Speaker A
Below you, the stairwell is full. Every face turned up toward the caged bulb above your head.
A fiction-style zombie survival story: trapped on a drifting cruise ship, a crew strands a wounded cadet, improvises a splint and a makeshift sounding line, and faces dwindling supplies and a storm.
Key Takeaways
- The story is a fictional survival narrative, with suspense driven by scarcity of food, water, and power.
- Cooperation among survivors is shown as essential, contrasted with the selfishness of the Chief Engineer.
- Improvised medical and engineering solutions drive the plot's problem-solving.
What the video covers
- Narrator is trapped in a stairwell as zombies climb toward a bright floodlit area, escaping through a steel door to the deck six promenade.
- At 1 a.m. the narrator reaches security control, where Rosa and others have been surviving with limited water and food.
- Theo, a 19-year-old deck cadet with a broken ankle, is introduced; he had fled his muster station on the first night.
- The Chief Engineer, Hale, is revealed to have abandoned the crew and secretly taken the lifeboat supplies for himself.
- The narrator splints Theo's leg using a mop handle, a broom, and the first-aid kit.
- The group uses a chain and a sounding line made of knotted rope to measure depth and anchor the drifting ship.
- Power returns intermittently; water is restored but food is running out, with only days of supplies left.
- Rosa has a box of energy bars, and the survivors split oranges and bars to stretch their rations.
- A storm arrives at sunset, the anchor drags toward the reef, and the lights and power fail.
- The story ends with Hale loading supplies into a lifeboat and Theo's hidden injury being revealed, leaving the outcome uncertain.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Then the first one takes a step. Up. Next to you is a steel door to the deck six promenade. You push it open.
Speaker A
Then the first one takes a step. Up.
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Far brighter than your bulb. You flatten yourself behind the open door. And they come.
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Next to you is a steel door to the deck six promenade. You push it open.
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When the stairs go quiet, you let the door swing shut, and go down. At one in the morning, security control's door opens before you can knock.
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Light pours in. At the front of the ship, the floodlights blaze over the foredeck.
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Hi. I'm the cough. Theo. Deck cadet. Nineteen. On the first night, he ran from his muster station.
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Far brighter than your bulb. You flatten yourself behind the open door. And they come.
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So she told you she was alone. Not my finest night. From the washroom cupboard: a wooden mop, a broom, and the first-aid kit.
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Up the stairs. Past you, near enough to touch. Out the door, toward the brighter light.
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It takes two pairs of hands. Keep the joints above and below a break still.
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When the stairs go quiet, you let the door swing shut, and go down.
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You remember the whisper. You mime a swimming stroke at Theo. Swimming? Forget it. I promised you a clear way down. There wasn't one.
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At one in the morning, security control's door opens before you can knock.
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Main power. The pumps push water up from the tanks again. While Hale's generator runs, water isn't the problem.
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Rosa, in person. Behind her, the camera wall, rebooting.
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Three people, two bars each. Six a day. Water: on tap. Food: five days. The reef: eight days.
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On a mattress: a tall young man in an orange vest, left ankle swollen and bruised.
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Behind you, the camera wall flickers back to life. Camera two-twelve. Outside, by the lifeboats.
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Hi. I'm the cough. Theo. Deck cadet. Nineteen.
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The man in the white boilersuit is loading the last boxes into lifeboat one. Hale. The Chief Engineer.
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On the first night, he ran from his muster station. He broke his ankle on the stairs and crawled to my door.
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He stops. Holds his forearm. Pulls his sleeve down over it. At three in the morning, he climbs in and shuts the hatch.
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He was ashamed. He begged her not to tell anyone he was alive.
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There was only ever enough for one boat. He leaves the generator running. Rosa darkens the ship again. All but the floodlights at the front.
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So she told you she was alone. Not my finest night.
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We can't anchor out here. The chain doesn't reach the bottom. The chain must lie along the seabed.
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From the washroom cupboard: a wooden mop, a broom, and the first-aid kit.
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And if the power dies, we still don't need it. Knock off the windlass brake, and the chain runs out by its own weight.
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You snap the mop handle in two. One half on each side of his leg, from above the knee to past the heel.
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I know that room. Two stairways up to the foredeck. And the floodlight breaker, by the crew door.
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You hold. Rosa wraps. It takes two pairs of hands. Keep the joints above and below a break still.
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A steel shackle from an empty davit, for weight. First he measures from the rail down to the sea. Then he ties a knot every fathom below it. Six feet. Fifty fathoms. Three hundred feet.
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Here, everything from the knee to the foot.
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Every dawn and every night, you lower the sounding line from deck five. All fifty knots in the rope slide through your hands.
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The broom, upside down, becomes a crutch.
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On day twenty, the bars are gone. Hale emptied the other five lifeboats into his own.
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You remember the whisper. You mime a swimming stroke at Theo.
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By day, the sky is bright everywhere. No single light to follow. They drift apart.
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Swimming? Forget it. I promised you a clear way down. There wasn't one.
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A crate of oranges, half of them moldy. Twelve are still good. That's all the food left. The galley was stripped on the first night.
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So you made one.
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Three in the morning. Rosa waits on deck five, above the foredeck, behind a steel door. Sounding line, six flares from lifeboat four, six lifebuoys.
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Out of habit, you turn the washroom tap. It coughs. Spits air. And runs.
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Above you, up two open stairways, hundreds of feet shuffle under the floodlights. The walkie clicks.
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Main power. The pumps push water up from the tanks again.
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She lights each one low, behind the steel wall, and drops it at once. The lifebuoy floats. The flare keeps burning.
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While Hale's generator runs, water isn't the problem.
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Theo pulls the floodlight breaker. The foredeck goes black. Now the brightest light is red, down on the water.
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Food is.
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You knock off the brake. The chain roars out. Above you, every head turns toward the noise.
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Rosa has one box of energy bars. Thirty bars, two hundred and fifty calories each.
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At eight hundred feet, three times the depth, Theo spins the brake tight. The sixth flare dies. In the dark, they drift. Some drift down the stairs.
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Three people, two bars each. Six a day.
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Something bumps the other side. I'm inside. Door shut. Now you wait for dawn. Dawn. Rosa reads the GPS.
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Water: on tap. Food: five days. The reef: eight days.
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The chain is tight. All day, the GPS doesn't move. The anchor holds. At noon, on deck five, in the shade of lifeboat four, the three of you split the last three oranges.
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Power, yes. But the engines need a crew of engineers. And the bridge is theirs.
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On day twenty-seven, the weather screen on Rosa's console shows the air pressure dropping. Fast.
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Behind you, the camera wall flickers back to life. Camera two-twelve. Outside, by the lifeboats.
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If the power goes, the taps go with it. Water: nine and a half gallons. Food: four days.
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The fourteen lifeboats launched on the first night are gone. None of them answers the radio.
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And behind the ship, there's only the reef. At sunset, the wind starts to howl. And the chain starts to jump.
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The man in the white boilersuit is loading the last boxes into lifeboat one. Hale. The Chief Engineer.
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The anchor is dragging. Rosa watches the GPS and calls out the miles. Ten. Seven. Four. One.
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The deck around him is empty. They've all walked to the floodlights.
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The lights die. The cameras. The taps. Everything. In the dark, the floor tilts under your feet. The whole ship is leaning.
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That's why he turned the lights on. To clear his way out.
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At the door, Theo stops. In the dark, his voice is the whisper from day eight.
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He stops. Holds his forearm. Pulls his sleeve down over it.
Topics:zombiesurvivalcruise shiphorror storyfictionpost-apocalypticstorytellingaudio drama
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