Then again, I was sure I had a pretty good idea.
Maybe I should have just headed for the lifeboats, but my shared cabin with Angela was located on Deck 2. The lifeboats were scattered across several decks, but quite a few were located on Deck 4. That wasn’t too far to travel.
If I could make it to my cabin and grab my most important stuff – water bottles, backpack, ID cards, cash, and maybe a jacket – then I would be able to get back to the lifeboats before anything too crazy or wild happened, right?
I started scurrying down the stairs, moving as fast as I could. My legs hurt, and I was out of breath as I moved, but I had to keep going. For a second, I wondered if I should go try to find Angela, but I had literally no idea where she was. When I peeked at my watch, I saw that the club wasn’t closed yet. She could still be dancing there or perhaps she was already in our cabin.
I was about to find out.
Two crewmates ran by, passing me on the stairs. Their radios squawked with noise, emitting codes and information I couldn’t really understand. It sounded important though, and it sounded like it was kind of angry.
I kept moving.
I made it all the way to Deck 2 without anyone stopping me or bothering me, and then I burst into my cabin to find Angela throwing up in the middle of the floor.
Chapter 4
Winter
“Are you okay?” I asked her, but she shook her head. Was she drunk? Or was she infected with the virus that Jemma and the guy on the Lido Deck had? I eyed my roommate suspiciously, but she didn’t say anything.
Instead, Angela shook her head and kept throwing up. I fought the urge to rub her back or offer her a cold washcloth. It was bad enough that she was puking in the middle of the floor and not the bathroom, but I didn’t want her to infect me if she had the same stuff those other people had.
Whatever this virus was, it wasn’t anything to toy around with.
I looked at her for a moment, not really sure what I was supposed to do. People on the ship were getting sick, it seemed, and I wasn’t interested in contracting whatever weird virus they were all getting. I knew I was being rude by standing there staring, but the cabin we shared was really small, and there wasn’t a lot of free space with her vomiting in the center of the room.
I counted to ten, but then I decided that I’d waited long enough. I couldn’t afford to just stand here and see if Angela ended up being okay. Could I? I thought about calling for help. I could call the room steward, right? Only, when I reached for the in-room telephone, the line was dead. There would be no help coming.
“Angela, can you talk to me?”
Nothing. Just more puking.
“The lines are down,” I said. It was like something out of a bad horror movie. The villain always cut the lines first because he didn’t want anyone escaping or breaking free from his horrible plan.
That was definitely the worst thing about this situation. I didn’t know who the bad guy was or if one even existed. As far as I knew, Angela could be hung over and I might be overreacting. The idea of a zombie virus sweeping over the ship was literally insane, yet I couldn’t deny what I’d seen.
Trying to convince myself I wasn’t going nuts, I moved swiftly, carefully dodging Angela and avoiding her movements as I grabbed my backpack. It already had my sweater, a water bottle, and all of my travel information in there. My mom had really pushed the idea of having waterproof travel documents into my head, so I had all of that set up already.
There wasn’t anything else I could really think of to bring with me. At least, nothing that was available in my room or elsewhere on the ship. I mean, yeah, having something like a hunting knife would have been great, but our bags had been searched before we’d boarded the ship, and we weren’t allowed to bring weapons of any kind. We weren’t even really allowed to bring a lot of drinks or food.
Angela threw up again and then sat down on the bed, collapsing. Her entire dress was covered in puke. It was more vomit than one person should have been able to produce, and looking at her made me feel a little bit sick.
“I don’t feel so good,” she said, whispering. She stared at her hands, but her gaze was misty and hazy. It was like she was staring at herself, but not really seeing.
“Angela, did you drink too much?” I asked, moving toward the door. I stood there with my hand on the door handle. I was ready to bolt at any time. If Angela lunged at me and tried to kill me, I’d be out of there, but I couldn’t leave just yet. Not until I knew she was fine or until I gave her the option to come along.
Maybe she was just drunk. She could be really drunk and just need a hot shower to wash away the puke and the alcohol. When I was done drinking for the night, a hot shower always seemed to help me calm down. Well, that and a couple of water bottles, Gatorade, and maybe some Tylenol.
“I drank a lot,” she admitted weakly. Of course, she had. We all had. We’d all been partying all week.
Something was different about tonight, though.
Watching the bartender being attacked had put me on edge. I’d never seen anyone be so publicly violent before, and the act terrified me. If someone could walk up to another person and just kill them in front of an entire ship full of people, what else could they do? They could do anything. Anything at all.
“Do you think you can walk?” I looked at Angela, worried. Did she look a bit more pale than she had a moment ago?
“No.” Her voice was weak. Faint. She looked like she was going to pass out. I knew that she needed medical care, but with the phone lines dead, how was I supposed to do that? I stepped out into the hallway. It was empty aside from someone running down the hall.
“Hey!” I called out to the person jogging away from me, but they didn’t even stop. “Can anyone help us?” I called into the hallway. No one appeared though. Glancing back at Angela, I knew I needed to try to get her someone who could look after her. At the very least, maybe the medical staff on board could start an IV or something like that.
“Angela, I’m going to get help. Stay here.”
She mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and I stepped out into the hallway.
“Hang on, Angela. Help is coming.”
The hallway was decidedly empty, but I remembered where I’d seen the stewards hanging out. They had their own little room a few doors down from where Angela and I were staying. The room where they worked wasn’t a bedroom. It was where they kept linens and soaps and that sort of thing.
“Hello?” I called out when I reached the room. I knocked on the door. “Hey, I need help! Is anyone in there?”
I heard scuffling coming from inside the room, but nobody answered.
“I can hear you! Open the door!”
I jiggled the handle, but nothing happened.
“Let me in! I need help!”
Damn. Were they seriously not going to open the door? I tried once more, but nothing happened. Finally, I kicked the door in frustration. I must have hit it just right, because the door bounced open to reveal a short man with neat blonde hair. He was glaring at me.
“No,” he said. “Go away.”
“Hey, my friend needs help,” I said. “Don’t you have a medical team?”
“Go away,” he repeated.
“My friend is sick,” I said once more, just in case he hadn’t heard me the first time. “The phone lines are dead.”
“I know,” the man sighed. “Please, just go away. I don’t want you here.”
I looked at him for a moment, realizing that he wasn’t just being rude. He was actually exhausted. He looked totally worn out. Did he know something I didn’t know?
“You can’t help her?” I asked, needing clarification. “But she’s sick.”
“Everyone is sick,” he said. “So please, go. Stay away from me.”
He reached out toward me but didn’t touch me. He gestured for me to leave, and I was confused enough and frustrated enough that I did. If he wasn’t going to help me, then I’d have to figure this o
ut myself.
It was hard not to feel anger rushing up inside of me. I understood that there were a lot of sick people on the ship, but Angela needed help. There was a phone in the hallway just outside of the steward’s room. I reached for it, but just like the phone in my own room, the line was dead.
Crap.
If I wanted help, I’d have to physically get Angela somewhere, and I already knew that was going to be easier said than done.
I headed back toward our bedroom to find her still sitting on the bed. Luckily, it seemed as though she was done puking. That was good news.
“Angela, do you want to go to the medical bay with me?”
“No.”
Really?
It was worth a shot, though, and I tried again.
“You’re sick, Ang. Don’t you want to go get help?”
There was a long pause, but she shook her head. She didn’t speak again.
Okay, so she didn’t want to get any help. That was fine. I couldn’t force her to seek assistance or anything. If she was feeling well enough not to need a doctor, though, maybe she’d want to go with me to the lifeboats. I was still scared, and I wanted to go there in case there was some sort of rush for the boats. So far, there hadn’t been any sort of announcement about what had happened up on the Lido Deck.
Maybe the cruise director was going to try to brush it off.
“Angela, people on the ship are getting sick. I’m going to hang out near the lifeboats. Do you want to come?”
“No,” she said.
“I think you should,” I told her. I still didn’t want her to touch me. I didn’t want puke on me, and she was pretty gross, but I also didn’t really want to leave her behind. Angela and I had been friends for a really long time.
Maybe I was overreacting.
What if I was misunderstanding the situation I’d seen up on the Lido Deck?
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I was imagining. After all, I knew that I had an overactive imagination. I knew that I wasn’t exactly the best at figuring out how the world worked all of the time.
Could I have been panicking over nothing?
Maybe I should stay and take care of Angela. Maybe I was being a horrible friend.
“I’m not coming,” Angela glared at me, hissing the words. She seemed really mad, which was strange for someone who had just basically puked her guts out.
“Yeah, I know you aren’t feeling very well,” I agreed. I stood there at the door, still not sure what I was supposed to do.
Run or stay?
Help her or leave her?
The idea of leaving her if something was going wrong seemed horrible and mean. It seemed unusually cruel and terrible. We’d been friends for so long. We’d been through so much together.
Then I thought of something. Yesterday, on the island stop, Jemma had been kissing a local guy and had gotten sick from him. Angela and I had gone to the same island. I hadn’t eaten or drank anything while we were there, though. The heat had been a bit too much for me, and it had totally killed my appetite.
Angela had eaten there, though. She’d gone to a little hole-in-the-wall kind of place and ordered a lot of food. She’d had a couple of drinks, too.
If Jemma had gotten sick there, could Angela have gotten sick, too?
“Angela?” I asked, looking up at my friend, but as soon as our eyes locked, I knew that I hadn’t been overreacting. I knew that I hadn’t been imagining things. I hadn’t.
Angela’s eyes were almost completely black. They’d completely glazed over with this deep, dark color. I couldn’t see the vibrant blue that had once been there. I couldn’t see anything that reminded me of her.
“Angela?” I whispered.
She looked at me, cocking her head, and I knew in that moment that my friend was gone. The nightmares had been real. The movies, the video games, and the comics? They’d all been right. When a virus like this came and destroyed your friend, it destroyed everything. There was nothing left of her.
There was nothing left that made her my buddy.
“Angela,” I tried one more time. I bit my lip, suddenly feeling like I was going into shock. This couldn’t be real. I had wanted so badly for it to be an overreaction. I didn’t want any of it to be real. “Angela?”
While I had anticipated that Angela might make a move toward me, I hadn’t expected that she would leap toward me, which was what she did. She threw her body toward me at once, and I shoved a leg out. My foot connected with her chest and she bounced back and landed on her ass in the pile of puke on the floor.
As she slipped around, trying to stand back up, I took that moment to head out into the narrow hallway of the ship. Quickly, I closed the door to the cabin behind me. I knew that it would lock automatically so I couldn’t get back in without a key, but would Angela be able to get out?
I wasn’t sure.
I just didn’t know.
I stood there for just a second and placed my hand on the door. This was it. There was seriously something wrong with my friend. I couldn’t panic. I couldn’t do it.
I had to get to the deck with the lifeboats.
I turned, and I started to run.
Chapter 4
Greta
I woke to the sounds of screaming. Glancing at the clock on my nightstand, I realized that it was already past midnight. My goodness. Something must be wrong. This wasn’t my first cruise by a long shot, but nothing like this had ever happened before. Not as long as I could remember, anyway.
“What in tarnation?” I muttered, mimicking my late husband. Dominique had always been so sassy and fussy at the same time. It had always made me laugh, but now, I mostly just missed him.
I took a few minutes to get dressed before I went wandering out into the hallways of the ship to find out what was going on. I could hear a couple of people running. That made me think there was some sort of emergency, yet there had been no emergency announcement made by the cruise director.
Strange.
When we’d done our orientation the first day on the cruise, the crewmates had made it very clear that there would be an announcement in the event of any sort of emergency.
There hadn’t been, though.
I pulled on my clothes, sneakers, and jacket, and I grabbed a baseball cap for my hair. If something happened and I did have to leave the ship, I wasn’t going to be caught with a sunburn. My shoulder bag had everything I needed to last me a day or two – snacks, water bottles, and my ID – and I grabbed that, too.
I knew that in an emergency situation, it could be tempting to grab everything, but that would just slow me down. Dominique and I had traveled together enough to know that nothing was worth being left behind or dying over.
Nothing but perhaps a child or a spouse.
I didn’t have a spouse. I’d won the cruise in a quilting competition for the best quilt in all of Mission County. I was excited about that. I’d invited a couple of my girlfriends to come with me as my plus one, but they were all still married and didn’t want to come without their husbands.
Not willing to be a third wheel on my own trip, I’d decided to just go by myself. I was long past retirement and felt I more than deserved a chance to explore the world, even if it was on my own.
Now, I stepped out of my cabin. I looked both ways. Sure enough, people were running around all willy-nilly, screaming and yelling.
I waved to a girl running by, trying to catch her attention.
“What’s going on?”
Mostly, I wanted to know if we were sinking. I didn’t much anticipate a repeat of the Titanic, but if we were going to sink, I’d like to be on a lifeboat before it happened.
“Cannibals,” the girl told me, and then she kept moving steadily down the hall, not slowing her pace at all.
I must have heard her wrong.
She did say “cannibals,” though, didn’t she?
I looked back and forth, wondering if I’d heard her correctly. What did she mean when she said cannibals? M
aybe she’d misspoken. Maybe she meant cannonballs. Maybe she meant someone had done a cannonball into the pool and gotten hurt.
Then why would people be panicking?
It didn’t make any sense, but I’d learned long ago that sometimes, things didn’t have to make sense to be true. I scurried down the road. Well, I went as fast as someone my age could go, which was quicker than most people thought. I skipped the main staircase, assuming it would be pretty busy. Instead, I went toward the stairs at the end of the hall and made my way up those.
It was the middle of the night.
Nobody should have been awake. Nobody should have been walking around, yet people were. They were wandering every which-way, moving here and there, and it didn’t make any sense. Someone else screamed, and then another person. All of the screams were making me feel a little dizzy, but I kept moving.
I headed for the deck with the lifeboats because if something really bad was happening, then I wanted to make sure I made it off of the boat. Oh, I might not have a husband anymore, but I still had a life. I wanted to live. I wanted to make sure that at the end of my vacation, I actually went home.
I had stuff to do! Those quilts weren’t going to make themselves.
“Hey!” A younger-looking guy pushed me as he made his way past me. “What’s the rush?” I yelled out. He stopped with one foot on the stairs and turned to look at me.
“You haven’t heard?”
“No.”
“Zombies,” he said, lowering his voice.
I stared at him, blinking. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like hurrying so much. What did he mean, zombies?
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah,” he said. He looked around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else coming to this staircase. The people who had felt like running away had already started to run. Everyone else was probably asleep still.
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “Zombies are a mythical monster that doesn’t exist.”
Stay Dead | Book 1 | Wild Undead Page 3
