Season of Rot

find leftovers later, or he would fight with the flock at the morning meal. He doubted if David had any thoughts in his head about food, and he didn’t care. Let the newcomer starve if he wanted to. There were worse ways to die.

All that mattered to Scott at the moment was finding a shred of peace. Meditation could take him away from the horrors of this place.

Earlier in the day, he’d told David to stop hoping, that it was a lost cause, but now he wondered: wasn’t he himself seeking hope by leaving the pen, if only in his mind? He sighed and opened his eyes. The guards were already headed back inside the breeding center and the frenzy among the men for the slop was dying down. Scott slowly got to his feet, ignoring the taunts of his fellow inmates that he’d missed the meal.

This time David saw him coming, then turned back to the fence as Scott reached his side. “How dare you tell me to stop hoping?” David whispered. “Hope is all that’s left to any of us now.”

Scott accepted the stinging words as if he deserved them. He nodded towards the road leading out of the compound. “What exactly is out there that you want so badly? There’s no place left to go. The dead are everywhere. In here, we know we’re not going to be cut open and chewed on.”

“What’s the point of being alive if you can’t live?” David shot back.

“Hank and Buck, those two rednecks over there, would argue with you that we are living. They get fed, have their friendship, and once every couple of days they get to have the orgy of their wet dreams with the ladies inside.”

“But would you argue with me?”

“No,” Scott answered. “No, I would not.”

David grinned. “Then what are we going to do about that?”

Scott offered his hand, and the two men shook. “I’m Scott. Scott Burgess.”

“And you can call me David.”

“I know.” Scott laughed. “Well, David, it looks as if we have a lot to talk about.”

5

Steven placed the half-full bottle of whiskey atop his desk. All he wanted in the world was the feel of its fiery embrace as the alcohol slid down his throat, but he couldn’t bring himself to open the bottle. Too many people depended on him. He hadn’t asked for this job, but the Queen was his ship. She was all he ever loved in his life, and when the time came he’d go down with her. He knew every inch of her like the back of his hand, and yet she’d changed so much over the last few months he barely recognized her.

Once upon a time, she’d been a gleaming beauty of magnificent white hulls, a floating paradise where dreams of love and adventure thrived. Now her hull was spotted with makeshift plates of armor and the scars of battle. Gun emplacements lined the length of the main deck on all sides. Where once she’d held hundreds of vacationers, she now contained barely one hundred refugees, tired, frightened and desperate.

Someone knocked, and through the open door of the captain’s quarters Steven noticed O’Neil standing in the hallway. In one fluid motion, he swept the bottle off the top of his desk and into the drawer where it belonged.

O’Neil shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I have the inventory of our supplies that you asked for.”

“Of course.” He motioned for O’Neil to take a seat across the desk from him. “And how do things look?”

O’Neil slumped into the offered chair. “Not as bad as we thought. The last dock we raided gave us enough fuel for another two weeks or more.”

“And it only cost us the lives of six men,” Steven added bitterly.

O’Neil continued with the report. “Our ammunition stockpiles for small arms are holding up remarkably well, and Luke assures me that the new torpedo tubes he set up on the forward hull will work if we need them. Our only real pressing concern is food. Even with a rationing system in place and the reduced number of passengers and crew onboard, we’ll be out again in less than a week. The priority of the last raid was fuel for the Queen, so we didn’t have time to stock up like we needed.”

“They came crawling out of the woodwork,” Steven chuckled.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“The dead, Mr. O’Neil. Regardless of where we put into port, they’re always there, waiting. We never have enough time.”

“Yes, sir. I don’t like the thought of touching land again anytime soon.”

Silence lingered in the room for a moment before O’Neil finally said, “Well, sir, what are we going to do?”

“Pray,” Steven answered. “Pray our little hearts out… And while we’re at it, bring me a map of the area we’re in now. Going back ashore is really our only option, isn’t it? Since the damn fish are just as dead as the rest of the world. Besides, even if they weren’t, you know we couldn’t catch enough to feed everyone aboard this ship. It’s just not possible with our limited equipment and resources.”

O’Neil left in search of a map, leaving Steven alone once again in the darkness of the room.

6

No stars lit the sky. Thick, dark clouds let loose what seemed a never-ending shower of rain. Brandon slept peacefully under the small tarp Riley had set up for him. Hannah rested against a tree, drenched to the bone. Her long red hair clung heavily to her neck and shoulders. Riley leaned over and put his arm around her. To him, she was beautiful no matter the circumstances.

“How far do you think we made it today?” she whispered, trying not to wake Brandon.

“A pretty good distance despite the weather,” he assured her. “We’re safe here for the night, I think.”

Hannah’s .30-.06 rested beside her, propped against the same tree. “Riley, do you think there’s anyone else left?”

“Sure, honey. Sure. There’s got to be. If we’ve made it this long, it just makes sense somebody else, somewhere, has made it too.”

“It’s not fair,” she muttered with a fresh wetness sliding down her cheeks. “Brandon doesn’t deserve this. He should be in school or playing video games. Think of all the things we took for granted, Riley, things that Brandon will never know except from our stories. If there are other people out there, we have to find them for his sake and start over somehow.”

Riley listened to the rain as it bounced off the leaves of the trees around them. “Hannah,” he said softly, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry, Riley? It’s not your fault that the dead woke up or that we’re living through the end of the world. If it weren’t for you, Brandon and I would be dead. I’m grateful for the time we had in the cabin. How many other people even had a chance like that? To pretend things were going to be okay? Those months were like heaven. It’s just… it’s just Brandon.” She nestled her face into Riley’s chest and sobbed hard against the muscles she found there.

Riley’s arms encircled her. “I swear, Hannah, if there is a place to start again, we’ll find it or die trying. We’ve just got to hold it together for a while longer. Rain or no rain, we’ll start moving again in the morning.” Riley shut his eyes and thought only of his wife’s body pressed against his until dawn.

The clouds broke as the sun rose. Riley checked over their weapons to make sure the dampness hadn’t damaged them as Hannah and Brandon made a game of packing up and preparing to get on the move. The three shared stale granola bars for a quick breakfast and drank water from their canteens, then set out in the direction of the sun.