The smell hit like a wave. The stench of thousands of rotting bodies. Thomas tried to make it to the rail but ended up puking all over his own shoes. I didn’t blame him. I could barely breathe. My eyes were watering up. We were slowly losing the momentum we had from when the boat had been steaming along. We were starting to move towards the wall of bodies. We were at the mercy of the currents and the winds and the tides now. I got my sword tied down on my back behind the life preserver in case we had to swim for it.
Around me everyone was gearing up as best they could. On the run, we had managed to lose the majority of the supplies we had scavenged along the way. Nine Millimeter ammo was at a premium while we had about a thousand rounds still of .22 cartridges. That was just the luck of who had managed to grab their bag and sling it into the airboat before the Zombies had gotten to us back at that first marina. I had one clip loaded up and shoved in my pistol. After that we were down to pea shooters. The .22 rounds worked, eventually and they were pretty quiet they just did not have a lot of immediate stopping power. When I shot something, I wanted it dead right now please.
Reeves and I went below and stared at the engines. We had no idea what we were looking at but we did feel pretty cool checking it out. We opened up hatches and poked around trying to see if there was anything we could do. I opened the hatch where the fuel tanks were and the place where you could prime them. I noticed a little switch I had not seen before. It had a label beside it saying, ‘Auxiliary Fuel Tank’. That’s what I’m talking about!
I hit the switch and ran up to tell Chrissie, yelling at Reeves who was yelling back at me. I got topside and saw the wall of the dead was coming up fast. We weren’t going to go under the bridge after all. Already some of the living Zombies on top were starting to try and scramble down over the corpses to get to us. Bodies were dropping in the river and the sharks and alligators seemed to be getting more ramped up as well.
“Turn on the engines!” I yelled at Chrissie who was staring at the upcoming wall which loomed at least twenty feet over our heads and had living Zombies starting to slide and rush down it to try and get at us. Chrissie hit the start button and the engines coughed but nothing happened. I heard Reeves yelling from below that he was trying to prime it and to give him a second. We didn’t have a second.
“Try it again!” Chrissie just froze, she looked over at me and I saw tears pouring out of her eyes. We were fast approaching the wall of corpses and the screaming from the Zombies was reaching a fever pitch. Chrissie pulled out her little .22 pistol. Stuck the barrel in her mouth and pulled the trigger before I could get to her. Her body jerked around on the ground. I stared at her. Thomas and everyone else had missed it as they were focused on the ten or twenty seconds of life we still had.
“Everyone down below!” I screamed, tears in my eyes, terror in my heart. I punched the start button again and the engine coughed a couple of times then came to life. Everyone rushed past me to get down below, slowing to look at Chrissies lifeless body lying on the deck.
We hit the wall of the dead. Bodies tumbled onto the bow of the boat and living Zombies scrambled to get aboard and get at us. I pulled my pistol and started shooting with one hand at the Zombies coming aboard while jamming us in full reverse with the other and holding the steering wheel straight. I ran through all my bullets and the Zombies kept coming. The boat was starting to slowly move backwards but it was not going to be fast enough. I reached down and grabbed the little pistol Chrissie had used to kill herself.
I emptied it into the mass of Zombies streaming up the bow. The boat was now moving backwards. I dropped the pistol and pulled out my knife. One hand still on the steering wheel. I was determined to get the boat away so everyone else had a chance even if I had to die to do it. I held my knife in my right hand and screamed in defiance at the Zombies coming for me. I showed them my war face. I was ready. My friends would be safe down below, then hopefully break out once we got some distance from the wall. They could come up then and be able to just drive out of this place.
Gunfire erupted all around me. Reeves, Thomas, Ginny and Ann all had my back. They lay down a hail of lead that blew the scourge coming towards me right off the bow of the boat. I should have known they’d disobey orders quickly instead of waiting a minute like I had thought they would to figure out I was trying to sacrifice myself for them. The smell of gunpowder all around me. I could barely hear as the guns had been going off right by my ears.
I saw Reeves notice Chrissie lying on the floor and fall down to this knees beside her. He looked up at me.
“She couldn’t take it anymore.” I said.
“Weak bitch!” Reeves screamed. Standing up and kicking Chrissies body. “Weak stupid bitch! How could you do this! We fucking survived! Fuck you!” Reeves picked up Chrissies body and went to the rail and threw her overboard. Then he collapsed on the deck and started crying and yelling.
“Ann, Ginny, take care of Reeves please. Don’t let him near a gun.” I didn’t have time to help. We had a tiny amount of fuel and I needed to get us under the bridge and away from here as soon as possible. I stared at the panel in front of me. The gas gauge was on empty. That wasn’t good. Then I saw another gauge that said ‘auxiliary fuel’ and it was still mostly full. That was a lot better. Over the screams of the Zombies we started hearing another noise. A great rumbling noise like the sound of a jet going right over you or what I imagine an avalanche would sound like right before it hit you.
I looked and saw that the North side of the bridge looked like it was shimmering, or shuddering, or bending. Then, in slow motion the whole North end of the bridge started collapsing. Making a snap decision I moved the throttle to full ahead and aimed to slide though close to the South side of the bridge. I was fully focused on getting us through there. We were about halfway under the bridge when chunks of concrete started falling all around us. One really big chunk hit the bow and sheared off a piece of it.
I kept the rudder straight. A death grin on my face. We were going to make it or we weren’t. Not a lot to say about that now. Water shot up all around us as huge concrete blocks and cars hit the water. The noise was deafening. Concrete powder darkened the air. I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t breathe. We surged forward as more of the bridge hit the river surface pushing us out of the way of the rest of the collapse. We made it through. We lived.
I pulled back on the throttles to let us idle. Ann came over and took my spot. I sat down on the deck then lay on my back and just tried to breathe for a minute.
We were alive and we had gas so now the Keurig would work. With Chrissie dead, we even had some extra. I was losing it. I started to laugh and cry and try to breathe and none of it wanted to work. I rolled over on my stomach and puked. Ann squatted down beside me and rubbed my back, “It’s ok baby.” She said it over and over. We both knew it was a lie. Nothing about this was ok or ever would be again.
Entry 16: Sinking
Everything after the bridge collapse is a blur. I was rocked physically, mentally and emotionally. Seeing Chrissie take her life right in front of me, rocketing through the destruction of the bridge, my body was tired past the point of endurance. Ann was my rock. She took over steering the boat while I sat down. Thomas came up and brought me a bottled water then went to help Ginny with Reeves. Reeves was wasted. His eyes were sunken. He just lay there staring vacantly in front of him.
Thomas went over and talked to Ann for a second then ran downstairs and came back with a medicine bottle and another bottle of water. Him and Ann conferred again and he walked over to me and squatted down.
“We think you should take one of these and I’m going to give Reeves a couple of them.” I looked at the label and saw he was handing out valium. Seemed like a good idea to me. I reached out my hand and he put a single small pill in my hand. I pulled my hand back over and stared at it. How could something so small help with a grief so big. Ann said do it so I popped it in my mouth and swallowed.
Thomas watched me d
o it then walked over to Reeves. Reeves did not respond at all; he’d slipped into a state of catatonia. He was one of the most physically resilient people I had met but recent events had shown he had a huge heart behind his strong guy façade. That heart had been broken too many times recently. I hoped he was able to pull out of it pretty soon since we were going to need him. I hoped all of us were able to pull out if it. The grief was palpable, stocking us like a lion on the prairie, ready to jump and pull us down and maul us if we weren’t weary and fleet in our motion.
Ginny walked over to me and gave me a hug.
“Chrissie was broken, the things she endured before we even met her broke her. You rescued her, you saved her and gave her another chance. She had a crack in her and the stress made it spilt wide open and swallow her heart. She gave up. You didn’t give up on her. You’re stronger than that. You have no idea how proud Gunny would be of you. You did it too. You managed to save us all again. You would have saved her life if she’d been stronger in her trust. I don’t think some people have it in them to make it through this and she was one of those people.”
We were both openly sobbing, tears in our eyes, I looked up and Ann had been listening and she had tears in her eyes too. Thomas was oblivious, he had found some fig newton’s and was staring over what was left of the bow trying to see if we were going to crash into anything. Ginny got to the point of her message;
“Steve, we need you. You’re our leader. But it’s Ok for you to lean on us too. We’re family now and we look out for each other. We’ve been through so much. I love you like a big brother. A big dorky annoying big brother with personal hygiene issues but it’s love!”
I looked up at Ann and she nodded. Tears in her eyes and a smile dancing across her lips. I looked up at her and smiled.
“I love you too Steve. But don’t worry, I don’t think of you as my brother.”
“We’re headed for Tennessee so it’s Ok if you think of him as your brother!” Thomas had evidently been listening. He also thought he was hilarious. I did too. Or at least the Valium in my bloodstream thought he was.
Ann and Ginny had evidently been enjoying the lifetime Oprah moments we had been sharing and both shook their heads and wandered away at the Tennessee jokes. They left to tend to the boat and make sure Reeves was ok. Thomas was still chortling to himself. I got up and snagged one of his fig newton’s. A few minutes later Reeves wandered over. He looked like crap, but had a big stupid looking valium grin on his face.
“Drugs are good.” He was just kind of standing there staring at us, whacked out, declaring his love for the valium shoved down his throat. Honestly, the effects of the valium on me were also pretty substantial, I started giggling like a two-year-old telling fart jokes. Thomas was out of the valium loop and just stood there eating fig newton’s while Reeves and I continued to crack up over the “drugs are good” lump of comedic gold. We were both high.
“How long until the boat sinks and we drown or get eaten by sharks?” I asked Thomas. Reeves made a fin with his hand and hummed the theme to Jaws. Freakin hilarious. Trying to look at what was going on objectively I figured that possibly when Thomas went to Pharmacy school he didn’t read about the needing food and the correct dosages and stuff for people when you’re having them pop prescription strength mind altering drugs. I tried to say all that but it was a lot of words and I forgot what I was taking about halfway through it.
I noticed Ann and Ginny had joined Thomas in staring at us. Ann was checking the bottle carefully, trying to see If maybe the dosage had been wrong. Ginny took the fig newtons from Thomas and told him to go get more food and give it to us. Then she told Reeves and me to eat up and handed us the pack of fig newton’s.
Thomas came up the stairs with two giant bags of Doritos. Now we were talking. He handed one to Reeves and one to me and then sat back down. I kept slamming fig newton’s. Reeves ripped his bag open and half his chips went flying down on the deck.
“We could go on the bow. Lots of Salsa!” Reeves joked.
The bow was covered in blood and brains from the Zombie we had killed trying to board our boat. The comment grossed out everybody except me and Reeves. Ann kept the boat moving forward, there was the wreck of another bridge up ahead of us. This one had obviously been demolished more efficiently than the last one. The middle section of the bridge was just gone. Ann slowly drove over where the middle had collapsed. Avoiding some large concrete barriers and such. The next bridge had been similarly destroyed although that one had been knocked out on the North shore more than in the middle. We were able to make it over that and the next one. It looked like some strafing missions had come through here to knock out the bridges and most had succeeded.
I don’t know what they were hoping to accomplish. Based on what we had seen so far the response to this threat had been all over the place. The emergency channel had not worked right to relay information. Roadblocks had been thrown up at random locations and had not been at all effective in containing the plague. Reeves had confirmed his unit had basically been told there was a really bad case of influenza and they were expecting people to riot. Ann had called back into a dispatch center and spoken to an old friend while it had been happening and that dispatch center had not had any real useful info for her either. Although, the little bit they had provided was probably the reason Ann and Thomas were still alive.
Ann was driving slow. This was partly to keep looking out for obstacles, partly to avoid putting the bow too hard into the water since we were missing a big chunk of it, partly to conserve fuel, and mostly because we had no idea where we wanted to stop at. I was currently in a horrible state of mind to try and help with strategic decisions. Reeves was about twenty times worse off than me. We were basically just annoying them.
“Reeves and me are going to go below and take an hour-long nap so some of this stuff wears off. I’ll pop back up here in an hour. Do me a favor and try to figure out a plan and then we can talk about it when I get back.” I said all of this with a huge grin plastered to my face. I was smiling so big it had been hard to get the words out. I walked downstairs with Reeves and we each stretched out in one of the bunks. The big look of relief and not having to deal with us clowns had been apparent on the faces of all those on the upper deck when we went below, completely alleviating any bad feeling I might have had about leaving my post.
I pulled out my ‘phone’, now of course it was mostly my camera / Zournal / flashlight / alarm clock, and set it to wake me up in an hour with vibrating. I was thinking Reeves may need a bit longer of a rest than I did. I put my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes, I could already hear Reeves familiar snoring coming from the other side of the small cabin.
Entry 17: Still Sinking…
I was laying on a raft in the middle of a pool when I looked in the water and saw sharks. I struggled to pull my arms and legs and everything onto the raft but it was small and I couldn’t fit everything. I saw the sharks circling and then out of the water a hand shot up and grabbed my ankle. I screamed and tried to kick off the hand. It just kept coming out of the water, the arm attached to it was covered in pink and the big blue veins were prominent on the hand. I couldn’t move without falling into the shark filled pool. The dead girl from the wall of the dead, the one I had seen with the pink footie pajamas started pulling her bloated body onto me with her teeth chattering. The chattering was vibrating my whole body. I swung at her to try and knock –
I slowly woke up. The vibrating was my phone; the alarm must be going off. Reeves was till snoring. Ann was staring at me with big round eyes.
“You were screaming in your sleep. Then you took a swing at me.” She accused.
“Yep.” I panted, “Napping on valium is a horrible idea. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Nope.” Ann said, “but next time I might just leave you alone to scream it out as long as we’re out in the middle of the river and nothing can hear us. Also, just to add to the fun. It’s raining.”
Rai
ning? What did that really have to do with anything? Except…
“Is it raining hard? Like hard enough for us to be worried about the boat sinking faster than it already is?”
“It’s raining hard enough where I think we should try and find a tarp or something to cover the hole. Seen any of those laying around?” Ann was looking around the cabin trying to see if she saw anything useful.
I thought about it. “No tarps or anything. We could take the cover off that goes over the bridge. Then put that over the hole?” I thought that may work. At least for a little while. “Do we have any nails or glue or tape or anything? It’s fastened up there with rope right now so we could try and tie it on up there somehow.”
Ann and I went up to the deck. I was feeling much better after my nap and the nightmares were slipping into my subconscious where they belonged. It was raining pretty hard. Thomas was steering us towards another bridge. Could the steering wheel and all the gauges and junk get wet? I looked closely at them and it looked like they were made to be exposed to the elements. Which made sense. I looked up at the hard cloth stretched tight to serve as the roof to the bridge. Looked like we could just cut the rope then pull it through all the little round rivet holes and we’d be good.
Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc Page 13
