“Well, yay for our waistlines.”
He checked the bottles, then tossed me one. The seal was still intact. I twisted the lid off and sniffed the contents, then took a sip.
Pure, sweet bottled water.
Joe raised a dubious eyebrow as I munched happily on one of the peanut-butter chocolate bars. “You like this shit?”
I shrugged. “I went through the whole no-carbs phase when my ex told me I needed to lose twenty pounds. I kind of developed a taste for these.”
“Your ex is an asshole.”
“I won’t argue that point.”
The GPS starting beeping again.
“Another set of coordinates,” Joe said.
“Maybe this time it’ll be pizza and Coke.”
We walked for another hour or so without talking, the effort of forging through the thick foliage and uneven terrain using most of our spare oxygen. The ground was covered with roots, ferns, and all sorts of plant life, some of which were equipped with sharp thorns. I tried not to think of snakes and spiders hanging from the ever-present tree limbs.
Honestly, this is a vacation destination?
I guess if one could toss out the crocs, mosquitoes, and such and just focus on the admittedly gorgeous butterflies and assorted birds and mammals, it was kind of understandable. But the heat alone was enough to make it a no-go for me. Give me fog and redwoods any day.
Sweat dripped down my forehead, my back, and in between my breasts. The heat was brutal, and even though I tried to make my bottled water last I found myself down to the last inch in what seemed like no time.
“You should save some of that,” Joe cautioned.
I knew he was right, but I was so damn thirsty I didn’t care. Still, I capped the bottle, leaving that last precious inch inside.
The GPS beeped. Joe studied the coordinates and led us through an impossibly thick grove of large-leafed trees that brought to mind dinosaurs. The smell was thick and vegetal, with an underlying tang of decay wafting from the ground. Our feet crunched on mulched leaves, dying flowers, and—
My right foot punched through something, the impact releasing an odor I was way too familiar with.
Ah yes, dead zombie.
“That’s just nasty,” Joe said.
I pulled my foot out of a female zombie’s abdomen, the flesh falling off my boot like pulled pork after a day in a slow cooker. It wore the remains of a peasant skirt and tank top. Its eyes were still open, milky corneas sunken into yellowed, blood-streaked whites. One of the signatures of Walker’s. A single gunshot wound punctured its forehead.
I wondered who’d shot it way out here in the middle of Cannibal Holocaust territory. Before I could say anything, the GPS got mouthy again and Joe pointed toward a tree a few feet behind me, where another white bucket hung suspended from a low-hanging branch.
“I’ll get this one.”
I stepped toward the bucket, feeling something brush against my ankle.
Three things happened at once.
Joe yelled my name.
A rotted hand clutched my shin and I slammed down hard on my hands and knees. My tanto skittered off a few feet away.
Something swept over me with a whooshing sound and slammed into the tree in front of me, where it stuck.
The owner of the rotted hand gave a plaintive moan. I looked down and saw another gooey zombie, a female, in the remnants of what was once probably a very expensive white linen dress. Maggots wriggled happily inside three large puncture wounds in its chest. It reached for me, gaping mouth releasing several buzzing flies.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any grosser or more stinky.
I used my free leg and shoved the thing away with one kick of my booted foot, retrieved my tanto, and put it out of my misery.
The cache itself looked harmless enough. It sat in the middle of a clearing on top of a log. Just a wooden crate latched shut.
Further investigation showed no trip wires and no Rube Goldberg — type booby traps. I still didn’t trust it.
“What do you think?” I asked Joe.
He gave the crate a sharp rap on the top with his knuckles and was answered by a muffled moan.
We looked at each other, and then Joe kicked the crate off the log with enough force to splinter the lid and disengage the latch. The crate landed on its side, the lid bouncing open to disgorge the contents.
A head rolled out onto the ground along with a few oblong objects wrapped in plastic. Several large, disgruntled tarantulas scurried out as well. I swear one of them hissed at us before skittering into the undergrowth.
The head came to a stop, facing us. Impossible to tell if it had been a man or a woman when alive, it had a half-eaten tarantula in its mouth, several hairy legs drooping over the zombie head’s chin.
No wonder the others had been so pissed off.
I put a blade through the head’s brainpan and picked up one of the plastic-wrapped items.
“Twinkies?”
Joe and I looked at each other.
“Oh, come on.” He shook his head. “Think someone’s seen Zombieland a few times?”
“I hate Twinkies,” I said glumly.
“Cool. I’ll be Tennessee and you can be Cleveland. ’Cause, y’know, I like Twinkies and I’m sensing you can be a bit of a bitch.”
I was about to retort but noticed something sticking out of the crate. “Hey, there’s something else in there.”
Joe took a look and gave a little whoop. “Now we’re talking!” He reached down and plucked the object from the crate.
“What is it?”
“A KA-BAR.” He held up a leather-sheathed knife that had to be more than a foot long, including the handle. “This’ll come in handy.”
Thunder cracked and suddenly the skies opened up to release a torrential downpour. The kind of rain that fell in sheets rather than drops and made it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you. I held my water bottle out for a free refill and enjoyed the feel of the rain sluicing the sweat and dirt from my hair and body. Joe did the same, but only after retrieving the Twinkies and squirreling them away in his pockets.
The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. Joe and I trekked through more jungle in what was now an oddly companionable silence, listening to the ever-present sounds of birds, monkeys, and frogs, along with the occasional zombie moan and the now familiar beeping of the GPS.
It was only about fifteen minutes before the beeping sped up.
“I think we’re close,” Joe observed.
“You think?”
“That’s sarcasm, right?”
I grinned. “Ya think?”
The beeping sped up, like R2-D2 on speed.
“Definitely hot.”
I followed Joe as he followed the GPS into a grove of what I thought were banyan trees, with big arched roots that vanished into brackish, brown water. A river.
Joe knelt on a patch of damp earth and examined a dark burrow at the base of a large banyan. The roots looked like some Cthulhian nightmare, wood tentacles intertwined and frozen in midwrithe.
“You really gonna stick your hand in there?” I peered dubiously into the dark hole, visions of Peter Jackson’s version of the insect life on Skull Island dancing in my head.
Joe must have had similar visions because he pulled out his KA-BAR.
After unsheathing it, he poked the business end of the blade into the hole, immediately rewarded with a sharp metallic sound. Nothing squealed, hissed, or moaned. This was a good thing.
Joe poked around a little more. Nothing came scurrying, crawling, or slithering out of the burrow, so Joe reached into the hole, pulling out an olive-drab metal container about the size of two lunch boxes.