Merman - Romance

Chapter 24

“We can get this one, she’s small,” Kent said pulling the rope from the bag he was carrying and starting to swing it about his head.

“No, no, she’s too old,” Ridec said sadly.

“She’s a child…” Rea started to say just as Kyle stepped out of the way of the girl and she slammed into the tree behind him.  That didn’t seem to deter her; she turned about to the sound of their breathing and raced forward again, this time she was headed towards Rea.

“Kill it!”  Kyle screamed just as Ridec flung forward his right hand and in one fluid movement allowed the boomerang to fly out and encircle the small child.

“What…?”  Kent started to say as the little girl stopped in her tracks for a few seconds just staring blindly forward until her head slid from her neck and dropped to the ground, her body followed close behind.  Every one turned to stare at Ridec as the small triangular shaped object came flying back towards him and went directly to the gadget on his hand and locked into place.

“What the hell is that boy?”  Kyle demanded.

“I would want one of those,” Linda muttered.

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” Ridec explained.  “You have to estimate distance and angles in order for it to work properly.”

“See what I said?  He’s a genius,” Rea said excitedly.

“We’ll definitely have to talk more about that…”  Kyle was saying when Kent cut in.

“What was wrong with that little girl?  She was a zombie, we can’t be out here all day in the open; you need to take whatever we find.”

“They have to be new zombies, persons who would normally be alive other than the fact that they’ve turned.  They can’t be too old…”

“She was a kid,” Kent cut in angrily.

“Maybe she was a kid many, many years ago but not recently.  Her clothes were already starting to rot off of her, her body was decomposing in parts, it was only the gel in her neck that was preventing all of her body from decomposing.”

“You mean she could have been hundreds of years?”  Kyle seemed shocked.

“Most likely,” Ridec thought about that for a moment.  “It makes sense.  Whatever is making these things walk is basically keeping them from decomposing.  Which is not good.”

“Because…?”  Kent queried angrily.  “Clearly we’re not all geniuses like you.”

“Because it makes it difficult to ever outnumber them, because it means there are zombies walking around that are hundreds of years old,” Ridec explained.

“So unless we kill them we’ll never be rid of them,” Kyle said sadly.

“Kill or cure,” Ridec countered.

“But you don’t think you can cure the ones like that little girl?” Rea asked.

“Even if she could be cured, which is unlikely, she would die because of all the other reasons why she shouldn’t be alive.  Loss of blood, hole in stomach, decomposed arm and leg, no eyes…quite frankly the list goes on and on and I haven’t even started on the state of her internal organs.  What we need are zombies who were recently turned, where the only difference between us and them is the disease has taken full control but some part of their humanity still exists.”

“There’s no part of their humanity that still exists,” Kyle said sadly and Mary nodded.

“It’s like a creature that’s gone crazy, they do crazy things because of the imbalance of the chemicals in their bodies, if you can get those chemicals in balance again then they no longer…”