Roxanne's Story - Vol. II: Survival In The Zombie Apocalypse

by Diane Butler

  “Get away you two!” Roxanne ordered. “You’ll have plenty of time but I do not want either of you in this bedroom without me. You are not to frighten her.”

  As Morgan laid Karen on the bed she opened her eyes and turned to see the two animals watching her from the doorway. “We ate fruit and fish for as long as we could but some people started to lose their pets and we knew it was the natives,” she said.

  Morgan and Roxanne looked at one another. “Where were you sailing from?” Morgan asked.

  “From the Bahamas,” she said faintly and put her arm over her forehead. Roxanne got a rag and soaked it in water, wringing it out before putting it on Karen’s forehead.

  “And you made it all the way to Louisiana from the Bahamas?” Morgan was astonished.

  “Louisiana?” Karen was momentarily alert at the mention of where she was and then became faint again. “We were trying to make it to an occupied bunker in Florida. Our last contact with them was six months ago.”

  Roxanne had asked Morgan not to say anything to the group until Karen was well and could answer more questions. She did not want a run on her house and knew how inquisitive Lucky could become, often pushing things too far. She let Mary take the truck into the community during the week and she reported back that they were blocking the town zombies from reaching their residential streets. “I don’t know if that’s the right solution since they need to go on foot to raid the surrounding stores, but I guess it’s better than waking up to a herd. Still, you would think that they would concentrate on killing off the zombies, or leading them out of town and then taking over the stores as residences. That way they would have the main road leading west out of town at their disposal. As of right now they’re actually enclosing themselves on a dead end street with only Jenny and a few boats at their disposal. I guess they can still use Route 236 and go around the helicopter, but if a herd is on that road and they can’t get to the short-cut to Route 123, then they’re boxed in.”

  Roxanne was sitting on Karen’s bed when Mary gave her the update. Karen was sitting up and now able to eat solid food, listening to Mary’s report. “You mean there’s a town here with people?”

  “Just in the last month,” Roxanne answered. “Until then it was just Mary and I and we were well supplied by raiding the empty houses and stores. All that has come to an end as this new group has bigger demands. When you are well enough you can choose to join them for more protection than Mary and I can provide for you.”

  “I found a bed for you,” Mary told Roxanne. “Morgan and Caleb helped me, but maybe you won’t want it up here now that Karen may be moving out. I was sure that you were tired of the couch since you can’t stretch your legs out.” But Roxanne agreed that a bed sounded good and they brought the frame up to put it together, pushing Karen’s bed closer to the window looking out over the canal.

  Mary never told Roxanne that Karen had asked about Roxanne’s scars and how she had gotten them. Mary told her that it was an accident and when Karen replied, “That’s no accident” Mary answered, “That’s all you need to know.” But it hadn’t escaped Roxanne that Karen was often watching her and she felt the same type of scrutiny from Karen that she had received from Lucky. She made sure that she never dressed or undressed in front of Karen and that all she saw were the wrists and facial scar. Finally Roxanne could stand it no more and turned one day to put her hand to her cheek, “Let’s just say that there are people to be aware of in the ZA. But not these people, not this place. You have no reason to associate my scars with where you are now.”

  “I heard of horrible things happening, have seen some myself but not until much later in the ZA. We were sheltered in the Bahamas for almost a year after the U.S. was infected.” Karen paused and looked away. “But then we let in the wrong people. One of our fishermen found a boat drifting in the ocean with a family on board. By then the Island had passed a law that we would not accept any more people. The Island could sustain only so many people but he felt sorry for them, thinking that they were just sick and needed nourishment. By the time he towed them to shore one of them had died and turned. When it became late in the day the fisherman’s family went looking for him and not knowing that he had been bitten and had turned, he then infected his family. Well, you know how it goes from there.”

  Morgan and Caleb visited once more and then it was agreed by all parties, including Karen, that she was well enough to see the community. Roxanne told Morgan to come back the next day with Lucky and Brandon in the jeep and they could show Karen around.

  Karen was both apprehensive and excited about meeting people and to see more of what type of shelter was being built. She had seen people attempt to build a fortress around their home and saw each one fail but those people had not banded together to build just one stronghold that everyone could defend. She liked the idea but was apprehensive that it could be done.

  Mary had brought all Karen’s belongings in from the sailboat and washed them. As Karen carefully dressed for the meeting she felt as if she were getting ready for a date. She was coming down the stairs when she heard the jeep arrive and was just opening the screen door as the passengers got out. She gasped and froze in her tracks when she recognized one of them. “Lucky?”

  Lucky stopped and looked over at her, “Karen? Oh my God, is that you?” Everyone watched as they ran to each other. Lucky picked Karen up and swung her around as they both laughed.

  CHAPTER 12

  Everyone sat outside while Karen explained how she had survived for the last two years. She and Lucky had been partners on several assignments with Secret Service and knew each other. When the ZA began she had been traveling with a Senator and his family in the Bahamas.

  “When we first heard of the outbreak the Senator immediately wanted to fly back to Washington, but his family begged him to stay and word on the hill was that he should stay put. As things became worse in the states, but while there was still communication, private jets and yachts from all over started coming to the Island. Within months they had to shut down the borders not allowing any more people in. They blocked the airstrip and had border control direct boats to the smaller surrounding islands. Some of those islands are not habitable, so I don’t know if they lived or died. The government just couldn’t be responsible for any more people and was more concerned about food for their own citizens. Plus, we didn’t have an outbreak of the virus, not one, and they wanted to keep it that way.”

  “The government kept strict control of any rioting. Water was boiled from fresh steams that were always guarded, ranches and farms were guarded, and residents with backyard vegetable gardens were advised to have a vicious dog. But then the dogs began to disappear. Basically the ocean kept us fed.”

  “We were free of the virus for a year but then a fisherman brought a family in that he found drifting in a boat offshore, and that’s when it began. The fisherman was bitten, he bit his family… well you know how it goes. People started building a fortress around their home but the bitten grew in numbers and many of the homes were overrun by large zombie crowds.”

  “We call them ‘herds’,” Caleb spoke up, “because they follow one another and their direction seems to be toward the latest sound that they heard. This town is somewhat different though. Some just keep circling around the block or pacing back and forth. Did you see any like that?”

  Karen shook her head, “No, the ones I saw always seemed to have a purpose, always traveling to the west end of the island.” Everyone looked at one another then Lucky spoke up. “The same here in the States. It appears that they are traveling from the east coast to the west but that’s a lot of cities emptying out to be in front of. People are being pushed west. We try to stay on the river as much as possible but recently had to abandoned a paper mill on the west side of the Mississippi because of a herd coming out of the north.”

  “Then our plan to get to the northern part of Florida would have worked,” Karen said. “Until six months ago we had contact with someone in a b
unker at NASA, Joe Fleming, a kid really. He was all who was left although it started out as a group of ten that had slowly diminished over the years. A few couldn’t take the isolation any longer and left, never to be heard from again. A few opted out, tempers flared and one was killed in a fight. This kid was getting desperate although he said he still had supplies. Last I talked with him I told him to hang on until we could get a boat ready and that we would join him.”

  Karen shook her head and became saddened. “That’s how I lost the Senator. We went to the docks in an attempt to bribe a fisherman into selling us a boat but found that most were in a panic and loading their families to leave the island. The ZA was now rapidly turning and people had heard of the swarms of zombies tearing houses down one by one. I guess the fishermen had the same idea of trying to make it to Florida so we tried to buy passage, but that didn’t work either. Suddenly the natives saw us as the cause of the island’s downfall. They resented the Americans who had fled to their island, seeking shelter and eating their food or those who had better homes and not the shacks that they lived in. They turned on us in anger, a mob began to form and the Senator was killed. I survived only because we had our houseman with us and he convinced the crowd that I had small children to take care of.”

  Karen looked down at her hands, “That was a bad time and I had to take that news back to his wife and two kids.” She looked up again, “I lost contact with Joe after that. I was never able to reach him again to tell him of the delay.”

  “Then the hurricane hit,” Karen continued. “If Joe had been able to reach us I’m sure he would have warned us. He still had satellite service and had done so in the past. He had all satellite connections and was able to tell us of what was happening around different parts of the world, including the rest of the U.S. We had boarded up in the past because he knew a hurricane was closing in on the Bahamas, although he was not a weatherman to know if it would shift or not. This one destroyed us, leveling the island and we were not prepared. It killed a lot of Z’s but it also killed a lot of people who then turned. The Senators wife and one child were killed when the house fell in. I didn’t have any medical supplies to ease their pain and they had internal injuries, but at least we were able to bury them.”

  “Weren’t you familiar with the Island’s foliage, the herbs and plants that could be used to make their passing easier?” Roxanne asked. Karen was mystified and looked up at her. “You were there for two years,” Roxanne continued. “Did you not learn what plant life to survive on?”

  “Roxanne is from the bayou,” Mary interjected. “She knows every plant, flower, weed and what it can do for you or if it will kill you.”

  “No,” Karen answered softly. “We were fools, thinking that we were safe from what was happening in the U.S., thinking that the island would supply everything that we needed, that someone somewhere on the island would always have things that we could buy if needed. There were natives who knew how to make medicines, but it never occurred to us that we would not be able to get to them.”

  Lucky touched Karen’s hand, “You did what you were trained to do Karen. After all this time I have never tried to learn the plant life, except to stay away from poison ivy.” He chuckled to break the tension in the air feeling that Roxanne was acting superior. “But how did you find the sailboat?”

  “Three days after the hurricane we found it washed up on shore. Don’t know where it came from, perhaps it was out at sea and lost its crew when the hurricane hit. The hull was in good condition and Detrick, the houseman said he knew how to sail and between the two of us we felt we could make it to Florida. It took us a couple more days to ready it. We only had one jug of water and some fruit but it shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of days.” Karen paused before continuing.

  “Then a storm hit and we were thrown off course. We didn’t know where we were we just always kept the sun to our back to go west, but then the days went from two to three and we still never saw land. Suzanne, the little one and I became ill. Detrick was convinced that we had the virus although I assured him that it was lack of water and the heat. He locked us into the bedroom saying that if it rained he would bring us water. I woke up a few times too weak to get out of bed but I saw that Suzanne was still lying beside me. Next thing I remember was Roxanne,” Karen looked up at Roxanne.

  “The place was in shambles,” Roxanne said to the group. “Either they went through another storm or Detrick went mad and broke the place up. He may have brought you to within sight of the shore before that happened. I don’t think you would have drifted this far before running aground.”

  “You’ve had a terrible experience, Karen,” Lucky said and stood up. “Are you still up to seeing the sights?”

  “Yes. It feels good to have my legs on ground again and I’d like to see the fortifications that you are making.”

  Mary and Roxanne watched from her porch as everyone left together. Mary started to go into the house but noticed that Roxanne continued staring at the empty driveway. “What’s wrong,” she asked.

  “I don’t trust her. I think she remembers more than she’s telling.”

  Mary couldn’t hold her tongue, “Some may say the same thing about you, Roxanne.”

  Roxanne quickly turned and Mary’s hand tightened on the doorframe expecting an angry outburst. Instead Roxanne nodded, “All right, I’ll give you that one but I still don’t trust her. Both she and Lucky have partnered together, both in Secret Service yet neither have impressed me as being able to survive or to protect their group. I guess I don’t trust her because they are both cut from the same pattern. I didn’t depend on Shoes to supply me with medicine or food. I learned how to identify and make both so I could survive on my own. Yet Karen does not learn about the land that she is living on from the natives. Instead, she depends on them for supplies,” Roxanne shook her head. “I don’t see either of them to be a leader or willing to learn from others.”

  Within the week Karen packed up and moved with Lucky into a residence within the community. Lucky tried to convince her to join him on Jenny but she said she wanted to be on land again so Lucky stopped bunking with the rest of his group on the riverboat. However, Karen kept asking for her sailboat to be brought around to the dock so they could work on it. She hadn’t given up on Florida and was not feeling completely safe with the arrangements the others were making to secure the area. “I barely know how to pilot Jenny,” Lucky said. “I wouldn’t be any good to you on a sailboat but I’ll talk to Roxanne about it.”

  “Roxanne?” Karen questioned. “It’s my boat, why would you need to talk to Roxanne?”

  “Because we need to cross her land to get to it and her animals aren’t exactly friendly to trespassers.”

  “They’re both strange looking dogs but I never had a problem with them. I sometimes felt as if they were watching me though and they never came close enough for me to pet them.”

  “One is a coyote, didn’t you notice?”

  Karen stood up from her chore and turned to look at him, “A coyote? How strange. And those scars that Roxanne has? Do you know how she got those?”

  Lucky hesitated then walked over to pick up his staff. “I wasn’t there and it’s something no one speaks of. I suggest that you not approach her on the matter. I need to check in with Brandon. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Caleb saw Lucky approaching and found that lately he was always angry when he saw Lucky. Karen appeared to be a nice woman and he realized that Roxanne didn’t remember a relationship with Lucky but somehow Caleb couldn’t get over the feeling that Lucky was cheating on Roxanne. As Lucky boarded Jenny and said hello Caleb asked, “Have you told Karen about Roxanne? That you were married?”

  Lucky stopped and looked questionably at Caleb. “We were never married Caleb. You know that she was married to Ed.”

  “I mean after Ed, and yes you were married to her. Or at least Roxanne thought so or she wouldn’t have stopped thinking for herself and blindly followed you after the
Park fell.”

  Lucky gasped at the insult, “Did Roxanne tell you this?”

  “No, but Roxanne was different when we met up with her in New Orleans. It’s like she was beaten down, just a shadow following in your footsteps. After she came out of the bayou she was more of the strong woman that I remembered.” Caleb picked up his staff to go ashore. “I think you should tell Karen that you were married to Roxanne. Any man who has been with Roxanne should be proud and not try to hide it.” With that he left the boat, leaving Lucky to stare after him.

  Morgan came out of the lounge with a cup of coffee and said hello but Lucky greeted him with, “What’s gotten into that kid of yours?”

  Morgan came to a stop and took a sip of his coffee. “Meaning?” he asked. Lucky told him of the conversation. “Oh, that. I think that Caleb is smitten with Mary and he’s having his first experience with raging hormones. He’s working it out in his head as to what the man/woman relationship is supposed to be like. Right now he’s a romantic and may see Karen as ‘the other woman.’ He’s always had a crush on Roxanne but he’s fourteen now and Mary is the first girl he has met who is his age. Kids become judgmental of their parents at that age. I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you, but I’ll have a talk with him.”