The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(183)

And then I realize what his words mean. “So you knew.” I don’t ask it as a question. I turn to face him. “If she’s the one who bit you, you knew about everyone else. Francis, Nancy and the others.”

“Why do you think I told you we shouldn’t wait for them?” he asks. Red streaks along his skin, marking every vein through his body with an infection whose heat sometimes radiates along the rubber of the raft.

“Then why did you keep asking to go back if you knew?”

He shrugs, stares at his hands. “I wanted to be wrong. Doesn’t matter now, I guess.”

And he’s right. We lost sight of the last raft two days ago.





His hands are hot as he grabs for me. He’s gasping for breath and at first I think he’s turned, gurgling on moans, but then I realize he’s trying to say my name. “Get up,” he says, shaking me, but his muscles are weak from so many days of disuse and I’m still much larger and stronger than he is.

“Get up,” he prods again.

He shoves something into my hand, the lanyards that lashed the flap of the canopy shut. “Tie me up,” he says. “It’s time. Tie me up, sink me.”


It’s been harder and harder for me to surface from sleep and I struggle to understand what Jeremy’s saying. He’s wheezing now as he takes my hands, wraps my fingers around the ropes, pulls them tight along his wrists and elbows.

His skin’s dry and cracked and I try to blink the salt from my eyes so I can focus on what’s going on. It’s dark in the little raft, pitch-black swallowing us everywhere with just the tiny hiccups of the alert beacon flashing.

-flash-

Jeremy knotting the ropes. Using his teeth to tighten them.

-flash-

Me winding them around his torso, tucking up his knees.

-flash-

Jeremy’s eyes glassy and bright. His chest barely moving.

-flash-

I don’t know what to say. What to do. What to tell him.

-flash-

I slip my fingers into his. “I’m sorry, Jeremy.”

-flash-

He’s nothing.

-flash-

Dead eyes. Still heart.

-flash-

Waves tilt and whirl as his body becomes a shell.

-flash-

I breathe in. Hold it.

-flash-

-flash-

-flash-

I exhale.

And before the light can flash again he explodes, straining and struggling.

I see the perfectly straight teeth, the gleaming white as he tries to lunge for me.

As he snaps at the air.

Screaming, I throw myself across the raft. Pushing and forcing myself back. Wishing the walls could absorb me. Keep me safe. His moans are like growls, guttural and wet. He’s insane with what looks like agony and rage and a desire so intense I can smell it.

Beneath me the entire raft bucks and swirls, his movements teetering us around, his feet ripping at the canopy overhead as he tries to gain his balance, tries to push himself closer to me.

I can’t get near him, can only watch as he pulls and pops against the ropes. Can only hear the strain on his joints, the snap of his wrist breaking apart under the twisting jolts. It’s too much. I can’t stand it, can’t be near him anymore. Can’t see him like this.

I dive through the opening in the canopy into the night, letting the waves close over my head until I can’t hear, can’t see, can’t forget as the raft twists and shudders above me.





“Do you believe in God?” I ask Jeremy. Water pools around the divot in the raft where I’m crouching and I’ve pulled open the canopy, hoping the sun will burn it away so that my poor chaffed skin can find relief.

Jeremy bucks against the soggy ropes holding him tight. I’ve lashed him to the other side of the raft and used strips of my shirt to tie his mouth shut. He still manages to moan, deep nasal sounds that reverberate through the raft so that I’m always feeling them even when I shove my hands to my ears.

I tried to push him overboard, I swear. But I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let go of him.

He’s all I have left. I couldn’t drift away from him on the empty horizon.

“Blink once for yes, twice for no,” I tell him, staring into his face. He doesn’t blink, just tries to lunge for me, his shoulder buckling back at a sickening angle.





“Jeremy?” I whisper. It’s night, pitch black, and I swore I woke up to screaming. I swore I woke up to Jeremy and his nightmares.

The raft shudders. Jeremy still desperate to escape. Still desperate for me. I shake my head, feeling like my ears are full of water, every sound distant and dull.

“Jeremy?” I ask again.

Carefully, I crawl across the raft, my muscles having a hard time keeping me from falling over. The bottom sags every place I set my hand and knee, feeling as if it too is giving up. I pull myself face to face with Jeremy, too close to be safe.

“Is there anything left?” I ask him.

And I can’t tell if he’s shaking his head or if he’s just twisting against his ropes to get closer to me.





I’m pretty sure Jeremy’s been talking to me. When I wake up I’m positive I hear his voice in my head. And when I’m staring at the horizon, trying to find shapes in the wavering distance, I swear he’s saying something.