by Scott W Cook
“I don’t know,” I said, “But since you guys didn’t come from Fish Tails, we should probably take him back to where you started. Where do you live?”
“On Coquina Key,” Tara said. She didn’t even hesitate, which was cool, “In Waterside south. You know it?”
I shook my head no, “Not really. I used to live over in Tampa before all this started.”
“I’ll drive then,” Tara said, sliding over to stand behind the wheel. Her tight ass pressed against my crotch as she did and my already partial… reaction… responded.
She pushed back and wiggled a little, looking over her shoulder and giggling at me, “Oh, sorry… just trying to get by.”
I laughed and stepped aside.
“Where are we going?” Mark turned and asked.
“Home,” Tara said.
He scowled, “You’re gonna show him where we live?”
“Would you rather we drop you off at Fish Tails and let you walk home alone?” I asked.
“What’s to stop you from coming after our shit when you get back?” Mark asked me.
“Dude,” I almost yelled but contained myself a bit, “You owe us your life. If Sam and I hadn’t come after you, you’d be zombie chow by now. We invited you guys to come with us to MacDill. We helped you out this morning. We’ve more than proved our good intentions. And you’ve more than proved that you’re a short-sighted, ignorant, arrogant dumb fuck with his head so far up his ass he can’t see what’s in front of him.”
“Hey, fuck you, kid,” Mark said, standing and taking a step toward me.
“Mark, what the fuck meng!” Hector snapped. He jumped up and got between us, “Why are you being such a pendejo? Andy’s people have done nothing but help us out and you’ve treated them like shit.”
“Damn right,” Tara said.
Mark treated her to a nasty look, “Just cuz’ you want to fuck him doesn’t mean your opinion matters, little girl.”
Tara scoffed, “You’re just pissy because you don’t have a shot. And you don’t get to decide whose opinion counts, Mark. We’re done with you. I suggest when we get back you pack your shit and move on. At least don’t bother us. You’re no longer welcome in our group.”
“What did you expect?” I asked him, “That you’d act like a jerk and everybody would be cool with it?”
Mark only scoffed and took his seat again. Hector came over to us.
“I’m worried about him, Andy,” he said, “I don’t trust him.”
“I don’t blame you, Hector,” I said, “but unless we shoot him, I don’t know what you can do about it.”
Hector smiled slightly, “Can we shoot him?”
I grinned, “He’s your guy, you tell me. I can’t, though. Unless he’s actively trying to hurt somebody. It wouldn’t be right.”
Tara took us past the entrance to Big Bayou and down the main channel along the eastern side of Coquina Key. The channel ran right along the shore, so we had a great view of all the waterfront property there. It was kind of sad, if you thought about it. A bunch of empty houses with nice yards, pools and docks.
Well, some were empty. At least half a dozen had zombies milling around in the backyard. When they saw us, some of them actually walked right off the seawalls and docks into the bay. They couldn’t swim, of course, so they just sank to the bottom or got tangled up in the pilings. A few even got swept into barnacle encrusted seawalls, pilings and rocks and looked like they were getting torn up.
“Jesus…” Tara said quietly, “I wonder how many of those things are wandering around on the bottom out here…”
It was a good point. Zombies were dead. They didn’t seem to breathe or need to, so could they just walk around under water until they came ashore or could make their way up an anchor line or something?
It gave me the creeps just thinking about it.
Tara pulled into a canal near the northern end of a group of condos. The canal ran west for a hundred yards or so and then turned south again to go between two buildings. There were slips on one side and a few boats or lifts on the seawall on the opposite side.
“Here we are,” Tara said, easing the boat into one of the slips.
The tide was going out and the dock was already at about waist high. Mark had to get up on the railing just to climb out of the boat.
“Maybe you should think about this,” Tara said, “About what you want to do. If you want to stay with us, then some shit has to change, Mark. If not, then I guess I’ll say good luck.”
Mark said nothing, just stared at us for a long moment before walking up the finger pier and onto the porch of one of the townhome units. He turned and looked back one last time and then went inside.
I sighed, “Let’s go. That idiot has already delayed us and we haven’t even gotten started yet.”
I was driving the boat and kind of lost in my thoughts. Thoughts of Tara, actually. I turned the corner into the canal that led back out into the bay and caught a movement out of the corner of my eye.
It took a second for me to realize what I’d seen. I turned and saw Mark coming from between his building and the perpendicular one we were just heading past… he had a rifle in his hands and he wasn’t alone.
“Down!” I shouted and slammed the throttle forward.
I threw myself on top of Tara who was sitting on the long bench on the opposite side of the boat from me. I managed to scoop my left arm under her back and lurched sideways onto the deck just as the shots started.
Bullets ripped into the couch where she’d been sitting and I looked up in time to see Hector’s chest explode in a cloud of blood.
Tara was screaming at me but I held her down and covered her as much as I could with my body, “Stay still!”
I looked up again and saw Hector lying face first in a big pool of blood. I also saw that the boat wasn’t exactly heading straight. We were lined up for the center of the canal, but somehow, maybe from moving around, the bow was now slightly turned to port and was headed for the seawall at the far corner of the canal. We might just make it and I sure hoped so because I wasn’t about to stand up.
“Andy, what the fuck?” Tara yelled right into my face.
Her eyes were wide and she was pale with fright.
“Mark and two other guys opened up on us!” I almost shouted back but I managed to keep my volume down, “They got Hector.”
She squeezed her eyes tightly closed as tears began to flow and she threw her arms around me and held me in a death grip.
I looked up again and the seawall was way closer… it was gonna be hairy…
The port side of the boat actually scraped the bulkhead as we passed at something like twenty knots. It actually worked in our favor because at this angle, Mark and his buddies couldn’t keep up their fire on us.
Not that they were very accurate, thank God. They hadn’t hit the engine so we were still moving away at least.
I waited a few more seconds and half crawled over to the wheel and turned it a bit. I knew from what Tara had told me on the way in that there was a shallow sand bar about a hundred yards from the shore on the other side of the channel. Now was not the time to run aground.
Tara turned over and crawled to Hector and checked his pulse. She looked back at me with tears in her eyes, “He’s dead… Mark killed him! that fucker murdered him!”
We were around the point now and I slowed us down and got us on course. I went over and picked her up, “Are you okay?”
She hugged me again and buried her face in my chest and started to sob, “Jesus, Andy… what the hell’s going on? First Maria and now Hector… and Mark tried to kill us!”
I stroked her back and held her, “I’m sorry.”
She sniffled and looked up at me, “Why?”
I set my jaw and moved back to the wheel, “Because he was probably trying for me, not you guys. Maybe if I’d stayed with the rest of the group…”
She shook her head, “It’s not your fault.”
I wished I c
ould believe her. I sighed, “Who were those guys?”
“I don’t know,” Tara said, wiping her nose on her sleeve, “I barely noticed before you tackled me. But as far as I know, the only people who lived in Waterside with us are the folks in my group.”
I took a quick look around. There were a lot of bullet holes in the seats and even the helm console, but the boat seemed to be running okay. I pulled the hand held VHF from my pack, which had been sitting on the deck forward of the helm and hadn’t been hit.
“Alpha team, Bravo orange. Come in,” I said into the unit.
“Alpha green,” My mom’s voice said over the radio, “Everything okay, kid?”
“Negative,” I said, “We’ve got a situation.”
“Report, orange,” Sam’s voice said.
“We dropped Mark off at his place,” I told them, “And when we were coming around a corner in the canal, he and two other guys opened up on us with semi-automatic weapons.”
“Oh my God…” My mom said nervously, “Are you guys okay?”
I paused and looked at Tara. She was standing very close to me, her arms wrapped around my left bicep. I sighed, “Also negative. Hector is dead. We’re headed back… but I don’t know what to do with him.”
There was a long pause. I looked at Tara.
“We buried Maria at Waterside,” She said softly.
I was going to repeat this but I guess Carl or Brenda must have said something, “Orange, red… there’s no time for niceties now. Just dump him overboard and get back here asap.”
I caught some angry sounding words before Sam let go of the talk button. I turned to Tara, “You heard that?”
She nodded, “It sucks.”
“I know,” I said glumly, “But we don’t have the tools or the time to bury him properly… and who knows who or what might come along.”
She wiped fresh tears from her eyes and nodded with a sniffle, “Yeah… it just fucking sucks…”
I hugged her and held her for a minute while I let the boat drift in neutral. I sighed and moved forward to Hector’s body. Tara helped and I was able to heave him through the forward railing door and into the bay. He just… floated there.
“Sorry, Hector…” I whispered.
“Jesus, Andy…” Tara said through her tears, “he looks so lonely there…”
I went and put the boat in reverse, backed away from Hector’s body and then put it in forward and gunned it. I wanted to get away from the sight as fast as possible and I’m sure Tara didn’t want to hang around either.
I pointed the bow straight for the far end of the Gandy Bridge. I sat in the swivel chair and Tara sat in my lap, snuggling up to me as we silently covered the miles. It took about twenty minutes and we nosed up to the other boats and with the rest of the group’s help, got them situated as they’d been before this pointless ride.
“What a goat fuck,” I said. I’d picked up that useful phrase from my group. A military slang term for a dirty job, basically.
“Are you guys okay?” My mom asked, hugging me and then Tara, “Christ, you got blood on your shirts.”
I scoffed, “Yeah, Hector’s. That son of a bitch Mark had an ambush set up.”
“Which means…” Carl began.
“Which means your houses and possessions are probably under his control now,” Sam said in a hard tone, “And it’s probably not safe to go back unless you want to take him out.”
“More killing,” Brenda said quietly.
“If you’re up for it,” I said, “I’m in.”
I was pissed off now. I didn’t really know Hector, hell we’d just met these people that morning… but he seemed like a nice guy and he certainly didn’t deserve to get shot by his “friend.”
“There isn’t much to save,” Carl said with a shrug.
“I think it’s a damned fine idea,” Tony added.
My mom looked surprised but then her face got hard and she nodded, “Might not have a choice.”
Tara looked at all of us, “I don’t’ like what he did either… but shouldn’t we just move on? There’s plenty leftover in this dead world so that we don’t have to fight over it.”
“That’s a good point, honey,” Mom said, “Except that a guy like that… a guy who’s willing to indiscriminately kill others including his own friends is dangerous. We don’t need somebody like that prowling around town so close to the rest of us.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Brenda asked, “That we go back to Waterside and hunt them down?”
Sam frowned and nodded, “Don’t see that we have a choice. It’s already pushing four o’clock and we haven’t even left the beachhead yet. I think we’d be better off cleaning up our mess at home before jumping into another one over here. We’ve got plenty of ammo for now. If we can resolve this Mark thing today, we can try MacDill tomorrow or the next day.”
“So where do we stay now?” Carl asked.
“With us,” Mom said, “We’re actually not that far from where we met you this morning.”
Chapter 11
From the personal journal of Samuel R. Decker
As dangerous and omnipresent as the zombies are, I’m beginning to think that they’re the least of our problems. It’s been one goddamned day since I started making this journal and we’ve already had to deal with two separate groups of assholes. Hell, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet. These are hardly the first of such occurrences… yet the frequency seems to be increasing.
These incidents also reinforce my belief that we need to shove off and find a new location. Being in and around cities just isn’t a good idea now. Between the abundance of the walking dead and the prevalence of selfish and dangerous survivors, it’s pretty clear to me that we need a different plan.
What bothers me is that just to pull up stakes and move into a rural area where we can farm and raise livestock… or anchor the Sorcerer somewhere and live on fish and occasionally come ashore to scavenge isn’t really a plan. It doesn’t solve anything in the long term. Sure, the four of us, and maybe with the help of Brenda, Carl and Tara we can create a small self-sustaining enclave… but that’s not living. It’s just staying alive with no course to steer and that bothers me.
At the moment, however, we’ve got more immediate concerns. Mark and his two buddies, and maybe more, have demonstrated that they’re a clear and present danger. They’re willing to kill casually. It won’t be long before they start seeking us out. So far, we’ve been really lucky living at the Harborage Marina – but that luck can’t hold out forever. Sooner or later, Mark or some other asshole will find us. Sooner or later, a horde of flesh eating monsters will crash the gates and we’ll have to defend ourselves.
So whether we like it or not, it’s time to go hunting.
“”What’s the plan, Sharky?” Andrea asked me as we led our squadron of pontoon boats back toward the marina.
“Recon,” I said, “Infiltrate… and eliminate.”
Her face took on a grim expression, “Sam… these guys—“she waved a hand at the boat behind us where Brenda and Carl stood together, “—aren’t ready for this kind of work. They could barely manage to hold up against a horde of brainless ghouls this morning.”
“I agree, Skip,” Tony said from the portside bench, “In a situation where somebody’s shooting back, they’ll get wiped out.”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh, “I know. That’s why we won’t bring them.”
“What about Tara?” Andrea asked, “And Andy?”
“Andy can handle himself,” I said, “Better than any of us ever thought possible. Not only can he handle himself, he’s proven to be a strong asset to our team.”
Tony grinned, “That’s for sure.”
Andrea smiled, “Yeah, but he’s still sixteen and he’s still my kid, Sam. It’s one thing to take down some G’s… but to intentionally put him into a firefight… I don’t know if I want him with us.”
“He won’t like being left behind,” Tony said, “he
was the one got fired on this afternoon. He’ll want payback. And so will that girl, I think.”
I nodded, “True enough. On the other hand, if we leave the three newbies at the marina, somebody with a good head on their shoulders has to stay and keep an eye on things… we could order him to take command of the home base.”
“Exactly,” Andrea said.
Tony frowned and shook his head, “He won’t like it, guys.”
Andrea scowled, “He’ll fuckin’ do it anyway. I’m his mother on top of a superior officer.”
“Watch that shit,” Tony advised, holding up a finger, “he’s a man now. Whether you like it or not, Andrea. He’s a man now. That means he can make his own decisions, it means he won’t like being mommied… it also means he’s probably gonna get laid. What do you think about that?”
Andrea said nothing for a moment, “I know, Tony… as for sex, that doesn’t bother me. He’s a good kid… man… and he has the right to be happy like the rest of us.”
“You mean like you two,” Tony said with a shit eating grin, “I ain’t seen a pussy in months.”
I laughed and Andrea flipped him off, “You’re such a pig, Tony.”
Tony scoffed, “Says the broad who’s had more orgasms this week than she can even count.”
Andrea grinned broadly, “Okay, good point!”
“We’ll discuss his staying back with him,” I said after I stopped laughing, “See what Andy has to say. If it comes down to it, I’ll order him to take command. He might be pissed but on the other hand, he’ll feel a sense of responsibility, too.”
Tony nodded, “Swearing him in helps this. On the other hand… how does that help me get some ass?”
“Fucking squids,” Andrea said with a giggle, “Is that all you ever think about?”
“Yeah,” Tony and I said in perfect unison.
Andrea guffawed and then said, “Hey, Brenda is free.”
Tony shook his head, “I think she and Carl might be involved… or will be soon.”
“Hey,” Andrea said beaming, “She handles a rifle pretty good.”
Tony winked, “Yeah, maybe I’ll see if there’s anything else long, hard and black she’d like to get her hands on.”
