Damocles

[softsponge]

This is the first part of a story set in a world overrun by zombies, it begins just a few short days after the outbreak,feel free to comment below...



DAMOCLES Chapter 1


As the Damocles bobbed up and down in the water; lifted and caressed by the neverending sigh of the Atlantic Ocean, the skipper looked across at Christopher and shook his head. “Look lad, we can’t waste any more time out here, there’s no one left, alive that is……..”. Chris looked at the old sailor with a mixture of contempt and pity. The skipper had lost family too but he hadn’t lost his life like the poor souls of Providence.

Chris felt the next wave lift the prow and not only did he feel his lunch coming back to greet him but he also saw the impressive figurehead of Missy rise with the force of natures own power. Seeing the contents of his stomach empty into the sea, Chris was reminded once again that he would never be a sailor, even if he sailed the waters off Rhode Island for the next forty years.

Maybe not a sailor but he was a writer by trade, an author, a storyteller in a profession second in age only to prostitution.
The stories he wove; for a sometimes adoring public were of perhaps a less horrific vein than the tapestry taking place across the world today but they had their moments of fear and terror, even if his target audience was children.

The Closet… never heard of it, number one in five European nations and a bestseller in Ecuador, Chris chuckled at the thought of corpses flicking through his books in undead libraries across the globe. Still it had earned him a tidy sum; enough to buy his own apartment and take six months off from writing while he researched his next novel, “Rhode’s War “. This was going to be the make or break novel, a tale of high seas piracy in 1798; cursing to himself when he thought of how little he’d accomplished before God or whoever had smacked the world in the face.

Just one week ago Chris had approached the skipper about buying passage on his tourist ship the Damocles. It was a beauty of a ship based on a design of a nineteenth century three mast sailing ship. For thirty years the skipper had taken fat tourists up from Florida and states further south out into the Atlantic to “experience” the life of a real sailor. Of course $20,000 had turned the skippers initial reticence into something approaching civility and so Chris had spent the last few days learning how to “run” a ship.

Seventeen blisters and eight lost meals later he was beginning to wonder why anyone actually wrote anything that required researching. However in light of current events his money had been well spent; he was alive and while his wife and children were dead, or at least he assumed so, he had been given the unique opportunity to chronicle mankinds end.

There had been no radio signals for two days now and the skipper’s powerful binoculars showed a welcoming party of corpses lined up against the docks. All was not lost though; Block island was free of corpses and several boat load’s of survivors had reached safety before the mainland had been overrun but a thousand people was a drop in the ocean compared to the billions who’d perished so far. Chris; his face the colour of a blade of fresh grass, rose from the deck and continued his argument with the skipper.“There’s bound to be someone, we saw that helicopter fly over two days ago and there’s no way they’d fly in if there was no-one to rescue, surely?.

The skipper his weather worn face tightening around the eyes said “ damn you to hell city boy, have you any idea what those things will do to us if they get on board here?, I tell you son, I fought in Korea , I’ve seen death up close at Inchon and I’m not going to kill myself on some fools errand today..”

Chris rolled his eyes and walked unsteadily away; he couldn’t believe that everyone was dead, and he was going to find out for sure, one way or another………..

Later as the sky darkened and began its struggle against daylight; the skipper looked around, and after checking that Chris was below deck raised the binoculars to his eyes. On the shore the mirror was flashing again, sending the same message in morse code that the skipper had been watching for days…….

SAVE OUR SOULS…….

[Egekrusher]

AWESOME story!!!

What direction do you plan to take it in? I'm sick of all of the zombie stories out there with a happy ending. I want something a bit more realistic (I know, the irony). If the world really was being overrun by zombies, there's no way in hell that you would survive more than a couple of days at most.

[softsponge]

lol, sorry im a bastard...the stories finished plus its sequal so ill add them slowly..and yes theres never a happy ending in zombie stories, nor should there be one

[softsponge]

DAMOCLES Chapter 2

The proud ship parted the waves before her like a hot knife through butter, a blustering gale pushed the Damocles faster than she had any right to expect….

As a new day began on the 16th of March., Chris was grinning, smiling wildly like a loon, because for the first time in over thirty years he was sure of his path.

He gripped the wheel tightly, salt spray plastered his hair to his face and caused his eyes to sting in the twilight hegemony of dawn...still he smiled. The skipper was out cold, the rum which Chris had smuggled onto the ship had served its purpose. The skippers insensate snoring reverberating still around the galley he had claimed as his bed.

That had led him to here; utilising all the skills he had accumulated over the past week, he managed by no small amount of luck to not only lower the sails but also to raise the anchor and steer the ship roughly towards shore. Not that the last part was particularly difficult, there was a lot of ocean and not so much land, and so the Damocles moved inexorably towards her fate and dry land…

On pier 19 Herbert Yardley looked out to sea for the umpteenth time since becoming trapped in here with the other survivors from the harbour rescue centre. Twenty two deadmen walking, well not quite, there were three ladies but that wasn’t quite as good a mental image, he mused to himself in yet another moment of despair.

Looking at his surroundings Herbert had to stifle a grin, of all the places to be trapped, a bloody medical waste depot. More than one of his fellow captives had fainted at the body parts contained within. Being British by birth and English by the grace of god, Herbert had adjusted to the new world order surprisingly well. After all at seventy two, life held few surprises. The walking corpses outside had been one to be sure but even they held little fascination now; Herbert was more interested in whether he’d run out of pipe tobacco or not.

Edie Rowley walked up to Herbert, her ample bosom stirring his ardor even at his advanced age, and asked “any sign?”, he turned and smiling the smile that only incorrigible old bastards and naughty children can ever truly get away with replied “ well there’s a great big pirate ship on the way in but I might have had my tobacco exchanged with whatever young Simon’s been smoking over there…………..”

Chris heard the banging coming from the wooden door to the galley below, an mixture of hangover groans and expletives that came out more like the moaning of some mythical beast, not the vented anger of a salty sea dog. As the shore reared up before him Chris could see the shambling creatures the government had insisted were reanimates but Chris new otherwise, he’d seen the movies those fuckers were zombies...

[Vodstok]

Very nice. Good descriptions, nice feel to the whole thing.

Ege, here is a nice little zombie story with a down ending: *Vodstok pimps self*

http://scaredyet.net/lit/shamb.aspx

[softsponge]

thanks for the praise vod, just read yours really enjoyed it :)

[Vodstok]

Why thank you :) You have fulfilled a dream of mine, I always wanted to see a zombie story that happened on a boat. Never got around to it myself....

[kpropain]

That's awesome softsponge I like it :)

[softsponge]

DAMOCLES Chapter 3

Dawns early light washed over Chris as he pulled hard right on the ships wheel. The first rays of the sun caressed the freckles and fine lines on his face, softer than any mothers touch. His smile; still fixed upon his face, was a masque, reflecting both his turmoil and fear at the future, a future, both unfixed; uncertain.

Through grim determination though; Chris had succeeded in allying a growing darkness within his mind to a steely determination not shown since Chris had been a small boy, struggling to learn the oft’ useful art of putting one foot in front of the other. These factors alone had enabled him to pilot the ship thus far, not prettily maybe but she wasn’t sinking and he hadn’t lost his breakfast yet either, if you count saltines as breakfast.

The coastline loomed in front of Chris; and while the ocean was daunting with its vast expanse and overwhelming harshness, the thought of approaching a land riddled with walking, honest to flesh eating corpses left a taste in the writer’s mouth not too dissimilar to sawdust and ashes....

One hour later……

“Shit, Columbus never had to deal with zombies”, Chris thought to himself as he watched the dozen or so corpses meander through packing crates and the flotsam and jetsam of humanity’s demise. Even though the Damocles was anchored barely twenty feet from the Rhode Island shore the dumb-ass fleshfuckers hadn’t spotted him. He listened to the gentle venting of the skippers anger against the galley door and thought about letting him out. He decided against that option when he heard the rusty warble of the skipper, threatening yet again to “gut him with a fish hook”.

Chris looked upwards and watched the cumulonimbus swirls of a promising cloudy morning, he’d always had his head in the clouds, maybe afraid of what was below, yes but in the clouds were the thoughts, ideals and the dreams of a million starry eyed children. He’d always been fascinated with the human minds capability to make a viable image out of anything stared at long enough and today was no exception.

As he watched the clouds coagulate, form and reform Chris saw a tapestry evolve. Within the sky’s canvas flames licked against a building beset upon by a horde of nimbus clouds. The image though was sundered by a phosphorescent light trailing across the sky. Chris watched the flare move across the clouds with a sense of wonder only a child on the fourth of July could imitate. His pleasure was only dampened by the splintering of the galley door and the threats continuing to issue from within.

Ignoring the curses of the skipper; Chris cupped his blistered hands and shouted “Is there anyone there?”….His voice carried across the short distance to the shore and instantly, as if someone had pulled a cord on the corpse’s backs, they turned in unison towards the Damocles and switched from semi-lifeless marionettes to blood hungry monsters.

Chris stood shocked at the image being indelibly burned onto his retinas. He.....; he’d never expected this, shit watching a Romero movie did not qualify anyone to view objectively a scene straight out of Dante’s inferno. The corpses even at the distance they were reached out for him with a desire born of frustration and psychosis. No celluloid monstrosities these, the ghouls in front of him were mothers, brothers, sons, spouses, infants and aged. Their unified cause one of homicide and vengeance. The dead in front of him weren’t mindless; they were jealous, envious of the living and breathing. His eyes making mental note of the pleading; the wailing, the woman who’s underwear didn’t match?....whatever.

Never would he forget the sight in front of him; nor would he ever take for granted what he’d had the temerity to call a life, not as long as the unloved, loved ones walked and lusted for what he still had…….

Then the first of the corpses stumbled off the docks as they urged their stiffening bones towards the Damocles......

With a simple splash the creature who had once held his wife close while watching scary movies on the couch and who’d kissed his daughters knee when she’d fell off her cycle, sank into the cold embrace of mankind’s progenitor. The same corpse who’d run the local kid’s baseball team; a nice guy, a normal guy, now a dead guy.

As it thrashed about in the freezing waters off providence; it failed to remember how it had cried at Forrest Gump, or how it had once stole a dollar out it's dad’s wallet. As it sank down to the bottom of the bay it never realised that once it had been able to swim, nor that it had never even looked at another woman in twenty years of marriage, and as it performed a water ballet of the undead it never once realised just how much it had meant to those around it. And as the creature landed on the sea floor it never even realised that its head had become impaled on an abandoned, rusty outboard motor.

As the curse left it’s ravaged body and the sea reclaimed her own, the greatest light it'd ever seen appeared and he remembered………………

[Egekrusher]

To you and Vodstok- both are excellent stories. Keep up the good work.