Free This Plague of Days, Season Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) by Robert Chazz Chute

hood of Aasa’s coat. Despite the slap and shock of the frigid water, she pulled both girls to the lifesaving ring. The girls sputtered and cried as they watched the sailboat pull away, its little engine chugging and whining at the sudden strain. McInerney steered as close to the Ciara’s hull as he dared, slipping past them.
    He spun the wheel and made for the fog as he called up to the Ciara’s crew, “Man overboard, you bastards! Two children and one woman in the water! Save ’em if you can bloody stand ’em!”
    A different alarm sounded aboard the patrol vessel as the Ciara’s crew lowered a zodiac. Three sailors wearing orange vests over hooded flotation suits leapt into the boat. One sat aft to steer the rescue boat’s powerful engine. The sailor in the middle carried a machine gun and the sailor in the bow directed them through the waves.
    To Dayo, the wait to be rescued felt like hours. Her breath was fast and shallow. She’d never been in such cold water and she wondered if her racing heart would give up before help arrived. She told the girls to be calm, but the swell rose and then dropped far away and, for a moment, she couldn’t even see the ship anymore.
    She shook and shivered. The little girls’ teeth chattered. They turned so pale, Dayo was sure McInerney’s prediction of their death was right. She had failed the girls and their father. Dayo’s aching hands were frozen claws and her arms felt like sticks. She closed her eyes and prayed, but not to God. She prayed to Aadi and asked his forgiveness.  
    Aastha was lifted up and away by her coat. Then the man in the bow of the zodiac pulled Aasa by her long ponytail. The girl was so far gone to the cold, she didn’t even murmur in pain.  
    Her work done, Dayo felt herself slipping and now she felt warm. It was okay. She could drown now, and gladly. Her eyes rolled up to the whites and she let go of the lifesaver ring. She would have dropped away into the welcoming deep if not for the loop of rope that caught her about one arm at the shoulder.
    Dayo’s fight wasn’t over after all. One sailor grabbed her by the back of the pants and another helped him muscle her over the side and into the bottom of the zodiac.  
    All she felt was regret that they hadn’t let her slip and sleep forever, far from monsters deep and dark.
    Monsters , she thought, come in all shapes and sizes.
    The ones who chose to do evil were far worse than the cannibals she’d fled. The men who had become rabid animals? She could understand them in a way. They were innocent. Sutr did that to them. But men like McInerney? She would hate herself if she understood what some men could become.
    When Dayo opened her eyes again, she and the girls were in the zodiac, naked and wrapped in shiny, silver blankets. A sailor with concern in his eyes crouched over them while he took Aastha’s pulse and talked to the others about hypothermia. The Ciara was close by on her left. On her right, another boat pulled alongside out of the fog.  
    The Irish sailor with the machine gun pointed it at Dr. Sinjin-Smythe, whose hands were above his head. Dayo wanted to yell but found she couldn’t.
    “Stop! Stop!” the seaman yelled.
    “Those are my daughters! Those are my daughters!” Aadi screamed.  
    Another man in a dark blue uniform Dayo had never seen before appeared at the rail. Their eyes met. He called to the sailors to calm themselves and smiled at her.  
    The sailor with the machine gun took aim at Sinjin-Smythe’s chest, ready to shred him.
    Sinjin-Smythe held out his hands. “The password is Prometheus.”
    The sailor lowered his weapon.
    The Ciara’s 20 mm cannons roared and hammered above them.  
    Dr. Neil McInerney thought he’d gotten away. The dentist exploded in a fountain of flesh and shattered bone as the Shepherd of Myddvai splintered and burned from the Ciara’s volleys. The sailboat burned so brightly, the explosion lit the fog bank with a hellish, red cast.
    Dayo