Jenn thought nothing of it until Stu arrived and ordered Mike to get three days’ worth of clothes together. “You’re coming with us. Gerry wants you to verify what we have to trade. We’re going to try something a little different this year.”
“That’ll take three days?” Mike asked.
“And since when does Gerry not trust you?” Jenn asked.
Stu glared. “Okay, he’s a goodwill ambassador who’s also going to take inventory. You have room in your apartment for him, don’t you?”
“I-I do,” she answered, feeling both bewildered and flushed. There were only seventy or so people living in the complex and there were over a hundred apartments. She could understand someone hosting Mike, but why wasn’t Stu or one of the other men doing it? It was an obvious question, and yet she held her tongue.
Stu watched her reaction, his dark eyes appraising her. When she didn’t say anything he said, “Good. I want to leave before the wind picks up any more. So, Mike, lets hop to.” Mike looked just as bewildered as Jenn felt as he started off towards his quarters. “Go with him, Jenn,” Stu said, giving her a push. “He might need help.”
She hurried to catch up. “What kind of help do you need?”
“The hell if I know,” Mike said, glancing back at Stu, who was glaring at the other teens. One of Mike’s friends had made a crack about Jenn needing to pick out Mike’s clothes for him. “Something weird is going on. Starting with Stu going up to the tower. He hates heights. Always has.”
This wasn’t news to Jenn. There were very few secrets in a group as small as theirs. “It might have to do with the traders. We didn’t have a good summer. Mister Pablo got killed and Winston got giardia and was sick for like, three months.”
“Yeah, our summer wasn’t the best, either. Um, my room is a bit of a mess. Maybe you should wait out in the hall for a few minutes.” They had entered what had once been the bachelor guard quarters of the prison. The gloomy building seemed weathered both inside and out. Paint was peeling from the walls and the handrails were dull orange with rust.
Jenn knew how messy boys could be; they were almost as bad as girls. Jenn was a rare exception. She kept her two-bedroom apartment perfectly neat, always hoping to have visitors which she almost never had. And now she was going to have a friend over for three days! It made her giddy, and as she waited in the unlit hall, she completely forgot the fishy circumstances. She was too busy worrying over what she would feed him and how much wood she had. The hills were far warmer than the island, still it was almost October and the nights were dipping into the thirties.
She had taken to sleeping in her living room where her fireplace was, but she couldn’t do that with Mike over. That wouldn’t be proper. In fact, she should sleep with her door closed and…
“I’m ready,” Mike said, squeezing out into the hall. He hadn’t opened his door more than seven inches, meaning he had to literally squeeze. In one hand he carried a plain white pillowcase with his clothes in it, and in the other hand he carried his unloaded crossbow.
There was an awkward moment between the two of them as they stared at each other. Mike then grinned, his cheeks high with color. “Do you think Stu will let me pilot the boat? He’s a little sloppy when he tacks and loses a lot of momentum. Also with the wind up…” He broke off, shrugging.
“You’re the expert,” Jenn said, hoping she didn’t sound like she was gushing.
They left the building, which was right around the corner from the dock. It was a hive of activity as the island’s “fleet” was coming in. It consisted of six small sailboats and a long canoe being paddled by five men, who were straining furiously in the face of a building wind. The sailboats on the other hand went back and forth, slowly eating up the distance.
Stu stood at the railing near where the Puffer was bobbing up and down. Aaron was already on it, fiddling with the rope holding the boat fast to the dock. Jenn saw that he was in danger of freeing it. Sure enough the knot came loose in his hands and he began to panic.
“Chill, little dude,” Mike said, grabbing a boat hook and pulling the Puffer back. To Stu he said, “We should cast off before the others come back. The dock gets a little clogged at this time of day with everyone fighting to come in.” He turned to Jenn and whispered, “They also get a little cranky when things aren’t perfectly exact. They all think they’re God’s gift to the Royal Navy or something.”
He lowered his pillowcase to Aaron before leaping across, landing softly on the Puffer as if he were landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. He turned and put a hand out to Jenn. She grinned and tried to make the same jump. Her feet slipped out from beneath her but he caught her easily.
“You did that on purpose,” he said, righting her and setting her squarely on her feet. “Since when do you play the damsel in distress?”
“What are you talking about?” Like nearly everyone her age, she could barely read and didn’t understand the reference but was sure that he was putting her down in some way. Her blue eyes drew down and her smile dimmed. “Damn-sel? What’s that?”
He looked to one of his friends in confusion and was about to say something when Stu grunted, “It was a compliment, Jenn. Budge over.”
She couldn’t see how sticking the word ‘damn’ in anything was a compliment. With the boat bouncing beneath her, and with both hands gripping the edges, she moved to the front next to Aaron, who smiled at her, showing a wide gap in his teeth. “Boats are cool,” he told her. “Do you think the Coven will let me be a captain of one?”
She agreed that they were cool. With their colorful sails flying high, there was something beautiful as well as joyous in the way the boats raced across the water. “I don’t see why not,” she told him. “But you know that you’re going to have to learn to swim.”
This doused his desire a bit. Because of his overprotective mother, Aaron had never learned to swim. He wasn’t the only one, either. Only about half of the Hill People could swim and, despite living off the water, even fewer of the Islanders could. The bay was just too frigid of a place for the hours of practice needed.
Jenn could swim. She had taught herself, just like she had taught herself how to hunt and fish, to gut a deer and clean a bass. She had not taught herself to sail. Deciding to change that, she turned around on the short bench to watch what Mike was doing.
Using a thin line of rope, he ran up their single sail, while at the same time heeling the tiller all the way to the right. As simply as that, the boat spun away from the dock so that its prow pointed out into the bay. Before the turn was complete, he pulled the tiller back the other way.
“How do you know how far to pull that handle?” she asked him. “Is there a marker on it somewhere?”
He wiped a stray hair that had slipped from his braid out of his eyes and answered, “No. It’s all a matter of feel and practice. You also have to know how to play the currents. Right, Stu?” He gave his friend a wink.
“Yeah, sure,” he growled in answer. Jenn asked more questions and Mike was only too happy to go on and on. As they tacked right to avoid the oncoming boats she was eager to try her hand.
Stu asked, “What about your signs? Aren’t you nervous?”
Her face clouded over and for just a moment doubt came over her, then Mike remarked, “Signs are never wrong though sometimes we misread them.”
Stu turned away, but not so quickly that she missed his eyes rolling or his sigh which was quickly eaten up by the wind. She knew he was about to give her his usual lecture on omens and signs, when he rose up suddenly, going into a squat, his head held high.
They were two hundred yards off the island by then and only had two boats between them and the open bay. Both were tacking away from them, but would be swinging back any minute. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the water on the Puffer’s port side. Sixty feet away were what looked to Jenn like white seals, only they were floating and not swimming.
“Is that trash?” she asked. “Or…” Mike had che
cked the boat’s momentum and now they all saw that it wasn’t trash; they were corpses. Big ones. Dozens of them, Some, directly in their path.
Mike pushed the tiller over. “Jenn, duck!” She dropped down as the boom swung over her head. The sail filled in a second and the boat heeled with the wind, one side lifting out of the water. Stu slid easily to the high side of the boat and leaned back to keep them from tipping.
In a minute, they had worn away from the danger and were tacking upwind. Jenn watched the corpses and saw they weren’t all dead. In fact, most of them would occasionally lift an arm or roll from their front to their back like logs. There were always zombies in the bay, but she had never seen so many all massed together.
“Are they really dangerous?” Aaron asked. “Could they have gotten us?”
In answer Mike grabbed the edges of the boat and shook it back and forth so that water nearly sloshed in. He laughed as Aaron held on. “What do you think, little man? And once they get a hold, they don’t let go.” He glanced back and the white smile on his face gradually slipped away.
There were two sailboats zipping across the water, the wind quarter-on. They were moving fast, heading towards the school of zombies at an angle. Mike immediately dropped the sheet and stood, waving his hands and pointing. “Right there, damn it! Look! Look!” Stu and Jenn took up the cry, only the wind was too strong and their words were lost.
At the last moment someone on the lead boat saw them waving and too late they slowed, but didn’t turn. They plowed into the wallowing zombies who went from looking like floating garbage to looking and acting more like a school of giant piranha in a flash. The water leapt as arms and clawed hands erupted all around the boat.
The pilot tried to change course, putting the wind full at their backs. The sail filled but the boat only moved sluggishly. It had been seized by seven or eight of the waterlogged beasts and their combined weight was over three thousand pounds. The boat rocked far to port; in response, the islanders threw themselves to the other side to keep the boat from broaching and sending everyone into the water.
While this was going on, the captain of the second boat had finally woken to the danger and turned the boat towards the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific.
“What the hell!” Mike screamed. He hauled the tiller over and neatly flipped the Puffer around and, as they were up wind, charged down on the floundering boat. “Get the crossbows ready,” he ordered. They had three among them and as it was customary not to walk around the island with bows locked and loaded, none were ready to fire.
As the boat bounced and crashed over the small waves, Jenn placed hers between her feet and hauled back on the cable, clicking it in place and feeding a bolt into the groove with shaking hands. It took her two tries. With every second, they came closer to the school of zombies and her fear escalated. It showed in her shaking hands and when her lower lip began to quiver.
Fighting zombies was a bad idea, fighting zombies on open water in a little boat was a terrible idea.
She couldn’t see how they were going to fare any better than the boat ahead of them. Not only was it bigger, there were four grown men in it fighting for their lives and losing. And they knew how to handle themselves on the water. As sure-footed as Jenn was on land, she felt timid on the boat. And she wasn’t the only one.
Stu was pale, his dark eyes larger than normal, his chest was heaving along with the boat. Aaron was making a whining noise as he struggled with Mike’s bow. He was too small to load it.
“Let me,” she said, taking the weapon from him. The bow had a pull that was nearly as great as Stu’s. She had just managed to get it back in time and loaded it when they went crashing through the school of zombies. Her fear spiked as they rode upon the backs of three of the beasts.
Suddenly a tremendous, putrefying, grey hand reached up out of the water and gripped the side of the boat, sending Aaron sprawling in the bottom. Jenn stood to shoot the beast and a second later found herself falling as well, heading face-first at the water.
Chapter 5
Jenn Lockhart
The grey hand had checked their speed, sending Jenn lurching toward the boat’s edge. She was sure she was going to be thrown in among the zombies, and in that split second when she was face down, looking into the thrashing water, she pictured herself simultaneously being ripped to pieces and drowned—her two greatest fears.
Somehow, Stu was fast enough to save her. He had been thrown forward as well, but he managed to reach out with one long arm and snag the edge of her jacket. Now Jenn was suspended over the water, staring at some pale, slagged beast as it rolled from its back and onto its side, stretching out an arm to snatch her down into the cold depths.
More of the corpses converged and arms and hands reached up for her; there were dozens of them. Her breath caught in her throat, which was the only reason she didn’t scream. Luckily the beast had to let go of the boat to get at her. Without the extra five hundred pounds holding them back, the Puffer fairly leapt forward.
As Stu dragged Jenn back on board, Mike aimed them right at the struggling sailboat which was now thirty yards away from the main school. “You guys should probably hold on this time,” he advised. Jenn, her entire body shaking now, hunkered down as Stu moved back to the center of the boat.
Before they could get to it, the other boat was finally pulled over. The sail slapped the water and covered one of the men, along with several zombies. Two of the men dove deep, while the last tried desperately to climb back onto the side-on boat.
The zombies had been churning the water before, now in their eagerness, the water frothed and splashed. A panicked scream arose from somewhere in the midst of the mess.
Stu, looking almost as dead white as a zombie, yelled to Mike, “Turn. They’re done for.”
Mike didn’t. He set his jaw and bore down on the stricken vessel. It looked to Jenn as though he wanted to crash straight into it. She gripped the edge of the Puffer as tightly as she had held on to anything in her life. At the last moment, Mike dropped the sail and pulled the tiller, turning the Puffer so that it knifed along the edge of the other boat, cutting right across the mast, which scraped beneath them. The two boats locked together as the daggerboard struck.
With the two boats joined together, the Puffer, for once, felt like a sturdy platform beneath them. Jenn stood and saw a young man fighting for his life not ten feet away. He was one of the two who had dived in, but for some reason he had come up early and was now surrounded. She lined up a shot on one grey head that was the size of a jack o’lantern.
“No!” Mike cried. “It’s too late for him. Aim right there.” He pointed at the sail, where heads bobbed beneath.
At first Jenn didn’t know which head to aim at, then one began to yell, “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! God!” She aimed at another. It was ghostly with dark sockets and a gaping mouth that opened and closed. She aimed between the sockets and pinned the sail to the thing’s forehead.
She started to pull back on the bow’s cable, but Aaron thrust Mike’s crossbow at her. Mike was leaning out over the water on the other side of the Puffer, stomping a boot down into the face of one of the zombies while Stu was reloading his bow. She grabbed the bow out of Aaron’s hands and aimed for another of the bobbing heads. She was so close that she didn’t think she could miss.
When she pulled the trigger, the bow jumped and the bolt rose a little more than she expected. Thankfully the kinetic energy in the bolt was great enough to pierce the creature’s frontal bone. It made a noise like a hissing tea kettle and sank beneath the water.
Although no longer surrounded, the man was still frantically trying to get out from beneath the sail.
Jenn threw down the crossbow and pulled out her hunting knife. “Aaron, grab my shirt.” While he grabbed the tail of her shirt, she took a step onto the mast of the overturned boat and drove the blade into the sail, making a wide opening. She hoped the man would come through. Instead it was a zombie that came through
, its face so pruney that it looked as though it was sloughing off as it breached the surface.
Its reach was shockingly long, and it had a hold of her before she even knew it. This time she knew she screamed. It went on and on. Her knife fell from her hand as she clung to the mast. Behind her, Aaron was also screaming. Desperately, he pulled back on her shirt and for just a moment, she was precariously balanced with equal forces going in opposite directions.
The greater strength of the zombie began to win out. Slowly she was pulled toward its gaping maw when suddenly Stu leaned over her and shot a bolt straight down its throat.
The point must have hit the thing’s brainstem because it suddenly spazzed, going completely stiff, its muddy eyes bugged wide and its arms flung out. Jenn inched back from it like a frightened kitten with both hands on the mast. She hadn’t gotten far when a man, a real living man, popped up through the hole in the sail.
“Help me!” he hissed, complete terror etched on his face.
Jenn and Stu grabbed him and heaved. He was strangely heavy and she figured he was tangled in a rope or the anchor chain. They soon found out there was a zombie hanging off his leg.
“Please, please, please,” he was whispering. “Help me.”
Jenn was already doing all she could. She had her legs braced and was pulling with both hands. Stu yanked his climber’s axe from his belt and began thudding the pick end of the tool into the beast’s arm as the man kicked.
After Stu’s fourth hit, with black blood flying, the man’s leg came free. Almost at the same time, Mike pulled a spluttering man from the water on the other side of the boat. He turned and saw the situation. “Lift the dagger board! We have to get off their sail. Come on, Aaron, you’re sitting on it, damn it!”
Generation Z [Book ] Page 4