Alive! Not Dead!

by R. M. Smith

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a disaster shelter around here too.”

  “Yeah, but where? There’s not a lot of places in this part of the state where thousands of people could go.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re all in their houses. I’m just glad we’re safe.”

  “Are you scared?” she asked me.

  “I’m more confused than anything else. Why? Are you?”

  “I just don’t like thinking that deads could be hiding around the corner.”

  “Yeah me either.”

  We were quiet. Deads she keeps calling them. Name fits I guess. They’re dead after all…

  I was almost asleep.

  I’ll call them that too, I thought as I drifted off to sleep.

  “You got a girlfriend?” she asked waking me up.

  “No,” I said quietly.

  “You know, I saw you looking at me,” she said.

  “I know you know,” I said, smiling, my eyes still closed.

  “Can I lay with you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She came over and lay down next to me. She put her head on my chest. I put my arm around her.

  “My head still hurts,” she said quietly.

  “It’ll be better in the morning…oh wait, shit. Here.” I reached into my front right pants pocket. The aspirin was still there. “This might help with the pain.”

  Her bottle of water was still half-full. She downed three aspirin.

  “Thanks” she said as she laid her head back on my chest.

  After that we were very quiet.

  Soon enough we were asleep.

  Back on the highway the next morning, Tara wanted to drive. As she drove, I looked over the roadmap that I had picked up at the gas station. I studied our position: it was about 196 miles to Spokane. We still didn’t know exactly why we were heading there other than the army base that we knew about.

  The roads were pretty clear so far that morning. It seemed to make everything better.

  The destruction around us didn’t seem to be as severe. Things looked more normal the further away we got from Seattle. Maybe the destruction only surrounds Seattle, I thought.

  Hours later, as we drove down into the Yakima River valley, we saw that both sides of the highway had collapsed and were partially underwater. My idea that the destruction was going away fell apart. I climbed up on some rocks to get a better vantage point as I looked down the road. The Yakima River ran right alongside the highway. As far as I could see, the road was destroyed. Large rippled cracks split off into several different directions. Between the bent over forest, the road curved into the distance. We would need to backtrack.

  Back in the van, the roadmap showed that the only way around this would be to take a side highway. That meant we would have to backtrack all the way to Cle Elum.

  “All the way back?” Tara asked.

  “Yeah. We wasted a good half day getting here. If we walk, there’s no telling what might be down the road. We might not be able to get through even on foot.”

  “I really don’t want to drive all the way back, Dan.”

  “Yeah me either…”

  I looked at the road map. I said “Well, it’s about 5 miles to Ellensburg. Hopefully Ellensburg’s not destroyed, too. You think we can hike that far?”

  “I think we can – if the deads let us.”

  “Let’s not worry about them for now,” I said with a chuckle. “We haven’t seen any for a while…let’s hope it stays that way. Let’s each carry a small bag. You carry the food. I’ll carry the weapons.”

  “K.”

  We set off from the van.

  At first, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. There weren’t any deads around, thankfully.

  For the first few miles, the hardest part was hopping from highway slab to highway slab and then back onto dirt or mud. Most of the road was built above water. Pieces had fallen down or had cracked sideways so that the road angled down into the rushing water. As we walked and hopped, the river raged next to us. The sound was very loud. It covered up our grunts as we jumped across gaps in the cool mountain air. The scent of fir trees and fresh sap was very strong.

  When we were about halfway to Ellensburg, Tara grabbed me by the back of the shirt to get my attention. I looked. The valley next to the road had dropped into a deep rippled crevasse. We really couldn’t tell how deep it actually was from our position.

  We stood side by side for a minute, looking at the complete destruction. Trees had fallen into the crevasse like tossed toothpicks. The whole split stretched as far as the eye could see, but was only maybe half a mile wide. It was as if the earth had literally split in two.

  A little further along, the road damage got worse. To one side, on the left, the river was running below the road’s cock-eyed surface. To the right there was a twisted guard rail. Beyond that was the crevasse. I peered over the edge as we approached. I found it hard to believe that the river hadn’t poured over the edge yet; especially after the huge jolts that must have rocked this region during the pole shift.

  Tara screamed.

  She had slipped on some grit on the highway and lost her balance toward the edge of the crevasse. It was only a slight yelp of a scream, not a full-fledged scream.

  She looked at me, a crooked embarrassed smile on her face as she regained her footing. Then she really slipped.

  The slab that she had been standing on tilted down. Her arms pin wheeled for balance. Her footing gave way. She was sliding off the side of the slab. She was grabbing air, missing, sliding down the slab.

  I reached for her but missed.

  At the last second, she reached for a jut of a piece of guard rail. She missed. It cut her arm.

  “Dan!! Oh god Dan help me!” she screamed.

  She was dangling over the edge.

  I looked for a way to reach her, but couldn’t see a way. If I slid down the tilted slab with her, I would probably fall off myself.

  “I’m slipping Dan!!” she screamed.

  Quickly looking where she had fallen, I noticed that there was a muddy ledge below where I could stand to easily reach her. I dropped both the tire iron and crescent wrench onto the cracked cement and jumped down into the mud below the bridge. Dodging some low hanging sections of cement, I quickly worked my way over to her. She was hanging onto a jutted rusty piece of pipe right above me. Her belly and legs were in my face. Her loose fitting jeans had slipped down. I could see the top of her pubic hair. Her belly button was pierced. If she were to drop now, she would fall down onto another tilted slab. This other slab was tilted too much to even walk on. If she fell, she would land on it, slip off and fall down into the crevasse.

  I told her to swing forward if she could. If she could do that, I would be able to grab her and catch her.

  “I can’t, I’m scared.”

  “Just do it. Come on!”

  She started to swing her legs from the front to the back but she wasn’t moving very much. Her pants slid down to her ankles. Her crotch was right in my face. I saw that her vagina was pierced with a small pearl. I shouted to her “Ok never mind, just let go when I tell you to!”

  I positioned myself, bracing myself for her to drop into my arms.

  “Ok let go” I shouted.

  She dropped.

  I caught her, but lost my balance.

  We both slipped forward onto the worst of the two tilted slabs.

  She landed on her belly. Her shirt slipped up when she landed on the tilted slab. Now the bare skin on her stomach was rubbing on the cement. Just her belly and upper torso were on the slab. Her feet and legs were over the edge of the crevasse. She was trying to get a foothold for a grip, but with her pants now down around her ankles, she was not able to move her feet very well.

  I was on my knees, holding onto both of her hands. I was holding all of her weight. I was using the tilted slab that she was laying on as leverage. My chest was pressed against it as she squirmed, dan
gling over the side. My feet were slipping in the mud.

  “Pull me up, Dan. Hurry! I’m slipping…”

  I tried, but it was an awkward position. I had to use all the muscles in my back to pull her up but she was stuck on something! She wasn’t budging! I was afraid that if I pushed too hard with my chest to get leverage, I might push the slab out further.

  I had a good grip on both of her hands. The arm that she had cut was a little slippery with blood, but not bad.

  “I got ya, Tara. Don’t worry. Just let me get a better grip here.”

  I tried to stand up. I got into a low bending position when a dead gargled right behind me.

  “Oh fuck.”

  The tire iron and crescent wrench were up above.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I couldn’t see the dead, but I could feel it behind me. It felt like it was breathing down my neck, sniffing me, getting ready for a nice big juicy bite.

  I pulled Tara up, but she was still stuck there. I couldn’t get her up.

  “Dan get me up!”

  “I can’t! You’re stuck!”

  There was nothing for her to hold onto if I let her go. Our hands were linked above the tilted slab. If I were to let go, she would be gone, down into the deep crevasse.

  The dead was there, behind me, ready to pounce.

  I had no choice. I needed to fight this dead off or we were both going to die.

  I let go of Tara’s right hand. She screamed. All of her weight went onto her left slippery hand. I turned around, still bent at the knee to see the dead only inches away from me. It had no skin around its mouth. The skin looked to have been ripped from its face by something. Bare teeth and bloody gums chopped at me. I swung out with my right hand and foot and was lucky enough to catch the dead off balance. I must have gotten in a good hit because it went easily down onto its butt.

  This gave me a second to turn around and grab Tara’s left arm again. This time with both hands! When her weight shifted, it loosened whatever she had been stuck on, so I was able to pull her up just a little bit.

  Then the whole tilted slab let go.

  It tilted up a bit more away from me. Its weight was too much.

  “Dan! No!”

  “Hold on!” I screamed.

  I couldn’t hold her. There was too much pressure. There was no way I could hold onto her, no matter what I did…the slab was just too heavy…

  The slab slid away.

  Her hands were ripped from my grip.

  I watched helplessly as she went down with the slab. A few seconds later I heard loud crashing down below.

  The dead was still next to me, almost back up on its feet.

  With my adrenaline rush, I reached for the dead, grabbed it by the front of its shirt, and like an idiot, threw the fucking thing over the edge.

  “Fuck! Why did I do that?” I hollered realizing what I had just done. I had just thrown a zombie down where Tara was. “Tara!” I yelled “You ok?”

  All I could hear was the rushing sound of the river. I quickly looked around for a way down. I couldn’t see anything but destruction surrounding me.

  I needed to see if Tara was ok.

  I made my way along some jaggy edges to get down to the bottom of the crevasse.

  It took a long time to get down to her.

  When I got there, all of my hopes were drained. The dead that I had thrown off in my fit of rage had found Tara. It had eaten her.

  There were other bigger pieces of slab that had crashed down into the crevasse as well as several other destroyed vehicles.

  Tara landed on a boulder and I was hopeful that the impact had killed her.

  I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I would never hope that someone would die, but in this case I did hope that her death was instant because her back was obviously broken. It would have been horrible for her to be lying there paralyzed with a broken back watching a dead come walking toward her.

  There would have been nothing she could have done but lie there and get eaten.

  The boulder was covered in blood all around her. Some of the blood had run down the boulder in spots in rivulets. She laid there, her legs spread, her pants still down to her ankles. The zombie had eaten her from just below her chin all the way down to her crotch. Her body had been ripped open. Her vertebrae was broken in half. Part of it stuck up out of her body. Her belly button piercing was gone. It looked like she had been crushed by the cement slab because it was still lying partly on her. I tried to push it off but it was too heavy.

  I noticed that her belt had been ripped off. It was partly under her and partly under the slab.

  I wondered if her belt was what she had been stuck on. No wonder I couldn’t hold her any more.

  I stood staring at her for a long time.

  Maybe she would be alive now if I hadn’t thrown the fucking dead down here, I thought.

  The crevasse around me was groaning, seeming to grow wider as I stood there. Earth and stone was crumbling down the jagged walls.

  “Goodbye Tara,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  I started climbing out of the slowly splitting earth.

  AFLOAT

  Night was falling by the time I made it back up to the destroyed highway. I was hungry and beat from the climb.

  When Tara initially slipped on the slab, she dropped the small bag of food she had been carrying. I found it near the spot where the accident took place; as well as the tire iron and crescent wrench. I popped open the can of fruit, took a couple swallows, then threw the can on the ground because I really didn’t have much of an appetite.

  I was still kicking myself for throwing the dead down on top of Tara.

  Fucking deads! God-damn zombies – whatever the fuck they are!

  I was such an idiot for doing that! I should have known better!

  I made my way toward Ellensburg. The crevasse with its surrounding destruction jaunted away from Ellensburg to the southeast. I stayed in a motel. It was mostly destroyed but I really didn’t care. I was beat.

  The next morning I continued toward Spokane. With the mountains behind me and nothing but rolling flatlands ahead, I figured the road might be passable enough. I got into a 4x4 Chevy pickup with a full tank of gas at a minimart. Inside the store I found some pickings left behind by passing looters as well as another road map.

  The roads were passable. I actually got the truck above 50 mph for a short bit until I came across the Vantage Bridge which crossed the Columbia River.

  The bridge was gone – washed away.

  Looking at the roadmap, the only other bridges crossing the river were around 20 miles away in both directions. I didn’t feel like backtracking to Ellensburg to catch a different highway just to find another bridge down.

  I was at a loss what to do.

  Since losing Tara, I was honestly on the verge of giving up. So many people were dead. The world was crumbling. Deads could be snarling, waiting around the next corner. My energy to keep trying to survive had nearly dried up.

  There was a small boating marina on this side of the bridge. I parked in front of a gas station attached to the marina.

  I thought about taking a boat to the other side of the river. As I drove to the marina, I saw a lot of capsized fishing boats as well as some boats that had been beached. There were some small yachts that had been destroyed, too, or were now submerged near the shore.

  There was a long rickety dock by the marina. At the end I saw a couple smaller boats that were still floating. From shore they didn’t look like they were damaged at all.

  I debated going out there or not.

  I had my truck. I could always turn around, go back a different way. I didn’t really need to go to Spokane. I was sure there were other military bases around. One could have been to the south, for all I knew. I didn’t know what the big draw was to go to Spokane.

  I could always go to Los Angeles or maybe even further down to San Diego or even Mexico – hell even to Salt Lake!

&n
bsp; Against my better judgment, I grabbed the tire iron and walked out to the end of the creaky dock, looking at the two boats. They were both small yachts. I had no idea how to even run one.

  Hopping onto one, I untied it from the dock. Somehow I needed to figure out where the anchor was and how to even get this damn thing started.

  I didn’t know what to do. I mean, yeah, I’d been on a yacht before, but I never ran one. Some buddies and I used to go deep sea fishing – but the yacht we took back then was always running and I never even asked the guys how it all worked. Usually we were too busy getting drunk to worry about any of that shit.

  The ship was 40 feet long. It had an open deck on the front end and one on the rear. The center of the ship had a locked door surrounded by windows with drawn curtains. This was where the main cabin would be with a ladder or steps leading down to an engine room or a kitchen; maybe a bedroom or a bar - depending on the kind of yacht this was.

  I broke the door open with my tire iron. Inside it was dark. Enough sunlight came through some of the windows. I pulled back the curtains to let more light in. This was a real nice yacht.

  I explored it. I found the main steering column but there was no key. I looked around for one, but couldn’t find any.

  Does this even need a key?

  Another door led into a dark place. I no longer had the cell phone that I had used days before to light up the dark. When the battery went dead, I just left it behind.

  I figured, by now, all cell phones would have dead batteries.

  The steering of the ship was an electronic joystick. I stood staring at it for a long time. I laughed beside myself; I had no idea how to even drive a yacht.

  “Ok how do you start?” I asked it.

  I poked around for a while, even looked in some cupboards for a manual, but there were no directions.

  I would have to wing it.

  I went back to the joystick controls. I fiddled with some buttons, but nothing was doing anything. Maybe the batteries are dead in this too, I thought; which could have been true. I never thought of that.

  Out of the corner of my eye, back on shore, I saw movement.

  There was a group of deads out by my truck, wandering around it.