In Poetics, Aristotle recommends that storytellers observe a unity of time (no large jumps forward in time), place (one location), and action (few or no subplots). Well, things don’t get much more unified than a couple of characters on a lifeboat. Hitchcock used this scenario to great effect in his World War II-era film Lifeboat, in which the survivors begin to suspect that one of them is a German agent. Gary Larson, author of the beloved newspaper comic The Far Side, repeatedly used gags involving lifeboats. (In one such strip, three men and a dog draw lots to see which of them will be eaten—the dog comes up a winner, and looks suitably smug.)
Our next tale also utilizes the grim immediacy and forced intimacy of a lifeboat scenario. “My original idea for this story was to have infection break out on an airplane, which caused airports to constantly divert it,” Ryan says. “As I thought more about the idea, I wanted to simplify it and boil it down. I was out to dinner with friends and talking about my idea, and my fiancé suggested using a boat instead. I’d been doing a lot of research into The Rime of the Ancient Mariner for another project so the first line was obvious, and the entire story unfolded from there. I love using zombies in my fiction because it allows me to ask what differentiates the living from the dead. How do we determine our own lives and futures beyond mindlessly doing what someone tells us?”
“Water, water everywhere, and—”
“Damn it, Jeremy! If you say that one more time…” It’s when I see his face fall that I swallow the rest of what I’m going to say. But the unspoken words circle my head, the rage stinging just under my skin. Honestly, I’d love nothing more than to reach across the tiny little raft and rip his throat out with my bare fingers.
I close my eyes, try to inhale slow and deep. I feel him shift, feel the ripple and dip of the rubber underneath us that pushes me just a little off balance. To avoid the urge to kick him, I pull my legs up to my chest, resting my forehead on my knees.
“Sorry, man,” he says, his voice a tiny defeated squeak.
I press my face harder against my kneecaps, digging the prickle of my unshaven chin into my skin. Trying to focus all my pain into a single point. Trying to burn out my frustration. Waves dip and tumble underneath us, tilting us toward the sun and then away, water whispering around our tiny octagonal rubber island.
The cruise ship still hulks on the horizon and no matter how hard I try, I can’t resist staring at it. Bright orange specks hover around it like chiggers—other lifeboats stuffed with other potential survivors. I start to unroll the nylon canopy, attaching it to the raft walls and pulling it over the inflated cross bar arcing across the center of the raft when Jeremy glances at me, looking startled.
“We could go back,” he says, hesitant. “We could try to get closer. Just to see.”
I stop struggling with the canopy and close my eyes tight again, curling back over my knees. “No,” I tell him, my voice echoing between my legs.
He sighs and dips his hand over the edge of the raft. I can hear the drip of the salt water as it plinks from his fingers. I should tell him to stop, tell him that the salt’s not good for him.
But we both know it won’t matter. Not in a few days if the reports have been right.
Jeremy has nightmares. Not that I don’t, but Jeremy’s are bad—worse than bad: horrific. The first two days on the life raft neither of us sleep. Instead, we sit here, eyes riveted on the gigantic cruise ship as we drift farther and farther away.
It’s during the second night when he finally falls asleep. I’m still staring at the ship, struck by how bright and dazzling it is—how it looks exactly like all the commercials as it lights up the night. I even start to think that perhaps we’d been stupid to evacuate so hastily and that maybe we should circle in closer, see if they’ve somehow been able to contain the infection.
That’s when Jeremy starts screaming and thrashing around. It makes the little raft buck and dip, one of the sides catching a wave and letting water slosh in. I jump on him, pinning him down and he swings at me before I’m able to get to his hands.
He wakes up with me straddling him and panting hard, my heart loud like gunshots in my ears. He doesn’t know he’d been having nightmares and he frowns, his face draining.
“Get off me,” he says, twisting to the side, and I let go his hands and scuttle back to the other side of the raft. He looks at me like I’m a monster and it makes me feel awkward and weird.
“You were screaming,” I tell him but he just grunts and won’t look at me. He keeps staring at the ship, watching the lights glitter like nothing’s changed. I pull my legs up to my chest and tuck into one of the corners, making sure no part of me touches any part of him for the rest of the night.