by Shana Festa
"Arms up, you piece of shit. I’m just itching for a reason to put a hole in your head." Frankly, so was I. He was lucky my head was pounding so much or else I’d have launched myself at him and ripped him apart with my bare hands. The look on my companion’s faces told me they were thinking of doing just that.
The pain in my head made me woozy and I wavered on my feet. Jake set me down carefully in one of the chairs and walked toward the men. He sneered at them, baring his teeth. Dave held his head high in indignation while Mel whimpered like a puppy about to be scolded. And scolded he was.
"It’s time for a little game. You boys are going to tell us where you got all the supplies in that boat of yours, and where you’ve been for the past month?" Jake’s hands were clenched in fists so tight his knuckles cracked. "I’m not gonna lie. This is going to hurt. A lot. I should also warn you, there is very little chance you will be leaving this boat breathing. I’m not heartless though. I’ll let you choose. I can shoot you in the head, or I can feed you to them." He pointed to the moaning group that still lined the shore.
Mel was full out crying now, blubbering like the village idiot. Dave lost his indignation and he looked to each of us, probably seeking mercy.
"Mercy left the building when you tried to rape my sister-in-law, douchebag." I stood up and gave Jake a quick kiss, at the same time reaching for his carbine. His grip tightened briefly but loosened when he saw the resolve on my face. "Here’s how I see it, Dave. We only need one of you to give us information, and frankly I never want to hear the sound of your voice again."
I raised the rifle and put the muzzle to his head. He dissolved into sobs and begged for his life. "Please. Don’t do this," he cried.
I hadn’t fully committed to the act until he uttered those words. A fury unlike nothing I’d felt before whooshed through my body and I swear I saw red. "I seem to remember saying those same words to you once." I pulled the trigger, and this time I really did see red. The deck behind him was coated in a fine mist of blood. Dave’s eyes rolled back and his head made a wet, spongy, sound when it hit the deck.
"Oh Jesus, oh Jesus. I’m sorry," Mel was sputtering. He put his head between his knees and covered it with his hands like they would somehow protect him from the same fate bestowed on Dave just moments before.
This time Meg came forward. Pressing her gun to the back of his head, she barked out commands. "Talk, asshole, or I’ll shoot you myself."
"Please don’t shoot me. I’ll do whatever you want. It was all Dave’s idea. It’s his fault they kicked us out." His words brought us all up short. We weren’t expecting him to say anything about other survivors.
"Who are they and where can we find them?" Meg punctuated her question with a hard knock to the back of his head with the carbine. Mel let out a strangled whimper.
"The camp we were at. It’s on Sanibel Island. They blew the bridges to Fort Myers and Captiva early on and managed to keep the infected off the island. Since it wasn’t season yet, most of the island’s residents were still up north. They ran into some problems initially because it spread so fast, but they exterminated them all. Every once in a while they get floaters drifting onto the beach, but they always keep guards on duty, and they moved everyone to a fenced in area just in case."
"So, why did they kick you out?"
"I met up with Dave a day or two after shit went down. It took us a week to find the others. We had the boat and just kept moving from place to place hoping to find people. Dave got a little too friendly with one of the women in camp, beat her up real good, and they voted for us to leave. I was guilty by association, and was exiled along with him." Given what went down below deck earlier, I didn’t buy his innocence for a second.
"Bullshit," I said. "Where did you get all the food and water?" I had taken a moment to lean over the deck behind me and saw a blue tarp pulled to one side revealing boxes of MRE’s and bottled water. It was obvious they’d been feigning starvation just to have a reason to board the ship and take advantage of us.
"The soldiers brought in trucks of food before they took out the bridges. They knew exiling us was pretty much a death sentence without any food, so they gave it to us and sent us away."
"How many of them are on the island?"
"Christ, I don’t know. Three, maybe four hundred? Almost half of them are soldiers. I’ve told you everything I know. I cooperated. Please just let me go. I’ll never bother you again, I swear."
Seth stroked his scruffy chin in contemplation. "I bet that’s the other platoon we lost contact with. The houseboat has a full fuel tank. Do you guys think we should try for the island?"
We all agreed, getting back to dry land and some type of civilization was something we all longed for.
"Let’s move everything useful from the cigarette boat, then secure the boat to the back. In case something goes wrong, we won’t end up stranded and dead in the water," Seth said.
"Wh-what about me? They won’t let me back on the island." Did this pile of dirt rapist think he was coming with us? Spilling a little information at gunpoint did not make up for what he tried to do to us.
Jake took his gun back and stepped closer to Mel. "No one said you were coming with us."
"But I told you everything. I answered all your questions."
"Yeah," Jake said as his face turned to malice, "but you also tried to rape my wife and sister. There is no democracy anymore, asshole. You don’t get a trial. You get an execution. I lied when I said you could choose how to die." Mel threw his hands in front of his face, but it did little to ward off the bullet with his name on it. He fell on top of Dave and as their blood mixed, the puddle around their bodies grew larger until it reached the edge of the deck and dribbled off.
Daphne stepped in cautiously and sniffed at the air. Letting out a huff of vindication, she jogged away from the bodies and went to lie in the sun. As she moved away, her tiny paws left prints of blood on the deck. Something had to be said for the fact that I thought the little paw prints were adorable. I had become one sick and twisted woman. I guess the apocalypse will do that to you.
"Too bad. So sad," was my eulogy to the newly dead.
It was getting dark as Dale and Will heaved their bodies off the deck and into the water. Nancy, using buckets of sea-water, rinsed the deck clean of the blood. The only trace of them remaining was the little prints made from Daphne. Not one of us felt remorse for ending their pitiful existence. They had brought it on themselves when they attacked us.
We went below deck after transferring the food from the other boat. Nancy was organizing and inventorying our new cache of supplies as the men brought it in, and Seth was trying to micromanage her progress between trips. Gabby was chipper as usual; she was one resilient little girl. I broke down though; I was emotionally spent from the last twenty-four hours, having lost so much…but I had gotten my husband back.
I caught a glimpse of Adam looking at me and could tell he wanted to be the one to comfort me. This was going to get weird; there was no way around it. He was a good man, and under different circumstances I could see us together.
Meg and Nancy filled me in on what happened after I got cracked in the face. Daphne had attacked Dave and bit him in the leg. I remembered watching her go over the side. Apparently she had fallen into the cigarette boat instead of landing in the water. I’d never been so happy to have such a cliché play out in real life. Dave barked orders at Mel as they grabbed the two girls and dragged them kicking and screaming into the two guest rooms. I was proud of them for putting up so much fight. They kicked, bit, slapped, and Meg even spit on Mel. They still ended up hogtied the same as I was. After they were bound and gagged, our assailants carried me down and tied me up.
Gabby had been hiding in the galley when they brought us down. She went nuts on Mel when he dragged Nancy into view. This resulted in her being dragged by her hair into the bathroom and locked inside. I felt bile rise in my throat thinking of them putting their hands on her. After Meg kicked Dav
e in the balls, they’d gone in her room to enact their revenge. Dave held Meg down on the bed and pressed a pillow over her face while Mel groped her and told her all the obscene things they were going to do to her. My skin crawled. Memories of the events repulsed me, and I noticed the rips in Meg’s shirt. I could see angry, red welts where the torn fabric revealed her skin.
The duo had been too engrossed in their assault to notice they were no longer alone. Jake, Adam, and Seth had entered the room behind them. The sounds of struggle I’d heard were our men beating the piss out of the sick bastards. They dragged them from the room and up on deck, where they held them at gunpoint while Jake and Adam tended to Meg, Nancy, and myself.
"Wow," was all I could say to them after they retold events. Daphne had been cowering in the invader’s boat when Jake and the men returned. They left her there until they had taken care of the situation for fear of alerting Mel and Dave to their presence. Can’t say I blame them. Her big mouth had kicked me in the ass on numerous occasions this past month.
Our group was topping the charts at ten—of course I included Daphne in the count—since Jake and the two soldiers returned. Not one of us had a lick of energy left. There were no squabbles over who slept where, people found the closest soft surface and crashed. Meg and Will opted to camp up on deck, probably for some privacy so she could give him her own special welcome home party. Go Meg, I thought, and let out a stifled laugh.
Jake looked at me in question and I brushed it off as a cough, pretending to clear my throat. The master bedroom was left to Jake and me. With the major migraine that had settled in, there was no chance I’d be giving any welcome home parties of my own.
I scrounged up some Motrin from the bathroom medicine cabinet while Jake changed the sheets to get rid of the blood. Even with the funky smell, neither of us cared about the puke drying into the carpet as we got into bed. I wasn’t ready to sleep yet, not until I found out where he had been for the past three weeks. We settled under the covers and gazed into each other’s eyes, content just being near one another.
"Hey, Jake?"
"Mmm hmm?"
"Next time you sneak away like that, I’ll castrate you." This was followed by a hearty round of laughter from both of us and Jake conceding to my demands.
"Yes, dear."
Ah, my favorite two words in the English language.
* * *
Chapter 25
Like Father, Like Son
"So…whatcha been up to lately?" I asked him, giving him a full-toothed grin. There was no chance his story would be a fun one, so I tried to lighten the mood a bit. He sighed and held me closer.
"First, I need to tell you how sorry I am for leaving you like that. I knew if I woke you to say goodbye we would just fight again, and I didn’t want that."
He was right. I’d have tackled him to the ground and forced him to stay. Hell, I may have even broken a kneecap just so he couldn’t get on that truck.
"The trip to the bridge was clear. It gave us a false sense of security as we peeled off from the other team. We left the Humvees at the end of the bridge and went in on foot. We only encountered a handful of them on the bridge, but they were easy enough to dispatch with our weapons. Got boxed in and had to jump. It was a bloodbath. There were only eight of us left by the time we went over the side of that bridge. One of the soldiers, they told me later his name was Statham, couldn’t swim. We tried to get to him but the fall had knocked the wind from us all, and we were having a hard enough time keeping ourselves afloat. He went under and never resurfaced. We swam to the closest bit of land we could find. Unfortunately, it was on the Fort Myers side of the river.
"However bad we thought things were on this side of the bridge, it was worse over there. The area was thick with them, and there was no place to hide. If we opened a door, they were waiting on the other side, they were just everywhere. Any time we stopped moving, they were on us in seconds. So we ran, without stopping, for nearly a full day until our bodies started to give out. Private Germain was the first to run out of steam. His legs just stopped working and he fell over. We couldn’t stop to help him because they’d be on us if we let up even a little. By this point our pace was just barely faster than the walking meat sacks. I’m haunted by the sound of him being eaten alive, screaming for help."
I could sympathize with him. Kat’s screams haunted my dreams every night and I woke up in a cold sweat.
"We were about to give up, barely able to move our muscles anymore, when we heard the screech of tires behind us. A car was barreling towards us and hitting our pursuers with the hood like they were bowling pins. The car pulled up next to us and the driver yelled for us to get in. The six of us piled into a tiny Prius with the driver."
The memory of piling in the car amused Jake and his mouth curled up at the corners. I was getting tired and fought to stay awake. Jake noticed and suggested he finish his story after we got some sleep. I declined, wanting to wake up in the morning and not have to start off the day in a dark place.
"The driver, Chris, had been bitten. We all saw the bite right away. It was hard to miss because it was on his shoulder and bleeding copiously. The problem was, he was currently driving and we couldn’t do anything about it. He kept driving in circles, explaining that he was out scavenging for food and was surprised by a zombie locked in the pantry of a deserted house. At first I thought he was just succumbing to the infection and getting delirious. But as we passed a house for the fourth time I saw movement in a window. Chris was driving us erratically to get all the lurkers to follow us away from the house. Eventually we were able to shake most of them and made a mad dash for the house. Chris wasn’t doing so hot by then, we had wasted a lot of time he didn’t have. The figure we saw in the window was his seventeen-year-old son, Chris Junior.
"That was the hardest thing I’ve dealt with so far, I think. Chris knew he was turning and said goodbye to his son. He left us all in the house and just walked out the front door. We watched him from the window, half expecting a horde to descend on him. The street was eerily empty as far as we could see in either direction. He stopped in the middle of the road and turned back to the house, then his body just went rigid and he crumpled to the pavement and started to convulse. We were so fixated on what was happening outside, we didn’t even notice when Chris Junior opened the door and ran to his father. By the time he reached his dad, he had fallen still. He turned and, just like that, was devouring his son.
"We could have saved him but we were out of steam. Every movement felt like we were trudging through wet cement. The two of them lingered outside for days just milling around the area aimlessly. It was almost like they still knew they were home. Sometimes they even came up to the front door and just stood there. Eventually more and more of the wandering corpses joined them. We stayed there for a week eating the food Chris had managed to scavenge and drinking first the bottled water, and finally resorting to drinking the water from the toilet basins. A day went by after we ran out of food, and we knew starvation was inevitable if we didn’t get moving."
Jake rubbed his face with his hands and leaned over to grab his water from the bedside table. As he leaned over I caught view of his bare chest. His abdomen was sunken in from malnutrition, and his ribs were painfully visible under the thin layer of skin. I traced the lines of the protruding ribs with my fingers, and he took my hand and brought it to his lips. Kissing each knuckle, he closed his eyes and relished in my touch.
"So," he began again, "we left the house. We got lucky and found a small motorboat. There were no keys, but Tapper had some experience hot wiring cars in his teen bad boy years." I made a mental note to keep my eye on Private Will Tapper since he was getting cozy with Meg. Jake must have read my mind. "He’s a good kid, just went through a rough patch is all. The army straightened him right out. Meg is in good hands. Not to mention I already gave him the speech."
"Oh, God, not again with the over protective, smothering, big brother routine. Poor Meg, I don’
t know how she’s put up with you all these years." I’d teased him relentlessly about this topic in the past. That earned a faux innocent smile from Jake.
"Who? Me? I know nothing of what you speak." We laughed at our ongoing joke. Things started to feel normal and some of the eggshells we’d been walking on started to fade away. After a few seconds, Jack continued his story.
"With Target being on the water, it was easy to get there. My heart sank as we drove the boat up to the back of the store. Whatever happened there left it in shambles. It was burnt nearly to the ground and teeming with zombies. I went to a very dark place for a while. It was a good thing I was traveling with five soldiers, because it took all of them to hold me down when I made an attempt to get out of the boat and search for you."
"Oh, baby, I’m so sorry you had to experience that. Trust me, I know all too well how the not knowing can fuck with your mind."
"Yeah, well they managed to convince me you would have made it out safely. The soldiers think you’re pretty much the baddest chick they’ve ever met."
My pride swelled at the compliment.
"We knew the location of the lighthouse. Since it was the group’s plan B, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what shape that place was in. I didn’t even slow down as we passed it. I knew there was no way you had gone there. So, plan C in effect, we headed towards Cape Harbour. I just kept repeating to myself that you were safe and finally I was sure of the truth behind it.
"About halfway through the city’s waterways the boat ran out of fuel and we were forced to abandon it and get our feet back on solid ground. We managed to tie up in a safe neighborhood, but I guess safe is a relative term these days. Daylight hours were spent on foot as we made our way through the neighborhoods. You think those streets suck to drive on with all the dead ends? Try doing it on foot! Finding safe places to wait out the darkness was the hard part. There wasn’t one night where we didn’t have to relieve a dead family of their home. We lost one more on the third night. He was bitten before we could get to him. It all happened so fast; he gave us a stiff salute and ate a bullet.