Pandora 2: Death is not an Option (3 page)

“Well,” Sean said, “we all have a whole lot to talk about.”

Meanwhile, Tommy had gathered his men in the hotel lounge. He turned and looked at each one warmly.

“Okay guys,” he started, “as of right now, your tour of duty is officially over. It’s your life now, and I don’t want you to feel you have to do what I have to do. Go or stay; it’s okay with me either way. It’s your decision, and I want you to do what you feel is best for each of you.”

“Well,” said Rich Foley, who had been, up until ten seconds ago, the squad’s corporal, “what are you going to do, Sarge?”

Tommy put his hand up to stop him. “No, no. I know what I’m doing, but I won’t let you know until each one of you decides for yourselves. As I said, it should be based on what you want, not what I want.”

“Aww, come on, Sarge,” whined Travis Cassidy. “Tell us.”

“Yeah, Sarge,” piped in Jamal Doakes. “At least a little hint.”

Laughing aloud, Tommy pointed at them and stated, “No. This time you’re going to tell
me
what you want to do.”

4

I
t was pouring rain in West Palm Beach. It was the rainy season there, and this was the fourth consecutive day of rain. Sitting in an apartment condo on the first floor of the Marina Palm Tower near the marina downtown were ten people. These were the only living souls left alive in the building. Except for one, all were residents of the posh condo complex.

Pacing back and forth in the living room of his condo, Stephen Dowd was rapidly deciding how he could more strongly present his argument. Steve was a forty-two-year-old gym owner with a very muscular build, a ruggedly handsome face, and a six-foot-two stature. He was the proud owner of Hard Body Heaven, the biggest, most popular complete gym in Palm Beach County. At least it had been until seven months ago, when Pandora sped into the solar system and ended his dream. He had been holed up in his building with his two friends and the rest of the remaining tenants since the whole apocalypse started. His two friends, Luke Adams and Josh Warner, were sitting by the floor-to-ceiling windows watching him.

Luke was the forty-two-year-old owner of several restaurants in West Palm Beach and surrounding cities. He was originally from money in Connecticut. Though somewhat overweight, he had a great
mop of chestnut-brown hair and Kennedy-esque looks and charm that worked very well for him, both socially and business-wise. He had decided to take a run at politics this year, figuring that if you look like JFK, you might as well take the obvious next step.

Next to him was the only nonresident in the room. Josh Warner lived two buildings down. He was a thirty-two-year-old attorney who had met Steve as a patron of his gym. He said he liked to stay in shape, and the two became friends. His former condo building had burned down a little over a month ago when a crippled and heavily smoking helicopter crashed into it and set the entire building ablaze. The copter had flown in hurriedly from the south trailing heavy black smoke. Then, as it had neared their area, it had suddenly shuddered, swerved, dropped, and flown right into the side of Josh’s concrete-and-glass structure. He had been able to get out unharmed and had made it over to Steve’s building safely. At the time, there hadn’t been a great deal of undead around the marina area, and he had been able to seek refuge there. Since then the number of zombies had increased greatly.

Steve glanced at his friends (with Luke giving him a thumbs-up) and started to speak. “I know everyone here feels safe where we are, but it is a false sense of security. When the streets were clearer of zombies, we were able to forage quite a bit of food and supplies from the surrounding businesses. We were fortunate in that a lot of people in West Palm left the city early. But now, the food is almost gone. Not only that, but the streets are now loaded with zombies. No more walking around doing food runs. Those days are gone.”

The group of tenants all looked at him with varying degrees of fear. The remaining seven people included Max Blair, a sixty-five-year-old retired plumbing contractor; Ana Beltran, the CEO of a local hospice care company; Karen Simon, Steve’s next-door neighbor and a twenty-six-year-old aerobics instructor; Dan Roebling, a rather
gruff contractor; Gail Nesmith, a retired teacher who was very, very bright but a bit neurotic; and finally the Van Nesses, Mark and Ginger. They were a married thirtysomething couple who were relatively new to the area.

“How are we just supposed to leave?” asked Ana. Steve knew Ana always had an opinion on every subject and that she would be the first to speak.

“Yes. We can’t all just pick up and stroll out of the Tower,” Gail interjected. “You remember what happened to the Gersteins.”

Harold and Ida Gerstein were a seventy-five-year-old couple who had lived on the second floor. Two weeks ago, after the medicines had run out, they became more and more afraid of what might happen. The old couple had decided to get in their car and leave. The Marina Palm Tower had underground enclosed parking that had successfully sealed the cars off from the zombies. No amount of convincing could change their minds. They had packed their car with minimal essentials and, with Steve and Dan working the gate, left the confines of the Tower.

Watching from the roof, the rest of the survivors tracked the exodus from the safety of their bird’s-eye view. The white Lexus pulled out of the garage and up the small ramp. As the luxury car paused, it became apparent that this trip had not been completely thought out. As the car idled, zombies started to converge on the elderly couple from both sides. As if suddenly realizing their precarious position, they turned to the right and hit the gas. Plowing through the encroaching undead, they sped up the block. As they neared the corner, swerving back and forth, they unknowingly ran over a baby carriage that was lying on its side. The unfortunate couple was trying to avoid a knot of zombies that were coming onto the street. There was a nerve-shattering
metallic screech as the carriage disappeared under the wheels and a shower of sparks as they awkwardly sped around the corner.

The mangled stroller must have interfered with the steering because the white Lexus plowed directly into the side of a parked Cadillac. The loud crunch and breaking glass shocked the startled observers. Harry Gerstein shifted into reverse with violently shaking hands. His wife, Ida, initially dazed, began to scream her husband’s name as he fumbled at the wheel. Finally shifting the car into reverse, Harry tried to back up. The Lexus’s bumper was caught on the crumpled fender of the other automobile. Both cars were stuck fast. He had his foot jammed on the gas as he swung the steering wheel back and forth in increasingly panicked turns. Smoke from burning rubber surrounded the spinning tires. As the zombies reached the car and started pounding on it, the situation turned from bad to worse. Ida Gerstein, screaming and totally hysterical, was clawing at her face. Her husband, starting to cry, turned to her and yelled, “We’re stuck!”

She stopped for an instant, staring at him dumbly, and then screamed, “Nooo!” She threw open her door and ran out. Amazingly, she made it almost six feet before she was swarmed and taken down.

Harry saw all of this from the driver’s-side seat. He was calling his wife’s name when the first zombie, a man in his fifties with milky eyes and most of his nose chewed off, bent over and climbed into the car. Harold Gerstein grabbed his left shoulder as a sharp pain shot across his chest. He pushed himself against the door to escape the entering zombie and accidentally hit the door handle. Tumbling backward, he fell on his head in the street. Mercifully, he died of a massive coronary seconds before the rest of the undead converged onto his body.

“Yeah, I remember,” said Steve, shaking his head. “How can I ever forget? That was a tragedy, but they were unprepared. They didn’t have a plan. They just figured they could drive out of here, and good things would happen.”

Seeing a couple of heads starting to shake already, Luke Adams stood up. “Steve’s right you know. They rushed out and died a horrible death, but that doesn’t mean we will too. Besides, like he said, we don’t have any more food. We’re down to eating peanut butter out of the jar and drinking the remnants of our toilet bowl tanks. We can’t last here. One by one, we’ll starve to death and join the others banging at the doors of their apartments looking for fresh meat. I’m for leaving. And that’s sooner rather than later.”

“I agree,” stated Max Blair. “I am only sixty-five. I’m way too young to die here.”

Steve chuckled then said, “All right, let’s take a vote and see where we stand. All in favor of leaving raise your hands.”

Steve, Luke, Josh, Max, and Karen immediately raised their hands high. Mark and Ginger Van Ness looked at each other and then slowly raised their hands.

Dan, the retired contractor, grumbled to himself then said, “If we do this, we need an ironclad plan. We can’t just go out there willy-nilly you know. We have to plan this carefully.”

“You’re right,” said Steve.

“I don’t think there is any such thing as an ironclad plan,” stated Max. “I was a Marine, and I know that any plan ends at the first shot fired. But at least we’ll have plans for A, B, C, or D. That’s the way to do it. Plan for all contingencies.”

Dan nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, then. We carefully plan for anything that can happen.” He slapped the coffee table with the flat of his hand. “I’m in.”

“Well, I’m not,” stated Ana sternly. She turned to the retired teacher, Gail Nesmith. “You’re a smart woman, Gail. You know that the minute we step outside of this building, we will be swarmed and eaten by the hundreds…no, thousands of zombies out there. We won’t stand a chance. Hell, we don’t even have any guns.”

“That’s not entirely true, Ana,” Max said with a smile. “I happen to have two.”

“I have one,” added Josh. Everyone looked at him, so he explained. “I’m a criminal attorney. I thought I should have protection.”

“Nonetheless,” Ana huffed, “we’re not soldiers. No one has any training.”

“Hey, some of us served,” said Max indignantly.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Max!” blurted Ana, throwing her hands up. “That was over forty years ago. You couldn’t run two blocks let alone fight your way out of a zombie-infested city.”

Jumping up Max yelled, “Well, we can’t stay here! You want to die curled up in a ball on the floor, go ahead. I am not going to die like that. Not now, not ever.” He looked at everyone then stormed off into the kitchen to cool down.

Gail, who hadn’t raised her head throughout the whole discussion, finally looked up at Ana and spoke. “They’re right, Ana. We will surely die if we continue to stay here. I don’t want to leave either, but I don’t think we have a choice. It’s dying here or taking our chances
outside. Not pretty, but there it is. I feel like throwing up right now I’m so scared, but we have to go.”

Ana stood there for half a minute then sat back down, folded her arms, and turned her head to the side, saying, “It better be a fucking good plan.”

5

P
ierre Bouchard sat in the galley of the main boat they used in their privateering, a fifty-one-foot Ferretti 510 that he acquired in Fort Lauderdale. He could have had a much bigger and more luxurious yacht. Hell, he killed the owners of this one; he could have just as easily killed the owners of any boat he wanted. His problem was a pirate crew that actually knew how to handle a boat. They had two twin-engine Wellcraft Scarabs and a Cigarette Top Fish speedboat as their “chase boats.” All of these required people who were skilled sailors. While they weren’t piloting anything as complicated as a large sailboat, most of his “crew” couldn’t tell fore and aft from saltwater taffy. Bouchard now had a couple of cartel hitmen and four drug runners who used to bring in coke from Jamaica to the mainland. The rest were assorted waterfront thugs of various sorts. Corso and Guzman were essential for keeping order. Corso because he was smart and had the respect of everyone and Guzman purely because the thought of spending an hour alone with him scared the shit out of the toughest of his men.

Of course
, Bouchard snickered,
I always have Daffy Duck
. The aforementioned waterfowl was his newest “buccaneer.” Actually from Alabama and named Jesse, he was a wildly crazy kid with a shaved head, completely tattooed skull, and more piercings than the entire
audience at a Gwar concert. His eyes were always completely dilated, making them appear black. They picked him up in Marathon. He was actually one of the five men who torched the four semis on the Route 1 bridge, thereby creating an inferno that sealed off the Keys. Of the other four, one died in the explosion, two were bitten by zombies afterward, and one just disappeared. Daffy Duck said he drowned, but like everything else he ever said, you never really knew. Everyone called him Daffy Duck because he was a real loony tune. You never quite knew what he was going to do. Bouchard thought he was a “real hoot.” He loved it when a town’s leaders would try to negotiate with him for leniency and he would nod sagely and then introduce Daffy as his top negotiator. It was always a show. Sometimes as they were speaking and pleading, Daffy would sit and stare at them just inches from their faces, or he would run around the room screaming some nonsense, usually involving his suspicions of alien implants. One time, he jumped on the mayor’s desk and started masturbating while cackling loudly. Usually by this point, the councilmen would have peed themselves already. Like he said, hilarious. This last time, he had grabbed a fountain pen and jammed it up the mayor’s nose then hammered it home with the butt of his pistol, all the while screaming, “Just sign on the dotted line,” in his face. Bouchard always appreciated a good joke.