Chapter 13: Scavenging
Randy slipped quietly into the large rubber raft the Guardsmen had inflated and put in the water for them. Him and another civilian were being sent ashore to scavenge any sort of weapons they could find. They’d been given a street map with the location of several houses where law enforcement officers had lived marked on it. The idea being that law enforcement officers normally kept a large cache of weapons in their homes. Cops like guns.
Their primary goal was to bring back weapons and ammunition. Their secondary scavenging target was medicine. The food on the island was begin rationed and there was plenty of that for a while. They were expected to report back on how many of the infected they encountered and how hostile the infected were. This was the first mission since the storm had died down so no one really knew what to expect. Which was why they were putting two expendable civilians out into the thick of it to see what happened.
The entire way across the sound Randy had been hoping they’d arrive to find the world hadn’t gone to hell. He wanted more than anything to discover that the commander had just gone insane. He’d fantasized so far as to have seen himself going back across at the head of a large strike force to seize the island back from the crazy tyrant. He could see himself kicking open the doors of the gym and liberating them all. Kelly running over to kiss him with hero worship in her eyes.
The closer they’d gotten to the marina the further that dream slipped away. They’d almost sunk the boat before they even got halfway across the sound thanks to running into a tanker or something that was floating right underneath the surface of the water. It’d been touch and go there for a second as the Bosuns Mate driving the boat had worked the throttle to get them across the underwater obstacle. As they pulled into the marina the devastation wrought by the storm was visible everywhere.
Boats were smashed apart against the pier. The mostly submerged hulks had water lapping over the top of the cabins now. Masts were pointed out of the water like a giant hedgehog having a horrible hair day. A handful of boats were randomly floating around in the water. More wreckage was visible down in the large salt pond on the other side of the Marina. Notably absent were the ferries that normally would be docked here. The Coast Guard vessels were also gone from their station. The Bosuns Mate said that they’d known the storm was on the way, so he was surprised so many of the boats had been left to ride it out tied to the pier. Some of the boats down there cost more than a really nice house. Hiring someone to either pull it out of the water and take it somewhere safe or sail it down the coast away from the storm just made sense.
It was all just more signs of the insanity that had been gripping the mainland. When Randy and Kelly had been driving over to get to the island from the airport in Providence this madness had been brewing. The virus had been spreading all around them it just hadn’t broken the surface of everyone’s awareness yet. The crew of the forty-four-foot Coast Guard cruiser weren’t taking any chances. They’d inflated the raft and told Randy and Joe to get in it and go see what they could see. They’d come in right as dawn was breaking so they could see the wreckage around them but so far that’s all they saw. There were no other signs of life. No signs of the insanity that supposedly gripped the mainland. It just looked like a bad storm had ripped through and on one had bothered showing up to clean up yet.
Joe’s wife and kid were back on the island being ‘protected’. They’d let Joe and Randy both know that if they decided to run off then their wives would be shot or turned into slaves. Either way, they’d never make it off the island. This was a very effective leash for both of them. It meant they couldn’t afford to get sloppy. If they managed to get themselves killed that would be looked at the same way as deserting. If they didn’t bring back anything useful that was also going to be chalked up as a failure. The penalty for that failure was going to be that they wouldn’t be selected for future scavenging missions. Without going on scavenging missions they wouldn’t be able to earn their freedom.
With the burden of their responsibilities weighing them down Joe and Randy stealthily paddled the bright orange raft over to the pier and secured it to a ladder. They climbed up the ladder to the pier and slowly made their way towards land. Wind tousled their hair and kept them chilled as they paced their way forward. Both men were lost in their thoughts. Fearful for their families and scared of what they were going to run into up ahead. They knew they were just a couple of guinea pigs the commander was throwing on the mainland to see what happened.
They reached the end of the dock and stepped onto the concrete parking lot with no issues. The parking lot was bereft of cars. Everyone must’ve deserted the area when the storms came. They walked over to where the ticket center was for the ferry. Everything at the ticket center was securely locked. There were a couple of food vending machines Randy thought it may make sense to break into later. He took out the map they’d been given and waved Joe over. They squatted down together in the gathering light to check it out.
“Ok. Looks like we’ve got three houses within a block of here that the commander’s marked as possibly having weapons. I think that’s mostly guessing. He must have some sort of rolodex with phone numbers and addresses for local officers or something. I think pretty much anyone living out here probably has a rifle or two they keep around for deer season. New Englanders and shooting deer are almost as New England as clam chowder and lobsters.”
Joe nodded his head. “Sounds about right. So, you saying we just hit each house on the street and try to find the weapons versus going to the marked ones? What if they had some other reason that they wanted us to go to the marked ones?”
“They gave us until noon to be back, but they also said we might as well not come back if we don’t have at least a few weapons and some medicine to show for it. I say we just go and start scavenging. The sooner we can find crap to shove in our bags the sooner we can get back to the island. I don’t trust those scum bags around my wife and you shouldn’t either.”
Joe nodded to show he understood what Randy was implying and that he agreed completely. Shouldering their pillaging bags, they set off up the first street by the marina. They walked past a row of boats that’d been pulled out of the water and tied down on trailers. They talked quietly about rummaging through some of those boats but decided against it. Houses made more sense to be able to find useful supplies in. There were several large houses on the road up ahead.
They passed the first dead body a few minutes later. Smelling something strong in the air they were both peering around as they walked. Expecting to find a pile of discarded trash or maybe a bag of fish or even a dead dog they were both shocked at what they finally saw. The body of a man in a yellow slicker was lying on the ground in between two of the parked boat trailers. He was lying on his back.
They could only tell it had been a man because there were pieces of a very bushy grey beard still attached to the face in places. The rest of the face had been torn off. The skin and eyeballs were missing as was most of the skin covering the skull. The man’s rain jacket had been pulled up and the pants ripped down to give whatever had attacked him access to the meat on the stomach and around the pelvic area. It was ripped apart. His crotch looked like a pile of rotten hamburger meat. Little black bugs and maggots were feasting on the remains.
Joe backed away and spilled his guts all over the road. Randy gave him a minute. He felt like he might blow chunks himself at any second. Then, carefully avoiding looking back at the remains, they proceeded up the hill towards the houses they’d targeted. More corpses started to pop up. Most of them covered in feasting sea gulls. The gulls must not have gotten to the man between the boats yet. They stopped at the entrance to the first house they got to. It had a long, curved driveway leading up to the two-story old school New England Cape Cod style home.
Joe felt a fly walking around on his neck and smacked at it with a subdued string of curses. He spun in a complete circle before he noticed Randy staring at him.
&nbs
p; “Sorry.” Joe whispered. “I just know what these things have been walking in and eating. Grossed me out.”
“I get it. Looks like the commander was telling the truth about the mainland being a slaughterhouse. You ready?”
Joe wiped at his neck one final time and arranged the large green sea bag across his back. He began walking up the driveway with a determined look on his face. Randy followed behind him doing his best to case out the house they were approaching. It was two stories with a huge front porch that wrapped around the front of the house. Above the front porch was a balcony that ran the entire length of the front of the home. The driveway ended in a parking pad large enough to play full court basketball on. There was a boat on a trailer tipped on its side in the corner of the parking pad. The truck that had been hauling it was still attached but hadn’t flipped over.
As they got closer the signs of a struggle became apparent. The front door wasn’t completely closed. A body was laying across the entryway. The feet of the body were keeping the door from closing even though most of the body had fallen into the foyer. A big red stain and a spray of pellet holes that looked like they came from a shotgun covered the center of the door. More blood had pooled into a sticky, stinking mess in the foyer. Stepping around the body they entered the house.
The bottom floor looked like a miniature war had been waged in it. Blood was everywhere. A chandelier had been hit by a shotgun blast at some time during the fight and rained glass down on everything. Another body was lying across the kitchen table. This one was a young woman in a pajama onesie. The absurdity of her death struck Randy. She was going to spend eternity as a corpse wearing a monkey onesie while draped across a kitchen table with half her face shot off.
Lying with his back to the kitchen wall was an old man who was still clutching his shotgun in one hand. He was missing half his face and on the other side an ear dangled by a thin strip of skin. Joe looked like he might puke again. Randy hated puking. Otherwise, he knew he’d have already hurled a few times as well. He didn’t look down on Joe for puking left and right. It was actually the opposite. He admired the man for being freaked out and sickened by it all but gamely stepping into the fray.
Randy walked over and pulled the shotgun out of the corpses grip. As he did so he noticed the gaping hole in the man’s body where the heart would be and realized the guy must’ve offed himself. Whether he’d been getting eaten at the moment or if this was afterwards would remain a mystery. Looking over at the blood covered remains of the girl in the onesie Randy had the sudden suspicion the man may have had to kill his own daughter or granddaughter.
He placed the shotgun in Joe’s seabag and rummaged around the corpse until he found a box of shotgun shells. He dropped those down in the seabag as well. They continued to explore the house. The upstairs was pristine compared to the travesty that was the downstairs apartments. The beds were all made. The windows were all tightly shut. Standing on the large balcony they could look down and see the Coast Guard boat in the harbor. The boat that was waiting for them to fill up their bags and head back like a couple of apocalyptic Kris Kringles.
They systematically ransacked the house. They found a couple of hunting rifles and a few more boxes of ammunition. There was a pistol safe box on the night stand that was locked. It was heavy and there was ammunition for it in the closet, so they dumped the box into the bag. They figured they could work on opening it back on the island. Randy put shells in both barrels of the double-barreled shotgun they found in the closet of a room that looked like it’d probably belonged to a teenage boy. They based that theory on the scantily clad subject of the posters covering the walls.
They emptied the contents of all three medicine cabinets in the house into their bags. They didn’t even bother trying to read the labels. If it looked like medicine, they just dumped it on in. They found a collection of some serious looking knives so dumped those in as well. By the time they’d finished with the house Joe’s bag was getting very heavy. They’d decided to fill up Joe’s bag first and then work on Randy’s. That way Randy could be in charge of finding stuff and dumping it in the bag as well as holding onto the shotgun to protect them if they needed it.
They considered setting the bags down in a central spot and dragging everything over to dump in them. The problem with that was then if they had to run from the monsters that were out here somewhere, they’d have to leave the bags behind. Showing up at the dock with no bags wasn’t going to cut it. They had to show that not only were they good scavengers but that they should get picked to go every time. Both were in a hurry to get their families off that island before it got any weirder there. Being under martial law where the commander was an apparent sociopath on an island slowly running out of food wasn’t turning out to be the vacation they’d been looking forward to.
They came out of the first house and started trudging down the driveway towards the main road. Once they made it to the main road, they’d head up another driveway. At this rate, they figured they’d be back on board the cutter well before the noon deadline. Randy was racking his brain trying to figure out how they could impress the commander enough to be put in charge of all the future shore raiding parties. He didn’t think two bags of crap was going to cut it. He told Joe to wait for a second and ran over to the pickup truck that was parked in the corner by the boat that’d been blown over. Looking inside he saw the keys on the seat.
He opened the door, got in and started the truck up. Then he jumped out and ran over to Joe. They worked together to get their current loot into the back of the truck and untwist the trailer hook up from the back of the truck. They drove down the driveway of the house they’d just cleaned out and out onto the main road. They drove up into the driveway of the next house over.
“Do you think whatever killed everybody here has died out or just left?” Joe asked.
“I’m thinking maybe it was just an intense virus that hit people and made them crazy as hell and then they all died. Something that makes you insane enough to eat other people can’t be healthy. Imagine the damage it’d have to do to your brain. Like taking a big dose of meth mixed with bleach.”
They parked and got out to head up the stairs. Randy absently shoved the pickup truck keys in his pocket. He stepped over some branches that’d blown into the driveway. He wondered how long before nature reclaimed all of this. With no one picking up the junk from the storms or replacing windows or closing doors it wouldn’t take too long. There was bound to eventually be a fire and with no fire department to put a stop to it who knew how many houses would burn down. Things that would’ve been dealt with easily back when people lived here would now be enough to sweep a whole town off the map.
The house was empty. The doors were all shut. The windows had shutters covering them. Joe pulled the shutters back on one of the windows and rammed the leg of a chair from the porch through the window. The sound of breaking glass filled the air. Randy waved at him and made a shushing gesture. Off in the distance they heard some loud screeching noises that sounded like wolves being tortured. It was a freaky, keening wail that sent a chill up their spines. Both of them knew they should probably just get back in the truck and get the hell out of there.
Instead, with visions of what would happen to their wives if they failed at this mission, they carefully cleaned the broken glass out of the window and made their way into the house. Randy didn’t feel like they had a minute to waste. His kids were down in Florida and they were unprotected in the middle of all of this. Him and Kelly needed to get there as soon as possible. That meant getting them passes to leave the island.
The first Zombie turned into the driveway and made its way towards the house as Joe and Randy disappeared inside to begin scavenging.
Chapter 14: Closet Fever
“That’s disgusting.” The disgraced pastor was making his feelings known about the fact that humans’ poop. He was absolutely right on the disgusting aspect of it, but it was a natural bodily function and something they had to
take care of. It was adding enormously to their desire to get out of the closet and into fresh air though. They’d found some sealable Tupperware in the closet for the school supplies. They’d each taken one of those to use as their own personal toilet.
The preacher had said it with such disgust that Alice started crying. She tried to hurry and ended up spilling some on the floor which made the preacher snort again in disgust. He looked like he might have something else to say but Brenda gave him a look that clearly conveyed he needed to shut up. The preacher shut up and moved as far away from the ‘potty’ section of the closet as he could. His lip curled up in disgust.
Brenda held back from flinging canned food at his head. The rotund preacher was a major hypocrite. He’d stunk up the place worse than any of them. He was also a pig. He was eating twice as much as the rest of them. Brenda hadn’t said anything at first because she’d been optimistic the Zombies would wander off relatively soon. With the Zombies sticking around it didn’t look like they’d be able to get out of this closet anytime soon. Here it was over a week later and the same damned Zombie was still beating on the closet door. A daily look out the exterior door crack revealed the number of Zombies in the loading dock area had dwindled down to about ten. That was ten that she could see anyway. There was no telling how many might be out of sight. Ten was too many.
A Small World Page 10