Carlie Simmons (Book 2): In Too Deep
Page 16
As the creature’s eyes fixated on the flashlight, it reared its bald head from the waves, its shrapnel wounds making its face look like a jigsaw puzzle. With its head seemingly in her sights, Carlie snapped off a round just as a ferocious wave knocked the raft, sending her backwards into the floor.
She coughed up a mouthful of seawater and tried to stabilize herself. In the chaotic illumination cast by her flashlight, she saw Shane and Jared still holding on. They were peering out into the coal-black ocean before them as another wave slapped the sides and sent them both reeling to the floor.
“I’m pretty sure that was a kill shot,” she said, staring out through the entrance.
Chapter 60
As the raft was tossed about in the choppy waves, the group of six survivors huddled together, frantically holding on to each other and the internal ropes woven into the life raft fabric.
“Gimme a hand closing off the entrance,” shouted Shane as Jared came up next to him and helped to unravel the heavy vinyl door. Once it was zippered down, the water stopped bursting in and both men settled back down to the floor.
The tiny circular raft resembled a floating yurt and was now impregnable. Using the flashlight on her Glock, Carlie searched for the emergency supply bag attached to the lower wall and pulled out two glo-sticks. After cracking them open, she hung them from tie-offs in the roof while Amy, Pavel, and Matias steadied her as the undulating floor of the raft constantly shifted beneath them.
“I feel like I’m in one of those funhouses at the carnival,” said Matias.
“Yeah, only that one you can get off any time you want,” said Amy. “This is worse than riding in an ambulance on an icy highway.”
“Where’s the vodka when you need it, eh?” said Pavel, who was white-faced.
With the glo-sticks secured, they all plunked down on the floor, inadvertently slamming against the soft sides.
Shane looked up at Jared who was next to him. “So, ‘Zombie Motherfucker,’ eh? Does that mean ‘ZMF’ is your new term?” Shane said as he struggled to hold on to the sides.
Jared shook his head as water pelted his face. “You know, after all this, I think we should just stick with the time-tested term, ‘zombie.’ I’m good with that.”
“That works for me, but we should probably all vote on it just to be sure,” Shane said, spitting out saltwater. “I don’t want anyone coming back to argue with us later on our terminology.”
“Whoa there, Sheriff, you oughta be careful. It sounds like you might be developing a sense of humor. Not sure how I’m gonna handle that.”
“Yeah, well it must be the eccentric bunch I’m hangin’ out with.” Both men began to laugh while gripping the rope and bouncing against the walls.
Carlie did a quick survey of the interior and saw the various survival packs and emergency supplies that were attached to the rubbery foundation.
Her core was slightly chilled from the soaked clothes adhering to her skin. She pulled out several space blankets and passed them around, then wrapped the reflective fabric around her.
The interior smell of the raft was a mix of sweat and vinyl combined with sea salt. Carlie held on to the thick blue rope railing that lined the entire circumference of the lower interior, her chilled fingers struggling to maintain a grip. She arched her head up towards the canopy which was aglow in green light, wondering how far land was and what the long, bitter night ahead would bring.
Chapter 61
As the morning tide lapped up on the white sand beach before Carlie, she looked skyward from her sleeping position under a tangle of low palm trees. The cobalt sky was visible past the green palm fronds and she could feel the warming rays of the late morning sun streaking across her face. Several purple birds were perched nearby singing a tranquil melody that almost made her think she was at a tropical resort.
Their life raft had arrived on the tiny island at sunrise after hours of tortuous thrashing on the rough ocean. After making a quick sweep of the immediate beachfront for creatures, they had all collapsed just inside the treeline and fallen asleep.
Shane was walking up from the right and he squatted down beside her. “Morning, sunshine,” he said, resting his tan arms upon his knees. “While you and the others were asleep I did a little recon of the area. Looks like we’ve just acquired our own private island.”
She raised her eyebrows and wiped the sand off her cheek. “What did you find?”
“Not much—a fisherman’s shack two miles down, a battered outrigger canoe, and some supplies. This island appears to be a few miles long so probably not much of a settlement here to begin with. There seems to be a few other scattered islands miles off to the northeast. Also saw a few monkeys in the trees and the tracks of small deer so there’s wild game here at least.”
“Not to mention some tasty pick-me-ups for our pina coladas,” Carlie said, picking up a bushy coconut next to her.
“With the supplies in the life raft, we have enough rations for three days, a desalinating water filter, medical supplies, a short-wave radio, shelter items, and flares.”
“Lotta good flares will do us here. No one has a clue where we are.”
“White Sands should have a fix on our last location, though. Once we’re out of contact for more than twelve hours, they will hopefully attempt some kind of satellite sweep of the area to search for survivors.”
“A few weeks ago, when life was normal, a search effort for a missing ship would have been a demanding inter-agency undertaking,” she said, pulling her hair off her shoulder. Maybe that emergency location beacon on the raft will raise someone.”
Carlie looked at the endless expanse of ocean before her. She knew as well as Shane did that their chances of having a search-and-rescue mission mounted were slim given the lack of resources and available personnel. Carlie glanced over at Pavel, who was curled up asleep in between Jared and Amy. She knew that the virologist’s survival was imperative. She swirled her fingers through the white sand, making a figure-eight pattern and then blotting it out only to start over again. Carlie heard Matias yawning and saw him stand up to her left, arching his back in a stretch.
“Glad you’re finally up, amigo. Shane was just saying he needed someone to help procure a monkey for breakfast.”
“Eeeh—monkey meat is horrible. Did you forget I grew up on the coast of Panama? I only eat fish,” Matias said while walking over to them.
“Then this must feel like being back home again.”
“Except the beaches back home had more bars than this,” he said, smiling.
The rest of the group slowly extricated themselves from their coiled sleeping positions and dragged their tired bodies over. Carlie could see the weary look and uncertainty in each person’s eyes. She knew the best thing for their mental state would be to get busy with their hands.
“Looks like this is going to be our own little Shangri-La for a while. Shane said there’s a fisherman’s hut down the beach so let’s take the supplies from the raft and relocate there. Jared and Matias—see if you can locate some nearby high ground and figure out how big an island this actually is.
“Shane and Amy, I want you to do an inventory of our existing supplies, ammo, and anything you find in the shack. Then use the desalinator to purify some water for the day.”
Carlie looked at the fatigued Russian scientist. “Pavel and I will gather firewood and then set up perimeter defense alarms of some kind. At dinner this evening, we will reconvene and go over a plan for the coming days.”
Jared stood up and brushed the sand off his pants. “As long as there’s no black smoke creature here like on that show LOST, we’ll be alright.”
Amy slugged him in his arm as she walked by while holding back a grin. “That’s for opening your mouth again and making me regret waking up today.”
Chapter 62
That night they sat around the campfire on the beach eating their dry rations and discussing their options as the waves lapped along the sandy shoreline.
“From what I can tell, this island is about four miles long and maybe the same distance wide. It’ll meet our needs for a while,” said Shane.
Carlie kept thrusting a burning stick into the orange bed of coals, lifting it out on occasion to watch the smoke on the tip waft into the starry sky.
“You’ve been awfully quiet since we arrived, Professor,” said Carlie, looking over at Pavel. “What are your thoughts on what we should do if we get out of here?”
Pavel was sitting with his legs huddled close to his chest and his arms wrapped around his knees. His eyes were transfixed on the roaring flames and Carlie wondered if any of the conversation had reached through to him.
“If I can get to the facility in Alaska that my colleague told me about, then I may be able to get a foothold on the virus and begin some attempt to formulate an antidote.”
“Alaska—as in six thousand freaking miles from here Alaska?” said Jared. “Well, shit, let me call up an air-taxi and get you on your way.”
“Why Alaska? The only thing there I’m familiar with is the army’s cold-weather testing labs in Fairbanks,” said Carlie.
“Before he died, Viktor, my old comrade from the Soviet days, mentioned that there was a CIA bio-lab in Alaska that still possessed some of the original KAD97 strain. That is how this all began. Though the current virus seems to have mutated, if I can isolate the genetic strain of that original then I can have a better look at how to combat this.”
“So, you guys were working as Agency contractors?” said Matias.
Pavel shook his head. “No, no, not me, just Viktor.”
“That laptop we found on the freighter in New Orleans,” said Shane. “It was an encrypted CIA device.”
“That I do not know about,” said Pavel, clearing his throat. “Viktor must have sent it with one of the smugglers from the island.”
“Question is—who was he sending it to on the mainland?” said Shane.
Carlie could hear the sound of the waves crashing behind her and looked beyond the fire at the ocean, whose whitecaps were glistening in the moonlight. “Tomorrow, I’ll give the radio another try and see if we can pick up any chatter or get a message out,” she said. “Let’s do two-hour rotations on guard duty tonight and keep the fire burning in case lady luck is out there cruising around on a boat or plane.”
“I’ll tell you this much,” Jared said. “We get out of here and get the professor to his magic lab in the tundra to brew up a cure, they’re gonna pin a medal on you, Carlie. Heck, they’ll probably have you running the Secret Service or whatever’s left of it.”
Carlie frowned and drove her stick deep into the hot coals then stood up. “No, thank. I’ve got some of my own plans for when we get back,” she said, looking into the jungle. “Right now, though, I wish I could just string up a hammock between two trees and forget about the world as we know it. That’d be OK with me.”
Chapter 63
A few hours after sunrise, Carlie and the others were scattered around the fisherman’s shack on the beach, enmeshed in their respective camp chores that she had assigned the night before.
She had just returned from collecting another armload of firewood and tossed it down on the pile beside the blaze. Carlie dragged her shirt sleeve across her sweaty forehead then took a deep breath of the fresh ocean breeze gliding over her. She was feeling more relaxed than she had in a long time and loosened two buttons on the top of her shirt. She walked to the crude shack and kneeled down beside the radio. Holding the speaker in her right hand, she began adjusting the dial, searching for a frequency that might reveal chatter from a nearby ship or plane.
As she fidgeted with the dial, she sat on the sand and looked out at the others moving around her. Matias was busy erecting a shade canopy with palm leaves while Amy was walking along the treeline collecting coconuts. Pavel was purifying another batch of seawater with the desalinator, his hands busy working the manual pump as he stared at the ground.
She looked down the beach and saw Shane sitting in the shade. He had removed his shirt and was field-stripping his pistol. Carlie gazed over his lean figure and then up at his face, whose eyes were intent as always on the job at hand.
As Carlie clasped the radio receiver in her hand, preparing to send out a message, she noticed Jared standing in the surf beyond the fire. His pants were rolled up to his knees and he stood barefoot in the lagoon with a bamboo fishing pole extended out before him and a look of contentment on his face. The sun was shining on his raven-colored hair as he yanked on the fishing line while hauling in a large mackerel.
Carlie clenched the receiver in her hand and slowly depressed the button to speak while shooting her gaze at the distant horizon as a calm breeze ran through her hair.
Thank you for continuing on this journey. Stay tuned for Volume Three in the Carlie Simmons Series.
Indie authors depend on reviews to get the word out on our books. If you wouldn’t mind posting a review, I’d be grateful.
You can get updates on future releases and my free, non-fiction survival ebooks by signing up at the JTSawyer website.
In Adventure,
JT Sawyer
Additional Post-Apocalyptic Fiction Titles by JT Sawyer
First Wave
The Longest Day
No Place to Hide
Hell Week: SEALs vs. Zombies
Until Morning Comes
Non-Fiction Survival eBooks by Tony Nester (aka JT Sawyer)
When the Grid Goes Down
Survival Gear You Can Live With
Bug-Out Gear for Travelers
Bushcraft Tips & Tools
A Vehicle Survival Kit You Can Live With
Life Under Open Skies: Adventures in Bushcraft