Brian Keene - Dead Sea

Basil, who had only been paying half-attention, sat up. “Why would we need to do that?”

“Disease,” Turn answered. “Think about it. Even if the army or somebody had killed all the zombies, they wouldn’t have been able to burn all the bodies. There’s simply too many of them. The fire pits worked early on, but once the situation got out of control, those failed, too. So now you’ve got thousands, maybe millions, of dead bodies lying around—or walking around. Corpses carry disease. Every zombie is nothing more than a walking biohazard.”

“Good point,” I said. “But if that were the case, then why aren’t any of us sick yet? We’ve survived this long. Wouldn’t we have caught whatever disease they’re carrying by now?”

“Not necessarily. I don’t know for sure because I wasn’t on deck when you guys shared your stories. But I’ll bet almost all of us survived by staying holed up somewhere and avoiding the zombies whenever possible. The fires were what forced us out of hiding, and we had limited contact with the dead before boarding the Spratling .”

Basil still wasn’t convinced. “You guys remember Hurricane Katrina, right? In New Orleans, people waded through the floodwaters, and there were bodies floating in the streets. There wasn’t a massive outbreak after that.”

“Lot’s of people got sick in New Orleans,” Turn said. “But the difference was that there were aid stations and medical help on hand soon after.”

Tony lit a cigarette. “Maybe we’re immune to Hamelin’s Revenge. Maybe we’ve already been exposed and it just didn’t take.”

“Maybe,” Hooper said, “your ass should go first when we land. Let one of them fuckers take a bite out of you and then we’ll see if you’re immune.”

“No thanks.”

“I think we should keep an eye on each other,” Mitch suggested. “Make sure nobody is getting sick.”

“I agree,” Runkle said. “And if they do show signs of disease, we should quarantine them.”

None of us argued with him. Runkle may have been a prick, but he was right. No way could we risk everyone onboard the ship coming down with hepatitis or the bubonic fucking plague.

Chief Maxey tapped the laminated map. “That’s all the more reason why we need to find a place to resupply ourselves soon. In addition to food and water, we need medicine and first aid supplies. If we’d had insulin, maybe that poor woman would still be alive.”

“No sense beating yourself up over that, Chief,” Tony said. “It was just bad fucking luck on Stephanie’s part. There wasn’t anything we could have done.”

“I suppose not,” the chief admitted, “but I’ll be damned if we’re going to lose anyone else because of something like that. We’ve got one little bottle of aspirin and Murphy’s cough syrup supply—and he’s drinking through that like it’s a bottle of Knob Creek. If somebody does get sick or hurt, we’re going to need a lot more than those.”

“Okay,” Mitch said. “So Norfolk and Portsmouth are out. Same with Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads, Little Creek, and Ocean City.”

“Virginia Beach is a possibility” Chief Maxey corrected. “Down from the tourist area, there’s a stretch of national forest. There’s a small station there we could try.”

“What’s up north?” Runkle asked.

“The Isle of Wight.” Chief Maxey traced the coastline with his finger. “And up in Delaware, there’s Rehobeth Beach, Bethany Beach, and South Bethany—all of them are going to be packed with zombies.”

Turn said, “What about the lighthouse at Fenwick Island? That should be fairly deserted. I think the lighthouse itself is on automatic, so there’d only be a maintenance man, if anyone.”

“That’s a long way to go,” Chief Maxey sighed. “We’re closer to North Carolina and points south. I think we should consider one of those or the station near Virginia Beach—keep Fenwick as a last resort. Maybe we could try one of the islands off the Carolina coast.”

“I don’t know, Chief,” Turn said. “Those islands are all inhabited, and they had regular contact with the mainland, which increases the chances of infection. I think Fenwick Island is our best shot.”

While they were talking, I noticed a little red dot on the map, positioned farther out in the Atlantic Ocean. It looked like it had been drawn with a dry-erase marker.

“What’s this?” I asked, pointing to it.

“Oil rig,” Chief Maxey grunted.

I was surprised. “There are oil rigs off the East Coast?”

“Sure,” Turn said. “There wasn’t a lot of drilling going on off Florida because of political stuff, but there are lots of operations elsewhere in the Atlantic. Most of them are way off shore. The one you’re pointing at is a jack-up. It’s mobile, which is why we drew it on the map in erasable marker. That was its last known location.”

“What’s a jack-up?” Basil asked.

Hooper grinned. “It’s when I run up to Lamar and jack his ass up.”

“You’re welcome to try,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady. Things had not calmed between us since our initial introduction. He thought I was an Uncle Tom and had since learned that I was gay—two strikes against me. In turn, I thought he was a lazy, ignorant, punk-ass motherfucker.

“I’d like to see him try it, too,” Mitch said.

“Ya’ll are tripping,” Hooper muttered, backing down. “I’m just fucking around.”

“A jack-up is a shallow water rig,” Turn explained, ignoring Hooper. “Basically, it’s just a big barge with a drilling rig and living quarters attached to it. The oil companies float it wherever they need to drill and then there are literally jacks that extend down, raising the platform and stabilizing it on the surface. It’s a little smaller than a full-blown drill ship. They’ve got motion compensating motors and all that shit. But anyway, yeah, they’re out there. Not just confined to the Gulf. The oil companies are forever drilling test wells just to see what’s down there beneath the ocean floor.”

Mitch asked aloud what I had been thinking. “So why couldn’t we just go to that rig?”

“There would still be zombies,” Chief Maxey said. “Even a small platform would have a crew. The company man, the tool pusher, driller, derrick man, floor hands, cooks, and roustabouts. Unless they evacuated the crew before everything on the mainland collapsed, they’d still be there.”

“Yeah,” Mitch said slowly, “but they wouldn’t necessarily be zombies. If they had no connection to the mainland, then there’s no way they’d have caught Hamelin’s Revenge. You’ve got to be exposed to it—bitten or come into contact with infected blood—to turn into one of them, right? Only thing that could get them would be the birds and the fish, and neither of them are carriers. Those crews could still be alive. They could help us.”

“He’s got a point, Chief,” Turn said. “In the Gulf, it’s pretty common for shrimp boats and the like to pull up and trade their catch for diesel. Stands to reason the same would go for Atlantic platforms. We could trade for supplies. They’d probably welcome us, especially now.”

“But we don’t have anything to trade.”

“We’ve got transport,” Turn said. “I doubt the oil company is sending a helicopter to pull them off the jack-up anytime soon. But we can. We’re their ticket off the rig.”

“Okay,” the chief argued, “but what if they don’t want to leave? What if they’d rather stay? Then what? What else do we have to trade?”

“The women,” Runkle suggested. There was no hint of humor in his voice. The guy was serious.

We stared at him in disbelief.

“Fuck that,” Hooper said. “The women are ours. We ain’t trading them. Need them for breeding purposes.”