Brian Keene: Dead Sea

On the surface of the barge, in between the rig and the building, was a fenced—in area where the drilling pipe and other equipment were kept. It also held a big garbage compactor. There were other pieces of machinery tied down to the rig to keep them from falling into the ocean. The fuel truck that I’d noticed earlier was also strapped down and the wheels were chocked. I peeked inside the cab and found the keys dangling from the ignition. At the end of the maintenance yard was a giant fuel tank filled with thousands of gallons of diesel, and a small trailer housing a generator. Beyond that was another big tank, holding fresh water, according to the sign stenciled on the side of it.

One thing that still bothered me was how the zombies had gotten on the rig in the first place. We’d encountered one, and saw signs of others the severed body parts and carnage. Had the lone zombie that we’d destroyed been responsible for the other deaths? If not, where were the rest of the creatures? The rig was deserted. And if that single, hard hat-wearing corpse had been responsible, how had he been infected in the first place? I had no answers, and thinking about it made my head hurt. There was a story here, but it wasn’t mine. It was somebody else’s monomyth, and it had ended badly.

I returned to the building. We set up in the crew’s quarters. For a while, we didn’t do much of anything. Exhausted, we simply sat there, grateful for the respite. Then we got ourselves cleaned up. I spent twenty minutes in the shower, letting the hot water caress me, feeling my aches and pains subside, washed away with the dirt and grime. It was the most wonderful thing in the world. When I emerged from the stall and toweled myself off, I felt like a new man.

We still had no clean clothes, but we found some spare uniforms in the crew’s quarters and we wore those instead. After everyone had cleaned up and relaxed, we ate dinner together—canned green beans and corn, cocktail wieners, crackers, peanut butter, pickles, potato chips, cereal, and bottles of juice and water. It was a feast.

I slept like a rock that night, and when I woke up the next morning, for the first time in my life, I remembered my dreams.

I dreamed I was a hero.

That all happened a month ago. The summer is over now and fall is on the way. The days grow shorter. It’s getting colder out here at sea, even during the daytime. The winds rip across the water, shaking the drilling platform. When the tide gets rough, it’s like being back onboard the Spratling again.

After a few days, we settled into our new lives with remarkable ease. It felt weird, at first, not living with the constant danger. Not being on the run or in hiding, constantly glancing over our shoulders and looking for the dead. It was hard to relax, in a way. Felt irresponsible for doing so. But once we’d realized that the zombies couldn’t reach us, and that we really were safe for the first time since this whole thing began, we embraced our new home.

Sometimes we talk about what could be happening on the mainland. We have no way of knowing, and it’s all speculation on our part, but it helps to take our minds off things. Are the cities and towns full of dead people, or has humanity managed to fight back? If so, is there hope for a rescue someday—a way off this oil rig, and back to the lives we knew before Hamelin’s Revenge?

Probably not.

We are surrounded on all sides by a dead sea. Even if the creatures in the water couldn’t reach us, their smell still could. With each passing week the stench has grown stronger-rotting fish and brine. The birds have a never ending smorgasbord. But when we’re inside the building and running the air filtration system, the smell doesn’t bother us too much. It’s only when we’re outside that it gets to be too bad, and even then it’s only unbearable on days with no wind. When it rains, the stench disappears.

Carol and the kids adapted well to our situation. We’ve each got our own room now. The privacy is nice, after all that time on the ship. She insisted on continuing their education. Both of them grumbled about it at first, but I think they actually enjoy their classes. It gives them something to do during the day—takes their mind off the overall situation. Trapped out here as we are, with no lifeboat or means of escape, monotony and boredom are our two biggest enemies. In the evening, we play video games or foosball, or shoot pool. Malik’s gotten really good at the latter. He’s a born hustler. One of the oil platform’s crew members left behind a kite and a spool of string. When they’re not studying or helping me with general maintenance, Tasha and Malik like to fly it outside. They get a really good breeze out here and the kite soars high. Carol reads a lot. We found some paperbacks in the crew’s berthing area, along with magazines and even a few old newspapers. The newspapers make me sad; they’re full of news that doesn’t matter. Current events that once seemed so important—the price of gas, the war in the Middle East, sex on television, celebrity baby photos. Once in a while, when we’re feeling hopeful, we turn on the television or radio. There’s never a signal, though. The static over the radio is the loneliest sound in the world.

When I’m working outside, I keep an eye out for ships on the horizon or planes in the sky. I’ve yet to see one. Doubt now that I ever will. Maybe we’re the last humans. I don’t know. Like I’ve always said, survival instinct is a motherfucker. It still is. We’ll go on living, go on fighting to survive. We have to. If we are the last humans left alive, then God has a pretty fucked-up sense of humor. How are we going to re-populate the planet once the zombies all rot away? Tasha and Malik are brother and sister. I’m a gay man. And even if I wasn’t gay, it turns out that Carol has already been through menopause. So much for that idea. The future falls to Tasha and Malik. They are the next generation. They have to survive. I have to be their hero.

We found some bags of marshmallows in the dry goods storage room. Sometimes at night we build a fire in an empty oil drum, using broken up skids for kindling. Then we roast marshmallows. The smoke drifts up into the sky. I like to pretend that somebody up there can see it. Maybe not an airplane, and certainly not God—God is dead. I know that now. God is one of them. But maybe someone else can see it. There are astronauts onboard the international space station, right? They were there when the disease first started, and they’re still up there. Like us, they have no way to get home. So I pretend that they can see our smoke, and that they no longer feel so alone. They know that someone else is still alive, that humanity survives, that life prevails.

But it’s just pretend.

I found a Bible among the personal belongings the crew left behind. The spine is cracked and the pages marked and worn. Whoever it belonged to read it an awful lot. I’ve flipped through it a few times, reading passages at random, looking for solace and comfort. I haven’t found either. But I did find a verse that spoke to me. Jeremiah, chapter eight, verse twenty: “The summer is over, the harvest is in, and we are not saved.”

The summer is over and death’s harvest is in. It was a bumper crop this year. And here we are, safe on this oil rig—safe, but not saved.

We’ve been careful to ration our food supply. The fresh water tank is full. I found an instruction manual that told me how to siphon water up out of the ocean in case of an emergency, but I won’t. That’s just asking to be infected with Hamelin’s Revenge. No sense taking chances. We’ve cut back on showers, only taking them every few days. We’ve got plenty of diesel fuel though, so there’s no chance of running out of power for a long time, unless the generator dies. On our second day here, we discovered a walk—in freezer filled with meat and frozen vegetables. Twice a week, we get something out of the freezer and defrost it. Otherwise, we stick to the dry stuff and canned goods, and even those are rationed. We’ve been supplementing our food with the birds. There are certainly enough of them. Rather than wasting ammunition, we hunt them with Alka-Seltzer tablets. We go out onto the platform and scatter a mixture of table scraps and Alka-Seltzer tablets that we found in the medical supplies. The birds gobble it up. But their digestive system is different than a human’s. Since they can’t burp or fart, the Alka-Seltzer sits in their stomach, fizzing away, until the gas and foam builds up to the point where it has nowhere to go. Then the birds’ stomachs pop. Once they’re dead, we have to gut and clean them pretty quickly. Otherwise, their burst stomachs leak into the rest of the body, ruining the meat. It’s pretty fucking gruesome, but necessary. We’ve got to save our food supply for as long as we can, and we can’t use up the rest of our bullets on seagulls.