Floyd & Mikki (Book 1): Zombie Hunters (Love Should Be Explosive!) (27 page)

Floyd had never been a big believer in prayer before, but that all changed. It wasn’t so much that Mikki had prayed for grenades and then found a big box of them. They were bound to run into a stash somewhere along the line. It was more because of Munch. Floyd had seriously prayed asking God to get rid of that damned cat in some way that Floyd couldn’t be blamed. As far as Floyd was concerned, God had come through.

Unlike the case of his fiancée. He had prayed that they would be happy together for the rest of their lives, that he would be a good husband, and she would be a loving, faithful wife. Well, he would have been a good husband, but she was certainly not faithful. He had held a grudge against God and women ever since. Now Floyd prayed they would just get to New California Haven soon and see what was there. With his luck, the whole damn place would be hit by an earthquake and slide into the sea just as he and Mikki arrived. Or Mikki would find a way to blow it up.

Fortunately, they were in no danger at the moment. He put another two cases of 24 MREs each into the bed of the truck. They pulled two from the engine and ate as they decided their next move. The 710 South was a parking lot from here. They might be able to go around, but while some of the freeway was bordered by a chain link fence, most of it had cement barriers or tall brick sound walls that prevented them from getting on or off.

Floyd pondered his maps while Mikki finished painting all the grenades. When they were dry, she took six for herself and gave six to Floyd. That should last them a while, even with Mikki’s explosive behavior. She kept the rest in the Styrofoam lined trays and ditched the large grenade box.

Floyd was clearly frustrated. They were so close, and yet so far. If the mass of wrecked cars was this bad now, it had to be worse the father south they traveled. Driving down neighborhood streets was likely to be just as bad. Not as many cars, but smaller streets were more likely to be blocked with wreckage. Not to mention the number of brain-eaters that would be wandering around. Sure, they were slow and stupid, but when agitated in sufficient numbers, they could tear a person apart. Floyd preferred to avoid that, if possible.

When they got back in the truck, it was Floyd’s turn to drive. He drove through a dirt area next to the freeway for a few minutes. Seeing what looked like an opening, he smashed through the chain link fence to get back on the highway. He didn’t get far. Even driving on the shoulder, he had to plow away more than a few smashed cars.

He had welded the plow on with sturdy metal, but Floyd had to wonder how much of this it could take before it fell off. Smashing through soft zombie tissue and brittle bones was one thing, but smashing through metal hulks was another. The Ford F-175 was as rugged as they come, but the frame wasn’t built to win a demolition derby, event with the modifications and reinforcements Floyd had made.

Without Freedom, Floyd and Mikki would have to walk to New California Haven (about 10 miles from their current location). If they stuck to the freeway, they probably wouldn’t run into too many brain-eaters that weren’t stuck in cars. Probably. But if there was a break in the side fencing or an off ramp led to a populated area, the place could be crawling with shamblers. Floyd backed up the truck until he could find a place to spin it around, then headed back out the hole in the fence he had made.

Unfortunately, the soft dirt shifted under the truck and he started sliding down the hill. He had no choice but to turn the wheel to head straight down or risk flipping the truck on its side. He hit the brakes but kept sliding down the soft earth. Eventually he came to the bottom of the hill and bounced up onto some asphalt, but not before smashing through another chain link fence. The same fence the shamblers had been behind farther back.

He headed down a road to the left but it was a dead end, so he backed up, turned around and headed the other way. As he feared, the appreciative crowd he had seen before was already on the move, no doubt drawn by the sound of the truck’s engine.

“Floyd, we got company.”

“I see ‘em.”

Floyd was desperately scanning the area for any place that might be safe. He started plowing through or over more and more of the abominations. At one point a body got stuck in the wheel well of the truck and jammed the tire. Floyd hit the gas, but the truck just spun in a circle. He finally managed to dislodge it by throwing the car into reverse and punching the gas pedal. A rather large bump or two later, he was able to put it into drive again, but by then a couple dozen of the unfortunate creep’s relatives were banging on the truck windows.

They passed by a little wedding chapel and Mikki said, “I wonder if these are friends of the bride or friends of the groom.”

“Friends of the groom.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Bride would make sure people dressed better for the wedding.”

“You ain’t never seen the bridesmaid dresses at my aunt’s wedding. These look better.”

Somehow, they ended up in an alley between rows of houses. Floyd hit the gas and made it through to a side street. He had no idea where he was, and no map would help him now. He turned right and headed down a street that led to a large parking lot. A large building that seemed to be covered in dark glass loomed ahead of them. At the top was the logo of a winged staff with two intertwined snakes. The medical logo.

“Oh, crap! This is the damn hospital!”

He wheeled around as brain-eaters seemed to come from everywhere. They were moaning and screeching and just generally pissed off. They poured out of the hospital and in from the surrounding neighborhoods. Floyd turned around to get out of the parking lot and bounced up over and embankment, landing hard on the asphalt of a side street. There was a loud bang.

“What was that noise, Floyd? That sounded like a bad noise!”

Floyd hit the gas, but the tachometer raced while the truck barely inched forward. He shifted the automatic transmission down to 1 and managed to keep going, but only at about 10 miles an hour. Fast enough to outrun a zombie, but not enough to plow through a wall of them. And that’s exactly what was headed their way. They were already pouring down the embankment behind the truck and filling the street ahead. Mikki began hanging grenades from every outer pocket, then unzipped her jacket and began stuffing grenades between her boobs—anywhere they would fit.

“Get us next to that ambulance, Floyd!”

The truck managed to limp up and over the embankment back to the rear hospital parking lot. Mikki reached back and grabbed the metal case with the extra belt for the 50-cal. It was too heavy, so she told Floyd to hand it up to her when she got out. She filled her backpack with every ammo clip she could reach, grabbed Bonnie, an Uzi and her sniper rifle. As soon as Floyd pulled up next to the ambulance, she jumped out the door and up onto Freedom’s roof.

Floyd grabbed a similar arsenal and joined her. Then he pulled himself up on top of the ambulance with as many grenades in his jacket as he could carry. He began tossing grenades strategically around them, aiming for concentrated areas where he could take out the most walking undead at a time.

Mikki was proud of him, but had no time to offer praise. She had her own issues to deal with. She unleashed holy hell on the approaching multitude with the 50-cal. She mowed down dozens of them, but more kept coming. She would lay them low, wait a minute, and then more would show up around every corner. The one thing in her favor was that the more bodies there were on the ground, the longer it took the newcomers to figure out how to step around or over them. Much of the time, they just fell over and began crawling their way in her direction. It significantly slowed their approach, but it didn’t stop them.

“Cover me, Floyd! Changing the belt!”

“Roger that!”

Floyd alternated between grenades, the Mini Uzi, and his pistols, depending on how many there were, and how close they were getting. He made judicious use of his ammo, which was already getting low. He was saving Clyde for last. He ditched his first two pistols after running through all the clips he had and used his last two pistols to bring down the nearest ones closing in on Mikki.

She slammed the new belt into place and opened fire once again. Firing in a semicircle around the truck, she wasted everything in sight. She fired hundreds of bullets using short spurts at a time, making every round count. All too soon, she was dry. She climbed up on top of the ambulance with Floyd. There was nothing left alive—or undead—for at least 300 feet, but a crowd of admirers was already on its way, stepping and tripping over their fallen comrades. They just kept coming and coming.

“Well this sucks,” she said.

“I’ve had better days,” Floyd agreed.

“Yeah, and we’ve had worse, too.”

“When?”

“OK, we ain’t never had worse, but that don’t mean I’m givin’ up.”

“Me neither. We’re still close enough to the hospital that we could climb up to the roof.”

“What good’ll that do?”

“It’ll get us the hell outta here.”

He loaded Clyde with a slug mag and aimed at an electrical pole not far away. Two shots later and the cables fell loose, landing about 20 feet away. He quickly switched out the slugs for his drum mag.

“Damn, Floyd! Them wires is live!”

“So don’t touch the sparky end!”

The two jumped down from the ambulance and quickly grabbed as much additional ammo and gear as they could carry from the truck, then hopped their way through the obstacle course of twitching bodies to the wires. As fast as possible, they were climbing up the thick cables.

Their weight swung them over to the side of the building. That made it a bit easier to get higher, as they could use their feet to scale the wall. Mikki made a crack about Batman but Floyd was in no mood for humor at the moment.

They were about halfway up the 10-story building when the electrical junction box on the roof gave way. They dropped about 15 feet, slamming to a halt in midair as the box lodged itself on the edge of the roof. It began sending a shower of sparks down on them. They weren’t getting up that way.

“Shit! Now what?” Mikki asked. Looking below, there was already a sea of creepers waiting below, reaching up for them.

“What the hell?” She got hit in the back with a rock. The creepers were picking up any trash they could find and hurling it in their direction, the same way they did to take out any overhead lights they encountered.

“Well, we can’t hang around here all day,” Floyd observed. He began climbing up, looking through the windows for a floor that wasn’t chock fulla zombies. He saw one that seemed to be pretty empty. He pointed to it and began kicking in the windows, but he couldn’t get enough leverage to finish the job

“We gotta crash in!” he called to Mikki. “Follow me!”

The two kicked away from the building as hard as they could. On the swing back, they held out their feet to crash through the window onto a seemingly empty floor. Fickle Fate had other ideas, however, and on the way back toward the building, the electrical box came loose again, dropping them down. They crashed through the window of the floor below.

Well, sort of. The window was made of dark-colored safety glass. It buckled, but didn’t break. They only smashed through part of it. Mikki got her foot stuck in a hole and Floyd’s part of the window buckled inward at the top corner. He managed to grab hold of the window sill through the opening, just as a huge panel from the electrical box crashed to the ground below them, missing them by inches. They immediately let go of the cables to prevent being yanked off the wall.

They were hanging outside one of the hospital boardrooms. Inside was a large wooden conference table surrounded by 10 creepers wearing dusty doctor coats. A whiteboard on wall read, “Contagion Outbreak,” with a list of options on how to deal with the threat. It would seem that none of the plans had worked.

The 10 doctors all turned and stared at the pair hanging off the window. Floyd pointed Clyde in through the hole in the window and blasted them all with the strobe light. In the darkened room, it worked perfectly. They all covered their eyes and staggered back. Floyd quickly blew their brains out, one by one.

“Hang in there, Mikki, I’m comin’!”

“I ain’t plannin’ on goin’ nowhere, Floyd!” she answered, upside down.

He made his way over to her and reached down to pull her up, so she could get her foot out of the hole in the safety glass. Now that they had a better grip on the window sill, they were able to shoot and kick the glass until it fell in. Finally, they were inside the building. Looking down at the rear parking lot below, they could see Freedom and the ambulance surrounded by a seemingly endless swarm of the undead.

“We left a bunch of grenades in the truck, didn’t we, Floyd?”

“I reckon.”

“And the two RPGs?”

“Yup.”

“And you just filled up all them gas cans, didntcha?”

“Yup.”

“And I’m guessing your transmission’s shot all to hell, ain’t that right?”

“Yup.”

“Ain’t gonna be able to fix it?”

“Nope.”

“Sorry, Floyd. I really am sorry.”

Mikki pulled the pin from a grenade and tossed it out the window. It bounced off the side of the ambulance, ricocheted a few times between the two vehicles, then landed under Freedom. A few seconds later, Floyd’s beloved truck exploded in a huge fireball that sent shockwaves and shrapnel in every direction, blowing away everything within sight on the ground. Something came flying up at them and Floyd and Mikki dove under the conference table.