The Boat Read Online Free PDF Page B

to help–”
    She reached up and put a hand on his face. “Call the police, but don’t go out there.”
    Jerry’s screams went on as Steve stared into Amelia’s bright and frightened eyes. She shook her head, slow and deliberate: no .
    Steve wheeled and grabbed the phone from the table. He thumbed it alive and dialed 911. It rang three times before he depressed end. He dialed again and went to the kitchen window. Jerry wasn’t moving anymore. Carol had managed to turn him over. He lay awkwardly on the chair, his head hanging upside down, facing the house. White knobs of spine were visible above his chin where she’d eaten his throat literally to the bone. His head rocked and shifted each time she tore another chunk from him.
    The phone rang and rang. After a while, it cut off.
    “Lock the door, Amelia, okay?” Steve said, his voice thin and soft, but Amelia was sitting at the table, her head in her hands and she didn’t move. Steve locked the door himself and pulled down the roller blind. Before it was all the way down, he’d taken a last look.
    Another neighbor had joined Carol at her feast. They worked at Jerry’s corpse like wolves. A whimper worked its way up Steve’s throat. Carol’s head came up. More gristle hung from the side of her mouth. Her face was smeared with blood.
    She seemed to mark him with her glazed eyes.
     
    ~ ~ ~
     
    He and Amelia waited until Carol and the other neighbor had wandered off before turning on the television. Every channel was either a special news report or blank. One station showed a map of the United States and they were highlighting the areas of the heaviest ‘breakouts’ and urging people to keep calm. They cut to a reporter on a street, Steve thought it was maybe Philly. The anchorman asked her if she’d seen been able to get the mood of the community, were residents scared? Worried? She’d nodded, looking serious, and just as she opened her mouth to speak, she was attacked from behind. A kid, fifteen or sixteen, tore a hunk from her cheek. The reporter screamed and tried to throw him off. “Tony help me, for Christ’s sake, put the fucking camera down and–”
    Another figure hurtled in from the side, knocking the reporter and her attacker both to the ground. The camera seemed to fall with them and then it focused on the reporter’s face. Her eye hung almost to the level of her mouth. If she’d put out her tongue, she could have licked it.
    Then the shot went blank.
    They panned back to the anchorman and he sat, mouth agape. Then he stood and walked from the newsroom.
    None of the other channels were doing much better. They caught one from the shore, a reporter stood on a dock yelling, “Go to water, go to water, it’s the only safe place, go to water, I repeat go to–” before that shot went blank.
    Amelia and Steve had looked at each other in the deepening gloom as night fell. They’d been afraid to turn on any lights for fear of drawing attention to themselves. “How far are we? From the shore?”
    Steve had rubbed his face, rubbed his tired eyes. “I don’t know. If we take 33, I guess about forty minutes. Maybe more.”
    After deliberating, they decided to go after midnight. Neither said why it felt better to wait, it just seemed safer, somehow.
    They were less than ten miles from the shore when they were confronted with crowds of the walking dead. They were everywhere…in the road, in yards, in parking lots. Everywhere. They seemed to be congregating here. When they spotted the headlights and heard their engine, they swarmed like moths.
    Amelia’s screams filled the car like shards of falling glass, but Steve felt calm settle over himself like a cold cloak. He turned over their options but it seemed to him there was only one. He swerved in and out, loathe to hit anyone, not understanding–not yet–the extent of the devastation. He had to get rid of the car. They’d do better on foot, bringing less attention to themselves. 
    He turned his