Fucking Francis, I think to myself. Of course he’d have been the first one bitten.
Jeremy wears glasses and the lenses are crusted with salt. Everything’s so layered with it that he can’t even find a way to clean them anymore and so he doesn’t bother. Just stares at everything through the white haze.
I hate looking at him like that. It makes him look like he’s already gone. Like he’s already one of them.
He doesn’t think I know about his bite. His hand keeps slipping to it, pressing against it, tracing the outline of it under his shirt. I pretend not to notice but it’s not like he’s being subtle about it. If I hadn’t seen the raw red ring of bite marks along his ribs that first night I’d struggled with him during his nightmares, I’d have figured it out eventually.
I mean, Christ, it’s running towards one hundred degrees every day and even though we huddle under the canopy of the life raft, it’s not like it’s cool in the shade. I ditched my shirt the first day but Jeremy still keeps his on and I don’t care how self-conscious and scrawny he might be: when the temperature hits triple digits and you’re stranded with a guy in the middle of the damn ocean while the world falls apart, you lose things like modesty.
If I can watch him slip into the water to take a dump, I can deal with his pale thin muscles and a chest like a plucked turkey. I may not be the smartest, but I’d have figured out he was hiding something under that shirt.
“How long you think it takes them to turn after they’re bitten?” I ask him. I know I’m an asshole but I’m bored and I wonder how much I can prod and poke at him before he admits the truth. Plus, he’s smarter than I am. Jeremy’s the one who first figured out that we needed to get off the ship, even though they hadn’t called an official evacuation. He was the one keeping up with the news when the rest of us were testing out our fake IDs in the bar and pretending everything was going to be okay.
He swallows, sharp dagger of an Adam’s apple dragging along his throat. “Depends how bad the bite was,” he says, pinching the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger.
I stare at him, willing him to have the balls to tell me himself but he just shifts and stares back at the boat. “Maybe we should pull in closer,” he says. “Just in case someone needs our help.”
I shake my head. “No,” I tell him. “Too risky.”
The thing Jeremy doesn’t understand is that the first time he fell asleep, I couldn’t resist the pull of all those lights. That promise of safety and warmth—the idea that everything was under control. So I’d paddled us closer.
There were people everywhere, all over the decks. Running. Screaming. Jumping. They were panicked and desperate. I saw other lifeboats rocking as they fought against them, the living and the dead.
Something had flashed in one of the windows and I stared at it, trying to see what was going on inside. That’s when I saw a hand, fingers scratching at the glass. That’s when I saw the teeth and mouth, banging against the window again and again, desperate to get out.
Even though I’d smothered our emergency beacon light, I felt like the thing was staring straight at me. That more than anything else she wanted to rip every bit of flesh from my bones and pull apart every muscle. Open me up like a frog on the dissection tray.
I’d let us drift back away then. Just before Jeremy started screaming. Just before I saw the bite marks along his ribs.
“You ever had sex?” I ask him.
His back stiffens, his shirt sticking to his body. Even though we’ve been rationing water he’s been sweating a lot—too much. His skin’s hot and flushed and he wants me to think it’s from the sun and heat but I can smell the way his wound’s festering, the sweet putrid stink of it. He pulls his head under the canopy and slumps against the wall. “Why?” he asks.
“Why sex? It’s supposed to be pretty damn good,” I tell him, trying to lighten his mood.
“Supposed to be?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow.
I scowl, cross my arms over my chest. “Don’t you think about those things, being out here?” He starts to look at me funny and I think about the night I pinned him in his sleep. I roll my eyes. “I just mean, it’s not like we have anything else to do but think. It’s just sex is one of those things I’d planned on doing before I died. I’m kinda pissed it might not happen.”
He shrugs. “Who says you’re going to die?”
I notice he doesn’t say “we” and I swallow, my tongue suddenly feeling a little thick. Scrunching down until I can prop my feet against the raft wall, I stare up at the peak of the canopy, watching it stretch and ripple over the inflated support bar. “What do you think’s happening back home?” I say. It’s a question I’ve been trying desperately not to ask but it’s all I can think about recently. Well, that and sex.
Jeremy’s silent and I let my head flop over until I’m looking at him. He’s staring out at the horizon but from here all I can see is gray water, gray sky, gray life. Slowly I push myself to my hands and knees and crawl until I’m sitting next to him.
The ship’s farther away now. We’d lost sight of it the day before and for a while we’d been panicked, not realizing until then how much we needed to have it out there even if we kept our distance. How empty everything seemed without it.
But then we’d seen the smoke rising out of nowhere and we’d paddled toward it until we saw it billowing from the decks of the ship. For most of the day it’s been listing to the side, slowly and inevitably capsizing.
“I think they might all be gone,” Jeremy finally says softly, before dancing his fingers along his side as if I don’t know what he’s hiding.
Every time he falls asleep, Jeremy screams. He never remembers it, or at least never acknowledges it. It’s driving me insane and a part of me hopes the infection goes ahead and takes him soon so I can be done with it.
The thing is, it’s not like Jeremy or I were being stupid. It’s not like we didn’t know how the whole thing works: someone gets bitten, gets infected, dies and comes back from the dead hungering for flesh. We’d seen the movies and played the video games. We knew.
It’s just…when it came down to it, it wasn’t that easy. It was never supposed to be real, never supposed to actually happen. Everything got confused and strange. We lost our friends trying to run through the cruise ship and we fought over taking a life raft and ditching or staying for official evacuation orders.
Really, this isn’t what was supposed to happen at all—this isn’t how it was supposed to end up. We’d treated it like a joke because we’d have panicked otherwise. “Ha-ha, the zombie apocalypse’s hit, let’s take a life raft and run.”
Ha-ha, joke’s on us. Or them. I can’t remember anymore.
Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t just make more sense to confront Jeremy and force him overboard. After all, it’s not like he has a chance of surviving this, and in the meantime he’s taking up resources that I might need.
Neither one of us says anything but we both know: if there was going to be a rescue, it’d have happened by now. There’ve been no planes, no coast guard or bright orange helicopters. Our little raft beacon chirps and blinks away merrily, sending little distress “rescue me” signals out into the world that either no one’s there to hear or they’re too busy ignoring us.
We know this. Just like we know that land can’t really be that far away—we’d been on a cruise after all. The whole point is to visit all the islands—they have to be out here somewhere.
But we can’t bring ourselves to lose sight of the ship to find out. Just in case.
I don’t realize what it is at first, the huge groaning noise like a whale’s swallowed us whole. There’s this massive, deep popping sound, a high-pitched whine and then the sound of the world sucking itself up with a straw.
The wave hits not too long after, tossing us around the boat. I grab the canopy trying to hold on and end up tearing part of it away from the sides.
“What the hell?” I ask, running my fingers over the raf
t to make sure nothing’s damaged.
Water knocks us around, up and down and up and down, and Jeremy’s at the flap, staring out in the night.
“No!” he shouts into the darkness and I suddenly realize just how dark it is. It’s nothing; pure absolute emptiness. The cruise ship’s gone, devoured by the ocean.
Jeremy jumps into the water and starts swimming as if he could somehow bring it back from the depths. I can’t even see him, he’s been swallowed up already, but I hear his splashing.
“It can’t go yet!” he screams. “I’m not ready. I’m not ready!”
I kneel in the boat, my arms over the side trying to feel for him as I listen to him beat at the waves and curse everything for taking away the ship once and for all.
When I finally get him back on board he shivers in my lap, his arms crossed tight over his chest. “I’m not ready,” he mutters, turning his face to my chest as tears burn hot against my skin.
I hold on to him, letting the raft rock us both, the silence of the sea settling around the sunken ship our only lullaby.
“Jenny Lyons,” I tell him and he cracks a small smile.
“Her?” he asks. “Really?”
I shrug. “It was eighth grade and computer class.”
“Didn’t she have braces then?”
“Oh yeah.”
He shakes his head.
“How about you?” I ask.
If possible, his cheeks pinken even more.
“Oh don’t tell me, sweet sixteen and never been kissed?” I mean it like a tease.
“More like eighteen,” he says staring at his lap.
I feel my smile tighten as I think about the bite on his ribs and suddenly it doesn’t seem so funny anymore.
It’s pitch-black dark when he finally comes clean. “Listen, I gotta tell you something,” he says. He must have known I was pretending to sleep because he doesn’t bother trying to wake me up first.
I shift a little, feeling the boat rock slowly under my movement. We haven’t seen anything else for days: no ship, land, rafts. Only so much nothing that it feels like we have to be the last people left.
As he explains I bite my teeth together as hard as possible, wondering if I can break them—break everything and be done with it.
“I’ll go overboard, if you want,” he says. In the darkness his voice has no body, no infection. It just is.
“But then you’ll turn into one of those things,” I tell him.
His breath shakes. “I’m going to turn into one of those things no matter what,” he says.
I push my fingers into my eyes, trying to poke them hard enough to bring tears because it’s the only way I can think of to unleash the searing pain inside. “Is that what you want?” I ask him.
“If I stay on this raft and turn, I’ll go after you,” he finally says. He pauses and in the emptiness our hearts keep beating. “I don’t want that,” he adds softly.
“So you think you can take me?” I ask him.
He doesn’t laugh, not really. It was a lame joke anyway, but I do hear him exhale a little harder as if he’d thought about laughing. “You have to promise me you’ll throw me over when it happens,” he finally says. “Promise me you’ll make me sink.”
I press my fingers harder against my eyes.
“Promise me.” His voice is urgent.
I shake my head. “I promise,” I mutter.
“I think Nancy had a little crush on you,” I tell him. It’s a thick soupy day, taunting us with rain and I’m organizing our water bottles to catch what I can. My mouth tries to salivate at the thought of it, cool and wet, sliding down my throat, filling every dry space inside me.
“I hope so, since she’s the one who bit me.” He’s leaning back in the shade of the canopy, shirt off now that I know his secret. I can’t look at him without glancing at the bite festering along his ribs. It’s like he’s proud of it, forcing us both to deal with it.
And then I realize what his words mean. “So you knew.” I don’t ask it as a question. I turn to face him. “If she’s the one who bit you, you knew about everyone else. Francis, Nancy and the others.”
“Why do you think I told you we shouldn’t wait for them?” he asks. Red streaks along his skin, marking every vein through his body with an infection whose heat sometimes radiates along the rubber of the raft.
“Then why did you keep asking to go back if you knew?”
He shrugs, stares at his hands. “I wanted to be wrong. Doesn’t matter now, I guess.”
And he’s right. We lost sight of the last raft two days ago.
His hands are hot as he grabs for me. He’s gasping for breath and at first I think he’s turned, gurgling on moans, but then I realize he’s trying to say my name. “Get up,” he says, shaking me, but his muscles are weak from so many days of disuse and I’m still much larger and stronger than he is.
“Get up,” he prods again.
He shoves something into my hand, the lanyards that lashed the flap of the canopy shut. “Tie me up,” he says. “It’s time. Tie me up, sink me.”
It’s been harder and harder for me to surface from sleep and I struggle to understand what Jeremy’s saying. He’s wheezing now as he takes my hands, wraps my fingers around the ropes, pulls them tight along his wrists and elbows.
His skin’s dry and cracked and I try to blink the salt from my eyes so I can focus on what’s going on. It’s dark in the little raft, pitch-black swallowing us everywhere with just the tiny hiccups of the alert beacon flashing.
-flash-
Jeremy knotting the ropes. Using his teeth to tighten them.
-flash-
Me winding them around his torso, tucking up his knees.
-flash-
Jeremy’s eyes glassy and bright. His chest barely moving.
-flash-
I don’t know what to say. What to do. What to tell him.
-flash-
I slip my fingers into his. “I’m sorry, Jeremy.”
-flash-
He’s nothing.
-flash-
Dead eyes. Still heart.
-flash-
Waves tilt and whirl as his body becomes a shell.
-flash-
I breathe in. Hold it.
-flash-
-flash-
-flash-
I exhale.
And before the light can flash again he explodes, straining and struggling.
I see the perfectly straight teeth, the gleaming white as he tries to lunge for me.
As he snaps at the air.
Screaming, I throw myself across the raft. Pushing and forcing myself back. Wishing the walls could absorb me. Keep me safe. His moans are like growls, guttural and wet. He’s insane with what looks like agony and rage and a desire so intense I can smell it.
Beneath me the entire raft bucks and swirls, his movements teetering us around, his feet ripping at the canopy overhead as he tries to gain his balance, tries to push himself closer to me.
I can’t get near him, can only watch as he pulls and pops against the ropes. Can only hear the strain on his joints, the snap of his wrist breaking apart under the twisting jolts. It’s too much. I can’t stand it, can’t be near him anymore. Can’t see him like this.
I dive through the opening in the canopy into the night, letting the waves close over my head until I can’t hear, can’t see, can’t forget as the raft twists and shudders above me.
“Do you believe in God?” I ask Jeremy. Water pools around the divot in the raft where I’m crouching and I’ve pulled open the canopy, hoping the sun will burn it away so that my poor chaffed skin can find relief.
Jeremy bucks against the soggy ropes holding him tight. I’ve lashed him to the other side of the raft and used strips of my shirt to tie his mouth shut. He still manages to moan, deep nasal sounds that reverberate through the raft so that I’m always feeling them even when I shove my hands to my ears.
I tried to push him overboard, I swear. But I j
ust couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let go of him.
He’s all I have left. I couldn’t drift away from him on the empty horizon.
“Blink once for yes, twice for no,” I tell him, staring into his face. He doesn’t blink, just tries to lunge for me, his shoulder buckling back at a sickening angle.
“Jeremy?” I whisper. It’s night, pitch black, and I swore I woke up to screaming. I swore I woke up to Jeremy and his nightmares.
The raft shudders. Jeremy still desperate to escape. Still desperate for me. I shake my head, feeling like my ears are full of water, every sound distant and dull.
“Jeremy?” I ask again.
Carefully, I crawl across the raft, my muscles having a hard time keeping me from falling over. The bottom sags every place I set my hand and knee, feeling as if it too is giving up. I pull myself face to face with Jeremy, too close to be safe.
“Is there anything left?” I ask him.
And I can’t tell if he’s shaking his head or if he’s just twisting against his ropes to get closer to me.
I’m pretty sure Jeremy’s been talking to me. When I wake up I’m positive I hear his voice in my head. And when I’m staring at the horizon, trying to find shapes in the wavering distance, I swear he’s saying something.
“You promised.” He’s starting to sag against his ropes. His body’s pretty torn up, joints dislocated and his left arm fractured where he pulled too hard. His skin’s tight over his face, cheekbones sharp and accusing.
“I’m not ready,” I tell him.
“Neither was I,” he says.
I turn away again. Nothing inside me is willing to cooperate anymore. Everything shudders and falls apart, muscles failing to fire, bones shifting under my skin so that I always hurt.
“You promised,” he says over and over and over again until I almost do want to throw him over just to shut him up.
It’s raining, so our water bottles are full again. One of the survival pouches has a fishing kit and I’ve been sitting here for a while staring at the gleaming little hook. Part of me wants to draw it along the raft, wondering if it’s sharp enough to gash the boat and sink us both.
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