Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  It was a release, and it was fun. The words serial killer never entered his thoughts.

  He would never talk about that part of his life with his big sister, either.

  • • •

  As October drew to a close, Liz faced a steadily growing list of problems. Fresh water remained a constant issue, and despite the supplies from the cannery, feeding more than fifty people every day was becoming a real drain on their resources. The scavenging parties were forced to travel farther beyond the ship’s sphere of control. One such run resulted in two civilians being killed outright, and the fish and game warden returning freshly bitten.

  Charlie quietly took care of him that very night.

  Liz decided that the extended raids must have stirred up the dead, because the rifle positions at Amy’s two defensive dump trucks fired much more regularly as the dead drifted in, costing precious ammo. They were starting to slip past at night too, and one Whiskey-Delta even got into the Coast Guard station itself and killed a twelve-year-old girl. Generator-powered lights were set up on the lawn, allowing the sentries to spot and stop the dead as they came out of the night, but generators used fuel. More resources being depleted.

  The Guardian Ethos of the Coast Guard was a code by which Liz had lived her entire adult life. Part of it stated, I serve the citizens of the United States. I will protect them. I will defend them. I will save them. I am their shield. But Elizabeth was finding it increasingly difficult to view these refugees—especially those who appeared to make little in the way of contribution—as the people she was supposed to be protecting. More and more they felt like a burden, and their losses no longer mattered to her beyond the resulting change in logistics.

  In the span of two days there was an incident of rape in the Coast Guard station’s barracks and an attempted theft of weapons and supplies as a man tried to escape into the night. Both offenders were civilian refugees.

  Liz had them both hanged, not even bothering to attend. Amy Liggett was ordered to preside over the executions.

  Charlie Kidd handled the rope.

  NINETEEN

  January 12—Nimitz

  Rosa was cold, and the thin scrubs, now soaked to the waist, did little to protect her. Her sneakers slid across a metal deck two feet below the surface of waters that were only a few degrees north of freezing, and her teeth chattered behind clenched jaws. Rosa’s medical knowledge told her that hypothermia wouldn’t be far off if she didn’t find a way to get out of this water and warm up.

  But there was no time.

  Michael was down here somewhere, and he would be cold too. Would he be smart enough—would he be able—to get himself out of the water? A baritone gurgle came from the darkness somewhere ahead, and she knew that Nimitz was not only taking on water but also moving. She felt the motion in her body, a subtle tremble and the vaguest of rocking. When she put her light on the corridor she saw the surface canted slightly to the left, in line with the ship’s list, and as the ruptured hull took on more of the bay, every space in that direction would flood more quickly than those to starboard. When she reached an intersection, she headed to the right. Hopefully Michael would have done the same.

  A new stench filled the air, and her light revealed a blanket of trash covering the water’s surface. With each step the odor sharpened, making her wrinkle her nose. This wasn’t a dead smell, it was something else.

  Two open hatches faced one another across the passageway, and she aimed her light and pistol into each. On the right was a small compartment filled with pipes and valves, and a heavy-duty stainless steel washer and dryer. Plastic bottles of bleach and detergent as well as a few shirts had collected in the corner where the list was greatest. When she looked through the hatch on the left, she recoiled at the vile odor inside. The lid to a trash disposal unit was raised against the far wall, and the opening beneath it—as well as whatever foul depths the trash chute led to—was flooded and overflowing into the compartment, the waste from below floating up and out.

  As she quickly moved away, she couldn’t help but wonder if somewhere down in that black hell, a dead crewman clawed at filth-streaked walls.

  There was a long, deep metallic groan that seemed to come from everywhere, and she stopped, still shin-deep in putrid, freezing seawater. It was not a sound the dead made, she decided. It was the ship. The subtle, rocking sensation intensified slightly, and deep here in the lightless bow she had a moment of disconnection, her sense of direction gone. She was lost in a dank, frigid purgatory where the dead hunted the living and the living were doomed to wander until they froze to death or were devoured.

  That’s panic you’re feeling. Stop it.

  Only the angle of the water showed her port versus starboard, and though she knew the carrier was moving, she didn’t know if it was floating in the direction of its list, turning in a circle, or even drifting backward.

  The deep gurgle, like the breathing of a fearsome, mythological beast deep in its cave, had her worried about one direction the ship might be heading. Down. Could an aircraft carrier sink? Of course, any ship could sink. But were those tears in the hull enough to do it?

  There was nothing she could do about it, so she shook her head and tried to focus, fighting the urge to simply start running, trying to think about what she was doing and trying not to think about the cold. And yet the cold was the immediate problem, as well as finding Michael.

  I’m getting scattered.

  A throaty snarl from behind her reminded Rosa that those weren’t the only immediate problems, and she turned with her light to see the passageway crowded with three flabby and bloated creatures coming toward her from just beyond the hatches to the laundry and the trash disposal. Seawater dripped from bluish lips, and white eyes stared out of pale, swollen faces. Two were in uniform; one was naked.

  Rosa raised her pistol. Fifteen yards, poor lighting. She lowered the weapon as she couldn’t risk missing and wasting rounds, couldn’t chance attracting even more attention with the echoing noise of shots. Instead she turned back and kept moving up the passage, slogging through the water and looking for a better place to make her stand.

  The flashlight eventually picked out a T intersection ahead with a closed hatch set in the wall facing her, and she waded into it. To her left and right were short hallways leading to open hatches, the murky shapes of stacked bunks and lockers beyond each. Crew berthing. Splashing came from the one to her right, and she almost turned away before thinking, What if that’s Michael in there? What if it’s not, and I trap myself in a space with no way out?

  The bloated trio trudged through the floating trash behind her, the naked one in the lead and making a wet snuffling noise as it got closer.

  “Michael!” Rosa yelled, her voice carrying.

  No response.

  “Michael, can you hear me?” The sound of her voice caused the bloated trio to move faster, and the splashes neared the entrance to the berthing compartment. Rosa kept the light on it, hoping to see . . .

  A young woman’s face appeared in the light, pasty-skinned with cloudy gray eyes, wet hair plastered to her face. She growled and started through the hatch. Shadowy figures moved behind her. Ripples of disturbed water washed against the backs of Rosa’s knees, and now the rancid odor of the bloated trio cut through the reek of backed-up garbage, making her gag.

  The hatch in the wall before her had the words ENLISTED REC stenciled in white letters across it. Rosa hadn’t taken the time to listen at the door to check if anything was moving on the other side. The bloated trio was closing, and the pasty woman with her shadowy companions was moving in from the right. No time.

  Without knowing what awaited her, Rosa threw the hatch handle, pushed it open, and went in.

  • • •

  He had once been Machinist’s Mate Sam Englewood of Flagstaff, Arizona. At eighteen he’d fled small-town life at the edge of the Grand Canyon
to find adventure in the Navy, eager to be away from the parched, high desert so he could experience the vastness of wind and sea. His every expectation had been surpassed, and he’d fallen in love with the Navy.

  Last summer his ship was overwhelmed by the multiplying dead, and Sam died at the hands—and teeth—of his own shipmates. His death was a bad one, caught halfway through a partially closed hatch, both legs chewed away at the knees. Since then he’d dragged himself through the lonely, flooded corridors, submerged from the chest down and pulling himself along on stiffened arms. Months in the water had turned him a bluish-white, his decomposing tissue heavy with seawater. There was no pain, no concept of the passage of time, only the driving hunger he had no way of satisfying.

  Until now.

  Food had suddenly appeared with a creak of metal and a burst of white light. This was followed by the sound of breathing, a sudden presence of warmth and movement. The gnawing hunger flared in his dead and diseased brain.

  With a wet gasp, the former Sam Englewood started pulling himself through the water of the partially flooded compartment, his face barely held above the surface as milky eyes hunted in the dim light.

  • • •

  Rosa shoved the hatch closed behind her, pushing hard against the resistance of water flowing over the knee knocker, and dogged the handle tightly. She knew the dead would open it when they arrived at the other side, so she swung her light around looking for a way to jam the handle.

  It was a recreation center. One of the recent earthquakes, or possibly a combination of the ship’s collisions and the resulting water, had flung couches and chairs at skewed angles, tipping over a television and dropping a soda machine on its face. A Ping-Pong table had slid into a far bulkhead, one end collapsed, and shelves that once held books and games were shaken empty. The surface of the dark water was adrift with swollen paperbacks and magazines, Ping-Pong balls, and plastic video game controllers. The room stank of decay and stagnant water.

  Something heavy thumped against the hatch behind her, and Rosa put her weight on top of the handle, holding it down.

  Swinging the light around again, she saw an open hatch on the far side of the room with a passageway beyond, and she could see nothing moving down there. My exit. She panned left, still holding the handle down with her gun hand—something was making it wiggle—and saw the overturned television and floating game controllers. They were of an older style that connected to the unit, not the newer, wireless versions.

  The cables. I’ll tie the handle down. But that would mean letting go and crossing the room. She’d never get back before the creatures on the other side—

  A cold hand gripped her at the knee and she screamed, swinging the light down out of instinct. It grazed the head of Sam Englewood, propped up in the water at her feet. In the beam she saw a rotting boy in blue coveralls grabbing her leg with his other hand now, hauling himself out of the water, mouth gaping.

  Rosa tried to jerk away, then released her hold on the handle and shoved the muzzle of her Glock down against the crown of the corpse’s head, pulling the trigger twice. There was an explosion of soggy brain matter, and she screamed at a hot burst of pain in her foot. The dead boy’s grip loosened and the body slid down her leg, slipping beneath the surface with a head shattered by contact gunshot wounds. The hatch handle flipped up and the weight of hungry corpses on the other side propelled it open, the steel banging hard into Rosa and causing her to stagger sideways.

  Her foot burned and throbbed. Not a bite. Ricochet. Then the bloated trio was stumbling into the compartment, only feet away from her. The pasty girl and her shadowy bunkmates were snarling behind them, pushing against soft flesh in their hurry to get at the food.

  The medic shot the naked corpse in the side of the head. It fell, and its fellows were forced to shove the limp figure to the side, buying Rosa precious seconds. She headed across the room, limping now as she waded, still holding on to both the flashlight and the pistol. Moans filled the room, accompanied by heavy splashing. Her foot hurt so much, and she wondered how much damage the bullet had done.

  Rosa stumbled through the next hatch and into yet another unexplored passageway, leaving a trail of blood in the water.

  • • •

  Michael opened his eyes to absolute darkness.

  He was drifting, his body sliding across something hard and unyielding until his back struck something equally hard, stopping him. There was movement around him, something tugging at his leg and ribs, but no pain. He reached for the movement, fingertips brushing against something soft, and the sensation in both places stopped immediately.

  The boy gripped a vertical pipe along the wall to pull himself to a standing position, his movements slow, feeling resistance all around him, eyes wide and seeing nothing. The movement he’d sensed earlier was going away from him, and he followed, each step an effort. A sound came from somewhere ahead, a thumping, muffled and distant. He headed toward it.

  Michael’s reaching hands touched something soft again, and his fingers closed on it. The something moved, and just as quickly he released it, continuing to follow the movement in a darkness that seemed to push back at him.

  He was hungry. Oh, so hungry.

  There was something that felt like a red spark going off in his brain, but Michael could articulate neither the color nor the organ in which the reaction was occurring; his was a world of sensation, not words. The redness flared again, and for the briefest of instances Michael’s eyes saw what was before him as if through a red-and-black lens: a flooded passageway where two others like him, completely submerged, were moving slowly through the water, heading for an ascending metal stairway. Then the flash was gone, and Michael was returned to the darkness. Hungry. Following.

  The movement ahead of him started upward, and Michael’s awkward feet found the steps, knees bending stiffly as he climbed. He could see the shadowy figures above him now, for there was a soft, gray light somewhere above.

  Hungry. His teeth clicked slowly together.

  The boy’s head broke the surface as he trudged up and out of the same stairwell opening through which he’d been pulled, his feet finding the flooded deck. A light resting under the water off to one side created a gray sphere in the room. In that light he saw the two that had preceded him shuffling toward an opening. To his right stood a third, a woman who stared at him for a moment before turning away slowly.

  The boy’s gnawed-upon thigh and open rib cage drooled pink fluid mixed with seawater, and his eyes were clouded over constricted pupils. He opened his mouth to make a sound, and water bubbled out. Behind his teeth, his tongue was rapidly turning black.

  Another red flash, the world seen in red-and-black tones, and Michael felt a ripple pass through his body. The hunger was worse now, but he didn’t follow the others, even though he knew it might mean food. He was feeling a different pull, and instead he moved through the partially flooded compartment, past coils of rope and racks of chain, finding a dark corner. The boy lowered himself into the water, the surface nearly covering him, and curled into a fetal position. The red flashes in his brain accelerated, sparks firing one after the other in a crackling sensation that began to travel down through all the muscles of his body.

  Michael’s black tongue moved, and he gurgled under the water.

  Then his body began to convulse as the transformation came on.

  TWENTY

  January 12—Richmond

  There were corpses in the cars, and they were moving.

  Evan walked under the shelter of the elevated freeway, out of the rain, passing a mountain of automobiles that had spilled from the ruined structure above. Below in the shadows of the highway, Evan’s boots crunched through weeds turned black and brittle. Groans and thumping came from the spill of tipped-over and angled cars, gray arms reaching through shattered windows and dead faces snapping their teeth, still strapped into their seats
. Trapped on the freeway high above, these drifters had avoided the worst of the fire, and he could still make out their features.

  Evan decided the burned ones were better. They looked less human. He turned away and kept moving, his broken wrist still slung against his chest.

  The remains of a chain-link fence crossed his path up ahead, but when he reached it he found it peeled back by heat in many places, sooty and melted, and he passed through without difficulty. Boots kicking through cinders, he emerged from the shadows of I-580 and back into the rain. Here, the downpour kept the ground from turning into black dust as he walked. Evan’s eyes swept back and forth across the terrain, searching for movement, waiting to see those deadly shapes rising from the cinders.

  He saw none. He was alone.

  Wishful thinking.

  The rain made a gentle pattering sound all around him. The sky above was a slowly turning mass of dark clouds that promised no end to the cold rain, and Evan decided the temperature had slipped below fifty degrees. The downpour made it worse, and though he was thankful for the layers of his jacket and flight suit, he had no protection for his exposed head and neck. He shivered.

  The vest has a signal mirror, a whistle, and even sunscreen. No goddamn hat. Perfect.

  He moved past a field of burned trees and stopped, looking at what lay before him. From the air, the terrain had seemed like just another scene of destruction, quickly flown over and easily forgotten. Things were more real here on the ground.