High Water by R.W. Tucker Page A

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