We lowered a length of rope, cooing and beckoning to the zombies. Kelly grabbed onto it, and started climbing up. He’d lost his glasses, but maybe zombies weren’t nearsighted. We swung the rope away from the boat and let it go, dropping him into the water.
Turns out zombies can’t swim. So we did the same thing to the other zombies. They sank. That was the one thing the ship had: rope. We took turns climbing down a rope and taking the water and gear from the little boat, like the Grinch stealing Christmas. And it felt like Christmas, after; we had enough supplies to last a few days. Plus we didn’t drop each other.
We cleaned up, and then we did something secret. We gave ourselves pirate names. Juicy Liu, Highwater Mark, and Justin Case. It seemed fitting. We’d stolen a boat. We’d killed Kelly. (Twice.) That made us pirates.
We were no longer the kind of people we thought we were, so we had to give up something.
Juicy volunteered to take the first watch. She wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, she said. But then she kept me and Highwater up, singing, “A three-hour tour” over and over. She didn’t know any of the other words, so she kept singing those. When she got bored of that, she sang, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Voices from neighboring boats joined in. For the first few minutes, it made me believe that humanity could survive.
I dozed but came awake when she nudged me with her foot. The singing was over. Juicy snuggled into my bedroll. I paced the deck, understanding why someone would sing. It’s like making noise when hiking, to warn the rattlesnakes. If you were singing, you were too crazy to be bothered.
So I started singing. Christmas carols, because I couldn’t remember any other songs. Then James Taylor, the Beatles, Dylan. I found that I knew all of the lyrics to “In da Club” by 50 Cent, so I shouted those a few times. I thought I heard Kelly rapping with me. That was impossible, but I looked for him anyway. The water was calm and unbroken.
I woke Highwater as the sky started turning a friendly blue. I hadn’t seen dawn in ten years or more, not since early morning marching band practice in high school. I watched the sky warm while I lay in Highwater’s bedroll, and I remembered how everyone, even cute girls, looked lumpy in band uniforms. Girls with their hair up in the uniform hats, like librarians. Librarians with chin straps. Marching in formation with books in their mouths instead of clarinets.
“No way Columbus sailed the ocean blue on this thing,” Juicy said. “I don’t even know anyone who can sail a square sail. It’s got to have an outboard motor.”
I squinted against the light. Juicy was beautiful. It’s funny, I had no recollection of her previous name, and no desire to remember. Whatever it was had never suited her.
“But where are we going to go?” Highwater was sunburned and he smelled like the kitchen of a Long John Silver’s at the end of the night.
I could still see the empty dock, far off the port bow. Unless it was the starboard bow. I wondered which way it worked. If it was like stage directions.
“Avast!” a voice called. Down below, in the water, there was a little man in a little motorboat. He pointed a little handgun at us.
We put our hands up, trained by cop dramas.
“Put your hands down. D’ya think I’d have bothered you if I thought you had weapons?” he said. He had a smile like a fighting dog. “Just toss your supplies over, water and food, blankets, first aid, whatever you got. Sunscreen, especially.” He wore sunglasses, the bastard, but his bald head was a deep, painful pink. “I mean it,” he said. “I don’t want to waste my ammo.”
“Okay, okay, give us a minute,” Highwater said. Always the fast thinker. “What do we do?” he whispered.
I found that I was very thirsty. “We’re pirates,” I said.
“So…what?” Juicy whispered. “We parlay?”
I squirmed out of the bedroll, came to the edge of the boat. “Let’s join forces, man,” I called. “We’re resourceful folks, the kind you want on your side. We stole all of this stuff ourselves, and dispatched three of… You know. Those things!” Nobody had said the Z word yet, and I didn’t want to be the first.
The little man shot his little gun. The three of us on the Ni?a hit the deck—was that where the phrase came from?—and waited. My ears rang.
“I mean it,” the little man shouted.
“Okay, you win,” I called.
So we lost our supplies, and the little man motored off.
“This can’t be a full-size ship,” Juicy said. It’s maybe ten-twelve paces from bow to stern.”
“Maybe it’s a scale model,” I guessed.