by JT Sawyer
THE WAY BACK
BY JT SAWYER
Copyright
Copyright 2015 by JT Sawyer
No part of this book may be transmitted in any form whether electronic, recording, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction and the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, incidents, or events is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Chapter 1
Somewhere in the Caribbean
The gaunt creature in a torn, blood-soaked tank top hobbled towards Carlie who was kneeling behind the trunk of a massive palm tree thirty feet away. The zombie tilted its wrinkled head, its face resembling a shriveled orange peel. It looked skyward as if studying the longitudinal rays of sunlight piercing the thick jade canopy. The salty ocean breeze floated through the trees and a heavy coat of sweat glistened along Carlie’s arms as she slowly pulled back the plant-fiber bowstring with her tanned fingers. She steadied the primitive arrow shaft in line with the desiccated creature’s chest. As the beast turned its milky-white eyes towards her movement, she loosed the improvised arrow and watched as it buried itself into the creature’s right pectoral. The zombie recoiled, tripping over a fallen log and tumbling backwards into a patch of knee-high grass. Carlie sprinted forward and closed the distance while gripping the wooden bow in her right hand. Approaching the fallen figure, she removed her weathered machete and delivered an angular strike across the forehead, severing the cranium. The creature stopped wriggling as Carlie resheathed her machete and placed her free hand on the arrow to yank it out. She stared down at the mottled corpse, noting how parts of the hands and legs looked shriveled.
Shane moved up behind her and was scanning the surrounding treeline for any movement while he kept his own bow ready. Carlie removed the soiled arrow shaft and she could hear Amy and Jared finishing off another creature to her right. She saw them flailing their handcarved clubs at its bald dome, followed by the sight of the portly beast tumbling to the ground with its head resembling a deflated football.
Matias and Pavel, who were covering the rear, emerged from the dense foliage and moved up behind Carlie. She flung back her shaggy blonde hair to reveal a weathered face and sunken cheeks. Like the others, she was clad in tattered clothing that was streaked with grime and blood spatter. Their hands were cracked from too much time in the sun and their fingernails looked like flaked drywall from the constant ravages of manual labor in the elements.
Carlie hardly resembled the athletic woman she had been five weeks earlier when they had narrowly escaped the doomed USS Farragut on their liferaft. With no hope of rescue in sight as the days turned into weeks on their small island, she knew that their fate rested solely in their own hands. After the first island’s resources had proven too meager to sustain them, they used a crude dugout canoe they had discovered at an old fishing shack to navigate along the chain of lesser islands dotting the ocean to the northeast. Each stop had proven too small, too hostile with zombies, or had too few animals for hunting. Since arriving at this new landmass earlier in the morning, they had dodged numerous groups of undead in their quest to hunt the small rodents whose tracks dotted the beaches.
Thanks to Shane and Matias’ skills in jungle survival, the group had learned to fashion bows, arrows, shelters, plant cordage, snares, fish baskets, and all that goes with becoming proficient in the never-ending quest for food. The precarious nature of living off the land had taken its toll on each person as their waistlines shrunk with each passing week and their energy levels fluctuated like the rush of tides along their many beachside encampments.
As the others regrouped around Carlie, she looked at each person to check on their physical and mental wellbeing. Shane had a thick charcoal-colored beard and slicked-back hair. She knew he was tired but he never complained and was always willing to push the extra mile overland in search of food. Amy still had a youthful appearance to her eyes despite her exposed cheekbones and unkempt hair that was matted in sections. Matias, although twenty pounds leaner, looked right at home in the jungle. His Panamanian heritage and knowledge of local flora and fauna, coupled with Shane’s former jungle training, had been their salvation during these many weeks of wresting a living from the unforgiving terrain. Pavel, the meek Russian scientist, was suffering the most. His scraggly silver beard revealed his age and he tired out the fastest, causing the group to constantly adjust their pace so they didn’t become separated in the thick jungle. Lastly, there was Jared, whose chestnut-colored beard stood out below his striking cobalt eyes. His sarcastic humor had only increased but Jared had turned into a proficient hunter under Matias’ tutelage while still managing to look like he took a shower every day. In the ensuing five weeks since they had been stranded after departing the USS Farragut, they had been forced to become a ruthless band of survivors. Whatever differences they’d had before had been swept aside in their daily struggle for sustenance and they had become a well-oiled hunting tribe. Early on, they had faced the grim reality that there wouldn’t be a rescue party landing on the beach to whisk them back to safety. With each passing day, their resolve to extricate themselves by any means possible from their tropical prison increased in proportion to their shrinking bodyweight.
“That should be the last of these drooling freaks,” said Carlie. “That makes six for the afternoon and tallies up with the tracks we observed earlier.”
“Yeah, but this is a bigger island so I’m guessing there are gonna be more as we venture further,” said Jared.
“We only need our immediate camp area secure—this will do for now. Besides, I’m always for avoiding contact with the enemy when possible,” said Carlie.
She looked around at the dense foliage and strained for any movement in the trees. “Let’s make camp in that thicket near the beach,” she said, pointing to a low grove of bamboo at the edge of the forest to her left. “That’ll provide us with security on three sides and cloak our campfire. Amy and I will head back to the canoe and grab the remaining gear. Why don’t the rest of you gather bedding material and firewood and then we’ll all meet back at our new abode in an hour.”
As the two women headed down an old deer trail, the four men began slicing down palm leaf sections and hauling them over to the bamboo grove.
A few minutes later, Carlie and Amy came upon the beach where their tattered canoe was hidden in the scrub. The vessel was eighteen feet long with a side rail for stability. It just barely fit all of them and their meager supplies but had become a trusted friend like most of their critical gear that enabled them to live under such trying conditions.
“This dingy vessel has managed to get us to six islands, but I keep wondering how many more miles it has left in it,” said Amy, tapping her tan foot against a football-sized ding in the side panel of the canoe.
“You talking about the canoe or your body?” Carlie said.
“Well, this finger of land here looks to be the largest island we’ve come across so far. Hopefully, it will provide us with more food and resources than the others, especially since the cooler winter months are only about six weeks off.”
As Carlie leaned forward to grab a pack out of the canoe, she winced and hopped backwards on one leg as a slender splinter drove itself into her heel. “Dammit, I really miss having boots. Hell, I’d even take a pair of flip-flops,” she said, sitting down and crossing her right foot over her other knee.
“Yeah, it seems like none of our stuff lasted long in this humidity and constant immersion in the water, especially since we all had desert gear to begin with.”
“Ah, what I wouldn’t give for a container of Nivea right now,” Amy said, staring down at the fissures in her hands.
“Or a bottle of shampoo.”
“And a real hair brush instead of a bundle of stiff twigs…and add in a massage.”
“Hell, I’d take a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt before that.”
“I sure don’t miss having to put on makeup.”
“Yeah, I never bothered to begin with, other than some eye-shadow once in a while. In my world, the other agents were married to their careers and only viewed dating as a means of letting off some steam in between assignments. Most of the time, I never gave a damn about whether the guys thought I was appealing.”
“From what you’ve described it sounds like you were also married to your career.”
Carlie looked up at a row of waves pummeling the beach. “Yeah, well, look where that got me.” She returned to studiously prying the sliver out of her left sole and then flicked the tiny piece of palm wood into the sand. The sun-dried cracks in her face hurt every time she squinted and her entire body ached as if every day was another round of being in nature’s boxing ring. Carlie stared down at her skinny calves which resembled slender fence posts. The red sores peppering her legs from the endless assault of sand fleas made her want to scratch off her skin. Her eyes were heavy and she just wanted to sleep in a real bed out of the wind and sun. The constant pangs of hunger and accompanying sounds of her stomach growling had become a familiar part of her daily routine but it was still hard to push away the constant craving for food when every cell in her body screamed out for nourishment.
Carlie knew they were all operating on borrowed time against the ever-present threat of running headfirst into Murphy’s Law, whose likelihood only increased as they grew weaker. She thrust a stick into the sand between her legs and swirled it around. Will we ever make it back to the States and get to the lab in Alaska so Pavel can begin work on an antidote? God, that seems like it’s in another galaxy. Maybe General Adams back at White Sands cracked the encryption on the CIA laptop that we got a hold of in New Orleans. That might contain the critical intel to locate a vaccine. And what of my brother in San Diego—is he even alive? She continued pirouetting the stick, creating a figure-eight and then blotting it out with her foot only to start anew.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” said Amy, who was walking towards the treeline. “Nature calls.”
Carlie stood up and flung the stick into the tide then walked over to the shoreline to wash off her foot. After retreating back from the water, she glanced down to her right and noticed a single row of boot prints that snaked along the shoreline. The stride was too uniform to be a zombie and the gait pattern didn’t match up with her mental files of anyone in the group. The only two people with footwear left are Shane and Pavel. Who the hell do these tracks belong to? She studied the stride, noticing that the heel-to-heel distance resembled the typical walking gait of an adult male. On the left side of the tracks was a round indentation which she surmised was from a walking stick. As Carlie stood to scan the track pattern ahead, her sleuthing was halted by the shrill voice of Amy screaming from the jungle behind her.
Carlie bolted back to the canoe and grabbed her bow from the ground then sprinted into the jungle. As her pace increased, she heard Amy yelping in pain followed by the sickeningly familiar sound of a machete cleaving through bone. Carlie leapt over a fallen moss-encrusted log and ran ahead, forging her own trail through the cumbersome foliage. She could see Amy removing her blade from the head of a ridiculously obese zombie clad in an orange shirt. As Carlie rushed up, she could see Amy bleeding profusely from her outer left thigh as a jagged piece of bamboo stuck out. Amy fell back into her arms before going unconscious and dropping the blood-soaked machete near her feet.
Carlie looked down at the creature whose prune-like skin resembled someone who had been soaking too long in a hot tub. Its soiled shirt bore an image of a skeleton smoking a cigar with a crown of red roses around its forehead. She frowned at the surreal image before lowering Amy onto a shaded patch of ground.
Chapter 2
“What happened?” said Jared, who had just run up with the others, standing ready with their weapons.
“I’m not sure,” said Carlie, who was kneeling beside her, applying direct pressure to the leg wound. “She must have taken a fall onto some bamboo when she was whacking that creature. It doesn’t look like she was bitten. I think she’s just got a nasty puncture wound. She hasn’t lost too much blood but there’s a pretty big fragment stuck in her leg.”
Jared kneeled down on the other side of Amy and ran his fingers through her chestnut-colored hair. Her eyelids were fluttering as she came to. “It’s gonna be OK, darlin’. You just hang in there,” said Jared.
As her eyes opened, tears began streaming down her cheeks. Her lips trembled as she tried to sit up slightly on one elbow. “You’re gonna have to pry it out, Carlie. It’ll bleed like hell for a few minutes but you gotta remove it,” she said, panting in between gulps of air. “If we were an hour out from a hospital, I’d say just wrap it as is but you’re gonna have to yank it out. I’ll have to take my chances.” Amy shook her head and looked up at the canopy. “All of my years of being a paramedic and I have to end up on the other end of things. God, this sucks.”
Carlie looked into Amy’s watery eyes and then up at the others. She motioned to Shane and Pavel to grab hold of a leg. Matias moved towards Amy’s head and supported her quivering shoulders.
Amy looked at Jared. “Get me a stick and make sure I keep it between my teeth no matter what happens.”
Jared leaned back and located a finger-sized branch and snapped it in two then handed it to Amy. She lay back into Matias’ lap, put the stick between her teeth and then blinked several times before giving Carlie a nod.
Carlie took a deep breath and then moved her fingers over to the jagged bamboo shank whose edge was protruding three inches from Amy’s quadriceps. Carlie pinched the finger-sized fragment and then swiftly yanked it out.
Amy’s misty eyes widened as her face wrinkled into a contorted grimace. She let out a muffled shriek while arching her back and forcefully grabbing Jared’s shirt sleeve, her fingernails digging into the fabric.
“Damn that was deep,” Shane said, staring at the finger-sized splinter while loosening his grip on Amy’s right leg. He reached into his pack and extracted the first-aid kit and removed the last two remaining packages of gauze along with a triangle bandage.
Carlie took the material and began wrapping the wound while trying to steady her own breathing. She had dealt with casualties before but had always had the luxury of having an ambulance to shuttle off the victim to a hospital. She knew that with a wound this severe in such a humid and hostile setting, the chances of infection were very high, not to mention their fighting efficiency as a team had been reduced.
As Amy slumped onto the ground, her rapid exhalations slowing, she spit out the wooden mouthpiece. Her chest rapidly rose and fell and she eased her grip on Jared’s sleeve.
“This wasn’t some kinda ploy for male attention, was it?” said Jared, who had resumed stroking her hair.
“Shut up, dufus,” Amy said in between breaths as she tried to force out a half-smile and then returned to pacing her breathing.
“She’s got you pegged,” said Shane.
Jared’s lips cracked a slight grin at his comment. “She’s being nice. You should hear what she calls you when you’re not around.” Jared turned back to Amy. “You can berate me as much as you like, missy. I know you’re one tough cookie.”
“Let’s get what’s left of the liferaft fabric out of the canoe and make a blanket-stretcher so we can haul her to our camp. We don’t have much daylight left,” Carlie said, glancing at the overhead canopy and the flame-orange sun hanging in the west.
****
That night Carlie and the others sat around their makeshift camp inspecting their bows, repairing their arrows, and carving small-g
ame traps. Amy was asleep on a thick bed of palm tree leaves behind them in a u-shaped enclosure of bamboo. A few feet out from the entrance were two rows of angled, waist-high bamboo skewers that Shane had set out as perimeter defense. Matias had carved out a small entrance in the rear of the bamboo grove as an emergency exit and lined that area with similar trailguards. This was the same setup they had used every night for weeks and it had served them well against undead denizens of the night who would get impaled before they could get within biting range.
Shane was hunched over a primitive firemaking set, his muscular arms rubbing the bamboo components together in a sawing motion as he had done every night for the past seven weeks. One end of the split bamboo was wedged in the sand and the other pushed into a folded bandanna tucked into his gut. The bamboo firesaw was a challenging method but one that was necessary in the tropics where other fire-by-friction methods were even more difficult. As he leaned forward, he skillfully rubbed another split section that had a small angled groove cut into the center over the fine edge of the tilted piece in the ground. Thirty seconds later, with the bamboo in his hand smoking furiously, he stopped and dumped the tiny glowing coal into a fist-sized wad of shredded grass. While taking a moment to inhale, Jared came over and hunched down to blow a steady stream of breath into the smoldering bundle. A few seconds later, the entire tinder bundle ignited and then he added finger-sized twigs to the flames.
“I suppose you’re gonna take credit now for my toil,” said Shane, wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm.
“Nah, this one is all you, amigo. Besides, I wouldn’t have taken so long to get my coal,” Jared said with a grin. His expression changed as he looked over his shoulder at Amy, who was groaning in her sleep. “You think she’s gonna be alright?” whispered Jared.
“The barbiturates out of the trauma kit will help with tonight but we’re gonna have to keep an eye on that wound. Things go septic fast in the tropics,” said Shane. “I once made the mistake of shaving the day before being deployed to Colombia and a little nick on my chin got infected within twenty-four hours.”
