Deadfall: Hunters (3 page)

The next morning, Gray, who was planning on leaving in a few days, offered to take me up to fly around. My first thought of course was that I would be crazy to. The guy technically wasn't a real pilot. He insisted we would be ok, pointing out that he had already flown around many times. At any other point in the past there is no way I would have gone up in that plane, but that day, it just seemed crazy for me not to fly with him.

Gray and I went up into the sky in the small plane without a hitch. As he would tell me later on, taking off was the easy part; it was landing that presented the real difficulties.

It was a beautiful summer day, just a few clouds here and there, nothing that impeded the stunning visibility we enjoyed that morning. I could see far out to sea, observing the curvature of the earth on the horizon. Towards the west, we could easily pick out the features of the land. We flew inland heading northwest, about twenty-five miles. Gray pointed out a highway, possibly an interstate or just a large four-lane highway of some sort. My eyes tricked me at first because the highway didn't register correctly in my brain. As we flew closer, I saw why I had been tricked by my own eyes. The highway was full of zombies, seemingly walking south. From that far up, it had initially seemed like I was looking at a murky river. Had I not been told it was a highway at first, my brain would have stuck to the notion that in fact it was water.

As we flew lower, we began to pick out the individual walkers, hundreds or possibly thousands of them. They instantly turned their faces to us, drawn to us by the sound of the plane, or maybe even just the movement in the sky. It made me wonder if the zombies were drawn to other objects and beings in this world. I can only make assumptions as I had spent absolutely zero time actually following zombies around to understand their behavior. What I did know is that they were instantly and fiercely attracted to humans. Just the sight of one of us living beings changed their demeanor completely. I remember seeing a zombie up in the mountains, interacting, or not interacting at all, with a bear. The zombie had clearly not acted aggressively towards the animal, but I had wondered if that was because of the altitude and my theory on that.

As we flew over the highway, I tried to imagine if the zombie would see birds flying in the sky and somehow react to that. But that would have to mean that the dead had more to their awareness than we credited them. Did they react out of some kind of instinct or did zombies actually think? Or more precisely, were the creatures that had animated the dead endowed with some kind of sentience.

I didn't enjoy thinking like that. It humanized the creatures I hated, the creatures I wanted to destroy and enact my revenge upon.  I was struck between being permanently angry at them while at the same time curious as to their nature.

We flew around the highway again, and then flew up higher. From up there, we could see far down the highway in both directions. We could clearly see the end of the line on either end, and even saw what looked like another horde flocking off a side road onto the highway itself, like a tributary river of the dead, feeding the main stream of zombies.

We flew back home, coming in nice and low into the airport. It was a smooth flight in, but the landing was so bumpy, I had forgotten that I had been sitting with a self-taught pilot. We landed with a thud, bouncing three times rather hard. Gray laughed out loud, proclaiming that this had been his best landing yet. I was glad to get out.

Lucy and Maxie joined us later that afternoon. Gray was planning to fly out the next morning and not return, so he had prepared a feast for us. It turned out to just be a bunch of cans of corned beef hash, but properly heated and cooked, it tasted fantastic. Gray had already packed up his plane with a few food supplies, and had stashed the rest away in the airport, leaving signs pointing out just where the food could be found. He left these signs on walls and doors all over the place. He assumed that if someone came across the place that they could use the supplies. He also wasn't worried about the zombies finding the stash. They were neither literate nor desiring of canned food.

He talked to us about his life before Deadfall, and of his desire to find his girlfriend. There was not a soul there that night that had the desire or will to even hint to Gray that the odds were against her still being alive. We all had suffered our share of losses and understood just how important it was to hang out to hope. I know just listening to him talk that night that I got a bucket of cold water dumped on my psyche. I had been hiding behind the anger of my loss, sulking. It was my first true loss due to Deadfall, while others in my group had suffered losses of their own and dealt with the loss far better than me. And here was this guy, who trained himself how to fly an airplane, willing to fly all the way back to New Jersey just to try to find his loved one.

It wasn't that I wouldn't forget or stop being angry. I live with her voice calling out my name every night, haunting me. But I just couldn't go on being sullen. I had used that event as an excuse to go blindly into this quest across the ocean to an island I had never been to before to find someone or something completely unknown to me. It was time to take this matter with more seriousness or I might lose others who still, for reasons beyond me, look to me as some kind of leader.

After our meal, Gray retrieved some pipe tobacco he had found and Maxie was immediately overjoyed. He pulled out a pipe he said he had not used in many months and as he sat there puffing, a wonderful fragrance filled the air. Lucy and Aaron sat close to each other, and I suddenly asked if they had any ideas for names. It was clear from their surprised expressions that this had not crossed their minds. We all then spent the next couple of minutes throwing out our favorite names. The conversation quickly changed into our own stories of children from our past lives. It was a wonderful way to end that evening, with good memories filling our minds. For us, it was these memories that gave us hope.

Obviously our encounter with Gray was nice and I would have written about it regardless, but the next morning, the would-be pilot actually gave me one large piece of advice that changed the way I was thinking about this whole Haiti thing. As he loaded up the final things into his plane, he shook our hands and we wished him luck. We asked him to relay a message to anyone at the military using the radio relays at the water towers, hoping to reach Evan and Chris, if either of them was still alive. He agreed, then shook my hand and said:

"You know, Haiti makes sense. If you think about it, zombies come from Haiti. Maybe there's something there after all."

We stood there watching as the plane took off into the sky, slowly turned northeast, and vanished slowly into the horizon. The entire time, I just stood there thinking about what he had said. Here I was the History teacher and the obvious had completely slipped by me. Gray might be completely wrong, but it made sense. The basis of our zombies in popular culture before Deadfall came from the zombies of voodoo religion. Was there something more to it? More importantly, had my father figured something out? And finally, why the hell did he just leave some cryptic message in a note in his journal and not a full on explanation?

That would have been too easy.

By that afternoon, we had refilled our water tanks, loaded up the boat and were headed back out to sea. We had enough food and water for a week, so we wanted to make good ways into Florida. We had initially planned on using the tip of the southern state to prepare our trip out into the Caribbean. After hearing Gray's story about the Keys, we thought we might avoid that.

Things are a little clearer now. Let see what Florida brings.

I'm writing this current entry from an airport on the tip of the northern part of the Florida Keys. I know I seemingly just wrote that we wouldn’t go to the Keys, but we had it on good word that this was a good location to hide, rest, and recoup, and that it certainly was. We have been here now for three days, and will depart across the Caribbean Sea to the northern shores of Cuba to then make our way southeast along the coast of that island. From there we will cut across to Haiti and begin our search for whatever it is that we are actually searching for.

Aaron and Lucy are no longer with us. Thankfully though, at least that part of this latest episode is one I'm not sad about. I’ll get to that. Instead, we now have with us a giant hulk of a man called Blevin, and a thirteen year old girl called Janine. And what happened in between this change of passengers is a whole story unto itself, one that routinely reminds me how much human beings can piss me off.  So, I shall begin where I left off.

Sailing down the rest of Georgia and into the Florida Coast was uneventful. We were thankful mostly because we had no real reasons to attempt pit stops due to our good water and food supply. We sailed close to Jacksonville, mostly in memory of Heather, and were greeted by the largest mob of zombies we had seen in some time. Now, Jacksonville itself isn’t along the coast. We had actually sailed up into the river that leads into the city, but I think just the nature of all the waterways in the area created a bottleneck for the walkers. I can only imagine how many others may have sailed into those waters before us, looking for some kind of refuge, and being sorely disappointed. In fact, after a few hours of sailing in and seeing so many on the shores, and coming to the realization that there might be many right under the ship, we turned around and headed back out to sea. No possible salvage was reward enough for the risk of that many undead.

Once out to sea, we studied the maps we had in order to try to find one last safe place to rest on land before heading out. Our only thought was something isolated, a perimeter that we could control. Sadly for us, the coast of Florida is one huge interstate with urban areas all the way up and down. Nothing gave us a safe vibe at all. The few places that might have isolation would have nothing we could use, i.e. the wildlife areas and protected seashores. We sailed past Cape Canaveral, the huge structures still there. Made me think it might be quite some time before we send anyone back into space. Seeing what space had brought us, I think next time around we should really be more mindful of how we develop our space-traveling abilities.

We would have loved to have gone ashore, but there was no decent place to anchor at and really, what were we going to salvage, rocket fuel? Not that they actually stored rocket fuel there. That’s not how it worked.

As we headed further south, we did run into one spot where there had been some kind of small fort built up along the beach where people had tried to survive. We knew that because there was an enormous sign facing the ocean that said “help us”. We sailed a little closer to the shore, but saw only the all too familiar slow movement of bodies. When these failed to yell out to us in a living fashion, we hung our heads and kept sailing by. I remember that evening we talked about all these attempts to survive, and just how many we had come across that had failed. It either gave us credit to our ingenuity or skill, or, as it was more aptly in my case, it showed just how lucky we had been.

Further study of the maps showed us that off of south Miami Beach there were a small set of islands, partially covered with parks and protected areas. There were also bridges leading to it which meant houses, probably of the wealthier type of individual. The type of individual who might have something useful we could use. We sailed down past Miami Beach, a little more desolated of the dead than other urban beach areas as far as we could see, but that probably just meant they were more concentrated back into the city itself. We came around the north of the small island, appropriately called Biscayne Key, since it was situated in the Biscayne Bay, and came about the bay side. We crossed under a bridge that we noticed had several cars piled up in the middle of it; signs of a barricade. This was either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which side the zombies were at.

The north part of the island once had a golf course, and the only way we could tell that now was because of the odd grass growing all along all these hills and dips along the coast. The grass stood out as something that surely didn’t grow naturally in those parts. Tague always had his binoculars out in the lookout for either the living or dead, and he pointed out the apparent sand traps. There was a pastime long lost now.

After sailing past the golf course, we came upon the residential area, built right up against the wild brush that now encroached upon the urban area. There was a large marina there that we found oddly empty. Perhaps the previous owners took to the sea to survive the onslaught of the dead. In either case, we had our choice of docks should we choose one. Of course, our first step was to anchor out of the marina, and then explore. Thankfully, again, because of the lack of all other boats, we could anchor in the marina space, behind the sea wall, and have an extremely short haul from the boat to the docks. We reached the marina mid-morning, almost five days from leaving Gray’s airport (I can’t even remember the name of the place).

Once again, Lucy and Maxie stayed behind in the boat. If anything were to happen to the three of us, at least Lucy and child would be safe and Maxie would sail them back up to North Carolina. Lucy had never liked that agreement, but at some point, in a heated discussion with Aaron one of those nights on the boat, she had stopped complaining about it.

On shore, we quickly noticed that something was off. For the first time in a very long time, we came upon an urban area that felt normal. What normal meant to us was an area that, although lacking in living people, felt like it was taken care of and maintained just as if it had been before Deadfall. There was no debris lying around, the cars were parked properly, windows intact, and generally clean. While zombies had no sense of vandalism in their addled minds, the destruction of humanity being their sole motivation, they, nonetheless, stumbled about a lot and generally just broke a lot of stuff. If that had happened here, things had been repaired and cleaned up. And yet, there was not a living soul in sight.

We began then, by doing what we always did. Within clear reach of our dinghy, we began making noise. We didn’t necessarily scream and shout, but we were not as mindful of noise as we would if we didn’t want to be detected. We busted into the locked marina door, again, noisily, and began to rustle about looking for salvage. Tague always maintained a look out. The point of all this was to draw out any zombies and make a quick escape if we needed to. After ten minutes though, we saw no sign of anything, no bodies traipsing our direction down the streets. Even if an area had been cleared of zombies, mostly by them walking off toward whatever destination drew them, there was always one or two around. That day, there were none.

Generally, that was good news; it meant plenty of time to salvage. But that odd feeling we were having was just further amplified by the lack of zombies. Any safe feeling we would usually get by the lack of zombies was replaced by these sensation we were being watched. Without proof of this though, we continued on with our routine.

Did I mention we now had guns? Yes, Gray had given us his meager supply, which for us was more than we needed. But we were now all equipped with small handguns, most of which I couldn’t identify. We missed having Evan around to tell us exactly what they were. Tague knew, but it just wasn’t the same as Evan’s long rants about details, capacity, range and all other things.

But we had guns now, and we kept them ready.

Tague went out and began looking through some of the parked vehicles. He had been practicing hot wiring the cars in order to start them. This was a larger urban area, and if it was in fact clear, we would be in a better situation if we could find a good place to rest and camp while we searched the area. Driving would be ideal. As he did that, Aaron and I perused through a map we had found in the marina. The west side of the island had all of the “normal” houses, and by normal, I guess I mean the ones that only had a value of a few million. The ones on the east side were probably valued far higher. The east side also had all the condos and resorts. A main highway ran straight down the middle, north and south, and any shopping areas would be found along this area.

Tague drove up to us in a Toyota Prius, rolled down the window, and smiled at us.

“I always wanted to drive one of these.”

When we asked him how hard it had been to hot wire the car, he replied by showing us the key. There were keys in all of the cars. Too easy.

We radioed back to the boat, updating them on the strangeness of our discoveries, and then drove off into town. As we drove away from the Marina and reached the main highway through the town, again, we noticed just how tidy and clean everything was. We soon found out why.

We had turned south on the main road, and had planned to drive it all just to get a bearing of where things where, to mark down locations. Then we’d return to the boat and plan from there. We never got that far. We turned right and had barely driven a few blocks when, as we drove past a really nice shopping center area on our right, a group of girls, teenaged girls, came running up to the street yelling something. It was probably one of the most shockingly odd sights we had seen in a long time. It would have felt more normal to us to see a group of zombies walking toward us than that sight. So odd, in fact, that we drove right by them, staring at them as we passed.

That made Tague crash right into a tree.

Thankfully, we hadn’t been going really fast, and Tague had been slowing down as we stared at the girls, but more than enough to make the airbags pop. As we struggled to get out of the car, without knowing for sure just what these girls had in mind, I know in my head I was thinking maybe I should get my gun out.

They reached us before we had gotten entirely out of the car. Aaron had been in the back seat, without a seatbelt on, and had gotten himself tossed halfway to the front seats. When the girls got to us, they began helping us out of the car. As we stumbled out, we could only look at each other. The girls were not armed in any way we could seem, and, to put it honestly, the oldest one was maybe sixteen. Three grown men should easily be able to take on four teenage girls. We never had chance to do anything.

“Please, we need your help.”

Oh….those words.

Now, for the sake of being able to explain everything well, I am going to cheat. At that very moment, I had absolutely no clue what was going on, who they were, or why they wanted help, and specifically, why they wanted help from us. What I am about to write I found out later that day, but I will relate it here now so that everything else makes more sense.

The girls had seen us arrive at the Marina. They had known we were on land and had been debating for a while to make contact with us, or just hide. As you will find out, things were a might strange on this island and the girls had a habit of just hiding if “strangers” came to the island. Unfortunately for them, or for us, some of them needed help with someone who had gotten hurt. It had been something not all of the girls had agreed on. In fact as we lay there, three more teenaged girls joined the group. These had not wanted to make contact, but the other four had thought it enough of a risk to run out and hail complete strangers.

Here is where we pick it up again, with the three of us sitting there on the ground, stunned.

“They have guns, Megan,” one of them said.

“It doesn’t matter,” said another, “If they can’t help us, Blevin could die and Cain could kill us all.”

If you haven’t already figured it out, those are two names that become critical in the days to come.

“Not just could, he will,” said yet another, “but not before
you know what
.”

The oldest of the teenage girls, one that had not wanted to make contact, took one step toward me. She looked right at me. Again, I wondered why I was somehow always picked out as the leader. This curse of mine would get me killed some day, of that I was sure.

“What are the guns for mister?” she asked, pointing at the sidearm strapped to my right leg.

“Preferably for putting down zombies,” I replied, holding back an instinct to reach for the gun, something I'm sure could have led to disaster.

“None of them here. We’ve made sure of it.”

“In that case, I won’t need to use it will I?”

Another girl stepped in, “Can you hand it over?”

“I’d rather not,” I began, “but if it makes you feel any better, I would really rather not use it, at all. We’re only here to find supplies.”

“Steal from us?” said the first girl again.

“Didn’t even know you were all here,” chimed in Aaron, rubbing his head. I could see by the confused look on his face that he just now understood what was going on. I would find out later when he complained about his headache that he just might have suffered a concussion when he hit his head somewhere in the car and he had been quite dizzy when he was pulled out.

At this point in the standoff, the first girl, her name would be Janine (yes, her) jumped in again said, “We don’t have time for this. We don’t know who you are, but we need someone’s help. We have a friend, Blevin. He is really sick. We REALLY need him to live.”