Undead Honeymoon (3 page)

I can’t believe Finn. He’s already asleep and it’s not even ten! He’s usually such a night owl, but I guess cruising takes it out of him. I’m pretty tired too, actually. Tomorrow is the jet ski tour and beach time.

Finn said the mountains where we’re headed are always blanketed with a thick mist that hides their peaks. They cast shadows over our ship’s private cove, and it makes the whole area look like something out of a fantasy novel.

I can’t wait!
 

August 12
th

Haiti was amazing!

Finn woke me up this morning with a tray full of chocolate covered strawberries. They were delicious, and I’m still wondering where he got them so early. At the same time I was impressed he was up before me. I looked toward the balcony and saw the sun hadn’t even come up yet.

“Aren’t we supposed to be sleeping in?” I said grumpily as I shoved a strawberry in my mouth. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and realized Finn was already dressed. “Where are you going so early?” I asked.

He smirked. “You’ll see. Hurry and get dressed. We don’t have much time and I want to show you something.”

I decided to humor him and quickly pulled some shorts and a t-shirt on. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and tried to ignore how badly I needed to brush it. I slid into my flip flops and was ready to go in less than five minutes, a personal best.

“Where are you taking me?” I repeated as Finn pulled me into the elevator at the end of the hall.

“To see something I know you’ll like.”

The second the elevator doors closed he launched himself toward me, so quick that I jumped as he pressed his lips hard against mine. His right hand pulled at my hair as he groped my backside with his left. I hardly had time to react before the elevator beeped, and a woman’s voice sounded over an intercom, “Deck Fourteen.”

In a flash Finn was two feet from me, looking as if nothing had happened. The doors opened as I fumbled to straighten my shirt. An elderly couple stepped in just as we left the elevator, and I know they probably suspected something. Finn’s perfected innocent face could only go so far. 

“Behave yourself, mister,” I warned as I tried to fix the tangled mess Finn made of my hair. He ignored me as we continued down the running track that circled the top deck. We walked until we reached one of the observation balconies. I looked out over the water toward the horizon. Deep shades of purple were just giving way to brilliant rays of gold and pink as the night turned to morning.  

“Perfect timing,” Finn whispered as he wrapped his arms around me from behind.

“Did you get up early so we could watch the sunrise?” I asked, bewildered. 

He nodded.

“Really?” I asked again, turning to him. He never got up early, ever. We kissed for a full minute before he broke it off and urged me to look forward. “Don’t miss it,” he said.

I turned and gasped.

The sun was just peeking out from between two of the greenest mountains I’d ever seen. They rose from the sapphire blue water like immense, tree covered pyramids. It was impossible to determine where they ended and the sky began. A thick grey mist covered their peaks, and I stood in awe as I tried to take it all in. The sun’s rays sparkled and danced on top of the water as I admired the Wellspring’s private cove.

“It’s
so
beautiful. It almost doesn‘t look real.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Finn said, sounding satisfied with himself.

Have I mentioned I could get used to this super romantic hubby? 

The next few hours were really relaxing. We had poached eggs and salmon before heading to the beach to get some sun. I wasn’t feeling sick at all so we still took our jet ski tour, and I decided last minute to let Finn drive. He managed to get the spot directly behind the tour guide, which meant we had to try and keep up with him as everyone else followed. I think he did it on purpose, especially since he kept the handle at full throttle for the
entire
tour. Let’s just say I was thankful for the built in handles on Finn’s life vest.

After the jet skis we went to the buffet the cruise line had set up on the beach. The fruit drinks were a little too sweet, but the barbecue chicken and ribs were delicious. There was a reggae type band playing just outside the covered eating area. They were pretty good, and one of the members tried getting Finn to buy their CD.

That’s when something kind of weird happened.

Out of nowhere we heard a woman scream behind us. We turned to see two burly men dragging a third away by his arms. He was flailing as if in pain, but no sound came from his gaping mouth, which was covered in something black.

Finn grasped my hand as he motioned toward a woman about ten feet away from the men. “Look at her shirt.”

She was wearing a white polo shirt with the cruise line logo on it. She clutched her right side, which was soaked in something red. My first thought was the fruit drinks from the buffet, but as she cried out I realized it was blood. The woman wasn’t speaking English, but I could tell she was yelling at the man being dragged away. 

“Oh my God. What did that man do to her?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.

Finn still hadn’t released his grip on my hand. “Maybe he tried getting something from the buffet and she tried to stop him. I heard Imperial is locking down on the locals for stealing food.”

“That poor woman, she was only doing her job. Do you think she’ll be all right?” I asked as she was escorted away by several Imperial crewmembers.

“Hopefully. She was able to walk away, so it’s probably not too serious, and they always have medical personnel on the ship.”

“And those poor people,” I said, slumping. “Imagine how hungry they are if they’re attacking people just for food. I bet Imperial throws out anything we don’t eat at the end of the day, too.”

“You’re probably right. They should donate whatever’s left over to the locals. That would solve their stealing problem and get them a lot of positive publicity at the same time.”

I nodded as I swallowed another piece of chicken. I suddenly felt guilty for eating so much.

I didn’t have much time to think about the incident, because the zip line Finn convinced me to go on had me fearing for my life.

“Are you ready?” he called out from beside me. With the wind in our ears, Finn sounded like he was a lot farther away than he really was.  

“No!” I cried.

My stomach was doing somersaults on me as I peered down the two hundred foot drop at my feet. We were perched at the edge of a platform on the side of a mountain. The platform overlooked the beach and loomed over the trees. Why did I agree to do the zip line?

“Okay number one, go!” a short, bearded man yelled from behind us. He had a walkie-talkie and wore an orange vest. Finn lifted his feet and grasped his harness. In a heartbeat he was gone, zooming down toward the beach. All too soon the man spoke again. “Number two, go!”

I hesitated before slowly lifting my feet. I squeezed the harness so tight I thought my fingers might fall off. I screamed as I dropped several feet after gliding away from the platform. After a second I opened my eyes and told myself I was still alive. For one terrifying moment I thought I was going to fall into the ocean, but I quickly realized I was moving forward at a steady, almost enjoyable pace. It was actually kind of peaceful. When I watched other people from the beach they looked like they were going so fast, but it felt like I was going much slower. I looked around as waves crashed below me. People were sunbathing on the sand, oblivious to our precarious adventure in the sky. Before I knew it I was skidding to a halt as I landed on a second platform at the other end of the beach. Another man wearing the same color orange vest started to unhook me from my harness. Finn was already out of his.

“Pretty cool, right?” he smiled.

“Amazing! It seemed so quick, though. How long do you think we were actually in the air?” I asked curiously.

“About forty five seconds,” said the man unhooking my harness.

Finn winced. “Ouch. Ninety bucks a pop for forty five seconds. That means this excursion costs two dollars a second for each of us. Pretty wild, right Lily?”

I laughed as the last of my straps were undone.

After the zip-line we decided to head back to the ship. Finn and I were already tired. I think it was all the sun and food. We’ve always felt like a nap after big meals, and beach days are exhausting in their own right. Maybe tomorrow the line for the Ferris wheel won’t be so bad, because I really want to go on it. Time is going by incredibly fast, and we’re already running late for dinner.

Time to wake the hubby.

August 14
th

We’ve been hiding in our stateroom for almost a full day. I really don’t feel like writing, but Finn says it’ll help calm my nerves. I don’t even know where to start. 

“It’s not like we have anything else to do at the moment,” he urged. He’d even started to write his own journal entry on the laptop. “Besides, people will want to know what’s happening here. It’ll be better if we write while it’s all still fresh.”

“No one will believe any of it. I can’t believe it’s happening at all, and I’m in it.” I whispered, close to tears. I didn’t know how I had any tears left; I’d been crying for ages. Finn was sitting on the bed next to me, and as I spoke he closed the laptop and placed his hand on my chin.

“You know I’d die before I let anything happen to you. We’ll be okay, Lily, I promise,” he said gently as he leaned in and gave me a light kiss. I took a deep breath and tried really hard to believe him.

So yesterday is when it started. Finn and I had just gotten done with dinner and were sitting in the front row of the ships theater. We were waiting for one of Imperial’s famous “Broadway at Main” shows to start. It was curtain time and the cruise director had just stepped onto the stage.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen! How are we enjoying our cruise so far?” he bellowed through his microphone. The crowd clapped and cheered in response, but the cruise director’s face pulled into a half hearted frown. “Aw … and here I thought you all were having such a fantastic cruise. You sound like you’re half dead! You can’t be
that
tired already… You’re going to have to do a little better than that. So how are you enjoying the cruise so far?” he said even louder as he held the microphone toward the audience. The roar of the crowd was impressive, and I looked around and saw that there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.

Almost every passenger on the ship must have been there.

I looked at Finn as he nudged my shoulder. “Excited?” he whispered.

I leaned in and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Of course!” 

Broadway plays were always something I wanted to experience more of, and seeing one on the ocean just added to my excitement. The cruise director was just about to kick off the performance when there was a loud popping noise somewhere beyond the entrance doors behind us.

“What was that?” I asked, turning my head. 

“Part of the show maybe?” Finn answered, sounding unsure.

POP POP POP.
The noise sounded closer.

Finn‘s eyes narrowed, and a dark look came over him. He grasped my hand and lowered his voice. “Lily, those sounded like gunshots.”

My pulse quickened as I wondered why someone would fire a gun on the ship. I didn’t know people even
had
guns on a cruise ship.

The cruise director had stopped talking at this point, and his head was turned in the same direction as everyone else’s in the audience. We didn’t have to wait long, as the entrance doors to the theater burst open and several passengers scrambled inside. They ran down the aisles, and their screams echoed throughout the theater like a group of deranged banshees. 

“They’re coming! They‘re coming!” one of them yelled frantically as he ran past where Finn and I were sitting. His shirt was stained a red and black color near the collar. The next two didn’t seem to be hurt, but they were equally terrified. They clamored up the stage and almost knocked the bewildered cruise director over as they disappeared behind the velvet curtains.

I turned back toward the entrance doors just in time to see a second group of people coming in, but this time they weren’t running.

They must be drunk
, I thought as they stumbled and dragged their feet, slowly making their way toward the back rows of the theater. The people sitting in the seats closest to them stared, dumbfounded as they tried to make sense of the situation. For a split second I thought it might be some part of the show…

That’s when a young woman from the second group bent down and sunk her teeth into the neck of a large man sitting in the back row. He screamed and attempted to rip the woman away from him, but somehow she held fast. There was a collective gasp as the man’s blood gushed and spilled onto the chair and carpet around him.

Several screams rang out as people started to realize the sudden display of gore wasn’t part of the show. The woman released her grip as the big man’s body slumped in his chair. She slowly stood upright, her face was motionless as a large chunk of flesh fell from her gaping mouth. Black rivulets ran from her colorless lips and hung like stalactites from her chin.

The rest of the slow moving group followed her example as they started to attack the audience members closest to the exit. Until that moment I’d never seen someone’s insides, and what happened next was nothing like the movies. People didn’t fall down dead when their stomachs or necks were ripped open; instead they writhed and twisted in agony while parts of them that were never meant to be seen were eaten.

I watched in disbelief as two of the cannibals managed to tear the left arm from a teenage girl. They peeled her flesh away like a banana peel as she watched helplessly from the floor. The fingers of her detached hand were still twitching as her shrieks cut through the roar of chaos.

That’s when I felt something grasp my wrist, hard. I screamed and turned to see Finn pulling on me. His face was ashen, and I could feel his hand trembling. 

“Let’s go, Lily!” he yelled, his voice shrill. He jerked at my rigid, unyielding body. “Don’t look at them, just follow behind me and
don‘t
look back,” he urged as shock threatened to overcome my senses.

We started up the side aisle toward the second set of entrance doors and quickly realized
everyone
else had the same idea. They were bottlenecking themselves, punching and kicking like wild animals in an attempt to escape. The passengers started backing out of the doors just as we reached the back end of the fray. 

“They’re coming through here, too!” a woman screeched. Finn and I looked to our left and spotted more of the deranged cannibals spilling through the first set of doors. A small group of them broke off and started stumbling in our direction. 

“This entire place is about to be overrun,” Finn said, gasping. He squeezed my hand even harder and turned toward the stage. “Let’s try this way!”

We doubled back down the aisle and made our way up the stairs and onto the stage. I stole one last glance at what was left of the passengers before we got to the curtain; I really wish I hadn’t.

Everywhere I looked there was blood, and small groups of the cannibals had started to form around the theater. They huddled around fallen passengers, ripping and tearing at them like wild dogs. A man crawled down the aisle in our direction, and I realized he’d been trampled by the crowd. One of his feet was bent at an awkward angle, and his pant legs were soaked with what I can only guess was more blood. My gut reaction was to help him somehow, but the thought was quickly squashed when one of the cannibals, a large woman, fell on top of him. The man’s face disappeared in a pool of gore just as a second woman started gnawing on his ribcage.             

“Behind here!” Finn pointed as he veered left behind the curtain. I followed him into a narrow corridor lined with electrical equipment and props. We weaved through several tight left and right turns as I continued to hear people screaming in the distance.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I’m not entirely sure, but I know it’s back here somewhere.” 

My stomach dropped. “You don’t know where we’re going? What if those people get to us?” My legs started to shake as I imagined being ripped limb from limb.

“Look,” he said, “the only exit that way is blocked by those things. I’ve taken backstage tours of Imperial’s ships before, and they typically have a back exit to the highway. I just hope this class of ship is built similar to the Gemstone class.”

I nodded, but froze as a scratching noise came from somewhere ahead of us. We spotted the man who we’d seen run up the aisle just before the
attack. He was throwing himself against a door with the letters I.C.H. stamped across its front. Several bloody, misshapen fingernails were embedded in the wood,
his
fingernails.  

The man’s shirt was dripping with something dark and foul, and I realized he was wearing an Imperial uniform; he was a crewmember. I hadn’t noticed before because of all the blood. 

“Hey, is that the way out?” Finn asked cautiously. “Is it locked?”

Finn cleared his throat after he didn‘t respond.

“Sir?”

The man lowered his hands and turned toward us. There was a vacant expression on his face as he started walking in our direction. The same foul substance his shirt was soaked in was dripping from the corners of his mouth. 

“Stay behind me, Lily,” Finn said shakily, “and make sure nothing comes from behind us.”

He looked around and grabbed a metal rod from a box of props. I took a step back as Finn raised the bar like a baseball bat. The man was getting closer.

“Stop now or I’ll use this!” he warned, raising the rod higher. Finn’s threat didn’t register to the man. His hands slowly raised in front of him as he let out a long, low groan.

“Stop!” Finn yelled.

I closed my eyes a second before I heard the bar smash into the man’s body.

My skin crawled as something hot sprayed over the right side of my face. I opened my eyes and wiped my cheek, and realized it was the man’s blood, mixed with small bits of things I still refuse to think about.

My veins turned to ice as I realized my husband might have just killed someone, cannibal or not. I felt the salty sting of tears as Finn’s hand closed around mine once again.

The man’s body was sprawled on the floor in front of us, and a pool of something black and tar-like oozed from his mangled face. I thought he was dead… but then an unnatural and inhuman gargling noise escaped his motionless lips. He slowly lifted a blood-soaked hand in our direction when we started to move. His neck was arced at a weird angle, and despite his injury he still tried to reach out to us.

The blow had broken the man’s neck, and he was
still
alive. Finn turned and vomited. I still don’t know if it was because of what he’d done, or because of the rotten stench coming from the man.                         

“I promised nothing would happen to you,” Finn said as he turned back to me. “And I meant it.”

We made our way around the man. His mangled, outstretched fingers brushed our jeans as we edged by him. I covered my mouth in order to keep quiet as I nearly slipped on all the blood. Finn placed his hand on the door lever and mumbled under his breath. “Please don’t be locked.”

He turned the lever and pushed, and the door swung open to reveal a narrow staircase.

“Yes!” Finn whispered as he ushered me through. He followed close behind, gently shutting the door until the man who tried to attack us was out of sight. His hand still grasped the metal rod, which was now slightly warped. 

“Where does this lead to?” I asked, looking down the spiral stairs. My heart was still racing from our encounter with the man lying on the other side of the door. I tasted bile as I tried not to think about what was going on in the theater.   

“I‘m hoping it leads everywhere,” Finn answered as he bolted the door behind us. 

“What do you mean?” 

“The letters on the door.
I.C.H.
It stands for Imperial Crew Highway. All of Imperial’s ships have them. It’s a way for crewmembers to access every part of the ship with minimal passenger interference,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s perfect, because it’ll take us to any part of the ship without having to go anywhere those things might be. That’s assuming they’re not down there, too.”