by Jones, K. J.
Extinction Level Event, Book Four
Rescue
K.J. Jones
Independent Publisher
Copyright © 2020 Katherine Guarino
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Art Painter
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
To the ELE fans and everyone who has posted positive reader reviews, big social distancing air hugs to you all!
A special thank you to Joe Brown for his help on the technicalities of battle. To Tanya Griggs, Shannon Hammac, and Mike Petersen. And especially to Shannon Smith, the captain of the ship on the fan page.
Part I
Chapter One
Charleston SC
1.
Phebe raised her hand against the morning sun. She walked along a cruise ship's cement pier. The sounds of seagulls. Water sloshing below. But the smells of the bay were wrong. It wasn’t the dead bodies surrounding her. They were past putrefaction and entered skeletonization. Very little smell from them. The stench was of things burned, mixed with an undertone of noxious chemical. It was from the Navy napalming the refugee island yesterday.
She ran to the side of the pier and vomited over the side.
Below, the eyes of an alligator floated in the murky, brackish water. A bit of tail sway broke the surface.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to puke on you, gator.”
A swig of tap water from a travel mug to rinse her mouth. She spat it down at the gator. It merely floated as the water dropped on its head.
She stood up straight and looked around, wishing she had sunglasses. Her gaze shifted to the cruise ship and she laughed.
“Perfect. That’s our lives right there.”
It hadn’t been noticeable in the dark when they docked last night. The huge white beast of a vessel listed outward from the pier. Giant ropes wrapped around giant cleats seemed to be the only thing holding it up. Several stories high, the ship looked like a leaning city.
She heard someone come up the ladder from the Molly.
“Whoa,” said Tyler. “Was that like that last night?”
“Assuming so.”
She swigged more water, swished, and spat out, this time hitting a rat standing on a dead body. It was less appreciative of this than the gator.
“I’m hungry,” Tyler said.
“That is a problem.”
“We don’t got no food.”
“Yeah.”
They turned to see who was making noises at the ladder.
“I’m hungry,” Mullen announced his arrival.
“Jump in the water and get a gator,” said Tyler.
“Ha-ha. Whoa. Was that like that last night?”
Phebe rolled her eyes. “Ty, go to everyone on the Mol and tell them that the cruise ship is doing this so I don’t hear it over and over again.”
“Testy this morning, aren’t we?”
“Kiss my butt, Walter Mullen. Tyler, go.
“Fine.” The tweener went to the top of the ladder and yelled down at the top of his lungs the news.
Mullen said, “Can’t we do something with those chickens? Ya know, for food?”
She cocked a brow. “You know how to do that?”
“I didn’t mean me do it.”
“How about we loot?”
“Oh. That would be better.”
Brandon Pell was next up. “That’s a lot of dead bodies.” He gave a worried look to Tyler. “You okay with this, little man?”
Tyler scowled up at him. “Really?”
Mullen snickered. “You are so new here, Pell.”
“What?” Brandon asked.
They laughed at him.
2.
An exploration/loot party organized. Armed and wearing ZBDUs, but no one had sunglasses. It was not something people thought to grab when evacuating. They set out on the cement pier. Footfalls, seagulls, and stomachs growling were the biggest noises. The city sounded deserted.
“Okay.” Mazy put her hands on her hips. M4 strapped to her shoulder; the business end pointed down. “How the hell do we get where things are?”
A wall of terminal buildings ran along the cruise ship pier. The group looked one way, then the other.
“Dunno,” answered Phebe. “Let’s walk towards the ship’s gangway.”
The bodies deepened. They had to step on bones.
“This is so wrong,” said Brandon.
“Then you can stay and bury them,” snapped Phebe.
They approached the main entrance to the cruise ship.
There was no gangway. Nothing connecting the pier to the tilted ship.
Tyler looked down. “There’s gators.”
“You jump first.” Mullen shoved him.
“Hey, asshole.”
“Boys,” Phebe reprimanded.
They settled down.
“Getting in there will be a challenge,” Mazy commented.
“C’mon,” said Tyler. “This way. I can see through.” He hurried beside the depot buildings until they ended.
“God,” Brandon exclaimed. “Look at all the rats.”
Mazy pointed. “Gator there.”
“Sunning itself?”
“Looks like it’s eating something. Or somebody.”
Brandon shuttered. “So wrong.”
They turned right. The last building ended. An internal roadway big enough for cars and trucks to come through, which was probably its purpose.
Mazy hurried to a police officer who was dead and skeletonized on the hood of a patrol car. She took the gun and gun belt. Both she slipped into her loot bag. The passenger side door was unlocked. She opened it and reached in, taking more goodies. “See his shotgun?”
Head shakes.
“Somebody must have already taken it.”
“Unless a gator ate it.”
Mullen shoved Tyler.
“Stop it, dude.”
Brandon stared at the leathered face. The outline of the skull was visible. Eyes gone – pecked out. The mouth hung open in the eternal skeleton scream.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “What was his name?” He closed in on the body to look at the name tag on the uniform.
“No,” Mazy barked. “We don’t do that.”
“Why?”
Mullen answered, “They’re just the dead, man. We don’t look at their shit. Just take what we need.”
“But they are people.”
“Not anymore.”
They moved on, leaving Brandon staring at the cop.
“Catch up, Marine,” Mazy ordered.
At the end was an erected barrier. Dead National Guard strewed about, skeletonizing beneath their digital-camo fatigues and makeshift ZBDUs.
“They’re already picked over.” Phebe squatted beside one.
They found themselves in an employee parking lot. Rifles raised, they scanned. An attack could come from any direction now.
“Marine Pell,” Mazy barked. “Get you shit together.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Brandon’s weapon raised.
“Take our six, Pell. Ty, Mul, right flank. One forward. One backward. Watch that depot.”
“Roger that,” Mullen said.
“Roger that,” said Tyler.
Mazy took point. Phebe left flank, but it was mostly trees.
Ben had stayed back to guard the Molly and the non-fighters – Emily, the Jacksons, the chickens.
Cars here and there. Some parked. Some rested in strange positions, showing panic driving. That was the usual. Seagulls and rats picked over the dead. That was the usual, too. Garbage everywhere. The normal garbage – fast food cups knocking down the street whenever there was a breeze, wet plastic shopping bags flapping while pinned to something – mixed with not normal garbage. A lot of it looked to be things from suitcases. Shirts. Damp, dark blue-cover US passports. Papers. Small plastic toiletry bottles, the kind allowed on airplanes.
“Wherever the bulk of the people are,” said Mullen, “it must look like a nightmare.”
“If I recall right,” said Phebe, “the historic Battery would be to our left.”
“You been here before?”
“Yeah. With my mom and brother. I think I remember the basics of the place.”
Mazy said, “Good. Direct us.”
“Whoa,” said Mullen.
Directly across the street stood a domineering Greco-Roman Revivalist building with huge marble pillars. It stood on high ground with broad steps leading up to it.
“The United States Custom House,” Tyler read from its sign.
“Very authoritarian,” said Mullen.
“That mean like cops?”
“Federal government.”
“Is it a post office?”
“It’s where they check what you’re bringing into the nation. For the cruise ship passengers.”
“Like drugs?”
“Hopefully not or you go to prison from here. At least I think so. I’ve never been out of the country.”
“You’re not starting now, bro.”
“You’ve never been out of North Carolina before.”
Tyler laughed. “I have. I lived on a refugee island in South Carolina that got burned up.”
“You ass.” Mullen chuckled.
Mazy announced, “Going left on this street, people.”
They kept walking.
Soon, snazzy apartments came up. Building blocks architecturally designed to try to look older. They obstructed the view to the Charleston Bay and the badly listing cruise ship.
“Rich bastards used to live here,” muttered Phebe. “Block the view for everyone else.”
Mazy nodded. “Hey. Should we do the stupidest thing possible?”
“You mean yell?”
“Yeah.”
“It would draw out whatever’s here.” Phebe looked up to the sky. Only seagulls. No circling carrion birds. “Maybe we should eat first.”
“Battle on a full stomach, good idea. Especially for our whiney boys.”
Brandon’s head was in constant motion, but looking downward more than up. He remained preoccupied with dead bodies. The others barely noticed unless the bodies contained something good to take. They stepped over them.
“Okay,” said Mazy. “What’s this? A park?”
The street veered right in a sharp turn.
“Yeah,” answered Phebe. “That fountain used to run. Kids would play in it when it was hot.”
“To the right then, since that’s where the road goes?”
“It’s a pretty park.”
“Later.” Mazy raised her volume, “To the right, people.”
“I thought this place was supposed to be historic,” said Mullen. “It looks like Charlotte, North Carolina so far. But with a big river. Or bay. Or whatever that is.”
“It’s a gator pool,” said Tyler.
They followed the curve in the road, still passing new buildings from the late twentieth – early twenty-first century. Pleasant buildings, but lacked uniqueness and definitely not historic.
A little further and the palm trees lining the street grew numerous. Three-story buildings with restaurants on the first floor. Tall windows, the sort people could walk through, told these were probably older buildings, refurbished to modern.
“This is, like, early twentieth-century stuff,” said Mullen. “I thought this place was older than Downtown Wilmington. Or, like, the same age. Or something.”
“Would you shut up,” Phebe told him over her shoulder.
“Just saying.”
Tyler said, “You talk a lot, Mul.”
“Shut up, Ty.”
“No. Make me.”
“I’ll make you, you little shit.”
Mazy barked, “Children, shut the fuck up and stay frosty.”
They settled down.
Brandon at the end of the line looked at everything with wide eyes. He was too new to the sights of carnage.
“We’re at cross streets, Pheeb,” said Maze. “Which way?”
“East Bay Street,” Phebe read the street sign. “This is it. We go left, towards the bay.”
“I thought the bay was behind us.”
“There’s water this way too. C’mon.”
Tyler whined, “Aren’t we supposed to be finding food? I’m hungry.”
“Okay.” Mullen turned three-sixty as he walked. “These are older buildings. Not sure if we’ve left the twentieth century, though.”
“No one cares, Mul.”
“I care, Tyler.”
Brandon called from the back, “Is this alright for Tyler to see? There’s dead bodies everywhere.”
Tyler turned around to him and walked backward. “Really, dude?”
“You are a child.”
Mullen laughed. “Oh, man, you are so new here.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll see. Just wait.”
Tyler gave Brandon a creepy, broad smile. “I kill all dem zoms!”
“Great,” muttered Mazy. “Now trailer park white boy thinks he’s inner-city ghetto.”
Puffy white clouds sluggishly floated across a blue sky as if nothing was wrong in the world.
“The cheerfulness of the sky,” said Phebe. “It’s depressing.”
Mazy laughed. “Isn’t it?”
“What’s that building?” asked Mullen. “The one with the tall top up ahead.”
“Don’t remember,” answered Phebe.
“Look at this ugly building,” he complained. “Wells Fargo put an ugly building in a historic place. Figures. Look. They kept a live oak there.”
Tyler sighed. “No one cares, Mullen.”
“We need to feed Ty. He’s grumpy pants.”
“I will shoot you.”
“You’ll get in trouble if you do. We don’t have anyone to mend a bullet hole, dickhead.”
“Shut up,” Tyler shrieked. “They’ll be here!”
“Sorry. Geez, dude. Calm down.”
“Cover me.” Phebe turned around and walked backward. “Ty, you okay, hon?”
“Mullen’s an asshole.”
“We know this. Just stay frosty, okay?”
“I am.”
“I’m not an asshole,” Mullen protested.
“You are too,” Tyler snapped.
Mazy said, “Don’t make me separate you two.”
Phebe faced front and chuckled. “I’ll turn this car around.”
“Yeah. Welcome to sudden motherhood.”
They stopped at the building Mullen had asked about, the tall top one.
“Greco-Roman Revival, I think they call this,” he said. “Now, we’re getting some historic.”
“What is it?” asked Brandon.
“Dunno. Don’t see any historic plaques. Oh, no, my bad. It’s the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon.” He snickered. “Dungeon. That’s where we should put Tyler.”
“Ty,” Mazy yelled. “Get away from there. Return to formation.”
The building was impressive. Its stucco painted a soft yellow. Doors as well as window trim were a crisp white. It had three grand double doors with two staircases leading up to them. Very easy to envision antebellum, big dress women w
earing bonnets going in and out of the Palladian-style, mirror symmetry building. Perhaps speeches made from the landing by a man wearing a top hat.
The beauty of the old building was marred.
Historic qualities obscured by sandbags and barriers. Bullet holes in the stucco ruined its facade. Blood on the white doors. The usual dead bodies with leathering skin and clothes that looked like rags, hanging from bone.
Unlike Wilmington, it appeared the National Guard fought the infected. The building was at a T in the road, so they could cover East Bay and Broad Street. An excellent location for machine guns. But why were their bullet holes behind them? The infected did not shoot. And where did the machine guns go?
“Let’s keep going,” said Phebe.
“What are we looking for?” whined Tyler. “Why can’t we go into one of these restaurants?”
“It’ll be a rat fest,” said Mullen.
“Why?”
“All that food. No refrigeration. No people.”
“Why wasn’t this place gassed?”
“Thinking it was. All those dead people at the cruise ship looked gassed.”
“Then why are there so many rats?”
“You know how this shit works. What are you, new to the zombie apocalypse suddenly?”
“They should’ve died too.”
“They’re rats, Ty. Where you see one, dozens are hidden.”
“Sucks, man. I’m hungry.”
“We got that, half-pint.”
“Don’t make me –”
“Enough!” Mazy glared at them. “Directions, Phebe, please.”
“Straight down East Bay Street. This way.”
“Follow, gentlemen. In silence.”
Short live oak trees shaded the street from either side. More shops.
They crossed Elliot Street, and everything changed. The ages of the buildings dropped. Shops and restaurants ended. The first floors of townhouses houses had wide, rounded-top doors for the horse stables from a bygone age. Though not as brightly painted as the Caribbean, the owners had painted different colors over stucco facades.
“I’m not sure,” said Phebe. “This may be what they call Rainbow Row. It’s where the merchants lived before the Civil War.”
The street was lined with more trees and bushes.