by Will Lemen
"Everybody hold on, we might hit some eaters," I shouted, as I again turned the boat to the left.
"One more turn, and we'll get out from under this bridge," I said, as the boat now roared close to its top speed.
Making one last left turn, a zombie's head bounced off the deep V-keel of the Morphadite, cutting a large gash into its skull and killing it instantly.
"I hope that eater's head didn't damage the boat," Gin shouted over the roar of our boat motor.
"That's doubtful, we split its skull like a ripe watermelon hitting a brick wall," I shouted back.
Looking back and seeing chunks of that zombie's blood gushing brain floating in the choppy river water.
"Kind of looks like pieces of a watermelon too," Jacob said, seemingly unaffected by our ongoing harrowing experience.
Now at top speed, our small craft hydroplaned atop the choppy waters induced by the floundering and flailing of the undead in the river, along with the splashes of their high diving cohorts.
Closing fast on the intermittent curtain of zombies now dropping from the backside of the bridge, I yelled. "Everyone get down as low as you can."
As our small boat breached the curtain of the undead, one of the falling zombies hit the point of the bow about half way down its chest and was ripped apart, spraying a fine mist of blood onto the windshield of the boat, along with one lung, and a body part that was unrecognizable after impact.
A second zombie hit face first on the top and back of the boat's outboard power plant, embedding its top row of brownish-yellow teeth into the hard plastic cover of the motor.
A third jumper landed feet first midway down the right side of our boat, snapping both legs at the knees, and impaling its skull on a cleat. It was left hanging there dead, off the side of the boat looking as if it were peaking over the side into the bowels of the Morphadite, reminding me of the old "Kilroy was here" cartoon.
Cutting the power and letting the boat drift again, I inquired.
"Is everyone all right?"
"Everyone's okay, but there's a couple of messes we'll have to clean up," Gin replied, shaking her head in disgust.
"Yes, I can hardly see through the windshield," I said, looking around for something to wipe off the blood and gore.
"I'll take care of this one," Billy said.
I watched as he held on to one of the cleats on the right side of the boat to steady himself, and with a karate type yell, he kicked the "Kilroy" zombie in the face, tearing its head off the cleat that attached it to the side of the boat.
The zombie splashed into the water and slowly drifted away, and as we watched, it sank to the bottom of the river.
"We should leave those teeth in the motor," Jacob said. "It'll remind us of the bridges we have to pass under."
"Good idea, but throw some water over them and wash off some of the blood, it already stinks enough around here," I said, while I dipped an old t-shirt into the tainted river water.
"This is great, all of this gore on the boat is going to attract even more flies," Gin said. "I don't think I can take much more of this bullshit."
We spent the rest of the night cleaning the blood and body parts from the boat; the best we could in the dark. None of us could sleep anyway, with all of the excitement from the encounter at the bridge, and the mess it left us, not to mention the realization that there might be many more bridges further down the river.
The next few days we drifted down the Mississippi without any substantial episodes, except for the increase in the fly population on the boat. We began starting the motor and speeding under the bridges, then drifting again until we approached another bridge where we would then repeat the process over again. We continued to use this tactic at all of the bridges we passed under until we concluded our river voyage at Vicksburg.
We quickly learned that the zombie's sense of timing was far from optimum. With their wavering gate and their clumsy staggering, it proved rather easy to avoid their attempts to drop on us, as long as we were aware of an upcoming bridge.
When the zombies would see us drifting up on them, they had a tendency to gather in a group, trying to position themselves in a spot in line with our passing. If we powered up and changed course slightly, by the time they stumbled over each other trying to reposition themselves, we had already gone by and would watch some of them fall into the water well after we had passed.
As long as we didn't drift under them giving them enough time to make their way to a vantage point directly above us, it was not much of a challenge to avoid them.
One disturbing note; we noticed that the zombies that had jumped into the water, tended not to run out of energy or become tired.
They would splash and flail around in the water until they finally made it to the riverbank, no matter how long it took.
At one point, we were able to anchor our boat on a sandbar in the middle of the river and watch a zombie tread water, after an hour we decided to continue on, and the zombie was still showing no signs of fatigue.
Fortunately, for us, not every bridge that we passed under had a horde of zombies laying in wait to fling themselves down onto us.
That fact caused me to wonder why any group of zombies that were scared senseless of the water, would gather in the middle of a bridge that spanned the largest river in the country in the first place, but some did, even though during the daytime, they could clearly see the river from their vantage point.
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DAY 13
Day 13 was the day that everything changed for us, and changed everything for everyone we would meet going forward.
The previous days had been similar to each other. Our routine was about the same; we would wake up at sunrise, force down a little food amidst the gruesome landscape, and then spend our time trying to fight the boredom of slowly drifting along, all the while waiting for the next round of terror that could be just around the next bend in the river.
Day 13 was different; right out of the box things took a downhill plunge.
Gin and I had just finished a paltry breakfast consisting of a shared can of peas and the last three slices of a loaf of bread that weren't spotted with mold.
Meanwhile, Jacob and Billy were arguing over the only chocolate granola bar that was left on the boat.
Gin suddenly turned to me, and looking rather forlorn, said. "Here we go again, look."
She pointed over my right shoulder at a boat approaching in the distance.
"Boys, get ready, there's another boat coming," I warned them.
Billy quickly snapped the granola bar in half, crammed one piece in his mouth, and tossed the other piece to Jacob.
"Everyone get down, like before," I said, reaching for my rifle.
As the possible new threat came nearer, we could see only one person in the substantially larger boat. It was a man, and he didn't seem to be in any distress.
"There could be more than just the one we can see, others might be hiding, same rules apply as before, if we have to shoot, shoot to kill and worry about head shots later," I said, reminding my crew of our first encounter with the woman and the two zombies.
With the stranger's boat upon us, he cut the inboard engine of his large cabin cruiser and shouted.
"Ahoy, ahoy there!"
I returned his greeting by shouting back.
"Ahoy to you stranger!"
The man looked to be about six feet tall, rather husky, with short white hair and a well-groomed white beard. I estimated him to be somewhere in his late fifty's or early sixties.
He cast a rope into our boat as his vessel slowly drifted along our starboard side.
"Tie it off boy," he said, as Jacob grabbed the rope. "We'll all compare notes, if that's okay with you folks?"
"Are you alone?" I inquired, as I stood up, my rifle at my side, pointing in his direction.
"Just me, myself, and I," he replied, putting his hands on the side of his boat and leaning in our direction.
"Where you f
olks from?" The bearded man asked cheerfully.
"Saint Louis," I answered with a smile, as my finger slowly slid closer to my rifle's trigger.
This man wasn't acting like you would expect someone to act in the middle of a "Zombie Apocalypse", especially an apocalypse that had started less than two weeks earlier.
"All the way from Saint Louie, you must have seen some things along the way," he said, not really seeming too concerned as his eyes scanned back and forth checking out our boat.
"That's right, we've seen some things, what's your name, and where did you come from?" I asked him still smiling.
"That's a really nice trophy you got there," the man said, pointing to the teeth sticking in our boat motor. "I'd like to have that trophy."
Noticing his behavior getting even odder, I replied.
"You wouldn't want to get it the way we got it."
"Well I recon not, if you say so," he muttered softly.
"Where did you say you're from," I asked again, becoming even more suspicious.
"From a little place north of here, called Friars Point Mississippi, you don't want to go there, it's crawling with those dead people."
"We call them eaters," Jacob said smiling.
"Eaters you say! Well speaking of food, you folk's hungry; don't see how you can have much food in that little boat of yours. I've got plenty of food, MRE's."
"MRE's?" Jacob asked, as he turned toward Billy for an answer.
Billy shrugged his shoulders and answered. "I don't know!"
Wondering why this stranger, that we had only just met, would want to share his food with us so readily, I answered Jacobs's question.
"Meals-Ready-to-Eat is what it stands for, they're mainly made for the military."
"That's right, meals ready to eat, I got plenty of meals ready to eat, got some cooking below as we speak," the man said, pointing to the hold of his boat.
"Say those are some mighty fine looking weapons you got there, I'd like to have those weapons," he announced giddily.
I glanced over at my two boys and my wife, and I saw that Jacob had already slung his carbine over his shoulder, and Billy had sat the butt stock of his rifle on one of the sleeping bags we had tied to the front of the boat and was holding onto his gun by the barrel.
Although her pistol was still pointing in the general direction of our newfound friend, Gin had lowered it, and didn't look ready to handle any surprises.
They all had been lulled into what could be a false sense of security, by this man's cheerful and generous demeanor.
"Sorry, we don't have any to spare, no spare ammunition either. Don't you have a gun?" I asked suspiciously.
"No gun, just a fishing knife, I was fishing when all this started, don't normally bring a gun with me when I'm fishing."
"I'm Jack, this is my wife Gin, and my two boys, Billy and Jacob. I didn't catch your name."
The smile sank from the man's face, his voice lowered, and he said slowly.
"How old is your woman, I'd like to have that woman."
With that statement, he turned away from me for just a moment.
Keep in mind, after several days of drifting down the river and having to endure the sight of bloated dead bodies constantly floating around me, along with the accompanying stench of their rotting flesh. After just barely surviving the attacking zombies that were jumping off the bridge into our boat in the middle of the night. Seeing a suicide boat filled with the dead bodies of whole families at least once every day (and usually more). Not to mention the memories of seeing our neighbors butchered on our patio door, and having to put one of them down as if she was a mad dog, and having to leave Jacob's best friend Norton and his father Joe, battling a large rabble of assailing zombies in their front yard and not being able to help them.
I was in no mood to play this guy's game.
I had already shouldered my AK-47 as the man was turning back to face me. He clumsily tried to shield the pistol he had in his left hand.
"If you have to know my name," he shouted. "It's your worst nightmare!"
I'll never forget the surprised look on his face, when he completed his turn and saw me standing there staring at him through the iron sights of my Romanian manufactured assault rifle.
Before the man could react, I pressed the trigger toward the rear of the gun, and fired a shot that hit him in his left lung.
Then rapidly, I fired another, and then another, and another, and another, and the man fell back onto the deck of his boat, dead and riddled with bullet holes.
Jacob had tied our boats together with the rope the crazed man had tossed to him, so it was rather easy for me to jump onto his vessel and send one more round crashing into his forehead, which exited through the back of his head and splintered the wooden deck below, destroying his brain and making sure he wouldn't reanimate.
Having to shoot, hit, or run over humans or sub-humans, was becoming the norm. Therefore, I figured with the crazy way this man was acting, plus the fact that he was in the process of pulling a gun on us, a gun that earlier he had claimed not to have, one more self-defense killing wouldn't matter much in the long run.
After shooting the stranger in the head, I quickly surveyed the deck of his boat to make sure no other threats were present.
When I turned toward Billy and Jacob, they were standing there staring at me with very confused looks on their faces.
From their position in our boat, they could not see the gun the man had picked up. Gin caught a glimpse of the gun, but everything happened so fast, that by the time she reacted to what was happening, it was over.
Jacob then asked. "Why did you do that dad?"
Gin quickly spoke up.
"Because it had to be done, he wasn't normal."
"He seemed normal to me; didn't he seem normal to you Billy?"
"He seemed a little weird," Billy retorted.
"He also lied to us," I said. "He said he didn't have a gun, that's a 1911 Colt .45 he's still clutching in his hand, and here's another one right here by the cabin door." I said, as I picked up the second pistol and shoved it into one of the large cargo pockets of my multi-cam pants.
"He may have lied about being alone too, so stay alert. I'm going to check down in the cabin."
I slowly eased down the three wooden steps that led down to the cabin below deck. The cabin door was ajar; allowing the aroma of what the bearded man that I had just killed had called his MRE's that were still cooking on a small propane stove, to seep out into the claustrophobic hallway where I stood. Before I entered the cabin I caught a whiff of the simmering meal inside and thought, "we're going to have a delicious warm meal for breakfast for a change."
However, when I peeked inside the cabin through the half-inch gap provided by the partially opened door, a nightmare that I had not even dared to imagine confronted me. I had suspected that the man from Friars Point Mississippi wasn't alone, but nothing could have prepared me for what I found in the cabin of this lunatic's boat.
Before me, was a hideous sight, the maggot infested torso's of a woman and three children, a girl about sixteen years old, a boy around twelve, and another girl maybe four years old, all dead with their body parts also teeming with maggots separated and stacked neatly in piles around the cabin which was overrun with flies.
It was apparent that they were the man's, meals ready to eat. He had been carving on them with a set of butcher knives and a carpenters hand saw, for some time it seemed.
Pieces of them that he had cut up like round steaks, were still sizzling in a large frying pan on the stove, emitting the scent that just moments before had titillated my taste buds, but after finding that the slaughtered humans were the source of the once pleasant smell, my now queasy stomach churned with every inhaled breath.
What was left of their bodies, were starting to decompose. This is probably the reason that this maniac interrupted his breakfast. He saw us and decided he needed fresher meat.
Until that moment, I had never smel
led the odor of human meat being cooked. If not for the reeking of all of the rotting and bloated bodies that had been floating around us for almost two weeks, not to mention the carnage that we had seen and the atrocities that we had been forced to commit leading up to this horrific scene, I probably would have puked my guts out right then and there on the floor of that boat's cabin.
I could hear footsteps on deck, so I quickly glanced around the cabin.
"There's nothing we need in here," I said aloud to myself as I climbed back up the steps to the deck.
"Is everything all right," Gin yelled.
As I emerged from the cabin, Jacob and Billy were looking at the dead man lying on the deck.
"Don't go down there," I said.
"Why not," Jacob asked.
"Because it's worse than our kitchen, that's why, so don't go down there, get it?" I answered gruffly.
"Is everything all right?" Gin asked again.
"Yes, it is now," I answered. "We must have disturbed his breakfast."
"MREs?" she replied.
"If that's what you want to call them," I answered. And by the way, we were almost his next MREs!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Billy asked.
"I'll tell you what that means. I was talking to that maniac for every bit of three minutes, and I looked over at you and Jacob, and both of you had put your weapons in a position that you couldn't have possibly used them if your lives depended on it, and by the way, from what I saw down below, your lives did depend on it. Both of you were acting as if this guy was your best friend, like you'd known him for years.
Gin, are you listening to this, you're our ace in the hole, your job is to sit there all pretty like, with a gun in your hand, and if need be, shoot somebody. You're most likely the last one anyone will shoot at because they think you're the least threatening of all of us."
"He seemed like a nice guy," Jacob said, with a slight sound of guilt in his voice as he raised his eyebrows and lowered his head.
"That nice guy was going to eat us!" I shouted, hoping to make an impression on all of them. "The MRE's he spoke of, happen to be the people below deck he butchered and has cooking on the stove as we speak, most likely members of his family"