It couldn’t have been more than two seconds after we met up with Steve that I decided I had to fuck him up. The words “I sure am glad to see you two are still around. I don’t know what I’m doing out here,” were barely out of his mouth. I had just enough time to look him over. That’s when I noticed his boots.

They were things of beauty, those boots. Brown leather with that fancy western-styled stitching on the toes. Steve had jeans on, so I couldn’t see the tops, but it looked like two colors of leather—one light brown, the other dark—made some kind of pattern. I would have traded all manner of riches and finery for those things. Seeing as how I had neither, I’d have to procure them in another manner.

We had hunkered down in a ditch that ran along the only road that led to or from town. McGuffey Island was long and thin, rising out of the Gulf’s water like one of the stitches on Steve’s boot. Nothing much there except for the mechanisms of the shrimp industry—boats, docks, and the men who dipped their nets, bringing forth whatever bounty the sea offered. Shrimping involved everyone. Though I never went out on the boats I worked the grill in the only restaurant in town. I liked to think it was all the hash I slung into those boys’ bellies that kept the island moving. Don’t know if that was a true statement, but it was one I liked to believe anyway.

Jeb peered over the edge of the ditch. He took a look around and ducked his head back down with me and Steve. “Looks like three of them out there.”

I peeked my head up to get a look. Sure enough, there were three of them milling about in front of the shed. Two of them looked normal enough, but the third was all fucked up. It was a man in his early fifties, grey hair matted to his head and face. There was some sort of tumorous growth coming off his jaw, so big that the weight of it pulled his head nearly down to his shoulder.

“Jesus hell,” I said. “You see that one with the big zit on his chin? Think of all the mess of green pus and bile that thing will spill if it gets hit.”

Steve gagged. Jeb and me looked at him. I wondered if the kid would lose his shit. Steve was Frank the bartender’s brother from the mainland, in town for summer vacation. I’d fixed him a few burgers, but I can’t say that I knew the guy. If he was anything like his brother I knew he’d be worthless.

“Don’t worry about it man,” Jeb said. He rested his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “It’ll be easy.” He turned to me. “What are we going to do, just rush them and go for it?”

I looked over the lip of the ditch again. It was fifteen yards or so between the ditch and where the shed loomed in the shadow of the big house. A burned out truck sat about halfway between us and the shed. That shed held my escape. I needed to figure out how to get rid of those things. We would have to be quiet.

One of the things caught sight of my head. He let out that weird wail they do–part exploding firecracker, part screeching cat.

“Just run for it,” I said.

Jeb and I jumped up. I was already a few steps into it when I realized Steve wasn’t with us. I had to drag him out of the ditch by his shirt collar to get him moving. All three of the things bellowed their siren song. I was afraid the noise would bring out more of them.

I swung the 2×4 I carried over my head and screamed like a banshee. I didn’t know if you could scare those things or not, but I was sure going to give it a try.

—

At first it was actually hard to get. It started as boils on the skin that would rupture, spraying some sort of viscous fluid. You had to be right there when one of those boils ruptured to get the stuff on you. Once you had it, though, it took hold quick.

The infected acted like normal sick people. They ran fevers and coughed up a storm. Old Doc Petty was pretty much only good for stitching up cuts and passing out penicillin—which was what he did until he caught the bug himself. There was a line at the dock on that first Monday with people waiting for the ferry to carry them to a mainland doctor. The boat was still over a mile away when someone noticed smoke boiling up from the top deck. I watched it sink from the service entrance to the restaurant.

I couldn’t say for certain how widespread this thing was. I thought the ferry burning was a bad sign. Everyone that had a boat seemed to split overnight. Those that stayed and were still healthy talked about setting up quarantine in the school gym.

The disease seemed to shift. The eyes of the sick glazed over with a white film. They became unresponsive, near catatonic. It only took a few hours before it shifted again. That’s when they started running wild, biting and spitting on anyone who was out in the open, passing along whatever vile concoction stewed in their blood. After they’d done their business to someone they’d leave them alone, as if they all suddenly marched to the tick of the same ghoulish clockwork.

I caught ol’ tumor jaw square in the chest with the plank. He went down, whump, and rolled around on his back like an overturned turtle. I looked over and saw Jeb stab at the one on the right. The third was right in front of me. I raised the plank, ready to bring that beast down when the funniest thing happened.

That thing—he, or whatever the fuck you want to call it—stopped its racket, just shut right the hell up when it saw me. I could see the tiniest trace of iris behind that obscuring fog. The pupil widened as if to take me in, the whole of me there at that instant. I realized I was standing there, screaming like mad. I knew that thing couldn’t have, but it seemed as if it were mulling me over. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand that. It held out its arm and took a step forward. I brought the board down and smashed those judging eyes and everything around them.

Steve stood over the old guy, watching him kick and twist in the sandy soil. The kid had a hand over his mouth and his eyes were all bugged out. He looked scared, like something had run through him like a falling elevator.

“Watch out for him,” Jeb said. He’d stabbed the third thing in the neck with a screwdriver and he was bent over trying to get it back out. It must have stuck in the vertebrae or something, because he couldn’t seem to dislodge it. He pointed to the old guy. “He’s still after you.”

The old man’s hand was on Steve’s ankle. He tried to pull himself toward Steve but he was too weak to go anywhere.

“Just leave the screwdriver,” I said to Jeb. “Won’t need it here in a minute.”

I went over and stepped on the thing’s chest. Its hand left Steve and came to rest upon my foot. For some reason that gave me the craziest notion: I thought of my grandfather. He died when I was still real little, so the only thing I can remember about the guy was his gnarled hands working white laces, showing me how to tie my shoes.

“Russell, I do believe that fella is trying to get fresh with you,” Jeb said.

“Hell if he does.” I swung the 2×4, careful to miss that tumor. A little spray of blood erupted and splattered the leg of my jeans.

At first I almost didn’t think anything of it. Jeb tried to play it off like he had just gone to run his fingers through his hair. I caught him, though. Right before he touched his scalp he rubbed his eye first.

I used the board as a pry bar and pulled the rusty hinges off the shed’s door. Nails held them in place instead of screws, so it wasn’t all that hard. Inside sat freedom: Doc Petty’s old Jon boat.

“Told you,” I said to Jeb. I clapped Steve on the shoulder. He was messing around with the motor, fiddling with the inside of the thing. “When we ran into your brother earlier and he told us you were going for it, I said to Jeb, ‘I’d put good money on that boat still being down there.’ Jeb wasn’t having it, but I said ‘Hell, if we’d both forgot about it I bet everyone else has, too.’ You can quit fiddling with that engine. I haven’t seen the Doc take this thing out since I was a kid. Doubt if it will run.”

Steve used his jeans to wipe the grease from his fingers. “You say you’d seen my brother?”

“Not really. Spoke to him, though.”

Steve seemed even more removed than he was when he watched me break that thing’s face.

Jeb and me had eaten up all the food in my place, so we’d ranged out to find more. Frank’s place was right next to mine, so we crept over and knocked on the back door.

“Watch it.” Frank’s voice sounded strained and distant from behind the door.

“It’s just us,” I said. “Don’t go shooting or nothing. We’re just looking for something to eat, maybe a few beers if you got any.”

“No, stay the fuck back. I got it. That virus. Don’t come in.”

“Aw hell,” Jeb said. “You need any water or anything?”

“Shut up,” I said to Jeb, real low so Frank couldn’t hear me through the door. “We’ll wait and see if–”

“I went out last night, looking for flashlight batteries,” Frank said. “I cut my hand breaking out the back window to the store and I guess I must of got something in it.”

Frank’s voice seemed to go quiet there towards the end, like he was fading away. He came to the window that overlooked the back porch. There was a boil, small but visible even at a distance, on his left cheek. Even though the window was cracked to let a little air in, when he spoke again his voice sounded even smaller than before.

“I was just going to go sit out in the street on account of Steve being here. He started blabbering about getting to the mainland so I just let him run off. Told him to check the Doc’s old place.”

I grabbed Jeb’s arm and pulled him. I wanted to get out there to see if that boat was still there, but Jeb yanked away from me.

“Sure you don’t…?” Jeb asked the ghost in the window.

“Fuck him,” I said. I was already checking the road to see if it was clear to walk on. “Let him rot in there by his lonesome.”

I rustled around in the shed until I found a couple of oars under a workbench. I stuck them in the boat with my 2×4 and we pulled the little trailer it was on into the yard. The tires were both flat and the rims dug into the sandy soil.

“Grab the front,” I said to Steve.

Jeb and me got the back and we carried the boat out of Doc’s yard, toward the sea. In the middle of the road Steve’s arms gave out on him and we had to switch places.

It was getting near dark. There was still plenty of light reflecting off the water, but it would soon fail. The boat slid into the water and for a horrifying second I thought it might not make it. Water seeped between the boards. But after a moment the dry wood absorbed some water again and the boat stopped leaking.

I held the boat steady as I let Steve climb in. Jeb stepped toward the boat and I put a hand out.

“Stop it,” I said.

Jeb actually looked surprised. “Just what do you mean here, Russell.”

“Don’t even act like I didn’t see you wipe that blood out of your eye back there. You’ve got it sure as shit.”

“I didn’t get nothing in my eye.”

I picked up an oar and held it between us.

“You can’t do me like this” Jeb said. “After all we’ve been through?”

We had done a lot together. We’d graduated fourteenth and fifteenth in a class of eighteen at McGuffey High. We’d saved up for over a year to move to the mainland. Jeb had an uncle said we could get on a work crew out in the oilfields if we could make it to Midland county.

That first weekend off the island we headed down to South Padre for a little vacation, some time to blow the stink of shrimp off us. We met some girls staying in the hotel room next to ours, and we stayed up all night drinking Lone Stars and talking about how we were going to be the wildest shit to ever hit dry land. Next thing you know a week had passed and the girls went back to wherever they were from. Jeb and me had to go back to where we were from on account of spending all our money. We didn’t even have funds for tickets for the bus or the ferry. I had to call my Pops and get him to wire me an advance.

After I had to crawl back and work for my old man again I didn’t feel so hot anymore. It seemed like things had gone glacial, in fact. After a few years Pops died and I got the restaurant all to myself.

Jeb got engaged to Tina Smith there for a while. I never did care much for her, but they were only together for a year. She’d taken some correspondence courses to become a paralegal, so she’d wanted to move to the mainland to get a job. “They ain’t got no need for a sailor there,” Jeb had said. I had to agree with him. The day Tina left Jeb and me sat on milk crates behind the restaurant and drank some cold beers. I don’t think either one of us said much. We just watched the ferry chug its way into the distance.

I fixed two scrambled eggs, hash browns, and three strips of bacon for Jeb every morning before he dropped his nets. “Ten Years Gone,” went that old Led Zeppelin song. It had been eleven for Jeb and me. Sometimes I’d find myself wondering if a combined history was really all it took to make a friendship.

“Paddle harder,” I said to Steve. The tide was going out but he struggled to get past the few lazy breakers near the shore. I wanted to be out of there and done with the whole mess.

I sat in the front of the boat with my back to the ocean. I could still make out Jeb there on the beach. A trickle of blood ran from his nose to where it dripped off his chin. He watched me and I watched him.

“Why did you have to do that?” Steve asked. “It’ll still be a few days before it sets in. I haven’t heard anything from the mainland in nearly a week since the phones went out. Surely somebody is working on a vaccine by now.”

“Doubt it,” I said. “It don’t matter much anyway. Jeb’s been out of it for a long time. Too far gone to save.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just paddle.”

The light was dim and I started to lose the shape of Jeb amongst the sea grass and dunes. I turned around and watched the sun slowly drown in the horizon.

“I thought you guys were friends,” Steve said. “How could you do something like that to a person?”

“I thought I might need his help carrying the boat. I was right on that account.”

When we passed the breakers I said, “We’re never going to make it there if I let you paddle.” I took the rower’s seat and pitched my back into getting us to the far shore.

“Russell, you might just be the meanest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

Steve was looking at me. I stopped rowing and draped the paddles over my lap. It looked like he was trying to judge me. I punched him in the stomach. Steve bent double and sucked air. I grabbed his hair and pulled his face up to where he could really see me.

“It ain’t mean now. Normal doesn’t apply now. The world’s done changed around us.”

“He’s just sick. Carol’s just sick. We’re going to get to the city and there’s going to be help there. There’s still time.”

“I used to think that too,” I said. “But then I wasn’t so sure.” I shook his head and pushed him away from me. I paddled west into the sinking sun. I wanted to keep going until I reached that fiery ribbon. I wanted to burn up till there was nothing left. “I couldn’t even find north with a compass for the longest while.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying that. I refuse to believe that if–”

“Refuse all you want.” Paddling forward, ever onward. Only smoke behind and fire in front. “Me, I’m done refusing.”

I didn’t even care about those boots anymore.

—–

Jesse Knifley currently attends Western Kentucky University, where he is an English major. In the event of a real zombie apocalypse his weapon of choice would be an ax. He would opt for a model with a fine hickory handle, because he is a romantic like that.