Water

by William Esmont

  “On your knees,” the soldier behind Megan ordered.

  She and the rest knelt.

  “So these are the new arrivals,” Purdue said as he came to a stop directly in front of Megan. “Welcome, all of you. Welcome to your future. To our future.” He locked eyes with her, and she spotted recognition, a brief remembrance of their first and only encounter. “Who wants to be first to meet your new God?” Purdue asked, breaking eye contact with Megan.

  The man they had picked up on the way to the stadium struggled to his feet. “This is bullshit! I’m not—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, one of the soldiers shot him in the head. The man crumpled into a heap, dead.

  “A non-believer,” Purdue said dismissively. His gaze settled on Megan. “How about you, my child? Do you believe? Do you have it in yourself to accept the flesh of our savior into your body? To become one with Him?”

  Megan tried to swallow. Her tongue rasped against her chapped lips. She shook her head.

  Purdue cut a pinkie-sized chunk of meat from the strip of flesh. Pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, he dangled it in front of her like a prize. Revulsion seethed inside Megan. Her meal threatened to burst from her mouth. She sealed her lips and shook her head violently.

  “A little help,” Purdue said, motioning at the man who had shot the dissenter.

  The soldier came around behind Megan and put his hands on her head, one meaty paw on her jaw and the other on the top of her skull. “Just take it,” the man growled, his fingers digging into her cheek, forcing her mouth open bit by bit.

  Megan clamped her teeth shut and writhed in the man’s grasp, nearly breaking free. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a blur of motion as another guard raised a small black baton and brought it down with a vicious swipe against the back of Jack’s head. Jack collapsed forward into the dirt, groaning. Blood poured from a gash on the crown of his head.

  “There’s more where that came from,” Purdue said, bringing the piece of flesh closer. “Now, take it.”

  Megan shook with fear. Fear of what would happen if the zombie flesh passed her lips. Fear of her life ending right there in that tropical hellhole. The soldier straddled Jack’s inert body and raised his club, threatening to deliver on Purdue’s promise.

  Tears streamed down her face as she remembered what had happened to her friend Cesar when he had been infected, how she had witnessed the change in his eyes as the infection took hold and multiplied out of control in his bloodstream. Her lips curled back under the pressure from the soldier’s grimy fingers. Her teeth separated as the pain in her jaw became intolerable – just a little – but enough for Purdue to jam his travesty of a communion offering into her mouth.

  Light exploded in her head as the zombie flesh grazed the tip of her tongue. For a moment, she was blind, unable to tell which way was up and which was down. Saliva flooded her mouth, poured across her lips in torrents. The sliver of meat settled on her tongue. She choked and swallowed involuntarily, drawing the poisoned flesh deeper into her mouth. It slipped down her throat like a cockroach scurrying from the light. Megan’s pitched forward and retched as her body tried to turn itself inside out in an attempt to expel the invader. But it was too late. The poison was inside her.

  Her extremities tingled, every synapse in her nervous system firing at once. Through the tears streaming down her face, Megan saw Purdue smiling at her as if she were the most wondrous thing he’d ever seen.

  Then her mind exploded in a burst of ecstasy beyond anything she had ever experienced.

  Twenty-six

  Gulf Star Oil Platform

  A steady breeze blew across the main deck of the oil platform, bringing with it the ever-present stench of rotting sea creatures and old grease. Luke leaned against the railing and wiped sweat from his forehead. His shirt clung to his back. Tinsley leaned against his side, one hand on his shoulder for support and the other mopping her own brow with a handkerchief.

  The noise of a door clanging open above drew Luke’s attention. Glancing up, he saw Chris standing on the main catwalk in the spot where Hines typically addressed them.

  “Where’s Hines?” Tinsley whispered.

  Luke shrugged. “Beats me.”

  “Can we switch places?” Tinsley asked. “There are too many people here. I can’t breathe.”

  “Sure,” Luke said, maneuvering to the side to allow Tinsley access to the rail.

  Chris raised his arms. “Thanks for taking time out of your day!”

  His voice carried across the crowd, and the incessant buzz of a hundred conversations dwindled until finally falling silent. Only then did Luke detect Dr. Cain lurking in the shadows just behind Chris.

  “I understand there’ve been a lot of rumors flying around over the past few days about people getting sick, about quarantines.” Chris paused for a moment as the crowd digested his words. When the noise dropped to a manageable level, he continued. “And unfortunately, I’m here today to tell you that there’s a strong kernel of truth to what you’ve been hearing.”

  “Are we going to die?” Mel Cooper asked. The scrawny redneck with stringy blond hair wore a denim vest with a Confederate flag on the back. “’Cause if we are, I’ve got a few scores to settle first.” He grinned a toothless smile at the people around him.

  A smattering of nervous laughter rippled through the crowd.

  Chris glanced over his shoulder at Doctor Cain. Luke couldn’t quite discern the doctor’s expression, but Chris’s face, already grim, grew even more serious.

  “This isn’t a joking matter, Mel,” Chris said, his eyes boring into the self-styled comedian. “We’ve already lost several people from this thing, and odds are, we haven’t seen the worst yet.”

  Mel’s smile disappeared, and he mumbled, “Sorry.”

  Luke observed the exchange with bemused fascination. He had tangled with Mel on several occasions and witnessing the man being put into his place pleased him immensely.

  Chris spent the next several minutes describing the latest threat to life on the platform, focusing mostly on listing symptoms and explaining the doctor’s plan to treat the people who had already fallen ill.

  Luke turned to comment to Tinsley. She was gone. He stood on his toes and scanned the nearby people, but he didn’t see her.

  “Excuse me,” he said to a man standing behind him. “Did you see—”

  The man nodded and pointed at the stairwell. “She went that way. She looked sick.”

  Tinsley had been battling nausea all morning. She had told him it was morning sickness, but Luke wasn’t so sure. Chris had just mentioned nausea as a symptom.

  Luke set off in the direction the man had indicated, forcing his way through the crowd. “Sorry,” he said when he stepped on a woman’s toes. “Pardon me.” He forcefully moved another man out of his path. He got through and went inside the oil platform. Far below, at the bottom of the stairwell, a door slammed. He took the steps two at a time.

  Luke pounded on his cabin door and shouted Tinsley’s name but got no response. He had left his key inside. “Come on, Tinsley! Let me in!”

  He held his breath and listened for a response. None came.

  He heard the sound of footsteps in the hall behind him. Turning, he saw Dr. Cain striding toward him, a concerned expression on his face.

  “Is everything okay?” Cain asked when he reached Luke’s side.

  Luke shook his head. “No. It’s Tinsley. She’s locked herself in. She—”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She hasn’t been feeling well. I’m worried she’s got whatever Chris was talking about.”

  Dr. Cain moved toward the door. “Do you mind if I try?”

  Luke stepped aside. “Please.”

  “Is she showing symptoms?”

  Luke gulped. Dr. Cain didn’t know about Tinsley’s pregnancy. “N-no,” he stammered. “N-not exactly.”

  Dr. Cain stopped with his knuckles poised in front of the door. “What
do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”

  Luke couldn’t hide the truth any longer. He regretted hiding it for this long. “Tinsley’s pregnant.”

  The doctor’s hand fell to his side. His eyes grew large, and his face went pale. “What do you mean? How far along is she?”

  “Ten or eleven weeks, give or take.” The doctor’s expression scared Luke. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  The doctor closed his eyes for a second as if praying. “Are you sure?”

  “I think so,” Luke said. “Why?”

  The doctor took Luke by the elbow and guided him down the hall, away from the door. His eyebrows knotted in consternation. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? What were you thinking?”

  Luke shrugged uncomfortably. “We were going to… but the time never felt right.”

  “You should have come to me right away. Both of you.” The doctor put his hands over his face and massaged his forehead. He exhaled hard and glanced at the closed door. “I’m sorry. You had no way of knowing.”

  “Knowing what?” Luke snapped, his frustration boiling over. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Tinsley isn’t the first,” Cain said in a hushed voice. “We’ve had several other pregnancies on the platform – before you arrived.”

  “And?” Luke asked, his stomach constricting into a hot, tight ball.

  “And all the women experienced severe complications, usually around the seventh or eighth week.”

  “What kind of complications?” But Luke knew by the look of profound sadness on the doctor’s face he wasn’t going to like the answer.

  The doctor met Luke’s eyes. “The last woman—her name was Nancy—she went into labor early. The baby… it was undead. It ate through her womb. She died from blood loss before we could do anything.”

  Luke wanted to vomit. The thought of a zombie baby chewing its way through Tinsley’s belly made his head swim. He couldn’t imagine the pain this other woman must have experienced, the terror at knowing she carried a monster inside her.

  “How many?” Luke asked, feeling faint. “How many have died?”

  “Three so far.”

  Luke’s mind raced with the implications. He couldn’t think straight. “But Tinsley is past that point. That means she’ll be okay, right?”

  Dr. Cain shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t say until I examine her.”

  Luke didn’t need to hear another word. Brushing past the doctor, he raced back to the door and resumed banging and calling out to Tinsley.

  Twenty-seven

  Isla Perpetua

  Megan regained consciousness slowly, becoming aware of her surroundings in painful fits and starts. She lay face down on the ground. Dirt coated her tongue. Panic seized her as she tried to open her eyes and discovered she couldn’t. They seemed to be glued shut. Summoning all of her energy, she rolled onto her back. Her muscles screamed in protest. Her arms, which had been pinned beneath her, began to tingle as blood rushed back into them. The pain brought tears to her eyes, but it also washed away whatever had been holding them closed.

  Jack lay a few feet away, his face covered in blood. For a heart-wrenching moment, Megan thought the blood was his. Then she realized her body was the same crimson color. Inspecting herself, she found three of her fingernails missing. Scrapes and gouges covered her arms as if a wild animal had attacked her. Dried blood filled her hair, matting it to her skull. Yet oddly, she experienced no pain.

  The last thing she recalled was Purdue standing over her, forcing her to eat a piece of zombie flesh. She couldn’t recall anything after the horrid taste of the diseased meat slithering down her gullet.

  “Jack,” she croaked hoarsely.

  He didn’t move.

  “Jack!”

  Still, he didn’t respond.

  “I think that one’s awake,” someone said.

  Megan froze. The voice had come from behind her, and it belonged to Nick.

  “You think?” answered the soldier who had clubbed Jack.

  “What happened?” Megan whispered, moving her head as far as her sore neck would allow. “What’s going on?”

  Nick’s face loomed into view. He turned to address the other man. “Yep. They’re coming down. Good timing.”

  “What happened?” Megan asked again.

  Nick ignored her. “Get her feet,” he told his partner.

  Megan looked over at Jack again. He still hadn’t moved.

  A second later, Nick dug his hands into Megan’s armpits. The other man grabbed her ankles. On the count of three, they hoisted her from the ground then carried her out of the sun and deposited her under an overhang, next to the same VW microbus in which she had arrived.

  “Water’s over there,” Nick said, gesturing at a rusty pail a few feet away.

  To Megan, it may as well have been a thousand miles. Megan watched as the men returned to the center of the stadium and started hauling bodies back to where she sat. Her sense of time no longer functioned. When she had last been conscious, the stands had been full of people. But they were empty. The sun hung much lower on the horizon.

  Where did Purdue go? Where was the zombie? What had happened? All those questions and more whirled in her head as she struggled to get her bearings.

  Jeremy. Megan’s blood froze in her veins when she recalled his whimpering form groveling at Purdue’s feet. She struggled to sit up so she could see better. Nausea burbled deep in her gut. She spotted Jeremy’s corpse lying a few yards away. Or what was left of it.

  His hair, once lustrous and black, was scattered in the dirt around his ravaged body. His torso had been ripped to shreds. Glistening loops of intestines lay discarded in the dirt. Long stretches of bone shone through where his skin had been gnawed off. The flesh of his face had been peeled free, leaving behind only a skeletal grin that mocked her where she lay. Megan stared at her forearm and peeled off a stray clump of the very same hair. Revulsion overtook her. She rolled to the side and had barely opened her mouth when the contents of her stomach erupted in a scalding torrent.

  When she was done, she stared down at the mess. A barely chewed eyeball stared back at her from the dirt. The tip of a finger. A piece of gristle that could only be an ear.

  Megan shrieked and scrambled to her feet. “No!” She shuffled out of the shade and into the sun, propelling herself by sheer force of will toward where Nick and his henchman were about to pick up an unconscious Hispanic woman.

  “Goddamn!” Nick said. “I should have known.”

  His hand went to the nightstick strapped to his left hip, and before Megan’s addled brain could figure out what was going to happen, the club came cracking down on her head.

  Once again, she tumbled into the bottomless well of oblivion.

  ***

  Jack gently lifted Megan’s head from the ground and poured a trickle of water between her lips. Megan sputtered and coughed. Her eyes fluttered open. “Wha…”

  “Shh,” Jack said. “Don’t try to talk.”

  Megan’s eyes darted back and forth, before finally focusing on Jack again. She licked her lips. “What happened?”

  Jack didn’t know how to answer, not without pushing Megan deeper into the abyss of her own insanity. The truth was far too horrible for any reasonable person to believe, yet he had no doubts about what had happened. They had killed Jeremy and consumed his living flesh as if they themselves were undead. Yet they were alive. All his senses were his own. None of it made sense.

  Jack placed his fingertips to Megan’s lips and shook his head. “We’ll talk later.”

  “But—”

  “We’re leaving soon,” Jack said. “Just wait.”

  She tried to sit up, but Jack put his hand in the center of her chest and gently pushed her back into place. “You took a nasty hit to your head. Give it a few minutes.”

  Megan squeezed her lips together and looked sick to her stomach.

  “Do you—”

  She launched into a painful-sounding seri
es of dry heaves.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jack said, patting her on the shoulder. He climbed to his feet. The numbness he had experienced upon first waking had long since receded. But every muscle in his body ached as if they had all contracted at once and been held in a locked position for hours. His jaw throbbed as if he had been on the losing end of a knock-down, drag-out fistfight. His teeth felt loose in their sockets. His eyes bulged as if too large for his head.

  Jack approached the spot in the dirt where the remaining scraps of Jeremy lay baking in the sun. Flies swarmed the corpse. A fetid stench invaded Jack’s nose. He swallowed the urge to vomit then walked in a slow circle around the body, searching for some clue to jog his memory, to explain the horror of the scene.

  All he got were jumbled fragments. Nothing coherent. Frustrated, he went back to Megan’s side. She looked more alert and was busy trying to wipe the blood from her chest and lower legs.

  “Any better?” he asked, squatting beside her.

  Megan let out a forced laugh. “Like someone tore off my head and shit down my throat.”

  “That’s pretty accurate,” Jack said, grinning. “It gets better.”

  She spat. “Right. That bastard turned us into fucking zombies. We’re infected now.”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so. This is something different. Something temporary. I think the zombie flesh had some kind of toxin in it that made us lose our minds for a little while.”

  “But—”

  “Look at yourself. You’re a mess, but you don’t want to eat me right now, do you?”

  Megan looked thoughtful then nodded.

  “Good.” Jack jerked his chin toward where Nick and the other men were picking up the last person from the center of the stadium. “Nick said we’re leaving in a few minutes. Drink some more water. We’ll figure this out later.”

  Twenty-eight