Zombie Ever After (26 page)

It appeared to Donovan and Cathren as if they were going to get away. Their pursuers had failed and their big chief was calling off the chase. Donovan paused his paddling and pulled his paddle aboard. Cathren did the same.

“Whew,”
she said. “That was hard. They almost had us.”
 

“Well, they can’t get us now, unless they have a secret weapon or a nuclear sub. We’re free of those sons-of-bitches, both the living ones and the undead.”
 

“Yes, thank goodness.” Cathren exhaled heavily.

They allowed themselves to relax for a bit. It would be a long haul to get to the mainland, and they wanted to take a few minutes to regain their strength before they started out again.

However, that was not meant to be.

Around the point of the island, they heard voices, shouting, and general commotion. Next, they saw the front tip of a canoe, and then the entire canoe, much larger than the one in which they drifted. The bigger vessel was filled with warriors—at least a half dozen—like a Native American waterbus, and was clearly an historic ceremonial craft. The canoe jetted toward Donovan and Cathren, controlled by experienced and fit paddlers who’d been well-trained for the task.

“Fuck the fuck!” Donovan yelled, grabbing his paddle.

“That’s not a real expression!” Cathren yelled back, grabbing her own. “But sentiment understood!”
 

Cathren and Donovan started their frantic, ineffective paddling once again, stroking their leisurely way out into the middle of San Francisco Bay. The rougher waves pounded against the bow of the small canoe with vigor, making progress forward even more difficult. As they punched their way through the strident sea, the last of the human side of the Indians of All Tribes bore down on the two with grim determination.
 

The Indians’ canoe cut through the water like a wooden torpedo. Donovan’s and Cathren’s floundered like a drunk in a swimming pool. The warriors closed in rapidly and efficiently. Donovan and Cathren knew they’d soon be prisoners to be fed to the tribal zombies.

From out of nowhere, the 3.5-hp motor lying at the bottom of the canoe popped into Donovan’s frazzled brain. It was their last, and only, chance. He picked up the machine and placed it outside the canoe, into the water.

“Cathren, give me a hand!”
 

“Sure, what can I do?”

“Hold this motor in place, like this.” Donovan demonstrated holding the motor against the boat, the propeller and rudder below the water line.

Cathren held it as directed while Donovan tightened the thumbscrews on either side of the engine. Meanwhile, the grunts of their pursuers grew louder, the warriors’ oars scooped rhythmically through wave after wave.

With the motor secured, Donovan pulled the choke out, put the lever in neutral, and yanked the cord.

Putt.

He tugged the cord again.

Putt. Putt.

Their enemies were only seconds from descending upon them. Donovan could see the whites of their eyes and the yellow of their gritting teeth. With a sense of finality, he pulled the cord one last, desperate time
 

Putt.

Putt putt.

Puttputtputtputtputtputt.

They had ignition.

Donovan pushed the choke carefully back in and turned the lever to Forward and the throttle to Full.

PuttputtputtputtROARRRRR!

Not exactly a bat out of hell, more a purring kitten out of Limbo, but at least they were off, moving faster than they’d been under unskilled paddle power. Closer to six knots now than their previous hardly-any-knots.

Chief Pallaton and his tribe of goons pulled up so close they could have reached out across the two canoes and touched them. A couple even tried to, falling into the bay inches from Cathren and Donovan’s canoe. Turns out, it was harder than he would’ve thought to leap from a moving, rocking canoe in the middle of a choppy sea, thank God.
 

Scuffling and pushing ensued as their pursuers wrestled for position and to steady their rocking craft. This resulted in their canoe upending dramatically, the canoe now standing vertical in the water. It was sucked into the deep, dark San Francisco Bay in an instant, leaving the men to swim against the icy cold currents back to Alcatraz.

Inch by painful inch, Donovan and Cathren pulled away from their would-be captors. As the swimmers receded into the near distance, Donovan turned and allowed himself to look toward the future.

Which, to no one’s surprise, was not promising at all.

San Francisco was engulfed in flames.

All hell had broken out by Fisherman’s Wharf, at the Embarcadero, in Chinatown, and throughout most of the surrounding areas. Landing anywhere nearby was out of the question. Bad enough to land in the city while it was loaded cheek-to-jowl with undead. Add a burning San Francisco into the mix, and they could forget about it. They needed a fresh plan.

“Treasure Island,” Donovan said, under his breath.

“What?” Cathren said.

“Treasure Island. We’ll set a course there instead, by dead reckoning.”
 

“I don’t know. I’ve had my fill of islands, to tell you the truth.”
 

“This will be different,” Donovan said. “It’s a man-made island. Not deserted or abandoned, like Alcatraz. It has no political significance, so we won’t be overtaken again by zealots, justified in their cause or not.”

“Maybe...”

“Plus, we sort of have no choice. Treasure Island is nearby, or at least nearby—
ish,
and most important,” Donovan said, taking a breath, “it’s not going up in flames at the moment.”
 

“I guess you’re right,” Cathren said, sighing. “Besides, our little engine ain’t gonna last forever.”
 

“Set a course for Treasure Island, then!” Donovan shouted, drunk with victory, or at least a partial victory. They had escaped from Alcatraz. The first people (the first couple, in any case) to do so in the history of the island.
 

They continued talking as they putt-putted through the bay, steering as needed to stay on course for Treasure Island. They made land in about twenty minutes and cut the motor. They pulled the boat up onto the rocky shore, which was covered with a scattering of wet newspapers, broken beer bottles, orange peels, and other assorted dreck.
 

The couple scanned the area. All around them, the collapsing remains of what appeared to have been a military community stood like ancient ghosts. Cathren and Donovan walked up the beach to street level and began snooping around.

“Kinda quiet,” Donovan said. “No people, as far as I can tell.”
 

“Nope,” Cathren said. “Seems pretty empty.”
 

“Let’s see what’s going on in some of these buildings—barracks for all we know. Oh,
crap.
”
 

Cathren turned to watch with Donovan as the canoe sank—motor, oars, and all.

“Awww,
it gave up its little wooden life to save us,” Cathren said, her lower lip pushed out in a pout.

“Well, I guess we’re left with only two ways off this island now: we’re either walking out of here or flying,” Donovan said. “Dead or alive.”

They strolled along for a while and turned down what appeared to be the main boulevard. Interestingly, unlike in the city, no abandoned cars lay strewn about willy-nilly on the streets. The few cars in sight sat parked nice and neat in the conventional way.
 

The couple continued walking around the small island, looking for signs of life. All the island showed them, however, was a kind of movie set. It looked unreal. Every street they walked on empty.
 

“Well, no people, that’s not good,” Donovan said. “No zombies, though. That’s
very
good.”
 

“Yes, I agree. Only I’m a little freaked out by all of this ‘nothing’ everywhere,” Cathren said.

Then, as they turned the next corner: people!

The roads were now no longer desolate. Rather, they teemed with busy, well-dressed men and women wandering every which way. Some lugged books. Others carried stacks of what appeared to cards and pamphlets. One teenage girl pushed a library cart half full of books across the street. The cart bounced along the uneven asphalt, ejecting a tome or two every few yards.
 

Elated, Cathren waved and called out. “Hello,
hello!”

The girl turned her head and gaped at Cathren with unseeing eyes.

As Donovan and Cathren got closer, the problem became clear: the girl was a zombie.

*
 
*
 
*

At the sight or the smell of Donovan and Cathren, the people in the streets—zombies all—dropped what they were doing, bouncing books on the street. They turned, moaning, and shuffled toward the couple.

Who took off in the opposite direction, yet again.

Around the next turn, they caught sight of it, sitting in the middle of the street, parked—or abandoned—by to the curb: a large bus. A bookmobile, to be exact. The door stood open; library books were strewn all around the street and sidewalks. Magazines, newspapers lay scattered everywhere, their pages flipping in the warm breeze.
 

Without a word or a signal to each other, and not quite sure what they would find, Donovan and Cathren stepped up into the bookmobile. Instead of trouble, they found keys still in the ignition. Had the bookmobile run out of gas, or had its occupants simply become overrun and forced to pull over? Perhaps they had panicked and run, abandoning the vehicle. At the moment, Donovan didn’t care what the reason was. He just wanted to find out if the damn thing would start.
 

He plopped onto the driver’s seat and pressed in the clutch. Cathren sank into the seat directly behind him. He gave the gas pedal a couple of pumps and then twisted the key in the ignition. The engine turned over but wouldn’t catch. He gave the pedal a couple more taps and tried again. One more attempt and he would abandon the whole thing. This time, however, to Donovan and Cathren’s great relief, the engine started and idled.
 

“We have wheels!” he said to Cathren.
 

Granted, it was a monster of a vehicle, with “Bookmobile” written across its rainbow-colored sides, surrounded by billboard-sized pictures of books and happy readers. Still, it was working, drivable transportation. Now, if only he had any idea how to operate the thing.

He’d driven stick before, sure. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was, he didn’t know if that knowledge would transfer. That is, if using a stick shift was universal across all types of vehicles. There was only one way to find out: put it in gear and start rolling.
 

Using the same “H” pattern his Dad had taught him, Donovan shifted to the top of the left leg of the “H” and slowly let out the clutch. The bus stuttered a bit, resisting his unpracticed touch, but she started moving.
 

Clutch in again, he shifted into second. Still good, still moving, even if jerky. Donovan had confidence now that he could get this thing on the road. The blind spots seemed enormous around the bookmobile. But he soon got used to using the various and large mirrors positioned around the cab of the bus. Donovan maneuvered the vehicle slowly back into the center of the street.

Unfortunately, the librarians, aides, customers, and neighbors—all now quite undead—had arrived, moaning, growling, drooling. They crushed together just a few yards from the bookmobile, angry and bent on destruction, as if Donovan and Cathren owed hundreds of dollars in overdue book fines. Donovan didn’t have to think twice. He gunned it, shifting into fifth, when he meant to go into third.

This, of course, stalled the engine and the bus came to a dead stop.

Panicking, Donovan turned the key while pumping the gas. Nothing. Now, he’d flooded the damn thing. The zombie librarians stumbled only a few feet away. He spied the milky grayness of their eyes and tried to start the bus. Still no luck.
 

The first fell upon them in an instant. One reached up, trying to claw its way in the window where Donovan sat. Cathren shrieked. Donovan punched the button to close the window. Another zombie pushed at the door, forcing it open, excited to a frenzy by the sight and scent of the warm and living Cathren.

“Oh my God, oh my God,
oh my God!”
she screamed.

Donovan and Cathren had nowhere to run. He got out of the driver’s seat and glanced into the interior of the bookmobile. Stacks of books, a couple of tables attached to the wall of the bus, a small computer. Nothing he could convert into a weapon and no place to hide. He used to find comfort in the library before all this. Now this local library-on-wheels would be his last stand.
 

The bookmobile rocked as the patrons’ and zombarians’ frenzied pounding intensified on all sides of the bus. The undead moaned and groaned. They made strange hissing noises. Hissing noises? After a second, Donovan realized the true meaning of the sound: they were shushing him and Cathren.
Old habits die hard.

Donovan shook his head in disbelief and returned to the driver’s seat. Adjusting the mirrors, he counted at least twenty of these well-educated zombies around the vehicle. Another thirty or more locals hovered up the road headed their way.
 

“This is not how I want to go out,” Donovan said to Cathren. “Any chance of you morphing into super-zombie-killer-girl?”

“I would if I could. Can’t control it though. It’s as if it has a mind of its own.”

“Fine, fine,” Donovan said, grinding the ignition key and his teeth one last, desperate, no-doubt-futile time.

Vrrrrroooom!

The engine started. At first, Donovan and Cathren stared at each other as if in shock, thinking they had imagined the bus starting. Before long, though, they detected the distinctive—and welcome—smell of diesel fuel. Black smoke filled the view in the side mirror. They knew they were back in action. Easing the bus into first gear and gently releasing the clutch, Donovan nudged the vehicle forward.