by Lowry, Chris
Where were the kids?
I heard two bodies jump off the bluff and crunch in the sand on two sides of me. They were big, man sized, not kids. More pirates I guessed.
“You think he’s worth the trouble?” the one on the left drawled.
I pulled a pistol and shot him, then swung to the man on the right. All I could make out was his shape against the bluff.
“Hey, hey,” he screamed. “Hold it.”
“Where are my kids?”
“On a boat on the other side.”
I took two steps closer so I could see better.
“Don’t shoot me. Please.”
I pulled the trigger and let him fall.
Other side. I had to reach the other side. Over the bluff and through the woods?
Anyone with the kids would have heard the shots.
I took off running around the beach, past our campsite and up the far side where the mud colored water slowed and eddied against the Mississippi shore.
A hundred yards away, a small boat pulled away from shore. I couldn’t make out individuals, but there were five shapes I could see.
Would they put the kids in the bottom? Or hide behind them.
I raced faster, feet slurping in the mud as the current caught them. Two of them pulled on oars, gaining distance.
I’ve never been a sprinter. Long distance running is about staying power. But thousands of hours running over the past decade trained the muscles, and I dug deep.
The boat was churning parallel to shore. I pounded across the beach catching up. One of the shadows turned and a flash of fire bloomed from his hand. The bullet zipped over my head.
I stopped, planted my feet and held my breath as I aimed. I squeezed the trigger and the shape threw up its arms and pitched over the side of the boat.
That set it to rocking, and the two shadows with oars mumbled shouts.
I ran harder.
The boat was fifty feet off shore and twirling in the current as it floated downriver. The two shadows seemed to argue, but neither set oar in the water to correct their course or pull further away.
Could they be the kids?
I passed the boat, and kept running working to get ahead of it. I shed my coat, my shirt, stopped slipped off my boots and hit the water in a shallow dive. I slapped through the water on an intercept course for the boat, hoping the current would carry it to me.
The other two shadows in the boat began shooting at the shore where I once was, but not into the water.
I treaded water, felt the river tug on my legs in a swirl as the shallow wall boat floated right to me.
The men inside were focused on the island.
I grabbed the gunwale and yanked myself over into a tumble of river water and squirming bodies in the bottom of the boat.
I kicked one shadow over the side, took an oar whack against my shoulder and grabbed a second man by the shirt and launched him over with my foot.
There were two left in either end of the boat, and two still bodies in the bottom. The Boy and Bem, hands tied, mouths gagged, frozen in wide eyed fear.
They didn’t recognize the wet monster that rolled out of the river and on top of them.
I grabbed a fallen oar and speared it into the closest shadow. He tried to get his gun up and shoot. The bullet plowed through his partner and sent him into the water with a gurgle filled curse.
The oar knocked his gun up, and I hopped up on a metal seat and did my best extra point kicker impression going for a Super Bowl win.
My toe connected with his chin, cracked his head backwards. The pistol dropped into the bottom of the boat and I slammed into the limp man before he collapsed and tipped him over the edge.
Then we were past the island and in the dark river, the boat spinning about in the current. The dark on the water seemed heavier, the black banks rolling by like undulating shadows.
I crawled to the kids and lifted them up.
The Boy fought back, still unable to see more than a shadow clawing at him.
“Boy,” I grunted and he went still. “Bem.”
I untied them and they grabbed each other.
Not me.
Maybe that would come later I reasoned.
I felt around for something in the boat, anything to steer with, to try and control our ride. I found a short oar and took it to the back of the craft, shoved it in the water to act as a rudder.
“Are you hurt?”
“Scrapes and bruises,” said Bem. “We tried to fight back.”
She broke down crying then, tiny shoulders heaving. I could see the shadows merge as her brother held her.
Then I was crying too.
I came to close to losing them again. This world, I swallowed the lump in my throat. This ever-loving bloody world.
I was going to find T, and get Anna and take my family away from it all. Away from militia, and mad Generals, and away from cults, and rednecks and river pirates.
The survivors were worse than the Z.
I felt the rage bubble and boil, the anger swelling up in a surge that threatened to take me into the red.
I fought it down by breathing. In four counts, hold for three, out four counts, hold for three. It helped. My racing heart slowed a little.
The tide receded on the rage, and I could feel the tunnel vision open up. I breathed some more.
“Did they bring guns?”
I tried to find a task we could do in the dark, some action to take their mind off what almost happened. I needed an action too, but holding the oar was working for now.
My kids had seen more people die at my hand. Maybe they didn’t me to hug them because they thought I was a monster.
I heard the clatter of fingers on metal as they searched.
“Empty,” said the Boy.
Referring to the boat.
I fished in the water in the stern and pulled out the soaked pistol the last man had dropped before going over into the water. I would have to dry it and clean it later, once the sun came up.
“No food,” Bem called out.
I watched them huddle together for warmth as the wind picked up on the water. My wet clothes soon got cold and stiff, my body started shivering. I remembered reading a piece about a man who got out of his Jeep in a snowstorm and froze to death. I tried to recall the details of hypothermia, but I knew the core temperature only had to drop a couple of degrees before it was a problem.
Often during a long-distance race, back when I ran one hundred milers’, I could start shivering at anything below eighty degrees. Air temp, not my core.
I knew I shouldn’t have started thinking about it because my muscles responded by contracting, cramping and twitching in spasms, shivers that rocked my whole body.
“You okay Dad?” Bem asked.
She couldn’t see me, unless my shadow was moving like a backlit marionette.
“Fine,” I chattered.
“You want my coat?”
“No Boy. Keep it.”
“We need to get off the water.”
It was good advice. I should have thought of it.
The article also said brain function decreases the colder you get. I didn’t have much to start with so if I got much colder we were in trouble.
“Distance,” I told them. “More distance between us.”
“Stay here,” the Boy told Bem and worked his way back to me across the eighteen-foot expanse of the metal boat.
“You need to get off the metal,” he told me. “The cold is leaching.”
Leaches, in river water? Could I feel them on my skin?
I swatted at my legs and held the oar in a death grip in the other hand. The boy sat next to me.
“The boat doesn’t have anything in it but us. I guess those guys didn’t plan on taking us far.”
That reached me, sent off pings of worry in the base of my brain.
Just how far were they planning to take the kids?
I worked the kinks in my neck and forced the muscles to move
so I could see the eastern shore. It was far enough away that I didn’t worry.
“We should stop and build a fire,” the Boy argued. “We’re all wet and cold.”
I wished we could. But a fire is what drew them to us.
And they would be looking. I couldn’t remember how many were dead, one or two on the island, a couple of more in the river, maybe a drowning also.
If they were a tight knit group, they would come after the boat.
I couldn’t recall if pirates were bound by honor, but it didn’t matter. We weren’t stopping until after daylight.
“Sunrise,” I told him.
He looked at his wrist and sighed.
“I wore a watch back when it mattered.”
“I never did,” I told him.
“I remember. But you were always on time.”
“Used my phone.”
“Want me to steer for a while?”
I tried to shake my head and it devolved into a shivering spasm.
“Rest,” I chattered. “Sleep if you can.”
“I won’t. I can’t.”
He crawled to the stern and huddled with his sister for warmth. I stuck the handle of the short oar between my arm and torso, and curled my arms around me.
Cold again. This time though, no lucky fish camp to crawl into, no saltines and soup. Just river water and waiting for daylight.
CHAPTER SIX
I don’t remember passing out. I don’t remember waking up until I was being carried on a stretcher. I opened my eyes and stared at the sky, blue with white cloud puffs rolling overhead.
Then into a building.
I could feel the wheels jump over a door jamb, felt the rocking of the stretcher and tried to sit up.
“Hold him,” said a man’s voice.
Soft, firm and gentle hands pushed me back onto the foam mattress. White straps were tied to my wrists and held me to the metal of the stretcher.
I looked around for the kids, stomach roiling.
They were walking with the stretcher, Bem’s arm over the boy, holding him tight as they followed.
She smiled.
Not scared. Not panicked. Just a tiny smile that eased the clenching sensation in my gut.
If they weren’t scared, we might be okay.
“You can take the restraints,” I said. “I’ll lie still.”
“What did he say?” a female voice this time.
“It will take a few hours for his voice to come back,” said the male voice again.
He leaned over me. Green scrubs. Stethoscope.
“You’re in our clinic,” he explained. “You’re going to be okay.”
I felt pressure on my shins.
“Can you feel that?”
I nodded.
If they couldn’t understand me, I wasn’t going to waste my breath.
“Feet or leg?”
“Can you feel your feet Dad?”
The Boy was by the bottom of the stretcher. I looked at him, then down at where my feet were. White, shriveled waxy looking flesh under the dark skin of the doctor touching them with long fingers.
I couldn’t feel it.
“No.”
“Sounds like a no,” said the woman. I saw her then on the other side wearing a similar outfit to the man.
“You have hypothermia,” he explained.
I guessed that one. Wet clothes on a windy night on the river.
“Soup,” I grunted.
“Yes,” he nodded. “Soup and liquids. You should get feeling back in a few hours.”
“Where?”
“You shouldn’t try to talk,” said the woman. “Let the Doctor take care of you.”
“Vicksburg, Dad,” said Bem. “We’re safe.”
She smiled another tight little smile.
Safe.
I wouldn’t be sure until I could check it out myself. But that would have to wait until I could walk. Maybe my voice would come back before then.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I woke up in an empty room and didn’t like it. My memory of hospital rooms before the zombie plague was full of beeps, and whooshing noises, the sound of people bustling as they rushed about to save lives.
Here there was nothing.
I wondered if there was a map on the door saying here there be silence. It opened and there was indeed a sign saying quiet please.
Close enough.
“You’re awake,” a fresh face boy said. He had eyes that matched his green scrubs, and looked too young to be a doctor.
“I’m Zach,” he introduced himself. “Don’t get up.”
I couldn’t if I wanted to.
My legs and wrists were strapped to the bed.
“That’s a joke,” he explained as he untied my right hand.
I snatched the green scrub and yanked him close.
“Where are my kids?”
It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question. I’d just crossed half the country to find them, killed a couple hundred zombies, a couple dozen more humans, maybe more because who was keeping count.
Just that past night, at least I think that’s when it was, I fought off river pirates to save them and spent half the night frozen to the bottom of a boat to keep them safe.
Now I didn’t know where we were. More importantly I didn’t know where they were. I knew they were not in the room.
And now I was free.
Zach responded as many brave men before him had when faced with a dangerous situation.
He piddled.
I watched the stain spread across the front of his green scrubs, his leg growing darker, his face glowing scarlet.
But I didn’t let go.
Zach might be trying to play a trick on me.
I did look at him closer though.
Zach had zits. Acne, like a teenager and then I realized he was one.
Another trick.
Send in a kid to soften me up, because good guys don’t hurt kids.
“Untie my other hand,” I told him.
He fumbled the strap loose.
“Your legs too?” he stuttered. “Sir?”
The Sir made me let go of his shirt.
And the kids walked in the room with another nurse carrying a tray of food.
“Dad?” asked Bem.
“Dad,” chastised the boy.
“What happened?” the nurse set down the tray and untied my other leg.
“He woke up confused,” Zach explained.
Give credit to the kid, he was being pretty cool about getting scared piss-less. Made me respect him.
“Sorry,” I offered.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m going to go change now.”
The last one he said to Bem.
She giggled.
My daughter giggled at the pimply faced boy who tied me to the bed. Technically, I knew that he untied me from the bed, but he was making eyes at my little girl.
I should have killed him when I had the chance.
She watched him leave. I did too, ready for his next trick.
“Eat,” commanded the nurse.
She pushed the tray closer on a table and lifted the bed up with a manual lever.
I pushed off the side and sat up.
“I’m going to be okay,” I told her. “I just need clothes and we’ll get out of your hair.”
“You can’t leave yet,” she smirked with one side of her mouth, then caught my look.
“Sir,” she added.
I had to work on the glare, but maybe the scar was making me look a little meaner than I felt.
Or maybe she got it right.
Bem and the Boy weren’t coming closer either.
They stood together, close to the wall where they could watch the door and me at the same time.
“How long have we been here?”
“One day,” the answered together.
“Where is it?”
“Vicksburg,” said the nurse first. “Eat. The Doctor is going to be by in a few minutes, we
’ll get you clothes and get you released.”
Released was a hold back to before. A throwback to when hospitals could almost hold you hostage unless you knew about a little thing called against medical advice.
“Where did you stay last night?”
“Here with you,” the Boy answered.
“What happened?”
Bem stepped forward then and put a hand on top of mine.
“We couldn’t wake you up,” she said. “The sun came up, but we couldn’t find a place to land the boat, and then we passed a city and they were yelling at us.”
“Natchez,” the nurse sniffed. “Den of thieves and bandits. You were lucky to get past them.”
“You wouldn’t move,” said Bem. “You just huddled in the boat and shivered. We couldn’t wake you up.”
“I thought you had been shot,” the Boy added. “You were just trying to hide it from us.”
The doctor stepped in.
“You haven’t eaten,” he looked at the tray.
Small bowl of soup. Small sandwich cut in two. A plastic container of juice.
“Do you have an appetite?”
“An appetite for answers.”
He smiled, white teeth standing out against his dark skin.
“That’s good. You have your humor back.”
“He’s got humor?” sniped the Boy.
I picked up the sandwich, dipped it in the broth and took a bite.
“Excellent,” said the Doctor.
He lifted a chart and examined it.
“As you can imagine, our resources are nowhere near where they were before. But it looks like you took a blow to the head, and that combined with hypothermia caused you to lose consciousness.”
“A pirate tried to use my skull as a baseball.”
“Sounds like them. You were lucky. They almost succeeded.”
“He didn’t. I am.”
He ran a finger along the scar line above my ear.
“This is poor stitching,” he said as he gave it a professional appraisal. “But it worked.”
“I asked her to make it a conversation piece.”
“Finish eating.”
I dipped and chewed, dipped and chewed.
Zach came back into the room with a pair of scrub tops and bottoms in his hands. He took the long route around the room to make sure he was close to Bem by the wall.
“Are those the ones you pissed in?” I reminded him about his situation just a few moments ago.
