Undead Honeymoon

by Quinn, Austin

  We were just a couple feet inside when he turned and looked me over. “Are you okay?” he asked hurriedly. I nodded, and he led me to a nearby counter. After making sure I really was okay he sprinted toward the closest food cart, the ones the crewmembers use to restock the buffets. He pushed it against the door and tipped it on its side. I winced as the cart crashed down with a horrible CLANG. The sound of metal against metal echoed through the kitchen as he pushed it against the door.

  “Don’t worry,” Finn breathed heavily. “I barricaded the other three doors when I was here the first time, so there’s no other way for them to get in.”

  It took almost the whole day before I decided to write about what happened. Finn is setting up a makeshift bed for us on one of the countertops. He used bags of clean aprons and oven mitts for a mattress and pillows. It would be kind of cute if I wasn’t so stressed about all the things trying to kill and eat us.

  What’s worse is that they’re just outside the doors, waiting.

  I’m not sure what’s going to happen to us next, but at least we’re in the kitchen. It’s not riddled with bullets and there’s a dry storage area that’s stocked with enough food to keep us fed until doomsday.

  I just hope it isn’t sooner rather than later...

  August 23rd

  Waiting around in a kitchen is not fun. I will admit that it’s better than our cabin, but not by much.

  Finn found a radio the cooks had hanging near the soup tubs, but the only station he’s gotten so far is some kind of French talk show. It sounds like French, anyways, neither of us are sure.

  There’s a wall clock over the door we came through, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. I keep looking at the second hand, willing time to move faster. It’s been eight grueling hours, and we haven’t heard anything outside the doors since this morning. For a moment Finn said he heard something shuffling, but nothing else. We think the corpses near the buffet line have lost interest in us, for now.

  My experience with the dead chef woman still has me a little shaken. Every time I think about her face I want to cry. Her eyes seemed so sad, almost like a doll’s eyes. It was as if she wanted to be alive, but knew there was no turning back from what she’d become.

  Finn keeps trying to comfort me by saying she wasn’t a person anymore, and there was nothing we could have done. But the thing is, she was a person. Just a couple weeks ago she was no different from me, and now she’s dead.

  I really wish we were home.

  August 25th

  I desperately need a bath, or better yet a shower. God what I wouldn’t give for a shower…

  Finn doesn’t even notice, and he needs one worse than I do. I told him he smelled like a salty pile of dirty laundry but he just shrugged it off. It must be nice to be a guy sometimes. The last bath I had was during our terrifying ordeal in the cabin, and I don’t think plaster counts as soap. The water is still running, so I might try using one of the oversize dish sinks.

  I haven’t been able to write much lately, it’s been too dark. Our only light comes through portholes on two doors and several skylights that are near the front end of the kitchen. It stormed all of yesterday, and the constant cloud cover had us sitting in almost complete darkness.

  We combed over every inch of the kitchen this morning for anything we could use to protect ourselves. Finn has been keeping himself occupied by making weapons out of what little we’ve found. He’s made half a dozen Molotov cocktails out of cooking oil, empty bottles, and dish rags. Right now he’s carving spears out of wooden broom handles we found in a supply closet.

  To think that I always made fun of him for his obsession with prepper and doomsday stuff. Now all of his craziness might actually help us to survive. I have to admit… it’s kind of hot to see him in survival mode. It’s like something clicked inside him after the theater, and he’s been impressively focused and determined ever since. I hope he doesn’t read this, it would go straight to his head.

  I almost forgot, we heard a horrifyingly loud and inhuman noise earlier. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but somehow even more earsplitting. It made the hairs on my neck stand up, and Finn even dropped the spear he was working on.

  “What was that?” I whispered, afraid the sound might come again.

  Finn bent to pick up the spear. “I think it was one of the banshees. It sounded like it came from a lower deck. Somewhere below us.”

  “Do you think it found other people? Living people?”

  “There’s no telling. Let’s hope they manage to get away if it did find them. From what I saw the other day, the banshees don‘t move, they just stand there. It‘s creepy, but at least you just have to run before the others get to you.”

  I nodded as I stared at the kitchen floor, wondering if we could try and help whoever it was. The only problem was the ship. The Wellspring is a city on the water. Even if those people were still alive, they could be five decks down. There could be a thousand corpses between us and them.

  August 24th

  We heard more banshees today, but the sound was muffled and far off. It could’ve just been our minds playing tricks on us. I’m really hoping it was our imagination. Just the thought of them makes my blood run cold.

  To make matters worse, Finn wants to go out tomorrow morning to look for cell phones. He says we have to try and reach the mainland to find out what’s going on. After what happened in our cabin he says we can’t afford to wait for a rescue that might never come.

  “What if they thought we were infected,” I stated, sounding hopeful. “It would explain why they shot at us. They probably couldn’t hear us over the noise of the helicopter.”

  Finn never looked up as he wrapped duct tape around a chef jacket. His face had lit up when he found the tape in a supply closet next to the dry storage.

  “It‘s a possibility,” he mumbled. “I wouldn’t count on it though. Just one working cell phone, that’s all we need.”

  I sighed, but didn’t say anything more. I was too tired to talk about the million what if scenarios constantly running through my mind.

  At least I‘m going with him this time. I didn‘t give him a choice. If he left and made me wait again, the corpses would be the least of his worries.

  If I don’t get eaten tomorrow, I’ll write more.

  Sprinters

  August 25th

  I never would’ve thought I’d be jealous of the people who say it looks like the honeymoon is over. They just don‘t understand how lucky they are; mine absolutely refuses to end!

  We’ve only been on the Wellspring for a little over two weeks, but every day feels like a lifetime. All I do is sit in near darkness, clinging to the slivers of sunlight that find their way into our gloomy hideout. I don’t know what’s worse, the waiting, or not knowing what’s waiting for us outside the kitchen.

  Finn tried getting me to stay again during breakfast.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea? Both of us going, I mean. What if we run into a banshee?”

  He seemed more nervous than the first time he’d gone out. A lot more.

  It was obvious he wanted me to stay put while he went off on another undead adventure, but it wasn’t happening.

  “Yes,” I said firmly. I grasped my broom spear and gave him a defiant look. “Let’s do this. Anything is better than rotting away in this kitchen.”

  Finn nodded solemnly and moved to one of the doors. He lifted the makeshift curtain he’d fashioned out of a large dish cloth and peered through the porthole.

  “Everything looks clear,” he said as he bent down and removed the blocks of wood I’d wedged under the exit earlier.

  We must have been quite the sight as we walked out of the kitchen and into the buffet. We were wearing almost identical oversized chef jackets, both of which were wrapped several layers thick with silvery grey duct tape.

  Aside from our spears, we each carried two large kitchen knives, carefully sheathed at our sides. The only difference between us was t
hree glass bottles with rags stuffed in the tops that Finn had. He’d strapped them to a belt he’d made out of apron drawstrings.

  “Molotov cocktails,” he said when I pointed curiously to the oil filled bottles. “Just in case.”

  I had no idea what he planned to do with them, but I didn’t argue. The more weapons we had against these things, the better. Still, I secretly hoped that just in case would never come.

  There were no corpses on the side of the buffet we came out on; none that we could see, anyway. They moved so slowly, I thought. It should be easy to avoid them as long as we stay alert.

  A chill ran down my spine as I recalled the fat chef zombie that somehow grabbed my arm out of nowhere. She moved even slower than the normal ones, and yet she still managed to almost get me.

  We’d decided to exit through the opposite side we’d come in; it allowed us to slowly make our way toward where we thought the corpses would be. As we walked by the buffet lines the smell of putrefying meat started to turn my stomach. The most unsettling part of it was the stench that came from places other than the buffet line. Pieces of what used to be people were strewn about the dining area like some sort of twisted Easter egg hunt.

  As we came to the u-shaped bend of the cafeteria the smell of rotting flesh became almost unbearable. I kept wondering when my stomach would stop turning, but quickly realized I didn‘t want it to. The sickeningly sweet and sour odor that wrapped around us like a blanket of death was something I never wanted to get used to.

  I held my breath as the group I’d awoken days earlier came into view. They were huddled together, wheezing and swaying in unison as the ship moved. It looked as if they’d moved back to the spot they were in before my screams had drawn them to us.

  The display glass in front of them was partially shattered, with globs of congealed blood smudged on its surface. It was then that I noticed the spot where the fat chef zombie had fallen. All that remained of the corpse was a pile of black sludge. A ribcage protruded halfway out of the center, and ragged patches of clothing were mixed among the sludge covered bones. Surrounding the remains was a circle of flies. Most of them were dead, but some were still in the process of dying. They twisted and squirmed as they attempted to flee from the toxic sludge.

  I pointed it out to Finn, who raised an eyebrow and looked as confused as I was.

  “Was it eaten by the others?” I asked.

  Finn was silent for a moment, but shook his head. “I don’t think so. It looks like what was left of it caved into itself. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it melted…”

  I shivered at the thought.

  “Maybe that black stuff is so toxic it eats away at their insides, kind of like acid,” I stated. “If we’re lucky it’ll happen to all of them, and this whole mess will sort itself out!”

  Finn took a step back so we were side by side.

  “Look! It looks like the group from earlier are all crewmembers,” he said, pointing to the huddled corpses in front of us.

  “And that‘s a good thing?” I whispered, confused.

  “Their cell phones are probably turned off because they were working when all this went down. That means the batteries might not be dead yet. I didn’t expect them to be so close together, though.”

  Finn paused for a moment as he continued to eye the group.

  “Okay, I think the best way to do this will be to take out two at a time. I’ll take the two on the left, you take the two on the right. The fifth one will be whoever gets to it first. Hold the spear firmly with both hands and thrust it like I showed you. Do you remember where to hit the ones with their backs to us?”

  I nodded.

  “Show me,” Finn urged. I gave him a disapproving look, but after he didn’t budge I sighed and reached up to the back of his neck. My fingers traced an upward path until they reached a soft spot just before the skull. “There,” I said, making sure to show my irritation. We’d gone over it a dozen times.

  “And if they turn to us, eyes sockets and temples, okay? Don’t stab wildly, because even the regular ones aren’t very fast. If they’re creepers it’ll be even easier.”

  I nodded. Creepers were what we’d decided to call the beer gut zombies that were incredibly slow.

  I froze as I suddenly remembered something. I yanked at Finn’s jacket just as we were about to close in.

  “What?”

  “There are only five of them here. Where‘s the sixth? I distinctly remember six.”

  My leg muscles tightened as my body prepared to run. I suddenly wanted to double back to our hideaway in the kitchen. At least there I felt somewhat safe.

  Finn’s eyes narrowed as he scanned our immediate area. His knuckles turned white as he grasped his spear with both hands. I looked behind us, toward the rows of tables in the rear dining section. There wasn’t anywhere for one to hide, unless it was crawling under tables. I shuddered at the thought.

  “Maybe it wandered off after we woke it up. It could’ve gone dormant somewhere else,” Finn replied as he regained his composure. “Spear up Lily, let’s get this mess over with.”

  I tried to keep my breathing steady as we came up to the nearest pair. Their backs were to us, and their heads bobbed slightly up and down, almost as if they were falling in and out of sleep. We were close enough to hear their sad, congested attempt at breathing. The reality of the moment suddenly hit me. We were about to kill these people. They were people, no matter how they acted. The woman who grabbed me, her eyes were so sad. There was still someone in there, trapped inside. I just knew it.

  Finn started mouthing a countdown, just before he reached one I stopped him.

  “Wait!” I whispered.

  “I don’t know if we should do this. These are people we are about to kill. What if they can be helped? They could just be really sick. What if there’s a cure, and we’re taking away their chance to be healthy again?”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing, Lily, but we don’t know if they can even be helped. Even if they could be cured, do you think they would want to be? I mean, just look at her.”

  He pointed to the woman who was to be my first target. She was my height, with pale skin and short strawberry blonde hair. Her left side had a gaping hole the size of a volleyball in it. There were no organs that I could see, just clumps of congealed blood clinging to the putrid black sludge that poured from her insides.

  I looked at my second target. A tall, broad shouldered man with a bushy mustache and wild brown hair. He looked more like a lumberjack than a crewmember. At first he looked almost normal, except for his breathing, but then I saw his neck. It had been ripped and torn at so badly from both sides that I wondered how his head was still upright.

  These people, at least the ones in front of us, were beyond saving. I wiped a tear from my cheek and set my jaw. I nodded to Finn that I was ready.

  My adrenaline spiked as the tips of our spears quickly found their marks. We took out the first two simultaneously, and as they dropped we recoiled and drove our spears into the third and fourth.

  Finn and I moved at an almost even pace as we took out the second pair. My spear was raised and ready to strike when the tip of Finn’s came down on the fifth and final body. He gave me a grim nod as we let ourselves breathe again.

  Finn swept a hand across his forehead. “Well that went pretty-”

  The sound of broken glass being moved made us both jump back.

  I looked around wildly but there was nothing to see. Finn quickly jumped back to my side as we tried to find the source of the noise.

  We both spotted it at the same time. The sixth zombie from the group was still here. It had climbed over the food trays and fallen to the floor between the kitchen door and buffet line. It slowly raised itself to a standing position as it stared at us in silence. Its mouth was slack, and a large shard of glass protruded from one of its sunken eye sockets.

  “I’ll get it,” Finn said as he raised his sludge covered spear.

  I
watched from behind as he inched closer to the buffet line. The corpse wasn’t moving. I started to get a bad feeling as Finn prepared to stab it through the shattered glass. Just before he thrust his spear it let out a blood curdling wail.

  Nails on a chalkboard, dying animals, crying babies. It was all of them at once. It was like someone trying to sing after swallowing a bucket of nails.