Brian Keene - Dead Sea

I shook my head. “We don’t know guys. We just don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Moaning with pain, Mitch tightened the pillowcase. It was already soaked through with blood. Brushing away her tears, Tasha stripped the sheet off his bed, grabbed Mitch’s pocketknife from his locker, and began cutting the sheet into strips. Joan kept clawing at the door.

“Can Joan work the latch?” Malik asked, glancing at the door.

“I don’t think so.” I turned back to Mitch. “There has to be a way. Amputation? Fire? You can’t just give up.”

Teeth clenched, he finished tying off the bite. The linens were stained red, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

“I ain’t giving up,” he said. “Just making better use of my time. Don’t know how long I got, so let’s not mess around. Get the guns out. All of them.”

Malik stopped crying completely. “The grenades, too?”

“Yeah, Malik.” Mitch grinned, despite the pain. “The grenades, too.”

I lifted up his mattress and pulled out the rifle and the shotgun. Then I grabbed the ammunition and grenades. Mitch propped himself up against the wall and nodded.

“You’ll have to load them. And Tasha, you’re gonna have to carry a rifle this time. I can fire the pistol, even with this bum arm. But there’s no way I’ll be able to handle a rifle.”

“I can do it,” Tasha said, “if you teach me how.”

“Won’t be much time,” Mitch said. “But I’ll try.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have a gun at all,” I suggested. “1 mean, no offense, Mitch, but you said it yourself. We’re on borrowed time here.”

“Yeah, but I ain’t dead yet. What—you think I’m going to turn on you guys? I’ve got to die before I become a zombie, Lamar. So I might as well take out as many of these damn things as I can before that happens. Who knows how many are loose on the ship.”

“How did they get onboard?” I asked, echoing the kids.

“Well, let’s think about it for a moment. However it happened, they got to Joan first. By the looks of her, she hasn’t been dead long. We saw her at dinner, right?”

The three of us nodded.

“Okay,” Mitch said. “Then it happened between the time she left the galley and now.”

“Was there anybody else in the passageway?”

“I don’t think so.” Mitch shrugged, clenching his teeth as more pain shot through him. “I really… didn’t get a chance to see. She attacked me… right away. She must have been coming down the corridor.”

I frowned. “Do you remember which direction she came from?”

Mitch paused, thinking about it. “Forward.”

“Her compartment is aft. So she wouldn’t have been coming from there. After dinner, Joan and Alicia were going to check in on the professor and Basil…”

My voice trailed off. The realization jolted me. My stomach lurched and my head swam. I thought I might pass out, so I sat down on the floor.

“Lamar,” Tasha cried out. “What’s wrong?”

“The professor and Basil. Both of their berthing areas are in the forward section. Joan was coming from their compartments.”

“Maybe,” Mitch said. “But that still doesn’t explain—”

“The fish.” I slammed my palm down on the floor. “The tuna—the one that swallowed the hook. Don’t you see? It kept thrashing around even after it had been out of the water for so long. It was wounded. Bleeding! And the professor had an open wound on his hand. His hand was covered with the fish’s blood .”

Malik frowned. “What are you talking about?”

I jumped up. “Remember when the dead first started coming back to life? There were cross-species jumps. Well, that’s happened again. Hamelin’s Revenge has spread to the fish. It’s in the rucking ocean now. The tuna was already dead. We just didn’t realize it. Remember that sore on its tail? We thought it was some kind of fungus or parasite, but you were right. You said it was a bite, Mitch. We should have listened to you. We should have paid attention, especially after all we’ve seen. Horses were supposed to be immune, but the other day, the chief said he’d seen a zombie horse. It can jump species. We should have lucking thought .”

“Lamar.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Get a… grip on yourself, man. You’re hysterical, and that’s not… going to help us… right now.”

“Lamar,” Tasha pleaded. “You’re scaring Malik. Please help.”

“Sorry.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, guys. It’s just not fair.”

“No,” Mitch said. “It’s not. But it happened anyway, and we can’t… change that. Right now, we need to stop it before anyone else gets… killed. Please, Lamar—while I can still think and move?”

“Okay.” I forced myself to calm down.

Mitch smiled. “You keep… asking everyone why we fight to survive when… it all seems so hopeless. Why we continue to go on? This is why. Because you’re a hero… and that’s what heroes do. They rise to the… occasion.”

I nodded, unable to speak around the lump in my throat.

“What are we gonna do now?” Malik asked, running his fingers over the grenades.

Mitch struggled to sit up farther. “Well, the first thing is that… you’re not to use those grenades. Set it off in the wrong spot and you’ll… sink this boat. They are a last resort, and I’m going to keep them… on me.”

“Well then what the hell am I gonna use? I need something, too. I want to blow stuff up again.”

“We’ll find something for you. For now, reach into my locker and pull out that big bayonet.”

“Man, I don’t want no stupid knife. Give that to Tasha.”

“I’ve already got his pocketknife,” Tasha said.

“Malik,” Mitch groaned. “Don’t… argue with me.”

Sulking, Malik did as he was told. His attitude changed when he saw the size of the bayonet—military-issue and nearly twelve inches long. It looked very sharp. Until now, I hadn’t even known Mitch had it.

“Now, that’s a knife,” Malik said, his demeanor changed.

Mitch grinned. “We cool now?”

“Hell, yeah!”

“Good. Now, Lamar, slide me the… weapons and the ammo. Tasha, go listen at the door… and tell us what you hear.”

While he checked and loaded the guns—carefully, so as not to bleed on them—Tasha crept to the hatch and listened. Her upper lip quivered with fear, and her eyes were wide.

“Miss Joan is still out there,” she whispered. “1 can hear her scratching on the door. Sounds like when our teacher at school, Ms. Price, used to run her fingers down the chalkboard. And there’s a banging noise too, but it sounds far away.”

Mitch slid bullets into the pistol’s magazine. “No screams or gunshots?”

Tasha shook her head.

“How about… Carol? Do you hear her?”

“No.”

“Good. That means… she listened to Lamar and is still inside her compartment. Okay, Joan is infected… so we have to assume that Alicia is, as well. That means there are at least… four zombies onboard.”

“Four?” I was confused. “There’s Joan, Professor Williams, and maybe Alicia.”

“Right.”

“So then who’s the fourth?”

“Basil. He had the… tuna’s blood on him, too.”

“Shit. I’d forgotten about that. But if he didn’t have an open cut and didn’t get it in his mouth, he might be okay.”

“Maybe, but we have to… assume he’s one of them… now.”

Carol called out and we yelled back, telling her to stay inside.

“The professor and Basil are probably mobile,” Mitch continued. “They died from the disease, rather than from… an actual attack by an infected corpse. Alicia’s the wild card. Maybe they… tore her to pieces, or maybe… she’s still mobile, too.”