I recognized the man’s voice as the one who’d given us the warning. I stuck out my hand. “Thanks for saving us. My name is—”
“Mister, I suggest you find a safe place for yourself and these kids and stay there. There’ll be plenty of time for introductions later, if we survive this.
And if we don’t, then I don’t need to know your name anyway.”
He brushed past me and began shouting orders.
Malik and Tasha glanced around the ship in amazement. People ran all over the decks, some of them armed and shooting at the zombies, others helping get the ship underway. I noticed that except for the man who’d spoken to us, none of them wore uniforms, but instead were dressed in civilian clothes. Many of them seemed unsure what to do, and kept shouting questions.
“This isn’t a crew,” I whispered to Mitch. “They’re just like us—survivors.”
“Maybe they’re all reservists,” he said.
“No. They’re confused. And look at the hair lengths on some of them. That ain’t military regulation.”
“Well, get the kids to a safe spot. I’m gonna see if I can help. Find out what’s going on and who exactly our saviors are.”
“Be careful.”
“You too.”
I guided the kids over to a wall—what sailors call a bulkhead. There was another walkway above us and it provided a sort of roof over our heads. We leaned up against the steel bulkhead and watched as the people around us prepared to cast off. There were two ropes left and a swarm of undead rats climbed up them. Mitch and another man leaned out over the railing, shooting the rats off the ropes one by one. One of them reached the top and scurried over the railing. A third person stepped forward and pushed it back into the water with a mop. Before the rest of the creatures could reach the deck, the ropes were loosened and dropped into the black, dirty water. The rats fell with them.
And then we began to move.
“Full ahead,” the man in the uniform bellowed. “Take us out, just like I showed you. I’m on my way up.”
It was a really weird sensation. Felt like we were standing still and the land was moving. We cruised farther out into the bay, leaving the harbor and the city behind us. The zombies stood on the pier watching us go. Some of them stepped forward, plummeting over the side and sinking beneath the surface. The others simply stared, their faces expressionless—except for that look of constant hunger. I wondered about the ones that had fallen into the water. Zombies didn’t need to breathe. Didn’t require oxygen. They were dead. So what was to stop them from hunting along the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay the same way they hunted through the city’s streets? Couldn’t they just walk along the bottom, feeding off fish and crabs until they reached the ocean itself? And then what? Sharks versus zombies? The image was ridiculous, but what if? What if…
What if Hamelin’s Revenge spread to the sea life?
“They can’t reach us now,” Malik shouted. “Nothing can get us out here!”
Tasha hugged him and he hugged her back. Both of them smiled. I turned back toward the land and watched the city burning. Stared at the orange-and-red skyline. By morning, there would be nothing left. Baltimore would be a smoldering pile of ashes. Port Discovery and the section of the city that housed popular bars like Ramshead and Howl at the Moon were obscured by smoke. The trade center and the Harbor Place shops belched flames. Yesterday, the skyline had been made up of tall buildings: offices, parking garages, banks, muse urns and apartment complexes. Now, it was composed of towering torches, each of them a blazing inferno. The city skyline looked like a row of Roman candles. And below them, growing smaller with every minute as the Spratling picked up speed, were the dead. The people onboard the ship cheered as we left the harbor. There was lots of hugging and clapping and fists in the air—a real celebration. And when the Domino Sugar factory exploded a few minutes later, we even had our own fireworks. Flaming debris rained down from the sky, splashing into the water.
“I’ll tell you one thing, kids.”
Tasha looked up at me. “What’s that, Mr. Reed?”
“Lamar. Call me Lamar.”
“Okay. What are you thinking, Lamar?”
“That this was the longest getaway I’ve ever seen.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Tasha said. “We’re safe now. Like Malik said, they can’t get us out here.”
The dead watched us leave. More of them tumbled into the water. Birds squawked above us. The sky was full of smoke, obscuring the moon and the stars. The ocean itself seemed lifeless. No fish leaping from the water or dolphins following the boat. Just the waves, and even those seemed small. The ship’s engines throbbed as we picked up speed. The bay’s surface was black, but the full moon lit a silvery path for us. The flames reflected off the waves. Then a cloud passed over the moon and the gradually lights vanished. Under the cover of darkness, we sailed out onto a dead sea.
Chapter Five
I don’t remember much about that first night onboard the Spratling. We were all dehydrated, exhausted, and stressed from our ordeal, and after a while, things just kind of blurred together. When the ship was safely away from the city, and far enough out into the Chesapeake Bay that the fires were just a dim glow on the horizon, everyone relaxed a little more. But there was still a lot to do. Mitch and I had to find sleeping quarters for the kids—the older man in the coast guard uniform called them “berthing areas”—and a place for ourselves as well. We ended up together in a room with six racks—bunk beds—three on each side. The mattress on each rack lifted up to reveal a small, narrow storage space. Each of us also had a small footlocker to store things in. We didn’t have many belongings. I pulled out my wallet and my keys and put them inside a locker. It seemed weird. Might as well have tossed them over the side for all the good they’d do me now. The keys were all for a life I’d left behind, a life I’d never return to. And the wallet was empty—no pictures, no money. I’d never had much use for snapshots. And money? Well, I’d never had much of that, either. And now, I didn’t need them. What good was money when there was nothing to buy? What good were photographs of friends and family when all of them were dead? I didn’t have many people that I cared about, but those I did I could remember in my head. If I looked at their pictures now, I’d just see them as zombies.
Mitch pulled a small rifle cleaning kit out of his backpack and went to work on the guns, using long cotton swabs to get the debris and residue out of the barrels, and then oiling them down. He explained each step to the three of us as he went along, so that we’d be able to do it, too. When he was finished, he stowed our weapons beneath his mattress and slid one pistol under his pillow. He didn’t unload his backpack; instead, he stuffed it between his rack and the bulkhead. Then he took off his boots and lay down. We all did the same. Each bed had a tiny feather pillow, one sheet, and a thin gray blanket that felt like it was made out of horse hair—very rough and scratchy. They smelled musty and mildewed.
“This pillow stinks,” I complained.
“Mine does, too.” Tasha wrinkled her nose. “Smells like a zombie.”
“They should,” Mitch said. “They’ve probably been sitting on this boat for the last twenty years.”
I propped myself up on one elbow. “What do you mean?”
“This is a museum ship,” he explained. “The Spratling is a piece of American history, so rather than sending it to the scrap yard to be cut up into razor blades, the maritime museum preserved it and turned it into a floating tourist trap, just like all the other ships at Inner Harbor.”
“Okay,” I said, “but what’s that got to do with why these pillows smell funky?”