The Boat

by Christine Dougherty

  Randy and Bonnie were residents of a town right near here, Cape May? Was that where they said they’d come from? They’d had an easier time of it. When everything had fallen apart, they’d simply taken to the water like anyone else with a boat. People noticed very quickly that whatever else the walking dead could do, they couldn’t swim. It wasn’t long before people started referring to them as sinkers or chum.

  Maggie and Joe had lived in New Jersey, too, but quite a bit further inland, almost to Philadelphia in a town known for its small, friendly neighborhoods. She and Joe had had a Cape Cod on a quarter acre yard and had lived on their street for thirteen years.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Tuesday that it really broke–June 7–Joe never made it home from his job in the city. She still couldn’t think about it without a heavy knot forming in her stomach.

  He called from his cell and Maggie had already been home, standing in the kitchen, still in her scrubs; she wasn’t due back in to the hospital again for the next two days. She was exhausted from her last shift as an ER nurse. There had been so many people who came in with the flu…it had been like some kind of crazy, overnight epidemic…that her original shift had been extended by four hours.

  She had the television on the counter turned to a local news station. Joe’s voice was broken up because he was on the train. Part of his ride–before the bridge–was underground. He said not to worry and he’d see her soon and to lock up.

  He said he loved her.

  As Maggie listened to his voice, the television was showing Philadelphia. So many people in the streets. They seemed to be pouring from every building in a human flood. The camera must have been right outside the news station and it was directed up Broad, a main thoroughfare. There was no word in Maggie’s vocabulary for what she was seeing. Chaos, anarchy, pandemonium…none of these words were big enough–bad enough–to describe what was happening. People were being hit by cars, by city busses, by cabs. They were knocking into each other, falling, screaming, crying, and in some cases, fighting.

  As she watched, one man–a young man, maybe a student–was hit by a car and knocked to the side of the road. As he struggled to stand, more people ran past, kicking him or running right over his hands, arms and head as he struggled. Then a car ran over his mid-section and he stopped struggling. He was tiny and blurry; a blurred mass of denim and blood and books. Maggie stared, horrified, her mouth hanging open as she listened to Joe’s chopped up voice. She nodded as if he could see her and stepped closer to the television. The young man lay still as death. Did she really just watch that kid die? On television? Her mind danced and feinted, trying for a less unsavory explanation…but there was none. “Joe,” she said, her voice a shocked rasp. “Joe, I just saw…I just saw a guy, a boy, get…”

  The blurry corpse twitched. Maggie stepped back sharply, her heart leaping painfully. Had that kid…? Had he moved? “Joe, you won’t believe this but…”

  Joe’s voice went on and on. He couldn’t hear her, she realized. She could hear him, but he couldn’t hear her. “Joe?” she said, her voice tiny, a little girl’s voice.

  The young man moved again and she felt a shift of hope like warm water in her head but then that warmth was washed away by icy shock…the young man was dragging himself up onto the sidewalk. But only half of himself. Only his front half. From mid-chest down, he’d been severed. She could just make out the twin lumps of his lungs dragging behind him…hanging on by threads.

  The running people on the sidewalk dodged away from him as instinctively as sheep will turn from a dog. Or a coyote. He grabbed at each flying pair of legs. “Joe, this kid, he’s not dead, he’s not dead he’s oh god what is he what’s happening…?”

  On some level she realized she wasn’t making any sense and she closed her mouth. She was scaring herself. Joe told her to keep the doors locked. Don’t go outside. He loved her. “Maggie? Maggie can me? Ma I love you can wrong with the train but Maggie?”

  A lady fell down, right in front of the young man. Had she been pushed? Maggie thought so, yes. The young man grabbed at the lady, grabbed her hair and pulled himself up onto her. Her arms flailed and she must have been screaming, of course she was, but there was no sound from the television. The young man was…he was…Maggie slid to the floor, her back against the kitchen cabinets, until the television was above her, the picture distorted by the angle. She said, “Joe please god please come home Joe come home please.” Her voice was high and thin. She couldn’t tell if she was hearing herself from outside or inside. She didn’t care.

  That young man was eating that lady. Eating her face. Tearing great hunks from her throat. Then the camera must have been hit because the scene seemed to float through the air, revolving, toppling. Maggie experienced a strong sense of vertigo as the camera fell.

  “Maggie? I lov me? Can–” Joe’s voice cut off all at once and Maggie vomited between her legs onto the kitchen floor.

  ~ ~ ~

  Maggie sent Babygirl along with Randy and Bonnie and then stepped down into the little rowboat. ThreeBees had two rowboats tied to the back of it plus two jet skis tied up alongside. From her vantage point on the rowboat, Maggie looked back at the ThreeBees. It had once been something pretty special, Maggie surmised, someone’s Shangri-la. Barbra’s Bay Breeze was painted in gold across her back end in boasting, fancy script.

  Now, after two months of serious habitation, it was looking much worse for wear. The boats and jet skis tied up around it gave the formerly sleek vessel a doddering, mother hen look. It (she, Maggie corrected herself, she) was a sixty-foot cabin cruiser, a weekender yacht for someone of moderate wealth. Three bedrooms and a bathroom (head, Maggie, it’s called a head, she thought and another ghost of a smile crossed her lips…what Joe would have said about that!). The second level, the level she was looking at, consisted of the back deck, side decks, and front deck; and inside, a big salon and a galley. The cockpit was one deck up…the staterooms one deck below.

  There were nine people living on it now. Randy and Bonnie, herself, Babygirl (she and Babygirl shared a bedroom), Jade and Singer, a brother and sister from New York in their mid-twenties who’d been staying with family in Sea Isle. Mrs. Allen, who had to be at least eighty, and Denny and Brian, roommates from Stockton State who’d managed to find their way to the coast. Just as Maggie had done. The young men bedded down in the salon and Jade and Mrs. Allen shared the remaining bedroom.

  Clothing hung from a line draped across the entryway from the salon to the back deck, drying in the wind. Classy, Maggie thought to herself, very, very classy. Bet the former owners never thought to dry their underthings on a line this way as they cruised from port to port. But of course, they had to conserve resources. Most important thing out here: resources. Her eyes slid with unconscious resentment to Flyboy, floating serenely out on the waves about a half-mile away.

  Flyboy was a yacht, too, but Maggie surmised that the owners of Barbra’s Bay Breeze would have gazed upon Flyboy with envy so deep that it would almost have been a physical itch. Flyboy was a super yacht: somewhere just over two hundred feet, Maggie would guess, eight guest rooms, six crew’s quarters, two salons, three heads, six decks–four above the water, two below, two galleys, a crew’s mess, a gym, a media room, an elevator (which wasn’t put to use), a grand circular staircase, a garage that held a runabout and jet skis or even a car…everything the seafaring billionaire would need to be comfortable.

  Talk about needing resources, Maggie thought, what got used on that sucker in just one week could run the ThreeBees for a year!

  But Flyboy also held over eighty people right now. Maggie had been on it last about a week ago for the general assembly. The formerly elegant appointments on Flyboy were looking even worse for wear than their own little ThreeBees. Cabinets had been chipped and countertops stained. Hand stitched leather upholstery had been snagged and gouged. Gym equipment had long since been heaved overboard to make room for beds. The luxurious owner’s quarters had been occupied b
y at least ten people camped out in nests of blankets and even couch cushions filched from the once glamorous salons–what once had been the private domain of some rich oil executive was now actually the least desirable area on the boat–kind of a cattle pen of humanity. The floors were dull and dirty. If the former owners could see Flyboy now, they’d probably faint dead away in a blue-blooded swoon.

  Maggie dragged her mind away from resenting Flyboy and put it back on task. She was being a real bitch today–if not outside, then certainly inside. She needed rest and time alone: a bath, a drink, a magazine that hadn’t been looked at eighteen times already. All of those things were near impossibilities in their new world.

  She got a firmer grip on the fishing net and scanned the floor of the rowboat. Two fingers lay under the seat and she scooped them up and over the side, her face set in lines of disgusted determination. She had to hunt for the third; it had made it to the front of the little boat. She was reminded of snakes and chickens, both purported to ‘live’ quite some time after being divided from their heads.

  She shuddered, hoping it wouldn’t twitch when she touched the net to it. That grossed her out. She finally got up enough nerve to reach forward and with one smooth movement, flung it up and over the side. It made a little ‘plip’ sound when it hit the water. She sighed and sank down onto the middle seat, blowing out a held breath.

  She scanned the horizon, as had become habit, her eyes skimming from beach to road to the little motel and its surrounding cabins. They hadn’t seen any new survivors for weeks now. But you never knew.

  “Maggie?”

  She jumped and turned, her heart racing, but it was only Babygirl. She stood at the edge of the deck and looked at Maggie with worried eyes. “Did you get rid of them fingers?”

  Maggie nodded and smiled. “All gone, Babygirl.” She scrambled up onto the deck and took Babygirl’s hand. “Want to eat?”

  But Baby’s eyes went past Maggie and her face clouded. “What man is that?” she asked.

  “Man?” Maggie echoed, confused, then turned to the starboard side. A yellow life raft floated twenty-five feet out. A man lay spread-eagled in the center, unconscious or sleeping–Maggie couldn’t tell which–but she could see that he was covered in blood.

  Chapter Three

  Maggie dropped Babygirl’s hand and gave her shoulder a small push. “Go get Randy. Tell him bring the walkie.” Baby nodded and trotted away. “Denny! Brian!” Maggie called and they stumbled from the salon, bleary-eyed. Napping again. Christ, those boys could sleep twenty out of twenty-four hours.

  Denny was dark-haired and Brian blond, but beyond that, Maggie thought the two of them had an almost troubling similarity. She knew that was largely because she wasn’t looking at people the same way anymore. Although once a warm and friendly woman, she’d become colder since…everything…had happened. She didn’t give the other members of the boat the attention she would have in her past life. She didn’t question them or think about the things they told her. She felt inner-turned, like a pill bug rolled tight onto itself; a hard shell protecting her from her surroundings. She didn’t want to let anyone in. Babygirl was bad enough with her growing need for mothering.

  “What’s up?” Denny asked. His eyes slid down to Maggie’s legs and then back up, over her stomach and breasts. He wasn’t lecherous, he was young, Maggie reminded herself, he can’t help himself. She didn’t take it personally. She found it ironic that she probably looked better now than she had for much of her life. She was thin and fit from the extra exercise and lack of excess food, and she moved with a confidence she had never realized came from having muscles.

  “Dude,” Brian said from just behind Denny and pointed. “There’s a dude out there, man.”

  Randy huffed up, walkie-talkie in hand. “What’s going on?”

  “Dude in the bay, dude,” Brian said.

  Randy blinked at him and then turned to Maggie. “Dude in what? What is he talking about?” Randy liked to act as though Brian and Denny spoke a completely different language from himself.

  In a way, they did kind of, Maggie thought.

  She pointed past Randy. “There’s a man out there on a raft; see him?”

  Randy turned and squinted out over the bay and then nodded. “What do you think? Sinker? He’s covered in blood.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I don’t know. We have to go check. Call Steve, would you? It would be best if–”

  Randy nodded, bringing the walkie up. He depressed the button. “Hey, Big Daddy, you guys there? Big Daddy? This is ThreeBees and we have a, uh…a situation over here, over.”

  “What’s up, ThreeBees? Over.” The voice that came through the walkie-talkie was thin and tinny. Almost as one, Randy, Maggie, and Denny looked in the other direction to the fifty-foot tug sitting pugnaciously between them and the Flyboy. The words Big Daddy were spray painted across the black hull like dripping, pirate graffiti. A man stood at the rail outside the engine room, walkie in his hand.

  “Yeah, hey, Steve,” Randy said. “We have a man floating on some kind of raft. He’s uh, he’s pretty bloody. And not moving. Over.”

  “Sinker? Over.”

  Randy shook his head. “We don’t know. Can you send someone to check? Over.”

  “On it, ThreeBees, over and out.”

  Randy grinned a little sheepishly, letting the walkie fall to his side. Brian sank down onto a deck chair, running his hand though his hair. Denny was red in the face. “Dude, I could have taken a jet ski and checked it out. Brian’d gone with me, right dude?”

  “Yeah, man, ‘course,” Brian said, but there was little conviction in his voice. Denny blew out a disgusted breath and turned, hands on hips, as three jet skis whined away from Big Daddy. They sounded like apocalyptic wasps.

  Denny hated being stuck on the ThreeBees. It was old people as far as the eye could see, he felt, and he and Brian were only nineteen. Maggie was at least kind of hot, but she was old, too. Jade was hot, with her long black hair and exotic black eyes, but Jade rarely came out of the room she shared with the old lady. Her brother Singer would join the two of them in there and they played mahjong or something equally boring all damn day.

  Fuck, I wish I was on Big Daddy, he thought. Or even Flyboy would be better than this floating retirement community we’re on now. Big Daddy was a sausage fest, but it still would have been better than this. His eyes tracked the jet skis as they went by. Steve was on the front one and he gave the ThreeBees a short wave as they went by. Steve was a pretty big dude, blond hair kept very short, sharply intelligent blue eyes, and very much in charge on the Big Daddy. But he was a fair guy, from what Brian had overheard. He was calm and decent. Not like the dude that ran Flyboy, that dick Adam.

  Twenty three of the men in the twenty-five to fifty-five age range had ended up with Steve on the Big Daddy. It took a lot of muscle to manage the tug. It was a big, bulky boat, powerful but lacking grace. Sometimes at night, Denny would look across the water and listen as they played music over there and laughed the loud, raucous laughter of men out of the censorious hearing of women. A bottle would be passed around, adding to the merriment. It was odd, too, that many of the men over there had been single before the event. They’d had few ties and now were quicker to recover their equilibrium. For some–the ones who’d felt uneasy in a technology-oriented society–this brave new world came almost as a blessing and they lived out the fantasy of seafaring warriors: Vikings or maybe even pirates, a little boy’s dream finally come true.

  Denny wished fervently that he and Brian were part of it. But fuck no, they were stuck on the ThreeBees. Christ, even the name was homo.

  The three men neared the life raft.

  Steve put up one hand, signaling the other two drivers to stop about fifteen feet from the raft. It bobbed harder in the small wake thrown up by the jet skis. The man inside lay on his back and his head rocked side to side, as if telling them not to rock him so hard. He looked young–early twenties at the most. His
eyes were closed and there was a long gash across his forehead and most of his face was covered in blood: fresh near the wound but drying to a brownish maroon in the creases of his neck and in his hairline.

  It was hard to judge how long ago the man had been hurt. Steve had seen a lot of injuries in that frantic week it took to attain the shoreline and quick assessments of the injured had become a habit. With the sun and wind…this could be a relatively fresh wound. Steve scanned the horizon in all directions. There were no other boats that he could see, save their own small armada. Where had this guy come from if there wasn’t another boat around? He could have cast off from land and been carried by the current, but that seemed a long shot considering the distance–and it wasn’t a large raft.

  The one sure thing was that this guy wasn’t a sinker; sinkers didn’t bleed. If they were somewhat fresh you might get a coagulated, blackish jelly from them but if they weren’t fresh, then the most you might see from their veins would be a dried up crumble that looked almost like coffee grounds.

  Steve reached out with a gaff, hooked the rope threaded through cleats around the raft’s edge and pulled it closer. He scanned the interior, seeing if there was anything useful aboard. That scavenger mentality had already become so ingrained that he hardly noticed he was doing it. Another condition of the times.

  A hunting knife–big with a serrated section across the back of the blade–lay near the man’s hand. A twitch of unease went through Steve’s mind. The placement of the knife was off…somehow fake looking, something was missing. As though someone had gone to some trouble to–

  “Hey, little help?”

  The man’s eyes were open. They were bright, bright blue and the whites looked very white, contrasting strongly against the mask of blood. His voice was raspy, barely there.

  “Can you move?” Steve said and the man closed his eyes again. He nodded slightly and then struggled to sit up, bringing a hand to the gash on his forehead. He opened his eyes again but they were slitted in pain.