Left Alone
By Christian Fletcher
Copyright 2012 by Christian Fletcher
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Christian Fletcher.
Also by the author –
Leftovers
Operation Sepsis
Chapter One
I watched a fly buzzing around and land on the side of the boat. Every time it landed, it rubbed its front legs together as though it was gleefully celebrating a minor success. Maybe the human race wasn’t too much different from flies, pieces of DNA running around the planet celebrating small successes, which in the grand scheme of things didn’t make much difference to the world as a whole.
Several months had ticked by since Smith, Batfish, the two dogs and I escaped the zombie infested city of New York. Batfish kept some sort of written diary or journal, keeping a note of the month and date and our daily, often life threatening activities. I knew it was early December but didn’t bother to ask her what day of the week or exact date we were up to. It didn’t really interest me. We used an old Coastguard boat as a base and had traveled south out of the Hudson River from New York. The simple reason for our southern route was to avoid the onset of the harsh North American winter. We didn’t have any plans or desired destination. We were simply trying to survive and watching the sun rise each day was a small triumph. The dark cloud of depression and anxiety hovered at the back of my mind and threatened to surface with alacrity when we were faced with any kind of troubled situation.
I thought a lot about Rosenberg, Eazy and particularly Julia, our departed companions since the world went to hell. At least I had the small consolation of the fact they weren’t shambling around as walking corpses trying to eat people. They were definitely all dead. Rosenberg was scattered in several hundred pieces after an explosion, Eazy had taken his own life by means of a 0.45 caliber bullet to the head after being bitten and was probably still floating around New York Harbor somewhere. Julia met her grisly end by attempting to follow me, jumping from one building to another. That all sounded crazy now. But these were crazy times.
We’d traveled by sea, down the Atlantic Coast, only stopping inland for essential items such as food, gas and ammunition. Several coastal cities and towns had been a nightmare, overrun with walking corpses trying to bite us and feed on our flesh. Atlantic City, Virginia Beach and Myrtle Beach were jam packed with hungry zombies, jumping into the sea to give chase when we’d slipped the boat from the harbors. After several close shaves, we only stopped in small towns and coves where the zombie population was low.
We’d met small bands of survivors in Charleston, Daytona and amongst the islands of the Florida Keys. They wanted to stay put where they were, hoping that by some miracle the epidemic would die down and life would return to some kind of normality. We stayed a few weeks on Big Pine Key and enjoyed the respite of the relatively zombie free island. The survivors had destroyed most of the living dead and made plans to blow up the Overseas Highway, the road which connected the islands to mainland America by a series of bridges. The plan never came to fruition as the survivors didn’t have explosives strong enough to totally destroy the masses of concrete and strengthened steel girders holding the bridge together. Good old American workmanship! The road was built to last and their attempts to demolish it had proven futile.
Zombies managed to breach the Big Pine Key’s ineffective defenses from across the bridge and the shallow Key waters, presumably washed ashore from boats or the surrounding islands. The usual panic ensued; the survivors had nowhere to run. Smith, Batfish and I had already made a contingency plan. We were stocked up and ready to roll at five minutes’ notice, which we did.
I felt slightly guilty when we pulled away out of the harbor in our ex-Coastguard boat, with the screams of agony ringing in my ears from the remaining inhabitants as the zombies overran them.
I read a book about the Second World War while we were on Big Pine Key. The book was a collection of firsthand accounts from U.S. Army soldiers during the European liberation campaign against the Nazis. Some front line units became so depleted that the campaign veterans didn’t bother to get to know the replacement soldiers or even ask their names. The veterans knew the green horn soldiers didn’t stand much chance of survival against the mighty Wehrmacht and the ‘Fuckin’ New Guys’ would soon be shipped home in body bags. I kind of knew what these war veterans meant. They developed an emotion of total detachment, which was how I felt. Maybe that’s why I didn’t mix and mingle and get to know any of the survivors on Big Pine Key very well.
Also, the book described the ‘thousand-yard stare,’ another battlefield symptom I could relate to. Front line soldiers developed the thousand-yard stare after scanning the ground for enemy soldiers on countless occasions. I had that stare, always scanning my immediate surroundings for approaching hordes of undead.
I never went anywhere without a loaded gun. Something I could never imagine myself doing six months ago.
We abandoned the idea of finding a safe haven amongst the Keys and continued up the west Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico. We ruled out stopping for supplies at the heavily populated coastal cities of St. Petersburg, Tampa and Clearwater. Instead, our brief shore side stops were virtually deserted little towns like Pine Island, Cedar Key and Horseshoe Beach. Places most people never knew existed. Our stops were more like smash and grab commando raids than mall shopping.
Batfish waited on the boat, ready to move at a moment’s notice while Smith and I lugged supplies back onboard. The problem we had was we couldn’t head too far out to sea and had to visually follow the shoreline. The small boat wouldn’t be able to cope if the sea became too rough and we were constantly worried about running out of gas and drifting aimlessly on the tide. The sea was heavily polluted with all kinds of debris and rotting bodies of both animals and humans.
Thousands of zombies roamed the coastline, meaninglessly meandering around until they saw us pass in the boat. They would moan excitedly and fall into the sea if there were no shore side barriers. We couldn’t hang around for long as some of them floated up out of the water. I guess the others sank to the bottom and became fish food. Whether it was something to do with trapped air in the bodies of those who floated, I wasn’t sure.
Occasionally, we’d see a passing boat drifting by on the tide, the occupants long since departed. We usually searched the boats, with our weapons cocked and at the ready in case of a zombie hidden somewhere onboard. Smith had come close to being bitten on a drifting yacht off the coast of Panama City. A small framed, female zombie had crawled out from underneath a tarpaulin sheet on the lower deck and was about to sink her teeth into Smith’s leg. I’d glanced around and fired one shot, hitting the female zombie in the temple. An action that would have probably blown Smith’s leg in half if I’d tried it six months ago.
The weather was a bitch the morning we began sailing up the Mississippi River from the Louisiana coast. Torrential rain lashed the upper deck in almost horizontal sheets. We huddled in the control room while Smith steered the boat through the murky waters. The two dogs whimpered and lay down below the front window. Life was cramped on the boat with only the control room and a small cabin below deck for living space.
It was Smith’s idea to travel inland for a while, as he said the boat needed some mai
ntenance and he needed some specific parts, such as new jets for the carburetors, or something. I knew shit about engines but felt the time was right to go inland for a while. The confined conditions of the boat were pissing me off and I needed some space.
Smith explained that the river flowed north to south through ten U.S. States, sourcing in Minnesota. He was looking for some sort of shipyard where he could find the parts he needed. I’d never been to Louisiana or seen the Mississippi River, in fact I didn’t know a lot about America as a whole. I’d lived in a shitty little town in Pennsylvania called Brynston before the zombie epidemic and was brought up in London, England when I was a kid.
That life, before the dead rose up and walked, seemed like someone else’s now. The distant past was like some movie I’d watched years ago and could only remember certain bits and pieces.
Finally, the rain stopped and the slate gray clouds cleared, giving way to bright, early dawn sunshine.
I took one of the crumpled maps from our collection and opened it out. Our assortment of charts and maps were bundled on a shelf under the steering console. Navigation was never my strong point and I struggled to work out exactly where we were. Smith took a glance and dabbed his thick, index finger onto a point on the map.
“We’re here,” he grunted.
I saw the river fanning out into the sea in several bending lines, like veins in a living body. We were heading inland between the Delta National Wildlife Refuge to our right and the Pass A Loutre State Wildlife Area on the left. I looked out of the window on each side. The land seemed flat and marshy with old rusting hulks of ships half buried at the water’s edges.
Batfish took out her tobacco tin and began to construct a joint, using some dope we found on a floundering yacht three days ago.
“Fancy sharing a doobie, Brett?” Batfish asked me.
“Yeah, why not?” An early morning high always helped take the edge off the day.
Batfish put the finishing touches to the spliff and gave Smith a wink. He shook his head slightly and turned back to the window, guiding the vessel through the brown waters. I folded the map and tucked it under my arm. Batfish opened the cabin door and stepped onto the upper deck. I followed her outside and she lit up the thick joint. The two dogs padded onto the upper deck behind me. A gray plume of smoke wafted into the air and disappeared into the ether. All three of us smoked but Smith hadn’t touched any marijuana since we left New York. He was more of a bourbon man and enjoyed his favorite tipple when we were anchored at sea for the night.
The breeze blew in our faces and the air smelled hot and humid. Batfish took a few puffs on the joint and handed it to me. I inhaled the smoke and stifled a cough, holding my breath as long as I could. Batfish went down into the living quarters and came back with the portable CD player we’d found on one of our scouting excursions. She played ‘The Pixies’ on the stereo and the song ‘Wave of Mutilation’ boomed from the speaker. The lyrics to the song spoke to me and seemed apt for our predicament.
I exhaled the smoke and enjoyed the numbing of my senses as the dope took hold of my system. We stood in silence on the deck, taking in our surroundings and listening to the music. I watched several guiding beacons with red and green triangular signs on top of their spindly, metallic frames drift by.
Batfish and I smoked the remainder of the joint, watching the sparse landscape of small marshy islands go by. We saw some small, weird town to our right, the dilapidated buildings partially standing and still bearing the scars of the bad hurricanes that had devastated the area in 2005. I wondered if the place had been abandoned during those terrible storms but then I noticed a figure shambling around between the carcasses of the buildings. Sherman, the bigger of the two dogs, moved to the side of the boat with raised hackles. We witnessed our first zombie sighting of the day.
Chapter Two
The tiles and roofing felt had been completely torn off the whitewashed buildings in the small town. I looked on the map and reckoned the location was called Pilottown and guessed it used to be something to do with boat pilots guiding vessels up and down the river.
“Do you think he’s going to come after us, Brett?”
I looked up from the map to where Batfish was pointing along the shore. The zombie was shuffling down the bank towards the water’s edge.
“Yeah, he’ll come,” I said. “But I reckon he’ll sink.”
The sight of the dead no longer filled me with as much terror as they once had. I’d kind of got used to them. I guessed the human psyche could get used to anything if exposed to certain situations for long enough. The older zombies, the ones that were infected in the first few weeks of the epidemic, were now rotting badly and we’d noticed bodily decay was worse in the warmer climate of the southern states.
This guy shuffling down the shoreline was long dead. The skin on his face and hands was almost green and old, crusty blood from a bite on his throat stained the upper half of his tattered, once white shirt.
It still amazed me how many zombies we’d seen on small, uninhabited islands and rocks off the coast. Maybe passing boats had cast those people ashore when they were still alive but in the first throes of infection after a bite.
“He’s in the water,” Batfish said, a tinge of nervousness in her voice.
The dead would come after the living, no matter what obstacles were in front of them. We supposed they were driven by hunger and the scent of a living body was like the enticing whiff of a kebab to a drunk for the undead.
I looked up from the map again and saw the undead guy struggling through the sucking, marshy mud on the river bank. I briefly thought about pulling my side arm and trying a head shot but decided against it. The distance was about fifty yards and the breeze might take the bullet away from the target. Besides, I didn’t want to rattle off a whole magazine trying to hit a stationary target that wasn’t posing an immediate threat. Ammunition was scarce and we tried to use our hand guns only in emergency situations.
“He’s stuck in the mud. He won’t be going anywhere.”
I watched the zombie wailing in frustration, waving his rotten arms around his head, up to his thighs in mud amongst the reeds and unable to take a further step towards us. His mouth hung open and his face looked as though it was contorted in pain and sorrow.
“Too bad, fuck face.” I muttered.
Something green and scaly and reptilian splashed from the water with lightning speed to the zombie’s right. The alligator gripped the blood encrusted zombie around the torso between its jaws. The undead guy disappeared beneath the water in less than two seconds.
“Jesus! Did you see that?” I gasped.
“Fuck, yeah, it was awesome,” Batfish said. “I suppose the gators have been flourishing since the demise of the human race.”
I shivered at the thought of that huge gator feeding on dead flesh then stuffing the remains under a rock or a log for later snacking. I wondered how long that particular zombie would remain kicking and thrashing as the gator chomped away on bits of its body. The only way to annihilate a zombie was to destroy the brain, so the undead guy would jerk around underwater until the head was devoured.
I put thoughts of the watery grave out of my mind and gazed up the river. The water was flat with slight ripples from the current brushing the surface. The warm sun climbed higher into the sky to our right. I wondered what the Mississippi River had in store for us as we slowly chugged between its banks.
Batfish flicked the end of the spliff into the river and pulled out two wooden, folding chairs from one of the upper deck lockers. She unfolded them both and sat down. I sat next to her and we watched the flat marsh land pass by.
“In normal circumstances, this would be a pleasant experience,” Batfish said. “The river, the music, the views, the sunshine.”
The Pixies track moved onto ‘Where is My Mind.’
I nodded and gave Batfish a sideways glance. She’d changed quite a bit since I first met her in Brynston, I guess we all had. Batfish w
as an overweight Goth girl when I met her, what now seemed like twenty years ago. Her best friend, Donna was killed by a stray bullet when we ran into some desperados on the journey to New York. Now, Batfish’s image had changed. She had no real reason to dress in such a Gothic style anymore and she’d lost weight due to our canned food and fresh fish diet. Smith was good at fishing and had caught our supper plenty of times off the back of the boat.
At times, Smith seemed like a different breed from the human race all together. Sometimes he was chatty, other times he was moody and made it obvious he wanted to be left alone. He’d told us his real name was Franco Dematteo but Batfish and I still referred to him as Smith. We’d got used to his pseudonym and couldn’t bring ourselves to call him by his birth name. He was a conundrum I didn’t think I’d ever work out. What we did know about him was – he was a former marine, cop and mobster, skillful with any weapon you put in his hands and also very good at staying alive. He was our unelected leader and we never questioned his ideas or planned routes. We’d been through too much shit to try and be heroes. We were just trying to stay alive.
Batfish and I sat for a while, wrapped up in our own thoughts and enjoying the marijuana induced relative calmness, just watching the tranquility of an unpopulated area. The two dogs, Spot the white Jack Russell and Sherman, the light brown, mastiff, lay on the deck in front of our feet, enjoying the sun. Those two had stuck with us through thick and thin and were good at raising the alarm if we were in any immediate danger.
The funnel suddenly belched out a cloud of black smoke and the engine spluttered a few times.
I turned to Batfish.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“You got that right. Let’s see what’s going on.”
We slid off the chairs and moved to the control compartment.
Batfish flung open the door.
“What’s the news, Smith?” Batfish asked. “Why is that black shit blowing out the exhaust?”
The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone Page 1