Zombie Ever After (22 page)

“I-I-I’m not so sure,” she said, and then she went strangely quiet.

“You crying?” he asked, softly.

“Yeah, is that okay? I’m still at least half a woman.”
 

“You’re all woman,” he said. “You’re kind of, I don’t know, enhanced by whatever’s happened to you.”
 

She was silent for a minute or two longer. Then she sniffed a couple of times. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for saying that. I’ve been worried, worried you might not find me—that you wouldn’t...”
 

“Not a chance,” Donovan said. “Let’s keep swimming, baby. We’re almost there.”
 

He thought she said, almost inaudibly, something which sounded a lot like “I love you.” At least that’s how he heard it.

“What, babe?” he said, as gently as he could.

“I said, um, yeah, let’s swim.”
 

“Ah, I see.” He smirked to himself.

They swam toward safety, pushing closer to land until the current began to drag them along. At that moment, they knew for sure they had made it. That is, if they avoided being dragged to their deaths by the undertow, eaten by sharks, or frozen alive.

As they came closer, Donovan realized exactly where “there” was. Not land. A big rock. More to the point,
the
Rock.

Alcatraz Island.

“Well.” Donovan gasped as he swam. “Any p-port in a storm.”
 

“What are you—” she took a breath “—talking about?”
 

“Welcome to Alcatraz,” he said, waving his hand in its direction.
 

She looked ahead, and he thought she collapsed a little in the water with the way the waves lapped at her chin.

“Great,” she sighed. “Well, might not be cheery, but we can be a hundred percent certain it’s zombie-free. Also, not a prison anymore.”
 

“Not for decades. Over a century,” Donovan agreed. “Just a tourist trap. Well, what used to be a tourist trap.”
 

They continued on, weary but more than eager to make ground. They bobbed and swam about five hundred yards, floated and struggled another two hundred, practiced their dead man’s float and the back float for another hundred.
 

Soon, they paddled to a point a mere ten yards from land. At length, they collapsed exhausted—bodies aching, gasping for air, coughing up bay water, even crying a bit—onto the rocky shores of Alcatraz Island.

Home at last.

For the third time in recent memory, Donovan awoke without a clue where he was. The gray sun dangled halfway up in the pale sky. Then he remembered: they were the newest residents of Alcatraz. He turned on his side to awaken Cathren, ideally with gentle strokes, kisses, and sex on the beach.
 

But there was no Cathren.

Donovan jumped to his feet. Surely he’d made certain she’d made it to the beach safely. He wracked his brain, trying to remember if he saw her there before he passed out. He couldn’t remember. He was just too exhausted to take it in. He couldn’t believe, after all they’d been through together, that he’d let himself fall sleep without checking that she was safe first.

He realized, for the first time, a question had been floating around in his brain for the past few days of whether he loved her or simply lusted after her. But, yes, he did.
 

He collapsed to the ground again, looking out to sea.

She was gone. Lost forever.

“Don!”
 

Through his tears and sniffling, he imagined her melodious voice.

“Don!”
 

That’s a lot louder. Not quite as melodious.
He didn’t know why he was fantasizing a less appealing voice now.

“For God’s sake, Don-o-van!
Hey, Donovan.
Hey, fool!”

Donovan turned, gazed, blinked, gazed again, rubbed his eyes, and this time remained staring at what he was staring at. Cathren had emerged from behind a large pile of rocks up the shoreline.

“Where have you been?” he called out as he stood up. He sounded more angry than he’d intended.

“Whoa, calm down, cap’n,” she said, walking up to him. “I’ve been on a scavenger hunt the past couple of hours while you’ve been dreaming. Searching everywhere for breakfast. In fact, I was coming back to check on you, to be sure the San Francisco Bay hadn’t sucked you back in.”

She gave him a quick kiss on the lips, and his anger at her vanishing act—or was it his fear, or his guilt?—melted away.

“So what did you find on your walkabout?” he asked her, taking a deep breath and rubbing his eyes with thumb and forefinger.

“Here. Look.” She held out both hands like a cup. “See?”

“What’s all this?”

“A bunch of different types of berries. I know a couple for sure. I was hoping you’d recognize some of the others.”

“Nope. Not a clue when it comes to berries.”

The sun was almost overhead now and the day was getting hot. The air hadn’t moved much since all the troubles had started, so, lately, every day was filled with damp, sticky heat.

Donovan brushed the sweat out of his eyes.
San Francisco and humidity: that’s new.
“Let’s move to the shade,” he said.

“Sure.” Cathren walked with him toward the shadow of a large tree up ahead that bowed over the small, rocky beach.

“So what do you think about the berries?” she asked, getting excited. “Pretty good, right? I swear, they look cultivated. They’re too big for nature, too bug-free.”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem logical.”

“Well, anyway, these are huckleberries, for sure,” she said, rolling a couple of berries in her palm with her forefinger. “And these might be gooseberries. I don’t know what the bright red ones are.”

Donovan sat on a large rock in the shade of an old fig tree. “Ah, this is better,” he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his forearm. “What do you think it means, though, all this fruit?”

“It either means that this fruit was cultivated a long time ago and has survived over time miraculously well, or…” Cathren paused. “Or, we may not be the only ones on this island.”

Donovan was too tired to give her remark much brainpower. The couple leaned back in each other’s arms and soon drifted off to a restless nap.

As the sun was starting to set, Donovan and Cathren awoke, feeling somewhat revived, despite eating only a few berries. They got up and Cathren led the way back to the berries she’d found earlier. She may be right, Donovan thought when they arrived. Rows of berry bushes spread out from where they stood in what had to be cultivated lines. He recalled hearing somewhere that there were no straight lines in nature.
 

The two quickly ate their fill of those berries that they recognized. After about twenty minutes of gorging on fruit, they both turned and looked up at the sky. Something occurred to Donovan as they stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms, watching the sunset. While the day was gray and the night dark as hell, each morning the sun rose with pink promise, and each night it set with red remorse.
 

But the point was, it was color. Almost the only color in the gray sky anymore. Donovan decided to take it as a sign of hope. These days, he had to have something to cling to.

Cathren clung to him as darkness fell, and he clung to her, too.

As they stood watching what passed for a beautiful view these days, back in the dense trees and bushes behind them, dark faces hid in the shadows.

Watching.

As the couple hacked their way through the overgrowth to the prison, a strange uneasiness crept over them. They approached the structure, which loomed ahead of them like a medieval castle in the mist, dark and hulking, an intimidating presence.
 

“Whoa,” Donovan said as they broke through the undergrowth and stood looking at Alcatraz Prison. Not the most eloquent response, but Cathren knew what he meant.

“Yeah,” she said.
“Whoa.”

It was odd, funny almost, that the prison spread out before them was the exact same Alcatraz in his mind’s eye, thanks to films like
Escape from Alcatraz
and
The Rock.
Donovan recognized the place right away when they’d approached land last night.
 

As they made their way closer, the hollow silence struck Donovan. Not that he expected anything but tranquility. After all, they were the only ones on this island. So who would expect to be greeted by any kind of noises? Especially nonhuman noises.
 

This silence, however, seemed like more of a negative stillness. The quiet left behind after all noises had been sucked out of the air. A black hole of sound.

The sides of the building appeared slippery as they approached. Damp, slimy. Many of the bricks were moss-covered.

“Ewww,”
said Cathren. “Kinda creepy.”

“Yeah,” Donovan said.

A soft, yet hot, wind blew, wicking the moisture from their skin. More like walking past an exhaust fan outside a funeral parlor than a comforting breeze. They trudged around to the front of the building. Donovan hoped the place was open. He was not sure he had the requisite skill set for breaking into prison.

After the couple finally made their way through the brush onto the decaying sidewalk and up to the entrance, they found the doors were shut. Donovan tried the door handle. Locked.

“Let me try,” said Cathren. She pulled on the door, but the heavy thing didn’t budge.
“Hmmm.”

“I wonder…,” he said, thinking aloud.

“What?” She put her hands on her hips and blew the hair off her forehead.

“Maybe we can still find a way to break in, just not through the front doors.”

“Let me get this straight,” Catherin said, taking a deep breath. “You want to break in to one of the most famous prisons of all time?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s right.”

“If there were a way to do that, don’tcha think it would have been tried already? I mean, inmates breaking out.”

“Not necessarily. Might be a whole different thing going from the outside in,” he said.

Donovan grabbed her hand and they left the sidewalk again. Overgrown weeds and brush grew thick and heavy along the side road to the rear of the building. They had no choice but to hack their way back into the bushes.

They pushed through the overgrowth and onto the road. Why were the wild things that grew around abandoned buildings so damn thorny? They watched their step as they went. The sky had grown much darker, and the walkway was pitted with holes.

After about fifteen minutes of trudging across overgrowth, weeds, and deteriorated concrete, they arrived at the back entrance to the prison. The entrance was surrounded by a tall, perhaps twelve-foot high, chain-link fence. Barbed wire coils slithered along the top of the fence as expected. Didn’t seem as if that was going to work after all. Donovan wasn’t interested in climbing the fence and dealing with that barbed wire. Especially because of the rust. Lockjaw? No thanks.

“Hey, look at this,” Cathren said.

Donovan pulled his gaze down from the threat of the barbs to check what Cathren pointed at. A gap in the fence like a small tunnel opening among the weeds and overgrown prickly brush. The chain link had been cut and part of it pulled back. Someone had excellent fence-cutting equipment, that was for sure. The opening appeared large enough for them to crawl through.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“Let’s go for it.”
 

They got down on their hands and knees and inched their way through the opening, Cathren first, then Donovan. On the other side, they stood up and surveyed the area.

“Well, we’re in,” Donovan said, brushing the mud and dirt off his pants.

“Inside the fence is better than outside, I guess,” said Cathren. She had a small cut on her cheek from the fence and mud in her hair. “We still need to get into the actual building, though.”

“Yeah,” Donovan said. He turned and studied the back entrance. A large metal door stood rusting in the shadows. Donovan eyed the outline of the door, looking for some sign of vulnerability along the edges, but found none.

“This is so frustrating,” Cathren said. “How exactly are we supposed to get in that place?”

“It’s not as if you expected the door to be unlocked, did you?” Donovan said. To make his point, he reached over and jiggled the handle, never taking his gaze off her.

The door clicked open.

Donovan stared in disbelief. He smiled back at Cathren and shrugged. She shook her head at him, smiling, then they slammed the heavy metal door wide open and marched inside.

The damp interior of the building reeked of mold and rat feces, both of which were in evidence everywhere. Donovan and Cathren stepped into the entrance hall: a waiting room with an opaque, sliding glass window on the right. A few gray metal and plastic chairs were scattered about. Straight ahead, a second steel door blocked their way. They proceeded to the door, determined to get into the building’s main area.

“What do you think?” Donovan asked, grasping the handle and smiling at Cathren.

“No way,” she said. “Not twice. We should be so lucky.”
 

“Well, maybe our luck has changed,” he said.
 

“Why don’t I try it this time?” Cathren said.

She marched up to the door as Donovan stepped aside, then grabbed the handle and gave it a little jiggle.
“Hmmm,”
she said. “Sounds okay. Here we go...” She pulled straight down, until she met resistance. “Damn.”
 

“Let the master give it a try,” Donovan said.

“It’s locked. Trust me.”
 

“Yeah, well, let me at least try.”
 

They switched places, and Donovan took a turn. “You’re right: locked.”
 

Cathren stared at him. “No shit, Sherlock.”
 

“Okay,” Donovan said. “I’m an asshole, message received. But I only wanted to make sure.”
 

“Fine. Now what?”
 

He searched the vestibule, hoping for a sign. Or a magic wand. “Check around—and yes, I get this is crazy—see if you can find a key or something in here. You never know.”