Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [19]
“What choice do we have?” I asked.
Dave looked at the guy for a long moment and I could see the wheels turning in his mind, looking for a way out of this just like he’d found a way out of dozens of other situations over the past few months.
“Those guns might not even be attached to that remote,” he finally said.
I shrugged, though his suggestion didn’t make me feel all that much better. “I guess it’s possible. And even if they are, he called us here so he must need us. Maybe he won’t really press the button. But do you want to test it?”
Apparently he did because Dave lifted his gun to his shoulder and pointed it at the lab coat guy. “I don’t think so, asswipe. Instead, I think you’re going to let us back away and get into our van.”
“Please David,” Lab Coat said. “I really don’t think that would be wise. Just come inside and I swear to you that I’ll explain everything to you and Sarah.”
But Dave wasn’t going to agree just because the guy knew our names. Like I said before, it wasn’t that shocking thanks to our minor celebrity status in the local area. People called us by our first names all the time.
Most of them just weren’t pointing a gun… I’m sorry, a shitload of guns… at us. Dave shook his head and started inching backward toward the van. With a grimace, Lab Coat Guy reached into his pocket and pressed a button. In unison the guns around us cocked or their safety measurements slid off.
I flinched. Shit, that thing really did control the weapons mounted at every conceivable angle.
“David…” I whispered.
But to my surprise, he wasn’t paying attention to the fact that we were about to get shot. Instead, he had turned his head and was looking back over his shoulder. Past the van, into the distance. Shaking, I turned my attention to whatever had caught his eye and let out a little shriek.
A swarm of zombies crested a small hill in the road we had come up to find this place. There were probably at least a hundred, some jogging, others just shambling their way toward us without any real drive or purpose. Already I could hear their groaning moans and hisses of hunger.
“You see, the situation is deteriorating with every moment you wait,” Lab Coat Guy said as we returned our stares to him. He was looking past us at the coming zombie horde, too, and a sheen of sweat had broken out on his upper lip. “If I don’t allow you to leave, you’ll be eaten. Or I’ll have to shoot you. Either scenario doesn’t end well for you. So please, come inside and let me take care of that lot.”
Dave looked at me and back at the horde. They were within a tenth of a mile now. I could almost smell the death on their breath.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Drop everything and run, Sarah. Go inside!”
Within seconds, we shed our weapons in a pile at our feet and ran toward the warehouse. The faster zombies had reached us by that time and were at our heels. I felt their fingers brush my back as I rushed past the stranger who now held our lives in his hands. And then there was only the sound of automatic gunfire.
I spun around as we got behind him to find that Lab Coat Guy had depressed the button in his pocket. All the guns on the turrets fired at once, hitting the zombies in one continuous shot. The living dead lurched and danced with the impact of the bullets on their chests and more importantly, heads, then fell into briefly moaning piles of sludge and goo.
Lab Coat Guy turned toward us, his face impassive and almost bored. For a guy who had called on a pair of exterminators, he had extermination down pretty pat already.
“Well, now that that messy business is taken care of,” he said with a sheepish smile. “Do you have any other weapons I need to know about? Perhaps hidden in a shoe or inside your clothing?”
I frowned before I bent and pulled a knife from one boot and an old-fashioned Derringer Dave and I had thought was hilarious from the other. Dave removed the gun belt he wore under his shirt and we dropped them all at our feet.
“Very