[I stand on the shore with Ajay Shah, looking out at the rusting wrecks of once-proud ships. Since the government does not possess the funds to remove them and because both time and the elements have made their steel next to useless, they remain silent memorials to the carnage this beach once witnessed.]

Ah, back to form. So this chapter is about people trying to escape by sea. This is a pretty solid zombie plan in theory, but in practice you’re limited by the avaliable boats. Today’s interviewee knew of a “shipyard” nearby but not the fact it was one dismantling ships rather than producing them. Apparently, neither did a lot of other people, or else they still felt their chances were better.

One of these ships, the Veronique Delmas, was trying to pull one of her beached sisters out to sea. Ropes and chains were haphazardly lashed to the stern of the APL Tulip, a Singapore container ship that had already been partially gutted. I arrived just as the Delmas fired up her engines. I could see the white water churning as she strained against the lines. I could hear some of the weaker ropes snap like gunshots.
The stronger chains though…they held out longer than the hull. Beaching the Tulip must have badly fractured her keel. When the Delmas began to pull, I heard this horrible groan, this creaking screech of metal. The Tulip literally split in two, the bow remaining on shore while the stern was pulled out to sea.
…
There must have been at least a thousand people aboard, packing every cabin and passageway and square inch of open deck space. Their cries were muffled by the thunder of escaping air.

While the book often goes too far in inventing failures, I’ll admit that such an attitude is a lot more appealing for horror than seeing things work. This is really awful – but the bit that’s best is that this is caused by the best of intentions. They were trying to rescue all these people and instead they killed them in their desperation.

The interviewer asks why people didn’t just pull up the ladders so we can be reminded that people weren’t thinking clearly. I don’t think this would ever be said in-universe. Everyone would already understand this. This sort of discussion won’t come for another generation or so.

For that matter, pulling up the ladders and waiting isn’t really the rational response, because people were still shaky on how exactly the zombies worked, and not a long term solution because how were they supposed to get food and water? If they couldn’t get out to sea and limited mobility, they were just delaying the inevitable. It’s better than dying immediately, but not really a good solution.

Other boats are ferrying people and of course they’re asking for whatever the people have and some boats have requirements. Indian guy proceeds to be shocked by the idea of people being prejudiced based on color of cast.

Untouchables? Castes? Who the hell still thinks like that? And this is the crazy part, some older people actually got out of the queue! Can you believe that?

Considering your country periodically lynches them…yeah, definitely. They’re not leaving the line because they don’t think that they deserve to live as much as other people but because there’s a good chance those people will refuse to let them on the boat so they should move to a line that will take them as fast as possible, and if they get on that boat it’s possible they’ll be murdered by humans instead of zombies.

He goes on to say that those were just rare exceptions which is why he said it as a broad description of the boats.

Anyway, to continue the horror there’s zombies in the water too.

Many infected refugees had tried to swim for the ships and then reanimated after they drowned. It was low tide, just deep enough for a man to drown, but shallow enough for a standing ghoul to reach up for prey. You saw many swimmers suddenly vanish below the surface

That’s pretty horrible!

Although once again, not sure why none of the infected seem to understand they’re going to die and trying to get to “safety” just ensures they’ll kill more people afterward. I remembered this as that there were some zombies and so swimmers started to get bitten and when they drowned they reanimated and started doing the same until the water quickly became a deathtrap, but apparently lots of infected just ran into the water anyway.

Despite this, some people are even willing to jump back into the water to save people. He swims out to a boat and gets there, but then goes under only to be grabbed by a human rather than zombie and pulled back up. Yay people helping other people!

I read one of the leaked scripts for the WWZ movie, so I’d like to mention here that I actually prefer the movie we’ve got. In that one, this story shows up, but instead it’s a story about the boat’s captain who jumps in the water to save a woman and her infant. They pull them up only to see blood on the baby, but before they shoot it the mother wipes the blood away and shows the skin isn’t broken. The crew calms down, but when they look away we see that the mother was bit on the heel and hiding her injury. Naturally, she soon reanimates and eats the baby. Moral: don’t help people.

Anyway, he’s one of the lucky ones. In the chaos, there was no way to keep track of if people were infected – also, you’d think that the water itself would hold an infection risk at this point, as even if the virus does degrade quite quickly it’s zombie soup at this point.

Some of the onboard infected refugees had begun to reanimate. Some vessels were floating slaughterhouses, others just burned at anchor. People were leaping into the sea. Many who sank beneath the surface never reappeared.

But yeah, creeeepy! This is fuel for a lot of good nightmares.

But it just ends there. We don’t get the context. How many boats made it? What happened to people who did climb into those beached ships – we know one was torn in half trying to get it out to sea, but the rest should still be there, so did anyone pull up the ladders? Were they all torn apart by the infected they’d let on board? Were the burning boats the exception or is he one of the only survivors?