The Boat – Zombie Survivors by Chris Dougherty

Author:Chris Dougherty [Dougherty, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dougherty Books
Published: 2012-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Steve watched as a jet ski whined its way from Flyboy to Big Daddy. It was late for someone to be out, but the moon was bright enough to navigate by. It was probably Carl. Steve wondered if he’d come up with anything on that John Smith guy.

He settled back in the chair, the gun across his lap. He was getting tired. He’d have to get Brian up soon to spell him. But he didn’t entirely trust that Brian would stay awake. That kid was almost as close to catatonic as Jade had been.

When they’d told him what had happened to Singer and why they’d had to put Jade back out on the boat, he had nodded in a resolute, almost unconcerned way. He’d sat with them for an hour but didn’t speak, other than to say he thought he needed a little more sleep before stumbling back into the salon.

Steve wonders how long it will be, if ever, before anyone feels ‘normal’. As long as you kept your head down and slogged through minute by minute, it seemed you could go on forever in this half-alive way. It was when you were brought up short by strong emotion–anger, fear, joy–that you had trouble reconciling the world as it is now.

Distantly, a dog barked. Steve reached down and grabbed binoculars. They have seen dogs at the shoreline on a few occasions, but once a dog starts barking…it didn’t usually end well for it.

He scanned the beach, left to right, looking for movement and then saw it–a big dog, lab or something like it, racing across the beach. It stopped and turned, barking, then turned again to flee. Five of the dead are following; an entire contingent can’t be far behind.

He wished they could do something to save the dog. Dogs were good animals to have, good companions, happy and uncomplicated. A dog in the post-apocalyptic world would be pretty much the same as a dog pre-apocalypse. Unless it had gone feral.

He lost sight of the running lab when it dodged inland and bolted for the woods. He lowered the binoculars.

“Were you looking at Jade?”

Maggie’s voice was edged with strain. Steve turned in the chair and was troubled by her pallor and thinness; she glowed like a ghost on the dark deck. She wasn’t doing enough to take care of herself. As much as she tried to act as though she could take or leave the people on ThreeBees, he knew that Maggie was damn close to saintly in how well she took care of them. She never put herself first. But you’d never get her to admit it.

“No,” he said. “There was another dog.”

Maggie’s eyes searched the shoreline as if she’d be able to see the dog from here. Her hands twisted together. “Did it get away?”

“As far as I could tell,” he said, erring on the side of kindness. “I didn’t see any of those…those things get him, anyway.”

She continued to stare into the dark distance, but her eyes had become unfocused.

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