It’s going to be another short update tonight. Big plans are in the works. I’m not sure what we were thinking when any of us agreed to this but the bad news is that we have a huge, huge problem on our hands. It all started some time after Ben made the last post. Man, were we ever stupid. So stupid! One of us should have seen it coming…

Jess and Kalla reanimated. Neither of them were infected nor had they been close to anyone that had been contaminated since Waskaganish. There was no way that they could have been contaminated in any way. This meant that the dead would come back no matter what. You die, you become one of them. It was completely terrifying and it certainly changed the rules.

What made it even more terrifying was that we had a mini-horde of the Undead loose on the ship at one point. None of us had thought to watch their bodies. Why would we? We thought we were safe. But that was not the case. It was such a surprise. Poor Carlos, we think he was the first person to encounter them. And then it just sort of snowballed from there.

No one was carrying firearms on the ship by this point. There was just no need. No reason to have our guns at the ready to shoot the Undead that just weren’t there. It was an oversight that probably won’t happen again.

Thankfully the communications were working on the ship and we could broadcast a message once we realized what was going on. The panic of course set in but most people were able to get to safe places and shut themselves in. It was not the best of situations but it was the best of what we had to work with.

Then the hunt began. Two small groups of about 5 or 6 of us went in opposite directions down the corridors looking for them. We started at the top of the ship and worked our way down. Chances are they wouldn’t go up unless they had followed someone but it was still best to start there. We really didn’t need any more surprises, or to lose anyone else. We carried radios as well to communicate the position of each body so that we could go back and dispose of them later.

There were many a scary moment in those narrow, cramped passageways. The Undead have a way of stealing your breath and concentration for even the briefest of moments. All you want to do is run as you look into the vacant eyes of pure terror. Once you gain control, you can get the job done but it’s like each and every time you wonder if you can do it again.

Some say that autopilot takes over and you do what needs to be done but that has yet to happen to me. When I was in Afghanistan it happened to an extent which is terrible for me to admit but not now. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do and each moment wears heavily on me.

It took us most of the day to kill and dispose of the bodies of the 49 survivors that had turned into the Undead. It was heartbreaking. We were supposed to be safe. Not only did we have a monster on board, we’d just had to deal with an uprising of the Undead because of the monster. When was our freaking luck going to change?

The worst of the news is yet to come. In the midst of the confusion with the mini-horde, the monster had the time and the inclination to snatch 2 more children. A boy of about 11 named Henry and Zoe, a girl who was only 8. The community on the ship couldn’t handle much more. At first we all thought that maybe they were just hiding from the Undead but when we found the note we knew for sure. That’s right the monster left us a note.

The note was short, simple and to the point. It simply stated that there was no chance in hell that we were going to catch him. And he signed the note Double Dutch. Once the note was shared with Doug, something in him stirred, like a long-lost memory or the name of a movie title that you can’t quite remember. There was something familiar to him about the name that bothered him but he just couldn’t put his finger on it. He had tried to log into the police servers from the ship already but for some reason the connection kept getting dropped.

In the end, he remembered that the name came from an open FBI case of a serial killer that had been operating all over the US. His MO (modus operandi) always included 2 children though the sexes and ages varied. He always killed them. One of the FBI agents working the case had stupidly dubbed him Double Dutch after the jump-rope game at a crime scene within earshot of the press and since then he’s left a note at each crime scene. And signed them Double Dutch.

If only we could have gotten connected to the NYPD servers. The FBI had a profile of the killer and if Doug could get, we’d be closer to potentially figuring out who the monster was. Providing of course the FBI profile was accurate.

The decision was made, in the face of everything else that we couldn’t deal with happening on the ship, to make a trip into the closest NYPD precinct and hopefully recover that profile. We’ll be heading off to do that in the next few days. Just need to do a little recon and get the ship into position. It’s going to be difficult. We have no idea what we’re going to encounter when we get into the city. Hopefully you’re not going to have to go too far but there’s no telling what condition we’ll fine the precincts in as we come across them. The idea is a little scary but we need to figure this out. We can’t let the monster take any more of our children.

The Next Day