by Howard, Bob
They had talked the night before about how they would move down the streets toward the homes with private docks and small boats. If they could find a house with two boats, it would increase their chances of success. Hampton told Colleen he had tried to start too many boats that had not been used for a few months, and there was nothing more frustrating than hearing the engine sputter and stop. Nothing except doing it repeatedly while a horde of infected dead were walking toward you.
What they needed to find was a house that still had its privacy fence intact and had two boats. That would be the best possible scenario they felt like they could hope for. The plan was to use the telescope to study every possible escape route for a couple of hours, spot the home they needed to reach, and then work their way in that direction.
After breakfast on the landing and a second cup of coffee, they carried their backpacks and bags of guns downstairs. Then they made their way back up to the second floor and long, narrow stairs to the man-cave. Colleen teased Hampton about the need for man-caves and asked him to describe what he wanted in his. More and more she made him feel like they had been friends forever, and he couldn’t think of a better feeling than to love someone who was also your friend. It felt good to laugh a little.
They got themselves situated in front of the telescope, and using binoculars first, they began making their escape plans. They tried to get an accurate count of the infected that were walking out in the open so they could guess at the number between them and the other houses. It wasn’t too hard because they moved so slowly.
They drew a sketch of the streets, sighted in on their names, and drew a decent map of the area. When they looked at the finished product, they saw they were on a large piece of land that was shaped like a leaf from an oak tree. The streets ran down the middle of each part of the leaf that extended out into Lake Norman. From what they could tell, the leaf shaped neighborhood was about two miles long, and they needed to reach one of the many uninhabited islands that dotted the lake. They wouldn’t know which one was best until they got there, but the good news was that the majority of the homes had private docks, and over half of them had boats tied up to them. Some were no more than a hundred yards from their house, and if they really wanted to have more than one boat to choose from, there was a marina back toward the interstate.
Looking at the map, Hampton felt like his old self again. He felt like he was being proactive, and he felt like they were going to come up with a good plan. At first he focused on the marina. It was really close, and there were at least two dozen boats in clear view. The problem was the trees. There were large areas of trees that they just couldn’t see through. The marina sat near the base of the bridge where their army had run into the horde of infected, so the odds were fairly strong that the horde had spread outward in that direction. They might be jammed up under those trees, just as they had been back by the bridge into Georgetown.
Colleen was looking in the other direction, and she was frowning.
“Is something wrong?” asked Hampton.
“I thought I saw something way out over the water, but I think I was just imagining it.”
“Where was it?” he asked.
She pointed to the west, and he aimed his binoculars that way. He didn’t see anything, but he wasn’t going to ignore any possibilities. As it turned out, it was a good thing she drew his attention that way because he saw something that gave him an idea.
“You just helped me figure this out, Colleen. We need time to get a boat motor to start once we get to a boat, right?”
“Did you find a way to buy us some time?”
Hampton handed her the map they had drawn and pointed at a house only two streets away.
“Look at this dock with your binoculars. What kind of boat is that tied to the dock?”
Colleen found the right house with her binoculars and then located the dock.
“It looks like a pontoon boat,” she said.
“Exactly, and pontoon boats can be easily floated away from a dock. Lots of room for our gear, too.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “How does that buy us more time?”
“Look at the next dock in line with the pontoon,” he said.
Colleen saw what he was talking about. The fence that separated the two pieces of property ran right down to the water. There was a dock on one side of the fence, and the pontoon boat was tied to it. Tied to the dock on the other side of the fence were two boats. One was a larger pontoon boat with big twin engines. If even one started, they could get underway. The second boat was a bow-rider that was most likely used for water skiing.
She smiled at him and said, “If anything follows us, we just lead them all into that backyard, then we coast over to the other dock and start one of the boats.”
“And if they won’t start,” added Hampton, “we can cross to the other side to one of those boats on the dock directly across from it. The distance between them is short enough for us to just coast across.”
“The worst case scenario is that none of the boats start, but at least we’ll be on the water, and I see about six more docks between our target and the lake,” said Colleen.
She looked at Hampton, and this time he looked like he was thinking of something else.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
Colleen cocked her head to one side and listened. At first she was going to say she didn’t hear anything, but just as she opened her mouth, there it was. She didn’t know what she was hearing or where it was coming from, but it sounded like it was getting louder.
“Is that a boat motor?” she asked.
She started scanning the lake trying to spot the boat, and she almost dropped her binoculars when something yellow came flashing into view from the left side. It wasn’t on the water, it was above it.
Hampton spotted it, too. He couldn’t believe his eyes, but when he recognized the type of plane that was skimming the surface of the lake, he knew why they were able to hear it from so far away. When he had bought his plane, he toyed with the idea of buying a float plane, but he decided there were more runways, roads, and open fields to land on than water. When he had flown with a pilot in a de Havilland Beaver a few years later, he had enjoyed the ride, but he thought he was going to go deaf from the sound of the engine. Now it was a welcome sound.
They both watched as the plane coasted in for a landing about two miles away. It came to a stop in a direct line with the bridge but at a safe distance from land on all sides. That was when Hampton remembered his short-range radio, and it was downstairs.
He bolted for the stairs and only had the time to shout back up to Colleen that he was getting his radio as he made the turn one flight down. She got behind the telescope so she could get a closer view of the plane. The telescope zoomed it in so close that she passed it going too fast to the left then passed it going too far to the right. She held the telescope still for a moment and told herself to wait. Her patience paid off as the plane coasted right into her area of focus. She was looking at the passenger side of the plane, and there was a woman holding a set of binoculars up to her face. She had really long and attractive blond hair. Colleen watched as the blond pulled the binoculars down, and she saw that the woman was every bit as attractive as her hair.
The plane rotated in the water facing straight at Colleen, but it kept turning.
“No,” she said out loud. “Too soon, you’re turning away too soon.”
Colleen knew Hampton would be searching for his radio, but with all the extra gear they had packed, it was going to be harder to find it. She could see the pilot now, and even though he was wearing headphones, she could see the full head of red hair and thick beard. It looked like the pilot’s seat was a tight fit for him. He was showing the blonde something, and both of them were smiling.
The plane completed its turn and immediately began picking up speed. She couldn’t track it with the telescope, so she switched to the binoculars again. It was just starting to lift off from the wat
er, and Hampton burst into the room with the radio. He was talking into it frantically and looking at Colleen with the hope that she would say the plane was still there.
“Just took off,” she said.
He felt like an idiot because he hadn’t been prepared. He was supposed to be broadcasting, but he hadn’t bothered. A small part of him knew it was because he had been distracted by his feelings for Colleen, but another part of him knew it was because he didn’t expect to see anyone.
“Did you get a look at it through the scope?” he asked.
She nodded.
“The pilot was a great big guy with a red beard. I’m not sure I’d want to run into him on a dark night. The passenger was a drop-dead, gorgeous blond.”
Colleen couldn’t believe how she sounded. She was jealous of a supermodel she saw in an airplane two miles away for about two minutes.
“Chris? Are you okay?” she asked.
Hampton was standing so still he could be a statue. His mouth was open, but he seemed to be unable to speak until she got worried.
“It can’t be,” he said. “Was the big guy smiling?”
“Now you’re scaring me, Chris. How could you guess that he was smiling? As a matter of fact you could see the smile from here.”
Hampton felt like laughing, or cheering, or even crying, and maybe all three at the same time.
“Because it seems like the guy is always smiling about something,” he said. “Even when things are a bit rocky. It’s like he believes everything will be fine in a few minutes.”
Colleen couldn’t believe what Hampton was saying.
“You know him? Do you know the blonde, too?” she asked. She cringed, hoping it didn’t sound as jealous to Hampton as it did to herself.
“That could only have been the Chief and Kathy McGinley,” he said. “It’s a long story. I’ll fill you in when we’re on the water. Right now, we need to get moving. Since that’s a seaplane, maybe he’ll stay near water long enough for us to make contact with him.”
With Hampton in the lead they barreled down the stairs fast enough to be hurt if either of them lost their footing. Once they were on the first floor, they took a quick look out every window to see if there was much movement outside, then loaded the gear on their bodies like a couple of pack mules. Their plan was to drop the gear if they got in trouble, but they had it packed based upon expendability. If it was something they could easily replace, it would get dropped first.
The fastest way to get to the house with the pontoon boat docked behind it was to go straight across the street from the front door of their house. They decided to cut across as many backyards as possible for two reasons. First, they would have to be in plain view if they followed the road. The trees were full, but they didn’t look like they were impassable. After almost a year of lawn neglect, the grass was tall everywhere, and hedges needed to be trimmed, but there was a lot of underbrush. The second reason was the infected dead tended to take the path of least resistance. They could be seen walking down the streets and across front yards, so it was at least possible there weren’t as many in the trees.
Hampton and Colleen had discussed their escape route from high above where they could see who had privacy fences. There were a couple of places where they knew they would have to do some climbing, but both could easily clear the tallest fences. The plan was to have Hampton go over a fence first, check the yard for infected dead, then Colleen would hand over their packs before climbing the fence herself. That would cut down on the noise.
Their goal was a house on a corner lot just one street away, but to get to it they would have to cross in full view of anything walking near the intersection that held the corner lot. Their advantage was that Crown Lake Drive, the main street at the intersection, was curved where it intersected with Bascom Ridge Drive. That meant the field of vision for anything facing their way was blocked by houses and trees along most of the street.
Once they were on the front porch, reality set in. It would be a race combined with an obstacle course. They could only run at a trot because of their gear, but the good news was that the infected couldn’t run at all. It seemed strange, considering the number of infected they had seen since moving into the house, but there were none in view from the porch. Then it dawned on Hampton and Colleen at the same time.
“If we could hear the plane, so could they,” said Colleen. “Do you suppose they’re all moving in that direction?”
“Could be,” said Hampton. “Let’s be careful not to run so fast that we catch up with any of them.”
“I don’t think running too fast is going to be a problem,” she answered as she waddled down the steps.
Hampton followed her down the steps but got ahead of her as they crossed Val Circle and cut between the first two houses. Both of them had a machete tucked in their belts, courtesy of the owner of the house they had just left. They also had their Glock handguns where they could get to them in a hurry. As they crossed the yards and passed through the trees, they saw that they had underestimated the amount of brush that had accumulated under the trees, but it wasn’t dry, so they weren’t being noisy. It was slowing them down though, and the weather was warm. They were sweating before they crossed the first backyard.
Hidden among the trees was a privacy fence, and in front of the fence was a small group of the infected dead. Hampton counted five, and he couldn’t see any to the left or right. He eased his packs to the ground and waited for Colleen to do the same. They both moved in from behind the group with their machetes and made quick work of them.
“Impressive,” he said to Colleen.
She flashed a cute smile his way and said, “You did okay, yourself.”
“Okay? I did okay?”
“We can work on your form when we get the chance. Right now we need to get over this fence.”
They climbed over as planned with Hampton having to suppress a grin the entire time. He had experienced a sudden epiphany about why the Chief seemed to be smiling all the time. He had thought it was because he had some inner way of coping with all the bad in the world, but Hampton considered the possibility it was the pleasure he found in the company he kept. Hampton was grinning because he was going through this hell with Colleen.
Colleen dropped over the fence and landed next to him. He helped her reload all of her gear, and then she did what she could to help him. She kept looking at him out of the corner of her eye, probably wondering what he was grinning about.
They set off in the direction of the next side of the yard and opposite privacy fence. The good news about privacy fences was that they kept the infected out of the backyards if the gates were closed. The bad news was that there was seldom a privacy fence on just one side of the yard.
When they reached the other side they found more good news. The people who lived in the pair of houses separated by the fence must have liked each other, because there was a gate. A quick peek through the gate showed that it entered into what had once been a stone garden with a small fish pond. There was an infected dead at the edge of the water looking down at a huge fish.
There was no telling how long this infected had been trapped inside the small garden, but judging by the wet clothing, it had fallen into and climbed out of the fish pond many times. It had been an elderly woman in her seventies, and the garden had been hers. Hampton and Colleen would have felt sorry for her if not for the lips pulling back to show blackened gums and stained teeth.
This infected had moved slowly in life, and being dead hadn’t made her faster. Hampton stepped forward and gave her a backward shove, and once again the infected was in the pond trying to find a way back out onto dry ground. In the meantime, Hampton and Colleen were going over a low stone wall on the other side of the yard.
They came out of the backyard facing directly across the intersection down Bascom Ridge Drive. About four houses away there were at least a dozen infected dead, and they were moving in the wrong direction. If they kept going where they were headed, t
hey would go straight across the yard of the house with the two boats tied up behind it. Colleen looked up at Hampton.
There was only one thing they could do, and they knew it without discussion. They ran with their heavy loads straight into the middle of the intersection until they were directly in front of the house with the pontoon boat tied up behind it.
They felt naked standing in the middle of the street at the end of the driveway on their left, but even though they were completely exposed, the small horde continued toward the yard that passed between the houses just two driveways away. Hampton looked at Colleen as if to say, “These must be the blind ones.”
“Hey,” he yelled. “Are you guys stupid or something?”
Colleen muttered next to him, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
He couldn’t help himself, and if he had any doubts about his earlier epiphany, she had erased them. Her shout out to one of his favorite movies was more than he could stand. Hampton busted out laughing, and Colleen joined in. The small horde of infected dead made a clumsy turn and began walking toward them. He looked at her and started laughing again.
“In a different time and place, you and I are going to eat popcorn and watch that movie until we have every line memorized,” he said.
“It’s a date, handsome.”
When they were sure the infected were going to follow them down the right side of the fence, they ran up the driveway and crossed the front yard to the left side of the house. Going around that side would give them just a little more time to get the pontoon free from its moorings and across the short distance to the next dock.
They got a pleasant surprise when they reached the gravel path that went to the dock. Before going to the pontoon boat, they had to first go up a set of stairs to a party deck, and then down another steep set of steps to the slip where the pontoon boat was tied up. The infected dead have difficulty going up stairs and no problem at all going downstairs. They would take a long time just getting to the party deck, and if they tried to follow down the steeper steps, gravity would take over. Their already fragile bones would probably keep them piled up in a heap far longer than Hampton and Colleen would need.
