Roxanne's Story (Book 1): Survival in the Zombie Apocalypse (36 page)

“Oh, thank God you are here.”

“You have saved our lives.”

“You must help us.”

“We need to get out of here.”

Roxanne turned to the Captain who had tied down the boat and he caught her look of confusion. “All right everyone,” he said. “Back off and give the folks a chance to catch their breath. You folks,” he waved to them “let me take you to the kitchen so we can talk and I’ll explain how things are working here. Frank, Smokey, Allen if you three will come with me please.”

For the first time Roxanne looked around and saw that they were in a lounge of couches, over-stuff chairs and end-tables with huge artificial flower arrangements in fancy vases. The Captain took them to a door beside an empty bar which opened into a formal dining room with windows on each side. Going through that they entered the kitchen where he introduced them to Gretchen. “If you could get these folks something to eat and drink Gretchen,” the Captain said, indicating that the four of them should sit in a booth. The three men sat facing them at the counter where Gretchen was working and Morgan and Caleb got into a booth behind them but Caleb turned around so he could lean over the back, looking at Roxanne. Roxanne made sure that Terry slid to the inside so that she could quickly get out with her gun if necessary. Since Lucky still had his rifle he had Brandon slide to the inside of the booth.

The Captain pulled up a chair and introduced himself, “Name’s Toby and I run a tugboat that is now out of gas which is my own damn fault. In fact all the boats that you saw docked are out of gas since everyone contributed their gas to me so I could cruise the Mississippi looking for more survivors. We thought we had a haven here, looting all the other casinos on the lake for food and water, all the supplies we needed. As you can see we blocked off the entrance to the casino and along the wharves so people could get to and from their boats.”

“But now the Lake has gone bad, even toxic and we hadn’t counted on that. The instruments on my tugboat haven’t worked in a long time, but I was always able to gauge the gas knowing how much she could run off of and how far. I badly miscalculated on my last run and barely made it back. But now I’ve stranded these people here and I feel responsible for it since I directed anyone I met in a boat to come here and brought others who were on foot.”

Gretchen came over with a roasted duck and plates followed with a bowl of crawfish and cold slaw. “Don’t worry,” Toby said. “None of it came from the lake and I’ve been picking late vegetables from an abandoned estate up river.” Roxanne broke off a leg of the duck and handed it to Mutt under the table.

“If you’re looking to get gas out of Jenny, we’re running manual. Never had gas,” Brandon said.

“No,” Toby said, “Where you come in is getting us
to
gas. That’s where Frank, Smokey and Allen come in. There’s a barge stranded in the Inner Harbor. It doesn’t have enough gas to run on its own, but enough for my tug boat and some of the other boats. We need to get these people off this casino and it’s going to take more than one boat to do that”.

After dinner Brandon and Toby moved over to the counter with the three men to work out the details of retrieving gas from the stranded barge. Terry said she wanted to meet some of the other people and went back out to the lounge but before leaving Toby called her over. “You have some people out there who are near panic. They will be asking you questions. Just tell them that we are working out the plans and that you found it boring so you left.” He then turned to Frank and asked him to find Larry and Butch. “Have them go down and guard the riverboat that they came in on. No one is to board that boat, you understand.”

He looked up at Brandon, “Most people here are good people and respect property of anyone on board. But there are some that panic easily. It’s just precautionary on my part to ward off any trouble.”

“Yeah, we’ve met a few like that. Terry is one. We just met her. The other is dead,” Brandon said thinking of Ed.

“How did you get here Morgan?” Lucky asked. “We waited at the farmhouse. What went wrong?”

Morgan shook his head, “As soon as we made the turn onto the highway, Gene had a heart attack. The truck was into the turn and it just rolled over into the ditch. Everybody was pretty banged up and it took us some time to get the doors open and crawl out. We couldn’t save Gene and Sally was beyond despair, screaming and crying.” He paused and everyone was silent for a moment. “It….it didn’t help to leave him there and her hearing the shot when I made sure he wouldn’t turn. Sally stopped eating after that and became terribly thin. We got caught in a downpour one night and she caught pneumonia which she was too weak to fight off. We did manage to bury her though.”

“It was just me and dad after that,” Caleb said. “We never saw any other people the whole time until we saw Captain Toby on the River. We kept to the highways hoping someone would come along.”

“We hated leaving all the ammo and supplies in the overturned truck but we took only what we could carry” Morgan continued. “We could hear the explosions off in the distance and knew it was Randy with his grenades but then everything became dead quiet. When we reached the farmhouse we could see it was surrounded by zombies, most of them trying to get into the barn. We were afraid it was you trapped in there but we didn’t hear any gunfire and I couldn’t handle that many Ze’s alone. We kept to the highway and walked past the farmhouse and only a couple of them saw us.”
 

“That was Randy in the barn,” Lucky said. “Cami didn’t make it out and Randy was bitten along the way. Like your situation with Gene, we were not able to bury Randy. We crossed the highway when we left the farmhouse and went into the dried cornfields across the road. We never took the highways, always staying in the woods. We couldn’t imagine what held you up and could only guess that there were Ze’s at the entrance and that you couldn’t get through.”

Brandon’s meeting broke up and Toby came over to the group with Brandon following. “I must ask that your group spend the night here at the casino. I can’t let you go back to your boat other than to get sleeping gear. If people see you board they will panic and think that you are abandoning us. You are our only hope at this point. I will have people guarding it all night in fact the two of you can be on one shift if you like.”

Lucky and Roxanne were suspicious of that idea but Morgan spoke up, “These are good people standing before you.” He nodded to Toby’s group. “You can trust them.”

“I’m going out to make the announcement as to what our plans are,” Toby said. “Morgan after you finish visiting with your friends will you show them Cabin B1 and B2. Let us know when you want to get your gear and I’ll have Frank and Smoky escort you. Can’t let Morgan go with you or they’ll think you are skipping out with your friends. Some of them now mistrust me since I made that disastrous error in fuel so I can’t go with you or they may think I’m skipping out on them. They’ll be comfortable seeing Frank and Smoky with their rifles escorting you.”

They looked up at Frank and Smoky, both huge men who looked as if they were still working out at the gym. Smoky, a black man had his arms crossed and was grinning, “We’re pussy-cats really but our size makes people pay attention.” They followed Toby out to stand behind him as a force while he made his announcement.

After the three of them left Roxanne said, “Morgan if it wasn’t for you vouching for them I would be looking for a way out right now because I have all kinds of red flags going up.”

“I understand Roxanne but”, Morgan began but was interrupted by Roxanne.

“No, you don’t understand. You don’t know what we’ve been through to get here. You’ve been here two months already. We were in the woods for three months, fighting Ze’s, fighting people who wanted to kill us for our supplies, starving to the point that we could hardly walk. Stealing………”

“Roxanne!” Lucky broke in and stopped her. “I’m sure Morgan had the same problems on the road, Roxanne,” Lucky said gently then turned to Morgan. “Let’s just say that we are more suspicious now than when we were at The Park and leave it at that. Now, Toby said something about showing us to our rooms?”

“Yes,” Morgan said as he slid out of the booth. He pointed to the kitchen door,” we will go back to the promenade deck and take the stairs to the upper floor.” He let them go ahead of him while Caleb slid out from the booth and whispered, “Dad?” Morgan put his arm around the boy and pulled Caleb to him, “Yes Caleb, I noticed. We will talk about it in private.”

Toby had finished making his announcement when the group walked into the lounge. Everyone fell silent and parted to allow them to pass. Then someone began to clap and the others picked up the motion and started clapping. Some yelled out, “Thank you!” Another yelled, “Bless you!”

When they reached the promenade Lucky said, “Brandon, I don’t know what you promised them but it better be obtainable or we will either be thrown overboard or lynched. Or, lynched and then thrown overboard.”

As they walked along the upper deck, Morgan said “all the rooms are double beds,” he opened a door and continued, “so this one will be you Lucky, and Roxanne.”

“Uh…no” Lucky said. “This will be Roxanne and Terry. Brandon and I will take the other room.”

“Oh……yes I see,” Morgan said. “I had forgotten about Terry. Of course.”

“We don’t know if those are Terry’s plans,” Roxanne said. “Maybe we should check with her. She doesn’t exactly like me and she could have found other friends by now.”

“Well ya’ll work it out,” Morgan said becoming confused and embarrassed. He didn’t know if something had happened between Lucky and Roxanne or if the bunking arrangements on the riverboat did not allow for couples to sleep together, or if it was to protect Terry.

“For right now I think the three of us need to talk, Morgan” Lucky said. “Roxanne nor I know what Brandon’s plans are, and we always work together as a team. He needs to fill us in, so if you will excuse us for now and later we will see someone about escorting us to Jenny.”

“Alright Brandon,” Lucky said after they sat down. It was a nice room with a double bed, an unusable bathroom, end tables, a dresser, desk and one chair. “You want to fill us in on what is planned?”

“It’s simple really, no heroics” Brandon said. “Tomorrow me, Smoky, Allen and the Captain will take Jenny out to the barge. Each of them will have a barrel for fuel. The Captain has a pump and he knows where the barge is and at the same time I will learn where the Inner Harbor Canal is. We bring the fuel back and they fill the boats that are selected. Not all the boats will get fuel since people have made friends and will be doubling up. Plus, according to the Captain, not everyone agrees on where to go. Some want to go up the Mississippi to colder weather. Some want to go to that plantation where the Captain is still finding fruit and vegetables. Some want to cross the Gulf and go to the shores of Texas. Seems the only people who don’t know where to go from here is us.”

They looked at each other in silence. “Lucky I’m sorry to say that the Captain advised against going around Florida to the east coast in Jenny,” Brandon said. “He said that Jenny is not made to handle the open sea; that she couldn’t handle the current and would be pulled out to sea. I suggested staying close to shore and he said the waves would pull her in and smash her up.”

“But she handled that creek so well,” Lucky said. “That was a very turbulent current.”

“Yes, but the power of the creek was all behind us, pushing us forward” Brandon said. “We couldn’t have turned around and gone back up that creek though. Jenny couldn’t fight the current going back up. She would have been pushed backwards.” There was silence among them again and then Brandon added, “The Captain thinks people could make a go of it at that plantation. There’s no way of fortifying it but he said there is little activity of zombies on that side of the Mississippi and most of the time he picked his vegetables without any interruptions. Why don’t we just take a look at it before we decide?”

“The Hurley’s have a daughter my age and I’ll be staying with her tonight,” Terry informed them. “So I don’t care what sleeping arrangements you make. If you’ll just get my few clothes off the boat I’ll be Okay.”

Roxanne and Lucky decided to go to the boat to get their gear since the crowd saw Brandon as the pilot and if he went they may become nervous that he would cast off. There wasn’t a problem with Lucky having his rifle or Roxanne wearing her holster although only Frank and Smoky still had ammo for their guns. They decided to leave their two boxes of ammo packed away on Jenny. Toby told them to also leave whatever food and supplies they had since the Casinos had been plentiful. “It was only recently that we started to ration, not knowing when we would be able to leave, or if we would be able to leave.”

“The Lake turned on us so fast,” the Captain said. “I saw the signs and should have taken heed. Again, my mistake. We thought we had it made here yet more and more zombies started going into the Lake, some coming off the shore when they saw us on the decks of the casino. And each time I went out on the tugboat they would come down to the canal and go into the water. Plus each time I came back from a run more Ze’s would come down into the canal. Eventually their bodies decomposed some faster than others depending on what wounds they had. If they had facial or head wounds it appeared that the water filled their skulls and they eventually died off. Others, it would take one to two weeks. We stopped fishing in the Lake and that was a large food source taken away from us. Then the Lake turned gray and that hovering mist appeared and that’s when the tugboat ran out of gas.”