Undead Honeymoon (11 page)

I remember they hadn’t been shot at, and were still holding out the hope of a rescue team. We told them everything we knew about the ship’s fate; how they had less than a day before The Wellspring was nothing more than a memory. Unfortunately they didn’t believe us, even with Lily in tears, insisting they should try to abandon the ship. I wish we would’ve tried harder… we just didn’t have the time.

“You really should wait here with us,” Lizzy replied. “We stand a chance if we just stay
put
. They will come for us. We have food, water, and weapons. We can hold out for weeks…”

“I think their minds are made up, sis. If they want to die, it’s their choice how they make it happen,” Flint huffed. “You two are going to die, you know that, right?”

Lily nodded. “Probably.”

I hadn’t told him about the rescue helicopter that was coming for us, only that we were headed through the Avenues. I figured it’d be the best bet as I remembered the phone call. “
I can only get you and Lily out. Anyone else and they’ll leave you there to die
,” the man said just before hanging up. 

“Probably he says…” Bill mocked as he sauntered toward the glass doors.  “Sorry to burst yer bubble there, youngin’, but take a look. There‘s no
probably
about it.”

I walked over to a particularly large bullet hole in the glass. Even in the suit, the smell of the black slime around me was almost overwhelming. When I saw what was just beyond the glass doors, however, my legs nearly gave out.

It was a horde so massive; I couldn’t see the end of it. Hundreds upon hundreds of corpses flooded the Avenues. I wondered where they all came from. I’d thought the majority of the ship’s passengers were in the theatre, but I was wrong. Dead wrong.

I could see a handful of creepers, groups of skinny sprinters, and countless others in varying stages of decay. Some were shambling along, bumping and falling into each other as they went. Many were missing legs, and were crawling along the deck aimlessly. Every few seconds a breeze would knock one over, causing the ones around it to turn and investigate.

I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes.

I couldn’t let myself falter. I knew I had to be strong for Lily. She was directly behind me, and had no idea what was waiting for us just outside the glass. It was heart wrenching, seeing the color drain from her face as I told her. 

“Finn. What if we don’t make it? What if… we can’t?” she whispered, eyes glistening. I secretly prayed she wouldn’t cry. I couldn’t take any more of her tears. I’d seen enough to last me a lifetime.    

“We have to try. Either way we’re dead if we stay here, you know that. Our best bet is to either jump overboard or head to the Ferris wheel. If we jump ship, there’s no telling whether or not we’ll be spotted by the helicopters. If we are, we’ll be sitting ducks. Plus, even if we aren‘t spotted, we‘re still in the middle of the damn ocean, floating around with no idea how far we are from land.”

Lily stood there for a while, seemingly lost in thought. I thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. I just opened my mouth to tell her I was scared too, but she looked up, smiling. I’ll never forget that look. So unexpected, so defiant.   

“What?” I said, taken aback.

“For better or worse,” she replied as she took my hand. 

I hugged her, all the while struggling to keep my breathing steady. I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life. Not so much for my own well being, but for hers. My only thought was to make sure she made it out alive.

I wish I could’ve kissed her, but those damn suits made it impossible. 

It took some convincing, but I managed to talk Flint and Bill into helping me move a table they’d used to block one of the larger holes in the glass. They lifted it as quietly as possible so Lily and I could squeeze through. I barely managed to fit with the duffel bag on my back.

“Good luck to ya,” Bill whispered. He extended a hand before I ducked through the hole. I pleaded with him one last time to find a way off the ship.

“Please believe us. They’re going to destroy the ship. You’ll all die if you don’t leave. Stay out of sight and make for the water somehow. They’re trying to contain the infection by any means necessary, which means killing anyone or anything that leaves the ship. Deck four is lined with covered lifeboats. Get to one and hide in it. Don’t release until you hear the first round of explosions.”

Bill nodded, and it was the last we ever saw of him. I still don’t know if any of them made it off the ship.

We found ourselves standing at the edge of the Avenues, which comprised the back end of the ship‘s uppermost deck. Bill and Flint quickly replaced the table, so any chance of retreat was effectively cut off. I quickly realized we’d spent too much time talking. The sun was already dipping below the horizon. The Ferris wheel was about two hundred feet away, but it might as well have been a mile. A sea of grey, rotten flesh stood between us and our rescue point.

“Right behind me Lily. Stay as close as you can manage. And watch your spear please…” I said as her spear tip brushed against my backside.

We tiptoed around a dozen sleepers. Several were emaciated, and my hair stood on end as I remembered how fast the one in the buffet was. Twice we had to step to the side in order to avoid crawlers. They never looked up as they slid and scraped their way across the deck. 

Lily tapped my shoulder. “Finn.”

“We have to be quiet,” I whispered.

“Finn.
Look
,” Lily said, her voice clipped.   

My face fell as I turned to see what she was talking about. Just ahead on our left were four zombies. They weren’t like the others we’d seen, not at all.

They were children, or at least they used to be. None of them looked old enough to be out of elementary school.  

They were huddled together, nearly shoulder to shoulder, as if they were going on a field trip. I hadn’t seen them because of my suit’s narrowed vision. 

“There’s nothing we can do for them, Lily,” I muttered. “We have to keep moving.”

It was all I could do to not lose my mind completely. I was so upset and angry at the sight of those kids.  

I’d always wondered why movies almost never showed children who’d turned; now I understood. Just the sight of them made me want to give up on the world altogether. What was the point of even trying to survive if the fate of innocent children was something so horrible? 

I took a couple steps forward before I realized Lily wasn’t right behind me anymore. I turned and saw she hadn’t moved since we‘d seen the children, and she was losing it in front of them. Her eyes were red and puffy, and I could hear her ragged breathing as she started to sob. Her mask was fogging up, and it wouldn’t be long before she couldn’t see at all.

“Get it together,” I snapped. “Take a deep breath, and put one foot in front of--”

I stopped when something bumped into me. I turned and found myself face to face with an enormous corpse, only the thing was, it wasn’t fat. It too was unlike any others we’d seen before. It was a guy who must’ve been a body builder before he turned. It had heard us talking, and its head jerked erratically as it searched for the source of the sound. The creature’s teeth were snapping just inches from my mask, but it couldn’t smell me. I kept as still as my body would allow, and as I stared at its overly muscular arms, my eyes fell to its stomach. Its arms were as thick as tree trunks, but the rest was emaciated. The thing‘s skin was so taut around its rotten chest that two ribs had broken completely through.

I was just about to step back when a gust of wind rolled across the deck, knocking over several zombies near the seafood restaurant on our right. The sprinter’s head jerked toward the sound, and in a flash it was gone, followed by several more.

I let myself breath again and continued forward. Lily had regained control during my encounter with the sprinting bodybuilder corpse. She was still sniffling, but at least she was moving again.

We were two thirds of the way to the Ferris wheel when we found ourselves surrounded by a small group of creepers. There was no avoiding them, as it was almost shoulder to shoulder corpses on either side. I thought about climbing over or under some of the tables to our right, but our suits and gear would make it almost impossible to do quietly. We had no choice but to go straight through, which meant brushing against at least half a dozen of them. At some point I noticed we hadn’t seen or heard any helicopters or jets since we’d been topside, but I kept it to myself. I didn’t know if it was good or bad, and the last thing I wanted to do was cause Lily to worry.  

Back to the creepers. I still can‘t figure out how we survived the stench.

Their rancid smell crashed into us like a wave as we inched through them. The suits didn’t seem to help at all.

It went okay for the first couple of feet, but a gust of wind caused one of the creepers to sway in my path. I jumped sideways to avoid it, but there was another to my side, and I crashed right into it. It tipped over like a statue, and as it fell to the deck its stomach cracked open like a rotten egg. Black, putrid slime exploded from its innards, spraying our legs and nearby corpses with its filth. 

My throat burned as bile fought its way up for air. I still don’t know how I kept from vomiting, but Lily wasn’t as lucky. She ripped the mask from her face and retched all over the deck.

The effect was almost instantaneous.

Banshees around the deck lets their jaws go slack, and the air was suddenly filled with their inhuman sound. Sprinters moved in from all directions as the nearby creepers turned to face us.

The fact that Lily was so close to me probably saved both our lives. My hand was grasping the hood of her suit before she looked up after vomiting. I pulled it back over her face just as the first wave of sprinters got to us. One bumped into me, only to turn and run to a nearby howler. A second slipped on Lily’s vomit and tumbled behind us. Its taut, dry skin cracked and tore down the length of its body, exposing rotten flesh and bone. I almost slipped myself, and realized I was standing on the oil of one of my Molotov cocktails. One of the bottles had cracked when the sprinter ran into me, and it was dripping down my side. That’s when it hit me.

I was an idiot.

I’d completely forgotten about the cocktails. I plucked a lighter from the only pocket on my suit and handed my spear to Lily. Even from behind her headgear I could see her eyes blinking wildly. I don‘t know what she was thinking, but she grasped the spear tight and held parallel to the deck, ready to attack.

Banshees were still shrieking around us, and the sprinters were going berserk. It was only a matter of time before one of them crashed into us full on. I looked around and found a good spot. I lit the cocktail, and after waiting for a clear shot I pitched it through the glass of the “Create-a-Friend” workshop on our right. We watched as flames quickly engulfed its interior. 

The heat to our side intensified as the fire reached the stuffed animals. The entire deck started to shift as every topside corpse started shambling toward the inferno. The sprinters were the first to reach it, and they darted around like demons as the flames licked at their grey flesh.

The fire had given us a clear shot to the Ferris wheel. We ran the rest of the way, going as fast as our suits would allow. When we got to the base we nearly tripped over the rope line; it was getting dark.   

I grabbed Lily’s spear and stuck it between the duffel bag and my back, along with my own.

“Climb!” I urged.

We scaled the spokes with relative ease and made our way to the maintenance ladder. From there it was another twenty feet before we reached the top. We climbed around the drive rim and settled into the top cab. The air around us was completely silent; no helicopters.

The sky that night was eerily dark; there were no stars at all. The deck beneath us was a different story. It was completely illuminated by fire. My Molotov had spread to the boutiques, and the flames gave us a front row seat to the zombie bonfire below. They seemed to think the fire was alive, and kept trying to attack the flames that twisted around them. Dark plumes of smoke rose from the zombies as bits and pieces of them started to fall away. The smell of decayed and burnt flesh reached us just as I realized it was starting to rain.