“No, because you were from Russia. It’s always cold there. I would think it’s in your blood,” Fleck said.
“First of all, I am not Russian. Not even close. I was adopted from Serbia.”
“Ah.” Fleck nodded.
“Anyhow,” Lev said. “I was at the—”
“Did you cause Nila to almost drown?” Fleck interrupted. “I’m sorry I wanted to ask before I forgot.”
“What? No.” Lev shook his head.
“Yes, you did, Lev, remember?” I asked. “Seventh grade you knocked me into the deep end of the Big Bear pool, I wasn’t ready and nearly drowned.”
“That wasn’t me, it was Ricky Langston, and I was the one who pulled you out.”
“Oh, that’s right thanks.”
“How do you not remember these things, Nila? Anyhow,” he said, “I was at the home and hardware stores.”
“Were they pretty much picked over?”
“No, not really. I was getting ideas for the cabin.”
“Any of them have to do with power or AC?”
“No,” he replied firmly. “I’ll hook up the solar generator and you can use the little unit.”
“I’ll never leave that room. And it’s hot everywhere.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Oh, I doubt it. Lev…it’s been two weeks, you know, since we got here.”
“I do. I know it seems like things aren’t progressing fast enough. But we had to find a suitable place. One we can work with. This isn’t exactly the most conducive to long-term survival.”
“Exactly.” I snapped my fingers. He got my point. Lev was a long-term thinker. We were on the same page or close to it.
Lev stared down at me. “I know that look.”
“What look?”
“You want to leave.”
“It’s been two weeks.”
“Nila, it is not a vacation. You can’t just pack up and go.”
“Yeah, we can,” I said.
Lev shook his head. “You do this, you know. Leave the cabin, don’t leave the cabin, go to Canada, come home. I didn’t want to leave the cabin in the first place. You wanted to come down here and maybe chase the rumor of the survivor camp in the Keys.”
“It’s not a rumor, it’s true,” I argued. “We talked to them, what? Weeks ago.”
“And you don’t want to go.”
“I just kinda think being on an island is boxing yourself in if there’s trouble. And this place, you just said it’s not conducive.”
“It’s not going to be easy to grow food. But we are far enough from signs of the infected.”
“We haven’t seen any at all since winter. It’s over.”
“It will never be over, Nila, not when Canada is battling it,” Lev said. “Look, if you want to leave and find somewhere else, we will. But for Katie’s sake we need to stop. To settle. We cannot be nomads moving about constantly.”
I could see it wasn’t going to go smoothly with him. I ran through possible comebacks, what I would say. I could tell him that Marco Island or city, whatever it was, wasn’t the place to be. The beach wasn’t even that nice. It had seaweed everywhere, shells, dark sand. It had a feeling of being marooned on a deserted island.
“Nila,” Lev snapped his finger in front of me.
Did he just snap at me? “Lev, don’t snap at me.”
“You were day-dreaming.”
“I was thinking of a response.” If I wasn’t frustrated enough before, I certainly was now and that was coupled by the fact he looked calm. “You know you said we can’t be nomads.”
“I did.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Lev laughed. “One, we would never know our surroundings well enough. Two, we would be scraping by. I don’t want to scrape by. Three, gas. How are we going to get there? It’s been just about a year, gas will not be good for much longer.”
I flung out my hand. “Oh.”
“Oh, what?”
“That’s not true.”
“Gas going bad is not true?” Lev asked.
“No, there were plenty of shows on television that showed survivors years later using gas.”
“That’s a TV show.”
“Still,” I argued. “You would think they did their research.”
“Nila, a fiction story isn’t always fact. Gas will be bad very soon.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “Did they test it?”
“Yes, I am sure they did. Why are you arguing so much with me?”
“It’s the heat.”
Lev exhaled. “Listen, I will do what you want to do, as long as the others agree. Let me know before I start working on the cabin. Okay?”
I nodded.
“I’m headed back to the car. We’ll leave the beach soon.” Lev turned. “I don’t know why we left home in the first place.”
I watched him walk away then peered at my daughter. She had wandered a little down the beach, and I called out a warning not to go too far and to stay away from the water.
She looked at me and waved, so oblivious to everything. Nothing seemed to faze her anymore, good or bad.
I peered to Fleck. “What do you think?”
“I’ll do whatever.”
I knew Bella would want to leave. Of course, I’d ask her. I couldn’t see her saying ‘let’s stay’ as she complained often.
Leaving and going further south was a bad idea. Other than Fleck’s family, we didn’t even pursue one of the reasons we went to Florida and that was to find the survival camp in the Keys.
I didn’t trust it.
I stopped trusting anyone outside our group.
Hell, I rarely spoke to the people at the campsite.
I looked back to see if I could spot Lev. He had disappeared over the crest of the beach. I suppose he was annoyed with me; I was annoyed with myself.
I thought about his statement that he didn’t know why we had left home in the first place.
So much had happened and enough time had passed that I had a hard time remembering why we had chosen not to stay.
I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked at Fleck. “You ready to leave the beach for—”
A scream.
Bella’s scream.
Naturally, I turned to look at her, then I heard Fleck.
“Holy shit.”
Through my peripheral vision I saw him jump from the lifeguard’s chair.
I spun to see where he was going. My heart dropped to my stomach, immediately thinking Katie had been pulled into the water.
Never did I expect to see my daughter crouched down by the water’s edge, oblivious to the fact that an infected had come out of the ocean and moved her way.
“Katie!” I tried to scream, her name getting stuck in my throat as I raced forward.
It wasn’t easy running in sand, especially on a beach that hadn’t been maintained for a year. There were rocks and branches and other debris that made my charge forth for my daughter impossible.
I couldn’t run fast enough. My ankle twisted, I felt something jam into the bottom of my foot.
It was like a bad dream.
The way it moved, the way it pushed forward through thigh-high water aiming for my child. It moved with agility and it moved fast.
“Katie! Run!”
It was seconds, I know it was, but it seemed like an eternity.
Katie slowly stood up, looked at me, then turned around and looked at the infected. She didn’t scream, she didn’t run, she backed up slowly, staring at him.
Fleck was trying to get a shot but it wasn’t safe for him to fire. Katie was too close.
“Come to me,” I yelled, but before she could react, I arrived, sweeping into her like a linebacker, grabbing onto my daughter just as the infected reached her. I swung her around and out of the infected’s way, tumbling to the ground, and landing as the single shoot was fired.
I looked up, still shielding Katie.
The infected flew back, then a
fter he landed in the water, he got back up again.
“Jesus Christ,” Fleck blasted, racing toward it. He nailed it in the face with the butt of the rifle. It didn’t even seem to faze him.
Fleck hit him again and again until it looked like he’d gone down. It was brief.
I saw the infected come out of the water slowly, then I realized it was a different one.
I jumped to my feet, grabbed Katie and hollered, “Just shoot them!”
During my run back, Katie in my arms, I hollered for Bella to take the baby to the car, and then I called out for Lev.
He had to of heard the shots. How could he not?
I saw him hurrying over the crest, carrying a rifle in one hand, a pistol in the other.
“Go.” I moved Katie toward Bella. “Go with Bella.”
“Are you gonna kill them, Mommy?” Katie asked
“Go!” I spun around just as Lev arrived handing me the pistol.
My back had been turned from the water for only a few seconds, but when I faced the ocean again, Fleck was backing up as at least a dozen rose from the water making their way to shore.
I may not have been a fast runner, but I was a good shot and I wasn’t pissing around.
There was no time to worry if they were infected or dead, or where they had come from. I would take the kill shot, and that’s what I did.
TWELVE
BEGIN AGAIN
We had become complacent. Despite how much Lev and Fleck verbally disagreed with me, they knew in the back of their minds I was right. It had been so long since we truly were confronted by the danger of the infected and deaders that we had stopped looking over our shoulder. Being on watch was a formality to us instead of a necessity. We were off balance. Our reaction time to the situation wasn’t where it had been six months ago.
Even though we all said it wasn’t over, I don’t think there was a single one of us who didn’t want to believe it was. The lack of infected and dead meant the outbreak was done. The threat was over.
Obviously, by the bodies on the beach it wasn’t.
They were fresh.
Several lay on the beach having made it to shore, while a few floated back out after they were shot.
Three days earlier I wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving Bella, Katie and Christian in the car. Now I was antsy.
“Can we go?” I asked. “Please.”
“They came from the ocean, but where did they come from?” Lev questioned, staring down at them as if he didn’t hear my plea to leave.
“They floated,” Fleck said. “Maybe they were out there a while.”
Lev shook his head. “No, we know that the deaders fall apart, if they were out there, the sea would have broken them down. Look at them.”
Not a single one of them was bloated or waterlogged. They didn’t have any of the skin tears. “They aren’t deaders,” I said. “They’re infected. Look at their skin.” I reached out to nudge one with my foot and Lev quickly stopped me.
“You’re bleeding.”
I glanced down to my foot all covered in blood. “I must have stepped on something.”
“Well, don’t touch them,” Lev instructed.
Fleck nudged one of the bodies. “The skin isn’t soft or mushy. It’s firm.”
“Infected,” I repeated. “They operate on memory. Either they floated until they were close enough to swim, or they fell off a boat. It has to be something like that. They’re all fresh.”
“Which means,” Fleck said, “phase one has begun all over again. The virus is back.”
Lev slightly shook his head. “Sadly, I don’t think it ever left.”
<><><><>
Katie was beyond enthusiastic in an almost disturbing way as she told Ben the story of the infected in the water.
“He was trying to move. But you know how it is moving in water. It’s hard,” Katie said.
“Is she serious?” Ben asked.
She beat us to the punch and gave him the low down.
“You’re saying about a dozen of them?” Ben asked. “On the beach?”
We nodded.
“They weren’t bloated?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “They looked like infected. Not deaders, infected.”
“Impossible.”
I lifted my hands—I didn’t know what to tell him.
He asked if either Fleck or Lev could take him to see the bodies, and I told them I was fine with the kids, and to go. I was curious what Ben would think.
They took off but before they did Ben told me not to touch the fish. At first I thought maybe he was insinuating they were contaminated, but then I realized it was another reference to my cooking.
I took it upon myself to inform those down in the Meadow Area about what happened at the beach. Surprisingly, they were pretty dismissive about it. Taking it with a proverbial pinch of salt as if it was an isolated incident.
“Probably just were floating in the water for a while,” one man said.
“You know how they are, they don’t die.”
“Last hurrah.”
“Ha-ha.”
Um, it wasn’t a joke.
The first thought that came to mind was to reach out to Westin, but the Meadow Area radio guy said only Grace in town could do that. She operated out of the local station.
She was only there until sundown.
Great.
I returned back to our cabin area, and while I still felt it was safe, a part of me was on edge. Suddenly my security net was gone and I was constantly looking out, listening for any movement, sniffing for any smell.
When Ben returned he seemed shaken.
“It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” Ben said. “None. There were seven bodies on the beach. Three more were walking the beach when we got there.”
“Walking?” Lev asked with sarcasm. “Only until they saw us.”
“So they were infected?” I asked.
Ben nodded.
“Were the three on the beach ones we shot?” I asked.
Fleck shook his head. “No, they were new.”
I exhaled. “So they’re still coming.”
“Like I said,” Fleck added. “It’s back.”
“And like I said,” Lev argued, “it never left.”
“No,” Ben said. “You both are right. We saw fifteen people, all infected, all in the same stage of the virus. You could tell by the skin, the black veins, all of it. Same stage. Which means they all caught it from the same source. Not long ago they were all sick. If there were fifteen there are more.”
“How can that be?” Lev asked. “Could one infected have bit them all?”
“Did you see any bite marks? Ben questioned.
“I…I didn’t look,” Lev replied.
“I did. I looked. Not one had a bite mark. Nothing. They weren’t bit,” Ben said. “They all caught our virus. Just like the first outbreak.”
“Maybe they were on a boat,” Lev said. “Maybe they caught a fish that was contaminated by an infected.”
“Or maybe the means of transmission have changed,” Ben said. “And another outbreak has started. Either way, they were all together when they got it. Fifteen people, they came from somewhere. Question is, where?”
If anyone would know what survivor groups were around us it was Grace, the radio lady in town, or Westin.
Lev and I hightailed it to the radio station to catch Grace before she left.
Like those in the Meadow Area, she held an air of disbelief. As if we were crazy, making it up. Though I understood her hesitation. After all, no one had seen any deaders or infected in some time.
Finally, after she made it clear she was annoyed with our presence she agreed to make contact with Cobb Corner. Carl answered and made us wait until he got Westin.
“And you’re sure?” Westin asked.
“Positive,” I answered. “I’ll take Ben’s word on it, he’s a doctor.”
“Wait, honey, you have a doctor?” Grace interru
pted with a completely switched tone that was sweet and upbeat.
I waved my hand at her. “Oh, so now you want to be nice to us.”
“Nila,” Lev scolded softly.
“Just that I have this pain in my shoulder—” Grace said.
“Tough,” I cut her off.
“Nila,” Lev said stronger.
I returned to speaking to Westin. “Sorry. I’m back. Anyhow, Ben thinks they all caught it at the same time and in the same way. We just don’t know where they’re coming from. We’re hoping you might know of a camp that was in this area.”
“Well…” There was a pause, a snap of static and Westin exhaled loudly over the radio. “I hate to say it. I think I have a good idea. We haven’t heard from Key West in over a week.”
“That’s a hell of a distance to float in the water,” I said.
“Not if they left by boat,” said Westin.
Grace tapped my arm. “They’re cut off. They guard their ports and bridge pretty good. No way. It can’t be them.”
“Grace said there’s no way,” I told Westin. “They’re too cut off.”
“One way to find out,” Westin replied.
He was right, there was only one way to find out for sure, and that was to go to the Keys and see for ourselves. Not that I wanted to go to an island of the dead, but it was so important to know. If Key West, shut off from everything, was indeed infected, then there was the possibility of a second outbreak and nowhere was safe.
THIRTEEN
STAYING AFLOAT
May 25
Despite the emergence of infected out of the ocean, it still was a safe place to be. At least I felt that way when the decision came to leave Katie, Bella, and the baby at home or take them with us to the Keys.
In the end I opted to take them with us. I didn’t trust strangers, and to me, nice people or not, they were still strangers to me at the campsite.
In exchange for an ear irrigation, which by the way was pretty disgusting, the Marco resident allowed for Ben to use his yacht. It was much nicer than the fishing boat he lay claim to.
Having lived his life by Lake Erie, Ben had been a boater and knew what he was doing. He knew we had to leave early in the morning to avoid the westerly winds.
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