The Dead

“We don’t have any choice,” Max said.

“Hold my hand, Steve,” Sally said. “Oh God, just hold on to my hand.”

They started forward again. Twenty or more torches burned along the shore ahead, the dead beneath dimly lit by their red glow, standing utterly still, watching, waiting.

Gary felt something hard against his foot, guessed it was a concrete block, stepped over it onto a yielding mass. He shuddered, strode forward. A soft mass flattened under his sole, and he caught himself picturing a cheek spreading out like putty beneath his descending heel. Teeth chattering, heart a heavy pulsing weight, he drove himself onward, stubbing his feet against bound limbs; catching his toe in a cavity that was almost certainly a gaping mouth, he yanked it free reflexively, feeling teeth scrape across the leather of his boot.

Despite the chill of the air, and the cold pressure of the water against his clothes and drysuit, he had begun to sweat. Frigid beads slid down his forehead and nose. He forced his legs to bend and straighten, trying to ignore the obscene surrender of fat stomachs beneath his weight, the subtle snap of fingerbones and cartilage sticking up through the bottoms of his boots. There was no way to step over the corpses. They were packed too closely together now. He was walking across a solid carpet of them, the water now coming up only to mid-thigh…

And when are they going to wake up, Gary? He asked himself. Any time now, and you know it. They’re going to start writhing and struggling, they’re going to rip through the barbed wire and sit right up, reaching for your knees, for your balls and your guts, and all you’re going to be able to do its fire that useless gun and scream…

He was dimly aware of corpses shrieking on the other side of the island, shouts from the living, an occasional crack of gunfire. It was all completely irrelevant, mere background noise. He could think only of his own predicament.

Linda trudged along beside him. She reached out and touched him from time to time. He barely felt it. He wondered vaguely, irritably what she was trying to accomplish. He needed all his concentration. They’d only covered fifty yards or so. Two hundred and fifty remained. And even if the drowned dead didn’t wake, there were still the ones on shore…

More than enough to kill us all.

There came the thumping discharge of a very-pistol. Violet light burst across the sky. Gary sucked in a sharp breath, but the light faded almost as soon as it appeared.

Bad flare, he thought, then wondered: had the corpses ashore seen them in its brief glare? If so, they gave no sign and remained motionless.

Might think we’re theirs, he told himself. Some of the drowned ones.

The group pushed on through the darkness. As yet, the glow from the torches barely lit them. Gary guessed they’d have to be within twenty feet or so before the corpses would be able to see them.

The screaming of corpses and men swelled behind. There was even less gunfire now. Gary knew what was happening back there. One by one, the soldiers were being seized, strangled or drowned…

His boot latched itself between what he guessed was an arm and a torso. As he wrenched his foot upward, the corpse arched up with it, then slid back down. In the brief moment before it sank, he thought he felt it jerk spasmodically.

Fear sang through him like an electric charge. He thought of warning the others-but had the corpse actually jerked? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t risk panicking them over nothing.

Closer and closer they drew to the shore, a faint red stain of torchlight playing over them. Gary felt no more stirrings. Perhaps there hadn’t been enough time for the victims to wake. It had been less than twenty-four hours.

Hope rose. Might do it after all, he thought.

He eyed the sentinels.

Aren’t so many.

He aimed his gun at one.

Bam! He thought. Down you go.

Piece of cake.

So long as they got out of this goddamn water.

So long as the drowned stayed dead.

Going to make it, he told himself. Going to make it. Going to ma-

Beneath him, a body heaved slowly, unmistakably. Hope shriveled.

“They’re waking up!” he whispered, stepping forward onto a mercifully inert cadaver.

“What?” Max asked.

“I just felt-” Gary broke off as Linda tottered into him.

“One of them just grabbed at me,” she breathed.

“Steve!” Sally gasped, somewhere off to the left. “Oh my God, Steve!”

“Keep moving!” Steve snarled in a low voice.

It seemed to Gary that at least one in four were moving now, squirming under his feet, struggling ever more violently. In the dim torchlight, he saw water roiling ahead of him, but as yet, none of the corpses had broken the surface.

Trying to get out of the wire, he thought.

The ones ashore had taken notice. Drawing together in groups of three and four, they moved closer to the water.

He could hear splashing behind, and vomiting and gagging sounds as water burst from drowned throats and lungs. They’d gotten out of their pinions back there, no doubt about it. He remembered how the first victims had been led farther out on the flat; they’d awakened sooner.

His brain whirled. He’d missed finding himself square in the middle of that mass resurrection by only a few minutes. Later victims were mostly closer to the shore. More and more, the ones he touched were completely still.

But the splashing from behind grew steadily louder. Were the dead simply making for the beach, or were they pursuing? He looked back, could see nothing in the darkness. Did they recognize him and the others as prey?

He took a blow to the knee, which almost buckled; a tremendous bolt of pain unlocked his hands from the H and K. He fumbled with the rifle. The butt struck the water.

A hand reached up, seizing the pistol-grip. Gary found himself staring straight into the rifle’s muzzle.

Like this? He thought. Shot with my own gun?

Sweat dripped into his eye. He didn’t even blink. Time slowed to a crawl. The muzzle weaved sluggishly back and forth, as though it were searching for the right spot to plant a bullet in his face.

Even that motion halted. Time stood still. His heart stopped in his chest, a lump of stone.

Then he noticed: the hand’s trigger-finger was missing.

His heart kicked in again. Blinking sweat out of one eye, gulping air, he tugged on the gun. The motion threw him off balance; the hand had already let go.

Linda grabbed his arm, steadying him.

“Gary-?” she whispered.

“I’m okay,” he said. The pain in his knee was subsiding. Favoring that leg, he continued on.

Off to the right, an arm whipped up through a spatter of reflected torchlight. Directly ahead, a dark long-haired head broke the surface, only to dip abruptly from sight. To Gary’s amazement, the dead seemed to be having a good deal of trouble freeing themselves from the wires. He guessed they didn’t have enough freedom of movement to use their full strength.

But more and more limbs were splashing up into view, more bodies bucking under his tread. One tipped him over, and the cold black water closed above his head in a gurgling rush. An unseen mouth seized the very tip of his left little finger and bit it off.

A howl rose inside him. He seemed to ride it back to his feet; but he couldn’t let it out. Water pouring from his face, he bottled it within him, whipping his injured hand up and down at his side as he pushed forward.