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

  “Dumbass,” Tick-Tock said under his breath, gaining a smile from Denise.

  “And now the ship is sinking,” she continued. “The pumps can barely keep up, and my biggest worry is that they’ll fail completely on one side and we’ll capsize. I was trying to get everyone organized so we could leave when you showed up.”

  “Why didn’t you take off before?” Steve asked.

  After studying him for a moment, she seemed to come to a decision. She didn’t want to let them know how helpless they really were, but holding up the M1, she said, “Because this is our only weapon.”

  Grasping the carbine tightly by its handgrip, she prepared herself for whatever came next. These people seemed decent, but looks could be deceiving. All three of them carried automatic weapons, and Denise knew they could take her out in a heartbeat. She might get one or two of them, but in the end she’d be dead. She felt that she could trust them, but she’d run into pirates more than once and they used all means of trickery to gain your trust. The blood of more than one still stained the deck of the ship.

  Now it might be hers, if she’d made the wrong decision.

  With a sigh, Steve pulled the two-way radio from his pocket and pushed the transmit button, “Brain, it’s Steve, over.”

  “This is Brain, over,” came from the speaker.

  “Pull up alongside and get some water ready, we’ll drop a line and hoist it on board,” Steve told him.

  There was a pause followed by Brain asking, “The one gallon or the two gallon bottles, over?”

  This was the code they’d agreed upon earlier. If Steve had a gun to his head and they were being held against their will, he would answer two gallon.

  “One gallon, over,” Steve said.

  The relief in Brain’s voice was obvious as he said, “Coming up, over and out.”

  “What about food?” Sean asked as Steve put the radio back in his pocket.

  “That isn’t part of the deal,” he replied.

  Turning to Denise, Sean said, “But it is part of our deal. If we’re all together now, then we need to share. It’s a melding of contracts. You’re the one who made the deal with them, so you need to uphold your end of it. You were feeding us before, and it’s still your responsibility.”

  Cringing at the man’s twisted logic, Steve said, “Spoken like a true politician.”

  From behind him he heard Heather say, “We can’t let them starve, but I don’t know if I want to share my food with them. Denise maybe, but the rest…”

  After a moment’s thought, Steve asked Denise, “How hard is it to find food out there?”

  “It’s not hard to scavenge. This is tornado country, so everyone’s got something put up in their pantry. There’s a lot of water stored too. When the National Guard started their forced evacuations, they only let people bring so much with them. They told everyone that food and water would be provided, so a lot got left behind.”

  Putting two and two together, Tick-Tock asked in disbelief, “You’ve been going into buildings alone?” His respect for this woman grew with every word she spoke.

  Denise nodded and said, “I didn’t have a choice. No one else would go with me, so I did little hit and run raids on the houses along the water. Go in to an area without too many of the uglies around and get in and out fast. All of the stores were wiped out in the rush to buy everything, so I didn’t even bother with them. I did find a pet store, so I brought back a bunch of cat food.”

  “You got to do what you got to do,” Tick-Tock said.

  With a laugh, Denise pointed toward Sean and his group and said, “I didn’t eat it, I gave it to them. But they were to good for cat food and would rather go hungry.”

  “What about weapons?” Steve cut in.

  “The relief centers wouldn’t allow anyone to bring firearms with them, but even so, I haven’t found any guns and only a little bit of ammunition. This is Texas, so I’m sure most people brought theirs anyway or died with them. I didn’t have a lot of time to search though, so I don’t really know. I took all the ammo I found, even if it didn’t fit in the carbine.”

  Looking at Sean and his slightly emaciated group, Steve knew that if he was going to do this, then he needed these people in good physical condition. He had no idea what lay ahead of them. They may have to walk or run.

  Raising the radio to his mouth again, he said, “Brain, you still there? Over.”

  “I’m here. Pulling up alongside right now, over,” came the reply.

  “Get a box of MRE’s ready to send up too,” he told him.

  “The out of date one?” Brain asked.

  “That’s the one, over and out,” Steve said.

  It was a compromise, but one he felt uneasy with.

  ***

  Tick-Tock turned the key of the ignition on the pontoon boat, listening with satisfaction as the engine turned over on the first try.

  Glancing at the fuel gauge, he said to Denise, “Full up.”

  She waved her hand at the storage tanks across the river and replied, “Gas has been the least of our problems.”

  He turned the key to off and then asked, “Who’s been doing the maintenance? This thing sounds like it just had a tune up.”

  “And an oil change and a new prop,” Denise added. She pointed to where Steve was walking the deck of the other pontoon, “Same thing with that one. The tug got a tune up but that was it. Everything else was good on it.”

  “Where’d you learn to do all that?” Tick-Tock asked. “Were you a boat mechanic before D-Day?”

  “My dad taught me,” she answered quietly.

  Wanting to change to what he hoped was a less painful subject, he asked, “So what did you do before?”

  With a shrug, she said, “I worked in the accounts payable department for Exxon. It was a job. What did you do?”

  “Disc jockey at a radio station,” he answered.

  “No way,” she said in disbelief and gave him an appraising look. “Prove it.”

  With a smile, he took a breath and said in his best DJ voice, “This is Tick-Tock coming to you from KLAM music radio where we play the best classic and alternative rock in Tampa Bay. Right now I’ve got a blast from the past that’s off the charts but near to our hearts.”

  Denise laughed and said, “Okay, I believe you.” Pointing to where Steve was waiting for Brain to guide the sailboat next to the pontoon so they could transfer some of their supplies, she asked, “What about them?”

  “Steve was my boss,” Tick-Tock told her. “Brain was the engineer at the station. His girlfriend Connie, we picked up on a cruise ship we came across out in the Gulf. We also picked up Sheila.”

  At this, the memory of Susan came to him and he fell silent.

  Denise asked, “Who else is with you? I like to know everyone I’m dealing with.”

  Shaking off his thoughts, Tick-Tock said, “There’s Mary, who’s been with us from the beginning, and Heather, that’s Steve’s girlfriend. You met her up on the ship.”

  Susan nodded.

  “She used to be a cop,” Tick-Tock continued.

  “Yeah, I’m not surprised. I kind of got that impression when I first saw her,” Denise said.

  “And then there’s Cindy. We found her in Clearwater, in the building we’d holed up in. As far as we know, she’s immune to the virus,” Tick-Tock told her.

  At this, Denise stopped coiling the rope in her hands and asked, “Is that really true?”

  “She was bitten a couple times by someone who was infected and she never turned,” Tick-Tock said. “That’s the only reason I’m here, instead of laid up on some island with a bottle of rum. We’re trying to contact the military so they can get her to a research facility. Maybe it’s something in her blood or spit that fights off the virus. If they can study her and find a cure,” waving his hand at a half dozen dead who wandered along the shore, he added, “maybe this will all go away.”

  Denise gave a short laugh and said, “I thought you were bullshitt
ing about that, trying to make it sound like you were on some kind of mercy mission to get our sympathy. From what I’ve seen, if you’re bitten, you’re history.” Looking thoughtful, she added, “This changes things.”

  Tick-Tock nodded and said, “Could be a whole new ball game.”

  Denise started to say something, but Steve interrupted by calling across the water, “Tick-Tock, after Brain is done here, he’s coming over to you. I need you to help him split what’s left of the food and water between your boat and the tug. It’s too late to get going today, so we’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  To Denise, he said, “We need to get everyone ready to go. Do all of your people have good boots in case we have to go on foot?”

  “Most of them do,” she called back. “Clothes have been easy to find.”

  “I want everyone to have a good pair of boots or walking shoes,” Steve told her. “If we’re going to do this, we have to be prepared for anything. They also need to have a good jacket and one change of clothes. Do all of them have a backpack?”

  “Some of them do,” she replied.

  “We need all of them to,” Steve told her.

  With a sigh, she said, “Then I need to go into the city. Don’t load this boat yet; I’ll use it to make the run. I know a place where I can get everyone outfitted and be back before dark.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Tick-Tock told her.

  She looked surprised at this, saying, “You’d do that?”

  When he nodded, she said with a laugh, “I’ve been doing everything by myself for so long that I’m afraid I won’t know how to act. Finally, a real man.”

  Tick-Tock blushed at the praise.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The San Jacinto River:

  The motor on the pontoon boat gave out a steady drone as they made their way against the current. Denise steered while Tick-Tock stood at the bow with a boat pole ready to push any trash out of the way. This had been a commercial area with a low population, so they’d seen very few of the dead. On both banks, petroleum storage sites lined the shore, filling the air with the smell of gas.

  Tick-Tock commented on this and Denise replied, “That’s another reason I want to get out of here. All we need is one lightning strike and the whole place would go up in flames. I’m surprised everything didn’t go up in the first fire. The wind was blowing hard out to sea that day, so that’s the only thing that saved us.”

  “Is that how the last one started?” Tick-Tock asked, “A lightning strike?”

  “I don’t know,” Denise answered. “I was at my condo when I heard a bunch of explosions. I went out on my balcony and could see the smoke and the flames. They must have shot up a hundred feet in the air. I tried calling some people I know in the industry to find out what was happening, but the phone lines were dead. Cell, landline, it didn’t matter. The radio and TV were still working, but they didn’t know anything. All they would say is that emergency crews were on the way to the site of the disaster.” With a hard laugh, she added, “As if the whole place wasn’t already a disaster area. Things were crazy, with reports of people eating each other and the dead coming back to life. My neighbor went out to get some baby formula and never came back. The National Guard was patrolling the streets in armored cars and shooting people in the head. They’d gather the bodies into big piles in the middle of the streets and then burn them. The smell was horrible.”

  “They were talking about all this on TV?” Tick-Tock asked.

  Denise shook her head and replied, “Only on the Internet. The TV and the radio were putting out a bunch of crap about how the situation was under control, and the government was working on a cure for the virus. They were saying that it was localized. I went website hopping and found out it was breaking out all over the world.”

  “Yeah, there was something going on with the mainstream media,” Tick-Tock agreed. “They made it sound like things were going great when all you had to do was look out your window to see they were full of shit.”

  Pointing to an H shaped dock, Denise said, “That’s where we’re going.”

  Tick-Tock studied the area. There were no boats around and only a few of the dead. They wandered aimlessly up and down the dock until they noticed the boats. Then they moved in a loping fashion to the closest point to their food. This happened to be where the dock jutted out on the right side. In their eagerness, a few stepped into the water, but most grouped together in a mob and stared at them.

  With delight, he read the sign over the building and recognized the yellow cursive writing.

  “Cabela’s,” he said in appreciation.

  “It hadn’t opened yet when everything went to hell,” Denise told him as she throttled back. “That’s why it wasn’t swarmed by people looking for gear. It’s only half stocked, but it should have everything we need. The down side is that they hadn’t delivered the guns yet. It’s all clothes and fishing and camping gear.”

  Raising his rifle, Tick-Tock said, “There’s only about ten Z’s. Not too many. I can clear them and then we can land.”

  “No,” Denise said sharply. “You fire that gun and we’ll have a shitload of them down on us. The only reason there’s just a few is because there’s a fence around the place they put up while they were building it.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Tick-Tock asked. “I take them out and we’re clear.”

  “The gate the contractors used is open,” Denise told him. “I’ve been here a couple times, but I had to sneak in and out.”

  Tick-Tock considered this, then asked, “Why don’t we just close the gate? Then we’ll have the whole place to ourselves?”

  “It’s not as easy as that,” Denise replied. “Outside the gate there’s about two or three hundred dead.”

  Not following her, Tick-Tock asked, “Why didn’t they come in?”

  “Because there’s some people holed up in a building across the street,” Denise told him. “They attract the dead. A few wander in here, but most of them just stand around waiting for someone to come out.”

  Looking at the Z’s grouped on the dock, he asked, “So how do we deal with them?”

  Pointing to a pole with a hook at one end laying on the deck, she said, “I use that. I pull them in the water and then tie up and go inside.”

  Recognizing the device from when he was a fifteen-year-old lifeguard at the YMCA, he said, “Sweet.”

  Used to pull distressed swimmers in without risking your own life, it was a sixteen-foot aluminum pole with a curved end.

  Tick-Tock picked it up and headed toward the bow when suddenly he stopped. He turned back to Denise and asked, “How did you do this when you were alone?”

  With a laugh, she replied, “Very carefully.”

  ***

  Steve entered the cabin he and Heather shared on The Usual Suspects, his feet making squishing noises. They weren’t taking on water anymore now that they were stationary, but the carpet was still soaked. Tossing his M-4 assault rifle on the bed, he flopped down next to it as his mind raced with thoughts of what he still needed to do. The boats were ready to go, with the exception of the one Tick-Tock and Denise had taken. They had decided to divide their resources between the three crafts, so if one of them ran into trouble, the others would be able to go on. He still needed to figure out how he was going to split everyone up. He definitely needed a few of his own people on each boat, not only to pilot them, but also to guard their food and water.

  Thinking back to his last interaction with Sean, he started to regret the deal he’d made with him. It seemed like every time he turned around, the man wanted more. More water, more food, more assurances that they would make it to an aid station. When they’d hoisted the MRE’s and a dozen jugs of water onto the deck, Sean’s group fell on them like a pack of wild dogs. Everyone was arguing that, because of their position on the council, they were entitled to the most. Instead of taking control of the situation, their leader was right in the middle of it, stating that since h
e was a senior member of the California legislature, he should get his first. They scrabbled and grabbed until nothing was left, then retreated to different parts of the deck to eat and drink.

  Before the first pack of MRE’s was opened though, Sean approached him and said, “That’s it? That’s all we get?”

  “For now,” Steve told him.

  “It’s not enough,” Sean told him in a slightly whiney voice. “You’re getting two boats from me.”

  Steve tried to keep the contempt he felt for the man out of his voice when he said, “And we’re going to be feeding you and giving you water until we get to an aide station. Our resources are limited, but you’ll eat twice a day and have enough water to survive. That’s the deal. As it is, we’re going to have to forage along the river in order to keep everyone alive.” Pointing to where one of the dead wandered along the quay, he added, “And there’s a whole lot more of those things out there, so it won’t be easy.”

  “But that’s your end of the deal,” Sean told him with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We make the rules and you take care of foraging and protection. As soon as we’re done eating, I’m going to make a motion that everything be split up equally. We decided a long time ago that we’re a collective, and everyone is equal. We made the rules and the regulations and Denise was our gatherer. Now, you’ve stepped into that role, so I don’t see why anything should change.”

  Tensing, Steve leaned forward and replied in a low voice, “And I can see how well that’s working out for you, but that’s not our deal. Our deal is that we take you to an aid station. It’s out of the goodness of our hearts that we’re going to supply you with enough food and water to survive. If you want more, you’ll have to do more.” He narrowed his eyes adding, “If we wanted to, we could take your boats and leave you here to rot, but we’re not like that. We’ll take you with us, feed you and give you water. Isn’t that enough?”

  “My people are a collective where everything is -.” Sean started to say.

  Steve cut him off, saying harshly, “But my people aren’t some kind of half-assed socialist circle jerk. From now on, you can look at us as capitalists where everyone benefits from their own work.”