1. Satan Gave Me A Taco
Seven weeks in and even hope was akin to pillory. The painted signs scorched Curtis’s eyes like a potent mirage, just enough faith to distend resolve from the downhearted, to prod him to cling.
An errant, day-old broadcast from a car radio in Los Niños had drawn him back to the port city of Escalante, where privately owned marinas that rented out motorboats and lodgings speckled the coastline, and the ocean was every glorious shade of aquamarine. The looped transmission came from a tactical team on standby in Bungan Port, telling survivors to head to the anchorage for shelter. The port was a repurposed naval base in nearby Bohol Island.
Escalante was the nearest and fastest shot. Bohol was a couple of hours’ sail east. It was also a tread halfway through off-peak season. The chances of the place being infested were low. Curtis didn’t discount the prospect of finding other survivors or any kind of sanctuary, with the same purpose if he was lucky. Going there was a risk with a point.
But the place brought back old, uninvited memories as he drove in, the view changing from sugarcane fields to ragged cliffs to the breezy colors of a holiday town. Curtis was born in Bohol, although all he had of his childhood were vague memories of a coastal village with hills that turned chocolate-colored in the summer, peering out at the even-tempered sea.
Escalante was Viviente’s southern port city. It was where the ship docked those many years ago, when Curtis joined his gang-grown buddies and left his hometown to embrace a smuggler’s dream, to forget the squalor of his old life and slam himself into the filthy splendor of crime, ditching two brothers in the interim between jaded teen and full-fledged brigand. He left them with generous but unwitting relatives in a callous escape under the shadow of dawn in the back of a truck.
Seeing Escalante again blasted fresh thoughts of family. If Bungan Port was intact, parts of Bohol must’ve been spared from the epidemic. Could it be then that his brothers survived, rough-faced Antonio and little Marklin, that a reunion during dark times inevitably forgave all past transgressions, that even his heartless, evil abandonment afforded him the right to contemplate on such possibilities?
While the city yawned, Curtis chided himself as he rolled in on someone else’s green Jeep, a gasping thing heavy with stolen gear and residual guilt. It wasn’t really stolen. You own what the dead can’t keep.
He cleared his head to focus on the goal at hand, aware that a lot of things could happen in a day. There were almost no whispers of survivors through the cities it took to get to Escalante. True, he rarely took a pit stop, but whatever cataclysm had the island in its clutches could cover a wide ground in twenty-four hours. Bungan Port may have already succumbed. Yet the broadcast did what Curtis thought was impossible. It had breached the barriers of his despair and given him purpose.
“Escalante Leisure Boats”, the sign read.
Curtis left the car doors open. A massive baseball bat pocked with giant nails lay on the passenger’s seat, stained with the bit of blood he hasn’t been able to wipe clean. He pulled out a pistol from one of the holsters strapped around his leg as he approached the entrance, trying to glean groans and grunts from the usual noise. The sea was blatant blue in the early afternoon. It was quiet.
He found two of the undead idling on the dock, barely balanced on loose bones and shrunken flesh. Minimal threat, Curtis thought. He decided to save ammo and hurried back to the car for his bat. He was more interested in the boats. Three of them, sixteen-footers by initial estimate, moored and intact.
Curtis gave the bat a twirl, then held the handle with both hands, his legs planted steady. “Here,” he spoke.
One of the undead jerked its head at the sound of his voice. The other turned more slowly, its glazed eyes looking for a focus. Grime dripped down their chins, lips partly maimed, their teeth black and moist from the sickness that corrupted them. A beastly noise started from their throats, a burbling guttural rumble.
Their eyes locked on target. Snarling, they sprung towards Curtis on heavy feet. The wooden dock shook.
Thwack! Curtis flung the first one off the dock and heard the water splash. The second lunged at him. Its holiday onesie oozed with something he didn’t recognize but smelled. He stepped out of its way and chucked it to the ground with a single swing.
The nails on the bat had ripped the zombie’s clothing, spraying blood from its wound. The force didn’t faze it. It struggled to get up, snapping its mouth, rabidly hissing as it trashed and tried to lift itself on its arms. Curtis pinned the creature down with his foot. He smashed its head in.
He braced himself for more, alert to any movement from the large cabin behind him.
The marina remained unstirred.
Curtis left the bat upright by the cabin door, readied the gun, and looked through the glass windows. The place appeared empty, but he heard a muffled buzzing and knew what it meant. He held his breath and kicked the door open, pointing his gun as he panned quickly around the large common room.
He was alone. Only the nasty stench of decay permeated the air.
The living area was a mess. Flies fluttered about a heap of remains that had sullied the floor. Splashed across the carpet and furniture were stains of sickly red. Curtis ignored the gore. His instinct was to look for the kitchen.
The soft hum of the fridge brought a smile to his face. “Yes,” he delighted as he opened it. Cold beer.
Sometimes Lady Luck threw a bone to the buggered, Curtis thought. That is, until her sister Lady Fuck buggered the buggered raw. These days the sisters seemed to trail each other closely.
And like an unfailing refrain, Lady Fuck found him a moment later. He was well into his second bottle when he noticed something staring at him from the doorway.
It was an enormous hound.
Curtis stiffened at the sight of it. Its fur was an unearthly shade of black, and its eyes were aflame. It began to move towards him with a predatory yet humanlike gait.
The beer bottle shattered as it hit the tiled floor. Curtis emptied the rounds of his nine millimeter. He aimed between the animal’s eyes and nowhere else. But the hound kept coming, its stride unwavering and sadistically slow.
“Stop shooting, fartfuck,” the dog spoke.
Curtis almost soiled himself. His throat made small gurgling noises.
“I’m not here to harm you,” the hound’s mouth opened. “But you should see your face right now. It’s delicious.”
The beast stopped a few feet away, huffing a few times, as though the air hurt it. Its voice possessed a low and eerie rasp, a ghostly echo following each word. Curtis stared at its jaw, a bite-a-human’s-neck-clean grade of a jaw.
“I was sent for you and there isn’t enough time, so listen close.”
Considering everything that’s happened, Curtis didn’t have the luxury of disbelief. Considering, too, that he had no real choice, he listened. After what sounded like a pitch, the hound asked if he would accept.
Curtis was engulfed in flames as soon as he said yes.