by Jon Schafer
Ricky looked uncomfortable as Heather went on, “One of the little girls you molested on this ship was twelve years old. You're a sick freak. You manipulated her and her sister along with all the rest of your Faithful.”
Ricky remained silent as he pushed himself further back over the balcony rail, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and Heather. Behind him he could hear the whining of the dead.
“So you like screwing little girls?” Heather accused, as she advanced on Ricky in four quick steps. “So you like getting fucked?”
Snapping out with the butt end of her rifle, Heather drove it into the center of Ricky's face to send him reeling backwards off the balcony.
Above his scream of terror, she yelled, “Now you're fucked!”
The Reverend Ricky Rose bounced off a seat in the main gallery of the Sounds Lounge before coming to land in a crumpled pile on the deck. Knowing where he was and that he had to run, he tried to get his feet under him. As soon as he moved his right leg, he screamed in agony. When he looked down, he saw it was bent at an unnatural angle halfway between his knee and ankle. He inhaled blood and started choking as he tried to draw a breath through his shattered nose.
As he rolled over, coughing and sputtering while trying to blowout the blood so he could get some air, a shape blocked out the emergency lights, casting a shadow over him. He looked up to see what it was and all he could do was issue a barely whispered, “No.”
Standing in front of him, still wearing the same torn Miami Dolphins jersey, was the dead woman who had gotten him sexually aroused months earlier on his first trip to the Sounds Lounge.
The same woman who he’d had hoisted up and strapped down so he could see what it was like to have sex with the dead.
The same woman who now lunged down to bite him as the hundreds of other flesh eating dead that populated the Sounds Lounge advanced for what they could tear off him and devour.
Heather turned away as Ricky's screams echoed through the compartment. For her, justice had been served.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Dead Calm/The Gulf of Mexico:
Tick-Tock yelled down to Brain from the rear of deck twelve, “Hold it steady, Chop. Heather's coming down.” Looking at the sailboat below her, Heather adjusted the rope trailing down that they had taken from the rock-climbing wall.
“This is too much like the bank building,” she said. “I think I'm getting déjà vu.”
“If you throw up, do you call it déjà food?” Steve tried to joke, following up with, “Can you get déjà vu all over again?”
Heather chuckled but stopped abruptly when she looked at Tick-Tock standing nearby, solemn faced. Suddenly the pain of losing Susan hit her harder than before and she felt the anger build up inside her. She wasn't mad at Steve for his dumb joke, she was pissed off at the loss of a friend; angry that there was nothing she could do to make it better for Tick-Tock or herself.
Looking over the stern of the Dead Calm, Tick-Tock said, “He's in position, Heather. Wait until your feet are on the deck before you let the rope go from the D-ring.”
Heather nodded. Before lowering herself over the side, she said, “It'll get better, Tick-Tock.”
He nodded once and motioned for her to go. As she started to descend she heard him say, “Maybe, maybe not.”
Once the three of them were on The Usual Suspects, Steve told Brain to start cruising from lifeboat to lifeboat to search for Mary and Sheila. After Heather had taken care of Ricky, they had attempted to look for the two women but by then the dead had swarmed over the ship in such numbers that it was impossible.
After making their way to deck twelve, they saw dozens of lifeboats holding the remnants of the Faithful floating on both sides of the Dead Calm. This gave them hope that somehow Heather and Sheila had made it into one of them.
As they checked each lifeboat, they gave its occupants directions on how to start the engines and showed them how to use the compass to keep them headed west toward land. Some of the boats with more experienced people on them had already started to head for shore. Heather was sad to find out that the one holding the two Hungarian sisters had already taken off but was glad the two young girls had made it to safety. She silently wished them luck. They, however, had no luck finding Sheila and Mary until they came to the final lifeboat.
Here, an older man told them about how he'd been searching for Reverend Ricky on deck seven when the dead started coming out of the cabin area at the front of the ship. He'd been talking to Sheila, and when the dead showed up, she had taken off into the aide station. Seconds later, she came out helping some butch looking woman - at this description of Mary, Tick-Tock gave a quick, hard laugh before falling again into silence - and together the two of them went to one of the lifeboats, climbed in and lowered it down to the water. Sheila's last words to him had been, “Haul ass, Pops. That bastard Ricky must have opened all the hatches. In about ten minutes you're gonna be up to your balls in stinkers.”
Steve thanked the man and told Tick-Tock to take the wheel.
“Which way?” His friend asked. “They could have gone in any direction.”
Steve gave him a skeptical look and said, “There's no way either of those two could figure out how to start a boat, much less how to steer or navigate it, so we need to look -”
“Down current,” Tick-Tock finished.
As they motored away, neither turned to look as the Dead Calm settled at the stern. Already, deck eight was submerged.
They were well away when it slipped beneath the waves.
***
Mary and Sheila watched the sunrise with dread. In their rush to escape the Calm of the Seas, they had taken one of the few open lifeboats in the ship's compliment. Now that the sun was rising, they knew they would pay for it as they were exposed to its harsh rays. The night had been cool so they had huddled together for warmth. Despite it being February, they could already feel the air warming up as the morning wore on.
“Maybe I should try the engine again,” Sheila said.
“You tried to start it for two hours and didn't get so much as a pop,” Mary replied. “Besides, where are we gonna go?” She said as she waved her hands at the empty expanse of the Gulf of Mexico.
“Steve said we’re not far away from Texas. We could make it there by heading west.”
“And then what?” Heather asked.
Sheila shrugged. She hadn't thought that far ahead. They had a little food and some water, but all they had for a weapon was the knife that came with the survival kit on the lifeboat.
Looking at the oars stowed along the gunwale, Sheila decided that she wasn't going to just sit and let herself die of exposure and thirst. As she started to unfasten them, Mary watched what she was doing for a minute before turning and looking out over the Gulf. She wasn't looking forward to manual labor. Suddenly, she spotted something. Not believing her eyes, she blinked rapidly to clear them. It was still there. Standing, she said to Sheila, “Don't bother with those.”
“I’m not going to just sit here and rot,” Sheila snarled back. “We’re going to row for shore and you're going to help,” She'd already made up her mind that if Mary didn’t help her, she was going to tie her to one of the oars and whip her if need be.
“No, Honey,” Mary said in an exasperated voice. “We don't need to, look.”
Sheila saw that Mary was pointing off in the distance. As her eyes followed in that direction, she saw the mast of a sailboat. After watching in silence for a moment, she could make out the boat itself and saw that it was heading toward them.
“We don't need to.” Mary repeated before adding brightly, “Here comes Steve.”
***
Steve lowered the binoculars from his eyes and said to Tick-Took, “It's Mary and Sheila. Let's go pick them up.”
Tick-Tock sighed and said something that gave Steve hope that his friend was starting to come out of his depression. Looking at him with one raised eyebrow, he replied, “Do
we really have to?”
Watch for:
DEAD WEIGHT; Book Three of The Dead Series (Now available)
DEAD END; Book Four of The Dead Series (Coming soon)