“Not a good time to be zoning out, Janey,” I said, but she remained unresponsive. I put my arm around her and guided her along the side of the cabin. Other zombies were crawling up the sides of the ship still, but paused when I moved Jane past them. “Guess there’s one bright side to this.”
I stepped onto the back deck first as we rounded the stern of the boat. The back was swarming with aqua-zombies, all of them keeping well away from the two of us. I lowered Jane to the deck and pressed against the wall of the wheelhouse until I got to the door and slid us both inside. I shut the door behind us and turned my attention to Jane.
Nothing had changed on her face in the past few minutes. There was no sense of recognition in her eyes, just a strange curiosity in them as she watched me. She spoke again, but none of it made a lick of sense to me. I grabbed her by the sides of her head and got right up in her face.
“Snap out of it, Janey,” I said. “Come back to me.”
A dark snarl rose up behind her lips, but I didn’t look away.
“I know you’re in there, sea witch,” I said, not turning away, “but this woman is mine. If anyone gets her, it’s me, got it?”
Jane fought to push me away, but I wasn’t letting go.
“If you can hear me in there, Jane, don’t give in to her,” I said. “You’re better than her.”
A guttural growl rose up from Jane’s chest. I wasn’t sure if it was because the woman was winning or Jane was fighting her, but I let go of her face and grabbed hold of her hands. The strength in her grip was both astounding and crushing.
The door to the cabin flew open behind me and the aqua-zombies started to pour in. I let go of Jane and went to spin around, but I was too slow, unprepared. One of the creatures got its decaying hands on my arm and squeezed. They, too, had more strength to them than I had imagined. The crushing pain to my arm overwhelmed me and I screamed out. My bat clattered to the floor of the cabin.
Jane’s eyes fluttered. “Simon. . . ?”
“Jane,” I said. “Help me. Fight it. Fight that woman’s power.”
Jane’s face returned to normal, which at the moment meant it was a mix of pain and confusion. She seemed to be disoriented and struggling, her arms shaking at her sides. I was so intent on trying to regain any sort of connection with her that it took me a moment to realize I was being dragged out the cabin door by the hands of the undead. “No!” I shouted, and Jane snapped to.
Jane eyed my situation, and then slapped one of her hands on the boat’s control panel. The glow of raw energy being siphoned from the ship ran up her arm as she spoke to it until the power ran into her and she channeled it down her other arm. Raw energy burst forth from her hand as it shot past me and struck the zombies holding me. The jolt of electricity sent a lesser tingle of sensation into my body as well, but I pulled myself free of the mess as I started to smell the wretched burn of decaying flesh.
I fell to my knees to retrieve my bat, landing hard on my satchel and worse, digging the metal corner of the Ghostbusters lunch box inside right into my lower ribs, stinging them. Once I was down, I decided to stay there for a few moments. The idea of standing back up and catching a blast from the Jedi power battle overhead had zero appeal to me, especially with the new pain in my side. I lay there, recovering, as Jane plunged her power into zombie after zombie with what amounted to a chain of lightning that ran from one zombie to the next. The stench was awful, but the foes all along the back side of the boat blew apart like they were eggs in the microwave.
As the deck cleared, Jane’s power began to falter until she stopped and collapsed on top of the control console in exhaustion. I got up off the floor to check on her. As I stood, I could see out the front of the control room once again. The bow of the boat was still covered in a monstrous swarm, and at the center of it all was Connor, fighting away. He was holding his own against the waterlogged, rotting army, but I wondered for how long. I turned away and put my hand on Jane’s shoulder.
“You okay?” I asked.
Her eyes were closed and her breath was coming in short rasps, but she nodded. “Just exhausted,” she said.
“Can you drive?”
She pushed herself up off the panel and looked at the wheel and the rest of the controls. “I’ve never driven a boat before.”
“It’s simple,” I said. “The trick is to try and not hit any land. But you know what? In this case, I think what we need is to get the hell off the water. Aim for Wards Island, up on our left.”
Jane looked nervous, but I needed to get moving if I was going to help Connor. While Jane fired up the boat and started her run at the island, I ran out of the cabin, doing my best to not slip in the slimy coating of zombie guts as I made my way back to the front of the boat. Connor had worked his way into a defensible position up against the very tip of the bow—a smart choice. The zombies could only come at him one by one due to the narrow confines of the space, but even with that advantage, more were struggling to climb up over the railing behind him.
I twirled my bat around in my hands while I raised it up into a classic batter’s stance. I rested it on my shoulder for a second, focusing in on the mob, and then started swinging for the outfield as hard as I could.
It was hard work, more so thanks to the sway of the now-wildly rocking boat, but both of us kept our feet. In a matter of moments, I had worked my way closer to Connor.
“Jesus,” I said, feeling the strain in my arms. “They keep coming up over the railings.”
“Don’t worry, kid,” Connor said. “With the boat moving, I think the undead crowd is thinning.”
“Good,” I said. “I can barely swing anymore.”
“What’s the matter, kid?” he asked. “You don’t want to swim for the island?”
“Not if I don’t have to,” I said. “I’d rather not find out whether the water of the East River would eat through me or the metal of my bat first. Or if it would make me like one of those creatures.”
“I wouldn’t worry about what would happen in the water,” Connor said.
“ No?”
“Nah,” he said. “Given the workout your arms are getting, I doubt you’d have the strength to swim to shore before drowning.”
“Thanks, Captain Optimism,” I said.
“It would be a better way to go than having your girlfriend channel some water-based she-devil and kill you.”
The numbers of our gruesome enemies were thin enough now that I could chance a look back into the wheelhouse. Jane looked worn and half-asleep at the controls, but she still managed to shoot me a weak smile.
“She’s got the mark under control,” I said.
“For now,” Connor added
“Yep,” I said. “For now. When we find that water woman, we’ll beat her into removing it. If we find her.”
I turned back and Connor was watching me. “Don’t worry,” he said, as sober and sincere as I’d ever seen him. “If it comes to it, I’ll take care of things if Jane turns.”
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure there was a proper way to “thank” someone for promising to beat down the woman you loved. All our training in dealing with zombies and the like was meant to prepare us to strike down our colleagues without hesitation if they turned, but I didn’t think I had the courage to do it to Jane myself. Was hoping I didn’t have to come to that level of difficult decision making.
At least I now understood why the appeal of the open water had put Jane in such an improved mood; the girl was just releasing her inner monstrosity.
20
We hit the shore on Wards Island, tying off the boat on the shattered wooden remains of a dock that had definitely seen better days. Thankfully we had been able to outpace the aqua-zombies in their efforts to climb back on board the boat. I was paranoid enough once we landed that I stood at the water’s edge waiting for several minutes to make sure we had no hangers-on. When nothing came shambling out of the river for us, I finally retracted my bat and holstered it.