by Howard, Bob
******
The big yacht showed up next. It was easy to spot when it crossed the horizon because of its size. Maybank had gotten a few hours of much needed sleep and was watching on a monitor, so he was scrolling through websites with boats on them and feeling more alert. In his mind that meant he was able to remember what he was doing from one moment to the next. He was more interested in how many people would be on a boat than he was the boat itself. The beast that was cruising toward his oil rig had three decks and was one hundred and thirty feet long.
Unlike the others he had seen, this one didn’t pass by on its way to somewhere in South America. News reports from Venezuela were as bleak as anywhere else, so it didn’t make sense to go there. Maybank concluded that there were plenty of small islands and secluded places that were fortified in South America, and the people with money were at least smart enough to get out of the Gulf Coast cities.
This one came straight at his oil rig and left little doubt that it planned to dock. It began to slow as it approached, and it circled to the Process tower. Whoever was navigating the yacht knew the layout, and even more surprisingly, who was on the oil rig.
“Maybank oil rig, this is Lady Blue out of New Orleans requesting to board, over.”
The message came through on one of his standard ship to shore radios rather than his computer network. At least he wouldn’t have to look at them on a video camera, and better yet, they wouldn’t see him. He looked like something the cat dragged in. He made a mental note to work on that.
“Lady Blue, please state your purpose to board, over.”
“Ah, Mr. Maybank, it’s so good of you to answer.”
The man had a South American accent and sounded very charming.
“We were afraid you would close your doors to us. If you don’t mind, it has been a difficult few days. We can talk after we board, over.”
Maybank didn’t particularly care for assertive people, and this guy sounded like he had written the book on assertive behavior.
“Lady Blue, I didn’t catch your response regarding your purpose to board, over.”
The man on the other end of the transmission must not have been used to saying the magic word, and it really had been a harrowing few days because his fuse was really short.
“Listen, we need shelter, and I understand you have supplies. There wasn’t exactly much time to order food and water for a trip. We were lucky we already had fuel. Are you going to let us board or not, over?”
“Lady Blue, supplies are limited. How much food and water do you need, over?”
The truth was that there were enough supplies for at least one hundred people to last over forty years, but those supplies were in the shelter. Topside, in the oil rig levels there were caches of supplies that were meant for other survivors, and if he knew the needs of this yacht, he could give them access to the correct cache. The crew quarters above the Wellbay were to be resupplied from those caches.
“I didn’t ask you how much you can spare. Do you have any idea who you are speaking to?”
All pretense of courtesy was dropped. Before Maybank could say anything else that would further irritate the man, he elaborated on his last transmission.
“This is Hector Dominguez, and as of today I am declaring the territorial waters of Venezuela are extended to include these coordinates. This oil rig and its contents are now the property of the sovereign nation of Venezuela, and you will turn it over to me immediately, over.”
“Lady Blue, permission to come aboard is denied.”
“Less than four full days into an apocalypse, and someone is already trying to take away my shelter,” he said out loud. “And the winner is, Hector.”
He did the sound of a fake crowd cheering and waved his arms over his head. Then he did an imitation of Hector blowing kisses to his adoring crowd.
“Did you say denied?”
There was a sound that reminded him of hail at first. When he turned up the speaker he could tell it was automatic weapons, but he wondered what in the world they could be shooting at. The monitors showed several men shooting upward, and the funny part was when they hit one of the additions that was reinforced with the special metal used to make the towers and the shelter. Bullets bounced off of it and began flying in all directions, including theirs.
They were too busy diving for cover to realize the bullets hitting their boat were ricochets. From different decks Maybank could see heads cautiously peering around corners as the gunmen searched for the imaginary shooters on the oil rig. They uncertainly waited for new orders from their boss. When Hector finally decided to see if an olive branch would work, he was less charming, but he was more sincere. Still, people like him had a hard time losing face in front of their minions.
“Mr. Maybank, perhaps we have gotten off on the wrong foot. I was less than polite because we have injured people on board.”
Before Hector had a chance to end his transmission, Maybank cut him off.
“What are their injuries, and how many are there, over?”
The pause was longer than he expected, and Maybank began to suspect they were weighing other options. By now they must have realized there was no way for them to climb on board unless they were carrying a powerful launcher used to shoot lines across between ships at sea.
He got his answer when he checked a camera angle that showed the stern of the lowest deck. They were setting up a launcher and preparing to send a line up to the spider web of catwalks and railings above them. He shook his head and keyed the radio.
“Lady Blue, you don’t need to do that if you cooperate.”
The launcher sent the line over the rails, and they fed out the line as quickly as they could. The idea was to shoot a light but durable line over the target and then retrieve the end of it. They would then tie a heavy rope to it and reel in the lighter line until they had the rope replacing it. Then they could climb up.
“Well, if you’d rather do it the hard way,” he said without using the radio.
As big as the yacht was, it easily passed through the opening between the huge towers, but it was drafting too deep to pass over the top of the submerged shelter. When it was designed, he decided it would be better to have it close to the surface so he wouldn’t have to bother with decompression. The shell protecting the shelter was more durable than the hull of the ship, but the scraping noise still bothered Maybank.
The cabin crew of the Lady Blue reversed their engines and pulled away from the rig, undoubtedly yelling at the sonar and radar operator to watch his depth finder. This left them short of their goal, which was the other end of the line they had launched over the railings.
Despite misgivings about being shot from above by the imaginary people on the oil rig, they launched their life raft to retrieve the line. Maybank saw there was a guy in the bow of the raft who was swiveling around with an AK-47 trying to spot a target.
The raft only had to go about fifty yards, and it didn’t draft deep enough to reach the shelter, but just as they were stretching with a pole hook for the line, the raft lurched to a stop. Everyone fell over on top of each other. It resembled a tag team wrestling match with everyone in the ring at the same time.
Hector Dominguez was watching his men as they progressed toward their target, and all he could tell was that something had gone wrong. A camera high above was telling Maybank what was happening in better detail, but even he didn’t understand at first. The raft shook from side to side on top of the water and seemed to rotate under its own power. Then the bow dipped and popped back up into the air. The men in the raft were jumping away from the middle of the raft as if something had gotten in with them, but just as quickly they got down from the sides of the raft.
With all the shaking and jumping around, it wasn’t long before the man with the AK-47 went over the side. He went in backward the way SCUBA divers do when they leave a boat, but his dive wasn’t planned.
He screamed as he hit the water, and a slick of red blood surrounded
the raft. The change in color added a contrast against which Hector could see the arms and legs that were already in the water, and he knew they didn’t belong to his men.
Maybank could see the outline of the shelter through the blue water, but just before the man with the rifle fell in, Maybank saw something walk toward him in slow motion with outstretched arms. Another figure was on the other side of the raft, and it was reaching as high as it could.
The man who had been steering the raft began beating furiously at a pair of hands that had gripped the material of his loose fitting shirt. It was probably the first time he ever wished denim wasn’t too strong to tear. The other two men didn’t know if they should be helping him or going for the line that dangled only a few feet away.
Hector was yelling instructions from the yacht, but his voice was drowned out by the AK-47 that had started firing wildly in all directions from under the raft. Bullets shredded the raft and ran in a straight line up the back of the man in the denim shirt. The impact threw him overboard, and the change in the weight caused the other side of the raft to tilt the other way just as one of the men managed to catch the line in a firm grip. He swung out away from the raft and pulled his feet as high above the water as he could.
The remaining man in the shredded raft fell inward, and just as his friend hanging on the line thought the guy had been lucky, there was a second burst of bullets that found the spot where he had fallen.
Hector continued to yell, the man on the end of the line was crying, and there was splashing under the raft. Gradually the only sound was the crying, and it faded away as the man skillfully climbed the durable line. It was either a skill or survival instinct. Either way, he gradually made it to the top and pulled himself over the bottom railing of a catwalk where he collapsed in a sobbing heap.
Hector was yelling instructions again. Maybank could hear him, but it was in Spanish, and he didn’t understand. The man on the catwalk thought he was yelling at him, so he peered over the edge. Over eighty feet below him, he saw the man in the raft trying to stand up, but there was no solid footing, and he fell backward over the side. The raft kept shaking back and forth until it finally lost enough air to be pulled under. Bubbles popped to the surface, and between bursts of bubbles, hands extended upward as if they were floating and reaching.
Up above, the lone survivor had recovered enough to remember why he had gone up the rope in the first place. He was signaling wildly to feed him the line so he could pull the heavier rope over the catwalk. Thirty minutes later, he had enough rope to secure it in place, and two more crewmen made the climb with additional ropes. Now anyone who made the climb had a safety line attached to them in case they fell.
Maybank watched with morbid fascination as the shadows continued to move around on top of the shelter, but now there were five of them. From time to time the shadows would stop where they were and a pair of hands would appear above the water. One of the shadows had moved very close to the edge of the shelter, and when it reached for the surface, it took one step closer to the edge and quickly slipped away into deeper water. He could see that the men up on the catwalk had also been watching, and they knew from that day forward not to ever trust water they couldn’t see through.
He could have told them about the chain ladders stored in lockers around the oil rig, but if he was going to do that, he might as well have extended the rungs from the side of the tower. Hector didn’t seem like the kind of person who played well with others, so Maybank decided they were on their own outside. They could stay as long as they wanted.
He knew that Hector was also not going to be satisfied with the supplies in the crew’s quarters. He would have his men beat on the steel doors of Maybank’s former apartment with everything they could find, and if they did manage to get inside, there wasn’t much for them to live on. They could watch TV for a bit, but Maybank wouldn’t want them getting too comfortable, so he would turn off the power to that section.
Maybank remembered there was one thing he needed to do before the Internet went completely dark. He switched from the internal monitors to his search engine and looked up his neighbors on the yacht.
He was right about Hector. There were several indictments but no convictions. Most of them were felony assault charges, but his main source of income was drug trafficking. Maybank mentally reminded himself to continue trusting his gut when the time came that he couldn’t look someone up.
One of the men outside had found the chain ladders and lowered two over the side. Armed men were climbing each of them, and Maybank was trying to make a decision. Judging by the number of weapons he could see, Hector had his priorities set on survival at the cost of others. There were going to be plenty of decent people who would approach the oil rig, and Hector was going to treat it like his own private kingdom. He would undoubtedly take their supplies and then kill them.
The decision wasn’t reached lightly, but it was only the fourth day, and that army was going to be living off of his outside supplies until they were gone. So, there was only one choice Maybank could make. He counted the number of people already spreading out on the catwalks and the ones who were on the chain metal ladders. Two dozen in five minutes.
Maybank’s left hand popped the cover up over a switch, and he didn’t hesitate. The switch clicked and isolated a large section of the catwalks from the rest of the maze. No sense in doing damage where he didn’t need to.
He couldn’t hear the hum that grew in the metal outside, and he knew it was being drowned out by the screams as two dozen armed men were hit with enough voltage to drop an elephant. Everyone was trying to let go of whatever they were holding, but the shock from high voltage was causing their muscles to contract and grip the metal harder. They began falling from the ladders and catwalks into the water. If they were alive when they went in, they were unconscious as they drowned.
Several landed above the shelter, and Maybank saw the shadows under the water converging on the bodies as they sank. Those men were lucky to be unconscious as the water around them turned red.
Hector was on the upper deck of the yacht doing his own screaming. Maybank could see exactly what kind of person he was as he barked orders at his crew. It appeared that he was telling them to help one of his men who had fallen from a ladder back onto the yacht. In reality, he wanted the body off of his deck and was shouting instructions to toss the man overboard.
“Nice guy and boss of the year,” said Maybank.
When they were all dead, Maybank switched off the power. Most had fallen into the water or back onto the boat, but several were still sprawled out on the catwalks. He didn’t see them at first, but three of them had already started to twitch, and after that they were trying to get up.
Maybank had seen enough on the news broadcasts to know that there was no way to predict how long someone would stay dead, but these guys were coming back fast.
“This is as good a time as any to test a theory,” he said to himself.
He threw the power switch on for a second time. There were sparks from the bodies that were still prone on the catwalks, but the dead people who were stumbling around didn’t seem to care about the voltage in the metal. Smoke was coming from inside the shoes of one man, and Maybank saw the flicker of flame as it ignited the pants.
The man made no effort to put out the fire, and it didn’t seem like he even knew his pants were about to turn him into a walking torch. The flames were licking at his left knee, and the fire on his right leg was catching up quickly.
It wasn’t out of a desire to escape the flames. It was simply the availability of an opening in the railing. The man took three steps, and the third one was thin air directly above the yacht. He rotated once before hitting head first right where Hector had been standing. Hector was mad enough to kick the man twice before he realized the smoking, ruined body wasn’t recoiling from the kicks. It was trying to grab his foot, and as it grabbed, it also snapped its teeth at him.
Hector stopped kicking and stepped
back farther than he meant to. He was staring down at the thing with so much shock and disgust that he backed over the safety rail.
His crew still on the yacht rushed to his rescue as he came within inches of going over the rail again one deck lower. They grabbed him by his clothes and put him back on his feet.
There was a loud popping sound as the other bodies ignited. Several were in the process of standing up, but all of them burned right where they were. Maybank’s theory had been that he could kill the zombies with electricity, and he was satisfied with the results until he saw the charred remains were still moving. He didn’t know if it was still alive or not, but neither the electricity or the fire had stopped it from moving.
The ammunition blew up next. The armed men were all carrying plenty of ammunition, and as they burned the rounds in their pockets loudly erupted in every possible direction. Hundreds of bullets went into the bodies of the burning men, and just as many rounds flew downward and riddled the luxury craft below. Several of the men who had stopped Hector from going overboard were shredded where they stood.
Hector didn’t know which way to go, but he finally figured out the oil rig was a bad idea. He shouted obscenities and shook his fist at the oil rig as if he knew exactly where Maybank was standing. There’s no way he could have known that Maybank was below him. Between obscenities he shouted orders to his helm crew, and the boat quickly pulled away.
Someone came out onto the deck of the boat as the distance increased, but Maybank could see that the person was a woman. She swayed from side to side and fell over when the boat rolled to the left for too long. Several people rushed to help her, and to Maybank it resembled a fight on the ice at a hockey game.
The last Maybank saw of the people out on the deck, the woman was on Hector’s back as he tried to crawl away from her. There were others pulling at her arms, but her face was buried into the back of Hector’s neck.