Donna of the Dead

by Alison Kemper

  “Yow!” I screech as my head smacks the landing.

  It’s a short flight of carpeted steps, but my body still lands at the bottom with a dull thud. I’m woozy, but I can tell by the approaching growl that the blonde’s changed direction and is heading back downstairs. Toward me.

  GET UP! GET OUT! GET UP! GET OUT!

  Adrenaline kicks in, screaming through my veins, forcing me to ignore the pain and move my paralyzed legs. My phone sits open on the floor, casting a triangle of blue light on the carpet. I seize it, angling the beam up the stairs. Sure enough, she’s heading straight for me, her shuffle slow, but steady.

  How can she find me with her eyes rolled up like that?

  Still on the floor, I scuttle backward like a crab, desperate to get away from the staircase. I crawl into an open section of the passageway.

  A sharp wail splits the air. “AAAGGHH!”

  Startled, I turn my cell in that direction. The glow lights three faces, their eyes rotated back in their skulls. They snarl at the light, but quickly refocus on a lump twitching near their feet. It takes me a moment to realize the lump is a crewmember. Dark blood blossoms across his white uniform. They’re biting him everywhere: arms, legs, face. But he doesn’t cry out again. Instead, he adds his voice to their chorus of growls.

  “Rawwwwrrrr!” they all snarl in unison.

  I can’t suck in enough oxygen to scream. The air tastes of blood and fear.

  My mind works overtime. These, these…crazy people…these infected people…whatever the heck they are, block my only escape to the main staircase, while the blond chick makes it impossible to return to my cabin. My only option is to head for the lower floors.

  In a heartbeat, I’m on my feet, racing back to the stairwell and flying down the steps. Darkness envelops the flights below. I flip my phone as I run.

  Open. Shut. Open. Shut.

  The voices are no help. They keep screeching the whole “Get up, get out!” thing over and over. Trust me, voices—I got the message. Loud and clear.

  My feet pound the floor. I put three or four flights between me and the blonde, and hurtle down a passageway. Monsters might be waiting in the gloom ahead, but I have to find a way back to the main staircase. From there, I’ll have some options: head toward Dad on the bridge, or Deke in the cabin. Maybe even board an escape boat if they’re being launched, or worst-case scenario, grab a life vest and jump in the ocean. Anything’s better than getting trapped below the waterline, with no possible exit, surrounded by infected people.

  Infected people? Who am I kidding? They’re zombies. Total and complete zombies.

  The long hallway remains deserted, thank God. But when I reach the fancy atrium staircase, it is not. I plant my foot on the first step, then freeze. There are lights here—red emergency lights—illuminating a scene straight out of a horror movie. All I can see are people. Or what used to be people. Hundreds of them. Biting. Bleeding. Growling. Grabbing. The elevator doors are stuck open, the tiny glass compartment crammed with bodies. Nearby, a zombie dangles over the banister, growling in a low whine.

  Cold, solid fear blankets my body.

  It’s easy to guess what happened. There’s a main exit one level above us. The passengers must have panicked and crowded toward it, hoping to escape to the outer decks. They were bitten as they tried to flee. Now, they’re all infected and converging here at the atrium.

  I stand stock still, unable to flee, struggling to process the scene directly in front of me. A body that’s been…uh…recently chewed on is in the process of “reanimation.” Its limbs and torso, motionless an instant ago, twitch and jerk. The creature’s leg twists in an impossible direction, allowing the figure to right itself. I recognize the newborn zombie: the Soap Nazi.

  So much for the power of antibacterial gel.

  She turns toward me, her eyes frosted like they’ve been covered with cobwebs. My hands fumble at the banister. My breath comes in gasps.

  I need to run, but again, my only option is down. I force my body into motion. The stairs below appear empty, so I book it. Hard. I’m not even sure my feet touch all the steps as I bolt down two more flights. I’ve got to find another hallway, cut over and reach the stairs at the other end of the boat. I’ve got to somehow find a clear deck.

  Bam! I hit the next landing at top speed, momentum propelling me forward. Something tangles my feet and I lose my balance, crashing sideways into the ornate banister. Pain shoots through my arm.

  Long, ashen fingers lock around my ankles. This time, I find enough air to scream. A zombie lurks on the landing below me, its arms stuck through the open part of the wrought iron staircase. Sharp nails turn inward, digging into my skin.

  Crap, the hands are strong!

  “AGGGHH!! Get off!” I shriek, jerking and yanking, desperate to wrench my ankle free.

  The bad weather is my friend. A massive wave pitches the ship sideways, and one demonic hand loses its grasp. With my free foot, I pry the viselike fingers off my other ankle.

  “Get! The! Hell! Off! Me!” I screech, stomping on the moldy fingers. I kick and throw my weight until I break loose. The zombie below the stairs howls with rage.

  Oh crap oh crap oh crap.

  They’ve completely trapped me. The monster waits underneath the next landing, only a few feet away. If I keep going in that direction, it’ll snatch me at the bottom of the next flight. Meanwhile, the Soap Nazi Zombie is advancing steadily down the stairs, catching up to me step by step.

  I have nowhere to go.

  THINK. THINK. THINK. No time to think. All I can do is scream. The corpse-woman staggers closer. Her pupils gleam, semi-luminous in the dark. I scrunch my eyes shut. I’m about to get bitten. About to turn into one of them.

  I want to think of something nice during my last moments of un-zombified consciousness, so I conjure up Liam’s face. I picture his green eyes, his curly, chestnut-colored hair. The dimples that show only when he laughs…

  Jump now.

  What?

  Jump now.

  I open my eyes. Everything looks different. A super-bright light shines in my face.

  Oh damn, isn’t this what happens when you die? Don’t you see a bright light coming for you?

  “Donna! It’s you!”

  What the—? Is that my voices? Am I dead? How come the voices sound like Deke?

  “Donna, you’ve got to jump. Now!” It is Deke. We’re still alive and Deke’s using a bright flashlight.

  “Jump where?” I shout. “I can’t see anything with that stupid light in my face.”

  “Over the banister. Hurry!”

  Over the banister, is he crazy?! This is the main staircase for the atrium; the drop’s gotta be, like, nine stories. I imagine my body slamming the hard marble floor below. Except…hadn’t I run down several flights of stairs? I had only run down, right? Not up? How many floors? There’s no time to calculate. I might wind up with a broken back, but at least I won’t be a zombie chew toy.

  “You’re outta time. Jump! Now!” Deke’s voice is hysterical.

  I leap, but it’s too late. Fingers grasp me and I don’t fall. I’m on one side of the banister, and the Soap Nazi’s on the other. Her neck stretches over the railing, and she flashes me a wide, perfect grin. I half expect her to ask, “Would mademoiselle like hand sanitizer before her meal?”

  But instead, her gleaming white teeth chomp in rapid succession, missing my face by millimeters.

  “Noooo!” I struggle harder, but can’t shake loose. She’s got me by the front of my rain poncho.

  My…dad’s poncho…which is miles too big for me. I pray the zombie’s got a fistful of slicker, and not my actual clothes. My arms are still free, so I wriggle frantically until I can reach behind me, yank the back of the jacket, and pull it over my head. And then I’m falling straight down.

  The drop is quick—it can’t be more than a story. I’m fine. At least, I’m fine for about half a second. Until Soap Nazi Zombie lands on me.

>   Splooch. She knocks the air out of my lungs. We wrestle frantically, but her hands seize my forearm, and this time there’s no breaking free.

  “Rawr!” she says gleefully, and bares those bleached-white teeth.

  I’m still half-blind from the light, and in my muddled state, I can barely make out what happens next.

  “Let her go!” Deke fights his way to the spot where I’ve crash-landed. His flashlight clatters to the floor, and he uses both hands to hoist a heavy object. A large metal baseball bat. For an insane second, I wonder, Why the hell is he playing baseball at a time like this?

  Smack! Deke wallops the Soap Nazi in the head. She releases her death grip and topples sideways, very neatly, landing unconscious on the floor, that fake smile still plastered across her rapidly decomposing face.

  There’s no time to be relieved. The entire lower level of the atrium is a sea of moving corpses. They morph quickly, twisting into snarling, gray-faced monsters right before our eyes. The infected creeps somehow sense we’re here, and in a matter of seconds, we’re completely besieged. Hands lunge from all sides; fingernails rake across my cheek.

  “Omigod, Omigod, Omigod!” I kick and claw, fighting to evade their grasp, but the floor is slick with blood and sweat. “Deke, they’re gonna bite me!” I twist violently away from the clutching hands. I know with all certainty, in the next few minutes, I’m going to change into one of these nasty ghouls. I scream and can’t stop.

  Deke is beside me, but he is not screaming. Deke is kicking some serious zombie butt.

  Thwack. Thwack. His baseball bat is bright red, the heavy kind they use in the batting cages on the ship’s Promenade deck. He smacks away hands as they grab for us, his muscled shoulders twisting with the effort. Any goon who gets too close gets cracked in the head. Each time Deke hits one, it goes rigid and keels over like a felled tree. He knocks a bunch of the things unconscious, but we’re still outnumbered with no escape route.

  Deke shoves me behind his back. My head spins with panic.

  “Donna! Stay sharp!” His voice keeps me from blacking out. I open my eyes. We’re surrounded by a ring of snarling, chomping faces, each glowing red in the glare of emergency lights.

  “There’s too many,” I hyperventilate.

  I don’t have a weapon, plus I’m no good at action-hero-type stuff. At this point, I can only cower behind Deke. He manages to clear a small zombie-free space, but we’re slowly backing ourselves into a corner of the atrium.

  “There’s a key in my pocket,” Deke says.

  “Ohmigod. Ohmigod. There’s too many of them!”

  Deke’s bat scares the monsters, but at this point, they’re overwhelming us with sheer numbers. Another few seconds and we’re goners.

  “Donna, listen to me. In my front left pocket, there is a key.”

  What is he talking about?

  “Please focus, Donna. I need you to get the key. I need both my hands to keep them off us.”

  I fumble in his jeans pocket until my fingers curl around a metal key.

  “It unlocks the door behind us. Donna, the crew door, the steel one. Are you listening?”

  I nod, even though he can’t see me. His concentration is fixed on the massive row of attackers surging toward us. The crew door, the crew passages. A way out. My hands rattle so badly, I struggle to fit the key in the lock. Deke’s bat whistles through the air again and again. Mercifully, the knob turns on the first try, and the door swings inward, revealing a tiny room with circuit boxes and an endless metal ladder reaching toward the top of the ship.

  “It’s open,” I gasp, scrambling into the passage. Deke follows blindly, tumbling backward into the room, barely keeping his balance.

  I’m not so lucky. My legs tangle in a thick coil of rope on the floor. Tripping, I grab the metal door for support. One gray zombie arm reaches after us, trying to stop the door from closing, but I’m already falling backward, my momentum slamming the door shut.

  Clang! The door seals itself. The steel edge sinks into the soft, rotting flesh, neatly slicing off the arm in the process. It falls to the floor with a thick, wet sound. Deke throws the metal lever, locking the hatch from inside. The arm continues to move, dragging itself by the fingers, limping along like a giant slug.

  “Kill it, Deke. Kill the arm!” I scramble into a corner.

  Deke shoots me an exasperated look, but pummels the fingers until bones crunch and the severed limb finally stops moving.

  I sink to the floor. My left hand is permanently cramped around my cell phone, which for some stupid reason, I’ve clutched through this whole ordeal. I pry my fingers loose and drop the phone in my pocket. Then I take one quick glance at the dead arm, lean over, and throw up on the floor.

  “Are you bitten?” Deke asks, his expression a mixture of fear and mistrust.

  “What?”

  “Are…you…bitten?” He stands carefully away from me.

  I can’t focus. Can’t hear his words over the pulse pounding in my ears. The blood. Everywhere. Coating my sneakers. Freckling Deke’s jeans and arms. Caking under my nails. So much blood. If I close my eyes, I’ll pass out…

  “Are you bitten?” Deke repeats, and he exhales sharply and moves closer. He lifts my sleeves, my pant legs, his fingers tracing my skin as he checks for bite marks. His hands are warm against my clammy skin, snapping me out of my stupor.

  “Get off me. Sheesh!” I push him away and gulp a few quick breaths. It’s cooler here in the crew passage and the air tastes clean. Fingers shaking, I examine myself, desperately afraid of what I’ll find. I’ve been gashed by so many fingernails; it’s hard to figure out if the blood’s oozing from scratches or teeth marks.

  “I don’t see any bites. Check my arm,” I say, “it’s bleeding like crazy.”

  “No, only a cut. Maybe from when you jumped?” Deke’s voice is calm now. Like he’s discussing the economy or something.

  “No, I th-think it’s from their fingernails.” For some reason, my teeth start chattering.

  “So you do feel okay?” he asks. “One hundred percent okay?”

  “What?! I’ve just been attacked by hundreds of…of…zombies. No, I don’t feel one hundred percent okay!”

  “Well, you sound like your usual charming self, so I’m gonna assume you’re not in the process of changing into one of them. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Deke lost his big flashlight in the atrium, but there’s another one in a metal bracket just inside the door. He shines it up the ladder. Empty. We’re safe. At least, for the moment.

  And then something slams into the door beside us. Hard. The thud echoes through the metal room.

  “AAAGGGHH!” I shriek, throwing myself into Deke’s gore-streaked arms.

  Deke disentangles himself and threads the bat behind his belt. “We gotta get to the bridge. Fast.”

  We start scaling the metal ladder. Midway, the noise of the engines cuts off.

  “That’s either really bad or really good,” Deke murmurs.

  I try not to look down. Deke’s attached the flashlight to a loop on his cargo pants, and the beam throws crazy shadows along the metal walls. The thudding noises behind the door grow louder, reverberating through the ladder shaft. My stupid teeth will not stop chattering.

  “D-Deke?”

  “What?” He pauses to glance down at me.

  “How did you f-find me?”

  Deke rolls his eyes. “Who else could scream like that?”

  “Ugh. That’s not what I mean. How’d you get that key?”

  He continues climbing. Sweat makes his black tee cling to his back. “I couldn’t sleep, so I knocked on your door. You didn’t answer, so I woke up Gran, and we went to your dad—to tell him you were missing. He was still on the bridge. The captain had already left to check on some crew members who didn’t show up for their shifts. Since your dad was busy driving the ship, or whatever you call it, he gave me the crew key and asked me to find you.”

  “Didn’
t you and Muriel run into any of those freakoids while you were walking to the bridge?”

  “Yeah, of course. But Gran used her Taser on ’em.”

  “Muriel has a Taser?”

  “Uh huh. I tried to get her to loan it to me when I went searching for you, but she said I don’t have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”

  “That sounds like Muriel.”

  It takes a long time to climb nine stories on a metal ladder, but in a way, this is a good thing. As the thudding dissolves in the distance, my voices dwindle like someone’s turned down the volume on a radio. By the time we reach a hatch at the top of the ladder, I’ve stopped shivering and can speak in a reasonably calm voice.

  “Any idea where we are?” I ask.

  “No clue. Here goes…”

  He flings open the door, and we emerge outside, on a deck with polished wooden railings. I recognize it. The Promenade deck—where the mini-golf course and batting cages are located. I run to the railing. Relief floods over me. We’re docked at the familiar port in Fort Lauderdale; Dad must have shut off the engines when we arrived. Rain pelts down, but at least it’s finally daylight. I scope out the surrounding decks—which are surprisingly empty. I don’t see anyone. Living or dead.

  Deke closes the hatch behind us, and we creep quietly, cautiously, edging our way along the railing.

  My phone rings, startling me so bad I almost fall overboard. It’s my dad.

  “Are you okay?” he and I ask at the same time.

  “I’m fine!” we answer in unison.

  “Where are you?” His voice is full of relief.

  “Promenade deck. Starboard. Aft.”

  The relief fades as my dad swears.

  “Dad, where are you?”

  “I’m still on the bridge. The captain never came back. Muriel and I barricaded ourselves in. A bunch of infected people are outside, but they can’t break down the doors. Are you sure you’re aft?”

  I understand why he’s upset. “Aft” means back-end of the ship. The bridge is at the front of the boat. This ship is massive, like a floating hotel, and we’re on totally opposite ends of the vessel.