Alive! Not Dead! (5 page)

I told her to swing forward if she could.  If she could do that, I would be able to grab her and catch her.

“I can’t, I’m scared.”

“Just do it.  Come on!”

She started to swing her legs from the front to the back but she wasn’t moving very much.  Her pants slid down to her ankles.  Her crotch was right in my face.  I saw that her vagina was pierced with a small pearl.  I shouted to her “Ok never mind, just let go when I tell you to!”

I positioned myself, bracing myself for her to drop into my arms.

“Ok let go” I shouted.

She dropped.

I caught her, but lost my balance.

We both slipped forward onto the worst of the two tilted slabs.

She landed on her belly.  Her shirt slipped up when she landed on the tilted slab.  Now the bare skin on her stomach was rubbing on the cement.  Just her belly and upper torso were on the slab.  Her feet and legs were over the edge of the crevasse.  She was trying to get a foothold for a grip, but with her pants now down around her ankles, she was not able to move her feet very well.

I was on my knees, holding onto both of her hands.  I was holding all of her weight.  I was using the tilted slab that she was laying on as leverage.  My chest was pressed against it as she squirmed, dangling over the side.  My feet
were slipping in the mud.

“Pull me up, Dan. 
Hurry!
I’m
slipping…
”

I tried, but it was an awkward position.  I had to use all the muscles in my back to pull her up
but she was stuck on something! She wasn’t budging! I was afraid that if I pushed too hard with my chest to get leverage, I might push the slab out further.

I had a good grip on both of her hands.  The arm that she had cut was a little slippery with blood, but not bad.

“I got ya, Tara.  Don’t worry.  Just let me get a better grip here.”

I tried to stand up.  I got into a low bending position when a dead gargled right behind me.

“
Oh fuck
.”

The tire iron and crescent
wrench were up above.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.  I couldn’t see the dead, but I could feel it behind me.  It felt like it was breathing down my neck, sniffing me, getting ready for a nice big juicy bite.

I pulled Tara up, but she was still stuck there.  I couldn’t get her up.

“Dan
get me up!”

“I
can’t!
You’re
stuck!”

There was nothing for her to hold onto if I let her go.  Our hands were linked above the tilted slab.  If I were to let go, she would be gone, down into the deep crevasse.

The dead was there, behind me, ready to pounce.

I had no choice.  I needed to fight this dead off or we were
both
going to die.

I let go of Tara’s right hand.  She screamed.  All of her weight went onto her left slippery hand.  I turned around, still bent at the knee to see the dead only inches
away from me.  It had no skin around its mouth.  The skin looked to have been ripped from its face by something.  Bare teeth and bloody gums chopped at me.  I swung out with my right hand and foot and was lucky enough to catch the dead off balance.  I must have gotten in a good hit because it went easily down onto its butt.

This gave me a second to turn around and grab Tara’s left arm aga
in.  This time with both hands! When her weight shifted, it loosened whatever she had been stuck on, so I was able to pull her up just a little bit.

The
n the whole tilted slab let go.

It tilted up a bit more away from me.  Its weight was too much.

“
Dan! No!”

“Hold on!” I screamed.

I couldn’t hold her.  There was too much pressure.  There was no way I could hold onto her, no matter what I did…the slab was just too heavy…

The slab slid away.

Her hands were ripped from my grip.

I watched helplessly as she went down with the slab.  A few seconds later I heard loud crashing down below.

The dead was still next to me, almost back up on its feet.

With my adrenaline rush, I reached for the dead, grabbed it by the front of its shirt, and like an idiot, threw the fucking thing over
the edge.

“
Fuck! Why did I do that?”
I hollered realizing what I had just done.  I had just thrown a zombie down where Tara was. 
“Tara!”
I yelled “
You ok?”

All I could hear was the rushing sound of the river.  I quickly looked around for a way down.  I couldn’t see anything but destruction surrounding me.

I needed to see if Tara was ok.

I made my way along some jaggy edges to get down to the bottom of the crevasse.

It took a long time to get down to her.

When I got there, all of my hopes were drained.  The dead that I had thrown off in my fit of rage had found Tara.  It had eaten her.

There were other bigger pieces of slab
that had crashed down into the crevasse as well as several other destroyed vehicles.

Tara landed on a boulder and I was hopeful that the impact had killed her.

I didn’t mean it in a bad way.  I would never hope that someone would die, but in this case I
did
hope that her death was instant because her back was obviously broken.  It would have been horrible for her to be lying there paralyzed with a broken back watching a dead come walking toward her.

There would have been nothing she could have done but lie there and get eaten.

The boulder was covered in blood all around her.  Some of the blood had run down the boulder in spots in rivulets.  She laid there, her legs spread, her pants still down to her ankles.  The zombie had eaten her from just below her chin all the way down to her crotch.  Her body had been ripped open.  Her vertebrae was broken in half.  Part of it stuck up out of her body.  Her belly button piercing was gone.  It looked like she had been crushed by the cement slab because it was still lying partly on her.  I tried to push it off but it was too heavy.

I noticed that her belt had been ripped off.  It was partly under her and partly under the slab.

I wondered if her belt was what she had been stuck on.  No wonder I couldn’t hold her any more.

I stood staring at her for a long time.

Maybe she would be alive now if I hadn’t thrown the fucking dead down here,
I
thought
.

The crevasse around me was groaning, seeming to grow wider as I stood there.  Earth
and stone was crumbling down the jagged walls.

“Goodbye Tara,” I whispered.  “I’m sorry.”

I started climbing out of the slowly splitting earth.

AFLOAT

Night was falling by the time I made it back up to the destroyed highway.  I was hungry and beat from the climb.

When Tara initially slipped on the slab, she dropped the small bag of food she had been carrying.  I found it near the spot where the accident took place; as well as the tire iron and crescent wrench.  I popped open the can of fruit, took a couple swallows,
then threw the can on the ground because I really didn’t have much of an appetite.

I was still kicking myself for throwing the dead down on top of Tara.

Fucking deads! God-damn zombies – whatever the fuck they are!

I was such an idiot for doing that!
I should have known better!

I made my way toward Ellensburg.  The crevasse with its surrounding destruction jaunted away from Ellensburg to the southeast.  I stayed in a mo
tel.  It was mostly destroyed but I really didn’t care.  I was beat.

The next morning I continued toward Spokane.  With the mountains behind me and nothing but rolling flatlands ahead, I figured the road might be passable enough.  I got into a 4x4 Chevy pickup with a full tank of gas at a minimart.  Inside the store I found some pickings left behind by passing looters as well
as another road map.

The roads were passable.  I actually got the truck above 50 mph for a short bit until I came across the Vantage Bridge which crossed the Columbia River.

The bridge was gone – washed away.

Looking at the roadmap, the only other bridges crossing the river were around 20
miles away in both directions. I didn’t feel like backtracking to Ellensburg to catch a different highway just to find another bridge down.

I was at a loss what to do.

Since losing Tara, I was honestly on the verge of giving up.  So many people were dead.  The world was crumbling.  Deads could be snarling, waiting around the next corner.  My energy to keep trying to survive had nearly dried up.

There was a small boating marina on this side of the bridge.  I parked in front of a gas station attached to the marina.

I thought about taking a boat to the other side of the river.  As I drove to the marina, I saw a lot of capsized fishing boats as well as some boats that had been beached.  There were some small yachts that had been destroyed, too, or were now submerged near the shore.

There was a long rickety dock by the marina.  At the end I saw a couple smaller boats that were still floating.  From shore they didn’t look like they were damaged at all.

I debated going out there or not.

I had my truck.  I could always turn around, go back a different way.  I didn’t really
need
to go to Spokane.  I was sure there were other military bases around.  One could have been to the south, for all I knew.  I didn’t know what the big draw was to go to Spokane.

I could always go to Los Angeles or maybe even further down to San Diego or even Mexico – hell even to Salt Lake!

Against my better judgment, I grabbed the tire iron and walked out to the end of the creaky dock, looking at the two boats.  They were both small yachts.  I had no idea how to even run one.

Hopping onto one, I untied it from the dock.  Somehow I needed to figure out where the anchor was and how to even get this damn thing started.

I didn’t know what to do.  I mean, yeah, I’d been on a yacht before, but I never
ran
one.  Some buddies and I used to go deep sea fishing – but the yacht we took back then was always running and I never even asked the guys how it all worked.  Usually we were too busy getting drunk to worry about any of that shit.

The ship was 40 feet long.  It had an open deck on the front end and one on the rear.  The center of the ship had a locked door surrounded by
windows with drawn curtains.  This was where the main cabin would be with a ladder or steps leading down to an engine room or a kitchen; maybe a bedroom or a bar - depending on the kind of yacht this was.

I broke the
door open with my tire iron.  Inside it was dark.  Enough sunlight came through some of the windows.  I pulled back the curtains to let more light in.  This was a real nice yacht.

I explored it.  I found the main steering
column but there was no key.  I looked around for one, but couldn’t find any.

Does this even need a key?

Another door led into a dark place. I no longer had the cell phone that I had used days before to light up the dark.  When the battery went dead, I just left it behind.

I figured, by now, all cell phones would have dead batteries.

The steering of the ship was an electronic joystick.  I stood staring at it for a long time.  I laughed beside myself; I had no idea how to even drive a yacht.

“Ok how do you start?” I asked it.

I poked around for a while, even looked in some cupboards for a manual, but there were no directions.

I would have to wing it.

I went back to the joystick controls.  I fiddled with some buttons, but nothing was doing anything. 
Maybe the batteries are dead in this too
, I thought; which could have been true.  I never thought of that.

Out of the corner of my eye, back on shore, I saw movement.

There was a group of deads out by my truck, wandering around it.

Th
is made me hurry a little bit. I started pressing more and more buttons on the helm around the drive stick.  Nothing was working.

I found another console after going up another wooden ladder.  This one had a digital dash, too, and a steering wheel
.  This has to be it! But how to start the damn thing?

Now I was starting to get frustrated.  The ship wasn’t starting and a bunch of deads
were slobbering all over my truck.  I needed to get this thing going or pretty soon the deads were going to be slobbering over me!

I started pressing all the buttons, turning all the knobs I could find.

“
God dammit start!”
I shouted at it.

I noticed that part of the dash had a keyhole. I wedged the sharp end of the tire iron under an edge of the dash and lifted.  Wood creaked and splintered as I pried the dash open.  Inside there was a whole electronic compartment with toggle switches and buttons.  I started pressing them an
d an electric whirring started.  Then all of a sudden the whole dash board lit up, showing fuel consumption levels, rudder angle indication, a fish finder system, and a bunch of other displays I didn’t quite understand.

I sat behind the steering wheel of the helm.  I flipped a few more toggle switches on a console to my right.

The engines roared to life behind me.

“Yes!” I said, smiling, “where’s the gas pedal?”

There were two yellow handles next to me on my right.

“Well there’s one way to find out,” I said as I pushed them forward.

The ship moved forward a bit, but then a red light showed on the dash.

Anchor,
it read.

The deads had taken notice of the noise at the end of the dock and were now shambling towar
d the yacht.

“Oh Jesus,” I whispere
d.  “Where’s the anchor thingy…”

I stared at the toggle switches…which one said anchor?

The deads were now almost at the yacht.

“Come on!”

There it was! I toggled it up.  The red anchor light went off.  I pushed the two handles forward and the yacht moved forward.  “
YES!”
I pushed the handles further and I went speeding away from the dock.

When I was far enough away from the dock, I let off the handles.  The ship glided to a stop.  I looked out the windows toward the deads.  They were all standing there, flailing their hands at me.  One of them got pushed into the water.  It sank.  It didn’t bob in the water or even swim.  It simply went under.

I watched for a while to see if it would
surface, but it didn’t.  I went around the yacht looking for any ladders that were hanging off the ship into the water.  I found two of them.  I pulled them back onto the deck.

Deads didn’t know how to swim; actually they didn’t know how to do anything except forage for human flesh.

I had the upper hand here.  I was on a ship in the middle of a river.  Deads couldn’t get to me.  If I needed supplies, all I’d need to do is run along a dock in some town along the shore and run into town for what I needed.

It really seemed like a safe idea.

I heard voices.

I cocked my head to the side, listening.  I was at the top helm of the ship with the steering wheel.  The voices were coming from below, somewhere behind me.

Grabbing my tire iron off the splintered dash, I quietly snuck down the ladder.  There were lights on down here now since I had powered up the ship.

The voices were ahead of me, around a corner.

As I got closer, the voices stopped.  I gripped the tire iron tighter.

Someone had left a TV on in the master stateroom.  The voices were from Ben Stiller as he begged to get out of jail in the old movie
“There’s something about Mary.”

I sighed deeply.  “Phew that was close.”

I searched through the whole ship.  Lights were on all over the ship as well as a radio.  I dialed through the whole thing, but nothing came back.  The radio signal was gone.

I also found a shower.

It had running water. I gave the water heater some time to heat up.  It would be nice to have a hot shower!

I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken a shower…probably the night before the plane crash?

The whole ship was stocked with food, drinks, and comforts.  I could have easily made a home in it.  Since deads didn’t know how to swim, I was safe.

I taught myself how to maneuver the yacht.  The ship was well equipped with the latest state of the art electronics.  It even had a cruise control as well as a
RayStar
GPS.  There was also a satellite TV that didn’t pick up television stations, and a whole library of DVDs as well as music.

The bar was well stocked, the ice maker
worked, and there was a nice room below decks that had a U-shaped couch.  I spent many hours there watching DVDs while getting drunk.

But over time I began to wonder if there was more life out there.  I began to really
miss Tara and the friendship that had blossomed between us.  I imagined spending time with her on the yacht, watching movies with her.  I imagined that over time we might have even got more friendly, maybe even become lovers.

But she was gone.

I tried to drink her memory away, but she kept coming back.  Thoughts of her hanging in front of me, her crotch in my face –begging me to save her, help her.  Her voice echoed in the empty bottoms of the bottles of liquor I drank.  Once the bottles were empty, I would throw them overboard; but her voice would always be waiting for me in the next bottle I opened.

“
Dan save me! Help me! I’m falling!”

Throwing the dead over the cliff…  It probab
ly landed right on top of her!

Fuck!

Up at steering, there was a VHF
radio system I always kept on. It was on one of my many drunken nights when I was sitting up there looking at Tara in my half-empty glass, I pressed the send switch on the radio and asked in my drunken voice:  “Any mother fuckers out there alive?”

Someone said back:
“Yeah it’s safe here at Larson Air Force base in Moses Lake.  Where are
you
?”

I beached the yacht.

I got back on the road on the east side of the collapsed bridge in Vantage.  There were not a lot of cars here.  Not a lot of deads, either.  I figured with the bridge down, it halted all traffic, including the undead type.

I walked for a long time.  There were no towns.  No gas stations.  It was a long flat dry stretch here as the road went northward out of Vantage.  A blue reflector sign told me a rest area was coming up.  I hoped that I might at least find a better type of transportation than my own two feet there.

Sadly
, there was only one vehicle.  It had 3 flat tires.  It looked like it had been parked there for a very long time in the last stall in the parking lot.  It probably had been there before the pole shift.

I had to keep walking.

It was 11 miles from the yacht to the small town of George.  On the road, I saw 10 cars total.  All of them had been abandoned on the side of the road.  The passengers were long gone.  Who knew what had happened to them.  Why would they leave their transportation behind? Why not stay in the car until they found somewhere safer? What had caused them to leave their cars? As I passed each car, I looked in them for anything I could use, but I didn’t see anything useful.