“Is it one of them?” Victoria asked, shying away from the drifting body.
“It doesn’t seem to be moving,” answered Halverson, scoping out the floater that was lying on its back rocking in the gentle waves. “Anyway, those things can’t float.”
“Are you sure?”
Not really, he decided, but said, “That’s probably a beachgoer who ran into the ocean and drowned trying to escape the ghouls.”
Except—
Except the corpse’s eyes suddenly snapped open.
Victoria screamed.
Chapter 2
The fat man’s eyes stared straight out of his head up into the sky. Hazed with white, they focused on nothing in the vast emptiness of the heavens. His bloated cheeks and blubbery rotting cyanotic lips gave his face a gruesome cast as rolling seawater sluiced over it. His hands appeared deeply furrowed like prunes, precipitated no doubt by long-term saturation, decided Halverson.
Attached to the corpse’s bottom lip was a crab with its teeth buried in the blue flesh. The fat man didn’t seem to mind.
Why should he? decided Halverson. The guy was already dead. Then why did his eyes just flick open?
“Did you see that?” said Victoria, blue eyes wide.
“The guy’s eyes?”
“Yeah. They just popped open. I thought you said he was dead.”
“He is. He must be. Look at him. His skin. It looks like he’s been submerged for a couple hours at the very least. Probably more.”
“Then why did his eyes open like that?”
“Some kind of rigor mortis, I guess. Your nerves can still function after you’re dead.”
“Is that why he’s moving his arms now?”
The corpse was indeed stroking its arms, Halverson could see. It was nearing the sailboat’s starboard gunwale. Though the corpse was moving its arms, you couldn’t exactly call it swimming. It was more like the corpse was thrashing its arms in its eagerness to reach the boat.
Was it a revenant? Halverson wondered.
“How can it be swimming if it’s dead?” said Victoria.
Halverson stroked his chin in bewilderment. “If it’s a ghoul, it shouldn’t be able to float. The other ghouls can’t float. They have no air in their lungs and they have no buoyancy. And for sure they lack the coordination to swim.”
Victoria squinched her face into a grimace of disbelief. “Then you’re saying that guy’s alive?”
“No. Look at him. He’s all swollen up. He died from drowning.”
The fat man was approaching the hull of the sailboat as he flailed his arms and kicked his legs.
“If he’s dead and not a ghoul, why is he swimming toward us?” asked Victoria.
“I can think of only one scenario. He was on the beach when the creatures attacked him. He swam into the ocean to escape them and drowned in his attempted flight. Before he reached the surf, one of the ghouls must’ve bitten him and infected him.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“When he drowned, his body sank. Then later, after the gases expanded in his stomach and floated him to the surface, he morphed into a ghoul.”
Victoria jacked up her eyebrows. “That simple, huh, Sherlock?”
“It’s the only explanation I can think of.”
The corpse was moving dangerously close to the sailboat’s hull, even as the crab devoured the entirety of the stiff’s lower lip.
Halverson abandoned the wheel, strode across the deck, and snagged the boat hook. He aimed the tip of the hook at the ghoul’s head and thrust the steel point at one of the ghoul’s open eyes.
The undulations of the boat and the waves threw off his aim and caused him to miss his target. The boat hook sank into the ghoul’s cheek, tore the decaying flesh open, then glanced off the skull and into the water.
All but stumbling off the edge of the deck, cursing, Halverson contrived to fetch up at the gunwale in the nick of time before he plunged into the sea, maintaining his grasp on the boat hook all the while.
The ghoul continued floundering within five feet of the boat’s hull.
With no one in the wheelhouse, the boat was veering starboard, closing the gap between it and the spastic ghoul.
Halverson had no other choice but to bucket across the deck to the wheel, grab it, and steady the sailboat.
“You’ll have to take care of that thing while I steer,” he said. “Here’s the boat hook.”
He tossed it to the deck.
Victoria retrieved the boat hook. She looked as though she didn’t know what to do with it.
“You know the drill,” he said. “Puncture its head. You have to kill the brain to kill the creature.”
She stepped unsteadily on the rocking boat toward the gunwale. She could see the revolting bloated thing flapping its arms and legs in the water. She brought up the boat hook and drew a bead on the ghoul’s head as the creature rode the waves.
“The thing keeps moving,” she said. “I can’t get a good aim at its head.”
“You’ll just have to take your best shot,” said Halverson at the wheel. “If you miss, try again.”
She stepped nearer to the gunwale.
“Watch your step. Don’t fall overboard, whatever you do,” said Halverson, following her with his eyes.
Trying to keep her balance on the rocking deck, she held the boat hook with both hands and brought it to bear on the floating ghoul.
She risked a jab at the thing with the boat hook. The hook’s point drove into the creature’s throat and ripped it apart.
Meanwhile, the creature swiped at the hook with its arms, managed to snatch it with one hand, and then got a grasp on it with both hands. Victoria stumbled toward the gunwale as the creature yanked on the hook, drawing itself closer to the sailboat.
It was all Victoria could do to brace herself against the gunwale and prevent herself from falling overboard as she maintained her grip on the boat hook.
Bobbing against the side of the hull now, the creature let go of the boat hook with one hand and grabbed the wooden rail on the gunwale with that same hand and commenced to haul itself up out of the water, all the while gripping the boat hook with its other hand and using the hook’s shaft for purchase.
“Let go of the hook!” cried Halverson, seeing her dilemma.
Barely able to continue bracing herself against the gunwale, she released the boat hook.
The portly creature fell away from the hull and hung from a single hand that gripped the gunwale’s rail.
Victoria recovered her equilibrium then backed away from the hull and kicked at the creature’s hand on the rail. The first time she missed the hand. The second she didn’t. The kick landed squarely on the decrepit hand, crushing the water-bloated fingers and dislodging their grasp on the rail.
The creature splashed back into the ocean.
Gouts of chilly water splattered Victoria’s face as she beheld the creature’s plunge from the gunwale where she clung for dear life.
The creature with its distended stomach floated on the rippling waves and batted its arms to no effect, unable to steer itself.
Victoria was watching the ghoul when she caught sight of a dorsal fin slicing through the ocean in the direction of the flailing creature.
Chapter 3
Grey on its flanks with a white belly, the sixteen-year-old twenty-foot-long great white cut through the ocean at speed and homed in on the flubbing ghoul.
Halverson watched in fascination as the struggle pitted one killing machine against another.
The great white, aka white death, launched the first attack. The shark zeroed in on one of the ghoul’s windmilling arms. Its jaws gaping, the great white snagged the ghoul’s humerus, champed down on it with eighteen thousand newtons of force, jerked its grey head back and forth, and tore the humerus away from the glenohumeral joint that attached the humerus to the scapula.
If the ghoul had been a living thing, a torrent of blood would have been unleashed at its mutilated sh
oulder by the great white’s vicious assault. But the ghoul was dead and did not bleed.
The ghoul’s arm in its mouth, the great white swam away. Unhappy with the rancid flavor of the decomposed flesh and bone, the shark spat the arm out into the ocean then circled back for a second pass at the ghoul.
The ghoul opened its mouth wide, exposing its green, rotting snaggleteeth and awaited the great white.
The ghoul didn’t have to wait long.
In a matter of seconds the great white was careering through the water, bearing down on the ghoul. As the shark wrapped its jaws around the ghoul’s stomach, the ghoul bent its purulent head down and clamped its jagged teeth into the shark’s skin.
The great white reacted instantly, veering to its right at the instant of the zombie bite, carrying the ghoul attached to its left flank like a giant remora as it swam away. The shark tried to shake free of the ghoul, but the living dead creature held fast with its teeth buried into the shark’s flesh.
Halverson watched the great white slalom through the sea as it tried to dislodge the ghoul from its side. The one-armed ghoul held on with the death grip of its jaws.
The shark bore the ghoul out to sea, continuing to back and fill in its attempts to free itself from the ghoul.
“We don’t have to worry about that ghoul attacking us anymore,” said Halverson.
“That leaves only the thousands of them on the shore to worry about,” said Victoria.
“You can waste your time worrying if you want. I’m getting out of here.”
“If those ghouls on the shore can float out here like fatso on the shark, we’re in deep trouble.”
“They can’t float. I told you. If they’ve already turned, they can’t float.”
Halverson steered north up the California coast.
“You also told me before that fatso was just a drowned corpse,” said Victoria.
“I made a mistake. OK? Is that what you want me to say? Are you happy now?”
“I’m not happy in any sense of the word. I just don’t think I can believe everything you tell me.”
That was true, he knew. After all, he was a black ops agent for the CIA and he could not tell her about that, no matter how much he wanted to. It was part of his job to keep his own counsel about his clandestine profession—even if he was aching to burst out to her that the Agency was trying to kill him because he knew the truth about America’s involvement in the scientific mutating of the bird flu into the zombie virus that was in the process of wiping humanity off the face of the earth.
But he could not tell her.
He could not tell anyone. He was sworn to secrecy by the organization that hired him. It was driving him nuts, though. He felt like he had to tell someone in order to retain his sanity.
Then he told himself to calm down.
He thought about it. After all, what good would it do if he told her the truth? Would it change matters any? No, because the truth about the origin of the virus wasn’t the problem at this moment. The problem was the consequence of the origin. The problem was the superabundance of ghouls taking over the planet.
He settled on a plan of action.
“We have to find out if anyone is still alive and link up with them,” he said at the sailboat’s wheel as a wave flung ocean spray into his face.
“What good will that do?”
“Then we can band together and destroy these things.”
“What if nobody’s left?”
He glanced at the drone soaring over the zombie-infested beach. “Somebody’s telling that drone what to do, and for sure it’s no ghoul.”
“You forget. Whoever’s flying that drone wants us dead.”
Which was true, he knew. Piloting that drone was the CIA and what was left of the government that had put him on their hit list.
“They’re not gonna help us defeat the ghouls,” she added.
“Not everyone’s gonna be on our side. I never said that. We just have to keep looking.”
Victoria shrugged then held onto the gunwale and, her spirits sinking, considered the ghouls swarming the beach. “See for yourself. The infected ghouls are taking over. Nothing can stop them.”
“We can do it.”
She eyed him somberly. “You’re in a state of denial.”
“You need to snap out of the funk you’re in.”
“Open your eyes and look at the beach. That’s our future.”
“Not if we refuse to accept it.”
“You can refuse to accept it all you want. It’s still gonna happen.”
“If you think like a loser, you’re already beat.”
Breathing in the salty air refreshed Halverson. He felt like he had a chance, no matter how slim.
“Everything sucks,” she said. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?” She shook her head incredulously.
“I never said otherwise. The point is, we have to keep trying.”
“I’m tired of arguing about it.”
“What’s your solution?”
She said nothing.
She rucked her face into a frown as she squinted at something swimming toward them in the water between the shore and the sailboat.
“I thought you said those things couldn’t swim,” she said in horror.
Chapter 4
Something was in fact swimming from the direction of the shore toward the sailboat, Halverson could see.
He could not believe his eyes.
He refused to believe it was a ghoul. Those things simply didn’t have the muscular coordination to swim. And yet he had been wrong about the floater as Victoria was so eager to point out.
Was he, like she said, in denial? he wondered. Was he looking at the world with the eyes of an optimist instead of with those of a realist? Was he seeing things the way he wanted them to look instead of the way they really did look? He didn’t accept the notion that his judgment was that clouded.
Somebody was swimming toward them. Of that he was certain. The question was, who or what was it?
At that moment he heard someone screaming. At first he thought it was Victoria, but he soon realized it was a man’s voice and it was coming from the swimmer.
“Help!” he cried as he stroked through the waves in the direction of the sailboat.
“We both know those things can’t talk,” Halverson told Victoria.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” she said.
“He’s one of us.”
“Are you sure?”
Halverson didn’t answer her. Instead, he steered the sailboat toward the swimmer.
“Throw him the life preserver,” he told Victoria.
She demurred, thinking about it.
“Look at him,” said Halverson. “Does that look like a ghoul? He’s just as alive as you or I.”
“It looks that way,” was all she said. She made no movement to retrieve the life preserver that was hanging on the mast behind her.
“You can’t just let him drown. He needs the life preserver.”
She watched the man struggling to swim toward them. He looked exhausted and seemed to be slowing down, mustering all his strength to manage another stroke.
She didn’t know what to do.
At last she made up her mind.
She turned around, snatched the round white life preserver from the mast, returned to the gunwale, and hurled the preserver toward the man.
At the end of his rope the man lunged toward the preserver as it plopped on the ocean’s surface in front of him. He managed to corral the bobbing preserver, gathered it in, and kept himself afloat.
Victoria pulled on the rope tied to the life preserver and to the sailboat’s mast.
The man paddled with what little energy he had left as he clung to the buoyant white donut.
When he reached the hull he seized the aluminum ladder and climbed up it onto the deck. Victoria helped him aboard as he reached the gunwale.
She scrutinized him warily as he stood on the deck dripping s
eawater.
“I thought I was a goner out there,” said the man, leaning over, his hands on his knees, and trying to catch his breath. He picked up on Victoria staring at him. “What?”
She hung fire. Then she said, “I hope you’re not one of them.”
“One of those things on the beach,” the man scoffed. “You gotta be crazy!”
The five nine man looked like he was pushing forty, decided Halverson watching him from the wheelhouse. The guy had a receding hairline with chestnut hair and looked to be in fairly decent shape except for a slight paunch. Maybe he liked his booze. His blue eyes had pouches under them and stared intently out under his high brow.
“What’s your name?” asked Halverson.
“Reno,” answered the man. “Blake Reno. And you?”
“Chad Halverson. And this is Victoria Brady.”
“Pleased to meet you. I wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Don’t we all,” said Victoria.
“Costaguana. That’s an interesting name for your boat.”
Now it was Victoria’s turn to say, “What?”
“I noticed your boat’s name on the stern when I was in the water. The Costaguana.”
“Oh.” Victoria nodded indifferently.
Halverson recognized the name. It was the name of a small republic in Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo.
“It sounds familiar to me for some reason,” said Reno. “I can’t quite place it. What’s it mean?”
“I don’t know,” answered Victoria.
“That’s odd.”
“I liked the sound of it,” put in Halverson. He didn’t want to get into the fact that the boat didn’t belong to him and Victoria.
“Yeah. It does sound pretty.” Reno scratched his head. “But there’s something about the name that rings a bell.” He shrugged it off. “Oh well. I’ll think of it later. Thanks for helping me.”
Reno wiped water off his wet clothes.
“What happened to you?” asked Victoria.
“I was following a lead for a story I was writing when I was waylaid by those things on the beach, whatever the fuck they are.”
“You’re a reporter?”
“Yeah, a newsman. I plead guilty to all charges, ma’am.”
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