An Apocalypse Family (Book 1): Family Reunion (24 page)

Liv shook Josh by the shoulder. She’d been on watch since two o’clock and caught herself nodding off.

“Hey, wake up, Josh, hey.” It took a couple more shakes, but Josh opened his eyes and smiled.

“Is this heaven?” he asked sleepily.

She shook her head. “That’s a pretty lame line, Josh.”

“Hey, give me a break. I just woke up,” he said. “Did we have any visitors?”

“No, it’s been quiet, and I’m starting to doze off. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get an early start.”

He rubbed his face and ran his hands through his hair. “What time is it?”

“About six. It should be starting to get light out, enough that the ghouls will have gone into hiding, anyway,” she said.

They ate Pop Tarts for breakfast and made some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the road. Stacy walked around in an early morning daze eating handfuls of Lucky Charms straight from the box.

“Stacy, stash those in your pack and wash up. We’re going to be leaving in ten; make sure you pee.”

“Gosh, Mom, could you be any more embarrassing?” Stacy shot daggers at her.

Liv shrugged. “Sorry, I’ll try to be more sensitive; now go get ready please.”

Josh pretended not to have heard the exchange and finished rolling up his sleeping bag that Liv had given him last night.

“That’s the first I’ve slept since this all began,” he said.

“You were snoring like a freight train. I was afraid you were going to bring the ghouls down on us there for a while,” she said, only half kidding.

“Why do you call them ghouls?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know, what do you call them?” she said.

“Huh, I don’t know, haven’t talked about it with anyone until now. I think of them as people—crazy people, but people.”

Liv was shocked by that.

“Are you frickin’ kidding me? These things are definitely not people anymore. Have you had any direct contact with one yet?”

“Yeah—I told you about Dale, my brother-in-law. Also, a couple of nights ago, I ran into a bunch of them that tried to tip over my ride, but I just drove off. Then, before Stacy beaned me over the head, I ran into a group of them in the Fred Meyer’s store. They looked horrible and they chased me, but like I said, they were just people acting crazy, maybe rabid.”

She looked at him and shook her head for the fourth time that morning.

“Josh, these things eat people. They don’t want to chat or ask how your day was. They’re only interested in one thing: eating! Like zombies, but they aren’t zombies, they’re still alive…” her voice faded and her eyes glazed over as if in reminiscence.

Her whole body quaked in a spasm of fear, then she finished.

“They can’t go into the sunlight. It burns them like the old vampire stories, but it doesn’t burn them up; they just get all red and blistered and then they die. They are definitely not people anymore.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” he said, not sure if he really got it or not. He knew they were bad news, but he would have to take her word for the rest.

“Let’s just get out of here.”

They found two different diesel trucks in the parking lot; they filled the ambulance and a couple of gas cans and were ready to roll.

As they drove through town, Josh felt the need to explain his route.

“I think we should keep along the coast on 101.” They were all in the cab of the ambulance; no one wanted to ride in the back. Stacy, fidgeting, sat between Josh and Liv.

“If you’re gonna stay close to the coast, why don’t we just take Uncle Phil’s boat?” she said, flipping through a first aid manual she found in the back of the ambulance. Josh looked over at Liv with his eyebrows raised. Liv was staring at Stacy with an astonished look on her face.

“It never even occurred to me,” Liv said. “My brother Phil has a fishing boat docked in Charleston, just down the road.”

“Have you seen him since this all started?” Josh asked. Her eyes moistened and she quickly averted her attention to something out the passenger window.

“Mom locked him in our garage,” Stacy said as if she were talking about the weather. Josh looked over at Liv, who shook her head. Josh took the hint and didn’t pursue the issue.

He switched subjects. “How big is Uncle Phil’s boat?”

“Oh, it’s big—ginormous!” Stacy said.

“It’s not that big, Stacy,” her mom corrected her. “I think it’s twenty feet or so.”

“It would take us longer to get there, but it’s not a bad idea. Is it seaworthy?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know a thing about boats,” Liv replied.

“Well, what do you think? Should we check it out, or just keep driving? I planned on stealing a boat once we got up north, but if we have access to one down here…” he said with a shrug.

“Make a left at the next intersection,” was all that Liv said.

“Hey, we don’t have to, it’s just an idea.” Josh could see that Liv was not thrilled.

“It’s just that I’m not a boat person. Phil tried to get me to go with him all the time, but I always found an excuse not to.”

“I went with him a bunch of times,” Stacy said. “It was a blast!”

Josh laughed. “I guess that means you’ll be the first mate then,” he said, poking her with an elbow. Josh was still skeptical about hitting the water, but if it meant not having to deal with the crazy people, he could get into that.

After following Liv’s directions for twenty minutes, they finally arrived at the Charleston Marina. She pointed at a building on the far side of the lot.

“He has a locker over there. We’ll have to break in; I don’t have a key.”

Josh drove around the lot a couple of times, looking for any sign of survivors. He gave up and drove to the building that Liv pointed out. The building was a long, concrete block affair with roll-up doors that had numbers stenciled on them.

“Each of the slips has their own storage area,” she said, stating the obvious.

“What number are we looking for?” Josh asked.

“Twenty-four,” Stacy chimed in. “It’s right down there.” She pointed to the end of the building. Josh rolled the truck around the end of the building and up next to number twenty-four.

Josh got out and examined the locking mechanism on the door. It was held in place with a heavy chain and three padlocks connected to each other to complete the loop. He’d seen this setup before on farm gates that more than one person or company needed access to. Uncle Phil must have had a couple of partners or friends who had access to the boat, only one padlock needed to be unlocked to remove the chain. Josh went back, got the bolt cutters out of the ambulance, and made quick work of one of the padlocks. Stacy and Liv joined him to open the locker. It was full of all kinds of fishing gear: poles, crab pots, nets—you name it, it was there. The keys to the boat hung on a nail with a float attached. A handwritten sign above the keys said, “Always leave the boat clean and the gas tank full.”

It sounded as if one or more of the partners had neglected one task or another before and needed reminding. Josh took the keys off the nail. He still had no idea if the boat was suitable for what they had in mind, and he wanted to look at it before they started moving any gear.

“Where’s the boat, Stacy—I mean, first mate?”

“It’s over here,” she said, and scampered off toward the docks. Josh and Liv followed along, Liv still looking rather perturbed at the prospect of going to sea. Josh had lived near the coast all his life, and while he’d never owned his own boat, he’d been on many and was confident he could safely operate one as long as it was in good repair.

They came to the marina entrance and a locked gate. Josh looked at the keys, determined that it must be one of the four on the key chain, and began to try them. The second key he tried fit the lock, and they went through the gate.

“Which one is it?” he said, looking down the row of boats, hoping it was one of the nicer ones.

“It’s the blue one over there,” Stacy pointed.

Josh smiled. “Definitely not a POS.”

“What’s a POS?” Stacy asked.

“Piece of sh–” before he could finish, Liv smacked him on the arm.

“Josh!”

“Shit?” Stacy asked. “Mom, it’s not like I’ve never heard you say ‘shit’ before.”

It was a beautiful Duckworth 26 offshore welded aluminum boat. It had a fully enclosed cabin and couldn’t have been more than a couple of years old. They walked down the dock to slip twenty-four, and when Josh saw the two Yamaha F150XA four-stroke outboard motors hanging on the back, he knew instantly that this boat would do nicely. He lifted Stacy over the gunnels and hopped on himself, then held a hand out for Liv.

“I’ll wait here until we have everything ready to go,” she said.

Josh could see the fear in her eyes.

“Liv, this is one hell of a boat. It’s made for the ocean; it has an eight-foot beam, the V-hull with those two motors—it’s completely safe.”

“You sound just like Phil. He would rattle off all that technical stuff and tell me what a pussy I am for being afraid. That is an awfully big damn ocean for such a small boat!” Liv half-shouted at him.

Josh realized he’d made an error in judgment. He should have approached it from a different angle.

“Liv, how many of those ghouls do you think we’ll run into out there in that big ocean?” he asked.

She pouted and gave him the stink-eye, but relented. She took his hand and let him help her onto the boat. He unlocked the cabin door and went in. Phil and his partners had spared no expense. The cockpit boasted a Funuro NavNet 3D UHD Radar with 10.4-inch color display, a GPS navigation system, and VHF marine radios.

“What did your brother do for a living?” Josh knew that this rig and this equipment was well out of range for most weekend anglers.

“He was a drug dealer,” Liv said without a moment’s hesitation. She laughed at Josh as he fumbled for something to say. “He was the northwest regional director of sales for a large pharmaceutical company in Portland.”

Josh laughed, “That would explain it.”

Josh spent all morning going over the manuals for the boat’s operation. He knew it was no substitute for experience, but he wanted at least to read up on the basics. The GPS was fairly simple, but it still took him about an hour to program it. It allowed him to set waypoints, which allowed him to avoid potential trouble spots he could see on the navigation charts. The boat’s 175-gallon tank was full, and according to the manual, they should be able to cruise at 28 mph while burning about twelve gallons an hour. He figured that was about three miles per gallon, but he planned to double-check his figures during the trip. In any case, they would look for fueling opportunities along the route. He brought the siphoning equipment with them that he’d used for the ambulance. The radar was a little more complex, and it took him a while to figure out how to change from weather radar to standard mode.

The passage out of Coos Bay went without a hitch. They passed the outer buoy 173 nautical miles south of the Columbia River, their first waypoint, at 3:01 p.m.

The seas were calm, two-foot swells with a northwest wind blowing at a moderate ten miles per hour. Josh showed Stacy how to steer the boat and follow the line on the GPS. She was elated that Josh trusted her to drive; she paid close attention to what she was doing.

Josh had laid their course far enough offshore to avoid accidentally running into anything, but close enough that they could return to land quickly in an emergency. He sat on the bench seat behind Stacy and surreptitiously watched to make sure she remained on course. They had packed the cabin space under the bow with all kinds of supplies, but there was still enough room for someone to lie down. Liv said she was tired, and crawled into the space to catch a nap. Josh checked the radar, switching between weather mode and standard. The weather looked fine and they weren’t in danger of running into anything.

“Stace, do you think you can handle this if I take a nap, too?”

“Yep, no problema, señor.’”

“Okay, if you have even the slightest inkling that there is a problem, you wake me up, okay?”

“Yes sir, Captain,” she saluted.

“And even if there is no problem, wake me up at six o’clock, okay?”

“Would you go lie down already?” Stacy said, waving him off like it was no big deal.

Josh crawled into the cabin next to Liv, shutting the hatch behind him.

“Ah, you mind if I join you?”

Liv smiled. “I was hoping you’d take the hint.”

She snuggled up against him when he lay down. Josh immediately felt the stirrings of desire and bent his head toward Liv’s smile. He kissed her gently and brushed her bangs out of her eyes.

“Still no strings,” he said.

“Hey, you never asked if there were any strings attached from my end.” Liv chuckled, pulled him close, and kissed him deeply.

They made out like a couple of teenagers in the backseat of dad’s car for a while, but stopped short of disrobing.