“I don't know, man.”
“We don't have a lot of choices right now, bro. We can either stay here and fucking die or we can make a break for it and pray to God the island is fucking clean. Come on.”
Caesar didn't wait for me to answer. He turned and started paddling away from the shore, out toward the open waters that lead to Catalina. I took one last look, then followed him. The planes made a wide bank to the left, then headed into the Marina. I was super nervous that they were going to head back our way to finish us off, but they vanished out of sight. Soon all I could hear was the sound of my own hard breathing as I paddled, and the slap of the water on my board. I could feel the muscles of my chest burning and began to wish that I'd gotten into long board riding like those old timers in Malibu. It was a lot easier to push around a whaler than it was to navigate long distances on a potato chip high performance board.
“Keep up, man,” Caesar said, picking up the pace and pulling ahead.
“I feel like my fucking arms are gonna fall off,” I whined. “I can't even see the island. How much longer is it gonna take?”
“We've only been at it like thirty minutes.”
“So how many hours does it usually take people who do this stupid paddle trip for fun?”
“The best time I've read about is six hours,” Caesar said, slowing down so I could catch up with him. “But that's guys like Laird Hamilton and Chuck Patterson. With the way the currents are, and all your complaining, we'll be lucky to make it there by tomorrow morning.”
“We gotta paddle all night in the dark?”
“Looks like it,” Caesar said. I put my head down and stopped paddling. He turned back to me and sighed.
“I know it's hard, man, but we gotta do this. Think of it like this, at least we aren't dead back on the beach.”
“We just left them,” I yelled, feeling my anger surge now that I was out of harms way for the moment. “We didn't even try to help! Bronan! Gus! All those guys are probably dead now. We let them die. We ran away like cowards!”
“I couldn't watch you die, all right?”
Caesar's face turned red as he shouted over the sound of the water.
“Besides, what good would it do the rest of them if we died with them? How would running back on land to get shot or burned or bombed help anyone? It wouldn't. So you can just push that thought out of your head right now. We're survivors, man. We fucking survive. Period. There will be plenty of time to sit around and feel bad about what we could have done or should have done and all the friends we lost, but for now all we can do is keep paddling until we're safe.”
“That doesn't mean I have to like it,” I said, feeling like an idiot.
“No it doesn't,” Caesar replied. “And neither do I. Just remember this, you have to live if you want to get revenge.”
Revenge. It was like a light switch went on in my brain at the thought of the word. I picked my head up and paddled with renewed strength. Caesar was surprised, but he quickly caught up with me and kept pace. He seemed relieved not to have to fight with me anymore. I didn't say a word as we paddled side by side.
I could feel the tears running down my face. My eyes burned with anger. My breath shook in my body as I dug into the water and pushed it behind me, a new fire in the pit of my stomach fueling me, spurring me on.
Maybe the island will be clean, I thought as I continued to paddle. Maybe I'll be safe there and then one day we can come back to search for survivors.
Even as I thought it, I knew it was wrong. There weren't going to be any survivors back home, no matter what was on the island. Bombs were raining down on my beloved city, tearing it apart. By the time we reached Catalina there would be nothing left of Venice Beach, not even the famous sign hanging in Windward Circle over by Mao's Kitchen would remain. Venice would be nothing more than a memory we shared.
We are the last of the Z-Boys, I thought. Dogtown, rest in peace.
No sooner had I thought it than I saw something in the water to our right side. As a surfer I'm always on the lookout for sharks and shit. Usually all you see in the water are seals and dolphins. One time a gray whale came up in Breakwater, not more than a hundred feet from us. Scared the shit out of me. I pulled my feet up onto my board and started freaking out. This was like that time only it was happening all around us.
“What is it?”
“A whale maybe?”
“What do we do, man?”
“I don't know. Just hold on.”
Whatever was rising up was really long and matched the color of the water. Fear coursed through me. I knew it wasn't a Great White. They're more likely to come up underneath you, throw you in the air without warning and bite you in half. Whatever this was, it was manmade and big and coming up beneath us. I felt a rush of bubbles and then something metal under my feet. Slowly from under the surface it rose, displacing water rapidly over its smooth hull as it breached the rolling waters. I heard my board clatter on the metal and saw Caesar kneeling across from me now. We were standing on the deck of a U.S. Navy submarine.
In the distance there was a hiss as one of the hatches wheeled open. Caesar and I froze, expecting more guys with machine guns to pop out and cut us down in a hail of gunfire. I was too tired to fight. No matter what happened I knew this was the end. A man in a sailor's uniform and hat stuck his head out and stared at us. We didn't say a word. I felt like my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth with peanut butter, just like a dog. My eyes were still burning. I was beyond exhausted.
“Sorry to scare you fellas. We didn't expect to have company, but we couldn't let you paddle all that way just to find out Catalina was overrun with Romero's too. We would’a picked ya up sooner, but frankly there was a disagreement between some of the fellas as to whether or not you were still clean. We hadda letja go for a bit and see if ya sank. Zed's don't surf!”
He laughed at his own joke.
“You know? From the movie Apocalypse Now? It's funny.”
There was a twang to his accent that, along with his friendly manner, put me a little more at ease. I still wanted to piss myself and could taste the adrenaline in my mouth, but I no longer thought we were in immediate danger. The fact that he wasn't waving an automatic weapon at us didn't hurt either.
We just stood there staring back, dumbfounded. Finally when it became clear we weren't going to talk he waved his hand at us, beckoning us to follow him into the belly of the metal beast.
“Don't just stand there gawking like a chicken waiting to have its head twisted off; let's get a move on. We have hot soup, warm showers, and clean clothes down in here. We’ve even got electricity since this sucker’s nuclear. I'll explain everything once you’re fed and rested up some. And boys, you're not gonna believe what I have to tell you…”
He vanished back down below with a smile.
I turned to Caesar and stared with my mouth hanging open, waiting for him to give me a sign. The last thing I wanted to do was jump back in the water, especially now that we knew Catalina was no longer an option. Still, I needed my big brother to make the call. He shrugged and started walking slowly toward the hatch. I turned to look back in the direction we'd come. Tiny wisps of black smoke curled in the sky over the only home I'd ever known. I turned back again to see Caesar sliding into the tube and hurried to catch up with him as the submarine began to slowly sink back into the depths of the ocean.
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END UNDEAD LA 1
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to my loving wife Angie for her constant support and encouraging words.
Thanks also to my hardworking editor Patricia Bains-Jordan.
Without her this book wouldn't be possible!
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About the Author
Devan Sagliani is a screenwriter, novelist, and blogger. He was born and raised in Southern California and graduated from UCLA. He is the author of the Zombie Attack! series, The Rising Dead, A Thirst For Fire, and the UNDEA
D L.A. series. Devan is also wrote the original screenplay for the movie HVZ: Humans Versus Zombies.
Devan's fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Million Writers Award. In 2012 his debut novel Zombie Attack! Rise of the Horde won Best Zombie/Horror E-book on Goodreads. He is also an active member of the Horror Writer's Association. He currently lives in Venice Beach, California with his wife.
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Follow Devan on Twitter @DevanSagliani and
Join the Horde on Facebook!
https://www.facebook.com/ZombieAttackRiseOfTheHorde
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Look for UNDEAD LA 2 coming soon...
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Undead L.A. 1 Page 30
