Dead Calm (44 page)

He opened his mouth to speak again but Heather cut
him off by saying, “You make me sick. When I was a cop, I used to
see perverts like you all the time. We’d lock them up, but after
ten years or so they'd get out and go right back to chasing little
girls and boys. Innocents.”

Ricky looked uncomfortable as Heather went on, “One
of the little girls you molested on this ship was twelve years old.
You're a sick freak. You manipulated her and her sister along with
all the rest of your Faithful.”

Ricky remained silent as he pushed himself further
back over the balcony rail, trying to put as much distance as he
could between himself and Heather. Behind him he could hear the
whining of the dead.

“So you like screwing little girls?” Heather accused,
as she advanced on Ricky in four quick steps. “So you like getting
fucked?”

Snapping out with the butt end of her rifle, Heather
drove it into the center of Ricky's face to send him reeling
backwards off the balcony.

Above his scream of terror, she yelled, “Now you're
fucked!”

The Reverend Ricky Rose bounced off a seat in the
main gallery of the Sounds Lounge before coming to land in a
crumpled pile on the deck. Knowing where he was and that he had to
run, he tried to get his feet under him. As soon as he moved his
right leg, he screamed in agony. When he looked down, he saw it was
bent at an unnatural angle halfway between his knee and ankle. He
inhaled blood and started choking as he tried to draw a breath
through his shattered nose.

As he rolled over, coughing and sputtering while
trying to blowout the blood so he could get some air, a shape
blocked out the emergency lights, casting a shadow over him. He
looked up to see what it was and all he could do was issue a barely
whispered, “No.”

Standing in front of him, still wearing the same torn
Miami Dolphins jersey, was the dead woman who had gotten him
sexually aroused months earlier on his first trip to the Sounds
Lounge.

The same woman who he’d had hoisted up and strapped
down so he could see what it was like to have sex with the
dead.

The same woman who now lunged down to bite him as the
hundreds of other flesh eating dead that populated the Sounds
Lounge advanced for what they could tear off him and devour.

Heather turned away as Ricky's screams echoed through
the compartment. For her, justice had been served.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Dead Calm/The Gulf of Mexico:

Tick-Tock yelled down to Brain from the rear of deck
twelve, “Hold it steady, Chop. Heather's coming down.” Looking at
the sailboat below her, Heather adjusted the rope trailing down
that they had taken from the rock-climbing wall.

“This is too much like the bank building,” she said.
“I think I'm getting déjà vu.”

“If you throw up, do you call it déjà food?” Steve
tried to joke, following up with, “Can you get déjà vu all over
again?”

Heather chuckled but stopped abruptly when she looked
at Tick-Tock standing nearby, solemn faced. Suddenly the pain of
losing Susan hit her harder than before and she felt the anger
build up inside her. She wasn't mad at Steve for his dumb joke, she
was pissed off at the loss of a friend; angry that there was
nothing she could do to make it better for Tick-Tock or
herself.

Looking over the stern of the Dead Calm, Tick-Tock
said, “He's in position, Heather. Wait until your feet are on the
deck before you let the rope go from the D-ring.”

Heather nodded. Before lowering herself over the
side, she said, “It'll get better, Tick-Tock.”

He nodded once and motioned for her to go. As she
started to descend she heard him say, “Maybe, maybe not.”

Once the three of them were on The Usual Suspects,
Steve told Brain to start cruising from lifeboat to lifeboat to
search for Mary and Sheila. After Heather had taken care of Ricky,
they had attempted to look for the two women but by then the dead
had swarmed over the ship in such numbers that it was
impossible.

After making their way to deck twelve, they saw
dozens of lifeboats holding the remnants of the Faithful floating
on both sides of the Dead Calm. This gave them hope that somehow
Heather and Sheila had made it into one of them.

As they checked each lifeboat, they gave its
occupants directions on how to start the engines and showed them
how to use the compass to keep them headed west toward land. Some
of the boats with more experienced people on them had already
started to head for shore. Heather was sad to find out that the one
holding the two Hungarian sisters had already taken off but was
glad the two young girls had made it to safety. She silently wished
them luck. They, however, had no luck finding Sheila and Mary until
they came to the final lifeboat.

Here, an older man told them about how he'd been
searching for Reverend Ricky on deck seven when the dead started
coming out of the cabin area at the front of the ship. He'd been
talking to Sheila, and when the dead showed up, she had taken off
into the aide station. Seconds later, she came out helping some
butch looking woman - at this description of Mary, Tick-Tock gave a
quick, hard laugh before falling again into silence - and together
the two of them went to one of the lifeboats, climbed in and
lowered it down to the water. Sheila's last words to him had been,
“Haul ass, Pops. That bastard Ricky must have opened all the
hatches. In about ten minutes you're gonna be up to your balls in
stinkers.”

Steve thanked the man and told Tick-Tock to take the
wheel.

“Which way?” His friend asked. “They could have gone
in any direction.”

Steve gave him a skeptical look and said, “There's no
way either of those two could figure out how to start a boat, much
less how to steer or navigate it, so we need to look -”

“Down current,” Tick-Tock finished.

As they motored away, neither turned to look as the
Dead Calm settled at the stern. Already, deck eight was
submerged.

They were well away when it slipped beneath the
waves.

***

Mary and Sheila watched the sunrise with dread. In
their rush to escape the Calm of the Seas, they had taken one of
the few open lifeboats in the ship's compliment. Now that the sun
was rising, they knew they would pay for it as they were exposed to
its harsh rays. The night had been cool so they had huddled
together for warmth. Despite it being February, they could already
feel the air warming up as the morning wore on.

“Maybe I should try the engine again,” Sheila
said.

“You tried to start it for two hours and didn't get
so much as a pop,” Mary replied. “Besides, where are we gonna go?”
She said as she waved her hands at the empty expanse of the Gulf of
Mexico.

“Steve said we’re not far away from Texas. We could
make it there by heading west.”

“And then what?” Heather asked.

Sheila shrugged. She hadn't
thought that far ahead. They had a little food and some water, but
all they had for a weapon was the knife that came with the survival
kit on the lifeboat.

Looking at the oars stowed along the gunwale, Sheila
decided that she wasn't going to just sit and let herself die of
exposure and thirst. As she started to unfasten them, Mary watched
what she was doing for a minute before turning and looking out over
the Gulf. She wasn't looking forward to manual labor. Suddenly, she
spotted something. Not believing her eyes, she blinked rapidly to
clear them. It was still there. Standing, she said to Sheila,
“Don't bother with those.”

“I’m not going to just sit here and rot,” Sheila
snarled back. “We’re going to row for shore and you're going to
help,” She'd already made up her mind that if Mary didn’t help her,
she was going to tie her to one of the oars and whip her if need
be.

“No, Honey,” Mary said in an exasperated voice. “We
don't need to, look.”

Sheila saw that Mary was pointing off in the
distance. As her eyes followed in that direction, she saw the mast
of a sailboat. After watching in silence for a moment, she could
make out the boat itself and saw that it was heading toward
them.

“We don't need to.” Mary repeated before adding
brightly, “Here comes Steve.”

***

Steve lowered the binoculars from his eyes and said
to Tick-Took, “It's Mary and Sheila. Let's go pick them up.”

Tick-Tock sighed and said something that gave Steve
hope that his friend was starting to come out of his depression.
Looking at him with one raised eyebrow, he replied, “Do we really
have to?”

Watch for:

DEAD WEIGHT; Book Three of The Dead Series (Now
available)

DEAD END; Book Four of The Dead Series (Coming
soon)