The two thoughts that usually come to mind: I need to remember to be truly grateful that I’m still here. And I really miss coffee. That’s not entirely fair; I do get coffee occasionally, but the luxury of a hot pot of the black nectar every morning was something I took for granted. That’s a mistake I won’t repeat. Apart from that I’m lucky to be here, staring out into the haze in the solitary quiet. The current is pretty predictable, just tide-driven and not too strong. Ordinarily it wouldn’t be smart to anchor so close to the commercial channel, but I haven’t seen a barge in 2 or 3 months, maybe more. This time of year it is so damn hot, that after awhile you get used to it. Funny really, but you get used to everything being sticky and damp all the time. I probably smell like a pig, but there’s no one here to complain, and some smells are worse. When the wind is right, out of the north, the land breeze brings the stink across the bay, right to my nose like it was yesterday. It isn’t as bad now, but after all the initial decomposition, there has been a funny, lingering …funk. It could be my imagination, but there are an awful lot of them still. It’s good recording this, just to talk about it, just to maintain some perspective. I am damn lucky, and maybe a little smarter than before.

The morning routine is not too tough. It’s second nature now to check the anchor line, and it really doesn’t scare me anymore. I just assume the worst, and that way I don’t screw up. A few times, maybe just a couple, I would wake up in the morning and see one clinging to the anchor line, just at the surface, frozen and staring up at any sound. They don’t have the upper body strength to pull themselves that far out of the water, or I would be long gone the hell out of here to deeper water. That’s not to minimize the danger – they can pull a man under; I’ve seen ’em do it. But it takes a lot more to climb hand over hand up a rope, and there are no handholds on the outside of a fiberglass hull, otherwise they’d have worked themselves around to the stern transom right away. So they can’t get in from below, and I just remind myself to be extra careful when any part of my body goes outside the lifelines, which is very seldom. But it’s habit and good maintenance to check the line every day. Every week or so I pull it up to inspect the line and chain – I sure as hell can’t afford to go adrift in the middle of the night, that would be a disaster. A couple of times I ended up playing tug of war with those bastards, but with it wasn’t too tough to get the anchor away from them. I guess it just doesn’t taste too good. Mercifully I have never seen any trace of those things around the stern transom, not a scrap or smudge, though I still avoid putting down the ladder for a swim when I’m in the bay. No sense looking for trouble.

It’s funny – well it is – to think that the first sign of trouble around here came during spring break. We had all heard the scattered reports worldwide about mass riots, “African rabies,” and all the rest. By then the weird disappearance of all signs of life in North Korea was on the news, but they’re a pretty messed up bunch anyway so it just didn’t seem connected. The usual crowd of kids was down from Ohio and Tennessee, all wanting to shake their tits and get drunk out on the beach for a week, bless their hearts. The snowbirds had mostly left to return to wherever the hell they come from these days, and that usually marks a bright spot in the year. Finally, a few months off from demented homicidal drivers and complaints about the cost of medicines in every letter to the local editor. The CDC had given us a few guidelines, but it was just the generic bullshit they gave out when everyone freaked over the bird flu: quarantine suspected cases, universal precautions, the outbreak might resemble the flu, blah, blah, blah… they didn’t even mention bites in the first couple of bulletins. We learned about the bites from the news and from friends and colleagues in other towns. At least that was a blessing, getting the latest from e-mail. By the time it started happening, I at least knew enough to be afraid, and let me tell you, I was. It came here from the south, not from the college kids over from the Mississippi Delta, but from the migrant workers. By the time it hit, we had seen tons of the Mexicans around here and more coming all the time. Anywhere you have high land prices, you have lots of building, and therefore, lots of Mexicans. Nice people, hard workers, too, and you can’t blame them for trying to make a buck, but there was always going to be hell to pay for not controlling the border. We just had no idea how much hell there would be to pay. The first one I saw in the ER was with his wife, kid, sister, and mother, all waiting very patiently. He was a small guy, pretty calm, and his sister – she was the interpreter – explained that he was a roofer over in the new neighborhoods in Freeport just east of here. I’ll bet those houses are going cheap now. Anyway she said he was out on the job, sweating all to hell and went for a drink. It seems he went around to the cooler in the back of the boss’ truck, and was getting a drink, when some nut job walked around the side of the truck and just bit him on the arm. The sister was pretty proud of her bro’ – I guess he was a scrappy little cuss, ’cause he told her he picked up a hammer and just laid the guy out cold. That was the day before. I looked at him again and he was really pale for a Latino, I mean pale and diaphoretic – sweaty – and despite the calm face, his eyes were wide, scared to death. I ordered the usual blood work, chest x-ray, blood cultures, antibiotics, y’know, to make them feel better. The bite was pretty deep, and the usual non-infected sort of look that my buddy up north in Virginia had told me about. (He said he was getting his kid out of class and would try to make it down here, but I never heard from him again. He was one tough bastard, a former navy diver, but he was scared shitless. I had never heard him scared of anything before.) Anyway, poor old Jose just lay there politely while I did the dance, but I knew what was coming. While we were waiting on the labs, the ambulance showed up with another bite victim, and this one was in shock. He had lost a lot of blood, but we got some O-negative into him and stabilized him, then got him back to the ICU. He died about a half-hour later, and they hustled him off to the morgue without further ado. Before that the hospital CEO hustled into the ER and told us that all bite victims were on quarantine, and that the cops would be here to help if there was trouble. I’m kind of embarrassed now, being surprised to see the CEO wearing a holster. I should have been quicker on the draw.

By now the ER was really getting packed, and both shifts had been called in to deal with everything from car wrecks to bites to panic attacks and MI’s. It was about seven, maybe eight – the sun had already set – and we just kept at it steady. I called home to tell the missus to get up there, but she wouldn’t leave her damn dogs. I said, “Bring the stupid dogs,” but she wouldn’t budge. Ok, I said, I’ll be there in the morning. Lock everything, and stay upstairs, with no noise and minimal light. She was a CNN junkie and just wouldn’t turn off the news – the reports were all over by now – but she promised she would. I told her where the gun was, but she never would use it even though I had taught her how. The cops – well, one cop – showed up about midnight, but everything was still pretty orderly. The rumors were all over by then, everything from, of course, walking dead to poisoned tap water. But everyone in the waiting room looked okay, so we just kept at it. Jose – whatever his name was – was asleep or in a coma, but all the beds were full so I just left him lying there. There was nothing else I could do anyway. We got a little break about 4 or 5 AM, and I crashed in the back. I slept hard, man, gone to the world. I didn’t actually hear the gunshots, I don’t think; I just woke up when the department head busted in the call room and told me there was shooting going on outside. I jumped up and ran out – the sun was up, and it was already a little muggy outside. The poor cop, a skinny little guy, was all that stood between us and a couple of them in the parking lot. I hadn’t seen one before; I guess I thought maybe they were in delirium or something. But they moved right at the cop, moaning, showing their teeth, like…hell, rabies, I guess; maybe that was a good name for it. He dropped one of them at ten yards – boom, right in the chest – and of course the damn thing got right back up and kept coming. I heard someone yell, “THE HEAD!” and old deputy dawg plugged him, gave him a lead stroke. That stopped him and then the other one further in the parking lot. Up close they were just what we learned they would be, y’know, all gray with cloudy staring eyes, torn clothes, all of them blood-stained. About that time another ambulance pulled up under the awning, and the driver jumped out and screamed at the deputy who ran around and started shooting into the back of the wagon. I think my next thought was something along the lines of, “Fuck this.” I jumped in the car and headed home.

I tried to call the wife on the way, but the circuits were all busy or inoperable, and all I got was the damned recording. It was probably eight or nine when I got home, and the neighborhood was … normal. It was quiet, too quiet, but there were no screams, no zombies, no people, no sound at all. That was probably, no it was, scarier than what I had expected. My wife, her SUV, and the dogs were gone, just gone. There was no note, no nothing. The caller ID showed her brother’s number over in Jacksonville, so I figured she had panicked and tried to head out to meet him. I can’t imagine why, especially when I heard stories about how bad it got over there. I don’t know whether she made it or not, but I really wished she had taken that gun. Maybe I’ll hear from her, I just don’t know. I hope she made it. I’ll never find her in Jacksonville, not now…maybe she’s headed back this way…

It wasn’t my finest hour, I’ll admit that right up front. I ran through the house, grabbing clothes, the gun, some water, my toothbrush – my toothbrush! – throwing it all in a duffel, and loading up the car as fast as I could. I think even then I didn’t have a plan; I just wanted to keep moving, like that was its own purpose. I called the hospital and actually got through. Trixie answered the phone and said things had gotten worse. The helo was on the ground spinning, but no one knew where to go. The cops had apparently retreated there, and more of those things were moving into the parking lot. A couple of the ambulances had shown up, their drivers just abandoning them in the parking lot and the crews holing up in the ER. It’s a little hospital, about 50 beds, with entrances easily blocked up, a generator, and radios. With a few guns and cool heads, they could hang on. They needed all the help they could get, and I said sure, I was on my way back. I grabbed the duffel and went back downstairs through the living room. The TV was still going and I switched over to Fox – some pitiful looking newscaster, bone-tired looking, was talking. The screen kept switching scenes, showing cities all over as they were collapsing into riots and fires. It wasn’t the zombies at first, just the fear of them that was causing the destruction. I was hungry, hadn’t eaten since supper. I sat down and had a big bowl of cereal, the last milk I’ve had for the past six months or so. I should have made some coffee, but there wasn’t time. Anyway, beer isn’t bad with cereal, and I had earned it.

Driving back out of the neighborhood, things were still quiet, spooky quiet, until I got out to the main road. I looked to my right and saw them, about ten or fifteen, in the parking lot of the supermarket. One person was limping, trying to get clear of them, but he was obviously surrounded and was down by the time I backed up and headed his way. As I slowed down, they surrounded the car and started pawing at the windows. I realized that my soft convertible top made my actions pretty stupid and I panicked, floored it, banged over the curb and out onto the main road toward the bridge over the bayou, heading into town toward the hospital. A couple of them were staggering out toward the bridge and one more was on the bridge, just standing there, staring. I got over the bridge and into town, past the gas station where there was a whole group of them. My tank was nearly full – good thing, too.

At the hospital things looked bad. The helicopter had its lights on, the strobes flashing, and the rotors turning. Twenty or so of those things were packed around the chain link fence, reaching, straining to get in. The crew in the helo was just sitting, staring, probably unsure of where to go. A group of town cops – I knew all of them – had backed some cars under the awning into sort of a barricade, and were shooting at the zombies drawing toward the ER doors. There were about thirty, maybe more, and they had the ER entrance completely cut off. There was no good way in, and once in, there would probably be no good way out, ever. I left, praying that a pissed off cop wouldn’t shoot out a tire before I got out of range. I went back across the bridge, and then headed right, down into the woods toward the little marina where I kept my sailboat. My only thought then was to get the hell away from the land, to get some distance and some time. Things were pretty chaotic down at the docks, but there were no ghouls there, not yet. Families, little kids, the retirees, everyone was cramming aboard their boats. There was a line at the fuel dock ten boats long, and the marina boys were doing their best to top everybody off. No way, I figured, am I going to wait through that line. Screw it. I threw my stuff below, undid the power lines, and fired up the diesel. Then I remembered my 12-gauge pump. I grabbed it from the aft berth and put it up in the cockpit, just to be ready. The wind was picking up – maybe 10 knots – out of the northeast, a good direction to get away if I needed it. I was trying to think of anything I might need, and decided to top off my water tanks. While that was running, I went into the store to grab some water, and got the last case. No one was inside so I made a mental note to promise to pay them later, grabbed some extra TP and a couple of bundles of dock line, and headed out. It was only a couple hundred feet back to the boat. By the time I got there and threw all the goodies on board, the screaming had started. They were coming down the road, I don’t know how many, and a panic took hold of the crowd. Parents were grabbing kids under their arms and running down the dock, while the boats at the fuel dock all started cramming ahead, bumping each other, everyone trying like hell to get to the head of the line. The marina crew hung in there, even when the fights broke out, trying to fill up everyone, at least until the shooting started. That was my cue. When I heard the first shot, I started to cast off, and I was out of the slip and heading toward the channel by the time the shootout began. Those dumb asses were gunning each other point blank, around a fuel dock at that; it’s a miracle they weren’t all blown sky high. I looked from the fuel pump on the left toward the stern right, and there they were, zombies walking out of the marina store and starting for the dock. A powerboat cut me off, sprayed me as he blasted out of the channel. I shot him the finger out of habit, which he didn’t notice, and he was gone around the spit in seconds. Another gas jockey, the “Anatoak”, a big cruising mother, passed me to port. I don’t know whether it was the regular crew, the owner, or who the hell was driving… they were either panicked or ignorant cause they ran full speed right up on the sand bar at the end of the spit. The big girl was backing down as hard as she could when I passed, but was stuck harder than a politician under oath. I hated it, hearing the passengers call to me, but I saw a couple of zombies coming out of the pines on the spit, wading through the knee deep water toward the Anatoak. Nope, I thought, I am not getting trapped now. I pointed at the zombies and yelled to the crew to jump, motioning them to swim toward me, but they just wouldn’t leave their boat. When I rounded the spit and left the channel out into the bayou, about four or five of the things had made it out on to the spit to the cruising boat and were grabbing at her sides while the passengers beat at them with boathooks and a deck umbrella. The pines mostly hid the marina from view, but by then I heard a lot of screaming from the docks. I put the engine in neutral and glided south along the edge of the spit. Through the binoculars I could see ’em, in knots up and down the dock, surrounding and chowing down on the slow ones. Horrible doesn’t begin to describe it. One or two had gotten onto boats, and I saw a couple just walk right off the dock, trying to grab on to a boat that was backing out of the slip. There must have been ten or so around the fuel dock, but the crew and all the dumb ass customers were already gone, gone or caught.

Not my proudest moment. I got the boat out to the channel, and figured to run for the pass, and out to the gulf. But the bay was crazy. There were dozens of boats, maybe a couple hundred even, just zooming every which way all over the bay, just complete chaos. That got me worried about being caught in a logjam trying to get under the channel at the bridge, and since my mast can only go under near low tide, I ran the risk of being trapped. So I went out into the bay and dropped anchor and just waited. I felt pretty bad, terrible, awful about not trying to go back to help the others at the marina, but I knew they were toast. It felt pretty bad, too, not being at the ER to do my damn job when they needed me most. I even tried calling them, but no one answered. I didn’t know if the lines were down, jammed, or they were all fighting off zombies, or maybe they were all gone. There was no way to tell. So I just sat for the next couple of days, watching the occasional boat pass, sipping beer, and trying to convince myself this would all be over in a couple of days. Yeah, right. The day after I left the marina, things got a little ugly – uglier. The zombies were scary, but they weren’t the most dangerous things around. Panicked, desperate people, some of whom probably didn’t know diddly about the water, were eyeing any way of escape. My boat anchored near the mouth of the bayou must have looked pretty good, because I got a few passes from the smaller boats. They started coming by just sort of staring, maybe scared, and maybe sizing me up. I only had one attempt at boarding, and that was on the third day out. I had sat up all night, watching the coast, hearing an occasional yell, or a gun shot. It was early the next morning, and I was dog-tired, when a ski boat came flying down the bayou. They roared on by and I waved – habit – and then saw them turn around and motor down. There was something funny about the way they approached, I can’t describe it…they didn’t call out or wave, just stared. As the boat neared I saw one grab a machete and another one grabbed a pistol out of his pants. I did something clearly no ghoul would do, I raised the pump-12 and told them to back off. They didn’t say anything, just started to climb aboard. Piracy. I don’t know if we could have joined forces, or if I would have helped them, because the subject never came up. I blasted at pistol boy and missed, but scared his ass so bad he dropped hi s gun overboard and just stared at me. Mr. Machete jumped back into the ski boat and gunned her out of there. It’s not like I didn’t feel sorry for those guys later, but this was survival – pure and simple. I never saw them again. A few days later one of those party boats on pontoons came sort of close. There was a family on board, a couple, some kids…they all looked pretty ragged, and I could see the bandages through the binoculars. I think they had all been bitten, the way they were all bandaged, and looked so hopeless. They saw me watching them, and just motored on by without a word, which was fine with me.

I saw a couple of fires from town in the first couple of days, but they petered out pretty quickly. Overhead there were jets flying, like the base was reacting blindly to these monsters. Eglin Air Force Base is the largest in the world, and I had some idea that it might be a safe place to head. On the third day, I motored toward their coast which is restricted thinking there wouldn’t be any people – the only trick would be to make sure they knew I was a good guy. There were a couple of jets that morning, but otherwise pretty quiet. I got near the coast and anchored, then inflated the dinghy. I was really nervous about leaving the boat, but I figured a whole air force base with a fence and guns and pissed off security forces would be worth the risk. I was probably five, ten yards from the beach when I heard the moan. One of them just lumbered on out of the bushes at me, moaning away, calling his buddies. I couldn’t believe it. I paddled on back to the boat, hauled the dinghy up, and just sat on the bow staring at this goofball. He stared a while, then walked right into the water, over his head, and was gone. He didn’t make any bubbles, go figure, just disappeared. My guess is he ended up under the keel, just grabbing at it, but I never saw him again. I didn’t see any more then, but there was no way I was getting back into the dinghy. I pulled anchor and went back to the center of the bay, just south of the base. The elevation is too high to see the field from the water, so I just watched the coastline. That afternoon there were a few explosions from the base, just random explosions. A few planes took off and zoomed off to the west, and then nothing. There was smoke over the base, and I could see a few runners up on the bluff at the edge of the runway, being chased I guess, and heard gunshots now and again. One of the AC-130 gun ships from a nearby base hovered over the field that afternoon, blasting away with its big-ass cannons. It was a hell of a show, but I don’t know whether they hit anything. I saw one or two small boats leave from west of the runway, but no one else. There were two zombies on the beach in front of me, just wandering back and forth, passing each other like they were on guard duty or something. One was in fatigues, and the other was naked. Force of habit maybe.

I heard a little on the VHF from time to time, got into a conversation a couple of times. No one really knew the specifics, but apparently some of the early injured were military, active duty or retired. Either way, they would go to the on-base hospital, so that must be how they got on to the base past the guard houses to begin with. One guy told me a big fight had taken place in the hangars just as the last jets were pulling out, and a whole bunch of those things had wandered out on to the runways, chasing the planes, or ground crews, anything that moved. That was probably the target for the gunship, for whatever good it did. I never heard any radio traffic from the hospital or the ambulance or the cops, so I guess they were all overrun or bugged out. A few boats kept up a pretty steady chatter just out in the gulf, but things were otherwise pretty solitary here in Choctawhatchee Bay.

It was two weeks before I worked up the nerve to approach the shore again. The water was still good, but I was a little short on food and I really wanted to stretch my legs on land, just for a little while. I eased the boat as quietly as I could back into the marina, and here’s why: by then I figured those bastards would be all around, and some even in the water, but I was pretty sure they couldn’t climb out of the water up on to the dock, so I should be safe enough initially leaving the boat (as opposed to taking the dinghy into shallow water). Also, my car was at the marina and I really, really wanted to go for a drive. Isn’t that ridiculous? It’s the apocalypse and I just wanted to go for a spin with the top down. And there was one other ulterior motive: I got on to the dock and up to the parking lot with no trouble. There were still a couple of other sailboats in their slips, so my 32-footer didn’t stick out quite so much as I feared. The marina store was deserted, but there were a couple of Zs hanging around the townhouses next to the parking lot. I didn’t want to attract any attention then, so I just jogged away from them to the car which started up perfectly. I had almost a full tank and it was a beautiful day, so I thought hey, why not? Top down, and I headed across the bridge to have a look. It made sense, I suppose, that Destin and all the resort areas were mostly deserted. I saw two or three, but probably most of the vacationers had headed out to try and get home when the panic hit here. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the same, but I sure am glad I didn’t have to make the choice. I drove slowly along a line of condos, and didn’t see much more than a bunch of trash blowing in the street. I topped the car off – can you believe there was still some gas? – and headed over to the Wal-Mart. Their parking lot was a little more crowded, but I thought it was worth the risk. I parked the car out 75 yards from the entrance and headed in. I had thought to bring a flashlight, which was a good thing, cause it was just too creepy dark in there. I was moving very cautiously, not too fast, and spotted a few in the clothing section – looking for bathing suits I guess. There weren’t any near sporting goods so I grabbed a sack and looked for ammo and, praise be, there was a whole row of undisturbed 12-gauge buck cartons. The poor customers probably couldn’t buy the guns without some stupid waiting period, so they just left this boxed gold there and ran. There was actually a lot of stuff left, including some flares. There was so much to carry, I needed to risk the sound of a cart and went back for one. A couple of zombies heard me and were coming down the big aisle behind the cash registers toward me, and I knew I had to move fast. I sprinted with the cart ahead of me, around a corner, and rammed that ugly shit right in the gut. It fell backward, just grabbing up at me as I ran past. I got to sporting goods and threw you name it – flares, ammo, lanterns and fuel, all kinds of stuff – into the cart. I pushed the cart down a narrow aisle damn quickly, while I listened to the moan on the other side of the partition in electronics. I sprinted over to groceries to load up on crackers, soup, candy bars – stuff like that – and found one stinking case of water. I had really hoped for a lot more, but folks at least were smart enough to take that. The case was pushed so far back on the shelf it had been missed; so there I was in a zombie infested building, on all fours like I had dropped the soap, reaching for a case of water. Pretty scary. I got it in the cart and saw zombies at either end of the aisle. I left the cart, blasted two on one end, and then threw the gun in the cart, held the light against the side with my left hand, and decided the party was over. I saw a few more on the way out, but I was moving too fast for them to catch up, and I got back to the sunlight and out to the car with no trouble. After I put all that stuff in the car, I looked back at the entrance and realized how stupid I had been. There were at least twenty in the parking lot coming at me, and more coming out of the entrance. Not only had there been more than I realized in the building, but I had to have been a lot closer to some of them than I realized. I learned a lesson on that one. Driving out, I passed a little closer to them just to see their reaction. Arms out, pawing, always straight at their target. That was another valuable lesson I picked up. See, zombies don’t think well enough to work strategy. Yeah, they moan and attract other zombies, but they aren’t smart enough to play the angles and cut somebody off. They come straight at you, so if you just keep your wits, it’s a lot harder to get surrounded. Good info, that.

I ran by my old house on the way back to the boat, just to get one thing, my wheelbarrow. Nothing looked different, and everything was still creepy and silent. Back on the main drag, I checked a couple of convenience stores but there was no water to be found. There were a couple of drug stores though, and what do you know, they had cases still sitting there! There was only one zombie in the Walgreen’s, an old looking guy in golf clothes, right in front of the pickup counter. He looked like he had gotten caught waiting to pick up his pills – I wonder how THAT risk factor would figure into the published complications for his meds. Anyway, I just bashed him and he stayed down, and I got behind the counter for a few antibiotics. A drug seeker’s paradise was scattered all over the ground – Demerol, Oxycontin, Lortab – you name it. I was tempted, just for a second, but then I thought getting all recreationally fucked up to celebrate the end of the world as we know it was a certain way to get caught and zombiefied. I grabbed some antibiotics and some ephedrine for long nights and got back out. Back at the marina, I was too busy to be proud of myself. There were about ten of those dicks in the parking lot, but the light was still good and there were no surprises behind the trees. I loaded my treasure into the wheelbarrow and booked it on down back to the boat. It was easy throwing all that stuff on board, and I had time to eat a candy bar before the whole pack of them started down the dock. I untied the boat and cranked her, then motored over to the fuel dock. I don’t know what size the marina tanks are or how long I can live off them, but I topped her off then and there and got away with plenty of time. That night I celebrated with some Vienna sausage and tortilla chips and dip, washed down rather liberally with tequila. I was still alive.

I got to thinking about a few things after that little foray from a more strategic perspective. Where was the safest place to be? I had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world, apart from the occasional lone plane I saw overhead. The gulf might be deserted or might be crawling with pirates by now. I had no clue where any safe zones would be, especially with our own air force base overrun. Where would people go when this crap hit? To the cities where there would be more people, but more of them? To the country, where supplies would be shorter and help would be harder to get if either ghouls or people attacked you? It gave me a new appreciation for my situation. I was near enough to an area infested with zombies to keep most people away, but if I played it smart, they couldn’t get to me, barring running aground in a hurricane. (I say infested because although the beach resort areas were mostly deserted, the area north of the bay, with most of the neighborhoods, was crawling. Every so often I would approach a different point on the north shore of the bay, and at least a couple always came out of the woods.) To be poetic, I was living on the brink of doom, but pretty secure, with a great ringside seat for Armageddon. I thought a lot about life, what it was all about, why I had been spared, and whether I would ever get laid again. I thought about what it had been like to be a doctor, and it made me pretty sad. I didn’t think of myself as a doctor anymore, really, just a guy who knew which pills to take for bronchitis or sew up his own cut. A doctor, I thought, would have been there to the last at the ER, trying to help those folks. Of course, that would have also magically transformed me into a walking corpse, so I could rationalize out of that one, with a little dose of cowardice. But the darker truth was that I had been good at what a doctor needs to be good at – offering hope when there is some, and comfort when there is not. This whole outbreak took all that away. There was no treatment for infection, none at all, and it made those patients enemies-in-waiting. In the few hours that I tried to help little Jose, or whatever his name was, and the several others, I started to fear them, and feel real anger toward them as I realized they were a threat to me. It was – is – a lousy feeling, logical, but lousy. When it hit the fan my highest calling was not to patients, because they were goners and all they could do was drag me down with them. I wanted to save my wife, but she lost her head and bugged out. She would have been safe with me, but worried too much about her dogs to think clearly. I have a buddy a couple hours east, over in Tallahassee. He’s a smart guy, knows how to shoot, and drives a pickup. We talked last just before the panic hit, and I knew he was going to load up his wife and daughters and head my way. There was room on the boat for them, and I really expected them to make it. I called his cell a few times, but none of the signals were getting through by then. I know he would have headed my way, so logically, I assume he didn’t make it, cut off by zombies or crazies all running every which a-way. I had gone into survival mode early on, turning my back on everyone, with staying alive as my biggest goal; I felt sorry for those back on the shore, but not sorry enough to risk my sorry hide. The worst was when I went back to the house for the wheelbarrow and found the note in the kitchen. My buddy had left a note saying they were alright, but wanted to stay on the move after being trapped over in Chipley near the interstate for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t believe he had made it, and the note said he would try to get a boat and find me out on the bay. I never saw them.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to treat myself to a little sightseeing, and headed out under the bridge. Out past the sea buoy, I turned port to follow the coast, set the autopilot, and got the binoculars out. There were a few on the beach, just staring at the water and the motion of the boat, I guess trying to figure out whether it was really there or not, hell I don’t know. Here I was four, maybe five months after the big panic, and there was one zombie in a floppy hat, still sitting in a beach chair, legs mostly torn off, arms on the rests, just like she was catching some rays. I don’t know if they made a sun block with SPF-ten thousand, but it sure looked too late for her. I really half-expected her to wave as I sailed past. I saw a couple here and there up on the hotel balconies, just standing there, but not much else. Things looked pretty deserted for several miles down to the big resort complex, which is where I turned around and headed back. I dropped the sails and motored, got under the bridge, and had the wildest impulse. My favorite bar, an Irish pub, sat up on the hill just past the bridge, and I wondered it there was anything worthwhile up there. The power should have been out a couple of months by then so the beer would have been bad. It was pretty sad really, the meat and all the stuff in the fermenting tanks had all spoiled and the place really reeked. But they kept personalized mugs for regular patrons there, and I just had it up my ass that I wanted my own mug back. I went room to room with the light and the pump-12, and the place was clear of zombies. I went to the rack, found my mug, and hit the gift shop for a few long-sleeve T’s and sweatshirts, then got a bottle of Bushmill’s from behind the bar and headed up to the deck overlooking the water. Up there you can see the gulf and the bay – well you can see what part of the gulf that asshole developer didn’t block with his tacky mega condo. It was a beautiful day, no zombies in sight, but no people either. No friends, no family, no more good times, at least not this year. I poured a big slug into my mug and thought about the slogan I had printed on the side: “Run Aground.” I sure felt like it. That was a funny slogan when I bought the mug, but not so much now. That was the only time I really came close to losing it I think, seeing all that was fun, familiar, everything around me just rotting and dying. The sun was getting near the horizon, and I had killed half the bottle, before I heard the first moan. Pretty stupid, I know, getting soused up on the deck that near sundown. I stood up, and looked over the edge at the parking lot, where four or five of them were already collected. Time to go I thought, grabbed up all my crap, and headed down the outside stairway. I only had to shoot one on the way back to the dock at the base of the hill. It was still plenty light when I cast off from the dock and headed back into the bay, kicking myself for being careless. In the two or three trips back into town, even when I went for more booze and cigars, I never stopped to drink onshore again. Stupid is fatal over there.

The weather hasn’t gotten any cooler yet, but the air smells different. It is almost football season – or should be – and I’m looking forward to the fall. I brought my little portable DVD player on board, and rescued some of my old recorded games. I only kept the ones where my team won, so it looks like they are headed for an undefeated season this year. I’ve stockpiled enough stuff from the grocery stores to survive the winter, and stolen enough fishing gear to catch some supper in the gulf too. And after that, the only question is whether I should risk stringing some lights in the rigging for Christmas. I guess none of the stores will be carrying them, but I may go back to my attic to get them. I don’t want to attract attention, but you’ve got to observe the proprieties of the seasons, even if it is the end of the world. Maybe in the spring I’ll sail over to the east. Maybe I’ll just wait. I’ve got a pretty good thing going here.