smile. My fatigue was gone, replaced with nervous energy.
We explored the jack-up level by level, sticking together as a group. Tasha and Carol were cautious, but Malik was excited. He wanted to run off on his own, and I had to keep hauling him back, warning him over and over not to do it again. We talked in whispers and communicated with hand signals. The silence was eerie. Everywhere we went, the birds watched us warily. We found a skeletal arm on one level, and a disembodied head lying between two drums of oil. The head barely moved, ravaged as it was by the birds. It had no eyes with which to see us. Its lipless mouth moved soundlessly. The zombie’s tongue was missing, too. I kicked it over the side and watched it sink. Then I wiped my shoe off with some greasy shop rags that had been stuffed into one of the barrel’s openings. Finally, we climbed back into the elevator and took it to the top level.
The elevator doors opened and a dead man was there to greet us.
Carol shrieked. The dead man was dressed in dirty, faded dungarees and a red flannel shirt. A bright yellow hard hat covered his head. Time and the elements had not been kind. The zombie was in an advanced state of decomposition. His flesh and the clothes had melded together. His face was a gleaming skull, stripped clean of all flesh. A few ragged pieces of skin and matted hair hung down from underneath the hard hat. With no eyes left in the sockets, I saw right away that the zombie hunted by sound, just like the corpses back at the rescue station. It had been attracted to us by the sounds of the elevator. Carol’s scream had confirmed our location. It reached for us, bones sticking through the split skin of its fingers. Malik raised his shotgun, but I knocked it aside.
“No,” I said. “He’s too close. The backsplash will hit us.”
The zombie lurched into the elevator and we shrank away, hugging the walls. The doors slid shut again, bumped against the corpse, and then opened. The zombie turned toward them in confusion, grasping blindly. I took advantage of the distraction, pushing it out of the elevator with the butt of my rifle. It stumbled back out onto the platform, arms pinwheeling. Before the doors could close again, I darted forward and clubbed it over the head, hoping to knock it down long enough to shoot it. The zombie collapsed to the deck and the hard hat came off its head, spilling soupy liquid. Two grayish-pink lumps—its brains—splashed into the puddle a second later. Gasping, I turned away. Apparently, it had decomposed so badly that the hard hat was the only thing still holding its brains intact. When they splashed out over the deck, the zombie ceased moving. I struggled to keep from throwing up.
Malik fanned his nose. “Oh man, that stinks!”
I nodded. “That’s the worst one yet. After all the things we’ve seen…”
I shuddered, unable to finish. Sour bile rose in my throat.
“Let’s hope that it’s the last one,” Carol said. “That would be fine with me.”
And it was the last. The rest of the jack-up was deserted. Once we’d finished exploring it, Carol and the kids got settled while I brought our supplies up from the dock. Basically, the jack-up was a giant barge. One end held the actual drilling apparatus. At the other end was a three-story building. On top of the building were a heliport and several big antennas. They even had a satellite television dish and a Sirius satellite radio unit, though I doubted there were any signals still being broadcast. Inside the building were the crew’s quarters, a galley, a gym complete with free weights and an exercise bike, a laundry room with three washers and dryers, several restrooms and shower stalls, and finally, a crew’s lounge with couches, a television and DVD player, and—much to Malik’s delight—an XBox videogame system, a foosball table, and a slate-bottom pool table. On the top floor, there were also several offices. Placards over the doors said things like company man and pusher. I wondered what those were. Where I’d lived, company men and pushers had been very different things.
There were also half a dozen storage rooms. One of the supply rooms held janitorial and maintenance supplies. Another held medical supplies and other things we desperately needed, like toiletries and vitamins. But we breathed a sigh of relief when we opened the door to the last storage room. It was filled with food—boxes of dry and canned goods stacked all the way to the ceiling. The chief had said that a jack-up’s crew usually numbered between fifteen to twenty people. I figured there was enough food here to last them a month. Since it was just the four of us, it would last us much longer, which was important since we could no longer rely on the sea for food. Not with Hamelin’s Revenge infecting the fish.
On the surface of the barge, in between the rig and the building, was a fenced—in area where the drilling pipe and other equipment were kept. It also held a big garbage compactor. There were other pieces of machinery tied down to the rig to keep them from falling into the ocean. The fuel truck that I’d noticed earlier was also strapped down and the wheels were chocked. I peeked inside the cab and found the keys dangling from the ignition. At the end of the maintenance yard was a giant fuel tank filled with thousands of gallons of diesel, and a small trailer housing a generator. Beyond that was another big tank, holding fresh water, according to the sign stenciled on the side of it.
One thing that still bothered me was how the zombies had gotten on the rig in the first place. We’d encountered one, and saw signs of others the severed body parts and carnage. Had the lone zombie that we’d destroyed been responsible for the other deaths? If not, where were the rest of the creatures? The rig was deserted. And if that single, hard hat-wearing corpse had been responsible, how had he been infected in the first place? I had no answers, and thinking about it made my head hurt. There was a story here, but it wasn’t mine. It was somebody else’s monomyth, and it had ended badly.
I returned to the building. We set up in the crew’s quarters. For a while, we didn’t do much of anything. Exhausted, we simply sat there, grateful for the respite. Then we got ourselves cleaned up. I spent twenty minutes in the shower, letting the hot water caress me, feeling my aches and pains subside, washed away with the dirt and grime. It was the most wonderful thing in the world. When I emerged from the stall and toweled myself off, I felt like a new man.
We still had no clean clothes, but we found some spare uniforms in the crew’s quarters and we wore those instead. After everyone had cleaned up and relaxed, we ate dinner together—canned green beans and corn, cocktail wieners, crackers, peanut butter, pickles, potato chips, cereal, and bottles of juice and water. It was a feast.
I slept like a rock that night, and when I woke up the next morning, for the first time in my life, I remembered my dreams.
I dreamed I was a hero.
Chapter Fourteen
That all happened a month ago. The summer is over now and fall is on the way. The days grow shorter. It’s getting colder out here at sea, even during the daytime. The winds rip across the water, shaking the drilling platform. When the tide gets rough, it’s like being back onboard the
After a few days, we settled into our new lives with remarkable ease. It felt weird, at first, not living with the constant danger. Not being on the run or in hiding, constantly glancing over our shoulders and looking for the dead. It was hard to relax, in a way. Felt irresponsible for doing so. But once we’d realized that the zombies couldn’t reach us, and that we really were safe for the first time since this whole thing began, we embraced our new home.
Sometimes we talk about what could be happening on the mainland. We have no way of knowing, and it’s all speculation on our part, but it helps to take our minds off things. Are the cities and towns full of dead people, or has humanity managed to fight back? If so, is there hope for a rescue someday—a way off this oil rig, and back to the lives we knew before Hamelin’s Revenge?
Probably not.
We are surrounded on all sides by a dead sea. Even if the creatures in the water couldn’t reach us, their smell still could. With each passing week the stench has grown stronger-rotting fish and brine. The birds have a never ending smorgasbord. But when we’re inside the building and running the air filtration system, the smell doesn’t bother us too much. It’s only when we’re outside that it gets to be too bad, and even then it’s only unbearable on days with no wind. When it rains, the stench disappears.
Carol and the kids adapted well to our situation. We’ve each got our own room now. The privacy is nice, after all that time on the ship. She insisted on continuing their education. Both of them grumbled about it at first, but I think they actually enjoy their classes. It gives them something to do during the day—takes their mind off the overall situation. Trapped out here as we are, with no lifeboat or means of escape, monotony and boredom are our
