Adrift

by Trimboli, TJ

  “I’ll be seeing yah, your honor,” the tattooed freak warned.

  Valentina lifted Becky up and they sped down the rest of the stairs not stopping for anyone until they got to the fifth floor. The doors ahead were barricaded preventing anyone from getting in. She banged on the glass.

  The doctor was attending to many patients. People of all sizes and ethnicities had arrived with cuts, bruises, burns, and countless other injuries. Upon seeing them, the Doc spurred himself into action pushing the large sofa just far enough away from the door that they could enter.

  “Thank you,” Becky said hugging her.

  Valentina tensed up, uncomfortable. Her kids were the only one’s she normally let hug her. She lightly tapped Becky on the shoulder. Behind her, the Doc was pushing the sofa back in front of the doors.

  “Hold it. I’m going back out there,” Valentina said.

  “You can’t be serious. It’s mayhem out there. I already stupidly let Bobbi go out. I’m not letting you go too,” he argued.

  “My kids are still out there. Try and stop me.” At that, he made no effort to.

  “Is the Captain here?”

  He shook his head. “Bobbi went out to get him.”

  She tied her hair back in a ponytail. “Wish me luck,” She said approaching the door.

  “Hold on,” the doc muttered. He pulled out a long serrated kitchen knife holding it out to her.

  Valentina took it tucking it away in the back belt loop of her jeans. Staring outside the glass doors, she peered into pure darkness. She thought of her children. That put the fire in her lungs and she raced out into the night. Down one more flight of stairs put her on the fourth floor, her floor. It was too silent for her taste. A bright white light shone in her eyes temporarily blinding her. She slid past it.

  There, a dead man sat propped up against the wall. Blood cascaded down his chest.

  She gently slipped the flashlight out of his hand. Peering down both ends of the hallway, no one was in sight. She headed right towards her room. In the distance, she could hear the muffled screams of a young woman. Valentina picked up the pace praying to God it wasn’t her nanny.

  Let them be safe, please God. Let them be safe.

  Up ahead, in the light, she saw two men dragging a woman. The woman had dried blood on the side of her face. She’d been knocked out cold but there was no mistaking her face. It was her nanny. She sped up pulling the knife from behind her back. Before the two men could react, she was on them. She pounced into both of them knocking them off their feet. Her hand flew down on top of one of them stabbing him directly in the heart. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  The other man pushed off of her doing his best army crawl towards the door to his left. She grabbed him by the foot pulling him back. She slid on top of him pressing the blade against the man’s throat.

  He was fat, bloated, with a neck beard that screamed hipster and gauges that would allow her to put her finger straight through his ear.

  “If you move a muscle I will spill your blood all over this hallway, do you understand me?” she warned.

  The man nodded his head nervously.

  “Where are my children?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She pressed the blade tighter, blood trickling down his neck. She had the blade up against his artery, one nick and the man would be dead before he knew it had been severed. “Don’t play games with me. The woman you were dragging was watching two children, my children. Where are they?”

  He cried, and then he pissed himself. She lifted herself off of his body at the sudden warmth in his crotch.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t do it. They were like that when we got there. I swear. I had nothing to do with it.” He sobbed.

  She turned back towards the nanny. She was still unconscious but a few feet away from her was her state room. The door had been ripped off its hinges. Valentina suddenly forgot all about the poor schlep, gliding towards the room. She peered inside, and screamed.

  MORRIS

  “Read ‘em mates. Danny, Jesse, Joey, DJ, and Steph. Full House,” Ahmed voiced as he threw down his cards. Threes over sixes. He raked in the goods. Money was no longer of any value to them so now, they played for toiletries, rations, and any other assorted items that could come in handy during their plight but most importantly, they bet booze.

  “Wasn’t there another kid on that show?” the tattooed freak across from him asked.

  Morris often wondered what could possibly possess a person to tattoo their neck, the pain one must have to put up with.

  It takes a special kind of nut job.

  “Now why do you got to go and ruin my joke?” Ahmed quipped. “We’re having a good time, it’s all in good fun, and you come along. The pop culture kid over here.”

  They laughed in unison. Beers were drank, cigarettes were smoked and even in the face of insurmountable odds…boys continued to be boys.

  Ahmed passed the deck off to his left. It was Richard’s turn to deal.

  Morris found it very curious when Richard first started to come to their poker sessions seeing as how he was a man of very few words and not the type he would have figured for a gambler but he had to admit, the man was a natural. He never gave it up to them but he often found himself wondering what Richard did in his old life. His quiet demeanor gave him a rain man type of vibe like he was silently counting cards on the group, hustling them whenever he had the chance but then he lost as often as he won, so that closed the book on the theory. The man was smart though, too smart for his own good. It’s why his silent attitude gave Morris the creeps. He didn’t trust a man who didn’t have anything to say and the fact that he now sat on the council made him even more uneasy.

  What could a man who never talks have to offer the higher ups?

  “Okay, so let me throw this at you,” the tattooed wonder spoke. “In zombie movies, it always ends the same way. People manage to break free from where they are only to find out it’s even worse the next place they go, there’s never any end to it all. Zombies rule the earth, you can’t kill them all, so you’re as good as dead.” He took a sip of his beer.

  “And your point?” Ahmed asked puffing on his cigar.

  “My point is, why can’t we win? With the combined efforts of our military and all the advancements we’ve made in weaponry, you’re telling me that we can wipe out a town in bum fuck afghan nation but we can’t wipe these suckers out?” He wondered.

  “They’d have to wipe out cities to do that. Structures that have been around for hundreds of years. We’d lose a part of our history,” Ahmed explained.

  “Better than losing the whole fucking thing.” The tattooed man countered.

  The man had a point. Better to lose and rebuild then to lose it all with no shot of redemption.

  “We can snipe the hat off a baby from hundreds of yards away with the push of a button but we can’t take these fuckers out, explain that to me,” tattoo man argued.

  “I cannot.” Ahmed retorted.

  They clinked beer cans chugging it down.

  “All that weaponry doesn’t do us much good if there’s no one to operate it,” Richard chimed in.

  Everyone around the table froze. It was the first time Richard weighed in on any of the discussions and inane ramblings they often went on.

  “It’s true we’ve made countless advancements in weaponry the last few years but much of it is machine operated. Sure, we have drones that can snipe the hat off a baby as you so eloquently put it but without technology and no one there who knows how to operate it, it won’t do much good will it? Do you know how to operate a drone? I sure as hell don’t,” he added sipping lightly from his beer.

  The group of men stared at him.

  “The point is this,” he went on. “The reason in movies and literature that no one ever makes it out of the zombie apocalypse is because it’s true. That’s the facts. Technology is gone, we haven’t had service, or any radio contact in
days, meaning they’ve overrun those key areas and that puts a huge dent in our infrastructure because so much of it is bent on global connection. We’re all on our own again, with no way to contact each other and each group is slowly but surely thinning themselves out.”

  Nothing like hearing there is no hope left to put a damper on the festivities. Everyone sipped at their drinks in silence for a few minutes.

  Richard shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring the party down.”

  “No, you’re right,” the tattooed freak lamented. “We’re stuck in the middle of the ocean with no way to contact anyone. Zombies don’t even have to get to us to kill us. They’ve got an endless supply of food in front of them and ours dwindles every day.”

  Morris had kept his silence throughout the proceedings. It was a dour subject, one he didn’t have anything to add to, so he kept his mouth shut. He preferred to listen during these debates anyway, he learned much more about an individual by listening to them argue than he did shooting the shit with them. He leaned back in his chair tipping his hat over his eyes.

  “What do you miss the most about the old days?” Ahmed asked.

  “My family,” one retorted. “I took this trip with some friends and I have no idea if my mom and dad or siblings are okay, if they got out. I don’t even know if they’re dead or not.” “I miss sports,” another said.

  “Girls,” Tattoo said.

  “We’ve got girls here man,” Ahmed scoffed blowing him off.

  “Yeah, but it’s not the same. I don’t know about you but I went on this cruise to meet chicks and get laid and the zombie apocalypse threw one hell of a monkey wrench in that plan.” A few of the guys nodded their heads.

  “It’s killing me. And I can’t even jerk off neither. I grew up my whole life with the internet yo. Can’t go back to jerking off to pictures in my head. It’s not right. I got all this pent up sexual drive and no outlet,” Tattoo confided.

  “I know what you mean,” another man said. “Every night, I try to get my wife in the mood. ‘What’s the point?’ She would say. I feel like she’d be content never having sex again. I’m not saying I need to do it every night but I’m still a man, I have needs and end of the world or not, I need that release.”

  “So take it,” Richard chimed in.

  Morris had slowly slipped into a light sleep. He could hear everything that went on around him but was slowly drifting into an R.E.M. slumber. The beers clouded his brain and he wanted to put an end to this conversation. It wasn’t leading them anywhere but making them angry, though he made no move to stop it. He felt too tired.

  “What do you mean?” Ahmed asked him.

  “Look around you boys. The clock has turned back to an age gone by,” Richard mused. “When gunslingers ruled the world, forensics was a word not yet discovered, and as long as you weren’t around after you committed a crime, you got away with it. There are no laws anymore but that which we decide to live by. There are over sixteen hundred people on this ship and two officers of the law left to keep them in check. And even so, what justice of the court do they have anymore? Our council? You should see the bickering they do. They won’t get nothing done.” Richard seemed to carefully choose each word at his disposal to get the juices flowing in these drunk hooligans.

  “I don’t know,” Ahmed piped in. “For all we know, we’re the last people on this Earth. Are we going to destroy all that for our own selfish gain?”

  “You all said it yourself. You’ve seen the movies, played the games. There’s no way out from this. This is a one stop express boat straight to hell. The only question is, do we want to have a little fun before we get there?” Richard venomously spat.

  “He’s right,” Tattoo agreed. “We sit here day after day toiling away just waiting until we run out of food. One day, we’re going to get up and we’re all going to have to starve to death. I don’t know about the rest of you but that’s not how I want to go. I want to feel the warmth of a good woman again. I want to feast as I once did, even if it will be the last time. I want to live my life, not walk over egg shells until they toss my body to the fishes.” He popped open another beer downing its contents.

  Men around him nodded their heads. They were drunk, they weren’t thinking clearly and they had been manipulated tenfold.

  “I say we take what we want. There’s not enough of them up there that could stop us. It’s children and its women. Scared and afraid. We take what is ours. We want food, we take it. We want water, we take it and if we want the feel of a good woman. Well, sooner or later we need to repopulate the earth, so we best get to convincing them now.”

  The rest of the men shouted in unison. “Yeah!”

  “Let’s go!”

  “I can’t get plastered without some food to go with it,” one shouted.

  They shot out of their chairs, amassing a formidable mob while setting out to cause nothing but pain and misery.

  Morris vaguely heard them talking, but with men it was all just talk anyhow. At least it was quiet and he could sleep now.

  KENDRA

  She strolled down the hallway sipping gallantly at her bottle of water. She played with her long ravishing locks of blonde hair, a smile on her face and a skip in her step. Given the unfortunate circumstances, people took offense to her exuberance. She couldn’t help herself though. Kendra had been reunited with her sister, and no amount of death or doomsday scenarios could jolt her enthusiasm to once again be under her care. She knew they would get through this, her sister told her so, and she was never wrong.

  “What have you got there?” a voice purred.

  She turned, startled to see a man standing in the hallway sipping at a beer. “Just a bottle of water.”

  “I didn’t know they still had any of those,” he practically choked on the words his lips were so dry. The beer wasn’t doing him any good neither. He swayed back and forth unable to keep a firm footing. The gentle swaying of the boat didn’t do him any favors.

  “I don’t know if they do. I got this one from my sister,” she replied. When the man made no effort to continue the conversation, she continued on her way.

  “Can I have a sip?” he called out.

  She looked over the bottle and contemplated hoarding it all for herself but she remembered the countless verses her sister had often quoted her about being helpful to the less fortunate. Besides, they had more back in her room. “Here. You can have the rest.” She handed him the bottle.

  “Truly?” he asked excited. He didn’t wait for her reply as snatched it from her.

  “Be well,” she remarked turning back for her room. The lights flickered as she approached her door. She took one last look back at the man. He had not yet taken a sip…he simply gazed at her. It made her nervous. She suddenly felt naked like he was ogling her body.

  She hurried inside.

  Inside, her sister sat at her bed reading.

  Kendra didn’t need to look at the cover to know what she perused. It was the bible, it always was. Her sister adorned herself with brown robes that she had made from the curtain cloth in the auditorium. She had made one for Kendra as well but she refused it. It was itchy and gave her rashes. Besides, she wanted to look her best each day in hopes of finding a mate. She was smarter than the rest onboard. She knew if they were to survive this, that one day soon they would have to repopulate the Earth. She would need a man to accomplish that and she cherished the thought.

  Most men never paid her any attention, often going for the more loquacious, elegant, bosomy woman as opposed to her small frame, petite breasts, and acne covered body. She kept herself in high spirits. The herd of the world had been thinned considerably, leaving less and less options for the horny men of this ship. She would finally be noticed, finally have her voice heard and contribute to society, instead of watching it pass by from the side lines.

  “Is that how you’ve been dressed all day?” her sister asked.

  Kendra checked herself out in the mirror. She w
ore a thin cut black top, tight as she could find one so her breasts would appear larger than they truly were. Her hair had been washed and combed, a luxury most on this ship had given up on. Her shorts barely covered her buttocks, the front end of which sported numerous cuts and holes as the fashion world dictated. She was by no means dressed as a choir girl but compared to some of the outfits she’d seen in her days, she pretty much was. “I like it. Besides, it’s hot as can be in the halls and this keeps me cool.”

  “That is what the robe is for.”

  “The robe itches and it keeps giving me a rash.”

  Her sister, Heidi, peered up at her. She seemed angry at first, as if she might unleash an enlightening upon the girl, but staring at her sister, she calmed considerably. Heidi could never stay mad at Kendra, like she could other people. The others, they were just heathens in need of God but Kendra was different, for all her faults, she was still family and Heidi never gave up on family. “I will try and find a better material and make you a new one.”

  “Thank you…I was thinking of going down to the bar tonight if you wanted to join me.”

  “I don’t think that would be wise tonight.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I have an uneasy feeling. A storm is in the air, you can smell it all over. Our first real test is coming. You’ll be safe in here.” Kendra sat at her bedside.

  “First test of what?” she asked confused.

  “Of ourselves.”

  The ship dipped with the waves. Kendra lost her footing leaping off the bed towards the wall. She slammed against it. Heidi fell into her a few seconds later. The ship felt like it was going to heave over and leave them upside down as if they were in the Poseidon adventure. Heidi gripped Kendra’s hand.

  “We’re going to die!” Kendra screamed.

  “It’s alright dear. We’re fine. It’s just the storm,” Heidi soothed as the ship began to level itself out. “Calm down. Listen, the ship is righting itself.”