End of the Line (Book 2): Stuck in the Middle (15 page)

Dave grumbled but he knew I was right. I heard him stomp off. I didn’t care
if he was still mad. I watched the water and saw choppy high waves from the wind.

“Jim,” I heard Manny besides me. “We’re ready to go, get in the car.”

I didn’t follow him. Instead I got out my binoculars and watched the water. I looked first at the
Renewal
. I saw Tanya with binoculars looking at me. She waved, I waved back. Grace was next to her, rifle out, probably annoyed over getting her hair wet, and ready to hit Brian when he got into range.

I d
idn’t think she would need to. Brian wasn’t doing well. Wave after wave went over the boat. Finally about halfway there, he stopped. It looked like he stalled and was trying to restart the engine, but as he was standing up, a wave went over and knocked him out of the dinghy. The boat turned over.

“He capsized the boat.”

Manny didn’t respond. I continued watching. The rain soaked my coat as it became torrential. I wanted to see if he would get on the upside down boat, but after five minutes I saw nothing. I looked back at Tanya and Grace. Grace still had the rifle out, waiting to see if Brian came out of the water. He didn’t.

“Let’s go, Jim, you’re soaked to the skin.”

“I think he drowned.”

“We can only hope.”

“Why did you give him a gun?” I asked. Manny looked startled. I looked him over, his shaggy uniform, his unkempt hair, his gaunt look and felt bad. I’m sure I didn’t look like an Adonis, but when I viewed myself in the mirror, I looked healthy. I realized I had been spoiled with having enough to eat at Costking.

“Look at these people Jim, they were set in their ways before this happened. They want
ed people to protect them. Those people went away with Joel. I was the only one left and stretched thin. Brian was the only one willing to accept the responsibility.”

Chapter 10

I thought about Justin on the way back to the airport, how he survived everything only to be killed no
t by a zombie but another person. I worried about Gwen who said nothing afterwards. Even with her upbeat personality, this had to be devastating. She had lived with Justin for the last year and a half. What was I going to tell Felix and Randy? This was the first death I’d had to deal with since last September when Rachel committed suicide. I still replayed it in my head watching her pull the trigger and not being able to get to her in time. I don’t know if she would have shot me if I rushed her. I always wondered if I should. I lost my two closest friends that day but no one comforted me. What Eric said hurt me. I wasn’t Maddie’s son but I felt close to her and she looked after me like I was her own.

I had to get my mind off it. Justin was dead. The issue now was to find a way to contact the
Renewal
.

Manny drove the car while I sat beside him. Two people from the camp,
both in their late thirties a banker named Paul and a housewife named Rose sat behind us. Dave and Gwen drove the other car. A woman named Joan and her husband Carl drove the third along with the three remaining children. 

“Do you have a CB back at the airport?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice low. Maybe I shouldn’t have yelled at him. He couldn’t have known Brian would go crazy. “We have two way radios but I don’t know if the batteries work.”

We passed an old zombie on the way back. Walking slowly in the rain.

No one stopped to kill it. Instead, Manny hit it with the car. I held on the door handle for dear life, shuttering as he hit it. It went flying to the roadside, hopefully dead but probably not.

“Are you alright, Jim?”

Cut off from my family and the boat, the answer would be no, but instead I said, “I’ll survive.”

No zombies waited for us at the airport. The broken door and dead limo driver were still there, but I didn’t see zombies inside.

Instead of pulling into the front, Manny pulled to the back of the airport next to the collapsed fence. It was a few doors from the locked one we tried yesterday. If someone got through this door, alarms would go off. We didn’t have this problem. No security, no electricity, no planes to hijack but I knew from yesterday it was locked. I assumed Manny had the key.

He
got out of the car, went to the door and opened it without a key. For some reason this was the funniest thing in the world and I started laughing. I probably freaked out Paul and Rose but they didn’t say anything.

Manny looked into the door and motioned us to come in. He looked nervous. I got
out, getting a soaking in the rain as I looked for zombies and made a mad dash to the door.

The door led to a backroom but not to the airport proper but the emptied out concession stores inside. The sign for a place called the Doughnut Hole hung halfway off its chain. On the counter was a stack of
yellowed Wall Street Journals from two and a half years ago with a headline that the flu caused the Dow to crash.

We went back to the makeshift flophouse in the airport offices.

Felicia wasn’t surprised to see us.

“Storm?” she said as we came in. Most of us were soaked, especially me.

“Worse than that,” this came from Dave. “That nutbag Brian killed Justin and stole the dinghy.”

No hint of emotion crossed Felicia’s face. I didn’t know her as well as Rachel, but I knew that look. When you get so desensitized, nothing matters. I never want to become that. She said nothing and offered no apologies.

“We have to search to see if we can find a radio to contact the ship.”

Manny vanished for a few minutes and returned with flashlights. Gwen was getting people settled in. She looked at me for a moment then went back to helping
the couple with the three kids including a scared boy that looked about 8. He had been the one Brian held a gun too. I smiled at him but he still looked terrified. I wondered who took care of the orphans at the camp. I didn’t want to overburden Hannah who was already taking care of Dena, Simon and Brie although she seemed to enjoy it. I knew Mike and she lost a son. I missed Maddie a lot more now. Being a teacher she could have kept these kids focused.

I followed
Manny out of the office and back to the gates. We walked through them with no alarms or full body scanners. Next to it were a series of closed doors. Manny selected the one in the middle and opened it. It looked like a screening room. Hundreds of those gray trays you put your stuff in were stacked to the ceiling. The remaining privacy screens stood in a row in another corner. Two desks with dusty papers were in the middle of the room. Manny pulled out a key on a flashlight keychain and opened one of the desks. He pulled out two handguns.

“I left these for Felicia. Loaded, but with no extra bullets.” He handed one to me. I reluctantly took it, although Grace had often told me in the nicest w
ay she could that I should never carry a gun because I’m more likely to shoot myself. I made sure the safety was on, and I stuffed it in my jacket.

I looked over the radios in the room. All I came across were walkie
-talkies. I turned them all on to see which ones had working batteries. Most of them were dead, but some of the crackled as if the batteries were near dead. I took the batteries out of the ones that showed some life.

“Here, Jim,” Manny said handing me a multi-channeled radio. I turned it on but it was dead. I opened the back. Nine corroded double A batteries greeted me. The acid
had leaked into the unit giving it a rust color. Instead of touching them, I shook them out over a tray.

“We need five more working double A’s.” I told Manny. We searched the room, picking up radios and turning them on. I grabbed another tray and started putting good batteries in it. When I had enough I put them in, but when I turned it on, nothing happened.

“Dammit,” I said. “It’s not working.” He took the radio from me, pulled the back off and looked at the battery case.

“Some of it corroded. Let me try to scrape it off. You look for batteries that might be fresher. Maybe in the draw
ers rather than the radios.”

Manny went to the desk. I searched drawers for any batteries as the sound of scraping filled the air.

I found seven unopened packs of AA’s in a draw and breathed a sigh of relief and smiled when I saw the Costking label.

I brought the pack over to Manny.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s try it.” He opened the battery pack, and used all fresh ones in the radio. I was never so happy to hear static. I turned to the channel we used. I was sure Tanya was monitoring.

“Care
Bear to Papa Smurf come in,” Manny laughed. I repeated my greeting.

I heard a lot of static.

“We’re too far,” Manny said. “We need to get closer.”

The room had no windows but I could hear the raining pou
ring against the building.

Manny drove while I used the radio, calling out for Tanya on our frequency but only getting static. I knew we weren’t close but bad scenarios went through my head of a sinking ship, of Brian coming out from the water like Fatal Attraction. I kept talking into the radio, waiting for a response other than static.

The heavy rain made me worried about the road. Manny was going slow, avoiding potholes that showed up in the headlights but with the heavy rain and the dimming light, it was hard to see anything in front of us. 

I didn’t want to go that far because I wanted to get back to the airport before it got too dark. The rain made the sky prematurely dark grey.

“Jim,” It sounded like Tanya, her voice still static. “Are you okay?” Manny continued to drive.

“Yes it’s me. Did you see what happened? Is everyone okay?”

“Don’t worry. We’re fine. This boat can take anything. We saw the guy with the gun. Who was that?” Her voice had gotten clearer so Manny pulled to the side of the road. He didn’t look at me but observed the area around us looking for zombies.

“This guy named Brian flipped. He killed Justin, but everyone else is okay. We’re at the airport.”

“We can’t get to you. Can you find another dinghy?”

“Maybe, but it might be better if we drove to a place you could dock.”

Tanya didn’t respond right away.

“Tanya?”

A moment later her voice came back. “Grace thinks we might be able to dock in the ferry slip in Greenport. Why don’t you head there?”

Greenport was on the other side of the forks. It was a two hour trip without zombies and potholes.

“It’s going to take all day. If we’re lucky,” I explained.

“Take it slowly and carefully, but don’t take any risks. You got all the time in the world. It may take us some time to get to Harbor. Call us when you get to Greenport. You keep yourself safe Jim. You’re in charge. You got it?”

“Yeah. I do.” I knew what we could do tomorrow, I could teach these people to live and to fight.

“We’re going to head to Harbor first. Drop everyone off then go to you.” I didn’t blame her as I imagined the crowded ship.

“I hope to see you soon—“

“Don’t worry,” she said and then she was gone.

“Let’s head back.”

Manny put the car into drive and made a U-turn. We were only maybe two miles from the airport. I kept my eye out for zombies but with the sun going down, the world turned into an eerie twilight.

“Tomorrow,
we have to teach your people to fight zombies.”

Manny didn’t reply. He looked straight ahead, his eyes wide.

I followed his glaze. It was a zombie, an old one, easy to take on, even though he was in the headlights, he hadn’t noticed us.

“We have to kill them all,” Manny said. “Right?”

“If we ever want to live again.”

It was creepy walking through the dark airport. I didn’t smell the dead or hear zombies. The door hadn’t been bordered up but in our absence someone had put a stack of chairs in front. It would make a racket if anything tried to get in.

I let Manny lead the way. He knocked on the office door and a woman
, who hadn’t come with us, opened it. The room was illuminated with candle light.

“What now?” I asked.

“We follow the same routine you do. Go to sleep around dark, wake up at light.” Manny took me over to where I slept the night before. Dave and Gwen were in cots close by. Both were up and eating out of cans. The light wasn’t strong enough to see the label.

I sat on the cot. The stink of food and body odor filled to the air.

“You okay?” a voice said by my bed. I knew it was Dave though I could barely see him. I explained my conversation with Tanya.

“How many people do we have?” he asked, finishing up the can. He put the empty on a table near the bed.

“Not sure. I’ll count in the morning. You should get some sleep.”

I didn’t know what time it was. It couldn’t be that late. Maybe a half hour had passed since the sun went down.

Dave pulled out something from his pack. Without a mirror he put one of those anti-snoring strips over his nose. I don’t think it worked or maybe Dave’s snoring was even louder without it.

I had some power bars with me and I didn’t feel like opening a can, so I had two as my dinner. My clothes had dried somewhat and I crashed on the cot I used last night.

Five second later Dave was snoring but I couldn’t sleep. Not because of Dave or because it was early as I usually go to sleep no later than 9. I was worried. The room was filled with snores and the overwhelming smell of body odor. A chill filled to air and I pulled a musty blanket around me. I worried about bed bugs, but I guess I could always burn my clothes.

I heard movement. In the faint lamplight, I saw it was Manny. He had changed his clothes to sweat pants. He sat next Felicia who had been lying on her bed. She got up and swung her legs over the side, but didn’t stand up. Secret love affair perhaps? Maybe that’s why he stayed when everyone went with Joel.

I shifted position so I laid facing away from them, pretending to sleep but could still hear their conversation.

“What do you want Manny?” she said. For the first time there was some emotion in her voice: annoyance.
Maybe not a love affair.

“You know what I want. You can’t stay here. All the people who aren’t coming with us—they are staying here to die.”

“Maybe that’s what I want.”

“Felicia—“

“I’m bad luck, Manny. You see the way Jim’s people are? Filled with optimism. They have good leadership. They are motivated to thrive not just survive.”

“They didn’t have what we had, no diseases, no dealing with the elderly and even so they lost half their group to the zombies and suicide--”

“Stop it,” she said, again no emotion but annoyance. “At least 60 people have died on my watch—I think it’s a good idea that I stop killing them.”

“Then pull back from leadership and let Jim and Tanya take over. Be a civilian for once.” It was nice that Manny thought I was so important. I wasn’t sure he was right.