Balestone (26 page)

Chapter 1

He pushed her dead body over the side of the boat with one last heave, then fell to his knees and watched his wife sink down into the dark waters. She wasn’t really his wife, not in the traditional sense. No one had time for civil ceremonies once the plague struck, and religion had all but vanished after millions of unanswered prayers. Still, he had loved her and considered her his wife as they struggled to survive. They had been waiting for a cure, and when that didn’t happen, they decided to start a family and make a life for themselves. Then Helen lost the baby. Forty-eight hours later, Todd lost Helen. They didn’t know how to stop the bleeding and even though Todd had amassed an impressive pharmacy over the many months since civilization had ground to a halt, he had nothing that could save her. Instead he was forced to watch her slip away.

He had cleaned her up and sat with her for a few hours. There was no way to embalm her and in the tropical heat, her body deteriorated quickly. He wrapped her in a sheet, then struggled to carry her body out of their cabin and up the narrow stairwell that led to the deck. He had been proud of the fact that she had gained weight with the pregnancy. She’d been frustrated by cravings for food he couldn’t get her, but she had eaten well and the extra weight only made her more beautiful to Todd. Unfortunately, when they lost the baby and Helen was slowly dying, Todd hadn’t eaten. He was weak from hunger and grief, so carrying Helen exhausted him.

He slumped against the smooth fiberglass rail of the yacht panting for breath. He briefly considered throwing himself into the water. It would be a merciful end to his pain, but Helen had made him promise not to kill himself. He had agreed, but he wanted to die anyway. Still, there was a small part of him that kept fighting for survival. He staggered into the galley and opened a can of tamales. They were greasy and spicy. Todd thought they were delicious right out of the can, but they had given Helen indigestion so Todd had been saving them. He ate the entire can and then drank a bottle of water before falling asleep on the leather sofa in the yacht’s opulent living room.

Todd woke to the painful realization that Helen and the baby were gone. Tears spilled down his cheeks and his grief threatened to paralyze him. He wanted something, anything to numb the pain, but he couldn’t waste the precious medications he had collected. He decided instead to make for land and see what he could find that might help him cope.

He opened the tinted glass door that led to the deck. The sun was beating down in a merciless onslaught off the southern tip of Florida. Todd wasn’t sure of his exact location; the yacht had been adrift for nearly a week. He climbed the slightly curved staircase to the upper deck of the ship, where he kept the solar panels and battery compartments. The yacht had been brand new when Todd took possession of it. The billionaire who had built it wanted something small enough that he could pilot by himself.

Todd had worked as assistant harbormaster for over six years; he knew every ship that was kept in the massive complex of ships of the Atlantic City boat yard. When the riots started and it was clear that nothing could stop the plague from turning the world population into insatiable, flesh-eating zombies, Todd took Helen, who had only been his girlfriend for a month, to the boat yard. They filled the yacht with supplies and set sail.

Todd didn’t take them far, just a few miles off the coast. The yacht had excellent radio and satellite communication equipment. Todd and Helen had spent nearly two weeks listening as the world came to a screeching halt. One by one, the radio stations went off the air. Eventually the power grid around Atlantic City fell, and with it went Internet and cell phone service. Todd discovered with the yacht’s onboard equipment he could still receive signals from the GPS and weather satellites overhead. All they needed was power, which came from gasoline generators on the ship. Unfortunately, after two weeks, their fuel supply was running low, as was their ration of food and fresh water.

Todd and Helen had no trouble finding supplies; it was getting those supplies on board the yacht before the undead chased them back out to sea that was the problem. Occasionally they came upon other survivors, usually in small groups that were armed to the teeth. Newcomers were rarely welcomed, and Todd had no desire to stay on the land where he and Helen could be easily overrun by the herds of ravenous zombies. So they stayed at sea, monitoring the airwaves and dreaming of a time when things might return to normal.

Todd was devastated that Helen had died so young, never seeing their baby, never finding the relief from a world that had turned against them. Tears stung his eyes, but he refused to give in to the pain and grief that wanted to overwhelm him. Instead he checked the connections between the solar panels. He had installed them after discovering a warehouse full of green-energy products. The solar panels could keep the yacht’s appliances and communication gear running, as long that they didn’t use the air conditioner. Todd also had a locker full of wave generators, which looked like small buoys connected by a thick, waterproof cable. They generated electricity from the rocking action of the waves. They worked best when the yacht was close to shore, or when bad weather made the seas rough.

The small cockpit was filled with small view screens and video displays to help the pilot control the ship. There were the usual weather monitors, along with satellite feeds and sonic range finders that revealed what was beneath the ship. The yacht had a gas-powered engine and an electric secondary engine. Todd did his best not to use his supply of fuel, which meant that most of the power produced by the solar panels and wave generators went to the secondary engine. There were small water pumps all around the hull that gave Todd a full range of movement. Controlled by a thick joystick that was built into the tall captain’s chair, he could use the secondary engine to turn the ship on a dime and travel 20 nautical miles a day. From the cockpit, Todd could see out of the thick windows in every direction; with the monitors, he could see hundreds of miles around him and even under the ship.

He settled into the big chair, immediately feeling conflicting emotions. Piloting the yacht which had once cost millions of dollars, gave him a sense of control over his world, which had been cruelly hijacked by the plague. In that moment, he also realized that his Helen was truly gone. He had no idea where he’d dropped her body, and there was no way he could ever find her again. This time he didn’t try to stop the tears. Instead he let his grief pour out in racking sobs until he was exhausted. Then he sat back up in the captain’s chair and turned the yacht toward land.

Chapter 2

Miami was never an option. The once booming city was now filled with the living dead. Whenever Todd passed the metropolis that was once home to over five million people, he could see the reanimated bodies searching endlessly for food. He had no idea what caused the plague. The news had called it a bio weapon, a virus, and a judgment from God. No one really knew what caused the dead to rise up and attack the living, but a few things were clear—something in the brains of the zombies reactivated the neural pathways and called the dead muscles and tendons to action. Gaping holes in their flesh or missing limbs couldn’t stop them. The blood-thirsty monsters didn’t even notice the physical wounds unless it impacted their brains. A blow that damaged the brain was the only way to stop the zombies, and Todd’s guess was that it destroyed the nervous system that continued to function after the rest of the body died. Without that control system, the zombies were helpless. How the disease spread was a mystery, as was its origin.

Todd sailed his yacht north, stopping at a small harbor in a tiny town called Foxboro just south of the Miami metroplex. There were, of course, houses all along the coast, but the population of Foxboro was much smaller than many other harbor towns. Todd and Helen had stopped there more than once without incident. The refueling station at the harbor still had gasoline, as well as a reservoir of fresh water. Todd steered the yacht up to the refueling dock and let it glide into the soft rubber of the old tires that lined the wooden structure. He hurried down and tied the yacht down. The large, gleaming ship seemed out of place beside the simple, sun-faded wooden dock with its aging pumps and barnacle-covered pilings. The fuel pumps were simple contraptions from a bygone era. Todd fed the hoses into the fuel receptacles and then used the manual levers to pump the fluid into the nearly empty tanks.

It took several minutes to get the fuel flowing, and Todd was unnerved by the silence. Even the small towns had eventually succumbed to the Zompocalypse, and even though Todd hadn’t seen or heard any zombies, he knew they could appear and ruin his plans at any moment. He always tried to get what he needed as quickly as possible if he was on the mainland. Being out to sea was the only place he ever felt truly safe.

The handles of the gas pump were rusty and each stroke down or up, made the metal creak and groan. The only other sound were insects humming in the overgrown weeds near the abandoned convenience store that once served the ships in the harbor and the inhabitants of the small town.

Once Todd had the fuel tanks filled, he turned to the fresh water reservoir—a large plastic barrel. The yacht held 250 gallons of fresh water in its internal tanks. Seawater was used for most things, even washing in the glass-walled shower. The fresh water was used for cooking, drinking, and occasionally rinsing the salt off after a shower. Personally, Todd preferred to drink from the five-gallon bottles used by the stainless steel water cooler. He already had three of the refillable containers, but he was always looking for more.

He breathed a sigh of relief once the water tanks were topped off. If worse came to worse, Todd could live off the canned goods in his galley for a few weeks still, but he wouldn’t last long without fuel and water. Even with the green-energy devices, having the fuel tanks full and ready made Todd breathe easier. He almost started to call to Helen and let her know he was going ashore, but then he remembered she wasn’t there. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned against the sturdy wooden piling. There were moments when he felt like his whole world was flipping upside down, and in those times, it felt good to have something solid to lean on.

He opened his eyes and pulled the big laundry bag off the edge of the yacht. It was a simple mesh bag with a drawstring top, but Todd put it to good use whenever he had to scavenge for supplies.

The convenience store wasn’t far from the dock. It was a simple building of cinder blocks painted bright white. There were signs still in the windows with prices on fresh fruit, meats, and seasonal goods. Todd couldn’t help but wish for fresh meat. It had been ages since he’d eaten meat that didn’t come from a can. The convenience store seemed to be empty. In the bigger cities, looters had cleaned out whole supermarkets even before things got really bad. Todd found that in the smaller communities it was much easier to find food, but he and Helen weren’t the only people to have stocked up on the wide variety of foods in the small town’s only store. There was one other public building in the little town; it served as the city hall, police department, and post office, but it had nothing of interest to Todd.

He pushed open the glass door of the store. It was dark, and dust had settled onto the metal shelves, which were mostly empty. Todd searched the aisles and found pet food, some souvenirs, and a rack of generic potato and corn chips. The chips were all past their expiration date, but Todd took them anyway. There were still cigarettes and chewing tobacco, but Todd had several boxes of cigars from Cuba on the yacht, so he left the smokes behind the counter.

Todd had to use the heavy flashlight he carried on his scouting runs as he moved into the back room. There were two offices, but they didn’t interest Todd, nor did the bulging green bank bag that sat on one of them. Money was worthless once the rioting had begun. For a while, people bartered with gold and silver, but the plague struck so quickly and spread so rapidly that the world seemed to fall into chaos in a matter of days. The storeroom was just as Todd had hoped it would be. There were several pallets of canned goods and a metal cage where the surplus alcohol was kept. Todd had busted the lock on the liquor cage the last time he’d passed through Foxboro, but there were still several cases of rum and bourbon.

Todd finished filling his bag. There was very little that would be considered healthy in his haul, but Todd didn’t care. He had no desire other than getting back to his yacht and out to sea. He wanted to drink and forget all that he had lost. He wanted to disappear in the black void of sleep where nothing mattered and no pain existed.

He was walking toward the dock when the glass bottles in the mesh bag over his shoulder began to clank together. It wasn’t a loud noise, but in the silence of the abandoned town it seemed loud. Todd tried rearranging the bag over his shoulder but the clanking only got worse. There was a moan from behind him, the telltale sign of zombies as they lumbered about in their stiff, uncoordinated lurch. Todd didn’t bother looking behind him; he just broke into a jog, which only made the bottles clash together even more loudly.

Todd knew the zombies couldn’t catch him. They hadn’t overcome the general population by speed or intelligence, but by sheer numbers. Once a person fell to the ravenous frenzy of a zombie, that person soon reanimated—even with most of the flesh ripped from their body. Todd couldn’t tell how many zombies were behind him, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting back to the yacht and casting off.

Once he was aboard the
Great Escape
, he finally chanced a glance back up the long wooden pier. Todd hadn’t named the yacht, but the finely painted name was clear to see against the ship’s white stern; the irony of the name wasn’t lost on him. He untied one of the thick gang ropes and then glanced up as he hurried to the second. There were three zombies, lurching in formation like a scene from a low-budget horror flick. Todd guessed they were close enough to catch him if he didn’t hurry. Normally Helen would already have the engine running and the ship ready to move back out into deeper water, but Todd was on his own now.

He had tied the boat to the dock with a simple slipknot, and he gave the rope a tug, untying from the wooden pier and setting the boat free. Todd snatched up a long fiberglass pole with a metal hook on the end. It was used for catching rope that had fallen into the water or as in this instance, shoving the yacht away from a pier. Todd set the hook against one of the heavy pilings and pushed with all his strength. The yacht shifted in the water and drifted away from the dock. Todd was still pushing when the zombies got close enough to reach out for him. He was more than an arm’s length from the dock, but he pulled back anyway. The dead smelled horribly; their ruined bodies filled with maggots and worms. Huge flies buzzed around them and ghastly fluid dripped from their open wounds.

Todd poked at the nearest zombie with the pole, stabbing it hard with the metal hook. The pointed hook punched through the filthy scalp and scrapped along the pitiful creature’s skull. The zombie grabbed at the pole, lost its balance on the pier, and toppled into the water. The creature thrashed, sinking into the water and disappearing in a rush of bubbles and discolored water. Todd focused on the other two zombies. They could survive underwater, but they were even slower than normal, and their ruined bodies attracted sharks. Todd waved his pole menacingly, but the other two zombies just paced along the dock, reaching for him in a useless gesture.

Todd hurried up the steps to his cockpit. The door was already open, and he pushed the button to fire up the electric motors. They hummed to life, and Todd pressed the joystick all the way to its limit. The big luxury craft moved slowly away from the pier. Once the depth finder flickered to life, Todd could see the zombie that had fallen in the water thrashing along the sandy bottom, still moving toward the ship. The harbor was deep, and there was no way for the zombie to swim let alone reach his ship and find a way to climb into it, but it still made him nervous. It took all his self-control not to fire up the main engine and race back out to sea. He told himself over and over that he was safe, but convincing himself was difficult.

Finally, when he was nearly a mile from the harbor, Todd flicked off the engine switch and shut down all the monitors in his cockpit. There were no signs of bad weather, and the seas were calm. Todd went back down to the main deck and pulled the handle that let the anchor down. There was a rattle that reverberated through the yacht as the chain unwound from the stern of the ship. Todd picked up his mesh bag and carried it back inside the large cabin that served as the ship’s main living space.

The yacht had a simple layout. The main deck was wide open, with soft seats running around the perimeter of the stern. There were walkways on either side of the cabin, which took up most of the main deck, leaving only a small open area at the bow of the big craft. Inside the cabin was an opulent living space with a 70-inch television, theater seating, bar, and leather sofa. The floor was hardwood, and the walls were covered with fabric to reduce the noise from the ship’s engines. At the far end of the cabin, a narrow stairwell led down to a small laundry room and the stateroom, the only home Todd had known with Helen. They had shared the king-sized bed and made the yacht their own, even decorating it with small items they found on supply runs to the mainland. But now Todd was alone. Just seeing the knick-knacks that Helen loved so much made his heart heavy, and he couldn’t stand the thought of sleeping in their bed.

Another stairwell led to below-deck storage compartments and the ship’s small kitchen. Todd secured the liquor in the wet bar and then left the dozen or so bags of flavored potato chips in the mesh bag on the floor. He found a heavy, crystal tumbler and opened one of the bottles of bourbon. Todd didn’t even bother to look at the label, he just poured himself a generous glass and then stepped back out onto the deck.

The sun was setting, and the scene along the shoreline was almost sublime. The zombies on the dock had given up and shuffled back in the direction they had come from. The palm trees stood like silent guardians, but the once immaculate houses along the coast looked dark and foreboding. They were like diamonds that had lost their sparkle, reminding Todd of a ghost town. He took a drink of the bourbon and did his best not to cough as the warm liquid scalded its way down his throat. He dropped onto the seat at the side of the deck. It was a long bench seat, bright white and low so that his arms spread out along either side. He watched the sky turn from orange to purple, then black. Stars appeared, and the silence was so great it made Todd afraid.

He drank the entire glass of bourbon, then stumbled into the cabin, locked the sliding glass door, and passed out on the sofa.