by Howard, Bob
Hampton was almost out of breath when he reached the top of the stairs, but he reached back and helped Colleen make it up to the top. They gratefully dropped their gear over the other side and then climbed down the steep steps. The infected still had to cross the gravel path and climb the stairs. At a much slower pace they gathered their gear and carried it to the pontoon boat. They jumped onto the wide boat and untied the lines. Since it was moored in a slip with a dock on both sides, they were able to each take a side, get a running start, and then dive into the silently gliding boat.
It didn’t take power for the pontoon boat to slide straight to the other dock. Hampton turned the wheel to the rudder just enough for them to coast into position on the opposite side of the dock from the two boats they wanted.
“Why do we have to take both boats, Chris?”
“We don’t know how much fuel we’re going to need, and we won’t know how much fuel we have until we check them out. I hope we find the Chief on the water not far away, but the other side of the lake in the direction they came from is about five miles away.”
“They took off in that same direction. Do you think they stayed around?”
“Colleen, to tell you the truth, there can only be one reason why the Chief would even be here. He knows I’m here somewhere. Yes, I think they’ll stay around and keep looking for me. That was the first time we heard their plane, so I don’t think they’ve been here too long.”
They had just transferred their gear onto the dock and started loading it into the much larger, twin engine pontoon boat when the first of the infected dead showed up at the top of the party deck. As expected, gravity helped it get to the bottom of the steep steps more quickly than it wanted to, and it landed in a heap. We could hear the bones snap from almost thirty yards away. It started to crawl in the direction of the dock, but the second infected appeared above it. It took one long step out into the air and went into a cartwheel straight down on top of the first infected. The sound of breaking bones must have included a broken neck because the second one didn’t try to crawl. It just laid there snapping its jaws at nothing.
The rest of them rained down from the party deck and formed a big pile at the bottom of the steps. The last four were able to crawl free of the twisting arms and legs and found a way to stand again. After taking a few steps in random directions, they resumed their pitiful pursuit.
Hampton had already loaded their gear and untied both boats. One part of their plan was to start the boats while still tied to the dock, but the alternate plan was to push both of them away from the dock and then drop anchor. The backyard of the house next door was heavily wooded, and they wouldn’t know until it was too late if there were infected dead near the end of the dock where it touched the ground.
Groaning from that direction made the decision for them. Colleen pushed the ski boat free and jumped aboard. She let it coast while she searched for a paddle. As soon as she found it, she gave a few hard strokes on the starboard side to turn the boat toward deeper water and then moved out of Hampton’s way as he did the same with the much larger pontoon boat. Both of them were dropping anchor about ten yards into deep water when the infected stumbled onto the dock. There were far more than they had expected.
With no railings on the sides of the wooden docks, they began falling into the water at random places. Some were still in shallow water, and the bottom was firm, so they stood up and tried to reach the boats again.
“Watch your anchor line, Colleen. They won’t be able to climb it, but they can grab it.”
It was a good thing Hampton warned her. The words had just left his mouth when Colleen’s boat began rocking. One of the infected had grabbed the anchor line first and then managed to get one hand onto a side rail. The rocking was enough to sit Colleen on her rear end in the boat, and that made her mad. She started slapping at the hand on the side rail with the paddle until she realized pain wouldn’t make it let go. She slipped her machete from her belt and neatly brought the blade down on the fingers. The infected fell backward into the water while three fingers fell into the boat. Colleen made a mental note to make sure she was in a stable position while she checked the engine.
Hampton had told her not to try to start the engine immediately. He told her to find the oil dipstick first to see if the oil was clean and full, then to check the fuel. He had explained there might be a manual pump or primer to help get fuel flowing.
He had watched as Colleen first kept herself from falling in the water, and then as she disposed of the problem. He was glad she was as capable as she had proven herself to be. When he saw that she had positioned herself safely before checking the engine, he turned to do the same with his boat. He was surprised to see an infected dead pulling itself onto the back between the engines and come to a full standing position. For some reason it made him as mad as Colleen had been, and he closed the distance between himself and the infected in one long stride. His foot connected with the middle of the chest, and the soaking wet body was launched through the air. Hampton pulled in his anchor and paddled over to Colleen’s boat. Instead of dropping his anchor again, he tied off to her side rail. He wondered if it reassured her as much as it did him.
Now that they were safely away from the dock, they could give all of their attention to starting the engines. It was a good thing they had time to do it, because the infected dead had begun showing up on the far side of the small waterway they had chosen to escape from.
Hampton looked across at the other side and saw over a dozen of the shambling wrecks walking onto the two docks, and it gave him an idea.
“Let’s try something,” he said.
Colleen turned in the direction he was looking and saw they would have been in serious trouble if they had coasted over to those docks.
“After we get the engines started, we’re going to stay in this spot for a few minutes to let the engines start to run smoothly anyway, so let’s stay a couple of minutes longer and see how many of them we can draw into the water. If we have to go ashore for any reason, it would be nice to have as many of them in the water as possible.”
Hampton didn’t know that his acquaintances from Mud Island had done exactly the same thing many times, even next to bridges and docks, but it seemed like a good idea. The water might not kill them, but it sure did help to contain them. He had a random thought about fishing. He had grown up fishing. Now he wasn’t too sure he would ever fish again. Not only was he hesitant about what he might hook, but he wasn’t sure that fish weren’t being contaminated and dangerous to eat.
The noise was beginning to grow. From four docks and all of the spaces in between them, the dead were emerging, and the louder they got, the more that came. It also increased Hampton and Colleen’s sense of urgency to get the motors started.
After a few minutes of what most boaters would have called preventive maintenance, they were both ready to give the engines a try. One engine started up on the first try on the large pontoon boat. The second one and the one on the ski boat were just a little more stubborn, but the pair of survivors were forcing themselves to be patient so they wouldn’t flood the engines. Besides slowing them down, a flooded engine would be a waste of fuel.
Their patience paid off as the first stubborn engine roared to life, closely followed by the second. Colleen let out a cheer when hers started, and Hampton joined in by giving her a high five. If he had asked her what that felt like to her, he would have been surprised to find that it meant the world to her to be treated as an equal. He made her feel like a contributor and not a liability that had to be protected by him. The truth was that Hampton felt like someone had his back all the time now that Colleen was with him.
With three engines running, they couldn’t hear the frenzy of groaning coming from both banks of the inlet. The infected couldn’t run, but they seemed to be capable of showing more excitement when they were closer to a loud noise, and there just happened to be two living people standing by the sources of the loud noise. They began
trying even harder to get to the water, and they were practically shoulder to shoulder.
Colleen looked at the incredible number of infected that had come out of the shadows of the trees and asked, “Would we have even tried this if we had known there were so many?”
“Good question,” answered Hampton. He had to yell over the sound of the engines. “I wonder why there were so many more on this side of the road than the other. We wouldn’t have made it this far if there had been so many on the other side.”
“Could it have something to do with where people went back when it started?” she asked. “If I had lived here then, I would’ve tried to reach the water, too.”
“Not likely,” he said. “First of all, there’s water on both sides, and second there’s the parade up on I-77. That should have drawn them up toward the highway and the battle at the bridge.”
Not that it really mattered to either of them, but the realization came to them both at the same time. They had been right when they thought of it before. The plane hadn’t been out on the lake very long, but its powerful engine must have drawn everything that was dead and capable of walking to go in that direction.
“Remind me to thank your friends for being bait even if it was for just a few minutes,” said Colleen.
Their mutual smiles were interrupted by the rocking of both boats. They had the sick feeling that comes with an up and down motion at the same time as the rocking, and Hampton reached across to grab Colleen just in time. He unceremoniously pulled her across from the ski boat to the pontoon boat.
The curved hull of the ski boat was designed for speed, but the increased speed meant it sacrificed stability, while the pontoon boat was a slow but stable platform. It made them both understand just how dangerous their new world was as they watched the ski boat rock so violently that it leaned too far to one side and flipped over away from the pontoon boat. If Hampton hadn’t seen it coming, there would have been no way Colleen could have survived.
The white underbelly of the ski boat came into full view with the blade of the engine spinning at high speed in the open air. As the boat upended, it dragged several of the infected with it. They were clinging to the centerline of the hull where it had just enough edge for them to hold. The one closest to the engine reached for it to get a better hold, and the result was one less infected hanging on. Its hand didn’t slow the engine, but it did start to sputter and come to a stop. The others were all facing away from the pontoon boat, so they turned to look back at Hampton and Colleen. As soon as they did, they let go of the boat and slid back into the water.
The water was becoming thick with bodies, and it was time to push through to open water. Hampton was also afraid they would foul their outboard engines on the infected if there were too many. Judging by the color of the water as the pontoon began creating a small wake, they were making their fair share of contact with bodies. There were also bits and pieces of the infected that made Hampton decide once and for all that fishing was not going to be the sport it used to be. At least it wouldn’t be for him.
Progress was slow at first, but they suddenly burst through to open water and began to move more quickly. Hampton looked behind him and saw that Colleen had once again shown quick thinking. She held up one end of the anchor line as if it was a prize and gave him a big, white smile. He wouldn’t blame her if she teased him about it later. Driving away with the anchor in the water was like trolling with a really heavy hook, and it undoubtedly had a few of the infected clinging to it.
They passed between two docks that were straight across from each other, and it was the narrowest point they would have to navigate. The infected were falling off of both docks in numbers too large to count, and Hampton was worried again. They didn’t have much choice, though, and they could only hope their trip wasn’t already over.
The pontoon glided toward the narrow gap, and the docks were both close enough for water to splash on them as the infected dead unsuccessfully tried to bridge the gap between them and their prey. More than once Hampton and Colleen both felt thankful that the infected couldn’t jump or apparently judge distance. If they could, the pontoon boat would have been crawling with them.
The two passengers stayed toward the middle of the pontoon boat and anxiously looked to their left and right to see if any hands grabbed one of the side rails. From time to time there was a slapping sound as a hand would hit the shiny metal of the rail, but none were able to get a grip.
As they cleared the dangerous area between the two docks, Hampton moved to the back to take a quick look and saw what had saved them. The area may have been narrow, but it had been much deeper than expected. He could see the shallows over on the port side and guessed the inlet had been purposely given a deep channel to follow. He took the wheel and steered the pontoon boat slightly to starboard where the water was a darker green color.
As they passed the last two docks on their right before reaching open water, Hampton saw the channel make a left turn, so he followed it out into the lake. The pontoon had plenty of room to maneuver, and they found themselves in something like a bay where two similar inlets converged. Hampton spotted three long docks that were much further from shore than the small docks they had used for their escape.
Each dock would require the infected dead to walk along boardwalks that were at least one hundred feet long, so that would give them the time they needed. All three docks had at least three boats docked next to them, so there were nine chances to find what he was looking for.
“Where are we going?” asked Colleen.
“Those docks over there.” He pointed in the general direction, and Colleen saw they were all uninhabited at the moment. The infected dead had been drawn away from those docks by all of their noise before leaving the inlet.
“When you had to abandon ship, we lost some of our supplies. At least one of those nine boats is bound to have a bug-out bag in it that didn’t get used. Maybe people got their boats loaded but didn’t have the time to use them.”
“Don’t you mean when you pulled my butt out of there before the boat flipped over?” she asked.
“You would have jumped in time, but you would have tried to do it with the supplies. I didn’t want to wind up with more supplies but lose you in the process.”
Colleen grinned. She knew he had saved her, and if he had yelled to jump instead of grabbing her, she had to admit, she would have tried to grab the supplies first. She also had to admit, she was grinning, smiling, and actually laughing out loud more in the last few days than she had in a long time.
Hampton coasted up to the first dock, and Colleen was quick to jump over the rail. She loosely circled a mooring line around a cleat on the dock and jumped into the first boat. As Hampton had expected, there were supplies. He idled the engine and jumped onto the dock to receive everything she handed over to him. Now that they weren’t going to be running on foot, they needed everything they could carry because they weren’t going to be able to rely on fish as a food source. Maybe when they knew if fish could be contaminated by the infection they could begin living off of it, but Hampton wasn’t going to be the first person to try it.
The first boat yielded two precious commodities. Not only were there extra cases of bottled water, it had extra fuel containers. Four red plastic containers with five gallons of fuel each were going to help them stay on the water much longer than they could have hoped.
They loaded their pontoon boat with everything they could find that was useful then moved to the second boat.
“Want to consider taking a second boat?” asked Colleen.
“No, after what I saw those things do to a curved hull boat, I think we should abandon that idea. We could take a second pontoon boat, but this one seems like it’s in good shape. I think we can trust our luck with it.”
Colleen was already into the third boat when Hampton saw the infected dead begin filing out onto the long walkway that let to their dock. It would take several minutes for any to reach them, but he decid
ed to help their own cause.
Once again he employed a tactic that was familiar to anyone who had survived to kill their share of the infected dead. He pulled his scoped rifle from its leather case and carefully sighted on the forehead of the infected dead that was leading the others down the center of the walkway. He watched as the bullet knocked the body of the one in front backward hard enough to take down the next three behind it.
“Nice shot,” said Colleen. She had stopped to watch, and was amazed at the logjam the shot had caused. Those that didn’t fall down couldn’t climb over the pile without rolling off into the water on either side. Those that were still coming up from behind were pushing against the logjam and causing it to get bigger. There was little doubt that they would still be trying to get past that same spot by the time Hampton and Colleen were ready to leave.
Hampton smiled at Colleen in time to see her get surprised by an infected dead that had somehow managed to stay stranded within the confines of the third boat since the beginning of the infection. It was so emaciated, that it had most likely been just decaying in that boat the entire time. Hampton was still trying to bring the rifle around and take aim when he saw Colleen fall over on her back.
When the infected dropped forward to claim its victim, Hampton saw her feet connect with the chest of the infected and shoot outward like a piston. The withered body of the infected flew through the air like a rag doll and disappeared into the water.
Her strawberry blonde hair appeared first, then her freckled face. When she sat up a little higher, he couldn’t believe she was smiling again.
“Are you okay?” he called.
“If you mean did it bite me, no it didn’t. I’m fine. Just make note somewhere that those stupid things can pop up almost anywhere. I’m just glad I did leg presses at the gym when I worked out.”
