ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (13 page)

"Is everything all right?" Gin asked again.

"Yes, it is now," I answered. "We must have disturbed his breakfast."

"MREs?" she replied.

"If that's what you want to call them," I answered. And by the way, we were almost his next MREs!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Billy asked.

"I'll tell you what that means. I was talking to that maniac for every bit of three minutes, and I looked over at you and Jacob, and both of you had put your weapons in a position that you couldn't have possibly used them if your lives depended on it, and by the way, from what I saw down below, your lives did depend on it. Both of you were acting as if this guy was your best friend, like you'd known him for years.

Gin, are you listening to this, you're our ace in the hole, your job is to sit there all pretty like, with a gun in your hand, and if need be, shoot somebody. You're most likely the last one anyone will shoot at because they think you're the least threatening of all of us."

"He seemed like a nice guy," Jacob said, with a slight sound of guilt in his voice as he raised his eyebrows and lowered his head.

"That nice guy was going to
eat us
!" I shouted, hoping to make an impression on all of them. "The MRE's he spoke of, happen to be the people below deck he butchered and has cooking on the stove as we speak, most likely members of his family"

Shocked, Gin asked. "Are you kidding me?"

"I wish I was. One of you boys grab that Colt pistol from his hand, and let's get the hell out of here," I snapped.

As I employed my greenhorn sea legs to make my way to the port side of the larger boat where the Morphadite was tied, silently and posthumously I extended my condolences to the unknown deceased people below decks.

But most of all I wanted to express my deepest gratitude, and thank the Friar's Point "
filleter
" for making it possible for me, until the end of my days on this miserable planet, to never be able to smell the aroma of any type of meat cooking on a grill, without having the memory of the horrendous culinary act that he had performed that day in the galley of his boat flood back into my mind.

So with Billy and Jacob already on board the Morphadite, I stopped momentarily just before jumping aboard my small craft and pulled the man's confiscated stainless steel Colt .45 out of my pocket, held the big bore pistol close to his head, and emptied the magazine into his face.

Then after jumping aboard my boat, I cut the thin rope that bound our two vessels together, and pushing the crazy man's boat away from ours, I once more aimed just below the water line and fired several shots, only this time, I used the crazy man's other .45 caliber pistol to accomplish that task.

"Start the motor Billy, and take us out of here, let's put some distance between us and this nut-job," I asserted.

We cruised at full speed for about fifteen minutes, then shut down the motor, and again resorted to a slow leisurely pace, floating down the river.

"I think we need to add another rule to our list," I said. "It might sound harsh, but maybe something like, when in doubt, shoot first and ask questions later. I think we came very close to the end of our journey back there. If that guy would have been a little less insane, he might have fooled all of us."

I could tell by the way that Gin was acting, that she was a little angry with herself for letting her guard down so quickly.

That's when she said. "We almost got killed back there, for real, didn't we?"

"I think we came very close, if I hadn't seen the gun in his hand, he would have shot us all," I replied. "The way it looked in that cabin, he certainly didn't have a problem killing people."

"I think you're right, from now on we should shoot first if anyone we meet does anything weird," Gin insisted as she reached for one of the newly acquired Colt .45s.

"I think I'll just put this one right here by me," she said, while dropping the Colt's magazine to check the ammo in the gun.

Slamming the magazine back into the 1911, she said. "It's got a few bullets left in it. Now I'm beginning to understand why you brought all those guns with us."

Pointing to our stockpile of ammunition, I mentioned.

"What's in that Colt is all of the .45 ammo we have, the rest of the pistol ammunition is 9mm."

"Well I'm going to start with this 9mm," Gin said, tapping the Beretta 92 that was resting on her lap. "I'll use the Colt for back up."

"You boys hear that, we shoot first, and ask questions later, we never put our guard down, if we're going to make it in this world, we need to stay suspicious of everyone we meet. Get it?"

"We get it dad!" Billy replied.

"What about you Jake, do you get it?" I asked sternly.

"I get it dad, shoot first," Jacob answered with his usual teenage sarcastic tone.

Day 13 seemed longer than any of the previous days, nevertheless, night finally dropped its dark curtain on the day, and like all of the nights before, I took the first watch.

Perhaps it was because of the stress our voyage was putting on me, or the lack of quality sleep I was getting, or our new diet, or possibly all of the above, plus some.

Nonetheless, that evening I felt extremely tired. I was fighting to keep my eyes open, and slowly losing that battle.

In this new hellish existence, with so many threats, coming from so many sources, to fall asleep on watch could easily mean the death of us all.

My heavy eye lids began to close one last time, when I was brought back from an inevitable sleep by a blinding flash of light, at least I thought it would have been blinding, if I had had my eyes open.

The flash of light, quickly brought me back to consciousness, but by the time my eyes could focus, all I could see was a distant streak in the sky that resembled a shooting star.

I thought this light must have been caused by some kind of jet aircraft. However, I hadn't heard any noise that accompanied the light, but that could have been either because I had already drifted off to sleep, or maybe because it was some type of new top secret stealthy jet out of Scott Air force Base in Illinois, or maybe Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

If that were the case, it would mean that there are still some military forces out there fighting this plague. It would also mean there still is a United States government somewhere out there.

Then another thought crossed my mind, maybe it was just some pilot fleeing for his life like the rest of us, but instead of floating down the Mississippi River in a fifteen-foot bow rider named Morphadite, he had commandeered the latest stealth fighter to make his escape.

In either case, we were still on our own, in the middle of the country, and in the middle of the apocalypse, and there was no immediate help coming.

However, the flash of light, and my conjecture of what it was, or might be, and where it might have came from, had stifled my desire to sleep, and I was able to finish my watch wide-awake.

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PIRATES

The next morning, Jacob awakened me with an urgent tone in voice.

"Dad, wake up, dad wake up!"

"What's wrong?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.

"Look over there," he said, pointing to a boat in the middle of the river ahead of us.

"It's not moving and we're coming closer to it, it must be anchored."

"It could be a suicide boat?" I said.

For the first time since we started seeing suicide boats, I actually hoped this would be one. It was early in the morning and I had just been awakened, I really didn't want to deal with something like we had dealt with the day before.

"We're still a few hundred yards away, hand me the hunting rifle, I'll take a look at it through the scope."

Jake handed me the scoped rifle as I leaned forward onto the bow of the boat. I extended the legs of the rifle's bipod and placed them on the part of the bow that was wide enough to support them.

Lying as flat as I could, I turned the zoom knob to infinity and adjusted the focus knob in kind.

"What do you see dad?" Jacob asked, the urgency still in his voice.

"Well, it's for sure not a suicide boat, I see at least three men, and two of them are moving around. Looks like the third one is watching us through a pair binoculars, so they know we're coming."

"Everybody, wake up!" I said in a loud voice.

Gin slowly sat up.

"What going on now?" she asked, yawning as she spoke.

"We're going to having company, we need to get ready, Billy get up," I shouted.

"Okay, I'm up," Billy replied, stretching his arms and yawning too.

"What's the big deal?" he then asked sarcastically.

Annoyed with his lack of seriousness and sense of urgency, I answered harshly.

"The big deal is, we're floating toward a boat that's anchored in the middle of the river, and it has at least three men on it. Do you remember what happened yesterday?"

Billy looked at the boat in the distance.

"Shoot first, right?" he replied.

"If we have to," I confirmed calmly, seeing that he now understood the potentially grave situation that confronted us.

We floated along for several more minutes, as we prepared to meet this new potential threat, and when we felt we were as ready as we were ever going to be, I started the motor and we cruised at half speed toward the anchored boat.

The Morphadite was not a fast boat, relatively speaking. Its 48 Evinrude could push it along at a top speed of only about 32 miles an hour. So a great many boats were easily capable of out running it.

With that in mind, I decided that we should meet this possible danger head on, instead of trying to out-run a probable faster vessel and thus, having to shoot from a less stable platform, that is if we indeed did have to shoot.

Just out of earshot of the boat we were approaching, I said calmly. "Stay alert, watch these guys, and keep your gun pointed at them and your finger on the trigger."

"Halt," shouted the man that was pointing his rifle at me. "This is a toll point. Your group will have to pay the toll!"

He was as dirty as the two men on either side of him who stood like sentries with their AR-15's held at a forty-five degree angle across their torsos, trying to look like they were doing this in some official capacity.

We weren't much cleaner, with the blood splatters from past zombie encounters, and having not been able to wash for over a week.

With the river tainted with rotting bodies, no one in their right mind would wash themselves with that water. So hygienically speaking, we weren't much different from them, but then again, we were not stopping people and demanding that they pay us a toll.

The man pointing the gun at me and mandating the toll, who I presumed was their leader, wore a red bandana wrapped over his head. He had adorned himself with two crossed bandoliers that were filled with shotgun shells, even though he was carrying a rifle. His boots were knee high and resembled cavalry boots; his white shirt had over sized puffy sleeves and was opened half way down the front to show off the two gold chains he wore around his neck.

His partners were comparably dressed, and they all were sporting a 1911 .45 cal. automatic pistol as their main sidearm, guns similar to the pair that we had confiscated a day earlier. They also had one or two extra pistols stuck down the front of their pants.

My first impression was that they were doing their best to imitate 18th century pirates. The only thing that was missing from their buccaneer costumes was a cutlass.

"How much is the toll?" I inquired of the man.

"Pretty much everything you have, except your lives. We'll take them too if you insist, so lower your weapons pay the toll and be on your way," The pirate answered me.

On both sides of me, and from behind, simultaneous shots rang out. A bullet whizzed past my ear so close I could feel the disturbed air in its wake, just before it planted itself deep in the chest of the "want to be pirate" that a fraction of a second earlier was demanding our every possession.