Free Dead Drunk II: Dawn of the Deadbeats (Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time Book 2) by Richard Johnson Page B

Padma
waved her arms over her head instead. “Swim over here!” The survivors started
to dog paddle towards the pumping station as they heard her voice. “You okay?”
she asked.
    There was no
answer and Jackie shook her head, a grim look on her face. “See?”
    “Say
something, anything!” Padma yelled, but there was still no reply from any of
the injured people. No screams, no pained whimpers, nothing. Just quiet
swimming and expressionless faces. Now they were within ten yards of the
ladder, close enough that the girls could see their injuries, including
multiple bite marks.
    Jackie
immediately pointed her flare gun at the growing jet-fuel slick and fired,
setting the swimmers ablaze in an instant. The zombies didn’t have the sense to
dive away from the flames and burned up in the inferno. Unfortunately the
current brought the flames right up to Jackie’s yacht, and in seconds it too
was engulfed.
    The yacht
smoldered for a while as the women sat and watched, stunned by their sudden
loss. Then Jackie’s boat, called Obsidian for her favorite color,
slipped into Lake Michigan and disappeared from sight. With it went all hope of
escape.
     
     
    *      
                *                      
*
     
     
    Mary flicked
her wrist and pushed the knife in effortlessly as the warm guts spilled onto
the dock. The three-pound rainbow trout shuttered briefly and went still. It
wasn’t much for four adults, but it was dinner.
    A week had
passed since they’d been stranded on the pumping station. The girls had little
clue of what was transpiring in the rest of the world, and it was probably a
good thing. The United States had been overrun by a manmade virus and
simultaneously invaded by China, it had nuked its enemies in retaliation, and
Charlie and his friends had settled into a life of cat food and expired beer.
    But getting
marooned at the pumping station had been more than a little lucky. Mary and the
others had found themselves isolated from the rampaging hordes of cannibals and
separated from the fires and looting in the city. In addition, the place was
equipped with canned goods, drinking water, and two comfortable bedrooms. The
late Frank had even left behind his fishing rod and lures, which Mary was using
to great effect in order to supplement their meals of corn and baked beans.
    It was a
tedious existence, but it was safe – for the time being, anyway. If the lake
froze during the winter, however, things would rapidly take a turn for the
worse. And so ideas for escape were never far from their thoughts.
    For now,
though, dinner took precedence and Mary brought the catch of the day in to be
cooked on a propane grill. Her fishing skills had come in handy and earned her
respect from Jackie and Padma… but not so much from Jen.
    Over the past
few years Jen had grown more like her stuck up fiancé, Blake, and Mary proved
to be an easy target for her diatribes. She had a snide comment for everything
the newcomer did, whether it was how she dressed, talked, cooked, or even
slept. Right now it was the way Mary was singing hymns while cooking fish.
    “You never
shut up, do you? I’m surprised you don’t get sun burns on your tongue.”
    “Jen, come
on,” Padma chided as Mary looked down and mumbled something under her breath.
    “I just don’t
see what’s worth singing about at the moment. This sucks. I’m bored out of my
mind, it’s hot as hell, who knows if we’ll ever get off this dump, and god
knows what will happen if we do.”
    Padma touched
her friend’s shoulder. “We all deal with grief in different ways.”
    “I can sing
if I want to,” Mary chimed in.
    “Shhh, the
grownups are talking,” Jen shot back.
    “I’m a
grown—”
    “Grownups
don’t push shopping carts into corrals, sweetie.”
    Padma’s
attractive face hardened. “Why don’t you wake Jackie and tell her it’s almost
time to eat?”
    Jen rolled
her eyes and left as Padma started