The gas gauge was starting to sit a little too far to the left, so I pulled into the parking lot of a country store between Mineral Bluff and Dahlonega that proudly advertised on a hand painted sign, hot boiled peanuts and fresh fried pork rinds. Yummy. After making sure there weren’t any zombies lurking, I popped the top to the underground tank and snaked my hose down into its depths. I opened the bypass on the inline fuel filter and hit the switch for the pump. It whirred with a high pitched hum as it sucked gasoline from the underground tank. The gas that streamed out of the bypass valve smelled and looked okay, no sour smell or off color. Either way it would have to do. I filled the Jeep up with every drop it would hold. The area was still clear, no signs of any hungry nasties stumbling out of the woods or down the road, so I pulled my tool kit from the cargo area. There was a stick of steel putty mixed in amongst the wrenches, ratchets and other assorted tools in the bag. Stuff breaks, usually at the worst possible time, and depending on where you are, a good tool kit could be the difference between life and death. The putty was handy for patching bullet holes, plugging a leaky radiator or fixing a stripped bolt hole among other things. I kneaded a ball of the putty and the hardening catalyst between my fingers until I had a gray ball about the size of a marble, then used it to plug the thirty-caliber leak one of my jerry cans had picked up somewhere along the running gunfight to the river. I munched on some stale peanuts from inside the store and washed them down with a couple of warm Coors Lights while I waited for the putty to harden.
A search of the store didn’t yield much of interest or value, except for the shadow box on the wall behind the cash register. A plaster cast of a humongous foot, at least eighteen inches long was displayed in the box along with a couple of Polaroids of a man kneeling to point at the footprint in the mud. There was also a newspaper clipping. I leaned into read the faded headline on the clipping.
May 13, 1977
Local Man Claims Bigfoot Sighting
Mineral Bluff resident Mark Barozzi was trout fishing on the Toccoa River when the large, bipedal creature emerged from the trees along the shoreline. He claims the creature growled at him before hurling a rock through the windshield of his pickup truck and running off with his creel of rainbow trout.
I laughed and stopped reading. It had the makings of a bad country song. Bigfoot trashed my truck and stole my fish…. I lifted the shadow box free of the wall and put it in the Armadillo. The kooky Colonel at the Valhalla settlement in Idaho would want it and I intended to fleece him for every ounce of gold I could. He was part of the reason I was short a finger joint. I went back in the store to see if there was anything else I could sell.
The raccoons, opossums and birds had made a mess of the place. Empty potato chip bags, cartons of cigarettes, the carousel display of cheap sunglasses and cigarette lighters that sat on the counter, bags of pet food, all of them shredded or scattered across the floor. Glass from the jar of pickle eggs lay shattered into a million shards of glass that reflected the light streaming in through the dusty windows.
The mice and birds had wreaked havoc on the rolls of lottery tickets for a source of nesting material. I took a few seconds to scratch off a few that were still intact just for shits and giggles. I won a couple of bucks on one, a free ticket on another. The rest were a bust, that’s why I preferred poker. My odds were always better. I dug around under the counters until I found a roll of Jumbo Bucks tickets still intact. I stuck the roll in my pack. Lizzie and her friends would get a kick out of them and probably find a way to make money with them.
Once the steel putty had hardened, I filled the repaired can with gasoline. At some point in the future the Armadillo would be getting a diesel engine swapped in. Gasoline wouldn’t last forever, and biodiesel was easy enough to make from a variety of different materials.
Tanks full, I wound my way through the twisted mountain roads down through Porter Springs and Dewy Rose. I encountered a few small clusters of undead along the way, but I steered clear of them and didn’t engage. No need to waste ammo, I might need every round when I reached the coast. I watched in the rearview mirror as they gave chase in a futile attempt to catch me.
If the roads had been clear the trip should have taken sixteen or seventeen hours to reach the coast but navigating around the fallen trees and derelict cars ate up a lot of time. I made good time once I was off the twisty, winding roads of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but the day was fast getting away from me. My goal was to reach Tybee Island before dusk, I was only a little over three hundred miles away, and secure a boat and hit the MEPS in the early morning hours. I still had to find a boat that would run, but it wouldn’t happen today. It was looking like another night holed up in an abandoned building. That’s the way it goes though. Setbacks were inevitable, you just had to roll with them and press on. I’d yet to see any signs of survivors, which was disheartening and relieving all at once. From experience in the badlands, I knew not everyone wanted to be found. Maybe they were tucked up in some of the cabins, high in the mountains.
I made camp that night in the garage of a Toyota dealership, hammock strung between the twin posts of an automobile lift. I took advantage of the shop and changed the fluids and filters on the Jeep. A search of the parts room yielded a few cans of fuel stabilizer and octane booster that I added to my gas tank and fuel cans. I’m a firm believer in taking every advantage I can get. I loaded a couple of new batteries in the Armadillo and hooked them up to the battery charger that ran off an inverter wired to the Jeep’s electrical system.
The water cooler in the mechanics break room yielded enough for me to scrub away the lingering stink from the zombie I’d fought in the barn. I feasted on some of the grub the kids had secured for me. Dessert was a couple of questionable candy bars I helped myself to after smashing the glass out of the vending machine in the waiting room.
I hit the road after a quick breakfast consisting of stale honey buns and warm Mountain Dew courtesy of the vending machines. I was anxious to get to the coast. Four days had passed since I’d left Tombstone, three since Lakota. If my competition had a second man, they’d certainly have eaten up most or all of my lead by now. They could run nonstop, one driving, one resting. Nothing, I could do about it, I had to rest. Getting into Jacksonville wouldn’t be easy. I needed to be mentally and physically prepared. Once I made my final approach it would be balls to the wall until I was out of the area.
I made good time down the deserted back roads, rolling through or around the small towns on the two-lane blacktops keeping an eye for out the telltale smoke of a cook fire, fresh tire tracks coming off a dirt road, anything to signal that all life on this side of the river hadn’t been wiped out. I saw nothing, just ghost towns and empty homes. I met little to no resistance from the undead, but I knew they were out the somewhere. Most of the infected must have been swept up into the large hordes. Millions upon millions of them gathered together, mindlessly following the ones in front of them, pushed forward by the ones behind in an endless march to nowhere.
20
River Rat
Tybee Island, GA
to
St. Johns River, FL
I stayed clear of Savannah, my bet being that it was infested with zombies. Tybee Island was smaller but boasted a marina on the river that would take me out to the ocean. I cursed my luck when I arrived. The marina was destroyed. A hurricane had been through at some point in the past year and hit the place hard. Boats and vehicles were scattered around the parking lot like empty beer cans at a frat party. Many of the buildings were just gone, torn away by hurricane force winds, their concrete foundations the only testament they’d ever been there. The dry dock building where I’d hoped to find a boat laid away for long term storage listed to one side, its roof completely missing, the steel beams left behind now home to nesting seagulls. The boats inside the dry dock had slipped from their racks into a jumbled, tangled mess. Keening wails echoed from within the boats jammed together like Jenga blocks. I swiveled the MK-48 to c
over the area, but they must have been trapped or they’d be spilling out by now. More boats were half submerged in the river, air pockets in the bow or stern causing them to bob like fishing corks in the current. I weighed my options, there was nothing here I could use, not even a jet ski. I could run north back towards Savannah and look for another boat tied to a dock or continue south towards Florida until I found another marina. What I couldn’t do was sit still and bitch about the hand I’d been dealt. I chose to keep moving south. It was closer to the target zone. If I couldn’t find a boat near the ocean in Florida, I needed to change professions.
I drove back inland, away from the worst of the storm damage. After passing by a few nice houses, I decided to play a hunch and pulled into one that had a large metal shop building sitting behind it. The house was in shambles but save for a skinny pine tree lying on the roof, the shop looked to be undamaged. After making sure there weren’t any undead lurking inside, I wasn’t making that mistake again, I grabbed a crowbar from the Jeep and pried the door open. Hallelujah, I thought as I stared at the beauty sitting in the dim light that filtered through the windows.
I walked around the boat to get a feel for it. It was a Robalo R245, once upon a time it would have been worth at least a hundred thousand dollars if it was worth a penny, and now it was mine for the taking at no charge courtesy of the apocalypse. The twin Yamaha 150 outboards on the transom would give me plenty of power and speed to run the coastline. I climbed on board, the keys hung in the ignition. I turned the switch, not even a click. The batteries were dead. That wasn’t a big deal, I had planned for that eventuality. I stepped below deck to inspect the luxuriously appointed cabin. It was air conditioned and big enough for secure sleeping if something happened to delay me. It was perfect. I rooted through the drawers and cabinets. I didn’t find any nautical maps, but I did find the owner’s manual. A quick flip through it revealed the boat had a one hundred forty-gallon fuel tank and a top speed of forty-five miles an hour. I calculated the numbers in my head. It had the range and the power I needed. Big enough for the open water, not too big to navigate the river.
I lugged in the new batteries from the Jeep and swapped out the dead ones in the Robalo. I hit the key switch and the twin Yamahas fired up on the first try. It was only a matter of minutes to roll the shop door up and hook the boat to the Armadillo. It was a couple of miles from the marina to the shop, an easy ride on the bicycle I’d also taken from the shop. The metal building was a perfect place to leave the Jeep until I came back for it.
Less than an hour later, I was ready to go. I used the winch on the Armadillo to drag the damaged vehicles and boats away from the concrete boat ramp, filled the boat and the Jeep from the fuel tanks at the marina and backed the Robalo into the water. The trapped undead were still keening from the storage building and a couple more banged on the glass portholes of an overturned boat partly submerged in the water. They weren’t a threat, so I tuned them out and fired up the Yamahas. The engines purred smoothly. A check of the gauges showed good oil pressure and the gas needle read full. I was good to go. I shut them down, tied the boat off to the snag of a broken dock support, grabbed my gear from the Armadillo and stowed it in the cabin.
Back at the shop, I parked the Armadillo inside and rolled down the door. I secured the door with my chain and padlock, hung the key around my neck and pedaled back to the marina. It was early afternoon. Plenty of time to run the coastline to Jacksonville before dark. I felt a tingle of excitement, this time tomorrow I would be headed home. What could possibly go wrong?
I stashed the bike in a debris pile and covered it with a piece of torn sailcloth. I fired up the Robalo and picked my way through the graveyard of boats floating in the river. It was about four miles from the marina to the ocean and another one hundred twenty-two miles down the coast to the mouth of the St. Johns River. Within minutes I was out of the river and in the ocean. The water was relatively calm. Small whitecapped waves broke against the white sand shores. The breeze was refreshing, a perfect day to be on the water. I opened up the throttle on the Yamahas and felt the slight chop on the water dissipate when the boat planed out. The breeze and the salt spray felt good on my skin as the boat carried me down the coastline. Everything on the shore was a mess from the hurricanes that had ravaged the area. Zombies in tattered bikinis and Bermuda shorts drawn by the sound of the Yamahas ran into the water towards me until their heads went under. The undead can’t drive and they sure can’t swim.
I was closing in on the halfway mark when I saw the sailing yacht anchored another quarter mile offshore from my course. I could make out movement on the upper deck, so I turned the wheel in the direction of the big boat. A well stocked boat would make a lot of sense for riding out the apocalypse if the captain was savvy enough to stay away from the bad weather and only raid for supplies in the small coastal towns. Without commercial fishing, the fish populations had exploded. Oysters and scallops would be abundant in the bays, plenty of food for a long time.
The yacht was rocking gently in the ocean breeze. It was at least one hundred feet long with a massive set of furled sails. I throttled back the engines when I was a couple of hundred yards away and watched the figure on the deck launch itself over the railing. I kept a slow parallel course to the yacht and saw more figures on board. They too launched themselves over the railing towards the sound of my engines. A ship full of the undead. There were more coming up from below decks, I could hear their keening and wailing now that I had the engines at idle speed. There was at least a dozen now in the water with more pouring over the sides, desperate to come after me. They couldn’t swim, but they would crawl or walk along the ocean floor. I watched the fins slicing the top of the water as a group of sharks homed in on the scent of the undead chumming the water. I opened the throttle back up and left them in my wake. The sharks would feast well today, and the fish and crabs would finish off the leftovers.
The sun was dipping down over the horizon when I made it to the mouth of the St. Johns River. I was a whole day behind schedule. The storm damage wasn’t as bad this far south, maybe Jacksonville wasn’t too badly damaged. It would suck to make it to my destination only to find a pile of rubble where the target should be. I followed the mouth of the river inland. I would run the river for twenty-five miles, then dock and make my way overland two and half miles to the MEPS station. Ideally, I would cut the engines a couple of miles short of the target zone and let the current take me to my final destination and use the electric trolling motor to ease my way in nice and quiet. Unfortunately, I was moving against the current and not with it and the river was flowing too swiftly for the trolling motor to move the large boat against the current. Another problem I hadn’t quite worked out yet.
I was approaching Marine Corps Facility Blount Island to my right, an island that encompassed a couple thousand acres. Before the outbreak it was home to a bunch of sailors and Marines, along with three or four privately owned cargo facilities. The bridge to the mainland was blown. I looked for any signs of life. A roving patrol or smoke from a cook fire. Marines were tough animals and I’m certain they made a heroic stand, but it appeared it hadn’t been enough judging by the keening coming from the island when I passed by its shores.
Everything was going according to plan until the Robalo shuddered when I hit something submerged beneath the waterline. The RPM gauge redlined while the motors screamed in protest. I shut them down and hit the tilt switch to raise them from the water. I swore under my breath when I saw the damage. The bottom portion of the right-hand motor was shattered, the propeller completely gone. Oil dripped from the damaged engine and made rainbow swirls on top of the water. The left-hand motor wasn’t a total loss, two of the three propeller vanes were bent, and a crack ran through the lower unit, but it wasn’t hemorrhaging oil, yet. It would have to do, my plan to be onshore and approach under the cover of night was shot to hell. I’d have to baby the remaining engine and hope it made it, at least until I could find another boat s
till tied to a dock somewhere. I lowered the left-hand engine and fired it back up. I could feel the vibrations from the bent prop resonating through the boat. I eased the throttle forward, at three miles an hour it was tolerable, at five, it felt like the engine was going to tear itself loose from its mounts. I backed off the throttle lever. It felt I was barely moving in the swift current. I did the math in my head. I was eighteen miles out by my estimate. Six hours navigating in unknown waters, in the dark. It was still feasible, the boat had lights. It was gonna be a whole lot harder, but I didn’t have much choice.
I churned along slowly, watching the shoreline for signs of another boat. There was nothing, not even an aluminum fishing boat. Every boat that had been tied to a dock was already washed out to sea or sunk from a years’ worth of rain. I’d barely made it two miles before the Yamaha sputtered and died. It finally cranked again after a half dozen attempts, but it was on its last legs. I angled it towards a clearing ahead to my left. I wasn’t going to make it by boat. The rest of the trip would be on foot. Fanfuckingtastic.
A glance at my map indicated the clearing was part of Fort Caroline, a French outpost dating back to the sixteenth century and a site of contention between the established Spanish colonies and the French settlers. Mostly because of the proximity to the Spanish ships that carried gold from the new world back to the Spanish Empire. Four hundred years later and life was still about the gold. Some things never change.
Road to Riches: Deadline: Book 1 (Zombie Road) Page 15
