Everyone moved out of his way as Bear lifted the cutting machine over his head and squeezed the accelerator. The saw spun at full speed and Bear dropped the blade on the undead holding the boat. The blade melted through arm after decayed arm, slicing them all off in a continuous motion. The armless beasts battered their severed stubs against the boat hull. One of them jumped at Bear and tried to bite his hand—it didn’t make full contact, but it did gnaw Bear’s skin—he pulled back and looked at his bleeding hand.
“Shit! Goddamnit!” Bear moved quickly and unscrewed the cap off the chainsaw’s gas tank; he haphazardly poured some gas on his hand, pulled a Zippo lighter out of his pocket, and lit his hand on fire. He cried in agony as his skin burned but he didn’t put it out—he wanted to incinerate any of the infection on him. He picked up the chainsaw and continued to slice and dice the undead. Some spilt gasoline on the chainsaw caught fire from Bear’s hand and the blade spun ablaze. The thin flames transferred onto the shoulder of one of the stenches, spreading upward and catching its hair on fire.
That gave Milla an idea. She dashed to the stacks of supplies, opened a box, and pulled out one of Tom’s bottles of expensive alcohol. She broke off the bottle’s neck against a railing and splashed the flammable liquid all over the raging corpses. They caught fire as she poured the bottle along the back of the boat. “Yeah! Burn, you bastards!” she said in hatred.
“They’re coming!” Maggie shouted and pointed toward the horde on the channel road.
The flame engulfed stenches let go of the boat. It finally moved forward, just in time as the horde on the road crushed into the water, producing a wave as if a cruise ship had been launched. The group escaped as the boat chugged along with only one engine and the dead followed them. Every dead thing in the area was being lured to them from the noise; causing the hordes on both sides of the channel to swell.
“You okay?” Maggie asked Bear.
“Yeah, I think I got it in time,” he said, looking at the top of his charcoaled hand.
“Let me see,” she said and Bear let her look at it. She tore a piece off her blouse and wrapped his hand with it, then wrapped a couple feet of tape around it. “That should hold it, for now.”
“Thanks,” Bear told her.
John glanced back and saw that the boat had gotten free; it was a few hundred feet behind and closing. Undead appeared in front of him and he shot at some, but it was more than he could handle so he ran for the water. He dived in and swam to the middle of the channel; he treaded water to wait for the boat. Some of the putrid undead followed him in, but John wasn’t concerned when they sank like rocks. A moment later something yanked on his leg, pulling his head underwater momentarily. He resurfaced and kicked at whatever dead thing had him, got free, and paddled a few feet away when another one grabbed onto his legs again. He could feel it trying to bite into his calves, but his armor prevented the creature from reaching his flesh. John kicked it off again and then grabbed his pistol, jammed it into the water and fired, stopping only when the magazine was spent. Patches of blood floated to the surface and he swam away, farther down the channel.
Lauren was looking for John and she saw him firing his gun at the underwater undead. “There’s John. He’s in the water!”
Ardent saw him as well. “Get ready to pull him in. Don’t miss because I’m not stopping!”
They couldn’t stop with the hordes right on the boat’s ass. If they did, they would be overrun. Lauren moved back to the starboard side of the boat. “Grab a hold of me!” she said to Bear and then bent over the railing, ready to catch John.
“Maybe I should catch him?” Bear asked.
“No!”
Bear grabbed Lauren by the belt and held her tight despite the pain of his burnt hand.
She extended both her arms like hooks skimming over the water.
John saw her and got ready.
He was in the right place to be picked up, but then the bow wave pushed him away from the boat and almost out of Lauren’s reach. She threw herself over the railing farther to get him and Bear almost lost his grip from the sudden jolt. She reached as far as she could and was barely able to grab John’s hand; they locked in a tight grip and she tried to pull him in, but he was a wet two hundred and fifty pounds. The weight dragged Lauren down the rail and Bear struggled to hold on. If Lauren lost her grip, John would be left behind and swallowed by the horde, but she wasn’t going to let that happen.
She groaned from the strain as she used all her strength to pull him in. Finally, he got close enough and grabbed onto the boat railing. He pulled himself up over and Lauren grabbed him by the waist and yanked him in. John fell on the deck and took Lauren with him; she landed on top of him. They were face to face. “Thanks,” John said.
“You’re welcome,” she answered with a slight smile.
They enjoyed a moment of comfort as they lay on the deck looking at one another, but quickly snapped out of it and got to their feet.
“Get a room already,” Bear said under his breath.
“Permission to come aboard, sir,” John said to Ardent.
“Granted.”
“How we looking?” John asked.
“We’re okay, we’re running on one motor but, besides that, we’re gonna make it,” Ardent said.
“Provided our one motor doesn’t die on us,” John noted.
“That’s not funny, man,” Derek told him.
“I’m not laughing,” John replied.
“Let’s not worry about that until we have to worry about that,” Ardent told them.
“Good advice,” John answered.
The group watched as they slowly pulled away from the hordes on both sides of the channel; every dead thing in the area was drawn to the action, continuously increasing their size. The one engine struggled to propel the boat as thousands chased them and kept pace, only losing an inch or so every few hundred feet. With the rising sun behind them, the shadows of the undead stretched after the boat like so many teeth of a shark bent on devouring them.
Distant figures of the undead gathered ahead of them, but not as many in numbers as the ones behind them, many running into the water to attack them. The group felt the impact of the dead things on the boat’s hull as they passed. The boat moved fast enough that the corpses didn’t have time to grab on and the ones that did manage to get a hold of the railing were met with a gun barrel to the face or a boot kick.
They pressed on.
As Ardent steered, he took a pair of binoculars and scanned the area ahead. Panning left and right slowly—he stopped and focused on something directly ahead—“We have a problem.”
“What is it?” Bear asked.
Ardent gave him the binoculars and Bear looked for himself. “Goddamnit.”
“Let me see,” John asked and Bear passed the binoculars.
John adjusted the focus ring and got the lenses to clarity—there was a bridge about half a mile ahead of them, which was no problem as it was high enough for the boat to clear. The problem was the fifty undead gathered on it—they were waiting for them. The group looked and saw what they were heading for, except Tom; he was too exhausted to stand.
“That’s great, man! Just fucking great!” Derek said. “We need to shoot those fuckers before we get there!” Derek readied his weapon.
“Don’t fire right away, wait until we get closer,” John said.
“Why?” Maggie asked.
“The more we fire, the more of them we attract,” Bear told her.
“I don’t think that matters now,” Milla added.
The numerous undead on the bridge saw the boat coming and they knew what was on it, a meal that they would destroy anything in their path to get to. The fifty dead things grew to a hundred and increased in size with each passing moment.
“We need to start firing now!” Anthony said.
“He’s right, all of us, right now!” Lauren said.
“Okay. Get ready then!” Ardent told them.
Everyone got their weapons ready and moved to the front of the boat for clear shots; Ardent grabbed his weapon, but couldn’t leave the wheel unattended. “Tom, take the wheel for me.” There was no answer and—when he turned back to look—“What the hell?” Ardent said at what he saw.
“Clear a path!” Tom shouted.
They turned to see Tom standing there with a large portable rocket launcher in his hands he had retrieved from one of the weapon crates—a Javelin missile—Anthony stood a few feet in front of his brother in awe. “Holy shit!”
“Do not stand in front of me,” Tom ordered.
They all stood aside and Tom placed his eyes in the targeting system and depressed the first trigger to zoom in on his intended target. Once satisfied with the selected location for the missile, he depressed another trigger. The missile was programmed and it locked on.
“Fire in the hole!” Tom shouted and depressed the final trigger.
A moment later, the missile was ejected from the launcher, its stabilizer fins extended and, after twenty feet, its rocket engine ignited. The missile sped off in a blur and immediately arced up into the sky, leaving a fiery trail.
“Up, up and away,” Tom said somberly.
The missile reached an altitude of a few hundred feet and then suddenly veered down in a steep angle. When it hit the center of the bridge, the explosion instantly vaporized the stenches while blasting a huge hole in the concrete bridge. The undead corpses that weren’t blown to bits were ejected off the bridge by the concussion shockwave.
The bridge was cleared.
Tom dropped the empty launcher and sat, almost falling down on his ass from exhaustion; Anthony rushed to his brother and caught his fall.
“I was saving that one for a special occasion,” Tom said with a grin. “Guess that will have to do.”
“Wow,” Maggie said in amazement. “Look at that.”
The boat glided under the destroyed bridge and the only thing that challenged them was the dust cloud from the explosion. Behind them, the hordes still pursued them without end.
“You saved our asses, Tom,” John said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Tom answered in a weak voice. “You owe me, okay?”
“Sure, whatever you want,” John said.
“After I’m gone,” Tom said and John saw the wound in his armpit. “You take care of Anthony for me, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Really.” Tom said in a serious tone.
“Really, I will.” John assured him.
“Good,” Tom closed his eyes to rest.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Anthony said in sadness.
“Just to sleep, baby brother.”
They all knew what was going to happen to Tom—it was just a matter of time—and they didn’t know how much time that was, which was the problem. Bear looked at the others, they all looked at each other, and they knew what had to be done; it was just a matter of who was going to do it. Even though the undead hordes produced a deafening noise behind the boat, the silence of the group was so taut that it was uncomfortable. Derek decided to break the silence by checking his rifle; he racked the loading bolt back to make sure it was loaded. The rest of the group looked to him.
It was decided.
He would do it.
“What’re you doing, Derek?” Anthony asked suspiciously.
“Nothing, kid.”
His suspicion turned to anger. “Bullshit!”
With his eyes still closed, Tom said, “Calm down, little brother, it’s okay. Derek, you have to understand that my brother isn’t stupid, and neither am I.”
“I’m sorry, Tom, but you’re infected, it’s nothing personal,” Derek was honest.
“I know,” Tom assured him, “but I’m not in any danger of turning in the next few minutes, that much we all know about the infection. When the times comes; I’ll take care of it myself, so if you all don’t mind, I’d like to relax without having to kill any of you,” Tom tapped his fingers across his pistol in his hand.
“Okay, Tom, don’t worry about it. You can trust us, we owe you that much,” Bear said.
“Thank you, kindly.”
Tom sat there in Anthony’s arms and rested as everyone kept an eye on him, and Anthony kept an eye on all of them. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to his brother.
“You remember when we were younger, Anthony?” Tom said. “When we use to spend summers in Laughlin with mom and dad?”
Anthony smiled slightly. “Yeah, I do.”
“We’d spend the whole day on the lake racing our sea doos while mom and dad putted around in the boat.”
“Uh-huh, and I always beat you.”
“I let you win, squirt.”
“Sure you did.”
“By the end of the day we were both sunburned, but we still wanted to keep going.”
“Those were good times,” Anthony said.
“I remember when we use to camp on the lake and mom and dad would make us sing campfire songs with them.”
“Make us?” Anthony said. “They extorted us. Was it one gallon of gas for the sea doos for every song we sang?”
“Yup.”
“That was awful.”
“It was great. I miss those times.”
Anthony thought about it. “Yeah, me too.”
“Row, row, row your boat,” Tom said. “That was mom’s favorite.”
This increased the tears in Anthony’s eyes. “I remember.”