Authors: Richard Johnson
Jackie’s
expensive yacht powered through the choppy waters of Lake Michigan while
absolute chaos erupted in the city behind them. Blaring sirens, gunfire,
screams for help and explosions competed for the girls’ attention before it all
faded away in the distance. The whole fiasco had been going on for only about
fifteen minutes.
But to Jen,
Padma, Jackie, and new arrival Mary, those minutes were a lifetime. They had
lost friends and dodged sudden death, and even killed a man. And it wasn’t even
lunchtime.
As they got
some distance from the shoreline, Jen asked Jackie what they were all thinking.
“Where are we going? Indiana? Michigan? Wisconsin? Just because this is your
boat, it doesn’t mean we don’t have a say so.”
Jackie cast
her friend a sideways glance and continued to pilot the boat without saying a
word.
“Jackie, you
need to—”
“Will you let
me think? Jesus,” Jackie replied with a huff. She was the type that had her
life in magnificent order with all going as planned since childhood, whether it
was her education, career path, love life, you name it. But now that whole
lifestyle was gone. There would be no more long-term plans, only reactions.
Reactions based on what would keep her alive the longest. She veered left and
Jen almost fell over.
“Well?”
Jackie
pointed ahead at a large building rising above the water. “Here’s your answer.”
“Okay. What
is it?”
“It’s a water
pumping station for the city. We’ll dock here until we find out what’s going
on, and we can always hop back in the boat and head to shore if we need to.
Does that sound good?”
“All right,”
Jen said and left to tell Padma what was going on.
Padma was
busily tending to Mary’s bruises and trying to calm the girl down. “You have a
nasty knot on your head, but nothing serious,” she added while checking the
thirty-year-old woman’s eyes. “And that’s pretty amazing considering you just
rode the top of a cop car and took quite a beating.”
Jen grimaced
upon seeing the injuries she caused the woman during their escape. “We’re
stopping right up here at some kind of station. It’s like an artificial island.
Sorry again, about that, by the way. You can’t blame me though, considering.”
“I’m okay,”
Mary said and rubbed her scalp. “It’s crazy that we ended up here together.”
Jen tilted
her head. “How so?”
“You don’t
remember me?” Mary asked, a little surprised and a little hurt.
“Sorry, no.”
“I’ve been
bagging your groceries for like ten years over at Healthy-mart. You come in
like clockwork every Sunday night. Wine, cheese, waffles and soda. Anyways, I
recognized you outside the store when everything started happening and figured
you would know what to do. You always seem to have everything together. I
chased you guys for like a mile.”
“Oh yeah,
Mary! It’s hard to place someone when you see them out of context, you know,”
Jen said with half a smile. In fact, Jen didn’t remember Mary at all, and
couldn’t care less who bagged her groceries, washed her car, or delivered her
pizzas.
Mary adjusted
her thick glasses and looked at the deck, realizing the truth of the matter. It
was just one more awkward snub in a lifetime of such, trivial compared to what
was going on at that moment, but still painful. Friendless, basically
penniless, and mentally slow, Mary was the polar opposite of her pampered
companions. But now they were all in the same boat, literally.
“We’re
pulling up, I need some help getting tied off,” Jackie shouted and the group
sprang into action. Soon enough the yacht was secured in place alongside the
pumping station and the women climbed onto the concrete structure, unsure of
what to expect. If the growing craziness had already reached this far out, then
no place was safe.
The station
consisted of a large concrete loading dock with various cranes and equipment,
as well as an ornately built, circular stone building. Water was collected
inside and transported by tunnel to a filtration plant, hundreds of feet
beneath Lake Michigan. A small bridge led to a smaller, now defunct pumping
station. But the women weren’t interested in the functions and purpose of the place.
For now, they were more concerned with discovering if it was safe.
They were
about to find out. The door to the building shot open and a man and a woman
wearing hardhats came towards them.
“You can’t
dock here! This is a restricted area. Did you not see the damned signs?” the
man asked. “You can get jail time just for being here. Homeland Security will
have your—”
“Nobody’s
going to jail, Frank,” a woman named Carol said in a much less combative tone.
“You do need to leave, though. This center is off limits.”
Jackie shook
her head. “We’re not going anywhere. Don’t you know what’s going on in the
city? It’s like a warzone right now. People are acting nuts, it’s out of
control.”
“See, this
girl’s on drugs,” Frank said and threw his hands up. “Just because you have a
fancy boat doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply to you. I suppose you’re related
to somebody important too?”
“Actually, my
dad is Jessie Collins. He used to be the congre—”
“I know who
he is and I don’t care. Now I’m not gonna listen to your tall tales anymore.
We’re supposed to be running the station, not talking to drunken socialites on
a joy ride.”
“Guys,” Mary
said quietly. She was ignored in the scrum, as she had been countless times in
her everyday life.
Frank’s
co-worker stepped in again. “Let’s just take things down a notch and get this
sorted out. I can make some phone calls.”
“Guys!” Mary
screamed at the top of her lungs and pointed. Everyone on the platform turned
to see a low-flying airliner heading in their direction, rapidly losing altitude.
The noise was deafening as it banked sharply and crashed into the water
directly in front of the station.
The plane
violently broke into pieces as debris and water splashed upwards and then came
down like hail. One of the still roaring engines broke free and skipped across
the water before bouncing up and over the group of terrified onlookers. That
is, mostly over. Carol and Frank were gone, and all that remained were their
shoes. And their feet.
“Holy shit,”
Jen said as Mary gagged before puking forcefully.
That’s when
they noticed the survivors of the crash. Several had floated to the surface,
severely injured and screaming.
“We should
try to save them!” Padma said, her doctor’s instincts kicking in. She started
taking her clothes off in order to dive into the churning mess, but one by one
the screaming victims ceased their struggling and disappeared under the water.
About a
minute later several began to reemerge, and then a few more. Soon dozens of
passengers calmly bobbed up and down in the surf and debris as the smell of
jet-fuel became overpowering. Padma walked to the edge of the dock and prepared
to jump in.
Jackie
grabbed her shoulder. “Wait, something’s not right. They’re quiet now.”
“Fine.” Padma
waved her arms over her head instead. “Swim over here!” The survivors started
to dog paddle towards the pumping station as they heard her voice. “You okay?”
she asked.
There was no
answer and Jackie shook her head, a grim look on her face. “See?”
“Say
something, anything!” Padma yelled, but there was still no reply from any of
the injured people. No screams, no pained whimpers, nothing. Just quiet
swimming and expressionless faces. Now they were within ten yards of the
ladder, close enough that the girls could see their injuries, including
multiple bite marks.
Jackie
immediately pointed her flare gun at the growing jet-fuel slick and fired,
setting the swimmers ablaze in an instant. The zombies didn’t have the sense to
dive away from the flames and burned up in the inferno. Unfortunately the
current brought the flames right up to Jackie’s yacht, and in seconds it too
was engulfed.
The yacht
smoldered for a while as the women sat and watched, stunned by their sudden
loss. Then Jackie’s boat, called
Obsidian
for her favorite color,
slipped into Lake Michigan and disappeared from sight. With it went all hope of
escape.
*
*
*
Mary flicked
her wrist and pushed the knife in effortlessly as the warm guts spilled onto
the dock. The three-pound rainbow trout shuttered briefly and went still. It
wasn’t much for four adults, but it was dinner.
A week had
passed since they’d been stranded on the pumping station. The girls had little
clue of what was transpiring in the rest of the world, and it was probably a
good thing. The United States had been overrun by a manmade virus and
simultaneously invaded by China, it had nuked its enemies in retaliation, and
Charlie and his friends had settled into a life of cat food and expired beer.
But getting
marooned at the pumping station had been more than a little lucky. Mary and the
others had found themselves isolated from the rampaging hordes of cannibals and
separated from the fires and looting in the city. In addition, the place was
equipped with canned goods, drinking water, and two comfortable bedrooms. The
late Frank had even left behind his fishing rod and lures, which Mary was using
to great effect in order to supplement their meals of corn and baked beans.
It was a
tedious existence, but it was safe – for the time being, anyway. If the lake
froze during the winter, however, things would rapidly take a turn for the
worse. And so ideas for escape were never far from their thoughts.
For now,
though, dinner took precedence and Mary brought the catch of the day in to be
cooked on a propane grill. Her fishing skills had come in handy and earned her
respect from Jackie and Padma… but not so much from Jen.
Over the past
few years Jen had grown more like her stuck up fiancé, Blake, and Mary proved
to be an easy target for her diatribes. She had a snide comment for everything
the newcomer did, whether it was how she dressed, talked, cooked, or even
slept. Right now it was the way Mary was singing hymns while cooking fish.
“You never
shut up, do you? I’m surprised you don’t get sun burns on your tongue.”
“Jen, come
on,” Padma chided as Mary looked down and mumbled something under her breath.
“I just don’t
see what’s worth singing about at the moment. This sucks. I’m bored out of my
mind, it’s hot as hell, who knows if we’ll ever get off this dump, and god
knows what will happen if we do.”
Padma touched
her friend’s shoulder. “We all deal with grief in different ways.”
“I can sing
if I want to,” Mary chimed in.
“Shhh, the
grownups are talking,” Jen shot back.
“I’m a
grown—”
“Grownups
don’t push shopping carts into corrals, sweetie.”
Padma’s
attractive face hardened. “Why don’t you wake Jackie and tell her it’s almost
time to eat?”
Jen rolled
her eyes and left as Padma started singing with Mary and took over grilling the
fish. A few minutes later everyone gathered on the dock for their meager dinner
as the sun sank over the horizon. Far away, skyscrapers burned brightly as the
artificial clouds of destruction billowed across the heavens. It would almost
be pretty if one could ignore the implications.
Jackie yawned
loudly and asked if anything exciting had happened while she rested for her
graveyard watch. It hadn’t. And so they fell into their nightly ritual of
eating bland food while “enjoying” even blander conversation.
“I miss my
cat,” Mary said as she picked at the corn on her plate, bringing up yet another
topic nobody else gave a damn about. “I hope she was able to escape my
apartment. Maybe through the window or something.”
“What was her
name?” Jackie asked as Jen made rude faces.
Mary
brightened, happy that at least someone was paying attention to her. This was
something that had rarely happened even before the apocalypse. “I called her
Little Mama. I got her a few months ago when a neighbor was getting rid of her
for peeing on the carpet.”
“And you
thought it was a good idea to take in a cat that was gonna… oh I guess I’m
wasting my breath,” Jen said.
Mary shook
her head. “You shouldn’t throw away things just because they’re not perfect.
Nobody’s perfect. Not even you.”
“Please,
screw your pity party,” Jen said as her voice rose. “If anyone should be
depressed, it’s me. I lost a fantastic life and a handsome man. What did you
lose? A cat-piss apartment and a dead-end job? Heck, you might be better off
now.”
Mary had
heard enough and decided to stick up for herself for once. “Girls like you have
picked on me my entire life, and why? Because I’m not smart or pretty like you?
Because I had to wear the same clothes to school every day? Well, you’re stuck
with me now so you’re going to have to just learn to deal with it.”
“You weren’t
exactly invited along.”
“Why are you,
you, you… being so nasty?” Mary said and began to turtle up as the all-too-familiar
feelings of suffocation crept in. It was times like this when her stuttering
made an unwelcome appearance.
“Because
you’re annoy—”
“Shut your
damned mouth and lay off her,” Jackie said, having grown tired of Jen’s
bullying. “We’ve been friends for years, pledge sisters, and you wanted me in
your wedding. But I’m telling you, shut it now or I will shut it for you.
Blake’s friends might enjoy treating each other like shit all the time, but
that’s not how I’m going to live my life. We’re better than that.”
“She’s right,
we simply must get along if we want to survive, all of us,” Padma added.