Excerpt: Apocalypse Z

The water down here was murky from sediment stirred up by my flippers or perhaps by a bottom current. I couldn’t be sure, but the deeper I got to do my final weld the worse the visibility became. It was a slow process, but soon enough I got there. Already I was starting to feel anticipation, for the welding job was almost over. The town that had hired me had agreed to pay me fully – in cash no less! – when the weld was completed. That was enough to keep me going, and soon I was ready to finish this baby up.

Once again I started at the top, slowly and carefully making my way down. I was getting paid a fair amount to do this, so I wanted it to be done to the best of my skill. If all went well, they would have no problems in the near future maintaining this wall. Before too long I was halfway done. Soon I would be deeper into this particular lake than I had been so far, signalling the last leg of my job.

Keeping the pace up I kept going, steady and careful in my technique. Now I was definitely farther down in the depths of the lake. Slowly an odd feeling began to envelope me, a worry that maybe I should’ve packed it in for the night. This was something I had trouble ignoring; usually when I got chills up and down my spine like this it was never good. Regardless, though, I kept going. I had only a little way to go now. What was the worst that could happen?

Pushing the troubling thoughts to the back of my head as best I could I continued on, eager to finish and return to the surface to obtain my pay. After just a few minutes I was almost at the bottom of the lake, finishing up. That’s when I first encountered them.

When I neared the bottom of the lake I felt something brush up against my leg. I thought nothing of it. I knew it was just one of the many water-dwelling weeds that apparently infested this lake. I’d been swimming through a good amount of them so far. For a brief moment I thought it could be a sturgeon, and I’ll admit that this thought put me a little on edge, but I knew that even if it was the things were harmless. I had nothing to worry about.

Closer I inched to the bottom. I could feel more and more of the weeds brushing up against my legs. This lake was really infested down here. You wouldn’t think it would be this bad by looking at the sandy shores, but looks could be deceiving.

My leg must have gotten wrapped around one or two, for when I tried to swim up to redo a section that I noticed was not of the best quality I wasn’t able to. Something was holding me back. It would be easy enough to untangle myself and I casually got in a position to do just that.

I looked down, the headlamp illuminating the floor of the lake. Weeds and trash and other gunk I expected to see, but there was no way I expected to see what I actually found.

Immediately a scream found its way out of my mouth, and I couldn't help but struggle to break free of what had me. For a second I couldn't believe what my eyes had observed, thinking it was just a mental image brought on by my previous thoughts, an illusion of the mind.

Boy, was I wrong.

Looking down again to see if it really was just my imagination I saw that it was as real as anything could be. The spotlight showed me a single circle in the dark waters. There I saw a face, staring up at me from the very bottom of the lake. Its eyes were sunken and its flesh seemed to be peeling off, just floating gently through the water, as if it had been underwater for quite some time. It was a decomposing corpse.