Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost Read Free Page A

a song with words that were probably about sailing and comas, but she never could tell.
    It was a dream she'd had many times. But when she reached the stool-island this time, things were different. Her giant Daddy was standing not sitting, and his eyes shone like lighthouse beams, projecting a strange white light over the ocean and into the murky clouds. He didn't look down when she spoke to him.
    "What are you looking for Daddy?" she asked.
    "The Jabberwock," he said in a deep and dreadful voice.
    This confused Anna, but confusion didn't last long within a dream.
    "What can you mean? The Jabberwock's not even a real thing."
    "But it is," he said, "and darling it's so terribly cold."
    He bent his burning white eyes down to her, and she was lost within the light.
     
     
    She woke lost within the light.
    It was bright in her room for the first time since the hurt. She wormed out of the covers like a birdwoman coming up from her feather chrysalis. The black velvet curtains on the window were still pulled open and bright light flowed in. It lit her art spread around the walls: crayon drawings of unicorns and caterpillar-men and Alice. Normally even glimpsing all these colors brought the hurt on hard.
    Now it didn't. Anna lifted her head and ran her eyes over the collection again, but still felt nothing.
    That was quite peculiar.
    "Daddy?" she called.
    No answer came.
    She sat up in bed and saw her arm. It gave her quite a shock. There was a thin line of crusted black running down it, like a scab, which meant…
    She strangled a scream in her throat. Screams and shouts brought the hurt on harder. Instead she followed the scab-trail with wide eyes. It could be anything. It could be paint or ice cream or even old strawberry jam.
    "Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today," she whispered to herself, but the words were not very convincing or reassuring. It wasn't jam. 
    "Daddy?" she called again. Her voice sounded louder than usual. The temptation to duck her head back under the covers was strong, but she pushed it away. Alice wouldn't do that and neither would Anna.
    She pulled herself out of the sheets and climbed from bed carefully, wary of the hurt. There were dark brownish-red footprints on the gray carpet. Standing by the bedside she lifted her right foot and looked at its sole.
    Dark brownish-red.
    She gulped and went to the door. The handle turned with difficulty, like it had been wedged in position. The door swung inward.
    Her Daddy was right there lying on the floor.
    Anna leapt back. For a terrible moment she expected him to lunge up and bite her like he'd bitten into the Hatter, but he didn't. Instead he lay still with his eyes closed and his lips pressed to the golden strip running along the threshold, sleeping soundly.
    He hardly even looked like her Daddy anymore. His skin had gone an even whiter gray and his scraggly beard was solid with black, like he'd been scarfing down chocolate syrup. His black pajamas were crusty and dark too.
    And he wasn't alone.
    She closed the door quickly, but the afterimage turned in her fuzzy head like a spinning coin.
    The dim corridor beyond him had been filled with sleeping bodies. There were so many, heaped on top of each other like the Queen's card-men fallen after battle. Arms lay across faces and legs lay across bellies, and all of them had white-gray faces and white-gray skin, and none of them were supposed to be there at all.
    Anna closed her eyes tightly shut. This was enough to bring the hurt on for days, just like one of the impossible things from her stories, but somehow the hurt wasn't there.
    She opened her eyes a crack: no change. She went to the window and pulled the curtains further open. Hundreds of gray-faced people were out there too, lying in the street and the front yards. She opened the window and heard their raspy breathing, rising and falling like a tide lapping at the beach.
    "What are you all doing?" she murmured.
    She went back to the door and knelt