At the End of the World

by Charles E Gannon

  “We’d go back a second time?” Jeeza’s voice was tight.

  I nodded. “Yeah. Sooner rather than later.”

  “Why sooner?”

  “Because if we come back later, a new bunch of stalkers might have moved in. But not if we do it in one trip. While the rest of us transfer the first load into the dinghy, someone watches the road through binoculars. And if no new infected come to check out any sounds we made during our first visit—”

  “Like gunfire,” Chloe drawled.

  “—then the pousadas should be clear for a second run. Which will be faster, since we’ll already know our way around and have chosen what we want to take. It’s just in, grab, and out.”

  Jeeza looked reassured. Somewhat.

  Prospero rubbed his hands together. “So, are we at an end?”

  I looked around. No questions or frowns. “Seems like it.”

  “Brilliant. Then I’m off to see if the batteries are topped up for use in the NODs.”

  We all looked at him.

  “Nods?” Steve asked.

  Prospero smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, mates. I forget where I am, sometimes. NODs: night observation devices.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He headed out with a “Ta!” tossed over his shoulder.

  The others were starting to rise. “Hold up a moment?” I asked.

  They stopped and sat, wearing half-formed frowns. “What’s up?” Rod asked.

  I hadn’t expected to have the opportunity to speak to them without setting it up, so I knew I’d have to roll it out quickly: “I’ve been thinking that the ship’s log shouldn’t be a—a collective record, anymore.”

  Jeeza rested her sharp chin in her palm. “Why?”

  “Well, partly because I started it as a personal journal. To record my own thoughts…and feelings.”

  Chloe’s poker face was absolute.

  “But more importantly, I’m worried about the precedent we set at Husvik. About other people writing in it. Because that means that other people can read it.”

  Jeeza smiled. “We won’t peek at your personal entries.” Her smiled widened. “Promise.”

  I sat, lowered my voice. “Look, I don’t care about you guys reading—that stuff.” Which was only kind of true. “But now we’ve got someone, well, ‘new’ working and travelling with us.”

  “Don’t you trust Perciv—Prospero?” Steve asked.

  “For the most part, I do,” I answered. “But that’s not the point. The old logbook—well, it’s about us. It describes how we get along as a group. And I’m not sure I want to share that.”

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to take the next step alone. Chloe explained my misgivings as well as I could have. “Look,” she began, “if what we found on St. Helena and Ascension are any clue to what lies ahead, we could be picking up more people as we sail from place to place. And I agree with Alvaro: it’s not safe to let them read about us, to learn who we are, or—particularly—the disagreements we’ve had. We could bring a person on board who seems okay but turns out to be the kind of rat-bastard that would go through our journal trying to find stuff he, or she, could use to push our buttons. Maybe try to get us to argue by finding sore spots, say things that will set us against each other. All so they can gain power.”

  Chloe shook her head. “I’m not willing to take that chance. Besides, if we really want a ship’s log, I say let’s start a real one, without anything private in it. Just the facts about what happens, each day.”

  Murmurs of agreement all around.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Who’s going to make the entries?”

  People started looking down at the tabletop. Chloe included. No one was fired up by the idea of keeping a ship’s log. Color me shocked.

  “I’ll keep doing it,” I volunteered. “Captain’s job, anyway. But anyone can jump in whenever they want.”

  Given that no one was nodding, or even willing to look me in the eye. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be sharing the duty any time soon.

  “Okay,” I said, standing. “It will be dark in three hours. Time to get ready.”

  November 3 (early morning)

  I didn’t know it would come in handy so soon, but I was wearing a face-full of the black camo paint from Ascension as we headed for shore. The waning half-moon picked out the brighter sand of the beach and the edges of the rocks, but for the most part, the steep, stony arms that cradled Baia Sueste were just looming black silhouettes. “See anything?” I asked over my shoulder.

  Chloe, wearing NODs, shook her head. “Other than waves, trees, and the restaurant at the south end of the beach, nada.”

  “Any chance that restaurant could be a hideout for infected?” Jeeza’s voice was steady but tense.

  “Not unless they like living exposed to the weather. All the windows are busted and almost half the roof is gone. Looks like storm damage.”

  We finished motoring quietly around Ilha Chapéu do Sueste—the “Southeast Hat,” which is a lot more lopsided and craggier than its name suggests. “Six hundred yards,” I muttered. “Check your gear and paint.”

  Prospero, who was in the back of the dinghy near the outboard, sounded skeptical. “I wouldn’t put too much faith in those camo sticks. The stalkers have excellent nighttime senses.”

  I shrugged. I’d heard that a lot while we were on Ascension. We hadn’t been around to see it for ourselves. I suppose that, along with their senses of smell and hearing, turning might improve their night vision. But if there was any chance that the face paint could help us, I was all for trying it out.

  Steve had a steady hand on the outboard’s tiller, thanks to time spent with his dad on camping trips. He saw the tell-tale swirls and foam of submerged shallows that I would have missed completely. Hitting them would have been a disaster: Voyager’s dinghy was a hard shell, not a Zodiac or partial inflatable. That made it better in rough water, but tougher in the shallows and a real bitch to get close to the beach. Assuming you didn’t tear a hole in its bottom on the way in.

  But his dad would have been proud. Steve timed our final approach so that we had a low cresting wave behind us. It pushed us far enough so that, when we hopped out, the water was no higher than our knees.

  Prospero jumped over the dinghy’s transom as soon as the outboard had guttered to a stop. “You did well,” he said to Steve.

  “I did better than that,” Steve deadpanned—and then smiled. The first time since I’d known him.

  Jeeza grinned a little as she climbed over the side and said, “Now don’t leave me to do this myself before you all go and have your fun.” Which was kind of silly because I don’t think that even Chloe could have pushed that boat ashore by herself.

  But the six of us together muscled it forward, waited for the next surge, and then charged it up the sand. After which Rod stood very straight and pointed toward the other end of the long arc of moonlit beach. “Well, whaddya know.”

  We followed his index finger: a Zodiac, tied off in a rock-sheltered tidal pool at the eastern end of the bay. There was a trawler motor still attached to its transom.

  “That would be damn handy,” Steve said with a hint of longing in his voice.

  “It would,” I agreed. I signaled for a huddle in the lee of the dinghy. “Small change of plans. Contact team advances as planned to secure the restaurant at this end of the bay. Once we know it’s clear, I’ll send you a squelch break, Jeeza.”

  “To do what?”

  “To run to the other end of the beach with a tow-line. Once you’ve made sure the Zodiac is floating and free of obstructions, fasten the line and spool it out on the beach.”

  “Uh, okay. But why not wait until we’re ready to leave?”

  “Because that Zodiac is likely to be the most valuable thing we might find tonight. So even if we return with infected right behind us, I want it ready for towing.”

  Chloe frowned. “Tow line isn’t long enough to reach.”

  I nodded. “If necessary
, I’ll run to the near end of the tow-line and swim it out beyond the surf while you’re launching the dinghy. You motor to me, we hook up the line, pull the Zodiac out.”

  Chloe shook her head. Jeeza shrugged, smiled. “Aye aye, Captain!”

  We stayed low as we left the cover of the dinghy, then kneeled. The cover team—Chloe and Prospero—aimed landward. The contact team—me, Steve, Rod—slipped water-tight bags off our backs. We unpacked our body armor and shotguns. Prospero handed the rifle bag forward. As the cover team watched over us, we unwrapped our weapons (M4s for them, an AK for me). Once we were in our armor (in my case, a fireman’s coat) and our guns were ready, it was our turn to cover Chloe and Prospero as they geared up. I watched the dark line of vegetation waving along the back edge of the beach and tried not to feel guilty that I had the AK.

  Let me be clear: Rod and Steve wanted the M4s. And I understood their reasons. The M4 is light, has super low recoil, and still has a laser-beam trajectory at ranges where the AK’s rounds are starting to rainbow. But it was night, and we’d be in brush and between buildings: we’d be lucky to see a stalker coming at thirty yards. Might be more like thirty inches, and in those conditions, I didn’t want an overpenetrating 5.56mm popgun. I wanted a human-stopping 7.62x39 round that was every bit as accurate at those ranges. Yeah, we had the shotguns on our backs, but their stopping power wouldn’t do us any good if we didn’t have enough time to unsling them.

  Chloe and Prospero finished shrugging into their lighter gear and checking their pistols, then reshouldered their FALs. They looked at me.

  I should have just given the word, but I hesitated. This was the moment where all our planning and preparation would be put to the only test that mattered: would it keep us alive when we walked into stalker-country? At night and without a town to fall back on if things went sideways? That was also the moment I realized that I had forgotten two final steps: what a great start.

  Meanwhile, Chloe had started cursing and tugging at her NODs. She had a military helmet: not the best protection against stalkers, but it was designed for the night-vision gear. Although given Chloe’s annoyance at the mounting mechanism, you’d never have known it. Even so, the helmet’s open face gave her and Prospero the sight picture they needed in order to see enemies—and us—quickly and clearly.

  Finished, Chloe gave an irritated thumbs-up. I nodded and signaled my team to seal the visors of their fire-helmets. The last thing any of us wanted was a slashing, shrieking stalker spraying infectious spittle—or blood—into our face. Once Rod had latched his in place, he angled his torso forward, ready to charge toward the restaurant.

  I shook my head, pointing at his hands and mine. We still had to double-check that our sleeves were folded over our gloves and taped into place. Going room to room at the airbase had taught us that, when your enemies are zombies, the most vulnerable part of your body is your hands. I mean, yeah, we did have fire gloves, and there was no way a stalker was going to bite through those. But there was also no way we could have shot our weapons while wearing them. Squeezing a trigger, reloading, or cycling an action? Maybe, but everything else was pretty much impossible. Such as: flipping the safety (you might be able to with an AK), hitting the magazine release (forget it with a pistol), or clearing a jam (doubtful, and only if nothing is distracting you—like, say, a ravening stalker). So our gloves were all U.S. military issue, even though none of us were totally sure that they’d stop a stalker’s teeth.

  Prospero and Chloe had angled their FALs inland again, but their eyes were on me. I nodded to them, then my team, and rose up into a hunched run toward the restaurant. I stayed close to the surf; that kept us out of the cover team’s landward sightlines.

  Nothing came out of those shadows, and we reached the restaurant—or what was left of it. Rod, Steve, and I peered into the jumble of fallen timbers. We couldn’t see squat.

  Not for the first time, I wished there had been a way to bring the dogs. But we had no way of knowing what we’d find or how fast we might have to haul ass out of there. Too many scenarios ended with us either having to leave our pups behind or being mobbed as we tried to get them back into the dinghy.

  Since the sightlines inside the ruined restaurant were very short, I laid my AK next to Rod, unslung the shotgun, snapped the safety off, and began moving forward. I kept my back to the left-hand interior wall, which gave Rod and Steve a free-fire zone into the rest of the place.

  When it’s dark, and the floor underfoot is littered with beams and other crap, and you’re wearing a sealed fire helmet, and the air is coming in through an open SCBA tube, your situational awareness is pretty much zero. Yeah, you’re well-protected, but you’re also a bumbling piñata and the rest of the world is a baseball bat, just waiting to take a power swing at your blind side. Which is everywhere.

  That’s also when you realize that the hottest thing a human being can wear is a fire coat. Especially when you’re playing hide-and-seek with stalkers. At night. On the equator.

  By the time I walked every foot of that damn ruin and waved the all-clear, I swear I had sweated out at least two pounds of water. Which I put right back inside myself by draining one of my canteens. Yeah, I know: a shitty example. “Sip it.” “Make it last.” My words. But I didn’t disregard them; I was so thirsty I didn’t remember them.

  After we’d crept to the landward side of the ruin, Rod handed my AK back to me. We spread out along the ragged remains of the rear wall, took a knee, and aimed our rifles into the dark brush beyond. I toggled my radio’s send button.

  That signal sent Jeeza down the beach to the Zodiac. She stayed at the edge of the surf; the infected weren’t averse to water, but from what we had seen at Husvik, they lose any ability they had to swim. They’re reduced to a frenzied dog-paddle. The locals on Ascension reported the same.

  As Jeeza started back toward the dinghy, Rod leaned toward me. “Hssst. Lookit. In the parking lot.”

  I peered through the storm-shattered vertical planks of the bayside wall. Two of FdN’s underfed dune-buggies were still parked there, a fallen tree screening them from the beach. “Yeah. I see them.”

  “Want to try hotwiring one?” Rod sounded eager, like a little kid urging a tween to do something daring. And stupid.

  “Nope. For all we know, the storm that wrecked this place washed over them. Probably messed up their ignitions. Besides, we don’t want any infected to hear an engine approaching. The only engine sounds we want them to hear is when we’re leaving. And hopefully not then, either.”

  Steve motioned toward the beach. Jeeza was back, crouching in the moonshadow of the dinghy, shotgun out. Chloe and Prospero signaled they were ready.

  I waved for them to advance and turned to watch the inland terrain over the muzzle of the AK.

  Again, no reaction in all that darkness. As Chloe came up alongside, I nodded my head toward the up-sloping road: a straight shot to both pousadas. “All clear?” I asked.

  She was scanning it. “No movement. And I mean nothing. Not even birds or little animals.”

  I wondered if that was normal for FdN, or whether the infected had learned how to hunt sparrows and mice. I didn’t put it past them.

  But we hadn’t come to assess the state of the local wildlife. “Give us fifty yards head start,” I said, reciting from the plan. “Then follow, maintaining that interval. We’ll pause every fifty to give you a chance to scan for targets with your NODs. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  For the first hundred yards, the hill’s slope was barely noticeable; maybe a five-degree incline. But after that? Twenty to twenty-five degrees. That may not sound like much, particularly when you’re only doing it for two hundred and fifty yards. But when you’re in the tropics, wrapped up in protective clothes and breathing masks, and wearing visors that prevent you from seeing what’s right at your feet, it’s nerve-wracking and exhausting. It also made me hope that the travel writer who had described this as a “smooth, steady slope” would die a h
orrible and painful death. Which (odds being what they are these days) he probably already had.

  Chloe’s impatience with her NODs wasn’t helping the mood, either. “God damn. I am taking this flimsy thing off. It’s a piece of—”

  “Chloe, you’re our eyes. Keep it on.”

  “Yeah? Well, you come back here and wear it, then.”

  “You’re our best marksman. Uh, markswoman.” Marksperson? Screw it. “Look, you’ve gotta wear it.”

  “You think I can shoot with this thing on? I can barely see the sights. It’s—”

  “Chloe, you’re not just wearing it for shooting. Your eyes are trained to hunt, will see things we might miss. We need those eyes watching over us.”

  It was a few seconds before she toggled to reply. “Okay, okay. But damnit, I really don’t like—Movement! Right ahead of you! I can’t—”

  I turned, saw a dim figure emerging from an overgrown lane about sixty yards ahead on the right-hand side of the road: the entrance to the first, and most luxurious, pousada.

  “Contact,” I muttered to the guys on either side of me. I kneeled. They did likewise. “Chloe, do you have a shot?”

  “Damn. I…I can’t tell. And if I’m wrong, I could hit you guys!”

  “Chloe, is it coming straight down the middle of the road?”

  “No, it’s on the right, but starting to veer center. Like it knows you might be there. It’s starting to run.”

  “Contact team,” I snapped, “shift: five left. Go.” It sure sounded cool. But it must have looked like slapstick, the way the three of us bumped into each other. We’d never trained for moving as a group in the dark. But we got to the far left side of the road. “Chloe? Do you have—”

  “Stay. Right there!” she interrupted, as a silhouette became visible ahead of us.

  A breath later, the FAL barked three times. The figure stumbled, kept coming. Then a quick flurry of four shots. The stalker went down on the third.

  “Christ, I suck!” Chloe shouted.

  “You killed it,” I said sharply. “Now swap in a fresh mag. And Chloe?”