LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation

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LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation Page 10

by Bryan James


  The miles came slowly as we crawled forward. In several places, the road no longer lined up across newly formed gullies—with yellow lines askew and gray pavement reaching forlornly into the sky—and we had to take the pitiful truck into the adjoining fields to avoid the broken pathway. The interminable gray was both a relief and a curse—the diffuse light allowed only limited visibility, and we felt that at any moment, thousands of those things would appear from the cloudy forests set back from the lonely road.

  I watched the mile markers—those that had survived—until we were drawing closer to Kate’s intended crossing. A single farmhouse stood next to the road, rubble where its walls had been, but the front door strangely intact, standing alone like an abandoned sentinel, staring at the road.

  “Where do you think all the people are?” Ky asked softly, scratching Romeo’s ears as she stared at the remains of the farmhouse.

  “Don’t know, kid,” I answered briefly, then pointed as a crossroads appeared from the sooty mist. “Is this it?”

  Kate nodded, eyes narrowing as she looked to our left, the northern fork of the road.

  “Should be a bridge about two hundred feet along that road,” she said.

  I nodded, releasing the brake and letting the truck creep forward on idle. The air felt heavy, here. The ash sucked in noise like a blanket of cork and I yearned to hear the squeak of a brake or the rumble of a broken axel.

  The silence was too heavy—too much. The gray was unrelieved by details—only vague shapes in the shadows. In the distance, I could hear only the sound of rushing water.

  To either side of the gravel road, trees grew closer, further reducing our visibility. The branches above our heads created a foliage tunnel, with fell limbs lining the pathway. Several smaller limbs, unavoidable now in the narrow roadway, crunched beneath our wheels. The sound of rushing water got louder as we moved forward, and I willed the gray mist to clear slightly.

  “Hey guys,” Ky whispered, staring out the left rear window. Kate glanced back at her briefly before focusing on the road ahead.

  “Yeah kid, what’s up?” she said absently.

  Ahead, a massive dark shadow appeared, thrusting above the treetops over our heads. Sharp angles and bright splashes of red and white paint were barely discernible.

  “Shit!” I cursed as the brakes locked and our tires pushed through the loose stones, coming to a halt abruptly. A massive torrent of water was streaming across the roadway, debris thundering through the wash that had been created by the floodwaters. Kate’s mouth was open, and she leaned her head out of the passenger side window.

  “Guys,” Ky whispered again. I heard Romeo whimper once.

  “Is that what I think it is?” said Kate softly, not hearing Ky’s plaintiff request.

  “What’s up, K?” I asked, opening my door and dropping softly to the ground, staring straight ahead.

  Suddenly, I realized what Kate was seeing.

  There was no bridge here.

  There was something much larger.

  The flood waters were surging around the metal carcass of a massive car ferry.

  Nearly a city block in size, the huge monstrosity lay on its right side, bow firmly planted in the bank closest to where we were parked, stern lost deep in the gray powder that fell from the sky. Dark windows stared at us from behind the mist.

  “Guys!” Ky shouted this time, slamming her door as she and Romeo dropped from the truck. “We have company!”

  I whipped my head around, finally following her arm as it stretched toward the tree line to our left. Multiple forms were moving between the branches, many soaking wet and looking horridly disfigured—as if they had been dropped in vats of acid.

  “Where did they …” I began, but Kate yelled sharply.

  “Okay, this is the end of the line,” she started grabbing packs from the bed, detaching our huge bags and throwing them to us. “We’re hoofing it from here, people.”

  “Uh,” I began, raising my rifle. The creatures were only twenty meters from the tree line and closing fast. “What are you talking about? We can’t just leave the truck. We have to try further up the line. We leave now, we’re on foot … possibly for the rest of the trip. We don’t know what’s on the other side of this river. Assuming, that is, that we can cross it. In case you didn’t notice, this bridge is out. There’s a boat in its place.”

  Ky cinched up her pack and slung her rifle, crossbow in hand, eyes on Kate, who was moving with purpose.

  Didn’t anyone understand me? Was I even speaking out loud?

  Kate looked up, glancing at the zombies behind me before moving toward the surging water.

  “End of the line, sweetheart,” she said. “After this, the river moves into a large valley, about forty miles long. No bridges until a major highway overpass fifty miles away. We have ten miles of gas left, tops. We either try for a crossing here, or we’re hoofing it after we get ten miles further on, with no guarantee at a crossing.” She looked at the large ship, wedged across the river as water battered its hull on all sides. “Nope, this is our shot.”

  She grinned quickly before turning away.

  “Nut up, McKnight. It’s just a wrecked ferry spanning white water in an earthquake-ravaged riverbed that might dislodge at any moment and send us to a waterlogged grave under a press of trapped zombies. Ain’t nothin’.”

  I was starting to regret meeting this woman.

  Pulling the pack tight on my back and grimacing at the load, I grunted once and glanced back at our approaching friends.

  Ky shot past me as Kate made her way to a piece of the roadway that had survived the washout. It jutted out above the rushing water, a torn guardrail reaching into thin air. Evergreens beyond the railing dipped into the dark waters as the earth eroded quickly under the onslaught.

  The piece of roadway was a slender bridge between two pieces of intact road, separated by the rushing water. Beyond the second stretch of concrete, rubble from the torn and broken bridge made a barely discernible pathway toward the broken ship. A deep gash in the hull, facing the roadway, could be accessed from the faint pathway. I noted that it hadn’t yet been filled with water due to the angle of the ship, whose stern must be much deeper in the river as the bow jutted into the air.

  “If we’re going, we should go now,” said Ky, anxiously watching as the first creature reached the back of the truck and started toward us across the broken concrete.

  Kate took a breath and leapt, landing firmly in the middle of the concrete island and turning to Ky. She needn’t have worried. Following her athletic canine companion, Ky’s leap was spot on, and I was suddenly alone on the bank. I glanced one more at our faithful steed, now surrounded by the undead, sighing heavily as I turned toward the two women and jumped forward.

  The creatures were emerging in greater numbers from the tree line, gruesome flesh sagging from their bones, their limbs swollen and distended. I stared, unable to help myself, before realizing why they looked different.

  They had come from the ship, and the water had soaked into their bodies, which had absorbed the seawater like a bloated sponge, pushing their flesh to its limits. Bulging eyes stared out from leaking sockets as they shambled forward.

  No, sir. This apocalypse was not getting prettier as time went by.

  Every day was something new. And every day was something more gruesome and fucked up.

  Kate led the way across the concrete islands. As we jumped between safe spots amid a torrent of rushing water, I watched as pieces of the embankment we had left began to erode before our eyes. Concrete was still calving from the bank. The water was not yet done creating new pathways for its destruction.

  Ky chuckled as several zombies stumbled head first into the raging waters, getting whipped instantly downstream, their limbs flailing into the sky as they disappeared under white water.

  “Mind the gap, bitch-wads,” she muttered, flashing me a grin.

  “Watch the edge here,” Kate threw back, as she reach
ed the end of the concrete where a massive gash in the side of the hull had been opened by a shattered piece of the steel bridgeworks. Nearly seven feet long and four feet wide, it was sufficiently large for us and our huge packs as we negotiated the approach. Edges of sharp, torn metal lined the jagged tear.

  Romeo flew into the space lithely, landing firmly on the other side and turning to Kate, who carefully stepped into the dubious safety of the steel hull.

  “I still want to go on record as saying this is a bad idea,” I said, eyeing the dark confines of the large ship—a ship that could have been a tomb to more than a thousand commuters at the height of the outbreak. A ship that had already disgorged a number of hungry creatures.

  “Noted,” said Kate, moving into the darkness as Ky entered the ship.

  “Good then. Glad they’re paying attention to me,” I muttered. “Awesome. Just …” I stared into the yawning unknown, then back at the crumbling bank, where countless zombies were still diving into the rushing waters like lemmings on a cliff.

  “…Awesome.”

  ***

  The ship had come to rest with its keel pointed east and the starboard side straddling the rushing water of the river. Amazingly, the entire bow half of the huge ferry was propped up, out of the water, its hull mashed and crushed together with the steel girders and other remains of the much smaller bridge. The high water that had pushed the beast this far inland had left the bow stranded, propped against the remains of the embankment on the south side with water flowing beneath it, while the stern was lost in the gray haze ahead of us. The gentle slope of the floor—what used to be the wall of a large interior passageway—indicated that the stern was much lower, perhaps partially submerged in the river waters ahead.

  Our lights illuminated a barren metal passage, and we crouched in the odd space. Assorted hatchways opened above us into various rooms in the ship, and we were careful to stay to the side of the hall—just in case something had survived and wanted to drop in on us.

  “If there are more of those things on board, where would they be?” asked Ky, looking around warily. An automatic rifle was clipped to the single-point harness on her chest, looking absurdly large on her small frame. Her trusty crossbow was held in one steady hand and I watched her ponytail swish back and forth underneath her baseball cap.

  I marveled again at what a brave kid she was.

  “Depends,” said Kate, scanning the hallway as we approached an intersection. Since we were walking on the starboard side hull, the only way forward was actually up—a passageway that had been a hallway leading into the interior of the ship. Another hallway continued toward the stern only five feet above our heads, and I saw the small red signs Kate was isolating with her flashlight.

  Bar, Restrooms, Engine Room (Authorized Personnel Only).

  “On what?” Ky answered, watching as Kate slung her rifle over a shoulder, pulled her pistol, and climbed awkwardly with one hand, using the frame of a nearby door and a fire extinguisher as footholds.

  “How fast the infection came on, whether they were mid-cruise, whether this was used as an escape from somewhere else … a variety of factors. If it came on while they were on their way to work one morning, they could be spread out everywhere. If they had time to freak out and gather together, they could all be locked in one room…”

  “Like the bar?” Ky asked warily, turning her flashlight to the signs ahead.

  “That’s where I’d be,” I muttered, bending over to pick up Romeo under the front legs. Kate had made it to the next passageway, gave it a visual check, and reached down for the squirmy animal.

  “Probably not,” said Kate, grunting slightly as the odd, squirmy weight of the dog hit her arms. She lifted him easily and deposited him in the hallway. Ky was making her way up the wall now. “They’d probably want to be somewhere with a view—somewhere less confining. The restaurants of these ferries and the passenger areas are all up near the bridge. Trust me, I think this thing is empty.”

  I groaned as she moved forward confidently. Famous last words.

  I threw the large bag of supplies and weapons above my head and made the climb, landing hard on the next passageway. Thankfully, this one seemed to stretch a long way—possibly half the length of the ship. The ceiling was peppered with more of the open doors we had seen in the last passageway, and I tried to make a mental map of how the ship was arranged. The ceiling—which had been an interior bulkhead before the ship was flipped—was solid steel. Rivets were in clear evidence in the girders above us. Multiple doors, and even a slight tinge of daylight filtering through in weak amounts.

  The car deck. We were next to the car deck.

  “Kate, slow down for a sec …” I began, but she had already passed underneath the first doorframe. Four arms snaked down, like anacondas from a huge tree. Fingers, bloated with death and moisture, grasped at her in blind hunger. One hand found a full grip of long hair.

  “Down,” I said softly to Kate and Ky, trying to keep our noise level low. I pulled my long machete free of its sheath along my hip, enjoying the steely sound of its release. The metal flashed quickly, and an arm dropped to the ground.

  “Thanks,” Kate breathed, as she looked up. The arms were attached to two bodies that had been crushed against the bulkhead by the shifting weight of multiple cars. A pile of vehicles smashed the two forms against the doorway, their heads barely visible as they craned for a look into the corridor.

  “Car deck,” I offered. “We’re going to want to watch the doors beneath us too—probably some bathrooms and vending machines. Could be more below.”

  Ky made a face as she walked, careful to step over the dark doorways below.

  “Should we try to get up to the car deck?” Kate asked, seeing the daylight between the shattered vehicles. “Maybe we could get through quicker?”

  I shook my head, taking in the destruction.

  “Too dangerous. And likely slower. Even though it’s open to the outside, those cars will be piled on top of one another—very precariously. The boat could shift, there could be a hundred more of those things trapped up there. No, I say we stay with the corridors.”

  Ahead, Ky had reached the next set of doors. She aimed her light down.

  “Gross,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  My hand shot up and Kate’s went to her pistol.

  “What is it?”

  Ky looked away as Romeo bounded forward.

  “Men’s bathroom. Smells horrible.”

  ***

  The corridor led deeper toward the center of the ship, and we carefully dodged the yawning doorways until we reached the end. There was another drop down, similar to the one through which we had entered, on the other side.

  The only problem was that this passage was submerged in water.

  “Any idea how this thing is laid out?” I asked Kate.

  She shook her head.

  “This is much larger than the ones I used to ride in Jersey. My only guess is that the car deck has multiple entry and exit points, but we don’t want to risk it out there. Only other option is up,” she pointed above our heads, to a passage that led around the car deck, deeper into the interior of the ship. A sign directed foot traffic: Bar, Observation Deck.

  I felt the floor move suddenly beneath my feet. I fell hard to the bulkhead as Kate and Ky collapsed against the walls. The entire ship was shifting—turning slowly and falling more toward the stern.

  “The water is winning the battle against this thing,” I guessed, connecting the direction of the shift with the direction of the cascading river outside. “It’s not going to stay this way for much longer. We can’t pick our way through the car deck—we have to get higher and out of these hallways. Zombies might not kill us if we move quick enough. The water surely will.”

  “Copy that,” said Ky, jumping up and making her way along the wall, seeking footholds for the climb.

  It took some wrestling, but we were able to manhandle the begrudging dog to the next corrido
r. Ky sat solidly with her light shining brightly down the dank, musty passage. Smells of rot and decay permeated this floor, and we could very clearly hear the sound of movement against the doors in the ceiling.

  Romeo shook himself once and stared into the hallway along the beams of our flashlights. He whined once.

  Kate grimaced and pulled her rifle around, charging it after checking the magazine.

  “I suppose we’re not big into the silence thing by now, huh?”

  I shook my head slowly and peered up at the thick metal doors.

  “No, I suppose not. We’re sure we have to go through there?”

  She shrugged.

  “No, but I don’t feel like swimming toward the engine room, and this is the next option behind the car deck. So we’re a little short on alternatives.”

  As if punctuating her comment, the deck swayed slightly, then canted hard to the starboard again. The water was winning the battle with the ship. We didn’t have much time.

  “So what’s the play?”

  She strode down the hall, ignoring the wretched smell of decay and the sound of the dead on the opposite side of the wall.

  “Position here,” she said, pointing to one side of the furthest hatch. “We make noise, open the hatch, and let them come. When we’re sure they’re all pushing forward above us, we retreat here,” her finger selected the door closest to where we had come up. “We pop this hatch, and go up. Quietly. If it works out, we flank them while they’re pouring down to come after us.”

  “How many do you think are in there?” I asked, moving to position.

  Kate grabbed Ky’s arm and herded Romeo behind her.

  “Enough,” she said, raising her rifle.

  “Open the hatch and let them fall. Wait for five or six of them to pile up, then fire. I’ll mop up after you as you focus on new ones pushing through.”

  “Copy,” I said, shaking my head.

 

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