On the other side, there was a meaty Smack! as the bullet hit thick hide and flesh. The only response was a chuffing grunt, followed by a nasal roar. Oh fuck. Alex fired again, with even less results. There wasn’t even a roar.
“I think you’re just pissing it off!” Alison said.
Desperation got the better of him. Jeremiah ran over and grabbed a big crescent wrench off a table and pointed it at the maintenance hatch. “Someone give me some help!” A second later, the door exploded inward.
* * *
General Rose was staring at the big map attached to his office wall with magnets. A distinctive and familiar noise made him frown. Distant gunshots? “Mays?”
“General?” his aide called from the adjacent cabin.
“Did you hear shots?”
“Yes, General, but there usually are.”
Captain Mays had a good point, though it didn’t change the fact that they sounded different. Someone was always shooting a zombie or two. Or a dozen. Since he’d arrived with the remains of his command, there’d been constant fighting against the infected on many of the ships. Some was intense enough to cause the loss of an entire ship. Most of the fights hadn’t been heavy on guns. A lot were hand-to-hand.
“Not like this,” he said and walked out of his cabin to the bridge. Captain Sampson and his crew were around the radio listening to someone who sounded extremely excited. Or scared. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Sampson spun, surprised by Rose’s sudden appearance. “Something’s happening all over the Flotilla.”
“What?”
“Attacks,” Sampson said.
“What kind of attacks?” Mays asked, coming in behind the general.
“We can’t find out. The transmissions are walking all over each other. However, one navy ship, the Freedom, got through for a second.”
“The guy was nuts,” another crewman said. “He was screaming about seals.”
“Navy SEALs?” Rose asked. Sampson shrugged. The wing doors of the bridge were open to the cool evening, and the sounds of gunfire were increasing steadily. Something was definitely wrong.
Rose walked back to his cabin and picked up his radio. “Rose to Ocean Vista, over.” Gotta change that name.
“Ocean Vista. Go ahead, General.”
“Tell security to secure all water-level entrances to the boat. There are incursions underway on other ships in the Flotilla.”
“Only one entrance doorway is open,” the man replied. “We have two people guarding it.”
“Get an entire squad down there. Immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rose nodded and put the radio down. Mays was standing by the cabin door, watching him, with a curious look on his face. “I know,” Rose said, “but I’m not being paranoid.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“Whatever. Put First Platoon on alert. Get them geared up and ready. Something is seriously wrong.”
Despite his doubts, Mays was a good aide and immediately did what he was told. Less than a minute later, the radio beeped for attention.
“That was fast,” Mays said and answered. “Go ahead.”
“Incursion on the port door,” the voice said, the sentence punctuated by a series of shots. “A goddamned, big, fucking seal!”
“Navy SEAL?”
“No, one with flippers. It’s as big as a man. Tried to bite Smith, so we shot it.”
“Oh, shit,” Rose said. “Close all doors.” He ran back to the bridge. “Sampson?” The man turned. “Strain Delta affects all life. Dr. Breda said advanced mammals have bigger brains, and they can act intelligently.” Sampson’s brows knitted. “The damn marine mammals, Lieutenant. They’re attacking to spread the virus.”
“How…”
Shots rang out, clearly audible through the open doors. Rose looked at Mays who was already on the radio. “Does it matter how?”
“Two men wounded,” Mays reported.
“What the fuck, Captain?”
Mays looked pained. “Dolphins jumped right through the open hatch.”
“Were the men bit?”
“No, but they both have cracked ribs. Shot the fish and rolled them overboard.”
“Tell them to shoot any animals they see,” Rose said and stabbed a finger at him. “Any. You got me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rose turned back to Sampson. “Lock the damn ship down and try to spread word to the rest of the Flotilla.”
Rose strode back into his cabin and opened his dresser. Inside were his battle rattle and weapons. “Better gear up,” he said to Mays. More gunshots echoed. The porthole showed only darkness as he took off his uniform jacket and reached for his well-worn BDUs. His rifle and pistol were both loaded. He had a feeling he’d need both soon.
* * *
Jeremiah was considering using the engineering compartment’s phone when the door burst open. He didn’t know who he was going to call. It wasn’t like OOE had an armed security contingent aboard. He’d been in such dire straights just before the plague, he’d cut his staff down to the bare bones.
The metallic door exploded inward, colliding with a table covered in tools, sending them flying like missiles. The table was crushed as though it were made of twigs. The elephant seal didn’t act like a rampaging monster. If they had been in a movie of science gone amok, the seal would have been a mutant bent on killing everything, especially humans. Infected men and women seemed to exist only to murder and feed on uninfected humans.
The seal stood on its front flippers, framed in the doorway, little black eyes moving from side to side as it deliberately examined the room. Jeremiah felt a cold shiver run up his spine. “Oh, my God,” he said. The seal instantly locked its eyes on him. Cold, deadly intent was evident in the seal’s demeanor as it moved toward him.
“Now,” Alex said. He and Patty fired simultaneously. Bullets smacked into the thick neck of the seal with little red splashes of blood. They continued to fire steadily with no evident effect.
Jeremiah noticed that the seal’s neck and side were covered in massive scar tissue. He remembered seeing videos of male elephant seals battling each other for sexual dominance. Those battles basically consisted of them violently biting each other’s necks until one decided it had had enough. The bullets must have seemed no more annoying than a particularly small challenger’s nibble. The seal advanced toward Jeremiah, its forward gait reminding him of an overweight person trying to belly flop in the surf over and over.
“The face!” he yelled. “The neck is too tough!”
Both shooters instantly shifted their aim. Just as her gun ran empty, and the slide locked back, Patty’s final bullets tore a chunk out of the elephant seal’s ‘trunk.’ It reeled backward, mouth open and roaring. Alex switched to a two-handed stance and aimed carefully. He fired a single round which entered the seal’s mouth and exited the top of its head.
The huge animal jerked, and all two tons of it crashed to the deck with enough force to knock over several benches and tables. Two of the benches landed on Wade Watts who had been screwing around with some parts. He let out a surprised cry but didn’t try to free himself.
As often happens in the aftermath of a traumatic situation, several people stepped forward for a better look. This phenomenon could be observed after chain reaction traffic accidents, natural disasters, even war. In the aftermath of a briefly violent event, people just had to get a closer look. Sociologists believe it was the remnants of a simian reaction which benefitted our ancient ancestors in some way.
“Stay back,” Alex warned.
Jeremiah jumped, realizing he was one of the ones moving forward. The elephant seal was twitching and pumping out a truly astounding amount of blood in bright red, rhythmic spurts. He reversed and backed away, looking over his shoulder at the access hatch. This isn’t over; I need to get out of here!
“It’s not dead!”
Jeremiah’s head came back around. It was the same assistant who’d sai
d seals were cute.
“You bastard—”
Alex yelled again, probably for the crazy woman to get back, when another, much smaller, seal flew in through the door and hit her square in the chest. Jeremiah had no idea how the damned seal had managed to launch itself the way it did. They appeared clumsy on land. It bit into her face as soon as they landed. Then, more seals poured through the shattered hatch like a jackpot on a deranged slot machine.
Alex started shooting as the young, seal-loving woman started screaming. Patty tried to shoot another seal, then realized her gun was empty. A big, fat, harbor seal rolled to a stop at her feet and snapped at her legs. Patty squeaked and backpedaled, clawing a magazine from her belt and desperately trying to fit it in place.
The seal caught hold of Patty’s pant leg and shook her, hard. She flew sideways and hit the wall with a clang. She fell in a heap and didn’t move. Alex continued to fire at the seals as they poured in. Jeremiah saw a couple of smaller seals take hits and go down before he turned back to the maintenance hatch. Without considering, he went to it and started turning nuts.
“Would you help me?”
Over the sound of gunfire, Jeremiah finally heard the voice. He searched for the source and realized it was Wade Watts who was trapped under the shelving. It looked like two had fallen creating an open area underneath, so he wasn’t pinned. “I’m trying to get us out of here.”
“Don’t we have to live long enough to get out?” Wade demanded.
“How’s helping you going to stop those crazy, fucking seals?” Jeremiah yelled.
“Like this!”
Jeremiah continued to strain against the wrench. The first bolt had yet to move. He glanced at the shelves and could see Wade underneath, holding up a device he’d built. Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a…”
“Yes,” Wade said. “Yes, it is. Get this damned shelf off me!”
* * *
The Pacific Adventurer was lit up like Christmas Eve. Lights all along the deck’s edges illuminated the water. The men from Rose’s platoon were spread out along the railings. The ship was 330 feet long, so the 44 soldiers were spaced 15 feet apart.
“Spread really fucking thin,” Mays pointed out, which was why he and Rose were armed and, along with the navy pukes, helping guard the sections near the bridge. “We’ve closed the water-level doors. What can they do?”
A minute later, a dolphin rocketed out of the water and landed on the deck at his feet. Rose put a burst of 5.56mm from his M4 carbine through the dolphin. “Make sense now, Captain?”
There’d only been two other attempts by the dolphins. Rose was sure he’d seen one watching from the water as the others tried. But after the first try, his soldiers were ready. Shooting a human-sized target at 200 meters was what they were trained to do. Hitting something as big as a dolphin from only a few meters away was simple.
Other ships weren’t as lucky. Through the crazy radio traffic, Rose heard intermittent calls about bitten people, attacking seals, biting dolphins, and people succumbing to the virus. It’s all turning to shit. The attack was well planned. They’d waited for evening. It had probably taken days to get all the marine mammals in position. How can humans fight this? He remembered Dr. Breda saying days ago, “The planet is lost.”
It had been an hour since the last attack. It sounded like they were largely played out around the Flotilla as well. He wondered how many had died or become zombies and how many more military ships had been lost.
“Hey, General,” Mays called.
“What do you have, Tom?”
“Come look at this fish.”
Mays was kneeling next to the carcass of the first dolphin that had landed on the deck. He’d shot it himself. Rose was reluctant to get up close and personal with the creature that had tried to kill him. Mays was using his Ka-Bar knife to hold the animal’s mouth open.
“Those are some impressive teeth,” Rose said.
“That’s the point. Dolphins don’t have teeth like this.”
Despite his earlier concern, Rose leaned in closer. The teeth were about an inch long and pointy, with serrated edges. “Aren’t those more like shark teeth?”
“Yes, they are.” One of the navy men had come over. He looked uncomfortable in web gear, and even more so carrying a rifle. “I was a marine biology major before joining the navy. Dolphin teeth are tiny and rounded, not pointy. Those are definitely shark teeth.”
“Then why are they in a dolphin?” Rose asked. The man shrugged. Could it be the virus? Dr. Breda insisted Strain Delta wasn’t from Earth. Could the fucking thing mutate creatures? How long had the dolphin been afflicted? A week? Two? He stared at the teeth and wondered how long it took to grow them. Years.
The sound of outboard motors made him look out to sea. A RHIB was approaching his ship. He thought the crew must be overly brave. As it got closer, Rose could see it wasn’t one of the smaller ones like he’d used. This one was longer and had an enclosed cockpit. There were gunners with .50 calibers on the front, along with six Marines in full battle rattle behind the cockpit. It looked like the USMC was still in the game.
“Ahoy on ship!” a loudspeaker blared as the engines slowed, and the boat came to a stop a hundred yards away. “Is this the boat with General Rose aboard?”
Rose moved back to the bridge wing where Captain Sampson was looking on. A young ensign reached into a cubby and handed Rose a bullhorn. “This is General Rose.”
“General, this is Lieutenant Kennedy. Good to see you’re okay. My commander sent me over to check on you. It’s been mayhem everywhere. We had to shoot a dozen seals that were trying to get aboard my boat.”
“We’re good, Lieutenant. I put my people on alert as soon as the shit hit the fan.”
“Glad to hear. We’re going to check others. You sure you’re okay?”
“We have a platoon, Marine. I think we can handle some wild fish.” The lieutenant threw a salute at him.
Rose shook his head and returned the salute. “Crazy goddamned leather necks.”
“Gung-ho bastards,” Mays agreed.
They had just turned the boat, and the twin outboard motors were beginning to rev up, when it was slammed from below. The collision was titanic, cracking the boat’s keel and shoving the center five feet above the waterline. The six Marines standing behind the cockpit were catapulted up and out, yelling as they splashed into the dark waters. The pilot slammed forward into the transom before falling limply as the boat dropped back into the water.
The forward and aft gunners had been buckled into their stations, so they weren’t injured. Both yelled and sprayed .50 caliber bullets in wide arcs. Rose was too surprised to duck as bullets smacked into the water in a line just below him. All he’d seen were a dark shape lifting the boat out of the water and a flash of white in the Pacific Adventurer’s powerful lights.
“Throw a rope to them!” he yelled at the equally stunned captain of his ship. He turned back just in time to see the massive, blunt head of a killer whale rise out of the ocean and rip the bow gunner from his position, gun and all. The same thing happened to the stern gunner a second later.
Mays got off a couple of shots during the second attack, though Rose couldn’t be sure if any of the rifle shots had hit their mark. The small boat was attacked from below and torn apart, right before their eyes. Dark shapes were just visible below the water’s surface. None of the ejected soldiers surfaced, and the killer whales swam off to find more prey.
“Sea monsters,” Mays said.
“What?” Rose asked, surprised to see he was still holding his rifle and hadn’t fired a shot.
“The missing navy RHIB? They said it could have been sea monsters.”
“Sea monsters,” Rose said and carefully searched the water. “Yeah.” In the near distance, they could see the dim outline of a distinctive ship, its aft low in the water and a launch tower amidships. “Captain, do we have power? Can we move?”
“Certainly.”
&nbs
p; “Then let’s go. We need to help out, and I’m sure as hell not getting in a small boat right now.”
* * *
Alex aimed and fired as quickly as he could. All pretense of monitoring ammo use was out the window. He’d swapped to his last mag an undetermined eternity ago, leaving him with 13 rounds of .40 caliber. He felt like he’d fired at least 100 shots since then.
An avalanche of harbor seals had flooded in through the hatch after he’d dropped the elephant seal. He’d wondered where they were all coming from until he remembered the back of the OOE’s ship was a low fantail that descended almost to water level. The idea was that it would be easier to load and unload spaceships. Turned out it was easier to load zombie seals too.
A seal stopped to maul the very dead research assistant. Another tried to climb over, and Alex took the two-fer. He fired, his bullet punching through the first seal’s head and continuing into the torso of the second. They flopped around, biting each other and bleeding. A flood of sea animal and human blood flowed across the floor.
Everyone who was still alive and conscious was in the back of the room hiding. He cast a quick glance toward them. Alison was cowering with Coldwell and his assistants, their eyes wide in panic. They either couldn’t move or knew there was nowhere to go. Jeremiah was trying to move a fallen equipment rack. Alex had no idea why. When Alex turned back, there was a crash and another elephant seal bulled through the corpses he had piled up.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, how many of you are there?”
It looked at him calmly, cocking its head. Alex responded by shooting it right between the eyes. The .40 caliber round dug a furrow in the animal’s cranium, temporarily revealing gleaming, white bone before the channel filled with blood. However, the bullet didn’t penetrate. The animal gave a honking roar and shuffled its huge, fat body toward him. Alex shot again, and the round punched into the beast’s neck just below its head. Other than a stream of blood, there was no effect. The pistol’s slide locked back, empty.
Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live Page 20