I glanced to the ground, wondering if he was right. Already the dead had made their way deep into the park, lunging from shadows as the living raced toward the entrance. There was a surge of people at the gates, a purposeful choke point for crowd control, and the dead were there, picking off the stragglers like it was some kind of carnival game.
Some people were fighting back, but it seemed useless from this far away.
“We won’t make it.” Wylie wasn’t crying anymore, and though his eyes were red and puffy and his upper lip glistened, his voice was calm and under control. He’d taken charge again, and before the words even sank in, I knew he was right.
Wylie was the one to talk Bart back into the cars while I sat staring at the gates and trying to avoid being drawn to the yawning darkness of the ocean beyond. Sarah slipped in next to me, almost silently, and this time when she took my hand there was nothing sexy about it. Her grip was pure need born of the simmering realization that we were stuck.
Below us the dead flowed in like the tide and we were creatures who could no longer swim.
“What are we supposed to do now?” The words choked in my mouth and I couldn’t force them out. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. Because from up here I couldn’t see any options, and the longer I sat paralyzed, the more dead came.
They commanded my attention; I could look nowhere else. Some of their wounds were garish and disgusting, limbs torn almost free, cheeks ripped from skulls, mouths torn open. But with others it was almost impossible to see the bite; there was no evidence of blood and struggle. Their clothes were still freshly pressed, some with their shirts tucked in and shoes neatly tied.
They looked normal. As if this was some sort of game they’d stumbled upon and decided to join. But then they’d open their mouths and the moaning would spill forth and it became clear they were just as dead as the others.
Sarah pressed her face into the crook of my shoulder, shuddering. “They’re everywhere.”
That’s when the lights in the amusement park blew. One moment everything was alive with brightness of various colors and the next it was absolute darkness. I couldn’t see the ground, I couldn’t see the front of the coaster car. I couldn’t even see Sarah sitting right next to me.
And all I could think about were the dead bodies stumbling around below, seeping around the base of the coaster, turning their gaping mouths toward us and stretching their arms high.
“Can they climb?” Bart whispered from a few cars back.
The horror of that question drilled into me. Suddenly I knew—just knew—that the dead were already scaling their way toward us. Their moans turning to grunts as they wrapped their arms around the trellis and found footholds to push higher.
We had no escape. We had no weapons.
Sarah’s response was strangled. The tips of her fingers dug against my skin, one hand clawing at my ribs and the other at the side of my neck as she buried herself deeper against me as if I could be some sort of protection for her.
I wanted to be strong. I wanted to fold my arms around her and let her believe my strength could keep us safe, but even I didn’t believe that.
“No,” Wylie finally said. “I don’t think so. The news reports didn’t say anything about them climbing. Otherwise they wouldn’t be building those big fences at the forest.”
For a moment none of us said anything. We were surrounded by the noise of panic: the living crying out for help, kids calling for their mommies and daddies, people screaming with pain as they were overtaken, and woven through it all was the sound of the dead: a moaning so visceral it invaded my skull, making me want to claw at my ears as if that could make it stop.
With the darkness there was no way we could attempt escape. Climbing from the coaster would be suicide either in a misplaced step or making it to the ground only to be taken by the dead.
We were trapped.
“Maybe in the morning, when it’s light, we can figure out what to do next,” Wylie said, confirming that he’d come to the same conclusion.
“I’m telling you, it’ll be too late then.” Bart’s voice sounded agitated and sharp. “They’re just going to keep coming through the night. In the morning there’ll be too many to fight our way out.”
Wylie lost the edge of control he’d been holding on to. “Then what do you propose we do, Bart? What other option do we have?”
“We climb back to the wheelhouse,” Bart shouted back. “There’s bound to be something we can use as a weapon in the control room. Wrenches or broomsticks—things we can use to fight our way out.”
“You’re being stupid.” Wylie was the sound of frustrated ire. “They’re probably already swarming the tracks down there. And seriously? A wrench? You think that would be enough?”
The car began to shift then as one of them threw himself at the other, fists hitting against flesh. It felt like at any moment we could go careening off the rails, and Sarah gasped, slamming her hands against the safety bar.
“Stop it, guys!” I shouted, but they were beyond caring. I fought my way free of the tiny car and started making my way back toward them. Already my eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but depth was still impossible to judge and my progress was slow as I felt my way from bucket seat to bucket seat, holding my breath every time my foot slipped along the plastic noses of the cars.
As I got closer I saw the dark forms of Bart and Wylie tussling, and then I was there between them, barely able to fit my body into the tiny space only meant for two. I shoved them away from each other. “This isn’t helping,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.
They were both panting and Bart’s teeth glistened with something dark that I assumed was blood. He swiped it away and then looked back down the tracks. “We can’t just sit here.”
“Yes, we can,” I answered before Wylie could. “What we’re not going to be is stupid.”
“How long do you think we can stay up here?” Bart responded. “The dead aren’t just going to go away. They’re not going to disappear no matter how much we want it.”
“It’s the rule of threes,” Wylie answered. “The human body can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. We have time to figure out a next step.”
Bart shook his head. In the black night, the whites of his eyes shone like stars. “Those rules are worthless. Those things on the ground—they don’t need any of that stuff.”
Neither Wylie nor I had a response to that. Instead I said I’d better be getting back to Sarah, and I made my way along the cars, leaving the silence of my two best friends behind.
At that point it just became about waiting for the dawn. The screams of our fellow park-goers had dwindled, so now we were left with moans.
Wylie settled into the car behind us but Bart was more restless, moving about and even venturing onto the tracks, though he never went very far.
Sarah leaned against me, her breath alternating between the hiccuping aftereffects of sobs and the regular rhythm of sleep. I thought about the rides we’d taken just hours ago. How it’d been the most alive I’d ever felt.
“If you had to go now—if this was it—would you have any regrets?” I found myself asking.
“Virginity,” Wylie said almost immediately, and I started to laugh, even as I became hyperaware of exactly how Sarah draped herself over me, her head cradled in my lap. His response made her grin, her nose crinkling up just a bit like it always did when she was truly happy.
“Does coming here tonight count?” Bart shouted from a few cars back, and then he was laughing as well. For a moment it drowned out the sounds of moans.