Voodoo Plague - 01

by Dirk Patton

  All of our weapons had been disassembled, checked, cleaned and were ready to go. Our packs were ready to grab and go at a moment’s notice and there wasn’t anything for us to do to get ready to move except for me to dress. I had been lounging in nothing but boxers while I healed and I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to putting pants back on.

  Our immediate plan was to use the boat to stay on the lake and river system we were currently floating on to get west to Highway 27 which we would then follow up to Chattanooga. Chattanooga was on the southeastern border of Tennessee, and while it would get us out of Georgia, it was still a long trek west to get to Nashville which was pretty much in the middle of the state. The sun was setting and I didn’t want to try to navigate in the dark, but wanted to be prepared to leave at first light.

  The maps I had access to were road maps, not navigation maps, and I had no way of knowing if the river we planned to use was large enough to support the big cabin cruiser. We needed a backup plan and I had just the idea. Starting the engine I let it idle to warm up while the electric motor whined as the anchor was reeled up from the lake bottom. Ready to go I bumped the throttle to its first stop and spun the wheel to head for the cove where Dog and I had left the speedboat the night of Rachel’s rescue.

  The sound of the engine and movement of the boat drew lots of attention from the infected on the shoreline. Their agitation was obvious even without using the binoculars and screams from the females floated across the water to us. Dog sat near the stern watching them across the water and I wondered what thoughts were going through his doggie mind.

  It only took a few minutes to reach the cove. The speedboat was exactly where I’d left it, bobbing in the water at the end of its anchor rope. Worried about running the larger boat aground I cut the throttle then reversed for a moment to kill our momentum, coming to a stop a hundred feet or so from the speedboat.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Rachel asked when she saw me heading for the stern rail where the small swim platform allowed easy access to the water. I paused and looked up at the flying bridge where she stood with hands on hips.

  I started to open my mouth to reply but she cut me off. “I know. You were going to swim over and get the speedboat. Did it occur to you how many bacteria are in the lake water that will soak into your wounds? I didn’t work like a mad woman saving your life to lose you now. Get out of the way.”

  Rachel had made her speech while climbing down the short ladder to the deck. She pushed past me, pulled her T shirt over her head, kicked off her boots, striped her pants off and dove into the lake. She surfaced moments later and started swimming to the speedboat with long, graceful strokes. I shook my head and watched her swim across the darkening water.

  Dog was still sitting by the stern rail and started whining when Rachel was half way to the boat. A few seconds later I heard the screams as several females appeared on the muddy shoreline of the small cove. The wake from the cabin cruiser had caused the speedboat to pivot around its anchor point and I realized that I had left too much slack in the anchor line. The stern of the boat was pointing directly into the cove and was maybe a dozen feet from the shoreline. I shouted for Rachel to turn back, but she couldn’t hear me over her own splashing.

  I watched in horror as first one, then another female took a running leap in an attempt to reach the speedboat. Neither made it, both splashing into the lake a couple of feet short, but the cove wasn’t deep and they were both able to stand on the lake bottom and start wading out to meet Rachel at the boat.

  Motherfucker! I grabbed my rifle and climbed the ladder to the bridge as fast as my healing body would allow. On the bridge I dropped to a knee, ignoring the protest from my chest, and rested my arm on the bridge railing as it supported the rifle. We were losing light fast, but the low magnification scope amplified what light there was well enough for me to sight my targets.

  Just before I fired I noted that Rachel had reached the bow of the speedboat and was pulling herself along the side rail, intending to use the swim platform at the stern to climb aboard.

  “Rachel! Infected in the water!” I screamed at the top of my voice.

  Rachel turned and looked at me, obviously hearing my scream but not understanding the words. She saw me aiming the rifle and understanding dawned on her face and she started to push away from the boat just as a hand broke the surface of the water, grabbed a fistful of her hair and took her under.

  I cursed, then reacquired my target and started shooting. The head of the female I had the best line of sight on exploded when the military caliber round punched through and I shifted aim to another floundering infected. My first shot missed, but my follow on shot took off the top of her head.

  That was all the visible females in the water, and I paused, holding my breath. Finally, with an explosion of water Rachel and the infected female broke the surface, locked in battle. Rachel had two fists full of her hair so she could keep the snapping jaws away from her face and neck. The infected struggled, clawing and whipping her head side to side in attempts to break Rachel’s grip.

  I sighted in on Rachel’s attacker, taking a deep breath as I tracked its head in the rifle’s scope. It was a high risk shot, but there was nothing else I could do. As my finger tightened on the trigger I heard more splashes and shifted my eyes to see two more females wading through the water towards Rachel. I quickly took each of them out with head shots. By the time I moved aim back to Rachel, she and the infected were under the water again. Maintaining my aim I waited. And waited. And waited.

  I was starting to fear the worst when once again they breached the surface. Rachel still had one fist wrapped in the infected’s hair, but her other arm was now locked straight out with her hand gripping its throat. I placed the scope’s red dot on the face of the infected, paused a moment to make sure I was adjusting with their motion, then squeezed the trigger as I said a small prayer.

  The head snapped back as the bullet punched through, a spray of blood and brains fanning out across the lake’s surface. The infected went limp in Rachel’s arms and she shoved the corpse away from her and nearly leapt out of the water into the speedboat’s cockpit. The anchor came up quickly with a manual winch, then nothing. I hadn’t told Rachel where I had hidden the keys.

  In the meantime more infected had arrived on the shoreline and I quickly picked them off before they could start wading out. Standing up I grabbed a bench cushion and raised it over my head for Rachel to see. It took a few tries before she got the message and started throwing cushions around until she found the keys. The speedboat started easily and less than a minute later Rachel cut the motors as she drifted up to the stern of the cabin cruiser. I met her at the rail and tied the smaller boat off to a cleat so we could tow it with the larger boat.

  I reached out a hand and helped Rachel cross the open water between the two boats and pulled back a handful of blood. Rachel was missing most of the ring finger on her left hand and it was bleeding profusely. I grabbed a towel and helped her wrap it up.

  “What happened? Did she bite it off?” I asked, leading her into the salon so I could administer some first aid.

  I was surprised to hear Rachel laugh in response. “No. Somebody needs to work on their aim.”

  33

  The next morning I started the engine and raised the anchor as soon as there was enough light to distinguish individual trees along the shoreline. Notching the throttles forward I settled on half throttle. The instruments on the flying bridge told me we were going 15 knots, which if my math was correct worked out to about 17 miles per hour. Exposed as I was to the wind and sounds of the hull slicing through the lake it felt much faster.

  I wasn’t a sailor by any means, having driven a boat only a handful of times in my life. Not very comfortable with how fast I could stop the big cruiser or what its turning radius was like I didn’t plan on going any faster than our current speed. Getting there a little slower in one piece beats getting there a little faster in several
pieces any day of the week.

  We followed the lake for most of the morning. There was the occasional abandoned boat floating at the whim of the wind and currents, but we gave them a wide berth. Twice we saw infected roaming the southern shoreline, but there was no sign of life all morning. Shortly before noon we entered an area of the lake where it spread out and the southern shoreline disappeared over the horizon. I throttled back to idle and pulled out the maps.

  We were in the widest part of the lake and it was nearly twenty miles wide at this point. We were closer to the northern shore which was apparently undeveloped. The map offered no clue, but I suspected it was protected land, possibly a state park or wildlife sanctuary, otherwise builders would have snatched up the valuable waterfront property and crammed in as many houses as they could.

  Over the horizon to the south the map showed a dense tangle of roads right up to the edge of the water for miles in each direction. A marina was marked on the map as well as an area designated for amphibious aircraft. What I wouldn’t give to know how to fly. We’d be to Arizona in a matter of hours, not the weeks that I expected it was going to take us.

  Rachel joined me on the flying bridge, curious why we had stopped. I showed her the map and traced my finger to the far end of the lake where a river either emptied into or drained from the lake. The map gave no indication and I wasn’t familiar enough with the area to even hazard a guess. I just hoped the river was navigable.

  Rachel agreed with me that we didn’t want to go anywhere near the southern shore. We not only had to worry about infected, but as we had learned there was a very real threat from survivors as well. I pushed the throttle back to half power and the big boat slowly picked up speed, coming to plane on the surface as we passed through ten knots. Rachel leaned a hip against the bridge railing and used the binoculars to make a 360 degree scan of the lake. We both stayed on the bridge for the next few hours, me driving the boat and Rachel frequently scanning the horizon for other boats.

  By mid-afternoon I was sluggish and sleepy from the sun and wind. I made myself stand to prevent nodding off from the gentle motion of the boat as it motored across the lake. Rachel seemed to have no issue staying alert and was once again holding the binoculars up, resting them on the back of her bandaged hand.

  “Got something,” She said.

  I was instantly alert as those two words triggered a big dump of adrenaline into my system. I looked in the direction Rachel was locked onto, but couldn’t see anything except water and humidity haze.

  “Can’t see it. What have you got?” I asked, hand on the throttle in preparation for pushing our speed up.

  “Small boat. Looks like three people in it, but I can’t tell men from women. I don’t think they’ve seen us. Take a look.” Rachel handed over the glasses and I raised them to my face and adjusted the focus for my eyes.

  It took some patience and scanning back and forth but I finally spotted the boat. It was a small ski boat, probably no more than twenty or twenty-five feet in length. There were three people visible, one driving and two sitting near the stern but like Rachel I couldn’t see any detail other than a human form. The boat was travelling in the same direction as us, probably about four miles away, moving at a good speed. I agreed with Rachel that it didn’t appear they had spotted us. They seemed to be focused on getting from point A to point B and not paying any attention to their surroundings as they transited the lake. I scanned ahead of their direction of travel, seeing nothing except more lake and more haze.

  “What do you think?” Rachel asked, watching me scan the lake.

  “I think I don’t like it,” I said. “They could just be survivors heading for the river like us. Or, they could be part of a larger group that’s either ahead of us near the river or behind us on the southern shore. Either way I think we need to exercise some caution here.”

  Reaching out I shut down the engine. The depth finder said we had almost two hundred feet of water under us at the moment, and I had no idea if our anchor line was long enough, but flipped the switch anyway. The anchor hit the water with a splash and the nylon line that attached it to the boat made a distinctly serpentine hissing sound as it unrolled and slid through a stainless steel ring set in the rail of the boat’s bow. It seemed to hiss forever, then stopped as suddenly as it had started. I moved the switch to the middle position which locked the anchor winch and a few moments later the boat came up against the line, stretching it tight as the anchor held us fast to the bottom.

  We stayed in that spot for the rest of the afternoon, taking turns on the bridge with the binoculars to keep watch. When it was Rachel’s turn to watch I went below and stretched out in the salon, resting but unable to nap. I planned to wait until dark before resuming our travel. I’d keep the speed down which would also keep the noise down and hopefully let us approach the river unseen and unheard.

  I didn’t know what to think of the boat we’d seen, but if I was of a mind to set up an ambush for unwary travelers I couldn’t think of a better place than the natural choke point of the transition from a lake to a river. The lake was great and had provided us with an easy path to cover a lot of miles quickly, but to really make progress we’d have to transition to the river, again assuming it was navigable. It was certainly drawn large enough on the road map I had, but I doubted the cartographer had been particularly concerned with the accuracy of waterways when the map was created.

  As the sun slipped below the horizon I started the engine, waited while the anchor winch did its job then fed in enough throttle to get us moving. I had taken a compass heading before we dropped anchor and quickly got us back on that heading as we slowly motored towards the river.

  We sailed with the boat blacked out, the only light showing being the dim, red glow from the instrument panel on the flying bridge. Even though it was dim I looked for a way to shut them off, coming up empty as apparently the light was on if the engine was on. I checked the fuse panel thinking to pull the fuse for the instrument lights, but it was poorly marked and I didn’t feel like messing around with something I knew little about. I finally settled for ripping off strips of duct tape and covering each instrument to mask its light. This was a better solution anyway because if I really needed to check something all I had to do was peel back a piece of tape and the gauge would be instantly visible.

  Rachel stayed on the bridge with me, again acting as lookout with the binoculars, continually scanning all around us. Neither of us was in a talkative mood and the evening passed in silence.

  Finally, shortly after midnight Rachel lowered the glasses and stepped close to me, speaking in a low voice, “Lights ahead, just a little to the right of our direction of travel. They’re dim and I can’t see them without the glasses.”

  Throttling back to idle I took the glasses from her and raised them to look in the direction she pointed. Faint spots of light were visible against a darker back drop. It took me some time to realize that the back drop was heavy forest and we had reached the shore where the river cut through into the lake. I guessed the lights were still well over a mile away as they were completely invisible to the naked eye, so I nudged the throttle enough to get us moving forward again.

  Taking a moment I double checked the location and load on our rifles, made sure the extra magazines were loaded and at hand on our vests and pistols had rounds in the chambers and were ready to go. Satisfied we were as prepared as possible I focused on the darkness ahead, straining to spot the break in the shoreline that would indicate the path to the river.

  A few minutes later I lowered our speed to as close to idle as I could get it and still have enough water flow across the rudder to allow me to steer the boat. The term ‘steerage way’ came to mind, but I wasn’t about to try and start talking like a sailor when I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Peeling the tape off the Indicated Knots gauge I checked our speed, the needle bouncing right around three knots, and then spread the tape back into place.

  “What can you see?
” I mumbled to Rachel, lips close to her ear. I knew how sound could travel across the water and I was worried enough about the sound of the engine and sure didn’t want to add in a human voice.

  “Same thing,” She answered just as quietly. “Dim spots of light. If I had to guess I’d say they almost look like windows in a house with the curtains closed, but that’s just a guess. Oh, and there’s a break in the shoreline directly in front of us that I’m pretty sure is the river. It could just be an inlet to a cove, but I don’t think so. It looks nice and wide to me. See what you think.”

  I took the offered binoculars and focused first on the lights, then slightly left to the break in the darkness that Rachel had referred to. She was right about the light looking like house windows, and if this was the river at least the mouth of it was nice and wide. Of course we still had the speedboat in tow which could float in as little as two feet of water if needed. I hoped we didn’t need it.

  We kept motoring forward, finally cutting the engines and letting the big boat drift to a stop when I estimated we were about half a mile from the mouth of the river. The spots of light were much more defined through the binoculars now and it looked like Rachel had called it correctly. They were, without a doubt, windows with curtains pulled over them. We both spent a good amount of time scanning the shore, the opening to the river and the building with the lights, but neither of us spotted any indication of an ambush and thankfully no infected.

  Decision time. Do we try to motor quietly into the river and past the building, risking navigating in the dark in a very large and cumbersome boat? Should we transition to the speed boat and head up river? Was it wise to try and make contact with the people in the building, or should we just pull back out into the lake and wait for daylight to make a run for the river at speed?