The Ginger Beard Man

Prologue

When Marie swung her oar at the stranger's head, it should've killed him. She'd heard the wood crack, as loud as when her son, JJ, had hit a home run in Little League. But only seconds after he fell into the river, his head came shooting back up, his orange hair now a wet auburn, and water spluttering from his mouth. The way he bobbed up reminded her of the game JJ used to play at the pool, trying to shove a rubber ball under the turquoise surface, only to have it come torpedoing past his waiting hands a moment later.

It didn't matter, though. He'd die soon enough. Either from the elements, or killed by the dead. The gruesome beings that roamed the forest and had no mercy left in their decaying bones.

The man flailed and screamed something as the current swept him away, but Marie couldn't make out his words over the wind in her ears and the constant slapping of the river against the rowboat's hull. He was probably begging for her to save his life. Damn fool.

She dipped the oar back into the greedy river to wash away his blood. And then, turning her back to him, she started rowing. Although she angled the boat back upstream, she had no plans to return to the beach where they'd departed from. There had been shadows watching them from just beyond the tree line, and she wasn't looking for trouble. Someone, or something, had been following him. She was sure that was the only reason he'd agreed to get into her boat.

And now she possessed his treasure. Which, of course, would make her the target of whoever had been hunting him down.

The current was fast here where the river was narrow and the water deep, and after only a few minutes Marie's back felt that familiar burn. Perspiration beaded at her brow. But her calloused hands were strong and her muscles no longer tired as easily as they once had. This boat had become her home. Rowing had become second nature.

And this rowboat had saved her life more times than she could count.

Zombies, it turned out, can't swim.

Marie navigated the boat upriver and just beyond the bend, to where the river widened out and there were inlets close to the shore where the current lost its influence over the water. As she came to a calm spot under a stand of trees, she heard the low growl of the dead. A raspy, inhuman gurgle. So, instead of disembarking, she threw a rope over an exposed tree root and anchored herself in place beyond the reach of those putrid walking corpses.

What she wanted wasn't on land, anyway. It was right there in the rowboat with her.

Once the rope was secure, she stowed the oars safely under the boat's bench, and then turned to her prize.

The stranger's backpack was the kind they sold in outdoorsy stores, back when people bought things at stores. Huge with lots of zippers and straps and pull strings. It was heavy and bulging, and she wondered how long he'd been traveling with all that weight.

There were lots of side pockets. The tan leather journal he'd been scribbling in when she found him was cradled in one of the mesh water bottle holders. And something soft was stuffed in the top, but she wanted to know what was in the main compartment. What had he been protecting? Marie loosened the straps and pressed the side of each plastic buckle to open the bag. Then she released the pull-string to loosen the cinched top.

Peering into the bag's open mouth, she salivated. Cans of syrupy fruit cocktail, baby corn, and string beans! Tins of spiced ham, corned beef, tuna! She couldn't even remember the last time she'd eaten an actual meal. One with vegetables, a carb, and meat.

Making sure she didn't miss anything, she unzipped the top pocket and found a rolled up wool sweater and a pair of socks. This bag was full of gifts!

Carefully, she unpacked the bag's main compartment, sorting and stacking the food along the empty bench across from where she sat. The tin cans glittered in the sun, more precious than gold. If she rationed everything out, she wouldn't have to worry about food for at least a month. Maybe longer, if she supplemented with fresh fish. No wonder he had looked at her so warily when she first approached him.

Whatever guilt she may have felt for knocking an unsuspecting stranger overboard was washed away. This was a treasure worth killing over. Hell, in this world, people were killed for far less. That was a lesson she knew too well.

Her stomach growled.

Maybe she could be careless tonight and actually go to bed with a full stomach. She could be dead before sunrise; life was fickle that way. Might as well indulge while she could, at least this once. And then she could be careful tomorrow.

She started with the canned potatoes and then moved on to the spam. Starchy carbs and protein and fat satiated her hunger. What she craved next was sugar.

A can of chocolate pudding would've been nice, but the can of pears was everything she could've hoped for. Sweet juice. Soft flesh. Just a bit of grit, enough texture to be reminiscent of fresh fruit. She'd had a pear tree in her backyard, but it was an old tree in rocky soil and the fruit it produced never seemed fully ripened. It was always too green or too hard, and then it fell and fermented in the patchy grass that grew by its roots. If she closed her eyes, she could still smell it. Despite the poor harvests, it was a good climbing tree, and one summer JJ had shimmied up to a high sturdy branch, and with the help of his dad, had tied on a tire swing.

As she licked the last of the pear juice off her lips, Marie tasted salt and realized that she had started crying. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and swallowed down the memory of pears. But even as she repacked the cans into the backpack, more tears slid down her cheeks.

It was lonely here in the rowboat. Her only company was the dead growling at her from the edge of the water. And now, without the shadow of hunger to distract her, her mind was threatening to wander off into dark corners.

She needed a distraction. Maybe she should sort the cans by meal or by nutritional content. Try to come up with a logical way to ration everything out.

But then she remembered the journal.

Marie picked up the tan leather book and thumbed through it. Most of the pages were written on. And from her initial skim, the entries were sentences and paragraphs, so not just doodles or lists. Maybe this journal would be another treasure: companionship, after a sort.

Shifting her weight to be more comfortable, Marie leaned back on the rolled-up wool sweater and opened to the first page of the journal and began reading.