Free Deadfall: Hunters by Richard Flunker Page A

and more each day. At first I began to grow worried that I had made a mistake allowing her on board the ship. She had survived a horrible ordeal. She had put a bullet in her zombie mother’s brain. Those weren’t the kind of things you simply ignored. But the more I observed her, the more I saw Heather in her. She had the same inner fire, the will to expunge the demons. I had to admire that.
    I liked having her remind me of Heather too. Sadistic of me perhaps.
    The trip across the strait took just over a day and the green trees of Cuba quickly came into view. We all had our passport, visas and communist jokes out within a few minutes. We had always dreamingly talked about surviving the zombie plague on an island was the best possible scenario, but the reality was that these Caribbean island were probably just large coffins. The less land on which to flee from the walking menace meant the greater chance of death. It didn’t take long before we were sailing along the edge of the island to realize there was very little human life left. Of course, there was very little human life left anywhere.
    We sailed down the eastern side of the coast slowly for two full days, just taking our time and waiting to see what we would see. It wasn’t much. A few derelict boats here and there, and the usual gathering of zombies at any port we came close to. The whole western side of the island is a series of inlet bays and these outer lying island peninsulas. It’s actually remarkably beautiful as only a TV commercial for a tropical island paradise could capture it. A few times we ventured into the actual bays, lagoons really, but Maxie said he was nervous navigating in these waters. The odds of there being sunken ships under the waves was just too high. So we kept skirting along the outer edge of the island as we sailed south against it.
    On the third day, in the evening, we came across evidence of an airport just off the coast. There was a smaller airport tower sticking out just above the jungle trees. As these locations had granted us boons in the past, we dropped anchor in the small bay just off the airport that night, and made plans to go onshore the next morning and scout. That night as I stood out along the side of the boat, watching the sun set over the green hills of the island, Janine came and stood next to me. She counted out two large ships anchored or stuck in that small bay. They were large cargo ships, and one of them was listing hard to the port side. We talked about them, quickly making up small stories for each of them, giving them backgrounds, naming their captains and even creating imaginary inventories for them. All of them had semi happy endings. Their crews would find Cuba and make for the shore, starting a new community of survivors. Survival was the happiest of thoughts in the new world.
    We didn’t expect any survivors here though.
    It’s a really hot night tonight, I’m already covered in sweat. I hope I can get some sleep
     

(Editor’s Note: There are some loose pages inserted into the journal here. Newspaper clippings, some letters and some military reports. Brian makes no mention as to why they are inserted here, but there are other instances where more documents are inserted in other locations in the journal. Everything is left unmodified.)

 
    Cape Fear Weekly

New Hunter Group Forming
    Military aims to train civilians for hunter duty
     
    Ever since the chaotic events from the night now known as the Battle of Carolina Beach, the Admiral has been looking for solutions to avoid a future disaster such as the one that occurred on that night. Two months after the attack, Carolina Beach is still infested with tens of thousands of LImps and they don’t seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere. Some attempts were made by armed helicopters to eradicate this new population of the dead, but the results were minimal.
    “We have tried a more direct approach and have met with minimal success. It is time to try