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Feb 09, 2024

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He didn’t know how long he was in the water. He held onto the log until he couldn’t feel his legs from the numbing cold, and when his hands began to slip off the water-soaked log, he wrapped his arms around it tight and did his best imitation of a kick to reach the shore.

He should have gone for the Arkansas side, but the Mississippi side was closer, and he wasn’t sure he could make it all the way across.

There was a monument on the riverfront in Memphis to a man who rowed out in a shallow boat to save dozens of passengers from a sinking steamboat and lost his life in the process.

He could have used his help as the cold sapped his strength and energy. He could feel sleep stealing up on him and knew that if he closed his eyes, he’d drown.

But then his feet hit something, and he began to stumble up onto a sandbar as the force of the water rushed him higher. Then he was on his knees and crawling out until he was on a high portion of the mud outcropping.

He felt like laying down and sleeping then, but some primitive part of his brain must have still been working because he shoved up and crawled on hands and knees until he reached the brush at the shoreline. He kept moving up, forcing aside the kudzu planted there to prevent erosion, and crawling all the way to the top of the riverbank, twenty or thirty feet above the water.

Luck was with him then, because if the crumbling shore had given way and sent him back down, he didn’t know if he would have made it up again.

He rested at the top for a few moments that stretched into thirty minutes and must have napped because he jumped awake with a shock. He was too exposed out here, ready prey for any Z that wandered up.

He reached around and felt his backside to check on the bullet wound there. His numb fingers didn’t go into any holes, but there was a long bloody gash that split the skin open. He’d need to pack it and give it some attention later, but he didn’t have lead rattling around in his bottom, so that was a plus.

He moved into a squat and stood up, let the dizziness wash over him and threw up what felt like a gallon of river water, still brown and dirty. It left an oily taste in his mouth, and that made him throw up again.

Just marking his territory.

But after the second round of vomiting, he felt a little better and stumbled through the woods away from the water.

The General and his men would be looking for him, and checking downriver, and if they had set a trap for him in Memphis, then he would assume he’d head for the next bridge in Greenville.

He had to figure out how he knew he was going to Arkansas, though, and how he knew to lay in wait on the 55 Junction.

He’d need food so he could think clearly, and a weapon to replace the one he lost. Weapon. Food. Shelter.

It was like a damn mantra in the post Z world. Food could come before a weapon, but those were priorities.

He kept limping through the woods, using the trees for balance. His wet clothes were making him shiver, and he added fire to the list of things he wanted. He wanted it before food and before a weapon, but that was just the spoiled civilized part of him trying to complain.

Pain was inevitable.

Suffering optional.

He had run a couple of hundred-mile ultramarathon’s each year before the Z apocalypse. They were an exercise in distraction, a meditation in pain management. One was in Chattanooga TN on a New Year’s Day one year. The day started out clear and cold and rapidly devolved into thunderstorms that soaked everyone to the skin and turned three miles of the course into a slog through a flood swollen creek. The drop in temperatures made hypothermia a foregone conclusion for everyone, and hot soup at the aid stations a necessary survival tool.

But it was cold between aid stations. Wet cold that coated sore muscles and leeched into the bones so that you were left to wonder if there was ever such a thing as warmth, or if you would ever have that feeling again.

He felt like that now.

He couldn’t feel his toes or feet, just numb slabs of meat he kept propelling forward. His fingers were curled into fists, unable to move from the claw-like pose locked in the joints. His hips ached, but at least they had feeling. Everything else just was numb, so numb even the shivering had stopped.

He kept moving forward, head almost down and knew he was going to be in trouble if he didn’t find something soon.

And then he did.

A fishing trailer set back from a cleared acre to the shore. Empty. Boarded up, so it might be abandoned.

It was a single-wide model from the '70s, covered in black grime from years of exposure, an empty wooden carport at one end of the porch. There was a boat under a second carport, a fourteen-foot metal long john with expired registration from a year ago.

So, it wasn’t completely abandoned, just unused before the Zombies hit, and not since then.

He sent up another silent prayer and angled his stumble toward the front door. He almost didn’t see the Z.

It came around the edge of the trailer and lurched straight at him, almost a mimic of his lurch toward it.

He moaned.

It moaned.

Then they collided and fell together, its jaws snapping for his neck and face, his clawed hands shoving back against its chin, fingers just millimeters away from its slavering teeth.

Hands grabbed at the wet clothes and tried to dig through the swollen canvas material. He struggled to move, to get on top, to roll over and away, but his slow brain couldn’t get his slower muscles to respond.

The Z pressed closer.

He shoved his clawed fist into its chin and pushed. He pushed until its head bowed back from the taut rotten cords in its neck, and he shoved even harder, until something cracked, and it stopped chomping, stopped biting, and he kept pushing until the head popped off and warm goo sprayed over his hands.

Then he rolled over, dry-heaved, and tried to wipe off the gore in the black leaves.

He realized he was crying, wondered when that started and forced himself up to the trailer. There was a padlock on the door, and he lifted one of the cinder blocks being used as a step and used it to smash the lock open. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t pretty, and he dropped it twice in the attempt.

But finally, the door swung open, and even through his river water-stuffed nose, he could smell the Z stink on his hands and sleeves. He couldn’t take that in the room with him and suffer through it all night.

He turned and shuffled back toward the river, remembered to double-check his surroundings for more Z only after he reached the water, but it was safe for the moment. He splashed the cold water over his hands and sleeves, removing as much of the gunk as he could and hustled back to the trailer as fast as he could.

Daylight was fading, and he wanted to check it out before it got too dark.

There were mattresses inside in the three bedrooms, and water in the tanks on each toilet. There were stale clean towels in a linen closet, along with old blankets that looked like they were just waiting for the owners to show up for a long weekend of fishing.

No weapons except for a fillet knife and fishing gear with a firestarter, and the cabinets were bare of food. Until he reached the one above the fridge.

He didn’t hold out much hope because people don’t keep food in that cabinet, not always or often. It was usually stuffed with appliances or dishes that were only used on special occasions.

But this fisherman’s trailer had an unopened box of saltine crackers, three cans of carrots, two cans of peas, and two cans of cranberry sauce. It was a veritable Thanksgiving feast.

He piled it all in the living room, then stepped outside. There was an overturned metal pan, like an old-fashioned wash bucket next to the boat. He’d check out the boat in the morning when the sunlight would give him the best view.

Right now, he just moved the bucket into the middle of the living room floor, gathered a lot of wood from around the trailer and stacked it inside and beside the bucket.

He shut the door, blocked it with the overturned kitchen table, and stripped off his clothes. He built a small blazing fire in the bucket, and when he was warm, hung the clothes across the shower bar that he moved next to the fire.

He sat naked in front of the flames, and cooked the carrots and peas into a soup, drank it all, ate a package of saltines with a can of cranberry sauce, and wrapped himself in a nest of towels and blankets to sleep, fillet knife close at hand.

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