Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost Page 5

  "Daddy please," she cried, "please stop!"

  He kept walking. The water reached up over his chest now, covering his shoulders and touching his chin, so Anna was paddling beside his head. She tried to keep it above the surface, pulling feebly on his neck, but she couldn't get any grip on the water and she couldn't stop him going on. He was too big and too strong, until just like that his head dropped beneath the water. His eyes extinguished beneath the surface and she plunged with him, holding to the loops of his backpack like the reins on a horse.

  Down there she glimpsed a dark underwater world where hundreds of bodies were walking along the deep sand, into darkness. They looked like an army of ghosts. Her lungs burned but she clung to her Daddy's head as tightly as she could, until at last she could take it no longer and she let go, kicking to the surface.

  Her head burst through the water and she sucked in air, coughing as sea spray splashed in her throat. She barely remembered how to swim and the low waves were stronger here, so far from the beach. They almost tugged her further out. Still she ducked her head and stared back into the dusty water, but her father was already gone.

  She scarcely made it back to the beach. She pulled herself up and there she knelt and sobbed, gazing out at the sunset over the waves, while bodies passed by on either side of her. She was an island again in the middle. One after the other they walked into the ocean as the sun went down far ahead.

  Her Daddy was gone. She was alone.

  WONDERLAND

  5. CHEF & WAITRESS

  After a time they stopped coming.

  The flow of bodies ended and she lay alone on the beach, with the sound of surf and seagulls cawing. The breeze that had been warm now bit into her. It was cold and dark on the beach. She listened to the waves fuming on the sand and imagined hundreds of bodies lying in heaps on the ocean floor, her Daddy amongst them, all dead.

  People couldn't breathe underwater. It was perfectly ridiculous.

  She imagined herself finding a boat and sailing out to find him, but the phone didn't work and she knew the ocean was very large. It went on and on and there's no way she'd know where to go.

  So she made a promise. She held one hand across her heart. It felt very significant.

  "Daddy, I'll find you," she said.

  Then she started walking.

  She didn't know where to go now either. With each step forward she thought of Alice talking to the Cheshire Cat. Naturally it came in her Daddy's warm voice.

  "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" he asked as Alice, a little high and curious.

  "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," he replied with the Cat's lilting, singsong tone.

  "I don't much care where — "

  "Then it doesn't matter which way you go."

  "- so long as I get somewhere."

  "Oh, you're sure to do that, if you only walk long enough."

  Thinking about that made Anna sad and happy at the same time. This was in Alice's footsteps, after all. But her father was gone.

  She walked.

  She found a gravel path running along the top of the dunes and walked along it. To the right lay scrubby green bushes growing in the dune folds, and beyond that was the thick undergrowth she'd pushed through many hours ago.

  Everything was different.

  "My name is Anna," she said aloud. The sea wind whipped the sound away. It hurt her face and set her hair flailing crazily.

  She climbed down. Back through the lumpy dunes she went, through the undergrowth, to a single-lane blacktop road. She hadn't stayed on any road for weeks, at least not for long. Nearby lay one of the ocean's trails, apparent by the downtrodden path over the grass, leading far away. If she walked it for long enough she might return to her house, and find her room with her bed still there and her pictures and the dead ring of the Hatter's blood, and…

  She couldn't go back.

  She followed the new road beside the dunes. It went on and on in the darkness. A few times she saw gray people wandering near. Their clothes were muddy and ragged, in places their faces were torn showing whitish muscle underneath.

  "That way," she said impassively as they went by. They teetered on toward the ocean.

  She walked in the dark. She found a tall red car and opened the door. A gray person came lurching out then staggered away toward the ocean. She imagined him staying in his car for all those days since it happened, held prisoner so close to the water he so wanted to walk in. He wasn't the first she'd released like this, but he was the first trapped within sight of his goal.

  She climbed in out of the wind. It didn't smell too bad. She closed the door and the sound of the waves faded away. Curled up on the backseat in her jacket with her little snail-pack still on her back, she could almost believe she was still curled up in the sling at her Daddy's chest.

  The next day she wandered, following the coastal road. She didn't know where to go really. It was OK to wander in the middle down the central white lines, because there were no cars except for cars that didn't move. At times the road lifted up over the rocks below, giving her a beautiful view out across the ocean, though she barely noticed it.

  She thought about her father, and where he was. She thought about all the things he'd done for her all her life, and how little she'd done for him, and how in the end he'd chosen to leave her behind.

  It hurt. Was he thinking about her now, somewhere deep beneath the waves?

  Probably not.

  She stopped in the shade of a billboard sticking up out of an outcrop of red rock. There was a cactus nearby; she recognized it from picture books she'd read as a little kid. Funnily enough the billboard also had a picture of a cactus, with some words and numbers that she couldn't really read.

  That was funny.

  She opened her pack and drank some bottled water. She chewed on a gooey breakfast bar. It was like the shooting stars, but easier to eat, and she didn't need milk. For weeks milk in every shop and refrigerator she'd seen had been bad.

  She took out her Daddy's phone and looked at it. It hadn't worked for so long, and she felt like leaving it here on the rock just like he'd left her. It would be fair and even. She tried to leave it. She put the phone there and looked at it. She got up and started away but that just made her cry. Worse than that though, she felt empty inside.

  She had to be strong, but she didn't know how. Holding on to her Daddy, though he had chosen to leave, was a different kind of strong from walking a long way or holding on really tight. It belonged on the inside, where you couldn't even see it. It was a kind of strong her Mommy had never had.

  She picked up the phone, tucked it in her pocket and started walking again.

  She could walk a long way without getting tired now. She didn't get hungry either, hardly at all. Her legs were sturdy and strong. She could be strong inside too.

  She came across more cars. In some of them people were trapped: a boy, a girl, a mother and father in a long silvery car. She let them out. They didn't stop to say thank you.

  "Bye then," she called after them, as they stumbled down off the road and into the dunes, together.

  Late in the afternoon she entered a town. There were big empty parking lots, and bright signs sticking up on tall poles, and long mall buildings. The road climbed again, this time going over other roads below. Cars were scattered everywhere. In places one of them had gone through the railings and fallen off the edge.

  She stood at the edge and looked down, to a dusty neighborhood where the walls were made of corrugated tin and the roofs were wrapped in place with black tarpaper. The car that fell through was upside down, showing its dark underbelly and wheels like a tipped-over toy.

  She kept walking. The sun was low off to the side, warming her comfortingly, and the ocean breeze kept her cool. The road descended and she came to a street lined with tall buildings. Bits of paper fluttered around like secret birds.

  There were two gray people banging against a glass door i
n the middle of the block, trapped inside. It was some kind of restaurant, but she couldn't read the writing at all. There were red lanterns in the window and pictures of fish painted onto the wall. One of the people was the chef, she knew that from his apron, and one looked like a waitress, but both had their trousers off. They looked funny.

  She tried to let them out but the door wouldn't open. She stood and shrugged at them.

  Thump thump, they said.

  Their faces looked sad.

  She walked around the side of the building, looking for a back door. Perhaps she could lead them out that way, like she'd led her father. Down a shadowy weed-sprung alley she walked, past large blue trash boxes on wheels, until she reached the side door of the battered brick building.

  It was metal painted a cracked blue, with a round and dented handle. She turned it and the door swung open outward easily, leading to a dark and musty corridor walled with pipes. Further on there was a shard of weak evening light coming in through the front windows.

  "It's OK now," Anna called down the hall. Her voice echoed weirdly off the pipes. "You can come this way. Pull your pants up, if you like."

  No sound of footsteps followed. "The ocean's really close," she added. "Just a hop-skip away."

  She was about to step in and lead them out by the hand, when a low growl sounded from behind.

  It sounded familiar. It came again, perhaps coming from between the two big blue trash boxes. Anna started back down the alley and looked into the shadowy gap between them.

  Something was standing there: a dog. At its feet squirmed a handful of baby dogs, puppies like hungry little oysters, and Anna's heart melted. They looked just like the Hatter. At once she started to cry.

  "I missed you," she said.

  Then the dog jumped at her. It was so fast she couldn't do a thing. Its jaws closed on her head and bit down, jerking her neck savagely. There was a horrible crunch, red sprayed out before her like shooting stars, and everything went black.

  And came back. She was crawling on the rough tarmac alley, with weeds between her fingers and blood in her eyes. It hurt to look and it hurt to move. Something was snarling somewhere, something was groaning.

  With immense effort she rolled to her side, and saw. Two gray people were fighting the dog. It was the chef and the waitress with their trousers down. The chef lay on his back with blood all over his white apron, holding to the dog's neck while it tore at his belly. Long stringy bits of gray meat came out of him, like rotten sausages.

  The dog was biting him and he was trying to bite it too. He had his mouth up against its back thigh, chewing at furry meat and spilling deep red blood. The waitress was on her knees beside them, bleeding darkly from the throat and twitching strangely. Her glowing white eyes stuttered on and off like a broken flashlight. She held the dog's back paws but didn't seem to be doing much more.

  It was ghastly and Anna only wanted to crawl further away, to find somewhere that her thumping head could grow calm, like a nice bed with tight covers to burrow into, but that wasn't fair.

  These two had saved her. Now she had to save them.

  She pushed dizzily to her feet. Blood dripped from her head to the dark tarmac. It ran hot down her cheek and the back of her neck, staining her blue Alice dress. She raised a hand to the wound and it came back sopping red.

  That wasn't good.

  The dog was growling and the waitress was lying down now, hardly holding onto its back legs at all. The chef was still biting but making much less progress than the dog. It grabbed a good hank of his innards and shook its head violently, sending shreds of gray spraying out like cereal-stars.

  Anna stumbled over. A half-brick lay by the chef's side and she picked it up.

  "Bad dog," she said.

  It looked up at her with its snout covered in gray, squatting to jump again.

  She hit it in the head with the brick. It wasn't hard, and swinging her arm almost made her vomit with dizziness, but the brick connected with a solid thunk and the dog stopped growling.

  The chef bit into its shoulder and it whined. Anna hit it again. Thunk. It drooped deeper into the chef's clutches. He got his hands around its neck and pulled it in.

  Thunk, one more time and he got his teeth into its throat and bit.

  Blood spat out and covered his face, and the dog calmed quickly. Anna fell to her knees. It was sad to see another Hatter die, but what choice did she have?

  "Thank you," she murmured.

  The chef ducked his head and ate, just like her Daddy. The waitress clicked and shifted on and off. The dog went still and died. For a time there was only the horrible sound of chewing, and the mewling of the babies.

  Then the chef lost interest in the mother dog. Instead he turned to the babies. Anna didn't realize what was happening until he picked one of them up, and held it up before him just like her father had so long ago.

  He opened his bloody mouth.

  "No!" Anna shouted.

  She lurched round the waitress and hit the chef in the arm with the brick as hard she could. He grip faltered and the little dog fell, smacking against the tarmac with a crunch.

  "You don't do that!" Anna shouted. Even her voice made the dizziness swell, like it was a wave she was riding atop, but she couldn't stop now. She waved the brick at him. "They're just babies, we don't eat babies do we?"

  He leaned over to pick up the puppy again. It was whining hard now. It looked so much like the Hatter Anna couldn't keep the tears from her eyes.

  She hit the chef again, this time jumping and crunching him in the throat. He choked and turned his glowing eyes to her. She shoved him, barely enough to rock him back, but enough for her to grab up the injured puppy and dart with it into the gap between the trash boxes.

  There was just enough room for her to turn around and meet him with the brick as he wriggled face first inwards.

  "No!" Anna shouted again, and hit him a third time, right on the head like she'd done with the dog. His skull cracked and he faltered for a second. Anna looked down at the puppies, sitting in a moldy cardboard box, and scooped the box up too. They were heavier than she expected, and the box was sodden so it was hard to keep it together even with her arms crossed beneath it like a sling.

  The chef grasped at her ankles and she gasped, then stamped down hard on his knuckles. His grip released but still he inched in closer.

  "Leave us alone!" Anna shouted, and kicked at his head once, twice. Her foot bounced off uselessly. She backed up against the wall and looked frantically for an escape. To her left there was a tiny gap between the trash box and the bricks. It was too narrow, but maybe…

  She got one shoulder in and twisted her body like a key. The back corner of the box shifted, though at the front it opened the path wider to the chef, and he came in fast. Anna forced the rest of her body into the gap, pressed so close to the brick she could smell the lichen, and twisted like a key again.

  The far corner shifted, the way out opened up, and she sped through it with the chef close behind. At the blue door she cornered hard and leaped into the cool pipe-hall, spilled the puppies onto the floor, then leaned out to grab the door handle a final time. The chef ran andreached out as she dragged the door shut.

  It slammed on his fingers with a massive metal bang, the latch clicked, and Anna was plunged into darkness. With the last of her energy she lay down on the cold stone floor, careful not to squash any of the puppies beneath her, and laid her hot and spinning head down to the ground.

  6. LITTLE HATTERS

  Into the darkness, the oysters snuffled and mewled close by. The Walrus and the Carpenter were so hungry. She reached down and patted them. They were so warm and downy and…

  Anna opened her eyes and looked around. Her head felt like jelly and the floor was cold and hard. She sat up, careful not to nudge the puppies, who were all wedged in close to her belly. How much time had passed? The end of the hall was lit with bright sunlight. She must have slept all night.

  She loo
ked down at the puppies and counted six of them, wiggly shapes in the dimness. Her vision was still blurry though, so it was possible she'd counted several of them more than once.

  "You're all very wobbly aren't you?" she asked them, chucking them under the chins and rubbing their little bellies. "I mean, very friendly." Her voice felt thick and slurred, like she was speaking through honey, and her hand was jerky. Her head didn't feel right. "Not like mommy."

  They licked at her hand.

  "Let's get you into the cold. I mean out of…"

  On her knees, she found their box and lifted them slowly and carefully back into it. Each one fitted in her palm beautifully, their little bellies settling against her fingers like bags of hot porridge. The double vision was fading and she only tried to pick up a puppy that wasn't there twice. When she was convinced she had them all, she picked the box up and stood, but almost fell. Her head pounded hotly.

  "Stop that," she told it, "I've no time for you at all."

  She carried the puppies very carefully, shuffling down the hall and hardly lifting her feet. A little way down she noticed one on the floor that wasn't moving, and she knelt and stroked him. He was cold and his back felt twisted.

  That was her fault. She'd dropped him, or the chef had, or somebody had.

  She emerged past a toilet door, then a swing door for the kitchen, into the main part of the restaurant. The walls were decorated with red and gold dragons, and a padded leather sofa ran round the outer wall and under the window. Round wooden tables were spread through the middle, with gold-framed leather chairs set neatly around them. Velvet curtains hung at the window edges. It reminded her a little of home.

  "Here," she said, and carried the pups to the sofa where the midday sun was shining. She laid the box down then caught herself from falling again. On her knees the world swirled. The sun pierced her eyes painfully.