Living Dead- Hand Blood Soup

  Matt Sears ran—then walked when encountering officers—then ran again. His vision careened like he was drunk. His balance was off; he listed portside. He whacked a shoulder on a hatch. He thought he felt, like a worm in his belly, the onset of nausea. Just what he needed. He knew what Mommy would say: Stay in bed, baby. He also knew what Father, a former rear admiral, would say: You show up for duty unless you’re dying, sailor, and even then, you ask permission.

  Was it the flu? He recalled the flu outbreak in the third month of deployment; the docs vaccinated all five thousand sailors in three days. It sure felt like the flu. His head and chest were brick heavy, a funky sludge coated his throat, and he was cold despite the underdeck heat. Mommy would call it psychosomatic. He was a nervous kid, and the whole boat was on edge after last night’s storm, the bolting incident, the third man-overboard alert, and deployment’s approaching end.
...

  Picking a moment to slip past the fray, he flattened himself to the wall and crept along. The naked man at the bottom of the heap convulsed, causing a sailor landslide, and Matt felt fingers, shockingly cold, blindly snatch for his hand. As Matt pulled away, the man’s fingernails clawed across the back of Matt’s hand. Matt stumbled out of reach, his shoes smacking through underfoot blood.

  He kept going, he had to, and didn’t examine his hand until he was under the brighter lights of a ladder. Three scratches welled blood. Self-pity overwhelmed him. The scratches hurt, he was starting to feel sick, and he wanted to be home—he was Mommy’s Boy, just like the gunner’s mates said. He clamped his opposite hand over the scratches to staunch the blood until he began to climb the ladder. A carrier was an injury factory; this was not even the worst wound he’d taken this month.
...

  When the CS’s expression changed to one of concern, Matt figured he must look pretty bad. He turned away and studied the soups. The vat of tomato blurred into the vat of chicken and rice. Gradually, he became aware that a sailor was waiting. Matt reached for the ladle, which rattled away from him. He blamed the latex gloves; he couldn’t feel anything. He reached for the ladle a second time and felt a kind of awe as he successfully lifted it.

  He did not, however, successfully serve the soup. The ladle cracked down on the sailor’s bowl, splashing all over. The sailor shouted and cursed and said unkind things about Matt, but Matt was not listening. His hearing had deadened as if he’d strapped on flight-deck earmuffs. Other senses were dimming too. He could barely smell the “bug juice,” the navy’s bright-red, sugar-bomb take on Kool-Aid. He could barely see two feet in front of him. Despite all this, he no longer felt sick, or not exactly; he’d gone past ill to a prickling numbness. Leaving the galley per Mommy’s advice was no longer an option.

  He’d show Fiederling. He’d show Father. He chased after the ladle with dumb fingers. This time, he saw the problem. The three gashes on the back of his hand were still bleeding. In fact, blood had inflated his latex glove like a full condom.

  Slowly, he grasped the handle of the ladle. As he curled each finger into place, the glossy balloon of blood swelled larger. Matt was transfixed. He wondered how long the glove would hold. He folded the fourth finger, The latex tumor wobbled. He pictured Mommy, weeping, telling him he never should have enlisted. He pictured Father, snorting over his mustache, declaring any job worth starting was worth finishing.

  Matt bent his thumb around the ladle. The latex bubble burst. Dark blood shot into the tomato soup and sank beneath the surface like a meatball. Matt blinked, felt his eyelashes gum together. Maybe he should use the ladle to fish out the blood. But that would take so much effort, and he was so tired.

  “Mommy’s Boy, wake up!”

  Matt looked up. Everything was a ghostly white, as if a skim of milk had seeped over his eyeballs. He nonetheless recognized the gunner’s mates who’d pinned him down.

  “You gonna soup us or what, Mommy’s Boy?”

  Matt felt nothing but the relieving tingle of blood discharging into the soup. The first gunner’s mate snorted, snatched the ladle away from Matt, and dipped himself a big serving. He did not seem to notice the darker, filmier bits floating amid the tomato purée. Matt squinted. The last thing he saw, behind the gunner’s mates, was a line thirty or forty sailors deep. He knew from experience that many of them would want delicious tomato soup, the most comforting chow they’d find on this wet, stressful day.

  On this carrier, Matt Sears was a carrier too. He died standing up, knees locked, forehead pressed to the sneeze guard. His last thought was of the clear cups of red bug juice on everyone’s trays. To Matt’s milky eyes, it looked thick and salty, and he wanted to drink it, and find more of it, wherever he could. Earlier, he’d thought the boat was well stocked for feeding, but he’d had no idea.

- The Living Dead, chapter: Mommy’s Boy