The Sea Hates a Coward Read Online Free

him, and Schneider lost his patience. Without heed for how wise a move it was to headbutt a zombie, he smashed his forehead into the other corpse’s and grabbed it by the ears, scared for a second they might come off.
    “Listen. Mate. I hate to hurt you, I do. But you have to hear me. We can’t get any further unless you do this with me, and I really need you to. If I lose you, I’m just running to save my own skin, and I’m going to lose my mind if that happens. Looking after you gives me a reason not to go mental, so please don’t screw this up for us. I need you.”
    Schneider wondered how he had managed to pronounce several sentences in a row without his tongue falling out of his mouth, and almost missed the other zombie staring right at him and nodding. Its arms fell away from his and it stood, favouring one hip, yet upright, waiting to move.
    They moved. Moaning a little for good measure, giving it a rest when he worried it might look unconvincing, Schneider led his clueless charge into the press, and did his best to look utterly hopeless. He bumped and blundered, arms spasming as he piled slowly into other corpses, head lolling without any seeming concern for where he was going.
    All the while, he could feel the gaze of the overseers on him. More than once, he imagined one wading towards him with a predatory sneer, felt empty pores dilate to release sweat that wasn’t there. Each time, it got harder not to flinch, or to turn his head to see if he was being watched.
    Worse yet, as he began slowly to make his way round the bulk of the flesh-mound, it occurred to him there was no way to check whether his hobbling companion was still following. What if they had slipped back into the uneasy rest of unconsciousness, had genuinely lost themselves in the slow chaos of bodies?
    Any attempt to circle back to check would surely only make the situation worse. There was nothing to do but press through and hope that the other body’s sojourn into sapience was persisting. “Don’t look back , ” he told himself, as he walked through Hell. “Don’t look back.”
    As Schneider was considering a sly half-turn to check, he walked, eyes unfocused, into the broad back of an overseer. He almost screamed. Remaining limp and slack-jawed as the ashen-faced brute—a woman whose nose was half-consumed by a livid sore—turned and scowled at him, was a feat enough to make Schneider wonder if he had somehow forgotten a lifetime on the stage. It was good enough: with a disgusted huff, the rot-faced giantess grabbed the back of his shirt in her Kevlar gauntlet and barrelled him on through the crowd.
    As he gradually slowed his stagger to his previous slouch, Schneider noticed the crowd was thinning. The lower slopes of the fleshpile were petering out to his right, while the immensity of the crane tower was some way behind on his left. Making his way through the rapidly clearing press of zombies and relishing the slow dimming of the light as he moved away from the tower, he looked out to see what the hill had hidden.
    Some way to his right, a cliff edge dropped away to a broad, dark valley, where a swarm of bright lights drifted back and forth. Only... it wasn’t a valley. Looking closer at the surface below, Schneider saw brief, flickering reflections as the ground rose and fell in massive, heavy undulations. The sea. And the lights were boats.
    Boats. Of course. He was on a boat. A ship. A floating city so large it had docks built onto its side, and its own pitted iron geography. He had seen one side of it, back in the flensing yards on the other side of that leviathan hull, and now he was seeing the other, who knew how many hundreds of yards up and across its deck.
    There was no way to walk away from this place. Looking down off its mountainous hull, any thought that the little lights puttering to and fro could offer any escape was swiftly crushed. The sprawling grid of piers and jetties that made up the dock below were separated