Clickers vs Zombies Read online

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  ISBN: 1-62105-058-0

  Copyright 2012 by J. F. Gonzalez and Brian Keene

  Cover art copyright © 2012 Dave Kendall

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Printed in the USA.

  Acknowledgements

  Both authors would like to thank: Jeff Burk, Rose O’Keefe, Carlton Mellick III, Larry Roberts, Mark Sylva, Tod Clark, Bob Ford, the real Dave Thomas, Michele Mixel, Nikki Graybeal, Geoff Cooper, Mike Hawthorne, and Mike Lombardo.

  Special thanks to Mark Williams, who contributed two paragraphs to this novel from beyond the grave.

  J. F. Gonzalez would like to thank: Cathy and Hannah, my parents, my corporate clients, Guy N. Smith for Night of the Crabs, Joe R. Lansdale for The Drive-In and Dead in the West, Shane Ryan Staley, Paul Goblirsch, Chet Williamson, Bill Furtado, Richard Christian Matheson, Kelli Owen, Mike Lansu, John & Paul Burkholts, Tom Monteleone, James A. Moore, Tim Lebbon, Ray Garton, Deborah Daughetee for her patience when I cease work on the screenplay treatment to work on this, Wrath James White for his patience when I cease work on the novel collaboration to work on this, and the real life Clark Arroyo.

  Brian Keene would like to thank: my sons, Mary SanGiovanni, Cassandra Burnham, Betty Anne Crawford, Susan Scofield, Nurse Stephanie, Melanie Candra, Michelle Burdette, Kasey Lansdale, Joe Lansdale, Damian Maffei, F. Paul Wilson, Tom Monteleone, Dallas Mayr, Lee Seymour, William Miller, Andrew van den Houten, Greg Wilson, and the Playhouse Posse.

  Author’s Note

  Although this novel takes place on a global scale, much of the action occurs on the coast of California. We have taken certain fictional liberties with that geography, so if you live there, don’t go visiting your favorite pier or beach. If you do, you might end up Clicker food. Or zombie food. Or zombie Clicker food…

  It should also be noted that although this novel features characters and situations from both the Clickers series and The Rising series, it does not take place in either of those series’ “worlds.” As the reader shall see, it takes place in an alternate reality, where characters and situations from those previous novels may have turned out quite differently. This novel also features cameo appearances of characters from a number of J.F. Gonzalez’s and Brian Keene’s other novels, however, knowledge of those characters or novels is not needed to enjoy this book. Consider the cameos ‘Easter eggs’ for the hardcore fans who spot them.

  For Kelli Owen,

  without whom this book wouldn’t have been possible…

  And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and Death and Hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and all were judged...

  —Book of Revelation 20:13

  PROLOGUE

  JULY 4

  Huntington Beach, California

  It had been warm earlier that day, but it was as cold as a witch’s tit by the time Brad Kincaid and Troy Johnson showed up at Steve Baker’s Fourth of July party in Huntington Beach that evening.

  Steve told Brad that the party was to be held between Lifeguard stations 51 and 52, between Talbert Avenue and Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach. Brad and Troy surfed this stretch of beach anyway and knew the area well. Troy pulled into the parking slot while Brad reached into the back of the jeep for the beer.

  “Let’s go!” Troy said.

  They trudged through the sand toward the party that was well underway around the bonfire that had been set up about fifty yards from the lot. There was a curfew that was strictly enforced between ten p.m. and five a.m. The Huntington Beach pier, which jutted into the ocean about two thousand feet was about a quarter of a mile north. Across the street from the pier was downtown Huntington Beach, a tourist Mecca filled with surf shops, restaurants, bars, clothing and gift shops, and nightclubs. Between the activity on Main Street and the pier—which boasted a 1950’s style hamburger joint called Ruby’s—the place was bustling.

  The police only allowed gatherings on the beach within a quarter mile radius of the pier after nightfall. Lifeguard presence stopped after six p.m. Alcohol was strictly prohibited. But that never stopped people from bringing it. What were the police going to do? The Huntington Beach Police Department only had two paddy wagons. Troy should know. He’d been hauled off to jail six months ago during a wild party that had gotten a little out of control—in cases like that, the police simply hauled everybody to jail and released them later on their own recognizance. His father, Anthony, had gone through something similar back in the 80’s when he was a kid.

  As they drew closer to the party and the sound of the music playing on Jim’s boom box, Troy’s grin faltered. He wasn’t into today’s music at all. Sure, it was supposed to be his generation’s music, but as far as he was concerned the only thing enjoyable his generation had produced was Muse and Lamb of God. Everything else—Black Eyed Peas, Ke$ha, Rhianna, Lady Gaga—they all sucked. Katy Perry was okay. So was that chick Pink. Troy preferred the music from his father’s generation, which dad played constantly—The Clash, TSOL, the Adolescents, Circle Jerks, the Buzzcocks. His Dad had been into alternative music when it really had been alternative music, and as a result, Troy also had a wide range of other musical interests: David Bowie, T-Rex, Iggy Pop, goth pioneers like the Cure, Bauhaus, new wave synth bands like Duran Duran and Talk Talk, ska bands like Madness and The Specials. Dad even liked classic metal like Metallica.

  But this pop shit was just too much. It had to go.

  “We ain’t gonna stay here long, are we?” Troy asked Brad.

  “Forty minutes tops,” Brad said.

  Some annoying pop tune was playing on the boom box. Steve was sitting between two blonds. He raised a bottle of Bud in their direction, grinning. “Dudes! How goes it?”

  “We brought beer,” Brad said. Troy set the case down and gave the party a quick survey. No wonder the music was so fucking boring. The half a dozen people that stood around the bonfire nursing beers looked like typical south Orange County yupsters. Steroid-enhanced muscle guys in ratty t-shirts and baggy shorts and buzzed hair standing with their blond perky sperm receptors. Mixed in with them were a dozen or so hipsters. The moment both groups laid eyes on Troy they averted their gaze. Troy got that a lot. Must be the spiked Mohawk and the denim jacket he wore with the various patches adjourned on it.

  Steve stood up and addressed his friends. “Hey everybody, this is my friend Brad. We grew up together. And this is his buddy Troy.”

  Troy already had a beer and he held it up in friendly salute. He smiled. “Cheers.”

  The hipster couple closest to him offered fake smiles that dwindled as quickly as they were plastered on.

  Brad engaged in conversation with Steve. Troy stood close by, nursing his beer, trying not to look so bored. Why did he bother coming to this thing? This was going to be fucking boring.

  “You and Brad been friends a long time?”

  Troy turned and saw that one of the yuppie guys had drifted away from his girlfriend. He was nursing a bottle of Bud. The guy seemed cool—Troy was a pretty good judge of character by way of scoping out the way people carried themselves. This guy was short and he was wearing dark baggy shorts, sandals, and a large Hawaiian shirt. His dark hair was shaved close to the skull. His left ear was pierced with some kind of dangling earring and he had a large tribal
tattoo that snaked down to his lower right forearm. Troy guessed that he was either of Asian or South Pacific Islander descent.

  “Yeah,” Troy said, grinning good-naturedly. “Brad and I go back to the sixth grade.”

  “That’s cool, yo.” The guy held out his right hand. “I’m Keoni.”

  “Keoni.” Troy shook Keoni’s hand. “You work with Steve?”

  “Oh yeah. We’re in the shipping department.” Brad and Steve worked together at Amerimax Building Products. Most of the people at Steve’s party were from work or were friends of friends.

  “Cool.”

  “And you’ve known Brad since sixth grade, you said?”

  “Yeah,” Troy nodded. “Brad and I go way back. He’s my best bud.”

  “Can’t go wrong with that, bro,” Keoni said. He took a sip of his beer, his gaze swinging out toward the ocean. “Chilly as shit out here, though.”

  Troy took a sip of beer. “Yeah, but that’s typical. It was seventy-five degrees earlier today.”

  “You hear about those weird crab things that fisherman found today on the pier?”

  “No. What was that about?”

  “Guess it happened late in the afternoon. Guy fishing off the pier netted it. It was this hybrid thing. Half scorpion, half lobster or some shit. About this big.” Keoni held his hands out about a yard apart. “Connie was working the afternoon shift at Huntington Memorial.” He gestured toward the woman on his left who was engaged in conversation with two of the other women. “Connie’s my girlfriend. She works at the admission desk in the ER. She was just coming off her shift when they brought the poor sonofabitch in.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Thing fucked him up good. Tore his arm off.”

  “It melted his arm off,” Connie said. She’d heard her boyfriend relating the story and was turned in their direction. She took a drag on the cigarette she was smoking—menthol by the scent of it. She shook her head, her big pouffy hair dazzling in the light of the bonfire. “I saw it as the paramedics wheeled him in. Guy was screaming and they were trying to keep him covered up but you could see it.” She held up her right arm. “His arm was just…falling apart.” She made a face, indicating disgust. “It was gross!”

  “No shit?” Troy asked. He took another quick sip of his beer.

  “Yeah,” Keoni said. “Crazy shit, huh?”

  “They get the thing that did it?”

  “Cops shot it,” Keoni said.

  “They shot it?”

  All conversation around the fire pit suddenly ceased and became one. Steve stepped closer to Troy and Keoni, his features troubled. “Yeah, crazy, isn’t it? Took a lot of bullets, from what I heard. It’s a wonder they haven’t closed the beach yet.”

  “You’d think they would,” Keoni said. He took a sip of beer. “I surf this beach every morning and they always close it down whenever there’s jellyfish or sharks in the area. Something like this…yeah, they should have closed it.”

  “So do they know what this thing is that cut his arm off?” Troy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Keoni said. “I don’t even think it’s hit the news yet.” He looked out at the other party-goers. “You haven’t seen anything on the news yet, have you?”

  Everybody shook their heads. One of the women—she looked exactly like Keoni’s girlfriend; big hair, big tits, long legs, probably had a brain like a toaster oven—tried to offer explanation. “I saw a few people mention it on Twitter and Facebook, but not many. Everyone is talking about the tsunami instead. It’s all the news is covering. “

  “They’ll be talking about that shit for the next two weeks,” somebody else said.

  That much was true. Last week, an earthquake measuring 9.8 on the Richter scale centered a hundred miles off the northern coast of Australia caused a tsunami of epic proportions. While the earthquake caused no structural damage—geologists were of the opinion that it was centered about fifty miles below the ocean’s surface—the resulting tsunami’s had caused massive destruction all along the Pacific rim from Australia and New Zealand to much of the neighboring Pacific Islands, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and the eastern seaboard of Russia. Tsunamis were also reported along the US and Canadian coasts as well as Peru, Chili, Argentina, and the Mexican coast.

  “So you’re saying it was like a sea scorpion?” Troy asked Keoni.

  Keoni shrugged. “That’s what I heard. Thing was built like a lobster or a crab in the front but had a scorpion tail.”

  Troy frowned. “That’s weird. There’s no living sea scorpions left. There was something called the Eurypterid, but it didn’t have front claws and it’s extinct.”

  “A Europe-what?” Keoni asked.

  Troy pronounced it for him. He suddenly realized everybody was paying attention to him, much like the jocks used to pay attention to him in class when he had spirited philosophical debates with their American Literature teacher over the merits of Saul Bellow versus Charles Bukowski. Troy successfully won that battle by pointing out all the flaws in Bellow’s work and demonstrating why Bukowski was more deserving to be remembered in the annals of American Literature. The looks he got from the student body elite clearly said, wow, man, you’re not just a weird punk rocker dude…you’re smart too!

  Brad quickly jumped in. “Troy’s majoring in archeology at UC Irvine. He’s been accepted into their PhD program.”

  Keoni raised his eyebrows. “No shit! Congratulations, dude.”

  “Thanks.” Troy took another sip of beer.

  “So there’s no such thing as a sea scorpion?” This came from one of the other women. Unlike the others, this one was short, slightly stocky, and had long dark hair.

  “No, there isn’t. Like I said, there was the Eurypterid, but they’re extinct, and they were quite big. Eight feet long or so.”

  “Ewww!” Scrunched up faces of disgust. Troy grinned.

  “Yeah, they were ugly fuckers. Probably had quite a few battles back in the day with baby Megaladons and T-Rexes.”

  Conversations started breaking up again, splintering off into individual groups. Keoni and his girlfriend, Connie, talked to Troy about his line of study. They appeared genuinely interested, especially Keoni. Troy indulged them, but not too much. He didn’t want to bore them. He was here to unwind and party, not talk about what he had to fill his head with all day during class.

  While they talked the fire crackled, warming the air around them. Other groups stood around their own fire pits, some roasting marshmallows, others simply drinking beer and having a good time. A few people wandered past them, heading toward the shoreline. The sun was going down rapidly and the moon was beginning to rise. It would be dark soon. Troy glanced at his watch. It was almost eight-thirty. The beer was almost gone. He was about to nudge Brad and ask him what they were going to do after the beach was shut down for the night when ear-piercing screams rose from the high tide line.

  Startled, everybody turned toward the ocean. The screams rose again, male, in pain, terrified. “Ahhhh, get it off me, get it off me!”

  Troy acted on instinct. He ran toward the shore, his adrenalin pumping. Half a dozen other guys from various fire pits joined him. Keoni raced along beside him.

  When they reached the shoreline, Troy saw what was happening. A man wearing nothing but swim trunks was on the ground screaming. A giant lobster-scorpion thing was eating his left leg. There was blood everywhere. The man’s friend, also dressed in swim trunks, was darting around him as if unsure of what to do or how to help him. The second man had a wild, panicked look on his face. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” the second man chanted.

  Everybody that ran to see what was happening stopped short as if they’d hit an invisible wall. Keoni said, “Holy fuck, that’s it! That’s like what they said got that guy earlier today!”

  From behind them, back at the fire pit, the women had trotted a few yards from relative safety and stood well back. They called out. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

&n
bsp; As Troy watched, dumbfounded, not believing what he was seeing, another creature scuttled up from the ocean as if it had surfed in on the tide. It quickly ran up to the man on the ground, who was whipping violently back and forth, trying to shake the first creature off his leg. The second creature darted forward and jabbed the man in the chest with its stinger. The man screamed and arched his back. His friend cried out and jumped back. So did the dozen or so guys who’d run down to the shoreline to offer assistance.

  “Fuck this shit!” Keoni said. He was already starting to retreat back.

  A guy wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and baggy shorts stepped forward. He was brandishing a large, heavy piece of wood. He took a roundhouse swing at the second creature, as if he were attempting to beat Hank Aaron’s home run record. The sound of the wood hitting the creature’s back was a sharp crack. The man on the ground continued to scream.

  More screams of terror arose, fingers pointing toward the ocean by people standing near the high tide line. Troy glanced quickly to his left. Another creature was surfing ashore. It started crawling toward them, it’s large pincers clicking together in rapid staccato.

  Click-click! Click-click!

  “Fuck this,” Troy said. He joined Keoni and their loose-knit group from the fire pit and they ran back up the beach.

  To Troy’s left, somebody shouted. “We gotta get the fuck out of here!”

  The clicking sounds grew louder. To Troy, they sounded like dinner plates being banged together.

  CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK!

  And as everybody abandoned their fire pits and started heading toward the strand and the parking lot beyond, Troy felt a mixture of excitement and terror from the adrenaline rush.

  The rest of the evening was utter chaos.