The Infected Dead (Book 4): Exist For Now

by Howard, Bob

  Doctor Sellers had become sick while working in his lab, and Doctor Nkrumah had been bitten by his old friend. Sick bay had long since been overcome by the sheer numbers of people they had already brought in, but Nkrumah had gone to sick bay out of reflex, and when he opened the door it had released the contents of the room onto the rest of the ship. People who hadn’t gotten sick found themselves face to face with corridors crowded with the infected, and there was nowhere to hide.

  Cassandra managed to reach the vehicle deck where she was able to fight a gradual but successful battle with crewmen and women who had gone up for safety. As they had become sick and turned on each other, the spaces between the vehicles had become crowded with the infected. From the top of a jeep she shot them as they made themselves easy targets, and she kept going until she ran out of ammunition. She was forced to go back to the decks below to resupply, and it took a full day for her to work her way back to the vehicle deck, but this time she was able to finish the job.

  When she had finally shot the last moving member of the infected crew on the vehicle deck, she walked to the port side railing and looked down. The ship was still under power and plowing through the water. The crew in the engine room wasn’t concerned with bringing the ship to a stop. They were too busy trying to stay alive.

  She wondered how many people were still alive in the lower decks and was sure someone else had to be because there were sporadic bursts of gunfire, but then again there were the sporadic screams of agony.

  She saw the Captain once. He was near the bow, and it looked like he was still uninfected. Cassandra wondered if there was anything she could do to help him, but she had already remembered that last time she had gone to his dining room with the message from the doctors. She remembered seeing the stew the cooks had prepared with the mangrove oysters and ghost crabs. Even if she could rescue him from the bow, he was doomed.

  Cassandra watched him as he tried to climb out onto a lifeboat that was hanging from its hooks ready to be lowered. If he tried to launch a lifeboat at the speed the Mercy Mission ship was traveling, it would tear him and the lifeboat to shreds. She wondered if it wouldn’t be more merciful for her to help him end it, so she braced her M4 on the hood of a Jeep and took careful aim.

  The up and down motion of the ship made her take longer to keep her sights on him, and just as she was about to pull the trigger, he disappeared. She wasn’t entirely sure where he had gone, but she thought he went over the railing. If she had her preference, she would rather drown.

  Days went by, and Cassandra lived off of the supply packs that had been stored in the Jeeps. Every time a vehicle had returned from a visit inland, it was resupplied for the next time. With one exception, there were enough provisions in each Jeep to last a three person medical team about a week, and there were forty jeeps on the vehicle deck.

  Unfortunately that one exception was big. In order to ensure the freshness of the water supply, it wasn’t loaded onto a Jeep until it was ready to go, and there were no functioning water spigots on the vehicle deck. The water supply must have been turned off somewhere below. She had found a couple of random six packs of bottled water, but it could only be rationed for a short while. The sun beat down on the vehicle deck, and there were no clouds on the horizon.

  Cassandra decided the inevitable truth was that she would have to go back to the source of the water supply and restore power to the pumps that would carry it to the vehicle deck, and there was no sense in putting it off. Besides she would only get weaker after more time without water.

  At sunrise she gathered together a light supply pack just in case she had to hole up in a cabin for a while, and climbed quietly down the gangway to the next deck. She knew what it would be like on the port side where the medical bay was, so she went down on the starboard side facing the bow.

  She felt exposed out on the gangway, but she hadn’t seen any of the infected demonstrate the ability to climb, and if the next deck down was populated, she could still climb back up. Once she was down another deck, climbing back up quickly might mean climbing back up into a crowd.

  There was also gravity. The infected couldn’t climb a ladder, but they had no problem falling down one. She hoped she wouldn’t look up to see one demonstrating that particular ability when she was ready to make her way back up to the vehicle deck.

  Six rungs from the deck she stopped again to survey her surroundings. The ladder led down to an open deck, so she still had a pretty fair idea of what was walking around. She had spent some time the day before watching this spot from above and had seen a few of the infected go by. A few of them walked right over the edge of the ship and disappeared into the ocean, and she hoped the others on this deck had done the same thing during the night.

  There was one blind corner in front of her as she lowered herself down the last few steps, so she stayed quiet and moved from the bottom of the ladder to the bulkhead where the blind corner was. She knew she had to at least look around that corner before going down to the next level.

  She pressed her back against the bulkhead and eased closer to the corner. As she did, it felt almost as if she knew there would be an infected dead standing there without even looking. The question was whether or not she could wait for it to come into view or if she had to be the one to make the move.

  The answer was decided for her as it stumbled directly across her path. She didn’t even think about how she was going to confront the dead when she ran into them. Her guns were too loud, so she would give away her position if she used them. She had a long knife that was more like a bayonet than a cutting knife, but she knew she would have to stab the infected through the head. That sounded easy enough, but sticking a blade into solid bone would be a mistake.

  Without overthinking it, Cassandra just reached out and pushed with both hands. She connected with the already off balance crewman on his right shoulder and launched him over the railing. She watched him hit the water and was busy congratulating herself when she saw the motion out of the corner of her left eye.

  In training she had been taught that corners and doors were the two places where people made their mistakes, and she knew she had made one by assuming there would only be one infected dead coming around the corner.

  Her Glock was suddenly in her hand, and she pulled the trigger. She didn’t miss, but the sound of the gun was like ringing a dinner bell. She didn’t have time to stay and watch as the infected crewman was knocked backward by the punch of the bullet to its forehead. As quickly as she could move, she crossed the deck to the next ladder going down. She knew she had to move with less caution, but she had to be clear of the area at the bottom of the ladder before any new arrivals responded to the gunshot.

  The ladder ended below decks, but the lights were still working. She was grateful for that small blessing. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like if she had to navigate to the engine room through dark corridors.

  Cassandra slid down the railings of the gangway without even using the steps, and as her feet hit the deck below they were already moving. She had holstered her Glock to have her hands free, and she was wishing she had a different weapon. She needed something she could swing in a narrow space that caused enough trauma to stop the infected.

  “The galley,” she whispered.

  She knew the ship like the back of her hand, and she didn’t hesitate. There would be some very useful kitchen utensils in the galley. Cassandra changed directions and ran back past the gangway she had just descended until she reached the next one going down. She still slid down the rails using her hands, but she put out her feet on the tops of the railing to use them as brakes. She couldn’t keep pressing her luck and hoping there was nothing at the bottom of the steps.

  When she landed this time, she saw two infected at one end of the corridor and one at the other end. They were moving away from her, but the sound of her feet hitting the metal deck gave off just enough noise to make them turn around. She pulled her knife free from her belt and stepped q
uickly into the nearest inboard cabin.

  Cassandra needed to be lucky in two ways. First, she had chosen an inboard cabin because there would be a chance there was another door leading from the cabin into another corridor. Secondly, she was hoping the cabin was empty.

  She was only half lucky this time, but she had entered the cabin so quickly that the infected inhabitant of the cabin wasn’t prepared to bite her as soon as she came in. It was on the far side of the cabin standing in front of the door that she had hoped would be there.

  Cassandra saw the cabin was actually a small office for someone on the crew. She turned the lock on the door she had entered and advanced toward the groaning creature that was moving in her direction with its mouth open. She brought the tip of the blade up under the jaw as if she was delivering an uppercut punch, and the blade went straight up through the brain until it reached the inside of the skull. She thought she had actually heard the sound of it stopping against the solid bone, but knew that wasn’t important as long as she could pull it free and keep moving.

  The door exited into the central corridor of the ship, and turning left would take her straight to the galley. She pulled the door shut as quietly as she could and mentally marked the spot just in case she would need to return to the room. At least she knew it was empty now, and so was the corridor for the time being.

  She entered the galley and saw that many of the crew had gone there in the final moments of their lives. It was a large room, often used for movies and meetings when food wasn’t being served. None of them saw her enter, but there were at least twenty infected dead wandering between the tables.

  She dropped low to the floor and waited to see if any of the feet she could see shuffling past the tables were moving in her direction. They were still moving randomly, so Cassandra started crawling in the direction of the serving line. She had to pass by several openings on the way, but she couldn’t stop or even spend time waiting to be sure it was clear at each opening. There would be just too many starts and stops along the way.

  Her luck ran out at the very last opening between the rows, and a low groan escaped from a woman who had probably been a nurse when she was alive. Now the former nurse was a shell of a human who was alerting the horde of infected that were scattered around the room.

  Cassandra was behind the serving line when she stood up straight and started to run. The infected would have to cross the room and go all the way to the same place where she entered and started down the line in order to get to her. There were no openings in the serving line where they could reach far enough to grab her, but since they could see her clearly, they tried to reach her anyway. The infected didn’t have the reasoning power to try to get to her by going to the other end of the line, but it wasn’t long before the weight of their numbers pushing against the stainless steel food display racks caused the heavy serving line to move.

  The serving line was bolted down in half of the sections, but every other section was able to be removed by releasing the brakes on the wheels and rolling them away. The brakes were always set, but the sections could slide if they were pushed hard enough. Cassandra was shocked when she saw the closest section on her left begin to collapse toward her. She had reached the kitchen door, but she had hoped she would at least be able to enter the kitchen at her own speed, not by bursting into the room. She was getting a bit frustrated by not being able to enter corridors and rooms using stealth. She had been lucky too many times, and she knew luck could get you killed just as well as keep you alive.

  Once again, the choice was made for her as the serving line fell over. The infected in front were pushed from behind causing them to pile up on top of the racks, but the ones pushing from behind were able to crawl over them more easily than navigating the metal shelves and serving platters that had fallen over with the racks. The infected would still have to fight their way over, but she would only have a few minutes before they would reach her. She saw that ironically the serving platters and pots still held rotten platters of mangrove oysters and ghost crab stew.

  Cassandra took a deep breath and pushed through the door that led to the kitchen, and she saw for once she had gotten a big break. There were no crewmen in the large room, and there was a heavy bolt lock on the door. She slid it into place, and for the time being, she was safe. She still had to make it down at least four more levels to reach the engine room, but there was a good chance she would find some water in the kitchen. If not, there would be juice in the refrigerators.

  Almost as important as the water was the rack of kitchen utensils she had been hoping for. There was a heavy meat cleaver that looked deadly hanging from a hook. She lifted it free and tested the weight with a couple of swings. It felt like it wanted to keep going on its own once it got started in motion. She liked that. Plus the blade looked like it was razor sharp. She made a mental note not to swing it too hard, or it would be permanently embedded in the head of the first infected dead she hit.

  She found a big bottle of apple juice in the first refrigerator and downed the sweet liquid in greedy gulps. The constant adrenaline rush she was getting as she worked her way down to the engine room was going to leave her feeling exhausted, so the big hit of sugar from the juice was what she needed. She was tempted to grab some of the food, but she was a little worried about it slowing her down. She needed to keep moving, and she wasn’t even sure where the exit was. She also wasn’t sure what would be on the other side of that exit.

  Cassandra never would have guessed the kitchen was so big, but she discovered that the food storage portion was like a small warehouse. It had been depleted by the trip across the Atlantic, but she was sure she could stay in the room safely for as long as she wanted to. The problem was, she didn’t want to. She kept searching for another exit until she found what she was looking for, but she didn’t stop there. She wanted more than one choice in case she had to retreat to the kitchen.

  The second door she found was a cargo door that was larger than normal, and she had an idea of where it would lead. It slid open along the bulkhead on wheels, and Cassandra was hit in the face with a blast of fresh air and salt water spray. It was the door where the supplies would be loaded from the dock, and she was only a few yards above the water. She breathed in deeply for a moment and let herself enjoy the wide open view. Up until that moment, she hadn’t realized how the Mercy Mission ship smelled. The dead were everywhere, and she had been so focused on reaching her goal that she had ignored the smell. She decided to leave the door open, and if she had no other choice, she would jump from the boat and take her chances at sea. If she had a life raft and supplies, she would do just that.

  Reality came back to her when a body passed in front of her eyes and hit the water. Cassandra looked up from the open cargo door and saw the gap in the side railing above. She wondered how many of the crewmen had fallen overboard, and she wondered if she could get more of them off of the ship that way. It was worth giving it some thought, but there were hundreds of people on board when this had all started, and at least half of them were trapped below decks with no way to get out. At least a small part of her also held out hope that there were others alive.

  She started to turn away from the open door when she saw something she hadn’t seen in a long time. There were seagulls circling the ship. That meant they were near land, and Cassandra tried to remember how long they had been at sea since leaving port in Africa. She asked herself if it was even possible that it had been long enough for them to have crossed the Atlantic, but the memories came back to her like a movie on fast forward.

  There had been time to watch the doctors make one discovery after the next, only to find something had contaminated the blood samples. They would try again, and more than once they thought they had found a cure, but each time it failed when it was tested. Before Doctor Sellers had become infected and bitten Doctor Nkrumah, there had been hope, but hope dimmed when the infection had finally broken free throughout the crew.

  There had been close calls
with the infected, and there had been many deaths, but mostly there had been the waiting. They spent months circling in the Atlantic just trying to establish communications with anyone who could give them some news of a safe harbor. When they did make contact with military forces at sea, they were warned not to approach land or other ships.

  She remembered they had sailed along the coast of Africa, and wherever they passed land that had open areas they saw the hordes of infected walking toward the shores. Sometimes they would send out a blast from the ship’s horn and watch the reaction of the infected. That was the only way they could be sure they weren’t survivors. If they were survivors, they would have waved, but the infected walked into the water as if they could walk all the way to the ship.

  Portugal and Spain were promising because there were less infected along the coast, but it was all an illusion. The infected were still there. They just weren’t walking into the ocean. The crew was once again encouraged when the coast of France came into view, and they saw a small contingent of soldiers camped on the beach, but a blast from the ship’s horn was met with gunfire from the troops. They could understand why when they saw that the sound of the horn drew the infected down upon the soldiers. There was nothing they could do as they watched the camp being overrun.

  The only communication established after France was with a Royal Navy destroyer that ordered them to change course. They were given no reason except that they would be sunk if they proceeded toward the United Kingdom. They had eventually turned back to the east in the hope that North America had done what they had hoped and saved their country.

  “Yes,” Cassandra said out loud. “It has been a long time.”