by R. M. Smith
This made me hurry a little bit. I started pressing more and more buttons on the helm around the drive stick. Nothing was working.
I found another console after going up another wooden ladder. This one had a digital dash, too, and a steering wheel. This has to be it! But how to start the damn thing?
Now I was starting to get frustrated. The ship wasn’t starting and a bunch of deads were slobbering all over my truck. I needed to get this thing going or pretty soon the deads were going to be slobbering over me!
I started pressing all the buttons, turning all the knobs I could find.
“God dammit start!” I shouted at it.
I noticed that part of the dash had a keyhole. I wedged the sharp end of the tire iron under an edge of the dash and lifted. Wood creaked and splintered as I pried the dash open. Inside there was a whole electronic compartment with toggle switches and buttons. I started pressing them and an electric whirring started. Then all of a sudden the whole dash board lit up, showing fuel consumption levels, rudder angle indication, a fish finder system, and a bunch of other displays I didn’t quite understand.
I sat behind the steering wheel of the helm. I flipped a few more toggle switches on a console to my right.
The engines roared to life behind me.
“Yes!” I said, smiling, “where’s the gas pedal?”
There were two yellow handles next to me on my right.
“Well there’s one way to find out,” I said as I pushed them forward.
The ship moved forward a bit, but then a red light showed on the dash.
Anchor, it read.
The deads had taken notice of the noise at the end of the dock and were now shambling toward the yacht.
“Oh Jesus,” I whispered. “Where’s the anchor thingy…”
I stared at the toggle switches…which one said anchor?
The deads were now almost at the yacht.
“Come on!”
There it was! I toggled it up. The red anchor light went off. I pushed the two handles forward and the yacht moved forward. “YES!” I pushed the handles further and I went speeding away from the dock.
When I was far enough away from the dock, I let off the handles. The ship glided to a stop. I looked out the windows toward the deads. They were all standing there, flailing their hands at me. One of them got pushed into the water. It sank. It didn’t bob in the water or even swim. It simply went under.
I watched for a while to see if it would surface, but it didn’t. I went around the yacht looking for any ladders that were hanging off the ship into the water. I found two of them. I pulled them back onto the deck.
Deads didn’t know how to swim; actually they didn’t know how to do anything except forage for human flesh.
I had the upper hand here. I was on a ship in the middle of a river. Deads couldn’t get to me. If I needed supplies, all I’d need to do is run along a dock in some town along the shore and run into town for what I needed.
It really seemed like a safe idea.
I heard voices.
I cocked my head to the side, listening. I was at the top helm of the ship with the steering wheel. The voices were coming from below, somewhere behind me.
Grabbing my tire iron off the splintered dash, I quietly snuck down the ladder. There were lights on down here now since I had powered up the ship.
The voices were ahead of me, around a corner.
As I got closer, the voices stopped. I gripped the tire iron tighter.
Someone had left a TV on in the master stateroom. The voices were from Ben Stiller as he begged to get out of jail in the old movie “There’s something about Mary.”
I sighed deeply. “Phew that was close.”
I searched through the whole ship. Lights were on all over the ship as well as a radio. I dialed through the whole thing, but nothing came back. The radio signal was gone.
I also found a shower.
It had running water. I gave the water heater some time to heat up. It would be nice to have a hot shower!
I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken a shower…probably the night before the plane crash?
The whole ship was stocked with food, drinks, and comforts. I could have easily made a home in it. Since deads didn’t know how to swim, I was safe.
I taught myself how to maneuver the yacht. The ship was well equipped with the latest state of the art electronics. It even had a cruise control as well as a RayStar GPS. There was also a satellite TV that didn’t pick up television stations, and a whole library of DVDs as well as music.
The bar was well stocked, the ice maker worked, and there was a nice room below decks that had a U-shaped couch. I spent many hours there watching DVDs while getting drunk.
But over time I began to wonder if there was more life out there. I began to really miss Tara and the friendship that had blossomed between us. I imagined spending time with her on the yacht, watching movies with her. I imagined that over time we might have even got more friendly, maybe even become lovers.
But she was gone.
I tried to drink her memory away, but she kept coming back. Thoughts of her hanging in front of me, her crotch in my face –begging me to save her, help her. Her voice echoed in the empty bottoms of the bottles of liquor I drank. Once the bottles were empty, I would throw them overboard; but her voice would always be waiting for me in the next bottle I opened.
“Dan save me! Help me! I’m falling!”
Throwing the dead over the cliff… It probably landed right on top of her!
Fuck!
Up at steering, there was a VHF radio system I always kept on. It was on one of my many drunken nights when I was sitting up there looking at Tara in my half-empty glass, I pressed the send switch on the radio and asked in my drunken voice: “Any mother fuckers out there alive?”
Someone said back: “Yeah it’s safe here at Larson Air Force base in Moses Lake. Where are you?”
I beached the yacht.
I got back on the road on the east side of the collapsed bridge in Vantage. There were not a lot of cars here. Not a lot of deads, either. I figured with the bridge down, it halted all traffic, including the undead type.
I walked for a long time. There were no towns. No gas stations. It was a long flat dry stretch here as the road went northward out of Vantage. A blue reflector sign told me a rest area was coming up. I hoped that I might at least find a better type of transportation than my own two feet there.
Sadly, there was only one vehicle. It had 3 flat tires. It looked like it had been parked there for a very long time in the last stall in the parking lot. It probably had been there before the pole shift.
I had to keep walking.
It was 11 miles from the yacht to the small town of George. On the road, I saw 10 cars total. All of them had been abandoned on the side of the road. The passengers were long gone. Who knew what had happened to them. Why would they leave their transportation behind? Why not stay in the car until they found somewhere safer? What had caused them to leave their cars? As I passed each car, I looked in them for anything I could use, but I didn’t see anything useful.
My mind kept turning back to Tara. I missed her terribly. I would have done anything to have her back or be able to talk to anyone now. I was so lonely.
As I walked into town, a sign told me that the city of George was where the Grant County Sheriff’s Office was. By now my feet were so tired. Reading the sign put a little more speed into my step.
There would be guns. Ammo. More protection than the tire iron I carried.
It turned out to be a false hope. The Sheriff’s office – as well as the entire town of George –had burned to the ground. It looked like a raging grass fire had simply consumed the town. The grass under my feet was blackened.
Luckily there were no deads. All of the people who had lived in the town were now gone or lying dead on the ground, burned.
Where are all of the people? Would a small town like this have a disaster she
lter?
I began to second-guess myself. I wondered why I left the comfort of the yacht. Why did I leave its safety? The conversation I had with the people at the military base had not been very clear. They said they were safe, they said they had shelter, they said they had food, weapons; and they told me exactly where they were.
It wasn’t the base that Tara and I had planned to go to originally. This one was closer. I wouldn’t have to go all the way to Spokane.
Maybe all of the people were at the military base! It would make sense. It would be safe for them there. There would be food. There would be weapons.
Yeah but on the yacht, I didn’t need any weapons. I was safe! Deads couldn’t swim. I didn’t need to share the food - I had a hot shower! And now here I was, walking on this deserted highway with no shelter, no food, no shower, and no nothing. I was in the open, a target for any hungry dead that might be just around the next bend in the highway.
Eleven miles back to the yacht. Thirty or more miles to the military base.
“Ok,” I said to the burned out town around me. “I’ll go to the next overpass. If there’s nothing worth looking at past it, I’m going back to the yacht.”
I didn’t get far. Next to the highway a wooden bridge over an irrigation ditch had burned. I could have easily continued down the highway, but my heart wasn’t in it. I kept on thinking of the yacht and the soft bed and the warm shower and the safety of it.
“Fuck it” I said. I turned back to the yacht.
THE ROAD TO RICHLAND
Three miles later on my trek back to the yacht, I heard an approaching engine. I turned to see a jeep coming my way. There was a guy with a NYC baseball cap driving and a girl in a bikini top in the passenger seat. There was another girl in the back seat wearing jeans and a yellow top. They all looked to be in their mid to late twenties.
“Yo!” the guy yelled at me. “You aren’t a zombie!”
I raised my hand to them as they drove up beside me. “Nope,” I smiled. “I’m just a regular guy out on a walk.”
They all laughed a little at that. The guy stepped out of the jeep, stretching out his hand. “I’m Mike Markowski, but you can call me Ski if ya want. These two ladies are Cindy and Mindy Thompson. They’re sisters, not twins. Cindy is my girlfriend.”
“Nice to meet you guys,” I said noticing how strikingly attractive Mindy was. “I’m Dan Kinglsey…are you guys from the military base?
Ski looked confused. “No? We’re from Spokane. We were gonna try to make it to Seattle.”
“Seattle is trashed,” I said, “mostly flooded. I’ve been traveling east away from there. A lot of the highway is destroyed as well.”
“Shit,” Ski muttered. “I was from there. I was gonna see if my folks were ok.”
“Yeah our parents were from there, too,” Cindy added. Mindy nodded.
“Sorry guys, but Seattle is pretty much gone.”
They all looked at each other, saddened.
I asked, “How is Spokane?”
“Pretty well fucked, too,” Ski said. “Well girls, I guess Seattle is pretty much out of the question.”
“We don’t know that,” Cindy said. She had long dark hair, not at all like her sister’s blonde hair. I wondered if maybe Cindy dyed hers.
“That’s what this gentleman just told us, hon,” Ski said.
“No offense,” she said, addressing me, “but we just met him. How do we know he’s not just making it up? He could be lying.”
“You can check if you want,” I said, smiling. “And no offense taken. Feel free the check for yourselves.”
“Is the road pretty bad all the way to Seattle?” Ski asked.
“Not all the way. There are some spots where you can drive without any troubles, but some places it’s all washed out so you’ll have to change vehicles because there’s no way you’ll be able to get through, not even in a jeep.”
“Dunno,” Ski laughed, “Roper’s pretty tough” he said as he thumped his open palm down on the hood of his Roper Jeep.
I smiled. “I bet it is. But, I don’t think it’ll be able to get across the river at Vantage.”
“Son of a bitch, that’s right! Bridge is down, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck.” He thought about it for a minute. “How did you get across?”
“A yacht.”
“No shit?” He scratched his chin. “Yours?”
I laughed. “No. But I needed to get across so…”
“What are you looking for over on this side?” Cindy asked.
“Just trying to survive. West of the river is not very nice.”
“Neither is east of it,” Ski added.
I asked “You seen many deads?”
“Deads?” Ski asked. “Oh, you mean zombies?”
“Yeah.”
“For a while there were a lot of them,” Ski said, getting back into the jeep. “Now, it seems like they’ve all vanished. Dunno where they could’ve gone.”
Military base, I thought.
“Hey, why don’t you sit in back with Mindy?” he said. “Might be more comfortable for ya.”
“Thanks I appreciate it,” I said as I got in. Mindy gave me a polite smile.
Mike “Ski” Markowski, his girlfriend Cindy Thompson, and her sister Mindy were sitting at the top of some weathered hard-wood bleachers watching Ski’s nephew, Sam play pee-wee softball.
It was the bottom of the fourth inning. Sam’s team was in the outfield. They were losing 12-6.
“Guys, I gotta go the bathroom,” Mindy said as she stood, brushing dirt off her jeans. She was 23, blonde and beautiful. When she stood, several men sitting around her on the bleachers turned to look at her. They moved to give her a path.
Ski and Cindy didn’t pay attention. They were more attuned to the game at hand. This was the fourth game of the pee-wee season. Sam’s team had done very well, winning three out of four games.
Sam waved at them as he stood in the outfield. He was seven.
He loved pee-wee softball. He loved his uncle Ski, too. He thought the world of him. Ski would hang out with him at his games – plus he was his PhysEd teacher in grade school; and Cindy was really neat, too! She was Miss Thompson! She was another one of his teachers at school! She was always nice to him. It was so neat to have them here watching him play! He was nervous around Mindy, Miss Thompson’s sister though. She was so pretty! He got so shy around her! He couldn’t even talk – and uncle Ski would give him so much trouble about it! Ski called Mindy Sam’s girlfriend. Mindy would smile. She said ‘of course’ she was.
It was a cool late afternoon in Spokane, Washington.
“Hey batter, hey batter, hey batter,” the outfield players began to chant as one of the opposing team stepped up to the plate.
The ball was pitched.
The batter swung, and missed.
As the umpire yelled “Strike one!” the horizon of the earth rose. People were thrown off balance. Cars crashed out on the passing street. Trees bent, some snapped in two. The fence behind the umpire crashed down onto him.
As this was going on, the earth shifted, hard, like a yank. The ground split. There were loud cracks as building foundations were lost. Water mains broke. Electrical wires snapped. Glass shattered.
A large crack formed in the playing field of the softball game. Large chunks of the earth titled into the crack. Fire bellowed from the cracks. Thick smoke rose. Players on the team fell into the crack.
Ski watched in horror as his nephew disappeared down into the smoke.
“No!” he and Cindy yelled.
The crack grew larger. It started splitting toward the bleachers. Cindy was awestruck. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Ski grabbed her hand. “We gotta get out of here!”
He jumped off the back of the bleachers as they started teetering down into the crack. Luckily, Cindy didn’t go down with them.
They ran over to his jeep. His hands shaking, he started it up.
�
�Wait! Where’s Mindy?” Cindy cried.
“Oh, Jesus, she’s in the john,” Ski said.
“We got to get her!”
He threw the jeep into gear and tore through the lawn. There were port-a-potties behind the bleachers. The bleachers were now gone down into the cracks.
A telephone pole had broken and was now lying against one of the port-a-potties. Sparks were flying. Ski drove his jeep right to the edge of the cracking earth. His eyes wild, he watched as it crumbled away next to the tires of the jeep.
“MINDY! GET OUT HERE NOW!” He screamed.
The port-a-potty door was shoved open. Mindy jumped into the back of the jeep.
Ski sped away from the field.
Destruction was all around them.
“What’s happening?” Mindy cried.
“I don’t know,” Ski yelled as he swerved around a fallen tree. “But we need to get somewhere safe!”
“The gym!” Cindy screamed “The gym at school! Go there!”
Ski made a hard left, passing a fire hydrant as it blew into the air. The school wasn’t that far. The sky had turned a dark red. Smoke was rising everywhere. There were loud booms, low rumbles, and screams as the jeep’s tires screeched around corners. Was it the end of the world?
The earth was still shaking as they made it to the school. Ski drove right up to the front door. He led the girls through the shaking hallways to the gym. There were other people huddled inside as dust sifted down from the ceiling.
It stopped.
It was quiet.
No one said a word. They all looked around, expecting the worst.
Twenty minutes later, one of the men in the gym - Ski’s assistant coach and friend Kent Lonng - went for help. No one’s cell phone worked. He was going to go outside to see if he could flag down some help.
Thirty minutes passed. Kent didn’t return.
“I’m gonna go check on him,” Ski said.
“No, Ski, no! Wait here!” Cindy cried.
“I’ll be fine. Won’t be a sec.”
He walked out into the hallway. As he looked toward the exit, he saw several people walking around outside the doors. It looked like someone was hurt because some other people were leaning down trying to help them.
