Kelly began a frantic search for her cell phone. She slammed her finger down on the contact labeled mom and sighed in frustration when she got her mom’s voicemail. The woman never seemed to answer her phone. That’s assuming she’d actually gotten around to charging it. Shaking her head with the frustration of it all she went back to her contacts and scrolled down to Cait. She pressed that contact and got voicemail as well. Now she was worried. Caitlyn was a fifteen-year-old girl who’d just gotten a smart phone a few months ago for her birthday. She would never forget to charge it and she could always be depended on to answer when called.
“I’m getting either voicemail or ‘the network is busy please try your call again later’ for pretty much every person I’m trying.” Randy said looking up from his phone with disbelief and fear flashing in his eyes.
“Me too.” Kelly said desperately as she tried her mom for the fifteenth time. She felt like she was trying to win a radio contest. She started sending text messages instead, but they came back as not delivered. She shook her phone like it was some kind of miniature etch a sketch and tried again. She finally threw her phone down on the bed in disgust. “Maybe it’s the storm?”
The wind was howling outside. Normally Randy would’ve been pretty amused at Kelly shaking her phone to try and make a text go but he was on the edge of panic himself. He picked up the landline beside the bed and pressed the ‘9’ key then tried making a call out to Kelly’s mom. He got her voicemail again. He started doing the same thing with every number he knew before digging though his phone contacts for other numbers to try. All of them came back the same.
“If it was the storm, we should get the network is busy on our sides or our phones would show we don’t have service. I don’t get this at all.” Randy picked up the phone and called the front desk. The hotel receptionist picked up on the first ring. Kelly listened as Randy fired questions at the receptionist. In a couple of minutes, he hung up the phone and sat there looking dejected.
“Well, what’d the hotel person say? When’s the ferry going to start running again?” Kelly asked him when he didn’t immediately start volunteering information.
“She said no one seems able to make any calls to the mainland. She’s not sure why. The ferry and the airport are both closed until the storm dies down. That could be days, or it could be tomorrow. According to the weather reports it should be another two days of strong winds and rain. The planes will be able to fly before the ferry can come across. Evidently, the waves stay big even after the storm goes away.”
“There’s no other way off this island. I’m not going to be able to deal with this.” Kelly got up and put her jeans on. Her hangover was long forgotten. She paced around the room. She was the mama bear and her cubs were in danger, but she couldn’t get to them. They kept watching the news. More cities were having riots now. There were videos showing people biting other people. Videos that showcased people acting like animals and shrieking those inhuman screams. Cities were on fire around the world. Videos of several major cities around the globe just showed people screaming and plumes of dark smoke rising.
As they sat there in the bed waiting for another mention of Winter Springs or anywhere else in Florida the TV went dark. One minute there was live video of a military jet flying towards New York City and the next there was nothing. A little message appeared on the screen. The message scrolled across the screen repetitively letting them know that the cable provider was temporarily down, but they were working hard to address the issues and return service. There was a toll-free number to call to get more information. When Randy tried calling it, he just got a fast busy. He called down to the front desk and was told that the satellite TV was out across the island. It happened most of the time during bad storms.
After an hour of pacing the room and talking out loud about what could be going on Kelly announced she couldn’t stay in the room any longer. She wanted to go for a walk even if it meant walking around in the pouring rain. She had to get out of the room for a little bit. Randy completely agreed with that sentiment. It felt like the walls were closing in on them. It was the worse feeling in the world having seen those videos of the horrors going on in the world and to not know if your kids were safe. They finished getting dressed and put on jackets to head down the stairs.
The lobby was empty, so they went out through the front doors and started walking down the drive towards the road that led to the small town by the ferry dock. It was a typical tourist trap kind of charming New England sea side town. There were taffy shops and ice cream shops and plenty of places to buy random souvenirs of objects with nautical themes and the words ‘Block Island’ emblazoned on the top of them and made in China stickers on the bottom. All of the stores were closed down now. Either due to the horrors happening on the mainland or because of the storm. There was no way for them to know.
They’d walked out of the hotel during a lull in the storm, so the weather actually wasn’t too horrible. There was a strong breeze that occasionally gusted up high enough to blow their hair around but nothing too crazy. The streets were all close to flooded with the torrential rain that had been coming down, but the water was running off quickly. As they walked, they looked out into the sound. Kelly was the one to see it first and she pointed it out to Randy.
“I thought they said the ferry wouldn’t run in this kind of weather?” Kelly asked out loud.
“They did say that. I wonder why they’re risking it?” Randy was looking at the ferry as it smashed its way through the high seas. Even in the relative calm of the sound the swells had gotten dangerously high. The sea was covered in whitecaps. It must’ve been insane trying to drive that monster of a ferry through the storm to make it all the way out here. What would’ve made them risk something like that?
“What are they doing?” Kelly asked. She pointed a finger towards where a police cruiser had pulled up in the loading area the ferry would typically dock in. While they were watching policemen getting out of the cruiser a big white van pulled up. Several men and a woman in the blue coverall uniforms of the USCG jumped out holding assault rifles. They took up positions where they could cover the dock. Once they got into position, they waited for the ferry to arrive.
They’d still been walking towards the downtown area while they watched all of this unfold. Considering what was going on down below Randy told Kelly he thought they should go back up the hill a little bit and wait to see what happened. This was a weird situation and the guys down there with the guns were giving Randy a bad feeling. The ferry was closer now and didn’t show any signs of slowing down.
“Do you think it’s going to crash?” Kelly asked. The harbor below was surrounded by a jetty made of massive rocks. The jetty and all the sand and everything else were currently hidden by the enormous waves slamming into and over it. The ferry was on a collision course with the jetty.
“It sure looks like it.” Randy said. They watched the ferry slowly turning to angle into the harbor mouth. It almost made it.
With a loud groaning sound of metal on rock the ferry went up on a large swell and came down on the jetty. The ferry tipped sideways as the water from the swell receded then the doomed ship caught the full brunt of the next swell. The powerful swell grinding the floundered ship further onto the jetty. They could see people scrambling to jump off the boat into the water before the boat went all the way over. Others were just getting washed overboard by the massive waves.
“Should we go try and help them?” Kelly asked. They were watching as people disappeared into the white water after either jumping or being washed off the boat. Those people were going to be smashed onto the rocks. The ferry was being turned sideways now by the walls of water slamming into it. It was settling lower and lower into the harbor mouth. The swells were starting to pass over the top of it. The bridge was eventually the only part sticking out of the water. It looked like a skull floating on the surface with cavernous eye sockets since the windows had been knocked out by the surf.
&nb
sp; People were making it to shore somehow though. Randy saw a couple emerge from the water and begin stumbling their way through the surging water across the top of the rocks closest to shore. Two of the guardsmen walked over to the area where the people were trying to come ashore. The two guardsmen leveled their rifles and opened fire. The shipwreck survivors were blown backwards into the frothing waters of the raging ocean.
“What the hell!” Kelly shouted.
Randy stared in confusion as they watched the guardsmen and police walking back and forth along the seawall. The men would occasionally stop to shoot survivors who were trying desperately to make it ashore. He wondered why they were killing them before they could make it up the seawall. Maybe to prevent the spread of the disease from the mainland that they were hearing about on the news? Maybe to protect the supplies they had on the island from outsiders? The people doing the shooting were part of the government so maybe they were privy to information that the rest of them just didn’t have yet.
“Let’s get back to the room.” Randy finally said after they’d seen the bulk of the people who survived the shipwreck be slaughtered by the local law enforcement. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was thinking it might not be a good idea to be seen wandering around right now. Not while the guardsmen and the police were still trigger happy. They turned and walked up the hill back into the hotel.
There still wasn’t anyone at the front desk. Happy there were no witnesses to them having taken a field trip they jogged up the stairs and back into their room. Once safely in their room they took off their soaked socks and shoes and sat down to talk. At the end of the day their conversation boiled down to one thing they both agreed on. As soon as the storm died down, they needed to figure a way off this island to get home to their kids. Kelly’s mom was formidable, but it was going to take all of them working together to live through whatever this was.
Bursting with impatience they sat and schemed away the afternoon trying to come up with a way to get off the island and back to Florida. Having to assume the whole world had gone crazy made it difficult to plan a road trip.
Chapter 8: The Loading Dock
Brenda went to check on Doreen. She found her darling baby curled up in a corner with her head buried under her long hair. The little girl was halfway underneath one of the big shelves holding cans of food. Brenda heard sniffling coming from the little girl she’d rescued. Brenda realized she’d just beaten the pastor unconscious in front of all these kids with a can of beans. That probably hadn’t helped any of these kids feel any safer. She squatted down in front of the little girl she’d rescued to try and comfort her.
“Hey honey. I’m Brenda. You can call me Miss Brenda if you like. What’s your name?”
The little girl slid back against the wall as far as she could go looking in terror at Brenda.
“Would you like a bottle of water or anything?” Brenda asked her. Trying again to break through the glassy eyed stare she was getting from the girl. She looked to be about eight which put her around the same age as Zoey. Brenda had managed to get all four of her young charges into the closet alive when everyone else in the church had died. Everyone but the cowardly pastor at least. She tried another tact.
“These are my granddaughters. Caitlyn’s the oldest. You can call her Cait. She’s almost old enough to drive. The spunky blond over there is Myriah. Doreen’s the toddler and Zoey here’s about the same age as you, I think. She’s eight. How old are you?”
“I’m seven.” The little girl finally stuttered out. Once she’d said that it seemed to open the floodgates. “Why’d you take me from my daddy? Why’d you hit that man? Is he dead? Was he a monster?”
“Honey. I didn’t take you from your daddy. The monsters were fixing to get you and your daddy. He made sure to get you to me, so you’d be safe. Your daddy’s a hero. He kept the monsters away while we got back in here. The man over there isn’t a monster. He’s the pastor for the church. He turned out to be a bad man. He was hiding all of this food and water from everybody and he snuck here to hide when the monsters made it in. What’s your name?”
“I’m Alice. Can I have some water?” Brenda smiled and turned to grab Alice a bottled water. She let out a startled yelp when she turned and saw Zoey standing right there smiling at Alice.
“Can I play with her?” Zoey asked.
“Sure. But you guys be really quiet. Ok. The monster beating at the door can’t get in but if it doesn’t hear anything it might go away. I’d like it to go away because it’s giving me a headache.”
“Are the monsters Zombies?” Alice asked.
“We can call them that if you want to honey. I don’t know what they are. Just poor people who got sick and now they want to hurt us. You guys go ahead and play but remember to be quiet.” Brenda smiled to herself as Zoey and Alice sat down and started immediately pledging their undying loyalty and friendship to one another. Shaking her head at how rapidly children can adapt to the weirdest of situations she crawled over to where Cait was sitting by Doreen.
“She’s asleep but she’s whimpering a lot. Did you kill the pastor?” Cait asked.
“I honestly don’t know if I killed him or not. I wish we could just get out of this place and leave him here. I’m going to crawl to the other side of the closet and take a look outside. You stay here and try to keep everybody quiet.”
Cait nodded as Brenda started moving towards the back of the elongated hallway. There was a board pulled down at the end that looked like it served as a counter to stack supplies on for distribution. On the other side of the counter was a spilt door that opened on the top and the bottom. The door was made of reinforced steel so should be safe from being beaten down anytime soon. The two halves didn’t look like they came together perfectly though. Brenda picked up the counter and carefully leaned it back into the slot that was on the wall to hold it. She was hoping she could figure out a way to see out the door without opening it.
Once she’d gotten the counter secured, she got down on her knees and crawled to the door. She tried moving her head around to find an angle she could see through the crack in the door but there was some sort of weather stripping in between the two door halves. Brenda looked around the storage closet until she found a few rain jackets hanging on metal clothes hangers. She took one of the hangars and bent the hook part into a straight piece of metal. She used her improvised device to poke at the weather stripping.
She poked at the stripping for about an hour before she finally got it to the point where she could pull a piece of it out of the gap between the doors. She had to be careful not to knock it out the front of the door where someone or something may see it fall out and get curious what was behind the doors. She finished pulling it out and put her eye up next to the slit she’d made. She stared out the slit for a few minutes then patiently worked the piece of rubber back in between the doors.
She crawled back over to Cait and sat down.
“What’d you see?” Cait asked her in a hushed voice.
“The loading dock is covered in those things. It looks like we’ll be here awhile. There’s plenty of food and water so we should be ok for a while. We just need to keep as quiet as possible and hope they wander off. Starting with the one who keeps knocking on the front door.”
Brenda heeded her own advice and stopped talking. She gestured for Cait to stay where she was. Brenda began methodically walking the length of the storage closet. She was using the flashlight on her phone to help her do an inventory. Since it looked like they may be here awhile, she needed to know exactly what they were working with.
Chapter 9: A Long Way to Go
Mike slowed down as they drove out the main gate for the park. He glanced down at his fuel gauge and saw they had about half a tank left. That wasn’t going to get them too far in the gas guzzler they were driving. Especially since he was planning on keeping the beast in four-wheel drive from now on. Thinking about how much gas they needed made him realize they didn’t really have a
clear destination in mind.
They’d driven up for the canoe trip from Westerly, Rhode Island which is where they all lived. It was a small city by the coast on the border with Connecticut. Mike had been thinking they’d head back there but he wasn’t sure why they’d want to do that now that he thought about it. He had a sister who lived a couple towns over but no other close friends or relatives. He had a girlfriend, but he’d only been seeing her for about a month now. He’d never even used the word girlfriend out loud with her. Kyler and Seth had both lost their moms here in the park.
They hadn’t seen Seth’s mom running around with the rest of the Zombies, but they hadn’t seen Kyler’s mom again either. Kyler’s dad had been dead for years now and Seth’s dad lived out in California somewhere and hadn’t bothered checking in on his son for a few years. Seth got the occasional birthday card from his estranged father, but it was normally on the wrong date. He had an aunt and uncle living in Westerly though. The uncle normally came on the canoe trip but hadn’t been able to make it this time because of a work conflict.
Mike did have a crazy number of guns in his trailer. It may be worth it to go by there just to retrieve all those. Or, he supposed they could just break into a gun store somewhere and get the nicer, more expensive models instead of the ones he had in his closet back home. His mind was going into overdrive trying to remember every cheesy Zombie flic he’d ever seen. He didn’t know what the right call was for them. He was just an aging alcoholic who liked camping. The main reason he liked camping so much was because the hated the real world. Hated that nothing had turned out the way he’d thought it would. Hated that he was an aging loser. He knew most people regarded him with pity if they acknowledged him at all. He felt the weight of the responsibility for keeping these two kids alive on his shoulders. He’d failed the rest of the troop, but he planned to do whatever it took to keep Kyler and Seth alive.
A Small World Page 6
