by Anton Strout
“Jane?” I shouted. “Anytime you want to join the fray, you just leap on in there …”
Jane still didn’t move. “I… I can’t,” she stuttered out.
“What?” I said, feeling a little panic set in. Without her help, I was going to be hard-pressed to fight off all the aqua-zombies by myself.
“I want to help you, but I can’t,” she said, almost crying. “I think…I think it’s the mark.”
“Son of a bitch,” I shouted. I cracked the next monstrosity in the head and pushed it overboard using the heel of my boot. Adrenaline kicked in and I felt a bit of a rush while I moved on to struggle against two more of the creatures. I only hoped that when I was done I wouldn’t have to turn my bat on Jane as well.
“Fight it, hon,” I shouted. “You’re stronger than her. Are you going to let that aquatic she-bitch run the show here?”
Jane raised the gaffing pole over her head with a concerted effort, but with each inch she lifted, her face squinted with pain. After a few seconds of holding it up, she collapsed back down to her knees, dropping the pole. “I can’t,” she whimpered.
Connor shouted from somewhere close behind me, startling me. “Is she okay, kid?”
I turned. He had made his way to the top of the cabin, taking the higher ground in the fight and using it to his advantage in undead crowd control.
I dodged one of the swiping zombies while hitting another with my bat, squishing the flesh. I looked over at Jane again. She was still paralyzed in place. “You know what?” I called up to Connor. “I have no idea. She’s powerless.”
Connor looked down at me. “Well, help her, then.”
“I’m trying,” I said, wiggling my way out of one of the zombies’ grip. “There’s too many of them.”
“That I can help with,” Connor said and jumped down from atop the cabin. The deck shook from the impact of his landing but Connor kept his momentum and plowed himself into a whole row of the creatures on my right. Half of them spilled over the side of the boat, all of them clawing nothing but air as they tried to stop themselves.
“That worked,” I said, tossing one of my remaining foes overboard. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “All I’ve done is prolong the inevitable. I’ve bought us a little time.”
“Right,” I said and spun to help out Jane.
By the looks of her, she didn’t need my help. Jane had made it back up to her feet once more and was surrounded by a ring of the creepy creatures. The odd thing was that the rotting monstrosities—outside of their simply being there—were all facing Connor and me, none of them even remotely interested in attacking my girlfriend. Jane wasn’t in need of protection; the damned things were protecting her.
“Jane?” I asked. Her eyes were fixed in our general direction but they were unfocused. There was nobody driving the car, or if there was, Jane wasn’t in the driver’s seat.
“Steady,” Connor said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “What’s up with her new entourage?”
“I was hoping you might be able to tell me.”
“I’m not sure,” he said, looking for a weakness in the ring of them, “but I think we better make the first move before—”
Jane interrupted him, speaking out loud in a language I wasn’t familiar with. “That’s not her machine language,” I said.
“No,” Connor said. “It’s not. It’s Greek. She’s ordering her undead bodyguards to attack.”
“What?!” I swung my bat at the two zombies closest to her before they could even begin to move. “Oh, hell, no.”
I grabbed Jane by the arm and yanked her from within their circle. Her face was still blank, but her body stumbled along willingly as I moved her toward the back of the boat.
“Not a good time to be zoning out, Janey,” I said, but she remained unresponsive. I put my arm around her and guided her along the side of the cabin. Other zombies were crawling up the sides of the ship still, but paused when I moved Jane past them. “Guess there’s one bright side to this.”
I stepped onto the back deck first as we rounded the stern of the boat. The back was swarming with aqua-zombies, all of them keeping well away from the two of us. I lowered Jane to the deck and pressed against the wall of the wheelhouse until I got to the door and slid us both inside. I shut the door behind us and turned my attention to Jane.
Nothing had changed on her face in the past few minutes. There was no sense of recognition in her eyes, just a strange curiosity in them as she watched me. She spoke again, but none of it made a lick of sense to me. I grabbed her by the sides of her head and got right up in her face.
“Snap out of it, Janey,” I said. “Come back to me.”
A dark snarl rose up behind her lips, but I didn’t look away.
“I know you’re in there, sea witch,” I said, not turning away, “but this woman is mine. If anyone gets her, it’s me, got it?”
Jane fought to push me away, but I wasn’t letting go.
“If you can hear me in there, Jane, don’t give in to her,” I said. “You’re better than her.”
A guttural growl rose up from Jane’s chest. I wasn’t sure if it was because the woman was winning or Jane was fighting her, but I let go of her face and grabbed hold of her hands. The strength in her grip was both astounding and crushing.
The door to the cabin flew open behind me and the aqua-zombies started to pour in. I let go of Jane and went to spin around, but I was too slow, unprepared. One of the creatures got its decaying hands on my arm and squeezed. They, too, had more strength to them than I had imagined. The crushing pain to my arm overwhelmed me and I screamed out. My bat clattered to the floor of the cabin.
Jane’s eyes fluttered. “Simon… ?”
“Jane,” I said. “Help me. Fight it. Fight that woman’s power.”
Jane’s face returned to normal, which at the moment meant it was a mix of pain and confusion. She seemed to be disoriented and struggling, her arms shaking at her sides. I was so intent on trying to regain any sort of connection with her that it took me a moment to realize I was being dragged out the cabin door by the hands of the undead. “No!” I shouted, and Jane snapped to.
Jane eyed my situation, and then slapped one of her hands on the boat’s control panel. The glow of raw energy being siphoned from the ship ran up her arm as she spoke to it until the power ran into her and she channeled it down her other arm. Raw energy burst forth from her hand as it shot past me and struck the zombies holding me. The jolt of electricity sent a lesser tingle of sensation into my body as well, but I pulled myself free of the mess as I started to smell the wretched burn of decaying flesh.
I fell to my knees to retrieve my bat, landing hard on my satchel and worse, digging the metal corner of the Ghostbusters lunch box inside right into my lower ribs, stinging them. Once I was down, I decided to stay there for a few moments. The idea of standing back up and catching a blast from the Jedi power battle overhead had zero appeal to me, especially with the new pain in my side. I lay there, recovering, as Jane plunged her power into zombie after zombie with what amounted to a chain of lightning that ran from one zombie to the next. The stench was awful, but the foes all along the back side of the boat blew apart like they were eggs in the microwave.
As the deck cleared, Jane’s power began to falter until she stopped and collapsed on top of the control console in exhaustion. I got up off the floor to check on her. As I stood, I could see out the front of the control room once again. The bow of the boat was still covered in a monstrous swarm, and at the center of it all was Connor, fighting away. He was holding his own against the waterlogged, rotting army, but I wondered for how long. I turned away and put my hand on Jane’s shoulder.
“You okay?” I asked.
Her eyes were closed and her breath was coming in short rasps, but she nodded. “Just exhausted,” she said.
“Can you drive?”
She pushed herself up off the panel and looked at the wheel and the rest of
the controls. “I’ve never driven a boat before.”
“It’s simple,” I said. “The trick is to try and not hit any land. But you know what? In this case, I think what we need is to get the hell off the water. Aim for Wards Island, up on our left.”
Jane looked nervous, but I needed to get moving if I was going to help Connor. While Jane fired up the boat and started her run at the island, I ran out of the cabin, doing my best to not slip in the slimy coating of zombie guts as I made my way back to the front of the boat. Connor had worked his way into a defensible position up against the very tip of the bow—a smart choice. The zombies could only come at him one by one due to the narrow confines of the space, but even with that advantage, more were struggling to climb up over the railing behind him.
I twirled my bat around in my hands while I raised it up into a classic batter’s stance. I rested it on my shoulder for a second, focusing in on the mob, and then started swinging for the outfield as hard as I could.
It was hard work, more so thanks to the sway of the now-wildly rocking boat, but both of us kept our feet. In a matter of moments, I had worked my way closer to Connor.
“Jesus,” I said, feeling the strain in my arms. “They keep coming up over the railings.”
“Don’t worry, kid,” Connor said. “With the boat moving, I think the undead crowd is thinning.”
“Good,” I said. “I can barely swing anymore.”
“What’s the matter, kid?” he asked. “You don’t want to swim for the island?”
“Not if I don’t have to,” I said. “I’d rather not find out whether the water of the East River would eat through me or the metal of my bat first. Or if it would make me like one of those creatures.”
“I wouldn’t worry about what would happen in the water,” Connor said.
“ No?”
“Nah,” he said. “Given the workout your arms are getting, I doubt you’d have the strength to swim to shore before drowning.”
“Thanks, Captain Optimism,” I said.
“It would be a better way to go than having your girlfriend channel some water-based she-devil and kill you.”
The numbers of our gruesome enemies were thin enough now that I could chance a look back into the wheelhouse. Jane looked worn and half-asleep at the controls, but she still managed to shoot me a weak smile.
“She’s got the mark under control,” I said.
“For now,” Connor added
“Yep,” I said. “For now. When we find that water woman, we’ll beat her into removing it. If we find her.”
I turned back and Connor was watching me. “Don’t worry,” he said, as sober and sincere as I’d ever seen him. “If it comes to it, I’ll take care of things if Jane turns.”
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure there was a proper way to “thank” someone for promising to beat down the woman you loved. All our training in dealing with zombies and the like was meant to prepare us to strike down our colleagues without hesitation if they turned, but I didn’t think I had the courage to do it to Jane myself. Was hoping I didn’t have to come to that level of difficult decision making.
At least I now understood why the appeal of the open water had put Jane in such an improved mood; the girl was just releasing her inner monstrosity.
20
We hit the shore on Wards Island, tying off the boat on the shattered wooden remains of a dock that had definitely seen better days. Thankfully we had been able to outpace the aqua-zombies in their efforts to climb back on board the boat. I was paranoid enough once we landed that I stood at the water’s edge waiting for several minutes to make sure we had no hangers-on. When nothing came shambling out of the river for us, I finally retracted my bat and holstered it.
I turned around to face the darkness of the island’s woods behind us. Jane was sitting on a boulder off to my right, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her body. Her wind-whipped hair hung mostly over her face, giving her a crazy sea-haggish kind of look.
I walked over to her, but she didn’t register my presence as I approached. I put my hand on her shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
Jane brushed her hair out of her face and looked up at me. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Horrible,” she said, “but a bit more like myself now that I’m on dry land.” She continued to comb her hair down to something less Don King–like. I took her wanting to straighten herself out as a good sign that she was acting a bit less possessed now. “What came over me? What the heck happened out on the water?”
“You don’t remember?”
Jane shook her head. “Snippets of it,” she said. “It’s all a bit cloudy for me.”
“I think you had a little visit from someone,” I said.
“Did I? From that woman?” she asked. I nodded and her eyes widened. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
I knelt down in front of her and took her hands in mine. “I’m fine,” I said. “You fought that woman’s power and you won.”
Jane shook her head and looked down on the ground. “I don’t know how it happened. Being out on the open water just brought out the connection to it in me. It was overwhelming. I felt so … right. The mark started burning while you and Connor were fighting those … things. I don’t remember too much else until you got me inside the cabin.” Her face darkened. “I never should have come.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over that,” I said. “You can’t change the past. What’s done is done. We just have to keep fighting this as it comes. We’ve got Allorah analyzing things from a scientific angle, and Director Wesker is looking into the arcana behind it …”
“But how long do I have?” Jane asked, hysteria rising to the surface in her voice. “I could feel myself losing control and no one seems to be making any progress on it.”
“We’ll find a way,” I insisted.
“No!” Jane shouted. “We won’t. I shower more and more. At this rate, soon you’re going to need to buy an aquarium to hold me, Simon!”
She was over-the-top with emotion, much like I had been during my psychometric bout at the Gibson-Case Center. I know how stubborn those feelings had made me in the moment, and Jane was being just as stubborn. No matter what I was saying, she wouldn’t listen to me. I stood up. “Connor,” I said. “Talk to her.”
I was met with silence and I looked around. At first, I couldn’t see him anywhere in the darkness, but then I caught sight of his shadowy figure standing at the edge of the woods by the white of a nearby building I hadn’t even noticed. He stood there stock-still, and I walked over to him with caution, my hand resting on my bat in its holster. I had already had to deal with one person under possession tonight. I was hoping I didn’t have to take on another.
“Connor … ?” I asked, hoping I was hiding the trepidation in my voice.
I walked around in front of him. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, and he was looking up in the air toward the building. I stepped right in front of him and caught my partner’s eye.
“What’s up, buddy?” I asked, unholstering my bat.
He looked over at me and his face looked normal enough. “Does anything strike you strange about where we landed?” he asked.
“Other than the undead Aqua Men off its coast? Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
Connor grabbed me by my shoulders and spun me around. “Open your eyes, kid.”
I had been so concerned about Jane that I hadn’t really taken in much of our environment. The three of us were standing in a cluster of trees, some kind of forest or park on Wards Island. It didn’t have much in the way of lampposts or lighting of any kind, giving the area a wild and unused look, but there was one thing that stood out about the place—the building Connor had been looking at.
In front of us stood an abandoned lighthouse that rose almost as high as the bridge itself. A small rectangular room at the base of it stuck out, but other than that it looked fairly typical—a raised cylindrical structure that narrowed as it rose, ending hi
gh above in a railed balcony that surrounded the glassed-in top and its long-extinguished signal light.
Once I had taken it in, I turned back to Connor, only to find that Jane had joined us. She seemed more composed now as she stared up at the lighthouse. She looked over her shoulder at Connor.
“Doesn’t look to be an active lighthouse,” Connor said, “but with aqua-zombies just offshore from it and nothing else around—”
“We should probably check that out, huh?” Jane asked.
Connor looked at her. “At least one of you is paying attention,” he said. “Good to have you back.” He smiled, and then headed off toward the steps leading up to the entrance of the lighthouse.
I didn’t move. “Excuse me for showing concern over my possessed girlfriend first,” I said.
“Can we not call me ‘possessed’?” Jane asked. “I haven’t started hurling up pea soup or anything.”
“Yet,” I added. Jane shot me a hurt look. “Sorry.”
Jane didn’t say another word and headed off after Connor, leaving me there to feel like an insensitive cad all by my lonesome. I shook it off and followed after her, undoing the strap on my holster once again and pulling my bat free. I hit the combination of marked buttons on the shaft of my bat that spelled out Jane’s initials, which extended the custom weapon to its full size with a gentle shikt.
When I caught up with the two of them at the top of the steps leading up to the entrance, Jane was whispering to Connor. “Who’s going first?” she asked.
Before he could respond, I pushed past the two of them. “I’ll go,” I said. I still felt caddish. The least I could do was take the lead going in. I tried the handle of the heavy door. It was solidly built, its ancient wood barded together with thick iron bars that ran across it at three separate parts. It wouldn’t budge.
