Rough hands gripped Steve’s shoulders and a scream ripped its way into his throat but then he realized it was Dave, Dave pulling him into the safety of the rowboat.
Dave threw off the line and kicked out, his foot connecting with the wood decking, sending the rowboat skittering crazily away from the pier. The woman that had been gnawing at Steve’s leg tumbled head first into the water and then three more corpses behind her also went in, becoming sinkers.
Steve grabbed the oars and pulled, taking them further from the pier. He glanced behind him and saw the boat with Singer, Jade and Brian cruising steadily in the direction of ThreeBees.
Good. They had made it.
He glanced back at Dave and Dave was huddled over himself, arms crossed over his stomach. He was moaning.
“Dave, are you bit? Did they bite you?”
Steve’s arms went slack on the oars. “Dave?” he said. “Hey, man…are you…are you bit?” His voice had dropped, chilled and aching.
Dave glanced up, grimacing. “No, they didn’t bite me. You fucking kicked me in the nuts, you asshole. I think I’m gonna fucking puke.” He moaned again.
Steve was shocked to feel laughter bubbling up from his stomach and he laughed despite himself. It was a short bark of amusement and then he threw a hand over his mouth.
Dave looked up again, his face sour. “You sound like a goddamned seal, you know that?”
They both broke up laughing. It carried across the water to the ThreeBees and at the railing, Maggie tilted her head in confusion.
Across the water, at the end of the pier, the undead did the same.
Chapter Seven
Jade sat on the deck bench of ThreeBees, shivering.
Maggie draped a sweatshirt over Jade’s shoulders and took her chin in her hand. She tilted Jade’s face up and looked into her eyes.
“Do you feel like you’re going to faint? Do you feel lightheaded?” Maggie’s voice was calm but detached as she felt for Jade’s pulse.
Jade shook her head ‘no’ and a tentative smile trembled on her lips. “I’m all right. We are all…all okay.” Tears spilled over her lids. “It was not right of me to…to insist on burying Mrs. Allen. I apologize.” Her voice had dwindled to a sad whisper and she cast her eyes down.
Maggie, who agreed with the girl that she shouldn’t have insisted on the foolish formality, merely patted her shoulder. Then she moved on to Singer. It was automatic for Maggie to get a pulse and she did so with Singer, picking his wrist up almost absently as she looked into his eyes.
“How about you, Singer? Any dizziness?” Maggie asked and then frowned at his wrist in her hand. “Do you have low blood pressure?” He shook his head no to both.
“I’m not dizzy, but my leg hurts where I was bit by the snake.”
Maggie nods. “Yes, we’ll have to get that cleaned out. At least it wasn’t poisonous.” She places her fingertips at his throat, palpating. “Heart murmur? History of arrhythmia?”
He shakes his head no again and Maggie frowns. She wished once again that she had at least a stethoscope. They had yet to find one on any of the scavenger missions. It would help to find this kid’s heartbeat because it seemed pretty weak at his pulse points. But that could be indicative of many underlying conditions, and besides, it didn’t matter at the moment.
There were other things, worse things, to be concerned with.
“Lie on your stomach on the bench, let’s see that bite.”
Singer did as he was asked.
Maggie rolled up the leg of his thin, cotton pants and then stood abruptly. Panic flashed across her features.
Steve and Dave were sitting in deck chairs nearby, and Dave was still grimacing, but he was chuckling, too. Steve kept up a constant stream of jokes, partly to keep Dave distracted from his pain but also in part because, although his relief was immense, it was still shaky. The jokes were bolstering his spirits.
He looked up as Maggie stepped away from Singer and the smile faded from his face.
“Maggie? What is it?”
She glanced at him and then gestured to Singer’s exposed leg. Then she looked over at Jade, but Bonnie and Babygirl surrounded her like protective flanking. Maggie was glad to see it, because there was no telling what was going to happen next.
Steve was next to her in an instant, his face grim as he looked at Singer’s leg. Almost as though he could feel their terrified scrutiny, Singer started to sit up, but Maggie put a restraining hand on his back. “Just…lie still. Don’t move, Singer, please.”
Dave had caught their concern and he hobbled over. He pulled in a breath. Singer’s calf had an oval bruise, mottled from dark red to purple–a bite mark–it had to be a human bite. Dots of blood were still welling up where the skin had been broken. Further down, closer to his ankle, the ragged, two-hole snake bite had already stopped bleeding.
“What is it? What’s wrong with my leg?” Singer’s voice was laced with panic barely held in check. Jade heard and looked over, her face falling.
“Singer?” she said, beginning to stand.
“Jade, stay over there,” Maggie said, her voice flat and commanding. Jade plopped back down. Bonnie put her arm around Jade’s back.
“Is it…what it looks like?” Steve said, his voice low.
“Was he near them? I thought you said that you were the last one on the pier…how did he–”
“The water. He fell in the water. It’s shallow near the pier.”
Maggie nodded. “Singer, when you fell in the water…did you…cut your leg? Did you feel it get caught on anything?” Singer shook his head in violent denial, but his eyes cut back toward Steve, rolling frantically.
“No! Nothing got me! Just that snake!”
Maggie put a hand on Singer’s forehead. “He’s hot, and his pulse is…it’s odd. Not strong.”
Singer scrambled up, pulling his pant leg down with a wince. “I’m not hot. You’re crazy. If I’m hot it’s because of the snake…the snake bite.”
Maggie and Steve looked at each other and their gazes were deeply troubled. If Singer had been bit by a sinker, then he might likely get the disease himself. And if he got the disease, and died, and reanimated…it wasn’t a chance they could take.
No one was one hundred percent sure how the sickness worked. The people who had made it this far seemed immune…but what if they weren’t? What if an individual just hadn’t yet been exposed?
“We have to get him off the boat,” Dave said and stepped away from Singer. Singer’s face flew open in panic. And fear.
“I’m not leaving this boat. You can’t make me.”
“Singer?” Jade said. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
“You can’t stay! What if…what if you–” Dave said, his voice rising.
“Singer? What are they saying?” Jade tried to rise and Bonnie, almost instinctually, grabbed her tighter.
“You can’t make me! You can’t make me!” Singer chanted, his voice furious and filling with tears. “You c-can’t m-make me!” His face was red.
“You can’t stay here!” Dave said, and now he loomed over Singer, furious in his panic, shouting. “You might be a goddamned sinker!”
Jade, who’d been struggling in Bonnie’s arms, fainted.
~ ~ ~
Jade stood forlornly at the back of ThreeBees and stared at Singer who was tethered in the smaller rowboat, a hundred feet out. The boat had been stripped of oars and motor. Dave sat in a deck chair and he, too, faced the rowboat. He held a shotgun across his lap. Being motorless and oarless wouldn’t stop Singer if he decided to hand over hand the boat back to ThreeBees.
This situation, in Dave’s opinion, was barely better than the honor system. There was too much at stake to trust anyone who might be coming down with the sickness. He glanced at Jade, feeling both ashamed and angry…he wasn’t the bad guy here; he didn’t need her doe eyes following him around accusatorily. He shifted his gaze to Flyboy.
He hoped Steve wasn’t gett
ing too much shit from Adam.
~ ~ ~
“You just…went? To land? Without notifying anyone?” Adam’s face was red, agitated. He was very aware of the people nearby who could easily overhear this conversation and he very much wanted the conversation to go a certain way.
Steve sighed inwardly. He wanted to keep the peace; above all else he wanted it, but Adam made it hard. He reminded Steve of the attention-seeking fanboy students who waited, tense and alert, for any sort of misstep so they could pounce, triumphant, with their trivial corrections.
“Maggie knew where we were going. I thought if something happened, that–”
“That what? She’d save you? She’d cure everyone of the disease that we have no firm knowledge of?” Adam liked the tone he had adopted; he thought it sounded sharp and demanding. He didn’t notice the eye-rolling that went on around him.
Steve noticed.
“No, I just meant, if something went wrong then she could alert Big Daddy and–”
“Really? Big Daddy? Alert everyone on Big Daddy?” Adam looked around theatrically, raising his arms. “And what are we? Nothing and nobody? You don’t care if the disease comes back to Flyboy?”
Steve shook his head, frustrated. “No, I didn’t say that, I just meant…look, it was no big deal. We were going to bury the old lady and then be back before anyone could–”
“So you admit you did it secretly? To circumvent me?”
“What? No. You’re twisting my words. Now, listen to me…” Steve stepped up close to Adam, getting right in his face. Panic flew across Adam’s features. “You aren’t the king. We have no king. You run your business and I’ll run mine.”
“Oh, now you don’t want to work together, is that it? We’re not good enough for the Big Daddy ThreeBees crowd?”
Steve is disgusted by the shimmer of tears that appear in Adam’s eyes. “Of course we want to work together, haven’t we been? We just wanted to get the old lady buried. That’s all. No big conspiracy, okay?”
“No conspiracy, huh?”
“No. None.”
Adam nodded but Steve saw the nasty, triumphant gleam come into his eyes. “Then why didn’t you tell us about the other dead guy?” Adam stepped forward at the confusion in Steve’s eyes. Now he was the one in Steve’s face. “What, exactly, did that guy die of Steve? Was it anything…catching?” Adam’s eyebrows were raised almost to the level of his slightly receding hairline. In his mind, he’d just delivered the incriminating blow…the dramatic line that puts an end to all the bullshit. He imagined everyone sitting, breath held, waiting for Steve to crumble out a confession.
But to his chagrin, Steve laughed bitterly.
“I fucking hope it’s not catching…he committed suicide.”
People huddled around Steve, asking about Denny, visibly shaken. Steve had no doubt that probably a quarter of these people, maybe more, had contemplated it for themselves at some point during the cruel festivities of these last two months. He remembers lying down next to Amelia in the woods, waiting and hoping for a quick death.
Adam had been moved back by the crush of people wanting to hear about Denny. He felt angry and frustrated, as though Steve had gotten the better of him in a test of wills. He felt Steve was always doing that…undermining him and trying to short-circuit his authority over Flyboy and the people on it.
He hadn’t been the first person aboard, but he was the first one who was starting to figure out the complicated controls on the bridge. Flyboy wouldn’t be much good to anyone come cold weather if she couldn’t be sailed south, he’d been fond of telling everyone, patting himself on the back. No one bothered to point out that, eventually, they would have gotten the bridge figured out. Everyone was too panicked, too tired and distraught to think clearly. Most everyone had lost someone. It wasn’t a time of great clarity for anyone.
Except Adam. He’d been pretty clear-headed once he got on Flyboy. Calculating, even. He’d begun to shape his new society, bending the tired, sad people to his will. Mostly they’d been more than happy to let someone else take control. But not everyone…not Steve and a handful of men that followed him around like lovesick skunks.
That’s when Adam had floated the idea of expanding to a tug…ostensibly for protection and maneuverability because they hadn’t gotten Flyboy figured out as far as sailing her. The bridge was a complication filled with gauges and screens that no one currently aboard had enough degree of nautical experience to work. They had found her here, anchored like a small island, and here she still sat. That was okay for now as they waited to see if there were more survivors. But come cold weather, they’d need to pull anchor and sail south. Without YouTube, without the internet, learning Flyboy was catch as catch can.
Also, Adam really just wanted Steve and his merry fucking men on another ship. Out of his hair and out of his plans.
But he didn’t want them to leave entirely. They were good protectors and good providers. And Adam considered himself way too important to make the harum-scarum land runs. Who would step in if something happened to him? These people would be done for.
When Big Daddy had found Barbra’s Bay Breeze during a scouting trip, and Adam had seen how Steve looked at Maggie, he’d decided that the people already on board her should stay on board. There was nothing wrong with their accommodations, he’d pointed out…they were safe and relatively content. Why not leave things as they were?
Also, in the back of his mind, he’d begin to imagine an armada, an entire fleet with Flyboy in the lead, with himself in the lead. It would be glorious.
He just had to make sure he stayed on top. Of everyone.
He waited until the crowd had dispersed and Steve was on the low platform that ran across the back of Flyboy, ready to mount his jet ski. Then he approached him.
“I want that mystery man, that John Smith, brought back here to Flyboy. I want to meet him. To determine where he should go.”
Steve shifted uncomfortably. “Listen, Adam, I think we should be cautious with that guy. There’s something off about him; Maggie thinks so, too. I’m going to put him on Big Daddy where I can keep an eye on him.”
Adam felt his impatient rage bubble up.
“Oh really? Maggie thinks so, too? You and Maggie agree that there’s something wrong with the guy?” Steve opened his mouth to speak and Adam shushed him with a brisk, chopping movement of his hand. “I don’t care what you and Maggie think. You’re both horrible judges of character, based on who you each associate with.” Adam felt a cruel giggle wanting to rise but he forced it down, forced his face to stay passive. Probably Steve was too dumb to get his meaning, anyway. “Bring him to Flyboy. Today.”
~ ~ ~
“Any change?” Steve asked and waved to Singer who sat in the distant rowboat. Singer gave him the finger and turned so that he was facing the shore, showing ThreeBees his back. Steve sighed and pulled a chair up next to Maggie’s. The gun was lying next to her, just in reach. It made Steve uneasy and he wanted to say something about it, tell her to pull it in closer, but he knew she wouldn’t. He was surprised she had it near her at all. She didn’t like guns.
Maggie glanced at Steve and then at Jade who had fallen asleep on the deck bench. Jade’s hands were fisted together under her chin as though she had fallen asleep praying.
“No, no change. He still seems sick but it’s hard to tell from this far away.” Her tone was mildly scolding. “Are we just going to wait and see if he keels over?”
Steve sighed and shook his head. “I guess so. I don’t know what else to do. With everything else going on, I just…”
At the honest despair in his voice, Maggie reached out and squeezed his hand. “It has gotten kind of eventful lately.” Her tone is dry but not unsympathetic.
Dave had driven John Smith to Flyboy that afternoon and while he did that, the rest of the people on ThreeBees had buried Denny at sea. All they’d done, really, was wrap him in a sheet and slide him over the side while Randy said the Lord’s Pr
ayer. Steve had been heartsick about it and he felt cowardly, too. He’d glanced out to the rowboat at Singer–to see if he was watching–and then doing so struck him as morbid. So he turned back around.
It didn’t seem right, tipping this young man’s body into the ocean; it made it seem unimportant, too much like tossing garbage.
Jade had been right about that.
They’d have to think about doing things another way if (when) someone else died.
Maggie squeezed his hand again and then she leaves her hand in his. “We’re all struggling. No one knows what to do about anything. We just have to figure it out as we go along.”
The thought depressed her. Is this what it will be now until she dies? This boat? These people? No, actually, it’s going to get a lot harder. They are going to run out of fuel, they are going to run out of canned food. Eventually, they may run out of water…what then? They can’t stay on the boats forever, anchored out here like small islands of sanity. It wasn’t permanent; none of it was permanent.
The thought of permanence depressed her; the thought of change scared her. For the millionth (billionth?) time, she found herself wishing for her old life back. She wanted her house, she wanted a shower, she wanted to do laundry on a bright Sunday morning…she wanted Joe. That, most of all.
She took her hand from Steve’s and stood. “Take over for a minute?”
“Sure,” he said. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer.
He watched after her until she was out of sight in the salon and then leaned down and scooted the gun closer.
“She likes you,” Jade said, startling him. Her voice floated across the deck in the gathering dark. She sat up and stretched and looked to where her brother sat, forlorn and rocking on the late-afternoon waves. As if he sensed her gaze, he looked over his shoulder. He gave her a small wave and she raised her hand in turn. “He’s not sick. I’d know if he were.”
Steve looked at her a moment more and then his gaze returned to Singer. “It won’t be too much longer. Before we know for sure.” He didn’t ask if she understood or if she was okay with any of this. He knew that she didn’t and she wasn’t. Would he be? If it were Amelia out there in that rowboat? If it were Maggie?
The Boat Page 9
