The ground grew moist as they approached the lakeshore. Grey fog danced into unfathomable shapes as it slowly moved over the water. The surface was completely still, resembling a sheet of glass. The trees around it were barren. Even the pines were void of life, their needles all turned to brown and broken away. The branches were dried out, many having broken off and scattered onto the earth. The cattails stood at the edge of the shore, though discolored and cracked.
“Hold here,” Ford whispered. He and the two men walked behind the trees, while Hill and the marines waited at the shoreline. The water was discolored, almost like a soup broth. Reimer wasn’t sure if it was the mist or lack of sunlight, or something in the molecular structure. Whatever it was, the last thing he wanted was to take a sip of it.
Gordon looked down, growing nervous at the sight of mud beneath his feet. Dunn was looking back into the woods. His hand never left his Carbine. Through the trees were the whispers of a thousand undead corpses, all in the distance. The whole forest sounded alive, but instead of bugs, birds, and deer, it was the gnarling sounds of decaying bodies. Some were louder, close to resembling yells. Dunn shook as a high-pitched scream echoed from the west. It was distant, sounding like a female’s voice.
“The hell?” Gordon said. With his rifle raised, he began to step away from the shore. Dunn’s bodily expression came alert, his eyebrows lifted high into his forehead.
“Don’t even begin to suggest we go out and—”
“Shh, ignore it,” Hill said. All three marines looked at her. “Believe me, you’ll get used to it. Consider it the replacement for the loons.” They looked to the right of the mud trail as they heard the grating sound of metal. Ford and the two Japanese men stepped out from between the trees, dragging two twelve-foot aluminum boats.
“What? We going fishing?” Dunn said. Ford gave him a glare, then looked at Hill. They could see the reluctance in his eyes. Without saying anything, he and the other two pushed the boat two-thirds into the water. The group gathered into the boats. Reimer, Hill, Dunn, and Ford gathered in the right, while Gordon went with the others. He took the center seat to row, only for one of the others to gesture for him to move.
“I’m more than happy to…”
“Best to just let him do it,” Ford said. “Keep quiet and trust us.” He sat at the center seat of his boat, while Reimer gave them a shove-off before jumping in. The boat glided several feet out, fishtailing slowly into the weeds until Ford steadied it with the oars. Moments later, the second boat was right behind them.
Ford rowed in silence, moving the boat around the cattails. Each thrust was slow, with minimal disturbance to the water. They punched through a thick fogbank, traveling blind for several yards. Reimer held his breath. Even with the facemask on, he didn’t want to risk inhaling any of that moisture. After a minute, the cloud passed away.
“Whoa,” Dunn muttered, ducking his head as they passed under a low-hanging branch. He looked back, then at Ford with disdain, then looked down into the water. They were traveling in shallow water. He could see the weeds bunched in groups under the surface. They clung to the oars like octopus arms. Ford shook them off, then proceeded several meters, then repeated the same motion. The pace remained extremely slow, causing Dunn to grow impatient. “Hey, Billy Jack.” Ford turned to look at him. “If you’re too afraid to hustle it up, I’ll be more than happy to give it a go.”
The cowboy shook his head.
“You obviously have no clue what’s happened here.”
“I understand things are different,” Reimer said.
“It’s beyond different,” Hill said. “It’s worse.”
“Shh!” Ford hissed. The group sat in silence as he continued to steer their boat east along the shore. Ghouls walked the shoreline, several of them having fallen and bunched in the weeds. Looking left, they could see bloated bodies floating further out in the lake like rafts.
Twenty more minutes passed in silence before Ford steered them into a thin cove. A low hanging tree leaned over the water, casting shade as though it were an umbrella. Beneath that tree was a large fifty-foot Gibson boat, anchored twenty feet off shore.
The formerly white hull was discolored from residue from the tree as well as the water, now appearing clay-colored in places. The cabin was a little under seven feet tall, with sliding glass doors providing access on both sides. A sundeck stretched over the cabin and living quarters, divided into two sections by a small set of stairs in the middle. A walkway surrounded the cabin, leading to a forward and aft deck.
Looking through the mist, Reimer could see figures leaning on the port guardrail on the aft deck. He counted three of them, two males and a female. After spotting the group, they began assembling at the stern deck edge. One of them, a muscular man with a thick bushy beard, extended his hand to Dr. Hill after Ford brought the boat along the Gibson.
The other two looked at the boats in surprise. The woman’s mouth gaped with alarm after realizing numerous members of their group weren’t there.
“Wait…who are these people?” she cried out.
“Where’s Tanner and Nick?” the second man said.
Ford shook his head and tossed him a rope to secure the boat.
“There was another mutant,” he said.
“You’re shitting me!”
“I’m sorry. Rick got a few rounds off, but it was fast,” Dunn said. He glanced over at Reimer. “Nick was the park ranger you met back there.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him better,” Reimer said. The two men climbed aboard, followed by Dunn as the other boat brushed along the hull. The bearded man helped Gordon and the others secure their boat. Reimer and Ford stepped to the starboard rail to make space while Gordon climbed aboard. The second male survivor, a black man around the age of forty, approached Ford.
“What about Jacques? Or Shoemaker? What happened to them?”
“They checked out the bunker and got overrun. Joe and Kevin bit the dust in the woods near the place. Got confused in the fog, I guess,” Ford said. The man took a step back, his face a riptide of shock. The brunette woman ran off the deck, overwhelmed with shock and disbelief.
“Damn idiots wouldn’t listen to me. Told them not to split off,” Ford said.
“Probably Shoemaker’s idea. Always wanting to be the boss. I always told him his ego would get him killed.”
Ford glanced at the marine. “Corporal Reimer, this is 57. 57, meet Corporal Reimer of the U.S. Marines.”
Reimer struggled to hide his puzzled look as he shook hands.
“He says I look like Wesley Snipes,” 57 said, answering the Corporal’s unspoken question.
“Oh, I get it now,” Reimer said. He pointed to his fellow marines. “That’s PFC Dunn and Private Gordon.”
“Unless the marines are crazy enough to only send a three-man team, I’m assuming you guys are what’s left of your unit,” 57 said.
“Started with ten…” Reimer said.
“Twelve, if you count the pilots,” Dunn said. His eyes were fixed on Dr. Hill as he spoke, his voice like a radio announcer. He wanted to be sure she knew.
“Now it’s just us,” Reimer continued.
“We lost six people. You lost nine. Sounds like we’ve both had a rough day,” the bearded man said. He shook his hands with each of the marines. “Name’s McCartney. These fellas there, just call them Han and Jones.”
The two Japanese men looked up and nodded, then proceeded to get back to work. McCartney forced a smile.
“Japanese interns. Came for the school, stayed for the apocalypse.”
“They speak English?” Dunn said.
“They call it English. Not sure I’d agree,” McCartney joked.
“Go jerk yourself, McCartney!” the one nicknamed Han called out.
McCartney smiled. “Okay, maybe better than I let on. Though, I can’t even begin to pronounce their real names correctly. You can thank Ford for their nicknames.”
Gordon thought about
it for a minute. Suddenly, it all came to mind. Jones, Han…Ford? Suddenly it made sense. He chuckled. “Very clever.”
“What can I say, he’s my favorite actor…was. And we share the same last name,” Ford said. Gordon smiled then glanced at 57.
“Shocked he doesn’t call you Lando.”
“He told me he would have, but then Disney butchered the character,” 57 said.
“Bastard movie was the last thing I saw before the world went to shit. Probably what stirred the dead from their graves,” Ford muttered. The stern look had shed from his face, replaced by a surprisingly warm smile. It lasted a few seconds, only to disappear as he stared across the deck. The missing presence of six people couldn’t go unnoticed. “I need a beer.”
“You have beer?” Dunn said. Ford grimaced, regretting speaking his thoughts out loud. He sighed and waved them on.
“Come on,” he said.
He led them through the starboard walkway and opened the sliding door. They entered the cabin, hearing the brunette’s cries through the closed doors of the master bedroom below. Ford opened the fridge and tossed beer bottles to the marines and the other survivors. McCartney declined, opting to check on the brunette.
“Michele, it’s me. Open up.”
Dr. Hill took a seat on the sofa near the helm. As she sipped her beer, she noticed a piercing stare from the cowboy as he twisted the cap off his bottle. Reimer noticed it too. He had seen the same look in Dunn’s eyes.
“You and I are gonna talk,” Ford said to her.
“I told you, it HAD to be done,” she said.
“Bullshit,” he said. “You manipulated those two to escort you. I told you we’d discuss going to that bunker. You deliberately waited until I was out on a supply run.”
Hill sighed and downed half of her bottle. She inhaled deeply and ran her sleeve over her mouth. “Can we do this another time?”
Gordon pressed the cold bottle to his face, the cool sensation helping him relax. The realization came to him that the refrigerator was working. The lights were on, meaning the boat had power.
“How long have you guys been here?”
“I don’t know,” Ford said. “What’s the date?”
“Since it began,” 57 said.
“Weren’t there transports?” Gordon asked. Ford’s angry expression seemed to deepen.
“Transports?” he faked a chuckle. “You know? They said there’d be transports. It was all over the radio. The TV. They gave designated locations. I went there. My fiancé was with me. So were, like, a thousand other people. But it never came. At least, not to ours.”
“What do you mean?” Reimer asked.
“My fiancé and I,” he paused briefly as he reminisced, “we both knew something wasn’t right. Word was starting to get around, something about settlements to the west. That was when New Mexico went dark. Idaho had become a warzone. We waited for days, but the pickup never happened. So, we tried for it ourselves. Got in a truck and went west, hoping we could get to those settlements we’d been hearing about. We made it maybe a hundred miles when we saw a chopper. Big military kind with the drop doors, forgive me if I don’t know the name. But we saw it coming down over a patch of trees near the Castle Hills. Of course, none of the broadcasts said to group there, but hell, we didn’t care. We went. Truck broke down. Undead began gathering around us. But we got through. We saw the chopper in the grass. Its ramp door was open. Soldiers were escorting several suits inside. Wasn’t no regular citizen, I can tell you that. We ran, waving our arms to flag them.”
“Maybe they didn’t see you,” Gordon said. A fist caught him on the jaw, knocking him to the floor. Beer splattered over the wood floor. Reimer and Dunn jumped to their feet, their hands ready to go for their weapons. Ford unbuttoned his denim shirt and pulled down the collar of his undershirt. Gordon looked up, hand rubbing his jaw as he saw what Ford was showing. It was a rounded scar near his shoulder. He had seen many like it. Judging by its greyish-red color and jumbled skin around it, it was about eighteen-months old.
“What?” he said.
“They saw us, alright,” Ford said. “Like I said, you guys don’t know what’s going on. You think, with a remaining area composed of two-and-a-half states, that they’ll want the whole country swarming there? Eating up resources? Hell no.”
Reimer sat down. Suddenly, it made sense why Ford was quick to draw on them back at the cliff. Dunn helped Gordon get up to his feet. He then turned to the doctor. She was tapping her fingers against her beer bottle, looking somewhat disconnected from the conversation. Dunn stared at the boat, then glared out the window into the surrounding area. He downed the rest of the beer. It did little to calm his nerves. He couldn’t stop dwelling on the fact that they had no extraction. The thought of living on this boat for years to come made him as uneasy as walking through the forest. He looked back at the doctor.
“So, this data you have? Is it on a disk, or a—”
“It’s a flash-drive,” she said. Dunn looked around. He didn’t see any lab equipment inside the boat. Everything pertained to survival.
“How’d you develop…”
“I had a laboratory,” she said. “Ten miles across the river. I was given coordinates of the old bunker. Managed to make it to the lake, almost got overrun. These guys found me. Told them the mission, and here I am.”
“You guys GOTTA get her to the Border,” 57 said. “I’m sure they’ve got labs there. She says they can make an anti-virus that can inoculate people against this disease.”
“We’re well aware,” Reimer said. “Problem is, we have no extraction.”
“What?” Hill said, wide-eyed.
“Chopper went down. Flock of…birds…came and attacked the cockpit,” Reimer said. He narrowed his gaze at Hill. “You care to explain that to us?”
“Freaking undead birds,” Dunn remarked.
“They’re not undead,” Hill explained. “They are diseased but not undead. They’re just one example of the phenomenon that’s taken place. We’ve noticed effects in the animal life that feeds off the ghouls. The birds and insects will pick the dead skin off the corpses, just like they used to do with roadkill. But in this case, they’re ingesting infectious meat. They’re still technically alive, but they suffer extreme cognitive defects…and a heightened sense of aggression.”
“A heightened sense of aggression. Explains why they went after us.”
“It’s happened with insect life. Birds, as you saw. Some mammals. Hell, even the fish. Bodies float in the lake, fish pick at them, you can figure out the rest.”
“What about everything else that’s going on?” Gordon said. “The plants? The mist? The mutants?”
Hill glanced at him, then looked at Reimer. “When you said things are different, and I said they’re worse, well…it gets worse.”
“What’s going on here?” Reimer said.
“You see, the effects on the environment: the plant-life, the undead, the soil, water… it’s all part of the progressing evolution of this disease. Even though the ghouls have a partially functioning brain, they’re still decaying. They’ve been lumbering around, flaking off skin cells onto the ground. Each cell filled with disease, is consumed by the earth just like everything else. If one is killed and its body left on the ground, everything is eventually consumed by the soil just like every other creature in life.”
“So, you’re saying that the environment is…mutating, so to speak?” Gordon said.
“That’s one word,” Hill said. “Another is evolving. It’s adapting to survive this outbreak. This forest was one of the first areas to have widespread outbreaks, thus, the environment has had more time to adapt and evolve. We’re seeing whole new species turning up all around this forest.”
“Like a giant Venus Fly Trap?” Gordon said. All eyes turned to him with interest.
“Haven’t seen one of those,” Hill said. “But I’ve seen other species. Saw one that looks like a big pod, with acid in its center. It pulls in
prey with vines, and…”
“I get it, that’s enough,” Reimer said. “How exactly does this allow the plant life to survive? Is it a cellular thing?”
“Partially. But evolving into carnivorous beings allows the plants to feed off the dead as well. This process is probably why the animals are surviving as well, except their process is far more gradual. It might take a few generations for them to adapt.”
“What about us?” Dunn asked. Hill shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m sorry to say, humanity gets the shit end of the stick,” she said. “Those ghouls, life after death, that is our so-called evolution. And it doesn’t stop there.”
“The mutants,” Reimer said.
“That’s right. As the disease has progressed, it’s allowed several of the hosts to adapt. Some of them generated increased calcium levels in their bones, notably their skulls to provide greater protection for the brain. Takes more than a shot to the head to put them down. There’s the one we saw at the cliff. More agile, able to move with bursts of speed. The disease in these hosts doesn’t alter the flesh the same way as normal corpses. Others have evolved to slow their decay in certain environments. Some live in the water. Others burrow under the ground.”
“We saw them,” Gordon said.
“Doctor, you said this disease has been affecting the environment, and that this area has had the longest exposure,” Reimer said. “What about the rest of the country? Hell, the world? You mean to say that what’s happened here will happen everywhere?”
Hill took a final slug of her beer then nodded.
“No,” Dunn said. “It can’t be. It’d be impossible to survive outside of the Border.”
“It’s inevitable, Corporal. Rest assured, this disease is adapting to every terrain and every climate. There’s nowhere to go. What you’ve seen here is just the beginning. This is how the world survives.” She tossed her empty bottle into a nearby bin, shattering it along the bottom.
CHAPTER 20
Z-Level 10: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel Page 15
