High Water Read online

  Pete gasped, feeling the swollen tissue of his fist searing. The pain was hot needles driven into his knuckles by a ball peen hammer. Pain was his body’s advice for him to stop fighting. A click from behind told him that the door was now open. Clutching his injured fist, he stepped backwards through the portal just as more figures ran out of the darkness. As soon as he was inside the dimly lit corridor, Liz slammed the steel door shut. The click of the door handle and hammering of fists on the door indicated that it had successfully locked behind him.

  They both paused for a moment, trying to catch their breath. Pete tried to flex his right hand. His pinky was definitely broken.

  Liz bear hugged him before they could start moving again. For another silent moment, they stayed that way.

  “We’re okay, we’re okay, Liz,” Pete said, hoping it was true. She nodded and broke away. Together they hustled through the empty locker room, its confines cool and clammy. Next they passed into the hallway leading to the external door. It was closed.

  “Fuck it,” he said, and he slammed open the door’s push bar with his foot. The door’s opening let through a clamor of sound and light. A noisy commuter train’s passing only yards away turned into a screech as it hit its brakes. He hoped they knew better than to stop.

  Walter was nowhere to be seen.

  “He’s not here!” Liz yelled over the sound of the train. “Let’s go back to your car,” she shouted and began to pull Pete in the direction of the main parking lot.

  At the end of the alley opposite the main parking lot, a pair of headlights flashed once and then went dark. Thrilled, Liz and Pete exchanged grins. As they ran up, he saw that the front windshield was cracked. Someone sat calmly in the driver’s seat, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

  Pete opened the door to hear Walter remark that, “This ain’t a fucking taxi.”

  Relieved, Pete laughed, “Good to see you too.” A recognizable odor hit him as he slid over to let Liz into the back seat. “Why does it smell like bong water in here?” Pete asked without hesitation.

  “Broke Challenger.”

  “You what?”

  Walter shrugged. “Sorry.” He gestured to the foot-well of the passenger seat. A mess of broken glass lay gleaming in the dark.

  “Dude, why did you have the bong in the car? Are you serious? What the fuck?”

  “I already said I was sorry.”

  “Goddamnit Walter.” Pete sighed and rubbed at his eyes.

  “You all look terrible,” Walter said casually. His spare way with words was one of those constants, like the procession of the equinox.

  “Well thanks, Walt,” Liz said sarcastically. He was right, though. They were both smeared with sticky blood slowly drying and stippled in bruises of varying colors.

  “It’s all relative. You should see what it looks like in there,” Pete said, trying to forget that his favorite bong was a goner. “How did you stay hidden?”

  Walter grinned, his eyes lighting up in the darkness. “This light is flattering on me.” Laughing, Pete and Liz clapped him on the shoulders and set to putting on their seat belts.

  After so much turmoil, so much pain and violence, Pete felt his mind slide back into a more relaxed state. Two of his favorite people in the world were here and they were all safe, at least for the moment. The hope soaring in his chest was intoxicating, the thought of safety and security a balm for his soul. He didn’t dare vocalize thoughts of escape, but couldn’t put his finger on the reason why. He realized that neither had anyone else.

  When they were strapped in, Walter put the car in gear and hit the gas. He looked expectantly at them in the rear view.

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “Something’s in the water, Walter. The pool concert turned into a fucking bloodbath,” Pete explained, feeling like that summed it up.

  Liz added, “The cops that showed up are probably all dead.”

  “Not probably. Check this out,” Walter said, rolling into the main parking lot.

  The poolside massacre had been horrific, but under the bright lighting the parking lot seemed worse. More than one car fire sent pillars of smoke into the air, the dancing flames lapping at the vehicle fuel supplies. A naked man with a gruesome exit wound in his shoulder whaled on a man in uniform laying facedown. Cruising past and around some abandoned vehicles, the Cutlass passed another squad car with an officer slumped over the hood. The unfortunate man’s head had been pulverized, his brain lying in a pink mound at his feet.

  “Holy mackerel!” said Liz in awe.

  Walter frowned into the rear view mirror. “Who says ‘holy mackerel’ about a brained cop?” Pete smiled in spite of the circumstance. He looked to Liz, but she continued to stare out the window silently.

  From his vantage point, the old casino billboard could be seen in all its glory. The ad’s pair of painted breasts watched over the carnage. Partygoers milled around the parking lot, snarling and occasionally clawing at each other. Strangely, there was no action among them to hurt the fellow infected.

  Pete reflected momentarily on the common cause between the disease carriers. A young woman wearing jean shorts and a belly-revealing t-shirt milled around a group of infected. Her swollen eyes were devoid of expression. Why was there a sympathetic reaction to the other infected? Perhaps it was the aggressive stature that characterized the infected, a quivering spasticity hinting at violence bubbling right under the surface. Or it could be the swelling of the eyes and the foul smell. Something cued the victims off to each other’s infection. Any organism that wanted to spread and spread widely couldn’t kill off other hosts. Not for the first time that night, Pete longed to be able to mount a lab slide and subject the disease to microscopic scrutiny.

  Further on, the SWAT van that likely belonged to the ill-fated expedition which breached Tahitian was abandoned but the diesel engine was still humming away. Past the SWAT van, a fire truck was being pounded on by several infected partygoers. They appeared to be gathering around the cab and trying to get at someone inside. Red and white lights continued to pulse and spin.

  Walter rolled to a stop. “Fortunate for us these things are fucking stupid.”

  Pete nodded at Walter’s eyes in the mirror. “We got an up close look at them, including a tooth in my arm. They don’t have anything on Shaolin, though.”

  One partygoer, a girl in a string bikini with very short brown hair, was part of the fire truck mob. She saw them and began to run directly at their car. Walter kept his eyes locked on her, but chewed his lip, “Never trained for this.”

  “I figured this was our black belt test and nobody told us.”

  “Sifu might try something less dramatic next time,” Walter replied.

  “You should tell Kyle that when we get back,” Pete said. Without emphasizing the ‘when’, he felt the significance of it. Walter slammed on the gas. Before Pete could object, the Cutlass accelerated at the girl, engine snarling. The car bounced angrily, once, twice, and then picked up speed. They continued to cross the parking lot, leaving behind the girl’s corpse and, ironically, Walter’s bumper.

  “Jesus, Walt!”

  Stoic-faced, Walter gunned the engine again, but the car grumbled and didn’t pick up much speed. Some of the infected crowd around the fire truck started fast in their direction. Walter responded by beginning to drift away from them, a choking noise coming from under the car.

  “Don’t worry, I got this,” Walter said, the engine sputtering and heaving.

  “Walter, they’re coming,” Pete said loudly. “Something’s wrong with your car.”

  “I got this, just a hiccup.”

  “You don’t have this, that’s what you said this morn—” Before Pete could finish, a suicidal infected dove head first into the wheel well of the left front tire. There was a thump, then a loud snap. The car began to fishtail.

  “You idiot, can you not drive this fucking car either?” Pete yelled. The pursuers were catching up to the slowing car.

 
“What do you mean?” Walter exclaimed, the wheel bobbing in his hands.

  “Hello, the fucking moving truck, Walter?”

  “You’re making me nervous!” Walter shouted.

  Liz yelled over both of them, “Come on, Walter, go faster.”

  The car, seemingly responding to Liz’s advice, made a grinding noise. There was a snap, and the engine stopped completely. Pete felt his mind hammer down the hope that had inspired him only a moment ago.

  “Shit, not my car too,” Walter said, sounding almost puzzled.

  Pete could see the mascara dripping from the eyes of a girl in a purple bathing suit now just a few paces away.

  “God,” Liz muttered, almost in wonderment as she watched the pursuers close in.

  “Shit shit shit, get out! We’ll be trapped, come on!” He grabbed Liz’s hand and opened the passenger door on the opposite side the infected. The car limped along at a slow roll.

  Walter pulled the emergency brake and brought the car to a lurching stop. He climbed over the center console as the infected closed in on the car. They were frighteningly fast and slammed themselves against the driver’s side. One lifted itself onto the roof as Pete exited. Belly-flopping onto Pete without any regard for his own safety, it forced Pete violently to the pavement.

  He felt himself falling.

  Part of Pete’s training had been focused on the correct way to fall. Humanity’s panache for pavement meant it was common for a fight to end with someone knocked out cold by the hard surface. In an almost instinctual reaction before meeting the pavement, he managed to throw up his arm and expose his side to the ground. He took the brunt of the damage in a non-vital area.

  The reflex didn’t do Pete any favors in stopping the man from assailing him. Two angry eyes encrusted in a scrawny teenage boy’s face were now only inches away. The kid’s outrageous bleached bangs touched Pete’s brow and the smell of the yellow ocular discharge was sickly sweet. Liz clutched at the boy’s back, but the angle was wrong and she had no leverage to pull him off.

  Pinned. The boy raised a fist to punch as the sound of broken glass reached Pete’s ears. More of them were coming, they were going to be overrun.

  But the signaling of the punch was the teen’s undoing. Blocking the blow was easy and reacting was even easier. Pete remembered the two word phrase to get him out of his predicament: hip check. Clutching the caught hand and bending one of his knees, he threw up his hip, sending the surprised assailant onto the pavement beside him.

  Using momentum from the hip check, he whipped all his weight into his fist, bringing it down like a hammer onto the solar plexus of the infected teenager. The boy sputtered and struggled. Scrambling to standing, Pete brought his foot down repeatedly on the face of the teen. Each blow brought a bellow from Pete. Bleached blonde bangs hung limply on the forehead of the young man’s crushed face; the front of the skull caved in. It was a shocking, wretched act of violence with no technique involved, but his heart felt nothing by the time it was done.

  Behind him, there was a piercing wail. Fear and dismay seemed to freeze his pumping heart. Liz. Deep panic made his skin tingle as he turned to look.

  A few feet away, Liz had been grabbed in a bear hug by an enormous Samoan man. Her attacker was wearing cargo pants and an undersized t-shirt soaked through with sweat. With a rasp, the Samoan whined “BIG. BEAR. HUG,” in a high-pitched voice. He shook his head and sobbed as he crushed the breath out of Liz.

  Liz’s pained blue eyes found Pete’s. Her red lips moved as she tried to speak, and her scream or mercy was a pitiful wheeze. Crying out her name, Pete threw himself at the pair. Before he could reach them, the Samoan saw his approach and tossed Liz to the ground. Her head hit the parking lot pavement with a meaty thud.

  An atavistic sound escaped Pete’s lips, his training forgotten for a furious instant. Throwing a punch that was swatted out of the way by the man’s meaty arm, he could barely stop the Samoan’s other arm, following in a wide swing from the side. The force of the blow put him off balance and the man’s belly further put him on one foot. The Samoan grabbed him in the same tight bear hug he’d had Liz in before Pete could reorient himself.

  Adding injury to insult, the Samoan bit hard into Pete’s shoulder. The pain was intense. He screamed, his voice cracking like an adolescent. The man used his great neck to tear his head away from Pete, taking a chunk of flesh with it. Howling, Pete chanced to look into face of the Samoan. The infected man gazed at him hungrily, like he was a choice cut of meat missing a good sauce.

  “Big…. hug…” came a whisper through teeth blooded with bits of Pete’s torn flesh. The body odor and rancid smell of the infected man made him want to retch, but he couldn’t breathe to do it. He seemed defenseless without leverage for his arms or his legs.

  Winding up, Pete head butted his new best friend with one of the last weapons available to him. A pig squeal whistled through the Samoan’s split lips. Pete struggled with his captor and tried to slam his foot down on the Samoan’s knee, but he was being held up in the air by the giant man. He could see the neon sign of Tahitian, still glowing in the mild night.

  The hug intensified and Pete started to lose consciousness.

  It was an unusual experience, almost as though he was observing his own demise. Spots overtook his vision quickly. Liz’s face lying against the pavement was the last thing he saw. His eyes closed, that final, heartrending image lost to a nothingness that yawned. The abyss stretched out below was deep, hungry, and had a gravity all its own. Pete could feel it dragging him down.

  More of the world slipped away. Muscle memory he had gained from months of kung fu instruction and put to lethal use for the first time today, tumbled away. With the training gone, cares left him. All that remained was a deathly calm.

  The fight had been too much. Not all tests were meant to be passed, he reflected with some regret. Liz was not trained and was his responsibility. Accepting failure, he relaxed and felt himself slip down into the void.

  A great reduction in pressure on Pete’s chest triggered the oldest reflex he had, his breath. A single wheeze brought him back from the brink. The saturnine darkness fled back underneath his consciousness like roaches fleeing into the walls. A short panting breath gave Pete the strength to feel the Samoan’s grip had loosened. Another breath, a deep lungful, gave him the strength to shove out his arms. Muscles renewed themselves with oxygen and were charged with vitality once again. He felt the ground beneath his feet. He squatted down in triumph, breaking the Samoan’s hold easily.

  Mental faculties came online. Pete knew from the prickling sensations in his hands and feet that he should be dead. A pitiful roll away from the Samoan gave him the vantage point to see a large boot closed around a black leg execute a downward kick to the back of the fleshy kneecap of the Samoan.

  Walter’s kick brought the gargantuan man to his knees with a thud. A squeal escaped from the bloodied mouth of the fat man just as Walter wrapped the thick neck in a powerful chokehold. The Samoan’s chunky limbs flapped in its death throes, and a spurt of blood gushed from one of burly man’s encrusted eyes as it popped out forcefully. If he didn’t feel like he was about to die, Pete thought he would have found it comical that the infected eyes always seemed to pop out. The organ dangled, stretching nerve fibers long, looking at him accusingly.

  Beyond Walter and the Samoan lay Liz, unmoving. Trusting Walter to finish the fight, Pete crawled an agonizing few feet to her body. Her face was turned away from him but he could see a deep gash that marred her head.

  “Come on baby, come on Liz, no no no, Liz, please…” Pete pleaded, cradling the woman he loved. She did not respond, the gash on her head soaking her light hair with thick red blood. He let out a sob. A vision of their life together was suddenly unimaginable.

  A shadow fell over Pete. He had enough time to see a foot swung at his face before it connected, knocking him onto his side. There was no trained fall for this move. The hour old scab on his ear tore away on
the pavement with a flare up of scorching pain and his brain cage rattled violently. A kick to the ribs quickly followed, then another, harder. Something popped deep inside his torso.

  He was being kicked to death.

  Lights flashed in his vision. Pete knew the next kick was coming and unconsciousness lurked, insatiable, deadly close again. Pete recognized that if he didn’t want to die he had no room for error in the next few seconds. A last surge of concentration and energy as the foot sailed toward him allowed Pete to throw the leg. He turned his opponent enough to grab their other foot. Pain stabbed through injured fingers, but he pulled as hard as he could. He upended the kicker and watched them fall face first into the pavement, a cartilage crunch the sound of the person’s nose shattering on the hard surface.

  Before his attacker could get up, Pete furiously slammed woman’s head into the pavement, repeating the action until he felt the legs and arms stop struggling. Bright red was spattered on her pale neck, wicking away into soft black hair. The blood might have been his own because blood was always the same color.

  Pete slid off the twitching body, gasping and drooling. His shoulders and neck seized up in spasms. Cruel draggers of pain were driven deep into his innards, something within clearly broken. Liz lay still. Nearby, the now blue-faced Samoan knelt as if in prayer. Walter was slumped against the big man’s back, still clutching the Samoan’s neck tightly. Grabbing blindly, Pete’s hand found something on the ground.

  Liz’s fingers were still warm.

  He pulled himself close to his girl, and -

  Convalescence