“You don’t have to do this!” He held his hands over his face this time. Unwise. “Please, please, I can’t keep on like this, just listen to me—”

I leveled the musket, aiming it as I had before, though I didn’t have to try hard. The muzzle fit through the bars of the cell just fine, and even if he backed away to the farthest side from me—which he had—the bullet would not have far to travel.

“God please. Please, don’t, I beg of you—”

He could beg all he wanted, but I had no choice. It wasn’t as if I wanted to be doing this.

I pulled the trigger.

The stench of death was briefly overpowered by smoke and black powder, and his body was almost thrown against the bars of his little cell by the impact. Blood, skull and fingers flew in all directions. Then, with the rocking of the ship, he toppled over and lay on the ground. As still as could be.

For the moment.

The first night of this, I had stayed up all night next to the cell, watching. Waiting. I had seen the other thing get up only moments after taking a shot to the chest, but a shot to the head was different, wasn’t it? Mustn’t it be?

Luckily for me, it seemed that it was. It took ages for him to stitch himself back together, and in those precious moments in the dead of night, with him just a lifeless body below … I could get to work.

I daren’t sleep, not even with him incapacitated. No, at the moment I slept during the day, above deck, under the watchful eye of the sun. The sun had been what sent his predecessor into flames, and the flames had subsequently nearly brought an end to this entire nightmare. But no, the beast had been flung overboard before the flames had spread, taking a brave member of the crew with him to the depths. That man had spared me a fiery death in his actions, but I wondered if in doing so, he had condemned me to a fate far worse.

Nevertheless, if I were to die even still, at least it would not be in fire. I had to admit I preferred it that way. I would sooner starve. For that reason, I kept this new creature—once a sailor, once a human, but neither any longer—out of the sun. Kept him below. Kept him alive. Not because I pitied him, god no. It was simply because I would really rather not burn to death. Nor would I like to drown, jumping from a burning ship.

I wasn’t to the point where I wanted to die at all, honestly. I was still holding out hope that it wouldn’t be necessary, that I could find some way to shore, some way into view of another ship. But if I ever were to stop holding out … well, I had one musket ball set aside just for that occasion.

Didn’t I just have a plan for everything?

That was the problem, though. Plans only went so far. I could only do so much with what I had. And what I had was this—a musket, rations, luggage, three chickens and countless rats. And him. That fucking monster.

I looked down at his body again and ground my teeth. The rats who had been scared away by the noise of the shot were already reappearing to sniff at his unmoving form. Not a corpse—he never stayed dead. The moment his body hit the deck, grains of sand started to trickle down the hourglass of my peace of mind. I should get moving.

The first thing I did was check on the livestock. Well, rather what was left of it. We had been a decent ways into our voyage when everything went to shit, so a good many of the larger animals—pigs and sheep—had already been butchered. Or they’d disappeared. I hadn’t known about the disappearances at the time, only learned about it from the captain’s log when I’d poked around after it all. ‘Disappearances’ was a fine word for it. I had my own guess as to what had really happened.

As I entered the space that housed the little pens with the chickens, I gagged a bit at the smell. The chickens didn’t seem to mind the stench much at all and after a moment, I wouldn’t either. I left the doors to the pens open, leaving the hens to strut about the stalls that used to house the larger animals much like I strutted through the ship itself. I wished I was as oblivious to the death that had happened here as they were. Every once and a while I felt a bit bad for the livestock, before I remembered that they were going to be slaughtered anyway. I supposed that for them, at least, everything had gone according to plan.

I stared at the empty stalls blankly. What had I come in here for?

The oppressive smell wiped from my mind all thought, replacing my routine with realizations that occurred to me afresh each day. Realization that I was running out of feed for the chickens. Two bags had already grown mold, so I had only one left. With that, I was running out of food for myself. The hens’ clucking and squawking did nothing to ease my mind—rather, it was almost like I couldn’t hear them at all, drowning all that out with the buzzings of an anxious mind.

I was going to starve to death. I was going to die here, no matter what. No rescue was coming. I was alone on the sea with a living corpse and three hens, floating far from anyone who could be fucked to care about me, if any such person still existed. Again I wished that I had died in the fire. I wished I had been eaten alive, or thrown overboard, or ripped to shreds like all the others on board had been. At least it would spare me the decisions I had to make. At least I’d be done.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

But now I had to decide. Living was a thing I had to choose to do, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. And as much as I wished I had died … I did not want to die now.

Not yet.

I realized I had sunk to the floor in my misery, sitting in straw stained in sheeps’ blood. One of the hens pecked at the floor next to me, picking at maybe a bug or a bit of feed that had gone unnoticed before now. I considered her idly. I supposed I could continue on if she could. Eat, shit, sleep, repeat. At least for a few more days. What else could I do?

Shakily, I got to my feet once more and moved to gather the eggs. There weren’t as many as the day before, but not as few as there had been the first day. A perfectly average acceptable haul. I decided to be grateful.

With the eggs gathered and the anxiety passed (for now), I went about my day the best I could. I made my little meal. I took inventory of the rations I had left. I fell into despair over how small that inventory was. I sat in despair until the sun came up and I felt safe enough to sleep. The cabin where the captain had slept—god, how I tired of their terms and language, talking of “heads” and “staterooms” and “port” and “aft.” Whatever this room was called, it was only accessible if you walked to it across the deck. So I would be safe there, as long as the sun was out. I could sleep.

And sleep I did. I slept like the dead.

Sleep never lasted long enough, though.

Soon enough I woke again. In those early moments before I had come fully awake, my mind gave me a taste of bliss, a second where I thought I was still in my childhood home. In that moment all I had to do in the coming hours was read a lovely book, maybe walk into town to see a friend. That moment was fleeting—I did not even register when it was leaving, nor could I find an opportunity to reach for it as it left. When it was gone I felt even emptier than I had been before it came.

I had far more to do than read a book. I had to kill that poor bastard in the brig again.

The musket was propped against the door to the cabin and I scooped it up as I left. It felt as heavy in my hand as it had been the first time I picked it up, though it didn’t take nearly as long to load as it had then. My hands didn’t shake now. They had shook very much the first time, but that had been because I had been overcome by the idea that I was the only one left alive. I was very glad I had double-checked to make sure that was true.

I remembered it well, the first night after the fire. I had slunk through the entire ship as quiet as I could, quieter even than the rats. My heart pounded, and the creaking planks I had forced myself to get used to in the early days of the journey had become terrifying all over again.

Just when I was nearly certain that I was really, truly the only one left … he had appeared.

I knew what the creature was capable of. I had seen it happen before, seen people who I’d known and spoken with fall dead only to rise again moments later. They were different after that. Wrong. He was wrong, too.

He stumbled like a newborn calf, stilted and jerky, inhuman and uncomfortable. His eyes were hidden from me by a bowed head and tangled locks of hair. I saw his shirt, pure white but for a dark, solid red streak that streamed down from his neck and coated his shoulder. His throat was coated in the stuff. Some of it seemed to be trickling from his mouth—it glittered as he opened his mouth to say something.

I blew his head off.

I still don’t know how I did it but god, am I ever glad that I did. It was reflex, almost. One moment I was in danger and the next I was … still in danger, likely.

I did not believe he was dead, not for one second, not truly. The only thing I had seen that would absolutely kill something like him was the sunlight. But, I had seen firsthand how poorly that would end for me when the flames of his undoing inevitably spread. So, could I throw him overboard?

Hooking my hands under his armpits, I attempted to lift his bodyweight. Immediately it became clear that while I could possibly hoist him over the railing and into the sea, getting him up to the top deck in the first place would be … unlikely.

What could I do then but lock him in the brig?

When I’d got him there (which had been a challenge in of itself) I had stayed up all night. I’d held the musket on my lap, reloaded, facing the barred door. I’d stayed as still as I could, which was not still at all. I had not been calm. My legs would not rest, and I bounced the musket slightly on my knee. Eventually, my worst fears were realized. The body began to move. I heard him groan a raspy, awful noise, and I scrambled to take aim. Before he could even manage a word I had shot him down again.

He stilled immediately. So, I found that I had some solace in this method, as brutal as it was. How long had he taken to heal? It took me another day to figure it out but after that I quickly fell into a rhythm, one that I would continue now.

By the time I made it back to his enclosure today he was sitting up. When he heard me coming, he turned to face me.

“Wait—wait!” he said it softly first, then cried out as I came closer.

I didn’t respond. I took aim, and as my finger rested on the trigger, it was steady.

“Don’t do this,” he whimpered. I could see his eyes clearer from this distance: big, round, brown and pleading as they peeked out from behind scraggly locks of hair matted with blood. I tried not to look into them.

I almost wanted to apologize before I remembered that this was likely just some trick, or an attempt at one. I couldn’t know if this was just him trying to get me to let my guard down. To falter for just a moment. I didn’t know if there was a chance he was still who he had been before his transformation, but I doubted it. Or at least … I couldn’t risk it.

So the words ‘I’m sorry’ remained unsaid, at the very back of my mind, and I let the musket do the talking instead.