Stay Dead | Book 1 | Wild Undead

by Mortimer, L. C.

“Die, already!”

  I screamed, kicking downward, and my foot connected with the creature’s arm. I couldn’t see it beneath the water, but I would feel it. I felt the second the zombie’s arm broke off beneath the waves because it was like a weight had been lifted off of my body.

  Hurriedly, I finished swimming back to Greta and Winter. I reached the lifeboat and they lowered their arms to grab me and pull me inside.

  “Are you okay?”

  “It’s not still there, is it?”

  “No,” I said. As soon as I was in the boat, I gestured to my leg. “Pretty sure it’s long dead and long gone now.”

  The remnants of the zombie’s hand were still wrapped around my ankle, but the creature was no longer attached. The hand extended to where its wrist should have been, and then there was nothing. It had broken off when I’d kicked it, leaving me a horrible trophy and a really awful memory.

  “How the hell are we supposed to get that off?” Greta muttered, reaching for the hand.

  Winter leaned out of the opposite door and vomited into the ocean.

  Chapter 14

  Greta

  A DAY PASSED.

  Somehow, an entire day passed, and none of us killed anyone else. The zombie we’d killed had been the only thing we’d needed to get rid of. It was dead now and gone. There was nothing else. There was no one else.

  We’d tried to row with the oars a little bit. That had lasted until it started to rain, and then we’d come back inside of the little lifeboat and simply sat, waiting.

  None of us knew what was going to happen next.

  I knew, though.

  I’d been married to a sailor long enough to know that most of the time, people who were lost at sea died really horrible, painful deaths. I didn’t think we’d be lucky enough to be killed off by sharks or sea monsters anytime soon. Instead, we’d probably dehydrate and shrivel up like snakes in the sun.

  Isaiah and Winter kept themselves occupied by napping and reading. Winter had an eReader in her bag that had somehow survived everything. She told me that the thing lasted weeks without needing to be charged, which seemed kind of incredible. Still, what was she going to do when the battery ran out?

  I wasn’t holding my breath that we were going to find civilization anytime soon. In my experience, we were going to be stuck for a long time. We’d probably all die, and it would be terrible.

  Probably, I should have encouraged my boatmates to drink all the water and eat all of the food because we weren’t going to make it long, anyway.

  I didn’t, though.

  Instead, we took inventory of everything that was on the little boat and sorted things out. We divided almost everything by three so that we each had an even amount of food, water, and first aid supplies. Then we waited.

  By the time evening rolled around, I was feeling discouraged. It had rained so much that we hadn’t bothered to try moving toward any sort of island or landmass. What was even worse was that any progress we might have made earlier in the day was already undone.

  The waves that surrounded us tossed us about, not caring about our plans, not caring about what we wanted. The ocean didn’t care about anything but claiming what it was owed.

  “Is it ever going to let up?” Winter whispered so quietly I almost couldn’t hear her. I looked over at where she was sitting, leaning against the wall. She’d taken off her clothing earlier and let it dry out before the rain had started again. Now she was dressed again, but looked exhausted.

  We all did.

  “It has to eventually.”

  “You know, I really should have checked the weather before coming on this vacation,” she told me, offering a tight smile. “My mom always told me that it was important to make sure I knew what to pack. She said checking the weather ahead of time was, and I quote, totally essential.”

  “Your mom was right,” I nodded, affirming her.

  “What about you?” Isaiah piped up. “Are you the kind of person who checks the weather?”

  “I look like it, don’t I?”

  “A little.”

  “I never check the weather,” I shrugged. “It’s not because I don’t care. It’s just that life is short, and I don’t want to spend it worrying about whether or not there’s going to be a little bit of rain.”

  “Life seems even shorter now,” Winter pointed out. “All of those people died yesterday.”

  “Not all of them,” Isaiah said. “I bet there are other survivors like us.”

  “Some of the lifeboats had to have been used,” I agreed. “I’d be shocked if we were the only ones who made it off of the cruise ship alive.”

  “If we aren’t the only ones, won’t we like, accidentally bump into some of the other survivors?” Winter wanted to know. She turned off her eReader and put it back in her bag next to her water bottles. I could tell that Winter was saving her water for as long as possible. We all were. Even though we’d divided up the rations, we hadn’t eaten or drank very much at all. It probably wasn’t a good idea to be stingy, but we all were.

  Luckily, fear had a way of suppressing your appetite, anyway.

  “The ocean is a big place,” I reminded her.

  “The world is a big place, too, but that doesn’t stop you from randomly running into people you know. Has that ever happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?” I wasn’t quite sure that I understood where she was going with her question.

  “Say you’re on vacation in a totally different state and you happen to walk into a random restaurant. As you’re sitting there eating, your best friend from third grade sits at the table next to you. What are the odds, right? Well, that’s happened to me. Multiple times.”

  “Sounds like you have a stalker,” Isaiah told her.

  “Come on, that’s never happened to you? I can’t be the only one,” Winter insisted.

  She was right.

  It had happened to me, too.

  “I can think of a few cases where that’s happened to me,” I said with a soft smile. “I was actually in Tokyo with my husband.”

  “You’ve been to Tokyo?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I nodded. “Well, I’m not sure what it looks like now. Hopefully they aren’t experiencing the same outbreak our ship is, but you never know. We were walking around the Imperial Palace there when a woman I worked with at least a decade earlier walked up to me and gave me a hug. Neither one of us knew the other would be in Japan, let alone at the same place at the same time. It was surreal.”

  “What did your husband think?” Winter asked.

  “He thought it was a joke,” I laughed. “He thought I’d planned it. I hadn’t.”

  “That has never happened to me,” Isaiah looked from me to Winter and back again. “And I think you’re both a little crazy. You know that?”

  “Yes, we know,” Winter told him. She didn’t seem mad or angry, though. “Everyone’s a little crazy. Besides, I haven’t had any coffee today.”

  “Nor have I.” I was something of a coffee connoisseur.

  “I guess that’s true,” he shrugged. “So, what’s our plan?”

  “My plan is to not die,” Winter said.

  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” I agreed.

  “What do ya’ll think is going to happen, though?” Isaiah wanted to know. “Like, what if we find other survivors? Are we going to make friends?”

  Were we going to make friends?

  In another life, I would have said yes. I would have said it was our duty to help other people in need. In another life, I would have said that making friends was absolutely essential when it came to staying safe and alive when you were floating at sea, but this wasn’t another life.

  This was our life.

  And yesterday, everything I’d ever known had completely changed. Everything I’d ever cared about or known about had been ripped away, and now we were floating in a plastic tub in the middle of the ocean.

  No, making friends was no longer on my list of prior
ities.

  Luckily, Winter seemed to agree.

  “I don’t think it’s very safe,” she said slowly. “What if they’re infected?”

  “I didn’t think of that,” Isaiah sighed. “Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t trust anyone. Not outside of this little boat, anyway. No offense, but I don’t think either one of you is going to backstab me or feed me to the sharks.”

  “Who knows? It’s only been a day. We might get hungry in a couple of days and fight you for your granola bars.”

  “Are you being serious right now, Granny?”

  “Don’t call me Granny,” I shook my finger at him. “I’m not that damn old, and you know it.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “But you already said you were a grandma.”

  “I am a grandma, but I’m not your grandma. Call me Greta or call me nothing. I’m tired of you younger people thinking that I’m some sort of incapable geezer just because I have white hair.”

  “It’s nothing personal,” he told me.

  “Well, it sure as hell feels personal.”

  Everything felt personal. Maybe it really was the lack of coffee or maybe it was because we’d been trapped together for over a day. My body was sore and I was starting to get irritable. It wasn’t Isaiah’s fault and it wasn’t Winter’s fault, either.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m a bit tired.”

  “We all are,” he agreed. “It’s fine.”

  “Can we just make a promise to each other?” Winter asked. “Can we promise each other that no matter what happens, we’ll look after each other? I mean, I don’t know about you two, but I’m pretty glad that I’m not being forced to survive alone.”

  “She’s right.” Winter was being clever. It was better to have other people around to help you survive. It was a horrible idea to try to live alone in general, but trying to stay alive after a disaster without any sort of support was just asking for an early grave.

  I didn’t want that.

  I had no interest in graves.

  What I had an interest in was living, so I decided that I would try to live.

  And these two kids were going to help me.

  “It’s a promise,” I agreed.

  “A promise,” Isaiah echoed.

  “No matter what happens, we’ll all look after each other.”

  It sounded great on paper. Looked good, too, but was this really the type of promise we’d be able to keep to each other?

  We weren’t just dealing with some sort of natural disaster. We were dealing with what could, quite possibly, be an apocalypse. We were dealing with something that could be the end of everything.

  We were dealing with something that could mean the end of the world.

  As darkness fell and we all found our sleeping spots for the night, I couldn’t help but wonder what my husband would have done. He was always so brave and charming. He always managed to find something good in everything he did. Whether he was fishing or hunting or just reading to me and our kids, he was always able to find something to smile about.

  Right now, I didn’t have very much to smile about. My free vacation had turned south very, very quickly, and I was feeling anxious and tired. Lost. Worn out.

  I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but one thing was for certain: I wasn’t alone. Winter and Isaiah were with me. I just hoped that together, the three of us were going to be able to make it through.

  Chapter 15

  Isaiah

  A LOT CAN HAPPEN WHEN you least expect it to.

  Take me, for example. There I was, hanging out in my early 20s, trying to have a good time, when all of a sudden, there were zombies. I was trying to find ways to relax and just enjoy my life when bam! Zombies.

  Then they came again.

  And again.

  The zombies that came on the cruise ship weren’t like zombies I’d seen in movies. They weren’t particularly fast or particularly smart, but they were mean. They were vicious. They were determined to reach whatever it was that they wanted.

  “If you could go back to last week, what would you do differently?”

  That was Winter. She wasn’t whiny, exactly, but she was kind of melancholy. I wasn’t really sure what to think about her as a person. She wasn’t the kind of person I’d hang out with usually. She seemed kind of bossy and kind of a know-it-all.

  She was a fighter, though, and that was pretty cool.

  “I wouldn’t have gotten on the ship, if that’s what you’re asking,” I told her.

  “No? You’d be missing out on all of this,” she waved her arm around, gesturing at the boat. Somehow, despite drying in the sun all day, it still felt wet. Oh, and it was hot. It was night now, and it was still hot. I’d stripped down to my boxers to dry off after fighting the ugly water zombie and I’d never gotten dressed again.

  Luckily for me, neither of the girls seemed to mind. They at least didn’t say anything. I was relieved because if they’d complained, I would have felt pressured to get dressed, and I really, really didn’t want to get dressed. Sitting on a boat was the absolute worst thing I’ve ever experienced.

  No, I would not do it all over again.

  Not even if it meant getting to have an “adventure.”

  “I think I’d live,” I said.

  “Me too,” Greta said. “Although, to be fair, maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe we all are.”

  “What do you mean?” I looked at Greta, taking her in. If I’d seen her randomly, I probably would have kept right on going. She didn’t come across as strong or threatening. She wasn’t the type of person I’d be attracted to, so as sad as it was, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about her.

  She was the type of person people underestimated, I realized. Maybe that was her secret. Greta came across as the type of woman people might look at and just shrug off. They’d think she wasn’t anything special, that she was just a grandmother or an older woman who was retired or starting to go senile. People didn’t look at her and realize that she was sharp.

  “Well, this is quite an adventure,” she said.

  “An adventure?” Winter looked irritated at the comment.

  “Sure,” Greta nodded. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Most of my days are filled with the same old stuff. I have my hobbies, sure, and I have my friends, but some of them are already starting to die off. I can’t remember the last time any of us did something really crazy.”

  “Something crazy like fight zombies?” Winter asked.

  “Something crazy like fight zombies,” Greta agreed. “And if we do manage to find some land without dying, I don’t think that it’ll be over.”

  “You think zombies will be wherever we land?” I asked.

  “I think so. Think about it, Isaiah. Why now? Why did everyone on the ship get sick at the same time? Why didn’t we get help for the illness? I bet you it was already spreading and people tried to squish it down.”

  “That’s the problem with trying to bury a secret,” I whispered. “It always comes back to find you.”

  “It does,” Greta nodded. “If the government thought that people were getting sick, they probably did something like try to keep it quiet. Maybe they brushed it off as a flu or something minor. A seasonal virus, perhaps?”

  “But if it was spreading in other places, and then it got onto cruise ships...” I was starting to understand what she was saying.

  Unfortunately, it sounded like she was saying that we were totally, completely screwed.

  “I hate this,” Winter whispered.

  “I know it’s hard,” Greta said slowly. “But we can’t lose hope.”

  “No offense, but you don’t know me,” Winter said quietly. There was no malice in her voice. It was weird. It was like the words she was choosing were kind of mean, but she didn’t sound like she was trying to be mean.

  “You’re right. I don’t know you. I’d like to, though. If we’re going to help each other out, it’s probably important that I get to know you.
Why don’t we play a game?”

  “I swear that if you suggest two truths and a lie, I’ll just overboard with that zombie,” Winter said quickly.

  “Nothing like that. Why don’t we play a game called one lie and two truths?” Greta spoke with a totally straight face, and I watched them both, looking from Greta to Winter and back again until they were both laughing.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” I finally said. “We’re going to be together. We should try to figure out what skills we each have.”

  “That way, we’ll know how to handle different situations. Sounds good to me,” Winter agreed.

  “Well, I was a teacher for a long time,” Greta said. “My husband was a sailor, as I said, so I know a lot of different things about a lot of different things. Being a teacher didn’t just show me how to teach math, either. It showed me how to read people.”

  “That’s pretty useful right there,” I pointed out.

  “What about you, Isaiah?” Winter really hated talking about herself, didn’t she? She so rarely shared anything personal that it became very obvious very quickly that she disliked being forced to share about her own life.

  That was okay, though. I could deal with that.

  I could handle helping her along on this journey. Greta seemed up for it, too. I couldn’t really explain my draw to Winter. It wasn’t romantic. I had a feeling that romance in the apocalypse was never going to happen between me and Winter. I didn’t care. What I did care about was helping someone I was starting to view as a friend.

  “You know about my job already,” I said. “I don’t have many physical skills that are useful. If you ask me to paint you some digital art, I can do it. Logo design? I’m all over it. I did, however, participate in a lot of outdoor clubs and games as a kid. I was a scout for a little while. I was also really, really good at Bible quizzing, and my church did a lot of camping.”

  “So, you’re probably pretty good at making a fire,” Winter pointed out.

  “That I am.”

  “Do you like to do the little trick where you build different little stacks with your twigs and then light them on fire?”