I begin looking over the boats in the area while trying to ignore the pain in my shoulder. Anything that appeared seaworthy had already sunk or was sinking. I could see the bullet-riddled hulls of otherwise pristine pleasure boats. What were left were creaky old boats turned living quarters. Among all the abandoned and scuttled boats at the many slips, I saw two inflatable Zodiac boats fifty feet apart. They might have been ignored because they sat low in the water, and they were old, but they were still floating, and I hoped the outboard motors had plenty of fuel in them.
Some of the bigger boats may have been seaworthy but that determination would take time we did not have. Most of them had been moored in slips a long time, more house than boat. I preferred the Zodiacs. They may have been old and scuffed and used for fun and screwing around, but both were black, and they had low profiles.
They would be filled beyond safe capacity, but that was a risk I was willing to take.
A girl in a short skirt and soiled blouse ran at us from among the sprawling two-story maze of buildings housing tourist attractions and shops on the pier. Her grin was fierce. Her emaciated face looked like a horrific mask, and the fingers of her too-large hands were splayed, those rough claws showing remnants of nail polish in bright pink flecks. Benjamin shot her between the eyes and then bent and threw up, his face white with fear.
I began directing people into the boats, thinking, Christ, there are at least ten of us missing. I saw Dr. Anders and was glad for that much.
People scrambled into the Zodiacs. I shouted for them to move quickly but be careful. The tide was coming in and there was a sea swell making the boats, the dock and the wooden fingers jutting from the dock rise and fall, but they did not all rise and fall together.
Renfield gave me a quizzical look. “Where are we going, boss-man?” His go bag was a big backpack. The gray and white cat had climbed up into the pack and perched there with an air of authority, seeming to be the one in charge.
“A mile in that direction,” I said, pointing out into the bay. “Alcatraz.”
I heard frantic questions and a few words of protest, and raised my hands, calling for quiet. Then I explained that landing in Marin or the East Bay would get us killed, and our only other options were Angel Island, which was for the most part a wildlife sanctuary with no shelter from the elements and twice as far away as Alcatraz, or the open sea.
Renfield was thinking fast. He sent two men to looks for fuel cans. They both returned carrying red plastic jerry cans.
I had visited Alcatraz quite a few times in the past. Like walking the Golden Gate Bridge, visiting the island was something San Francisco locals rarely did, unless they had friends or family in town on vacation and went along on the guided tours.
I had also gone on quite a few supply runs with the Wrecking Crew after Jillian had died, after I had killed her. Specifically, nighttime runs. Night runs could be seen as more dangerous, but in fact they were less risky for small teams if they moved fast and stayed sharp. Grins were lurking in the city day and night, but embittered and potentially dangerous survivors like Haise’s gang stayed hidden when the sun went down.
Whenever I had a good vantage point, I watched Alcatraz. There were a few lights burning on the island, but that was expected, even under these unusual circumstances. Alcatraz was a small island right in the middle of shipping lanes between the Pacific Ocean and the Port of Oakland, and it was often hidden in fog, so there were always lights on the island, the most notable being the beacon atop the lighthouse. I was watching the island for two reasons. First, to make sure the lights were still on when the power was off everywhere else, and second, to watch for any moving lights. I saw the former. I never saw the latter.
The main reasons I wanted to go to Alcatraz were isolation, and power. The island should be completely safe, and thanks to recent upgrades, Alcatraz now got over sixty percent of the power to its grid from solar panels, and despite the fog, the Bay got a lot of sunshine. The remainder of their power came from diesel generators, and I could only hope that some fuel was stockpiled somewhere.
When the trouble started the island was very likely evacuated, unless someone else decided to use it as a refuge, which was unlikely. Most people thought it was just a small, cold island filled with the crumbling remains of an old prison left almost in ruins from exposure to the salty sea air. But it could also be a source of food in the form of fish and birds.
Seagulls, cormorants and pelicans are plentiful on the island. To the first Spanish explorers the rock was known as La Isla de los Alcatraces, the Island of the Pelicans. Gulls may be little more than flying garbage cans, and their flesh can be tough and greasy, but they can be eaten. Seafood would not be a problem as long as we had some capable fishermen. And there was wakame. Considered food by some and an invasive plant taking over the Bay by others, this plentiful seaweed was a fair source of vitamins and minerals, if not high in sodium, but most people had bigger things to worry about these days than risking high blood pressure.
Alcatraz could be our sanctuary. I was hoping that no one else had come up with the same thought when the city fell apart.
A grin came around the far corner of the aquarium building, followed by another.
“Who knows how to drive one of these?” I asked. Benjamin raised a hand. So did Conaghan.
“Then let’s go,” I said, stepping into Ben’s boat and taking one last look back at the pier as the mooring line was cast off.
There was no sign of Randall, or Ayala. Or the guns they had hoped to find.
Both outboard motors started. Both sounded choppy, but the boats began moving away from the pier.
Clyde let out a mournful howl as we pulled away from the dock.
The grins that had come into view fell under crossfire as soldiers came into view. When the soldiers saw the Zodiacs, they began shooting at us.
Conaghan’s boat hit a swell and lurched. An older lady fell into the sea. The boats kept going.
Whenever we rose up on a swell the soldiers on the pier fired at us. Then we would sink down out of sight, bullets passing overhead with the high pitched whine of wasps. I was thinking that this freakish luck couldn’t possibly last when two spotlights shone out from a hundred feet away and a loudspeaker blared.
“This is the Unified Containment Task Force operating under the authority of the Government of the United States. Return to the pier now or we will shoot.”
One of the UCTF craft turned on a swell and illuminated the other. They were small, powerful Sea-Doo boats, each carrying a driver and two men with rifles.
“Holy shit, dude,” Ben said. “Those are Speedsters. They can go, like, sixty miles an hour.”
I heard a shot echo across the water from behind. I didn’t know what to do.
Then I remembered visiting a friend who had lived on the pier years ago. I remembered us drinking beer in his old Chris-Craft, and I remembered the hair-raising stunt he pulled with a small motorboat.
I shouted to Conaghan and saw him nod. “Follow us! And everyone stay as low as you can!”
We turned the Zodiacs back to Pier 39, with the Speedsters closing behind us and armed men watching our approach from the edge of the pier.
“Keep going,” I said to Ben, as we passed the wooden fingers jutting from the dock where we had found the boats. The pier began looming over us. “Keep going,” I said again. He looked into the dark gap between the rising and falling sea and the massive concrete slabs of the pier that made a foundation as broad as a city block, and gave me a nervous smile.
“You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head.
“That’s a big pier, but it’s just a pier, on pilings. There are a few feet of clearance under there. Depending on the height and depth of the swell, of course.”
“Dude,” Ben said.
I was carrying a big Mag Lite. I turned it on and it became our only headlight. I looked up to see the soldiers on the pier gaping down as us as we disappeared under their feet.
&
nbsp; It had been a long time since I’d done this, and I swore I would never do it again after a drunken, claustrophobic ride with my buddy.
The foundation of the pier was now a ghostly gray roof over our heads, and the sounds of the Zodiacs’ engines were very loud, reflected by water and concrete. Whenever the boat rose on a swell everyone ducked down.
I looked back and saw that the pilots of the Speedsters were hesitating; their boats were riding higher in the water than the overloaded Zodiacs. Then they came at us full throttle, realizing what I hoped they would not; we could travel under the narrowest part of the pier and come out on the other side.
I urged Ben forward, and now two other flashlights were switched on, helping him steer around massive concrete pilings encrusted with wet barnacles and crabs that seem to watch us curiously as we roared by them.
There was a massive swell that lifted all of us. Someone in Conaghan’s boat screamed and I felt my go bag brutally pressed down against my back as the sea pushed us up against the unyielding stone overhead.
I heard a buckling crunch and a cry from one of the Speedsters behind us that was abruptly cut off. Then one of the engines behind us sputtered and died.
I had Ben turn as at ninety-degree angle. Instead of quickly coming out into the open from the other side of the pier we were now traveling under its length.
“Fast as you can go,” I whispered to him. Then I turned and shouted, “Hey you pussies, I thought American soldiers had balls?”
That was answered by the glare of a spotlight, a burst of gunfire and the roar from the engine of the remaining Speedster as the driver went all out in pursuit.
There was another series of swells, short and choppy. Ben eased up on the throttle to slow our boat and turned in to the rough swells to avoid being tossed about.
When I looked back I saw the Speedster’s spotlight turn away from us and heard men crying out as the boat that was moving far too fast brushed against one thick concrete piling and then slammed into another. There was no dramatic fireball, like we used to see in the movies. The light went out, and the boat sank.
We came out from under Pier 39 missing two people. They must have fallen out of the Zodiacs during the chase. The children in our boat, huddled down at the adults’ feet, were scared but otherwise okay.
I looked over at Conaghan’s boat and was relieved to see the big man still at the tiller, and Renfield and Dr. Anders seated behind him.
Conaghan saw me and shook his head. Then he grinned.
We headed out to sea steering for the lights of Alcatraz. It was a long trip in the Zodiacs. Many of us looked back. What had once been a familiar skyline was now a dark shoreline crowned by fire. It was cold out on the water, and I’m sure every one of us felt terribly alone.
My shoulder hurt like hell, and I was very tired. A pretty teenager named Annie made me a sling out of a strip of cloth. That helped. Someone else offered me a few Tylenol from their go bag. There were no more emergency rooms, no more annual check-ups, no more dentists or ophthalmologists. At least not for us, not for a long time. Christ.
Behind us, powerful lights cut through the fog overhead, and as I looked back I could make out the seething masses of hundreds and hundreds of grins at the water’s edge. There must have been other units besides the one that shot at us, herding the pathetic creatures to the furthest point they could go.
Helicopters dropped out of the fog layer, floodlights turning night into day on the pier. The choppers quickly dipped down to pick up soldiers and whisk them away.
We were halfway to the island when there was a rolling boom in the fog overhead. It wasn’t thunder. It was—
“They’re on their way,” Renfield said, as he hunched over his radio. “They’re running a bit ahead of schedule.” He looked at one of the few working wristwatches among our group. “It’s only a quarter to tomorrow.”
We were fighting a current and closing in on Alcatraz when we heard the distinct sound of aircraft overhead.
There was still a layer of fog like a low ceiling over the city. It swallowed buildings on the higher hills, and the top stories of office towers in the Financial District. The tip of the Transamerica Pyramid was lost in soft whiteness. The jets we heard were flying in that fog.
The sounds of the aircraft dwindled as they flew south, inland, and then they turned north and began their bombing run.
Bright orange blossoms bloomed on distant hills and created an intense otherworldly glow inside the fog, and then roiling balls of fire marched down out of the fog toward sea and bay.
Familiar landmarks crumbled as explosions erupted one after another, skyscrapers toppling and block after block became a shimmering conflagration.
The light of fires burning closer to sea level danced against that low ceiling of water vapor, turning it into a shifting red mass overhead, like blood on the water.
Soon most of San Francisco was burning. It had burned once before, after the great earthquake in 1906. I wondered if anyone would rebuild the city this time, and thought it unlikely.
I saw the shifting masses of the infected standing on the water’s edge. They could not or would not swim. I could not see their faces, only bodies, silhouettes before a raging inferno.
I was glad I couldn’t see the faces. Seeing human beings, no matter how deranged by disease, smiling as they burned alive . . . that was a memory I could do without. I wondered if any humanity remained in them. Did they look back in terror as they saw the fires descend upon them?
The infected began to burn, that mass of bodies breaking apart as some ran or fell into the water and some simply stood and were taken by the flames.
People in both boats began to cheer.
I felt terribly sad, then turned away and looked to Alcatraz, and the future.
* * * * *
We reached the island a half hour later, fighting currents and rough water. We moored the Zodiacs at the boat dock where ferries once disgorged carefree tourists from all over the world.
I took a head count. Thirty-five of us had survived, most of that number small children and teenagers.
People sat together listlessly after climbing out of the boats. I started issuing orders.
The Zodiacs needed to be pulled out of the water. We didn’t want to chance losing them in rough weather.
I needed people with flashlights to investigate Building 64. I knew that some of us could sleep in cells in the cellblocks, but Building 64, once used as barracks when the island was a military fortification and later as apartments for prison workers, might have habitable space as well.
Someone had to check the water tower and see if there was drinkable water available. The island has no natural source of fresh water, but there were drinking fountains supplied by the water tower. We needed—
Clyde began barking and yanked his leash out of my hand, running south around Building 64 to the open space of the old parade grounds.
I followed, and soon saw that Clyde had found Randall and Ayala, who were standing near a beat to hell dory, soaking wet and exhausted.
“Boat got messed up on the rocks,” Randall said.
“I didn’t hear a motor,” I said, over Clyde’s ecstatic yipping.
“We ran out of gas halfway here,” Ayala said, setting down a long nylon bag. “Had to use the oars. Conejo!” He walked past me and a moment later I heard his daughter let out a joyful shout.
Randall set down another bag. “It got crazy back there,” he said. “But we got some guns.”
The following day, after a few hours of restless sleep in the cells, we discovered another survivor; a park ranger in a dirty uniform. He was my age and half crazed, with a poorly splinted broken leg that was free of infection but would heal improperly and leave him with a limp. He had been hiding at the north end of the island. We had searched all the buildings for food and found none, but we did discover that the water tower held plenty of water, for now. When I asked the man how he had survived he said, “Fishing.”
>
“I’ve got a job for you, then,” I said, looking at his nametag. “Ranger Hawthorne.”
* * * * *
Within a week we began getting down to business.
We gathered all the blankets and mattresses we could find in the cells, most of which were dressed like a movie set since Alcatraz Prison was a museum, and used them to make comfortable beds in the most central cells, living space furthest from the damp drafts coming through the old outer walls.
We had watches posted in high places; the old dock tower, on roofs, on the water tower, and in the lighthouse, to watch and listen for planes and helicopters. We put kids up there. They had the sharpest eyes. We observed the careful use of lights at night. The island must appear unoccupied to anyone who might be watching from a distance.
The lighthouse was still operational after the presumed fall of American civilization. Now powered by solar panels, it was the oldest light station on the West Coast, We left it running.
Water was rationed, but Hawthorne was pulling fish out of the bay every day.
An older woman who wore a tie-dyed t-shirt under a cable-knit sweater and insisted everyone call her Sister Sunshine swore that she could get small gardens growing on every side of the island if someone could find seeds for fruit and vegetables.
Seeds went onto our WANT list, and it was a long list. We realized that as risky as it might be, sooner or later we would have to make a run across the Bay to Sausalito or Tiburon to grab some essentials.
Renfield spent all of his time up in the lighthouse, sending and receiving messages on his radio.
Helicopters passed overhead twice, traveling from the East Bay to the Marin area. Lookouts shouted the alarm and anyone who was out in the open ran for cover.
Smoke still hung over San Francisco despite often-brisk winds, indicating that fires were still burning in the city.
Dr. Anders suggested a simplified method of immunization against the smiling sickness; a cupful of pureed maggots.
The Doctor only had a small tabletop magnifying glass to work with, “No more than a toy,” as she described it, but she was able to see the living parasites, giardia motivus, motorboating around in drops of blood on slides prepared from carefully packaged samples of infected fluids she had brought along.
4POCALYPSE - Four Tales Of A Dark Future Page 26