Plague Ship

Plague Ship
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 420

He leaned against the headboard with nothing more than a coverlet draped loosely over the two of them. His fingers intertwined with her hair, loosening the woven pattern as his other hand slipped down to her . . .

"What’s wrong, darling?" she asked playfully.

He shook his head. "I fear what I may have caught whilst giving this week's alms at the zombie's hospital."

His eyes snapped open. The grass under the tree had not been as soft on his bones as it first appeared.

He stepped aside as a team of prancing steeds overtook him, and tried to ignore the shouts and insults of those around him.

He limped toward Brisbane. The wood clapper announced his presence with each painful step. He covered his face as the peasants approached. They kept a wide berth around him, repulsed. He smiled to himself -- how ironic. One of them shouted: zombie's hospital is at the edge of the city.

`I had read the sign at the crossroads,' he said in his mind. `I'm not illiterate.' He still looked down on these peasants.

He did not realize until it was too late. The infected pushed passed the hospital like a flock of sheep, toward an awaiting ship. He heard a voice to his left announce something about the hospital being full. Wait on the hospital ship.

The smell of the plague and zombie victims packed so near nauseated him, even though, he didn't smell much better -- not with the rotting, ulcerating flesh peeling from his once handsome, virile body.

The anchor scraped against the side of the ship as it lurched out of the water. The ship moved away with the current and, it leaked. He was trapped, to drown. Cold water lapped around his ankles. He shivered. Someone leaned against him, closer than anyone had in years. He felt a pinching sensation on his neck.

He could not move.

"What...are you doing to me?"

"A little late to worry about that, James of Brussels’?"

"You know me? I've the plague."

"Look around you? Everyone is dying on this ship. The perfect place for me to feed off them, don't you think? No one will notice. No one will care. They say they no longer know what to do with all the plague victims, so they are isolated them on this ship."

Water filled his lungs. He closed his eyes.