The first cabin door he came to was open, as it had been when they boarded. The hinges at its bottom had cracked and broken away, leaving it hanging at an odd angle. There were several empty boxes jammed in the doorway, leaving only a small gap above that wasn’t big enough for Wesley to get through. He pulled the top two boxes away, and was surprised when they just fell to pieces in his hands. He dropped the remnants onto the deck behind him and stepped into the short entryway to the cabin.
The place stank of something, but it wasn’t the smell of death, more like unwashed than undead, but he drew his gun anyway. He’d been on a yacht before, but nothing this big. There had to be a couple of decks beneath this one, and although the group had been to the engine room, and the pilot’s room above it, no one had been down into the crew quarters.
Almost on cue, and just as Wesley stepped into the barely lit main berth, a heavy roll of thunder rumbled above, and a moment later a flash of lightning lit up the room through two portholes. There was no movement in the cabin, but Wesley still paused as he stepped inside and surveyed the wreckage. It had been lived in, but not recently. The floor was littered with empty food cans and torn boxes, but anything organic had long ago dried up.
A glance around the room showed no other exits, and nowhere for a hidden zombie to lurk. Only a small cupboard with its door swinging wide that only a child could sneak into. Across the cabin, hanging on the wall, was exactly what he had come looking for, a large box with a red cross on it. He almost walked straight across the room to grab it, but then stopped. There had been a noise, hadn’t there? Just then, as he stepped inside. Not the noise from outside, nor the thunder. Something else. A scratching?
Wesley leaned down, aiming his gun into the cupboard, paranoid enough now to check even that, and he was glad he did. The cupboard was in darkness, with barely any light hitting the inside, but there was just enough to reflect off the two eyes that stared back at him.
His heart rate doubled in an instant and he stumbled back, hitting the shelving on the opposite side of the cabin, as he watched a furry head slowly poke out of the darkness. He had the gun aimed right at the dog’s eyes, and nearly fired, but he stopped. If the bullet passed through the animal, it might make a hole in the boat and they’d start taking on water. If he could just grab the med kit and get to the door, maybe he could lock the dog in.
He took three quick side steps, while keeping his gun up and watching the pooch, then grabbed the kit and started to edge his way across the room. Wesley could see it a bit better now, and it looked to him like a German Shepherd. It still didn’t move, but just watched him. No growling or show of teeth. The dog, unlike Wesley, seemed to be perfectly at ease with the situation.
Maybe it’s not dangerous. But it could be hungry.
Then he was out the door and shutting it behind him. Problem solved, for now.
Burns was waiting for him and grabbed the med kit as soon as Wesley appeared on deck. The big man opened it and rummaged around, seemingly finding what he needed.
“Errr,” Wesley said. “We seem to have a guest in the cabin. A good-sized dog. So don’t go in there. I don’t know if it’s rabid or anything like that.” He glanced around and saw the little girl from the survivor group grinning.
“A doggy?”
Wesley smiled. “Yes, there’s a doggy. But we don’t know if it’s a good dog or a bad one.”
“Oh,” she said, her smile disappearing. With a lurch of sadness, Wesley realized that this was probably a child who had known little but disappointment in her life.
Without warning, the yacht’s engine suddenly roared to life, and a half-hearted cheer went up. A moment later they were moving again, chugging away from the dock and toward the distant bridge that spanned the neck of the inlet.
“Okay, I got him bandaged properly and wrapped up tight,” said Burns, now standing at Wesley’s shoulder. “But he’s lost a lot of blood. I still don’t know that he’ll last long.”
Another survivor appeared from the prow and jogged over to them.
“We have another problem,” he said.
Burns sighed. “What now?”
They followed the man to the top roof deck, where he pointed up and ahead at the bridge. As they approached it, Wesley could make out movement among the riot of abandoned vehicles.
“We gotta go under that,” said the man. “And it’s crawling with those fast ones.”
“Oh, shit,” said Burns.
Wesley looked up at the bridge, and then down at the expanse of water beneath it. And just as he worked out the problem, as the boat came within fifty feet of the bridge, he saw the first flailing shape drop from above and splash into the water. The first of many.
“Stop the boat!” shouted Burns. “Turn us around.”
The boat slowed as ordered, then started trying to reverse. Wesley watched in horror as they drifted to within ten feet of the shadow of the bridge on the water.
And the dead began to rain down.
Dark figures plummeted downward, missing the boat by only a few feet. Looking toward shore, Wesley could see hundreds of runners sprinting onto the bridge from the road. He couldn’t see up onto the bridge itself from there, but knew they would be running through the abandoned vehicles, speeding toward the middle. Dozens of them now tumbled down at them. Gunfire rattled as Melvin and Browning sniped at ones that were too close. Ten seconds passed as the living ran for cover, leaving Wesley and the shore patrolmen standing alone on deck.
None of the dead landed on the yacht in the end – they had stopped in time, and for that Wesley was grateful. But the force with which they hit the water sent splashes pelting the hull, and he had no idea how much damage a falling body could do to the already weather-weakened deck. Never mind to them.
The vessel finally backed away, and Burns rejoined Wesley. The man was about to speak when there was a flash of darkness in the sky, and the plane shot by again, the sonic boom hitting them a moment later.
“Okay,” said Wesley, regarding the undead guardians of the passage out to sea. “Now what the hell do we do?”
Flushed
JFK, Flag Bridge
Drake rubbed his forehead and squinted, waiting for the Tylenol to kick in and headache to pass, but it wasn’t shifting. He stared out the main screen and across the deck at the chaos down below. It occurred to him that never before, even on their biggest ops back in the world that was, had this vessel been so close to panic and dysfunction. Then again, the ship had never before had to fight for its life. As he shook his head in wonderment, he belatedly noticed the Air Boss standing in the doorway.
“How long have you been there?” Drake said, pulling up a chair and collapsing into it.
The big man shrugged. “Only a minute. You asked me to see you after the meeting.”
“Did I? Sorry. Not much sleep since this shitstorm started up. Do you know there have been five injuries in the last day? Stupid stuff like dropped heavy equipment. How many of those guys do you think just don’t want to face off against the swarm?”
“I don’t know that any of us are all that enthusiastic about it.”
“Fair point.” Drake took a look at the overhead, trying to remember why he’d called the other man in here. “Right. Look. The flight deck is getting too dangerous, trying to be two things at once, and time is ticking down. You can see for yourself that the dead are going to be at the gunwales soon. I think we should recover the last birds and cease air ops. Now.”
The Air Boss looked slightly crestfallen. “We have two more rearmed and refueled, ready to fly. I was hoping we could get in one more sortie.”
“Yeah,” said Drake. “I was, too. Anything that can degrade the herd is great. But the danger is we end up with no space or time to safely recover them, and the pilots find themselves having to punch out. Two birds in the drink don’t bother me that much. But the pilots might not find the waters to their liking.”
“Yeah, I see your point. We’ll call it.”
<
br /> Drake could see the Air Boss didn’t like this. He didn’t much like it himself. They were running low on heavy weapons already, and they hadn’t made much of a dent. The port-side missile launchers were already dry – though the surface-to-air Sparrows weren’t too damned accurate when targeting ground targets anyway. Then again, they didn’t have to be. In this threat environment, you almost couldn’t miss. And the port-side CIWS wasn’t amounting to much in the end, regardless of all that inspection and test-firing, because while it could swivel to face nearly forward, it couldn’t shoot around the prow. And of course Drake couldn’t maneuver the boat to get a better shot.
Then again, this was all pretty standard with combat operations – things rarely worked out in any way you would have predicted, much less planned for.
Drake was about to speak again, but his phone started to buzz. He looked up to the Air Boss, trying to call to mind if there was anything else that urgently needed dealing with. “Okay. Carry on,” he said putting the phone to his ear. A piercing burst of static hit him for a moment before the line cleared. Maybe their own shipboard wireless packet network was starting to fail. Everything else seemed to be.
“Go for Drake.”
“Sir, this is Albertson.”
Albertson. Who the fuck was he…? Right, the hydro-stability guy.
“Sir, you asked me to look at timescales and calculations for dumping the forward ballast tanks.”
“And?”
“Well I’m out on the flight deck right now, looking down at the forward pump expulsion port. I came out to check if there were any obstructions that might stop us using it.”
Drake stood, looked out, and managed to spot the man down below in the distance.
“Okay. Speed this up, can you?”
“Well, it’s already emptying.”
“What?”
“Sir, the ballast tanks are already emptying, and from what I can see it’s an uncontrolled expulsion.”
“Is that bad?”
“Erm, well, not bad so far. But there are fifty-foot jets of water blasting out of the side of the ship. Obviously, someone already started flushing the tanks.”
“Someone? Who is someone?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Sir.”
Drake frowned for the third time in as many minutes.
“Okay, so let me get this straight. The tanks are emptying. Nothing has gone wrong so far. Goal achieved. But we don’t know who the fuck opened them. Is that about the shape of it?”
Silence for a moment. “Um… yes, sir.”
“Great. Then return to whatever it was you were doing.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Drake put the phone down, stood up, paced across the room and headed for CIC to watch the last air strikes. Under normal circumstances, emptying the ballast tanks without authorization would be considered an act of sabotage. But he didn’t remotely have time for such crap right now.
How quickly everything changed.
Thunderchild
The Skies Over Virginia Beach
A few thousand feet above Wesley’s stranded yacht crew, Lieutenant Hailey Wells was also feeling the first effects of the weather front. Heavy winds now buffeted her plane as she banked once more and headed back inland. One last bomb to release, before having at them with the missiles.
She spotted the fleeing group of the living again, or what she presumed must be them. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else alive down there. This time they weren’t in the truck, and they were no longer running along the docks. They were on a boat, a large yacht by the looks of it, out on the water – and the pier they had been running along when she last sighted them was now completely flooded with the dead.
But those poor bastards evidently had another problem. The yacht was near the bridge that spanned the mouth of the lake and the inlet to the sea, but was turning back. Then Hailey saw why. Flailing figures were raining down from the bridge, dozens of them leaping from the railing and landing in the water. A quick scan of the area made the situation very clear to her. The refugees on that yacht weren’t going anywhere unless they went under that bridge, and it wouldn’t be long, maybe twenty minutes, before the horde of dead, currently surging through the city, filled up the lake and swallowed the boat and its crew. Probably quite literally.
And their exit was effectively blocked by the ones falling from the bridge.
Hailey eyed the span, wondering if there was anything she could do to help them. The missiles she had on her hardpoints were Hellfires, and far too destructive to deploy directly – there would be no bridge left and the debris would probably block the inlet. But maybe her 25mm auto-cannon? As she blasted back inland, closing fast on her next target, she mentally played back the image of the bridge: the cars and trucks all backed up, the dead pouring through the gaps and over the edge…
A tentative plan formed in her mind. One missile at the foot of the bridge, fifty yards back, and then cannons along the length of it. Sure, if she hit some of the smaller vehicles they might go over and into the water, but the bigger ones wouldn’t. That should clear the way underneath, or at least thin things out enough to make the risk worth it. But would they be ready?
Hailey knew she would take all kinds of flak for diverting from her flight plan, and for such creative deployment of her limited ordnance. But if those people down there escaped as a result? That would be worth the risk. And the flak.
As she released her last JDAM, took the sleek fighter through a tight 180, and then zoomed back out toward the seafront, the need to brief the flat-top intruded on her thoughts.
“Tugboat Jack, this is Thunderchild. Last JDAM is a hit. Over.”
“Roger that, Thunderchild. We are beginning cyclic recovery of all aircraft, and winding down flight ops. I’m sending your recovery instructions and landing slot. We’re on a tight timeline here, so don’t dawdle, over.”
Ending flight ops? Already?
“Tugboat Jack. I’m not black on ordnance yet. I still have times-two Hellfires.”
“Acknowledged, Thunderchild. This ops window is closed. RTB immediately.”
“Roger that. Over.”
Below her, the lake blasted by in a blur, but she did get one last look, and saw the water was now teeming with the dead. The folks on that yacht wouldn’t have the bird’s-eye view that she did, and wouldn’t see that the previously blue water was black and thick with bodies. Any minute, the dead under the surface would be clawing at the sides of their boat.
But she was out of time. Her slot and approach vector were happening now, and she had already overflown the refugees. The lake and that bridge were a mile behind her in an instant. Ahead of her was open water – and, in the distance, the looming hulk of the Kennedy.
But, then again… just one Hellfire, and a couple of strafing runs with her five-barrel Gatling cannon… That’s all it would have taken, and those people in the yacht might have had half a chance.
But it was too late to help now. Or was it…?
* * *
Up in PriFly, the lead air controller watched as the blip that represented their last active air mission, an F-35 moving into its recovery slot, suddenly reversed course and headed back toward land. He frowned at his screen, then grabbed a desk mic.
“Stormchild, Tugboat Jack. Update status, over.”
There were ten seconds of silence, and the controller felt his heart thump heavier. Was there some malfunction with the aircraft?
“Stormchild. This is Tugboat Jack. How copy, over.”
“Tugboat Jack, Stormchild. I am making one last thunder run.”
“Negative, Stormchild, negative. Reverse course and get back in your recovery slot immediately. If you want to use this flight deck to land, you need to get your ass back and do it now. Your last chance is evaporating.”
“Copy that,” came the crackling voice of the pilot, but a few seconds later it was obvious that her heading had not changed. She was still blasting back toward land – and h
er last seconds of recovery window ticking away.
“Stormchild, Tugboat Jack.”
There was no reply.
“Shit,” cursed the air controller, turning toward the Air Boss. “Sir, I think we have a problem.”
* * *
Hailey twiddled down her headset radio volume, the last words of the air controller fading even as he spoke them. She sighed. So, her first combat mission in ages might in fact prove to be her last. But, then, it might have been anyway. The JFK did not look like it was moving any time soon, and that would mean abandoning it. And that meant no more air missions.
The folks on that yacht were going to die if they didn’t get help. And her chain of command didn’t want to send her back to use her missiles anyway, so this was only utilizing a resource that would be wasted otherwise. All this she told herself, but deep down she knew it was just something she had an emotional need to do. She couldn’t walk away.
She blasted over the seafront, laser-painted a spot just inside the foot of the bridge, then banked right, and headed on a parallel path to the main road. A quarter-mile farther and she whipped around again, bled off some altitude, and soared toward her target. This was the strangest feeling – she had never before in her career ID’d, painted, and engaged a target without oversight and approval from command. There was definitely a court-martial type offense in here somewhere, but she didn’t have time to work out exactly what it was.
Damn, she thought, as the Hellfire missile ripped away, rocketed downward, and slammed into the base of the bridge. I might actually be keelhauled for this… As she blasted over, she just had time to see cars, trucks, road, bridge, virtually any matter in the vicinity, all rise into a great fireball and dust cloud, raining down debris for two hundred yards all around.
She dropped down even further and felt a tingling burst of excitement as the tops of the buildings on either side of the road rose up higher than her cockpit. She did another pass over the bridge, checking the effect of the Hellfire – which had basically blown up the whole foot of the bridge – turned back around, put the target reticle of the big auto-cannon at the center of the mass of fast-running dead that still surged across the span, and let the deadly thunder fly.
Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS Page 15