Author's Note: Chapter two…Now it gets moving a little.
Sleep does not come easily to those who fear waking. For the last few days, Tyler had not even tried to sleep through the haze of unshakable terror, and would often sit up with a blank stare until, to his surprise, he realized that he had been wide awake from sunset to sunrise. Now exhausted and nerve-wracked, he was forced into a dizzy submission as he lay shivering on his side in the cooling sand. Every now and then he would drop off slightly, only to be jolted awake by the slightest scuttle of an insect or the faintest wash of the tide. The tormenting cycle ran through him dozens of times until at last, the distant snapping of a branch sprang him into full consciousness perhaps for good. He clung to his shoulders, eyes wide but empty, head filled with the ever present questions 'what if?', 'what now?', and 'what for?'. He was starved, but he didn't have the will to eat. Thirsty, but there was nothing to drink in convienient proximity except for a case of luke warm Coors, and the taste of the alcohol was starting to make him feel even sicker. He was cold as well, but didn't have the energy to try and start a fire.
Realizing that he would not find sleep this night, he slowly sat up and looked around, a subconscious search for any sign of zombie life as he did so. That's how every glance had become, it was always what he expected to behold. He observed only the rolling of the tide becoming slightly more instense, now reaching up to the spot where Tom lay and already touching his feet. Tom was somehow flat out in deep slumber, as though the total damnation of an entire civilization truly did not weigh on his mind at all. Though even if Tom was cold, crude, and conceded, Tyler found it hard to believe that a person could not mourn if just a little for the tragedy, whether or not they chose to show it directly.
Nothing could be heard save for the nearly silent croaking of some midnight insects and the every-so-often trill of a wayward sea bird close by, calling over the sweep of the receeding tide waters. It was the most peaceful scene Tyler thought he could ever recall, and that fact only soldified its eerieness as opposed to bringing him comfort. Nothing now would ever bring him ease, he knew that. It would still be nice to hope that one day he would be able to close his eyes again. He looked over again at Tom, now seeing that the tide was rolling all the way up to his shins and soaking his pant legs, but not stirring him in the slightest. By now, little beach crabs were beginning to pick at him every now and then. He could've slept through an army of undead corpses marching over his head and still wouldn't have complained about it. He honestly wondered how Tom had survived before they had crossed paths, being such a heavy sleeper and somewhat ignorant to his surroundnings. But that mixed with Tyler's edgy paranoia had kept them both in a safe balance thus far.
Another branch snapped off in the distance, but he forced down his initial fear with tremendous effort. He couldn't allow himself to tuck his tail every time a tree shifted. He was briefly reminded of the days when he was very small, a frightened child who had no taste for a thunder storm and sleeping with a pillow over his head. He never liked thunder storms, but where they had once scared him, they now depressed him. In his early days when he owned his first apartment, before having moved to Milwaukee, he had a dog. Some little mix breed mutt, good at taking his mind off of things, especially the oppressive wash of rain on his window pane. But that dog was dead now—just like everyone else. A dim memory that brought him bitterness instead of the warmth he may have hoped for. The dry crunching from the trees came again, but this time he couldn't swallow the cold shudder. Another crunch.
And a moan.
Springing to his hands and knees, Tyler floundered in the sand for a moment to try and find the spot from which the sound was coming. A garbled scream followed, then a strident clatter, like bodies tripping down over the rise of the small hill off to the right of him. For some reason, he just could not bring himself to move—until he saw the dangling arms of a sillouhette emerging from the treeline.
He instinctively scrambled backwards, but couldn't seem to find his feet. "TOM!" he screamed out, a thoughtless idea…the zombie noticed the cry and snapped to attention, mauled head zipping around in violent desperation to find its source and mouth hanging agape in a drooling countenence of shock. There was no reason to keep quiet now; the thing would inevitably find them. "Tom! Tom! Get up!" Tyler continued to yell, ferociously climbing to his feet in panic and tripping down the edge of the beach. To his annoyance, he found that Tom was not awake at all when he at last stumbled down to his side. "Would you wake up, you stupid asshole!?" he fisted his hands into Tom's shirt, lifting him up with an uncharacteristic bout of strength and knocking him back against the ground just as quickly.
"Wha-ah, huh?" he slowly came to, looking up at Tyler with a little bit of confusion and then a heavy punch of anger. "What-WHAT?" he snarled, shoving the smaller man way harshly and making him fall back.
"Get up!" he forced himself shakily to his feet in a wild hurry. "Get up, are you deaf?! They found us!"
Tom jerked upwards as though someone had pulled a rope fastened tightly around his neck, swiveling his head around and gaping at the creature that was now running down the beach towards them. And it wasn't alone: more soon followed suit, arms outstretched in a flying attempt to somehow catch their prey before they were within a hundred feet of it, tongues rythmatically sloshing out of their crumbled teeth in a way that much resembled charging dogs. "Why the hell didn't you wake me up!?" Tom shrieked as he leapt to his feet and took off before Tyler could respond. Tyler was up in an instant as the closest corpse's features became clear, sprinting after Tom as fast as he could with a high-pitched yelp of terror.
They crashed through brush and boat debris along the beach without concern to minor cuts and gashes on their legs or feet as they went, searching for some kind of escape route. The only thing that lay before them was the abandoned dock and the open water. As they approached, however, their only option became grimly clear. Those dead animalistic skeletons were already infesting the docks, idly standing about around the boats as though they were trying to place some kind of familiarity from a past life. They almost looked entirely harmless, and very nearly a simple part of the scenery, until of course they saw these new arrivals running for the lives they themselves had long forgotten. And then nothing mattered but the blood. From both sides, Tyler and Tom were about to be swarmed by a throng of roughly twenty undead, feet thunking against the wooden dock as they tore after the two men and swashing through the sand behind them. They could either swim for it, or get eaten.
Tyler frantically stopped and spiralled his vision in every direction. There, to his near immediate left—the closest thing to them, and a true miracle if not the most fortunate of flukes, was a small fishing boat, big enough for three to four people. Noticing it, he reached out and snatched Tom by the shirt to thrust him towards it. Tom tripped and stumbled into it, and thankfully, it was tied only loosely, easily pried away by a flick of Tyler's wrist as he half-fell backwards into it himself and onto a board harshly. His upper back ached as he flung himself up, arms hanging over the edge as he fumbled for an oar. The dead people were already wading out into the water after them, reaching out and trying to keep their heads above the surface of the water to see their way. Some of the heavily torn apart or those lacking in limbs became submerged as they clawed their way along, disappearing into the water competely and never resurfacing. The two survivors managed to shove the boat away from the shore with enormous strain, but still the spitting beasts found their way to them with alarming speed. They threw themselves off the docks and into the water, grabbing for the edges of the boat—only to be driven away by Tom, who had luckily found a long fishing knife, and albeit rusted, he was making good use of it. Fingers jetted from the sides of the boat as he slashed at them, spraying blood and greatly impairing their captive grip.
With fevered, wheezing gasps, Tom was hacking as hard as he could at their heads and shoulders, snapping out any vulgar thing he could possibly think of at the top of his lungs and emphasizing each curse with a violent bash of the knife. Tyler fought as hard as he could to push the boat away with his only oar, panicking as he felt it being pulled rigidly against his hold by some unseen force under water. Obviously one of those demons had gotten under the boat. Somehow, with a force rather beyond him but rather unimprotant at the time, he heaved it out of the thing's hands without pulling himself into the water or overturning the boat. He would later, upon reflection, decide that it must have been the balancing weight of the dead arms holding the other side of it down that had kept them from capsizing. He was shaken quickly from his own dillema when he heard Tom scream.
He turned in time to catch one of the corpses with a handful of Tom's hair, reaching and chomping ferociously for his neck. Such pure, raw, beastial desperation was a sickening sight upon the features of one that had surely once been able to think, to reason. To control itself. Tyler pushed down the surge of rotten bile and jammed the butt of the oar into the creature's face. To his surprise, it fell away instantly, almost making him fall over when he reared it up to offer another (now uneeded) blow. Slowly they were all falling away, chopped apart and unable to keep up without their hands and arms, or in some cases, heads. The fear and the tremendous shock, however, remained with the two men until they were well out of harms way and into the open ocean, where the cantankerous cries of enraged animated cadavers could only faintly be heard. As of now, only their drifting forms could be spotted, features industinguishable as they made one final fevered dash towards their fleeting prey.
Tyler sat staring back out at them, fingers clutched so tightly around the hand of the oar that the knuckles were bone white and he could scarcely move them. One of his feet was still lifted up as though in preperation to make a move that had never been made, chest quaking with what was either the struggle for a chance to vomit or the refusal to emit a sob. His grip was gradually relaxing, a cold sweat beginning to trickle down his neck, and suddenly, before he knew it, the oar had dissappeared from his hands and was moving slimly away against the still waters. It didn't even occur to him that he might retrieve it.
"Shit-FUCK!" Tom choked out, clutching at his head as if making sure that it was indeed still intact. "God damn it, son of a bitch! God damn it!"
Tyler couldn't for the life of him understand what Tom was so upset about. They had only left the shore behind that had given them no form of subsistence. They were better off this way, and it was possibly their best option. Those corpses wouldn't be intelligent or able enough to swim this far out. But then again, the boat offered them no further means of survival than the deserted beach front. Less, in fact. They would have to find an island, but which direction would they go? And how could they know which direction they were going at all? The mixed blessing it was, Tyler could not side with either his pessimism or his optimism at the moment. "You okay?" he said lightly, watching Tom rub the bruises around his neck.
"Fucking fabulous, dipshit!" he spat back, tossing the long knife clumsily to the bottom of the boat. Tyler jumped as the blade landed close to one foot. "I've never felt better."
"You're still alive, aren't you?" Tyler said with a note of cynicism.
Tom didn't seem to know how to respond to that as he snarled and flipped out a certain finger before mouthing some kind of threatening insult. "And stuck with you." He finally added, satisfied with the implied venom in that remark.
"Would you rather be stuck with one of them?" Tyler shook his head and drew his arms up against his chest. He then snorted and let his eyes wander. "Never mind. I'm sorry I said that. I don't usually like to ask stupid questions."
The sun began to rise, golden and crisp over the flat ocean before them, or at least that was the color Tyler remembered it being.
"Coulda fooled me, fucktard." Tom muttered back, rubbing two fingers slowly over the bleeding teeth marks carved deep into his forearm.