unimaginable amount of pain, before one of his ribs snapped and pierced through his heart. With Terrence dead, the man moved close to Shawn. His knee popped as he lifted his leg, but before he could bring it down on the first mate, Ji slammed into him, knocking him to the floor.
Ji reached down and tried to pull Shawn to his feet, but he was too heavy. He watched the attacker as he made his way to his feet, and he ran over once more and kicked him back to the ground. With the man on the ground, Ji kicked him several times with hopes that he would stay down for a while. He turned back to Shawn and said, “I’m glad to see you’re alright Terrence. Help me get Shawn out of here.” Terrence reached down, grabbed Shawn’s foot and raised it high. He then punched Shawn’s knee, snapping it backwards and causing another round of screaming from the already injured first mate.
“What the hell’s the matter with you!” cried Ji as he ran to Terrence. He spun Terrence around and looked into his face. The empty eye socket leaked its disgusting gunk. The other eye was grey with a slimy film covering it. Ji kicked Terrence in the stomach with enough force to knock them both backwards. Terrence fell back into a support post, which broke his fall and kept him on his feet. Ji was grabbed by the slimy hands of the injured man.
The injured man had a tight grip on Ji’s shirt, and Ji dragged him most of the way across the ferry before he finally broke free. Seeing that he had one option, Ji looked down at Shawn. “I’m so sorry. I can’t get you out of here,” he said before running through a door and jumping out into the bay. As he surfaced a few yards away, there was another splash from behind him. The injured man came after him, but he was lost in the waters of the bay.
Ji could hear Shawn’s screams as he swam towards the island. He wasn’t sure if his eyes were blurry from the tears or the salt water, but he kept telling himself there was nothing he could do for his friend. The one thing he knew for certain at this point was that those screams would haunt him for the rest of his life, and unfortunately he had no clue how much longer that would be.
Four
Kent Walker reached Jordan and Ricky quickly. He could tell they weren’t drowning – as the old woman had screamed – from up on the path, but he did see that something was wrong. Jordan remained frozen in place, he had tears rolling down his cheeks and he was taking short shallow breaths. Ricky, on the other hand, was lying on the rocks perfectly still.
Fresh blood speckled the waterlogged man’s slimy face, and flesh hung from his mouth. With his bloody, wrinkled fingers, he ripped strips of muscle from the young boy’s calf. Kent kicked the man in the ribs and lifted the small boy up. Tyler, who had come running when he heard the woman screaming, grabbed Jordan and pulled him back up to the path.
Nelson Jeffries, a man with dark brown hair and thick black-framed glasses – unaware of what exactly was happening – ran past the two men to help the man in the water. Kneeling down, he grabbed the waterlogged man under the arms and hoisted him up further on the rocks. “Are you alright, sir?” he asked then looked at his wrinkled skin. “How long have you been in there? Never mind that, I’m gonna get you out away from this freezing water.”
Most of the tourists had gathered around by now to watch the spectacle. The woman continued to cry for her grandson as Kent laid him down on the path. “We will have to get him to the ferry. He is alive, but the pain has put him into shock, which is probably for the best right now.” Kent looked at the other tourists, and they each backed away in hopes of not being volunteered to take the boy back to the dock.
“Fine!” Kent reached down and picked up the small child. He took off running down the path, following it past the power plant and towards the dock where the Bay Cruiser awaited. Jordan finally snapped out of his own shock and ran after his brother. They were followed by two others who felt bad about not volunteering to help.
The waterlogged man kicked and swung his disgusting arms wildly as Nelson dragged him up to the path. A young woman ran down to help, but instead she knocked Nelson off balance. The waterlogged man twisted out of Nelson’s arms and knocked the woman onto her back. Falling on top of her, he bit down into her throat. Blood sprayed from her neck and flooded her mouth, causing her screams to come out as a gurgle.
Regaining his balance, Nelson pulled the man from the young woman’s bloody body. The man thrust his thumbs into Nelson’s mouth and tore through the flesh and muscle of his cheeks. As he screamed in agony, the waterlogged man reached into Nelson’s mouth once more and pulled hard on his tongue. The frenulum under his tongue stretched, then tore, taking with it some of the skin from the bottom of his mouth.
The young woman’s friends helped her as she struggled to her feet. The blood poured from her mouth as she stood. A man with a green goatee took her right arm and wrapped it around his shoulder, while another young woman with short spikey hair and a four gauge ring in her septum took her left arm. The young woman continued to gurgle, forcing more blood to spew from her neck. She pulled the man close to her and bit the bottom of his ear off. Instinctively, he pushed her away, which caused the spikey-haired girl to fall back into the waterlogged man.
The young woman and the waterlogged man attacked the spikey-haired girl. Blood gushed from her nose as they stomped on her face, and her left arm was twisted until her elbow broke. As the life left her body, her attackers turned to the screaming crowd. No more heroes stepped forward. Instead, they trampled each other in an attempt to find safety at the front of the pack.
The two attackers caught up to the man with the green goatee as they reached the path. He tripped over the body of a child that had been thrown to the ground and stepped on. Before he could stand, his friend was on top of him. She grabbed his thick goatee and twisted his head sideways. Blood leaked from his head as she slammed it repeatedly into the concrete.
Waterlogged man and the young woman wandered through the bodies that had been trampled by the horrified tourists. They could sense the living, and out of the two dozen bodies lying along the path, eleven people were still alive. Joined by the spikey-haired girl, they finished off the people lying on the path in gruesome ways.
“In here!” said Ryan as Tyler and Layla moved past him. Ryan and Jen flagged them down from inside the Post Exchange.
“What are you doing in here?” Tyler asked as they snuck in to meet the other couple.
“The dock is a bad place, but I know I can’t stop them. They are scared and not thinking clearly,” he said. Just then they heard Phillip’s voice.
“Everyone needs to form a line as we board the ferry, please!” ordered Phillip as the frightened group approached the dock. “We don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
The crowd didn’t listen. They barreled through the ramp to the ferry, each one trying to be the first to board. Even after the screams erupted from those that did make it first, the back of the crowd kept pushing forward. Like a frightened stampede, there forward movement wouldn’t be halted so easily. The front of the group turned and pushed against the back like a backwards game of tug-of-war.
The old woman stepped out from the group as she saw her oldest grandson walking towards her. “Are you hurt, Jordan?” she asked as he dragged his right leg. “Oh god you are. What happened, dear?” She grabbed him by the shoulders and examined the blood all down the front of him. “Jordan, talk to me please.”
The boy stared at her through his dull grey eyes. Blood dripped from his hair, and something dropped out from under his shirt, splattering on the ground as it hit. The woman looked down and screamed as she realized that what hit the ground in between them were his intestines. The blood continued to pour from the boy’s stomach as he lunged for the woman’s face. She never made any attempts to escape her painful death.
“We have to help them,” Tyler said.
“You ain’t going out there,” Layla responded in a commanding tone. “Are you stupid? Those things will kill you like everyone else.”
“She’s right,” said Jen. “There seems to be no way to stop them.”
/>
“We can’t just hide here and watch these people get slaughtered.” Tyler stood up and prepared to hop out of the dilapidated building. Before he could, however, a man jumped up in front of him, grabbing his arms. Tyler jerked away and swung at the man’s face. He had never been in a fight before, and he didn’t think of himself as a strong man, but he would protect his wife with his last breathe. Instead of colliding with the man’s face as he had hoped, the man in the dark leaned to the side slightly, caught him by the wrist and flipped him out and onto the hard ground.
“What the hell are you doing? I’m not one of them,” the young Asian man said as he helped Tyler back to his feet. “Come on, get back in the Post Exchange.”
“You must be from the ferry?” Ryan asked, taking note of the Asian’s outfit. “What do you know about what’s going on?”
“I think these people are dead,” he said with an odd flatness in his voice. “I watched as several of these people were killed. Right in front of me, my friends were killed. Now they are up, killing.”
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jen countered. “These people are sick, they have rabies or something.”
“I think he is right, babe,” Ryan said. “I’m sorry, but as crazy