Winter Apocalypse: Zombie Crusade V (8 page)

As soon as the cabin door was closed, O’Brien motioned to Bruce. “Carolyn, this is Bruce. Bruce, this is Marilyn, the one I told you about, but her real name is Carolyn. If you don’t mind, I’d like a few minutes alone with her before her friends join us.”

Bruce made a slight bow and kissed Carolyn’s hand. “I look forward to talking with you soon.” He winked at Father O’Brien. “It’s a good thing you’re a priest or I might have to stay and defend this lady’s honor. I’ll be in my cabin if either of you need me.”

“He seems very nice,” Carolyn observed as Father O’Brien guided her to a seat.

O’Brien smiled. “He’s usually a grouchy old man, but you have a knack for bringing out the best in people.” He took a closer look at his new friend. Decades in the church had taught him how to quickly take the measure of a person, and he instinctively liked what he saw in this woman. “I’ll pour us some coffee. Sugar and creamer?”

“Spoonful of sugar please, no creamer. And you’re quite the charmer yourself. You only know me from my voice over the radio, but I’ll accept the compliment and thank you for it.”

Father O’Brien sat down across from Carolyn with his own drink before raising the cup in a slight toast. “You’re welcome. And thank you for coming all the way down here, especially in November.”

Carolyn lightly touched his mug with her own before taking a sip. “Michael is damn suspicious of everyone who hasn’t been on Manitoulin since the outbreak began, but I could tell by your voice that you were trustworthy. Sooner or later we’ll all have to band together in this new world if we want half a chance of beating the flesh-eaters.”

Father O’Brien choked on his coffee. “Did you just say you were from Manitoulin Island?” he sputtered.

Carolyn nodded. “Yeah, I think the need for secrecy is over. Are you alright?”

“Even though I should know better, sometimes providence still sneaks up on me. Tell me about Mayor, or rather Michael. What was he before the outbreak?”

“An overqualified fishing guide. Well, he and his wife ran a really nice bed and breakfast, but he used to be some big-wig engineer.”

Father O’Brien crossed himself. “Does his last name happen to be Carboni?”

Carolyn’s eyes widened in surprise. “How did you know that?”

Just then, the door swung open and Brittany stepped aside to let Robbie and Michael enter the cabin. “I’m going to stand guard with Roberto if you don’t need me,” she said to O’Brien.

“Thank you, dear.” The priest motioned for the men to sit down. “I know we have a lot to talk about, but first I just want to thank the good Lord for bringing us together. Come, let us join hands.”

Robbie glanced at Michael, who shrugged and whispered, “I guess we should expect that a priest would want to pray.” They both walked over to the small table where Carolyn and Father O’Brien were sitting.

O’Brien scooted around and grasped one of Carolyn’s hands, then he reached out for Michael’s. “Gather round, I promise I’m not known for long sermons.” Carolyn took Robbie’s hand, and after an awkward moment Michael and Robbie linked up as well.

Father O’Brien cleared his throat and began, “Lord, we thank you for all your blessings in these troubled times. As we face the evil that has been unleashed upon our world, your strength can still be found in your brave and honorable children. I thank you for Carolyn, your messenger and my angel. I thank you for Robbie, one of your most righteous warriors and defenders of mankind. And finally I thank you for Michael Carboni, nephew of Jim and Trudy, cousin to Christy, who personifies—“

“Hold up!” Michael pulled his hands away and stepped back from the table. “How do you know who I am? Carolyn, have you been filling him in about my family in the states?”

“I suppose if I knew your family tree that would be a possibility, but I’ve never really been that interested in your background.”

Father O’Brien grabbed Michael’s hand again. “I’m almost done. Now let’s see, Lord, I thank you for Michael Carboni, who personifies hope and sacred leadership against the enemy. Amen.”

Carolyn smiled at Michael. “That was nice.”

Michael was about to speak when Father O’Brien patted his shoulder and gently declared, “Sit back down, son. Your uncle was a friend of mine. I had no idea who you were; well, your cousin Christy tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. When Carolyn mentioned Manitoulin Island, it all started to fall into place. I sincerely thank God that we found each other.”

Michael sat down. “You say he was a friend of yours?” The priest’s use of past tense had implied bad news.

“He was part of a small group of us that were on our way out of Cleveland, headed for Jack Smith’s castle in Indiana. Trudy and Christy made it there.  Jim didn’t. I’m sorry, Michael.”

“The last time I talked to him he told me about the guy who built the castle in Indiana, and what we needed to do to protect ourselves from the infected.” Michael looked at Robbie. “If anybody else would have told me that stuff I wouldn’t have listened. It sounded crazy, but coming from Uncle Jim I knew I had to follow his directions without question.”

Robbie nodded. “I’m glad you did. Thanks to your uncle, we had a much better idea about how we could save ourselves.”

“Speaking of saving ourselves, there’s a lot more you all need to know.” Father O’Brien paused, “I’m not sure where to begin, so let me start where Jack says it all began: back in Afghanistan, with a general named Matthew Barnes.”

An hour later the Canadians sat in stunned silence. Father O’Brien’s revelations about the pandemic being part of a madman’s grand design to reinvent the world seemed incomprehensible. What had been terrible enough as a mindless viral threat now became even deadlier and more inherently evil. Michael was sure of one thing: with Barnes creating and controlling armies of the infected in the eastern U.S., any and all pockets of survivors in North America needed to rethink their survival strategies.

“So why is Barnes so interested in Jack Smith?” Robbie wondered. “I know you said Jack was his driver in Afghanistan when some village had an outbreak, but, let’s face it, the guy who drives a general is still just a peon.”

Carolyn squeezed Robbie’s hand. “Don’t forget the guy is crazy. We shouldn’t expect crazy people to act rationally.”

Robbie pulled Carolyn closer and sighed. “Not even crazy geniuses?”

Father O’Brien shook his head and smiled half-heartedly. “Maybe especially not crazy geniuses. I can’t really say for sure why Barnes seems obsessed with Jack, but it may just boil down to the man’s ego. He thinks that Jack and Carter undermined his authority—it’s probably especially insulting to him that peons, to use your word, Robbie, got the better of him all those years ago.”

Bruce had listened quietly while Father O’Brien updated their new friends about the state of the world. “I just want to add one thing before I go relieve our peon on guard duty.” He stood up and stretched lazily before pulling on layers of cold-weather gear as he spoke. “I’m pretty much an old man, and I’ve been a loner most of my life, but now is not the time to isolate ourselves. Nobody is safe, and we’ll be easy pickings for Barnes and his zombies until we can come up with a force equal to his. I personally don’t know Jack Smith, and I doubt he’s half as impressive as his reputation around Middle Bass suggests, but he does have the right idea when it comes to banding together and fighting with everything you’ve got.” He was out the door before anyone had a chance to reply to his monologue.

Roberto arrived shortly, and he was looking forward to joining the conversation, but he quickly fell asleep wrapped in blankets on the floor. Brittany emerged from her cabin and tried to rouse him to send him off to bed, but she finally gave up and climbed under the blankets with him.

“What surprised me,” Brittany offered after settling in, “was how it turned out that guns weren’t our best defense after all. Thank God that Jack Smith and Carter Wilson never forgot what they’d encountered in Afghanistan, and that they spent their time and money preparing for an outbreak that they probably never expected would really happen.”

“Good point,” Carolyn agreed. “It seems like common sense to consider guns the best line of defense. Our fighters have learned to use hockey gear to protect themselves.”

“Seriously?” Brittany sounded doubtful.

Robbie nodded and laughed. “I killed three of the infected on the mainland with a hockey stick the first time we saw them.”

“Pads, helmets, goalie-masks, gloves, all of those things have saved lives during the fighting,” Michael added.

“I thought you guys were safe on your island. What happened?” Brittany asked.

Michael shrugged. “There was a lot of fighting in the early days of the outbreak, before we managed to swing the bridge and secure the island. Even then, people were still sneaking off on small boats for weeks; once in a while we’d have an incident that had to be quietly dealt with.”

“Bottom line,” Robbie interrupted, “is that it didn’t take us long to realize that gunfire just attracted more of the creatures. Plus, nearly every male, and many of our women, know how to wield deadly weapons while wearing hockey gear. We’ve yet to have a single bite wound through the gloves, and the wrists and hands seem to be the most vulnerable body parts during a fight.”

O’Brien was about to agree when Bruce burst through the door, “You need to come see this; I don’t know what to think.”

Brittany gave Roberto a sharp jab to the ribs as she jumped up while the rest of the group hurried out to the deck. Bruce pointed to an unnatural glow that had appeared several miles downstream. “The NVGs don’t help at all, and my eyesight has seen better days.”

“Electric lighting?” Michael hypothesized.

“Maybe somebody’s managed to power up part of Sarnia,” Carolyn offered.

“Brittany,” Father O’Brien called, “please bring me the binoculars.” The young woman was quick to comply, with Roberto right behind her.

“I brought both pair,” she explained, handing Michael a set as well.

  A minute later, both men were peering intently downriver. Michael was still confused, but Father O’Brien was sure about what he was seeing. “It’s that old ferry we passed just north of Marine City this afternoon.”

Michael lowered his glasses and frowned. “What ferry? I don’t remember you mentioning anything about a ferry.”

“When we passed it we thought we heard noises from the infected, but the ship was adrift, and we certainly had no reason to investigate. I don’t know what to make of it now.”

Roberto thought it was the perfect time to share his theory with the Canadians. “I think that a bunch of people on the Michigan side were trying to escape the virus any way they could. They all crowded into the that boat, but somebody was already infected, and eventually they turned everyone else into flesh-eaters too.”

Brittany added, “Unless we were all imagining the same thing, there were a lot of howls and moans coming from that ferry.”

Everyone was quiet as they considered the possibility that a ship with an unknown number of infected was making its way up the river. Michael finally broke the silence. “Were the lights on when you passed her?”

“No,” O’Brien replied, “and I’m fairly certain there was no engine activity at the time we passed.”

The glowing ship was now close enough to be easily identified without the aid of optics.

“That’s no small ferry,” Carolyn mumbled.

“Yeah,” Michael added, “and it’s going way too fast for this river, and too fast not to be using her engines.”

Given the vessel’s speed and course, O’Brien speculated that it would pass their position in less than five minutes. The small group huddled together on the pier between their yachts and waited to watch the ghostly-looking ship bull its way upstream toward Lake Huron. Then, before anyone on the pier realized the danger they were in, the bow of the huge ferry began turning directly toward the marina.

Father O’Brien urged everyone to remain calm. “That boat is too big for this part of the marina. They’re probably headed to one of the larger piers, closer to the fuel.”

Michael was skeptical, “Didn’t you say you thought it was adrift earlier, with infected aboard?”

“Yeah, that’s what we thought,” an obviously nervous Brittany replied, “but maybe there are still uninfected people aboard, and they’re looking for a place to dock and abandon that ship. There’s a big tug tied up down there by those larger piers, maybe they want another large boat for their survivors.”

Carolyn had remained uncharacteristically quiet, but finally shared her thoughts on the matter. “My ex-husband was crazy for anything that had to do with ships; when we were dating, we used travel to different marinas just to watch them dock and launch all the time. I can’t put my finger on it, but something isn’t right in there.”

O’Brien agreed, “It’s going too fast to stop before it reaches the end of this channel—“

“Maybe something’s wrong with the pilot, but it doesn’t matter: we need to get our boats out of here—NOW!” Michael declared as the ship sped toward the mouth of the channel leading to the marina.

The two crews wasted no time untethering their crafts and preparing to disembark. “Let’s rendezvous back on the lake, about ten minutes out from here . . .” Carolyn shouted over to O’Brien.