“He might get in,” I whispered.
“He won’t get in,” Greta said. “He’ll fall off. Just give him time.”
“What if he doesn’t fall off?”
“He will.”
I listened, wondering if I would be able to hear anything else. The screaming from inside had been absolutely crazy. It was something that would definitely be giving me nightmares if I wasn’t careful, but I was planning to be careful.
“So, what do you think happened?” I finally voiced the question I didn’t want to voice. I brought up the question that was going to be plaguing me for as long as I managed to survive after this.
What happened?
In movies, there was always a clear cause for any sort of pandemic. People weren’t careful enough at a lab or there was an evil scientist. In real life, things weren’t usually as clear cut. Things tended to be a little more unpredictable and sloppy.
Messy.
“I have no idea,” Isaiah spoke up first. “Zombies? It’s zombies, right? Has to be.”
“Could have been something someone picked up on the island,” I said, thinking of Jemma. I hadn’t even met the girl, but it could have been. Then I thought of Angela, my roommate, and how I’d just left her.
“Zombies, monsters, crazy people...call it what you want,” Greta said. “The name doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’re being violet. They’re eating people.”
She shook her head, as though she couldn’t believe the way people were behaving.
“I left my roommate,” I whispered. I had to say it out loud. I was horrified and embarrassed that I’d left Angela behind. She hadn’t wanted to come, at first, and then it had been clear that she was sick. I knew that I couldn’t have brought her along, but it was still sad and horrifying for me.
We’d been friends for so long, after all.
“She got infected,” I added, just so nobody thought I was being a bad person.
“Nothing you could’ve done,” Greta told me quietly.
I wasn’t sure if she was trying to be polite or to calm me down, but it was working. I liked it. Greta reminded me of a kindly grandmother, only slightly more badass. I had the feeling that she was probably used to people underestimating her.
She didn’t seem like the kind of person who should ever, ever be underestimated.
Greta seemed like the kind of person who was strong and determined and clever. Those were good things to have in a survival buddy, I was certain.
“Yeah, a couple of my buddies got it, too,” Isaiah added. “They were puking like crazy down by the pool. Said some girls tried to bite them.”
“Tried? Or succeeded?”
He shrugged, but I had a feeling that the biting had definitely happened.
“So that’s what spreads it, right? Biting? Saliva?”
“Could be anything,” Greta said. “Anytime there’s something like this, though, it’s always best to err on the side of caution.”
She was right.
I knew she was right.
We had to be careful. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the side of the boat, and I listened as the zombie on top of the lifeboat continued to bang against the top of the lifeboat.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
It was going to be a long journey.
Chapter 7
Isaiah
When my mom suggested I needed to take some time off of work and go have fun with my friends, I don’t think she expected that I’d actually do it. Jeremy and Franklin wanted to go party on a cruise ship, though, and they’d scored some sweet deals.
Yeah, it was a last-minute decision, and yeah, we were all cramped together in an interior cabin with no windows, but it didn’t matter. Everything on the cruise was included: food, dancing, fun. The shows were included. All of it.
And there was the swimming.
The cruise ship had like five different pools, eight hot tubs, and even a couple of waterslides. Everyone made fun of me because that was where I wanted to hang out during the trip, but then again, I was the only one who hadn’t gotten bitten, wasn’t I?
I had known the second that Franklin and Jeremy started talking to those twins they were going to get themselves into trouble. Girls like that didn’t look at guys like us. Not ever.
When they’d all started going at it, I’d looked away, embarrassed. I’d tried to focus on my drink or the show we were watching. I couldn’t believe they were all making out in public at a performance on the ship. It was pretty trashy, and I didn’t think many things were trashy.
When one of the girls bit Franklin, he screeched and grabbed his neck. He was so loud the manager made us leave. When we got outside Jeremy laughed and showed us where he’d been bitten, too.
That was only a few hours ago.
It had taken a couple of hours.
That was it.
Hours and now I was floating through the ocean on the world’s weirdest lifeboat with a grandmother for a guide and a nerdy girl with a cardigan.
Could things get any stranger?
This really wasn’t what I’d dreamt about when I’d decided to take my trip. What I’d dreamt about was relaxing on the Lido deck with a cold beer and my best friends. What I’d dreamt about had involved eating copious amounts of food from the cheesecake buffet and then drowning the stress of work with more beer.
Apparently, it wasn’t meant to be.
I wrapped my arms around me as well as I could. The orange life jacket – life preserver, as Greta would say – was bulky and awkward. It made sitting on the hard metal bench of the lifeboat even more uncomfortable.
Then there was the fact that there was that thing up above us. It kept hitting the top of the lifeboat like it was trying to claw its way inside. I closed my eyes, wondering if there was a way I could pretend it wasn’t there. I imagined that I was lying on a calm, relaxing beach.
I imagined I was there with someone I cared about.
Anyone.
It didn’t happen, though. No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, it seemed like things just felt worse. My stomach twisted and turned as I wondered whether I was going to survive this.
Yeah, we’d made it off the ship, the three of us, but what next?
We weren’t going to last long in a metal box of a boat. It was night now, and it was cool outside, but what happened tomorrow?
Were we going to cook alive?
“We’re close to an island,” Greta said.
“What?”
“You were muttering to yourself,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. You think we’re going to cook alive. We won’t.”
“How can you be sure?” My eyes flew open as I looked at the lady. Even in the dim lighting, I could tell that she was a prim and proper sort of woman. She probably knitted sweaters or did paintings or something like that. She was definitely the crafting type.
She reminded me of my own granny.
“Oh, I’m sure,” she said.
“We were supposed to stop at an island tomorrow, right?” The other girl, Winter, spoke up. “We can’t be too far. Not more than a couple of hours, anyway.”
“Should we try to steer the boat, then?” I asked. “Should we try to figure out how to get to that island?”
“Do you have a compass?” Greta asked.
“No, I forgot to pack that when I was running away from my roommates,” I said. There was more sarcasm in my tone than I’d intended.
“Just be glad we got an enclosed lifeboat,” Winter muttered, pointing to the little ceiling. The zombie was still up there, somehow.
“Go away!” I called out to it.
It fell silent.
“There,” I said, happily leaning back. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Let’s see what we can find in here,” Winter said. “We need to start moving, right? We’re going to just bump into the side of the cruise ship if we don’t.”
As if on cue, we bumped
into the side of the giant ship. Our little boat jerked, and Winter, who was crouching in the center of the boat, fell over. She hobbled back up, moving awkwardly with her life vest, and started rummaging around.
“The phone battery won’t last long,” Winter said. “Let’s find a flashlight so we can get that turned off.”
I didn’t move, but Greta got up and started looking around. The two of them began to rummage around, and reluctantly, I started to, as well. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want to be the one lazy survivor. I’d read enough stories as a kid to know that in situations like this, people who didn’t pull their own weight got kicked off.
Or killed.
I didn’t want to be that guy.
Carefully, I got up. I didn’t want to admit that I sucked at balancing. Maybe I was still a little drunk, or maybe the boat just wasn’t that smooth, because I seemed to struggle to stay upright. I fell once, landing on one of the little benches.
“Take your time,” Greta called out. “There’s no rush anymore.”
The zombie on the roof started hitting again.
No rush.
She wasn’t wrong. We’d rushed to get off that ship, for sure. Then we’d rushed to launch this boat. Now the rushing was done. We’d managed to make it off the cruise ship alive. Now what?
First things first: lights and a compass. Those were the two things we needed. If we could get those two items, we’d be able to go...somewhere.
I just didn’t know where.
“Got it!” Winter cried out, holding up an electric lantern. “Phone off,” she said to Greta, who nodded and powered off the current device she was using for light. Winter flipped on the electric lantern and hung it in the center of the lifeboat. There was a little hook there for such an occasion.
“Light works pretty well,” I commented. The entire interior of the boat was lit up, and now it was easier to see that Greta and Winter looked just as tired and scared as I did.
“Compass time,” Winter said, and started looking around again. She rummaged around, looking for helpful items, and Greta and I followed suit. I found water bottles and food rations and even some sunscreen, but I couldn’t find the damn compass.
Finally, Greta found one and held it up, along with a manual for piloting the boat.
“Guess it’s time to do some reading,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I steered a boat.”
“As long as we don’t hit anything else,” Winter shrugged. “It can’t be too bad, right?”
“Can’t be worse than what we just left from,” Greta agreed. She started to skim through the manual. We bumped into the side of the ship again, and I looked over at Winter.
“You think it’s everywhere?”
“The virus?”
“Yeah.”
Nothing.
She was silent.
I shouldn’t have asked.
I knew I shouldn’t have asked. Asking was only going to raise questions she wasn’t going to want to answer. What was worse is it would raise questions I knew neither one of us could answer.
“I don’t know.”
“Probably,” Greta said. “If it wasn’t, we would’ve gotten help already.”
“You think someone on the ship called for help?”
“Oh yes,” she nodded, looking through the little book. She pushed her reading glasses up on her nose. I didn’t even see her put them on. They must have been in that bag of hers. They were probably tucked in there with her knitting.
“What about you?” Winter asked, looking at me. “What’s your theory?”
My theory?
“I just don’t want to die,” I told her. “This was supposed to be a vacation.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Same.”
I looked at Winter and wondered what her story was. Where had she come from? What was her tale? This couldn’t have been easy for her, either. She hadn’t said a lot, but she hadn’t needed to.
I leaned back in my seat and rested my head against the hard plastic side of the boat. One thing was for certain: nothing was ever going back to the way it was yesterday.
Nothing.
Chapter 8
Winter
GRETA MADE EVERYTHING look easy.
I wasn’t really sure how she managed to do it, but she got everything sorted out swiftly and within ten minutes, she was piloting us away from the cruise ship. We didn’t go too far, though, before she killed the engine.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Aren’t we going to go look for an island or something?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Look.”
A few little windows enabled us to look at the cruiser we’d just left, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think about everything we’d just seen because it scared me. The idea of being trapped in some sort of zombie wasteland sounded like total hell to me.
It seemed like some sort of nightmare we were never going to get out of.
“Why are we looking?” Isaiah asked. Apparently, he had the same idea as me: the less we thought about what we’d just endured, the better. It wasn’t like I hadn’t dealt with trauma in my life before. I had. I’d had plenty of it. I just didn’t feel the need to dwell on the stuff that was bad.
“Because I want to see what happens next,” Greta said. “Look. It’s on fire.”
We watched flames erupting from one of the windows on the upper decks. Someone had started a fire that seemed to blaze out of control, at least in that one window.
“I didn’t even know a ship could catch on fire,” I muttered.
“Anything can catch on fire if you try hard enough,” Greta told me.
“Why fire, though?” That was Isaiah. I wanted to ask him how old he was. I figured we were probably about the same age, but he seemed younger, somehow. More naïve. He seemed innocent in the way a young kid just out of high school seemed innocent, like he believed the world was a great, wonderful place.
I was old enough that I didn’t believe in that sort of thing anymore.
“They probably saw the infection spreading and were trying to stop it,” I offered.
“People do strange things during a crisis,” Greta added. “Something like this has never happened before. Nobody knows what to do.”
From our spot in the little lifeboat, we watched the cruise ship. It was dark out, and we couldn’t see super clearly despite the lights that remained on in the ship. A few lights started to go out as we watched, though. First at the front of the ship, and then slowly, the lights turned off leading all the way to the back.
The screaming continued.
“I think we should go,” I whispered.
“Somewhere that’s not here,” Isaiah agreed.
The zombie on the top of our little boat knocked in agreement, too.
“What are we going to do about that?” I gestured to the top of the boat. “We can’t bring it with us. It’ll attack us.”
“We’ll deal with that once we’ve docked somewhere,” Greta seemed unconcerned. “I’ve dealt with bullies my entire life. One more isn’t going to kill me.”
She turned us around and we started heading in the opposite direction. Greta guided the tiny boat through the waters, and we were silent as we rode. I kept looking through the different items on our lifeboat to see if I could find anything useful. Finally, I stumbled across what I really wanted.
“A radio,” I said. I flipped it on.
Instantly, I wished I hadn’t.
I had thought that perhaps I’d be able to call for help. Maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to ask people to come rescue us. Maybe the cruise ship zombie virus really was just an anomaly. Maybe it wasn’t anything serious or wild. After all, one bad day on a cruise ship shouldn’t have been enough to destroy everything, right?
But every single channel I turned to had a distress signal.
Every time I twisted the dial on the radio, someone was crying or screaming, begging for thelp.
That was when I realized we were a
lone.
It was the three of us.
“Everyone’s affected,” I whispered, shutting off the radio.
“Pretty terrible,” Isaiah whispered. “I wonder if my family’s okay.”
“If they’re anything like you, they’ll be fine,” Greta offered. She didn’t seem like she was sucking up. She was just very matter-of-fact in the way that she spoke. Greta was probably one of the best people I’d ever seen in an emergency because nothing really bothered her.
When it was time to leave the ship, she’d just come along, and we’d left. She hadn’t worried herself with fighting too much. She hadn’t tried to be a hero. She’d just grabbed her bag and some water, and she’d helped us get on the lifeboat.
“What’s your story?” I asked Greta.
“No story.”
“I mean, why are you like this?”
She laughed and looked over at me.
“Kid, you have no idea what I’m like.”
“I know. I’m trying to understand. You just seem really calm.”
“When you’ve seen as much as I have, you tend to take stuff like this in stride.”
“Tell me more,” I asked.
“Is that what you want, Winter? You want a campfire story about the old lady piloting the boat?”
“Yes,” I told her. She seemed like she was trying to irritate me, but I wasn’t going to be irritated by her. I wasn’t going to be bothered or upset. We were all stressed, tired, and soon, we’d be hungry. I needed to keep Greta awake, I knew. None of us knew how far this little boat would get us or if we’d be able to reach land before we ran out of fuel.
If we encountered any sort of trouble before we hit land, that could be it. I wasn’t sure whether dying on board the cruise ship from zombies or starving to death in the middle of the ocean would be worse. Both would be painful. At least if we all starved to death, I’d have a little extra time to over-think my life and remember all of the stupid stuff I’d said and done in my lifetime.
“I want to hear a story, too,” Isaiah said. “I’ll trade you. A life for a life.”
“That’s not what a life for a life means,” Greta said.
Stay Dead | Book 1 | Wild Undead Page 5