“Now what?” John asked as I brought the car to a full stop a hundred feet from the bottom of the hill.
“I think we have to make our move here,” I replied. “I don’t think it is going to get much better anywhere else. If I’m right, the mob coming this way will be coming down Carson Street before much longer. We need to get as close to that pile up as we can, then make a run for it on foot.”
“But I don’t see a river?” John replied.
“The river is behind the trees on the other side of Carson Street,” I replied. “We need to get on the other side of that pile up, cross the bike trail and then get through those trees. It should only be about two hundred feet.”
“That doesn’t sound too difficult,” Donna said.
“When we get out, we have to move fast.” I said. “I’m going to drive right up to the intersection. When I stop the car, John, you and I will get out and take the canoe off the roof of the car. Donna, while John and I are taking the canoe down, I would like it if you would help my mother out of the car, then if You, Kenny and Ma, would all just wait at the front of the car. Keep your eyes open, I don’t see any zombies moving around among the cars, but you never know. Any questions?”
“I don’t need any help getting out of the car,” my mother complained. “I’m getting old, but I’m still capable of getting out of the car on my own.”
“OK, Ma,” I replied. “Just be careful. I need you to help Donna get the blankets out of the car. We’ll toss them in the canoe to carry them down to the river.”
I dropped the gearshift into drive and slowly drove the car down the last part of Becks Run Road. When I was within three feet of the first car in the pile up, I put the car in park and shut off the engine.
“OK, let’s move it,” I said and jumped out of the car and began to unfasten the straps holding the canoe to the roof on my side of the car.
I heard the other doors opening as everyone got out to take care of their assignments. John and I were just taking the canoe off the roof when I heard Donna shriek. I quickly turned to see Donna, Kenny and my mother staring at a mangled, bloody face as it slammed into the inside of the passenger’s window of the car in front of us. The cold dead eyes glared out at them as its hands pounded at the window, smearing blood across the glass.
“Just ignore it,” I said. “It can’t hurt you as long as it can’t get out.”
“How did it get in there?” John asked.
“Later,” I replied. “John, take the back of the canoe, I’ve got the front. Ma, Donna, throw your blankets and bags into the canoe then grab hold of the side of the canoe for support. We have to move.”
“We’re you this pushy when you were in the army?” Ma asked.
“When I had to be,” I almost smiled. “Now everyone, keep your eyes open and hang on to the canoe. I’ll lead us down to the river. If you see anything moving, let me know, otherwise just hang on and keep moving.”
I had just started to lead the group around the biggest part of the pile up when I heard John call out.
“Mike, there is something happening up past the dairy mart,” John said nervously.
“I had been switching my attention between the cars in front of me and watching to see that my mother was OK. I turned my head and looked up Carson Street past the dairy mart. I saw at least fifty staggering bodies, bumping into each other as they struggled to come down Carson Street. I couldn’t tell how many more were behind them, but I also couldn’t see a break in the group behind them as they moved around the bend in the road. But I didn’t need to wait long to get an answer to how many were coming in behind those that I could see. When the first of the mob spotted us, they began to groan. Seconds later I could hear the terrifying sound of answering groans echoing off the hills and building further up Carson Street.
“OK, keep moving, we don’t have far to go,” I said. “Just keep your eyes on the cars around us so we don’t get any surprises.”
“What about those people?” John asked and pointed towards the dairy mart.
“Don’t worry about them now, they are a lot slower than we are and all we have to do is to get to the river before they do,” I replied as I started moving again. We finished getting across the street and around the pile up a few minutes later. The mob was getting closer, but the path ahead of us was also a lot easier than what we had just gone through.
We quickly crossed the bike trail, then started through the tree line. However, once we passed through the tree line, we found that we would have to navigate a steep bank in order to get down to the river.
John looked around, “If we move down to our right a few hundred feet, there is a sandy beach where we can get down to the river a lot easier.”
“No time,” I replied. “Ma, Kenny, get in the canoe, I’ll climb down and John, you hang on to the back of the canoe and slowly lower it down to me. After I have it, you will need to come down and help me gently lower it the final few feet to the water.”
“OK,” John replied.
I helped Ma into the canoe, “Now you hold onto the sides of the canoe so you don’t go rolling down the hill.”
“Really?” Ma said indignantly. “I’ve been riding in canoes with your dad long before you were born.”
“Good,” I replied, forcing back a smile at my mother’s determination. “But I doubt dad ever made you ride down a muddy bank before. Just in case, hold on tight.”
After seeing that everyone was securely in the canoe, I slid down the bank, getting soaked as I landed in the river with water up over my knees. “OK, John, lower them down.”
John started to lower the canoe, but as the front part of the canoe touched my hands, I saw John’s feet go out from under him. All the weight of the canoe came rushing down on me, but I managed to control the runaway canoe. The canoe pushed me further away from the bank, but I was able to keep it from capsizing as it slid out into the water.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw John get to his feet and start to wipe the mud off his jeans. Next I saw John stop and listen, he turned back towards the trees behind him. He stood for a second, then he turned and slid down the muddy bank, ending up in the river next to me.
“They’re coming through the trees,” John said breathlessly.
“Get in the front of the canoe and grab a paddle,” I said. But is was obvious that John had never done any canoeing and was unable to climb into the canoe from the waist deep water. I grabbed his waist from behind and pushed him up into the canoe.
I heard another splash in the water behind me and turned to see two more zombies tumbling down the riverbank and splashing into the water next to the first zombie. They splashed around, trying to get to their feet only a few feet behind me.
I quickly turned, grabbed the back of the canoe and walked further out into the river, pushing the canoe away from the shoreline as I walked. When I was shoulder deep in the river, I climbed up into the canoe and checked to be sure I had all the passengers that I had started out with, then grabbed my paddle and moved the canoe a little further out into the river.
“We need to get out of here,” John said urgently. “They are going to swim out to the canoe.”
“They can’t swim,” I replied calmly as I watched dozens of the dead come through the trees and fall down the bank, ending up in the river.
“You mean they will drown before they can reach us?” John asked.
“No, they won’t drown,” I replied. “They will try to walk out to us, but the currents will knock them off their feet and carry them down the river.”
“Then they’ll drown?” John asked.
“No, they will never drown,” I replied. “They don’t breathe air like we do. Hopefully the river will take them far enough away from us that we will never see them again.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” John said as we watched the bodies fall down into the river and then slowly be carried away with the currents.”
“They are already dead,” I replied as I put
my paddle into the water at the side of the canoe and guided us out into the middle of the river. “You can’t drown the dead. Since the dead can barley walk, they are too uncoordinated to be able to swim, so they will just get washed away. That’s why we are going out to the island. It was the only place that I could think of that was close enough to get to fast, and the only place I knew of where the zombies couldn’t get to.”
“They are real zombies?” John mumbled to himself. “But how? Where did they come from?”
“When we get to the island, I’ll tell you what I know,” I replied. “But in the meantime, if a zombie comes floating up to the side of the canoe, jut hit it in the head with your paddle.”
John sat silently, trying to understand what I had just told him. As bad as the TV reports had been and as horrifying as the zombies we had encountered had looked, believing that they were actually dead bodies moving around was not something that our minds wanted to believe. It was something that we had been taught that was impossible, it was only something that was possible in the movies. As much as I had seen to this point, it was something that I was still having a hard time comprehending. It hadn’t been until Wilson said, “Of course bullets didn’t stop them, because they were already dead,” that I had relented and accepted the fact that what I was seeing was real, dead zombies. I could only imagine the conflicted thoughts going through John’s mind.
We let the currents take us down the river towards downtown Pittsburgh, occasionally using the paddle to guide the canoe to keep us out in the middle of the river and away from the shoreline.
It felt eerie to float down the river with nothing but total silence all around us, except for the occasional moan and groan that came from the shoreline. The buildings were all dark, the streets and sidewalks were deserted, no cars were moving or people walking, no boats on the river, but the reddish tint covering the roads and lower part of the buildings as we got closer to the city told us what we would have seen if we would have been here yesterday and the day before. The smell of death that blew out over the river to greet us, was almost completely overlooked as our noses had become so accustomed to the smell over the last few days.
When we got closer to the southside of town, we started to notice that there was a moaning or a constant low drowning sound off in the distance. It got louder as we drifted further down the river. When we were directly across from the southside business district, we could see why we were hearing that sound. The southside was a sea of bodies flowing through the streets. The sound grew louder when the bodies closest to the river spotted us, then the bodies started moving towards us.
“Mike,” John said. “They can’t get out here, right?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. We watched as they walked off the landing docks and splashed into the water, then slowly disappeared. We continued down the river feeling safe out on the river, that was until we went under the Liberty Bridge and bodies began to rain down around us. When one body bounced off the canoe right in front of me, I almost jumped out of the canoe.
“What they hell was that?” Donna shrieked.
“Shit, they’re coming from up on the bridge,” I shouted back, quick John, paddle towards that concrete bridge support under the bridge.”
When moved under the bridge and reached the concrete support, I grabbed the pillar and held the canoe in place.
“What do we do now?” John asked. “This reminded me of the time kids were throwing rocks from the overpass out on Route 79. They ended up almost killing a woman before they caught them. I would have never believed it if someone told me that one day people would be tossing zombies down on boats from the Liberty Bridge.”
“I don’t know?” I replied. “But if you look down the river past the point, you can see the island, that’s all the further we have to go. We’re almost there.”
“Do you think that if we wait long enough that they will go away?” Donna asked.
“That’s possible, but with this new wave coming through Pittsburgh, we could be here for days,” I replied. “There might be another way. A friend of mine told me that one of the zombie’s weak points is that they are easily distracted.”
I thought for a second, trying to come up with a distraction to get the zombie’s attention above us in such a way that we could get out from under the bridge unnoticed. We could let the canoe drift out where they could see it, then while they all went for the boat, we could swim out from the other side of the support pillar, we didn’t have much further to go to get on the island. But I quickly dismissed that idea, it would be too far to expect my mother to tread water and I was sure that I would need the canoe again to get off the island. Then I looked at Donna’s red vinyl jacket.
“Donna?” I asked. “Could I have your jacket? Before you decide, you probably won’t get it back.”
“Will it get us out from under this bridge?” Donna asked.
“I hope so,” I replied. “I haven’t tried anything like this before, so I can’t guarantee it.”
Donna quickly took off her jacket and handed it back to me. I tied the sleeves closed, pulled the zipper closed, then stuffed my extra pillow into the jacket. I pulled the cord that ran around the waist of the jacket and tied it tight, hoping to make the jacket as waterproof as I could. Then I looked at everyone and spoke in a soft voice, “I’m going to toss this jacket off to our left and hope the current will take it out where the zombies can see it. If it floats long enough to get the zombie’s attention and they start coming down off the bridge at it, we are going to paddle as hard as we can and go out off to the right.” Everyone nodded. I turned and tossed the jacket as far as I could to our left.
We watched as the current took the jacket and began to carry it down the river about twenty feet to our left. It bobbed up and down as it began to move away from the cover of the bridge. A few seconds later, it began to rain zombies to our left. I whispered, “Paddle to our right until we get to the other side of the concrete bridge support. When I say go, John paddle like hell and I’ll guide us out from under the bridge.”
“What should we do?” Ma asked.
“Hold a pillow over your head,” I replied. Ma, Donna and Kenny immediately grabbed a pillow and held it above their heads. I wasn’t sure how much help that would be, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.
We quietly paddled to the other side of the support. I could still hear splashing sounds coming from the other side of the pillar. I could also hear the loud groaning coming from up on the bridge, so I figured that the zombies would be as distracted as they were going to be. I quietly said, “Paddle like hell John!”
Between our paddling and the river’s current, we shot out from under the bridge. The first zombie to jump for us fell into the river twenty feet behind us. We paddled another two hundred feet in silence before John spoke. “Where did you learn so much about zombies?”
“I learned from the master,” I chuckled, it felt strange hearing someone impressed by how much I knew about zombies, especially since it wasn’t all that long ago that I hadn’t believed in zombies. “If we are all lucky, he will be joining us on the island in a few days.”
“Who is joining us on the island? Ma asked.
“Wilson,” I replied.
“Who is Wilson?” Ma asked. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Mickey,” I replied.
“Mickey,” Ma said. “Why are you calling him Wilson?”
“Once we get to the island, we should have a lot of time for me to explain it,” I replied.
As we paddled up to the island and I guided the canoe into the little cove where I had always left the canoe when I would come out as a kid, I laughed to myself as I heard my mother say, “The last few days has been so confusing.”
As I looked up at the island, I could only hope that this would be the first of some less stressful days, for a change.
It had been so long since I have had a day without out some kind of stress. In fact, ever since we had arrived at
Roswell, my life had been hell. I doubted that was going to change anytime soon, but a few quiet peaceful days would be nice.
Chapter 26
As we pulled the canoe out of the water and stashed it under the brush, I wondered how much the island had changed. I was particularly worried that somehow a few zombies had managed to find their way onto the island. I had witnessed the zombies that fell into the river being swept away by the current, I figured that it was possible that a few of them could have been washed up on the island somewhere. I’d hate to have gone through everything we had to get here, only to end up being ambushed by a wet zombie because I was careless.
I helped my mother out of the canoe and get up to dry, flat land. I then returned and grabbed our blankets and pillows. I felt something strange in one of the pillows and discovered my mother’s crossword puzzle book and two pens. I was happy we had remembered her puzzle book. If all went well, we could be here for a long time.
John and Donna led Kenny up on shore, John was carrying their two bags. When we were all standing with what few belongings we had to our names, everyone seemed to look at me as if to say, Now what?”
“I think the best place for us to start is that we will go explore the old power plant and see if we can find some shelter and a base to operate from for a few days,” I said. “After we make sure the island is safe, we can decide where we want to set up our permanent base.”
“What do you mean until we see if the island is safe?” John asked. “I thought you said it would be safe here?”
Apocalypse- the Plan Page 21
