by James Cook
Both of them went back inside, leaving me sputtering in the yard. A few seconds later, Sophia emerged with an M-4 and three spare magazines riding her hip on a web belt. Between her slender figure, vintage Pink Floyd t-shirt, white shorts that barely touched her upper thighs, and combat boots, the rifle and tactical gear looked garishly out of place. She noticed my appraisal and frowned.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I just grew a dick out of my forehead.”
I looked away. “Sorry.”
She marched down from the porch and stopped in front of me. “Where should we start?”
“Dale’s ladder isn’t long enough. There’s a house down the street that has one the right size, but we need two.”
“So let’s get that one first, then look around for another one.”
“Thanks. I never would have figured that out on my own.”
“Fuck you.”
“When did you become so foul-mouthed?”
“Hey, you’re the one who just cussed out his own stepmother.”
A flush crept from my neck to my hairline. “You haven’t had the day I have.”
Sophia stepped closer, her expression growing serious. “Bob and Maureen, are they really …”
“Yeah. They’re gone.”
She studied the ground between her feet. “Was it bad?”
“Bad ain’t the word, Sophia. Come on, we’re wasting time.”
Lance’s old Chevy pickup roared to life next door as we walked down the street. Sophia had to break into a light jog to keep up with my longer stride. “Hey, what about the guy that lives down the street from the Kennedys? Phil what’s-his-name.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Shit. I forgot all about him.”
“Did you see him at all?”
“No.”
“Should we go check on him?”
I thought about the swarm of ghouls skirting the edges of the lake on their way toward the cabin. “No, there’s no time. He’s on his own for now.”
“We can’t just leave him there, not with those things around.”
Her chestnut eyes met mine as I squared off with her. “You want to go after him? Be my guest. But I suggest you take more ammo with you. You’re gonna need it.”
The gaze burned a few degrees hotter, but I didn’t look away. Finally, she let out a sigh. “Fine. I guess you’re right. I just feel bad, is all.”
I didn’t bother with an answer. It seemed obvious to me what our priorities should be, and risking my neck any more than I already had was not at the top of the list. A few weeks ago, I might have thought differently. I might have insisted we take the Jeep and bring Phil to the cabin, even if I had to drag him kicking and screaming. But the more I accepted I was living at the end of the world, the more any sense of moral duty seemed silly. This was not some Hollywood movie—there would be no shot-in-the-arm plot twist, no last minute rescue, no helicopters and sirens and flashing lights at the end, no god in the machine. Bob and Maureen had started this day like any other, never expecting it would end for them the way it did. But death had come calling, and if I wasn’t careful, it could come for me just as easily.
“We need that ladder.” I said, and continued down the street.
It was blue, the fiberglass kind used by electricians, extendable to twenty feet. Sophia helped me carry it the short distance back to the cabin. “One down,” she said. “Where do you want to start looking for the next one?”
I looked back the way we came. A bug flew in front of my face, buzzing furiously. “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said, shooing the bug away. “Let’s split up, we can cover more ground that way.”
“Works for me. I’ll search this side of the street.”
“Fine. Yell if you find one. If I don’t answer, fire a shot in the air.”
The sound of hammering reached my ears on the fourth house I checked. After having no luck finding a ladder there, I returned to the street and looked back toward the cabin. Lance was nailing a piece of plywood over one of the downstairs windows.
I looked to the other side of the lake to see how much time we had. The swarm was about halfway across and closing steadily. Looking away, my eyes drifted to the cabin cruiser floating about a hundred feet from shore.
I smacked myself in the forehead.
“Why the hell didn’t I think of that earlier?”
I started running back toward the cabin, but then heard a single shot echo from about ten houses down. I stopped in front of the cabin and briefly debated what to do before heading in Sophia’s direction. She appeared in a yard ahead of me and waved an arm over her head. I waved back.
When I reached her, she went into the house behind her and opened the garage. A ladder nearly identical to the other one we found hung from a wall on a set of hooks. “Nice work,” I said.
“Thanks. Now help me carry it.”
“I don’t think we’ll need it, but we’ll take it anyway.”
“What do you mean?” she asked as we took the ladder down.
“Dale’s boat.”
Sophia went still. “Son of a bitch. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Probably the same reason I didn’t. Come on, let’s get back.”
Lance worked quickly; nearly all the downstairs windows had a sheet of plywood and several two-by-sixes covering them. When we returned, he was swinging a big framing hammer with deft precision, driving each nail home with no more than three swings.
“Tell me something,” I said as Sophia and I dropped the ladder on the sparse lawn. “Why are we bothering with all this? Dale’s boat is right there.”
“I know,” Lance said. “But I don’t want those things getting into your house tonight. Or mine, for that matter.”
Just then, Lauren came out the back door with a wheelbarrow half full of food and half full of loaded rifle magazines. “Just in time,” Lance said. “Caleb, why don’t you help her roll that off the porch?”
I looked at Lauren, then back at Lance, and hooked a thumb over my shoulder toward the boat. “You could have told me that was your plan all along.”
His face twitched in what on another person might have been a smile. “And rob you of the joy of figuring it out for yourself?”
“Asshole.” I grabbed the front of the wheelbarrow and lifted it while Lauren came down the steps. She thanked me, then began pushing it across the yard toward the dinghy. After retrieving the outboard motor from the garage and gassing it up, I attached it to the dinghy and helped Lauren load the supplies and ammo inside. Once finished, Lauren and I pushed the little boat into the water. The motor started on the first try.
“You good, or do you need me to come with you?” I asked Lauren.
“I can handle it. Go help Lance.” She motored away.
Back at the cabin, I said, “What do you want me to do with these ladders?”
“Take one of them in the house and put it on the second floor landing,” he said. “Leave the other one on the porch. You find a crowbar yet?”
“Be right back.” I had seen one in the garage where we found the second ladder. After retrieving it, I asked Lance what he wanted me to do with it.
“Get that splitting maul and tear out the stairs below the first landing.”
I stared at him for a good ten heartbeats. “I’m sorry, you want me to do what?”
“You remember fighting those corpses on the balcony, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“You see anything from ‘em to make you think they’re smart enough to climb?”
I thought about it, and shook my head. “Not really. But we don’t know for sure what those things are capable of.”
“I think they’re dumb as bricks,” Lance said. “How many of them did we shoot down while the others just watched? No matter how many we killed, they just kept coming. That seem like evidence of high-order intelligence to you?”
Again, I couldn’t argue. “No, it doesn’
t.”
“Well there you go. Now go on, get to work.”
I couldn’t think of a good reason not to, so I did. While I worked, Sophia helped Lauren cart supplies, fuel, and ammunition to the boat. Lance finished barricading the downstairs portion of the cabin but left the back door open. He placed the lumber he planned to seal it with beside the entrance, then went to his house and set to work barricading it as well.
Dismantling the stairs was surprisingly easy. After clearing away the drywall with the crowbar, I used the maul to bash apart the steps and knock over the support posts. After that, it was just a question of levering the remaining boards apart with the crowbar. In ten minutes, a ragged mess of shattered lumber lay where the first eight steps of the staircase once stood. Sophia came over and stared at my handiwork, hands on her shapely hips.
“Looks like we finally found something you’re good at.”
“Puts me one up on you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Again with the language.” I dropped the crowbar and started toward the back door. “If anybody asks, tell them I went up the street to get Lola.”
“Are we bringing her with us?”
I stopped and looked over my shoulder. “You think we shouldn’t?”
“Doesn’t she have her own boat?”
“Safety in numbers, Sophia.”
“That what it is?”
I faced her. “What do you mean?”
“She’s pretty. You think I haven’t noticed you looking at her?”
I blinked twice, mouth hanging open. “Are you kidding me?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
I blinked again, still not believing what I was hearing. “I don’t have time for this.” I walked out the back door without another word.
Lola answered on the third round of knocking, eyes glassy. She swayed unsteadily in the doorway, trying to focus her vision and not finding much success. “Caleb?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Sumthin’ I’cn do for you?” Her breath reeked of wine.
“We have a problem. A big one.”
The eyes settled, coming to rest somewhere around my chin. I wondered how many of me she was seeing. “Wha’ problem?”
“You should come take a look.”
She stepped outside, not bothering to shut the door, weaving a drunken line across the front yard. “Wha’ isit?”
I grabbed her around the shoulders to keep her from falling over. “How well can you see right now, Lola?”
“Jus’ fine.” She tapped her glasses.
“You see that over there?” I asked, turning her to face northward.
She looked, squinting in the distance. “S’people over there.”
“Not people, Lola.” She looked up at me. “Infected.”
She looked again and went rigid in my arms. “Oh shit. Oh fuck, ohfuckohfuckohfuck no. We hav’ta get outta here.”
She struggled, trying to run away down the street. I held her by the arm. “We’re going to do that Lola, but running won’t help. You see that boat down there?”
Her eyes tracked down my arm to where I pointed. “We’re going to take it out and wait until they move on.”
“’Kay. Cn’I come with you?”
“Yes, Lola. That’s what I’m here for.”
I half-carried her back to the cabin. Lauren had dragged the dinghy ashore and gone back inside to retrieve more supplies. I had Lola sit down, pushed the boat into the water, and drove her to the cabin cruiser. Getting her from the dinghy to the fantail was a bit dicey, but I managed to keep her from falling overboard.
“Just stay here,” I said after pushing her onto one of the white bench seats under the deck canopy. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“’Kay.”
“Don’t move.”
She stretched out on the seat and closed her eyes, glasses hanging askew. “’Kay.”
I pulled her glasses from her face and stowed them under the opposite bench, then went to the control panel and turned the engine over. The fresh water tank was full, which was good, and the fuel was at half, which was plenty. Once out in the deep water, all we had to do was set anchor and kill the engine. Didn’t take much fuel for that. The boat had a separate generator to power the electrical system, so we would have electricity without having to run the less efficient five-liter V8 main motor.
Finished, I killed the engine, climbed back down to the dinghy, and drove ashore. Lauren and Sophia were headed toward me with a final wheelbarrow of supplies while Lance nailed the last two-by-six over the plywood covering the back door.
“Is Lola with you?” Lauren asked.
“More or less.” I jumped back over the gunwale and stacked the contents of the wheelbarrow so the weight was evenly distributed. That done, I drove the women to the cruiser. This time, I tied the dinghy to the fantail cleats to make unloading it easier. When it was empty again, Lauren and Sophia went up to the forward lounge, carefully avoiding Lola, who now lay with one arm hanging from the bench, snoring loudly. I untied the dinghy and said, “Be back shortly.”
Back ashore, Lance had just finished the last of his preparations. I helped him put his tools away, then waited while he gathered his weapons. Finally, we made our last trip to the cruiser and secured the dinghy astern. At the controls, Lance leaned against the captain’s chair, cranked the engine, and eased the boat forward to slacken the anchor lines. When they had enough play, I used the windlass to bring them up.
“Where we headed?” I asked.
“Hundred meters or so from shore should be far enough. You know what kind of anchor this thing has?”
“Thirteen-pound plow, fourteen feet of anchor chain, couple hundred feet of line. Line and chain are both half-inch.”
Lance disengaged the bow thruster and eased forward on the throttle. “Should be plenty.”
He steered us straight out until he estimated we were far enough from shore, then turned north toward a pair of thin islands jutting out from a shallow cove. Five minutes of putting along at seven knots brought the nearest island about a hundred meters from our port bow.
“This spot should work just fine,” Lance said. “Water’s about seventy feet deep, rises pretty sharp when you get close to the island. If we have to jump ship, it’ll be a close swim.”
I went forward and dropped the anchor. Lance reversed the propeller and eased backward until the scope of the line was forty-five degrees from the bow. The anchor dug in firmly until we stayed put with the throttle in reverse at four knots, much stronger than the Guadalupe River’s lazy current as it pushed through the lake.
“So what now?” I asked, staring at the shore. It was mid-afternoon, plenty of daylight left. To the north of the cabin, I saw the horde reach the edge of the peninsula and head straight for Colleen Drive. At best estimate, we had escaped them by about fifteen minutes.
“Now we stow the supplies,” Lance said. “Not a good idea to leave them on the deck.”
It was the work of less than five minutes to form a human chain, hand everything down to the galley, and stash it in cabinets and stowage compartments. The only thing left out was a case of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. “Who brought that aboard?” I asked, pointing.
“I did.” Sophia grabbed a bottle. “Where are the glasses around here?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetie,” Lauren said. “Your father wouldn’t like you drinking.”
“Well, my father isn’t here. So unless you wanna tie me down, I’m getting drunk.” She shifted her chestnut eyes back to me. “Glasses?”
“Cabinet behind your head.”
She turned and grabbed two glasses, then pointed at Lance. “What about you?”
His face didn’t move, just a slight head tilt to the left. “Why not? Got nothin’ better to do.”
“Jesus Christ,” Lauren said disgustedly, standing up to leave. “You people are unbelievable.”
We watched her stomp up the ladder to
the main deck and slam the door behind her. I looked over at Lance.
“Think I should go talk to her?”
“Right now? No. What’s her problem, anyway?” He went to the counter and let Sophia pour him a drink.
I sighed and stared at the door. “If I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t be asking for advice, Lance.”
“All right then,” he said, handing me two glasses. “Take this to her and set it down beside her. Don’t say a word. Just sit down close by and don’t look at her or speak to her. Sooner or later, she’ll crack. Won’t be long after that she’ll pick that drink up and ask for another.”
“You think?”
He shrugged. “Got nothin’ to lose trying.”
I took the glasses.
TWENTY-THREE
She lasted five minutes.
During that time, I gassed up the generator, switched on the radio, dialed in to the frequency Dad and the others used on their handhelds, and sent ten messages at thirty-second intervals.
No response.
Frustrated and scared, I slammed the mike down in its cradle.
“They’re probably just out of range,” Lauren said.
I turned to look at her. She sat with her back to the sun, outlined against a tangerine sky, legs crossed and bouncing nervously. Lola snored away on the bench behind me, oblivious.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll probably hear from them soon.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Silence for a while, then she said, “This is for me, I assume?” She took the drink from the cup holder on the back of the bench and held it up to the light.
“You assume correctly.”
“What the hell, maybe Sophia has the right idea.” She took a sip and made a face.
“Isn’t this supposed to be the good stuff?”
“I guess so. I get the impression people drink it more for the effect than the taste. Kind of like coffee.” To punctuate, I drained half of mine in a single gulp. My stomach was still empty from throwing up earlier, so I felt the buzz almost immediately.
“So what do you think of her?” Lauren asked.
My eyebrows came together. “Who?”
“You know who.”
I looked back at Lola. “I think she needs a therapist.”
