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Author’s Note: I’d like to thank the readers for the positive response to the first Dead in the Water, along with a particular thanks to Neil for publishing it. This sequel is more-or-less divided into three parts. Part 1 follows the characters from the first story in the days after the Breezae incident. Part 2 has the crew at a Naval base as its preparing to evacuate. The final part takes up about half the story, and involves the crew at an ocean platform, attempting what was supposed to be a simple delivery.

It’s a bit longer than the first one, but a lot of that is dialogue, which is a faster read than narrative. Like any author, I hope the reader finds it so riveting that he or she read it in one sitting, regardless of length. If the reader hasn’t already read the first one, however, this will be a spoiler.

I used a number of the site web board names (after asking), mainly because they seemed to work better than anything I was making up, ie, they’re real. Let me express my gratitude. Except for the guy who drinks too much, the two female neo-Nazis, the people cheating on their spouses, the cross-dressing tax cheat, and the person using five names (one for each of his/her personalities), I know absolutely nothing about these people, so any correlation between them and their namesakes in the story is purely coincidental.

Dead Ahead has zombies, pirates, savage naval battles, gratuitous sex, lurid depravities, claustrophobic settings, and gimmicky military hardware, all interwoven with quirky details, characters and situations that could probably only occur in the Living Dead scenario, but the important thing is: they could occur. What more can you want?

"Jesus Christ … That’s it, isn’t it?" Kidd asked Uncle Henry. "That’s really it." Both men were on the bridge of the Max, a yacht belonging to Kidd’s charter business out of Key West. They were scrutinizing – as well as they could through binoculars -- an anchored brigantine now less than a kilometer away, dead ahead. Although it appeared deserted, Kidd had Uncle Henry -- his business’s head mechanic -- cut the motors so they could assess the situation from a distance and see what they might be getting into. It had already changed dramatically from the first sighting of the craft with its recognition, and the Max hated surprises anymore. There was nothing on the horizon.

"That’s it," Uncle Henry quietly affirmed.

When the Plague arrived and the borders separating Earth and Hell started to blur, people with boats took to them for the safety afforded by a mile or so of ocean between themselves and the things – humans who had died and then resuscitated as something less, with horrific appetites to whet. Kidd, his wife, and most of his employees saw the wisdom of going maritime, but started late and discovered that their first boat-of-choice in his private mosquito fleet had been stolen. The Max was a good substitute, but it needed refueling from time to time, no matter how carefully they conserved. Fuel was rapidly becoming hard to find and, once located, harder to appropriate.

Careful not to dwell on the theft of their favorite boat, neither Kidd nor anyone else in the crew thought they’d ever see it again. Now here it was, maybe half a mile away, just … waiting for them, almost. Strange, the ways of the sea …

"Huh? What’s that, you say?" Uncle Henry asked. "Strange what?"

Kidd kept the binoculars to his eyes a moment, then shook his head. "I said it’s strange, the way it seems to be just … sitting there."

Luke, Kidd’s nephew and first mate, joined them. "Maybe they’re dead somewhere below." There was no need to specify who. He held his hand out for Kidd’s binoculars. "Lemme see … Are those bullet holes in the side, Uncle Henry?"

"Yep." Uncle Henry was nobody’s uncle, but everyone called him that, anyway. No one knew why, and no one ever asked him anymore. (Is Uncle Henry your real name? always got, Most people who know me sincerely believe it is.) They asked him everything else because he seemed at times to be one of the smartest men on the planet. The title "Uncle" was a courtesy and only peripherally important, if important at all. It was like the Lone Ranger’s silver bullets -- always happy to explain why he wears a mask, he never explains why he uses silver bullets. Once the mask question’s settled, no one cares or remembers to ask about the bullets.

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