The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight Read online

  Tick-Tock gave an evil grin and said, “Just like the dumbass tourists who used to rent boats and go flying up and down the Intracoastal Waterway. They forget that boats don’t have brakes.”

  Steve and Brain duck walked to position themselves on either side of the .50 while Tick-Tock readied the Hilti. Hefting it in his hand, he said, “I used to use one of these when I did construction. They’re nice.”

  “You’ll love that one,” Brain told him. “Ten shots almost as fast as you can pull the trigger.” Gauging the size of the boltholes in the mounting bracket at the base of the .50, he added, “Use two nails in each hole.”

  “And then duct tape it,” Heather put in.

  All three men smiled at this. The Hilti utilized a blank powder cartridge to drive a nail into wood or concrete. It would be more than enough to hold the .50 in place.

  Seeing their reaction, she added, “Laugh all you want, but duct tape will save the world.”

  Holding up his hands in surrender, Steve crawled back across the deck and retrieved the tape from the storage cubby under the steering station. While he was crouched beneath Sheila, she looked down at the back of his head only inches from her crotch and said in a voice just loud enough for him to hear, “While you’re down there…”

  Steve could only smile and shake his head as he made his way back into position. He would have to say something to her later. While she might be kidding, if Heather had heard her, it wouldn’t have been funny.

  “Kill the engine,” Tick-Tock told Sheila. “I want them coming at us as fast as possible.”

  The little motor at the back of the sailboat cut off. In the silence they could all hear the roar of the cigarette boat as it drew near. Steve wanted to risk taking a peek but restrained himself. If he were spotted, it would ruin the illusion of three females all alone and helpless at sea.

  From below, Mary’s voice called out, “Are we there yet?”

  Everyone replied at the same time, “Shut up, Mary.”

  Tick-Tock found this hilarious.

  “They’re just about in range,” Heather called out. “On the count of three, pop up and tear them a new one.”

  She started counting, “One…Two…THREE!”

  Steve and Brain hefted the .50 caliber and positioned it so its mounting bracket lay on the flat top of the transom. They had barely gotten it in place when Tick-Tock fired the first nail from the Hilti. The sharp crack of the .22 blank cartridge rang through the air as he cocked it to fire again. Setting the nails at an angle for maximum holding power, in seconds the heavy machine gun was secure. The ammo can was already attached, so Tick-Tock grabbed the slide handle, wrenched it backward and let it slam forward, chambering the first round.

  “They know something’s up,” Heather called out. “They’re turning.”

  But it was too late for the pirates. Tick-Tock triggered off the first burst even as the words left her mouth.

  The hammering noise of the .50 filled the air, causing Sheila to let out a sharp scream. Except for her, Cindy and Mary, the others had all fired the weapon and were prepared for the noise of the heavy gun. They were all good shots with it too, having had plenty of time to practice while at the radio station, but Tick-Tock was its master. Despite the pitch of the sailboat, half of his rounds struck their target.

  The men in the cigarette boat knew they were walking into a trap when they saw the heavy machine gun and three men appear from nowhere. The pilot tried to turn to the left, but at such a high rate of speed, this caused the bottom of their boat to be exposed. Ten of the heavy .50 caliber rounds smashed all the way through the hull and out the other side, as the few rounds that missed sent geysers of water shooting into the air. Chunks of fiberglass and wood flew from the craft. It shuddered visibly as it came back on an even keel and slowed, its forward momentum causing water to pour into its hull.

  Tick-Tock triggered the .50 again, this time sending eight rounds into the engine compartment. He was rewarded with a sharp crack as flames burst from the rear of the stricken boat. Oily smoke poured out as he raked the hull from bow to stern. Two figures could be seen jumping overboard seconds before the boat exploded in a ball of fire.

  His ears ringing from the noise of the .50, Tick-Tock could barely hear Steve say, “Good shooting, Tex.”

  Nodding grimly, he traversed the machine gun back and forth as he searched for another target. Nothing was in sight except for scattered, burning wreckage and the sinking hull of the modern day pirate ship.

  ***

  Brain steered The Usual Suspects through the remains of the cigarette boat. The waters of the Gulf had extinguished most of the flames, but a few pieces here and there still smoldered. A body, blackened and barely recognizable as human floated by on the right.

  “There he is,” Heather said and pointed. “I knew I saw someone jump overboard before it blew.”

  Twenty feet away, his back toward them, a man treaded water.

  “I saw two of them,” Sheila added. “Maybe the other one was the crispy critter we just passed.”

  Heather shook her head. “Whoever jumped got away before it blew. I know because I saw two people un-ass that boat. Where’s the other one so we can finish this and go?”

  Steve laughed and motioned toward a piece of hull bobbing in the water. “Or maybe it was a person and a dog.”

  Everyone looked and saw the distinct shape of a medium sized dog crouched on a large piece of floating wreckage near the man in the water. As they watched, he tried to climb up, but the dog snarled at him. Dropping back, he said, “Come on Pep. It’s me, Jimmy. There’s room for the both of us. What the hell’s gotten into you?”

  Tick-Tock laughed and said loudly, “Looks like you got a mutiny on your hands, Captain Bligh.”

  The man spun around in the water. At first his face showed fear, but it quickly turned to relief. “Thank God you came back. I wasn’t with those guys. They grabbed me off a boat a couple days ago and were using me as a deck hand. You’ve got to help me.”

  Heather exchanged a glance with Sheila and Connie. Jimmy’s voice had a distinct, reedy tone to it, one they’d recently heard before.

  Sheila looked down at him and said with contempt, “I want you to say something for me. Say, hey little chickies, I see you. Big daddy’s got something for you.”

  The relief on Jimmy’s face turned back to fear.

  “That’s what I thought,” Sheila said.

  Caught in his lie, Jimmy whined, “We were just having some fun. We weren’t gonna hurt you. I swear.”

  “Like you didn’t hurt those people we found shot in the back?” Steve asked. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d say that hurt. Didn’t look like they had too much fun either.” Pointing to two dark torpedo shapes in the clear blue water and a dorsal fin that broke the surface a dozen feet away, he said to Brain, “Get us out of here. This piece of shit can swim, if he can make it.”

  To punctuate this, Sheila flipped Jimmy the bird.

  Brain reversed the engines and was starting to back up when Tick-Tock called out, “What the hell are you doing? We can’t leave him here. Those are sharks.”

  Everyone looked at him with astonishment.

  “It’s not right,” he said as he took the wheel and steered toward Jimmy. Passing him as the man held up his hands to be rescued, Tick-Tock idled the boat next to the piece of wreckage the dog stood on and called out, “Come on, boy. Up.”

  The dog scrunched his backside and wiggled it a couple times before leaping for the sailboat. Its claws scrambled on the gunwale as Heather grabbed it by the collar and hauled it in. When it hit the deck, it found its feet and shook vigorously, spraying everyone with drops of water.

  “Cindy’s going to love you to death,” Tick-Tock said as he pushed the throttle forward.

  Heading into the setting sun, no one paid attention as Jimmy’s screams of pain and horror filled the air.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Galveston:

  The
wind shifted and they could smell Texas City and Galveston from where they had anchored offshore for the night. A thick, oily, burned smell filled the air, along with the scent of things incinerated and left to rot. Within seconds, everyone had covered their mouth and nose with a bandana or a t-shirt, but nothing could keep the stink from gagging them. Closing up the cabin and turning on the air conditioning filtered out some of the stench, but sleep was impossible. The horrific odor got so bad that their only choice was to move forward and make their way upwind or head back out into the Gulf. It was still an hour before sunrise when Steve pulled up the anchor and Tick-Tock steered The Usual Suspects through the shipping channel.

  Tick-Tock lifted his makeshift face covering and hacked up a wad of phlegm before spitting it over the side and saying, “I feel like I’m trying to breathe inside a truck muffler. There’s no smoke but that smell… Jesus, it’s enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon. The whole city must have burned.”

  Steve nodded in agreement. “Texas City was an oil town. Once a fire got going, it would have been tough to stop.”

  “No one to stop it either,” Tick-Tock said in a matter of fact way. “I remember hearing that Texas was one of the first states hit by the virus. If it was like everywhere else, then the emergency service people got wiped out first. I’m surprised it’s not still burning.”

  Pointing his binoculars toward the flat, black stretch of shore that used to be one of the most popular beaches in the world, Steve said, “Probably would be, but it looks like there’s nothing left to burn. All I can see is a seawall, and even that’s all busted up and cracked from the heat. Lots of wreckage, but I’d bet my top hat and my house cat that none of it’s standing over two feet high. When the refinery went up, it must’ve spilled burning oil and gas into the bay. The tide and the wind took over, and it flowed across to Galveston and torched everything.”

  Tick-Tock lifted his binoculars and scanned the area beyond the beach, “Looks like the city’s the same. I can see some twisted iron and shit, but nothing standing over two stories, and that’s just piles of rubble. There’s still a lot of gas and oil in the water, so go below and tell everyone there’s no smoking or cooking. I don’t know if the fumes are thick enough to catch fire and I don’t want to find out. We should be safe running the engine since it’s built not to throw off sparks, but with all the crap that got washed into the bay, we’re going to have to watch real close for anything floating just below the surface. I’m going to need you to grab the push pole and get out on the bow to clear the way. Last thing we need is a hole in the hull.”

  The smell of petroleum and things long burnt grew thicker as they made their way cautiously into the cut that led to Galveston Bay. The water turned rainbow colors mixed with a thick sludge that made a rainbow of swirls around the bow of The Usual Suspects as Steve pushed the occasional piece of flotsam out of their way. As they passed Pelican Island, the true devastation of Texas City became apparent.

  Blackened, twisted wreckage poked up from piles of debris. The occasional ruins of what were once buildings could be discerned, but these were few and far between. Some areas had been cleared by something that exploded, with the remains of what had stood in that spot scattered in a wide circle. Along the shoreline, little could be seen except burnt pilings jutting up from the water with the piers that they had once supported burned away. Ahead of them they could see the Texas City dike jutting out into the bay from the edge of what used to be the rail yards. Lying across it was the broken, rusted hulk of what had once been an oil tanker. From the looks of it, the huge ship had been lifted up and set down with enough force to split it almost in two on the breakwater.

  Heather came up from the cabin and stopped in shock at what she saw. Only able to spin in a slow circle as she tried to take in the utter destruction, she kept repeating, “Oh, my God!”

  Shaking her head to clear it, she joined Tick-Tock by the wheel.

  “Lots of crap in the water so you might want to slow down a little,” Steve called from the bow. Turning to see Heather, he said, “Grab the other pole and give me a hand. All the crap that got blown into the bay is jammed up here at the cut and it’s turned into a big floating mass. We’re going to have to clear a path, but it looks like once we get further in it clears up though.”

  Heather joined him and together they levered a woven mass of burned wood, plastic and unrecognizable remains out of the way. After an hour of work, Steve looked back to judge how far they had travelled so he could gauge how much longer it would take. The fumes from all the gas and oil were making him sick and he could see Heather’s face was pale. They had both thrown up repeatedly, and he knew if they didn’t get some fresh air soon they might pass out.

  Steve gazed at the path they had cleared and was reminded of pictures he’d seen of the wake left behind by an icebreaker. Using the broken oil tanker as a landmark, he estimated they would be into clear waters in about thirty minutes. Once there, they could pick up speed and get out of the polluted waters of the bay.

  As he was about to turn back, he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. He stopped to look closer at what he first thought was an arm waving to him from the midst of the debris, but it disappeared as soon as he focused on it. Shaking his head, he worried that the gas fumes were making him hallucinate as he helped Heather heave an algae covered mess of broken pallets out of the way.

  Steve waved Tick-Tock to move forward into the area they’d cleared as he put the end of his pole down onto a large chunk of fiberglass to push it out of the way. The top was slick and he couldn’t get any purchase, so he put the tip below the waterline and gave it a shove. The wreckage of what had once been part of a speedboat hull slid slowly to the left, but when he tried to bring the pole back in, he met resistance.

  He turned to Heather and said, “Tell Tick-Tock to hold up, I’m snagged on something.”

  Twisting back and forth on the pole didn’t do anything so he tried pulling again. This time it worked, but something was stuck to the end. The chunk of hull was moving away, but he must have broken off a piece of fiberglass that had gotten stuck on the hook shaped gaff. He readjusted his grip then heaved up and over his right shoulder to see what it was. A shape emerged from the dark water, and when he saw what he’d hooked, he almost fell back onto the deck.

  Blackened and covered in seaweed, the zombie had both hands wrapped in a death grip on the pole. Its burned face grinned up at Steve and Heather in a rictus of fury as it let out a high pitched keening noise at the sight of food. Its nose and ears were gone, revealing gaping holes in its skull. With its lids burned or rotted away, its eyeballs looked huge. Water poured from its mouth as it gnashed its teeth and whipped its body back and forth, almost pulling Steve into the water.

  He tried to push the end of the pole into the thing’s face, hoping to knock it off, but the Z’s grip was so strong that it only moved a few inches and stopped short of contact. He was about to rear back to give himself more room for a forward thrust when Heather’s pole shot forward like a spear, its end punching through the Z’s eye socket and rocking its head back. From behind them they could hear Tick-Tock yell for Brain to get his ass up on deck.

  Heather shook the now dead Z off the end of her push pole and called out, “We’re good. We don’t need Brain. We got this.”

  “You may have that,” Tick-Tock said, and then pointed to their left adding, “but you don’t have that.”

  Looking to the port side of the boat, Heather and Steve saw what Tick-Tock meant. The pass was bottlenecked by the enormous amount of debris that had been pushed into the Gulf of Mexico. It created an interlocking surface on which thousands of the dead were now staggering and crawling across. Some were burned and charred like the hitchhiker they’d just sent to the bottom of the bay, but most seemed intact except for wounds and gouges leaking putrid, black puss. A few were clothed but most were naked, their clothing worn out or torn off since they were turned into the walking dead months a
go.

  As Heather watched, one of the Z’s fell between a gap in the flotsam and disappeared. Another’s leg dropped into a hole and staggered it. Extracting itself, it crawled along until it could regain its feet, ever moving toward its food. Looking beyond at the shoreline, she could see thousands more dead emerging from the destruction that had been Texas City.

  Coming on deck, Brain took one look at the mass of dead flesh approaching and uttered, “We are so screwed.”

  “Not yet we’re not. Take the wheel.” Tick-Tock shot back at him as he picked up his M-and called out toward the bow, “Steve…”

  “I’m already on it,” Steve replied, even as he and Heather started attacking the flow of trash that locked them in place. They worked with frenzied speed, managing to clear a path that kept The Usual Suspects moving forward at a slow but steady pace.

  But the approaching wave of dead was faster.

  Tick-Tock opened fire, taking out the closest of the Z’s. More were coming at them from the shoreline ahead and to their left, so he called for Sheila and Connie. If the dead got in front of them, they’d be cut off. The three of them took up positions on the bow and started picking off the dead. Heather had taught everyone to shoot, but with the amount of fire being poured into the wall of zombified flesh, Connie soon had her hands full just keeping their magazines loaded. Pep followed the women up and raced around the deck. As if knowing what they were trying to do, he pointed his body in the direction of the nearest creature and barked at it until someone shot it through the head.

  With only a thin wedge of debris standing between them and safety, Steve could see they were close to open water and safety. There were still a few of the dead in position to cut them off, but Sheila and Tick-Tock made short work of them. Steve turned toward Brain to tell him they were almost there, but his words caught in his throat.

  They had been concentrating so hard on what was in front of them, they had neglected to keep an eye on the dead approaching from their left rear quarter.