SPACESHIP ZOMBIE CRUISE

FILE ENTRY 28.0

Bella Starr

"Now that I think about it," Draco says inside the elevator, "the bridge is exactly where we need to go. I can order the captain to shut down the engines, but I strongly disagree with sounding the alarm to port officials back on Earth."

My face radiates with heat. "If you knew as much about your ship as you should, you'd know that killing the engines completely will also shut off the artificial gravity."

"Oh...well, how do you know that?"

"We paid a visit to the engine room and had a chat with the chief engineer."

"Okay, so that wouldn't be the best idea, but we could at least slow the ship down enough to buy us time to figure out what to do about the outbreak."

Now in the light of the elevator I can see Draco's brilliant blue eyes framed by short blonde hair that comes down level with her chin. In those eyes, her irises shift and rotate. It's then I realize the corporate head is wearing specially designed contact lenses, likely surgically implanted in her eyes. Who knows what kind of tech the lenses provide her?

"Can you access information from the data stream with your contacts?" I ask.

"You're very perceptive, Ms. Starr." Draco's lips curl into a knowing grin. "I can read the ship's passenger list, but for some reason, I can't get a call out. It seems the only thing I can do is surf the ship's stream. Can't reach Earth or Neptune Shores. That's disturbing."

I stare at Draco. I hadn't made the call home to my mother earlier that night, and now it seems I never will.

The doors part, prompting me to move. We slink from the elevator out onto the Sea Breeze Deck. The dim nighttime lighting illuminates the deck in a dull twilight glow. Bodies litter the floor surrounding the kidney shaped pool. Better yet, body parts is a more accurate description of what I see. Apparently, after I fled the top deck and went back to my room, infected chaos reigned. Now the setting looks like a battlefield after the fight came to an end.

As we near the pool, something catches my eye. Movement above me. I look up at the clear protective shield that provides a canopy over our heads. The holographic display seems to be on the fritz. It blinks. Comes back on-line and then blinks off again. It's weird. One second, I see the hologram of stars, and then I see another image of stars trying to reveal itself. There. The hologram cuts off with a glitch and a picture of the real solar system comes into view. And the stars aren't blurred, not even a little bit, which is what I would have expected seeing we're not going two percent the speed of light anymore. The ship seems to be moving, though, like we're floating in space under minimal power.

The chief engineer had dialed back on the ship's gravity drives. He said we were traveling at reduced speed, but I never suspected we were going this slow. We're moving, but we're creeping.

Then there's a bump.

And another bump.

I look at Halo and Astra. They seem confused. Everyone has stalled by the pool, mesmerized by the scene overhead.

The stars shine and then disappear, blotted out from sight. That's odd. Something crashes into the canopy over our heads. I can make out an outline of the shape as an object drifts, bumps, and skids across the clear shield like a rock skipping on water.

The lighting flickers, goes out. Above me, jagged shapes collide into each other, sending fragments tumbling away.

"The ship is barely moving," Astra says.

"That's the least of our concerns," Draco says. "Looks like we're in an asteroid debris field, likely somewhere between Neptune and Uranus, and we're drifting on auxiliary power. Now we have to reach the bridge and see what's going on."