Apocalypse of the Dead. Joe Mckinney

their windshields. Here and there they saw a tree.

      Richardson counted sixteen zombies, all of them within fifty yards of their position and closing fast.

      “Let’s go,” Barnes said.

      He was already moving out, going quickly, but without splashing. It was harder for Richardson. He was terrified of moving through water, especially when he couldn’t see his feet. He had a terrible feeling that the infected were just below the surface, waiting to grab him, even though he knew that to be impossible. The infected weren’t truly dead, after all. They needed to breathe to go on hunting.

      As they were moving forward, he tripped over the curb of a traffic island and went face-first into the water. When he came up, spluttering and blinking the water from his eyes, he saw that Barnes was already a good ten yards ahead of him.

      He ran forward, making a terrific splash.

      But Barnes didn’t try to quiet him. One of the zombies had closed the distance between them, and Barnes leveled his AR-15 and dropped him with one shot.

      Two others were close by and he dropped them as well. The pools of blood spreading out around the dead zombies turned green as they sank.

      Barnes turned back to Richardson and said, “Heads up. Behind you.”

      Richardson twisted around.

      A male zombie, the face a blotchy pattern of scabs and abscessed wounds, was less than ten feet from him. He hadn’t heard it moving behind him, he realized. And then another thought occurred to him. This was one of the later-stage zombies. It didn’t move with the same clumsy gait. The milky film had cleared from its eyes. The dead, vacant stare was gone. In its place was a feral intensity, the deliberateness of a hunter.

      “Shoot it,” Barnes ordered.

      Richardson muttered an acknowledgment and raised his rifle and fired.

      His first shot hit the zombie in the neck and sent it spiraling backward into the water.

      Richardson got it in the head with his second shot.

      He heard firing behind him. Barnes had zombies on three sides, but he was still calm. His firing was controlled, his pattern deliberate. One after another, the zombies went down until only a few remained, and those farther off, not yet a threat.

      The battle had lasted perhaps twenty seconds, but Barnes had managed to drop a dozen or more of the infected. Richardson was in awe.

      “Be careful,” Barnes said. “Don’t get too close to them. They may look dead, but it’s always possible for one of them to pop up suddenly.”

      Richardson nodded.

      “Come on. Let’s go.”

      Barnes led him to a five-story building a couple hundred yards away. All the windows and doors had been blasted inward during the storms and the first floor was choked with debris, lath visible through the walls. Water came up to the bottom of the few pictures still on the walls and lapped at the top of the receptionist’s counter toward the back.

      “Come on,” Barnes said. “We’re headed for the roof.”

      They found the stairs and started up, water pouring out of their flight suits as they moved up to the second floor.

      Richardson stayed behind Barnes, letting him make sure the way was clear before they proceeded upward again. Every floor was a repeat of the one below it, wrecked, the walls peeling, the carpet dark and moldy beneath their boots. The place smelled of seawater and sewage and rot.

      When they reached the roof, Barnes moved immediately to the edge and looked down.

      Richardson moved in beside him.

      Below, a few zombies were moving toward the fallen corpses. Richardson knew that these later-stage zombies were cannibals, and wouldn’t hesitate at an easy meal.

      He was watching one pack of zombies eating a floating corpse when all of a sudden the corpse was yanked under the water. One of the zombies refused to let go of his meal and was pulled down with it. He resurfaced about twenty feet away, but with one arm bitten off at the elbow.

      “What the hell was that?” Richardson said.

      Barnes watched the zombie get to its feet and just stand there with a vacant expression on its face.

      A moment later, it was pulled under again.

      “What’s down there?”

      “Tiger shark, probably.”

      “A tiger shark? You’re kidding.”

      “They’ve been known to come in this far during high tide,” Barnes said. “And we did put a lot of blood in the water.”

      He stood up then and took the radio from his tactical vest.

      “Quarter Four-One to Dispatch,” he said.

      “Go ahead, Quarter Four-One.”

      “Quarter Four-One, we’ve set up on the roof of the Clear Lake Title Office. Our situation is stable at present, no injuries. Request evac A-sap.”

      There was a long pause.

      “Quarter Four-One?” Barnes said.

      “We read you, Quarter Four-One. Negative on your request. Evac is not possible from your current location.”

      Barnes looked at Richardson and frowned. “What the fuck?” he said. He keyed up his radio again. “Quarter Four-One, you did copy my transmission, didn’t you? Our situation is stable, but urgent. We are not injured. We need immediate evac.”

      The radio was silent.

      Barnes tried again, but got nothing.

      “Fuck,” he said, and clipped his radio back onto his tactical vest.

      “What does that mean?” Richardson said. “Why won’t they answer you?”

      “What the fuck do you think it means?”

      Barnes sat down against an air duct and took a Snickers bar from his vest. “Might as well get comfortable,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere for a while.”

      CHAPTER 7

      Her grandkids said they wanted to go down to the estuary, and Margaret O’Brien figured, sure, that’d be okay. She had them for the weekend while Grace, her daughter, was on a business trip in Atlanta, and frankly, she thought she was doing pretty well. The kids fought and bickered with each other every chance they got, that was true, and Randy, who was seven, tattled constantly on his sister, Britney, who was ten, but the trick to kids was just to keep them occupied. They had something to do, they behaved. Grace acted like Margaret had forgotten everything about children. Ha! She’d raised three daughters, hadn’t she? And she’d done it as a young widow, too. She didn’t have a wealthy ex-husband paying her alimony. She hadn’t forgotten everything she’d learned about raising kids. She was sixty-eight, sure, but she wasn’t senile. Not yet, anyway.

      “Look, Ma, I’m not saying you forgot anything,” Grace had said, once again holding out the book she’d been trying to unload on her for the last twenty minutes. “All I’m saying is—”

      Margaret held up one of her small, chubby hands.

      “Don’t,” she said. Margaret, short, thick about the middle with a generous bust and a full head of brown hair that was only now starting to turn gray, was born Margaret Stephanides, and sometimes, when she argued with her daughters, the Greek blood in her fanned hot. She took one look at the book, Siblings Without Rivalries it was called, and said, “This is the book you think is going to teach me about taking care of children? Bah. Grace, you’re going away for the three days. You don’t think I can handle myself for three days? What do you think, I’m going to let them steal a car or something?”

      “No, Ma, I just—”

      The