by J. W. Vohs
The tiny flotilla made it to the small island in about twenty minutes, and they ran their canoes right up onto a sandbar on the southern tip of the landmass with little concern for what might be waiting for them. Vickie immediately went to Jerry, while David led the rest of the fighters on a quick sweep that turned up nothing. They ran back to the canoes and helped carry Jerry into a tent that Jim and Trudy had set up inside a small copse of trees. He was burning up with fever though Vickie was hopeful that the acetaminophen she’d given him a few minutes earlier would soon bring his temperature down. Gracie arrived with a bucket of water and she and Luke began trying to cool the injured man down with sopping rags.
David pulled Vickie away from the tent and asked, “What do you think?”
She grimly shook her head, “The bite wound is bad, but I’ve got the bleeding under control. I know that all of you are hoping that maybe since these creatures are changing from what we called zombies that maybe they aren’t spreading the virus anymore. Look, I spent three days in the ER when the outbreak first started before Sal basically kidnapped me and took me home until you found us. Jerry looks just like the bite victims did then.”
She started to quietly cry before taking a shaky breath and declaring, “He’s not going to make it.”
David just hung his head in mute disbelief. Christy heard everything, and she wrapped her arms around her husband and pulled him tight. Sal was there for Vickie, though he was crying even harder than she was. At that moment Luke stepped out of the tent and came striding over to the group, his head held high and dark eyes gleaming with grief and anger.
He looked at David and firmly declared, “I’ve seen this before, too many times. I’m not gonna let him suffer until he finally turns. We need to carry him away from the kids and take care of it. We’ll bury him in the middle of the island.”
David thought the boy was in shock as he responded, “Luke, we don’t’ want to be hasty here. We don’t know….”
“David, stop!” Luke interrupted. “I’ll do it myself if none of you want to help me. And if I ever end up in this situation I don’t want you all standing around comforting one another until my pain is over! My dad has taken care of me my entire life, even bringing me through an apocalypse while most of the world died. Now, I’m gonna take care of him.”
Christy stepped forward, “All right, Luke, we’ll help you take care of him. But we love him too, and we’ve been through a lot together. Can we say goodbye first?”
Luke’s face softened, and he almost looked embarrassed, “Of course, just make it quick; I can’t bear to see him suffer when there’s no hope.”
Vickie patted him on the shoulder, “I’ll give him some more painkillers. He’ll get really drowsy and slowly fall asleep. He won’t be in much pain, son. I dealt with this many times at the hospital when it all started.”
Luke just nodded and motioned toward the tent, “Go ahead.”
Vickie went in and administered the medication, then one by one the members of the group went in and said their goodbyes. Gracie stood outside next to Luke, not touching or talking, but letting him know she was there. Tears streamed steadily down her pretty face, but she didn’t sob or even sniffle, managing to look incredibly dignified in spite of the agony she was experiencing for Luke, and remembering losing her own father the same way.
David stood with both of them until everyone else had his or her turn in the tent. He stepped forward, took a deep breath, and went inside to say goodbye to the man who in a few short months had become the closest friend he’d ever had. Jerry looked feverish but he was lucid, shakily holding up a hand which David gently took in his own.
The dying man whispered, “It’s been an honor to fight at your side.”
David smiled sadly before replying, “The honor has been all mine.”
Jerry continued, “You will get Luke to Indiana; he needs to get to your brother.”
“I’ll get him there, buddy,” David assured.
“God has plans for that boy, but he’ll need to join your brother and learn from him.”
David nodded, “I won’t let you down, Jerry.”
A look of peace came over Jerry’s feverish face as he closed his eyes and murmured, “I’ll see you on the other side, brother. Send Luke in here.”
David gave the dying man’s hand one more squeeze and left the tent. He nodded at Luke, who had been holding Gracie and whispering words of comfort to the heartbroken girl. He let her go and reached one hand gently to her cheek before heading to the tent. Once inside he knelt beside his father and placed a damp rag on his forehead. Jerry opened his eyes with some effort and tried to smile.
He managed to whisper, “I’m proud of you, son.”
Luke quietly said, “I’m proud of you too, Dad. Thank you for raising me the way you did.”
Jerry weakly responded, “Always listen to the voice inside. God’s hand is on you. You find David’s brother and stay at his side. You need to learn from him now.” He drew a ragged breath, “There is a picture of me and your mom wrapped up in plastic in my wallet. Be sure and take it with you—just looking at her now and then has given me great strength.”
Luke could only nod sadly as his father continued, “Hey, I’ll see you again soon enough. I know you’ll miss me, but I’ve already seen your mom on the other side. She’s waiting for me.”
Tears dripped from Luke’s eyes onto Jerry’s face as he said, “Go to her, Dad. Go to her.”
Jerry didn’t open his eyes again. A small smile played at the corner of his mouth, as his breathing grew shallow and ragged. Luke sat there holding his hand for nearly twenty minutes until it was over. The he wiped his eyes and walked out to face the group. His voice was firm as he said, “He’s gone. I’m gonna grab one of those folding shovels and find a good place for him. David, will you take care of him and then wrap him in a blanket?”
“Sure, Luke, I’ll take care of it.”
Gracie asked, “Can I use the other shovel and help? I never had the chance to do that for my father.”
Luke looked at her, tears glistening in his eyes, “Yeah, I’d really appreciate your help.”
After the two grieving teenagers left to find a gravesite, Vickie went in first with her stethoscope. After listening for a while she declared, “The heart is beating about twice a minute, but I can’t detect any respiration. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some going on, because the body needs oxygen somehow. But that’s as far as this goes with Jerry. When we make it to Indiana we’ll hopefully be able to do some autopsies and learn more about the transformation.”
David and Christy went in and covered Jerry’s body before carrying him out. They took him a little way into the trees before using the .22, then went and looked for Luke and Gracie. They found the teens in the middle of the island with a grave almost two feet into the rocky soil and convinced them to take a break while the older couple worked at it for a while. After that they took turns for several hours until they felt that the hole was deep enough.
They buried Jerry in the late afternoon, the sunlight filtering through the canopy of trees like shining beams come to guide the hero’s soul to heaven. Luke said a few simple words over the grave, and then everyone spent nearly an hour gathering large stones and making a mound over the burial site as both a marker and a barrier to keep scavengers from digging up the corpse. Finally, there was nothing left to do or say, and everyone drifted back to the camp where they ate as well as their supplies and grief would allow before hitting the sleeping bags early. There may have been more difficult days in his life, David thought as he drifted into a fitful slumber, but he sure couldn’t remember one.
CHAPTER 21
The group was on the water by dawn the next morning, everyone anxious to put some distance between themselves and this place of sacrifice and sorrow. Luke watched the island from his canoe until a bend in the river hid it from his sight, then he turned around and focused his thoughts on the mission at hand. Every now and then he
pulled out the old photo of Jerry and Margaret, taken soon after the two had wed. Jerry’s blond hair was cropped so close that it was almost invisible, and he had a rakish grin on his boyish face. Margaret looked like a movie star, brown wavy hair framing her angelic face. They both radiated happiness, and the gazing at the picture gave Luke some comfort, though he couldn’t explain why.
The Maumee flowed sluggishly through the Ohio countryside, meandering back and forth for miles; the width of the river decreased as their distance from Toledo increased. They came to an island that would have made an excellent camping site about twenty miles into the day’s journey, but they only stopped for lunch and an opportunity to stretch their legs before climbing back into the canoes and resuming their trip upstream. David estimated that they were traveling about four miles an hour, and in the late afternoon he led them to an island near the small town of Antwerp, close to the Indiana state line.
The usual routines revealed a safe camping location, and after an uneventful night they resumed their journey at first light. They were now traveling several hundred pounds lighter, with Jerry and much of their food gone. They all would have preferred to have Luke’s father still with them, but as they began to periodically encounter stretches of rapids that required wading and towing they took advantage of the lighter loads to move more quickly through the shallows than they were able to do earlier in their journey.
They had covered fifteen miles, about half of them rapids, by the time they found another island surrounded by water deep enough to keep hunters at bay. They hadn’t seen any of the monsters since the fight by the portage at Independence Dam, but the infected were never far from their minds. David estimated that they would reach the suburbs of Fort Wayne the next day, and the city’s pre-outbreak population had been over a quarter of a million. He figured that at least four hundred thousand people lived within thirty miles of the city, and his group had no choice but to find a way through that mess.
As they sat around talking quietly after dinner that night, David admitted to the group that he really didn’t have a solid plan on how to reach his brother once they left the river behind.
“We’ll have some decisions to make once we reach Fort Wayne,” he explained. “We’ll have a short day tomorrow and stop on an island just past the 469 bridge. From there it’s only about six miles to the dam on Anthony Boulevard. I used to fish for walleye and catfish there when I was a teenager, so I know the place pretty well. By that point we are definitely in the middle of a lot of city neighborhoods, and I expect there to be thousands of infected roaming around. There’s a small island less than a mile from the dam, and I plan on having us stop there so we can scout the area.
“After we get past the dam, the headwaters aren’t far at all. Then we’ve got choices to make, and none of them are great. We’ll basically be the closest to Jack’s compound by land when we reach the headwaters; those are about forty miles from Jack’s place. If we follow the Saint Mary’s or Saint Joe we can clear the city on the water, but we’ll be moving farther from our destination with every mile we travel.”
Blake asked, “What’s your gut feeling?”
“Well, they’ll both get us out of the city in about the same amount of time. Of course, I don’t see how we can fail to draw a crowd with either route. Those three rivers meet in the heart of the city and then meander for miles through residential districts. The Saint Joe at least takes us north, and closer to Jack than the Saint Mary’s, but there’s a big dam about three miles up from the headwaters.”
“How big?” Christy asked.
“It’s a real dam,” he explained, “not just one of these walls- across-the-river types we’ve dealt with so far. They can raise and lower the water levels, and there’s a building on the east side that they run it from. It’s old too. I never checked the place out when I lived in Fort Wayne so I don’t even know what it’d take to get around it. I know that it’s at the north end of Johnny Appleseed Park, and surrounded by two colleges and a high school. There aren’t many houses right there, so maybe there won’t be many hunters.”
“There weren’t any houses at the last dam either, but somehow there was a huge pack of hunters roaming around,” Luke added.
“That’s true,” David agreed. I suspect that just about anywhere this side of the Mississippi if you make noise you’re gonna attract attention. The population density was just so high in this part of the country before the outbreak . . .”
“What’s the Saint Joe like above the dam?” Jim asked.
David thought for a moment, “Pretty wide and slow. I know that a college, IPFW, sits right next to the river just above the dam, and then there are houses for miles along the shoreline. A lot of them have pontoons and other boats.”
Lori jumped in, “Why don’t we go that way? We get far enough out of the city and start scouting the countryside, look for transportation to your brother’s place. Any big towns or anything between the Saint Joe and The Castle?’
David furrowed his brow and finally said, “No, nothing like that. Mostly farm country with small towns we can avoid.”
“Well,” Christy said, “If we get up to that big dam you’re talking about and don’t like what we see, we can always turn around and try taking the Saint Mary’s out of town. But if we can get past it we can try Lori’s idea.”
David nodded, “I like it. Of course, we still have to get past the first dam and through the city; but other than that, I think we’ve got a chance.”
The actual distance between where they started the next morning and where they ended was no more than ten miles, but with all of the oxbows and rapids they had to navigate everyone was beat by the time they reached the island near the interstate. They were well inside Indiana now, but nobody had the energy to celebrate as they set up camp and tried to find anything left in their dwindling store of food that held any palatable appeal after all their days on the river eating cold rations. Granola bars, cereal, jerky, corn chips, and other similar fare were tasty treats once in a while, but after a week it was all the group members could do to force down enough calories to keep going. To make matters worse they passed fish, deer, small game, beavers, and even stray livestock on almost a daily basis, but they didn’t want to take the chance on cooking over an open fire. They’d started the trip with small camp stoves but had badly underestimated the fuel situation and had run out days earlier.
They’d heard hunters howling several times during the day’s trip, and towing the canoes through shallows had been very nerve-wracking, but they didn’t see any of the infected. They were learning that rivers were the lowest point on any horizon in farm country, and they were traveling well below the banks. Most of the time they floated under a canopy of lush summer foliage and even the slightest wind would set the leaves to rustling. They couldn’t see very far or hear much at all, but the flip side was that they were out of sight of anything that wasn’t in a position to actually be looking down into the river. While they’d passed a few small towns since Defiance, the vast majority of the Maumee between there and Fort Wayne wound its way through farmland and woodlots. Now they were less than ten miles from downtown Fort Wayne, but the island and surrounding area looked no different from what they’d been seeing since leaving the yacht.
With a few hours of daylight remaining and everything ready for the night, David asked Luke to take a walk with him around the little island. When they reached a decent distance from the camp he sat down on a rock and motioned for the teen to do the same.
“We haven’t had much of a chance to talk lately; how are you doing?”
Luke shrugged, “There’s something to be said for having to be constantly vigilant for creatures determined to eat you while struggling up a river for days on end. Throw in guard duty and I’m pretty much too busy to think.”
“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Heck, I don’t know if I’ve had a conversation with Christy the last two days. How’ve you and Gracie been getting along?”
&nb
sp; Luke’s cheeks reddened and he gave a shy smile, “ Fine, why do you ask?”
“Well, she seems to be a bit taken with you.”
“Shoot, David, I’m the only guy around her age that she’s seen in over two months. Pretty soon we’re gonna be part of a community.” He looked a little sad as he explained, “She’ll find an older guy once we get around other people.”
“Is that what she said?”
“No, but . . .”
“What do you feel inside? You know, in that quiet place where God talks to you and helps you save our butts from time to time?”
Luke grinned at that and then looked away for a moment before answering, “In that place, and in my heart and mind, I know, without a single doubt, that Gracie is the most beautiful, wonderful woman in this entire world.”
David nodded, “Have you told her that?”
Luke looked aghast, “Are you kidding me?”
“Listen, son, life has always been short, but this spring it got a whole lot shorter. Every hour could be our last out here and you know that. Don’t let another hour pass without telling her exactly how you feel.”
Luke sputtered, “But what if she doesn’t feel the same way? I mean, I know she cares for me and everything and we’re together all the time . . . well, she did kiss me when Dad . . . oh lord, David, I’ll face hunters all day long but I don’t know how to deal with this.”
“Hey look, buddy, I’m twelve years older than you but we’ve been to war together, numerous times. You’re like a son and brother to me, and I’ll always be straight up with you. Gracie is head over heels in love with you, and she thinks you’re the most amazing man on planet Earth.”
