Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

I could go for the phone—or the desk chair. For some reason, the chair felt safer. I hoisted it up and waved it at her like I was a lion tamer. “Get the fuck back. I mean it. Do it now.”

She knelt down with a grunt. The collection of fries that I’d licked all the salt off were sitting on the top of the trash. She picked them up and shoved them toward her maw. Just seeing her do that made me want to throw up all over again.

“Get out, get out, get out!” I screamed with increasing volume.

She looked up at me and screamed back, just as loud as I had, a guttural animal sound. Something frothed inside her mouth. Loud knocking started on the other side of our cabin door and a male voice asked. “Is everything okay?”

Emily unlocked the bathroom door and raced out, shrieking, “Daddy!” The strange woman tracked her motion, turning with frightening speed to lope after her, like she was a cheeseburger on legs. Emily opened the door and made it into the hallway, the woman hot on her heels. I threw the desk chair onto the bed and ran full speed after them—and reached the hallway just in time to see Hal step forward and clock the woman upside the head with a cane.

She went down with a crack, and Hal stood over her, ready to wallop her again. When she didn’t move, he looked at me as I panted in the doorway. “Are you okay?” he asked with a shout.

I nodded and took in the situation. The downed woman was breathing, but not much else. “Shit.”

Major concussion? Subdural hematoma? Shit shit shit.

I knelt down. I didn’t want to touch her, she was probably covered in germs, but—I folded her eyelids up and checked for blown pupils, then I felt over her head for dents. She wasn’t bleeding, but he’d hit her hard, and she’d gone down solidly. She was hot, like the children had been before.

“I said—are you okay?” Hal asked again, interrupting me. He pointed to the side of his head. “My hearing aids are out.”

“Yeah, I’m good, thanks.” I glanced over to Emily, who was staring up at Hal with a mixture of awe and disgust. “Are you okay, Emily?”

“You’re not my daddy,” she told Hal with disappointment.

“Nope,” Hal agreed. Then he knelt beside me. “Is she still breathing? I hit her pretty hard.” He was still overly loud—loud enough for himself to hear.

“She’s still breathing.” Though not much else. I knew I ought to try to wake her up, to check for brain function—but I couldn’t get the image of her rooting in my trash for licked fries out of my brain.

“Claire said she was threatening you, that I needed to get over here.” He looked from her to his cane.

I nodded emphatically so he’d know what I meant even if he couldn’t hear me. “I’m glad she heard us. Thank you.” I wasn’t sure I’d be able to explain it in court if this woman was dying now, but Emily and I had definitely been in danger.

He squinted, reading my lips. He probably needed glasses, too. Then he smiled widely. “You’re welcome!”

Claire came out of their room, rolling her wheelchair over to us, fighting the rocking of the ship. “How did you know?” I asked her.

“My ears are as good as my legs aren’t.” She looked down at the woman. “Oh, my.”

“Oh, my, is right.” With extreme reluctance I patted the woman’s rotund stomach. It was taut, but I couldn’t feel a baby inside—and frankly, the woman looked too old to have kids. Although these days with IVF, who knew?

“You two get her into her room—I’ll go get help from up the hall. Can you help me, little girl?” Claire asked Emily. Emily nodded and started pushing Claire’s wheelchair, although I could tell that Claire was doing most of the work.

The woman’s room was two up and across from mine, and the door was still barely open; it hadn’t clicked fully shut. I ran over to prop it open with a room service tray, trying to ignore the thirty or so she had stacked inside.

Then it took a lot of heaving and hoing—bodies were awkward to move. Thank goodness Hal was strong.

“She’s got a fever,” Hal over-enunciated to me.

“I’d noticed,” I muttered. I was trying not to breathe the woman’s air, and ignore that I was covered in her sweat.

“She’s very hot!” Hal reexplained.

I nodded again. “I KNOW.” I hauled her torso forward until we reached the end of her bed. “Help me get her sitting up.” I didn’t want her drowning in puke before the cavalry came. If they came, more like.

There were food trays all over the room. I wondered if finding out we were all on room arrest had triggered some kind of hysteria in her. I knew my room looked like I shouldn’t be one to talk, but this was absurd—and all her trays were empty.

“I’ve heard of feeding a fever, but this is ridiculous,” I said after taking a look around.

Hal grunted, the kind of noncommittal noise that people who couldn’t hear well made to keep conversations afloat. He did seem remarkably composed for a man who’d just brained someone into unconsciousness. Did he have a touch of Alzheimer’s, or was he just old school? Despite his strength he looked ancient enough to have been in any of the last five major wars.

I stood and my back popped. This was not what Asher had in mind when he’d left me up here to stay safe, and so much for wearing the mask. Hal dusted his hands off and looked to me for direction.

“Shouldn’t someone stay?” he shouted.

Technically? Yes. She could have a bleed inside her brain, above and beyond whatever ailment she’d had that’d made her go crazy and attack us. But there was nothing I could do about it right now, and I didn’t think the doctor below could even monitor her, much less do any pressure-relieving trepanation that didn’t involve a corkscrew or a beer tap. It hadn’t exactly been an ICU facility when I’d been down there for my pregnancy test.

And if I were honest, I didn’t want to be here when she woke up. Being in her room, trays practically licked clean—right down to tiny ketchup and mustard bottles, emptied—stacked on every available surface, made my hackles rise.

“They’re going to send help—but they warned it might be quite some time,” Claire said from the hall. Emily was sitting on her lap now, and Claire was running fingers through the girl’s long hair, which had somehow come out of its braid. “They said we should wash our hands, and each get back to our own room for the duration of the quarantine.”

I snorted. “I bet they did. Did they say the word quarantine ?”

“No. But what else could this be?” she said sensibly.

I stood over the insensate woman with her weird stomach and her weirder ways. It was stay here and watch her for signs of life like a hawk—and being afraid of her if she did wake up—or take the cruise employees at their word and walk away. I shook my head. I didn’t want it to be me who stayed here, but Emily was too young, and Hal and Claire were too old.

There was a lick of froth at the corner of the woman’s mouth now. Left-sided heart failure? Or … rabies? I frowned.

“Come out of there, you two. You’re not responsible for her—and I, for one, don’t want to catch what she has,” Claire said, absolving us all in one cantankerous swoop.

I put a hand to my stomach, weighing alternatives. Being in here is not good for you, baby, and that’s all that matters. I quickly followed Hal out the door.

As the woman’s door locked shut behind us, trapping us all—or just me—with the consequences of our decision, chimes blared again overhead. I jumped like it’d caught us doing something shameful. Maybe because it had.