Kill Ratio

"I didn't say anything," said Victoria, sitting on the thwart in the stern, peering up at him as the water sloshed against the sailboat's hull.

Painted avocado green, the hull had seen better days.  Its paint was peeling in spots and it bore nicks in its wood. The exposed wood was suffering from salt and water erosion.  Wedged in a hole in the hull to prevent leaking just above the waterline on the port side was a severed human hand, its fingers extended seaward.

Victoria was wearing a peach blouse and blue jeans with one of the front pockets torn and hanging down like a flap, courtesy of a flesh eater's attack.  She wore it like a battle scar.

The plague that had contaminated the world had not aged her one bit, Halverson could see.  She still looked her years--twenty-eight.

"I was talking to myself," said Halverson.

Clad in jeans and a torn T, he looked at her with his ginger eyes, the color of a lion's.  A few years shy of forty, he wondered if he'd ever reach that age, what with the pandemic.

Hearing the mast creak above her, Victoria craned her neck up and saw two legs in torn trousers kicking spastically.  Its arms bound behind its back, the one-handed fortyish male flesh eater was hanging by the neck from the top of the mast and twisting in the wind.

"Why do we have to have that thing up there?" said Victoria.

"To scare away other flesh eaters," said Halverson.  "Like a Jolly Roger."

"It's not like we're gonna meet up with a bunch of them on the ocean."

"What about when we dock?"

"It gives me the creeps hanging up there."

"Hopefully it does the same to the flesh eaters."

"I doubt it."

"It's also handy for plugging leaks."  Halverson glanced at the flesh eater's arm that was missing a hand.

Victoria rolled her eyes.  "What's the point of keeping it alive?"

"The flesh eaters won't pay attention to it if it's not moving."

Head tilted back, Victoria squinted at the ghoul, the sun shining in her eyes intermittently as the creature swung to and fro in the wind. The creature's jaws were champing the air like it was dying from hunger.

Halverson's thoughts were elsewhere. 

"We're going about this the wrong way," he said.  "Instead of running away from the walking dead, we should be running toward them."

Victoria screwed up her face and squinched her blue eyes at him. "The sun's addling your brains. We've been out here too long on the ocean."

"It's only been about a month."

"Seems like a year," she said, head down, getting depressed thinking about it.

"What I'm saying is, we need to touch base with the people in power. That means we need to make land and then head east."

"Right into the mouths of the flesh eaters."

"We have to find out what's left of the government."  Even as he uttered them, he regretted his words. After all, he had found out the hard way that somebody high up in the government was out to kill him.

She raised her head.  "Do you have some messianic complex to save the country?"

"I want to see if there's any country left."

"Why does it matter?"

"Sailing out here on the ocean isn't getting us anywhere."

"Where do you want to get?  We're still alive.  That's what counts."

True enough, he decided.  As far as it went.  "I don't want a bunch of infected zombies taking over.  We have to fight them."

"Back to your messianic complex.  Why do you have to save the country?"

It was his job, Halverson knew.  He worked for the National Clandestine Service of the CIA.  But he couldn't tell her that.  Nobody knew what he did.  She believed his cover story that he worked as a journalist.