So, as it turns out, boats weren’t all that difficult to find in a state dominated by lakes. Weird. Finding a boat that was functional [i]and[/i] would feasibly work with her ill-conceived plan… That was a bit tougher for Cassie. After mulling over the selections in a small marina, she finally decided on a wave runner for simplicity’s sake; she was just going to ignore the whole splashy wetness thing they had going on. As luck would have it, the marina had one of the little personal watercraft that fit the bill and was easily dropped from its boat lift into the bed of her truck. She tightly lashed her most important possessions onto it, namely her parachute and M4 carbine, so the chance that they were lost lessened greatly; Wave runners could be tippy little mothers. She smiled at her handiwork and at the stupid idea in her head that was becoming more real. Phase one of her three phased operation was complete.

Phase two was stupid simple. The woman drove herself to the coast near where she knew Mackinac was just a few mile jog across the lake. Being so close to Horde Season as it was, the snowy beaches were lousy with the undead that had been steadily seeping in throughout the year attracted by the mass of fleshy things gathered off the coast. Cassie decided to make her run a bit further down the beach from where the main horde was congregated, not being [i]that[/i] insane, and stopped in the thin wood line that skirted the mainland side’s edge of sand. She already had a sizable gaggle-fuck of deaders headed her way from the deep rumble of her diesel and her using the blunt side of her hatchet to shatter the back window out probably didn’t help. To be honest, she could have totally broke the window before when she had been loading her sea-doo, but it was freaking cold outside. The ten minutes of uncomfortable driving would not have been worth a few less zeds gnawing on the sides of her truck; that was for sure. For the last portion of the easy stuff, Cass flipped the toggle to bring the snowplow up off of the ground as high as it could manage. Phase three where was all the fun shit happened; she liked phase three.

Now, Cassie had a flair for the dramatic. She had worked in Hollywood before the end of the world, after all, and it had kind of been her job as a stuntwoman. Pairing that with her normal eccentric, live-life-on-the-edge personality, nobody who had met the woman for more than a few minutes would really be surprised at what she did next.

She gunned the shit out of that truck. Straight towards Lake Huron without an iota of hesitation. The woman would have loved to have been blasting some Bohemian Rhapsody, specifically the rock part where Wayne, Garth, and their cohorts head-banged it out like champs in their rusted out AMC Pacer, but apocalyptic scavengers couldn’t be too picky and someone logical may have argued that it would have just caused her to garnish more unnecessary attention. 

Waves of zombies cascaded from the sides of her snowplow as she tore through their ranks unceremoniously. The few that snuck beneath her tires were no match for her behemoth and the fewer still that made it over the top didn’t have enough oomph to do anything more than crack the windshield before sliding off. Cassie had just enough time to think that the sound of decaying man-flesh trying to gain purchase on the smooth glass was awfully similar to that of squeegeeing a window clean before the truck hit the iced over lake. She realized just how cold the winter had been already when it took a good several hundred feet before the weight of the Ford was too much for the ice to handle. The plow on front didn’t help. Not when it came to the jarring halt as the metal blade hit the stubbornly immobile water, not in slowing down the whole sinking process. You would have thought Cassie would have learned about driving trucks into bodies of freezing cold water from her last little escapade with Simon but hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The slender woman threw off her seat beat and lunged for the back window even before the water had time to hit the front grill of the truck. Just as quickly the backpack with her meager supplies and tools was slung over her shoulders as she scrambled to straddle the seat of the wave runner as its confinement sunk beneath water. Walkers belly flopped into the water around her as the machine gurgled to life.

She gunned the shit out of that sea-doo. The little patch of open water that had been created by her truck’s nosedive would hopefully allow her to build up enough momentum so that she could slide across the remaining ice to open water. Or at least get her close.

It did… Kind of. The craft started slowing dangerously close to zed-amble speed about a hundred feet from her goal. Cassie groaned and slipped off the back to start pushing. Undead were already converging on her again, so she opted for one hand to push and one to brandish her pistol. “Shitshitshitshitshitshit…” The worlds just kept rolling off her tongue as she ran, gaining volume and pitch in accordance to the how close each deader she dashed by got. Adding in a few yelped “fucks” every time she was forced to fire on one that almost got the best of her, Cassie had an interesting cacophony of swear words going as she and her mini-herd of zombies made it to the edge of the ice. 

She gave one last push before throwing herself onto her escape, but she wasn’t the only thing. One particularly tenacious little bitter latched a hand onto her backpack, throwing off her carefully balanced feng shui. As soon as they hit the water the zombie’s lower half acted like an anchor and peeled the both of them off the back of the wave runner.

Fully submerged in the water, the coldness of it hitting her all at once, felt like she had been sucker punched in the solar plexus by Chuck Norris. Every muscle in her body constricted into tiny knots simultaneously and she felt like she was going to just keel over right then and there. But then some kind of biological failsafe snapped and everything loosed, including her breath in a storm of bubbles, and she had enough sense to detangle herself from the bag and zombie that was dragging her further into the depths. Her jacket went quickly after as she struggled to make it back to the surface. Other zombies starting sinking and swirling around in the undertow around her stretching feebly towards her, like some kind of fucked up snow globe or something, and she was mindful enough to give them enough berth as she ascended. 

The first gulp of air she took into her burning lungs after she breached the surface was glorious. So much so that she almost forgot she was bobbing in ice water filled with both sinking and floating zeds. Crap. At least her sea-doo hadn’t gotten too far away; she was lucky the things had an emergency kill switch that tethered to their riders in case they fell off. [i]Thank you baby Jesus[/i], she thought as she paddled over and dragged herself back into the seat. She replaced the kill switch with already quaking hands and powered the thing back on before giving the horde behind her the bird and speeding off towards the island.

God damn, she was so cold though. The wind and the wet and the freaking temperature to begin with had her believing she had never been so cold in her entire life. Ever. If she didn’t die from hypothermia or have all her appendages fall off or something from this, Cassie vowed to never go near anything cold ever again. Not even frosty beverages. At least it was good motivation to get to the island in a hurry, the whole impending death or being permanently maimed thing, and she redlined the watercraft the entire way there.

The harbor guards didn’t even stop her to ask their normal security questions despite the fact that she had an assault rifle slung across her front. They just gave her wide eyed looks of concern and asked if she needed help. That’s how pitiful she looked. She just chattered out that her family lived in the Hotel Iroquois and they let her go on her soggy way. Luckily, Hotel Iroquois, like the vast majority of the hotels that had been built on the island, was butted right up against the harbor so her walk was only a few agonizing minutes long. 

Two flights of stairs later and a little jaunt down a hallway brought her in front of her family’s home. Her family, of both blood and bond, that had avoided the initial outbreak by pure luck and coincidence and that had survived the following years together. She smiled despite her bluing lips and thumped soundly on the door. It didn’t take long for her to hear a loud gasp followed by several latches being undone hurriedly. Cassie had forgotten about the peephole. Surprise ruined.

The door flung open on its hinges and her mother half hugged and half dragged her quickly inside the room. “Cassandra Marie!” she exclaimed, the joyful tears in her eyes not able to squash the tinge of motherly disapproval by calling Cass by her first and middle name. “You’re half frozen through! I’m the only one home, strip down and get by the fire. I’ll get you dry clothes.” 

Cassie complied, a goofy look of fondness cracking through her coldness as her mother berated her, like she always did. “Hi, Mom. I missed you too.” 

Samantha Shannahan, matriarch of what was left of her clan and mother of who had to be the most frustrating child in existence, swept back into the room and threw a heap of clothes and furs next to her daughter. “It seems you still haven’t found a lick of sense in all your wondering,” she chastised and grabbed up a towel to help Cass dry off. “Leila took Bri with her to the market and they’ll probably be back any time now. I don’t want my granddaughter seeing her mother look half dead. At least your uncle and Jason won’t be back from work for a few hours yet.”

“It was really awesome, though,” Cassie smirked as she started to pull on the newly provided clothes. 

“I’m sure,” her mother replied after an exasperated sigh. Her face softened as she wrapped an animal pelt around Cassie and planted a firm kiss on the top of her head, then she sank down to the ground next to her to embrace her in a one armed hug. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you again.”