She left him sitting there so she could walk to the front of the van and see if she needed to take care of anything up there. Primarily, she needed to make sure there wasn’t an angry man sitting in the front of the van waiting to shoot them when they tried to go find a boat. She walked to where the front wheels of the van were. Her back to the bottom of the van she cautiously stuck her head around to see what she could see. There was a man crawling slowly away from the front of the van. She poked her head around a little further to look through the shattered windshield.
There was a body crumpled at the bottom of the van. The body had blood seeping out of it in a few different places. He was either dead or so messed up that he wasn’t going to be a threat to anyone anytime soon. She looked and listened intently for another ten seconds to see if anything else was going to happen. Deciding she didn’t have any more time to waste she walked confidently over to the man crawling along the hard asphalt of the parking lot. He had a gun clenched in his right hand.
Kelly stepped on his right hand until he let go of the gun. Then she asked him if he could stand up.
“No. I think you shot me in the foot.”
Kelly thought about it. She needed to get Randy and this guy into a boat as soon as possible. She needed to get this guy to start the boat and get them the hell off this island. She had zero clue how to start a boat. She also had zero clue how she was going to get her husband and her hostage out to the boat before more people showed up and killed them. This was all assuming there was a boat they could actually use just sitting out there waiting for them.
“Stand up.” Kelly said and poked the man in the back with the barrel of the rifle.
“My legs messed up ma’am. I don’t think I can stand up without help.” The man said. Kelly didn’t care.
She squatted down right in front of the man. “Stand up or I’m going to shoot you in the arm and see if that fixes your leg issue.”
She watched as the guy got to his knees then slowly and painfully tried standing up. He got about halfway to his feet before keeling back over. She poked him with the barrel of the gun, and he tried again. This time he stood on one leg and balanced himself. His shoe was covered with blood. Great, she really must’ve shot him in the foot. She stood there wondering what to do when she heard Randy behind her.
“I can walk. He can lean on me and you can cover us. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Randy came over and let the gimped-up guardsman lean on him. Once the man was semi-balanced, they started hobbling together towards the docks. Kelly was walking backwards and casting nervous glances towards the entrance to the parking lot.
“What’s your name?” She asked the gimp.
“I’m Tony.” He said. He was getting into the rhythm with Randy. They were starting to make decent time. Building slowly towards the speed of a drunk eighty-year-old with a walker. One of the cool walkers with tennis balls on the legs.
“Well Tony. We want to take a boat to the mainland. We were going to have your buddy Griffin take us over, but we had to shoot him. Are you going to take us over or do we need to shoot you and find somebody else?” Kelly asked him sweetly. She took a long glance over towards the van. Tony followed her line of sight to the dead body on the floor of the van. He then looked over towards their truck and saw Griffins body on the ground. He gulped.
“They took all the keys from the boathouse. We can look on the boats and see if we can find a spare but if we can’t we’re kind of screwed.”
“Can’t you start it without a key?” Randy asked him.
“I can’t. An engineer or mechanic might be able to do it, but I mostly just paint boats and drive them. We can try though. Most people keep an extra key on the boat somewhere. Just because it sucks to drive all the way down to the marina to get your boat and realize the keys are sitting at your house. When they’re moored up like this, they have to leave them with the harbor master, so he can move them around if he needs to. Those are the ones I’m pretty sure already got seized on the commander’s orders to prevent people from doing what we’re trying to do.” Tony seemed apologetic about it. He was obviously trying to explain it in a way that didn’t make Kelly think he was lying. He wanted to avoid her deciding to leave a third body bleeding out in the deserted parking lot.
“Let’s take a look then. If we don’t find something before your friends show up, you’re dead.” Kelly said. The sweetness was gone from her voice. She was channeling a mother’s need to get back to her babies now. There was no mercy for anyone who stood between her and them.
“Let’s see if we can’t hobble a bit faster then.” Randy said with a grin. “Nothing like the fear of death to get you motivated! Right Tony?” Tony didn’t respond but he was moving a lot faster. Kelly had gotten her point across.
“Let’s check the one in the middle first.” Tony guided them over to a smaller, sporty looking boat that was tied up next to a couple of sports fishing boats. The kind that could be chartered for a group to go out fishing for the day. Randy and Kelly helped Tony aboard the boat and he immediately shuffled over to the canopy covered bridge area of the boat. Randy and Kelly walked along with him and asked how they could help. Pretty soon they were all digging around looking for a key.
Five minutes later they were failing on a different boat. There weren’t that many viable candidates for them to try out. The old harbor area they were in had taken the brunt of the storm that came through. The boats that were tied up to the dock here had all taken a beating. A few of the boats were listing noticeably and one had sunk completely. It was dark out, but they were all aware that the big ferry was tumbling around in the bottom of the marina as well. Once they did finally get a boat started, they’d still have to make it out past that giant obstruction. There was no way of knowing if the harbor was even passable.
“We’re actually lucky the ferry sank in here. Otherwise, the commander would’ve probably had all the boats brought around to the other side of the island.” Tony brought up as they emptied out all the drawers in the lower cabin on the boat they were searching. Randy took a last look at the pile of women’s panties and protein bars on the deck and saw a set of keys lying there. He bent over and scooped them up.
Kelly looked down into the cabin at him. She’d stayed top side to search the bridge area and watch Tony. She was also keeping an eye out to see if any company showed up. She’d seen a few cars drive past the harbor but so far none had actually turned in. Which was good since anyone taking even a casual glance at the parking lot in the harbor would know something was going on. The overturned vehicles and dead bodies were a pretty big giveaway.
Randy jingled the keys at her with a goofy grin on his face. She let out a girly shriek of joy. Randy was too excited to even give her crap about sounding like a fifteen-year-old who’d just seen Justin Bieber walk on stage. Besides, he’d felt exactly the same way when he first spotted the keys. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he’d made the same noise himself. He hurried up the ladder to the main deck and handed Tony the keys.
Tony started screwing around with gauges and knobs and priming the engines. Randy watched all of the activity and thought to himself that it was really good that Kelly had hit the guy in the foot and not the head. Without the aid of helpful YouTube videos there’s no way they’d have figured out how to get this boat started in a timely manner. He walked around helping Tony balance and be mobile. After what seemed like an eternity of doing other stuff Tony was finally ready to try the key.
The first one he tried didn’t fit the ignition. Randy got a sinking feeling in his stomach until Tony flipped to the next key on the chain and it slid in easily. Tony turned the key and the engines coughed a few times then roared to life. The powerful hum of the engines vibrating the boat in a sensation Randy thought might be one of the best feelings he’d ever had. They busied themselves casting off. Once they had the ropes undone Tony started backing them out and away from the slip.
“We’ve got company.” Kelly said
quietly as she squatted in the stern of the boat and rested her M-16 on the bench back there. Randy admonished Tony to hurry up and get them out of the harbor and into the ocean then he went and got down on the deck next to his wife. They watched as two sets of lights drove off the main road and into the parking lot. The lights on one of the cars flipped to bright as they got close to the van.
Not wanting to give the guys in the parking lot time to figure out what was going on Randy and Kelly took a few pot shots at the sedans. The sound of glass breaking and men cussing and screaming indicated they hit their marks. A few seconds later both of the sedans were squealing tires to get out of the parking lot and back on the main road.
“Tony. How we looking? We need to be out of here now. We give them time to come back with some big guns while we screw around trying to get out of the harbor and we’re going to be very dead.” Randy called out nervously. He stood up and started walking back towards the bridge. Kelly stayed in the stern. She was focusing on the shoreline as she worked the M-16 barrel back and forth with her eye glued to the gun sights so all she’d have to do was squeeze the trigger to kill whatever she saw.
“I think we’re good. We don’t seem to be hitting anything.” The words were barely out of Tony’s mouth when they felt the boat begin scraping across something underwater that was large and hard. They waited breathlessly to see if they’d get stuck. The boat started to slow down as the scraping noise got louder. Tony moved the lever to put the engines into full ahead. There was a loud popping noise from the bottom of the boat then they were moving normally again.
A few more minutes and they were out the mouth of the harbor and headed for the mainland. Kelly looked back at the harbor one last time. Even though there were lights moving around on the road she didn’t see any lights in the parking lot or anything else that indicated they were being followed. Tony asked where they wanted to go.
“We need to get to Florida. Take us as far south as you can and find a place to fuel up or snag another boat.” Randy told Tony. Kelly smiled over at Tony.
“Good job getting us out of there. You’re with us now. Ever been to Florida?”
Chapter 32: Pain in the Neck
At some point during the night Zoey had morphed from being an angel to becoming a large annoying leech who kicked. To save his sanity and try to get some sleep Eric had moved her off him several times. Each time she’d been latched back around him within minutes. She had lots of dreams about playing soccer and riding bikes based on the number of times she randomly kicked him. As sleepy as he was, he was still thrilled to see the light of dawn start spreading across the sky. It meant he could escape from this tiny torture machine shaped like an innocent little girl.
He sat up and noticed that while they’d been sleeping, they’d drifted close to the lakeshore. They were about ten yards from the bank of the lake right now. He looked over at the densely wooded banks and saw a small path leading up to a clearing. A girl of about Zoey’s age was running down the path towards them. The girl on the path opened her mouth and started screeching. Eric froze. Fear coiled within him. A primal fear struck at his heart. The young girl Zombie reached the end of the path. She charged at them through the shallow water. She was still screeching loudly.
A flash of green and brown as an enormous alligator erupted out of the shallow water and wrapped its powerful jaws around the girl’s torso and head. The alligator went into a death roll and disappeared back under the water with its victim. Some ripples the only evidence that any bit of that early morning nightmare had just happened. The ripples spread out and gradually disappeared. The young girl’s story ended. Eric looked around the boat to see if anyone else had seen what just happened. Everyone on the boat was sitting up and staring. Mouths open and eyes wide in disbelief. Doreen started crying. Brenda went to comfort Doreen but then hesitated. They began to hear echoing screeches drifting to them on the wind.
“We need to get out of here.” Eric said.
“Agreed.” Brenda said, helping Eric get the boat started. The pastor was sitting in the bow staring back at them. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked miserable. An entire side of his face was basically one big bruise. You could almost feel sorry for him until you thought about the fact that Jim wasn’t here because of him. Alice wouldn’t be there either if it’d been up to the coward. What to do with the man was a question that was constantly flitting through Brenda’s and Eric’s thoughts. It was odd that of the three adults left alive Brenda and Eric were the two with compassionate hearts given what paths they’d each chosen to walk back when the world was normal. Brenda had always thought people called to the ministry were automatically kind hearted. She was hoping the pastor was the exception to the rule.
Brenda, Caitlyn and Eric fumbled around with the engine and the starter for a minute before they had the boat moving again. Once they were moving the next question was where were they moving to?
“I know you want to get there but I’m not sure I have the energy for another run at Disney right now.” Brenda said. The wind was whipping her hair around as they slowly drove back to the middle of the lake. Eric was on the steering wheel guiding the small boat and controlling their speed. He’d already come to the same conclusion about making another theme park run.
“It may have been a good idea to get to Disney. If we had a helicopter or something it might have even worked out. I just hate that we lost so many people trying to make it there. Maybe we just need to find somewhere near a store and stay there instead? We need food and shelter. It shouldn’t be that hard to find since I don’t think Zombies have figured out how to use can openers yet.”
Brenda laughed aloud at the image of a Zombie using a can opener. The little joke had caught her off guard, but it’d affected her in a good way. She knew she was getting in a funk. She kept up a brave front for the kids but inside she was tired. She was tired and scared. She was terrified she was going to get them all killed. The fact that she’d kept them alive this long was a testament to her faith in god and willingness to do whatever it took to reunite them whole and healthy with her daughter and son-in-law.
There’d been so much death. They were practically wading through corpses to get where they needed to go at this point. Unholy demons were possessing the people all around them. It’d crossed Brenda’s mind multiple times that maybe this was the rapture. Maybe god was calling his people home. Leaving the vessels to walk the earth and be possessed by demons getting ready for the final battle. Brenda just couldn’t figure out why the children and her would be stuck in limbo like this.
Brenda had lived her life trying to be a good person. It wasn’t always easy. She’d been tempted to go down dark paths in the past, but she’d never strayed too far from what she knew to be right. She had a strong moral compass and a strong faith. She knew she’d worked hard to be someone god would welcome to his bosom. She wondered if maybe the fact that she assumed she’d have been caught up in the rapture was a form of pride that was the sin keeping her out.
She was full of questions and doubts. She wanted someone of faith to discuss this all with but the only person available was the pastor. She had serious doubts at this point about the pastor’s faith. She no longer thought of him as a man of god. He was just a church bureaucrat who’d been good at speaking. A man who could make it look like he was speaking from the heart when really, he was the kind of guy who could lock a door and watch a toddler be eaten by Zombies without lifting a finger to help.
Eric had told her when she broached the subject with him that he’d given up on god. She hadn’t pressed him too hard on it as it seemed like it might have been something recent. She could understand where that resentment towards the church and its teachings would come from with Eric. Brenda knew he’d been a divorced dad paying child support for two tween aged daughters before this all happened. She inferred this from him questioning her on who’d been in the church that fateful day when everything went to hell. Based on his questions and what she’d
learned from the other guys with him she knew that he’d come back looking for his daughters. He’d fought Zombies like a man possessed to get into the places he thought they may be. They’d never found any traces of his daughters in any of the places they tried. The closest living relative they’d found had been Alice.
“Earth to Brenda.”
Brenda snapped out of her self-induced daze. She hadn’t realized her train of thought around religion was going to distract her from the conversation with Eric quite that much. The poor man must think she was descending into dementia right in front of him. Given the state of the world today Brenda thought the people with dementia might be the lucky ones. They still needed to worry about mundane matters though. Like where they should go and what they should eat.
“I’d like to go back somewhere near my daughter’s house and try to survive there for a while. Give my son-in-law and her a chance to make it back and join up with us. Then we could try and go somewhere else. There’re some houses near their house that are pretty huge and are more isolated than their house is. There’s a couple of supermarkets within a few miles of there. We should be able to stock up on supplies pretty easy.” Brenda looked at Eric to see what he thought of the plan. She felt bad bringing up that they should wait on her daughter when Eric hadn’t been able to find his own daughters.
A Small World Page 24