parents knelt at my bedside, begging God to spare my life, or, perhaps asking His forgiveness for what happened next: the doctor walked over and turned off the respirator!
That's when the stranger outside my bedroom door began beating on it profusely, bringing me back to the moment at hand.
Death was knocking. A chilling thought smothered every other idea in my head: it was death that caught me watching earlier as it went about its gruesome task next door. And the person they had buried wasn't really a person at all, but just another soul they were sowing; a defiant seed that wasn't any more ready to be planted than I. These two dark figures weren't my neighbors, they were gatherers of the dead and I was destined to be their next gardening project.
The beeping of the phone was slowing and I realized that what I was hearing was the rhythm of my own heartbeat.
I screamed at the mirror, “I'm still alive! Damn you, I'M STILL ALIVE!!!”
But, I was dying.
This house, this neighborhood, this entire ordeal had been nothing more than a dream.
No... it was a nightmare. My final nightmare!
And it dawned on me that a month hadn't passed as I had imagined. I had been shot just a few hours ago!
I once read somewhere that just because a person was in a comatose state didn't mean they couldn't hear what was going on around them. I knew, now, that it was true. I could hear my wife crying and my parents praying.
The phone beeped every few seconds now and my legs had become too weak to support me. I slumped to the floor against the dresser, facing the door, and waited for death to come for me. I wasn't quite ready to let it in.
With only two solid blows, the door lost the battle and shattered into a million pieces as the stranger in the hooded raincoat stepped through. He wasted no time and came right for me, wrapping his cold, clammy hands around my throat, choking the life out of me.
I blinked hard and reached for his face. My fingers caught his sunglasses and bandana and ripped them away and I found myself face to face with a hideous skull. Its eye sockets were nothing more than voids of total blackness and its ghastly, toothy grin made it obvious that it was enjoying its morbid job.
I grabbed its hands and felt the flesh peel away like layers of onionskin, revealing its skeletal arms and appendages. The bones of its hands crackled as they tightened their grip on my neck.
My hands fell to the floor, tired and numb.
The lightning flashed once more and bathed my vision in an ocean of light that began to fade slowly as my vision gave way to an eerie, lonely darkness from which there was no escape.
The cold grip of death held on to my throat until the last thing I heard was the long, steady, high-pitched tone from my cell phone-
BEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee………
stowaways
Matt knew he didn’t have much time left to get back to the only remaining lifeboat in the aft end of the huge cargo ship before it, and everyone left on board, was consumed by the towering waves… or before he was consumed by those ungodly things roaming the decks. Along the way, he was going to have to make a pit-stop at the infirmary to catch up with what was left of their crew: Tony, Wallace, Julie and Troy.
Matt had been voted to be the one to run and drop anchor to try to stop the ship from going any further and bringing the threat of the undead into the port of New Orleans. Now, he was a hundred yards further from the lifeboat than he was twenty minutes ago and nearly out of shotgun shells.
Dark, without power, and probably way off course, the massive vessel of steel bobbed in the stormy swells of the Gulf of Mexico like a toy boat in a tub of water. Heavy, dark clouds, highlighted with distant flashes of lightning, blanketed the night sky.
Matt ducked into a room just off the port side deck and took a count of the ammo in his pocket as the ship listed to one side, rocked by a massive wave: 4 shells.
“SHIT!” He dropped one when he lost his balance as the large vessel slammed back down into the water... 3 shells.
His body bounced off of a table in the middle of the room and he stumbled into the wall, dropping the shotgun along with another shell, which rolled under the table before disappearing into the darkness of the room. Matt found his footing and grabbed the gun.
A silhouette blurred passed the open doorway.
Matt flattened himself against the wall and froze.
Another silhouette clamored by, followed closely by a third.
Just then, the vessel was hit by another wave, this time sending a river of seawater through the doorway from the deck just outside. And with the water came the fourth silhouette as it stumbled and fell through the door, gliding along the floor with the gallons of seawater that washed it into the room.
Matt didn't move, not even to raise the gun. He hadn't been this close to one of these things in the two days that the cargo ship had been adrift. And he didn't really care to be any closer, so he wasn't about to give it a reason to look his way for a second.
The ship rocked back to starboard and Matt did his best to keep his balance in the shadows.
The thing stood up, its nude, sinuous body soaked to the bone, literally. Its skin hung in rotting shreds, hanging from the bones and exposing muscle and tissue that must have been decaying for several weeks, only, that couldn't be possible because as far as Matt knew, dead men didn't walk.
What Matt did know was that four days ago, they had picked up a shipment of twenty-four cadavers from Port Au Prince that had been donated to an American medical university.
That night, Chuck, one of the crewmen, reported hearing a knocking coming from the shipping container that held the cadavers and went with the first mate, Riley, to investigate. The things poured from the container like cockroaches and by sunrise all hell had broken loose and everything was out of control. All but five of the crew had been slaughtered by these dead stowaways; ripped apart with bare hands as the things fed on their victims, some eaten while still barely alive. Soon, even the captain and his crew were dead. After that, the ship went dark and was left to drift in the middle of a relentless tropical storm.
Matt was lucky enough to have been in his bunk fast asleep when it happened and was awakened by Troy, his bunk mate, in the midst of the carnage. They were able to find the other three crew members and three weapons, including the shotgun Matt now carried with him.
He had lost his rock-paper-scissors battle over who would drop the anchor. It sucked, yes, but it was easier for one person to elude these things, not to mention the fact that Matt was the youngest and most fit of the five crew members left standing, so it was fitting that fate chose him for the task.
Now, the stowaways roamed the ship day and night like packs of wolves, never alone, attacking anything that had a heartbeat. It didn't appear that they even slept or rested at all. The gut-wrenching smell was the worst part of it and was typically a sure sign that one of these things was in the immediate area.
The stowaway sniffed the air and Matt was slightly amused by the thought of the walking corpse being able to actually smell anything passed its own, putrid odor.
But, now there was something else in the room making noise; thumping and thrashing in the water that stood an inch deep on the floor. Matt knew exactly what it was, and from the sound of the thumping, it had to be a big one.
The stowaway turned its attention to the big, thumping fish that Matt couldn't see on the other side of the radar console, and let out a loud yelp as if to warn the fish that it washed into the wrong room.
The ship listed again to the port side and Matt stood firm, but the stowaway didn't. It stumbled backward to the floor and slammed against the far wall. Matt could still see it, but what he saw next took his breath away.
The large fish that had washed into the room slid along the floor when the ship tilted. It was a fucking shark!
A big son of a bitch, too, at least ten feet long, and it slid, jaws first, right into the stowaway. They both began attacking each other; the stowaway clawing with his ha
nds and the shark chomping away instinctively with its deadly shredders.
Matt was stunned by the sight and he knew he had to take the chance to escape, but he couldn't take his eyes off of what he saw. Who could? A wrestling match between a man and a shark... on a ship... in the Gulf of Mexico. People would pay top dollar for this shit! Matt watched as one of the stowaway's arms fell to the floor, effortlessly severed by the shark's snapping jaws.
Then, the ship fell back to starboard and Matt lost his balance, sliding on his back, feet-first, in a wash of seawater towards the door. He was followed by the shark and the stowaway.
Matt hit the wall first, just to the left of the door, but it was the big shark that hit the bull's eye as it got stuck, tail first, halfway out the door, stopped only by its fins that made it too wide to go through the door backwards.
The shark thrashed to and fro with the ravenous cadaver in its mouth, still clawing away at its aquatic enemy. Then, the stowaway spotted Matt and decided it didn't want to play with the shark anymore and began reaching for him instead.
Like a raging animal in a trap, the stowaway wiggled and strained to get a hold of Matt, who was well within arms' reach but scrambling fast to widen the gap between them. With each swing of the shark's body, the stowaway got closer and closer, its eyes ever on the prize and clawing with all of its might to get a grip on Matt.
Matt kicked wildly, splashing in the sea water that covered the