by Perrin Briar
The metal dribbled as they scoured two curved lines, small puffs of smoke whispering when the sparks dove into the sea. Within twenty minutes Joel and Jordan’s semi-circles joined. Jordan’s half was irregular and misshapen compared to Joel’s almost perfect circle. The hole was about the size of a large human head.
The sea lapped against the hull, sibilating when it kissed the white-hot metal. Joel coiled his leg and kicked at the circle over and over. The action caused their door-raft to push away from the hull in vicious thrusts. The pounding reverberated over the entire hull, sending out tiny ripples on the sea’s surface. The opening gave and fell into the engine bay with a loud clang. Water flooded through the hole and into the room like it was dying of thirst.
Joel lifted his visor, caught Jordan’s eye and smiled. “That wasn’t too hard, huh?”
Something grabbed Joel’s leg, his foot pulled into the hole. Rotting fingers and arms with muscles exposed to the shoulder grasped at Joel’s boot, pulling and tearing at the fabric.
“Jesus Christ!” Joel yelled, kicking at the flailing arms.
The groans floated up to them from the hole in the hull, echoing in the spacious confines of the engine bay. Jordan braced the raft’s weight and attempted to push them away from Light, but the Lurchers’ grip on Joel’s foot did not loosen.
A mad yellow bloodshot eye appeared in the hole. It rolled around until it found Joel, and one of the arms, a ragged slice of sinew without index fingers, shot out for his ankle. Joel picked up his blowtorch, turned it on, and pressed it to the arm. The flesh bubbled and popped and burst open to reveal the bleached white bones beneath. The arm lost its grip. Joel pushed the white-hot flame into the gaping eye. Before the flare even touched it, it melted and ran down a cleaved cheek. Joel aimed the torch at the hands holding their make-shift raft. Jordan curled his lips at the stench of burning flesh. The hands relented. They pushed away from the hull.
The groans grew quiet as they drifted away, paddling across the expanse of empty ocean to Haven, which sat three hundred yards away. They climbed the rope that hung against Haven’s prow and collapsed on the deck. Joel lay on his back, staring up at the wispy white clouds in a sapphire sky. He chuckled. “Your first real Lurcher attack. How was it?”
“Wonderful,” Jordan said.
Mary brought them cups of water. Stan looked out at the ferry. The water lapped against Light’s hull, submerging the hole. Pockets of air escaped as seawater flooded the engine bay, bubbles rushing out like the sea were foaming at the mouth. “How long do you think it will take to flood the engine bay completely?” he asked.
“Hours, might be,” Joel said, between breaths. He turned to address everyone on the deck. “Anyone fancy placing a wager?”
At 7pm the water entering the ferry sputtered and gurgled like a baby who’d had too much to eat. Mary put her playing cards down on the table and peered over at the ferry. “You know, I think it’s stopped-”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the water began to spill into the engine bay once again, the hole bubbling foam. Mary turned back to the others playing gin rummy.
Joel checked his watch. “That’s three hours. You’re out, Mare. Who’s still in for the running?”
Jordan and Anne raised their hands. Stan had thought the engine bay would flood within two hours.
“You look nervous, Anne,” Joel said. “You’re up next, aren’t you? Worried about your four-hour hunch?”
Anne glared at him. “Not as much as you should be about me beating your ass.”
Joel raised an eyebrow. “Is that as good as it sounds?”
Anne whipped her cards at him.
At 10pm Anne started awake. She turned over to go back to sleep, but was immediately arrested by the quiet. The stars twinkled overhead like a billion fireflies leading the way to some distant paradise. A smattering of clouds obscured a third of the view in what would otherwise have been a perfect night sky. The moon was bright, the blue craters clear like the veins of a particularly strong cheese. The silver light cast a smoky monochrome of the ferry. There was no sound save the wet slap against the boats’ hulls. Anne sat up on her elbows.
“It’s finished,” Joel said in a forlorn tone of voice. She hadn’t noticed him sitting with his back against the cabin. “It finished ten minutes ago. We go in the morning at first light.”
Anne yawned. “All right.” She settled down to go back to sleep.
“Oh, and Anne,” Joel went on, “don’t mention this to Jordan.”
“Why?” Anne smiled. “Because he won the wager?”
17.
The next morning Joel and Jordan cut off a piece of Light’s upper hull and affixed it over the hole they’d made the previous day. They had both seen finger fragments and chunks of torn skin floating through the hole, but did their best to ignore it.
The water was calm again today, the surface highlighted by the sun poking its head up above the sea’s surface. They once again climbed the rope up to Haven’s deck, this time bringing the door up with them. Stan would reaffix it later. They all sat down to a breakfast of baked beans and barbequed Vienna sausages, compliments of the former ferry passengers.
“This extra sausage is delicious,” Jordan said, gloating over his wager winnings. “Do you know, I think it’s the best sausage I’ve ever had?”
Joel scowled.
“Girls,” Mary called. “Come get your breakfast.”
Jessie and Stacey were playing with their favorite new toys: a plastic tube with propeller blades that they shot up into the air with a catapult. They liked to aim them so they fluttered down over Haven’s edge, and they could catch them as they leapt over the boat’s side and into the sea.
“Girls!” Mary said, this time with heat in her voice.
There was a palpable tension hanging over the group as they ate, no one mentioning the task they were going to undertake, and ignoring Light as if it wasn’t there.
“Well, I’d better get ready,” Anne said after eating. She headed below deck. Joel caught up with her.
“Anne,” Joel said, speaking in a hushed whisper, “can I have a word?”
They moved into the main living area. The suitcase full of their salvaged goods sat on the sofas, their innards open, contents spilled across the dining table.
“Anne, I want you to stay here.”
Anne blinked as if she’d been slapped. “What? No. I’m coming.”
“There’s no point in all of us being at risk for no good reason.”
“There is good reason – the more of us there are the better.”
“Not this time. The Lurchers will all be dead.”
“You hope. What if they’re not?”
“I want you to keep an eye on Stan, Mary, and the girls.”
Anne folded her arms and looked away.
“Anne, we need you here.”
“What if something happens?”
“Then I’ll feel relaxed knowing you’ve got my back.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “This isn’t about you. This is about what’s best for all of us.”
Anne, after a pause, nodded, but she still wasn’t happy. “Fine. But next time you get to babysit.”
“Fair enough.”
Jordan finished off his last sausage. When Joel and Anne emerged from below deck, Joel was wearing his armor, and Anne wore a heavy frown.
Joel approached Jordan and said, “Are you ready?”
“Just about.”
Anne helped Jordan with his armor. She pulled the fastenings, tugging them as tight as they would go, cutting off his circulation. She glared at him, daring him to complain. He didn’t. That only made her angrier.
Stan cranked the gangplank. It extended with all the slow energy of impending doom. Only one hook of the gangplank fastened onto Light’s soft decking, the other hung suspended in mid-air. With the added weight of the water in the engine bay, Light had listed even further during the night. The stern had been pulled down, forcing the bow
to lift up from the waterline.
Jordan and Joel crossed the gangplank, Jordan with a lot less apprehension than the day before, though still not quite with the same confidence as Joel.
As they walked across Light’s deck toward the bridge, Jordan sidled up to Joel. “Do you think Anne will do as you asked?”
Joel looked at Jordan out the corner of his eye. “How would you know what I said to Anne?”
“The temperature dropped ten degrees whenever she looked at you. And, she’s not here.”
Joel smiled and eyed Jordan with newfound respect. “There’s no telling what Anne will do.”
From Haven’s deck, Anne watched them disappear out of view as they stepped into the bridge and went down the stairs. The rattling sound of Stan winding the gangplank back in echoed the twisting of apprehension in Anne’s gut.
18.
Nowhere was Light’s listing more obvious than on the vehicle parking level. The square box shape of the vehicles somehow heightened the lop-sidedness of the room. But the vehicles had not moved, their handbrakes holding firm.
Joel opened the door that led to the stairwell. They caught the strong salty iodine smell of the sea that they previously could not smell until they were at the bottom of the stairs. They shared a look.
“You don’t suppose the door could have snapped open under the pressure?” Jordan asked.
“The Lurchers having escaped and organized a nice welcome party for us?” Joel raised his knives. “We’ll have to go down and see.”
Four steps from the maintenance floor, Joel’s boot set foot in water, soaking him to the ankle. He crouched to see down the corridor. His flashlight revealed the water was deep at the stairs, then tapered off and became shallower as the incline reduced, the water only barely stroking the door’s bottom. It was shut.
“That’s disappointing,” Joel said. “No welcoming party.”
Joel waded into the pool, the deepest pointing up to his waist. He kept his arms above the waterline. As he emerged from the pool, the water ran down his waterproof pants, dribbling on the water’s surfaces then the floor as he made his way to the locked door.
Water leaked from the edges of the doorframe, thin rivulets that joined the pool on the floor. The decapitated body beside the door hadn’t moved, but now it looked like an ancient totem, a dreadful warning to strangers of the horrors yet to come.
“Listen,” Joel said.
There was no groaning, no scratching, only the trickle from the doorframe. But still Jordan felt uneasy.
“Are you sure we should open the door?” Jordan said.
Joel gave him a flat stare. “This was your idea, remember. We can’t turn back now.” Joel put his hands on the wheel lock. He leaned all his weight into it, the cords in his arms straining against his skin. He stopped. “Blimey, it’s on tight. Give us a hand.”
Jordan took hold of the wheel too.
“Ready?” Joel asked. “On three. One, two…”
They put their full weight behind turning it, their faces turning red with exertion. They expelled painful grunts of air. The wheel cried out as if in pain, then only squeaked as it haltingly gave way. Water spilled from the doorframe in wide channels, running down Jordan’s leg. They stopped.
“One more turn should do it,” Joel said, out of breath. “When this door gives, it’s going to open pretty fast. We’ll need to move quick. Are you ready?”
Jordan nodded. They braced the wheel again. They barely twisted two inches before something inside the door snapped with a sharp crack. The door flew open, tossing Joel and Jordan aside like ragdolls. The water spilled over them, rushing forth from the door like a mighty river had burst its banks. Lumps like clotted cream spilled through, splaying out in all directions, eviscerated on the sharp steel stairs, their heads scalped, the limbs hooked about the stairs torn from their sockets, thick blood oozing and spreading out over the surface.
The corridor was packed with bodies like monstrous rotting lily pads. The water level was up to Jordan’s chest now. At the deepest area at the stairs he wouldn’t even be able to keep his feet on the floor.
The room shuddered and a sound like a giant angry monster filled their ears. A light bulb fell from its holder, splashing in the water. Dust sprinkled the surface.
“What was that?” Jordan said.
“I don’t know,” Joel said, “but it doesn’t sound good.”
They waited a moment, but the event did not repeat itself. A body in a blue boiler suit floated between them. Her long blonde hair spread out around her head like a halo. Jordan put a hand out to touch her.
“Don’t go near it,” Joel said, causing Jordan to start. “Stand back.”
Joel approached the body and brought his knife down on the back of its head. The flesh and bone gave easily, like a rotten apple. The knife sunk into the skull, the cross guard thumping the bone. Joel turned the body over. Her skin was white, bloated and waterlogged, the face pale as trodden snow. The eyes were closed. She had perhaps been in her mid-twenties.
“She looks like a regular person,” Jordan said.
“Don’t let that fool you. She’s a monster. They all are.” He nodded to the other bodies, floating like trash. “Disable the others.”
Jordan looked at the unmoving bodies. “They’re dead.”
“We’ve made that mistake before,” Joel said, wading over to a body wearing a Tottenham Hot Spurs shirt. “We didn’t check them, assuming they were dead. They came up behind us and…” He slammed his knife into the back of the football fan’s head. “Almost got us. Don’t let their appearance fool you.”
Jordan waded over to the body of a man lying face down in the dark water. He wore a red rain jacket and blue jeans. His skin was pallid and bloated, the hair on the back of his head was so fine and thin his lumpy scalp could be made out beneath it. Jordan raised his chair leg in both hands above his head. He looked over at Joel who plunged his knife into the eye of a young girl no older than eleven. Jordan turned back to the man in front of him and prepared to bring the weapon down… It slipped from his fingers and slapped the water behind him.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t.”
“You have to,” Joel said. He stood at Jordan’s shoulder with the discarded chair leg in his hands. “Your life, as well as ours, depends on it.” He put the leg in Jordan’s hands. “The first time is always the hardest. It’s easier not to think of them as human. Stan reckons they’ve regressed to some former animal state, to the time before we became self-aware. I’m not sure I believe that, or even if I understand it, but I do know they want to kill us. And they won’t stop unless we kill them first.”
Jordan raised the chair leg to shoulder height. Joel moved to turn the body over. Jordan wanted to protest, but the words stuck in his throat. The face had been torn, the flesh hanging by strips. His nose was a bloody ruin, bitten or else ripped off. The inner cavern of his nostrils was dark and covered in a thick slimy membrane. Blue veins coursed under his skin like thick ropes. The eyes stared up at the ceiling, mouth hanging open, the jaw skewed at an unnatural angle. The face actually made it easier for Jordan because the thing before him did not look human. Jordan brought the chair leg down.
The skull gave way easily to the club, leaving a crater where the man’s face had been. Once was enough, but Jordan raised the club and brought it down again. Water splashed and turned red. Shards of shattered cranium pinged off the walls. Soon Jordan was pounding the water where a head used to be.
Jordan’s arms burned. He could no longer lift the chair leg. Blood and a thick green pus clung to the leg’s engravings and oozed down the vine grooves like a blood gutter on a sword, spilling over his gloves. Jordan sobbed, drawing in wracking breaths that shook his whole body.
Joel put a hand on his back. “You did well.”
“It’s not that,” Jordan said. “Until now I never really believed the world had changed, at least not as you all told me. I guess I secretly believed the world
was as I remember it. But now…” He stared into the dead black eyes that gaped from the crushed skull. “Now I know the world really has changed. Everyone I knew is gone. And here I am, smashing it to smithereens with the leg of a destroyed chair from a forgotten world.”
Joel said nothing, letting the moment linger. Once Jordan was ready, they moved about the corridor destroying the brain of each floater they found. The water tinged the color of red wine with flecks of yellow pus.
And then they stepped into the engine bay.
19.
“They’ve been down there an awful long time,” Anne said, peering at Light through the binoculars.
Stan sighed. It was the fifth time she’d said it. “No longer than you were yesterday.”
“That was different.”
“How is it?”
Anne shook her head. “It just is.” She peered through the binoculars again.
“No matter how hard you try you’ll never see through the hull with those binoculars. X-ray vision doesn’t come as standard.”
Anne smiled, but the tension didn’t leave her eyes.
“They’ll be fine,” Stan said. “Don’t you think they would have made contact with us if there was a problem? The Lurchers will all be dead, and there’s nothing left to harm them.”
“It’s not the Lurchers I’m worried about.”
At that moment there was a loud screech, like a girder under too much pressure.
Anne raised the binoculars, heart pounding in her ears. She scrubbed Light left to right, looking for what could have caused that god awful noise. She felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up into Stan’s wide white eyes, his gnarled finger pointing at Light’s stern.
“I don’t think you’re going to need those binoculars, love,” he said.
She looked up. Her blood felt like it had frozen in her veins.