Brian Keene: Dead Sea

Jumping out of my seat, I swung the oar like a club, striking Runkle across the face. The shock reverberated up my arms. Runkle grunted. His lips split. Blood and teeth flew through the air. Dropping the oar, I jumped to Malik’s side and grabbed the broom handle right above his hands. Together, we spun the impaled man around and pushed him over the side. His blood dribbled down the spear toward us. We needed to hurry. Runkle gripped the edge of the lifeboat, holding on for dear life. Malik and I pushed harder. The tendons stood out on his neck as he struggled with us. The spear sank deeper into his body. The blood ran closer. Tasha ran forward, scooped up the shotgun, and smashed his fingers with the stock. With a final shove, Malik and I managed to topple the crazed cop into the churning waves. We let go of the broom handle, letting Runkle take the bloody weapon with him.

“He shouldn’t have messed with us,” Malik said, puffing out his chest.

“Are all of you wearing socks beneath your shoes?” I asked.

Nodding their heads slowly, Carol, Malik and Tasha all looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“Help me get the chief up,” I said. “Runkle bled into the water in the bottom of the boat. I don’t want the chief swallowing it.”

Tasha looked worried. “How are we going to bail if his blood’s in the water?”

“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But first thing’s first—help me with the chief. Carol, pick up everything that doesn’t have blood on it yet, especially the food and our weapons.”

Out on the ocean, Runkle let out a choked scream. I looked up in time to see a huge gray shape rising up beneath him. Runkle waved his arms, frantically beating at the water. His eyes bulged. There was a flash of white, what looked like a fin, and then he was gone in a surge of spray. Whatever the creature was, it had dragged him beneath the surface.

Malik ran to the edge of the lifeboat. “What the hell was that?”

“Don’t worry about it now,” I panted, sliding my hands under the chief’s armpits. “Just help me get him up before he’s infected.”

Carol collected the weapons and food while Tasha and Malik helped me with Chief Maxey. We got him into a sitting position on the bench. His head lolled back and forth in time with the waves. His nose was swollen and bloody, obviously broken, and he was missing one of his teeth. But he was breathing. I gently patted him on the cheek, and after a few seconds, his eyelids fluttered.

“Are the water bottles okay?” I asked Carol.

“They seem to be,” she said. “There’s no blood on them that I can see.”

“Hand me one.”

I unscrewed the cap and put the bottle to the chief’s mouth. The rim must have brushed against one of his sore spots, because he winced and then opened his eyes. Spring water ran down his throat, and he choked, spitting it back up.

“Runkle?” he gasped, glancing around. “Where is he?”

He tried to stand, but I gently forced him back down.

“We took care of it, Chief. Relax. You okay?”

“My nose hurts like a son of a bitch. I think it might be broken. But I’ll live.”

“Good. Might want to pick your feet up and keep them off the bottom of the boat.”

He looked down, and then back to me. “Is that my blood or Runkle’s?”

I shrugged. “Both, I think.”

Tasha grabbed my arm and pointed off the bow.

“Something moved out there.”

I squinted into the darkness. “I don’t see anything. What was it?”

“I don’t know. Something jumped out of the water and then swam underneath again.”

“Maybe it was just a big wave,” Carol suggested. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she didn’t believe it herself.

A blast of thunder ripped the night sky, drowning out the roaring winds.

I turned back to the chief. “Can you row?”

He nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

“Okay. I think we should get moving.” I sat cross-legged on the bench, keeping my feet out of the tainted water, and grabbed an oar. “Everybody sit back down. Try to stay out of the water. Hopefully, we’ll get a few more really big waves and they’ll wash that shit out of here. Then we can start bailing. Carol, are you awake enough to act as lookout?”

“Yes. I don’t think I could fall asleep right now if I wanted to.”

“Okay. You stand watch. Tasha, I want you to use the rifle. Make sure there’s no blood on it.”

She nodded.

“Hey,” Malik hollered. “What about me? How come I never get nothing?”

I smiled. “You get the shotgun. If you have to shoot it though, I want you to be careful.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s liable to knock you overboard, and we don’t need that.”

He looked back at where Runkle had been.

“No,” Malik said. “We sure don’t.”

We all took our places. Carol peered out into the sea. The chief and I started rowing. The kids held their weapons at the ready, keeping the barrels beneath some plastic sheeting that had escaped the water and blood. We didn’t talk. The GPS beeped mournfully. Chief Maxey glanced at it, checking our coordinates.

“We still on course, Chief?”

“We are,” he said, “and please, just call me Wade. I don’t have a boat anymore to be chief of.”

I nodded. “Okay… Wade.”

The thunder rumbled again. Then the glow stick went out, plunging us into darkness.

In that darkness, something moved. It splashed just off our starboard side. Whatever it was, it sounded big.

“Chief.” I whispered. “Sorry—I mean, Wade. Maybe we should start the motor.”

Lightning flashed, and I saw him nodding his head in agreement. Chief Maxey reached behind him and took a deep breath. Another splash echoed across the water, this time to our rear. Something bumped us from underneath the hull. We smelled it—rotten fish. Something dead, but still swimming. Then the motor burst to life. Chief Maxey gave it full throttle and we shot into the night.

The splashing sounds followed us for a long time before they faded.

When I looked back, all I saw was darkness.

The storm finally ended several hours later. There were a few last flashes of lightning and some final rumbles of thunder, almost as an afterthought. Then it was gone. During that time, we didn’t see anything else in the water, either above or below. Maybe the weather kept the creatures away or maybe there was a war going on beneath the surface, and they were too busy eating each other to worry about us. A replay of what had happened in our cities, a battle between the living and the dead, now being waged under the sea as well as on land. The sky cleared and we could see again. The sun was still down, but its first few predawn rays were visible as a red glow on the horizon. I wished the sun would hurry its ass up. All five of us were cold and shivering, soaked to the skin from the rain and the waves. The kids had runny noses. The chief—even though he’d asked us to just call him Wade, I still thought of him as Chief Maxey—had picked up a bad cough. Sounded like a goose. His entire body shook each time he coughed. His broken nose had swelled up like a golf ball, and when he talked, it sounded like he had a bad cold.

The storm had battered us about all night long. Luckily, the lifeboat hadn’t sunk. I’d been right about the storm surges washing the blood back into the sea. We were able to bail the water out after the first half hour. Carol and I did it while the chief stood guard and the kids held the weapons. We bailed very carefully, mindful of any leftover blood. When we were finished, Carol and I gathered up anything with Runkle’s blood on it and then tossed the items over the side, including his handgun. I hated to get rid of it, but we had nothing to clean and disinfect the weapon with. It sank like a stone.