Ghost Run (6 page)

Having the whole night to read up on the machine, I was now fairly familiar with its capabilities. The GARMR was heavy, weighing down my boat to the point that leaning too far in either direction would bring on water.

The sound of the dinghy sliding across the sand reminded me how few times I made landfall this way. I'd almost always tie up to a dock or other deep object. I felt vulnerable in the shallows, where the dead had no fear of going.

I jumped out of the dinghy into the shallow Gulf water wearing my T-shirt, shorts, and sandals and with the M4 across my back, careful not to let the Simon watch on my wrist get wet. I grabbed the dinghy's bowline and began dragging it onto the beach. Using some driftwood, I made a sand anchor, ensuring my ride would stay where it was.

I put on a pair of heavy leather gloves and started unloading
the boat. The GARMR was first. It was a two-man lift, so I wasn't surprised when I nearly dropped it into the water. It was warm to the touch, something I hadn't noticed before when I was shoving it on board
Solitude
. With a lot of effort, I finally got the heavy machine onto the beach and then grabbed my pack from the boat.

I climbed up the grassy dune to the center of the island to get a better look. I couldn't see too far because of the way the dunes were shaped.

I pressed the follow button on the Simon.

With predictable reliability, the machine rose from the damp sand.

Walking down the beach, I was suddenly stricken by the feeling of loneliness. It went on for a mile in front of me with nothing to interrupt the white sand ahead but intermittent pieces of driftwood. I could hear the GARMR behind me to my right. It seemed to be carefully avoiding the water. I checked the tablet and touched the video icon. I could see myself walking in front of the GARMR. I looked down at the high-definition screen and watched the GARMR's vision. I hit the IR button and the whole screen went black-and-white. I was able to alternate between the two for hot/cold colors. The GARMR software placed small green boxes over the wave movement it detected just offshore. This intrigued me.

My head was down in the tablet, when one of the pieces of driftwood stood up and started walking down the beach toward me.

In the split second before I looked up, I saw a red box appear over the movement.

Hostile.

The GARMR trotted out ahead to the undead creature. I hung back to see how it performed in the sand. I was a good fifty yards away from the thing, so I checked my surroundings before looking at the tablet feed again. I was very impressed by how stable the video was, considering the GARMR was nearly running to the creature.

I zoomed the camera in to its rotting frame. Crabs were attached to its leg muscles, still eating while it walked toward me, completely ignoring the GARMR. It was nude and most of its skin was missing below the waistline.

The GARMR positioned itself in front of the creature, forcing it to walk around. When it did, the machine put itself in front of the corpse again. I didn't want to waste any more time or risk the GARMR falling into the water, so a head shot to the corpse completed the exercise.

I pressed the yellow button and pointed down the beach. The GARMR did as instructed and began its scouting mission.

I watched on the tablet, gobbling through a package of freeze-dried pineapple. Sure would be nice to be sipping on an umbrella drink with Jimmy Buffett singing nearby.

The GARMR went along the beach fairly quickly before hitting its programmed return distance.

I put the tablet into my pack and crossed over the dunes to the leeward side of the island. Through the binoculars, I could see the buildings across the water on the mainland. One of them was a white ten-story office building. A fire had broken out at some point, leaving a great black streak from its seventh floor to the ceiling. I could barely make out at least half a dozen corpses standing on the roof.

The faint sound of electrical motors revealed the GARMR's return. Without looking, I could hear its standby routine; first a folding click and then the sound of settling servos. Fish jumped in the surf and I could see their glimmering scales.

I gazed out over the water to the mainland and began thinking of what to do.

If not for Task Force Phoenix, I might not even be here. I might never have felt Tara's embrace or held our new baby. I knew that this was a terrible idea, something that should never be attempted by any lone person, or even a hundred. If I didn't at least try to pick up their signal, I'd return a coward. After all, Phoenix might still be out there somewhere, alive. The Warthogs that scouted Hotel 23 after the nuke launch found signs that the team had escaped, moving east.

I was east, too.

I returned to the beach and began to search. After walking down the warm white sands until nearly at the end of the island, I found what I'd been looking for: a long, slender, and straight length of bamboo that could soon become a spear.

I sliced a fine point into the wood with my pocketknife. After building a small fire in a sand pit, I hardened the spear tip and headed for the dinghy.

The fish were jumping. The GARMR followed me to the water's edge and stood there with its small robotic head cocked sideways as I climbed into the dinghy. I paddled slowly alongside the island, thankful for the polarized sunglass I was wearing.

Paddle, drift, paddle, drift was the routine.

After a few cycles of this, I found what I'd come for. I wasn't always good at this, but much of the fresh meat on the Keys came from fishing. Cattle were rare, having been killed off on the mainland by the undead. I'll never forget the time that pontoon boat made it back to the Keys on fumes, a cow strapped to its flat deck. The captain had been out scavenging and found her, still alive, on a large field surrounded by a chain-link fence, complete with a pond and a massive open barn that looked like it had once been full of hay. That captain became a very rich man that day.

The flounder swam just below the surface to my right. Suppressing a sneeze, I watched it and slowly positioned my spear to strike. Knowing that the fish wasn't where it appeared to be from the refraction, I compensated; this was a skill taught by hunger. I jammed the spear into the water and hooked. The foot-long flounder came up out of the water, flailing. I'd stuck it cleanly through the gills and out the other side. After sweeping it with the Geiger, I tossed it into the well and paddled slowly back to the rising smoke up the beach, hoping to see another meal.

No such luck.

Back at the beach, I cleaned the fish on the bow of my dinghy and cooked it over the small fire along with the can of green beans I'd brought from
Solitude
. If someone were to ask me a couple years ago if I could survive long-term without a grocery store, plumbing, or electricity, I'd have called them crazy.

The fish was outstanding and the view was unforgettable if you could push certain facts out of your mind, one being that the mainland was thick with walking corpses. There was a lot of daylight left, so I decided to take advantage of the clear blue water and bathe using the bar of lye soap I'd traded for with five rounds
of .22LR. I didn't really need it; I had boxes full of real store-bought stuff put back for a rainy day.

Bug's retirement fund.

I don't like writing about her or Tara too much when I'm out here. My mind starts going places and I lose focus. That will surely kill you if you let it go too far.

Clean and dry, I packed my things and clumsily loaded the tested GARMR back onto the dinghy. The unusual warmth reminded me of the GARMR's power source. It worried me a little, but another quick scan with the Geiger put my concerns at ease. I paddled toward
Solitude
as she drifted slowly around her anchorage. Stowing the GARMR back on the bow, I now knew what had to be done.

Day 4

Sailing east, I meticulously studied my charts; I'd do everything I could to shave any ground distance. I planned to make landfall south of Tallahassee and trek inward, looking for the tallest structure left standing. The Morse code is still transmitting, although just as faint as before.

•  •  •

The moon was absent when I tied
Solitude
to the aluminum docks. When given the choice, I preferred wood; it was a lot quieter underfoot. The Geiger checked good, so I wore my NOD. It was impossible to use over a gas mask. In the early days of all this, I only moved at night; that was until I was briefed on the short-range thermal vision side effects of the anomaly. Traveling at night was out of the question in the irradiated areas in and around New Orleans, as the contaminated creatures were fast and noticeably more cunning.

The familiar green glow of the NOD comforted me even though my field of vision was severely restricted. Someday, probably a few years from now, this once expensive piece of technology would die along with the last remaining lithium batteries out there, never to power on again.

But until that time came, I owned the night.

Before leaving, I topped off my gun and lubed it with a few drops of synthetic motor oil I kept on board for weapon maintenance. Running a dry M4 could lead to serious issues out here; I kept a small bottle of the oil in my pack for those miserable times my gun needed to take an unplanned saltwater swim with me. Turning to
the machine on the bow, I took one last look at the tablet through my nonassisted eye.

“Checkers, power on,” I commanded.

GARMR's electrically actuated joints whirred into action. I watched it curiously through night vision while its legs kept balance on
Solitude
's gently rocking bow. It looked almost natural . . . almost.

Scanning through the tablet video feed, I switched to IR. GARMR's night vision illuminator was much more capable than mine. I used the virtual direction pad, slewing the machine's head down the vast expanse of the docks to get a better look at the shore. They were out there.

Leery of an RTG leak, I checked the machine for abnormal readings. Satisfied by the Geiger output, I could feel the heat again emanating from the machine as I led it to the port side of
Solitude
. The GARMR's titanium and steel hooves were shoed in some sort of honeycomb-pattern impact-resistant polymer, but they still made noise like football cleats on metal bleachers. As the GARMR boarded the docks, the sound rang out like great dinner bells.

Panicked, I reached for the carbine on my back, but it wasn't there; I'd left it by the helm.

Shit, stupid me. Another screw-up like that could have me ripped to pieces. And the night is still young
.

“Checkers, stay!” I hissed.

The machine began to retract its legs and drop to the metal dock. I walked backward to the helm, waiting for hell's gate to open and for a hundred irradiated dead to come barreling my way. I lowered the brightness on my red dot to its lowest setting and peered through with the NOD.

Oh yes, they were coming.

Based on my sight picture, they were a hundred yards down the docks. I watched as they advanced, hearing the distant sound of dock metal shifting from the weight of a platoon of marching corpses. A loud splash broke the near silence, prompting me to put my carbine in full auto. A few seconds of controlled breathing helped me back off that bad idea and move the selector switch back to semi-.

The creatures were fifty yards out when I made the decision to send the GARMR.

After pressing the scout button on the Simon watch, the machine stood and looked over at me with its head cocked sideways like before. I pointed down the docks and before I could think, it was trotting in the direction of the advancing undead.

I watched it through the tablet video feed. Dauntless, it didn't even slow as it selected the best space between corpses to enter the mob. The screen was thick with undead; I couldn't see anything but tattered clothing and rotting flesh.

After three distinct splashes, the GARMR broke through to the other side of the mob and continued its scouting mission into the green beyond.

The macabre platoon turned and followed it, creaking metal on the dock as they all slogged after the GARMR.

•  •  •

With the docks now clear, I tossed my heavy pack on deck, reminding myself to share some of the load with the machine the next time we met up. Anything over forty-five pounds was a huge pain in the balls to carry over a prolonged period, and my pack felt closer to sixty. The magnified light of the cosmos reflected off the narrow aluminum planks. I adjusted my intensifier and kept moving toward land, comforted for the moment that nothing could come at me from the side. When my boots pressed into the overgrown grass, though, it was game on, their rules. You either had to play by them or become them, the only positively charged particle among a galaxy of negatives.

The clouds shifted, casting more starlight all around. I could see that I was in an oceanfront residential community. Seeing only green, I just knew that the homes were painted in the familiar pastels of beach communities spanning the entire gulf shoreline.

Time and the elements had not been kind to this place. A hurricane must have hit here sometime before. Many of the shingles were ripped from the rooftops of the surrounding homes, or at least the ones that still had roofs. Nearby, a sailboat lay on its side, its fractured mast jutting through a once extravagant home. Bay cruisers lay about like toys covered in debris. One was jammed inside of a house, outboard engine first. Using her keel as a ramp, I
climbed aboard the
Reel Magic
onto her side. I woke up the tablet, casting light all around, illuminating the dirty sailboat hull and what was left of a ripped mainsail that lay draped over the hull. The GARMR was moving, but I couldn't tell from where. I panned its stabilized camera around to get a sense of its surroundings.

“Checkers, stop,” I said into the Simon's internal microphone.

The full-motion video stopped moving. I panned the camera behind the GARMR and waited. Sure enough, the ghostly shapes of the undead began to form in the distance as they came into range of the machine's optics. I aimed the camera back around and sent the GARMR behind a nearby overturned boat.