Last Stand on Zombie Island

by Christopher L. Eger

  The stress of the Hurricane, coupled with the extended multi-year recovery and the time spent from home put the last nails in the coffin of Billy’s marriage. It had never been very sound to begin with. She got the kids and the house. He got a one-room apartment loft and worked as much as he could part-time around the Fire Department’s dive schedule.

  When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill had affected the Gulf Coast, he applied for a temporary job with the response effort. The fact that he owned a small 19-foot boat, and had HAZWOPR training with the fire department put him at the top of the list among the 800 local Biloxi boat owners that signed up for the Vessels of Opportunity program in Mississippi.

  He had taken two months of built-up vacation from the City and skimmed oil for $1200 a day. When the program wound down and he was deactivated, he went back to work with the fire department’s dive rescue team full time. His next regular off day, he paid the marine salvage yard a visit.

  After some negotiation with cash in hand and the sale of his oil-beaten skiff, the Captain Tony became his at last. Another $15,000 spent repainting and blasting the hull, repacking the rudders, new electronics, overhauling the engines, renovating the galley, new carpet, two new air-conditioners, new generators, tackle, rods, and coolers she was ready for the water.

  A few weekends spent scouting houses in Gulf Shores and a long talk with the ex-wife about custody put him and the kids back together in a new life fifty miles away in Gulf Shores. Cashing out the ten years he had put into his retirement with the Department paid for the closing costs on the new house and the move.

  Now as the Fooly Involved, the old boat and Billy had come through their storms together. He patted the boat’s emblem of a firefighter sitting at a bar-room table with a dragon about to arm wrestle, then throttled the old girl back to life and away from the sleek Coast Guard cutter.

  ««—»»

  On board the Fish Hawk, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Orlando Jarvis placed his binoculars back into the saddle by the bridge as he watched the rigid inflatable boat leave the charter craft.

  “Small boat to Fish Hawk, ready to notch,” came Hoffman over the radio.

  Jarvis triggered the mic and said, “Notch when ready,” as he watched the rubber boat come up to the open stern deck of the coast guard cutter then run up the back ramp where a seaman threw the securing deck line over the bow of the small boat and locked it into place.

  The USCGC Fish Hawk (WPB 87375), was an 87-foot long Marine Protector-class Coastal Patrol Boat. Built at Bollinger Marine in Louisiana for a little over $3-million, she had spent her whole career within a few hundred miles of her birthplace. The cutter was relatively new compared to other Coast Guard vessels, an organization known for keeping floating relics in service from as far back as Pearl Harbor. She was based in Mobile and her zone of operation was on the Gulf of Mexico between St. Marks, Florida to the east and Gulfport, Mississippi to the west. The Fish Hawk and her eight-man crew were Jarvis’s first command.

  “What’s the run-down, Chief?” Jarvis asked Hoffman as he came into the Fish Hawk’s wheelhouse from the small boat.

  Hoffman shook his head, “Just a charter boat captain. He seemed a little pissed that we pulled him over but he’ll get over it.” As he spoke, his blonde moustache danced over his top lip.

  The Chief had removed his tactical vest to show the standard blue t-shirt flecked with dried salt. The t-shirt had the familiar drawing of the Fish Hawk on the back, a sunglasses-wearing bird of prey flying over a map of Mobile Bay and the mottos Sentinel of the Bay above it and 87-feet of Rock and Roll below it.

  “Yes he will, Chief. These charter boat guys need to remember that everyone out here is playing the same sheet of music,” Jarvis intoned. “This isn’t a black-hull; we are a patrol boat.”

  Jarvis was referring to the so-called black-hulled coast guard ships such as buoy boats and tugs that made up half of the organization’s vessel list. Being in a ‘white-hull’ such as the Fish Hawk that was more high-speed, as their mission catered more to law enforcement and homeland security tasking. Jarvis had graduated from the Coast Guard Academy (in the top 5% of his class) just eighteen months prior and had spent his first year on board a large high endurance white-hulled cutter chasing Russian trawlers and Alaskan crabbers across the northern pacific before landing his current command.

  “Roger that, Skipper,” said Hoffman. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Hoffman had spent 10 of his 12 years in the Coast Guard on black-hulls. Boatswain’s Mates were the most versatile members of the Coast Guard’s operational team. Masters of seamanship, BMs are capable of performing almost any task in connection with deck maintenance, small boat operations, navigation, and supervising all personnel assigned to a ship’s deck force.

  “Let’s turn back away from the ICW, Chief, and set a course to intercept some of this large ship traffic I saw on the scope.”

  Hoffman took up the helmsman’s chair in the middle of the wheelhouse and throttled the ship’s twin diesels forward, while rotating the joystick for the rudders to port side to take the Cutter into deeper water. Jarvis took his spot in the captain’s chair to the left of Hoffman and started scanning his list of possible High Interest vessels forwarded down from Sector Mobile, hoping to get lucky.

  The radio came to life with a call from Sector, ordering them to the scene of an accident at the Perdido Key Bridge.

  “Finally, some action,” Jarvis smiled through a set of perfectly white teeth at Hoffman.

  The Chief blinked hard a couple times and brought the cutter about.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER 3

  Mackenzie Tillman started her shift at the Orange Coast Bank in Gulf Shores an hour before the branch opened. She had to count down the previous night’s after-hours deposits before opening her window. She worked in what they referred to as a motor branch, which looked like a building not much larger than a tollbooth with a covered awning that held spots for up to three cars to drive through on each side and be serviced by the two tellers inside. Today she was flying solo as her normal partner had called in sick after getting a panicked call from her father on the west coast yesterday afternoon.

  The main branch said they did not have a replacement and advised her to just open one side of the branch and handle it the best she could.

  Mackenzie was sure that she was getting the raw end of the deal in having to work by herself, as she now not only had to work all of the deposits alone, but also had no relief for lunch. She really had to go back to school and get away from this crap. Two dollars over minimum wage did not justify working double duty with a smile on your face. The expression ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired’ echoed in her head.

  Most of the customers were your ordinary check cashings, deposits, and withdrawals. Anything that could not be passed back and forth through the sliding drawer of the bank booth quickly and easily was sent to the larger branch downtown. Mackenzie was the express checkout lane of the banking world.

  She raised the mini-blinds to open up and already had a line of several cars waiting anxiously.

  Happy place, happy place, happy place, she told herself as she flipped on the Open sign, pushed the drawer forward and forced a smile.

  “Welcome to Orange Coast Bank, how may I help you?”

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER 4

  “When are you ever going to learn, Spud?” Gulf Shores Police Sergeant Cameron Durham asked as he stood going through the back seat of James ‘Spud’ Barnes 1983 Cadillac and produced a forged stack of doctor’s prescription pads that would fill half of a shoebox.

  Spud shuffled and gave an openhanded shrug, “I have no idea what you are talking about boss man…I loaned my car out to my sister and her boyfriend last night and those must belong to him. I don’t even know what those are. You know I am on parole.” As he spoke, he had the characteristic slow-down and then speed-up singsong of someone making it up as they went along. This traffic stop was fast on its way to ruini
ng Sergeant Durham’s whole day.

  Sergeant Durham looked at him disapprovingly. Of course, he knew Spud was on parole. Every cop in the greater south Alabama area knew that he was on parole. Spud was something of the clearinghouse for ditch-weed and stolen goods in the region. Mind you, Spud did not grow dope or even sell it; all he did was perform a role as a dope broker, hooking up those looking with those selling, for a nominal fee. What did get him in trouble with the State was being something of an urban hunter/gatherer—mainly of other peoples stuff.

  Every legitimate business has a hook-up guy willing to sell a couple TVs out the back door, do an oil change and throw in a couple of free tires, or look the other way on a drive off with a tank of gas. Spud was the person who made a living out of knowing all these people and putting them in touch with each other. If they shipped him out of the county, the crime rate on the island would drop in half.

  “Come on, boss man, I got a good job now. I work at the Quick Lube off 59 five days a-week. I keep my meetings with my parole officer and everything. I’m rehabilitated,” Spud was pleading the whole time Durham was searching his car and nodding his head.

  “Anything else I’m gonna find in this car you want to tell me about Spud?” Durham asked.

  Looking up at the late morning sun rising high in the sky, Spud squinted, “Well there are some laptops in the trunk, but they are totally cool.”

  Durham had been with the Gulf Shores Police Department for five years, having transferred to them after another five with the County Sheriff’s Department after graduation from the State Police Academy. Ten years in law enforcement taught him criminal behavior.

  The spring and summer in Gulf Shores was crazy, especially on weekends. That is when thousands of visitors from ‘across the Amnesia Bridge’ and the rest of the Southeast flooded into the 29-mile long island every day. The impossibly white sugar sand beaches were known to some as the Redneck Rivera. Several vendors sold t-shirts that claimed that Gulf Shores was “a sleepy little drinking village with a fishing problem,” and the tourists embraced that concept. The high-powered drink, “the Bushwhacker,” was perfected, not invented, in the local bars, one of which was even owned by Jimmy Buffet’s sister.

  Most of these summer tourists are harmless, but there are the 10% that come to unwind and drink too much which leads to arrests for public intoxication, underage possession, single vehicle accidents, indecent exposure, simple assault, as well as the always popular menacing and sending of harassing communications. At least once a week some guy gets tanked up real good and decides that he can make the jump from his balcony to the swimming pool below.

  Sometimes they can, but occasionally one of these daredevils fail and that is always exciting.

  Sergeant Durham had been looking forward to a slow winter. Winter is when the throngs of alcohol-fueled tourists left and was replaced by a much smaller amount of often elderly snowbirds escaping the harsh winters of Michigan, Minnesota, and the like. These snowbirds, along with Gulf Shores’ normal regular population of less than 5,000 full-time residents, would calmly sit out the winter until spring break.

  The typical day in winter for Sergeant Durham would consist of taking a report of at least one theft (mainly of video games and tools) or responding to a small-scale fender bender. Of course there are traffic citations which lead to arrests for DUI, possession, etc. There are days where you do not have to respond to a single call. This is the time of year that the department does training and grants vacations and extended leaves.

  “Dispatch, this is GS5, get ready to take a license for a 27 please….and get me a time and case number,” he called into his radio preparing to start the paperwork for bringing Spud in even before going for his handcuffs.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER 5

  The fishing had not gone too bad, Billy thought, as he idled the Fooly Involved back on a course to the marina. They had caught few redfish, a nice speck and some good-sized white trout on the way out once the Coast Guard went their separate way. They had spent a couple hours circling the deep water over the artificial reefs and oilrigs off Ft. Morgan and had picked up a few amberjacks, a smallish wahoo and some triggerfish to add to the collection.

  “Shame to turn in so soon,” Billy said down into the salon from the Captain’s chair behind the wheel.

  Ted, head of the average white guys and the central mouthpiece of the expedition curled on the half couch in the salon behind the foldout Formica table. “I hate the hell out of this…but I’m dying here.”

  “You guys don’t worry about paying for the rest of the trip; Lance has your fish cleaned and ready to go for you. I’ll just use the deposit for the gas and to pay Lance and we’ll call it even.”

  Billy smiled to himself and winked at Lance who had spent the morning baiting hooks, pulling fish and mopping vomit as fast as he could.

  “Friggin’ lightweights these guys are,” half-whispered Lance as he puffed away on menthol and gazed out to sea, “I got puke in my shoes, Cap’n.”

  “Normally you have to pay good money to get that kind of treatment, kid. Hell, I shouldn’t even pay you today.”

  Lance was not as easily amused. He thumped the butt of his cigarette, sending it cartwheeling into the sea. “I got fish to clean, boss.”

  “Try to keep the puke off of them, will ya?”

  Another cool look thrown from a leathery face and a forced smile before Lance exited down to the deck below. “Damn this deckhand bullshit.”

  “Remember, Lance, what’s the difference between God and a charter boat captain? Nothing, except God knows he can’t be a charter boat captain,” Billy called down to the younger man.

  Billy adjusted the course on the chart plotter with a few quick clicks, settled the Fooly Involved’s twin diesels into a high cruise speed, and sat back in the Captain’s chair for the ride back to Gulf Shores. He scanned the VHF radio and listened to the normal traffic.

  The big red Mobile Bay Ferry was just off the port bow making its normal run from Fort Morgan to Dauphin Island. Lots of Coast Guard radio communications and a few Vietnamese shrimpers conversing in a singsong filled the air. There seemed to be some sort of commotion about a barge striking the Perdido Pass Bridge. As Billy could tell, there were not many other charter boats out on the water this time of year.

  As he got closer to shore along the South Alabama coastline, his cell phone began vibrating with waiting voicemails and text messages as it acquired signal again from land-based towers. It was one of the nice things about going offshore—once you were a mile or two away from land you could not get cell phone service and could not be bothered. He scrolled through the text messages first and there was a series of increasingly frantic texts from both of his kids.

  On his phone he read crazy texts about cops at the schools, classes canceled, everyone assembling in the halls, some sort of health crisis and all the kids being held there until their parents could come get them.

  Billy increased the throttles on the Fooly Involved’s diesels up as he called down to the deck below.

  “Hey guys, hold on we are picking up speed to get in a little faster.”

  The old Hatteras creaked and popped as she stretched her legs and the front deck of the boat began to take on more spray as the size of the wake behind her doubled. She was good for about 25-knots on her rebuilt engines although it ate into her fuel bunkers and into Billy’s profit margin, but his kids were not likely to exaggerate. The school district had a strict no-cell phone policy but Billy had always made it a point to have both of his kids carry them hidden in their bags so that they would have them to keep in touch if they had a change of plans after school.

  Or if there was an emergency.

  ««—»»

  It was just after lunch as the Fooly Involved returned to the marina. Billy had tried several times to call the school, to call his kids, his neighbor, the police department and kept getting fast busy signals on the cell phone or call failed messages. Occ
asional text messages kept coming through and he had tried to send several that all failed with “service denied” errors.

  Down below, the five charter anglers had gathered around their Blackberries and iPhones and discovered much the same thing. They had turned on the small flatscreen TV in the salon. It was attached to a small-dish satellite receiver and, while it could normally pick up 100-channels when close to shore, all it showed was a black screen.

  “I knew this was a friggin’ bad idea to go out while all this crap was going on. When I do connect, I can’t get anything from the news updated past 2am this morning when I checked it earlier,” one of Ted’s fishing buddies said to no one in particular. He had fish guts on his I’m with Stupid t-shirt.

  “We already put down a non-refundable deposit and we agreed that we wouldn’t spend the whole summer down here and not go fishing once,” Ted defended himself.

  “I can’t get a hold of any damned body. I got a text message from Curt back at the lab and he said the National Guard has taken over the city. Set up roadblocks everywhere and have closed down the interstate,” I’m with Stupid t-shirt replied.

  “In Mobile?” Lance asked, menthol bobbing as he spoke.

  “No, Birmingham,” Ted gestured and held up a large gold ring on his hand. “UAB,” he said, referring to the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

  The assembled collection grumbled and broke into side conversations.