Roxanne's Story (Book 1): Survival in the Zombie Apocalypse (27 page)

She crawled back under the door to meet Mutt still sitting outside. She petted him and said, “It’s been a good day Mutt. A repaired staff, a new dagger, what more could a girl want?” She looked down at him and he nudged her empty duffle bag. “Well OK, I didn’t get dinner but it shouldn’t be up to me to bring home the bacon every time.”

“Come on Mutt, let’s go back. I may be a new woman but I still become tired after a couple of hours. Let’s see what the men came up with. Fish maybe?”

The next morning Lucky and Roxanne were standing in the cold water at the bow of the boat ready to push Jenny into deeper water when Brandon raised the paddle wheels. Mutt was on the bow looking down at them. “I never learned to swim,” Roxanne said.

Lucky took his hands off the bow and turned to her, “Well shit, and you thought this was a good idea? How are you going to swim out to the boat if we shake it loose?”

“I’m not afraid of the water, in fact I love being around water. I know how to dog paddle. Just no one ever taught me to swim. I’ll ask Brandon to teach me,” she said.

They heard a grinding sound and then Brandon yelled out, “OK, I have the paddle wheels up. See if you can push it out.”

They were not successful using their arms to push or leaning against it so they turned to put their backs up against it and pushed together, using all the strength in their legs on the muddy lake bottom. On the third attempt they felt it budge and that gave them encouragement. The fourth attempt finally dislodged it and the boat started to float away from them.

They heard Brandon give a yell of joy and then he ran out to the bow. The boat was slowly turning as it floated away. “I’ll throw the ladder over and you can swim out.”

Roxanne waded to shore and ran ahead of Lucky on the wharf to dive in without slowing her run. At first Lucky thought that she had lied about not being able to swim since it was almost a perfect dive. Her feet were a little far apart but she dove into the water smoothly. He ran to the end of the wharf looking for her but when she came up she was already at the ladder and didn’t need help at all. Either the dive had propelled her to the ladder or she had swum underwater. He shook his head. The woman was suicidal, that’s all there was to it.

Brandon helped her up the ladder as Lucky swam out. “Damn that felt good,” she smiled, “by the way; you need to teach me how to swim.”

Brandon stepped back with a shocked expression, “Huh? You don’t know how to swim?”

“Is someone going to help me off this ladder?” Lucky yelled out. “I need some help here!” Brandon reached down and grabbed Lucky’s hand while Roxanne reached for a towel.

“Come with me to the controls Lucky,” Brandon said and the two of them left her alone with Mutt who was thankful to see her on board. They climbed to the bridge and Brandon steered the boat in the direction away from the shore. Then he pulled a lever to lower the paddle wheels. “Just hold the wheel in this position while I go below to turn the axle. It may give a jerk so be steady on your feet. I’ll give Roxanne a heads up to sit down.”

Roxanne sat on one of the benches as she was told and held Matt to her so he wouldn’t stumble. After a short time they heard the grind of metal and the boat gave a lurch as the paddle wheels attempted to start and then stopped again. She wanted Brandon to have success since he wanted this so badly. It had given him new life, a purpose, a goal other than to stay alive one more day. The wheels ran longer the second time and Lucky concentrated on keeping the boat away from shore and the wharf.

The third attempt was a charm and the wheels continued to run at a steady pace. Brandon appeared on deck with a big smile on his face, grabbed her hands and began dancing her around while singing a tune that she was not familiar with.

“Brandon, get your ass up here,” Lucky yelled out. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

Roxanne leaned down and petted Mutt as Brandon climbed to the controls. “It’s a new adventure Mutt,” she whispered.

Brandon was having that dream again, the nightmare of letting people die as he grabbed their supplies and ran. The three of them had been running for a month, always having to change their course because of herds, never having more than a couple of hours of sleep and moving on again. They hadn’t eaten for three days and their bodies were starting to break down, constantly burning off fat and muscle that was so desperately needed to continue on. Ammo had quickly been depleted although they still carried the empty weapons hoping that they would find another supply somewhere.

They heard the screams and ran to the end of a forest to see a family of four fighting off a small group of Ze’s. Roxanne had risen from her crouch to run out and help when Lucky grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “No, there’s too many of them. We can’t help, but see where they dropped their duffle bags? They’re on the edge of the circle of Ze’s. I think we can make a sprint past them, grab the bags while still on the run and just keep going.”

Brandon and Roxanne looked at each other. “But Lucky,” Brandon said, “that isn’t us, preying on other people. There are four of them, three of us and ten zombies. With their help we should be able to handle this.”

Lucky shook his head, “You’ve calculated wrong. There are three of us and ten zombies which makes us outnumbered. They’re clueless as to how to fight and we can’t feed ourselves so how are we going to feed them. If you’re not with me then circle around, but I’m making a run for it and will get at least one bag, maybe two if I’m lucky.”

In the end Brandon had followed Lucky but the look of hope and joy in the eyes of the people when they spotted him had always haunted him and it is those pleading eyes that he couldn’t escape. It seemed as if he couldn’t put enough distance between them to drown out the screams of their dying. They had finally stopped running when they ran out of breath and waited for Roxanne to catch up. They expected for her to have circled and would find them from another direction but she showed up carrying a duffle bag. Brandon always thought that she had stayed in the brush still trying to calculate how one person could save four people against ten Ze’s and had stayed so long that the four were finally attacked and consumed. Only then did she leave her place and run out to grab a bag since it was the only option left to her after having waited too long.

Brandon woke up with a start and in a sweat although the nights were becoming cold. He was out of breath as if he had been running and sat on the edge of the bunk with his head in his hands. Once he was able to breath normal again he got up and went out on deck to see Lucky standing against the railing looking out to shore.

Lucky turned as he heard footsteps and asked, “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No,” Brandon shook his head.

“Seems I can’t sleep anymore unless I get drunk,” Lucky turned back to look out over the water.

“Yeah, I noticed that Roxanne has started to carry a bottle to bed with her,” Brandon said. A sigh escaped him. “Do you think we’ll ever forget being on the run like that and the things that we were forced to do to stay alive?

“No,” Lucky said. “We will never forget we just need to learn how to live with it. We…..I made a lot of mistakes which people do when they haven’t slept for days or haven’t eaten. I knew the condition existed, but always thought I was better than that and could overcome any hardship forced on me and would still make the right decision. I was even trained for it. I guess the difference is that in training you know it will end and you will get to sleep, you will be fed. But experiencing it in real life,” he shook his head, “I fell into the same pitfalls that they warned us against.”

“You kept us alive Lucky, don’t beat yourself up. It’s a new life out there that we are going toward.”

“No it isn’t, Brandon,” Lucky turned to face him and leaned against the rail. “It’s just more of the same out there, just in a different place. More Ze’s, more gangs……” he trailed off thinking of the gangs they met on the road and using Roxanne as a decoy. “I didn’t keep us alive, Roxanne did with her hunting and Mutt kept Roxanne alive. I failed miserably and lost her. She will never want me to touch her again and I don’t feel worthy enough to even attempt it.”

“Give it time. She needs to heal. The situation changed all of us, showed a different side of us that we didn’t know existed. Brought out the worst in us and we were shocked by it. None of us know who the hell we are now.”

“Before this did you think that Roxanne had a black heart?” Lucky asked.

“Good God no,” Brandon replied.

“Well I did. I saw how she killed KC and Ed; saw the ruthlessness of the method she used. And like a stupid man I thought only I could penetrate that blackness to receive the goodness in her. That was my mistake in thinking that I could throw anything at her during the last three months and she could endure it. Turns out, she didn’t have a black heart at all until I created one for her.

“We need to find a dingy or a row boat,” Brandon said while at the helm. He hadn’t thought this part out, of how to reach the residences on the shore so they could do a supply run. Most wharves outside the houses were short and in shallow water and he was afraid of running the boat aground. They had found a raft on board but it was a flimsy thing and wouldn’t hold much. Lucky and Roxanne used it to row out to a house and once it was loaded they would swim along the side of the raft to bring it back to the boat but it was exhausting work, especially for Roxanne who was still learning to swim. Mutt would always go ballistic watching Roxanne leave the ship, constantly pacing and whining until he would see her emerge from a building again.

Lucky climbed the ladder and then leaned over as Roxanne handed him the few items they had found at the house. Candles, blankets because the nights were getting cold, extra sweaters and some canned goods. But Roxanne had been ecstatic when she found a case of dog food and almost tipped the raft trying to bring it back. She couldn’t lift it up to Lucky without losing her balance so she handed him a couple of cans at a time.

They had dried off and gone to the helm with Brandan when he made the remark about a dingy. “Why don’t we start skipping houses and just keep going” Lucky said. “See if we can find a marina or perhaps a rowboat that is on a lift on dry land. Or, a larger estate that has a boat house. Maybe a small boat will be in the rafters that we can use.”

He turned to Brandon, “We’re still in this channel. The water is too smooth to be going anywhere major like a commercial area. Are you afraid of being able to handle it on a river that has a strong current?”

“Yes I am,” Brandon answered. “But that won’t stop me. I will need to face it sooner or later and I have gotten some practice under my belt. Don’t know what we’ll meet though so in the beginning I suggest we all wear life jackets. I’ve heard that the Mississippi can be a vicious river at times. Don’t know about the Tennessee River. Hell, for all we know we may be approaching the Ohio River.”

“Alright, then let’s just keep going. There should be a marina at the end of the channel right before we enter a major waterway, regardless of what river it is. That’s where the money is for fishermen to go out on charters so there should be a marina there.”