Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [31]
I stared at his dead body for a long moment, almost in disbelief. Then I slowly lifted my gaze to the awning. Dave stood on the edge, his rifle trained on the dead body before me.
“What the hell?” I called up as he turned the weapon away from me. “What the hell, David?”
He shrugged and looked anything but apologetic. “Look, it didn’t work and until I figure out the timing on the pulley, I won’t take the risk with your life that he’d catch you while you were running.”
“Shit, David, I could have jogged that prick around the lot for the whole day and kept trying to catch him.”
I threw up my hands and kicked the zombie to expel some of my frustration. My boot hit soft flesh with a sickening thunk. Great, now I had mung on my boots and even though that was my own fault, I’d decided to blame David for it, too.
My husband turned his face. “Yeah, and eventually the living dead coming over here from the edge of the parking lot would have reached us and then what?”
I stomped my foot (spraying ick on the pavement around me) and clenched my fists straight down at my sides.
“Well, first, the ones out there are lurching, not running, and you know they wouldn’t have started running until they could smell me, which would have taken half an hour at least. And when that happened, then you could have killed some of them. But shit, man, at least give the plan a chance. We’re never going to catch one if you give up and start throwing machetes the second a zombie looks at me cross-eyed.”
“I’m not even sure fucking catching these freaks is a smart idea,” he said with a deepening frown. “Is it really worth the risk?”
“Christ, stop being such a girl!” I snapped. “I mean, we could really do something and you’re ninnying around!”
There was a long silence from above and then Dave softly said, “Well, excuse me for trying to look after you.”
That shut me up. For a long moment we just looked at each other, kind of like the big zombie and I had around the corner. But this stare was waaaay more uncomfortable. Finally, he turned away.
“I’ll reset the pulley. From what I saw, I think I might have figured out the timing on it.”
I nodded as I turned back toward the parking lot with a sigh. I didn’t like fighting. We’d done enough of that in our life B.Z.
I guess I should have apologized or maybe gone up on the roof to talk it out with him, but before I could make any decisions about my husband, I saw something off in the distance that caught my eye. A flash of movement that was too quick and certain to be from a zombie.
I dropped down to grab my rifle and leaned it across my lap as I stared through the scope. I scanned the distance for the movement again and when I found it I nearly fell over.
“Holy shit!” I cried as I staggered to my feet. “Reset it, reset it!”
“I am,” Dave grunted from above. “Almost done, what’s your rush?”
“There’s a kid!” I cried as I trained my rifle on the scene unfolding across the lot. “And he’s got zombies on his tail.”
“What?” Dave asked as the netting dropped back on the pavement. He lifted his own gun and stared at the lot.
We both watched as the kid, maybe about ten or twelve—it was hard to tell from this distance—sprinted through the lot toward us. Behind him were two zombies, doing that run that is so Goddamned disturbing, no matter how much time has gone by and no matter how many times you see it. Seriously, the dead shouldn’t jog.
Although, to be fair, before all this started I was of the belief that I should never jog either unless something was chasing me.
So then things started chasing me.
But I digress. The poor kid was pretty athletic, actually. The zombies were still at an impressive distance behind him and he wasn’t allowing them to catch up.
“I’ve got the lead in my sights,” Dave said from above. “I’m taking the shot.”
I nodded and watched in my own scope as the explosive sound of my husband’s gun firing was quickly followed by the lead zombie