Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (24 page)

William throttled back on
Serenity’s
engine and brought the boat to a stop close
to the shoreline. He looked out toward the overlooking bluff. His
lodge was still there, and not far off to the left he could see the
unfinished row of houses, which were little more than foundations
with skeletons of upright studs. He went down the ladder to find
everyone getting ready.

“Jess and Danielle, keep the kids here,”
Neil said. He could sense Danny’s frustration at having been
excluded and banished to the metaphoric kids’ table again.
Unfortunately, Neil didn’t have time to deal with that. “We can
leave most of the gear out here with you. If there is any
trouble...” He didn’t finish his thought out loud.

He looked over the railing at the boats
still tethered to the back of
Serenity
and
following along like a pair of newly born ducklings following their
mother. “We can use those to get to shore and check things out
first.”

“First though...” William leaned over a
padlocked compartment just inside the main cabin. From his pocket,
he produced a key. Smiling, William unlocked the compartment and
opened it.

Inside was a pair of very familiar looking
assault rifles. William removed the one that looked like a Russian
made AK 47. “I know it’s not American,” he said, “but I love this
weapon.”

Jerry asked, “What’s the other one in
there?”

“It’s an M14. Another beauty. And a classic.
She’s special. A good friend of mine found her at a market overseas
somewhere. She might be exactly your speed and just as accurate as
that elephant gun you’re carrying. You get twenty shots from her
before reloading and can fire as fast as you can pull the trigger.
Interested?”

Jerry tilted his head and looked in at the
beautiful firearm. Its wooden stock was a lighter tone than most of
the rifles he typically saw and shone with a polished, heavily
lacquered surface. Atop its frame was a powerful scope, which
dwarfed the one affixed to his current rifle. For a change of pace,
he felt his young age, fascinated with this new instrument of
intimidating power like a child with a new toy at Christmas.

William removed the second rifle and handed
it to Jerry, then reached back into the compartment and came back
out with a duffle bag. The blue vinyl bag was filled with bullets
and extra magazines for each of the rifles. The two men divvied up
the ammunition and clips, Jerry taking the short boxy magazines and
William the longer, banana shaped ones.

Nearly laughing aloud, Neil asked, “So,
William? Worried about running into the pirates?”

“Naw. Lot of my clients, once we got out
into the middle of nowhere, liked to shoot the guns. We’d throw out
some buoys or whatever and let ‘em go to town. We never shot at any
animals. I wouldn’t have any of that. Just not sporting, ya know?
Besides, there were crooks and other scumbags out there sometimes.
Paid to be ready for anything.”

Emma asked with a smile on her face now,
“Even the end of the world?”

William looked back toward the shore and his
cabin. “Especially for the end of the world. Let’s get going.”

Approaching the land slowly, the only sound
Neil, Emma, Jerry, and William could hear was the water hitting the
side of their rowboat.
Serenity
, bobbing
gently on the tide, waited well behind them. They were out on their
own and heading into the unknown. Only William was familiar with
the land that lay ahead, but he didn’t know what to expect either.
Jerry noticed that Neil was finding it hard to look away from the
fishing boat and the faces that were watching them row away.

With his hand on Neil’s shoulder, Jerry
said, “They’ll be okay out there. Danielle and Jess both have more
experience on boats than you and me.”

Neil tried to smile but it eluded him. “I’m
just tired I think. Maybe if we’re lucky, it’ll be quiet enough
that we can get some rest.”

“Finding quiet probably won’t be a problem.
It’s almost too quiet. Is it supposed to be this quiet?

The profound silence didn’t alarm William at
all. The peace and tranquility of the location was what drew him to
it. William guessed it was what also attracted the developer who
plotted individual lots for a small patch of homes as well.

William owned enough property with enough
trees to have a nice screen to the six houses, which would be his
closest neighbors when they were finished. He wasn’t necessarily a
hermit. Still, some of his guests were expecting a wilderness
experience. It might prove a little difficult to deliver on that
experience with some million-dollar homes around the corner. He had
made peace with the world catching up with him a long time ago.
Now, he wondered if he wasn’t going to miss the company of families
living near to him. Those houses would likely never be
finished...would never be anything more than a series of six deep
holes with cinder block walls.

There was no one to meet them and no one
walking the newly paved street. Again, William wasn’t surprised. He
lived away from everyone else and these days people didn’t get out
and about much. That wasn’t to say that they hadn’t gotten together
since the happenings in Whittier. Most homes had taken in refugees
from the city who babbled and cried nonsensically the first few
days. It was hard to know what to believe and what to excuse as
shock. They talked about friends and neighbors, people who had
known one another for decades, becoming homicidal to one another.
There was also talk of sudden cannibalism. The survivors also
referred to their attackers as zombies, but that had been chalked
up to hysterics. A few of the more creative souls in the community
suggested that it was probably a chemical leak that caused mass
psychosis in the population and the chaos that followed. There were
too many holes and doubts in their theories but they made for good
theater.

The lodges and homes of Shotgun Cove became
bunkers. Low windows were covered with lumber, doors were
reinforced, firewood was stocked, and food was rationed. They
hunkered down and waited, but nothing ever came. Apparently,
whatever was hitting Whittier, some kind of sickness most people
believed, wasn’t in a hurry to get to Shotgun Cove.

Those first few days had people avoiding one
another. If it was an illness, no one wanted to contract it or
spread it unknowingly to others. The community’s Internet
connections were fragile under the best of circumstances. When the
calamity struck, the online service to Shotgun Cove was amongst the
first of the casualties. They were utterly isolated.

After a couple of weeks had passed, William
heard a knock on his door. He opened it with his revolver in his
hand. He didn’t think an assailant would knock before attacking,
but he wasn’t taking any chances. He was met on the front porch by
Gordon Fawcett, an old timer who had bought property not too far
from William’s and planned to retire there. Gordon was armed as
well, with a shotgun, which he was holding casually under his right
arm.

Gordon told William about a meeting they
were planning to have to decide what, if anything, to do. It
sounded like a good idea, so William accompanied Gordon up the road
to the largest lodge in the area, which didn’t surprise William at
all. They went to Norman Kellogg’s lodge, which had the best view
and easiest access to the water. His pier hadn’t been finished yet,
but when it was he would likely have all four of his boats take off
from in front of his place.

Norman liked to point out that yes, he
was
related to the famously wealthy Kellogg
family of cereal fame. Most people didn’t much care about his money
or his family one way or the other, neither of which impacted their
lives at all. There may have been some envy on occasion at all his
outdoor toys which he drove around to show everyone. He had the
latest snow machines and four-wheelers. His boats had the best GPS
tracking systems and the newest performance motors. He had the
biggest televisions in the Cove and on and on. For most people, all
of that was merely background noise that they could ignore.

Everyone gathered at Norman’s to discuss
what to do. Some of the refugees from Whittier pleaded with
everyone to stay away from Whittier. There was nothing left back
there, they said. Most were inclined to agree so it was decided
that The Cove would just sit back and wait. They agreed to keep in
touch using their two-way radio system, which was imperfect at best
because of the dense trees all around them, but it was better than
having to send up smoke signals or tying string and cans between
houses. Everyone was to keep his guard up and watch out for one
another. The meeting was adjourned with very little being done and
virtually nothing being changed.

William invited a handful of folks to come
back with him to his lodge. He was all alone otherwise and thought
it better if he had some company and some help if something were to
happen. He had ample provisions left from the fishing season and
space for several. He had a generator and full propane and fuel oil
tanks, so he had electricity, heat, and hot water. Not a bad way to
wait out the apocalypse.

Sandra, Danielle and Gus all agreed to move
in with him. Gus had been cooking over at another lodge but he was
the only one left in it and it sat uncomfortably close to Whittier.
He grabbed his meager possessions and any remaining foodstuffs from
the lodge and moved to William’s. The two women came from Whittier,
though both were just visiting and had come from elsewhere. Neither
of the ladies had much more than what she was wearing, although
Danielle had a backpack to which she clung obsessively.

She explained to William that she was a
diabetic and that the last of her medicine was in the backpack.
Danielle tried to assuage William’s concerns by assuring him that
she only kept the insulin vials, syringes, and other materials for
emergencies. She controlled her diabetes through diet and exercise,
but there were occasions, oftentimes unpredictable occasions, which
necessitated the need for the insulin.

Sandra was originally from California and
was on her last few days of vacation to the Last Frontier when
everything happened in Whittier. She had been waiting to go on a
glacier cruise with her parents and her sister, having moved to
Alaska a few months earlier and invited the whole family to come
visit her. Sandra was in her final year of graduate school at
Stanford and welcomed the break.

They had been eating lunch at a hotel
restaurant when the shooting and screaming started. They had just
started running, following the throngs of people trying to get
away. She didn’t know when she lost her family because she was so
focused on getting away herself. When she finally did look around,
Sandra realized everyone else she knew was gone. Sobbing,
frightened people running and putting distance between themselves
and the city center surrounded her, and not a single one of them
did she recognize.

A bunch of people stopped at a large
apartment complex on the edge of town, but Sandra was talked into a
big white truck. She climbed into the back seat and sat, more or
less, on Danielle’s lap all the way to Shotgun Cove.

Danielle and Sandra jumped at the chance to
move in with William and his sophistication and urbanity, which was
more appealing than their original accommodations. Rose and Pete
were great people and both Danielle and Sandra owed their lives to
that pair of siblings’ generosity, but neither woman ever felt
truly comfortable in that lodge. It was a place built for men,
without any of the comforts or distractions that might interest a
woman. Besides, there were already others staying with Rose and
Pete, so having two fewer mouths to feed worked to everyone’s
benefit.

And that was how it had been until Danielle
came to William to talk about going back into town. She was running
desperately low on medicine. She had scraped together a little from
other lodge owners and guests still carrying it for loved ones that
never escaped the town. When that ran out, Danielle knew that she
was going to need some.

Word was sent out that a party was being
formed for an excursion back into Whittier. When the morning sky
had enough light to comfortably show them the way, the apprehensive
but hopeful group departed in two trucks. They headed into a
possible storm with little in the way of knowledge or understanding
of what lay ahead. They were blind and truly unaware of what had
befallen Whittier and the poor souls who didn’t make it out alive.
Only Danielle and Sandra had an inkling as to what to expect and
neither of them had a firm grasp on it.

William opened his lodge door and savored
the mixed aromas of vanilla and cedar that greeted him. That was
how a home was supposed to smell. With all the window shutters
downstairs closed tightly, the main floor was dark, though a sliver
of light was hovering at the top of the steps leading to the upper
level. He leaned over and disarmed the alarm system, which provided
a thin veil of security while he was gone. There was no longer a
security network to reach out to the police dispatch, but the alarm
did still deliver an auditory wallop with its siren and speaker.
The alarm was run on a rechargeable battery power source which
barely used any energy, but provided peace of mind.

Out of habit, he untied his boots and
slipped them off as he entered. There probably was no need for such
considerations any longer, but habits were habits. It was an
Alaskan custom to remove footwear before entering a home. He set
his boots aside and enjoyed the feel of hardwood floors beneath his
feet. Despite having socks on, he could feel how cold the floors
were. A hearty fire in his stove and soon the cold would be
mitigated substantially. He wanted to stall on using his heat too
much this early in the season to help the fuel oil last. There was
no telling when he could expect to get more of that, if ever. Wood,
on the other hand, was in great supply and the stove did a good job
of heating on its own. It was only on the darkest, coldest days of
winter that the heater was needed.