The Boat (21 page)

Chief wasn’t very old, but he got sick. Cancer, his grandmom told him, cancer that was eating him up inside.

Mikey thought that was so interesting. Something was eating Chief from the
inside
? But how would that work, exactly? He started watching Chief with avid interest; sometimes laying his head on Chief’s chest when the dog lay sleeping by the couch.

To his grandmom, Mikey looked just the picture of a boy devoted to his oldest, bestest friend. But in reality, Mikey was trying hear the chewing.

Then one morning, Chief had been dead in the kitchen. Mikey was curious about the cancer. Would he be able to see it? Could he catch it in a jar? So he had gotten the big knife from the butcher block where Grandmom kept it and he had…

They took him to another kind of doctor after that. A doctor who wanted to talk and talk. Mikey learned a lot from this doctor. He learned the difference between himself (abnormal) and everyone else (normal). It was more or less an accelerated course in ‘fitting in’ and Mikey could never have learned so much on his own in the same short time span.

It was very helpful.

He’d learned to hide the things that satisfied him, and to hide them well, because they were atrocious to other people. Years went by and Mikey fit in better and better, more and more, until he was well-liked and even loved by the people around him. He was valedictorian of his high school. He had a girlfriend. He began college. He had even decided his major: psychiatry. But then everything changed.

He had watched with curiosity when his roommates died and reanimated and then eaten his current girlfriend. He’d pushed her out of his room and into the shared living room where his roommates stumbled in clumsy circles, moaning. He wasn’t sure what reanimated humans would do and he wanted to see.

And he had seen.

It had been exciting as they tore her apart. It had taken her a long time to die because she had fallen face down and it was a while before they got to her jugular. The screaming was irritating, but Mikey (now Michael) had merely tuned it out.

He called up the memory of his parents fighting, the blood and the moaning. That had been powerful…but this…this was even better. He felt as though sparks were jumping and snapping in his brain. He watched as one roommate gagged and threw up a wad of wet hair. A good portion of his girlfriend’s teacup-handle ear lay in the vomit.

It was satisfying in the way gutting fish had been; gutting Chief.

He’d found a good vantage point to view the carnage and for three days watched as people died and reanimated, or died and stayed dead, and ate each other indiscriminately. It was the best time.

But then it had stopped. There were no more survivors except himself. No one for the walking corpses to go after.

For the first time in his life, Michael had felt an emotion: depression. Black, smothering, unmanning depression. He couldn’t get the carnage out of his mind, the swelling, almost sexual, feeling he got when he saw the killing occur.

He needed it.

But then he fell ill. In his depression, he neglected himself. He didn’t eat. He barely drank anything. He lost fifteen pounds in the space of one week. He contracted bronchitis that quickly became pneumonia and in his run down state, it was nearly fatal.

He was found in the back of a CVS by another survivor. She was ransacking the pharmacy, looking for anything that would come in handy, when she found Michael curled up next to a blood pressure machine.

She shook him and he came to briefly. She asked his name and he could only shake his head, made mute by the clogged, drowning feeling in his filled lungs.

“How about John? John Smith?” She’d smiled down at him and he’d gone away again, the fever carrying him to dreams of bloodied teeth under cracked lips, rich, red organs spilling forth, and over and over he saw the ear vomited up by his roommate.

The woman and two others had come back for Michael, referring to him as John, and transported him to where they had made an encampment in a nearby apartment building. Over the course of the next two weeks, Michael, now John, was nursed back to health.

Once healthy, he repaid their kindness by leading a contingent of the reanimated humans to the apartment complex while the people inside slept. Michael (John) was not afraid of the undead humans…not in the way the other survivors were. To Michael (John) they were simply another
type
of human, a fun and slightly dangerous type. In some ways, they were easier to understand because they were so singular in nature. They only wanted one thing: to kill and eat the living.

It had done more to buoy his spirits than any antibiotic ever could. The depression lifted. John Smith, formerly Mikey and then Michael, decided to keep his new name. It was as though his own last fever had burned his old life away, awakening him to this new purpose, this extraordinary new human he had become.

When he had discovered the survivors on the boats, it had been even better. The last boat he’d been on, the
Open Rhodes
, had been very exciting. There had been six strong people on that one. The carnage had been magnificent and deeply satisfying. He almost hadn’t gotten away, so enamored was he by the killing.

But
Flyboy
would be even better. John Smith had never seen a boat as large as
Flyboy
. It would take a long time, maybe a day, maybe even two, for the festivities on such a large boat to be over.

He’d swum out from shore in the first light of dawn, towing his yellow life raft until he was close to the smallest boat, the
Barbra’s Bay Breeze
. He knew the little raft would be hard to see in the yellow, morning light. Then he had climbed aboard, cut his forehead, and waited for them to ‘find’ him. He knew they would eventually and he also knew that being injured or ill made people accept you quicker.

That was how humans operated.

The undead ones, anyway.

~ ~ ~

John Smith swam past
Big Daddy
.

In the wooden rowboat he towed, Jade’s first life burned out.

Then her second began.

~ ~ ~

His slow and even strokes brought him to
Flyboy
in less than fifteen minutes, but getting his prize on board would be tricky. It wasn’t late, only somewhere around nine or nine-thirty–pre-sickness, it would have been prime time but now, with lack of resources and lack of interest, people tended to be out just after the sun had fully set.

John paddled near the hull of the big boat, heading for the back. There was a low portion–kind of a large step–that would give him access to the other decks. He’d hang back there until the ship was completely quiet. Then he’d haul the rowboat in and let the fun begin.

He clambered up onto the step and turned to sit. His lungs, still feeling the lingering effects of the pneumonia, were grateful for the break. He could just see into the rowboat, fifteen feet away. The girl was moving sluggishly, writhing in the bottom of the boat. She was very small. A curl of doubt wormed into John’s consciousness. She wouldn’t be able to overpower anyone. He’d have to give her a helping hand.

At that thought, the literal image floated into his mind of his hand in the girl’s mouth, being bitten. Would he feel different? If he were one of the cold reanimated? It occurred to him that in some ways, he was already more like them than he was the other, hotter humans.

Maybe like the transition from Mikey to Michael and then to John, becoming a walking corpse was part of his destined path. Maybe the undead John, nameless from then on, was his ultimate form. The idea held a certain power.

Somewhere behind him, in the depths of
Flyboy
, Adam was tossing and turning in his room, thinking about Sami and secrets…thinking about checking on John Smith and deciding against it.

John Smith sat waiting as August tenth became August eleventh. It had been just over two months from the time of the sickness and John was eagerly, if quietly, anticipating the hell he was about to unleash.

He had waited this long.

He could wait a bit more.

Chapter Thirteen

“Shit, shit, shit…” Brian said, fairly dancing with agitation. It was somewhere around two in the morning and Brian had taken over the watch from Steve about fifteen minutes earlier.

Steve had pointed out the slack rope and told Brian to keep an eye out, make sure she didn’t drift too close. The lack of tension wasn’t in itself cause for alarm. The rowboat often drifted enough for the rope to hang limply from the cleat.

So Brian had kept an eye out on the pitch dark of the overcast night. He sat, but an excess of agitation pushed him back to his feet. He looked out over the black water. He strained to hear anything at all that would tell him if Jade was too close or not. What if she had decided to paddle in by hand?

“Shit…shit, shit, shit…” His agitation increased and he told himself he was just spooking himself–but it wouldn’t go away. But it also wasn’t enough to sound an alarm. Deciding, he bent to take up the slack rope and he pulled it in, hand over hand. He would see for himself if Jade was still in the boat.

The more he coiled, the more uneasy he became. Finally, the entire line was curled wetly at his feet and he considered the frayed end of the rope in his hand. Why would Jade cut herself free? Brian shook his head, his stomach tied in a tight, uneasy knot.

“Carl? Yo…Carl! Wake up, dude!” Brian shouted in a whisper back to the salon. He didn’t want to wake everyone. Not yet.

After a minute, Carl ambled out looking like a disoriented bear fresh from hibernation. Then he saw the frayed end of the rope in Brian’s hand and his eyes focused.

“She’s gone?” Carl asked and Brian nodded. Carl turned and hurried back into the boat.

Brian stood dumfounded, wondering what could have happened to Jade and then Steve and Maggie were on the deck, followed by Carl.

They all stared at the rope in Brian’s hand.

“Why would she cut herself free?” Brian asked, and Maggie shook her head. The clouds covering the moon broke apart and the moon bathed everyone in its blue glow. They all looked pale and ghostly, their eyes deeply shadowed.

“She wouldn’t–or, couldn’t–actually. She didn’t have a knife.”

Brian was opening his mouth to ask if a fish could have bitten the line apart when they were all startled by a muffled gunshot from
Flyboy
. They turned in unison just in time to see as something fell over the rail. Had it been a person? Did someone just go overboard?

Then a low, ululating scream travelled across the water.

“What the
fuck
–” Steve said and then the gun went off again, making them flinch.

“Jade,” Maggie said, her voice flat, almost a question but not quite.

Steve turned to her, confused, his thoughts a racing jumble. He fumbled for the walkie-talkie. “Jade? What are you saying?”

She held up the frayed end of the rope.

Steve shook his head once and then looked back to
Flyboy
.

It made no sense; but he believed it one hundred percent all the same.

Somehow, Jade had gotten onto
Flyboy
.

Shakily, Steve opened the line on the walkie-talkie.

“Adam, what’s going on over there? Over.”

“Adam, this is Steve, we’re concerned about you guys. Over.”

“Are you having trouble? Over.”

“Adam?”

~ ~ ~

John Smith was having a tough time. He’d nearly lost Jade already.

As he’d sat and contemplated life as an undead, she’d struggled up before he was ready and swayed side to side in the unsteadily rocking boat that still floated fifteen feet from the back of
Flyboy
. Luckily, she did not face his direction, but rather the empty ocean.

She would have stepped out and sunk, had she been aware of him. He’d seen them do it before. They were blinded by their hunger, made stupid with need.

He scanned the area around him and saw a line curled on the deck. He pulled it down and then began to ease the rowboat forward. He pulled slowly so as not to cause her to tip right out of it. He also had to remain very quiet. After a tense minute, the rowboat was almost within his grasp. He leaned out to grip the leading edge, but his foot slipped on the wet step and his leg went in.

He righted himself, but Jade had already turned toward him at the sound. She took a step. Then another. She clambered clumsily over the seat. A low moan had begun in the back of her throat. Her arms rose. It was the hunger.

John steadied the rowboat and pulled it closer. The tension had drained from his body and now he was only cold. Only calculating. He gathered the other rope in his free hand. He had to wrangle her quickly, before she fell but also before she got too close. If he did decide to become an undead, he’d do it on his own terms.

She got to the front of the rowboat and walked right into the v, then stumbled, her ankle turning. She fell toward the water, arms still reaching for John.

He was ready with the rope and he snaked a looped a section around her neck as she pitched to the side. He kicked her hip, twisting her as she fell, and the line formed a rough noose. Then she sank.

Sinkers were heavy. John’s arms strained and he pulled, stepping up and back onto the deck and finally, she slid from the water, moaning. Immediately, her arms reached for John standing above her. The line had cut into her neck and a blackish gel oozed out and fell in small clumps to the deck. She struggled to hands and knees and then stood, swaying.

She would have fallen off the back of
Flyboy
if John didn’t jerk her roughly forward, playing out the line as he walked backward. She followed. She walked to the step first and then struggled a foot up onto it. With her next step, she was unbalanced and she almost tumbled sideways. John yanked again, pulling her forward onto the deck and onto her knees. One of her kneecaps dislocated with a pop.