Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [51]
The little boy suddenly popped his head between us and stared off toward the zombies.
“You think there might be people still alive in there?” he asked with a shiver.
I nodded. “With all that interest, I’d guess it’s a strong possibility.”
His head disappeared, but I heard him moving around in the back and loading up weapons. As we came to a stop about a hundred yards from the flipped car, he leaned forward and handed me a rifle and a 9mm, both fully loaded. I looked back toward him in surprise.
“Thanks, Kid. You might come in handy after all.”
He grinned and I swear he also blushed, but Dave interrupted our “moment” by maneuvering the net gun into his lap.
“Talk later. Let’s do this,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
I nodded. “I’m going to roll up until I’m as close as I can get. Take the shot and get one of them if you can. One of us will shoot the other and then we can deal with whatever’s in that car.”
Dave nodded and slowly rolled the passenger window down fully. After some grunting, he managed to get the unwieldy net gun positioned to point it outside. He had his hand on the release mechanism when I started to roll forward again, doing my best to be both silent and deadly.
The zombies were so focused on whatever they were eating that they didn’t even notice. Perfect.
“Now!” I whispered just beneath my breath.
Dave shot me a glare (apparently he didn’t need my direction) before he lined up the gun as best he could and released the net toward the male zombie who was leaning over the car. The thing looked almost nonchalant, like a mechanic looking at your car to say, “Well, there’s your problem, lady. Your car’s been swarmed by zombies.”
All the zombie needed was a cigarette hanging from his mouth and it would have been beyond perfect. Until the net hit him.
Pallets and lawn furniture didn’t do justice to what it was like to catch a zombie in a glorified butterfly net. He flew back against the car as the net closed around him, pinning him to the metal.
His feet went out from under him and he collapsed back, thrashing and whining as he clawed and chewed helplessly at the netting. His movements only tangled him more, though, and unlike a human who would probably stop thrashing once the contraption started to twist and hurt him, the zombie didn’t. Soon he was all wrapped up, mangled arms bent at odd angles behind and above him, and legs all akimbo.
Meanwhile the other zombie who had been half in the car window, pawing at whatever was left in there, popped out, his face covered with blood and his red eyes bright with killing frenzy. He turned toward us with a guttural, angry roar.
“Gun!” Dave hollered.
The Kid handed forward a semi-automatic M1A and Dave repositioned himself on the window ledge. He fired off a shot just as the zombie lunged toward him and the creature dropped straight down and out of our line of sight with just a final whimper.
“Go, go!” Dave said as he immediately launched out of the van and hustled toward the flipped car with me and Robbie right behind him.
I thought he might go for the captured zombie first, since I had no idea how long he would stay stuck by the netting, but instead Dave went to the window of the vehicle without even double-checking our quarry (talk about making mistakes that could get a person killed, David).
He yanked away from the vehicle almost immediately and when he looked at me, his face was pale.
“What?” I whispered, nudging The Kid to keep his guns trained on the zombie as I moved to the window myself.
I peeked inside. It was a bloody mess but what had happened was clear enough. A girl probably about Robbie’s age was in the back, her head caved in from the impact of the accident. But by the blood around her mouth and on her nails, it seemed like maybe she had been turned before the car flipped. She had obviously attacked the younger boy who was next to her on the seat, slumped against the door. He was what the zombies had been eating and it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Dad had been driving and was apparently distracted by the kids “fighting” in the