“You’re preaching to the choir,” answered Reno.
Parnell walked up to Victoria and Reno. “I haven’t got any problem with money. I never said I did.”
“You mean you’re not gonna turn us into the authorities?” said Reno, feigning astonishment. “Surprise, surprise.”
“What authorities? Society is in chaos.”
“And you wouldn’t get a piece of the action, if you did.”
Parnell rounded on Reno. “Why do you have to be so cynical?”
“I’m calling it like I see it.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with having money.”
“I guess. Doctors and lawyers are the two highest paid professionals.”
Parnell harrumphed. “There you go again being cynical.”
“Not only do doctors make oodles of money, they also have the power of life and death over their patients. It isn’t just money with you guys, it’s power, too.”
“Not only are you a bred-in-the-bone cynic, you’re a psychiatrist wannabe as well, I see. Did you ever hear of something called the Hippocratic oath?”
“The medical profession has a good PR department. I’ll grant you that. You doctors need it to fight off all those malpractice lawsuits.”
Parnell flung up his hands and stalked away from Reno. “There’s no talking with you.”
“Does that mean you don’t want your cut of the loot?”
Parnell came to a halt and faced Reno. “I have no problem dividing up the money equally among us. That’s the right thing to do.”
Reno was smiling. “You always know how to spin it so you come out smelling like a rose, don’t you, Doc?”
“All the money in the world doesn’t do us one iota of good out here on the ocean if everybody’s dead,” pointed out Halverson.
“What’s your advice?”
“We’ve got to find more people who are alive so we can form a functioning society that will be able to survive in this new world we’re stuck in.”
“New lack of world, if you ask me.”
“Whatever,” said Victoria. “Why does everything we say have to turn into an argument?”
“Are you gonna kill me?” Brittany asked Reno warily, her eyes riveted on Reno’s shotgun that was still leveled in her direction.
“Will you put that gun down and stop terrifying the girl, Reno,” said Victoria.
Reno lowered the shotgun.
“We’re not gonna kill anyone,” Victoria assured Brittany.
“I’m cold,” said Brittany, shivering.
Parnell strode up to her. “You’re probably in shock.” He turned to Victoria. “Are there any blankets onboard?”
“I’ll take a look down below,” said Victoria.
She disappeared down the companionway.
A few minutes later she returned with a powder blue wool blanket. She draped it around Brittany’s shuddering shoulders.
“How come she gets special treatment?” said Reno.
“Are you in shock, too?” said Parnell.
“We all saw what those ghouls did to that Russian woman on the street. I don’t exactly feel euphoric. And that’s not the only person I’ve seen ripped apart by those things. But I’m not asking for any special favors on account of it.”
“She lost her boyfriend to them.”
“Here we go bickering again,” said Victoria, fed up.
Reno shook it off. “Let’s have something to eat.”
“How can you think of eating after what we’ve just seen?”
“He’s right,” said Halverson from the helm. “We need to keep up our strength.”
“I’ll eat later,” said Victoria, looking ill.
She shepherded Brittany toward the stern and helped her sit down on a thwart.
“You’re missing a perfect dinner,” said Reno.
He dug into the supplies Halverson and Parnell had scattered onto the deck when they unloaded the shopping cart.
“I don’t think so,” said Victoria, watching him pawing through the snack food.
“The perfect dinner,” cooed Reno. “Pretzels and Cheetos.”
He tore open a plastic bag of pretzel sticks and started munching a stick.
Parnell sorted through the food. “Don’t forget a drink.” He snatched up a red aluminum can of Coke and lobbed it to Reno.
Reno managed to catch the can in his free hand. “Too bad it’s not a beer.”
Victoria turned up her nose at the food. “That’s all junk food. Didn’t you get anything else?”
“I was in a rush,” answered Halverson from the helm.
“Too bad we had to abandon the other carts,” said Parnell. He scowled at the bags and boxes of junk food scattered on the deck. “If the zombies don’t kill us, this stuff will.”
Shrugging, he glommed onto a green can of ginger ale, popped open the top, and swigged the soda.
Chapter 24
Halverson could feel the weather getting cooler as they sailed northward away from SoCal. It was more comfortable now, away from the hot, arid Santa Anas that were buffeting Los Angeles. It felt like it was in the seventies.
Newton the iguana didn’t like it, Halverson could see. The iguana was pacing around the prow, agitated by the cooldown. Newton preferred temperatures in the eighties and higher like those found in his native Colombia. Nothing could be finer for him than lying on a hot rock as the Colombian sun’s burning rays beat down on his skin. Then he could relax and lie motionless on his belly.
The sun was setting on the western horizon, seeming to bob like a molten orange globe on the dimming ocean.
“I hope you can see where you’re going in the dark,” said Reno.
“This boat has running lights,” said Halverson.
“What’s that in the distance?” asked Reno, peering ahead.
“Looks like a bridge.”
“It’s orange. It must be the Golden Gate Bridge.”
As they neared it, they could see into San Francisco Bay.
“There’s a bright light coming from beyond the bridge,” said Reno.
Halverson figured he knew what it was as he picked up on the lighthouse and the water tower not far from it.
“It’s Alcatraz,” he said.
It was the infamous federal penitentiary, now a star attraction of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The likes of gangsters Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Whitey Bulger, and Alvin (Creepy) Karpis had resided there at one time or another.
“It gives me the creeps just looking at it,” said Victoria, spotting the prison in the distance as she angled up to the gunwale beside Reno.
“Got your sea legs now?” he asked.
“Not really.” She didn’t care for sailing, but she was sort of getting used to it in dribs and drabs.
“AKA the Rock,” said Reno, gazing at Alcatraz.
Originally discovered and fortified by the Spanish in 1769 in San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz became a US military prison in 1859. In 1933 it became a federal maximum-security penitentiary, from which, authorities claim, nobody had ever escaped.
There are those that believe three convicts might have escaped, since their bodies were never found after they paddled away in a raft they cobbled together out of prison raincoats. The convicts were never heard of again, though there have been unsubstantiated sightings, mostly by relatives of the three convicts.
Authorities are convinced, however, that the three convicts—Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin—drowned in the icy waters of San Francisco Bay.
These three attempted the impossible on June 11, 1962, when they concocted one of the most elaborate prison escape plans ever devised. It included constructing papier-mâché dummy heads that the three convicts planted in their cell bunks to hoodwink guards into thinking they were asleep while they escaped. To create the lifelike dummy heads they used human hair that they gathered from the Alcatraz barbershop.
Only one convict is confirmed to have ever reached th
e mainland from Alcatraz by swimming. The same year Morris and the Anglin brothers tried to escape, John Paul Scott escaped from Alcatraz, swam across San Francisco Bay, and arrived on the mainland on December 16. Exhausted from the swim and suffering from hypothermia near the Golden Gate Bridge, he was found by teenagers and promptly arrested by the police.
“It doesn’t look very inviting,” said Victoria, as she beheld a flock of ravens flying over Alcatraz.
“It’s not a prison anymore,” said Reno. “They closed the prison in 1963.”
“It still doesn’t look inviting.” She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling chilly. “Why did they close it?”
“Bobby Kennedy closed it. He was the attorney general then. He said it was too expensive to operate and its buildings were being eroded by seawater.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
“I wrote an article about it a while back.”
From the helm, Halverson said, “That’s the perfect place for us to escape the ghouls.”
“Are you crazy?” said Victoria.
“Think about it. Where’s the last place the ghouls can get to? A prison. Not only is a prison good for keeping people in, it’s also good for keeping people out—even dead people like ghouls.”
“We would be safe from them there,” agreed Reno. “The ghouls can’t cross the water.”
“And there must be provisions inside the prison that’s now a museum.”
“Even if there aren’t, we could sail to the mainland and get supplies whenever we wanted.” Reno thought about it and nodded. “You might be onto something.”
“That lighthouse is on, so they must have a generator on the island. That means we’ll have power, as well.”
“All the comforts of home,” said Victoria dryly.
“I’m for it,” said Parnell, approaching Reno and Victoria at the gunwale.
“I hate to be a party pooper,” said Victoria, “but what if ghouls are already on the island?”
Reno shook his head, no. “How could they have gotten there?”
“How could they have gotten anywhere, for that matter?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” said Halverson.
He set sail for Alcatraz in the dusk.
“Something tells me this is a bad idea,” said Victoria.
She watched the ravens circling over the island.
The blanket still around her shoulders, Brittany got up and padded over to Victoria in her bare feet. “Are we being punished? Is that what this is all about?”
“Punished for what, dear?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who’s punishing us?”
Brittany shook her head, not getting it. “Then why are we going to jail?”
“We’re hiding from the ghouls.”
“But why are there ghouls in the first place?”
“You’re working on the false assumption that there’s some grand design to the end of the world,” said Reno.
“And there isn’t?” said Brittany.
“None at all. It’s sheer chaos. And that’s why it’s so scary.”
Chapter 25
Its mast creaking in the wind, the Costaguana sailed through the crepuscular waters, plowing up white froth like snow from a snowplow in its wake.
Water, water, everywhere, Halverson thought, recalling Coleridge’s poem about the ancient mariner as the boat made for Alcatraz. Spindrift in his face, Halverson peered toward the San Francisco shoreline. Zombies, zombies, everywhere. He couldn’t actually see any from here. The shore looked deserted of any kind of activity—human or otherwise. He could think of no other reason for the desolation other than the plague.
He wasn’t going to take any chances putting to port till he reached Alcatraz. He figured San Francisco proper was as infested with disease as was Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and points between on the mainland.
Overhead, a drift of ragged clouds scudded with the onshore breeze.
As he entered San Francisco Bay he could make out three high-speed inflatable Zodiac boats moored at the small pier on Alcatraz Island.
“I see boats but no people,” said Reno, noticing the direction of Halverson’s gaze.
“Let’s see if we can find some,” said Halverson, steering toward the pier.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” said Victoria.
“What’s the alternative?” said Reno. “Floating around on the ocean for the rest of our lives like the Flying Dutchman?”
Victoria heard her stomach rumble, protesting her stint as a sailor. “That’s not a good option.” She massaged her stomach.
Halverson pulled up to Alcatraz’s dock.
When they were close enough, Reno hopped onto the pier and tied the painter to a steel cleat on the floorboards.
Halverson furled the sails so the boat wouldn’t tip over and capsize in the windy bay.
“Toss me my shotgun,” said Reno.
Halverson gathered up two shotguns and pitched one to Reno. The other Halverson kept for himself.
Victoria collected her shotgun as well.
“What do you guys expect to run into?” asked Parnell, eying their weaponry.
“The way things are these days, who knows?” answered Reno.
“Better safe than sorry,” said Halverson.
He stepped onto the wheezy wooden pier, followed by Victoria, Parnell, and Brittany.
“Let’s check the place out,” said Reno, striding off the pier onto the bleak, wind-swept island.
The dark, grim outline of the redoubtable prison loomed up in front of them.
Halverson, Victoria, Brittany, and Parnell followed Reno off the jetty.
Before they had taken twenty paces, a team of half a dozen males emerged from the prison and headed toward them.
Halverson tensed.
“Are they OK?” asked Victoria.
“They seem to be walking in a straight line,” answered Reno. “That’s a good sign. They’re not lurching like ghouls.”
“They’ve got AK-47s slung over their shoulders, too,” said Halverson warily, not sure what to make of it.
Reno didn’t share his concern. “Then they must not be infected. Ghouls don’t carry guns.”
“Maybe they think we’re diseased,” said Brittany.
“If nothing else, they must have a well-stocked armory,” said Halverson, noting that the men were packing pistols along with their AKs.
“Hello!” called out the lead man, who was wearing an olive drab foraging cap. “Can we help you? I’m Kobe Jones.”
He was a thirtysomething black who stood over six feet tall with close-cropped kinky hair. He had high cheekbones and a prognathous jaw.
What he didn’t have was a genial voice, decided Halverson. On the other hand, it didn’t sound threatening either.
Jones and his men pulled up in front of Halverson and Reno.
“I’m Chad Halverson,” said Halverson. “We’re trying to escape the plague.”
“Who isn’t?” said Jones. “Have any of you been bitten by the infected?”
“Is that what you call them?” asked Reno. “The infected?”
“Yeah,” answered Jones, sizing Reno up.
“None of us have been bitten,” said Halverson on the spot.
He knew Reno had a mouth on him and he wanted to nip Reno in the bud before he got started antagonizing everyone.
“Is it safe here?” Victoria asked Jones.
Jones didn’t answer her. Instead, he asked, “Why did you all come here?”
“We saw the lighthouse on,” answered Halverson. “We thought somebody might be here.”
“From what we’ve seen, the mainland’s not safe,” said Reno. “This seems like a good place to hole up.”
“We don’t have a whole lot of room here,” said Jones. “You can see for yourself it’s a small island.”
“Are you in charge here?” asked Halverson.
“No. Jefferson Bascomb is.”
“That’s why we came out here—to take you to him.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Jones didn’t move. He checked out Halverson’s shotgun with hooded eyes. “The thing is, you don’t need guns here.”
“Then why do you have them?” asked Reno.
“I’m in charge of security on the island.”
Halverson motioned to Reno to cool it. “We only brought the guns because we thought there might be ghouls here.”
“Well, there aren’t,” said Jones.
“We want to be prepared in case of an emergency.”
“That’s why we’re here. We’re the security force and that’s our job.”
“OK.”
“We have a peaceful setup here. We don’t want anybody rocking the boat. That’s why only security personnel are allowed to be armed.”
“Is this your subtle way of telling us to get off the island?” said Reno, annoyed.
“Not at all. You’re welcome here.”
“Then let’s go see your leader.”
“As soon as you hand over your shotguns.”
Halverson didn’t like the idea of being unarmed.
“We need to talk this over,” he said, and gestured to Reno, Victoria, Brittany, and Parnell to join him as he pulled away from Jones.
Chapter 26
“Now what do we do?” asked Reno, as he huddled with Halverson and the rest of their party out of earshot of Jones.
“I don’t like the idea of handing over our guns to these guys,” answered Halverson.
“I don’t either. How can we trust them?”
“If we don’t hand our guns over, we can’t stay on the island,” said Victoria.
“What do we need with guns here, anyway?” said Parnell. “You heard Jones. There aren’t any infected here.”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sailing around on the sea.”
“We could go someplace else,” said Halverson.
“But there are people and supplies here,” said Victoria.
“Let’s hand over our guns,” said Parnell.
“Easy for you to say,” said Reno, “since you don’t like guns in the first place.”
“Guns aren’t gonna solve our problems. We need to find the cure for this epidemic.”
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