Nuvitas Cuba, Coastline, Post-War Economic Standpoint and Shelter:
P-WESS
[The vessel is much like a typical pre-war house boat, the steel rimed plexiglas windows locked shut and two small fishing boats moored to the back, bobbing up and down in the small waves off the shore. However, that is where the similarities to a luxury liner end; the deck is more like a prison then a home, its entire perimeter surrounded by a knee-high railing supported wall of wood and the roof of the liner a small refuge of wind-worn tents the likes of which you'd find in a cheap hardware store or an old world camping site.
The small boats anchored to the side are held secure as a madman's treasure, their contents little more than soil and neurotically well tended vegetable plants.
We sit atop the roof of the house boat, settled in the deepest parts of the bay, she turns to me with a cockeyed glare; keen as a fox and from the look of it just as crazy as she lazes in her hammock.]
I was never the brightest light on the Christmas tree or the sharpest tack in the box…or even the…uh… screw I'm outta acronyms!
[She laughs, painfully unsure of herself, her eyes meeting mine for only seconds or minutes at a time.]
As soon as I heard the words "African Rabies" I was on high alert. Then when Phalanx came out, so quickly pushed through the system, I didn't trust a word of it; on the pill's box or the word on the street or even on the news.
It was a lot like the Swine-flu vaccine, piled up, pieced together and shipped out as fast as possible with little to no thought about its safety. They wanted a miracle cure even if it didn't work and damn did they get one.
Someone out there made a shit-load of money off of other peoples suffering but I'd be damned if I would be one of the sheep to the sheers.
Cattle, all of them- do you know what one of the side effects to the flu vaccine was? Guillain-Barre syndrome! Complete paralysis that might never go away!
Needless to say I completely ignored the quick fix and went about my day as though the virus where just that, some other news hype virus that would run its course through the panic.
When I first heard about the dead rising I took no stock in rumor… but the actions of the countries; to see North Korea literally vanish and the reports on Israel having instituted self quarantine; those were the eye openers. Those countries were battle ready places in constant turmoil, they wouldn't just drop shit and refocus in a manner like that for no reason; they were the ones who knew and it was then that I chose to follow suit.
My mother was a doctor and my father a government man, her knowledge was my reference and his paranoia my backbone. All of what I did came from conventional medical knowledge combined with a life-times worth of sci-fi movies and secured with a world of good old fashioned paranoia.
Five days before the great panic, I had gotten everything I needed for a stand in my already well-defensible home. Not defensible in the traditional sense but oddly convenient from a zombie pandemic point of view. I lived in the country side, the fruits of man's labor; his urban world, just at the edge of my perception… there were no big neighborhoods or cities for me to worry about and those who passed by paid me no mind; must've thought me crazy. [laughs]
[What about your loved ones? Weren't you worried about them?]
Loved ones?
[She leans in close again with a crooked smile, head tilted at an angle to rest on her folded hands.]
My mother and father had died a looooong time ago and my sister… well...I- I don't keep in touch with people very much, let alone family but… I knew worrying would do no good…
My sister is one of the few people I ever knew that I could confidently say would survive something like this; I sent her an e-mail and a phone call but my guess is she was already long gone.
[She chuckles, smiles and leans back into her hammock, swinging with the waves, contented]
I was always the lazy one of the family…
Day three of the great panic found me in my attic-turned safe haven, I'd boarded the floors, stocked supplies and even had a small battery powered radio in the corner by the pathetic little attic window; the kind that all the old-world attics seemed to have. By the time I was done, it probably looked as if my home where under construction but abandoned.
My basement became cold storage as the natural cool of the ground worked to keep things at good temperature and by the window the yard hose was hooked and the scaffolding I'd put in place worked as a wonderful little garden with a few small rain barrels as well.
So much scaffolding; had to be like adding a whole other house to my house!
…I always both loved and feared heights, ever since I was a kid; falling out of my old tree house.
So I waited, watched as the world went by; as people swarmed to the north and streets became clogged. It was all rather boring actually, I never even saw a zombie until almost four months after the first refugee waves…. But when I did…
[Her eyes meet mine again and lock onto me if only for half a minute as she listens intently to her surroundings.]
It was the walking corpse of what was once the Safeway cart boy; he was a tall balding man with the mentality of an eight or nine year old "special" child, i.e. Retarded, but at least he was a working man.
Now he was a shambling somewhat bloated creature that had achieved the unlikely prospect of being dimmer than when he was when alive.
At first, I wanted to kill it; it was wandering through my yard an uglier site then the ass end of a rat. I was sorely tempted for some action after hauling my butt up in the attic for damn near three months and I had become personal friends with my dad's old brush cutter.
[She reaches down and lazily lifts aloft a huge and heavy cracked wooden pole with a large and ugly looking rusted blade bolted to the top; it is curved and sharp, perfect for hacking through small trees or lopping off a head or two.]
I quickly dismissed the idea though, it was that line from that old movie: Sean of the dead, "-Avoid all contact with the assailants…." So I just sat up there on my scaffolding above the wandering thing and contemplated just how long it had been walking about to have eventually ended up at my house.
I watched it lurch in a sloppy half-circle and observed it- my prey just out of my reach.
What else was I gonna do? The power had gone out nearly a day ago.
I bore easily, it gets me in a lot of trouble sometimes and it sure as hell got me then, cuz that guy'd been born with a gimp leg and as a zed head he was even less coordinated so the thing fell flat on its buggered up back and ended up staring me right in the face.
[She seems as if to shiver at the memory, her grip on her polearm getting tighter.]
I stared that thing right in the eyes!
[She leans in quickly towards me, pointing from her eyes to mine and finally falling back to rest in her makeshift hammock.]
All it could do was stare at me, wriggle a bit like a fish and moan. You see, during the beginning of the infestation no one knew very much about them, personally I didn't know they could produce sound and use it like they did, I didn't think they were smart enough- and don't tell me that crap about how they're not smart because they are. How else would they know to moan? Or that moaning means food?
[She looks at me as if challenging me to interrupt her with blatant fact]
I know they're not smart but thinking they are makes it easier for me to predict them. I suppose it's not them that's smart so much as it is the infection….
[What do you mean?]
How do zombies know what's food and why do they prefer humans as food; hell, why do they feel the need to eat at all, they're dead aint they? My guess is because that's the one thing the infection needs to spread; humans. There are a few parasites that alter the behavior of the secondary host so that they can gain access to their terminal host- like that one thing that digs into an ants brain and makes it cling onto high leaves so's a bird, the terminal host, will come and eat it…
[sighs] I dunno, who does? But It never occurred to me that other zeds would come knocking cus've that- and dammit all did they come knocking!
It was obscene-o-clock in the morning when they woke me up, musta been half a dozen scratching at my house, beating my windows and trying to scrape their way up to me. Right then and there my plans fell apart, I knew just by looking at em that they were attracting even more of em, I musta been right paranoid for it but the forest in my yard felt like in was moving.
You see, there was one big reason why I stayed… I… I have an imbalance…
[She twirls her fingers idly about her forehead, embarrassed; she sighs again and resumes her story.]
I'm autistic, as you can likely tell- anyway, I need pills to keep my head in order; Fluvoxamine 150 milligrams, melatonin 3 milligrams. [The sentence seems heavily rehearsed and memorized, like a computer reiterating data to and from storage.]
Without the stuff I go straight into serotonin syndrome and it can be just as ugly as "African rabies" was… That's why I stuck close to urban civilization and probably why the Safeway cart boy zed was the first to pay me visit, I needed to stick close to the pharmacy… but that idea wasn't looking to good anymore.
I made the decision to leave then and there, I'd survived my childhood without my meds- albeit barely- and I would damn well do it again! So I made plans, I'd stick near to the forest; the pine trees with bases that are easier to climb up, the woods followed nearly all the roads of the countryside but… where would I go?
It was obvious at this point that waiting for the big guys of government to save my ass would be a stupid idea; it was obvious even before the panic… I decided to gather info, to sit and wait and not make a sound as I listened to good 'ole "radio free air"; god bless those bastards on radio free air…
I gathered every piece of data I could and made sure not to underestimate my enemy as I had done with the Safeway zed. I was hauled up for hours almost a day surrounded by an ever increasing wave of zeds just moaning and moaning- were it not for my radio and headset, I'm damn sure I'dve gone bonkers…
It was then that I garnered two lovely little pieces of knowledge, zacky boy as they called him… couldn't swim and got cold feet in winter. That affirmed my most important myths and assumptions; it told me that the masses of people headed north where going to the shores and for colder climates.
I knew then where to go and how and everything I'd need and all I had to do was reach the rivers.
The big beautiful South River, the same river I passed by every day on my way to work… at least I think that's the name of the river… I just needed to head north dammit- and I'd use the deep water to do it. Using the waterways would not only keep me out of zack's reach but if I played my cards right I could have a mobile fortress with all I would need to survive a cold winter and if I was lucky, it might also keep me safe from people.
[People?]
People; the masses of angry frightened fools that would claw their way up mountains for safety and topple em in panic, the robbers, the stupid… the infected. I could barely provide for myself let alone deal with an angry mob.
[What makes you so sure that people were dangerous?]
Look, I knew that I needed to find shelter in a populated and secure area but I also know that large amounts of desperate angry people were just as dangerous, if not more so, than zack. They carried diseases like panic and hate and sorrow and famine, at least zack could become predictable… zack didn't hold a gun to your forehead and demand all your life-savings…
[She stares blankly at me for a second before disregarding a thought and continuing her story.] Anyway, I knew just where to go, how to get there was the problem; I never had any sense of direction and I had no idea which way to go. I spent a few hours studying my map, worked out how to get to the main river system and in reference to the river and my compass I could pin-point the exact location of the fancy boat store.
Ah yes the fancy boat store… filled top to bottom with dozens of yachts of all sizes, and better yet, right next to the naval training academy!
I didn't expect to find many intact boats, let alone ones that were sea worthy but boy was I surprised when I found this old bitch! [She reaches out of her hammock and slaps her foot on the roofing of the boat beneath her.] The only problem I could see with her at the time was how low down to the water she was but that was an easy fix and as it turns out she was a pet project. I'm not sure, maybe some old navy guy had too much time on his hands and decided to navy-up the old house boat but this girl is meant to last now! [chuckles] Reinforced hull, resistant to corrosion, high rails and storm proofing [sighs] I'm sorry that whatever old fool made this beauty never got the chance to use it but… you can't dwell now than eh?
So yeah… getting there was the problem… I was packed and ready, had canned food, a few lighters, my mom's old military compact can opener thingy… lightweight blankets… extra socks and a few pairs of pants, some seeds and a flashlight and a bunch of batteries. I was waiting in my attic, zack seemed to have forgotten all about me but that didn't mean he wasn't there or that he wasn't still coming. There were a few in the yard and I knew the second they saw me they'd come straight for me, moaning out to the rest of them and I'd have one giant stream of clusterfuck heading my way after that.
So after a long few hours of assessment, waiting and watching the dawn peep over the horizon; I basically said fuck it and jumped down running with my backback on and my polearm in hand. I'd jumped down along the side of my house that was pretty bare; zack wasn't looking so I booked it. I wanted to stick to the forest but the fall leaves crunching underfoot would give me away in a heartbeat, so I hung along the bare sides of old trails and walked over the small country roads; it seemed as though no one had thought to use them as an escape route, too well hidden from frantic minds and too small and too choked… oh well, all the better for me eh?
Eventually I had found my way to the road that I was looking for, right by the bridge over one of the smaller rivers that fed the big one; I was amazed that zack hadn't spotted me but I admit… the post apocalyptic look that had come to my neighborhood was quite a sight more amazing than even my seemingly scott-free escape… looked like an old sci-fi movie threw up on the planet…damn weird…[sighs] humans can make such a mess of things…
Anyway, I followed the road, staying below the level of the car windows, I could hear a few zeds in some of the cars, I knew they must've at least felt that I was there but they couldn't see me so none of them saw fit to raise the alarm… thankfully I was on the tail end of the first wave of zeds following the first wave of refugees so it was slim pickings for zack which meant they were few but not too far in between and the bulk of them were heading away from my current position.
It had to have been at least… three or four hours of crawling and crouching through the road system before I was spotted… I was down on my hands and knees beside a red SUV when zack got smart again, the window of that bullshit car was busted and out pops zack to take a look see… an ugly fat… pig of a woman was leaning out the window, the kind of pre-war obesity that came with a scooter and a diabetic coma; she was too big to pour out of the window like she was trying to but that didn't keep her quiet.
Not five seconds later the place was an uproar, one zed after another in one looooong chain of angry moaning. Thankfully they were all stuck in their cars, a little muffled and there weren't any free wandering zeds about so I just ran along the road, to hell with stealth but the road was just one long choke point and it didn't take long for zeds to start popping out of the woods at the roadside and over the guard rails. I needed to find shelter and fast, to find a place that I could haul up and play dead till zack forgot about me; they were closing in on me from all angles now…back and front…
It was getting dark when I eventually came across a big truck with a bunch of boxes tied to the roof, I had become a great friend with my giant polearm bushwhacker by that time; I sure as hell kept it with me and it damn well came in handy but it was heavy and I was exhausted… I must've ambled miles along the roads as they turned into highways, I could barely lift my machete or my bayonet… I collect things…blades were one of the things I collected.
[I shrug to her, indicating that I have no desire to judge her for her odd hobbies, she shrugs as well.]
I climbed the latter on the side of the big rig and made camp on the roof, it was one of those cross-country haulers; I had debated maybe taking it but the roads would never've handled it.
I stared at the sky, even then my insomnia still refused to give way and zack wasn't helping either so I decided to find something to burn for a fire. I debated burning the boxes but the cardboard wouldn't last long, the rope was too useful and the surrounding cars were no help either; just a bunch of polymer suitcases surrounded by grasping hands…
I leaned over to try and open the back of the hauler but it was real heavy looking and there were zeds all over the place. I looked in the boxes but they were full of metal… but they were secured in place with rope and hooked bungee cords! I cut the rope and used the hooked bungee cords as a grabber kinda thing, I must've been fishing for a half an hour and once again zack wasn't helping! [huffs] They were reaching for it, I lost a few bungees to them but eventually I managed to hook the handle and with a good yank I triggered the automatic retraction or something- the thing that makes the door pop up easier, it popped up and I leaned over to look inside.
ZOMBIES! [she makes a series of frantic angry motions with her hands] Dozens of refugees turned zed head just poured out onto the road…great just fracking perfect I thought, just my luck, now I had another small mob of free walking zeds at my feet, must've been a couple of dozen of em! [sighs] I was about to give up, I swung my bungee cord fishing wire off the door handle and yanked it up but it turned out I'd caught something else too; a beautiful little handmade pine rocker! I suppressed a yelp of pure joy and quickly set about hacking it to bits and lit it on fire using some lighter fluid I brought and the cardboard boxes as a starter, in a few minutes I was warm and cozy and my canned soup wasn't so cold anymore; the only problem I had was the annoying moaning but I'd spent most of my life tuning out annoyances and this was no different, fell asleep in less than an hour or so, it was great.
By the time I woke up it was nearing 11:00 or noon… I dunno, my back hurt and my thighs were killing me but there was good news; apparently zack has no patients and a relatively short attention span. The moaning had stopped and oddly enough there wasn't a zed in sight, which was pretty damn far from my vantage point. I could still hear them though, there was a crash in the distance, a car alarm started blaring and the distant bark of a dog; I smiled at that and wished the pup the best as I scouted out, re-orientated myself with a quick study of my map and climbed down, back to the crouch and crawl along the tires of the cars.
Eventually I came to an old country road near a broken down SUV with a bike strapped to the back, there were no zeds in sight or sound and that road would take me straight to the river. The SUV was big, ugly and busted to pieces against a telephone pole, the windshield shattered and blood spattered, there was a corpse in there though. From the looks of it, a suicide, a bullet clean through the guys head… the car crash had broken his legs… poor bastard. I looked from the body to the bike, cut it loose and tied my polearm to my back with the rope from the truck and rode like the wind through the clear back-woods road, the wind whipping through my hair as I flew down the paths.
The whole trip was quiet, creepy and weird; I kept expecting zack to jump outta the bushes or something but the ones in the fields were so far away even I couldn't hear them moaning and I buzzed by the closer ones so fast they almost didn't recognize what I was. Pretty soon I had a small river of zeds following my bike but as long as I stayed up and kept going, I'd be safe.
I must've biked down that road for hours before it led out into the highway again… it was a mess; broken up cars everywhere, burning shit, bodies- I swear I could hear screaming in the distance through the moans, a post apocalyptic nightmare and the smoke in the wind burned my eyes as I neared the clogged intersection at the base of the bridge over the big river.
There were zeds EVERYWHERE! It didn't take long for the ones in front to spot me or que in on the ones moaning away behind me so I ditched the bike and ran for the boat shop. I had a whole mob after me again by the time I reached the store; all broken glass and turned over cars; the walls of the store were stripped bare and the entire place looted, the steel holdings that once secured rack after rack of yachts were bent broken and bare; I had nowhere to go and zack was closing in quick! I looked for some way to get to the roof but some damn fool saw fit to destroy the retractable latter that led to it! I passed the restroom, eyed it with sympathy for my bowels and quickly set about trying to climb one of the displays near the torn open roof hatch and threw my polearm up to the roof. I got to the top of it just as zack started to cross the threshold of the broken storefront; it's amazing what a horde of zombies closing in on your position can do for your climbing abilities… SNAP! [She claps her hands together suddenly and loudly.] The bearings came loose and zack was at my heels again, more and more pouring in through the front; rather than fall on top of the thing, I jumped back onto a shelf by the opposite wall and pushed off! The store shelf toppled and gave me a good ramp up to the roof so up I went and of course zacky boy wasn't far behind me; the bastard actually used the broken case to haul himself up too! I damn near shit myself watching him crawling up, about a dozen other grasping hands following him.
[She laughs, shakes her head and shudders a bit as she turns to look me in the eyes again.]
That was when I spotted her, washed up on the tidal bar with her engine blown off and a small fire at the back. Her windows were broken and the doors locked shut but none of the aesthetics mattered; she was a beaut and she even had the home-fires burning for me. The spring of hope died in my throat when I saw just how beached it was but if I could hold out until the tide came up I just might be able to push off, I looked over my shoulder to the zeds reaching up through the roof hatch and grabbed ol' faithful; I reinvented whack-a-mole that day. Every time one popped their ugly mug through the door I lopped it off, cut their fingers up, busted their arms; whatever came in safe whacking distance. [laughs] I look back on those hours spent on that roof and I think; geeze, I could've been at work or shoveling the coop or reorganizing data charts but there I was smacking zombies, stranded on the roof of Marine West…. Dad would be rolling in his grave. [The realization of the implications of what she just said seemed to strike a chord in her as her gaze turned distant.]
I was starting to get bored and I was already exhausted, the tide was coming up though and the little boat was just about ready to come off the sand but once again the real problem would be getting there. The roof hatch was jamming up with zeds and I was surrounded by what must've been hundreds of 'em; the front, the back and the sides- all one big reaching mob. If I was really lucky, I would be able to jump past em and not break my legs in the process; I eyed the rusted boat racks warily and got an idea. I always carried a small noise box, the kind that would blare high pitched and ugly whenever you pulled it because boy-toy got too handsy, so I pulled it and tossed it as far as I could into the crowd at the opposite side of where I wanted to go; I just needed one of them to go for it, thankfully one of 'em was just dumb enough to do it, he sounded the alarm and the whole of the mob shifted towards it. Too dumb to stop going for it and too clumsy to find it, by the time they found out it wasn't food, the mob chain reaction had already set the entire group in motion after it; it wasn't like the lead zed could say "oh hey guys you can stop coming this way there's really nothing here."
I was still too high up to just jump the whole way down so as quick as I could, I tossed my weapons down and I leapt for the steel boat racks… and I missed… a bit… went sailing right into them but I didn't catch hold right away and god only knows how or why but something cracked and the damn thing started coming down right on top of me!
Now if that didn't get zack's attention, nothing would and the whole mob came after me again. Somehow the rack didn't squish me, one of the bars beaned my leg but I didn't have time to worry about it; I'd always been pain tolerant and the thing still worked so I would tend to it later. I just barely got to my polearm in time and ran to the shore where the waves had been kind enough to make pushing off a plausible endeavor. I jammed the pole into the sand and pushed as hard as my arms would let me, beating at the small fires with my feet as the painfully small waves of the river fought me the whole way through. Finally I got her to budge and with a quick haul I was off the banks and the broad side of my blade made for a perfect paddle; just in time too, zeds were pouring into the river after me but I figured I'd cheated them for now… boy was I in for it…
Right behind me and crawling out the broken window was zack, reaching after me, he grabbed my shoulder and went in for the kill… to this day, I'm not sure how I managed it but I pulled the blade outta the water and jammed the blunt end of the pole right through its ugly decomposing face! I swung hard and flung it through the broken window and it went soaring through the air all the way back to shallow water, took some of the window frame with it too…I almost fell in after it.
I paddled out a bit further and set about exploring my little boat; I doused the small fires, tossed the blown engine and secured the inner cabin area to make sure there weren't any more zeds lurching about. The radio was broken and the heating and electrical equipment shot; no steering no lighting, no maps; the list goes on. I tied the rope I'd used to hold my polearm to my back onto a heap of scrap metal and when I reached comfortably deep water I used it as an anchor.
I would have to spend the night out there, thankfully, as the saying goes "red sky at night sailors delight." There were no storms or bad weather headed my way so I hauled my feet up for a nap; I had heard stories on free radio about zeds climbing up the mooring lines so I decided to sleep out of their reach on the roof of the cabin, besides, steel roofing was becoming quite comfortable to me. It was at least two or three in the afternoon the next day when I woke up to the familiar gurgling moan of a few waterlogged zeds that had pulled themselves up. I could see the ones trying to climb on board from the sides, all clumsy scraping that barely got past the railing- that's when I got the idea to reinforce it [she points to the wooden barrier held to the rail, it is a sheer surface that reaches knee high and offers no holding] I took a mental note to always sleep on the roof and then set about knocking zack and zackette off the deck with a swift whack and a push. That's when I noticed it; the damn creatures had snapped my mooring line! I had drifted into the middle of nowhere! To say the least, I was more than a bit angry but I had canned food and a few other supplies that would last for maybe three or four days and I had taken to the rivers so I would hit shore somewhere.
Now that I look back on it, I can sorta trace my way back. I had lived near Richmond, in Virginia and took the rivers to the bays and was carried south along the coastlines… all the way to Cuba… not what I had originally planned to do…Hell, I wanted north! Canada, not south to Cuba.
I was stranded on that course for days; day one was easy and busy, day two was long and boring and day three was long boring and frustrating. By day four of my seafairing I had become an experianced zombie whacker and was probably going slightly mad and not long after that I had lost track of the days. I had long since made sure to rig up everything I needed; a sundial, a makeshift compass and a few pots to boil water for drinking and catch dew and rain… so I had nothing to do but watch the horizon and fish. I was getting sick of canned soup and my lack of medication was kicking in; my stomach hurt, photosensetivity burned my eyes and I had developed an extremely annouying twitch and tremor that made delicate work rather dificult.
That was when I saw it and by god, who'dve thought that Cuba of all places would be the first to reclaim itself.
There where dry docks and large vessels moored to the island and even a chinese submarine of all things! [laughs] I docked, took my first shower in months and traded work, fish and crabs for a hammock a working radio and some real land loving food. I'd found my little niche, oddly enough it was in the exact opposite direction of where I wanted to go; I got a job keeping the peace and weeding out zeds, got paid too! A fresh meal and a warm bed garunteed at the end of the day in a flourishing and slowly expanding little township with a growing economy of all things. Life was going pretty smooth until one of the ships blew up; a rogue chinese submarine from what I heard… what a waste, over half the fuel supply out the window and half the town burned…
I had grown too attached to these people and this place to leave… an error on my part but it drove me to do everything I could to save the place, I beat out the fires and salvaged the fuel that I could and I kept a watchful eye out for zack the whole way through.
It was a miracle we pulled out of that mess, I never thought that humans could collaberate as one with such an efficientcy, I never thought I would see so many nationalities push through predjudice and even the language barrier… I admit, I was impressed. [she pushes herself up onto her elbows and leans over to point toward land and smiles] and we're still at it.
[she sighs contentedly, leans back and drinks from her rootbeer.]