Sea Sick: A Horror Novel

“I need a drink,” said Tally in a voice muffled by the closeness of his chest.

“Okay,” Jack agreed. “We’ll go to the bar.”

“No. I can’t be around people at the moment. They just remind me of what I’ve lost. Do you have anything to drink in your cabin?”

Jack nodded. “Hope you like scotch.”

Tally wrinkled her nose. “I suppose it will do. Long as it will get me drunk.”

“Oh, it’ll do that alright.”

Jack took Tally to his room.

***

Half the bottle of Glen Grant was now gone and Jack’s vision was bleary. He’d been drinking now, every day, for a couple of weeks, but his tolerance never increased. Every night at midnight the day reset and Jack’s constitution reverted back to how it was the day he had first boarded. When you considered the fact that he was still aging, it seemed a little unfair.

Tally seemed as drunk as he was. She was lying on the bed beside Jack and stared, transfixed, at the television set. Toy Story 3 was playing on the modest LCD and a big pink bear was stomping around a playroom like a tyrant while the other toys cowered. Jack wondered if the film would make Tally miss her daughter, so he pressed a button on the remote and switched the channel to something else: an infomercial about Cannes – their ever unreachable destination.

“So are you going to tell me what happened, Tally? Why did you disappear on me?”

Tally rolled onto her side and looked at him. “I…just needed some time alone. Some of the crew go to the Sports Deck for a drink at night so I thought I would join them, try to forget about things for a while. It worked for a few hours the first night and I even started to have fun. It was only staff members up there and none of them were sneezing or coughing. I thought it would be a good place to stay during the attacks. But…”

Jack nodded. He knew the story already. “At 8PM a bunch of children showed up?”

Tally seemed to recall the memory in vivid detail. Wrinkles appeared across her brow. “Yes. A couple of the children were under the weather, so sat on the side-lines with their parents. A lot of adults were also very ill. I knew then that things were going to get bad.”

“And you were right,” said Jack, remembering the trapped children from his own experience on the Sports Deck.

Tally continued. “When the attacks started, some of the children started leaking…leaking blood from their eyes. A couple members of the staff locked up the healthy children in the football enclosure to keep them safe. Without thinking, I ran in after them. It wasn’t as safe as I’d hoped.

“We were trapped in there for hours, Jack, while mutilated children and their torn-apart families tried to get in at us. There was so much blood up against the glass that, after a while, I couldn’t even see anymore. I could just hear the moans and whining of the infected people. The dead people.”

“You think the infected are dead when they attack?” Jack had made the similar summation himself long ago – ever since meeting Doctor Fortuné.

Tally nodded emphatically. “I saw a man with his intestines hanging out. He kept tripping on them as he walked around the deck. There was no way he was alive. The infection kills them and then they get up again and start killing. It is evil, Jack. Whatever it is, and whoever created it, is pure, malevolent evil. Being with all those children, trapped and scared, while other children – dead children – tried to get at them, it… it broke me. I kept going back, hoping I could do something to stop it, but it happens the same way every time. There’s no way to stop it. And now I can’t get it out of my head, Jack.”

Jack looked at her and could see the damage written across her face. Even if things worked out, some way, in the end, neither of them would ever be the same. A part of their souls, their spirits, had been broken.