Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc

by R. S. Merritt

  This kept getting better. We were stuck about a mile up the river from the big bridge you cross when you’re headed north on I-95 and you go through Jacksonville. If the tide knocked us off the wrecked freighter it sounded like out best course of action was to go full throttle for the ocean. Hoping we found somewhere safe to dock before the boat sank. If the boat did sink we’d need to swim for the shore covered in angry Zombies. I didn’t give us much of a chance of making that beachhead.

  Chrissie came back with lifejackets and we shrugged into them. She was not able to find an inflatable or anything so we’d be free floating in the water if we had to abandon ship. Not a comforting thought now that we had seen that alligators considered people a ready source of food at this point. The dark cold water scared the crap out of me now.

  Chrissie walked over and consulted with Ann. Then they had Thomas come over and they started thumping around on his cast. Ann walked over to me.

  “We think his arm may be ok to take out of the cast now. Chrissie thinks it should only take about four to six weeks for a bone to set and he’s had the cast on for a long time now. We’re going to cut it off now and hope for the best. If we have to go into the water he is going to need both arms to survive.”

  I nodded, “What do you need to cut it off with? I think the Band-Aid kit we raided had those scissors in it that should probably work.”

  Ann held up the scissors I had been talking about and gave me a wink. She then sashayed herself over to where Thomas was sitting, surrounded by everyone else smiling at him, and started working on trying to cut the cast off. It took some time and a few of us trying to make it happen but finally Thomas sat there with a white, stinky, forearm out in the open for the first time in months. He waved it around and tried throwing some punches. His arm had a funny bump in it but he said it didn’t bother him. If it didn’t bother him, it definitely did not bother the rest of us.

  Carefully removing Thomas’s cast had taken us a lot longer than anticipated and the sky was starting to get darker. The waves had picked up a little as well as a breeze coming at us from the direction of the bridge. These things all combined to cause our boat to start shifting around. A wave would come and the boat would be picked up and free floating for a second or two at the crest of the wave before we would settle back down on the freighter. I thought this was a great thing and we’d eventually be knocked off the freighter and be able to continue on our merry way.

  Chrissie ran up to me, “We have to do something, the boat is getting beat up pretty bad every time the wave drops us back on the freighter. I think we need a tow to get us out of here. Right when the wave picks us up we need people puling us forward to get us off this freighter as quick as possible.”

  “Why can’t you just use the engine to get us off?” I knew the tide gently plucking us off the freighter idea had been too good to be true.

  “I’m afraid if we do that then we might screw up the propellers. You guys can just jump in the water and when we yell to pull you pull on the rope to move the boat forward faster.”

  Great. To keep us all from going into the dark, cold water with the amputated body parts covered in crabs floating around in it we needed to jump in it right now and play tug of war with our broken toy yacht. Chrissie was already dragging over the ropes for us to use. It was decided that me, Reeves, Thomas and Ann would get the honor of jumping in and pulling on the rope when yelled at. I was kind of worried about Thomas doing it since we had just pulled his arm out of a cast about twenty minutes ago but we needed the four tallest people to make this happen.

  Hell, Reeves had spent most of the last few days being coddled after he did his aerobatics routine down the middle of the highway. Every part of my body hurt most of the time now. There was no time to nurse injuries laying on the couch wondering if mixing beer and codeine would kill you or just make the afternoon more fun. Time to man up. Especially since Ann did not seem to have a problem with doing it. I at least needed to outman her.

  Lowering myself off the back of the boat into the cold dark water and then trudging around to the front of the boat, fighting the current and the waves, almost being bowled over by the boat. Not fun. We weren’t sure if when we pulled the boat off the freighter it would stay afloat or sink so we all had our lifejacket sand supplies with us. We figured out real fast the lifejackets kept us too high in the water to heave on the line when Chrissie yelled ‘Heave’. Why was she yelling ‘Heave’ anyway? She trying out for Captain Hook or something?

  We took the life jackets off and tied them together and then tied the mass of them to Ann. She was too short to really be able to do this anyway since when the wave crested was when we needed to pull and at that point the water was a good foot over her head. She wasn’t very good at sinking. I think men are better at that cause of the lack of boobs. As far as I know, boobs float, Ann had nice boobs, so she floated. I have kept that thought to myself until right now but I am pretty sure it is scientifically accurate so I’m logging it!

  Either way, she was pretty much useless with the rope. The rest of us were not much better. Even with our lack of boobs none of us were doing a great job of trying to pull on the boat when the waves crested. Chrissie was probably about ten seconds from having to use her chest as a floatation device if she tried to be encouraging and yell ‘Heave, all together guys’ to us one more time. I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with us screwing around in the water with the rope but a big swell came through and the boat was suddenly free.

  It was free and headed right at us. We all dodged out of the way. Once the boat was off the freighter Chrissie put the engines in reverse and cast some ropes over to us. We grabbed onto the ropes and Chrissie and Ginny tugged us all over. I noticed Ann used the life jackets as a raft which made her experience way better than everyone else’s. Being fully immersed in a river you know is full of dead bodies, alligators, and live Zombies looking to kill you is disturbing during the day. At night, it is the stuff of literal nightmares.

  We all boarded the boat and proceeded to shiver. We had been shivering in the water to but hadn’t really noticed because of the fear of an alligator clamping down on us or a Zombie coming out of the water, or the waves smashing us in to the boat. Chrissies was up running the boat now and Ginny led us all below where she got busy making coffee and handing out blankets to all of us. Every time she handed one of us a blanket she would say ‘Heave’ and crack a smile.

  We didn’t seem to be sinking. That was a good thing. Ginny told me Chrissie needed to talk to me. I went up topside with a blanket wrapped around me. Sipping on a coffee. Chrissie looked over at me as I settled into the chair beside hers.

  “We’re not sinking yet. The pumps are able to keep the water pumped out of the hold for now from the cracks it is seeping through. I think you may even be able to get down in the hold and find something to caulk the cracks with. I saw a bunch of junk down there by the fishing supplies. Bigger deal though. I don’t think we should try and get out to the ocean at night. I think we should go in closer to shore, anchor for the night, and head out first thing in the morning. That way we don’t hit anything else.”

  “Works for me, Skipper. Just not too close to the shore. I think we’ll need to stand a watch. Once we get anchored you go sleep all-night. We need you bright eyed and busy tailed in the morning. Whatever that means. I’ll start the first watch now and help you get the boat anchored.”

  Chrissie guided the boat to within about sixty yards of the shoreline and told me to lower the anchor into the water. I dropped it in and played out the rope as it descended. It looked like the water here was about twenty feet deep which should keep us safe from Zombies or from getting stuck. Chrissie told me to watch out for the boat moving if the anchor started dragging. Then she told me to make sure the engines stayed on to keep the pumps running and she headed down below.

  I sat in the comfortable leather swivel chair and listened to the sound of the engines and the sound of the water hitting the rivers surfac
e as it was pumped out. It was very soothing and to keep myself from getting too soothed and passing out in the chair I got up and walked around the boat. It had gotten too dark to see the shore anymore. Without something to look at how did we know if the anchor was dragging or not? The boat had some powerful lights on it we could turn on to check but that would alert everyone and everything in a huge radius that there were some tasty humans sitting out here in a sinking boat.

  I went down below. Everyone had already fallen asleep. I stepped over Thomas and right on Reeves fingers. He grumbled something that did not sound very flattering and glared up at me. I shushed him and shone my little penlight around until I found Chrissie. I walked over and poked her in the shoulder to wake her up. She woke up looking super confused and whipped her knife around, almost cutting me with it.

  “Sorry! What’s up?” She asked. Lowering the knife after figuring out it was me.

  “How do we know if the anchor is dragging?”

  She sighed, she moved me out of the way and got out of the bunk. We both managed to step on different parts of Reeves. He grumbled and got up and walked up the stairs onto the deck with us.

  Once we were outside Chrissie walked over to the anchor line.

  “If we are in a strong current and there’s nothing on the bottom for the anchor to really catch on then you should be able to fill it in the rope. It will fill like it gets really tight then really loose.”

  Reeves and I both stared at her.

  “The rope guys, you should be able to fill it if we are dragging. Right now, it does not feel like we are too me. That could change but I think we’re good for now. Any other questions?” She looked at both of us.

  “Should we wake you up every once in a while, to check it?” I asked. “I have no idea what the hell you just showed us to look for. You know what the rope feels like to me. It feels like a rope.”

  She sighed, “Fine, come get me in between watches and I’ll check it out. Now. I’m going back to sleep. You coming Reeves?”

  “Only if everybody is done stepping on me.”

  Entry 15: Hells Jetty

  I woke up with Reeves lightly stepping on my fingers.

  “Rise and shine sleepyhead. Early birds and worms and shit!”

  Reeves was way too happy this morning. I pulled my hand out from under his boot where he was faking getting revenge for us all stomping all over him the night before. I sat up and very thankfully accepted the cup of coffee Reeves handed me.

  “We’re down to like twenty Keurig’s then we’re living like cavemen again. I say you add Keurig’s and a Keurig machine onto our shopping list. I’ll carry it if we have to walk. I’m probably going to cry when we run out.” Reeves wrapped up the horrible news of the shortage on the little Keurig pods.

  I agreed with him. Even though the boat was probably going to sink underneath us and we’d managed to crash it at least once already this had by far been the most pleasant part of our adventures so far. We’d made it further on this boat than we had in any other vehicle. I was really banking on finding us some more rivers and boats to move us to Tennessee. As long as we did not run into anything it seemed about a million times safer and we could do it during the day. I loved boats.

  Reeves and I walked out onto the main deck behind where the girls and Thomas were all standing up beside the Captain’s chair looking out at something. Chrissie had the binoculars up to her eyes. She slowly pulled them down and turned and looked at me.

  “You’re going to want to see this.”

  She handed me the binoculars and I walked up to stand beside everybody and started checking out the bridge up ahead. It was a huge bridge. On top of it there was a massive snarl of traffic. No way anyone was driving through there. I continued scanning around. The bridge was pretty massive but I wasn’t sure what Chrissie had me looking for. I saw there was a barge anchored right underneath the bridge.

  Looking closer I saw it was actually smashed up sideways against two of the huge concrete pylons holding the bridge up. The current was pressing it pretty hard against the bridge and there was a ton of crap pressed up against that side of the barge by the currents as well. Looking closely at it I saw a lot of dead bodies mixed in with the other junk. Pretty gross and we’d want to avoid the barge but I still wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

  I put the binoculars down and shot a questioning look at Chrissie. She told me to look at the bridge right above the barge. I did. Then I finally saw it. The bridge was vibrating. The barge must be pushing on it hard enough to be making it unsteady. It must have hit it pretty hard to be doing that. I continued scanning the bridge and now focused in a lot harder on the North bank of the river. It looked like the last chunk of bridge there was missing. There was an airgap. Thinking maybe they blew it up to try and keep people in the city?

  Regardless, I got what Chrissie meant. The bridge was not stable and could fall at any time. We needed to be on the other side of the bridge before that happened.

  “Let’s pull the anchor up and get moving. We need to be on the other side of that bridge quick. Everybody keep a life jacket close by in case we need them. Let’s try and skim the South side of the river as much as we can. Probably need to do it slow and steady because we do not want to get stuck here.” Reeves was pulling up the anchor as I finished talking.

  Chrissie got us moving and Ann and I took our spots at the bow as lookouts. The south side of the river had a bend in it where they had dredged out a big part of it when they were building the bridge. I’m assuming that last part, for all I know aliens scooped out that part of the earth and took it home and used it to build some kind of alien mud bath spa or as a litter box for their giant alien cats. I had the binoculars and was focusing on the water in front of us. Ann poked me and pointed towards the South side of the bank.

  I looked over and saw a bunch of vultures walking over the breakwater there. I figured they were eating bit and pieces of washed up corpses. I got back to looking at the water in front of us again and scanned over to the breakwater to see how far it went out. Looking at it through the binoculars my mind started putting together what my eyes were seeing. The breakwater was not made of rock.

  The breakwater consisted of the bodies of what must be at least a hundred thousand corpses. The vultures were walking among them picking out the best parts. I stared. I zeroed in on the corpse of a little girl in a water logged and stained set of pink footie pajamas. The little girl had gone to bed and woke up with the disease turning her into a lunatic who had jumped into the water she could no longer swim in to try and rip people apart. I hurriedly moved the binoculars back to the water in front of us, scanning for any danger.

  Not seeing anything, I moved back to the jetty from hell. Trying to find the little girl again amidst all the other bodies I saw a body getting tugged into the water. I scanned down to see fins circling the pile of bodies. I had not realized we were close enough to the ocean for sharks to be a problem. I didn’t see any but I figured there would also be some alligators circling around all of the bodies also. Good thing we had been further away before when we hit the sunken barge or whatever it was and hadn’t had to worry about being in the water with all of that going on. Scanning up, I also saw a crowd of living Zombies reaching down into the flesh of the bloated corpses for a meal as well.

  The boat started moving sluggishly in the water. I looked back at Chrissie who was busily pressing buttons and dials and trying to figure out what was up. She looked at me with panic in her eyes.

  “I think we just ran out of gas.”

  When we had checked, the gas levels the gauge had shown we had plenty of fuel to make it out to the ocean. I racked my brain, the pumps that is all I could think of. The pumps must have made us use more gas, faster, than we had planned on.

  The pumps!

  “Hey Chrissie? How long are we going to stay afloat with the pumps broke?” Chrissie just stared at me. She had no idea. None of us did. I realized I was putting way too much pressure
on someone who had basically just driven a ski boat around a few times and had no real knowledge of the mechanics or engineering behind the kind of boat we were on now.

  We were on a sinking boat, drifting towards a bridge that could collapse at any second, possibly being sucked towards a wall of corpses with alligators, sharks, and Zombies feeding on them. With the boat dead in the water there was no power so we couldn’t even enjoy any of those last twenty Keurig’s. It looked like my life was back to status quo.

  “Load up. Get your life jackets on. Get your gear strapped on. I’m hoping we manage to drift under the bridge and can fetch up against a dock or something we can either steal gas from another boat or take another boat. Anybody has any ideas now would be a good time to throw them out there.” I looked around. Everybody basically had a ‘we’re fucked aren’t we’ facial expression going. I pretty much agreed but needed to try and stay optimistic. I looked up the river, we were about a hundred yards from the bridge, which now looked monstrous.