Everything goes to slow-motion.
Liv feels his hand go by less than three inches from her face. His fingers—long and boney—are sticky from blood and get entangled in a lock of her hair, ripping it from her skull. Liv can feel the strands of hair give way one by one.
Then the rest of the guy goes by—his arm, his shoulder, his face, pale and stubbly-bearded—and he crashes into the trolley, connecting his jaw squarely with the metal side bar.
Again, with Liv’s senses working on overdrive, she hears the sound of bone breaking all too clearly, and she catches a glimpse of a molar as it spills out the corner of the guy’s mouth.
Then, like someone hit a button on a remote control somewhere, everything jumps back into regular speed.
Liv finds herself stumbling backwards away from the trolley as the guy struggles to regain his bearings after likely giving himself a fairly decent concussion. He slips back into action surprisingly fast despite this, getting to his feet and rounding on Liv. His jaw looks to be dislocated, as it’s sitting almost an inch to the side, giving him a wondering look.
Liv backs up, drawing him purposefully closer to the water, prepared to run the other way around him as soon as he makes a move for her.
Liv never gets to execute that plan, though, because right then she catches a movement out the corner of her eye. It’s a reflection in the side window of Grandpa’s car, showing a figure coming at her fast from behind.
Liv realizes in a flash there’s no time to get out of the way, so instead she spins around, flinging her right hand out with a shrill cry. The back of her hand connects with the side of the face of the dead person about to jump her.
Except he isn’t dead.
And he wasn’t about to jump her.
Liv stares in amazement as the guy stumbles backwards, his hand going to his cheek, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Oh,” she says stupidly. “Sorry. I thought you—”
The guy looks past her and cries out: “Watch out!”
Liv jumps to the side just as a heavyset figure with long, curly hair covering most of the face grabs for her. Liv doesn’t have time to see whether it’s a guy or a girl, and she doesn’t care either way. She just runs to the trolley and begins wheeling the handle around. “Keep them away!” she shouts at the boy.
He dodges the fat zombie—who turns out to be a woman after all, at least judging from the bra visible through a hole in her shirt. “There’s no time!” he shouts back. “They’re already here!”
Liv darts a look around and feels her gut sink. The deads are coming from every angle. Dozens of them. The closest are seconds away.
The guy jumps over and grabs the trolley. “Get it in the water!”
“It’s not lowered!” Liv protests, but finds herself pushing along nonetheless.
The trolley rolls down the ramp and splashes into the water, the jet ski swaying dangerously from side to side before finding its balance. The trolley sinks and disappears from sight.
“Come on!” the guy tells her, grabbing her wrist and pulling her out of the way as an old guy in pajamas comes lumbering out from behind the car, drooling and revealing his pink, toothless gums.
Liv needs no further invitation; she runs down the ramp and jumps out into the water, landing next to the jet ski, the guy right behind her.
Liv has never been in water fully clothed, and she’s surprised to find how much heavier she feels. She needs to paddle her arms forcefully to keep from sinking. Luckily, though, the water is lukewarm from baking in the sun all day.
The boy swims in front of her, grabs onto the jet ski and tries to pull himself up, but the weight of him causes it to almost topple over.
“Wait!” Liv cries out, spitting water. “Stop that! We’ll have to board it from the stern, or it won’t work!”
The guy lets himself drop back into the water, spluttering: “What’s the stern?”
“The rear end! Here, follow my lead!”
She swims to the back of the jet ski. Again, it’s a lot harder than had she been wearing her swimsuit and a life vest, and it takes all her strength to hoist herself up. But she manages.
“Now you!” she calls out.
Just as she looks down at the guy, he disappears from sight, a look of surprise on his face. It looks like something dragged him down, and for a terrible moment, Liv is thrown back into one of her childhood nightmares where strange, giant undersea creatures would drag her down to the deepest part of the ocean and drown her.
Of course, this part of the port can only be a few yards deep, and two seconds later, the guy breaks the surface again, heaving and coughing.
“What are you doing?” she shouts at him.
“They’re … underwater!” he splutters, grabbing for the jet ski.
Liv looks back towards the ramp, and what she sees her makes her skin crawl. All the commotion in the water has pushed the jet ski a fair bit out from the dock, which is lucky. Because the zombies are marching right into the water, disappearing one after another below the surface.
“Oh, crap,” Liv mutters.
Then she decides there’s only one thing she can do: get the hell out of Dodge. She turns to the handlebars, plunges her hand into her pocket, takes out the key and inserts it into the ignition.
TWENTY-FOUR
Dan feels the hand grope his ankle again, trying to get a hold of his leg. He kicks frantically, splashing to get to the rear end of the jet ski.
He’s almost made it when the jet ski roars to life.
“Wha—” he begins asking, but is cut off when the hand suddenly grabs his shoe and pulls him down.
Dan swallows a mouthful of salty water and uses his free
