Chapter 17

Start Of The Island Navy

My little group headed towards our first target, Sunshine Marina. Sunshine Marina was a smaller out of the way marina where a lot of retired, former ship handlers kept some smaller boats to still enjoy the water. It was surrounded by mostly farmland, which gave me hope to find some skilled farmers and even possibly mechanics to help fill out my group. As my group pulls up I see some very encouraging signs. First, there are two tractors, no wait those are combines, pulled up to and abandoned at the beginning of the dock. Second, several of the boats are not at the dock but rather anchored together a little way off shore in a little boat island.

The bad news is that there are at least three dozen zombies wandering around the marina. That is a lot more than I would expect for this remote of an area. I wonder if the loud slow moving combines brought them. Oh well, I guess how they got here really doesn’t matter. I pull off the road and the other three vehicles follow my lead. The sound of our engines has pulled at least half of the zombies from the marina towards us. There should be several following us as usual also.

“Hank, you and Susan take care of the followers. Charles you are on over watch for any leakers from any direction. I will deal with those in front. Any questions?”

“Nope, understood.”

“Alright, sooner started sooner done.”

With that statement I opened up with the .45 carbine first and dropped eight zombies with ten shots. No time to reload, the .30 .30 comes up and nine zombies go down with these eleven shots. The closest zombies have been cleared and I have a chance to reload. I reload both rifles and then finish off the four zombies still coming my way. With the immediate zombie problem sorted I settle down with my new small caliber sniper rifle. Basically I put a really large and ridiculous scope on top of a .22 semi-automatic rifle. I was hoping that with the scope I could improve my accuracy enough to use single or double shots to put down zombies at a distance without wasting the larger caliber ammunition.

In that vein I had loaded each of my clips with alternating hollow point and target ammunition. The idea was to take one body shot first, trying to hit the heart. I would follow that up with an attempted head shot. The target ammunition should be enough out of a rifle to break the bones in the head at least 50% of the time depending on where they hit. The firing all around me had stopped by this point and nobody was yelling so I assumed that it was safe enough to focus on long range shots. I have at least fifteen targets that I can check this configuration out on and I have plenty of time, ammunition, and ten preloaded clips. That is one hundred shots.

I had not sighted in the rifle yet so I spent the entire first clip on two zombie doing just that. By the time I was done with the second clip I was confident my little plan was going to work. My next two clips proved me right. It was very rare that hollow point bullet alone would take down a human target. I don’t know if I wasn’t hitting the heart or what. I was going to have to check on that. The combination of a body shot and then a head shot was very effective. Usually the head shot would cause them to crumple up and go down. Dead or not they would at least bleed out in the near future. I loaded my .22 with another clip and proceeded to eliminate the final few zombies around the marina.

“Good news, the .22 sniper rifle seems to work with a two shot combo. That should save us a lot of ammunition in situations where we can wait and take our time.”

“That is good to hear Mark. The surrounding area is clear and it looks like someone from the group of boats in the marina is heading our way to talk to us.”

Hmm, I had been so focused on the shots that I lost situational awareness. Not a good thing if I was by myself. In fact, it could have been deadly. However, with people to back me up it really was not a big deal.

“Alright who wants to go down with me to meet the natives?”

They all got a little laugh out of that. It was decided that Susan and her father Franz would go down with me. There was at least a little hope that Franz might be recognized by a few of the people in the boating community. We walk towards the dock the dinghy was making for. “Franz, feel free to interrupt if they say something unreasonable about boats. Susan, if you notice anything off just tug on my arm and say we should check with Stan before making a decision.”

They both nodded and understood my little precautions.

“Good afternoon, boat people, or whatever you want to call yourselves. My name is Mark Evans and with me Is Susan and her father Franz. We would like to talk to you about recruiting some or all of you to join our little group. If no one wants to, then that is fine. We don’t force others like some people do. We just ask that you leave us alone and we will leave you fine folks alone.”

“That is a heck of an introduction young man.” The gentleman speaking had to have been in his 80’s at least. When they came up with the term weathered, they could have used this gentleman as their model. His skin was leathery and he had more wrinkles than I could count. However, to think that he was old or useless would be a mistake. He radiated a calmness and sense of security. In short he was fascinating.

“Well sir, I have found out that time is precious, especially when dealing with zombies on the loose. I prefer to get the major points out of the way and then I know whether it is worth staying or moving on rather quickly.”

“That sounds fantastic. So can you explain what your group is doing or is trying to do so I can pass on the message?”

“We are trying to put together a group to head on down to Andros Island in the Bahamas. It is one of the largest islands with fresh water, has a low indigenous population so it should be easy to clear, has established agriculture, room to grow, and mild year round weather. I feel that this would be the safest place for my family and friends and we be able to stay safe and even prosper there.”

“Excellent summary. Why would you need our help or anyone else’s help for that matter?”

“Well the thing is, I am good with ideas, I can even help out with most tasks that need to be done. I could probably even navigate a ship to Andros Island. However, truly larger ships, multiple trips, and maintenance are beyond me and my group. That means we need to find like-minded individuals who have these skills and other skills we may be lacking to help us out.”

“Well that was the best sales pitch that I have heard in a long time. Here is the problem though, trust.”

“Old man you do not know how happy I am to here you say that. Umm, by the way may I please know your name so I can call you something other than old man or wrinkly guy in my head.”

At my last statement everyone around me and the old guy burst out laughing including him.

“I guess I never did give you my name. I don’t mind the old man, but let’s leave my wrinkles out of our discussion. You can call me Gerald. My friends call me Captain G. or that dang pirate if they are particularly close to me.”

“This is great, I love pirates. Now about your trust issue. You are the first person in this whole stupid apocalypse that has put into words what people need to function as a group. Trust. I wish there was an easy answer to your question but there isn’t one. As I see it you have three ways of forming a group that can work. Personal Power, Group Power, or Mutual Benefits and Trust. I don’t like the first two and the last one is difficult to earn and easy to lose. I think the best thing we can do is start with mutual benefits and over time develop trust.”

“Son, that is perhaps the best answer you could have given. If you had demanded anything or spouted some hippie nonsense about being brothers in humanity or some crap we would have asked you to leave. What exactly is your plan and who is going to lead this shindig?”

With that set of questions I knew that this group would be joining us and probably for the long term. I explained to Gerald my rough outline of a plan. Every time I thought about it I would be inspired to add more details and/or things we needed for it. As for leadership I proposed that whoever was the expert in that field would lead that leg of the journey or activity. Anyone not happy with it could leave, propose someone else with a good reason, or just deal with the situation like an adult. I think the both of us knew it would not be that easy in the long term, but it would definitely work for now.

After a few more minutes of discussion Gerald went back to talk to everyone out on the boats and I signaled my small convoy to come on down. I put everyone to work immediately. This marina was out of the way and more rural than most. However, from what Gerald told me it was deep enough for anything besides large tankers. It would make a perfect outpost on the coast. From here we could organize supplies and runs into the interior of United States for what we needed.

Long term I was hoping to set up something like this in each state or country nearby. I figured that if we went no farther north than North Carolina and no further west than New Orleans we should have access to everything we needed and avoid the largest groups of zombies and people from bigger cities. Outside of Florida there were no truly large coastal cities until you hit Washington D.C. up north and New Orleans in the gulf. I was hoping if we limited our area of supply raiding it might work to our advantage at least until we expanded and built up our forces. Most of the Caribbean was not as militarized as America so was not as worrisome as groups from the continent. The only exception to that would be Cuba. That was a whole different ball game. I hate to say it, but I was seriously hoping because of its government and situation that the virus would hit it hard and the whole thing would implode and leave us alone.

I knew I was probably not that lucky, but I had much more immediate worries and plans to deal with. By my most conservative estimate I expected the zombie and survivor situation to explode in two to four weeks. If I was being pessimistic, it could happen as early as one week. What I meant by this is that people rarely had more than one to two weeks of food and or water stored up in their houses. We had seen very few people on the road and several waving at us from windows. My best guess was that within the next month when other survivors of the zombie virus started running out of food it would cause mass migrations, confusion, and violence. Death by zombie would rise as people had to leave their homes to find food. Death by other survivors as they fought over food would probably be even worse.