Chapter 28

Ferry Magic

It was painted in what I can only describe as eye catching color. Bright yellow like a rubber duck to be exact. Well there would be no sneaking up on anything in this vehicle. You could probably see it from space. It had been modified to have eight rows of benches with space for two people on each side if they were big or three people if they were small or squished together. There was a small gap in the seating in the back that was taken up with two extremely large coolers. That would be handy for snacks and other things. The whole seating area was covered by a canopy that looked like it could be removed if wanted.

Other than the color this was exactly what I wanted. I can tear out some of the bench seating to give myself room to store and load in cargo. Before I could climb in and check out the inside personally Michael stunned me with his next question.

“So what do you think are in the other two garage bays?”

Wait what? I had been so focused on the glorious duck boat in front of me I had not realized that when we opened up the garage it did not open up into a large open area like most garages. Instead it was a single vehicle bay. We had seen three doors on the outside of the building. Does that mean that there are two more boats?

I quickly hurry outside with Michael right behind me. We open up the next bay and see an identical bright yellow duck boat. We just glance at each other. We open up the last garage bay and see instead of a third boat a fully functional shop to maintain them. Jackpot! Now how do I get all of this onto the tender boat? The tender can definitely handle the weight of both of them, but they are too heavy to lift with the crane. What if I partially drive them onto the five-meter water deck? The whole duck boat is about 10 meters long so that really would not work.

Can I just tow them behind the tender? Yeah that seems to be the best idea. I will have to check in with the captain though to make sure it is actually feasible. With that that I turned my walkie talkie back on and tried to contact Olivia. No response. They are probably still out of range. While it may have seemed like it took us a long time to get here, in reality it was probably pretty quick compared to how roundabout the route will be for the tender boat. I can use this time to load up both vehicles and make sure that Michael and I can drive them.

Michael and I set a routine and get started with the work. We work for half an hour, loading up any and all spare parts and tools that we find. Next, is a quick break and a five-minute search around the area for incoming zombies that might hear us working. Finally, I use the walkie after every five-minute patrol to check and see if the tender is in range. We continue this pattern for two hours before I get a response from the tender. “Mark can you hear me this is Sally.”

“Yes Sally I can hear you. Are you guys close?”

“Uhh, the captain says we should be there in about 30 minutes to an hour depending on boat traffic and wrecks.”

“Boat traffic?”

“There are a few other people sailing around the area. We had to scare one group off and another just talked to us on the radio. That is what took us so long.”

“Roger that, we will see you soon.”

I guess that does make sense. Miami has a ton of watercraft. Somebody else that survived had to have had the idea to get on a boat for safety. I am not happy to hear that some people are already playing pirate though. I am glad that I loaded up the tender with weapons. Although with ship to ship combat we may need something better than just rifles. Dang it I am going to have to go to a military base aren’t I. I have been avoiding them like the plague for a good reason. Many people probably travelled to their closest military base for safety. Even if they didn’t, a group like ours will not be able to compete with trained military personnel and their access to higher powered weapons.

I am going to have to pick the military target wisely. It has to be minor enough that it had fewer military personnel, but large enough to have the supplies we want. In a perfect world the base will be abandoned. Let’s face it though, if this was a perfect world we would not be experiencing a zombie apocalypse. Enough of this, I need to focus on the here and now. Michael and I need to finish loading up before they arrive.

Forty minutes later the tender and the girls pull up to the nearby dock. Michael and I walk down to greet them.

“I hear the trip was interesting?”

“Pirates and survivors. Not what we were expecting.”

“I’ll get details later.”

“Captain, can we tow these duck boats behind the tender and make it to the Bahamas?”

“NO!”

Well that was not the answer I was expecting. I finally got the captain to explain in her say as few words as possible way that towing them for a few miles might work. Towing them for a long time would put too much stress on the tender’s frame. Furthermore, with the possibility of waves over four feet high the cables could rip out from the tender causing us not only to lose the duck boats, but irreparably damage the tender. So after much discussion there were two alternatives identified that we could use.

The first was simple. Find a tug boat and haul them behind. Unlike the tender, a tug boat was designed to haul things and was set up for it. So hauling them should not be a problem. The second alternative was the one that intrigued me. It was an offhand comment from Olivia that sparked the idea. She said something about if it was in New Zealand we could just drive them onto a ferry and motor them across. A car ferry. That was brilliant. Miami was a big port and if I remember right it did have a couple of ferries that operated between it and some of the closer islands. It might be a stretch, but if we could find one then not only could we take the duck boats, but we could load up all sorts of other driving equipment we needed.

It was decided that we would look for a ferry. Michael and I both requested a co-pilot to help us with the duck boats. I took Olivia and Michael took Sally. Helen would stay with Trika on the tender and be her assistant. The tender would lead the way and we would follow in the duck boats. We made sure to switch over a few more weapons and ammunition to our duck boats in case we ran into the proto pirates they had before. If they face gunfire from three vehicles instead of one, it would probably cause them to leave us alone permanently.

In a city with a lot of waterways, a duck boat is the only way to travel. Whenever we would get to a large bend or peninsula with houses that Trika had to go around we would just drive up onto the shore and then back down the other side as a little short cut. I could tell that Trika was getting annoyed with us by around the third major turn. “You should have just met us at the ocean!”

A whole sentence. We forced a whole sentence out of her. However, she was right. There was no reason for us to do this leapfrog with her except for protection. We talked about it and decided to go ahead towards the ocean entrance and scan the docks and the port for a ferry. Trika looked relieved and we took off before we started laughing. I do not want to make our primary captain mad. That would just be stupid.

We kept in contact through the walkies and made quick stops at several abandoned stores for anything that caught our fancy. The only essential pieces of equipment we picked up were easy to find in a big town. We grabbed four 55 gallon drums to hold diesel fuel and took out the two back seats to fit them in. Then we stopped by a giant hardware store and collected four hand pumps, two electric pumps, assorted hoses, and a generator each. These duck boats had a fuel capacity of about 100 gallons, but only made about 5-10 miles per gallon. We must have stopped at twelve different gas stations on the way to the port. Not just to fill up the duck boat and keep it topped off, but to fill up the 55 gallon drums also.

We soon have a system that works well to get what we need. We pull up to a gas station and park next to the underground storage tanks. Two people clear the zombies, two people use a pry bar to remove the caps of the tanks and set up the pumps and generator. We then pumped fuel for five minutes and cleaned up. Anything longer than five minutes and we started attracting too much attention from locals and zombies. Anything shorter than that and the amount of fuel we pumped really was not worth it. With an electric pump we are getting about 50 gallons per stop. That is 10 gallons a minute which is not bad. That let us fill all the drums and keep the duck boats full of fuel in case we had to make a break for it or skip a few fuel stops.

Soon enough we could see the docks. There were tons of ships, containers, boats, yachts, and just about any type of floating device you can think of. I mumbled, “How in the heck are we supposed to find a ferry in all of this mess. This is going to take forever.”

“No it won’t, follow the signs to cruise ship port four.”

“Wait you know where one is?”

“I just grabbed a phone book at one of the gas stations and looked it up. Carib Ferry is supposed to be run out of Port Four.”

Olivia is really starting to find a place in my heart. Smart, cute, resourceful, and just a bit sassy. For some reason she seemed to like me too. Wow could this be the famed end of the world romance? I will keep things low-key for now. It really is not an appropriate time for exploring these feelings. I call over to Michael in the other Duck and also let Trika know are destination. Ten minutes later I was looking at it. A massive ferry that could accommodate dozens if not more vehicles. It seemed a little extreme for what I wanted but it should do the job.

It is going to take forever to clear this thing and make sure it is safe. Not only that I have to figure out how to drive it. I mean Trika taught me the basics on the tender but this thing is at least three times bigger than that. It has four decks and is at least 200 feet long. Is that a semi on it? It is, that mean we can just pull a fuel tanker straight onto the boat and not have to worry as much about fuel. I wonder how many cars and semi’s this thing can actually hold. The more I think about this the more I realize that we are not going to be able to accomplish this without more people. The questions is where should be get them from?