Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost by Michael John Grist Read Free Book Online Page B

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