Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile (19 page)

I could see no sign of the undead on the shore but I was a decent clip away from land. I was careful to remain in the center of the small channel as it opened up to the lake. As I approached the mouth of the inlet, I locked the wheel and ran up to lower the sails. I wanted to be far enough away from land to feel safe, but I still wanted to be close enough to swim easily ashore if something were to go wrong with my little floating sanctuary.

The sun was getting low in the sky as the boat drifted to my self-assigned safe zone. I dropped anchor and estimated that the lake was about sixty feet deep. I unpacked all my gear and hung up the wet stuff to dry out. I scavenged the boat once more, checking out the head and galley. There was no usable food but there was a tin mop bucket and an old grill top that had been cleaned before it was stowed long ago. In the head, I found a stack of magazines. I kept some to use as toilet paper when the good stuff ran out.

I had about an hour or so of daylight left so I took the mop bucket and dipped it over the side to get some water. I then took a bar of soap and the grill top and used them as a washing machine to clean up all my dirty gear. Not as good as Maytag but better than nothing. My undergarments and socks were starting to smell pretty bad and I am getting a light rash under my armpits and around my crotch. I spent the rest of my daylight washing and wringing my clothing dry. I used some nylon cord that I found in
a trunk at the stern to improvise a drying line below the guardrail in case the wind blew my stuff off the line.

Just as the sun dipped down below the tree line I secured myself belowdecks in the stateroom, wearing only the green wool blanket that I had acquired from the old farmhouse, hoping that I didn’t get into a naked gunfight. For the first time in a while I feel safe to sleep and let my guard down so I will do just that.

09 Oct

I slept in until 0830. A light eastern wind kept the boat pointing into the breeze. My head was scratchy around the makeshift stitches. I knew it was time to remove them. Using the mirror from the boat’s head and the same needle I had used to stitch my head, I began to remove them one by one. I stopped about five minutes into the procedure and thought it might be a good idea to boil some water to clean the area every few seconds, but changed my mind, realizing that it would be dangerous to make a fire on a boat in the middle of a lake with all my gear spread out. I had visions of a burning beacon signaling the dead and any band of miscreants within twenty miles. After about ten minutes I was done and cleaned up the wound as best I could, rubbing in a small amount of expired triple antibiotic.

My clothing had dried by noon, and I could see that some clouds were forming on the western horizon. Looked like it could possibly rain. I brought my dry clothes down into the cabin, folded them as best I could and repacked them in the order I thought I might need them. Before getting dressed for the day I again dipped the bucket into the lake water and tried to take a modified sponge bath, using one of my clean socks as a washrag. It wasn’t a hot shower, but it sure as hell felt better than being dirty. I dried off with the wool blanket and had started to get dressed when I heard them in the distance. The wind carried their cries to my sanctuary and once again reminded me that this was not a camping trip or a pleasure hike down the Appalachian Trail. This was a death game.

I could not tell how far away they were but it didn’t matter. Using my new binoculars I scanned the shoreline of the lake. Something was moving along the shore northwest of my position.
From this distance it could have been a deer. I went belowdecks just as it started to rain to check and recheck my gear. There was some motor oil in the sink area so I tried to make good use of it by oiling some critical parts of my weapons. I figured that if it’s good enough for an engine it’s good enough for a weapon. The guns have seen some use in the past days so I figured that it couldn’t hurt.

As I wiped the SMG down, I once again heard a faint buzzing sound. It reminded me of a few days ago at the watering hole. It seemed mechanical in nature. I had enough daylight to sit and think inside the boat and formulate my plan. I knew that Hotel 23 was south/southwest from my position. Just a WAG (wild ass guess) at the distance would be two hundred miles. My general heading in true, not magnetic should be 220 to 230 degrees. At two hundred miles, traveling on foot most of the way, at ten miles per day, I should be in the neighborhood of Hotel 23 in roughly a month. For anyone who finds this, that is/was my plan. I will follow a general heading from Caddo Lake to Nada, Texas until I reach the facility. My first priority is to knock a gas station and grab a road atlas or maybe check for one in abandoned vehicles along the way.

After gaining access to an atlas, I can formulate a better route, going around towns and cities instead of blindly stumbling into them. I’ll hunt for food to replace my perishables and try to travel at night when possible. Supply priorities are: water, food, medical supplies, batteries and ammunition. Funny how priorities shift. In the beginning ammunition would have been my first priority.

1623

Sound has strange quality on this lake, like some strange parabolic antenna attracting the sounds of the dead to the mast of this sailboat. I can hear the moans and rasps of them. Terrible things. Thinking of this I pulled out my survival radio and gave it a shot—nothing. Once again I grabbed my binoculars and scanned the distance. I could see them everywhere I could see the shore. They swarmed the shoreline like seagulls. I’m noting any change in trend in their movement at the shore.

Sooner rather than later, I’m going to have to make landfall and continue my journey south. I’m not looking forward to making a two-hundred-mile walkabout across dead-infested territory with over sixty pounds of gear. Every now and again I think about this and it still shocks me down to my DNA that this is happening. The suicide rate must have skyrocketed in the past few months among survivors, because not a day goes by that I don’t think of ending it here and now. There are no red days on the calendar anymore. I have no days I can rest and let down my guard. Even on this boat I dream of them somehow getting onboard and taking me out. Looks like tonight will be a can of chili, and with my gear safely centralized, some boiled lake water for dinner. All I can do is sit here and enjoy the coming sunset and try to ignore the ominous bellows in the distance.

10 Oct

0630

I feel well rested and recovered enough to start heading south and west on the water. My intention is to triple-check my gear and raise sails for shore. Loneliness is magnified by the solitude of the lake. I remember staying in a hostel in Brisbane, Australia, a couple of years ago. Not wanting my things stolen, I chose a single and stayed there for three days nursing a hangover for the first two. Somehow, in some detached way, that time of solitude in Brisbane reminds me of how I feel now. Maybe it is the fact that I am traveling alone and the only other things that matter to me are my pack and weapons.

2200

After fooling with the sails for an hour or so, I pulled anchor and made very slowly southwest. I know these things can see my sail; I just did not know how the sight of it cruising across the lake
would affect their decision to follow. My plan was to run the boat aground to save time. I could not afford the time it would take to properly moor the vessel and tie her up securely. This would be a one-way trip, as after the boat was run aground it would take another motor-powered vessel to pull her back to the lake. Using the binocs I scanned the shoreline for any indications and warning of the dead reacting to my presence.

I tied off a knotted line to the bow so that I would have an easy deboarding when the time came. In between boom swings of the sail, I positioned my three MP5 9mm magazines where I could reach them, with the fourth full at twenty-nine rounds in the weapon chambered. Make no mistake—this was not Normandy beach in the forties but was Caddo beach with potentially more ghouls than German soldiers and one man to push back their numbers.

I wished the vessel had a speed slower than five knots—I wanted to approach more conservatively. After two hours of steering the bow port and starboard, I could finally get a good look at the beachhead that I would be assaulting. On first count I observed a dozen dead at the shore with icy gazes locking to my center mass. Using the compartmentalization techniques that I had learned in the military, I made a poor attempt at pushing the thought of getting torn apart out of my gray matter.

Knowing that this vessel had a draft of at least six feet, I anticipated a respectably violent impact when the sails pushed the vessel and keel into the rocky shore. Nearing land, I tied off the boom and lay flat on my back with my feet braced on the forward railing. Lying on the deck I tried to push the mental image of the dead out of my thoughts by looking up at the mast and clouds in the sky above. Then came the impact . . .

The vessel leaned violently to port while the bow turned starboard and I could hear everything on the shelves below fall and crash to the deck.

Regaining my footing, I shouldered my heavy pack and readied my submachine gun. I estimated that there were twenty of them closing my position with the potential of thousands if I didn’t move fast. Aiming as best I could with the short-barreled MP5, I took out five of them so that I would have the time to carefully
climb down the knotted rope to the shore. I was down to about nineteen rounds in this magazine as I only had a 50 percent head hit ratio past twenty yards with the SMG. I knew my Glock was loaded and ready as backup as I hit the water at the bottom of the rope. I carefully scanned for any open spots in the group of ten or so that remained and once again played offense as I threaded the needle and ran through them as best I could.

Those ten would turn to a hundred if I didn’t lose them, so I decided to run down the shoreline in plain view as fast as I could, prompting them to follow. It was about a mile before jogging became nearly impossible with the pack. I turned ninety degrees right, into the tree line out of my pursuers’ sight and then started the system of
walk twenty paces then jog twenty paces
for about an hour. I had successfully lost the dead and was marginally safe in the open plains of what I believed to be Texas. Until I find a reliable map of the area, my plan is to head west until I reach a two-lane highway running north-south and shadow it south until I hit the interstate that runs east-west into Dallas. Of course I will not be visiting Dallas—ever. I will simply shadow the interstate highway system going in the general direction of Hotel 23 using roadway lateral navigation.

As I walked west with the sun at my back I started to feel more energized despite the painful blisters on my feet. What I wouldn’t give for some moleskin in my gear. I might try rigging tape. By the late afternoon, I had found a deserted two-lane highway and approached cautiously from the east. I had depleted my water supply down to half the Camelbak bladder so I thought it best to stop at the nearest small bridge over a creek to fill up. It took a mile of paralleling the road before I spotted a steel drainage tube running underneath the road from the field in which I was walking.

The Steiner binocs had already earned their weight in my pack for helping me to find the water supply. As I approached the drain carefully from the northwest, I spotted half a dozen dead cattle—what was left of them. In virtually all of the cattle carcasses the legs were removed and strewn about the field, indicating that they had likely been taken down by the dead. I would have believed that feral dogs or coyotes had done the job if I hadn’t seen a long-dead corpse with a hoof mark through its head and a mouth full
of cowhide covered in white hair. The beast must have knocked one of them down and taken a lucky step. No matter. The dead had probably swarmed the cattle like Amazonian piranha. I could almost imagine the event in my head, remote-viewing back to the beginning months.

Leaving the field, I moved to the water supply and could hear the trickle of the water as it fell from the drainage pipe under the highway. The pipe was about the diameter of a fifty-five-gallon steel drum. I pulled out the water bladder and had begun to fill it when I heard a shuffling sound inside the pipe. Looking into the darkness I could make out the human shape of what I believed to be one of those things. Using my flashlight I discovered the partially decomposed body of a creature lodged among drainage debris and unable to get out.

The creature’s head was caught in such a position that it could not see me. It did, however, know I was there. I poured out my decontaminated water and dried the inside of the plastic water bladder as best I could with a clean set of spare skivvies. Leaving the poor bastard to rot in his steel cylinder tomb, I kept moving, looking for water. Now that I had been forced to give up my entire water supply, I felt even thirstier. I continued to shadow the two-lane highway south. Using my binocs I saw that I was following the direction of Highway 59. I took a few minutes to scratch this down in my journal. I continued to keep a lookout for any of those green signs that gave the mileage to the next city.