Free Time of Death Book 2: Asylum (A Zombie Novel) by Shana Festa

only
inches of visibility. My anxiety shot up as Meg flew past me,
yipping with glee, and went under. The seconds until she
reappeared, laughing, were the longest of my life and I let out the
breath I'd been holding in a forceful gust.
    "Holy crap! It's freezing!"
    I turned, taking deep breaths to calm my
racing heart, and found Daphne standing in front of me doing her
trademark full-butt wag and looking like a drowned rat. My mouth
formed an exaggerated circle, and I held out my hands shaking them
toward the dog as I gurgled out an exasperated AHHH sound. I shook
my hands between the dog and Jake, never closing my mouth, and
continued to make that weird noise. Anyone who's ever seen Ace
Ventura: Pet Detective will remember him doing something similar
when he got shot in the legs.
    "You took the dog down the slide?" I
sputtered out accusingly at Jake, who wore the look of a guilty
man.
    Putting his hands up to deflect the blame, he
defended himself the best way he knew how. He let someone else take
the fall. "It wasn't me. Pete did it!"
    "Oh, hell no, man. I'm not taking that bullet
for you. Take it like a man." He slapped Jake on the back.
    "Okay, fine, it was me. But she pressured me
into it!"
    "Right. I can see that. Not!" I softened a
bit. She did look like a happy drowned rat after all. I pulled Jake
off to the side, not wanting the others to hear our conversation.
"What if one of them is in the water?" I asked.
    "We're too far off shore and the water's too
deep here for that to be an issue. Even if the bottom was covered
with them, they wouldn't be able to get near us. We need this, Em.
Look at them, look how happy they are."
    He was right, once again. Damn, I really
hated when he made sense. The others looked as if they didn't have
a care in the world. The joy on their faces from this small victory
was plainly visible.
    I was afraid of the water before the end of
the world; there was no way I was going down that slide. Forget
zombies, Jaws kept me on dry land.
    The sun was still high enough to heat the
water in the newly-filled hot tub so that it wasn't a shock to my
system when I lowered myself into its contoured seat.
    "This is heavenly," I admitted. "Now all I
need is a bar of soap and my life will be complete." Jake slid into
the seat next to me, and we were soon joined by everyone else. I
bent my legs to let Daphne stand on my knees, half submerged. Jake
flicked water at her, and she kept snapping at the flying droplets
trying to catch them. With my head resting on the built-in pillow,
I closed my eyes and soaked up the relaxing sun. Every once in a
while I heard Jake snap at the dog to stop drinking the water.
    "Too bad we can't turn on the bubbles," said
Meg wistfully.
    "Who says we can't?" proclaimed Vinny. We
waited for him to flip a switch, but he didn't move. Well, okay,
that's not entirely true. He moved, slightly leaned to one side,
and a second later the water bubbled beside him.
    "Vinn-y!" screamed Meg, dragging out the Y
sound in his name in a high-pitched shriek.
    Both Jake and Vinny were laughing
uncontrollably, Meg was shrieking, and Peter stared open-mouthed at
my brother-in-law, aghast at his contribution to the tub.
    When their laugher died down, I looked at
Jake and asked, "So where are we exactly?"
    "Halfway between Fort Myers and Cape Coral.
The Cape Coral Bridge is over there." He pointed over my shoulder
and I looked, squinting to make out the destroyed bridge. A shudder
ran through my body, thinking of the last time I was on the bridge
searching for Jake. The day Sanchez was bitten and hid it from us,
only to turn and kill nearly all our people inside Target.
    Jake continued on, "I think we should head
south to the shopping district and do some scouting. It seems like
residential areas are bad news. Maybe we'll have some luck in less
populated areas of town."
    "We'll need to go sooner than later, like
tomorrow," added Vinny. "I don't like cutting it so close with
rations."
    His statement