Just like in scenario two he found his legs immediately attacked.
Unlike in scenario two, Ram went wild, kicking this way and that, feeling facial bones snap and eye sockets cave. But, as expected, a particular tough and large zombie caught a hold of his shoe. Ram kicked hard and swung away.
As he swung back, he knew he couldn’t keep this up. With all his kicking he hadn’t progressed an inch up the fence and already the bite of the wire was worrying his fingers loose. If he didn’t find some way to relieve the pressure on his hands and get out of reach quick he would be a dead man.
As he swung back toward the big brute he kicked again but this time the blow struck the thing’s chest and an idea shot from his brain to his foot like lightning. He planted that left foot on the zombie’s collar bone and then his right went on the crown of its head and in this way he stair-stepped right out of reach.
He was up the remaining part of the fence in a few seconds. Wearing a smile of relief, he was prepared to give Jillybean a huge hug, but she wasn’t in sight.
“Jillybean!” he called in desperation.
“Oh, hi,” she said from almost at his elbow. She had been bent over in a little crevice among the rocks. Now she struggled up bearing a stone as large as she could carry. “You made it! I’m so happy and Ipes won’t believe it. He thought you were a goner. Hold on.” The rock was getting heavy so she pitched it over the side where it sounded like it crushed something squishy. “I was going to save you with that rock.”
“You saved me with that fence. Was that Ipes’ idea? Or yours?”
The zebra was lying on its side in the rocks. Jillybean picked him up. Dusting off his bottom, she said, “The way he talks you would think I don’t have any ideas. It is a wonder I can tie my shoes without him.”
Ram laughed—it was half relief and half because she was so button-cute. She went on talking about the zebra for a few minutes, all nonsense of course, and while she did Ram checked himself for scratches. Thankfully his tough leather jacket had resisted every fingernail.
Euphoria had a good hold of him until he saw a string of zombies picking their way through the rocks toward them. The man-made island consisted only of the bridge/tunnel highway and a rocky hillock. His euphoria dissipated in the chilly rain and Ram sighed looking out at the grey sea.
“It’s gonna be cold,” he murmured.
Jillybean's lips thinned in anxiety. “Can we maybe go back. You know, sneak along the edge of this island thingy and then make a run for the land.”
Even if they could get past the mass of zombies heading their way, it would be a long run, one that he could make if he was alone. There was no way Jillybean could make the run. If she tried she'd die; something he wasn’t going to allow to happen. “Naw, it’s too far,” he said. "We’ll swim to the other island, it's only about a half a mile…” Her leg began an anxious shimmying dance and her lips compressed so much that they practically disappeared. “I’ll carry you if you can’t swim,” he assured her.
“I can swim a little. I had swim lessons at the Holly Pool, by the supermarket. They used to do swim lessons for the Tadpoles, that was me, a Tadpole. It was at like early in the morning and it was cold, but that looks really cold and I don't like the waves. I can't swim in waves, I think. Ipes says I can't neither."
He assured her once more that he would carry her if needed—and it was needed very quickly. Choppy, churning waters, coupled with trying to swim fully clothed turned out impossible for Jillybean and a torture for Ram, especially when he added the weight of a six year old and her sponge-like Zebra.
When she began to sputter after barely twenty-yards, he turned over on his back and pulled her onto his chest. For the next hour he slogged backwards in a one-armed, monotonous, and very slow manner. It would have been quicker to sink to the bottom of the bay and walk through its black mud.
By the time he reached the other island he could barely keep their heads above the water. They both struggled to shore: Ram's muscles quivered with exhaustion, while Jillybean's quivered with early onset hypothermia. She sat on the rocks and hugged herself while Ram went to investigate the highway as it emerged out of the tunnel.
More zombies. They dotted the bridge and, like drunken guards, they went back and forth in erratic lines. The sight of them crushed Ram's spirit. He had spent almost the last of his energy fighting to get to a little rocky island that was, for all intents and purposes, the exact match of the one he just left.
What was perhaps worse was that in the distance at the edge of his vision he could see another little island where the bridge ended and the highway again slunk down beneath the water.
"Why did they build a bridge like this?" Jillybean asked. He had stared at the impossible route he had chosen for them for so long that she had come wandering up and now she reached out and held his hand. Her fingers were like ice. "It really doesn't make sense and Ipes is too cold to talk or he'd tell me."
"I think it's because we have a navy base near here and they can't get the super big boats under the bridge," Ram explained. "So they built a couple of tunnels and sent them under the water. And now the boats can float on past. It's an engineering marvel, except they didn't engineer it very well with zombies in mind. Look. See all of them out there?"
"Yeah. Ipes is afraid."
"I am too," Ram lied. The truth was that he was too tired to be afraid. "Do you think you might be able to swim some more? I mean without me carrying you?" She shrugged without looking up, meaning she would try but wasn't going to guarantee the results.
"But I'd rather we just take that boat instead," she said, pointing off to the right.
"There's a boat?" Ram demanded. He didn't wait for an answer and took off, hurrying over the thousands of head-sized rocks that made up the little island.
There was indeed a boat: a dinky sailboat of fifteen feet in length that looked part zombie itself. Its hull appeared to have gone over rocks like cheese over a grater, and the sail was in tatters, flapping uselessly in the wind. Even the boom, the pole that jutted out perpendicular to the mast and held the lower part of the sail in place, was bent near in half.
Ram couldn't believe his good luck.
Careful not to accidentally set it free back into the Chesapeake, he climbed onboard and began to inspect his new treasure. There wasn't much to it: in a storage compartment at the back of the boat he discovered two life preservers, an anchor and chain, and fifty-feet of thin cord. In the bow was a crawl space and it too held some items: a heavy fishing pole and tackle box, rags—mostly old t-shirts, a couple of buckets, and a sail repair kit.
"Jillybean, get on in," he said through the driving rain. She was just standing there shivering. "Don't be afraid."
"I'm not afraid, but this doesn't look like it'll go. And look there's water all in the bottom. Won't it sink? Like blub, blub, blub?"
"We'll keep it close to shore at first to see," he said. When he put out his hands to her she allowed herself to be lifted over the side. "We have to get you out of the rain. Get in there." He pointed at the crawl space. "Take off your clothes and bundle up in those shirts."
A minute later she said from in the cubby, "They are kinda stinky. What are you going to use to get dry with, Mister Ram? Ipes says you'll freeze to death if you don't get dry. There's still one t-shirt left."
"Wrap it around your head, Jillybean," Ram ordered. "Don't worry about me." How was he going to get dry? That was a question he would have to worry about later—unfortunately later would equal to a cold wet night, which in truth was on the verge of becoming the present.
"Hey Jilly, can you hand out that sail kit. It's the big clear bag." She handed it out with a skinny arm that protruded from what looked like a pile of dirty clothes.
"Thanks," he mumbled, trying to see through the plastic for instructions, and not finding any. It wasn't a professional kit. The owner of the boat had collected a mish-mash of items he thought would come in handy, heavy sewing needles, thick, white thre
ad, an awl for puncturing and a square of heavy canvas. At the bottom of the bag he finally found something that gave him hope: a wide roll of Sail Tape.
"Hhmm," he said, squinting at the tiny writing on the tape in the fading light. After a minute his shoulders slumped: the sail would have to be dry for the tape to work. He cursed at what he considered a poorly designed product. Seconds later he cursed louder when he pulled back on the sail and saw the extent of the damage. There wasn't enough tape in the whole world to hold together the shreds of white.
"So much for sailing," he said.
"What?" asked Jillybean from in the crawl space.
He squatted in front of the door and looked in; only her eyes were visible. "The sail that's up now is shot. I don't know what to do. We can't really stay here, but we also can't go on."
"You wanna know what Ipes thinks?" she asked, her voice muffled by the t-shirts. Ram had little to lose in hearing advice from a toy, besides the zebra had come up with a few ideas already. He nodded and Jillybean said, "Ipes says we should sleep here. He says you should push us out a little and drop the weighty thing...the anchor! That's it. He says that if we are out a bit the monsters won't be able to get us while we sleep. Is that a good plan, do you think?"
"Are you sure it was Ipes' plan and not yours?" Ram asked.
"Yeah, it was Ipes. He's really smart," Jillybean said. She then giggled and added. "Just ask him, he'll tell you all about it."
"Maybe later," Ram said and then shut the door on the girl.
Moving the boat wasn't a problem. He had gained much of his strength back and the boat fairly shot away from the shore egged on by a stiff southerly wind. Too late he discovered that the anchor chain was a knot of rust, frozen by oxidizing chemicals into a ball. He lost two minutes working it free only to find that the infernal chain wasn't hooked to anything!
The little island seemed small when he glanced up in a panic. How deep was the water, he wondered. It seemed too deep for the length of chain, so he added the fifty-feet of cord to the end, tied it off at the gunwale and chucked the anchor in. Then came another worrisome minute—the anchor didn't catch the bottom as Ram thought it would.
He figured there'd be a little jolt and they'd be stuck in place. Reality was different. The anchor thumped into the black mud far below and then was dragged along like a reluctant dog on a leash.
Ram could do nothing about it. He sat there in a growing depression, lashed by the cold steel rain and bit by the sharpness of the wind. They would blow out to sea; he was sure of it. They would starve or freeze, or the boat would sink under them! Was it his imagination, or was the water in the hull beginning to grow deeper?
After marking the level he stared at the water for long minutes and found that it wasn't getting deeper...or rather it was, but it was from the rain only, which could be bailed overboard. Delighted by this, he looked up to another treat: while he was busy fretting over the concept of sinking, the anchor had finally snagged on something. They were some two-hundred yards off shore, a little further than he hoped, but on the bright side they were free from the zombie menace.
"Scootch all the way over," he said to Jillybean. The crawl space was the shape of a gently curving triangle with a base of about four feet; there wasn't much room. "Also, can I have one of those T-shirts? Thanks...now turn away. I have to get undressed."
"Are you gonna turn the shirt around and wear it like shorts? Ipes said it was a good idea, but it feels like I'm wearing a diaper."
That was the plan. In a few seconds he discovered that she was right; it felt very weird. Still, it was better than freezing in his wet clothes—that is, once he got used to dressing after the fashion of an infant.
After he changed, he rung out their clothes, as well as Ipes who was a saggy bottomed little thing. He then brought out the sail cloth from the plastic bag, nervous that it would be little more than a coarse slab of canvas. It turned out, softer and larger than he could have imagined. When stretched out, it was ten-by-ten and big enough to wrap the two shipmates in a warm cocoon.
With the rain pattering, the boat gently rocking, and the little girl snuggled up, snoring lightly, Ram could barely stay awake. He had much to think about and to consider: mainly how they were going to get back to the safety of the CDC. However that question wouldn't stay latched to his thinking. Instead he thought about Jillybean. Her resilience amazed him. She was mostly bone with a thin layer of skin stretched across, yet nothing fazed her for long; she had bounced back from her food poisoning as if it had never happened. The same was true with every fright that came her way.
They made a good team. He supplied the brawn and the experience, while she had an intuition that was decades beyond her maturity level.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked. Whenever he wondered about this, he pictured Neil and Sarah. They were the logical choice to raise her: they were good parents and the CDC was a safe place, or so he thought.
Once again he’d be “Uncle Ram.” He smiled at the thought and as he did his head grew warm and his eyes sleepy.
The night passed without either of them even noticing. One second they closed their eyes and the next a murky light filtered into the crawl space to wake them.
"I don't want to get up," Jillybean said in a whisper when she saw his eyes flutter open. Off the shore as they were there was no need to whisper, but the survival mechanism was clearly ingrained.
Ram grunted, "Yeah, me neither." Getting up would entail another difficult day of survival; of running and hiding, and probably swimming in freezing waters. Staying curled up in the soft material in the semi-dark held a great appeal; it was sort of like playing hooky from school. “But I can’t,” he moaned. “I got to see if I can get the sail working. Turn away I got to get dressed.”
Getting dressed entailed putting back on the damp clothes from the day before—they were absolutely freezing! Jillybean giggled as he fake cursed.
When he was dressed he crawled out into the morning, stood in six-inches of chilly rainwater and cursed for real. The little island was gone. Sometime during the night the knot he had tied to the gunwale had given out and they had floated away, pushed out to sea by the prevailing east wind.
“Where did the land go?” Jillybean asked squinting all around them. His “real” cursing had set off alarms and she had dressed hurriedly.
“I have no idea. That way I think,” he said, pointing in the general direction of west. Though the clouds were still heavy and low, the sun’s rays filtered through to irritate his eyes when he faced east. “I just don’t know how far. It could be really far.” He began a quick calculation. “Maybe up to…twenty miles.”
This was a lie to keep her from freaking out as much as he was. He judged the wind to be about fifteen miles-per-hour, and they had been in the crawlspace for ten hours. If the knot had let go right away they could conceivably be a hundred-and-fifty miles away from land. Even a middle-case scenario put them at seventy-five miles away.
And Ram did not know how to sail.
He had some vague ideas and figured if the wind turned around he could point them at the wide expanse of the Atlantic seaboard and not fail to hit land. But of tacking, or luffing, or rigging, or even tying knots he was painfully clueless.
Jillybean’s lips pursed. This was her thinking face and Ram waited patiently for her or Ipes to come up with an idea. After a moment she glanced up at the mast, taking its measure.
She then turned away and spoke in a low voice, as though talking to the ocean, “But it’s too high. Why can’t Ram do it? Oh…I guess.” She glanced once more at the mast before addressing Ram. “Ipes says I have to climb up there before we do anything. I have to look around. He says you can’t because of your weight. He says you might capsize the boat which means knock it over. But I don’t really wanna.”
“It'll be ok,” Ram told her. “I’ll be right here. I’ll catch you if you fall.”
Nothing other than hearing those words would have got Jil
lybean up the twenty-two feet of mast. Ram lifted her almost half-way, while the remainder she shimmied, with jutting elbows and frogging knees, until she had the masthead butting into her diaphragm.
Pointing to the south of them, she yelled, high-pitched, “There’s a boat.”
Ram hopped up on the bow and squinted, but couldn’t see a thing beyond rolling grey waves. “Are you sure?”
“It’s a boat or a small island. No, wait it’s a boat for certain!”
Chapter 28
Sarah
Atlanta, Georgia
The hoist cable saved her. When the zombie pitched forward and fell, its flailing body twanged off of the thick wire, sending it thudding down, not inches away from Sarah.
Though they were in a small space, the elevator shaft was so all encompassing black that she couldn’t tell exactly where the zombie was or what it was doing. It was there in the dark, groaning, swimming its feral hands about, trying to feel its way around.
Twice, she felt its claws strike her leg; both times she had to bite the inside of her cheek from crying out. For the moment the zombie didn’t know it was in a five-by-five concrete square with two humans.
It would know soon enough. Eve wouldn’t last. She had begun to squirm. She wasn’t used to being carried on Sarah’s back, and she didn’t like the dark, and she most certainly didn’t like the weird action that occurred during and after their fall. She was on the verge of letting out one of her little cries that her parents had worked so hard to teach her in the hope it would keep her safe.
Without something: a low reassuring whisper, a gentle humming, even a caress, she was going to cry and then the zombie would know.
In the cramped shaft with a deadly creature, this was all the advantage Sarah had. She knew that she had to strike and very quickly. The zombie, on the other hand, was only concerned with getting to its feet. It used the cable to pull itself up. Sarah felt it vibrate and heard it hum.
Then she caught the putrid breath of the creature square in her face. It was standing now, but how close was it? How tall? Where could she strike that would kill it in an instant? In the black, all she had to work with in order to fix its location was the noise of its moan and the stink of its mouth.
The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors Page 25
