Caddo Lake
08 Oct
Yesterday I walked until I came upon a lake. The signs leading up to it read “Caddo Lake Boat Landing Ah.” The last letters of “Ahead” had been shot off the sign by a shotgun long ago. It was about 1400 when I came to the lake, so I had to start making preparations for somewhere safe to hole up tonight. I carefully approached the boat dock, thinking back to Matagorda Island and how that situation had ended up. Many boats were still docked, and there were a few that had succumbed to the deep and pulled part of a dock down into the water with them. There were two sailboats of decent size docked and still afloat, but one of them did not look serviceable, because the owner had left the sails on deck to endure months of wind and weather. The other twenty-footer most likely had the sails stowed and would probably work. I could see a working anchor and a chain propped up on the rails of the forecastle with a hand-cranked winch.
I was only a hundred feet away from the boat, close enough that I could stand there and observe my surroundings. With the food and water I had on hand, I could pirate the boat, sail it out into the lake and get some real sleep tonight.
My goal was to move south and west back in the direction of Hotel 23. If the lake were shaped to my advantage, I could cover a lot of ground with the safety of water around me. Edging closer to the vessel, I saw no threats near. I wasn’t taking any chances, though, and approached the vessel scanning every direction. That dirty f*ck with the hatchet got one over on me and I could have been dead or dying right now if my luck had run out on the hood of that yellow bus.
In a moment of nervousness I chambered my weapon again to make sure I had one in the hole and a 9mm round dropped to the ground. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I was getting closer to the vessel . . .
Did I chamber my weapon?
I asked myself again. Pushing back the fear and anxiety, I kept moving. I was out in the open, within view of anyone or anything. I was at the boat. She looked derelict, with the nylon lines on the deck covered in mildew and bird crap. The curtains to the belowdecks were closed, allowing me no view of the interior.
I again checked my surroundings and jumped across to the starboard catwalk. Edging to the stern I could see remnants of bloody barefoot prints leading all the way back to the stern. I kept moving aft, making sure to point the dangerous end of my weapon at any blind spot. I followed the prints as they trailed off the stern into the water.
My next task was to make sure that there were no surprises waiting in the cabin below. I twisted on my weapon light and flipped open the door. No smell. Kept walking farther, into the bowels of the sailboat, bending over so as to not hit my head on the fixtures that littered the ceiling. Aside from the familiar old smell, the boat was abandoned. I began to inspect the sails, anchor and all the rigging to make sure that she would be safe for my transit across the Caddo.
The sails had some mold, but they were still workable. The motor would probably never work again and I doubted I would even attempt it. It was pulled back and out of the way so it wouldn’t matter to me either way. All that really mattered were the sails, anchor and rudder. I checked the pantry of the vessel—nothing but old and rotted beef jerky, two bottles of cloudy water and a pack of bar soap. I checked a small storage locker holding a small CO2 inflatable lifeboat. Sitting in some storage netting attached to the bulkhead inside the locker was a set of Steiner Marine binoculars. These will really come in handy when I make landfall and when I need to scout ahead on my way south.
After taking one more look out the porthole to make sure nothing was about, I commenced to rig the sails to head out into the lake for some rest and relaxation. Barring being at the summit of Mount Everest or at the International Space Station (poor bastards), this was the safest rest I could hope for in this day and time. It had been awhile since I had taken my sailing lessons, but I still remembered how to swing the boom and raise and lower the sails. The wind was blowing to my advantage, which was the second lucky thing to happen to me in the past forty-eight hours. I’m sure I am due for something else.
Kicking the dock from the bow, I started my travels south and slightly west out of the small inlet toward the expanse of the lake. The sails caught the light wind and pulled me at a speedy three knots toward my destination. This was a happy time for me. I forced my current situation out of my head and imagined I was sailing on Beaver Lake back home before all of this happened. I thought of being home on leave and visiting my family, and of my grandmother’s brown beans.
I could see no sign of the undead on the shore but I was a decent clip away from land. I was careful to remain in the center of the small channel as it opened up to the lake. As I approached the mouth of the inlet, I locked the wheel and ran up to lower the sails. I wanted to be far enough away from land to feel safe, but I still wanted to be close enough to swim easily ashore if something were to go wrong with my little floating sanctuary.
The sun was getting low in the sky as the boat drifted to my self-assigned safe zone. I dropped anchor and estimated that the lake was about sixty feet deep. I unpacked all my gear and hung up the wet stuff to dry out. I scavenged the boat once more, checking out the head and galley. There was no usable food but there was a tin mop bucket and an old grill top that had been cleaned before it was stowed long ago. In the head, I found a stack of magazines. I kept some to use as toilet paper when the good stuff ran out.
I had about an hour or so of daylight left so I took the mop bucket and dipped it over the side to get some water. I then took a bar of soap and the grill top and used them as a washing machine to clean up all my dirty gear. Not as good as Maytag but better than nothing. My undergarments and socks were starting to smell pretty bad and I am getting a light rash under my armpits and around my crotch. I spent the rest of my daylight washing and wringing my clothing dry. I used some nylon cord that I found in a trunk at the stern to improvise a drying line below the guardrail in case the wind blew my stuff off the line.
Just as the sun dipped down below the tree line I secured myself belowdecks in the stateroom, wearing only the green wool blanket that I had acquired from the old farmhouse, hoping that I didn’t get into a naked gunfight. For the first time in a while I feel safe to sleep and let my guard down so I will do just that.
09 Oct
I slept in until 0830. A light eastern wind kept the boat pointing into the breeze. My head was scratchy around the makeshift stitches. I knew it was time to remove them. Using the mirror from the boat’s head and the same needle I had used to stitch my head, I began to remove them one by one. I stopped about five minutes into the procedure and thought it might be a good idea to boil some water to clean the area every few seconds, but changed my mind, realizing that it would be dangerous to make a fire on a boat in the middle of a lake with all my gear spread out. I had visions of a burning beacon signaling the dead and any band of miscreants within twenty miles. After about ten minutes I was done and cleaned up the wound as best I could, rubbing in a small amount of expired triple antibiotic.
My clothing had dried by noon, and I could see that some clouds were forming on the western horizon. Looked like it could possibly rain. I brought my dry clothes down into the cabin, folded them as best I could and repacked them in the order I thought I might need them. Before getting dressed for the day I again dipped the bucket into the lake water and tried to take a modified sponge bath, using one of my clean socks as a washrag. It wasn’t a hot shower, but it sure as hell felt better than being dirty. I dried off with the wool blanket and had started to get dressed when I heard them in the distance. The wind carried their cries to my sanctuary and once again reminded me that this was not a camping trip or a pleasure hike down the Appalachian Trail. This was a death game.
I could not tell how far away they were but it didn’t matter. Using my new binoculars I scanned the shoreline of the lake. Something was moving along the shore northwest of my position. From this distance it could have been a deer. I went belowdecks just as it started to rain to check and recheck my gear. There was some motor oil in the sink area so I tried to make good use of it by oiling some critical parts of my weapons. I figured that if it’s good enough for an engine it’s good enough for a weapon. The guns have seen some use in the past days so I figured that it couldn’t hurt.
As I wiped the SMG down, I once again heard a faint buzzing sound. It reminded me of a few days ago at the watering hole. It seemed mechanical in nature. I had enough daylight to sit and think inside the boat and formulate my plan. I knew that Hotel 23 was south/southwest from my position. Just a WAG (wild ass guess) at the distance would be two hundred miles. My general heading in true, not magnetic should be 220 to 230 degrees. At two hundred miles, traveling on foot most of the way, at ten miles per day, I should be in the neighborhood of Hotel 23 in roughly a month. For anyone who finds this, that is/was my plan. I will follow a general heading from Caddo Lake to Nada, Texas until I reach the facility. My first priority is to knock a gas station and grab a road atlas or maybe check for one in abandoned vehicles along the way.
After gaining access to an atlas, I can formulate a better route, going around towns and cities instead of blindly stumbling into them. I’ll hunt for food to replace my perishables and try to travel at night when possible. Supply priorities are: water, food, medical supplies, batteries and ammunition. Funny how priorities shift. In the beginning ammunition would have been my first priority.
1623
Sound has strange quality on this lake, like some strange parabolic antenna attracting the sounds of the dead to the mast of this sailboat. I can hear the moans and rasps of them. Terrible things. Thinking of this I pulled out my survival radio and gave it a shot—nothing. Once again I grabbed my binoculars and scanned the distance. I could see them everywhere I could see the shore. They swarmed the shoreline like seagulls. I’m noting any change in trend in their movement at the shore.
Sooner rather than later, I’m going to have to make landfall and continue my journey south. I’m not looking forward to making a two-hundred-mile walkabout across dead-infested territory with over sixty pounds of gear. Every now and again I think about this and it still shocks me down to my DNA that this is happening. The suicide rate must have skyrocketed in the past few months among survivors, because not a day goes by that I don’t think of ending it here and now. There are no red days on the calendar anymore. I have no days I can rest and let down my guard. Even on this boat I dream of them somehow getting onboard and taking me out. Looks like tonight will be a can of chili, and with my gear safely centralized, some boiled lake water for dinner. All I can do is sit here and enjoy the coming sunset and try to ignore the ominous bellows in the distance.
10 Oct
0630
I feel well rested and recovered enough to start heading south and west on the water. My intention is to triple-check my gear and raise sails for shore. Loneliness is magnified by the solitude of the lake. I remember staying in a hostel in Brisbane, Australia, a couple of years ago. Not wanting my things stolen, I chose a single and stayed there for three days nursing a hangover for the first two. Somehow, in some detached way, that time of solitude in Brisbane reminds me of how I feel now. Maybe it is the fact that I am traveling alone and the only other things that matter to me are my pack and weapons.
2200
After fooling with the sails for an hour or so, I pulled anchor and made very slowly southwest. I know these things can see my sail; I just did not know how the sight of it cruising across the lake would affect their decision to follow. My plan was to run the boat aground to save time. I could not afford the time it would take to properly moor the vessel and tie her up securely. This would be a one-way trip, as after the boat was run aground it would take another motor-powered vessel to pull her back to the lake. Using the binocs I scanned the shoreline for any indications and warning of the dead reacting to my presence.
I tied off a knotted line to the bow so that I would have an easy deboarding when the time came. In between boom swings of the sail, I positioned my three MP5 9mm magazines where I could reach them, with the fourth full at twenty-nine rounds in the weapon chambered. Make no mistake—this was not Normandy beach in the forties but was Caddo beach with potentially more ghouls than German soldiers and one man to push back their numbers.
I wished the vessel had a speed slower than five knots—I wanted to approach more conservatively. After two hours of steering the bow port and starboard, I could finally get a good look at the beachhead that I would be assaulting. On first count I observed a dozen dead at the shore with icy gazes locking to my center mass. Using the compartmentalization techniques that I had learned in the military, I made a poor attempt at pushing the thought of getting torn apart out of my gray matter.
Knowing that this vessel had a draft of at least six feet, I anticipated a respectably violent impact when the sails pushed the vessel and keel into the rocky shore. Nearing land, I tied off the boom and lay flat on my back with my feet braced on the forward railing. Lying on the deck I tried to push the mental image of the dead out of my thoughts by looking up at the mast and clouds in the sky above. Then came the impact . . .
The vessel leaned violently to port while the bow turned starboard and I could hear everything on the shelves below fall and crash to the deck.
Regaining my footing, I shouldered my heavy pack and readied my submachine gun. I estimated that there were twenty of them closing my position with the potential of thousands if I didn’t move fast. Aiming as best I could with the short-barreled MP5, I took out five of them so that I would have the time to carefully climb down the knotted rope to the shore. I was down to about nineteen rounds in this magazine as I only had a 50 percent head hit ratio past twenty yards with the SMG. I knew my Glock was loaded and ready as backup as I hit the water at the bottom of the rope. I carefully scanned for any open spots in the group of ten or so that remained and once again played offense as I threaded the needle and ran through them as best I could.
Those ten would turn to a hundred if I didn’t lose them, so I decided to run down the shoreline in plain view as fast as I could, prompting them to follow. It was about a mile before jogging became nearly impossible with the pack. I turned ninety degrees right, into the tree line out of my pursuers’ sight and then started the system of walk twenty paces then jog twenty paces for about an hour. I had successfully lost the dead and was marginally safe in the open plains of what I believed to be Texas. Until I find a reliable map of the area, my plan is to head west until I reach a two-lane highway running north-south and shadow it south until I hit the interstate that runs east-west into Dallas. Of course I will not be visiting Dallas—ever. I will simply shadow the interstate highway system going in the general direction of Hotel 23 using roadway lateral navigation.
As I walked west with the sun at my back I started to feel more energized despite the painful blisters on my feet. What I wouldn’t give for some moleskin in my gear. I might try rigging tape. By the late afternoon, I had found a deserted two-lane highway and approached cautiously from the east. I had depleted my water supply down to half the Camelbak bladder so I thought it best to stop at the nearest small bridge over a creek to fill up. It took a mile of paralleling the road before I spotted a steel drainage tube running underneath the road from the field in which I was walking.
The Steiner binocs had already earned their weight in my pack for helping me to find the water supply. As I approached the drain carefully from the northwest, I spotted half a dozen dead cattle—what was left of them. In virtually all of the cattle carcasses the legs were removed and strewn about the field, indicating that they had likely been taken down by the dead. I would have believed that feral dogs or coyotes had done the job if I hadn’t seen a long-dead corpse with a hoof mark through its head and a mouth full of cowhide covered in white hair. The beast must have knocked one of them down and taken a lucky step. No matter. The dead had probably swarmed the cattle like Amazonian piranha. I could almost imagine the event in my head, remote-viewing back to the beginning months.
Leaving the field, I moved to the water supply and could hear the trickle of the water as it fell from the drainage pipe under the highway. The pipe was about the diameter of a fifty-five-gallon steel drum. I pulled out the water bladder and had begun to fill it when I heard a shuffling sound inside the pipe. Looking into the darkness I could make out the human shape of what I believed to be one of those things. Using my flashlight I discovered the partially decomposed body of a creature lodged among drainage debris and unable to get out.
The creature’s head was caught in such a position that it could not see me. It did, however, know I was there. I poured out my decontaminated water and dried the inside of the plastic water bladder as best I could with a clean set of spare skivvies. Leaving the poor bastard to rot in his steel cylinder tomb, I kept moving, looking for water. Now that I had been forced to give up my entire water supply, I felt even thirstier. I continued to shadow the two-lane highway south. Using my binocs I saw that I was following the direction of Highway 59. I took a few minutes to scratch this down in my journal. I continued to keep a lookout for any of those green signs that gave the mileage to the next city.
The sun was starting to go down by this point so I decided, despite my thirst, that it was best to use the remaining hour of useful light to find a safe place to hole up for the evening. There were houses in the vicinity of the road but I didn’t have time to break and enter and properly sweep a house before sunset. I kept moving and scouting with my binocs until I discovered a suitable location to sleep—the top of a relatively easy-to-access roof. I stopped in a field and checked my pack to make sure everything was in place before bolting across the road to the target house. I put the wool blanket I had on the top of my pack for easy reach and extra 9mm ammunition in the zipper pouch on the lid of the pack. I then dropped the magazines from my MP5 and Glock to make sure they were at capacity—fifteen plus one on the Glock and twenty-nine plus one on the MP5. Weapons hot, with the MP5 set to single shot and my pack rearranged, I made for the house of choice, a two-story home on the outskirts of a small neighborhood.
The sun was getting low and the temperature was falling as I sprinted as fast as I could to the fence line. I threw my pack over the three-wire barbed-wire fence and climbed over, being careful not to cut myself. After lifting the pack back on I checked the road in both directions. There was undead movement in the distance on both sides of the road. I crossed the road slowly and deliberately, using the cover of an old car, long abandoned. Standing on the other side of the road, I knelt and scouted ahead with the binocs in the fading light. It seemed relatively clear so I double-timed it to the house. I chose this house because of the ladder that I had spotted four hundred yards earlier. It was leaning against the guardrail of the front porch.
I made it to the house and positioned the ladder so that I could easily climb to the roof and sleep there tonight. Before climbing up, I surveyed the outside of the home, noticing that the front door had been splintered in from the outside and bullet holes peppered the front of the house and the wooden pillars of the porch. Another site of a last stand gone wrong. The whole perimeter of the home was covered in what I call gore marks, places the dead had pummeled for days in an attempt to enter.
Makeshift board barricades were nailed up on the downstairs windows but most of the boards were ripped from the window frames and all the windows were busted from the outside. This house would be a terrible choice in which to sleep tonight, but a fairly decent choice to sleep on. Satisfied that this place was condemned and that it was not worth investigating its interior, I carefully climbed the ladder to the roof. Once on the roof of the first-story overhang, I pulled the ladder up with me and then climbed to the second story. I didn’t want to take a chance of one of those things breaking through the second-story window and attacking me in my sleep. After making it to the roof of the house I pulled the ladder up with me.
I had a pretty good vantage point with enough light to spare to set up camp on the roof. I pulled out my blanket and strapped my pack to one of the roof exhaust pipes. Using the pack waist strap, I attached the secured pack to my arm so I wouldn’t roll off the house in my sleep. I was able to use part of my pack as sort of a pillow. What with being fully clothed, with a thick wool blanket, it is not that bad up here. Good night.