by J. L. Bourne
Paddle, drift, paddle, drift was the routine.
After a few cycles of this, I found what I’d come for. I wasn’t always good at this, but much of the fresh meat on the Keys came from fishing. Cattle were rare, having been killed off on the mainland by the undead. I’ll never forget the time that pontoon boat made it back to the Keys on fumes, a cow strapped to its flat deck. The captain had been out scavenging and found her, still alive, on a large field surrounded by a chain-link fence, complete with a pond and a massive open barn that looked like it had once been full of hay. That captain became a very rich man that day.
The flounder swam just below the surface to my right. Suppressing a sneeze, I watched it and slowly positioned my spear to strike. Knowing that the fish wasn’t where it appeared to be from the refraction, I compensated; this was a skill taught by hunger. I jammed the spear into the water and hooked. The foot-long flounder came up out of the water, flailing. I’d stuck it cleanly through the gills and out the other side. After sweeping it with the Geiger, I tossed it into the well and paddled slowly back to the rising smoke up the beach, hoping to see another meal.
No such luck.
Back at the beach, I cleaned the fish on the bow of my dinghy and cooked it over the small fire along with the can of green beans I’d brought from Solitude. If someone were to ask me a couple years ago if I could survive long-term without a grocery store, plumbing, or electricity, I’d have called them crazy.
The fish was outstanding and the view was unforgettable if you could push certain facts out of your mind, one being that the mainland was thick with walking corpses. There was a lot of daylight left, so I decided to take advantage of the clear blue water and bathe using the bar of lye soap I’d traded for with five rounds of .22LR. I didn’t really need it; I had boxes full of real store-bought stuff put back for a rainy day.
Bug’s retirement fund.
I don’t like writing about her or Tara too much when I’m out here. My mind starts going places and I lose focus. That will surely kill you if you let it go too far.
Clean and dry, I packed my things and clumsily loaded the tested GARMR back onto the dinghy. The unusual warmth reminded me of the GARMR’s power source. It worried me a little, but another quick scan with the Geiger put my concerns at ease. I paddled toward Solitude as she drifted slowly around her anchorage. Stowing the GARMR back on the bow, I now knew what had to be done.
Beachhead
Day 4
Sailing east, I meticulously studied my charts; I’d do everything I could to shave any ground distance. I planned to make landfall south of Tallahassee and trek inward, looking for the tallest structure left standing. The Morse code is still transmitting, although just as faint as before.
• • •
The moon was absent when I tied Solitude to the aluminum docks. When given the choice, I preferred wood; it was a lot quieter underfoot. The Geiger checked good, so I wore my NOD. It was impossible to use over a gas mask. In the early days of all this, I only moved at night; that was until I was briefed on the short-range thermal vision side effects of the anomaly. Traveling at night was out of the question in the irradiated areas in and around New Orleans, as the contaminated creatures were fast and noticeably more cunning.
The familiar green glow of the NOD comforted me even though my field of vision was severely restricted. Someday, probably a few years from now, this once expensive piece of technology would die along with the last remaining lithium batteries out there, never to power on again.
But until that time came, I owned the night.
Before leaving, I topped off my gun and lubed it with a few drops of synthetic motor oil I kept on board for weapon maintenance. Running a dry M4 could lead to serious issues out here; I kept a small bottle of the oil in my pack for those miserable times my gun needed to take an unplanned saltwater swim with me. Turning to the machine on the bow, I took one last look at the tablet through my nonassisted eye.
“Checkers, power on,” I commanded.
GARMR’s electrically actuated joints whirred into action. I watched it curiously through night vision while its legs kept balance on Solitude’s gently rocking bow. It looked almost natural . . . almost.
Scanning through the tablet video feed, I switched to IR. GARMR’s night vision illuminator was much more capable than mine. I used the virtual direction pad, slewing the machine’s head down the vast expanse of the docks to get a better look at the shore. They were out there.
Leery of an RTG leak, I checked the machine for abnormal readings. Satisfied by the Geiger output, I could feel the heat again emanating from the machine as I led it to the port side of Solitude. The GARMR’s titanium and steel hooves were shoed in some sort of honeycomb-pattern impact-resistant polymer, but they still made noise like football cleats on metal bleachers. As the GARMR boarded the docks, the sound rang out like great dinner bells.
Panicked, I reached for the carbine on my back, but it wasn’t there; I’d left it by the helm.
Shit, stupid me. Another screw-up like that could have me ripped to pieces. And the night is still young.
“Checkers, stay!” I hissed.
The machine began to retract its legs and drop to the metal dock. I walked backward to the helm, waiting for hell’s gate to open and for a hundred irradiated dead to come barreling my way. I lowered the brightness on my red dot to its lowest setting and peered through with the NOD.
Oh yes, they were coming.
Based on my sight picture, they were a hundred yards down the docks. I watched as they advanced, hearing the distant sound of dock metal shifting from the weight of a platoon of marching corpses. A loud splash broke the near silence, prompting me to put my carbine in full auto. A few seconds of controlled breathing helped me back off that bad idea and move the selector switch back to semi-.
The creatures were fifty yards out when I made the decision to send the GARMR.
After pressing the scout button on the Simon watch, the machine stood and looked over at me with its head cocked sideways like before. I pointed down the docks and before I could think, it was trotting in the direction of the advancing undead.
I watched it through the tablet video feed. Dauntless, it didn’t even slow as it selected the best space between corpses to enter the mob. The screen was thick with undead; I couldn’t see anything but tattered clothing and rotting flesh.
After three distinct splashes, the GARMR broke through to the other side of the mob and continued its scouting mission into the green beyond.
The macabre platoon turned and followed it, creaking metal on the dock as they all slogged after the GARMR.
• • •
With the docks now clear, I tossed my heavy pack on deck, reminding myself to share some of the load with the machine the next time we met up. Anything over forty-five pounds was a huge pain in the balls to carry over a prolonged period, and my pack felt closer to sixty. The magnified light of the cosmos reflected off the narrow aluminum planks. I adjusted my intensifier and kept moving toward land, comforted for the moment that nothing could come at me from the side. When my boots pressed into the overgrown grass, though, it was game on, their rules. You either had to play by them or become them, the only positively charged particle among a galaxy of negatives.
The clouds shifted, casting more starlight all around. I could see that I was in an oceanfront residential community. Seeing only green, I just knew that the homes were painted in the familiar pastels of beach communities spanning the entire gulf shoreline.
Time and the elements had not been kind to this place. A hurricane must have hit here sometime before. Many of the shingles were ripped from the rooftops of the surrounding homes, or at least the ones that still had roofs. Nearby, a sailboat lay on its side, its fractured mast jutting through a once extravagant home. Bay cruisers lay about like toys covered in debris. One was jammed inside of a house, outboard engine first. Using her keel as a ramp, I climbed aboard the Reel Magic onto her side. I woke up the
tablet, casting light all around, illuminating the dirty sailboat hull and what was left of a ripped mainsail that lay draped over the hull. The GARMR was moving, but I couldn’t tell from where. I panned its stabilized camera around to get a sense of its surroundings.
“Checkers, stop,” I said into the Simon’s internal microphone.
The full-motion video stopped moving. I panned the camera behind the GARMR and waited. Sure enough, the ghostly shapes of the undead began to form in the distance as they came into range of the machine’s optics. I aimed the camera back around and sent the GARMR behind a nearby overturned boat.
“Checkers, stay,” I said, causing the GARMR to collapse into its compact standby state.
I stowed the tablet and checked my wrist compass before sliding quietly down the mold-covered keel. My gun was at high ready, its magazines fully replenished from Solitude’s respectable armory.
Turning the corner north, I made out a street sign that was nearly covered with debris. The same went for the tall oak trees all covered with gunk at about nine feet off the ground.
Could the hurricane surge have reached that high? The answer to my mind’s question could be heard in the trees.
Small branches snapped, forcing my attention upward. A dozen writhing undead were tangled in the gnarled branches, backs broken, arms and legs contorted into horrible positions of pain. One of the creatures had a fence post rammed entirely through its chest, another a small branch growing through its neck and shoulder. Alerted to my presence, they groaned and shook the branches, dropping acorns onto my head and back. I moved swiftly away from the trees of tormented souls, hoping that I’d finally seen it all.
I was able to go a mile, much of it uphill, before I started to feel tired. Instinctively, I pressed follow on the watch. The GARMR would be a few minutes behind me, so I made for the subdivision just ahead. The surge water didn’t seem to have invaded this far above sea level.
I picked out a large cottage-style home and started my methodical process. Unkempt palm trees waved in the seaward breeze. The grass was two feet high in the front yard. Sapling oaks jutted up, vying for sunlight against everything else. Another gap in the clouds illuminated the area, revealing undead that stood unmoving in the dark streets, between cars.
I slowly climbed the stairs to the wraparound porch. The boards slightly squeaked from the weight they hadn’t borne in ages. In both directions, the porch was covered in leaves, dead palmetto bugs, and palm bark husks. Hurricane shutters blocked the windows, and large sections of sheet metal barricaded the front door. I tried to reach behind the metal to try the door latch, but the sharp edges persuaded me to stop. Tetanus treatments required refrigerated storage, so there would be none to be found—anywhere.
I walked down the porch, staying low to avoid detection until I made it to the corner leading to the back of the house. As I crept, I heard a bang in the distance, something metallic falling on concrete. I knelt, guarded on two sides by high metal rails. Checking the tablet, I could see the GARMR was okay and advancing. Slewing the camera, I saw the overturned boat from earlier. The machine was getting close.
I got up and continued. At the end of the porch, I stepped down to ground level and onto the driveway in front of the detached garage.
A bright spotlight came on, whiting out my NOD.
“Goddamn security light!” I grunted under my breath while I raised my rifle.
I pumped two rounds into the lamp assembly, missing the LED on the first shot but disintegrating it on the next. My NOD returned to its normal state. This happened to me once before, when I was making a run to the mainland not far from New Orleans and was walking down a newly discovered dock. I’d triggered a solar-powered security spotlight, and in no time a horde of highly irradiated undead spilled onto the dock and chased me back to Solitude with my Geiger nearly vibrating out of my pocket.
Right now, though, I remained in the middle of the driveway, taking advantage of the open area. I waited for the creatures to come, nervously scanning over my shoulder. After some time, I could hear the GARMR’s feet click quietly down the concrete drive.
I moved toward the massive screened-in atrium that encompassed the backyard pool deck and back-door area. Branches and pine needles punctured the remaining screens in almost every panel. The pool was half empty, filled with untold sludge and a motionless, bloated corpse. I opened the screen door and propped it open with a coil of garden hose, allowing the GARMR to enter the atrium. Once inside, I heard the shuffle of feet coming down the driveway around the corner. I kicked the hose out of the way and quietly closed the screen door.
“Checkers, stay,” I whispered into the watch.
With the GARMR in standby mode, I moved to the chest in the corner of the pool deck and crouched behind it. I watched two lumbering figures round the corner and step onto the driveway where I’d tripped the light just a few moments before.
As if on cue, the clouds shifted overhead; the NOD-magnified moonlight revealed ghastly details of the creatures through the ripped and tattered atrium screens. The first corpse must have been a weight lifter in his previous life. It was massive, standing well over six feet tall. Its lips had long ago retracted, giving it that trademark undead nightmare look I had become unfortunately all too familiar with. I stared at it from behind the chest. Expectedly, its eyes didn’t reflect IR light back at me through the NOD. The enormous walking corpse stood there for a moment, craning its head from side to side, searching. After a few moments, the gargantuan creature shambled back in the direction it’d come from; its adolescent undead companion followed it in the direction of the street.
The hurricane shutters were all in place over the windows, but the sheet metal cover was missing from the back door. I reached for the handle and turned, expecting it to be locked. Thankfully it wasn’t, as it would have been near impossible to get through the robust hurricane door quietly. Remembering the GARMR, I again propped the screen door open with the garden hose and went back inside the abandoned home, shutting the heavy door behind me.
I raised the NOD away from my eye and turned on my carbine light, illuminating a vast kitchen area. I pointed my barrel up at a large and ornate chandelier that hung over the center of the kitchen. The bright light bounced in a million directions from the hand-forged iron-and-crystal monstrosity.
I concentrated on the dancing crystal refractions and imagined for a few precious moments that nothing outside wanted to kill me. The nine-foot granite island below the chandelier was covered in a thick layer of dust. Something that could have been an apple had nearly disintegrated in the center of the slab. I ran my fingers across the granite, clearing away the dust and showing the blue stone concealed underneath.
An oak spiral staircase led up to a dark loft above the main floor.
I’d nearly forgotten.
I pointed the light to the floor to check for footprints. I saw nothing to indicate that anything had been inside this house for a long time. With the master bedroom and guest rooms cleared, I walked over to the dust-covered spiral staircase and looked up into the darkness.
I crouched down to see the bottom step. Concentrating, I thought I could see the outline of a shoe print somewhere in the layers of dust. I traced the outline of the print with my index finger . . . right foot, size 9, give or take. Could be male or female. Studying the next step, I saw another. I doused my light and brought the NOD down over my right eye, allowing my left to adjust to the darkness. My gun was at the ready. I could feel the warmth of the doused weapon light with my left hand while I climbed the staircase. As I ascended, I noticed a pair of skylights recessed into the twenty-foot ceilings. They spilled twin oblong rectangles of starlight onto the floor below.
Round and round up to the loft.
At the top of the staircase, I saw something I never would have expected.
An elaborate train set. Not a plastic, mass-produced children’s toy; this was a model that someone had put hundreds of hours of their life into creating
.
I folded my NOD back on top of my head and again hit the light on my gun. Although covered in dust, it was a spectacular sight to behold. A huge table sat in the center of the loft, encompassing all but a narrow walking path around the table. Tunnels, bridges, pastures, cities, and countryside were all depicted in the two-hundred-square-foot model.
The level of detail was staggering. I picked up one of the train engines and marveled at it for a moment. It was hand painted, right down to exhaust stains and weathering imperfections. Some of the cargo cars had tiny spray-paint graffiti on the side. I placed the cars back where they were on the maintenance tracks and just stared at the large table. Wanting to see the other side, I rounded the corner and entered the narrow walkway between the table and the wall. Walking sideways, I noticed a pond in a cow pasture. I dipped my finger into the pond, imagining it was full of water, and it probably was before. The miniature hay bales looked as if I could pick them up and break them apart like shredded wheat and feed them to the cows that drank from the dry pond. Transfixed by the train table, I moved awkwardly down the narrow walkway before tripping and falling down between the table and wall.
I’d fallen on a corpse.
I screamed and jumped, bumping my head on the side of the table, seeing stars. I bolted away from the corpse like a spooked animal.
It didn’t move.
I shone my light on it and noticed the bright silver revolver in its right hand and the hole in its head.
It was holding something in its left hand. I moved toward the corpse with my gun trained. I reached down and peeled the fingers away, cracking the bones like dead branches.
There was a control box connected to a golf cart battery under the table.
The power switch was in my hand and I just couldn’t resist.
I flipped the power switch on and the world on the table was set in motion. The battery was weak but still putting out enough current to power everything. The streetlights flickered and dimmed as a small engine emerged from a tunnel, its headlamp dim from the battery’s neglected state. As the engine rounded the corner, I could see something tucked into a logging car just behind three coal cars. The table lights dimmed once more, this time dramatically, before browning out. The engine stopped moving and the glow of its headlamp began to fade forever. Just like that. Something that someone put countless hours into building would never be used or enjoyed again. Fuck this world.