Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost (2 page)

The bed rocked as his weight flopped onto it. Anna instinctively froze.

Silence thumped in the dark like the hurt. She strained to hear above her own gaspy breathing.

"Daddy?" she whispered.

The bed jolted and something snaked across her shoulder. His arm nudged her back through the blankets, and then came a horrible soft clicking sound, matched by a tightening of the blankets. The terror redoubled as she realized what it was: his teeth biting at the sheets.

She screamed and started burrowing through the sheets to the side. Her foot found the mattress edge and she pushed at the sheets as hard as she could. They untucked a little. She squirmed harder, using muscles she hadn't used for a year, until her toes popped through into the cooler air of the room.

Her father pressed harder and so did Anna, widening the hole until she could pour herself through it like hot tea: her foot and leg went first, the other leg followed, then her hips and the rest of her body tumbled through and slumped awkwardly onto the carpet.

She lay for a second panting in the cool air. Clouds glowed above in an eerie white light. It was a dream; it had to be a dream.

Her Daddy's face popped over the edge of the bed like a horrible jack-in-the-box. She froze. It was her Daddy but not her Daddy; the black centers of his eyes were gone, covered over with shining white like Humpty's cracked eggshells. His dark skin had gone gray and his breath sucked in and out with loud raspy wheezes.

He reached down for her and she yelped, then unfroze and rolled under the bed. In four dizzy revolutions she cleared the underside, just as he tumbled to the floor with a thump. She stared in disbelief as he got on his belly and started crawling toward her. It was tighter for him and he came on slow, but he didn't stop.

For the first time since the coma she stood up. It felt incredibly high up, like Alice after biting the cake. The dark room spun and her frail legs wobbled below. She barely remembered how to walk, and she didn't have a clue what to do. Most of all she wanted to call for her Daddy, but he was right here chasing her, and-

CRUNCH

A horrible sound came from below, shaking the house and making her jump. Another followed then another, and her heart skipped a beat with each one.

THUMP THUMP

More hit. Her Daddy was still well under the bed so she chanced a trip to the window. She hobbled over on the scratchy carpet to the window and caught her balance on the wall. The black velvet curtains were tacked to the frame, protecting her day and night from the light of the outside world. Now she slipped her hand underneath the fabric and tore it away.

Outside it was night still, and the road was filled with people.

They were everywhere, hundreds of them in pajamas and sweatpants. They all had the same strange gray skin and the same glowing white eyes, and all of them were trudging in the same direction down the road, like a river flowing to the ocean.

Then they stopped. Their heads turned as one, like flowers bending in the wind, and their glowing white eyes settled on her.

Her breath stopped.

They charged.

CRUNCH THUMP THUMP

They hit the house and glass shattered, the floor and wall shook, and Anna jerked away from the window to smack up against her Daddy.

"Aaah!" she screamed.

His hand came up to scrape her face and she ducked and staggered round him, running jerkily back to the bed. If she could just get back under the covers and close her eyes then this horrible dream would go away, she knew it. She started to climb up the mattress but her Daddy stopped her with a hand on her back.

She screamed again. He pressed closer trapping her against the bed frame so she couldn't move at all. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Stop it Daddy!" she wailed. "I don't like this game." He pressed closer still and his gray face with its white eyes loomed in and she thought she was going to die.

Then the Hatter barked from the other room.

She barely heard the weak sound of his bark over the crashing of people-waves outside, but her Daddy did. He stopped advancing at once and went very still. Anna went very still too, not even daring to breathe.

The Hatter barked again, more of a yelp than a real bark, and now her Daddy moved sharply away. He went through the bedroom door roughly, banging his shoulder off the frame.

Anna let out a quiet sob. The Hatter barked again and her Daddy was stalking now outside in the hall. He'd saved her, but now who would save him?  She was small but the Hatter was much smaller. She'd made a promise to protect him.

She got up and started for the door, almost tripping over her big ankles. She could hardly run; her body wasn't used to fast movement at all.

"Wait!" she called over the crashing sound.

It was dark and she stubbed her toe on the edge of the bedroom door. The corridor outside was a dark foreign territory, a place she hadn't seen for months, half-remembered from an old dream.

The dim light of her Daddy's eyes receded down the hall.

"Wait Daddy."

He turned into his bedroom. Anna bounced along the walls after him, calling all the time. Her legs were not used to this, her balance was weak, but the Hatter needed her and this was her one job. She reached the doorway gasping, exhausted from the exertion, to find her father holding the Hatter up before him in both hands.

"Here he is sweetie," her Daddy would have said, "come pet him, I'm so proud that you got out of bed."

But this was not her Daddy, and he didn't say any of that. Instead he lifted the struggling puppy to his face, opened his mouth, and bit down hard into the Hatter's soft and furry back.

2. THE HATTER

She'd begged her father for a dog for months.

"I'll be so good, I promise," she'd told him, "I won't pull his little ringlet tail or play the drums on his head or
anything
."

Her father had laughed, all chocolate brown in the comfy dark. "Pigs have ringlet tails, honey, not dogs."

"
I know
Daddy," she'd urged, "I know that, that's my whole point."

"I don't know about the drumming though."

"But I
won't
drum, don't you see? I won't!"

He laughed and stroked her hair. "Anna, you are a silly thing. I see your mother in you, you know. She was playful."

She never answered when he said things like this. This was the sadness, which loomed over him like the hurt loomed over her. This was the reason she wanted a dog so much; her mission, just as his mission was to help her get well. They would get well together.

"He'll hardly make a sound, I promise, and he'll keep us company, and when he's big enough I'll ride him around the room like a knight."

He raised an eyebrow. "We'd have to get you a saddle."

"I'll have a beautiful saddle!" she crowed, though of course quietly. "It can be leather or velvet or tomato-skin, I don't care. Just a dog Daddy, it would be wonderful. We can take walks and if I'm tired you can go out in the park with him, in the fresh air."

He popped his finger on then off her nose, like pushing a button. "I know what you're doing, sweetie. I get it."

"What am I doing?"

"I know you worry too. You want me to go out more."

She looked at him blankly. Of course this was true, but it felt very important he not know this, or she not admit it. All day every day he lived by her side. He had nothing else. After her Mommy had gone half the life had gone out of him too.

Maybe a dog could fix that.

"I just want a horse to ride around on. Daddy, can't I? It's only fair, you know. He'll be the best fun and the best friend to us both."

He sighed. She could feel the thoughts turning in his head.

"Maybe," he'd said.

They ended up with the Hatter. They would both love him, and he would change and save their lives.

Anna screamed. The Hatter screamed. His little bones cracked and his skin tore as her Daddy's big jaws crunched closed, then he yanked back and pulled the Hatter apart. Blood spattered everywhere, lit by the eerie white light from his eyes. Blood hit the carpet like gentle rain, and the Hatter's little body crumpled in her father's hands, becoming a lump and not a dog.

Anna screamed. 

Her Daddy chewed and the sound was horrible. Bits of skin and bone crunched and sheared in his grinding mouth. Stringy lines stretched from his lips to the torn lump in his hands.

The Hatter went silent and became just a ball of glinting black in her father's hands. The horrible bite-shaped hole in his back now defined him. His little spine poked up through the edges like stalks sprung off a snapped sapling twig.

Anna screamed. Her Daddy kept on chewing: grind crunch pop, turning the little puppy to bits. Tears filled her eyes and her jaw ached but he didn't even look at her. He swallowed then went in for another bite.

Anna ran at him and hit him in the belly and the leg.

"Stop it!" she cried. He didn't stop. She hit him and shouted until her fists hurt and her voice went hoarse.

"Stop it stop it stop it!"

He chewed on, biting at the bits left in his hands. The Hatter's hot blood splashed through his hands and onto her face. It poured down his pajamas in a dark trail, making the carpet sludgy. Soon the Hatter was all gone.

She staggered back. Her father's scraggly beard was smeared with blood and fur, like chunky chocolate ice cream.

"Daddy what have you done?"

In the hallway she noticed the crashing below was still going on. Sobs jerked up her throat like hiccups, like her Daddy was squeezing them out. In the doorway to her room she realized he was following.

She shouted and slammed the door shut. He thumped against it a second later but the handle didn't turn and the door didn't budge. His thumping joined with the thumping from below.

Anna pulled the side-table in front of the door. She climbed back into bed. She tucked her arms and legs into the tight covers and snuggled down low under them, like she was tiny Alice in a giant's pocket again. She pulled the pillows after her and wrapped them round her head.

The thudding diminished. She caught her sobbing and stopped. Soon enough sleep found her.

She dreamed she sailed upon an ocean.

The ocean was vast and made of people. They flowed upon each other smoothly, each a gray speck of water just like all the others. Anna sailed atop them with her bed as a boat, using the sheets and blankets as sails, wearing a blue and white petticoat like Alice.

"Ahoy there!" she called to the bodies below.

They carried her forward. She used the footboard as a tiller. Occasionally flapping birdwomen flew overhead, and she waved. She fished in the ocean of gray wriggling bodies, and came up with bright red chunks of tongue. They flapped at her like fish but said nothing.

The tides carried her for thousands of miles. The water-people lapped against her bed with low thuds. She stood at the prow looking to the horizon where her Daddy was waiting for her, a giant man sitting on a giant stool in the middle of the ocean.

"Darling Alice," he would say when she finally reached him, "why have you come so far?"

"I'm searching," was the answer she always gave, "am I home yet?" 

He'd smile. "What is home, little Alice, but threads and cobbles, bits of old lint plucked from your pocket? Build it up, child, build it up."

Then she'd lie down at his feet and pluck old lint from her pockets, and he'd sing a song with words that were probably about sailing and comas, but she never could tell.

It was a dream she'd had many times. But when she reached the stool-island this time, things were different. Her giant Daddy was standing not sitting, and his eyes shone like lighthouse beams, projecting a strange white light over the ocean and into the murky clouds. He didn't look down when she spoke to him.

"What are you looking for Daddy?" she asked.

"The Jabberwock," he said in a deep and dreadful voice.

This confused Anna, but confusion didn't last long within a dream.

"What can you mean? The Jabberwock's not even a real thing."

"But it is," he said, "and darling it's so terribly cold."

He bent his burning white eyes down to her, and she was lost within the light.

She woke lost within the light.

It was bright in her room for the first time since the hurt. She wormed out of the covers like a birdwoman coming up from her feather chrysalis. The black velvet curtains on the window were still pulled open and bright light flowed in. It lit her art spread around the walls: crayon drawings of unicorns and caterpillar-men and Alice. Normally even glimpsing all these colors brought the hurt on hard.

Now it didn't. Anna lifted her head and ran her eyes over the collection again, but still felt nothing.

That was quite peculiar.

"Daddy?" she called.

No answer came.

She sat up in bed and saw her arm. It gave her quite a shock. There was a thin line of crusted black running down it, like a scab, which meant…

She strangled a scream in her throat. Screams and shouts brought the hurt on harder. Instead she followed the scab-trail with wide eyes. It could be anything. It could be paint or ice cream or even old strawberry jam.

"Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today," she whispered to herself, but the words were not very convincing or reassuring. It wasn't jam. 

"Daddy?" she called again. Her voice sounded louder than usual. The temptation to duck her head back under the covers was strong, but she pushed it away. Alice wouldn't do that and neither would Anna.

She pulled herself out of the sheets and climbed from bed carefully, wary of the hurt. There were dark brownish-red footprints on the gray carpet. Standing by the bedside she lifted her right foot and looked at its sole.

Dark brownish-red.

She gulped and went to the door. The handle turned with difficulty, like it had been wedged in position. The door swung inward.