Dead Calm Read online

  DEAD CALM

  By

  Jon Schafer

  Book Two of The Dead Series

  Copyright© 2013 Jon Schafer

  Cover art by David Reyes, but you know him on Fiverr as Bluecuore

  Modification for the paperback edition by Jon Schafer

  For Catface, Rocky, Kaiser, Kasey and Jaz.

  Acknowledgments:

  I want to thank my brother Steve and my friend Patti Mercier for all their hard work. Susan Herkness for deciphering my writing and putting it in a format that you all can read. If you’re looking for a good editor, you can find her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/susan.herkness. Thanks to Orlando Fernandez for his first read of this book and a special thanks to Mac and Brat for their typing skills.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Visit Jon Schafer's website at http://www.jonscatbooks.com/

  or find him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jon.schafer.94

  Watch the promo video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOiSCF9QbWY

  Dead Calm: A condition of no wind according to the Beaufort scale.

  Chapter One

  The Gulf of Mexico:

  Steve Wendell woke with a start.

  Jolting upward, he cursed as he banged his head against the low ceiling and fell back onto the mattress. Rubbing the knot already swelling on his forehead, he swung his legs out from under the blanket and placed them on the deck before cautiously trying again. Once upright, his eyes focused on the wall of the small cabin, the dream that woke him rushed, unbidden, into his mind.

  Dead, decaying arms reached up from the depths of the clear blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, grabbing and clawing at the hull of a sailboat. The hands dragged along its length, causing it to stop dead in the water. His sailboat, their sailboat, the sailboat named “The Usual Suspects”, that he and his fellow survivors took after fleeing the city of Clearwater and the flesh eating dead that populated it. Shaking off the residual images of the nightmare, he pulled on a pair of cut off jeans and his tennis shoes before slowly standing. Although the 48-foot sailboat they had taken was spacious enough for the seven people who escaped the city of the dead, the cabin he and Heather shared in the bow had a slanted overhead, which he always seemed to be hitting his head on.

  Stooping slightly, he navigated around a cardboard box half filled with MREs salvaged from a National Guard MRAP after its crew had been killed and eaten. Opening the door, not a door he reminded himself (Tick-Tock told them to call it a hatch), he entered the main sleeping compartment. Bunk beds were set into the walls on each side of this area to create a corridor with a long table set in the middle. In the dim glow of a night-light, he could see that four of the beds were occupied.

  Steve quietly made his way past the sleeping forms and let himself through the hatch at the far end. Entering the next compartment, he glanced with longing at the small, enclosed shower. He would have liked nothing better than to sit under its spray and soap off the salt and grime caked on his body but, since water was at a premium, this was not to be. Running along the left bulkhead was the galley. He approached the stove and removed the coffee pot from the brackets. He poured a mug and quickly downed the tepid brew. Grimacing at the hours old coffee, he muttered, “Not recommended to be taken internally except in an extreme caffeine emergency.”

  Glancing at his watch, he saw it was a little past five AM. Knowing the others would be awake soon, he poured more water from their dwindling supply into the container and added grounds to make a fresh pot. Re-securing it in its brackets, he adjusted the gas flame to the lowest setting before moving to the ladder leading to the cockpit.

  Above him, he could hear Tick-Tock say something and Heather laugh in reply. He paused as he considered the one good thing to come from having the dead walk the earth.

  Heather.

  A Pinellas County Sheriff’s Deputy, she had been working part time at a bowling alley to help pay off her student loans when Steve met her. Although both were in a relationship at the time, they found themselves attracted to each other. They drew even closer when the HWNW virus loosed itself on the world, killing off its victims before bringing them back to life to feed on the living. It seemed like they'd just found each other though, when the disease split them apart.

  On the night the dead raised up to challenge the living for possession of the Tampa Bay area, Steve went in search of his current girlfriend, Ginny. She had not taken the growing threat of the HWNW virus seriously and had gone out bar hopping with friends in Tampa. Steve hoped he could bring her to the safe area he had prepared in the Garnett Bank Building where he managed a radio station, He had spent the previous days securing the high rise building and had stockpiled supplies to help them survive the expected waves of walking dead. After searching for Ginny, and with no other way to find her, he retreated to the safety of the bank building.

  Meanwhile, Heather had been called into duty by the Sherriff’s department to help repel the hordes of flesh eating dead that had clawed their way out of the sewers and storm drains running beneath Pinellas County. She fought side by side with her fellow law enforcement officers, but they became overwhelmed by the rapidly growing number of flesh eaters and were pushed back into a small pocket near the St. Petersburg pier. When the Sheriff saw that the situation had deteriorated beyond anything his deputies could be expected to deal with, he released them from their duties so they could find shelter wherever they could. Although the pier itself was a safe area, to Heather shelter meant joining up with Steve who was four cities and dozens of miles away.

  Since the living dead now populated the route overland, she set out alone in a small, open boat.

  After navigating her way around the peninsula that forms Pinellas County, Heather crept on foot through the city of Clearwater, which was now filled with tens of thousands of zombies. She made her way as far as a rooftop across from the Garnett Bank Building and managed to signal Steve. With the help of the other survivors holed up with him, he succeeded in getting her to the relative safety of the high rise. Once reunited, they rarely left each other's side.

  Both had failed in their endeavors, but not from lack of doing everything in their power.

  Climbing the ladder, Steve poked his head up through the hatch and looked around the darkened cockpit of the sailboat. Heather spotted him and motioned for him to sit by her. Tick-Tock gave him a thumbs-up from where he lounged in a captain's chair behind the wheel.

  The dark silence of the calm night made Heather speak just above a whisper as she said with a laugh, “Tick-Tock is one warped individual, where did you ever dig him up?”

  Steve smiled and shrugged as he settled into his seat. Tick-Tock had been working as one of the disc jockeys at the radio station he managed. In need of people with special skills, he invited the man to join him along with some of the others who worked there. As a former Marine and part-time adventure seeker, Tick-Tock quickly became his number two, making himself indispensible in helping to secure their position.

  And, in the end, trying to defend it.

  The end had come when, after months of living in relative security, the dead breached their defenses and flooded the building. It had been Tick-Tock who slowed the initial assault and helped buy them time to evacuate. But even before that, when Marcia and Heather had discovered a ten year old girl hiding in the building who appeared to be immune to the HWNW virus, it had been Tick-Tock’s idea to use a sailboat to take her to one of the military bases that dotted the Florida coastline. It was everyone's hope that th
e child might hold the cure for the disease of the dead.

  Looking at the endless expanse of flat, dark water around them, Steve asked, “Seen anything?”

  “Couple of dolphins,” Tick-Tock answered, “besides that, nothing. No boats, no planes, not even a mermaid to keep me company.”

  Heather spoke up, “I didn't see anything on my watch either. I crashed out for a while when Tick-Tock took over and just came up here a few minutes ago to get some fresh air.”

  Steve found his unease at the situation growing. He had been hopeful that during the night, when lights stood out better, one of them would spot another craft. Their situation was getting desperate as their food and water was depleted. If something didn’t happen soon, they would have to take drastic action.

  The small group of survivors had set out over a week ago from Clearwater, their destination being the naval base in Key West. Everything was going smoothly until they reached a point just south of Fort Myers. Here, their original plan to follow the coast was frustrated by a late season storm that came up and blew them out into the Gulf. They were tossed around for two days before the storm passed and then found themselves becalmed in its wake. For five days now there had barely been the slightest breeze to propel the or even cause a ripple on the water's surface.

  Although they had a small engine in the stern of the sailboat, their fuel supply was limited to what they had on board. Until they could determine their position, they couldn't afford to waste it by heading in an arbitrary direction. If the storm had blown them too far to the south and they headed east to where there should be land, they might end up going through the Florida Straits and out into the Atlantic Ocean. Or they might have been blown near the coast of Mexico or Texas and would then be heading in the wrong direction if they went east. Despite the mystery of their location, they decided to let the slight breeze that occasionally came up take them in an easterly direction in the hope they could reacquire the Florida coast.

  “Still nothing on the GPS?” Steve asked Heather, whose job it was to monitor the device.

  “It locks onto a signal every few hours but loses it before the coordinates come through,” she replied. “Brain looked at it again and said it's not the electronics. Everything checks out. He thinks it's got to be a problem with the satellites, so there's nothing we can do about it.”

  Steve nodded. Brain had been an engineer at the radio station and their tech guru.

  Turning to Tick-Tock, he stated the obvious, “And still no wind.”

  Tick-Tock pointed to the slack sails in response. “Just barely making headway.”

  “Still heading east?” he asked.

  Tick-Tock nodded in reply and then asked, “How are we doing on food and water?”

  Steve sighed, “Food for another week, but we’ve only got enough water for three days if we stretch it. The inboard water tank is down to just a few gallons. Then all we have left is the water we brought with us. After we finish this pot of coffee, I’m going to put a restriction on who can drink it to only those on wheel watch. If we don't spot anything by tonight, we’re going to have to crank up the engine and risk heading east. We can go without food for about three weeks if we have to, but without water we won't last two or three days.”

  “When you caught Mary taking a shower, you should have thrown her worthless ass overboard,” Tick-Tock said.

  Steve nodded. His chief detractor was Mary Oliver. The former morning show host had only been included in Steve's plan to take refuge in the radio station because her brother owned it. In her quest for self-gratification, she ignored everybody's needs except her own. Now, like it or not, she was part of the group and was expected to pull her own weight. Steve had major doubts this would ever happen.

  Heather laughed harshly. “I still can't believe what she said when you caught her.” In a high-pitched mimic of Mary's voice she said, “But I'm not drinking it, I’m washing up.”

  “If living, breathing human beings weren't in such short supply right now, I'd have cut her up and used her for shark bait,” Steve replied.

  A slight breeze rattled the sails, raising their hopes, but both died as quickly as they came up.

  Noise from below caught their attention, so Heather bent down into the hatch to see who it was. Straightening, she said, “Susan and Cindy.”

  Susan had come along with Mary when Steve locked down the Garnett Bank Building. The two were a couple until Susan started to gravitate to Tick-Tock. Not wanting a jealous love triangle while they were living in such restricted quarters, Steve brought the situation out into the open the night they sailed. He made the three of them promise to back off from one another, no fucking or fighting, until they were once again on dry land.

  A small voice called up through the open hatch to wish all of them a good morning.

  It was Cindy, the group's hope for a cure. After her little brother, who was infected with the HWNW virus, bit her, Cindy's immune system fought off the disease. The day before the dead broke into the Garnett Bank Building, Heather and Marcia had come across the little girl hiding in some unused offices. After they saw the half-healed bite marks on her arm and came to the conclusion that she was immune, they laid plans to take her somewhere so that she could be studied and a cure found.

  The three returned Cindy's greeting and then fell into a restless silence until Susan appeared carrying a tray with mugs of coffee on it. After passing these around, she took a seat on the far side of the cockpit from Tick-Tock. Since Steve's meeting about their back-and-forth relationship, she went out of her way to avoid both Tick-Tock and Mary.

  False dawn came and went with the four of them sipping coffee as the boat drifted in an easterly direction. Steve, Heather and Tick-Tock tried to keep as much of the deteriorating situation to themselves as they could, but the group's state was readily apparent to Susan and Brain. Only Cindy and Mary seemed unaware of the danger they faced.

  As dawn broke, Heather pointed to the Northeast and said, “Cloud on the horizon, maybe we'll pick up some wind or it'll rain and we can get some fresh water.”

  Steve squinted in that direction and felt his hopes rise at seeing the faint distant smudge. In the days since the storm had passed, the sky had been cloudless and blue, so this was a very welcome sight. They desperately needed some wind. If it didn't kick in by nightfall, they would have to crank up the engine and take their chances heading east. He knew if they ran out of fuel before they reached land they were in deep shit, but it seemed their options were getting more limited as time went by.

  Feeling the discouraged mood of the group, Susan stood to go below and see what Cindy was up to. She had set the little girl to picking out breakfast MRE's from their dwindling supply and promised to let her help put them together into some semblance of food.

  As she moved to the hatch, she heard the sound of small feet pounding up the ladder, which could only belong to one person. Stepping aside and turning to her left to give Cindy room to pass, her eyes locked on the small smudge in the distance. Remembering when she was little how she used to try and find shapes in the clouds, she asked Cindy what she thought it looked like.

  Cindy studied the formless mass for a moment before saying, “Aw, that's not a cloud, Susan. It's a great big ship. You can see the smoke stack and everything.”

  Bored with the game, she turned to Heather to ask if they could go fishing later but found herself ignored as everyone in the cockpit crowded the rail to look at something. Wedging herself between Steve and Heather, she couldn't figure out what was so exciting. It was just a big boat and they already had a boat.

  Wondering if Brain was awake, she went below to see if he wanted to play Monopoly before breakfast.

  ***

  “That kid must have eyes like a hawk,” Tick-Tock said as he steered the sailboat toward the vessel in the distance. “We all looked at that ship and thought it was a cloud. Shit, I could barely even tell what it was when I scoped it out with the binoculars.”

  Steve
nodded in reply as the sailboat’s small engine pushed them at a steady pace through the flat water. After days of barely making headway, he was enjoying the breeze brought on by the motion.

  Heather agreed, “I must have looked at it a half dozen times and all I saw was a cloud.”

  Raising a pair of binoculars to his eyes, Steve said, “Morning light is tricky. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what you're looking at.” To Tick-Tock, he asked, “How big do you think she is?”

  Tick-Tock scrutinized the ship through his binoculars before replying, “Hard to tell. She's still a long way off and she was broadside to us when we first spotted her. Now we're looking at her bow on.”

  “Is it coming toward us?” Heather asked.

  “I’ll say no,” Tick-Tock answered. “Looks dead in the water. I don't see any navigation lights, and it doesn't seem to be making any headway. It could be spinning on its anchor, but there's no wind. My guess is her rudder is turned and she's spinning in the current.”

  Steve let the binoculars drop to hang from the strap around his neck and asked, “How long until we're close?”

  After judging the distance, Tick-Tock replied, “We’re only making five or six knots, so I’d say it'll take over an hour.”

  “It seems like we're moving faster,” Heather commented.

  “That’s because we’ve been sitting still for the past few days.”

  “If we’ve got an hour then we've got enough time for a war council,” Steve said. “We should go over our options.” Leaning into the open hatch, he called out, “Brain, we need you up here.”

  The engineer appeared seconds later asking, “What's up, we close to that ship yet?”

  Steve shook his head, “Not yet, I need you to steer the boat while we figure out how to handle this.”