Meghan: Eat me

I hummed aimlessly as I gazed out of the porthole, chin resting on a hand. The water was murky but it was still pretty, seaweed and fish flitting by. Maybe this school trip wouldn’t be such a waste after all. I pressed my nose against the glass and tried to see everything, not able to shake the feeling that there was something there I was missing. Something dark swiped past the small, round window, but crane as I might I couldn’t quite see it. Hmmm…
“Everyone on deck!” I heard the professor-in-charge calling from above. Shrugging in irritation I ran up the stairs and onto the deck of the ship. The Professor, a tiny bald slip of a man with huge glasses and tweed coat, had rented the thing for our ‘sea exploration’ trip. So far it had been a success, but as I had watched him shakily try to command his students and get tangled in ropes and steering equipment he hadn’t built up my confidence much. Currently he was clinging to one of the many ropes on board and looking at the water as if it was something nasty. But then again, so were a lot of the students. Curious, I stepped to the side and looked over.
The water was writhing. Like a cup of ground meat with maggots roiling in its flesh, the water churned. Its semi-blue green coloring was gone; it had turned a muddy, murky brown. What the…
The other students aboard were equally confused, pointing and shouting questions to one another. One of them leaned too far over the edge to look and fell into the shifting water. The entire class drew a collective breathe, waiting for him to come up but knowing that he wouldn’t. The water grew more frenzied. Red seeped up from the depths to stain the surface and everyone quieted. People started backing towards the center of the boat but I stayed, digging my fingers into the wood. What the hell was going on?
Scraping sounds came from the sides of the boat, like something trying to crawl its way through from the outside. People started screaming and I narrowed my eyes, never looking away from the water, I could almost….There.
“Teeth.” I said quietly.
“What!? What did you say?!” someone screamed frantically in my ear. Oops, hadn’t meant to say that out loud, mass panic would be bad…
“Beef.” I said smiling, “I’m just dying for a hamburger.”
“You sick fu—“ But then the boat started rocking and the rest of her sentence was lost in the screaming.
And then we could see them.
“What the fuck are those!?” Practically everyone was screaming it, and when I saw them trying to claw their way up the side of the boat, I really, really had to restrain myself in order not to laugh.
Their black, blank eyes
Peeling flesh
Rotting limbs
“They’re alligators.” I said, well screamed in order to be heard.
“Those aren’t alligators, I know alligators.” This was the Professor, wild eyed and sparse hair flying
I grinned at him, “That’s because they’re zombies.”
His mouth sort of sagged as he tried to process what I’d just said.
“Zombie alligators,” I said patiently, “Night of the living dead, rotting corpses, coming back to life, shoot em in the head—“
“Stop! Stop.” He said, panting slightly, “Okay, okay, something is attacking the ship; we have to get to land, somewhere safe.”
With that he sprinted off, hopefully to steer us to safety. I leaned out over the edge and watched the beasts try to bite and claw their way up the ship. Luckily they weren’t having much success. The screaming increased in volume behind me and I turned my head to find the source. The student who had fallen over the edge had crawled over the side, seaweed dangling from his ears and mud running from him to pool on the deck. His eyes were vacant and red rimmed and he was struggling to pull himself over with his remaining arm. Grimacing I grabbed a mop that was lying abandoned on the deck and ran across to him. Some of the other students were edging towards him, making soothing noises and offering open hands. Gaaaah, idiots.
“Move!” I screamed. They did just as I swung the mop. It hit him neatly under the jaw and knocked him flying back over the side. Hmm…That wasn’t too hard, I can keep one under control until we get to shore. I looked optimistically to my fellow students only to find to my horror that many of them were falling into the deadly water. What the hell? Had their centers of gravity just suddenly disappeared? Now one small problem was much much bigger. Luckily the remaining sane humans took up stations along the deck, armed with buckets, wood, and other blunt objects. We beat off the attacking hoards and cheered as we saw the ship approaching a port.
The ship didn’t even stop; it just plowed through the small wooden dock. I understood why when I felt a slimy hand on my shoulder and turned to beat in the head of our undead Professor. Afterwards, of course, I thanked him for leading the class to safety.
We climbed and crawled over rocks and the ruined boards on the beach, running for the only building we could see; a lighthouse. The townspeople had already gathered there and let us in. Apparently the zombie alligators were a regular occurrence and whenever they saw a ship coming in, they hid. We were taken to an antechamber and checked for disease and then armed with a variety of pointy objects. A few students went to guard the top of the tower and a few stayed in the antechamber to check incoming parties. I tapped a scythe in my palm impatiently as I waited in the antechamber. People sometimes left the safety of the lighthouse to go find their loved ones, it was important to have people here to help them come back unscathed. I checked the eyes of all who passed, looking for the telltale washed out blackness. The tower moaned as the dead outside tried to uproot it, but we remained. How long would we stay? Until I woke up.

-Meghan