The Boat

by Christine Dougherty

  “Can you make it across to a jet ski?” Steve motioned Carl forward. Carl’s jet was a two-person job, big and roomy. “Can you climb up with Carl?”

  “Come on, man,” Carl said, leaning forward and offering his hand. “Ease on up here.” Carl was big, bigger than Steve, and dark. His wildly growing mass of curly hair and beard made him look like a virile pirate. He looked as though he should have been riding some kind of sea dragon of yore rather than the ubiquitous jet ski.

  The man scanned Carl up and down with a look of unease. Then he reached forward shakily, coming onto his knees. Carl’s hand was like a bear paw, covering the man’s entire hand, and when the man slipped, Carl was able to life him bodily across to the deck of the jet.

  Steve had another twinge of apprehension. There was something off about the guy, something…Steve shook his head. There’s something off about all of us, he thought. Nothing seems exactly right anymore. Because nothing is exactly right.

  “Get him to ThreeBees,” Steve said, raising his voice to be heard over the jets. “Maggie can see about that cut then we’ll get him sorted.” He watched as Carl started away, the man holding fast to the giant’s back.

  “Dave, tie that raft up to ThreeBees and then head back to Big Daddy, okay?”

  Dave hesitated. He and Steve had met up three days after the shit hit the fan and had been together ever since. Dave had seen the hesitation in Steve’s eyes.

  “What is it?” Dave asked, raising his voice, reaching for the raft with his own gaff, and then grabbing for the rope curled untidily at its bow. “What did you see?”

  Steve shook his head, but his gaze went involuntarily to the departing jet. He shook his head again more firmly. “Nothing. It’s nothing. I’ll see you back at Big Daddy. Hour at the most.” Even as he said it, Maggie came to his mind. He might be longer than an hour.

  Dave started away, the yellow raft bouncing jauntily in his wake. Dave was young and handsome in a clean-cut, college way, his brownish blond hair blown sharply back from his face. The scene would have been set if the raft had carried two pretty co-eds in bikinis with beers in their hands, laughing and squealing at the speed.

  World isn’t like that anymore, Steve thought. He powered off his jet and the silence that fell was a relief. Even the imaginary laughter of the pretty coeds faded off to the horizon.

  Water lapped the edges of the jet, washing up and over his feet. Despite the sun, he shivered and the sky seemed to darken. The swamp. That had been the worst and not just because of wet feet, either.

  Because of Amelia and what had happened to her; that’s why the swamp had been the worst.

  ~ ~ ~

  Steve had lived in central Jersey, just outside of Princeton, and he taught at the university. He liked the dichotomy of the bustling, townie atmosphere of the campus only a fifteen minute drive away from the secluded silence of his little house in the woods. When he was home, he couldn’t even see his nearest neighbor.

  Best of both worlds.

  But the campus had become a very uneasy place during that last week. The rumor among the students was that lots of people were dying of a strange new flu, and it wasn’t just the really old and the really young this time–it was everyone. They were hearing (and repeating) that the government was covering up the numbers and trying to soothe everyone with the platitude of get rest, stay hydrated and you’ll be better before you know it.

  But the rumor persisted: if you got sick, you died. And that wasn’t even the worst part of what was said to be going on.

  The rumors had begun in the spring and had been mere blips on the radar at first. A few mentions on Twitter and Reddit, a couple of uneasy Facebook posts. Someone had posted a ten-second video clip to YouTube of police in riot gear beating a small group of students outside a California university infirmary–they might have been protesters, there was a lot of that going around lately. Something was happening behind the students, something impossible to see clearly in the shaky, obviously hand-held, low quality video. Something–someone–staggered down the stairs from the infirmary and the students had surged away from it like panicked sheep, looking over their shoulders and screaming, almost overwhelming the police line. The police had pushed back, batons swinging, and then the video had cut out but not before an astute observer could have noticed the rally cry from the students: “dead! dead! dead!” which they yelled over and over. It had more than three hundred thousand views within an hour and then mysteriously disappeared, leaving only the warning ‘owner has not verified content’. The comment portion remained for a day longer, becoming more strident, and then that was gone, too.

  Steve looked at the iPhone in his hand. The screen had gone dark so he pushed the button again to check the date. Tuesday, June 7. He sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his hand through his hair. It didn’t make any sense. He reached behind him and shoved at the mound under the covers.

  “Amelia, hey. Wake up. Wake up, love,” he said. The cocooned Amelia moaned and kicked back but he jumped up, smiling and momentarily distracted from the message he’d just retrieved. “Come on, Am, rise and shine.” He slapped her ass through the covers. “Up and at ’em.” He slapped again, a muffled whump on the downy quilt. He didn’t get how she could sleep like that. She looked like a mummy.

  “Kill you,” she said; her voice muffled and still half asleep. But he knew she’d wake up now. She’d reached–as she called it–the point of no return.

  He went to the kitchen and started coffee. It had been a message left by one of his former students, Melanie Ransome from two semesters ago. She’d been yelling–screaming, really–but it had been muffled. The phone must have been in her purse. He only knew it was her because it had been her name on the caller ID.

  He stood looking at his yard from the window over the sink and listened to the coffee pot chortle behind him. She’d screamed something like “they’ve come back”…his mind wanted to insist that he’d heard “please come back” because then she could have been yelling for a dog or even a wayward boyfriend. “They’ve come back” didn’t mean anything. He shook his head, recalling her tone. It had been panicked beyond reason. He shivered.

  “I’d rather have tea.”

  He jumped and turned sharply, nearly dropping his empty cup. Amelia stood in the doorway, the comforter still wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair was a riot of honeyed curls and one side of her face was lined. Her cheeks glowed with hot pink fire.

  She sniffed and one hand emerged from the swelter of blankets to rub her nose. Despite her thirty two years, she looked about twelve.

  “Not feeling well?” he asked and bent to kiss her.

  She turned her head. “I’m getting a cold, don’t kiss me.”

  He contented himself with a kiss on her temple. Her skin was very warm. Almost hot. The flu rumors floated into his mind but he shooed them away; he’d been teaching too long to let drama-addicted students excite him.

  “You should get out of that blanket,” he said, filling the kettle. “You’re gonna give yourself a fever.”

  She collapsed into a chair at the little four-person table. “I think I already have one.” The hand emerged again, this time to rub at her eyes. “It started yesterday in my throat. My throat feels okay now, but my nose is stuffed. See?” She sniffed extra hard and he could see her nostrils close as no air was getting through.

  “Very nice,” he said, and tipped the water over the waiting tea bag. “You’re angelic, love, you know that?”

  She grinned. “Yep, I know. That’s why you love me.”

  He smiled. It was one of the reasons he loved her: her openness, her realness. At thirty-seven, he’d had plenty of casual girlfriends and even a handful of one night stands and had been pretty content with the mostly solitary direction his life seemed to be taking.

  But then Amelia had stopped him in his tracks.

  Funny, bubbly and passionate, she’d reminded him of Meg Ryan…not a bad accompaniment to his somewhat dour Tom Hank
s, he’d thought, that first night they’d met. It had been at a bar, a mutual friend’s fortieth birthday celebration. He’d seen her arguing with the birthday ‘boy’ about the recent firing of a near-tenured professor. Even as she’d argued, she’d been funny, wagging her finger in his face with one hand while the other hand steadied him on his bar stool–the man was very drunk.

  Steve had pulled her away, disregarding the shocked expression on her face. “I think he was about to get violent!” he’d said over the crowd noise.

  She’d looked back at the birthday boy who sat jollily swaying. He was singing something. Auld Lang Syne? Then she’d turned back to Steve.

  “Violent, huh?” She gestured to the happily singing drunk.

  Steve’s eyes never left hers. He’d smiled and nodded. “Yes, I’m sure of it. I think I just saved your life.” He knew it was a gamble because she was very obviously a woman with a mind of her own, but the slow smile on her face had convinced him that his gamble just might pay off.

  They’d found they had a good deal in common. Each had no immediate family. They’d both never married. Neither of them wanted children anymore. In the big things, they were eerily compatible. He had been planning to ask her to marry him and had already started shopping for a ring.

  He looked at her flushed features as she sipped the tea. She wiped a hand under her nose and sniffed hard. She must have sensed his gaze and she turned and smiled, then shrugged. “Too sexy for you, right? It’s killing you, isn’t it?” Her eyes were red-rimmed and the left was crusted at the corner.

  He laughed and nodded. “I think it’s the quilt that’s doing it, actually. All that down…it’s making me really horny…all those ducks…mmmm.” He fingered a corner of the quilt and gave her a lecherous wink.

  Now it was her turn to laugh but it turned quickly to coughing. “I might go back to bed. I’m not due in to work until four.” She was an artist and worked at a local screen-printing shop. “I feel awful.”

  He took her cup and turned back to the sink to wash it. “Good idea. I might come with you. Maybe I’ll just call out today, what do you think?” He put the cup in the dish drainer and glanced out the window. “Maybe we could–hey, that’s weird, Jerry is in the yard. What the hell is he doing?” Alarm filled Steve’s stomach with sluggish butterflies as he noticed three things at once:

  Jerry, his neighbor, was running full tilt toward the back door.

  He was in pajamas and one slipper, and had a small axe in his hand.

  Jerry’s wife, Carol, was running behind him…chasing him?

  “Jesus Christ, what’s going on out there?”

  Now Jerry was closer and Steve could hear him through the old, single paned windows.

  “She’s trying to kill me! She’s dead! She’s trying to kill me! Help! She’s dead! She was dead! Help! Help me!”

  “Guy’s lost his mind,” Steve said, his voice dropped almost to a whisper. His eyes switched to Carol and his blood ran cold. The side of her neck had been laid open and a blackish sludge coated her shoulder and arm. She seemed unable to lift her head completely. She was running clumsily, listing badly to one side and he saw that her foot was gone. She was running on the ragged stump, bumping clumsily along.

  “Jesus, Steve, what happened to Carol?” Amelia had crowded up against his back and she was looking over his shoulder. Steve could feel the heat coming off of her even through the blanket.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know–oh shit!”

  Jerry had glanced over his shoulder, perhaps to judge the distance between himself and his rampaging wife, and he stumbled over a plastic lawn chair. He struggled to right himself, but he must have sprained his knee, or even broken it, because even as he stood, his leg collapsed back under.

  Then Carol was on him.

  She never slowed, just ran right into him and they both toppled forward over the chair. Carol’s mouth was on Jerry’s neck as if she were kissing him, but then a grimace of panic and pain split Jerry’s features and Carol’s head came up. Her mouth was covered in fresh red and a stringy material jittered as she chewed. She was biting him. No, not biting…she was eating him.

  “Carol, don’t bite Jerry!” Steve said; his voice was a startled roar. He banged the window with a fist. Even in his cold haze of shock, he realized how ridiculous he sounded. He went for the back door. He had to do something…help out.

  Amelia stood with her back to the door, covering it. The comforter had puddled around her like heavenly clouds and her white face glowed with color. She looked like a feverish angel. She was shaking her head. “You can’t go out there. I won’t let you.”

  Steve stopped, nonplussed. “What? Why not? I have to help–”

  She reached up and put a hand on his face. “Call the police, but don’t go out there.”

  Jerry’s screams went on as Steve stared into Amelia’s bright and frightened eyes. She shook her head, slow and deliberate: no.

  Steve wheeled and grabbed the phone from the table. He thumbed it alive and dialed 911. It rang three times before he depressed end. He dialed again and went to the kitchen window. Jerry wasn’t moving anymore. Carol had managed to turn him over. He lay awkwardly on the chair, his head hanging upside down, facing the house. White knobs of spine were visible above his chin where she’d eaten his throat literally to the bone. His head rocked and shifted each time she tore another chunk from him.

  The phone rang and rang. After a while, it cut off.

  “Lock the door, Amelia, okay?” Steve said, his voice thin and soft, but Amelia was sitting at the table, her head in her hands and she didn’t move. Steve locked the door himself and pulled down the roller blind. Before it was all the way down, he’d taken a last look.

  Another neighbor had joined Carol at her feast. They worked at Jerry’s corpse like wolves. A whimper worked its way up Steve’s throat. Carol’s head came up. More gristle hung from the side of her mouth. Her face was smeared with blood.

  She seemed to mark him with her glazed eyes.

  ~ ~ ~

  He and Amelia waited until Carol and the other neighbor had wandered off before turning on the television. Every channel was either a special news report or blank. One station showed a map of the United States and they were highlighting the areas of the heaviest ‘breakouts’ and urging people to keep calm. They cut to a reporter on a street, Steve thought it was maybe Philly. The anchorman asked her if she’d seen been able to get the mood of the community, were residents scared? Worried? She’d nodded, looking serious, and just as she opened her mouth to speak, she was attacked from behind. A kid, fifteen or sixteen, tore a hunk from her cheek. The reporter screamed and tried to throw him off. “Tony help me, for Christ’s sake, put the fucking camera down and–”

  Another figure hurtled in from the side, knocking the reporter and her attacker both to the ground. The camera seemed to fall with them and then it focused on the reporter’s face. Her eye hung almost to the level of her mouth. If she’d put out her tongue, she could have licked it.

  Then the shot went blank.

  They panned back to the anchorman and he sat, mouth agape. Then he stood and walked from the newsroom.

  None of the other channels were doing much better. They caught one from the shore, a reporter stood on a dock yelling, “Go to water, go to water, it’s the only safe place, go to water, I repeat go to–” before that shot went blank.

  Amelia and Steve had looked at each other in the deepening gloom as night fell. They’d been afraid to turn on any lights for fear of drawing attention to themselves. “How far are we? From the shore?”

  Steve had rubbed his face, rubbed his tired eyes. “I don’t know. If we take 33, I guess about forty minutes. Maybe more.”

  After deliberating, they decided to go after midnight. Neither said why it felt better to wait, it just seemed safer, somehow.

  They were less than ten miles from the shore when they were confronted with crowds of the walking dead. They were everywhere…in th
e road, in yards, in parking lots. Everywhere. They seemed to be congregating here. When they spotted the headlights and heard their engine, they swarmed like moths.

  Amelia’s screams filled the car like shards of falling glass, but Steve felt calm settle over himself like a cold cloak. He turned over their options but it seemed to him there was only one. He swerved in and out, loathe to hit anyone, not understanding–not yet–the extent of the devastation. He had to get rid of the car. They’d do better on foot, bringing less attention to themselves.

  He turned his lights off and doubled back to where the woods had ended. He told Amelia to be ready to go when the car stopped rolling. Just get out and head for the woods, he’d be right behind her. She’d nodded and her eyes were enormous, her cheeks bright red with fever. He’d taken her hand and squeezed it. Even her hand was hot.

  Steve waited for a clear stretch and let the car roll to a stop. They bolted from it and into the woods. The ground was marshy and soft in spots, trying to suck them down. It was like running in a nightmare where your legs and feet are leaden and unresponsive.

  They’d gone three miles in silence before Amelia’s coughing forced them to stop and rest. They huddled against the base of a tree, panting with exertion, listening intently for sounds of pursuit–there were none. Steve berated himself silently for never once using his gym membership…his legs were burning with exertion.

  Amelia coughed steadily. He bundled her to him even though her heat was making him uncomfortably warm. He was furious with himself for not thinking to pack water and food. He better get his shit together and start thinking or they were going to end up as someone’s dinner.

  He felt Amelia relaxing in his arms and tilted his own head back against the tree. What had happened? The people dragging around seemed…as if they had already died. He thought about the coagulated blackness coming from Carol, her missing foot, her glazed eyes. She had been dead. But somehow not. As if she had died, but been reanimated in some way. But that’s not possible.