Last Stand on Zombie Island (24 page)

He went to help Cat but she shrugged him off. “I’ve got this,” she said from under the brim of her hat as she pulled back on the rod, “Go help dumb and dumber.”

Billy nodded and helped the cousins pull in first one tuna and then the other. Both had brought in a big-eye like the one Billy had caught, only larger. At least a hundred pounds each. All three of the men helped Cat pull in her fish and their help, although unwanted, was needed.

When she finally brought the leviathan to the surface, she smiled and looked at the men with a laugh. On the other end of her Penn was a giant yellow-fin tuna, twice as big as the largest fish they had caught. The animal was beautiful as its slick silver, blue, and yellow streaked body broke the water.

“Guess I had to show you guys how it was done, eh?” Cat smirked.

««—»»

Billy ran up four white tuna catch flags from his outrigger as he turned the
Fooly Involved
back towards shore before lunch. The practice had been followed by charter captains for almost a hundred years and he wanted to proudly show off his ‘laundry list’ for everyone to see as he came back to the marina with the bacon.

“Everyone is gonna shit when they see what we got,” Cat smiled as she held her hat on into the wind.

“You think that yellow fin is a record?” one of the cousins asked.

Billy shrugged, “Who knows, if it is I’ll be sure to call the game wardens and get it certified, maybe take everyone’s picture with it and get in a magazine,” he joked.

He charted a course back through the shallows as the fastest way back home. He did not want to fool around 30-miles off shore any more than he had to these days. There had been all sorts of rumors floating around the docks as to what was out at sea since the outbreak. Of course, every rumor got more wild and outlandish with added information, but such is the world.

While still fifteen miles off the coast of Alabama, Billy made out Sparkman Reef, a shallow water atoll that was largely awash during most of the year but offered a nice little anchorage for boaters in the middle of nowhere to moor and get some swimming and light tackle reef fishing in. Billy knew the waters were a favorite for spear divers and those seeking to get away from everything. With that in mind, the number of boats moored along the little reef still took him aback.

“Get me the binoculars from the cabin,” he said to Cat as he turned toward the anchorage.

She retrieved the yellow rubber-coated marine optics and handed them over to her father.

There were thirty boats anchored and tied loosely together on the leeward side of the reef. They were all shrimp boats and significantly larger than his own. Some looked to be over 100-feet long. Their long outriggers were high in the air above them and it looked like a white-masted forest heavy with green nets, trawl boards, and floats. He could see old Vietnamese women squatting and talking to each other while little kids ran from boat to boat, chasing each other and playing games. A few small brown men stood in a group and looked out at him pointing and smoking cigarettes. One had a shotgun.

He throttled down the
Fooly Involved
as he came within a few hundred yards of the boat on the end, a blue steel-hulled behemoth that must have gone more than 120-feet long. On its stern was painted in white letters was the name
Sea Horse
, and under it
Bayou La Batre
.

“Ahoy there,” he yelled out at the men looking back at him across the water. They only talked to themselves and gestured. Billy could make out the singsong of Vietnamese floating across the water to him. No one raised the shotgun yet.

He had lived beside and worked with a number of Vietnamese his whole life. Many of their families had taken to shrimping as a natural extension of their former life as fishermen in the Gulf of Tonkin. The water was similar, the shrimp were smaller but more abundant, and the work was familiar. By the 1990s, many shrimpers in the gulf had sold their vessels to Viet captains who kept the same boat names and continued the family business they enjoyed. Many lived on their boats year-round and took shrimping very seriously. Some of the larger ones were completely self-sufficient with their own desalination plants, icemakers, and fully equipped workshops.

“Real warm characters, eh?” one of the Fort Morgan cousins asked Billy. “I’ve got my service revolver in my bag. I think I’m gonna get it before one of these gooks goes looking for a reason to use that shotgun.”

“Hold up,” Billy said to the man before calling out to the shrimpers again. “I said hello out there! Anyone want to talk?”

This brought more gesturing and talking from the group of Viets. Billy noticed that they were drawing a lot of attention and more and more people were lining the rails of the shrimp boats to get a look at the gleaming white charter boat and the goofy leather man yelling at them. Finally, one very thin man, barely five feet tall, climbed down a rope ladder in bare feet to a small dinghy tied to the scuppers of the giant shrimp boat. He started the small outboard and roared over to the
Fooly Involved
.

“Hey, baby girl, head for the cabin, and get behind the wheel. Keep a hand on the throttles and if I give you the signal, hit it, and get us the hell out of here, OK,” Billy said to Cat quietly.

As she nodded and moved away she asked, “What is the signal?”

“You’ll know,” he said and turned his attention to the dinghy whining over to him.

The small Vietnamese man quickly lined the dinghy to the stern of Billy’s craft. His weathered thin face held sharp almond eyes and a small mouth dotted with black and grey wiry stubble. His hand resting on the throttle of the outboard looked carved from a twisted tree root.

“What you want?” the Vietnamese asked in a singsong voice.

Billy had climbed down from the tower and over the deck, with Cat and the cousins behind them. “Don’t really want anything I suppose. We were headed back to Gulf Shores and saw you here so we figured we would stop. You have to admit, you don’t see a shrimp boat city every day,” he said, forcing a laugh to put the man at ease.

It did not work, “So what you want?” The man asked again with no expression. He spoke English well but had the diction and sentence structure that made you instantly feel he was better in Vietnamese.

“Just saying. We have room in Gulf Shores for you and your people if you don’t want to go back to Bayou La Batre,” Billy said to the man

“We don’t know anybody in Gulf Shores. No Vietnamese there man, come on,” he replied.

Billy shook his head, “Neither did I a couple years ago, but its home now. It sure beats bobbing up and down out here on the reef with winter coming.”

The little man looked up at him from the gently bobbing dinghy and blinked. “You have infection there? Cannibals, man?” he asked.

Billy shook his head, “Not anymore. A hell of a fight but we cleaned ’em all out.”

“That’s bad shit. We don’t have any infected here on the reef,” he replied. “How do we know you have space for us in Gulf Shores man, come on?”

“You want me to call ahead and roll out the red carpet?” Billy asked with a grin. “There are hundreds of rental condos empty on the island and they are working on having electricity here in the next few days.”

“We not paying rent man, come on,” the small man shook his head from side to side.

“I’m sure you won’t have to pay rent. We got a bunch of people there from all over the country that are staying on the island rent-free. Want me to get someone on the radio and have them tell you?” Billy argued.

“Dude, this guy doesn’t give a shit about you, or Gulf Shores, and if we keep this up they are gonna put us in a tiger cage somewhere on one of these damned boats,” one of the cousins said low enough so that only he could hear. Billy made a face and shooed him off.

“So what you want from us?” the little man in the dinghy asked again.

“Nothing, just trying to help. Forget it,” Billy said finally and threw his hands up in the air, walking back to the cabin and away from the Vietnamese.

“Wait. Who you gonna call on the radio?” the man called after Billy.

Billy stopped and looked at him, “I was gonna see if I could get one of the people that’s juiced in on the committees to tell you the deal.”

With that, the man finally tied his dinghy to the F
ooly Involved
and came aboard. After radio negotiations with Mack back on Gulf Shores, all was well. The fact that giving a home to thirty shrimp boat refugee families, who brought their boats along with them and could help feed the island through the winter, was a good deal that was not lost on the civil leadership back on the island.

With the deal worked out, Billy extended his hand to the Vietnamese.

“Billy Harris,” he said with an outstretched palm and a crooked grin. The man’s small hand felt like steel when he grasped Billy’s. His palm was like cardboard from decades of sun and saltwater.

“I am Thanh Trung. In Vietnam, my family name means
loyal
and I am. These are my people,” he said pointing to the forest of shrimp boat masts off the bow. “We are all we have.”

“Not any more Mr. Trung, looks like we are all in this together,” Billy said to him.

“Thank you. For the past couple weeks our only home was wherever we drop anchor. That’s fine for us old men, but the sea is no place for our children. Trust me, I know, man,” Mr. Trung explained.

“What happened in Bayou La Batre?” one of the Fort Morgan cousins asked. The small town of about 2000, about half of whom were Vietnamese, was well known as the
Seafood Capital of Alabama
and was home to one of the largest shrimping fleets in the Gulf.

“Bad shit, dude. As soon as the cops disappeared, we packed up our boats and left town. We tried for Pascagoula but it was bad there, too, houses along the beach on fire, sirens everywhere, and gunshots. We started towards Gulf Shores and saw fires there too, so we went out in to the Gulf. Thirty years ago, I left Vietnam. We are used to surviving. Used to being a refugee. So now we are Boat People again, man,” Mr. Trung said.

“Seen anything since you’ve been out here?” Billy asked.

“A few boats come close but don’t stop. We only speak Vietnamese on radio to other Vietnamese. Like code talkers, man, come on. We did see a couple ghost boats though.”

“Ghost boats?” one of the cousins asked.

“Yeah, boat dead in the water, drifting around on the tide man. Ship full of cannibal. Scary stuff. The ferry is a ghost boat now, man.”

“
The
ferry? The Mobile Bay Ferry?” Billy asked.

“Yes, man, saw it floating five mile from here. Bad stuff. Floating towards Gulf Shores, you need to get on that man, if you want us to come back with you, come on,” Mr. Trung said.

««—»»

Billy was busy looking through the binoculars out over the horizon from the top of the tuna tower on the
Fooly Involved
. Cat was driving the boat back on a heading straight for Gulf Shores from the shrimp boat city at Sparkman Reef. The two cousins were down on deck looking out as well. After ten minutes of slicing through the waves, Billy could just make out the red car ferry wallowing on the open green-blue sea of the Gulf off to his port side.

“Off the left side about a mile out—take a look,” he yelled down to the cousins on deck below as he climbed down the tower. He entered the cabin and walked up behind Cat at the wheel. “Come about to the port side a little and let’s get close to the ferry,” Billy said to her.

“
The
ferry? Our ferry from by the house?” she asked, with her face lit up like Christmas.

He nodded.
Crap
. Maybe he should have just left this for the Coast Guard. She had hung out with those two boys that ran the ferry terminal a lot. They were good kids, just out of high school. Taking a year off before going to college the one had said, the one that Cat had asked over for dinner one night before the outbreak.

“Stay in here and don’t get any closer than a few hundred feet away, we don’t want a collision,” he said and walked out of the cabin.

The ferry loomed into view, bobbing on the gentle three-foot swells like a forgotten raft in a swimming pool. Billy could not make out much more than its distinctive shape at the distance but once he put the binoculars to his eyes he found out all he needed to know.

The ferry wasn’t large by big-city standards, 140-feet overall with room for thirty cars, but it was a regular sight along Mobile Bay and linked the two towns of Gulf Shores and Dauphin Island across the bay year-round. It was loaded down with at least a dozen cars and what looked to be forty or so passengers and crew. Blood streaked the cars, windows were busted out, and at least one body was folded over the railing with its arms reaching out lifeless to the sea below. No smoke came from the ship’s stained diesel stack and no lights shown from its cabin or sides. A number of shuffling human forms could be seen lurking around in the shadows.

“What’s it look like, Billy?” one of the cousins asked.

“A bad Friday night,” he answered.