Dead Sea

Chapter Thirteen

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.

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.”

“You lost your hat. If we had some sunscreen, I’d rub some on your head so that you don’t get burned.”

The chief turned beet red.

I hid another grin. He had a lot to learn about talking to women if he was going to be the last player on earth. Taking another break from rowing, I leaned out over the side and trailed my fingers through the water. It was cool, and felt good on my skin. The sun climbed higher into the sky, reflecting off the ocean’s surface, shimmering like headlights on a busy city street.

And then something bit my finger.

Screaming, I pulled my hand out of the water.

The others looked at me in alarm. Tasha and Malik jumped up and ran to my side of the lifeboat, rocking it dangerously back and forth.

“What’s wrong?” Malik asked. “What’d you see?”

I glanced back down in the water. A dead fish floated just a few inches below the surface. When it turned, I saw that its belly was missing. Its mouth gulped in an 0 shape. There were no teeth, but that hadn’t stopped it from trying to swallow my finger. I held my hand up in front of my face, examining myself for wounds or scratches. There were none. I wiped it on my shirt and shivered.

“Get out of the way,” Malik shouted, trying to push past his sister. “Let me kill it.”

Tasha shoved him back. “Stop pushing, Malik. You’ll tip us over.”

“Both of you stop it,” I said. It was hard to speak. My heart was still in my throat. My skin tingled. If the fish had been equipped with teeth—well, that would have been it for me. Shuddering, I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Another dead fish bobbed to the surface, its festering tail flicking slowly back and forth. Even underwater, we could see that its entire length was covered with open sores. Scales and strands of flesh floated from its sides. A third appeared, and then a fourth—then a whole school of fish, varying in size and type. The surface teemed with them. The chief leaned out over the bow and Carol kept watch from her side.

“There’s more here,” she cried.

“Here, too,” Chief Maxey reported. “Dozens of them. Everybody sit back and hang on tight.”

He started the motor. There was a grinding sound from underneath the lifeboat’s hull. Blood, scales, and a decapitated fish head floated to the surface. The zombie fish had been chopped into bits by the propellers. Chief Maxey gunned the engine and the boat’s front end tilted up into the air, knocking us all backward. We held on as he pulled away. The boat leveled out again. I looked back, and in our V-shaped wake, I saw more undead fish—and something else. A sleek, dark shape closed the distance between us and disappeared beneath the boat. Something bumped into us from underneath, scraping along the bottom and jarring the lifeboat. A triangular fin resurfaced on the other side.

Carol gasped, “Oh my God…”

“Shark,” Malik shrieked, jumping up and down. “It’s a shark!”

More fins erupted from the water, appearing on both sides of the lifeboat. They paced us, having no trouble keeping up. The chief pushed the throttle to its maximum and we pulled ahead. The fins fell behind, but the creatures were still determinedly giving chase.

Carol gripped the bench. “Are they alive or dead?”

“It don’t matter,” Malik shouted at her. “They’re sharks. Ain’t you ever seen the movies? They’ll eat us either way.”

Tasha had left the rifle lying on the bench. As the boat shot forward, it slid toward me. Snatching it up, I shouldered the weapon and peered through the scope. Everything was blurry and I had to read just the magnification. Then, able to see, I moved the crosshairs around, searching desperately for a fin. I found one, and scanned the water, looking for its head. The effort was pointless. The shark’s body was submerged, its head hidden. Cursing, I squeezed the trigger, aiming for where I thought the head should be. The rifle bucked against my shoulder and pain tore through my chest. Through the scope, I saw a plume of spray as the bullet sliced the ocean’s surface. I must have missed, because the shark didn’t slow. Raising my head to get a better look, I noticed more sleek fins dotting the surface. One of the sharks was close enough for me to see that it was missing a chunk of hide. Gray skin gave way to pink and white meat. The open wound confirmed what I’d already suspected. The sharks were dead.

The zombies circled closer. The chief leaned forward, as if willing the lifeboat to go faster. I looked through the scope and fired another shot. The fin changed course, swerving away. I shot at it again, but the bullet still seemed to have no effect. Meanwhile, another of the creatures cut us off from the front and swam head on, as if intent on ramming us. The chief shouted for the shotgun, but before anyone else could act, Malik grabbed the weapon and ran to the bow. He aimed the shotgun, thin arms struggling to keep it aloft. The shark emerged from the waves. Its mouth was open wide, flashing rows of white, razor-sharp teeth. Malik squeezed the trigger. The shark’s black eye exploded and some of its snout was sheared away. The blast knocked Malik to the floor. He looked stunned, but he kept the shotgun clutched tight in his hands. As he struggled to stand, I took aim with the rifle. The shark skated along the side of the lifeboat. Its ruined eye leaked blood and pulp, but it didn’t cease its attack. Shrieking, Carol scooted out of the way as it raked the hull with its teeth. I lined up the crosshairs right over the gaping hole where its eye had been and took my shot. The shark reared up out of the water and then sank beneath the waves. The frothing surf turned red.

Quickly, I searched for another target, while Malik stumbled to his feet. Gripping the shotgun, he stomped over to the side and aimed, letting the barrel lead the shark by a few feet. Despite the chaos, I was once again amazed at the boy’s adaptability. It was like he intuitively knew how to shoot.

Malik and I sank two more zombie sharks before the chief managed to outrace them. Even then, the fins followed along behind us. Again, I thought of the slaughter that must be taking place under the sea. How many different species of fish and crustaceans lived in the Atlantic Ocean? How many of them were dead already, and hunting the others? As Malik and I reloaded, the GPS gave out a series of loud, rapid beeps.

“Look around,” the Chief shouted. “We should be able to see the jack-up!”

We glanced expectantly in each direction, but saw nothing except gray water and clear sky. The two merged, indistinguishable from one another.

The horizons were empty except for the circling birds moving across them in great flocks.

A dolphin chattered off the port side. I lined it up in the crosshairs, but held off on taking the shot. It didn’t look dead. Then the dolphin leapt from the water, soaring through the air and splashing back down again, sending up a huge plume. When visibility improved again, I saw the water turn red as the dolphin thrashed. Something else was attacking it from below. The dolphin’s body turned over again and again. By the third spin, its white underbelly was scarlet. I pointed the scope down and my eyes widened. A school of undead dolphins were ripping their brother to shreds. They spun him with their noses, ramming him and darting in for quick, savage bites. Then one of them noticed us. It swam toward the lifeboat. The scope’s magnification made the creature’s gaze seem malevolent. Before I could shoot it, the dolphin plunged below the waves.

I moved the scope around, trying to find the dolphin again before it could reach us.

And then Carol screamed.

The zombie dolphin launched itself from the water and soared through the air. I could only stand there gaping as it landed in the lifeboat, knocking my oars into the sea. Carol screamed again, scuttling backward on her hands and feet like a crab. The chief pressed himself against the side, unable to let go of the throttle, because if he did, the boat would stall. Then we’d be dead in the water—in more ways than one. Brave but weaponless, Tasha watched the dolphin warily. I raised the rifle and lined up the crosshairs. But before I could act, Malik pressed the shotgun against the creature’s head and pulled the trigger. The dolphin squeaked once and then died. Its tail slapped against the sides of the boat as its brains and blood leaked out onto the bottom.

“Get away from it,” I warned them all. “Don’t let the blood come in contact with you.”

The GPS suddenly rang a shrill alarm, distracting all of us for a second.

“I see it,” the chief shouted. “The oil rig. I see it, on our port side!”

We all looked in the direction he was pointing. There was a black dot on the horizon.

“That?” Carol asked, squinting.

“Yes, indeed,” the chief said. “That’s the jack-up. Ladies and gentlemen, we made it.”

We cheered, staring in disbelief. Tasha ran over and hugged me. Carol began to weep with joy. Malik raised the shotgun over his head and laughed.

“Let’s go,” the chief yelled. “Hold on tight.”

Before we could even heed his warning, he turned the lifeboat in a wide arc, flinging us all to one side. We grasped the benches and the sides, trying to avoid slipping or falling into the dolphin gore. The boat whipped forward, racing across the surface, the front end shaking as it bounced up and down on the waves. The zombies fell farther and farther behind. A scarlet cloud spread out in our wake as they turned on the other creatures of the sea.

“We can make it,” the chief shouted over the engine’s roar.

I wondered who he was trying to reassure—us or himself. I waited breathlessly for something else to go wrong, for the engine to smoke or sputter, for us to run out of fuel or for another school of zombie sharks to suddenly emerge in front of us. But nothing happened. We rocketed across the ocean and the oil rig drew nearer. We could see it easily now—a big black barge with an oil drilling rig and living quarters attached to it. Its size was astonishing. Like a small town. As we drew closer, I noticed there was even a tanker truck and several forklifts parked on the platform. I remembered that either the chief or Turn had told us that a jack-up was actually a small operation. I wondered just how big a full-sized oil rig was.

“Usually,” the chief said, “the oil companies bring their personnel in either via helicopter or boat. There’s a landing pad on the platform and lower level docks at the water’s surface. I’ll pull alongside that. Lamar, you stand ready with that rifle while Carol and the kids disembark, just in case any of those things try a last minute attack.”

I nodded, and he continued, turning to the others “Once you three are safely on the dock, Lamar and I will hand the supplies to you. Then I’ll tie us off and we’ll be home free.”

Unless there are dead people onboard, I thought.

“How do we get up to the higher levels?” Carol asked. “It seems awfully high. I hope there aren’t any stairs. My legs are killing me, and I banged my knee when that dolphin jumped onboard.”

The chief gently rubbed his injured nose. “Don’t worry. There aren’t any stairs, at least not in that section. Not sure what they’ll have, though. Some rigs have elevators, and others use cranes to lift all their personnel up to the top in man baskets. But that’s not anything to be concerned about. If there are any crew members left onboard, and the rig doesn’t have elevators, we’ll ask them to haul us up in the basket.”

“And what if they refuse?”

“Then Lamar and I will shoot them.”

Carol looked shocked, but then the chief grinned. She smiled back at him.

I checked our pursuers, but they were gone from sight. There were signs of battles being fought below the surface all across the open water-splashes and plumes and red-tinted surf. But none of it was close enough to the lifeboat to cause me any immediate concern. I hoped the fish would continue fighting each other and ignore us long enough to get aboard the oil rig.

We drew closer. The massive jack-up loomed over us. We scanned the decks and catwalks, looking for signs of life, but all we saw were seabirds. They covered the rig, perched on every antenna, crane, building, and safety net. There were hundreds of them. At least now we knew where all the ones we’d seen earlier had come from. They must have flown back and forth from the mainland. And with all the offal now floating on the waves, they wouldn’t even have to make that trip.

The chief pulled alongside the lower level dock and shut off the engine. I stood guard with the rifle, watching the sea for signs of trouble while Carol, Malik, and Tasha climbed up onto the platform. The ocean remained clear, but the signs of the terrible battle beneath its surface increased. Huge clouds of blood now floated on the tide like pools of oil. Severed heads, tails, and organs rolled on the waves. A seagull darted down and gripped some fish entrails in its claws, but before it could take flight again, a large blue-and-green fish leaped from the water and seized the bird in its mouth. The bird squawked in alarm. Its wings beat at the water. Then it was pulled below. I turned back to comment to the others, but none of them had seen it happen.

Once Carol and the kids had safely disembarked from the lifeboat, the chief handed the supplies up to them. They set the containers and bags on the deck. Malik started to explore, but Carol warned him to stay close to the rest of us. Sulking, Malik complied. To distract him, the chief handed the shotgun to Malik, stock first, and Malik set that aside as well. Then the chief turned back to me.

“Are we still clear?”

I nodded. “So far, so good.”

“Okay. You go on up, and then I’ll tie us off.”

I eyed the drilling platform. “Is this thing stable? Seems like its just floating out here.”

“It is,” he said. “Basically, the oil company just floats it out to wherever they want to drill. But there are jacks that extend down to the ocean floor, raising it up and stabilizing it. Kind of like an anchor. So we’re not going anywhere.”

I passed my rifle to Carol, who took it hesitantly. It was obvious that the weapon made her nervous. Smiling, I clambered up onto the dock and took it back from her. Her posture and expression relaxed again. I stared up into the rigging. If the jack-up was occupied, nobody had come out to greet us. Maybe it was abandoned, or maybe they were dead.

In the lifeboat, the chief began whistling while he gathered up the ropes.

“Hey, Wade,” I whispered. “We still don’t know if this thing is deserted. Maybe we should try to be quiet.”

“You’re right,” he agreed, lowering his voice. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t be whistling anyway, I guess. It hurts my nose. I’m just excited.”

He turned back to the ropes and hauled them over to the side, grunting with the effort. I turned my attention back to the jack-up. Malik and Tasha followed my gaze. Carol watched the chief.

None of us saw it in time.

Our only warning was when the creature surfaced. There was a rushing sound, like a blast of steam from the world’s biggest iron. We turned back to the ocean and the chief froze, the ropes hanging from his hands. The ocean’s surface rippled with a motion not caused by the pull of the tide. A huge black bulk surfaced from the depths, rocking both the lifeboat and the dock. The motion knocked the chief off his feet.

Water streamed down the creature’s sides as it rose higher. It was a whale—an undead whale. Horrible wounds covered its bulk, and the stench wafting off its hide was worse than anything I’d ever smelled. It was like every corpse in Baltimore had been bottled up and brought here. Gagging, I bent over and wretched. Carol did the same. The kids turned away, coughing. When I turned back, I caught a glimpse of one huge, soulless eye—bigger than a dinner plate and black as night. Then the lifeboat capsized, turning over completely and tipping the chief into the sea. A mouth the size of a car opened up beneath him, swallowing him whole. He didn’t even have time to scream. Carol screamed for him. Screamed for us all.

Ignoring the rotting beast’s smell, I snapped the rifle up and fired a shot. It was like shooting spit-balls at a dinosaur. The whale slammed against the dock, and the entire platform shook. I emptied the magazine into it. Beside me, the shotgun roared as Malik did the same. I don’t know if our rounds had any effect. The zombie sank again beneath the waves, taking Chief Maxey with it. The lifeboat drifted away on the tide. The air trapped beneath the hull kept it from sinking. There was no way for us to retrieve it. The lifeboat was already out of our reach.

Carol fell to her knees and sobbed quietly. Tasha and Malik just stared in disbelief. I knew how they felt. It had all happened so quickly. It just didn’t seem real somehow. I mean, a zombie fucking whale? If circumstances had been different, I could have almost laughed. You go through life believing only in what you can see. What science can prove. Things like ghosts and monsters are the stuff of fantasy. But then, one morning, you wake up and the dead are out in the streets hunting down the living. Your world comes crashing down when that happens. But even when you get used to the idea that the dead can walk, a zombie whale still seemed incredible. In a way, I think it shook our world view all over again.

The lifeboat drifted farther away. I watched it go, wondering where it would end up and if there’d be anybody left to find it.

“Why him?” Carol sobbed. “Why Wade? He was such a nice man. So gentle. He saved us all. Why did it have to take him?”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know, Carol. I don’t know.”

We’d lost yet another member of our group. And now we were stranded. If there were zombies aboard the drilling platform, we’d have no means of escape—except for the weapons we held in our hands.

“We’ll grieve for the chief later,” I said. “Grieve for them all. But right now, let’s check our ammunition and then make sure this place is safe.”

Malik shuffled over to me as I dug through a bag and found more bullets.

“If there’s dead folks onboard, how we gonna get away?”

I reloaded my magazine and refused to look up at him.

“We’ll find a way,” I said softly, fingering the rounds. “We’ll find a way…”

The floor on the jack-up was about twenty feet off the ocean’s surface, but there were levels under the rig as well. We stowed the supplies on the dock, intending to come back for them once we’d determined that the drilling platform was safe. A metal sign affixed to one of the girders said PROPERTY OF BLACK LODGE OIL & GAS—A DIVISION OF THE GLOBE CORPORATION-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. I hadn’t heard of Black Lodge, but Globe Corp. was massive. One of those big international corporations that seemed to be everywhere. They had their hands in everything before society collapsed: electronics, defense systems, financing, energy sources, telecommunications. They’d been one of the big darlings on Wall Street. Their shares traded for hundreds of dollars. Now those shares were worthless.

We approached the elevator. I took a deep breath and pressed the arrow button. There was still power. We heard the whine of an electric motor and squeaking cables as the car came down to us. The doors clanked open and we stepped inside. The elevator slowly rose. I tightly gripped the rifle and tried to reassure the rest of them with a smile. My fatigue was gone, replaced with nervous energy.

We explored the jack-up level by level, sticking together as a group. Tasha and Carol were cautious, but Malik was excited. He wanted to run off on his own, and I had to keep hauling him back, warning him over and over not to do it again. We talked in whispers and communicated with hand signals. The silence was eerie. Everywhere we went, the birds watched us warily. We found a skeletal arm on one level, and a disembodied head lying between two drums of oil. The head barely moved, ravaged as it was by the birds. It had no eyes with which to see us. Its lipless mouth moved soundlessly. The zombie’s tongue was missing, too. I kicked it over the side and watched it sink. Then I wiped my shoe off with some greasy shop rags that had been stuffed into one of the barrel’s openings. Finally, we climbed back into the elevator and took it to the top level.

The elevator doors opened and a dead man was there to greet us.

Carol shrieked. The dead man was dressed in dirty, faded dungarees and a red flannel shirt. A bright yellow hard hat covered his head. Time and the elements had not been kind. The zombie was in an advanced state of decomposition. His flesh and the clothes had melded together. His face was a gleaming skull, stripped clean of all flesh. A few ragged pieces of skin and matted hair hung down from underneath the hard hat. With no eyes left in the sockets, I saw right away that the zombie hunted by sound, just like the corpses back at the rescue station. It had been attracted to us by the sounds of the elevator. Carol’s scream had confirmed our location. It reached for us, bones sticking through the split skin of its fingers. Malik raised his shotgun, but I knocked it aside.

“No,” I said. “He’s too close. The backsplash will hit us.”

The zombie lurched into the elevator and we shrank away, hugging the walls. The doors slid shut again, bumped against the corpse, and then opened. The zombie turned toward them in confusion, grasping blindly. I took advantage of the distraction, pushing it out of the elevator with the butt of my rifle. It stumbled back out onto the platform, arms pinwheeling. Before the doors could close again, I darted forward and clubbed it over the head, hoping to knock it down long enough to shoot it. The zombie collapsed to the deck and the hard hat came off its head, spilling soupy liquid. Two grayish-pink lumps—its brains—splashed into the puddle a second later. Gasping, I turned away. Apparently, it had decomposed so badly that the hard hat was the only thing still holding its brains intact. When they splashed out over the deck, the zombie ceased moving. I struggled to keep from throwing up.

Malik fanned his nose. “Oh man, that stinks!”

I nodded. “That’s the worst one yet. After all the things we’ve seen…”

I shuddered, unable to finish. Sour bile rose in my throat.

“Let’s hope that it’s the last one,” Carol said. “That would be fine with me.”

And it was the last. The rest of the jack-up was deserted. Once we’d finished exploring it, Carol and the kids got settled while I brought our supplies up from the dock. Basically, the jack-up was a giant barge. One end held the actual drilling apparatus. At the other end was a three-story building. On top of the building were a heliport and several big antennas. They even had a satellite television dish and a Sirius satellite radio unit, though I doubted there were any signals still being broadcast. Inside the building were the crew’s quarters, a galley, a gym complete with free weights and an exercise bike, a laundry room with three washers and dryers, several restrooms and shower stalls, and finally, a crew’s lounge with couches, a television and DVD player, and—much to Malik’s delight—an XBox videogame system, a foosball table, and a slate-bottom pool table. On the top floor, there were also several offices. Placards over the doors said things like company man and pusher. I wondered what those were. Where I’d lived, company men and pushers had been very different things.

There were also half a dozen storage rooms. One of the supply rooms held janitorial and maintenance supplies. Another held medical supplies and other things we desperately needed, like toiletries and vitamins. But we breathed a sigh of relief when we opened the door to the last storage room. It was filled with food—boxes of dry and canned goods stacked all the way to the ceiling. The chief had said that a jack-up’s crew usually numbered between fifteen to twenty people. I figured there was enough food here to last them a month. Since it was just the four of us, it would last us much longer, which was important since we could no longer rely on the sea for food. Not with Hamelin’s Revenge infecting the fish.

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.