The Turning: A Tale of the Living Dead (13 page)

They drifted in the water, the
boat in neutral, and watched as fires broke out through what was left of the
City by the Bay, the flames consuming everything in its path.  They were too
far away to see anything specific, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the dead,
stumbling and groaning, on fire, their bodies a living funeral pyre. 

Jeff felt sorry for anyone who was
still alive before that conflagration.  Surely there were people there,
holed-up like he and Jenny had been.  He wondered about the building where his
job was, if anyone had lived that he’d worked with had lived, and where they
could be now.  If they were still there, hidden away somewhere, they were
surely dead now.  He shivered, thinking it could have been him and Jenny,
barricaded in the apartment, with bombs dropped on them, instead. 

Jenny squeezed his hand. 

“You know what this means?” she
said.

“I’m out of a job?” Jeff said.

She hugged him.  “It means there’s
still people out there, somewhere.  They bombed the city for a reason.  So
there must be someplace safe.”

He wrapped his arms around her. 
In the distance, the sun was beginning to set and the orange light from the
fading day reflected in her eyes, setting them ablaze.  He dipped his head and
kissed her, feeling her warmth next to him.

She pulled away from him and
looked around the boat.  “Do you know how to drop the anchor?”

“What do you mean?”

He looked around.  They were two
hundred yards from the shore, close enough to keep it in sight, but far enough
so none of the dead should be able to reach them. 

“I’ll figure it out,” he said.

An hour later, with the light
outside almost gone, the anchor was set and he was  satisfied they weren’t
going to drift anywhere.  He stood on the deck, a cool breeze slipping across
the surface of the water making him shiver.  Fires in Oakland and San Francisco
caused the horizons on both sides to glow orange and dull, the smoke choking
the sky.

He’d never felt so alone in his
life.

Jenny, who’d been down in the hold
the whole time, emerged, a smile on her face.  She hugged him again.

“I found some food down there and
made us soup,” she said.  His stomach growled and his knees buckled as he
realized how long it had been since he’d eaten.  It seemed like an eternity
ago, and it was only that morning.  His shoulders ached; he hadn’t taken the
backpack off the whole time.  He slipped out of it, with Jenny’s help, slowly. 
He had long cuts and divots on his back, shoulders, and chest, from where the
pack had chafed him during their flight.  Groaning, he slumped to the chair
next to him and put his head in his hands.  He was so tired, so very tired.

He didn’t know how it happened but
Jenny got him down into the hold, locking the door behind them.  She sat him at
a small table and put the bowl of soup in front of him and he ate it quickly. 
He wiped his mouth, ate another bowl and fell back, his stomach full and his
eyes fluttering shut.  He felt like he was tumbling down a long, dark hole from
which he would never be able to crawl out of.

Jenny’s lips found his and he
opened his eyes.

“It’s okay,” she said.  “It’s
going to be okay.”
Their mouths met again and he struggled out of the darkness and lost himself
in her. Within seconds they were on the small bed, their clothes peeled off and
in a heap on the floor.

As he entered her, he looked deep
into her eyes.  “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said.

“Ditto,” she said, her eyes
rolling back in pleasure as they worked together, pushing and grunting, until
they both fell into a deep well of bliss and passed out, holding each other
tight, their bodies still entwined. 

8

They woke at noon the next day. 
Jeff tried to roll over but his body was so stiff he could hardly move.  He
groaned and tried again.  This time he managed a half-rock and fell back in
place on his side.

“I can’t move,” he said.

Jenny laughed and kissed his
nose.  “I like you here, anyway.”
“I stink,” he said.

“You do, but so do I.”
“What I wouldn’t give for a hot shower right now.”
“You and me both.”

Jeff’s stomach squealed.

“You sound like a pig,” Jenny
said.

“I’m hungry.  Get up and fix me a
meal, woman!”

“You’re not funny.”
“Yes I am.”

Jenny kissed his cheek.  “Okay. 
Maybe a little.”
She slipped free of his grip and got to her feet.  The boat rocked lazy.  She
stretched and her knees and back popped.

“Oh, God,” she said. 

Jeff managed to sit up.  His back
was sore and his legs were so stiff it was all he could do to keep from wincing
with every movement.

“Go up and see what’s going on,”
she said.  “I’ll get some food ready.”
Jeff tried to get to his feet and couldn’t.  He laughed and looked at Jenny,
helpless, and tried again.  He rolled forward and got to his knees, his thighs
screaming in agony. 

“Jesus.  I knew I was in bad
shape, but come on.”
He grabbed a chair next to him and used it to get to his feet.  He hurt so bad
he immediately sat down in it and bent forward.

“Is it that bad?” Jenny said.

“Yep,” Jeff said.  He raised his
legs, stretching as best he could.  Every muscle was so tight he was afraid
they were going to snap.  He did this for a few moments until he felt his back
loosen up and tried standing again.  He stumbled to the door, feeling like one
of the zombies from the day before. 

He opened the door and went
outside.  The sky was overcast smoke was thick in the air.  He stood at the
back of the boat and surveyed Oakland.  It was mostly gone now, the fire having
spread west until it reached the shore, leaving behind a skyline of burnt
shells and husks.  There wasn’t much left of the old world, just some landmarks
and an eerie silence that unnerved him more than the destruction all around. 

Over time, he'd gotten used to
constant noise, the cars and the machinery and the airplanes, the barrage so
constant it became a wall of white noise in the background.  Even when it was
over, when the dead rose and civilization collapsed, there was the sound of
them, shuffling and moaning.  Now though, drifting out on the bay, there was
nothing.   Hell, there weren’t even any seagulls flying around.

He turned his gaze to San
Francisco and saw it wasn’t much better.  What damage the plane had done the
day before was now superseded by the aftermath of fires and collapsed buildings
and streets.  He couldn’t see everything from his vantage point, but he could
see enough to know that everything was devastated.  Coit Tower was torn in
half, jutting up from the ground like a shard of broken pottery; whole
neighborhoods were rubble; the Embarcadero was gone, just gone, flattened and
smoldering; the Financial District still had a few pieces of buildings
standing, but not many; and the docks looked like splintered fingers, pointing
out at the bay.  Tall spires of black smoke rose up, dotting the landscape,
like towers built to ancient, evil gods.  The wind from the ocean dissipated
the columns and blew their filth over towards Oakland where they met their
smoke brothers, mingled, and drifted off south and north. 

So many thoughts went through his
head.  Why had that pilot bombed the city?  Was he part of some military
force?  How had things gone so bad so quickly?  Was it just this area?  Were
they part of some quarantine he didn’t know about?  And if so, was there a way
out?

His back stiffened again so he
tore his eyes and his thoughts away from the destruction.  He did a few more
stretches, loosening up his muscles until he felt halfway normal again.  He sat
down in the captain’s chair and listened as the waves lapped the sides of the
boat, relaxing into the gentle rocking and swaying.

The door opened and Jenny
emerged.  She had a tray in her hands with two bowls of soup and two bottles of
water.  She brought them over and sat down next to him.  He smiled and dug in. 

“I took stock down there,” Jenny
said between bites.  “We have five more cans of soup and some bread and
popcorn.  The bread was bad, of course.  There’s some bottled water and a few
cans of soda, too.”

“No chocolate?”

“No!  I’d kill for a Hershey bar
right now,” she said.  Her eyes glinted with a hint of mischief. 
Jeff looked out at what was left of San Francisco.

“What are we going to do?” he
said.  A sudden rush of panic and fear beat his chest and made his mind race,
thousands of possibilities—all bad—coursed through his brain.

“We just have to take it a day at
a time,” she said.  “One hour at a time.  One minute at a time.  There’s no
sense in making plans.  We have to live.  That’s it.  And right now, we’re
okay.  They can’t get us.  We’re safe here.  We’re safe.”
As if on cue, a jet emerged from the clouds above them, its engines cracking
the sky.  It flew over, aimed towards San Francisco and circled the city as if
surveying the damage done. 

“You think it’s the same one?” he
said.

Jenny shrugged. 

The jet dropped a couple of bombs
and flew off, disappearing in the distance.  They sat and watched, eating their
soup as fires raged anew in the city.  Neither said a word to each other and
the afternoon bled into the night, fog rolling in and engulfing the boat in a
shroud.

In the middle of the night, Jeff
woke to Jenny crying.  He held her close.

“My parent lived in San
Francisco,” she said. 

He didn't know what to say.

Jeff held her until her tears
stopped and she fell back asleep.  He stared at the ceiling, thinking of his
own mother and how, even now, after all that had happened, he still didn't care
if she was alive or dead.

Eventually, sleep took him, too.

They stayed anchored to the same
spot for another day.

When the sun dawned on day three,
they’d come to some decisions about what they should do.  Jeff pulled the
anchor and started the craft and headed towards the Bay Bridge. 

The day was quiet except for the
rumble of the engine and the spraying water, foaming their wake.  He kept close
to the shore of Oakland and, as the bridge loomed just ahead, he again thanked
whatever good fortune they’d had that they hadn’t been able to take the van out
of Alameda and tried to drive it anywhere.

The bridge was jammed with wrecked
and stalled cars.  Zombies in the hundreds shuffled around, looking lost and
aimless.  He watched as one zombie got behind the wheel of a parked car and
pretended to drive.  He couldn’t be sure because it was so far away, but that’s
how it looked to him.  It was creepy, seeing that dead thing mimic being
alive.  When they did things like that he saw echoes of who they used to be,
and it made Jeff wonder if there wasn’t some spark, some bit of humanity left
in them, after all. 

He shook those thoughts; it was no
good going there.  Jenny looped her arm through his as they drove next to the
bridge, heading towards Treasure Island.  Above them, a zombie had spotted
their boat and shambled to the edge of the bridge.  Jenny pointed it out and
they watched as it lunged forward, reaching for them, and fell over the rail
and plummeted to the churning water of the bay, missing them by half a football
field.  Others did the same, like some kind of mass suicide, so many in fact he
had to steer a little further out from the bridge to avoid their falling
bodies.

They drove around the southern end
of Treasure Island and ducked under the bridge and past it, out into more open
waters.  They looked to their right and left, checking out the destruction of
San Francisco and Oakland, then Berkeley as they traveled further north. 
Buildings were raised and smoldering, streets blazed with fires, the dead were
still there, milling around, doing what they did.  It wasn’t chaos, not like it
surely had been when all hell broke loose, but it was damned depressing.  If
nothing else had convinced them life as they knew it was forever over, this
did.  Even if they found any civilization out there, it wasn’t going to be like
it had been.  And so another dark layer of depression fell over the two
survivors.      

Jeff steered them onward, grim and
determined. 

“When we get up north, it will be
different,” he said to Jenny as much as to himself.  They’d decided to stick to
the original plan.  They would go north as far as they could and find someplace
to hole up for the winter.  There were less people the farther north they went,
so it would improve their chances, and the cold was likely to drive the zombies
away because of their attraction to body heat.  It was a theory, and one they
were happy with.  It beat anything else they could think of .  They would take
the boat as far as the gas would let them, and then head inland. 

Jeff zoomed over closer to the
wharfs in San Francisco, taking a good look at Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the
big tourist spots in the city.  It was practically leveled, restaurants and
shops teeming with visitors were now smoldering chunks of charred remains and
rubble.  A few zombies worked through the wreckage, but nothing living moved. 
Jeff looked on with sad eyes.  He remembered his first weekend when he moved to
the Bay Area, how he went to the Wharf and mingled with the crowds of tourists
that clogged its sidewalks.  He experienced it all; he ate a fish dinner,
watched the sea lions sun themselves on the docks, and even got scared by that
crazy homeless guy who hid behind a fake bush and jumped out at strangers. 
Jeff wondered what happened to him and, if he was a zombie now, he was still
hiding behind the fake bush, still jumping out to try and scare his zombie brothers? 
It was a thought at once dismal and hilarious. 

It was all over now, though.  All
of it.  No more San Francisco, no more job, no more watching the hot office
girls on his lunch break sitting outside in the local park, no more traffic, no
more bars, no more movies, no more books, no more anything.  It was gone, gone,
gone.

Jeff felt his knees shake and a
sudden weakness spread through his body, starting in his empty stomach and
flowing outward.  For about the hundredth time that hour, he decided he
couldn’t go on.  He’d be better off, he thought, if he took the pistol and
stuck it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Jenny leaned into him, her soft
body changing his mind all over again.  He was in love with her; he knew it. 
He also knew it was probably only because of what they’d gone through, the
situations that threw them together into a desperate state of loneliness, loss,
and survival mode.  And he knew she loved him, if only for those same reasons. 
He didn’t care, though.  The best thing ever to happen to him was Jenny, and
he’d be damned if he’d let a little thing like a Zombie Apocalypse get in their
way.

He steered the boat away from the
docks and headed northeast.  He decided to cruise further from the shore so
they wouldn’t be able to see so much detail.  It was too depressing to deal
with.

Jenny tugged his arm.

“Look,” she said.  “There’s
Alcatraz.”

Sure enough, it was right there,
just off to their right, a rock island sitting in the middle of the bay. 

“I never went there,” Jenny said. 
“I always wanted to.”

Jeff smiled and turned the boat in
its direction. 

“What are you doing?”

“We might as well drive around
it,” he said.  “This is probably the last chance we’ll get to see it.”

Jenny smiled and squeezed his arm
as he made a straight line for the island.  It seemed so small when he’d seen
it in the distance but now, pulling up on it, the place  was giant.  The closer
they got, the more monolithic and cold it appeared. 

The boat engine spluttered and
went out.  Jeff looked down as they drifted towards the island, about fifty
yards out.  He cranked the key and it started again.  He sighed with relief
until the rattled and groaned and quit again.  He looked down at the dash.  

“Shit,” Jeff said.  “We’re out of
gas.”

The boat drifted on its own
momentum towards a set of docks and, when they got close enough, Jeff grabbed
the ropes and jumped out, landing stiffly on the floating wood.  He quickly
lashed the boat to the dock and got back on.  He went down into the hold,
retrieving the pistol and crowbar and emerging back into the sunlight.  A
brisk, cold wind blew through him, making his teeth chatter and his body
shiver.  Jenny grabbed her tire iron and together they got onto the docks.

“Maybe there's some gas
somewhere,” he said.

 They walked towards land.  Just
up ahead was a large boat, part of the Blue and Gold fleet, anchored to the
dock.  It drifted, a fat, dead whale, empty and useless.  They kept their eyes
on the gangplank, watching for any zombies drifting around.  The fact that the
boat was here meant there must be survivors.  They had to keep their wits about
them. 

Seagulls flew by, some landing,
some drifting overhead.  They squawked and cackled, filling the air with their
cries. 

A tourist shop lingered at the
crest of their walk.   It was old, with white paint and red writing up near the
top.  It said something about Indians but Jeff hardly had a chance to read it
before someone stepped from between a pair of bushes behind the building and
cocked his rifle.

“Hold it right there,” the man
said.

Jeff, with the pistol in his hand,
spun to face the person talking to him.

He was a tall man, skinny as a
rail, with ill-fitting clothes too large for him, sliding around on his frame
like a giant shirt on a tiny clothes hanger.  The man had pale white skin, a
hook nose, dark eyes, and a shock of black hair, sticking in all directions
like he’d just woken from a delirious nap.  Despite his appearance, the man’s
hands were large and steady and he held the rifle on them with precision.