Battlefield Z Everglades Zombie_the Battlefield Z series Read online

  “Dad, I’m going home. Bis,” said the Boy.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Where?”

  “Her house, I think,” he answered.

  “Where was the sign?”

  “Gnarly Surf Shack.”

  This time the nod was real. It was a breakfast spot we went to every visit to the beach. Get to the sand early to find a spot to park and walk up the main strip to a little outdoor café on the river next to the drawbridge.

  She loved it. We loved it.

  “Boat?” I turned to Brian.

  “We get back to the bus and go get her,” he said with an enthusiasm I didn’t feel.

  He hadn’t been in a car crash and a firefight, so he could feel that way.

  I looked past them to the window. Long shadows stretched across the sand as the sun dipped toward the Gulf on the other side of the state.

  She was an hour away.

  One hour.

  Twenty minutes in the boat. Twenty minutes back to the bus. Ten minutes to get to the river from where we were.

  Two hours to her house.

  A trip that had taken far too long brought me right back to where I started. Where I hid and lost my kids the first time.

  “Let’s get moving,” I said.

  “We think we should go in the morning,” said Brian.

  He bit his lip and glanced over his shoulder for support from the others. They nodded their heads.

  “We can camp in the bus if we lose daylight,” I said.

  “It’s not just that,” Peg said. “We’re tired. You’re tired. We’ve been going hard for weeks.”

  She was right.

  But we were only two hours from her. I said as much.

  “But if she’s not there when we arrive,” said Brian. “If there’s another note that sends us someplace else, we’ll be spending the night in Z central.”

  He motioned to the mansion.

  “We have a good spot for the night. We can leave at dawn.”

  “There are men out there hunting us,” I reminded him.

  “They don’t know we’re here,” said Tyler.

  “You need to rest,” Bem said.

  The Boy nodded. I could see the others too. All nodding. All agreeing with each other.

  I stood up and wobbled. Not much. But the blow to my head may have had something to do with it.

  Anna put her hand on top of mine and I realized I was holding the edge of the counter for balance.

  “Okay,” I said.

  They watched me, but no one said anything. Guess my wobble made them wonder. Made them worry.

  Made me worry too. The world wasn’t tilting sideways yet, and vertigo hadn’t started a doppler tunnel effect.

  Still, I could use some rest. Maybe not sleep, because I think the rule is concussions shouldn’t go to sleep. But rest and food would be good.

  “Food?”

  There was much shaking of sad heads around me.

  “Everywhere we look is empty,” said Brian.

  The hunters, whoever they were, had scavenged the entire island. I almost made the argument that we should take the boat and fish along the way, but kept my mouth shut instead.

  We would go to bed without supper that night. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I sat up in the dark and glared at the room around me.

  There were mattresses and comforters spread on the tile floor around the fireplace, sleeping bodies curled or splayed on them.

  I studied the darkness for what disturbed me.

  Raymer snored. Lou whimpered, some dream making her foot twitch.

  Anna lay still next to me, the Boy on one side of her, Bem and Tyler on the other. Close enough that it made me want to growl.

  But it wasn’t in the house.

  Something outside, some noise or shadow flitting across the glowing cat smile of the crescent moon making the sand glow two shades brighter than the dark water.

  I pushed to the edge of the mattress and stood, picked my way across the cold tile to the floor to ceiling windows that made up the rear wall.

  I made an argument for sleeping upstairs, but this room was big enough for all of us. There was safety in numbers, even if the glass made me feel exposed.

  The darkness beyond stretched unbroken to the north and south, curving with the shoreline.

  Once, before the Z, I had gone out in a boat after dark and the Florida coast looked like Christmas lights in the night. There were dark places along the way, natural conservation areas, especially around Cape Canaveral and the Space Center.

  But here, where we were, there was a long line of condos and developments that stretched as far north as St. Augustine. A couple of thousand buildings facing the water.

  A few hundred more to the south.

  All dark. All empty.

  A shadow moved across the sand. A body. Too quick to be a Z.

  Trying to sneak.

  We hadn’t made it back to the mansion unseen. Or maybe our feeble fire stood out like a lighthouse through the glass windows, and we were just too cocky, too naïve to notice.

  Someone did though, and my money was on the hunters.

  They found us, and they were moving in.

  I opened my mouth to say something. To wake the others and get everyone moving.

  But to where?

  A mad dash for the boat in the dark?

  How many would we lose that way? How safe would that be?

  Would we be running into a trap? An ambush set up and waiting for the bodies on the beach to flush us out?

  I shook my head and ignored the ache at the base of my skull. The gash there probably needed stitches and I was a good candidate for a concussion, but there was no time for pain.

  The thing about running long distances was learning to compartmentalize and ignore the aches. They were there, but they couldn’t stop you.

  I turned back to the room and found the Boy standing by the fireplace.

  He picked his way over to me.

  “You saw something,” he mouthed into my ear.

  I nodded.

  “Do you want my help?”

  I nodded again.

  “Stay here. No one goes out,” I whispered into his ear.

  “I can back you,” he answered.

  “This is backing me. Keep them safe. Keep them quiet if they wake.”

  I leaned back, but a shadow fell across his face and I couldn’t see his reaction. I wasn’t sure if he could see mine either. The moon was bright outside, but in here, all it offered was shapes and insinuations.

  The Boy reached for my hand and put it on top of his head. I curled my fingers into his hair and he nodded, letting me know he was following my play.

  I patted his face with my palm, then trailed my finger along the wall to the stairs and climbed them.

  It was darker upstairs.

  The long tall windows below let in meager light from the moon, but up there, the doors to the rooms were closed.

  I played the part of a blind man feeling my way to a door, twisted the knob and slipped into one of the bedrooms we had taken a mattress from.

  I moved slow toward the window and wondered if I could be seen from the beach as I reached through the curtain and slid up the double paned glass.

  It looked over a faux balcony, a narrow one foot space with a balustrade that led to the true balcony off the master bedroom. The design was for effect, but it would have been smarter for me to go back in and exit through the master.

  As it was, I slid over the sill of the window and edged to the true balcony. I slipped over the side, made my way to the corner and shimmied down the slick column.

  Slipped on the salt crushed thin marble. My boots made too much noise as I landed, and I crouched in the shadow of the column, waiting to see if I had been heard.

  There were four shadows moving across the beach, two from either direction.

  Closer now. They slippe
d up the shallow dune and climbed onto the walkway, skipping the gate.

  Guess they didn’t want to chance a squeak.

  Four on one. I hated those odds, but I had surprise on my side.

  They hit the wide pool deck and split up again. Two moving on the pavers toward where I was hiding, the other two on the far side of the patio.

  Far enough in the dark that it was difficult to make out details on them.

  I hoped that would work to my advantage, and wished I had woken Tyler and Byron as additional back up.

  The time for wishing was over.

  The two shadows evolved into men, gun toting hunters with eyes locked on the glass. Watching for movement. Checking to make sure they weren’t discovered.

  The first one passed the column I was behind and I held my breath. The second followed and two steps past me, I reached out, grabbed his chin and lifted. I made a swipe with my other hand and cursed as blood squirted out of his neck and made a wet, slopping sound on the tile pavers.

  The first one turned, enough time to open his mouth and make a gurgle before I jammed the point of the knife home in his Adam’s apple.

  He dropped the gun and it clattered on the bricks.

  The other two opened up, muzzle flashes crackling in the dark. I dropped to the deck and rolled for the column.

  Bullets chewed up the brick pavers, razor sharp chips slicing through the skin on my arm and face.

  Two single shots rang out and the hail of fire stopped.

  I glanced up and could see the shadow of the Boy in the door behind two mounds on the deck.

  He stepped aside and Byron moved past him to strip the fallen of their weapons and ammunition.

  “There’ll be more,” he called out.

  There were.

  Bullets sailed over his head and crashed the windows, showering the group inside in a rain of crystalized glass.

  More shadows on the beach, just a couple of bodies shooting as they ran toward the boardwalk from the house to the sand.

  The gate squeaked open as Byron crawled toward the door. I didn’t see the Boy and panic clenched my gut. Had he been hit?

  No time to check. I grabbed the rifle from number two, sliced the strap that trapped it under the dead weight of his body and aimed at the end of the wooden sidewalk where it touched the deck.

  The shadows kept firing as they ran, reached the brick pavers and I opened up in quick bursts.

  They pitched forward, sideways and one slid across the deck and dropped into the pool.

  Then the men up front opened fire.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There is no alarm clock quite like a machine gun redecorating the walls of the house you happen to be hiding inside.

  The builders of the home weren’t cheap. They used real marble and thick brick under the stucco walls, so the bullets only sounded like thunder slapping the sides of the house.

  The windows were another story.

  When the four now dead men tried to make their beach run toward us and took out the wall of windows, they woke everyone up in a hail of clattering glass.

  The front door and windows facing the street shattered under the new assault.

  “Keep low!” I heard Brian scream and people crawled out of the house and onto the pool deck.

  My people.

  “Beach!” I pointed and The Boy nodded from the ground where he cowered.

  I watched him whisper into the ears of people as they crawled past him, and then nodded as they shimmied around the pool and moved toward the wooden boardwalk.

  I strapped the stolen rifle to my back and shimmied up the marble column to the balcony.

  I wish I could say it took no time. That it was easy. That my monkey like dexterity combined with athletic prowess made the climb almost super heroic easy.

  And if I lived to retell it, and no one who was watching contradicted me, that would be my story.

  But in reality, there was grunting. And groaning. Some moaning. My forearms burned as I wrapped them around the marble. My feet cramped as I gripped with all I had.

  Everyone made it to the sand before I made it to the balcony.

  I wanted to scream to them to hide in the dunes, but I was too busy trying to catch my breath.

  Brian or Byron directed them there anyway.

  Then whoever was shooting out front came in through the front door and lit up the inside of the mansion.

  I stumbled across the upper balcony and this time used the master bedroom door.

  The inside landing was still dark, except for the yellow muzzle flashes of automatic weapons blinking like lightning from the room below.

  I laid down, aimed through the rails and sighted on a group of shadows that congregated inside the door.

  None of them survived.

  There were others though, inside the main living room, and outside the front door.

  They zeroed in on my shots and tried to remove my hiding spot.

  But I wasn’t there. I moved further back in the darkness.

  Something small, round and sounded like a baseball thudded onto the carpet five feet away.

  I sprinted through the bedroom, made the door to the balcony when the world blew up around me.

  Lifted me up, sent me over the rail. So fast I didn’t have time to windmill. To scream.

  Just a quick vision of the black smooth deck rushing up to meet my face.

  Then muck.

  Stinking green muck and a belly flop into the rancid waters of the pool.

  I crashed into the dead guy floating in the water and floundered up, let go of the rifle that was trying to drag me down.

  Bounced my forehead off the edge of the pool. Crawled out and scraped toward the boardwalk.

  A hand reached over the side of the wood and yanked me into the dunes, then dragged me into the shadows under the walkway.

  Someone put a finger on my lips, but they need not have bothered. The edge of the board clipped my rib as they pulled and I didn’t have enough air to breath, let alone scream.

  Bootsteps pounded above us. Sand rained down through the cracks in the board.

  “Where are they?” a gravelly voice rasped. “Keep searching.”

  I could have shot him. If I had a gun. Mine was at the bottom of the swimming pool.

  I reached for Brian’s and he pushed my hand away. I dug for my knife instead, but someone else pinned that hand to my side.

  Hot breath breezed into my ear as Anna leaned her head into mine. Willing me to be still. Willing me to be quiet.

  I listened to what they weren’t saying and kept still.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We could see them searching the beach as dawn broke over the ocean. The horizon slipped from black to purple to the gray light of morning just before the sun peeked up.

  They were looking for tracks, and when they didn’t find them, I wasn’t sure what they would do.

  We hid in the darkness under the boardwalk as a dozen tromped out to the sand, and back again. Crunching on the shattered glass.

  There would be enough light soon to follow the water trail I left from the pool to the edge of the walkway.

  That might be enough to make them look.

  Whoever was directing the search didn’t make the men fan out. He sent them south, searching from shore to the edge of the dune.

  I grabbed Brian by the shirt and pulled his ear close to my mouth.

  “Go,” I breathed and pointed north. “Stay inside the dune.”

  He nodded.

  There was a shallow depression between the dunes and the million dollar homes that lined the sea front.

  I hoped we could make it a few houses up or more, then cut inside to the road and run for the river where the promised boat waited.

  Brian tapped Peg, who in turn tapped Anna.

  They began crawling, each tapping the next in line.