A reason to live

<snip>
They turned to face the opposite direction. 
More zombies were shuffling from that direction too. 
“We’re surrounded…” Jay said, drawing a pistol from his belt “And you broke my good gun…”
<end snip>

Seymour did something next that Jay didn't expect.

The last thing that Jay expected was for Seymour to bound towards the zombies, kicking and punching them all, doing a pirouhette and catching each one in the head, knocking them all over before pummelling their squishy heads into the floor.

Unsurprisingly Seymour DIDN'T do this. Instead he sat down on the floor.

“What are you doing?!” Jay screamed at him, there's zombies. He pointed at them even though they weren't far away. “Look. Zombies!”
“What's the point.” Seymour said, letting his head fall into his hands.
“What do you mean? The point is we escape, stay alive... and then...”
“And then? What?” Seymour groaned. “Stay alive for what? Everyone we know is dead. My daughter lived and died 3 millions years ago. I'll never meet her. I'll never know who she grew up to be.”
“Oh stop acting all depressed like you've got nothing left to live for.” Jay shouted at him.
“But I HAVEN'T got anything left to live for!”
“You have... probably.” Jay racked his brain trying to think of something. “Err... think of all the fine wines you haven't tasted yet.”
“The Huzards stole them all.”
“Okay... err... think of all the classical music you haven't heard yet.”
“Unless Mozart came back from the dead in the last 3 million years I doubt there's been any more written.”
“How about... err... you like the royal family don't you? You haven't met the new king of queen yet!”
“Do you seriously expect Humans to still be around? It's been 3 million years! They've all died out. Look what happened to mice and weasels, if there are Humans around we'll be the equivalent of pond life. They'd regard us as unevolved council-estate chavs!” He took a deep breath. “You must feel the same. It's hopeless. You just had shoot your dead wife, I expect that wasn't much fun.”

Jay sat down next to him and put his head in his hands too. As they sulked the zombies kept coming.

“If that gun had any ammo I'd use it to shoot myself.” Seymour whined.
“I wish it did.” Jay said sarcastically. “I could strangle you to death if you'd like?”

They sat in silence and waited for death. As they did, they looked out of the window opposite, they heard an explosion a few decks away and watched as a huge chunk of metal drifted past the window.
“Was that the Drive Room?” Seymour asked.
Jay silently nodded, but neither of them moved.
“So it's even more hopeless. We've got absolutely no way of taking control of the ship without the Drive Room.”
Jay shook his head.

The zombies got closer. They were only a few footsteps away now.

“I wonder how Alota died.” Seymour said. “It's a depressing thought, but I'm in that sort of mood.”

Jay looked up, “Oh yeah, I forgot to give you something.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a scrap of paper. It was a single page torn out of a book. “Sorry it took me so long, with all the zombies and the shooting, and the Simulants I forgot to give it to you. I found it in my time with the STCP in an escape pod from the Red Dwarf.”

Seymour's eyes lit up as he saw the yallowed paper. He unfolded it carefully, it must have been hundreds of years old. Then he gasped.
“It's a girl's handwriting... look at the little hearts dotting the i...” He gasped again. “This is Alota's handwriting!” He pointed to the page. “That's an Oxford comma, I taught her that when she was 3 years old – I didn't think it had sunk in!” His jaw gaped open as he read the page.

Darling diary. I've been on this bloody ship for almost my entire life, I only have distant memories of living somewhere else. Living with my Dad. I miss him, but I can't really remember what he was like. I think he looked like Mr Benn and lived in a place called Downton Abby, but I might be confusing that with all the videos I've watched. That's how I learned to read and write, by watching repeats of Sesame street. Holly isn't much use at conversations, he forgets me every day, and I have to reintroduce myself constantly, sometimes even twice a day. He always makes a joke about my name, but I can't see what's funny about Alota Niples.
I'll be 18 next month, I wonder if I'll ever meet someone I can have a proper conversation with. I found a kitten last week and I've been trying to teach it to speak, but so far it's not going very well.

A tear fell from Seymour's cheek as he read it. “How dare you keep this from me!” He shouted at Jay.
“It's been in my pocket for almost 600 years. I forgot okay?”

Seymour lept to his feet. “This is a reason to live for!”
“Is it?”
“Yes! I want to know more about her, what was he life like... I don't care if she's dead. I just want to know.
“Well if you want to keep living, you'd better look behind you!”
Seymour ducked as a bloodied Human hand clawed at his head. He pushed the zombie away and it knocked into another, sending them backwards.

“It's still no good, there's too many zombies, and we don't have any weapons. We're still surrounded.”
“Oh piffle!” Seymour said with a grin, and jabbed at a computer terminal behind him.
“What are you doing? All the computers are locked.”
Seymour shook his head. “Not after the Drive Room blew up. Remember SpaceCorps operating protocol 528-B?”
“Sorry it's been 600 years for me, is that the one about Hungry Hippo and all other blood sports are banned?”
“No it means that if the Drive Room is destroyed, ANY computer can control the entire ship. As long as you have hand scans of the two most senior officers onboard.”
It took Jay a few seconds to catch up. “That's us!”

They both placed their hands on the screen and grinned. Then the computer came alive.
“I can control everything!” Seymour said. “I'm activating all turrets and tolling them to target all zombies and simulants.” He pressed the final command and a turret popped out of the ceiling above them and fired a hundred rounds into the zombies in just a few seconds, splattering them with blood but Seymour didn't even turn around.
“I'm flooding the cargobay where the Simulants are...” They watched on the screen as a tidal wave destroyed the Simulants and their machine to bring back the dead.”

“Can you control the engines?” Jay asked.
Seymour grinned. “Where would you like to go?”
“Seriously?! Somewhere with food, I'm sick of tinned mushy peas!”
Seymour nodded. “There's a planet 2 days away. Course laid in.”
They felt a jolt as the ship's engines kicked in for the first time in 3 million years. They groaned, but fired up to full speed. Jay stifled a laugh, things were finally looking up.
“We've got control of the ship... no zombies, no badguys... this is like the good old times!
“Uhh...”
“What?”
“Alright I might have done something jolly bad.” Said Seymour.
“What?”
“By turning on the turrets I gave Holly access to them. Duck!”
The turret which had wasted the zombies so proficiently fired at them, destroying the computer system and exploding the screen in an explosion of sparks.

Jay dived left, Seymour dived right. But that was when the lights went out.
The turret powered down, and everything went silent.

“What happened?” Jay asked in the darkness.
“I... did the only thing one could jolly well think of.” Seymour said. “I cut power.”
“To what systems?”
“To everything.”
“Everything?”
“That's right.”
“So there's no lights.”
“No.”
“Air?”
“Um... No.”
“Incoming baddies alerts?”
“No, well that never worked anyway.”
“Phone chargers?”
“Nope.”
“Wifi? Can I at least check my emails?”
“Who's going to be emailing you?! No, nothing's working. I flipped the master reset. It'll all come back up in about... 4 days.
“4 days!!!!”
“That's how long a master reset takes apparently. I was as shocked as you, but I'm not an engineer. But look on the bright side, when it comes back up Holly will be back to normal, although we might have to set the clocks to the correct time... oh and one other bad thing...”
“What?”
“It's wiped all the savegames on your Xbox.”
“Damn!”

After a few minutes of stumbling around in the darkness, jay stopped and asked “So... how long will this air we're breathing last for?”
“About enough time for us to reach that planet, we're drifting of course but we're heading in the right direction. I say we get into a Starbug and investigate the planet, then come back when the ship's turned back on.”
“Okay so just one question... which direction are the others, I can't see a thing.”
“Good question. MR WHITEWOLF! Ms JONES! MISS MOREAU!” Seymour shouted until they found the others.

<OOC – so all the power is off but we're drifting to the planet. All the zombies are dead (unless there's some survivors?) although Seymour didn't think to shoot the Huzards, Vermin or any of those odd monsters we saw after coming out of stasis. I didn't explain in the post but stasis rooms will still be working, they're on a separate backup that'll continue to work. Could someone find a way for us to see in the dark, and then get to the flightdeck?>