Brian Keene: Dead Sea

And then we waited, watching each other for the first warning signs of the disease. All of us were sleepy, but there was no nausea, shortness of breath, or decreased circulation. We kept an extra eye on the chief, figuring he’d had the greatest risk of exposure. Hours passed uneventfully. If any of us had contracted Hamelin’s Revenge, we showed no indications of it. We all felt and seemed fine. Carol suggested that maybe there was something in the saltwater that killed the disease. But the fact was that none of us knew for sure. I was an unemployed factory worker. Carol was a former quality control manager at an injection molding plant, and more recently, a makeshift teacher for the kids. And the chief was an ex-coast guard chief and museum guide. None of us had the tools to fully understand and diagnose Hamelin’s Revenge, let alone the skills for figuring out how to defeat it.

The sun crept higher and the birds came out, circling over us and screeching at the dawn. I wondered where they’d all come from. According to the chief, there was no land nearby. We’d seen none during the night—no lights on the horizon. They’d obviously taken shelter from the storm. But here they were now, as if materializing out of the clouds.

We shut the motor off again to conserve fuel, and once more began rowing. I looked out across the ocean and sighed. I felt like shit. I was exhausted, grimy, and sore. My ears felt all stuffed up because of all the close-range gunshots without hearing protection. My clothes were soaked. Dried salt caked my lips and the corners of my eyes. The wind scraped against my skin like sandpaper. As I rowed, I blocked out the protests from my arms and back, focusing instead on the sea. It was a big contrast from the night before. The water was so beautiful. The hypnotic rhythm of the foam-topped waves almost lulled me to sleep. I stopped rowing for a second and rubbed my bloodshot eyes. They felt dry and crusty. I kept them closed, and my breathing slowed. I felt relaxed. Peaceful. Then a wave lapped gently against the side of the lifeboat, breaking the spell. I shook my head and began rowing again, forcing myself to wake up. The surface was like the top of a birthday cake—smooth and flat, broken only by small, cresting waves. Farther down in the depths, the deep blue gave way to gray and green, then black. It seemed like it went on forever. Nothing moved down there. I wanted to jump over the side and just sink to the bottom, washing the filth from my body—a baptism.

The chief was also staring into the depths.

“We should be right over the Ethel C.”

“What’s that?” Malik asked.

The chief snorted, clearing dried blood out of his sinuses, and then told us.

“The Ethel C was a Lebanese freighter. That’s a ship that carries cargo from one place to another. She sank here back in April of 1960. She departed New York on her way to the Mediterranean Sea, hauling a load of scrap iron. Historians believe that the cargo must have shifted, breaching her hull. Some of the survivor’s reports indicate that. Others differ. Whatever the cause, the pumps couldn’t keep up with the water flooding in, and she sank. They never even managed to get out a distress call. According to reports, she went very quickly.”

Malik moved closer to him. “Quicker than the Spratling did?”

The chief nodded sadly. “Much quicker, but despite everything, all of the crew made it off alive. There were twenty-three men in the lifeboat. Imagine how crowded they must have been, packed in there like sardines in a can. And you folks thought this little lifeboat was crowded. Of course, theirs was a lot bigger than this one. They drifted for thirteen hours before the coast guard picked them up. That’s where their story ends. But that’s not the end for the Ethel C. She’s still there. She’s down there right now—sitting upright on the bottom of the ocean.”

Malik glanced out at the water. “Just how deep is this, anyway?”

“Where we are?” The chief shrugged. “If I remember correctly, it’s right around one hundred and ninety feet deep. The wreck is intact—all three hundred and twenty-nine feet of her—so if you were to dive down there and go scavenging, you’d find her wheelhouse at about one hundred and forty feet and the rest of her below that.”

“Intact?” Tasha slid closer, enthralled with the conversation. “You mean like it’s still new?”

“Well, not quite. The Ethel C has been down there for a long time, so she’s in pretty bad shape. The hull is probably corroded. But as I said, she is still upright and divers say that she has a very impressive haul. Over the years, they’ve brought up the navigation equipment and most of her portholes, along with silverware, mementos, picture frames, pocket watches, jewelry—things like that. People pay big money for treasure like that.”

“Dang,” Malik breathed. “I’d love to dive down to a shipwreck. Imagine all the stuff down there.”

Carol nodded her head in agreement. “It’s romantic, in a way.”

I tuned them out, thinking about the wreck of the Ethel C, sitting on the ocean’s floor, dead—and yet, in a way, still alive in the recovery operations conducted by the divers, and alive in the memories of men like the chief. It was sadly poignant. After all, death wasn’t the end anymore. Staying in your grave was strictly old school. And if there was such a thing as a soul, what proof did we have that it lived on? What if our souls were trapped inside those rotting corpses-able only to watch in horror and revulsion as our own bodies turned against those we loved? What kind of an afterlife was that? That wasn’t heaven. It was hell. Eternal life equaled zombie. Better to achieve immortality another way. Regardless of our religion, regardless of what we believed, the cold, simple truth was that none of us had a fucking clue what lay beyond this life. The only kind of eternal life we could be sure of was the kind enjoyed by this shipwreck—living on in the memories of others. Like a myth. An archetype. The professor had been right. We were monomyths. All of us. Every survivor. If humanity was able to survive, if five hundred years from now Tasha and Malik’s descendents sat in a classroom and learned about ancient history, we would take the place of Hercules and Superman. Come hear the tale of Mitch, the warrior, and Runkle, the trickster, and Lamar, the hero.

Bullshit.

A fat seagull darted down to the ocean’s surface and then flew back up into the air. Something red dangled from its beak. I noticed more birds doing the same. They were feeding off something floating on the tide. We were too far away for me to tell what it was. I figured it was just seaweed.

Yawning, the chief checked the GPS and nodded with satisfaction.

“We’re getting closer,” he said, clearing his swollen nose again. “We should be able to see the jack-up in a little while. Not a moment to soon, either, if you ask me. The sun’s going to be brutal today, out here on this open water. We’d have to deal with sunburn and exposure on top of everything else.”

Carol smiled. “Between a bad case of sunburn and an army of zombies, I’ll take the sunburn.”

He returned her smile and Carol blushed, and then quickly looked away. The chief’s ears turned red. I stifled a grin. Maybe there was hope for the human race yet.

“Don’t be so sure,” the chief told her. “We’ve been out here all night, exposed to the elements. We’re all dehydrated. A few hours with the hot sun beating down on us and we’re going to be in even worse shape. First we’ll blister. Then we’ll—”

“That’s okay,” Carol said, holding up her hand. “You can spare me the gory details. I believe you.”

“Sorry.”