Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  Liebs looked up at the shattered bridge level, billowing smoke in the moonlight. Banks . . . PK and Maya . . .

  “Out there!” Stone shouted suddenly, pointing across the water.

  Liebs could feel the carrier moving, but without the landmarks of San Francisco and Alcatraz—both had vanished beneath the surface—it was hard to judge direction. He thought they were moving west, and a glance forward showed him the hills of Tiburon, the northern support of the Golden Gate Bridge coming up on the right. Yes, it was west, with the black Pacific beyond.

  The gunner’s mate looked to where the younger man was pointing. In the clear lunar glow, the low-slung, black silhouette of the enemy warship could be seen pacing them several miles to starboard. And then the shape was obscured behind a red-and-white flash.

  “Incoming!” he yelled, pulling Stone down into the flight controller’s pocket. A shell screamed in, and then there was a blast, the aircraft carrier shuddering as the BOOM of a deck gun rolled across the water. Another high-pitched whine then, another BOOM, and a second impact shook Nimitz.

  Liebs lifted his head and risked a look. The superstructure had taken no new hits, and the flight deck was clear. The hull. They’re going to sink us. A third shell detonated against the aircraft carrier’s port side.

  Stone was standing up beside him now and had come to the same conclusion. “What can we do?” he shouted.

  Liebs shook his head. “Not a goddamn thing.”

  • • •

  Calvin grabbed the railing of the starboard catwalk and hung on as a third shell punched into the other side of the ship, then started moving again. Bodies littered the grid of steel underfoot, freshly killed humans as well as the dead put down a second time, and his boots pounded among them as he ran for the short stairway leading to the flight deck.

  The shriek of an inbound fifty-seven-millimeter shell came a second before another blast and rumble. He climbed to the flight deck, saw the smoking bridge high above, and saw the enemy ship steaming parallel to them miles away.

  “Liebs! Stone!”

  “Over here!” the gunner’s mate shouted, and Calvin spotted the two men. He ran to them and jumped down into their hole.

  The deck gun put another high-explosive round into the carrier’s savaged hull.

  “Can we shoot back?” Calvin asked.

  The gunner’s mate shook his head. “We’ve got nothing but the fifties. And even if we put a fifty-cal on the port rail, they’re out of range. It wouldn’t do much if we could hit them. That’s a goddamn warship out there.”

  The hippie leader’s mind raced through everything he knew about Nimitz, everything he had seen, then stopped when his mind came to a single image. “Chief, can you put one of those RIB boats into the water?”

  “Look, if we abandon ship—” he started.

  Now Calvin shook his head. “Can you do it?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  The older man told him what he wanted, and the gunner’s mate looked at him with cool, appraising eyes for a long moment, then nodded. “It might work, Cal,” he said. “But it’s a long shot.”

  “Cal, no way!” Stone shouted. “That’s insane!”

  Calvin smiled at the boy, squeezed his shoulder, then showed them both the bite wound. Stone cursed and looked away. Chief Liebs looked at the torn flesh that was a death sentence and said, “We have to hurry.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Richmond

  Where cities once rose from the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay, an angry planet had thrust a fifty-four-mile-long wall of bedrock high into the air, a cliff climbing a hundred feet above the crashing shore. In what had been Richmond, a fragment of red-and-white radio tower jutted horizontally over the water, wedged into a crack at the base of the cliff.

  Evan, his back pressed against the rock and his boots braced on a steel crossbar, sat atop the remains of the tower, his useless left wrist in his lap. Death was coming for him in the form of a rotting, middle-aged woman wearing scraps of a red dress, strands of wet hair plastered to her pale face. Waxy blue eyes stared at him, and teeth clicked together as the corpse dragged itself down the length of the tower.

  In the distance there was an occasional red flash in the night, a hollow boom, but Evan’s attention was locked on the drifter. If the dead had been more coordinated, he knew, it would be on him already, but it moved slowly, gripping the steel and pulling itself forward. A wave surged up from below, and for a moment the tower was awash, the dead woman lost from sight beneath churning foam. Perhaps it would wash her off? But then the water receded, and she was still there, hanging on and inching forward.

  The flare sputtered out, leaving them in the black-and-white of the strobe blinking on his vest. Evan popped his remaining canister, jamming it into the rock face, able to see her once more in the dazzling pink light. The drifter made a croaking noise deep in its throat. Ten feet to go.

  Another wave pushed up onto the tower, and for an instant a pair of bodies was tangling in the broken steel at the far end, arms flailing. The tide carried them away before they could catch hold.

  How many of the dead in the Bay Area? Evan did the math. Eight million? Most of them would be in the sea now, churning with the current like vast schools of fish. How long before more washed up onto the tower?

  The dead woman croaked again and pulled herself closer, closer, one hand reaching out to touch his right boot. Evan pulled his legs in. She advanced, and reached again, clawing for his ankle.

  Evan kicked out savagely, his heel connecting with the bridge of her nose and rocking her head back. He kicked again, feeling bone give way beneath rotting flesh, and the dead woman pawed at the boot hitting her face, letting go of the steel. Another kick sent her off the tower and into the sea.

  “Yes!” he cried. “Drown, bitch!”

  The next wave brought another pair of drifters against the twisted radio tower, and this time both creatures managed to hang on. They clawed their way to the top and started pulling themselves toward him.

  Evan thought of the woman he loved, the child he would never see, and his despair turned into a sob.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Adventure Galley

  In the combat center, Vargas cursed and slammed his fist into the console as the lights on his control panel flickered and the image on his targeting screen went fuzzy. Goddamn system! The quake must have knocked something loose. He flicked a row of switches, powering down the deck gun and the targeting computer, then flicked them up again. The console hummed.

  “Mr. Vargas,” the captain’s voice said into his headset, “why have you stopped firing?”

  He cursed again. “The fire control system is acting up, Captain. I’m trying to reboot it now.”

  “I want that gun up and firing, mister.”

  No shit. “Yes, ma’am. I’m working on it.” The infrared video feed on his left still showed the carrier, drifting west. He’d been able to put a nice cluster of shells together at its forward port waterline, and the ship was tilting harder than it had been. Of course that might just be wishful thinking, he conceded. It was difficult to tell at this distance, and harder still with such a big target.

  “Operate the gun manually,” the captain’s voice ordered.

  Yes, I know. What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do? “Yes, ma’am. A few more minutes and I should have it.” Maybe.

  “Snap to it, mister.”

  The screen in front of him jumped, and the image slaved from the exterior camera appeared, Nimitz at the center. There was no targeting square or crosshairs. Vargas checked his board and saw that the gun’s radome and gyro-stabilizers both glowed red, signaling that they were offline. He pounded the console again, but that only made the video image jump back to a field of white-and-green static.

  Vargas took a deep breath. Stop hitting the electronics. He powered do
wn again. If he could get the video feed to come back, then he might be able to switch from the automated fire control to manual, operating the deck gun with a joystick. It would lack the precision accuracy he’d enjoyed before—it would be real shooting, aiming a pip on screen and judging range in his head—but at least he’d be able to fire.

  The magazine counter read thirteen fifty-seven-millimeter shells remaining.

  Vargas let out a long breath and forced himself to wait while the system rebooted once more.

  • • •

  Amy Liggett reached the captain’s cabin without encountering another crewman. Where was everyone? The cutter shuddered from what could only be the deck gun firing. She didn’t have to speculate about the target, and that caused a renewed anger to boil inside her.

  The cabin was empty as she’d expected, except for Blackbeard, who meowed loudly from his perch on the captain’s bunk.

  “I’m sorry your mommy is such a bitch,” Amy told the cat, crossing the room as another shot boomed from the deck gun.

  Blackbeard watched her, then licked at a front paw.

  Since it sometimes contained codes and classified orders, the combination for the captain’s wall safe was shared with the executive officer. Amy was betting Kidd hadn’t changed it since locking her former XO in a maintenance closet.

  The handle clicked and the safe door opened.

  The deck gun boomed again.

  FORTY

  Nimitz

  Charlie went through the hatch to the firefighting gear room more carefully than the last, pausing to listen, then entering with his rifle barrel leading. He was still seeing double, still nauseated, and blood from his head wound was saturating the right side of his sweater.

  The other man’s blood trail was easy to follow.

  Lockers, shelves, and long racks of gear extended out into the compartment, row upon row of firefighting coats and pants, lines of boots and yellow helmets, oxygen tanks and hand tools. He leaned against a steel locker and aimed his rifle down the aisles, searching for movement. The blood trail led up the center aisle.

  A bang came from off to the left, something heavy falling against hollow metal. Charlie swung the M14 in that direction and fired off a burst, bullets tearing through fire-resistant coats, punching holes in helmets and sparking off steel.

  Time’s up, Father.

  • • •

  A bullet punched into the sheet metal of an equipment locker six inches over his head, and Xavier jerked left, away from it, stumbling down an aisle where brass hose fittings and nozzles hung from pegs in ordered rows. Tanks of foam with handheld spray hoses were lined up on the opposite side. It was still painful to breathe, and his chest was filled with a burning sensation, but he was starting to pull in more air with every gasp. It made him wheeze, and he tried to suppress the noise.

  Xavier’s vision was still gray at the edges, and the deck behind him was streaked with a staggering blood trail and red boot prints.

  He stumbled over a bench and crashed against a rack of silver hazmat suits, falling to the floor, making the gear swing. Another burst of rifle fire tore blindly through the compartment, tearing up several of the hazmat suits behind where he’d been standing a moment before.

  Maybe he’ll run out of bullets. Xavier crawled on his hands and knees to keep low. From behind him in the compartment came the clatter of an empty magazine hitting the floor, the click and snap of a fresh one being loaded into a rifle. Too much to hope for.

  Xavier tried to crawl faster, looking for a way out, and came to the bulkhead running along the back of the compartment.

  There was no hatch.

  • • •

  The dead were closing on Rosa from both sides of the catwalk, the horde of crewmen that had come up from the pit on her left, a half-dozen more in rotting uniforms moving through the hatch ahead of her, all of them surging toward their meal. She aimed the flashlight and shot the closest one in the head, and the crumpling body was immediately pushed aside by the others.

  One bullet left. That one’s for me.

  • • •

  The Hobgoblin’s brain flared with red light at the pistol shot, violent urges driving it into a frenzy. It scrambled hand-over-hand up a pipe, then jumped across open space to another, hands catching hold of a valve wheel and bare feet planting against smooth steel, ending up where the pipe forest edged closest to the catwalk.

  The scent of prey was overpowering, and it looked down through its red-and-black world to see the bright glow of the thing it needed to destroy. To both sides were others that were like him, yet different, and they wanted the same thing. The Hobgoblin would not be denied its prize.

  Michael’s muscles tensed, and then he let out an ungodly shriek and leaped.

  • • •

  Rosa made a move for the ladder that climbed to a hatch above, dropping her flashlight as she gripped a rung. It rolled to the edge of the catwalk and stopped, throwing its beam on a crowd of shuffling bodies coming in from the right. Snarls rose behind her, and she knew she was seconds away from being torn apart.

  Then the thing in the pipe forest shrieked. Rosa looked up to see a dark mass dropping toward her, arms outstretched and roaring with mad lust.

  She screamed and fell to the catwalk, shoving her pistol upward and pulling the trigger.

  Then the Hobgoblin was on her.

  FORTY-ONE

  Nimitz

  The crippled aircraft carrier moved west on a ten-knot current, the port side hull shredded by armor-piercing and high-explosive rounds. The firing fell off for a while, but the damaged section had now slipped below the surface and was taking on water at an alarming rate.

  Nimitz drifted along the land mass on the north side of the bay, an area where Sausalito had crumbled into ruins. Ahead was the remaining support tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, its red steel climbing into the night sky, the approaching roadway still intact and leading up to the support, then dropping away into space in a gnarl of broken asphalt, bent red steel, and twisted cables.

  Water churned about the tower’s base, and on its present course, the current would carry the flattop straight into it. High above, the roadway approach was packed with the dead, crowding together right up to the drop-off. Several noticed the approaching carrier and tried to walk toward it, stepping off the side and tumbling down into the sea.

  The rest simply stood in a shifting crowd, staring at and thinking about nothing, while the wide, flat deck of the ship drew closer.

  • • •

  Rosa was flat on her back, the creature’s weight atop her, the maroon face staring into hers with its mouth open in a snarl. Michael’s expression was frozen in a rictus of fury, but the waxy eyes saw nothing. A neat bullet hole was punched through the center of his forehead.

  The groans of the dead came at her from both sides, and Rosa shoved the body off, scrambling to her feet. A sailor galloped at her from the left, and she threw her empty pistol at it, leaping for the ladder that climbed one wall of the tubelike room.

  Hands caught at her backpack and she shrugged out of it, climbing in bare feet. Each time her bullet-damaged foot pushed off a rung, she let out a scream of pain. More hands tore at her legs, nails ripping through the fabric of her oversized pants. Another hand caught the bloody bandage trailing from her right foot, pulling her back down. Rosa screamed again and tore it free, still climbing.

  Then she was above them, a crowd of reeking drifters pressing at the base of the ladder, reaching upward. She looked down, out of reach now, seeing the mass of agitated shadows in the glow of the flashlight still on the catwalk. Wincing and crying out from the pain in her foot, she reached the tiny platform at the top of the ladder, a single, closed hatch waiting in the wall beyond.

  What if someone wedged this one closed from the other side, just like the hatch below? If that was the case, she was
finished. The dead would keep her trapped up here on this platform until she died of thirst or decided she could no longer take it and flung herself out into the three-deck shaft of vertical pipes. Either way, she would join their ranks.

  Her hand touched the handle. It’s locked.

  But then the handle moved on its own, the steel oval swinging away from her. She cried out as a hand shot out to grab her arm.

  “Oh my God, Doc!”

  Tommy stood on the other side holding a flashlight, his assault rifle hung around his neck on a sling. He pulled her through the hatch. “I heard the shots! I’ve been looking for you, are you okay?”

  Rosa sobbed and fell against him, her body trembling.

  The orderly held her close. “Michael?” he asked.

  The medic shook her head, face buried in his chest.

  Tommy put an arm around her waist. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  • • •

  Charlie Kidd stalked up an aisle between firefighting suits, rifle to his shoulder, following the blood trail. His vision continued to sway into double images and back again, and he still felt like throwing up but forced down the urge. He was leaving his own trail now, losing blood from the head wound. Soon he would pass out and drop, he knew, and there would be no one to give him medical attention. Death was close.

  So be it. You first, Father.

  The aisle ended at a wall with another aisle crossing right to left, the rear of the compartment. On the deck before him, boot prints and bloody smears went in both directions. Right or left? His finger tensed on the trigger and he leaped out, swinging right, squeezing a long burst from the M14.

  The bar was iron, six feet long and capable of prying open cockpits and helicopter doors. Xavier gripped it in two hands and let out a primitive cry, thrusting it like a spear and driving it into the man’s back.