Still Water: Prologue

Prologue

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I thought the apocalypse would be different. Sure, the TV shows got some things right. The canned food. The generators never shutting up. The way one stupid mistake could take someone out for good.

Two months ago they declared an emergency and told everyone to stay indoors and wait for an all clear. They said two weeks. We’d heard that before.

A lot of people didn’t wait. We watched the coverage anyway, reporters repeating the same phrases like they meant something. Traffic stacked up heading north, the way it does before a big hurricane.

The rest, the ones who stayed, went on with their lives.

Three days later, the power went out.

Dad’s whole-house generator kicked in immediately, backing up the solar on his roof. Others weren’t as prepared. Houses turned into ovens in the Florida humidity. More people left then, usually in a hurry.

By the end of the first week, it was obvious who was still around.

Vinnie and Rachel were across the street with their two kids. My parents were still here. My wife and I stayed, abandoning our home next to my parents and moving in with them. A few more on the block stayed, too. People who’d had generators. People who hadn’t panicked. People who either didn’t have anywhere else to go or decided not to try.

Everyone else was gone. Some left notes. Most didn’t. A few houses were locked up tight. A few left their front doors wide open.

“Sarge” from across the street was still here. He didn’t say much. He watched the sky at night. He listened.

He was the first to notice the flashes on the northern horizon.

It wasn’t lightning.

We watched them from the street, counting without meaning to. The sound came later, soft and delayed, a gentle, rhythmic thump, like someone closing a door far away.

We tried the radios after that. At first, we thought it was interference. My dad adjusted the antenna.

Nothing came through but static. Not even the emergency broadcast that was played in a loop. No chatter on the shortwave, either.

Sarge turned his off before the rest of us did. He didn’t tell us what it meant until morning.

Jacksonville was gone.

Sarge was right about another thing, too. He said they would come.

One night, Vinnie’s doorbell camera caught two men from the apartments on Spencer Road moving through the neighborhood. They weren’t knocking.

Vinnie answered the alert with a shotgun.

Afterward, no one argued about whether it had been necessary. Not out loud.

The next night we heard gunfire farther down the road. Not close enough to see. Close enough to recognize. It didn’t last long. There were no sirens.

By morning, Sarge was already dragging furniture from the abandoned houses into the street.

He didn’t ask, but we all saw it. He started stacking things on opposite ends of our block. No one stopped him. A few people helped without being asked.

Barricades. They weren’t meant to keep people out. Just slow them down. Vinnie added some trail cameras at the top that could alert us if something tripped it.

What we didn’t expect was what the barricades stopped.

They gathered at the barricades. Not clawing or pushing, just standing there, close enough that the space on our side feels smaller every time we look at it. Their skin pallid and stretched thin. And the smell. We got used to it over time.

Romero called them zombies. We tried other names for a while. “Undead.” “Walkers.” Just “The Dead.”

None of them helped.

The first time someone put a round through a head and it didn’t matter, we stopped believing what we thought we knew. Sarge found that destroying the head worked. A shotgun at close range. Decapitation if you had the means.

The body drops. The head doesn’t always stop.

The fresh ones are quiet. Not fast, but close. You don’t hear them coming because they don’t come the way you expect. Doors don’t stop them. Neither do stairs. We learned that part late.

They don’t run. They wait. And when you notice them, it’s because they’ve already decided to be seen.

The older ones move badly. They shamble. They fall and flail, and sometimes they stay down longer than they should.

But they don’t come alone. Two. A dozen. Enough that you start counting without meaning to.

We settled into calling them hunters and gatherers. No one remembers who said it first. It was probably Vinnie, but it wasn’t meant to be funny.

We ran into the first hunter in a pharmacy off Blanding. We were looking for insulin and antibiotics, moving fast.

It spoke before we saw it. Not shouting. Not groaning. Just words, broken up, like it was trying to remember how they went together.

Vinnie answered it by instinct. That was the mistake.

It came at him low and fast. Not running. Committed. We got out because Sarge was behind us and didn’t hesitate.

Afterward, we stopped assuming silence meant empty. The hunters watch. They seem to wait for mistakes.

It took another month for the math to become obvious.

Fuel became harder to find. Meds after that. We started talking about what we needed instead of what we wanted. That was the change. No one said it out loud, but no one was pretending we could stay, either.

I guess now we need to figure—

“Honey,” my mom says from behind me. “They need you over at Vinnie’s.”

My mom stands in the doorway with her weight on one hip, like she always has. Her hair’s gone mostly gray now, cut to her shoulders because it’s easier that way. The Florida heat has roughened her skin, drawn the lines deeper around her mouth and eyes, but she still moves fast when she needs to.

She’s in her mid-seventies and dresses like someone who plans to stay on her feet. Sneakers, loose shirt, the same watch she’s worn for years. She looks smaller than she used to, but not fragile. Not yet, anyway.

“Thanks, Mom,” I say as I stand. I try to step past her and she doesn’t move.

“You’re not too old to give your mom a hug,” she says, smiling.

I lean down and wrap my arms around her. She lingers for a moment but lets me go.

I walk to the front door and take the rifle propped beside it. A scoped .30-06. Vinnie gave it to me. Sarge taught me how to use it. My pistol stays on my hip while I’m awake.

And then I step out into the humid air of the warm Florida night.

The heat hits me immediately, thick and wet, like it’s been waiting on the other side of the door. Smoke from Vinnie’s fire pit hangs low over the yard, mixing with the smell of salt and rot that never quite leaves the air anymore.

The generators are quieter out here, farther away, but I can still hear them if I listen for it. A steady, tired hum under everything else. Bugs scream in the dark like nothing has changed.

The fire throws uneven light across the fence line. People stand where the light reaches them and drift back when it doesn’t. No one’s sitting. No one’s relaxed.

Vinnie’s thinner than the last time I really looked at him, all angles now. The goatee makes his face sharper, his eyes brighter than they have any right to be this far into it. His hair’s gone more salt than pepper, but he hasn’t bothered cutting it past what gets in the way. Mid-forties, maybe, but he moves like someone who hasn’t sat down since this started.

He stays close to the fire, hands always busy with something he doesn’t need to be doing.

Sarge stands a little apart from the fire, shirtless like always, holding a beer can in his hand. Late sixties, maybe. None of us are sure, and no one asks.

He’s still built like a drill sergeant caricature. Broad shoulders tapering down into a narrow waist, skin burned dark by the sun, muscle that never learned how to quit. Square jaw. Straight back. The kind of frame that looks like it should come with a voice attached to it.

It doesn’t.

He’s quiet. Soft-spoken when he talks at all. He doesn’t give orders. He just says what he’s about to do, and somehow that becomes the plan. He’s earned that since this started.

When he looks at you, it’s not appraisal. It’s concern. Like he’s already counted the cost and is checking to see if you understand it yet.

Vinnie presses a warm beer into my hand.

“Sarge thinks it’s time to go.”

I look over to Sarge, and speak a little louder than I mean to.

“Yeah. I’ve been running the numbers. A week, if that. We’re running out of fuel. We’re running out of dad’s insulin. If we stay, we’ll have to scavenge past Publix.”

Sarge nods.

“And we will run into more of those hunters.”

I exhale through my nose.

“So what’s the plan?”

“We get a boat in the water, sail the St. Johns to the Intercoastal, then head south to Miami and east to Shipwreck Cay.” Sarge doesn’t blink.

I let out a chuckle. “The cruise ship island?”

Vinnie nods. “Yeah. Think about it, Danny. They’ve got panels and generators. Big fuel reserves. Desalination. We can fish, maybe even find animals on the other islands.”

I don’t answer right away.

Shipwreck Cay. I remember the commercials. Blue water, white sand, staff paid to smile like nothing bad could ever happen to you there. It feels obscene now, even as an idea.

“How many people?” I ask.

Vinnie shrugs. “Us. Rachel and the kids. Your folks. Sarge. Maybe a few more if they haven’t burned their bridges.”

“How many boats?”

“One,” Sarge says. He crushes the empty can in his hand, drops it into the fire pit where it hisses and blackens. “Two if we need it.”

I look past him, down the street toward the barricades. The dead are there. I don’t have to see them to know it.

“Which marina?” I ask.

“Doctor’s Lake,” Vinnie says. “We can’t take Kingsley, but we can use the back roads and make it to Park Avenue.”

US-17, I think. We’d made it as far as the railroad tracks on Kingsley and saw that US-17 had turned into a parking lot.

“We’re only getting across that bridge on foot.”

Sarge nods.

“Yeah. But I’ve scouted the marina, there’s a 60 foot ketch there that we can… borrow.”

“Your folks won’t make it that far,” Sarge continues. “So we drop everyone off at Club Continental. Vinnie and I will get the boat and pick you up.”

I tilt my head slightly, considering the plan. Sarge continues.

“I’ve scouted the marina and the club. Took care of a couple gatherers. Didn’t see hunters. Doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”

I take a pull from the beer. It’s warm and flat and tastes like aluminum. I finish it anyway.

“And if the boat’s gone,” I say.

Sarge meets my eyes. “Then we take something else and upgrade when we get past the city.”

That’s his version of optimism.

We stand there for a while, listening to the fire pop and the generators hum and the insects scream like this is still just another Florida summer night. Somewhere down the block, something knocks against the barricade. Wood creaks. No one moves to check. It doesn’t matter.

“I’ll talk to my parents,” I say.

Sarge nods once. “I want to leave before dawn. Less eyes on us,” he says.

I walk back to the house and tell my parents.

My dad asks how far we’ll have to walk. My mom asks how much she can carry.

I tell them clothes and medicine only. When I say it, my eyes drift to the china cabinet. My mom closes it without looking at me.

The next task: Tell my wife, Ann.

I find her in our bedroom, leaning over a half-packed suitcase. Her dark brown hair is pulled into a loose bun, the way she does when she’s not planning to stay long.

She speaks without turning to me.

“Danny, I heard. We’ve only got a few days of food left.”

I step up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. She leans back into me, just enough to say she’s there.

“Sarge wants to leave before dawn,” I say.

She nods. “Okay.”

She reaches into the closet and pulls down her old backpack instead of the suitcase. The zipper sticks. She doesn’t ask for help.

***

We meet at Vinnie’s place while the sky is still the wrong color. Not dark, not light. That thin gray that makes everything look unfinished.

His house is the only one with lights still on. One generator still running, a low mechanical growl that feels louder now that everything else is quiet. I shut down and secured the generator at my dad’s. The rest of the block is dark.

The truck is already idling when we get there, Vinnie under its hood tweaking something with the engine. A white pickup with a flat-bed trailer hitched to it, the kind meant to haul cars. The ramps rattle when someone steps on them. The sound carries farther than it should.

People load without being told where to stand. The kids go into the cab with Vinnie. Adults climb into the bed or onto the trailer, settling along the rails and wheel wells in between crates of supplies and suitcases, hands finding metal to hold onto. Ann hands packs on the ground to Vinnie’s wife, Rachel.

Sarge stands off to one side, watching the street. Shirtless like always, boots on. His AR slung across his shoulder, the shotgun riding low on his hip, finger laid flat along the frame. He’s already done the math.

“We swing up Custer,” he says quietly, not addressing anyone in particular. “Check the Zaccones. Then cut back toward Dalton.”

No one argues. No one asks why. It’s halfway up the loop. Close enough to be hopeful. Far enough to be dangerous.

“If anyone’s alive and staying quiet, that’s where they’ll be,” Vinnie says.

“And if they’re not?” someone asks.

Sarge doesn’t answer. He looks toward Bowie, where the road opens up wider than the rest of the neighborhood. Exposure. Sightlines.

“We don’t linger,” he says instead. “We don’t knock.”

Someone shifts their weight on the trailer. Metal creaks. A ratchet strap clinks as it’s tightened another notch.

I climb up beside Ann and settle in, my .30-06 between my legs. She’s got her backpack between her feet, arms wrapped around it like it might try to get away. She doesn’t say anything. She just leans into me until the truck’s vibration settles into both of us.

The truck pulls out of Vinnie’s driveway and stops at the corner of Custer and Dalton long enough to count heads. My dad’s already in the truck bed, sitting awkwardly on the edge like he doesn’t trust it to hold him. My mom grips the side of the truck with both hands, eyes forward.

Sarge gives Vinnie a nod and the truck rolls forward. The trailer lurches, then follows.

We move slowly up Custer, tires whispering over asphalt. Houses slide past on either side, too close together now that we’re elevated. Driveways empty. Garages open and hollow. A lawn chair tipped on its side like someone stood up and forgot to sit back down.

Halfway up the block, Sarge raises a hand.

The truck eases to a stop, the brakes squealing softly.

The Zaccones’ place stands in the middle of the block. No lights. No movement. It’s quiet. Too quiet. No birds. Even the insects stop making noise.

Sarge steps away from the truck without saying anything. Halfway up the Zaccones’ driveway, sand crunching under his boots, he raises a fist behind him. Stay put. He pauses, the shotgun already resting against his chest.

No one’s watching him anymore.

Eyes are on windows. On doors. On the quiet. Someone on the trailer shifts and the metal creaks. Too loud. Ann tightens her grip on her pack. I feel it through her shoulder.

“Zaccone,” Sarge calls. Calm. Neighborly. Like this is still how you do things.

Nothing.

He takes another step, stopping short of the front porch. The house looks intact. Door closed. Curtains drawn. No smell. No movement.

“Sal,” he says.

The door opens.

Zaccone fills the frame. Big man, older, soft in the middle. He’s wearing a stained pizza shop T-shirt that hangs wrong on him now, stretched and damp with sweat. His face is slack, eyes glossy, unfocused. For half a second my brain tries to put him where he belongs. Behind a counter. Flour on his hands. A menu taped crooked to the wall.

There’s a sound like wet cardboard being hit with a hammer and, out of the corner of my eye, I see Sarge drop straight down. A flash of something shiny passes him on the way.

For a fraction of a second no one understands what they’re seeing. Then my eyes catch on something buried in the pine tree to the right of the driveway. A round metal shape sunk deep into the bark, still vibrating. The edge is nicked. Sharpened.

Sarge hits the concrete hard, one hand clawing at his throat. Blood comes out wrong. Too dark. Too fast. He tries to say something and can’t. His shotgun clatters out of reach.

Zaccone steps forward, and that’s when the wrongness clicks.

His skin is pale and tight, stretched shiny across his face. He moves smoothly, not fast, but without hesitation, like each motion is already decided. In his hand is another tin, fingers curled around the rim with practiced ease.

My body moves before my head does.

I bring the rifle up without thinking. The sound is enormous, ripping the quiet apart. The recoil slams into my shoulder. For a split second everything smells like burned metal.

Zaccone goes down, but not before I catch a glimpse of his eyes. Staring, distant, fogged, like the color’s been sucked from them.

He doesn’t go down like Sarge. He jerks, stumbles, then collapses into himself. A flat metallic clatter follows.

The silence crashes back in, heavier than before.

Then someone screams. Someone else shouts my name. I don’t answer. I’m staring at Sarge, at the way his chest isn’t moving, at the blood pooling under his head.

Vinnie hops down from the truck, eyes fixed on the tree as I reload and aim.

“What the fuck—”

He stops short, staring at the metal buried in the bark.

“That’s a fuckin’ pizza tin.”

By the time I lower the rifle, Rachel is on the other side of Sarge, shaking her head. Nobody on the trailer says a word.

I drop down and join Vinnie. He stands at the tree longer than he needs to, staring at the tin buried in the bark like it might hold an answer if he stares at it long enough.

“Hunter,” I say as I look at Sal’s corpse, still weary that the job might not be done.

Vinnie just nods.

I’m still holding the rifle up when I realize Ann is already moving. She steps around Sarge without looking at him, kneels just long enough to take his rifle and strip the magazines from his vest. She grabs the shotgun next to him. Her hands don’t shake. Mine do.

Rachel is crouched beside Sarge, one hand pressed uselessly against his neck, the other braced on the concrete like she might fall if she lets go. She looks up at us then, eyes wide and wet and searching for something she already knows isn’t there.

“We can’t just leave him,” she says. “We should do something. Bury him. Something.”

Vinnie finally turns away from the tree. He doesn’t look at her right away. He looks down the street, past the open barricade, where the road bends out of sight and a lone shape drifts along the curb, slow and uneven, drawn by noise or habit or nothing at all.

“If we stop, we lose the light,” he says. His voice is steady, tired. “That pushes everything back a day.”

He gestures once, down the block. The open street. The space Sarge bought them.

“He already cleared the barricade,” Vinnie says. “That window’s open right now.”

Rachel swallows. She nods, once, like agreeing to terms she never wanted to negotiate.

The truck idles behind us, loud in the quiet. No one says anything else. Ann stands and hands me the magazines. I take them without looking at her. When I glance back at Sarge, it’s already too late to pretend this is temporary.

Nothing else is said, we just move.

We take back roads through neighborhoods that should be waking up, but we find them deserted. A man slumped in a driveway like he sat down and never stood up again. No one moves to check. We don’t slow.

We pass the junior high on Gano, the road opening up into fields on either side. The portable classrooms are gone, burned down to their frames, black rectangles scorched into the ground where they used to sit. Twisted metal slumps inward, half-collapsed.

The main building still stands in the back, beige and intact, windows dark, doors closed. It looks sealed rather than destroyed, like whatever happened never reached it—or never needed to.

A few trucks sit in the parking lot. Parked straight. Intact. Someone decided this was defensible. Whether they’re still there is a question we decide not to answer. The rifle comes up without me thinking about it.

Shapes move in the field beyond the fence. A few of them. Spread out. Moving badly. No one slows. No one raises a weapon.

We turn onto Kingsley when the road runs out, just before ten. By the time we make it to the intersection at US-17, we realize it’s open in a way it shouldn’t be.

Cars sit wrecked and shoved aside, not smashed so much as moved. One sedan is half up on the median, its rear end folded in like it was pushed there. Another’s been spun sideways and left that way, tires burned down to rubber ghosts on the asphalt.

It looks like a dump truck came through and didn’t bother slowing down.

No one says anything. We take the gap while it’s there.

Another block or two beyond that, Club Continental sits back from the road, half-hidden by old live oaks whose branches stretch low over the drive. Spanish-style buildings cluster in on themselves, white stucco dulled by grime, red clay tile roofs heavy with age.

The landscaping has gone wild. Shrubs spill into walkways. Palms lean where they weren’t meant to. Whatever once kept this place trimmed and orderly stopped showing up weeks ago.

It doesn’t look looted. It doesn’t look burned. It looks paused.

We stop where Kingsley runs out and the river takes over. The truck idles for half a second before doors open and people start moving. Crates come down first, then bags, hands already reaching for the next thing. No one asks where to put anything. Everything drifts toward the end of the dock on instinct alone.

Rachel returns and climbs into the cab with the kids and shuts the door. She doesn’t look back.

Vinnie, my dad, Ann, and I gather near the tailgate, close enough to hear each other without raising our voices. The river smells close and heavy, like it always has.

“You’re coming with me,” Vinnie says, already looking past me toward the marina. “We’ll get the boat and bring it back here.”

My dad nods once, like the decision was made before it was spoken. Ann meets my eyes and adjusts the strap on my pack, tightens it without comment. She hands the AR to my dad.

No one says goodbye.

Vinnie and I set out on foot. The marina’s less than a mile away, and it’s faster than trying to thread a vehicle through what’s left of the street.

Walking the raised median is easier than cutting between cars. Fewer blind spots. Less noise. We step over mirrors and glass and keep moving.

The bridge rises higher than it needs to, open to the wind. From the top we can see the lake spread out to the right, a wide expanse of the St. Johns River to the left, flat and dull. Nothing moves toward us. Nothing waits.

At the crest we look down and see Doctor’s Lake Marina laid out to the right of the bridge. Empty slips. Floating docks nudged out of alignment where lines were cast off and never retied. A few boats sit crooked in their berths, fenders still hanging, radios silent. The place smells like old fuel and warm water and rot that hasn’t decided what it wants to be yet.

The ketch is still there. Sixty feet, two masts rising above the rest. Not built for crossing oceans, but solid enough to get us off pavement and down the coast and across to the Bahamas.

Vinnie nods once. “It’ll do.”

When we reach the boat, I climb aboard and feel it answer under my weight, lines creaking softly against the cleats. The smell hits me as soon as I open the companionway—old water and diesel and something sweet that’s gone wrong with time. I head below alone while Vinnie stays topside, watching the docks.

The cabin is close and dim, tighter than it looks from above. I move through it slowly, light first, then my shoulder, then the rest of me, letting my eyes adjust. The galley’s intact, a locker left half open, plates shifting faintly with the movement of the water. There are no footprints, no signs of anyone leaving in a hurry. A narrow passage leads aft and I clear it the same way, expecting it to pinch down more than it does.

The bunks are empty. Blankets rumpled but dry. A pair of shoes sits neatly under one of them, placed like whoever wore them meant to come back. The head smells worse than the rest of the boat. I check it anyway. Nothing moves. Nothing answers.

When I come back up, Vinnie’s still where I left him, eyes on the docks. I tell him it’s clear and he nods, already turning away.

I move into the cockpit and bring the systems up. The panels light without complaint. The batteries are still holding. The engine turns over clean and settles into a steady rumble that feels more reassuring than I expect it to. The tanks are where they should be. Fuel enough. The watermaker’s intact. Whoever left her didn’t strip anything important.

“She’s ready,” I say.

Vinnie starts on the lines. “Good.”

Vinnie casts off and the boat eases away from the dock, the lines slipping free without ceremony. The engine settles into a steady note and the marina falls behind us, quiet and empty as we angle out into the channel.

The water opens up quickly. Five minutes at most, a slow arc across the channel and around the low bulge of land that hides the dock from the road. The shoreline slides past without incident. No wakes. No movement. Just the engine and the smell of fuel and water mixing in the heat.

When the dock comes into view, I lean forward without meaning to.

They’re all there.

Crates stacked where we left them. Packs lined up along the planks. Rachel in the cab with the kids, the doors open now. Ann standing with my dad near the end of the dock, one hand resting on the AR like it belongs there. No one running. No one waving.

Something in my chest loosens.

Vinnie sees it too. He eases the throttle back and lines us up with the dock, unhurried, like this part was never in doubt.

We tie up and start loading without stopping to talk about it. Crates go first, then packs, then people. The kids are passed aboard and disappear below. Someone finds water and starts handing it out. Someone else sits down hard on the deck and stays there.

Ann steps aboard last and moves to the rail, steadying herself as the boat shifts. My dad follows her, awkward but careful, taking the space he’s given next to her and my mom without comment. No one asks where anything should go. It all finds a place.

Vinnie casts off again and brings the bow around, easing us out into the channel. The engine settles, then quiets as the sails take hold. The shoreline slides by as we move north, trees flattening into a dark line on either side of us.

No one looks back for long.

The river opens ahead and we let it carry us.

ToC | Next Chapter →

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This is the opening movement of a much longer story. I’m interested in whether a slower, less trope-driven take on the apocalypse has room to breathe here. If it does, I’ll keep going. Let me know.