Todd sailed his yacht north, stopping at a small harbor in a tiny town called Foxboro just south of the Miami metroplex. There were, of course, houses all along the coast, but the population of Foxboro was much smaller than many other harbor towns. Todd and Helen had stopped there more than once without incident. The refueling station at the harbor still had gasoline, as well as a reservoir of fresh water. Todd steered the yacht up to the refueling dock and let it glide into the soft rubber of the old tires that lined the wooden structure. He hurried down and tied the yacht down. The large, gleaming ship seemed out of place beside the simple, sun-faded wooden dock with its aging pumps and barnacle-covered pilings. The fuel pumps were simple contraptions from a bygone era. Todd fed the hoses into the fuel receptacles and then used the manual levers to pump the fluid into the nearly empty tanks.
It took several minutes to get the fuel flowing, and Todd was unnerved by the silence. Even the small towns had eventually succumbed to the Zompocalypse, and even though Todd hadn’t seen or heard any zombies, he knew they could appear and ruin his plans at any moment. He always tried to get what he needed as quickly as possible if he was on the mainland. Being out to sea was the only place he ever felt truly safe.
The handles of the gas pump were rusty and each stroke down or up, made the metal creak and groan. The only other sound were insects humming in the overgrown weeds near the abandoned convenience store that once served the ships in the harbor and the inhabitants of the small town.
Once Todd had the fuel tanks filled, he turned to the fresh water reservoir—a large plastic barrel. The yacht held 250 gallons of fresh water in its internal tanks. Seawater was used for most things, even washing in the glass-walled shower. The fresh water was used for cooking, drinking, and occasionally rinsing the salt off after a shower. Personally, Todd preferred to drink from the five-gallon bottles used by the stainless steel water cooler. He already had three of the refillable containers, but he was always looking for more.
He breathed a sigh of relief once the water tanks were topped off. If worse came to worse, Todd could live off the canned goods in his galley for a few weeks still, but he wouldn’t last long without fuel and water. Even with the green-energy devices, having the fuel tanks full and ready made Todd breathe easier. He almost started to call to Helen and let her know he was going ashore, but then he remembered she wasn’t there. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned against the sturdy wooden piling. There were moments when he felt like his whole world was flipping upside down, and in those times, it felt good to have something solid to lean on.
He opened his eyes and pulled the big laundry bag off the edge of the yacht. It was a simple mesh bag with a drawstring top, but Todd put it to good use whenever he had to scavenge for supplies.
The convenience store wasn’t far from the dock. It was a simple building of cinder blocks painted bright white. There were signs still in the windows with prices on fresh fruit, meats, and seasonal goods. Todd couldn’t help but wish for fresh meat. It had been ages since he’d eaten meat that didn’t come from a can. The convenience store seemed to be empty. In the bigger cities, looters had cleaned out whole supermarkets even before things got really bad. Todd found that in the smaller communities it was much easier to find food, but he and Helen weren’t the only people to have stocked up on the wide variety of foods in the small town’s only store. There was one other public building in the little town; it served as the city hall, police department, and post office, but it had nothing of interest to Todd.
He pushed open the glass door of the store. It was dark, and dust had settled onto the metal shelves, which were mostly empty. Todd searched the aisles and found pet food, some souvenirs, and a rack of generic potato and corn chips. The chips were all past their expiration date, but Todd took them anyway. There were still cigarettes and chewing tobacco, but Todd had several boxes of cigars from Cuba on the yacht, so he left the smokes behind the counter.
Todd had to use the heavy flashlight he carried on his scouting runs as he moved into the back room. There were two offices, but they didn’t interest Todd, nor did the bulging green bank bag that sat on one of them. Money was worthless once the rioting had begun. For a while, people bartered with gold and silver, but the plague struck so quickly and spread so rapidly that the world seemed to fall into chaos in a matter of days. The storeroom was just as Todd had hoped it would be. There were several pallets of canned goods and a metal cage where the surplus alcohol was kept. Todd had busted the lock on the liquor cage the last time he’d passed through Foxboro, but there were still several cases of rum and bourbon.
Todd finished filling his bag. There was very little that would be considered healthy in his haul, but Todd didn’t care. He had no desire other than getting back to his yacht and out to sea. He wanted to drink and forget all that he had lost. He wanted to disappear in the black void of sleep where nothing mattered and no pain existed.
He was walking toward the dock when the glass bottles in the mesh bag over his shoulder began to clank together. It wasn’t a loud noise, but in the silence of the abandoned town it seemed loud. Todd tried rearranging the bag over his shoulder but the clanking only got worse. There was a moan from behind him, the telltale sign of zombies as they lumbered about in their stiff, uncoordinated lurch. Todd didn’t bother looking behind him; he just broke into a jog, which only made the bottles clash together even more loudly.
Todd knew the zombies couldn’t catch him. They hadn’t overcome the general population by speed or intelligence, but by sheer numbers. Once a person fell to the ravenous frenzy of a zombie, that person soon reanimated—even with most of the flesh ripped from their body. Todd couldn’t tell how many zombies were behind him, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting back to the yacht and casting off.
Once he was aboard the Great Escape, he finally chanced a glance back up the long wooden pier. Todd hadn’t named the yacht, but the finely painted name was clear to see against the ship’s white stern; the irony of the name wasn’t lost on him. He untied one of the thick gang ropes and then glanced up as he hurried to the second. There were three zombies, lurching in formation like a scene from a low-budget horror flick. Todd guessed they were close enough to catch him if he didn’t hurry. Normally Helen would already have the engine running and the ship ready to move back out into deeper water, but Todd was on his own now.
He had tied the boat to the dock with a simple slipknot, and he gave the rope a tug, untying from the wooden pier and setting the boat free. Todd snatched up a long fiberglass pole with a metal hook on the end. It was used for catching rope that had fallen into the water or as in this instance, shoving the yacht away from a pier. Todd set the hook against one of the heavy pilings and pushed with all his strength. The yacht shifted in the water and drifted away from the dock. Todd was still pushing when the zombies got close enough to reach out for him. He was more than an arm’s length from the dock, but he pulled back anyway. The dead smelled horribly; their ruined bodies filled with maggots and worms. Huge flies buzzed around them and ghastly fluid dripped from their open wounds.
Todd poked at the nearest zombie with the pole, stabbing it hard with the metal hook. The pointed hook punched through the filthy scalp and scrapped along the pitiful creature’s skull. The zombie grabbed at the pole, lost its balance on the pier, and toppled into the water. The creature thrashed, sinking into the water and disappearing in a rush of bubbles and discolored water. Todd focused on the other two zombies. They could survive underwater, but they were even slower than normal, and their ruined bodies attracted sharks. Todd waved his pole menacingly, but the other two zombies just paced along the dock, reaching for him in a useless gesture.
Todd hurried up the steps to his cockpit. The door was already open, and he pushed the button to fire up the electric motors. They hummed to life, and Todd pressed the joystick all the way to its limit. The big luxury craft moved slowly away from the pier. Once the depth finder flickered to life, Todd co
uld see the zombie that had fallen in the water thrashing along the sandy bottom, still moving toward the ship. The harbor was deep, and there was no way for the zombie to swim let alone reach his ship and find a way to climb into it, but it still made him nervous. It took all his self-control not to fire up the main engine and race back out to sea. He told himself over and over that he was safe, but convincing himself was difficult.
Finally, when he was nearly a mile from the harbor, Todd flicked off the engine switch and shut down all the monitors in his cockpit. There were no signs of bad weather, and the seas were calm. Todd went back down to the main deck and pulled the handle that let the anchor down. There was a rattle that reverberated through the yacht as the chain unwound from the stern of the ship. Todd picked up his mesh bag and carried it back inside the large cabin that served as the ship’s main living space.
The yacht had a simple layout. The main deck was wide open, with soft seats running around the perimeter of the stern. There were walkways on either side of the cabin, which took up most of the main deck, leaving only a small open area at the bow of the big craft. Inside the cabin was an opulent living space with a 70-inch television, theater seating, bar, and leather sofa. The floor was hardwood, and the walls were covered with fabric to reduce the noise from the ship’s engines. At the far end of the cabin, a narrow stairwell led down to a small laundry room and the stateroom, the only home Todd had known with Helen. They had shared the king-sized bed and made the yacht their own, even decorating it with small items they found on supply runs to the mainland. But now Todd was alone. Just seeing the knick-knacks that Helen loved so much made his heart heavy, and he couldn’t stand the thought of sleeping in their bed.
Another stairwell led to below-deck storage compartments and the ship’s small kitchen. Todd secured the liquor in the wet bar and then left the dozen or so bags of flavored potato chips in the mesh bag on the floor. He found a heavy, crystal tumbler and opened one of the bottles of bourbon. Todd didn’t even bother to look at the label, he just poured himself a generous glass and then stepped back out onto the deck.
The sun was setting, and the scene along the shoreline was almost sublime. The zombies on the dock had given up and shuffled back in the direction they had come from. The palm trees stood like silent guardians, but the once immaculate houses along the coast looked dark and foreboding. They were like diamonds that had lost their sparkle, reminding Todd of a ghost town. He took a drink of the bourbon and did his best not to cough as the warm liquid scalded its way down his throat. He dropped onto the seat at the side of the deck. It was a long bench seat, bright white and low so that his arms spread out along either side. He watched the sky turn from orange to purple, then black. Stars appeared, and the silence was so great it made Todd afraid.
He drank the entire glass of bourbon, then stumbled into the cabin, locked the sliding glass door, and passed out on the sofa.
Chapter 3
The days that followed were much the same—short periods of productive work followed by binge drinking. Todd woke up sick, vomited over the side of the ship, drank some water, forced down a can of food, and then went to the cockpit on top of the ship’s cabin. Todd was losing weight, and he felt sick all the time, but he didn’t care. He was alive and he wanted to be dead, but he couldn’t just kill himself. He had vowed never to let himself succumb to the plague, and he had promised Helen not to drown himself in the ocean. Instead he drowned himself in bourbon.
Each day he sailed a few miles up the coast of Florida, before his grief drove him back to a bottle of whisky. He had to begin each day raising the anchor, which meant cranking the anchor’s manual ratchet. It was hard work, especially for a hung-over, weak man. Still, he did it each day and forced himself to eat. It wasn’t enough food, and he knew he would soon be seriously ill if he didn’t eat better, but his stomach wouldn’t hold much. He had vitamins that he took religiously and canned fruit, which he tried to eat a little of each day. He hated to think of the food he was wasting when his stomach refused to take in any more. The yacht had a decent-sized refrigerator and even a deep freezer, but he had taken them off line due to the high-energy consumption of the appliances.
Sweat was a normal occurrence since Todd couldn’t use the yacht’s air conditioning, only now his sweat stank of booze. He showered occasionally, but mostly he just drank and slept. One night he fell asleep without dropping the anchor, and when he woke up, he found himself dangerously close to shore. The depth finder showed only a few feet between the yacht’s keel and the bottom of the ocean. The waves were pushing the ship toward land, and Todd was forced to fire up the main engine to move the boat farther out to sea.
It was almost two weeks after Helen’s death when Todd finally decided he needed more supplies. He was down to a third of one water container, and his food supplies were dangerously low as well. He still had plenty of whisky, but he knew that wouldn’t sustain him. He began to look for a place to resupply. The coast was filled with houses, and since Todd didn’t need fuel, he began to search for a home that might have what he needed. Almost all the massive homes along the coastline would have some food, but after an hour of searching Todd found one. A sturdy looking house with security shutters over the windows and a small rowboat tied to the dock, which extended out into the ocean from the sandy beach.
Todd found his mesh bag and put his shoes in it, then he hung the life jacket around his neck and set the yacht’s anchor. Finally, he checked the radar to ensure there weren’t any moving boats within a few miles of the Great Escape. Occasionally Todd saw other ships plying the open sea, but they usually steered clear of one another. The world had become a lonely, frightening place, and Todd guessed that it was only going to get more difficult to survive. He tried to convince himself that losing Helen and the baby had been a blessing in disguise, that they were better off not forced to struggle or suffer in the Zompocalypse, but he couldn’t quite believe it. And yet, despite his fear and the pain of his grief, a tiny flicker of hope that things might somehow, someway, get better was beginning to shine in the recesses of Todd’s mind. It was linked to his will to live and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake it.
He jumped into the cool, clear water. Todd had anchored nearly a mile from the coast. The water beneath him was dark and deep, but he could see his body below the surface. He slung the pull strings of the mesh bag over his shoulder and began swimming toward the shore. He was soon tired, but the life vest kept him afloat and the waves helped push him toward the dock. When Todd reached the dock he pulled himself out of the water and laid on the rough wooden platform. It took several minutes before he could catch his breath. His diet and drinking habits had caught up with him and stolen his strength.
Todd checked on the rowboat. It had a small motor and two long oars. Todd thought the little craft seemed sound enough. He would use it to get whatever supplies he could find back to the yacht. He had no idea how deep the water was, or if he could have gotten the Great Escape to the dock. There were no large ships in the area, only small boats and recreational watercrafts. Todd wasn’t ready to take any chances with his ship, so he swam in and would row back out with his supplies.
The walk up the long dock was creepy. He could see houses built almost on top of one another up and down the beach, but there was no sign of any people. Life had ceased to exist in this once happy part of the world. Todd could imagine the families who spent their summers and weekends in the large homes. He could almost smell the barbeque grills charring meat and hear the stereos playing classic songs as he made his way toward the house. It was all a fantasy, but it was a good fantasy—one that made the flickering hope in his mind a little brighter.
The dock was built up the beach and connected to the well-maintained deck of the large home. The house itself looked almost like a fortress. It was large and boxy, not nearly as extravagant as some of the homes on either side. The windows were all battened down, and Todd guessed the doors would be double bolted too. He w
ould have to get lucky just to get inside, but he recognized the type of owners who had been the last occupants. They were Preppers, the kind of people who believed in being prepared for disasters of all kinds. They might still be alive inside and that would present a different set of problems. He didn’t want to get shot before he could get the supplies he needed.
He tried knocking softly at first. He waited patiently and listened, but there was nothing but the sounds of waves rolling onto the sand. Todd knocked more loudly, then when no one responded, he took a chance and banged on the door. Sound attracted the zombies, and Todd guessed there were at least a few lingering around, but he hadn’t spotted any yet. There was still no response from inside the house, so Todd went to the nearest window. It took him nearly ten minutes to pry the security shutters from the window, but once he did, he was able to use a plank of wood to break the glass to get his first look inside the home. It was dark, but the beam from his flashlight revealed exactly what he needed to see. There was a sturdy-looking counter just inside. He heaved himself up and climbed through the window, turning his body onto the counter until he could get back to his feet.
He was in the kitchen, which was large and clean. He made a sweep through the cabinets and found the usual canned foods. There was nothing special in the kitchen, and Todd left most of it in the cabinets, setting out a few things that he would take back. There were two floors above him, but Todd took the wooden stairs down into the home’s basement. The lowest level was not finished out, with concrete floors. There were wooden studs but no sheetrock or paneling to cover the walls or hide the pipes and wires that ran up into the living areas of the home. Still, the basement proved to be a virtual treasure trove of emergency supplies. There were shelves filled with MREs and over a dozen of five-gallon water bottles that would fit on Todd’s water cooler. And in one corner, there was a large gun safe.
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