Stay Dead | Book 1 | Wild Undead

by Mortimer, L. C.

  “I do,” I said, laughing. “My mom also taught me this trick the last time we went camping together. She said you should put a little bit of dryer lint in whatever structure you build for your twigs. Then light that on fire. Everything else goes up in flames.”

  “Doesn’t the fire smell like socks if you do that?” Greta asked.

  “Weirdly enough, it doesn’t,” I told them. I laughed for a second, but then I started thinking about my mom. I really, really hoped she was okay. I didn’t like this situation anymore than anyone else did.

  If I ever made it back home, I’d give her a hug and tell her I was sorry for all of the stupid crap I ever did to give her trouble, but I was wondering if home was a place I’d ever see again. It was kind of starting to seem like it wouldn’t be.

  It was kind of starting to seem like home was a place I should probably just forget about.

  Chapter 16

  Winter

  HE WAS HOMESICK.

  It was written all over Isaiah’s face, and I felt really, really bad for him. I knew I shouldn’t have brought up anything related to our pasts. Talking about where we’d come from was a fast way to start dwelling on how we’d all left.

  And we had left.

  As much as we might want to think about the days before this one, that was useless. There was literally no reason to think about why we’d boarded that cruise ship because we couldn’t take it back. We couldn’t take back our cruise. We couldn’t take back the infection. We couldn’t take back the zombies.

  I would have done almost anything for a little privacy that night. After our talk, we all went to our own little “spots” on the boat. We’d each managed to find a tiny little place to settle in, a place we considered our own.

  In my spot, which was really just one of the benches, I used a life jacket as a pillow and tried to fall asleep. I closed my eyes and just stayed there silently, trying not to roll off of the bench. I knew Isaiah had given up on bench sleeping. Instead, he’d piled his clothing onto the bottom of the boat and made himself a little nest. It was a little bit wet, yeah, but he didn’t seem to care too much.

  Greta was snoring again within minutes. I really didn’t understand how she could do that. Maybe it came from being old or from being married to a sailor. I didn’t know. What I did know was that this wasn’t working for me.

  I didn’t want to be there.

  I wanted to be home.

  I wanted to be around people who knew me.

  I wanted to be around Angela.

  A week ago, my biggest problem had been whether or not to pack a bikini for the trip. In the end, I’d gotten scared and chosen to pack a one-piece instead of a tiny two-piece. I’d been nervous about the way my body might look and I’d been worried that people might judge me.

  Now I thought that was stupid.

  All of it was stupid.

  Why had I cared so much about things that didn’t really matter?

  Why had I worried so much about what I looked like or what I would be wearing?

  All of the people I wanted to be looking at me were currently dead or zombified. It really, really didn’t matter.

  “I wish I had known,” I whispered. I knew Isaiah wasn’t asleep. I knew he could hear me.

  “Would you have done something differently?”

  “Packed more snacks,” I admitted. “I’d do anything for a candy bar.”

  “I wish I’d known, too.”

  “What about you? What would you do differently?”

  “Everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Not come, for one thing.”

  “Yeah, it really was a bad time to take a cruise, wasn’t it?”

  “I feel dumb.”

  It was how I felt, too. I felt like I should have known. I should have had an inkling or some sort of sixth-sense that there was going to be a problem on the ship. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be?

  In movies and books, people always had this sense of foreboding before something terrible happened. You would wake up in a cold sweat or suddenly develop a terrible headache, and that was when it would happen.

  Real life didn’t seem to be that way.

  “You aren’t dumb.”

  Isaiah and I rested there in silence for a long time. I actually thought he might have fallen asleep, but then he started talking again.

  “This thing is going to last a long time.”

  I knew he was right.

  There wasn’t going to be any sort of grand rescue.

  “I’ve seen movies and news clips of people who were lost at sea,” I told him. “Everyone who was rescued always said that you can’t give up hope.”

  “I’ve given up hope.”

  “Me too.”

  “We have to be strong for her, though.”

  I knew he meant Greta. I knew Isaiah was worried because Greta had grandkids and she wanted to get back to them. That was her goal, and it should be ours, too. If nothing else, the idea of getting Greta back to the people she loved would nice. It would be a nice feeling.

  “I’m scared,” I finally admitted.

  “Of what?”

  “Everything.”

  The world felt like it was crushing me. Even before I’d gotten on the ship, I had feelings of being suffocated. It was constant. I never felt like I was good enough or my choices were good enough. I never felt like anything I did was enough.

  Choosing to go on the cruise was supposed to be my way of decompressing. It was supposed to be a time when I could just finally relax and unwind a little bit. It was supposed to be a lot of things that it hadn’t ended up being.

  Now?

  Now I was floating with my two new friends, and I still felt like a failure. I hadn’t known how to pilot the boat. I didn’t understand how we were going to make it more than a couple of days with our meager rations. I’d done a terrible job fighting the boat zombie.

  And I was scared.

  I was worried that Greta and Isaiah were going to realize that I was a fraud and that I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was worried they were going to realize that everything about me was stupid and screwed up.

  Perhaps most of all, I was worried that we were never going to make it off the lifeboat. I’d checked the radio a few times, but we’d only ever gotten static. Most of the stations didn’t even have static anymore. There was just...nothing. No matter how many times I turned the dial on the little device, nothing happened.

  Isaiah thought it was because we were getting farther out to sea and farther away from radio towers.

  I thought it was because there no longer were radio towers.

  I thought that it was because the zombies had destroyed them.

  Well, or people had.

  “You don’t need to be scared.”

  “Why? Because you’ll protect me?”

  I didn’t like Isaiah like that. This wasn’t some sort of romantic comedy where we were going to accidentally fall in love. This was real life. This was real trauma.

  “Because I’ll be your friend, Winter. No matter what happens, I’ll be your friend. Greta will, too.”

  Chapter 17

  Greta

  ON A NORMAL MORNING, I’d wake up, start a pot of coffee, and drink half of it before I really felt awake. It was only after the coffee that I’d grab my phone and start checking the news. Sometimes I’d stand at the backdoor of my house and look at the birds splashing around in the birdbath my husband and I had put out there years ago.

  Every once in a good long while, I’d actually make breakfast.

  Most of the time, though, it was just coffee and slowly becoming a human again after a long night’s rest.

  The first couple of days on the cruise had been quite nice for a coffee lover like me. I’d gotten the all-you-can-drink pass, which most of the younger people on the cruise liked because they could get drunk as skunks. I liked drinking my whiskey just fine, and it was a good pass for that, but what I really loved was the coffe
e.

  The first real morning on the ship, I’d settled down at one of the little coffee shops on board, and I’d tried almost every coffee drink on the menu. I’d been jittery as all heck that day, but I hadn’t cared. I’d gotten to do something fun and wonderful, and it had been quite the treat.

  I only wished my husband had still been around to see it. He would have laughed and called me his silly girl. That was one of the things I missed most about him.

  Now I was sitting up in a lifeboat. Winter and Isaiah were both still asleep, snoring up a storm, and I was wishing for coffee.

  I still hadn’t eaten even though I knew I should. The stress of the situation had killed my appetite, though, and I hadn’t been tempted to dig into the crackers or snacks in the bag. I’d had some of my water – it was too hot not to – but I was too afraid of running out of that to drink any more of it.

  Instead, I was sitting, leaning with my back against the side of the little boat, and wondering how we were going to make it out of this.

  We had to do something.

  We hadn’t been able to paddle against the wind. Not that the oars were really made for rowing in the ocean. They were something we could use when we were in shallow water to help propel us up onto a beach, but as far as directions went, they would only serve to wear us out as we searched for land.

  And I didn’t even know if we’d actually be able to find land.

  I might have talked a big game when we’d first found ourselves on the boat, but the reality was that I didn’t know where we were any more than the kids did. I didn’t know what was going to come ahead of us.

  Were we going to make it out of this thing alive?

  Maybe.

  Were we going to be in one piece?

  Possibly.

  Would we have crazy emotional issues when this was all over?

  Yes.

  Definitely.

  Now, I tried to think of a way I could get out of this situation. We were all completely screwed if we didn’t do something.

  But what?

  We were floating in the middle of nowhere with nothing in sight. There was no land. We couldn’t just start swimming. We’d get tired and sink before we ever reached any sort of shoreline.

  On a whim, I decided to go sit on top of the lifeboat. We’d kept the doors open part of the day before just to get some air flowing throughout the little boat. It was incredibly hot out in the middle of nowhere without any shade, and it was baffling to me how we’d already managed to make it through one day with a little bit of water still intact.

  I hadn’t missed the way Isaiah and Winter had chosen to try to conserve their own water usage, as well. They might be young, but they weren’t stupid. They weren’t the type of people who were just going to drink up all of their water and then instantly die.

  They were like me. We made a good team, I thought. At least, I hoped that we’d all live long enough to make a good team.

  Watching the two of them fight that zombie yesterday had scared me a little. It had been insane to me just how fast everything happened, yet how slowly at the same time. They’d both leapt right into the water, seemingly unafraid at everything that was happening. They didn’t care that what they were doing was crazy.

  They just wanted to take care of each other.

  Carefully, so as not to wake my companions, I opened the canvas flap over one of the doors and climbed out onto the top of the boat. I was certain that Winter or Isaiah would wake up from all of the noise, but they didn’t. A moment later, I was sitting on top of the boat just watching the sunrise.

  It wasn’t hot outside yet, so I was actually able to both see and enjoy the sun.

  This was it, I thought.

  This was the life.

  If I’d been doing this in a controlled environment where I had a boat with actual gas or I was still on a cruise ship, I’d be having the time of my life.

  As it was, I had to remind myself that eventually, all of the chaos around me would end. It always did. When you were going through a hard situation, it was easy to feel overwhelmed. It was easy to feel like the walls of life were closing in on you and that everything was crashing and burning around you.

  I didn’t want that, though.

  I didn’t want to die here.

  When my mother passed away, I felt like nothing else mattered. It was like my entire life was ending prematurely. I remembered crying in her bedroom after the medical team took her away, and I remember feeling like nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  Sam had come to me and held me.

  Sam had always held me when I needed him.

  He’d come over to me, and he’d promised me that it was okay to be sad, and it was okay to be scared, and perhaps most of all, it was okay to mourn.

  That realization was probably the best thing Sam ever gave me. He shared with me that there was nothing wrong or strange with feeling sad or with needing someone.

  There was nothing wrong with missing someone terribly or craving the future you felt robbed of.

  “Oh, Sam,” I whispered, looking at the sun slowly rising. “I wish you could see this.”

  He’d been gone for a few years already, but sometimes it felt like no time at all had passed. Sometimes it was like the pain was just as fresh as it had been on the day when he died. Other times, it felt like there was an entire lifetime I’d lived alone after losing him.

  Not a day went by where I didn’t miss him, though.

  I closed my eyes. Tears were starting to fall, and I didn’t want Isaiah or Winter to realize I was crying. If they saw me shedding tears, the two of them might get scared or worried, and we didn’t need that. They were young and full of hope and life.

  They didn’t need to think I’d lost my hope.

  When I looked up, I wiped away the tears and nodded to myself.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s get to it.”

  We were going to hope against all hope today that we’d be able to find a place to dock the boat. If we could find a beach, we could swim there. We could try to get the boat there using the oars, too. That would be ideal since we’d be able to use the boat for shelter.

  If we could only just find the island that our cruise ship had been heading toward when everything went to hell...

  And then, I couldn’t quite believe it.

  I saw it.

  I saw the island.

  We’d done it.

  Chapter 18

  Winter

  I woke to the sound of screaming.

  “Get up here!”

  It was Greta. Something was wrong. Was there another zombie? Had the water zombie come back to haunt us? That was both my first thought and my greatest fear. I had been so certain the stupid thing had finally died.

  Why would it be coming back to life now?

  After all of this time?

  “Isaiah!” I hollered at my new friend, who was currently passed out. He was balanced precariously on his stomach on one of the hard benches in the boat. I had no idea how he’d managed to sleep like that all night without waking up or rolling off. “Isaiah, it’s Greta. Wake up!”

  “Come!” Greta called again. “It’s worth it. I promise.”

  It’s worth it?

  So, she wasn’t in danger.

  She wanted to show us something.

  I calmed down immensely as I hurried over to the open canvas flap where she’d crawled out earlier. How hard had I been sleeping? I hadn’t even heard her leave the boat.

  “Coming,” I called out. Carefully, I climbed to the top of the boat and saw Greta sitting there. She seemed wildly calm and unbothered for someone who had just been screaming. “What is it? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  “Look,” she said. Then she raised a finger and pointed.

  I turned, looking to the direction she indicated.

  “Are you serious right now?” I whispered.

  “I’m serious right now.”

  “We found it?”

&nbs
p; “We found it.”

  I didn’t understand how it had happened, but there in front of us was land. It was land. I knew it wasn’t the land we’d been looking for because it wasn’t a harbor or someplace with a lot of other boats. I didn’t see any high buildings or tall towers.

  It was just beach and trees for as far as the eye could see.

  “How is this possible?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure this is real?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What’s going on?” Isaiah’s head appeared as he peeked out of the boat.

  “Look ahead.” I pointed toward the beach, unwilling to let myself really believe it. I couldn’t quite grasp the fact that it was there. How could that be there? It didn’t make any sense.

  We’d floated for a couple of days without any real direction. We’d floated, trying to find a way home, and we’d finally found something.

  Our brush with death didn’t seem quite so terrible now that hope was within our sights. I stared at the beach wondering whether any other survivors from the cruise ship had made it to this same place, wondering whether we were going to meet people who had been infected or not.

  “It’s a beach,” he whispered. “We found a beach.”

  “We’re going to be fine,” Greta said.

  That seemed to be our motto these days. Half of the time I didn’t know whether it was actually true or not, but having something to believe in felt nice. Having something I could count on felt nice. It felt safe.

  Not a lot of things felt safe anymore.

  I didn’t tell Greta or Isaiah that I was scared of sharks and seamonsters. I didn’t tell them that the idea of a whale coming along and attacking us was something that actually made it hard for me to sleep. I didn’t share any of that because it felt silly, but now it felt like it was in the past.

  All of the horrible things that could have happened to us during our time at sea hadn’t happened. It had rained a lot, and the waves had been fierce, but we’d managed to stay upright and afloat, and we’d all made it.

  Now we were so close to freedom.