I could hear the dead behind us, but couldn’t see them yet. There was no doubt they were coming.
“Boat!” Billy said. “Remember the part about the boat?”
He moved off, and I followed him. Nobody else moved, so I told them to.
“We don’t know him,” Remo said catching up to me.
“Yeah, well, he didn’t know me either, and he just saved my ass. Besides, he waltzed through a gang of pus bags and they wouldn’t touch him.”
We didn’t say anything else until we reached the angled stone retaining wall that slipped down steeply into the bay. There was a forty-foot fishing boat off the island maybe a hundred feet. Billy cupped his hands and yelled out to the boat, “Mickey! This is Bugs! Come get us!”
Two kids, one definitely less than ten, the other about twelve, sat up and looked at us. The older one ran forward and the boat started up as the younger one struggled with the anchor. The bigger one came back and helped her, and soon the boat, piloted by a child, was on the way.
“Do not put your feet in the water,” Billy ordered. “I don’t know who’s down there.”
A hand-made gangway was pushed from the boat to the island. Billy grabbed the end of it and pulled it secure, then made his way across the four-foot gap. Chloe tried to go across first, but Donna grabbed her shoulder. Remo went across and inspected everything in a heartbeat. He motioned for us to come aboard.
When we were all sitting or standing on the open stern, Billy opened a white cooler and passed us all a Coke, noticed we weren’t drinking, then grabbed the one he had given Alvarez, popped the top, and took a sip. “Want me to taste them all? I mean, they’re sealed for Pete’s sake.”
I popped the top and guzzled a bit. The soda was piss warm.
He seemed delighted at my trust. “What’s the plan, fellow seafarers? Where would you like to go?”
“Alcatraz,” I answered. “We have friends there.”
Billy brightened further. “Me too!”
Richy gave a huge belch, and the two kids that Billy had on his boat both smiled. I followed Richy’s burp with an absolute gaseous explosion from my belly, then Ship put us all to shame. No doubt he could have propelled this boat across the bay with one burp if the tub had a sail. Fucker always has to one-up me. Bastard can burp like a champ, but he can’t say shit.
“Do you know a guy named Dallas?”
“Pittsburgh? Yeah, of course I know him. He thinks he’s from Texas or something. He talks like this.” He added in terrible, thick, southern drawl. “Dallas is a big fella, but not as big is your friend here.” Billy looked at Richy and Chloe and narrowed his eyes a little. “Do you two know who Black Jaques Shellacque is?”
“Sacrebleu,” Chloe said in a French accent and I thought Billy was going to spontaneously combust. He clapped his hands together and kept them there while he opened his mouth and eyes as wide as possible. He looked exactly like a six-year-old kid who had just gotten what they wanted for Christmas.
Billy planted his ass on the deck, crossed his legs, and put his elbows on his knees. He talked to Richy and Chloe for ten minutes about Bugs Bunny cartoons, pulling the other two kids in on the conversation. Alvarez took over the wheel from the young boy, and piloted us north.
Alvarez, Kat, and Donna all looked sort of crossways at each other as the kids spoke to our new friend. The three adults motioned me to come over to them.
“You think this guy is a little… off?” asked Kat under her breath.
“I was in prison, Kat. Absolutely everyone thinks I’m evil when I tell them that.” I glanced at the back of Billy’s head. “Plus, he saved me when it would have been easier to let me get eviscerated. I’m okay with off.”
We debated a bit for a moment, but in the end, this was Billy’s boat. What were we going to do, throw him and his kids overboard and pilfer it like pirates?
I moved back to Billy and put a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks again for saving me.”
“I get that a lot,” he answered. He was about to say something else, but I interrupted him.
“Can we call to Alcatraz and let them know we’re coming? I don’t want to be shot at when we pull up to the beach.”
“Dock.”
I didn’t know what he meant. “Huh?”
“Pull up to the dock and nobody will shoot at you. There will be armed folks there to greet you, you’ll have to surrender your weapons and gear and spend a day or two in quarantine, and then you’ll be fine. We pull up to any of the beaches, and you won’t get out of the boat before a sniper bullet takes the top of your head off. We should wait until we get within sight of the island before we call.” He glanced around the bay with his hand shading his eyes from the sun, looking for something. “Never know who’s listening, and they have boats too. I don’t know how to work the radio, do you?”
He looked like he really wanted to know, so I asked Alvarez to teach him. Billy cleared his throat as The Rock came into view off the port bow. We were crossing under the Bay Bridge, and it looked intact.
“Yoo hoo! Alcatraz folks! Rick? Ali? Are you there?”
The answer was immediate, This is Alcatraz, to whom are we speaking?
This is Billy! Remember me?
I don’t know you, Billy, do you have the call code?
Uhh… no. I just have some folks who want to hang out with you guys. One of ‘em says he knows Dallas.”
We see a small vessel coming from the southeast, is that you?
“Is it?” he asked Alvarez, who nodded. “Yeah, that’s us.”
“Please do not attempt to land on the island. A vessel will come out to meet you a quarter-mile out. You will be disarmed and will have to go through mandatory questioning and quarantine if you want to come in.”
“Roger, wilco, over and out!” the kid replied. “That was kinda easy.” He looked at the other passengers on our boat, then pulled me aside, next to Alvarez and Donna. He looked at his Nike sneakers for a second, then at me. “My price for the ride is that you take the kids with you. They’re better off with the folks on Alcatraz. Things are getting difficult in San Francisco.”
I was confused. “You’re not coming?
“To Alcatraz? Ha! No way.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “I’m undesirable. I used to be a psycho serial killer and there are a bunch of cops on the island now. They’d lock me up.”
This guy was tough to read. He actually sounded serious.
A big pleasure boat, flanked by a small, black military-looking thing began to move out toward the center of the bay from Alcatraz. They called us and we told them to hang on.
Billy was hugging his kids. “This is what we were out here for. You knew it, guys.” They both nodded, and the little girl was sobbing. “They’ll take great care of you, but you have to take care of each other too.” More nodding and sobbing.
Billy stood, shook everybody’s hand, grabbed his pack, and hopped off of the stern into a little aluminum dinghy. We were two hundred feet off of a dock to our port side, with Treasure Island way off to our right and Alcatraz in front of us.
“Ugh. Pier 39. Well,” he sighed, “haven’t checked out the Hard Rock Café yet. Might have some good stuff in there.” He untied the little boat and began to row to the dock. It was filled with infected. So much so that they were falling off one at a time and splashing into the salty water. “Tell Sam I said hi, and give Ali a kiss for me!”
My savior rowed off and was soon fastening his line to a piling on the dock.
“Don’t worry,” the boy informed us, “they won’t touch him.”
They didn’t. He walked past several of the things, climbed a short, wooden ladder, and moved into the teeming masses of infected as if he were fighting the crowd for the bathroom at a rock concert.
Alvarez moved us off quickly, and we met up with the Sea Ray and its inflatable counterpart in fifteen minutes. The little black boat had a light machine gun on a tripod attached to the front of it, and
the business end was pointed at us. There were also all kinds of guns on the pleasure craft, but they were pointed less at us and more toward the air. One other thing of note adorned the pretty boat: an extremely large Texan, with an equally huge grin on his face. His arms were folded and he had one eyebrow raised. I couldn’t help but mirror his shit-eater, and he nodded at me.
“Looks like ya found yer friends.”
“You too, big guy. Clara and Eleanor okay?”
“Fine ‘n dandy.” He looked the boat over. “Where’s the other fella? Tim?” His face fell. “Oh no…”
“Sorry, Dallas, he didn’t make it.”
Remo threw a line to a guy and they pulled the boats together. Another military guy hopped aboard our boat and stood in front of the jarhead.
“Look who isn’t dead,” the guy said aloud.
“Butters,” Remo said. “Damn, I was hoping you got eaten.” They clasped hands and I felt immensely better. Three other well-armed guys and a well-armed woman came to our boat, checked it over, including our packs, and said we were okay.
“Where’s Billy?” the pretty, auburn-haired woman asked.
“After saving us all, he took a small boat and rowed back into Hell. Are you Ali or Sam?”
She looked confused, then stuck her hand out. “Ali.”
“I’m supposed to kiss you.” Donna raised her eyebrows, and I noticed. “Billy asked!” I added quickly.
Dallas came aboard and enveloped me in a bear hug, crushing my injured appendage.
“Damn good to see you, Hoss.”
“You too. We kind of have to talk to the man in charge, Dallas. There are some people on their way here, and they might not be friendly.”
“Happens all the time. Most of ‘em are dead, but not all. Fightin’ the dead is easy. The livin’ shoot back.”
We unhitched the boats and began to move across the bay to the safety of Alcatraz. I had been on an island refuge before, only mine had been fashioned out of steel.
It had been no safer than anywhere else.
Read on for a free sample of White Flag Of The Dead
Acknowledgements
I haven’t written a lot of books. More than most, but significantly less than others. As of the time you’re reading this, I’ve had five novels published, and I’m thankful. On each of the five occasions, I was fortunate enough to have a book hit the shelves, the most difficult part of the process was acknowledging all of the wonderful people who helped make it happen. I’m going to attempt that now, so bear with me. Firstly, I need to express gratitude to my family; Wife, Kids, and Parents. My parents made me; my wife and kids made me better. Thank you for your patience and your love. To the folks at Zombiefiend.com: You people are more than helpful, you push. Without those pushes, all of my stories would still be in my head. My head already hurts, so thank you for helping me get the words out. To the Wardroom (wdrmmta.wordpress.com) and homepageofthedead.com, you helped more than you know with advisements and encouragements. To T-Rex: you made my stuff better. Thank you so much for that. To Shelly Loring, you tried so hard to teach me how a comma is used. Thanks for that, and sorry I’m dumb. To Severed Press: I still don’t know why you picked me up, but I appreciate that you did. I will sneak in a quick thank you to James Cameron as well, for writing and directing the movie Aliens, which is referenced numerous times in this book. Lastly, I need to thank you, Dear Reader. You have, once again, thumbed through the pages of a book that I worked quite diligently on. You persevered through the good (I hope there was lots) and the bad, (I hope there was none) to get here. Hopefully, you read the acknowledgements too…
1
“Ugh.”
“How’s that?”
“Ugh.”
“Come on caveman, your son is calling you.” My wife of six years poked me in the ribs and pushed my feet off the bed. In the background, soft music played through the monitor, indicating that Jake, our son, was awake and had activated the toy.
“I’m too tired to play daddy today. Get someone else.” I groaned, rolling over and burying my head in my pillows.
“Move it or we’ll never play at making another one,” she threatened.
“Empty threat. I’m too good for any woman to give up cold turkey.”
Ellie grabbed my pillows. “Fine. How about it’s your turn since I got up at 2?”
I rolled out of bed and lay on the floor. “I’m nothing if not fair.”
The words “Have fun” floated over the bed and down to my ears as I started my morning routine of pushups and sit-ups. I barely felt them anymore, since I had been doing them since I was a kid. However, habits are habits, and it woke me up in the mornings.
I walked down the dark hall, feeling very much like a zombie. I am sure I looked it, too. But things needed to be done, and as the wife said, it was my turn. Five a.m. was waaaay to early for anything, let alone getting up from a very sound sleep. Jake, my five-month old, was wiggly and wanting to move out of his crib. He was just learning to sit on his own, although he couldn’t push himself to a sitting position yet. He rolled all over creation, and dragged himself along in an attempt to crawl. We thought he was the greatest thing, being new parents, but even we were surprised at how happy he was all the time, and what an easy baby he was, if judging by the grousing my brother did about his kids.
“Hey, buddy.” I said stepping over to his crib. Jacob had activated his plastic fishbowl, which had alerted us to his state of wakefulness. Jake looked at me and smiled through his binky, swinging his arms in excitement. How these little guys remained so cheerful all the time was a mystery to me. If I could bottle it, I would be rich.
I picked him up and headed downstairs to make a bottle for him, since Ellie was not breast-feeding. She had tried, but it just seemed to not be in the cards, so here we were, spending lots of money on formula. I didn’t blame Ellie, how could it be her fault? She felt bad enough as it was, since she believed she was not getting that special “bonding time” that so many people say is so important. On the plus side, it allowed both of us to have some special time with the little guy, so we enjoyed it for what it was.
Downstairs I made him a bottle and a small bowl of oatmeal cereal. The doctor had said he could start it, so we got some, and he really seemed to enjoy it. I tasted it once and it reminded me strongly of glue, but I didn’t let Jake know that. I turned on the television to see what news there could be. I generally watched Fox for news, simply because it was slightly harder to spot the bias. Ellie liked the local stuff and once in a blue moon, I turned on CNN. Most of my news came from the Internet, but it was good background noise.
“…incoming reports remain sketchy, but there seems to be some sort of outbreak in New York City on the lower east side. We go to Hannah Graves at the scene of Angel of Mercy Hospital. Hannah, what can you tell us?” I glanced at the screen, but Jake decided to make a grab for the food bowl, so I lost the reporter’s comments.
“Okay, thanks, Hannah. We’re going to our interview with Dr. Rafik Narwal, from the Center for Disease Control. Dr. Narwal, what can you tell us? Are we looking at a pandemic?”
That got my attention. I picked Jake up to give him the rest of his bottle and stood in front of the television. Dr. Narwal looked bad, as if he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep lately.
“Nothing of the sort. We have taken precautions, like we normally do, when we have a situation where an infected person comes down with symptoms we haven’t seen before in this country. In Africa, this sort of thing is routine and would not even be a story.” Something in his manner was not sitting right with me. I had spent the last four years of my life as an administrator in public schools, and I knew when someone was lying to me, or when they were trying to cover up something. Right now, Dr. Narwal was lying, and worse, he seemed scared. When the CDC spokesman looked scared, check your antibiotic supply because things were not good. I started to think about what I had read recently, where estimates of the death toll from a pandemic avian flu outbreak,
could reach 150 million. I started to pay very close attention
“What kind of symptoms, so we will know what to look for?” Darla the commentator asked. I called her Darla because I didn’t know her name and she looked like one, anyway.
Dr. Narwal looked nervous. “The symptoms are relatively flu like, with profuse vomiting, diarrhea, sweating and salivating. If anyone comes down with these symptoms after being infected, it is a very good idea to isolate them, as they are very contagious.”
“Is this a new disease?”
“All reports indicate we have not seen this strain of virus before, so yes.”
“Where did this begin?” Why people cared about this I wasn’t sure, but maybe it gave them some sort of relief blaming someone else.
Dr Narwal explained. “One of our colleagues was doing research in a remote village in the Congo Basin. Nothing out of the ordinary there, many of our diseases and cures come from largely unexplored regions like the Congo and the Amazon. Dr. Roberto Enillo, was researching a new virus outbreak and he discovered this new disease. We are currently running tests as to what kind of virus this is, what the incubation rate is, its survival rate in the open, what kills it, and what feeds it.
I noticed he used only the past tense when talking about Dr. Enillo.
“What can we tell people to do?” Darla asked, leaning forward, looking concerned for the camera. I felt her concern, and appreciated the glimpse down her shirt.
Dr. Narwal relaxed a bit, as this was familiar ground. “People should not panic. If a relative comes down with the symptoms, isolate them and call the authorities. If you feel you are sick, go to a hospital or clinic and they will take care of you.” Something was ticking in the back of my mind, but I didn’t pay close attention as I knelt down to change a dirty diaper. . Jakey was finished with his bottle and gave me a satisfactory belch to complete his morning routine. I laid him on the floor and smiled at him, which got a full smile and arm flapping in response. What you don’t know about the world, buddy. I thought.
The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory Page 31