A Small World

by R. S. Merritt

  “That works for me. I’d like to use it as a base to keep looking for my kids. Maybe I can still find them out there somewhere. Otherwise, we need to keep your grandkids and my niece nice and safe. Yeah. So that works. Let’s find a nice place and get set up and see how that goes.”

  With a new goal in mind they began looking for a good place to land. The lake they were on was covered in houses in some sections and devoid of houses on others. They were looking for a house set apart from the others where they could quickly get from the boat to a car. They circled around the large lake until they found a home that had a barren back yard. They were able to see from the concrete seawall all the way up to the large two-story home from the boat. They pulled in closer to take a good long look before committing to it.

  The house was large and yellow. The overgrown lawn covered a good two to three acres. A large dock held a couple of jet skis and a flat-bottomed boat that looked like it hadn’t been used for a few years. In a good year the whole place was probably worth at least a million dollars. Way out of either Brenda or Eric’s budgets.

  “Thinking about pulling in to this one?” The pastor asked. He’d slunk over from his designated place in the bow. His face still looking like one big bruise. Eric considered pushing him over the side of the boat to see if there were any alligators on this end of the lake.

  “We are. We were just checking to see if it looked safe first. Why don’t you go sit back down and rest?” Brenda said. She gestured for him to head back to the bow of the boat and sit back down. The pastor seemed like he might have something else to say but after glancing over at Eric and seeing the look on Eric’s face he wisely thought better of it. Looking defeated he went back to take up his seat in the bow. Brenda would’ve felt sorry for him if she didn’t despise him so much.

  “We could send him first to see if it’s safe.” Eric offered up.

  “Yeah but we can’t trust him not to just take a car and leave without us.” Brenda said after mulling the idea over.

  “Would that be such a bad thing?” Eric said with a smile. “I’ll chip in for the gas.”

  Determined to be smart about their approach to the house they pulled up next to the dock and sat down to wait and observe. They figured if they forced themselves to wait at least thirty minutes they could be sure they’d at seen everything they could see by staring at the house from this vantage point.

  Thirty minutes was a long time to try and make a bunch of young girls sit in a boat and be quiet. Doreen wasn’t having it and Zoey kept asking if they could be done being quiet yet. So, after a little less than five minutes of their self-coined Zombie stakeout they found themselves in the position of deciding to make a run at the house. If they didn’t do it soon then Doreen or Zoey were going to get loud enough to attract Zombies from all around the lake anyway.

  Eric checked his M-16 and made sure his boots were laced up tight. He was going to go first and check out the house then signal for them to join him if everything looked good. Switching from stakeout mode to assault mode Eric hit the dock with both feet already moving. He set off at a quick pace towards the house with his head on a swivel. The bright yellow house that had looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting began taking on a more ominous look as he approached it.

  Suddenly, all he could see were places Zombies may be waiting for him. Or, maybe there was a survivor up in the second floor right now with Eric’s head centered in the sights of his rifle. Eric made an effort to shift those kinds of thoughts out of his mind for now. His paranoia was one of the reasons he was still alive but right now it was interfering with his doing what he needed to do.

  He made it across the yard and padded up the back stairs to the deck on the back of the house. It was a large wooden deck with a huge set of sliding glass doors behind it. The kind that real estate agents would point out as giving a beautiful view of the lake. They’d be absolutely correct as far as Eric could tell. He gave himself a few seconds to try and catch his breath and control of his fear. He hadn’t even realized how safe he’d felt on the boat. It’d been the only time since this all started that he hadn’t been worried about a Zombie popping out of nowhere to take him out. He hadn’t had to worry about the kids running off and getting snagged by one of the monsters.

  Now, after their brief respite, they were going to be back in the thick of it. He couldn’t say he was totally happy with this plan. What he’d really like would be to stock up a houseboat and go live on a wide river somewhere. A big bag of water purifying pills and him and the girls could spend every day fishing. This current plan to go hang out in the suburbs and wait for people who were probably dead to show back up and be reunited with their kids seemed like suicide compared to the houseboat plan. He’d seen it in Brenda’s eyes that she wasn’t going to give up on her daughter. Hell, if the daughter was anything like Brenda then she might actually make it back to reclaim her kids.

  His breath collected, Eric decided to try the sliding glass doors to see if they’d open. Slinging his rifle behind his back he grabbed the handle for the slider and pulled on it. To his surprise it slid open easily. White gauze curtains blowing slightly in the mild breeze off the lake obscured his view of the inside of the home. Brushing aside the thin curtains Eric moved into the living room. The home was well lit thanks to the numerous large windows scattered around as well as the massive sliding glass doors.

  Eric had his rifle up and ready to defend himself from the screeching Zombies he expected to come running out of hiding at any time. None of that happened though. Eric did a quick sweep of the downstairs and found nothing more than a well-kept home with a pantry full of canned goods and bottled water. He opened up a door off the pantry leading to the garage and saw a jeep as well as a golf cart parked in the spacious garage. The jeep with its soft canvas walls wasn’t going to be ideal for driving through hordes of Zombies but it’d be a lot better than the golf cart alternative.

  Satisfied this would be a good place to rest and plan their next move Eric went back out on the deck and waved to Brenda to herd everyone else into the house. Eric rested the M-16 on the decks border and covered the group of kids led by Brenda as they moved quickly across the overgrown lawn. The pastor brought up the rear of the pack. Eric contemplated how easy it’d be to just put a single shot right into the hypocritical pricks face. Overall, Eric thought they made it across the lawn stealthily enough to have avoided attention despite the one random, whiney complaint from Doreen wanting a juice.

  Around the lake that one request for a juice carried. Zombies registered it and stopped what they were doing to try and figure out where the normal sounding human voice had drifted to them from. Not able to discern an exact location they started just wandering in packs around the lake. Seeking out the hated normal human who made that noise. A single-minded lust to rip into normal human flesh driving them onward.

  Chapter 33: Twelve Steps

  It turned out that when soliciting sobriety promises from a raging alcoholic you needed to be extremely specific. Kyler had asked Mike to please stay sober when it was his turn to stand watch. Mike had agreed. Mike stayed sober for approximately five minutes after Kyler fell asleep. Then Mike began justifying taking one small drink. He’d promised Kyler he’d stay sober. A couple hits of Southern Comfort weren’t going to get him drunk. As a matter of fact, the way he felt right a couple quick sips would help by waking him up and helping him get through the night.

  Kyler woke up with sunlight beaming down on him. He looked over and saw Mike was passed out in the driver’s seat again. Sighing, Kyler got out of the car and walked a few steps towards the bushes to relieve himself. He had no idea what to do about Mike. He needed at least a few more people here to have a real intervention. Mike was the adult and Kyler was technically still a kid, so it wasn’t like the guy was going to listen to him anyway. Plus, if the possibility of getting ripped apart by Zombies while he was passed out in the car didn’t scare him then what would? Sighing again, Kyler rea
lized he was just going to have to shoulder even more of the burden of keeping the two of them alive.

  When he was done, he walked around to Mikes side of the car and thumped on the window a few times. Mike woke up with a start and started fumbling around trying to find his pistol. Kyler put his face up the window and said hello a few times to get Mike calmed down. Once calmed down Mike got out of the truck and began rummaging through the truck bed to find a bottled water. Kyler handed him one he’d already picked out.

  “Feeling a little dehydrated?” Kyler asked.

  “Yeah. A little bit.” Mike said. He looked guilty and defiant at the same time. He was ready for a fight. Ready to explain why he’d just had to get drunk the night before.

  “About ready to go check out the docks and see if we can get on a boat before a sick person with a bad infection decides to eat us?”

  “Dude. Fine. Let’s just call them Zombies. I guess it doesn’t really matter.” Mike said. Caving on the whole terminology argument. Kyler smiled. He’d take what small victories he could with this guy.

  “Cool. I’m ready when you are. Maybe we drive by a few times and honk the horn and try to get them to come out where we can dodge around them easier in the truck?” Kyler was walking back around to get in on his side.

  “Yeah. Good idea. We can try something like that.” Mike hesitated and looked over at Kyler. Kyler stopped on the other side of the truck before getting in and looked curiously back at the grizzled old man. Mike had added more patches of white hair to his overall salt and pepper look. He also looked like he’d rubbed a bucket of fried chicken all over himself then rolled in the dirt. He was in serious need of a shave and a shower. For the first time though Kyler realized the man had a frailness about him. He’d always looked up to Mike as his dads’ friend. As a strong and able veteran who didn’t take crap off anybody. It scared him to look at Mike and realize he could visualize him lying in a coffin. The man was old and this whole ordeal was aging him quicker.

  “Sorry.” Mike said and then started getting in the truck. Accepting the apology for what it was Kyler climbed in on the passenger side. Mike arranged his gear and slammed the bottled water. He was studiously avoiding looking over at Kyler. Kyler handed him a bottle of Advil and another bottled water. Mike took care of getting that into this system then started up the truck.

  “Ok. So, we drive back to the docks. I beep the horn to get their attention. Once they’re all charging for us, we drive out slow enough that they can follow. We take them back up the road a few miles. Then we turn around and haul ass around them back here and quietly check out the boats and grab one we think’s good. Once we have it started, we get all the supplies we can and then we sail the boat down to Florida and drink Red Stripe and eat lobster the rest of our lives. Sound good?” Mike asked.

  “What’s Red Stripe?” Kyler asked with a straight face that broke into a grin at the lost look on Mike’s face. Mike punched him in the arm and started driving. Both of them thinking this plan had about a million ways it could go wrong but hoping they could improvise their way out of whatever happened. You could never plan for every eventuality. Mike had explained the whole KISS concept to Kyler as it related to military thinking. If you over complicated something, then it was bound to go to hell. Contact with the enemy was complicated enough without a complicated plan to deal with. You needed to have a clear objective and a clear series of tasks to carry out to reach your objective. Complexity killed military operations.

  The plan they’d come up with fell apart before they even had a chance to get it started. Mike pulled up to the main road and got ready to turn right. Kyler noticed the road looked odd in the direction they needed to drive in to get to the docks. Taking a closer look, he figured out the oddness was a mob of Zombies moving down the road towards them. It must’ve been the ones who followed them out of the docks yesterday plus whatever other Zombies they’d passed who’d decided to join in. They’d all met up and had some sort of Zombie powwow the night before. Luckily, the group of Zombies hadn’t decided to walk up a mile and check out the side road or they’d have found a couple of easy meals asleep in a truck.

  “New plan. We honk and drive towards the end of the road. We look for somewhere to pull off and just hope they keep right on running.” Mike looked over at Kyler to see if he agreed. Left unsaid was that if the plan didn’t work, they were going to have to swim for it since the road they were on ended in the bay. Kyler nodded. They were kind of screwed at this point anyway. Hopefully the new plan worked. It was pretty much the old plan except driving towards the bay instead of driving back towards the interstate. This new plan just gave them a much shorter runway before they were going to need to pull back on the stick.

  The road they were driving on ended abruptly at a roundabout which had two private driveways branching off it. Prior to getting to the roundabout they’d drive past a few more driveways that may be options for them to hide out in. They needed to figure out how to get the Zombies to follow them down the main road then keep going once Kyler and Mike turned the truck down one of the driveways. In theory the Zombies would troop right on by and then they could simply drive back to the docks and pick a boat to sail off into the sunset on.

  In actual practice it didn’t really work out that way. Looking down the road right now they could see that once the Zombies had lost sight of them yesterday, they’d evidently just hung out on the road waiting for some other stimulus. That would imply that even if they got the Zombies going in a conga line behind them right now that once they were out of sight the conga line may just stop and sit there blocking the road. In the best case even if the Zombies did all try and maintain the conga line there would still be some serious discrepancies in speed between the Zombies. There were ones that could run like Olympic track stars and then the ones that moved like wounded geriatrics. The disparity in speed meant the Zombies would quickly get strung out as they pursued the truck.

  The Zombie spread issue was a show stopper. It meant no matter how long they waited they couldn’t be sure all the Zombies had actually passed by before they decided to come out. The Zombies may not all be able to run at the same speed, but they were all capable of making that horrible screeching noise. Once that screech trumpeted out the other Zombies who’d already gone by would come running right back. Once they heard a screech near the dock that’d start a countdown dictating how long they had left to live if they didn’t get out in the bay.

  “How many rounds do you have left?” Kyler asked Mike. Mike made a show of counting loose cartridges then held up a single magazine.

  “This one’s full and I have about ten loose cartridges. I’m going to give the loose ones to you to load into the magazine I used up earlier. There’s way too many Zombies though. It doesn’t help that as soon as I pull the trigger every Zombie in ear shot will be headed our way on top of whichever ones we shoot at. The gun’s a last resort. The quieter we do this the better.”

  “Is this boat idea even going to work?” Kyler asked.

  “What do you mean? Assuming we can get a boat underway it should work fine. The only thing better would be a helicopter or a blimp or something and my blimp license expired over a year ago. I do know how to work my way around most kinds of boats though. We’re starting to overthink this. You ready?” Mike gave Kyler a smile and put the truck in drive. He eased out onto the main road and then laid on the horn.

  The horn had the desired effect. There was an immediate chorus of shrieks from the Zombies. A large crowd of them broke away from the mob and began sprinting down the road towards them. Mike kept his hand on the horn another few seconds before slowly starting to accelerate away from the Zombies running towards them.

  “Look out!” Kyler yelled. He was pointing down the road in front of them. Mike had been focused on the Zombies giving chase from behind. The horn had managed to wake up more than just that group though. Shrieks were coming from various directions now. Two Zombies were running down the road straight towa
rds them from the opposite direction. They couldn’t turn around and go the other way either as the road behind them was overflowing with Zombies in pursuit of the truck.

  The first Zombie coming from in front reached them. Mike tried to juke the truck to go around but the Zombie high jumped over the dash and smashed right into the window. The passenger side of the windshield came off and started falling into the truck. The Zombie was rocking back and forth and trying to unstick itself from the window to get at Kyler. Blood and brunette hair covered the spiderwebbed window. What used to be a young woman was now waving around a broken set of arms wrapped in the remains of a purple jacket as she tried to turn herself around to get at the two humans in the cab.

  The body of the woman covered the windshield to the point where Mike was having to stick his head out the driver’s side window to see to drive by. This was hampered by the Zombie on the windshield clawing and arching her way in his direction to try and get at him. The window was cracking and falling apart in multiple places as the Zombie continued to thrash around.