««—»»
The drive from the Community Center down Fort Road to their home was surreal. They had lived in Biloxi during Hurricane Katrina and surviving that aftermath, while soul-depleting, did little to prepare them for what they saw on the twenty-mile trip down the length of the island. This was an entirely different experience.
The numbers of police and MP roadblocks were thick and very curious until they got away from town itself. In several places, bodies lay in the streets. Some of the cadavers were covered with bed sheets or blankets, bloody stains blossoming across their cotton fabric, while other bodies were exposed. A fire raged along a block of elevated beachfront condominiums set side by side. Their bright Caribbean pastel paint jobs bubbled and streaked with soot and the occasional flame. Smoke billowed up into the morning sky as pelicans flew curious overwatch.
Once outside town, the road narrowed to two thin lanes between sandy shoulders. It ran the ribbon of the island as it tapered to less than a half mile wide. Just over the sand dunes and sea oats, you could see both the water of Mobile Bay out the passenger window, and the surf of the Gulf of Mexico out of the driver’s side. Short, dead-end streets branching off the main road held dozens of beach houses and bungalows, some dating back to the Civil War. Most were either unoccupied seasonal homes or rentals, but from those that were not, an occasional figure would be standing in the window peering out like a specter among the dunes.
Cars lay abandoned along the roadside in places. A solitary leather boot rested in the middle of the fort road about five miles outside of town, its owner nowhere in sight. Occasional gunshots echoed across the narrow island. Billy had to weave around an ice chest with an axe stuck through the lid in the road at one point. Just past the ice chest was a minivan that had burned and from it, a charred arm hung lifeless from the shattered driver’s window.
A little girl in a Scooby Doo t-shirt, no more than eight years old, walked down the middle of a side street, holding a yellow lab puppy by one paw. After Billy drove past her, his mind continued to analyze the girl and it pointed out to him that the reason the puppy looked so odd was that it only
had
the one paw.
Cat worked the truck’s radio on both the AM and FM bands, scanning for any stations still broadcasting. Only the island’s weak AM station, WGSH, could be found and it simply repeated the same prerecorded emergency announcements that it did the night before on a loop.
The twenty-mile drive home from town normally took just under a half hour, but that morning lasted more than twice as long. The far western end of the island stopped at Fort Morgan, built just after the War of 1812 and site of the Battle of Mobile Bay where Admiral Farragut proclaimed, ‘Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead.’ As the huge redbrick fort came into view on the horizon, Billy looked to his right and saw his neighborhood.
An ancient silver giant in a cotton button-down shirt and threadbare khakis stood against a roadblock and smiled. The roadblock looked to be made of a collection of sawhorses and lawn furniture.
“I was wondering when you kids would make it back,” the silver giant asked in a clear voice, with all of the gravity of Charlton Heston. Not the overbearing
Ten Commandments
Charlton Heston, but the chattier NRA-version. Your grandfather, only with better breeding and capped teeth.
“Kind of a long story,” Billy said to Edgar Wallace, his next-door neighbor and closest friend on the island. Ed had moved to Gulf Shores a dozen years ago, after the death of his wife. He had never remarried and had been childless. The 87-year old orphan had largely adopted Billy and his brood as his own for lack of a better choice, although he would argue it was vice-versa.
Once, while helping Ed install a new ceiling fan, Billy had eyed a number of framed photos in a cardboard box. All were of a younger version of Ed either in a suit or judge’s robe, with a vaguely familiar face shaking his hand in that formal way known only to practicing politicians.
“How did everything go here last night?” Billy asked as he stepped from his truck.
“We had a little excitement here,” Ed said, white teeth shining. An ornate Beretta Silver Pigeon 686 double-barreled shotgun leaned against a folding lawn chair.
“Nice shotgun,” Billy said.
“First time I used it was last night. A man who gave it to me was a better baseball team owner than a President, but the sucker works,” Ed said.
“Have you seen or heard from Wyatt?” Billy asked, his tone hushed.
Sadly, Ed, rarely silent, shook his head from side to side.
“The phones went out about lunch and the lights went just after dark,” the old man finally said.
“He was missing from the school. I got Cat from the high school but when we made it to the elementary school…” Billy trailed off.
Ed clasped Billy on the shoulder, “It will be ok. You will see. I am sure he is fine. He is too much like you not to be,” Ed said deliberately in full grandfather mode.
Cat had gotten out of the truck and was standing in the front yard of their house, looking out over the back yard and into Mobile Bay beyond it. The vacant ferry dock lay empty and the attendants, who normally hovered there, were gone.
“Mr. Ed,” Cat asked, “did the ferry stop running? What happened to the two boys that worked here?”
The old man shook his head again.
“They cast off for the other side of the Bay at Dauphin Island yesterday afternoon and those two fellas left on it. A coast guard boat came along last night and shined a light on the empty dock but kept going. I couldn’t tell you anything else,” Ed related.
“The last thing I got was a Tweet saying they were coming back here from Dauphin Island. That was last night and I haven’t got anything through since then,” the girl said, looking past the house at the dock.
“How did you get along last night?” Billy asked as Cat walked away.
“The two rangers that live at the Fort shut it down tight and came out here to turn folks away. We had some folks down here throwing a fit to get off the island, and they told them to wait for the ferry. Eventually we had about fifty cars here waiting for that damned thing.”
“Wow, things get ugly?” Billy asked.
“Oh yes. About two in the morning, a couple maniacs wandered up and tried to attack people sleeping in their cars. It didn’t work out too good for them,” Ed said gesturing with his chin towards the highway marker for the ferry across the street. Three lumps wrapped in area rugs were arranged neatly in the sandy grass.
“There was a lot of that in town last night. We shut the bridge down after dark,” Billy said. He could feel the weight of his .38 grown heavy in his pants pocket as he thought of it.
Ed exchanged a look with him and nodded knowingly.
“Well, it’s to be expected. First time I fired a gun since 1945, but then as now, it was for the right reasons,” the old man explained. “We tried to contact the Sheriff and then the city police by phone but we don’t have any service out here now.”
“There is a lot of that going on, too,” Billy said as he walked into his darkened house. He turned on a hurricane lantern that sat upon the entryway table and looked up at the photograph on the wall there. One was of Wyatt and his soccer team from last spring.
From the frame of the photograph stared his son’s face, and next to him was the girl with pigtails from the school.
— | — | —
ChapteR 21
The
Fish Hawk
maneuvered alongside the dock at station. The crew of the cutter was on deck in full Kevlar vests and helmets, and every member was armed. Both of the ship’s Mark II heavy machine guns were loaded and trained out, one to port covering the station, the other to starboard covering the open water.
“Holy shit, Skipper,” Hoffman said through his moustache.
Jarvis looked out through the windows of the small cutter’s bridge at the remains of the station. The two-story concrete station house, built to withstand hurricane-force coastal winds and storm surge, was pockmarked with a number of small arms bullet holes. Its roof had collapsed and smoke tendrils rose from its blown-out windows.
A 45-foot response boat was overturned with its green scum bottom exposed to the sunlight. The wake of the
Fish Hawk
slapped against the vessel as she moved closer. An empty orange lifejacket with
Coast Guard
stenciled across the back in reflective paint floated near the craft.
“Looks like someone crashed the gate, sir,” Myers, the 18-year old seaman on the port Mark II called back over the 1JP sound powered phone connection as he trained his weapon on the station.
Jarvis picked up a pair of binoculars and glassed the site. The high-speed security fence around the station was intact except around the gate. There, a dump truck had been run through the fence and crashed into the station itself. A number of bodies radiated from the truck in all directions. Some wore blue coast guard uniforms. The station’s radio tower hung detached at an odd angle from the side of the burned building.
“That explains why we haven’t been able to raise them on the radio all morning, Skipper,” Hoffman, pointed out.
“Hail the station,” Jarvis said, still examining the station through the binos.
Jarvis surmised that the entrance had been where the majority of the fighting had been, then at some point the infected had taken over the station and Coasties on the outside had taken the building under fire. How the small boat had overturned, and the station burned remained a mystery. The station’s second boat was missing.
“Attention, Coast Guard Dauphin Island, this is the Cutter
Fish Hawk
, show yourself, or call on channel 16 if possible,” Hoffman spoke into the microphone, his words booming out of the cutter’s loudhailer and over the station.
The Chief repeated his call four times to no response.
“Try to call Sector New Orleans and Station Gulfport, Chief. Maybe the Senior Chief is out there somewhere in the station’s other 45,” Jarvis instructed. He turned to the Cook who was filling in on the helm. “Bring the boat around and head back to Gulf Shores for now.”
“Skipper, aren’t we going ashore?” Hoffman asked.
“No, we can’t risk it. The Senior Chief had twenty guys here and if they couldn’t hold this place, what can a small boat team do?” Jarvis explained, placing the binos back in their holder and stepping to the chart plotter.
“Fuck it, sir, let’s grease these bastards,” Hoffman said. Jarvis did not respond and only locked his jaw. Now was not the time to light into the Chief in front of the other enlisted men on the boat.
“I’ve got movement about 70-degrees off t he bow, sir. Behind the station house,” the machine gunner on deck called over the intercom circuit.
Jarvis picked up the binos again and trained them on the area in question. Shadows obscured by the morning sun moved into view through the parking lot. A group of a dozen shambled into view slowly.
Hoffman knew immediately that they were infected. Some were civilians, one wore a brown sheriff’s deputy uniform, and others had on Coast Guard blue— smeared with blood. They approached the dock and made their way toward the
Fish Hawk
as she turned 180 degrees to return to Gulf Shores.
Jarvis could just make out the tall figure of the Senior Chief standing bloody and broken in the middle of the group, his empty holster empty at his side.
“Let’s make 20-knots for Gulf Shores,” he instructed the Cook. The Senior Chief grew smaller in the distance, swaying at the end of the stations dock watching the cutter leave through lifeless eyes.
— | — | —
Part II
“I think human beings are just a very complicated form of bacteria…if you look at us objectively. If you were an intelligent life form from another planet, looking down that you wouldn’t see individual people…you would see mold on a sandwich…I think somehow or another that is what we are supposed to do. We’re here to fuck shit up… I think we’re here to eat the sandwich.
”
— Joe Rogan
— | — | —
ChapteR 22
Mack stood at the table next to Billy signing up volunteers. Just over a week had passed since the outbreak had hit the island, and things were getting better.
Billy had kept going to the Community Center every morning after the outbreak until eventually he found Wyatt and his new best friend Mack. They were playing checkers with rocks on a checkerboard created from a calendar colored in with a sharpie.
“Can we keep her?” the boy had asked, “She’s homeless.”
A brief introduction and an abbreviated explanation of the past few days’ events all around left the now-unemployed bank teller living in the guest bedroom of Billy’s house. She had lived on the mainland in Robertsdale. According to most accounts, that small town was now firmly part of
Zombieville
, as the survivors had taken to calling all points north of Gulf Shores.