Chapter 28: Closing In On Normal

Chambers integrated well into the OBX community, he quickly passed the test and became a sheriff’s deputy. Even Quinn was given a house and after passing the lifeguard test found herself a job. Rebecca worked as a head physician at the hospital. Everyone was doing their part in the new community, trying to bring back a way of living from the past.

Across the beach of a j-like curve into a rocky shore on the bay, Samuel and Tyrell ate their lunch outside of the oil refinery. They began taking their lunches outside after they stopped the leak. The bay was cleaning itself of all the dead fish and oil and every day the view got better. This bay was now the only beach opened to the public and just so happened to be where Quinn was working.

Most days around noon, Deputy Chambers would come around to hand out lunches. Annie was sitting on the bench with Quinn when Chambers arrived. Annie was also there, spending the day with Warren and Jackson at the beach. Warren threw Jackson’s favorite stick in the water for the dog to fetch. And Samuel watched his son from across the bay. It was actually quite nice.

“The system's almost fixed,” mumbled Tyrell with his mouth full of sandwich.

“Having hot showers again is going to be huge,” Samuel exhaled.

They were finally getting back to normal, or the closest thing to it. Samuel’s job at the refinery was to solve the oil leak. The first thing he did was stop it. Now mother nature was taking care of the rest, drawing it out with the tide, like venom from a wound, albeit gradually. The leak bordered the roped area for the public beach. If someone swam close enough to it in the water they would feel the grease, and even potentially drown, which was why they put ropes at a safe distance. They had thought of everything.

Chambers was still trying to court Quinn. He had a special place in his heart for her. If it wasn’t for the eye-patch Quinn might have one day succumbed to Chambers’ advances, the policeman’s outfit was really doing it for her. The deputy and the lifeguard would flirt every day, expecting, now, that their ends were far ahead of them. But ever since New York, when they put his eyeball back inside Chambers’ head, he had been unsure of himself. Every day the burning in his head got worse. Aspirin and oxy subdued it for a long time, but now that things were calm, drugs no longer worked as well.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

A kid out near the deep end dock jumped off towards the oil leak. Unseen by a distracted lifeguard he tried to swim in the oil. Quinn had her back turned while talking with Annie and Chambers at the picnic table. Chambers was finding it particularly hard to kick the heat today.

The boy out in the oil leak got tired from swimming in the thick mess of oil and started to cry out. His mother heard him from the beach and immediately got up. Chambers wanted to ask her out to dinner, he knew he could only do it if Annie wasn’t there, watching them. It was awkward and Chambers was sweating.

The boy slipped under, and his mother screamed out. Quinn and Annie looked out into the bay towards the scream.

“Do you,” Chambers mumbled, “want to… go to the… hospital-” before he fell to the ground.

Quinn did not notice him as she sprinted into the water, dove in, and swam out to the boy. When she got to the edge of the oil leak she told the kids around her to make a chain. Quinn swam into the oil anchored by the chain. Too thick to open her eyes, Quinn had to reach around for him. She grazed an arm that grabbed her by the elbow and pushed for the surface, but the boy was stuck in the mess that kept them in the bottom. The chain of children and adults pulled Quinn up. She yanked on the arm and wouldn’t let go until it snapped free.

They were pulled through the yucky water, back into the clean water, and then out onto the shore. Sand was everywhere. Water dripped into her eyes as she tried to catch her breath. The hand still clinging to hers. It was silent too. The most eerie part. Not even the boy’s mother was speaking. She forced her eyes open, to have a look at the boy. He might need CPR. Everyone was standing around, frozen. Nobody wanted to admit what they were seeing.

It can’t be, not here.

Quinn held in her hand a snatched-from-the-oil-claw of the undead, waterlogged but still clumsily animated. She screamed in disgust and threw it away. People started to panic. The boy was gone, and there was a zombie in the water.