First Light Read online

  It was over almost as soon as it had begun.

  In but a moment, all the zombies were dead—the last shot through the temple as it raised its head to regard its angel of mercy.

  “Rose!” Lyra cried, whipping her head about the area. “Rose! Rose! Are you ok? Answer me!”

  “I’m fine!” she called back.

  Her friend spun to face her.

  The relief on her face was immediate, almost painfully so.

  “Are you all right?” Lyra asked, edging toward the side of the sun deck. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Rose managed, stumbling forward to meet her.

  “I saw you go down and I thought… I swore you’d…” Lyra shook her head. She brought a fist to her face and cupped it in front of her nose as she bowed her head in what Rose knew was a rare attempt to fight back tears. She waited a moment to regain her bearings—for the realization that her best friend had not succumbed to the sea or the dead to kick in—before lifting her eyes to look back at her. “Thank God you’re all right.”

  Rose couldn’t reply.

  All at once, everything came flooding in.

  Gone was the adrenaline that turned her into something she was not.

  Replaced by it were the things that made her human.

  Chapter 3

  “I can’t tell if it’s dislocated,” Lyra said, fighting the urge to frown as she placed a hand on Rose’s shoulder. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “It hurts,” Rose said, matter-of-factly, the harsh tone in her voice far more blunt than she’d wanted. She drew her arm free of Lyra’s grasp and settled it along her side. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I’m just…”

  “I know, Rose. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

  Rose glanced up from her place atop the bed and directed her attention to the spread of windows on the far side of the room. Having acquisitioned the master cabin, they had a view of the front deck—including the undead, who now lay with varying pieces of their heads blown off. “Lyra,” she said, forcing herself to turn and look at her friend. “How did you… well…”

  “Shoot them?”

  “It’s not like you could’ve gotten hold of a gun back home.”

  “True, that.” Lyra waited for Rose to speak further before settling back against the headrest. “I ever tell you I went through a tomboy phase? Yeah—me. Lyra Allen: the girliest girl in all the land. A tomboy phase. You’re probably shitting your pants right now just thinking about it. I mean, I would too if I were you, but I did. Oh yes I did. I beat up boys, I rode skateboards, I jumped on top of horses and rode them without a saddle—I did it all.”

  “That doesn’t explain how you know how to shoot.”

  “Lemme get to that part,” Lyra said. “Jesus. You’d think it was of the utmost importance.”

  Rose pursed her lips. Lyra’s gaze faltered, and gone was the sarcasm.

  “Anyway,” her friend said. “When I was a teenager, I had a boy bet me ten pounds that I couldn’t shoot a BB gun even if my life depended on it. What do they call them nowadays? Airsofts? Something like that. I don’t know. All I knew was that my Mum swore that if I ever laid a hand on one I’d be in for the whoopin’ of my life. So… given that it was me, and that I was really jonesing for a new handbag, I took him up on the offer.”

  “And that’s how you learned to shoot,” Rose said.

  Lyra nodded. “Hit the target first shot,” she said. “Not a bullseye or anything—that’d come later. I got my ten pounds, though, and I got my handbag, but the point was, I’d done it. I hit the target. So I kept going back to test myself. Eventually, I got good at it. Now… that isn’t to say shooting a real gun is anything compared to that. I spent most of the time trying to figure out how to get the damn safety off, but I got it to work. Sure as hell didn’t expect the kick to be that hard, though.”

  The smile that graced Rose’s lips brought a warmth the cold morning had refused to offer. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

  “A bit sore from the kick, but other than that? I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about. You’re the one who nearly took the tumble.”

  “Nearly?” Rose laughed.

  “Ok. Fine. Took a tumble. Gotta say though: good save, catching yourself like that.”

  “Not one of my more graceful moments.”

  “You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

  Nodding, Rose expelled a breath and once more regarded the undead outside the windows. “What’re we gonna do about them?” she asked.

  “Normally I’d say leave ‘em. Bird’s’d take care of them just fine. But considering what they are and all…” Lyra shrugged. “I think it’s best we get rid of them.”

  “Have we done a headcount?”

  “Kinda hard to count ‘em when you’re shooting at ‘em.”

  “Where did you get the gun, anyway?”

  Lyra paled. “You didn’t see,” her friend said, “did you?”

  “See what?”

  “Then again, you probably wouldn’t have anyway. You went down so fast after you ran up the stairs.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “When the zombies started going over the railing, I thought for sure you’d already gone over. It wasn’t hard to imagine, considering everything that was going on. Zombies, hurling themselves from the stairwell; you, nowhere to be seen. So, like any normal person would when they thought their best friend was dead, I panicked. I cried out in the hopes that you would answer, and that was when I saw that the Israeli had managed to bounce off the ones that’d been crushed against the railing. The moment he saw me, he bolted.”

  Lyra paused.

  In lieu of the brave-hearted confession, Rose reached out to brush her hand along her friend’s arm—hoping, at the least, to inspire comfort. Instead, Lyra shrank away—as if, by reflex, she’d drawn away from hot coals. The unexpected reaction jarred Rose’s consciousness to the point where she wasn’t even able to withdraw her hand. It merely remained there—halfway between them.

  It took several moments for Lyra to regain her sense of self. When she finally did, she met Rose’s gaze with eyes so haunted, ghosts could’ve filled them.

  All the people, Rose thought. All the things she killed.

  “He came at me, Rose,” Lyra said, the first sign of real emotion bubbling free in the form of a sob. “God… I’d never seen anything run so fast before. I didn’t know what to do. He slipped on a groove in the deck and I thought, ‘This is it. This is my chance.’ So I brought the iron around and clobbered him in the head with it. That was when I saw something—”

  “The gun.”

  “—and I didn’t even think. I just grabbed it. The moment I figured out how to get the safety off, I opened fire.” Again, Lyra paused. Though able to maintain most of her composure, the tears had begun full bore. Already Rose saw the telltale signs of swelling around her eyes and cheeks. “I… I hate to say, but… I didn’t see you. Now I know you were there, but then? It didn’t even register. All I knew was that those things had to die, otherwise I was going to die, and rot in the sun.”

  The tremble that took Lyra’s body shook the mattress. Fueled by the fever of adrenaline, she bowed her head into her hands and began to cry—forcefully, and unlike anything Rose had ever heard.

  Lyra wasn’t a crier. Unlike most of the women Rose knew, she turned such emotions into anger that ultimately shadowed everything. For a self-defined ‘girly girl,’ she proclaimed such things weak—that in a family where many of her distant cousins would pick on her simply because she was the girl, crying had no use when you were pushed in the mud and made to look like a fool. Rose had only seen her friend in such a state a few times, and none of them had compared to this.

  Her life had just been on the line. Her wits had been tested, her skills pushed to the limit. She’d thought her best friend was dead and that
it was all her fault.

  At that moment, Rose wanted nothing more than to lean forward and hug her. She knew she couldn’t, though. Lyra would’ve never allowed it.

  Settling back, Rose closed her eyes.

  The chilly afternoon air permeated the room.

  If, she thought, she opened her eyes, Rose would see her breath—cold and blue in the air.

  The dead had taken their world.

  And they had almost gone with them.

  Lyra’s condition left her in no state to begin the cleanup necessary for their wellbeing, so when the throb in her shoulder died to a lull thanks to cheap over-the-counter medication scrounged from the bathroom, Rose donned a pair of heavy leather gloves she’d found in a tackle box and went to work removing the corpses from the top deck.

  As grisly as it should have been, she found the process surprisingly cathartic.

  That, however, did not dispel the reality of the situation.

  Free from whatever had kept them from decaying, their bodies had begun to bloat, and with it, the flies had come. Desperately seeking their next meal, they swarmed the air over her head, their low drone the only sound that broke the monotony of the early-morning gloom.

  With the foot of a corpse in both hands, Rose stared at the body whose head had been nearly taken off by the bullet.

  The flies burrowed into the skin.

  They fed off the blood.

  If one of them touched her—if one of them bit her—

  With a shake of her head, Rose tightened her grip on the corpse’s foot and continued to tug it along.

  The space under the railing would allow her to slide the bodies off without issue. The blood would be another matter.

  At the end of the railing, she glanced down at the body and offered it only a moment’s regard before sliding its legs off the deck.

  Gravity did the rest.

  It fell to the sea, only to bob once before being dragged away.

  There, she thought as she watched the body fade into the distance. Was that so hard?

  She knew if she dwelled on it for too long she’d answer her question. With that in mind, she turned and started for the next corpse, only to stop before she could reach it.

  At first, she wasn’t sure what had stopped her.

  It became apparent soon after.

  Wrapped around the individual’s arm was a bandage stained with blood.

  It’s her, she thought.

  The woman—the ginger, as Lyra had been quick to describe.

  The one who’d started it all.

  Closing her eyes, Rose took in a lungful of the stale air and shook her head.

  After standing, she took hold of the dead zombie and began to drag it away.

  No matter what, she couldn’t stop.

  She had a job to do.

  When she returned to the captain’s quarters after disposing of the two bodies in the living room, she found Lyra asleep. Tense from a morning of not only physical but emotional strain, she closed the door behind her and slid into the bathroom as silently as she could, where she proceeded to run a hot shower she felt would be the last she had in a while.

  There was no blood on her body. Only sweat, tears, the bitter memory of the morning. Nonetheless, she scrubbed herself until her skin was raw and then stepped out, feeling no better for it.

  Her expression in the mirror gave no indication of relief.

  Eyes red, she thought as she stepped closer to the sink. Dark circles. Cheeks puffy.

  For all she knew, she could’ve been crying and she wouldn’t have even known it. Considering her circumstance, it was surprising she hadn’t broken down. Maybe she was resilient. Maybe she was numb. Or maybe she was subconsciously blocking out the truth to keep from losing her mind.

  A knock came at the door.

  Lost in thought, Rose hadn’t even realized that her friend had awoken.

  “Rose?” Lyra asked.

  “You can come in,” she said. Lyra opened the door and blinked as a rush of hot air spilled out at her. “You might want to shower now. We might not get a chance to do it again.”

  “All right,” her friend said, pausing to consider her. Her dark eyes were awash with exhaustion and the harsh lines that crossed the whites resembled the deck just moments after Rose had dumped the last body. “Are you ok?” she asked.

  “I think it’s finally starting to sink in,” Rose said.

  “You always did have a problem with delayed reactions.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, hell—you’d break up with a guy and act like it was nothing until a day or two later. Then it would all just…” Lyra shook her head. “Doesn’t matter anymore now, does it?”

  “Not really.”

  Lyra took a few steps back and allowed the door to close to a crack behind her. “You have some clothes?” she asked.

  “Just what Jewel gave us,” she said. “I’ll get them in a second.”

  Lyra nodded and turned to give Rose her privacy.

  Rose sighed.

  She couldn’t even remember seeing Jewel or Tommy while dumping the bodies.

  Was she really that blind?

  The rain started again later that afternoon. Flush with bloated clouds, it blocked out the sun and thrust the world into a somber light that seemed ironically appropriate for the end of the world.

  Rose watched from her place in a small chair as the rain slithered down the wide window and disappeared onto the outer sill, her attention cast to the endless distance and the lack of anything that existed within it. The slight sway of the sea was an awful reminder that they were most likely stuck.

  A knock came at the door. “Hey,” Lyra said, raising a platter just as Rose turned her head. “I made us something.”

  “You found food?” Rose asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank God,” Rose said.

  Lyra nodded and glanced about the room. “We got a place to sit this?”

  Rose shrugged. The only table in the room was spread before the loveseat, and even then, it appeared ill-equipped to hold a tray of food in place. Noting this, Lyra walked to the chair opposite Rose and settled down, careful to balance the tray in her lap. “Ah well,” she said. “This’ll do.”

  “What is it?” Rose asked.

  Leaning forward, she looked down at the platter spread across Lyra’s lap to find what she could only describe as a feast: sliced rolls, meats, cheeses, a haphazard mix of potato chips and even pretzels.

  “Lyra,” she said, glancing up from the food to look at her friend. “Where did you find all of this?”

  “The pantry’s full. Fridge is, too.” Lyra assembled a sandwich and shoved it into her mouth.

  Her expression spoke for itself.

  That sandwich, as simple as it was, appeared no less than a slice of Heaven.

  Rose hadn’t realized they’d gone without food for almost two days until her stomach started growling.

  Still, regardless of her hunger, and the fact that the food called to her in a way that made her mouth water, she couldn’t help but think of the logistics behind it all.

  If they had fresh food, she thought, and it wasn’t in a freezer…

  “Did you see a stove in the kitchen?” Rose asked, edging out to take her share.

  “Mmmhmm,” Lyra managed through a mouthful.

  “You know if it’s electric?”

  “Propane,” her friend said. She swallowed what she had in her mouth, and laughed when Rose’s expression paled. “What? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “That shit’s explosive, you know.”

  “I took chemistry.”

  “Lyra. I’m serious.”

  “I know you are,” her friend shrugged. “If it helps any, there’s still three-quarters of a tank left. Leaves us plenty of fuel to cook on if we need it.”

  Which we will, Rose thought, but bit her tongue.

  There wasn’t any use in debating if the propane would pose a danger. As haza
rdous as the world was, they were the only two on the ship, the only two they’d have to worry about. There’d be no fear of guns going off or something going crazy—of a burner being left on and something spilling to start a fire. Essentially, they were in the perfect survival situation.

  But for how long?

  The question—so eager to linger on her consciousness—clung to her like a hooked barb that could never be removed. To push it from her mind would only further her apathy, but to allow it to stay and risk inhibiting her with terror?

  She shook her head.

  Midway toward taking another bite, Lyra paused. “Rose?”

  “I’m ok,” she said.

  “You’re getting that look—like you’re studying for a test and you have no idea what the hell you’re reading.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “We both are.”

  “I mean…” Rose sighed. “It’s just… I keep thinking: we’re out here, in the middle of nowhere, just the two of us—alone. The zombies are gone, there’s no way they’re going to come back, and there’s no way any more are going to get to us. On one hand, we’re perfectly safe, but on another…”

  She didn’t need to explain. Her meaning was bold and clear—etched in the boards beneath them, in the walls around them. The ocean cried so mighty blue. The rain’s song was somberness incarnate. Each little shift on the almighty sea was the board and shuffle of the clock whose time would never be openly displayed.

  The fear of running out of food, of not being able to survive, of the waves coming forth to swallow them whole…

  Of never getting off this ship…

  Lyra looked down at the platter in her lap, the disbelief finally chiseled from her face. “I… I guess I never thought of it like that. I was just happy we were safe.”

  “From one thing,” Rose said. “But not another.”

  Lyra nodded. She lifted a chip, regarded it for a moment, then stuck it in her mouth. She appeared to be forcing herself to eat, as indicated by the rough snap and moving jawline, but she didn’t stop. Something, Rose thought, was telling her to keep going; that her body, so battered by stress, needed the nutrients.