The Turning: A Tale of the Living Dead (16 page)

The zombies pursued, shuffling and
stumbling and lurching, falling behind but keeping a steady, unrelenting pace. 
All it would take was one trip, one fall, and they would have gushed over him
like waves breaking on a shoreline.

But Jeff did not fall, he did not
stumble, he ran on, swift and sure, even though is body hurt and he was so
stiff that it seemed impossible he could even move, much less sprint.  He made
the small room, dashed through it, entered the bigger room and then went
through the door at the other end.  Sunlight slammed his eyes and he nearly
tumbled down a small set of stairs as he gulped down fresh air and slowed a
moment to gather himself.

He was outside now, at the crest
of the big hill that led from the docks to the prison itself.  Trees and tall
grass ran along the coasts.  A brittle wind whipped through his hair and ears,
whistling slightly and making him shiver.  In the trees, birds chirped and
above, seagulls flew.  It was just like any other day on planet earth.

Behind him, he heard the dead
clatter into the big room, too close for comfort.  Jeff jogged down the
driveway and headed towards the docks.

He didn’t think much, his body
running on pure survival instinct.  Even though he ached and wanted to lay down
and die, he could not.  His body had taken control and he was on automatic. 
His shoes crunched the ground beneath him, moving him forward to his goal. 

When he reached the big boat, he
ran to where he’d been before, what seemed like an eternity ago, to siphon some
fuel.  He resumed his activity, sucking the gas through the hose and filling
the tank from earlier.  Stopping now, he felt his mind kick back in, thoughts
and emotions jumbling inside of him creating a cauldron of confusion and
contempt.  He fought the voices down and concentrated on what he was doing. 

Moments later, the first zombie
made its shambling appearance.  It was a man with tattered clothes and missing
both arms.  What had those people done?  How many had been on this boat and how
long did it take to kill all of them? 

Jeff shook with rage when he
imagined the confusion and terror they all must have felt, being rounded up and
herded into the cells and then picked off, one by one, the women raped and
maybe even the men, too.   

He clinched his fists and gritted
his teeth.  He wanted to kill those fuckers, to stomp them until there was
nothing left of them.  But Jenny had already done that, somehow escaping her
bonds and creeping up and murdering them.  He wished he could have seen it; he
wished he’d been there, watching as she shot and killed them and cut their
heads off.  They would sit up in that prison, propped against the barber’s
chair, for all eternity, unable to move, constantly hungry.  It was a horrible
place to be put but still, Jeff wished worse for them.  He wished they were
raped, over and over again, for all time.

The zombie was twenty yards away
now and behind it came another ten.  He knew all the rest, the dozens, would be
hot on their heels.  It was time to get out of there.

He stood, aimed the rifle, and
fired.  He hit the armless zombie in the chest, exploding its heart in a geyser
of thick, black blood and rotten flesh. 

Jeff grabbed the gas can and ran
out of the big boat to his boat.  He stopped and stared at it for a second,
wondering if he should wait for Jenny.  She was up there somewhere, in the
prison, and he didn’t want to leave her with these ghouls. 

He shook his head.  Jenny was
dead.  She wasn’t coming back because she put a bullet through her head. 

The gas can slipped from his
fingers and clanked on the dock but did not topple over.  Jeff turned to face
the zombies staggering towards him, past the welcome center with the red
“Indian Power” scrawled at its top. 

There was no point in going on. 
Jenny was no more and all his hopes and dreams, the ones that were left, at any
rate, were gone with her.  He was alone, maybe the last living person on
earth.  

He glanced over his shoulder at
the smoldering ruins of San Francisco.   

Jeff didn’t want to live in this
world anymore.  And suddenly, right then, the weight and horror of all that had
happened came crushing down on him.  He dropped to his knees, his shoulders
heavy with an unseen burden.  The whole world was dead or damned near it, and
had succumbed to an unrelenting horror—unending, unceasing, the waves of the
living dead.  There would be no recovery, no return to the old ways.  That was
over.  And he’d been fine with it all, even if it scared the shit out of him,
as long as Jenny was with him.

Now she was gone.

Forever.

He took the rifle off his
shoulder.  It would be tricky to use it to kill himself, but he could figure it
out.  He slipped off his right shoe and sock and placed the butt of the rifle
between his big and second toes.  Carefully, he stuck the barrel into his mouth
even as he slid his foot over the bottom, his big toe finding the trigger.  He
held the barrel steady between both his hands.

One flex and it would be over. 
One flex and a bullet would go through his brain and end all of his suffering
forever.  One flex and the pain that was eating his heart away like a swarm of
piranha would go away.  Just one flex.

Tears filled his eyes as he
watched the zombies, twenty of them now, reach the docks and stumble towards
him, mindless and greedy all at once.  He couldn’t go on.  Not anymore.

He jerked his toe and shut his
eyes, wondering what was next.

The rifle clicked.  Nothing
happened.  He flung his eyes open and looked down the barrel and flexed his toe
again.  It clicked.  The damn thing was empty.

Jeff pulled the gun from his
mouth, twisted, and vomited.  There wasn’t much in his stomach, but what was
there exploded across the docks in a fine coating of water and bile.  He
vomited again and again, his chest heaving and his lungs burning.  An awful
taste filled his mouth and nose as he looked up, the zombies advancing on him,
a mere fifteen feet away now.

The same survival instinct that
had carried him from the prison down to the docks kicked in again, this time
lifting him, grabbing his shoe, and taking him onto his boat with the gas can
in one hand and the rifle in the other.

He untied the rope and pushed away
from the dock with his foot as the first zombie, a topless female wearing a
short, black skirt, lunged forward, its large breasts swaying in the wind.  The
topless woman slipped down the side of the vessel, fell the water, and sank
like a stone. 

The zombies crowded the docks,
shuffling after him like homeless people begging for change.  Some tumbled into
the water and sank, while others stopped and watched as Jeff’s boat drifted
further and further away.  They stared after him with those empty, soulless
eyes.

Jeff filled the gas tank and
started the boat.  He drove away from Alcatraz, leaving it behind him, not
daring to look. 

“You have to live,” she'd said to
him.

“You have to live.”

He didn't want to.  He wanted to
die.  But he'd promised. 

Up ahead, the sun was setting,
throwing brilliant streaks of orange across the sky.  The Golden Gate Bridge
was blown in half—possibly bombed by the jet they’d seen days before—so that
its two sides were forever separated in the middle. 

Tears streaking his face, Jeff
drove towards the sun.

He didn’t look back.

PART
TWO:

A
Season in Hell

1

He drove until it was almost too
dark to see, keeping the coastline to his right as he headed north.  When night
settled down, he dropped the anchor, made sure it was secure, and went down
into the hold. 

Jeff walked around for an hour,
pacing, his mind working over what had happened the last few days.  He chewed
on his thoughts until he could think no more and his legs, tired from the
running and fighting and the walking, finally gave out.  He collapsed in a heap
on the bed and was about to fall asleep when he smelled Jenny on one of the
pillows and his eyes popped open.

He stared at the ceiling, wishing
he was dead.

The next day he pulled up the
anchor and continued his drive north.  He did not eat, he did not think, he did
nothing but move the boat forward, keeping an eye on the coast and the waters
ahead.  Every now and then he would spot a zombie, shuffling up and down the
beaches, doing what only God knew.  And every time, the zombie would sense him
and stumble into the water, arms in front, like it was going to somehow catch
him.

He drove until his body got tired
and he stopped, dropped anchor, and went below again.

This time he fell asleep quickly,
his mental and physical fatigue so great not even his grief could override
them.  He slept the night and the next day, hardly stirring.  He had dreams
filled with murder and debauchery, but he could not wake from them and, after a
while, he couldn’t tell the difference between his memories and his nightmares.

When he rose he was so stiff he
fell to the floor.  He would have laughed, if there was any mirth left in him,
so instead did some stretches until he felt better.  He sat up, decided he
didn’t want to know anything about the day before, and went back to bed.

He slept another twenty-four
hours.

He was even stiffer this time, but
he didn’t care.  He got up, did a few stretches, and went up top.

Across the waters, on the beach,
forty or more zombies were gathered, shuffling over the sands and walking into
the water, heading for him. 

Jeff couldn’t believe it.  He saw
others, floating in the waves, either being pushed back towards the shore or
getting caught in a riptide and whooshed out to sea.  None of them came close
to the boat, but still, they could have, just by blind luck.

He shuddered.  It was spooky,
seeing them out there like that, waiting for him to come closer, stepping out
and getting washed away. 

It truly was never going to end. 
Even out here, far enough from the shore to be safe, they still found him,
still lusted for his flesh, and still wouldn’t go away.

He thought of Jenny and missed her
so badly he dropped to his knees, his guts twisting into knots and cramping. 
He bent over double like he’d been punched and wailed.

Jeff lay there into the deep
night, crying and weeping.  Every now and then he stared up at the stars and
cursed God.  Eventually, he fell asleep.

He woke in the middle of the day,
a nice sunburn on the right side of his body where he’d laid on his side,
sleeping.  He went down into the hold to see if there was anything he could
find for it.

In a cabinet he spotted some aloe
and rubbed it into his pink flesh.  Aloe.  The tube was almost empty and when
it went, that would be it.  Nobody was going to be making aloe anymore, just
like they weren’t going to be making car parts or bicycles or canned soup. 
When these things ran out, they would be gone, forever.

Like Jenny.

The pain welled-up inside him
again, a geyser of agony, but he pushed it down and away.  He could weep no
more; he had nothing left inside of him. 

He shambled over towards the bed
and saw Jenny's jewelry, sitting on the counter.  She'd left it behind.  He
picked up each piece, running his fingers over them.

There wasn’t much.  There was a
slender, long gold necklace, a small solid gold band, and a pair of elephant
earrings, made of wood.  Jeff held them all in the palm of his hand and
squeezed them tight.

Tears did come this time, fast and
hard and undaunted.

He did not sleep that night,
haunted by memories.  Or maybe he did slumber and what he saw behind his
eyelids were just nightmares. 

He woke the next morning to the
sound of something bumping against the side of the boat.  Whump, whump, it
went.  Over and over.  He got to his feet, his back stiff and his legs tight,
and stumbled out onto the deck. 

The sun was rising and its yellow
rays hurt his eyes.  Jeff used his hand to shield his eyes and lurched over to
the side of the boat.

There, floating in the water, its
rotten, bloated head thumping against the boat, was a zombie.  Finally, one of
them had drifted close enough to touch. 

There was no end to the nightmare.

Jeff looked out and saw there were
two dozen of them, bobbing like corks, some as close as ten yards away and
others almost out of eyesight.  And on the shore were another hundred, at
least, all gathered and staring out at him. 

For the first time, he understood
what that jet pilot had been doing when he went on those bombing runs in San
Francisco.

He pulled up the anchor and
started the boat and carried on north, leaving those zombies behind like so
much cast-off drift wood. 

He drove slow, trying to conserve
his gas.  He was running low and soon he’d be out and he wanted to make sure he
got as far as he could before he had to go back onshore.

When he stopped it was late
afternoon and he needed another dose of aloe to soothe his burning skin.  He
dropped anchor and went below and used what was left of the lotion before
sitting down on his bed and staring across the room.

His stomach rumbled and he
suddenly felt very sick.  It dawned on him that he hadn’t eaten in three days. 

Jeff got up and looked in the
cabinets, finding a can of chicken noodle soup.  He cooked it over the small
stove and slurped it down quickly, chasing it with a pack of stale crackers. 

Full, he next went through
everything in the cabin, finding nothing much of use until his eyes fell on the
backpack he’d carried from the Food Bank.

The Food Bank.

That seemed like an eternity ago. 
How long had it been, really?  A week?  Half a week?  He’d been holed-up with
Jenny and having the time of his life.  Oh, it didn’t seem so at the time, but
it was funny how looking back, things changed in retrospect. 

He opened the pack and rummaged
through it, the contents foreign to him.  There was more canned food in there,
some soup and Spam and some deviled ham.  It would last him a week, two if he
only had one a day.  He would have to do something about food.

But why?  What was the reason to
keep going on?

His gaze flickered over to the
jewelry on the counter.  He went over and held the items in his hands again,
desperately trying to rub out some soaked-in essence of Jenny so that he could
hold her, if only for a few seconds, once again.

He slept fitfully that night and
the next.

APRIL

At last, the day came when he was
almost out of gas.  He set down his anchor and made the decision to camp out
for another day before going ashore.  If any dead showed up, as they had in the
past, he had enough gas to drive on down a bit further before disembarking. 

He gathered his things.  He had a
pair of slacks and some socks and a shirt.  He would change into these and carry
on.  He’d been wearing the same clothes since they'd left Alameda and he was
sure he stunk to high heaven, so he'd wear those to shore and then change. 

He searched through the cabin and
found a small quilt that he rolled up and tied using some twine he found.  He
rifled through the drawers by the small stove and found a box of matches and a
compass.  Those would come in handy, for sure.

There were no weapons except for
the crowbar he’d left behind in favor of the pistol when they climbed onto Alcatraz,
so it would have to do.  There was also the rifle, but it was empty, so there
was no real point in taking it.   He had to travel light so he could move
swiftly. 

His plan was still the same.  He
was going to go north and search for a place to hole up before winter hit. 
After that, he didn't have a clue and, frankly, he didn't care.  The only
reason he hadn't jumped off the boat and drowned himself was his promise to
Jenny.   

His eyes fell on the jewelry.  He
missed her so much

Hands trembling, he picked the
necklace up, undid the clasp, and slid the ring down it.  He took the elephant
earrings and bent the hooks on them until they wrapped fairly tightly around
the necklace.  He then slipped the necklace around his neck and fastened the
clasp.  He ran his fingers over the trinkets, rubbing them as if somehow doing
so would cause Jenny to reappear.  When that didn’t happen, he let go and
dipped his head and closed his eyes.

He was so damned tired.

The next morning he was set to go
ashore but when he stood up on the deck, he saw some zombies had shown up and
peppered the shore like fleas on a dog.  He cursed and went below decks and
right back to bed.

It seemed he knew nothing but
anger and depression.  He fumed as he rolled around in bed, unwilling to go any
further.  Maybe he should just stay on the boat until his food ran out and then
starve to death. 

No.

Jenny wanted him alive.  He wished
she hadn't.  He wished he'd died with her back there.  Going on was too
painful, too hopeless. 

He stayed in bed all day.  He
didn’t eat.  He didn’t sleep.  He replayed the events in Alcatraz over and over
again in his mind.

At some point, around dusk, he
fell asleep.

He woke and Jenny was beside him,
naked and smiling.  They were back in her bedroom in Alameda, as if nothing had
happened.  Tears filled her eyes.  She collapsed into his shoulder and shook
against him as she cried.

“I was raped,” she blurted against
his chest.  She was shuddering now, her breath coming in great gulps and her
words shaking and quivering as they tumbled from her lips.

He looked away. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I didn’t
know.”
“Pull the covers up,” she said.  “I’m cold.”

He did as he was told, wishing he
could take her pain away, wishing he could bring it into himself and then flush
it so that it never bothered either of them ever again.

She shook against him, a
combination of fear and loneliness. 

He felt something cold scrape the
side of his leg and he knew it was the barrel of the pistol.  She slid it up
his body, dragging it along his now-naked torso until it reached the side of
his face.  He looked at Jenny and saw her holding the pistol against him.

“Is this what you want?” she
said.  “You want me to kill you, to put you out of your misery?”

He nodded.

Jenny laughed, mocking him. 

“You haven’t suffered enough,” she
said.  She lifted the gun from him and stuck it in her mouth, gave him a
mischievous wink, and pulled the trigger.

He sat up and screamed, “No!” just
as the gun bucked and exploded and sent pieces of her skull and brains blasting
across the room.

Warm, wet blood splashed his face
and shot up his nose and down his throat.

Jeff woke screaming, all alone in
bed. 

He lay there, trembling, unable to
catch his breath and stop his heart racing.  His eyes bugged out and panic set
in, deep and frantic, paralyzing him.

On the deck above, footfalls moved
steadily across the boat.  The sound lanced through his pain as he listened,
his survival instincts kicking in.

Someone was up top, walking around.

He reached for the crowbar next to
him and listened as the footfalls stopped.  He strained his ears but heard
nothing else except for the water lapping the sides and the occasional creak of
the boat as it floated.  He was about to relax again when the steps started up,
this time not as fast or assured, but slow and sloppy, like the person’s feet
were dragging.

Zombies!

Somehow they’d gotten on board. 
He had to go up top and kill them.  Bash their heads in and toss them
overboard.  Jeff stumbled across the darkness of the cabin until he reached the
foot of the stairs.  The steps followed his progress up above him, stopping at
the entrance to below decks, mirroring his every move.

Jeff put a foot on the stairs and
the doors suddenly yanked open and moonlight flooded down and blinded him. 
Standing in silhouette was a woman, with nice curves and long, flowing hair
blowing in the sea wind.  She smiled and stepped forward, revealing her face in
the moonlight.

It was Jenny.

Her face was partially devoured and
he could see her teeth and jawbone through the chunks bitten out on the right
side.  The tip of her nose was gnawed off, leaving just the jagged cartilage
sticking out like a chicken bone stripped of its meat.  One eye was missing and
the other had been poked until it was bent inward, nearly squished.  Blood
trickled from the corners of her mouth as she smiled.

“You haven’t suffered enough yet,”
she said.

Jeff woke up for real this time,
screaming bloody murder.  He bolted up and  grabbed the crowbar and swiped the
air in front of him with wild abandon, as if he were being attacked from all
sides.

When he realized he was really
awake, he dropped the crowbar and buried his head in his hands as the bar
clanged on the floor.  He rubbed his eyes and moaned.  There was no comfort, no
peace, even in sleep. 

He coughed, disgusted, and got out
of bed.  He had things to do, none of which he even gave a shit about doing.