Floodwater Zombies by Sean Thomas Fisher, Esmeralda Morin

me, I’ll know it! My gaydar came from the Apple store, sister. It’s top of the line!” one of them blurted, producing another eruption that briefly trampled upon Gary.
     
    Kourtney dried her hands on a white bar towel stuffed into her belt. “Sounds like you’re about to cough up a lung.”
     
    “Well then turn up the stereo!” Doc bellowed, taking a drink from a red draft of Killian’s.
     
    Rob and Mick chuckled.
     
    “Now that’s funny right there! I don’t care what anyone says,” Mick said, doing his best impersonation of Larry the Cable Guy.
     
    “ Git -r-done,” Rob drawled out the corner of his mouth.
     
    Kourtney lowered her head, ignoring them and peering at Doc from the top of her eyeballs. “You need to quit.”
     
    Doc waved a hand through the air. “My momma didn’t raise no quitters!”
     
    Rob and Mick laughed louder and clanged their bottles together before drinking.
     
    “He’s on a roll tonight, Kourt!” Mick laughed. Brown curls poking out from his frayed Harley Davidson ball cap bounced with each rolling chuckle. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
     
    “Here, here!” Rob smiled, lifting his bottle into the air and then taking another long swill. He swallowed with a sigh. “Besides,” he frowned, adding more wrinkles to the ones courtesy of too many Marlboro Reds and summertime rides on his Harley without sun screen. “Isn’t it bad enough we have to go outside to smoke in Doc’s own bar?”
     
    She kept her eyes fixed on her father.   “Those things are going to be the death of you yet.”
     
    “That or his shitty drivin ,” Mick snickered.
     
    Rob’s face suddenly turned serious. “Did you know that texting and driving kills more people nowadays than smoking does?”
     
    Doc lifted his bushy eyebrows and pointed a crooked finger at Rob. “See? The man knows, Kourt.”
     
    Kourtney tucked the towel into her belt and rested her hands on slender hips. “That is not true.”
     
    Rob nodded confidently. “Saw it on Yahoo.”
     
    She folded her arms, covering the Doc’s Bar and Grill logo on her tank top. “You saw it on Yahoo?”
     
    Rob took a long drink and swallowed. “That’s right, but I don’t go on there anymore though, too many racists.”
     
    Mick choked on his beer and began coughing. “Racists?”
     
    “Oh yeah, they pepper in racists comments after almost every story on Yahoo. And it doesn’t matter what the story is either,” Rob said, tightening his gray ponytail. “It could be a story about a great white shark attacking a surf contest and they’ll get on there and blame it on the blacks.”
     
    Mick arched a skeptical eyebrow at him. “They will?”
     
    Rob nodded feverishly. “They tear people apart left and right on there. Bunch a snarkologists .” He shook his head and rapped tight knuckles on the bar. “That’s bad energy, my friends.”
     
    Mick’s eyebrow remained stuck in the middle of his forehead. “ Snark -who ?”
     
    Doc nodded, scratching a thick white sideburn. “The world is angry right now, angrier than I’ve seen it in all my years.” He leaned on the bar and stared hard into Mick’s and Rob’s eyes. “And I was around during the Nixon administration, but recession or not, if we don’t start lookin out for one another, we’re never gonna make it. Too many monsters out there.”
     
    Rob and Mick nodded in silent affirmation and took a long pull from their bottles.
     
    Kourtney pressed a button on a gun behind the bar, ejecting a stream of fizzy Coke into a red plastic cup. She plopped a straw into it and turned around. “All I know is there’s no way texting and driving kills more people than smoking does.”
     
    “I can’t wait to start smoking!”
     
    Rob and Mick froze mid-drink and slowly rotated their heads to the seven-year-old seated around the corner of the bar.
     
    “Alex!” Kourtney gasped, clapping a hand over her chest. “You are not smoking