Stay Dead | Book 1 | Wild Undead

by Mortimer, L. C.

  Sometimes, I felt like my life was so wildly stagnate that nothing else really mattered. Sometimes it seemed like if I ever wanted to get ahead, I’d have to change everything about who I was, and who wanted to do that?

  People could talk a big game, but change was hard. The kind of change it took to really do something with your life was hard. Sometimes it seemed impossibly so.

  “Yeah,” the sunglasses girl said. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  She didn’t sound convinced, though, and I wasn’t convinced, either.

  “We can go check on her after the movie.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, I don’t want to get too close, you know, just in case...”

  Just in case Jemma was contagious. I understood that. I wouldn’t want to get too close, either. The opening credits of the movie started to play and I leaned back in my chair watching them.

  Whatever happened in this film, I was sure it was going to get a little crazy.

  Chapter 2

  Winter

  THERE WAS A BRIEF INTERMISSION about halfway through the movie, and I got up to stretch my legs. I walked around to one of the upper decks just to feel the breeze on my face. Setting my arms on the railing, I leaned out over the balcony and smelled the saltwater waves.

  This was it, I thought.

  This was the life.

  If I could keep doing this, living like this, then everything was going to be okay for me.

  Why couldn’t real life be more like a vacation?

  Why couldn’t I just do this all day every day?

  I didn’t like the idea of going back to my normal, ordinary life where things were just so boring. I didn’t even have a pet. Maybe I should have thought about it long ago. I’d be a good pet owner, I knew. I had a lot of love to give to an animal.

  Only, it had never really seemed like the right time. It had never really felt like it was the right moment. I’d been stuck in some sort of time warp, waiting for the perfect time to do all of these wonderful things, but I hadn’t done them.

  I’d spent years trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and now that I was finally venturing out of my comfort zone and starting to travel, I realized that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be free. I wanted to explore and see the world.

  Maybe I needed to get a job on a ship.

  Resting my arms on the railing, I looked out over the water. The waves hit the sides of the ship as the giant cruiser lurched through the ocean, barreling ahead into the darkness. The wind rushed over my face, and I closed my eyes.

  Peace.

  Being here seemed to bring me peace.

  It was kind of wonderful, actually, just how nice the cruise had been so far. Things had been really wonderful, relaxing, and just totally chill. I hadn’t had to worry about anything at all. I’d been able to relax myself. I’d been able to just finally forget all of the things that had been bugging me.

  The biggest decisions I had to make here were whether I was going to eat in the main dining hall or grab something from the buffet. I had to decide whether I wanted to swim or lay out. These weren’t exactly life-changing decisions, which meant they were fun to make.

  “Having fun?” A man was standing at the railing a few feet away from me. He was staring at the water, too, like I was. He was tall and skinny with long, grey hair. I wondered if he was here with his family.

  “Yeah, probably too much fun,” I smiled.

  “That’s the best kind of fun. Is this your first cruise?”

  “That obvious?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. “People ask me that all of the time.” Aside from asking where I was from, that was the thing people asked me the most.

  “Not really,” he shrugged. “Some people like to compete, though. You know, see who’s been on the most trips.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” I laughed. “A couple of the seniors I’ve met have kind of wanted to show off how many trips they’ve been on.”

  I was jealous, if I was being honest. I loved the idea of just getting to relax and travel around the globe. It sounded like a wonderful sort of thing. Being able to just explore and do as I pleased without worrying about work or responsibilities seemed incredible.

  “What about you?” I asked my new friend.

  “Not my first cruise,” he said. “Hopefully, not my last, either.”

  “Do you always take the same ship?” I’d met a few people who were very particular about the ship they sailed on.

  “Never,” he said. “I mean, most of them are the same, anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure,” he nodded. “Aside from things like the lifeboat style and location, you’re pretty much looking at a floating paradise with food, right?”

  “I guess that’s probably true,” I shrugged. “My friend loves to cruise. She said she likes choosing ships with good party scenes.”

  “Let me guess,” the man chuckled. “Your friend is about, oh, 23?”

  “Something like that.”

  “She’s not wrong. Some of the ships I’ve been on didn’t have a good bar selection. This one doesn’t seem to have that problem.”

  I was still slightly buzzed, but not nearly as much as I’d been at the start of the movie. In fact, talking about drinking made me want to head to the bar for a refresher. I was glad that Angela, along with the rest of her family, seemed to like drinking.

  Being stuck on a ship without alcohol, or without a good selection of alcohol, sounded pretty much horrible to me.

  “Did you get the drink package?” I asked.

  “Always,” he nodded.

  “Good choice.”

  I was just about to excuse myself to go get a new drink. I’d choose one with rum instead of vodka, I thought, not wanting to risk the chance of getting whatever weird illness that girl, Jemma, had come down with.

  If there was a risk of her virus being from the vodka on board, I wanted to stay far, far away from that.

  Before I could excuse myself, there was a brief announcement letting us know that the intermission was almost over. Waving goodbye to the railing guy, I headed back to my seat. Settling in, I closed my eyes for a moment.

  I made a mental note to thank Angela when I saw her later. She’d be drunk, crashing into our room in the middle of the night. I knew that. I didn’t really mind too much. When she came back, though, I’d tell her just how much the invitation to come along with her family really meant to me.

  It meant so much.

  My thoughts were interrupted all of a sudden by a high, shrill sound that seemed to echo throughout the darkness. I turned, wondering what it was. The sound was familiar, but not something I was used to hearing on board the ship. Finally, it registered.

  Screaming.

  Someone was screaming.

  Only, this was unlike any scream I’d ever heard before in my life. This scream was large and heavy and wild. It was horrifying. It was the type of scream someone would make when they were about to die or be killed. It was the kind of scream that someone would emit when they were about to die.

  At first, I thought it was the sound of the movie. After all, a creepy movie, even if it wasn’t a horror flick, was going to have some screams from time to time. When I walked back toward the balcony that overlooked the movie, though, the screen that had been showing the film was blank.

  What was going on?

  I glanced down to where Sunglasses and her friend had been sitting. Their seats were empty. The two girls were standing nearby, pointing and shouting. I followed to the place they were pointing, and I stared in shock.

  There, at the bar, someone was tearing the bartender apart.

  They were eating him.

  Chapter 3

  Winter

  “What the hell?” I stared, looking at the situation unfolding in front of me. Was this real life?

  Two security guards ran across the deck toward the bar. One of them slipped in some water that had sloshed over the side of a nearby wading pool. He recovered
quickly and continued moving. The other one never slowed.

  Everyone was shouting, pointing, and yelling, but nobody really seemed to understand what was happening. The two girls who had been sitting in front of me were close enough that I could hear what they were saying.

  “Hey,” I yelled to Sunglasses, who turned when she heard me. “What happened?”

  She looked over at me, eyes wide. She just shook her head. Her friend, however, seemed to have seen more. The two of them scurried over, as though they couldn’t miss up a chance to gossip about the event.

  “He just grabbed the bartender and started hitting him and trying to bite him. What the hell, right? Like, I’m sorry, but getting a drink is not that serious of thing.”

  She rolled her eyes and looked back toward the scene unfolding. The two security guards managed to calm the guy down long enough to handcuff him, but he was still snarling and trying to fight them – or bite them – as they escorted him away from the bar.

  They headed toward the private staff elevators. Were they going to take him to the jail? Surely there was some sort of on-board jail, right? I thought I remembered hearing something about that when we first boarded.

  As the crew members moved toward the elevators, I watched a group of medical personnel move in toward the bartender, but even from across the deck, I knew there was no chance of him making it. I felt a little sick watching, staring at this guy’s misfortune. I’d never seen anyone die before. It felt weird to be watching it now.

  I wasn’t sure if the freaking-out guy had stabbed him or just bitten him in the neck, but the bartender was long dead by the time the doctors arrived. I felt a little queasy, all of a sudden, and it had nothing to do with the waves. This wasn’t motion sickness I was feeling, it was something else.

  Fear.

  I’d seen enough zombie movies and played enough 7 Days to Die to know that if someone started biting another person – especially to death – that you needed to take that seriously. Whatever was going on wasn’t normal. That biting stuff? That wasn’t okay.

  It wasn’t usual.

  It was...

  Well, it was messed up was what it was. I also knew that if the guy the security guards had taken downstairs was sick with something that it was only a matter of time before the rest of the ship got sick.

  Had there been some sort of incubation period?

  What had happened?

  “Hey,” I gestured at the two watcher girls again, and they looked over at me. They both seemed wildly nervous and wildly annoyed with me for trying to talk to them. I got it. They were probably the popular kids in high school and I was still, quite obviously, kind of a nerd. “You said your friend was sick, right?”

  “Yeah, Jemma. Do you know her or something?”

  Ignoring her question, I asked another one of my own.

  “What happened to her?”

  “She’s sick.”

  “Yeah, but what’s she sick with?”

  The two girls looked at each other. They were probably trying to decide how much – if anything – they should tell me. Finally, one of them shrugged and decided to answer.

  “She got food poisoning.”

  “Did she try to bite anyone?”

  “Bite anyone? What? No. She was just throwing up a lot.”

  “Did anything happen to her recently? Anything that could have made her sick?”

  One of the girls nudged the other. She whispered something to her friend, but I couldn’t quite make it out.

  “No way,” the girl said. “She wouldn’t have gotten sick from that. He was so hot!”

  “Sick from what?” I asked, wondering if they were going to tell me what they knew. Suddenly, the last of my buzz was completely gone and I was totally, horribly sober. If ever there was a time to be drunk, it would be now.

  People were still swarming around the decks, murmuring and trying to figure out what was going on. The film was still playing louder on the overhead projector, yet few people were still paying attention to that. Everyone knew that something else was going on. Something big.

  “Sick from what?” I repeated when the two girls didn’t answer right away. What could have made their friend sick? If it wasn’t from bad vodka, there had to be something else, something they didn’t want people to know.

  “She hooked up with this guy at the stop yesterday.”

  The ship had stopped yesterday and most of the cruisers had gotten off to explore a local island. It had been a ton of fun. I’d gone with Angela and the two of us had done a little bit of shopping and exploring ourselves. We were supposed to stop in a couple of hours at the next island on our “must visit” list. Tomorrow morning, we would all debark to go exploring and enjoy excursions as a group.

  Suddenly, I wondered if that was still going to happen. Judging by the amount of blood on the deck of the ship, I’d venture a guess that we weren’t going anywhere. If the captain didn’t quarantine the entire ship right away, chances were that the harbormaster, or whoever was in charge of allowing ships to dock, would make that call.

  “Hooked up with someone? Was he sick?”

  “No, but she said he was really kinky.”

  “Kinky how?”

  “Are you a voyeur or something?” Sunglasses laughed. She didn’t seem embarrassed at my questions. She was just annoyed. I got the vibe that both of these girls were tolerating me, but neither one of them really liked me. That was fine. I wasn’t trying to be besties. I just wanted information.

  “A little,” I lied.

  “He bit her,” the friend said. “Like, pretty hard. I’ve had guys bite me before, but not like that.”

  So that was it.

  It was zombies.

  It was zombies, and it was happening. The plague was here. I’d always thought people who believed in conspiracy theories were really stupid. It seemed to me that people who believed in stuff like monsters and magic were really dumb, but all of a sudden, it didn’t seem so dumb anymore.

  “Zombies,” I whispered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Did she just say zombies?”

  “Yeah, I think she did.”

  “Hey, Jemma didn’t make out with a zombie!”

  “Look,” I said, turning to the girls. “Something weird is happening on this ship. I’m just saying that you need to be careful. We just literally saw some guy being ripped to shreds. That’s not normal.”

  “Well, no, it’s not normal,” the darker-haired girl agreed.

  “So, what are we supposed to do about it?” Sunglasses asked.

  “Look,” I pointed to the place where the bartender had been. The doctors were now carefully hauling him away toward the elevators where the guards had taken the biter-man. The bartender’s body was now covered with a sheet to hide his identity, I’m sure, but blood was dripping as the doctors moved him.

  That blood was mixing with the water that was sloshing around on the already-wet deck. The ship was moving rapidly, and we were hitting waves like crazy. Anyone who stepped in the water on the deck was going to be exposed to that. Whatever was in that blood was about to be everywhere on board.

  “The blood?”

  “If that guy who attacked the bartender was infected with something, it’s in the bartender’s blood now. The bartender’s blood is in all of that water.”

  We watched from our spot as people continued moving across the deck, acting like they hadn’t just witnessed something horrible. I understood it. People had this way of trying to pretend like bad things didn’t happen. It was natural to want to put that stuff out of your head.

  In my opinion, acting like it didn’t happen wasn’t super smart, though. If you acted like something didn’t happen at all, then you weren’t going to be able to protect yourself or keep yourself safe. You certainly weren’t going to be able to avoid any problems.

  “They’re just stepping in it,” Sunglasses said.

  “Acting like they don’t even see it,” her friend whispered.
>
  “Look, ladies,” I finally said. “I’m heading back to my room. I’m packing a bag, and then I’m heading to the lifeboats. If something is about to go down, then I don’t really want to be around when it does.” If there was going to be a mad dash for lifeboats or getting off the ship, I thought I’d rather like to be there at the beginning of the rush, rather than the end.

  “You’re going to steal a lifeboat?”

  “No, I’m not going to steal anything,” I said. “But if there’s going to be any sort of evacuation, then I want to be close to those boats.”

  “Evacuation?”

  I nodded, and then I let my eyes wander around the rest of the Lido Deck. The movie hadn’t stopped playing, which I thought was a little strange. Lots of people were still sitting around, trying to figure out what was going on. A few families started to get up and head back to their rooms. I didn’t blame them. I wouldn’t want my kids exposed to what just happened, either.

  “Good luck,” I said to the girls, and then I started heading toward the stairs.

  I knew better than to take an elevator when something was about to go down. I glanced at my watch, glad my mother had decided to get me one for my birthday. She’d snagged it for me because it was on sale and because it let me count my steps each day. Being on the cruise had definitely gotten me active, if nothing else.

  “Where’s she going?”

  “What a weirdo.”

  “I don’t want to evacuate.”

  “Nobody’s going to have to evacuate.”

  As I walked away, I heard the girls talking and finally, the movie switched off and was replaced with loud music. Someone had gotten things figured out, apparently, because I could hear the heavy bass of the music and the audience was already gasping with excitement, ready to think about something other than scary movies and dead bartenders.

  What the hell was going on?

  When I stepped into one of the interior hallways to start moving toward the stairs, I saw a couple of staff members running by. The crewmates weren’t usually in such a hurry, so I wondered what they knew that I didn’t know.