were approaching a big city. That always made Floyd nervous. Big cities meant more brain-eaters and more smashed cars on the interstate to maneuver around—if possible. They wouldn’t make it there for at least an hour, so Floyd hunkered down in the passenger for a quick nap. It didn’t last very long.

“Hey, Floyd. You might wanna look at this.”

Mikki nudged him out of his slumber and handed him the binoculars. Her door was open and she was standing on the foot rail, grabbing onto the light bar. She pointed down the road.

Floyd opened his door and stood on the ledge, getting a higher view of what lie ahead. He saw what she was pointing at, sighed, then got back inside, saying, “Same shit, different day.”

About a mile ahead, the interstate was a mess. They were approaching the outskirts of the city. Cars were stalled or smashed all over the road. The meridian was relatively clear, but it would be a bumpy ride, even with Freedom’s big tires. It was in times like these that Floyd wished he had one of those monster trucks that could roll right over anything. Of course, they aren’t built for long drives and don’t get very good gas mileage.

Another problem was the welcoming committee. Literally hundreds of creepers scattered all over the median and both sides of the road. They couldn’t just plow through them because the terrain was so rough, they couldn’t get up enough speed without the risk of tipping over.

“It would be a lot easier if they were all lined up, instead of all over the place,” Floyd mused aloud.

Mikki smiled. Floyd knew that smile. He hated that smile. That was the
hair-brained scheme that might just get us both killed
smile. Sure enough, Mikki had an idea.

“Take the wheel Floyd.”

“How you gonna get us killed this time, Mikki?”

“Relax, I ain’t getting’ us killed, yet. Are you good at drivin’ backwards?”

“Does water run off a duck’s ass?”

“Good.”

Mikki grabbed her boom box, selected an appropriate CD, and climbed up on the back of the truck to take her place behind the 50-cal. “About time we tried this gun out, dontcha think?”

Floyd thought she looked way too happy about this, but he had to agree. This was as good a time as any to try out the new gun. He drove forward slowly honking his horn until he got the attention of the locals. Munch began to me-oan loudly in her bag. Soon, the zombie posse began moaning back and heading their way.

Floyd didn’t need to ask Mikki about her plan. He knew her well enough by now to know exactly what she was up to. He came to a halt, letting the brain-eaters shuffle closer.

Mikki placed the boom box on the roof and secured the handle on the light bar. Then she cranked it up loud, blaring
Another One Bites the Dust
by Queen, annoying and attracting the creepers to move even faster in their direction.

Floyd threw Freedom into reverse and started backing away slowly, then faster as the crowd picked up more speed. He flashed his headlights to piss them off and entice them even more. The music kept blaring. For such a little boom box, it had great sound!

Floyd kept a good 50-foot distance as the crowd grew bigger and bigger. Shit, there had to be over a thousand of them now, moaning as loud as Floyd had ever heard it. Every brain-eater around must have answered the call. They were walking up the off ramps and joining the party. Soon there was a sea of them heading right up the interstate. As Floyd kept backing up, they kept coming, getting madder and madder.

“Any time now, Mikki!” he yelled out the window.

“Not yet!” Mikki yelled back. She didn’t even bother putting on her helmet. She had the wind in her hair, an ocean of zombies in front of her, and her finger on the trigger of a big, big, big-ass gun.

The plan seemed to be working. The shamblers were lining up nicely. Floyd just hoped Mikki and he hadn’t bitten off more than they could chew. There seemed to be no end to the shuffling crowd. They were still pouring onto the interstate from every means of access. Brain-eaters stuck in crashed cars were banging their heads against the windows, desperate to get out. Fortunately, there were none closing in behind them. That would have really sucked.

“Now would be a really good time!” he yelled out the window again.

“Now
would
be a really good time!” Mikki agreed, opening up with a hail of bullets.

“Yeehaw!” Mikki screamed. They didn’t need the music anymore, as the noise of the firing 50-cal was more than enough to keep the creepers coming, but she cranked it up anyway.
The bullets rip to the sound of the beat.
It helped to set the mood. If she died and went to heaven, she would be doing this for all eternity. This was better than playing
Doom
.

Copper-jacketed bullets ripped through the rotted flesh like a light saber through a piñata. Only it wasn’t yummy candy that came flying out. Each bullet took down at least a dozen or more creepers, and Mikki was firing a lot of bullets.

Still, she wasn’t out of control. She lined them up carefully, aimed, and fired in short bursts. She knew the ammo was limited and she wanted to make every shot count. The highway was littered with the corpses of the corpses, but still more kept on coming. What the hell?

Suddenly the gun jammed. Floyd didn’t realize what had happened at first. He just thought Mikki was taking time to light up a cigarette or something. Then he heard her voice.

“Uh, Floyd? We got a problem here.”

“Now is not a good time for problems, Mikki!”

“Tell me about it! Stupid gun’s jammed!”

“Can you fix it?”

“I’m workin’ on it!”

“Well, here’s a suggestion…work on it faster!”

Mikki hit
repeat
on the boom box and the song started up again. Floyd sped up a little more in reverse. The brain-eaters were furious now. Firing on one tended to get them riled up, but firing on hundreds of them really kicked them into high gear. Floyd had never seen them so frantic before.

Of course, it was pretty comical at the same time. They kept tripping over the bodies of their fallen brothers and stepping on each other trying to get back up. That slowed their approach considerably.

“Forget it! Hop back inside!” Floyd ordered. Reluctantly, Mikki left the music blasting and headed back into the truck.

“My turn,” he said nonchalantly, as she buckled up.

“To do what?” she asked.

“Go bowling!” Floyd answered.

He threw the car into drive and hit the gas. Soon, decayed bodies were flying up into the air and landing in pieces all over the side of the road. Floyd drove right down through the middle of the swarm. Poor Munch was beside herself, me-oaning and bouncing all around inside her bag.

“Who’s side are you on, Munch?” Mikki asked the bag. It was a rhetorical question. She didn’t really expect an intelligible answer.

Apparently, there was an end to the horde after all, as suddenly Floyd popped out into the open. Now the plow was just scraping the bodies they had earlier left lying on the asphalt in the first assault. Floyd spun the car around to survey the damage.

They had missed a few way back there, but they were far enough away to lose their bead on the two humans. The ones who still had legs were wandering about aimlessly. The ones who didn’t were futilely waving hands in the air or using them to crawl about, going nowhere fast. Even Munch had stopped me-oaning. Mikki climbed out of the truck, shut off the music, and worked on the gun until she dislodged the misfed bullet. The gun would be good to go whenever they needed it again, and the belt still had a good number of rounds left on it.

“Floyd, gimme the binoculars!”

She was as excited as if the captain of the football team had asked her to the high school prom. She climbed up onto the back of the truck again, stood up, and stared. She wanted to scream and holler but didn’t want to attract any leftover creepers.

“Floyd! Floyd! Get up here!”

Floyd wasn’t sure how much weight the bed’s hard top could hold without buckling, but it seemed to be sturdy enough as he joined Mikki. She pointed off into the distance, and handed Floyd the binoculars.

He didn’t see what she was so excited about at first. Just a line of cars and bodies all up and down the highway. He followed the line of sight along the interstate from where they were standing. Then he saw it. He knew at once what she was so happy about.

About a mile or so up ahead, pulled off the side of the road on an overpass above the city, with its rear door wide open, was a big, dark blue truck. Painted on the side of the truck were big, white, block letters. They spelled, “S.W.A.T.”

Floyd took the opportunity to fill the gas tank again. He was pretty happy with the mileage he was getting. Despite the extra weight of the plow, he was actually getting a few more miles per gallon. He suspected it was because the plow was much more aerodynamic than his razor grill.

Mikki sat on top of the cab, facing backwards with her feet on the bed lid. The boom box was playing Bobby Darin, singing
Mack the Knife
. It wasn’t too loud—just loud enough to attract any local creepers into range. Floyd couldn’t help thinking how appropriate it was that Mikki had a “boom” box. She certainly liked anything that went
boom
.

A few stragglers made it into range, crawling or staggering over the piles of mangled creeper bodies.  Mikki dispatched them with well-placed pistol shots. No sense wasting the better ammo. The upper half of one creeper crawled its way at them, pulling itself along with its hands and arms. Mikki sent its head to join the lower half of its body somewhere in oblivion.

“Can we go now?” Mikki asked anxiously as Floyd finished placing the empty gas cans back into the bed and lowering the lid. She was fully dressed in her armor and as anxious as a promiscuous teenager waiting for her period to show up. She really wanted to get to that SWAT van, and Floyd knew it.

“Almost ready. Just one more thing.”

Floyd dropped five of his motion sensors in a fairly tight circle around Freedom and checked the reception. If anything went wrong, he didn’t want any unpleasant surprises when they returned to the truck. They seemed to have wiped out all the brain-eaters in the local area, but there were sure to be more. There were always more. If one or two sensors went off, they could probably handle it. If they all went off, Floyd would know they were in big trouble.

“Let’s go,” he said, clipping the small receiver to his belt.

Floyd and Mikki, Bonnie and Clyde, all headed out together, weaving their way through the cars as undead moms, dads, kids, dogs, cats, and even a parakeet slammed against the car windows along the way, trying to get at them. Mikki wondered aloud if the town had a nuclear reactor. Floyd told her not to get her hopes up.

They made it to the van OK. Mikki joyfully jumped inside through the open doors. Her excitement dimmed pretty fast, however, when she realized the van was empty. Completely empty. The gun racks on the inner wall were empty. The equipment lockers were empty. Boxes of whatever-they-were-supposed-to-hold were empty. She cursed her luck like a sailor cursing an overpriced hooker.

“Calm down!” Floyd insisted. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“Calm down? Calm down? Let me tell you somethin’, Floyd. Don’t never tell a girl to ‘calm down’! Nothin’ makes a girl
not
calm down like tellin’ her to calm down! And in case you ain’t been awake for the past two years, it damn sure
is
the end of the world! Geez!”

Floyd decided this was a good argument to avoid and jumped up onto the hood of the van, then up on top to scan the area with his binoculars. Long dead bodies lay all around the area. Floyd looked for anything that resembled a uniform. After a minute or two, he was what he was looking for.

“There!” he pointed. “That building. And look on the roof!”

Mikki looked through the binoculars. There were a couple of bodies in riot gear lying on the ground outside the entrance to what seemed to be a small, old hotel, about six stories tall. On the roof of the hotel, perched in the corner, was a lifeless sniper with high-powered rifle. Floyd knew at once what Mikki meant when she said, “Oooh, Floyd! I want it!”

Floyd agreed that a high-quality sniper rifle for Mikki would be a good addition to their arsenal. “We’ll, check out the bodies on the ground first, then make our way up to the roof.”

The streets were pretty clear, since whatever shamblers were here had long ago wandered up the ramp to the interstate, where Floyd and Mikki had just turned them into mulch. Even so, Floyd dropped another two motion sensors into the street and verified they were operational, just to be safe. The little receiver wasn’t too fancy, but it could handle up to 10 signals and numbered them in the order you dropped them. So if six and seven lit up, Floyd would know they had company on the ground. If one to five lit up, he knew there was something near the truck. Of course, once they got to the roof, they would have a good view of everything around them, including where they had left Freedom parked on the interstate. They had to hurry, though, as the sun was already on its way down and they would certainly have more guests arriving once the city was dark.

There must have been one helluva fight. The three SWAT team members on the ground were surrounded by hundreds of dried out zombie bodies. If you could even call them bodies. Once they died for real, the brain-eaters tended to crumble to dust fairly fast. This battle had happened over a year ago, so it was more like dusty, lumpy clothing lying all around. The answer was blowin’ in the wind.

Spent shell casings were everywhere and every ammo clip was empty. Sadly, however, it hadn’t been enough. When they ran out of ammo, their guns were useless. All three had batons in or near their hands and all three had all been shot through the head. Floyd supposed the sniper on the roof must have done them a favor. Since the body of the sniper was still up there, that meant he had not been bit, but he obviously hadn’t made it out alive, either.

Floyd and Mikki ignored the discarded machine guns. Without ammo, they were no more than heavy scrap metal, and they weren’t as good as the arsenal the pair was currently carrying, anyway. The Mini Uzis on their backs held Zeke’s special antipersonnel rounds. Floyd had an Uzi strapped over his left shoulder and his hunting rifle strapped over his right.

Each of the SWAT guys was wearing a Night Vision Goggle (NVG) headset instead of a helmet. Floyd wasn’t sure how to incorporate them into their armor yet, but he stashed them in his backpack anyway.

Floyd checked the receiver again. The lights were all still green, indicating it was working fine, and the areas he had marked were still clear. After surveying their current surroundings from every angle, Floyd led them back towards the door of the hotel. He turned the sound down on the receiver as they passed near the motion sensors, causing two of the lights to turn red. Once they were inside, he turned the sound back up so he could hear an alert.

“Looks like the SWAT guys cleaned out this part of the hotel, at least,” Floyd observed, commenting on the number of bodies and spent shells lying all over the lobby and the dark splatter stains on the walls.

“What’s that mean, anyway, Floyd? ‘Swat’?”

“Special Weapons and Tactics. Police trained to use combat weapons.”

“I knew it was somethin’ like that. Couldn’t remember exactly. Was you ever in the military, Floyd?”

“Yeah, a long time ago. I joined the army right outta high school. Went through basic training, got sent overseas. Buddy ran over me with a jeep and they sent me home. Got a purple heart and a medical discharge. Never saw no action, though.”

“Well, you seen enough action lately, that’s fer sure. You seem pretty healthy to me.”

“Yeah, no permanent damage to speak of. Just enough to make me useless to the army. Screwed up my left shoulder and elbow. Had a lotta therapy, but I’m fine now.

“Well, at least you got a medal out of it.”

“A lotta guys did a lot more than me and got no medals for it. They were true heroes. I didn’t get to do shit.”

“I wish I coulda joined the army.”

“Ha! I bet you do! You’d have made one helluva demolitions expert!”

Mikki smiled inside her helmet. “I ain’t so bad, now. Self-taught!”

They moved over to the stairs. On the way, Mikki hit the elevator button. Nothing happened, of course, but she said to Floyd, “Hey, ya never know when you might get lucky.” Floyd answered that he wasn’t likely to trust an elevator in a place like this, anyway, and headed up the stairs.

As they moved up and up, they saw that the hallways on every level were littered with bodies. Some had only one or two, but one had as many as 10. Every door had been opened one way or another and every room had been cleared. No wonder they ran out of ammo, Floyd thought. They didn’t know what they were dealing with. They tried to put down everything that moved. It would have been much smarter to leave the trapped creatures in their rooms, but the SWAT guys wouldn’t have known that.

On the top floor, they found the roof access. It was a metal ladder in a closet that went straight up. There was no way any brain-eaters would be able to use it to get up there. That was fairly reassuring.

Floyd threw open the lid at the top of the ladder and looked around. Nothing was moving and the body of the sniper was propped up over one corner of the building. He climbed out and reached a hand down to help Mikki up. They had to hurry. The sun seemed to be going down even faster. They needed to get the rifle and get out.

From the looks of the body, the sniper had probably died of dehydration. An empty black water flask lay on the ground beside him, along with a radio. Floyd remarked to Mikki that these guys probably never expected to be deployed for more than a few hours without backup. Poor sucker probably died waiting for an extraction that never came.

Mikki picked up her trophy, unwrapping the sling from the dead sniper’s left arm. In a belt pouch on the body, she found several more clips of high-powered ammo. Unlike the guys on the street or the men who cleaned out the inside of the building, the sniper saw no reason to waste ammunition on a lost cause. Mikki snapped the ammo pouch onto her machete belt.

“Cool!” she said, inspecting the rifle. “Silencer and an infrared night scope. Don’t know how long the battery will last, but I just flipped it on and it’s still workin’—at least for now.” Mikki was clearly happy, even if it didn’t blow something up.

“Well, let’s get outta here before we need to use it. I don’t want to be anywhere around here when night falls.”

“Yes, sir! Mr. Man, sir!”

“Will you
please
stop saying that?!”

They headed over to the lid and Floyd grabbed the handle to lift it up. Nothing happened. It didn’t budge. He pulled and pulled.

“Oh, shit! It must have locked from the inside! No wonder that poor bastard got stuck up here. Now we’re in the same boat!”

Just then, Floyd’s receiver started beeping. He looked and saw numbers six and seven were red. Mikki didn’t need to ask what that sound meant. She ran to the edge of the roof and looked down.

“Hey, Floyd, did you order a pizza?”

“Not for over three years, now. Why?”

“Pizza delivery guy just showed up. And he brought friends.”

Floyd gazed in the direction that Mikki was looking and saw a brain-eater shuffling through the street wearing a Domino’s Pizza delivery uniform. The name on his shirt said, “Stevie.” A couple of others had entered the area, as well. Floyd knew they had to get out of there fast, before a lot more showed up. The sun might still be shining up on the roof, but shadows had already darkened the city enough for the brain-eaters to start heading into the streets.

“Sorry, no tip for you today, buddy,” Mikki said, as she tried out the new rifle. A small hole appeared in pizza dude’s forehead, and a big hole blew out the back.

“Shoots a little to the right,” Mikki remarked as she made an adjustment to the sight. Then she lined up another shot but Floyd stopped her.

“What are you doing? Don’t shoot ‘em!” Floyd ordered. “You’ll piss ‘em off!”

“Now all of a sudden you
don’t
wanna shoot creepers? And just how the hell are we gonna get out of here if we don’t?”

The two other shamblers started howling. Not the kind of moan when they smell prey, but the kind of howl when they realize they are under attack. They understood their buddy was no longer with them and they began calling for reinforcements.

“Oh, shit. Too late now!” Floyd lamented.

“Let’s figure out how to get off o’ this damn roof first, Floyd! Otherwise it won’t matter.”

Mikki was right. Floyd looked around and saw nothing they could use. Six stories up was too far to jump, and there was no outside fire escape they could use to climb down, either. However, Floyd got an idea when he looked up.

There was an electrical box on the roof that once had probably powered the entire building, but since there was no electricity, the wires should be safe. Floyd swapped out his drum mag for slugs and aimed for the far end of the cables, where they connected to an electrical tower. He fired once and a cable broke loose, falling down to the roof and over the side of the building. He fired again and the other cable joined it. Unfortunately, they made a lot of noise as they fell and hit the outside wall. That meant there would be even more of Pizza Dude’s buddies showing up soon to investigate the sound.

Mikki followed Floyd’s lead as he grabbed the cables and pulled them over to the other side of the building, away from the gathering crowd of zombies. They pulled and hung on the cables momentarily, bouncing as hard as they could. Satisfied that the cables would hold their weight as they climbed down, they moved to the edge of the roof, ready for anything.

Or so they thought. They were, in fact, not ready for what they saw.