Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America (23 page)

As it almost always was after a big blow on the ocean, the next day was spectacular weather-wise. The sun shone brightly overhead and the sky was mostly blue with some mottled clouds floating about. The seagulls, which had taken cover during the storm, were swooping and diving overhead, letting out their loud caws.

As far as how my body felt, it seemed as the entire force of the hurricane had been directed at me. Randell lied about getting me up for my shift and I slept through the night and into the next morning.

When I awoke, I found Joni kneeling at my side, peering at me with an expression caught between curiosity and dread.

“Hey,” I said, my throat dry.

She held out a bottle of water. I took it, screwed off the stop, wincing as my hands still ached, and took a long pull. The water felt good, but nothing was going to wash away the feeling of guilt I was experiencing.

“So, Dave,” she said haltingly, “did he...did he...?” She stopped and looked away.

I hesitated before answering. “I’m certain he didn’t make it,” I said. “I wasn’t looking at him when he detonated the charges, but he was right on top of the explosives.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, slumping against the wall and then looked out the window across the room. There was no other way to describe her face other than lost. Large silent tears began to flow down her cheeks. Being emotionally stunted, I wasn’t sure what to do. I sat up next to her and after about a minute, I put an arm around her shoulder and patted her back. It was the best I could do at the time.

We sat like that for several minutes until I heard footsteps on the deck outside and a moment later Randell passed by a window followed by Jay. Just before they entered the room, I pulled my arm away from Joni, feeling guilty about keeping it there, but feeling equally bad about taking it away.

Randell said, “I found a dump truck over a dune to the south. The keys were in it and it started. It doesn’t have a lot of gas in it, but more than enough to get us to the south side of the island.”

“That sounds good,” I responded. “Any deaders?”

“A few washed ashore, but most were in pretty bad shape,” Randell said.

“Jane put down a couple that must have been on land during the storm,” Jay said proudly as if he has done it himself.

Another set of feet sounded on the deck and Jessica and Martin rushed into the room.

“I saw a giant sea turtle!” Martin shouted.

Jessica, on the other hand, saw that her mother had been crying. “What’s wrong, mommy?”

Joni sat still for a moment and then wiped the tears off her cheek.

“Is it about daddy?” Martin asked, any hint of excitement gone from his face.

“Do you want me to tell them?” I asked.

“No, I’ve got it,” Joni said, pushing herself off the floor and standing. She walked across the room to the two kids and put a hand on each one of their shoulders. “Kids, let’s go outside, I have to tell you something.”

Both of them knew what she was going to say, but had to hope she would tell them something different. Maybe some good news for a change. Joni led them both outside and they dutifully followed, quietly as if they were being taken to the gallows. Jay, Randell, and I stayed inside, all three of us looking very uncomfortable. It didn’t take long. Jessica cried first, a long shrill mournful sound, cutting into the souls of everyone who heard. Martin joined in and it was brutal for the next few minutes.

Robbie rushed into the room with his little radio in hand, unaware of the drama that had just unfolded, and said, “The President’s called off the dropping of nuclear bombs.”

“That’s gotta be good news,” Randell said.

“No, they’ve proven to be ineffective,” Robbie replied. “The virus is spreading unchecked.”

The good times just kept rolling.

It was more than an hour before the kids calmed down enough to even consider moving. The rest of the party wasn’t in much better shape. Rosalita looked like she had aged another twenty years overnight. I was thirty years younger than her and I was beat, broken, and battered. It was wonder she even moved at all.

Still, we had to move. None of us had eaten in twenty four hours and water was going to become an issue soon. The irony of an endless gallons of water surrounding us, but being undrinkable struck me, but that’s how life was in the apocalypse. Like it had a real sense of humor. A dark sense, but it had one.

The supply of bottled water we had with us was running low. There was no rest for the wicked, I guessed. Compounding the situation was the fact that we had no idea what the rest of the island was really like. It could be teeming with the undead for all we knew.

Randell took charge while I stumbled about trying to come up with some sort of muddled plan to move us southward. Within a half hour, he had the dump truck beside the house and ready for us to board. It was a large industrial truck with a lot of rust, but it ran. It wasn’t a luxury ride by far, but it could accommodate all of us easily.

We put Rosalita in the cab to make it easier on her. For the first time since I had known her, Joni declined to drive as she stayed in the back of the truck with the kids and let Randell take the wheel with Robbie as co-pilot. Jessica’s eyes were red and raw from crying and little Martin looked as lost as a kid could ever be. Just looking at them tore at my heart, but there was nothing I could do. What they were going through was something they had to go through on their own because the path of grief is a solitary one. People can walk beside you, but they can’t walk it for you.

The ride in the back was bumpy, but we felt relatively safe. The only way down the island was a narrow stretch of land less than a mile across. We passed by the Pea Island National Refuge where seagulls and pelicans went on doing those things that birds do, ignoring the fact that the world was ruled by the dead. The wind felt refreshing as it blew over us after the punishing rains of the previous day. There was nothing but low scrub bushes and grass on the east side of the island and a whole lot of beach on the other side. Waves, a little rougher than normal, crashed against the shore in that rhythmic and soothing way that waves do, lulling us down into a complacent posture. Of course, those of us in the back had no idea what was coming up. That was left to those in the cab and I was fine with that.

Randell slowed as we reached the first major population center on this part of the barrier islands, Rodanthe. Like any other place that could accommodate a beach house on these islands, developers had crammed the houses in as close as they could. Short streets streamed off the main drag like little tributaries with houses lining each one. Many of the houses were missing long strips of siding, ripped off by the powerful winds of the hurricane. Several had gaping sections of roof torn away, too. The storm had not been kind to the island.

Before starting off, I had contemplated having Randell stop somewhere in Rodanthe to check on supplies, but we decided to head to our final destination and then come back once we got settled in. It was an optimistic plan because the house could have been taken by the hurricane or by others, but we banked in it being there. If it wasn’t, we would improvise.

Randell slowed down even more, making me curious why, but before I could do anything, he gassed the pedal and we shot forward rapidly. I thought I felt a subtle impact and this was followed a second later by a crushed body rolling down the road in our wake. I guessed it was one of the undead and this was quickly confirmed as two deaders appeared in the street, arms outstretched toward the back of the truck, stumbling along after us. As usual, they paid their crushed colleague no heed. Dinner was driving away and they had to catch up.

We quickly left Rodanthe and drove along on another uninhabited section of road bordered by the ocean on both sides. Avon came up next and was much like Rodanthe, dead and deader. The houses looked hit a little harder as we saw two house flattened entirely and several missing the roofs. A large warehouse building looked like Godzilla had stepped on it with its walls spilling out onto the road. Randell deftly maneuvered the truck around the debris. There were more undead here, too. Randell dispatched two with the truck, but we saw more than a dozen outside the local grocery, aimlessly wandering in the parking lot. They could have been waiting for the next sale on meat for all we knew. Of course, we were meat and were always on sale as far they were concerned.

Avon came and went and after a two mile stretch of nothing but ocean and more beaches, we made it on to Hatteras Island finally. We had to pass through Buxton first. It’s claim to fame was great surf fishing and the famous Hatteras Lighthouse.

The north side of the town was in bad shape. It looked like the place had taken a direct hit by the storm. More than a dozen houses were smashed to pieces. Shingles, siding, and entire parts of buildings lay strewn about the streets. Several beachside houses tilted frighteningly forward, their pilings broken, leaving the structures in ruins.

There weren’t as many zombies, though. The ones we did see looked waterlogged, as if they had washed in from the ocean. Several were missing clothing entirely. That wasn’t a pretty sight as their gray and mottled skin looked bloated and wrinkled from spending too much time in the water.

We passed Brigand Bay and I renewed my fervent hope that the house was still there. Why I was transfixed on this house wasn’t entirely rationale. Maybe it was because the world had just taken away everything I had ever cared about and if I could just have this one thing that I cherished from the past, then maybe, just maybe I could find some way to balance things out? To give me some kind of hope that everything could be alright again.

What I saw in the Bay didn’t give me much hope as the boats left behind by those who escaped before the storm hit lay strewn about the shoreline like a giant angry child had tossed his toys about. Most were badly battered, with their masts snapped off. A large yacht sat on its side with two small boats rammed into its deck. When we came upon the campgrounds on the south side of Buxton, we encountered a small herd of zombies. Randell showed them no mercy and rolled over the few that stumbled into the road. The battered bodies of the undead rolled under the dump truck and down the street like undead tumbleweeds.

We were in the homestretch now. My grandfather’s place was on an inlet on several acres of land on the east side of the island. He had made sure to hold onto as much land as he could to act as a buffer against the “damned” tourists.

Even though I was nearly dead on my feet, I rose from my place in the back of the dump truck and stood on one of the wheel wells to get my head above the lip of the sides. The wind whipped at my face, but I could smell the sea salt in the air and something about it energized me. It was just like when I was a kid and my body ached with an overwhelming anxiousness to be out of the car and running on the beach again. We just couldn’t get their fast enough.

Randell slowed the truck into a gentle curve and I began to remember all the landmarks again. We crossed over The Slash, a local waterway that cut the island in half, starting at the north end of the island and extending its heart. I had spent plenty of time on it as a kid in our little skiff, learning to sail.

Randell took a long looping right and we passed by a bank and then a supermarket. The supermarket looked like it had been through a war. Several of the windows were smashed in and a monster truck with gigantic tires sat half-in/half-out of another set of windows closest to the main doors. Grocery carts littered the parking lot with most of them overturned. We went for another quarter of a mile and took a right.

I could feel the anticipation welling up on my chest. We drove past a house that was much worse for the wear. Most of its windows were missing along with a large section of roof. This struck a pang of fear in me, but we would find out soon enough if our planned refuge was still there.

Randell slowed the truck to steer around a car sitting on its side and we started the final push. My grip on the lip of the dump truck intensified. We passed by a small grove of trees and I saw it. The Castle. At least that’s what we called it as kids. It stood just as tall and proud as I remembered it, looking indestructible.

My great-great grandfather had built the original place. It was quite a formidable place, or so my dad had told me. But the storms were stronger and it was nearly destroyed in a hurricane in the ‘20s. My grandfather re-built it, almost starting over. Where most places had pilings placed deep into the ground, my grandfather went twice as deep and used a combination of concrete and steel. The exterior of the house was primarily made of limestone, big and knobby rocks. Beneath this hard exterior was even tougher stuff. More concrete and steel. My grandfather said the place was built like a battleship and that’s why it still stood while so many had fallen.

He had even built the dock on the inlet behind the house to military standards. There was nothing cut rate like many of the modern designs about the place. He had built it to last and it had. I could barely see any damage at all. Maybe there were a couple dents in the metal roof and there was a large palm tree down in the side yard, but that was it. The Castle had weathered the worst the world had thrown at it and had come up a winner as it always had done.

Randell bought the truck to a stop and we, in the back, disembarked. My muscles protested the movement, but my mind ignored the pain as I reveled in the place and all its memories.

“It looks like a castle,” Martin said.

“That’s what we called it,” I said.

“And your family built this place?” Joni asked.

“My grandfather did,” I said.

Jay and Jane walked in a wide arc around the front of it, their expressions a juxtaposition of wonder and curiosity.

“Man, this place is mucho grande,” Jay said in awe.

Randell and Robbie gingerly helped Rosalita out the cab and down to the ground. When she saw it, Rosalita crossed herself and said, “Dios mios!”

“And we’re going to live here?” Martin asked still looking amazed.