Paul slammed the empty water bottle onto the counter and sighed. “You ready to fire this thing up?”
“You mean are you ready to fire this thing up?”
A slight grin snuck into his beard. He nodded to the sliding glass door, glancing at the pistol-grip shotgun he left lying on the couch as he headed back out into the rain. Up top, the control panel intimidated the hell out of him, sinking his spirits. They needed to get off this dock and pronto, but the numerous buttons and switches made that impossible and the last thing Paul felt like doing right now was taking a boating course. Holstering his sidearm, he wiped his brow with the back of his hand, unsure if the liquid running down his face was rainwater or sweat. He felt dizzy and his head ached. The smallest key on the ring unlocked a glove-box, where he found the brutally thick owner’s manual. Dropping into the captain’s chair with the rain beating on the roof, Wendy kept lookout while reading over his shoulder at the same time.
In extremely small print, the manual told them that Wavy Gravy was a three year-old, forty-five foot Cabo Express with 800 gallon fuel tanks and a water tank capable of holding up to 100 gallons. She also had a vac-u-flush head in the bathroom, an automatic anchor and a big old twin diesel to get them where they wanted in a hurry.
“This is so amazing,” Wendy said for the tenth time, dancing from foot to foot.
Paul wiped his face with his sleeve and inserted a key into the control board with Wendy watching his every move. Turning the key one click, the instrument panel lit up with the power from two large batteries below deck. His eyes widened. “She’s got a full tank,” he whispered.
“Yes.” Wendy shrieked way too loudly. “Start it! Start it!”
“Hang on,” he said, flipping another page in the manual.
Wendy bounced around the upper deck like a kid after too much chocolate. “I can't believe it! We can live on this thing and nothing can get to us!”
“Unless they can swim.”
She stopped dancing, eyes sobering. “Paul,” she moaned.
He ran a finger along a paragraph as he read aloud.
Wendy threw a hand over her heart. “We should find an island. Can you imagine? It’d be like being on vacation. Does this thing have GPS?”
“Will you give me a minute?”
“Can it get us to Hawaii?”
“No idea.”
“How far away is Hawaii anyway?”
“Wendy!”
“Sorry.”
Water dripped from the tip of his nose, darkening the pages as he slowly repeated the instructions. He looked up and filled his lungs with a hopeful breath, lifting his chest. “Cross your fingers.”
She crossed her fingers and watched him flip some switches and punch some buttons before turning the key the rest of the way. The boat’s exhaust pipes spit white puffs of smoke out the back end with a throaty rumble that vibrated the dash. Paul’s heart melted at the beautiful sound while his eyes scanned the lonely dock. Even in the storm, Wavy Gravy was loud and wouldn’t take long to attract decomposing onlookers. After coughing some more smoke out the back, Wavy evened out into a smokeless purr.
Paul turned to Wendy with his first real smile in what felt like years. “How do you like me now?”
She threw her arms around him and planted a wet kiss on his filthy cheek. “I like you a lot, and it’s good to see your smile again.” Wendy hugged him tight, her heart beating against his.
He hugged her back, feeling guilty for taking comfort in the arms of another woman. “Alright,” he said, drawing apart. “Let’s go get the stuff from the car and untie this thing while we still can.”
☠
Once clear of the dock, Paul cranked the wheel to the right and pressed the throttle forward too hard, making Wavy jump. He stayed close to the shoreline in case he screwed something up and stalled the boat. The last thing they needed was to drift out to sea as the coast guard was no longer answering their phones. Glancing at Wendy in the seat next to him, he gave it more throttle, sending the luxury boat slicing through the rough water like a hot knife through butter. The wind whipped at their hair and water sprayed their faces. Wendy laughed out loud, hanging on with each long, gradual bounce.
A few miles later, Paul brought the boat to a smooth stop and turned it off. His eyes toured the coastline. Water lapped against the side of the boat. The combination of clouds and dusk turned Texas into a blue-gray blob without a single light in any direction. He hit the anchor button and the chain let out, smoothly plunging into the dark water below. His gaze caught on the radio, pulse quickening in his ears. Lifting the black handset from its cradle, he said a quick prayer. The boat was a huge break and he hated to be greedy, but they would need more.
“Do you think it works?” Wendy asked, her teeth chattering in the cold breeze.
There was a light click when he turned it on. Tiny bright lights lit up his face as the boat rocked back and forth. He tried channel twenty-three – the one it was already set on. “Hello? Is anyone out there?” Releasing the button on the mic’s side, they listened to the rain slow to a patter on the roof, the radio casting a yellow glow across their faces.
No response.
Not even static.
He tried again. “Can anyone hear me? We are off the coast of Texas, copy that.”
They traded a disenchanted look and Paul began working his way up to channel thirty-seven with the same frustrating results, grumbling under his breath.
Wendy turned for the steps. “Okay, I’m going back downstairs. I’m freezing.”
“I’ll be right down,” he said, trying another channel and then another. Using the webbing of his hand, he squeegeed his wet face and peered out over the water the sky had turned dark and sinister, like they’d just entered a place where the worst had yet to come. Defiantly, he spit into the ocean and a muffled sound came through the radio, snatching his attention. His heart skipped a beat. He turned up the volume and clicked the black handset. “Hello? Is somebody there?” Paul let up on the button, eyes sliding to the shoreline. Someone coughed in response, prickling his flesh. Tightening his distant gaze, he spoke in a slow clear voice. “If you can hear me, we are in a boat north of Corpus Christi! Do you copy?” He let up on the button, holding his breath, praying for one more miracle.
Silence answered and he could feel someone watching him. He glanced downstairs to see if Wendy was standing there but she wasn't. More coughing drew his eyes back to the radio. Someone yelled something in the background that sounded eerily similar to: Oh God, please! A shrill scream followed. Something shattered into pieces and everything went black. Paul’s chest heaved beneath his wet coat. He rubbed water from his eyes, everything a fuzzy blur. Lazy raindrops tap-danced on the rooftop as he waited for a response that never came. He gripped the microphone tighter in his hand, face glowing in the radio light, voice barely above a whisper. “Hello?”
Water slapped against the boat. A fish jumped somewhere nearby.
He stared at the radio through unfocused eyes, imagining the unimaginable. After a few more seconds of slow torture, Paul angrily racked the microphone and turned off the radio, plunging him back into the blue-gray. He turned to the empty horizon and stared for awhile, eventually going downstairs with the hairs standing up on his arms.
Chapter Forty-Three
DAY SEVENTEEN
Paul didn't remember coming into the master bedroom. The last thing he remembered was the voice coming through the radio the night before. He yawned and stretched out in the comfortable queen-sized bed as daylight pushed through a small porthole window next to the closet. Then he remembered that his wife was dead and never coming back. The revelation sent an ice pick through him, bleeding his will to survive into the mattress. He would wake up alone like this for the rest of his wretched life and there was no changing it. That’s the hand he was dealt and it smothered the benefits of their new home on water. Quietly, he crept out into the tiny hallway and opened the door to the other bedroom to find Wend
y curled up with a blanket in the bottom bunk. The boat rocked and when he was positive she wasn’t dead and going to come back to life and eat him, he shut the door and squeezed into the miniature bathroom.
The clean toilet seemed like a mirage and it was nice not to have to hold his breath for a change. It reminded him of home. He tried to be grateful for their fortune but gruesome thoughts of Sophia and Dan wouldn’t let him rest. He could barely fight them off long enough to figure out their next move. The food and water onboard would last a few days but they’d have to make a supply run soon. A BIG one. If they could haul enough back to the boat to get them through the next month or two, they’d have some time to reset mentally and physically and maybe make a stand.
After brushing his teeth with someone else’s toothbrush, he rinsed and went up top for a look around. The dark clouds from the day before had given way to the rising sun lighting up one side of a colossal cruise ship barreling down on Wavy Gravy. Paul’s adrenaline shot through his bloodstream. He tried to yell to Wendy but fear turned his vocal cords to ice. Paralyzed by the sheer size of the massive vessel, he forced his hand to the keys in the control board.
“Wendy,” he managed to say, starting the boat and raising the anchor.
The cruise ship bounced closer, full speed ahead and on a direct course for Wavy Gravy with black clouds coughing from its periscope-like smokestack.
“Wendy!”
People ran about on the many rows of decks, so high up they looked like insects.
“What’s wrong?” Wendy cried, from the bottom of the steps, hair in a rats nest.
“Hang onto something!” Paul jammed the throttle forward before the anchor cleared the surface, praying it was free of any unseen rocks and that Wavy wouldn’t hook or stall.
Wendy shrieked and fell as the boat shot forward, sending white smoke puffing out the back. “What is it?” she clamored, crawling up the short flight of steps on her hands and knees.
The ocean liner looked much taller close up, like a skyscraper on water. At the top of the stairs, Wendy screamed and staggered with the ship’s violent wake. Paul cranked the wheel to the right and floored it, watching people race up and down the decks, excited by he and Wendy’s presence. Some wore straw hats and Hawaiian shirts and some flung themselves overboard. Paul dodged the falling bodies like they were dropping bombs. A woman in a tank top and denim shorts caught her head on a lifeboat and flopped into the water with a bloody splash. Paul clenched his teeth and yanked the wheel, a tendon bulging in his neck. The zombies that didn’t die upon impact splashed their way to Wavy Gravy but didn't get far. Paul watched them drown, wondering if they could learn to swim like some had learned to hide or ride a bike with training wheels.
Wendy braced herself against the passenger chair as Wavy rose and fell with the mammoth swells closing in from behind.
“Hang on!” Paul said, fighting the wheel for control.
Wavy lurched to and fro, threatening to roll. A man in a white captain’s hat and short sleeve button down followed them along the top balcony as Wavy slid by. When he ran out of deck he climbed over the railing and jumped, freefalling past rows of windows to a thundering splash that Paul could hear over the cruise ship’s symphony of destruction. He turned the wheel sharply to the left and floored it. The cruise ship hit sand, sending a garish sound of twisting metal cutting through the salty air. The kind of noise you can feel in your bones. Once clear of the hostile waters, he pulled back on the throttle and turned the boat around, exhaling a heavy sigh of relief. They watched the cruise ship slam into the beach, covering their ears to block out the horrible screeching as the ship dug pyramids of sand around the bow and teetered to the left, sending people and patio furniture catapulting over the railings to the beach and shallow water below. Momentum carried the cruise liner through a row of pink beach houses, turning the wooden decks and walls into airborne spears. Flesh-eaters hurled themselves over the railings as the ship docked into its final port with a massive explosion for its grand finale.
Beneath a mushroom cloud of rising black smoke, Paul and Wendy watched the living dead drown. One after the other, they swam for Wavy Gravy and disappeared beneath the turbulent water. With one last groan, the powerful vessel and its terrifying racket came to a stop. Seagulls screeched above, angered by the ruckus or excited for some new scraps. Bloody passengers staggered up and down the beach like wild dogs, watching their shipmates drown, fixated on getting to Paul and Wendy one way or the other. He had an eerie feeling he’d talked to some of them on the radio the night before. It was hard not to imagine normal people still locked in their ship cabins, waving to Paul and Wendy for help through the tinted windows. He used his hand to shield his eyes from the glare, scanning the ship’s numerous windows he couldn’t see through. An earthshaking explosion rocked Wavy Gravy from two hundred nautical yards out, blowing Wendy’s hair back and pushing them further out to sea.
“Jesus Christ,” Paul cried, correcting their course.
Wendy righted herself and watched the ship burn, unable to tear her eyes from the horrendous wreckage ashore. She holstered her gun and released a long breath, blond hair blowing wildly behind her through the air. “Well, so much for sleeping in peace at night.”
☠
Wavy rocked back and forth against the anchor wedged into the sea floor below. Blue skies made an appearance for the first time in days and the warm sunshine seemed like a long lost friend, like it could make everything okay again. Wendy scooted closer to Paul, absorbing his body heat despite the sunlight streaming through the tinted cabin windows. After putting several miles between them and the thick smoke from the cruise ship, they spent the next one hundred and twelve minutes eating microwave popcorn and York Peppermint Patties while watching Fool's Gold on a Blu-ray disc they found inside the player. To say it was surreal was an understatement. They’d gone from a massive catastrophe to Matthew McConaughey in the blink of an eye and it didn’t seem right. But it felt good. Damn good to step away from the horror for a minute and time travel into the past where movies and candy still played a role. Even Sophia and Dan faded to the back of Paul’s mind as he watched the movie with one eye on the TV and one on the windows. They could see for miles around from the leather sectional and Paul wondered when airplanes and space stations would start falling from the sky next. He took a drink of the cold beer they’d stocked in the mini-fridge the night before, seeing the colossal cruise ship barreling down on them at top speed in his mind’s eye. That memory would trouble him for the rest of his life but it would have to get in line.
A wispy trail of smoke rose from the end of Wendy’s cigarette as the credits rolled, her body heat flushing Paul’s left side. “I don't care what anyone says,” she said, lighting up a joint and passing it to Paul. “I love that movie.”
He took it from her and stopped it in front of his lips. “Where do you keep getting these?”
“From Dancers. Joe always kept at least a pound of the good stuff locked in the safe.”
He passed the joint back and she took a slow hit, looking out the windows for the same thing he was. But the water was calm, the temperature rising as fast as their blood-alcohol level.
She exhaled a rolling cloud of smoke through the sunlight. “Let’s go swimming.”
“No way,” he said, taking the joint back.
“Why not?”
“One word: Sharks.”
“Oh, come on,” she laughed, slapping his bare leg and getting up. “There aren’t any sharks in there.”
“Look how far out we are. This is some deep water.” He pointed to land. “No way in hell I’m escaping all those things on shore to end up getting eaten by a great white.”
Wendy snuffed her cigarette into an empty beer can and stretched, staring out into the sun-splashed day while Paul wet his fingers and put the joint out.
“I can’t believe it’s finally March,” she sighed, wiggling out of her jeans in the middle of the living room.
�
�Whoa!” Paul shielded his eyes from her red lace panties with his hand. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m going swimming in the ocean for the first time,” she casually answered, pulling her t-shirt over her head and throwing it at him. “I stink and so do you.”
Paul peeked through his fingers, heartbeat quickening when he saw her matching bra. “Do you have to do that right here?”
“Sorry, Paul, but I forgot my suit.” Wendy planted her hands on her hips, striking the Victoria’s Secret Angel pose and pulling it off. “You coming or what?”
“Now way; that water is probably freezing.”
She grabbed his hand and hauled him off the couch. “If you think I’m going in there by myself, you are crazy.”
He grabbed his beer and followed her out onto the back deck. “Do you even know how to swim?”
“Of course I do.” Wendy set her beer on a patio table and stepped to the end of the boat, staring out over the glistening water with her toes hanging over the edge. She shivered in the sunshine. “I’m scared.”
Paul took a slow sip, studying the purple butterfly on her back. “Maybe you should wear your gun.”
“Are you really not coming in?”
“I’m really not coming in.”
She shot him a sidelong glance and turned back to the ocean, balling her hands into white fists. “Chicken,” she said, leaping forward with a high-pitched scream and splashing into a patch of sun sparkles. Wendy popped up like a cork, inhaling a sharp breath. “Oh my God, it’s freezing!”
Paul thumbed inside. “I think I’ll use the shower. It’s got a full tank…and heat.”
She pulled her hair from her face, revealing a blue-eyed glower. “Come on, Paul, get in.”
He looked down at the clean cargo shorts and tank top he found in the master closet. “Mmmm, I guess not.”
“Just go in your underwear. They need to be washed anyway.”
A Little More Dead Page 23