There are certain things that do and do not lend themselves to stories.
And I confess that the title did not come naturally,
the characters did not come willingly,
but understandably when you consider they’re just survivors.

This story began in Japan on an island.
The Grand Okawa Hotel on Izu – scenic and spectacular.
It’s 1965 and mad science is not yet quite alive.

Back then the rules were different on cyanide experiment,
and water that you’d swim in then you wouldn’t dream of now.
The pool seemed most innocuous,
the guests that night were not just us,
and we should’ve thought something was clear awry.

Awry it was that hotel staff would shudder as they walked right past,
not looking back or even glancing twice.
The water’s edge and brilliance bright that kept it’s blue right through the night
was never gazed on them with any want.

Amiss we should have made our mark when a bell-hop slipped and nearly parked
his carriage in the deep end barked and howled as if avoiding death itself.

Because he had.

We took our rooms and dinner slow, and made our way to floor below to breathe in salty air and taste the view.
But neither I…nor you, could have seen them coming.
The screams at first we thought from fun to hear them ring out one by one, but
Soon the feared reality gripped our souls.

Twisted arms and backwards legs they came.
Chanting for our tasty brain, their minds now a shadowed vacancy.
They rushed at first upon those near who came to see the screaming there, but
All was lost too soon and quick they died.

…or so they tried.

Apothecary mad in style took to their veins and cursed their while,
And wouldn’t let them go from earth and dust.

It took us all a fearful time, to figure out and soon surmise that the cause of death was simply clear as day.
The pool the guest had swum in then absorbed within their supple skin, had turned them inside out and out of mind.
The un-dead rose and violent fought their way through throes of all the lot,
Humanity they just forgot.

A weapons lab most illogical playing cards all biological secluded on island tropical.
We…were…trapped.

But I grabbed a crow-bar, you found a gun, and through the carnage we did run.
And now a dozen years or more have passed since that night I made quite sure

That I ran faster than you.