Zombie Drift

2: Peter Evers

Peter Evers sat on his bunk, staring at the cellphone in his hand. He hated not having service. Up until five minutes ago he’d been texting pretty as you please to his best friend Alec. It’s not like his buddy was that far away. In fact, Alec was right there in Charleston, SC. He was supposed to be waiting for him when he disembarked from the boat. Of course, Peter would need to find a way to escape the all seeing eye of his father’s watchdog, Ethan. He’d been a constant presence, and somewhat of a nuisance, the whole voyage. It wasn’t the fact the man was fifteen years his senior. It was more like, well…the guy just didn’t know how to have fun. He had even turned down the chance to dance with the Ethiopian singer up in the jazz lounge the night before. To Peter that was stupid.

There were many things Peter found stupid. The fact he was seventeen and being made to go on a cruise with a man who was a complete bore had to top the list. His Father, Gerald Evers put Peter on the ship to get him off the mainland while they investigated where the death threats were coming from. Gerald owned Ever Sail Cruise Lines, as well as other profitable business entities, and so it was the easiest way to get the boy out of the way. Peter wasn’t sure who he resented more, his Father, or the man he’d hired to watch over him during his time at sea. He briefly wondered if his dad discovered who’d been threatening to kill his son and why, but then he realized he already knew the why. Like the current President, his dad knew how to piss people off on Twitter.

Tired of trying to get his phone to work, Peter picked up the remote for the wall mounted television and turned it on. There wasn’t much else to do while he waited for Ethan to get out of the shower. If he snuck out the room the man would be furious. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea, but before he could entertain that notion, images on the TV stopped all mischievous thought. At first, he thought it was a movie. There’s no way this could be real. On screen, the front of a grocery store was being severely vandalized. Windows broken, the front door hanging off its hinges. The parking lot in the forefront was littered with trash and heaps of rags. But wait, it wasn’t rags. No, it was bodies. Laying in the lot as if it were a battlefield. And like a war zone, there were moans of the dying coming through the television speaker. It sent a chill up his spine. But it wasn’t just the sound that bothered him. It was the way the bodies were trying to move. In jerky movements, as if the bones had been broken in their arms and legs, some of the bodies were attacking others. A voice came over the image. “Are you getting this?” Then something else lumbered into view. It blocked out the entire camera eye for a moment then moved out of frame. The camera view was different now. In fact it was sideways, as if someone dropped the camera on its side in the dirt. From this new angle all Peter could see was shuffling feet and the dead unseeing eyes of a woman laying on the ground in front of the camera. He waited for someone to pick it up but they never did. He was forced to view the poor dead woman. He began to wonder if this was one of those “Cloverfield” type movies. The ones that were made to look like someone’s home video to give it a touch of realism. He’d seen several such films in the past. Cloverfield. Blair Witch Project. District 9.

Still there was something way creepier with what he saw on the TV.

“Hey Ethan,” he called out. He didn’t know if the man heard him from the shower, but it made Peter feel better just to call out his name. He may have been a bore to the teenager, but he knew his dad wouldn’t have had the guy traveling with him if there wasn’t something special about him. Despite their close quarters, he had never asked the man what he did for a living when not babysitting on sea cruises.

“Ethan,” he called again, his eyes glued to the dead woman’s eyes on the screen. He entertained the notion of getting off the bed and going into the bathroom to retrieve the man. The only thing that stopped him was the thought of the man not in the shower, but on the toilet or in some other state that required privacy. As the long seconds ticked by, and they did seem awfully long, he continued to watch the still dead body onscreen. He noticed some things going on in the background of the image. Other fallen bodies were visible, but thankfully their gaze wasn’t directed at the camera. Peter could see shadows of movement past the corpses. Or at least he thought they were corpses as none were moving or otherwise showing signs of life. He stared a little closer to the TV. Did one of the bodies just twitch?

“Hey kid, What you watching?”

Peter turned to look at Ethan. The man had emerged from the bathroom fully clothed. He wore tan khaki shorts and a horrendous Hawaiian shirt that had so much color to it there was no way the man could blend into a crowd. The button up shirt screamed attention. Normally, Peter would have said something sarcastic about his attire, but the images from the television wouldn’t let him go.

“There’s something weird on the TV,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a movie, the news, or what, but the camera has been laying on the ground for awhile.”

The older man walked over to get a better look. “Damn,” he muttered. “Is that a…”

“Yeah, she’s dead. It’s got to be one of those found footage horror movies, right?”

“Um..yeah..I guess. I don’t watch many of these new movies, so…”

“It’s got to be a movie..” Peter replied. “There’s no way it…”

Suddenly her eyes blinked. On the screen. The dead woman. Her eyes blinked.

Peter jumped. “Holy shit! Did you see that?” He looked at Ethan. The older man hadn’t jumped like he had, but Peter could tell something was going on behind his eyes, as if he was working things out in his head.

“What channel is this?”

“I’m not sure. I just turned it on and somebody was filming a store get vandalized or something.”

On screen, the woman twitched and she began to move.

Peter didn’t jump this time. At least not on the outside. But on the inside his nerves were thrashing around and a knot was forming in his stomach.

The woman tried to push herself up, but her arms were at awkward positions, and one even seemed to snap, producing a loud crack through the speaker. She looked at the camera and let out a low guttural moan. Then she began to chew up her own tongue.