Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, - [ereader manga .TXT] 📗

as he could, but saw nothing. He heard only rain.

In a detached way, he realized he was freezing, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t important. His body shook and it shuddered, but he couldn’t walk. His heart pounded in overdrive. His breathing grew faster and shallower. He couldn’t get enough oxygen. He’d faint if he didn’t get more, but he couldn’t. The air was drenched in water. He already felt like he was in the sea. Was he in the sea? Did he make it to the shore already? Was it time to swim?

No, he was still on the street. Wasn’t he?

God, what was happening?

He no longer knew which direction he was supposed to be going. He could hardly even stay upright. His head felt like it was caught in a whirlpool and his stomach fluttered they way it did when he leaned too far back in a chair. He bent his knees and reached for the ground.

Squatted. Placed his hands on the pavement. There was a good half-inch of water pouring over the street. His fingertips found gravel and grit.

Then someone bumped into him. He didn’t know who it was. Annie again most likely. But he smelled the stench of body odor and heard a deep guttural exhale, a half-grunt, half-sigh that sounded like it came from an animal.

Oh God. It was one of those things.

One of those things had just walked right into him.

He scrambled on all fours and ended up slipping and rolling onto his back. Water poured into his eyes and his nose. He jammed his eyes shut and blew out his breath.

No idea where that thing was. It seemed to have vanished. The feeling of panic ebbed slightly. He could think again.

He was on the street. And he had to move. He needed to stand. Walk to the water. Swim to the boat.

Shit. The others could be there by now. How long had he been standing there? They wouldn’t leave him, would they? And where was that thing that had just walked into him?

He stood up. And bumped into another one. It grunted. Its breath smelled like a carcass. It grabbed Parker’s arms with cold hands.

He screamed.

It wasn’t a horror-movie scream. It didn’t even last a full second. It was more of a startled gasp, really, or maybe a yelp. Completely involuntary on his part. But it was just enough that the thing that gripped him knew it found prey.

It tightened its grip and pushed into him. He felt it, but he couldn’t see it.

Jesus, where were its teeth?

What he did next was instinctive. He didn’t think anything through, didn’t plan, didn’t calculate. He just reacted. His arms were pinned to his side, so he kneed the thing in its groin and head-butted it in the face.

Only then did Parker realize the thing was shorter than him or he might have head-butted it right in the teeth.

It cried out in anger and pain and Parker shoved the thing down to the ground.

There was nothing he could do about what happened next.

It screamed.

If there was any doubt before about what their screams meant, there was not anymore. The sound had a perfectly clear and unambiguous purpose. It said, Found prey.

Parker stood. So much rain poured off his body that he felt heavy. He still couldn’t see, had no idea which direction he was facing, but he knew where that thing was. It was on the ground three feet in front of him. It screamed again and he kicked it in the face. He felt and heard a sickening crunch as its face broke. It flopped to the ground, silent.

He turned around, found the faint gray smudge of the sea in the distance, and ran. If he crashed into anything or anyone, he’d shove it aside or run right on over it.

He could not see the ground. Could not see his feet.

So he did not see the curb.

He didn’t go flying, exactly. His right foot just spun underneath him. He went up and then down.

He may as well have been hit by a bus. His abdomen slapped the ground like he’d just done a belly flop. Air exploded from his lungs. His stinging palms felt sandpapered. He tried to breathe and could not. He gasped for air, but his diaphragm and lungs refused to cooperate.

He heard footsteps in front of him and the faint sound of a human voice beneath the drum of the rain saying, “This way.” It sounded like Hughes, guiding the others.

Parker still couldn’t breathe. He got up onto his knees, but he still couldn’t breathe.

Everything stopped. He stopped hearing the rain, stopped feeling the wet and the cold, and completely forgot that those things were out there in the dark.

Because he couldn’t breathe.

Nothing else mattered until he could breathe. He keeled forward, desperate to draw breath, but he couldn’t.

He was going to suffocate.

But just as suddenly as he had stopped breathing, his lungs exploded with air. Parker took one gasping breath after another. He was not going to die on that sidewalk. Not if he got up and ran.

He stood again and felt like someone had stabbed an ice pick into his knee. His palms felt shredded to ribbons. He couldn’t run. Couldn’t walk without limping. He was just about done.

But he limped, dazed, certain he wouldn’t make it, but drowning now seemed better than being killed by one or more of those things. At least he wouldn’t turn into one of them.

The water was not far ahead of him. He heard splashing. His companions were wading in and pushing off toward the boat. He could see the water a little bit better as he got closer.

He heard Annie cry out, “I see the boat!”

Footsteps behind him. Footsteps moving fast. Running. Lots of them.

Screams behind him.

Those things knew where they were. Those things knew his companions were getting into the water.

Parker ran. He didn’t know how, but he did it. A switch flipped and the pain vanished from his knee, his hands, and his belly. He’d either make it to the water or die like a gazelle on the African Savannah in seconds.

He hit the water at full speed and it tripped him. Pinwheeled him forward and face-first into the sea. His injured knee slammed into a rock below the surface and the pain exploded again. He saw white flashes behind his eyes and felt his stomach leap up his throat, but he pushed himself into the dark water and swam ahead blindly.

Splashing behind him. Lots of splashing behind him. Those things had followed him in.

Why were they swimming? They didn’t jump in off the docks in Olympia, but now they were getting into the water?

He swam. Not properly the way he learned as a kid in the pool at the YMCA, just a frantic and panicked blind paddling scramble away from the shore. He was hyperventilating. He couldn’t help it. The adrenaline in his system reached its biological maximum. His heart pounded away like a hummingbird’s. He had to breathe fast and hard and deep and then even faster, but the water was almost ocean-like in its choppiness, and he got some in his mouth and his nose every time a wave swept into his face.

So much water washed over his head that he could no longer tell if he was above water or not. But he had to breathe, and he had to breathe fast, and he if he didn’t find the boat now he would drown.

He had no idea where it was. No idea any longer which way was the shore, so he slowed down and tried to stand on the bottom so he could fill his lungs and get his bearings, but his feet found no purchase. The sea had no bottom. He had swum too far, he was sinking, and he was going to drown. Those things were somewhere behind him, but he was going to drown.

But then his feet touched the bottom. He was submerged over his head, but his feet found the bottom, and he pushed upward as hard as he could, ignoring the explosive pain in his knee, and launched himself back toward the surface.

His face broke through and he gasped. Go. Just go. The boat has to be up ahead somewhere.

Annie’s voice cried out ahead of him.

“I found the boat!”

He could barely hear her over the rain and the waves.

Something gasped and gurgled and splashed much closer behind him.

Go. Toward Annie’s voice and don’t stop until your hands grasp that ladder.

He swam. And this time he did it correctly, the way he was taught. No furious dog paddling, but the proper crawl stroke with the proper method of breathing.

“Here!” Annie cried. “Here!”

She just might save his life.

The surface of the sea exploded with light from the boat. Someone had flipped on the power switch and turned the darkness to daylight.

“Parker!” Annie screamed from the deck. He saw her face. Pure terror and shock and alarm at what she was seeing behind him. “Parker, hurry!” she shouted, hysterical now.

Somehow he swam faster. He didn’t think it was possible. He felt like a torpedo on the water’s surface, his feet behind him kicking in the water like a propeller. And he felt a strange sort of high and detachment. A deep and serious calm settled inside him. He moved fast, but time seemed to slow.