“Out of curiosity,” McInerney began, “did you notice any identifying marks on the uniforms of the group who attacked Atlantis?”
Ship wrote in a notebook and passed it to one of his compatriots. “Ship says he noticed a set of Roman numerals on the black BDUs of several of the douches who blew up my house. The numbers were here.” The man touched his left breast with his index finger.
Seyfert looked sideways at McInerney, both Rick and Dallas mimicking the act and glancing at each other. “Triumvirate,” all four men said in unison.
“Yeah, one of them said something about him not being Triumvirate,” the new guy told them.
“Wait, not Triumvirate?” Seyfert asked.
“Yeah. I had just stuck my knife in his stomach. He was bleeding out and said they had conscripted him.”
Meara looked at the new man oddly. “You…you killed him?”
“Nope. I stabbed him and let the dead kill him. The same dead who had been my friends before they were made dead by that asshole and his buddies. Triumvirate or not, that dickweed had to go.”
Seyfert snorted, obviously agreeing with the stranger’s actions. McInerney glared at the SEAL, and Seyfert stared at the ground.
McInerney sighed. “So, Atlantis is lost?”
“Yeah, it’s toast. Those pricks blew it up. There were some survivors who escaped in boats to the other rigs and ships in the Gulf. There’s a couple dozen big ships and several rigs out there.” The man pulled a green spiral notebook out of his tactical vest and flipped open to the last page. A list of many coordinates and radio frequencies along with the names of some vessels adorned the back of the book. “You can check them out if you want. Give ‘em a call, I mean.”
McInerney accepted the book with thanks.
The man looked at Dallas and sighed. “Did you tell them?”
Dallas shook his head. “Tell ‘em what?”
“About this?” The man pointed to a horrible scar on his arm. It looked barely healed. Both the Navy corpsman and Doctor Lefkovitz had checked each person during their quarantine. The bandage on the man’s arm was clearly a bite wound, but as it was healing, and the man wasn’t sick, both doctors cleared him of infection. The new guy said he had been bitten by a living man during a fight a few months ago.
Dallas looked around at his friends before replying. “Uhh…no. Thought you should do that.” The big Texan pointed at the wound. “Another one?”
The man smiled. “Thanks, my large Texan friend. I need to ask you another question. Normally, I wouldn’t do it in front of all these people, but if I’m going to live here, I gotta know: do you trust everyone in this room?”
“No,” Dallas said immediately. “I dunno these three guys.” He pointed at the man’s friends, including the giant, “but if they’re with you and you trust ‘em, they’re good enough for me, cuz I trust you.”
The guy continued, “Right.” It was Ship’s turn to put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Ship shook his head, No. “Got to, buddy.” He turned to speak to McInerney. “Captain, there are some things you need to know about me. Number one: I am a shit magnet. Bad things follow me around like a lost puppy. Number two: There are people hunting me. Not just people, what’s left of the US government. Some of them are good people, and some are in league with the son of a bitch that tried to kill Dallas and your men in Massachusetts.” All the men in the room looked at Dallas, who tried to make himself small. An impossible task for a man of his size.
“You divulged mission specifics to a…stranger?” Pitt demanded.
Dallas looked a bit sheepish. “Listen to what else he’s got to say.”
“I was hunted and captured by a man named Lynch,” the new guy said and Rick’s blood went cold.
“Holy shit,” blurted Seyfert.
“Yup, except he was not the same Lynch as yours. Government douche, yeah, but my guy was torn apart by infected and Dallas killed yours. Unless he died twice, it wasn’t the same dude.”
Pitt looked concerned. “Why is the government hunting you?”
The guy looked at the giant, then at the Army guy, then at the marine. “Because of this.” He raised his arm, the bite mark evident. Everyone knew it was a bite, but they also knew it was from a living human, as nobody would be alive after a day-long quarantine after being bitten by an infected.
The man looked down for a moment, put his hands on the table, then looked back at the group. “The guy who bit me was a little…less alive than I may have let on.”
“What?” asked McInerney, a bit confused. Meara, Rick, and Pitt had their hands on their weapons quickly, but so did all the newcomer’s friends.
“Relax,” Dallas said and put his hand on Rick’s arm.
“Dallas, he’s bitten!” Pitt almost shouted.
Even with the tension in the room and hands on weapons, the guy smiled. “It was almost four months ago that I was bitten.” He put his foot on the table and pulled his pant leg up. Another wound, clearly a healed bite mark, was present on his calf. “This was almost two years ago.”
This revelation sparked a more intense conversation which lasted into the early evening. When the group broke for a meal, Dallas, Rick, the new guy, and his friends Ship and Remo stayed behind to talk for a few minutes. Anna Hargis showed up with some wild raspberries she had picked earlier in the day.
“They grow behind the water tower,” she told the group. She had wanted to meet the new folks and had shown up at the end of the meeting to do so. She was introduced to the group and shook hands. She stared at Ship for a moment, but he smiled at her and she liked him instantly.
They stared out at the bay as they spoke, talking about different times while the sun sunk into the ocean. Lights came on throughout the island, and some could be seen in the city as well.
Rick pointed at the lights across the water. “Those would be the bad guys,” he told the group. “They’re the only ones with the stones enough to have lights burning.”
“Bad guys?” the marine, Remo, asked.
Rick sighed. “Yeah. They’ve attacked us on several occasions during forays. They call themselves The New Society. Gangers from LA and their conscripts.”
Remo and his friend looked at each other, Remo shaking his head. “We’ve dealt with their kind before. We’ll help with them if you’d like.”
Dallas smiled, and Rick was about to speak when a giant explosion ripped through the evening. Most of the people who had been conversing were now on the floor with their hands covering their heads. Dallas stood tall, looking out the dirty window toward the northwest.
“What the hell was that?” demanded Rick.
Dallas glanced back at his friend. “That was the sub…”
San Francisco Bay
A small craft made its way from San Francisco toward Alcatraz. One man surveyed the area with binoculars, the other piloted the small boat using a fishing motor.
“No, I told you,” whispered the man driving, “it ain’t gonna sink. It’ll be fucked up though. Enough that she won’t be able to move.”
“I never seen this much explosives before,” said the man who had asked about sinking the Florida. He looked at the large bundles on the deck in front of him. He tried to stand in the small rigid inflatable boat he was in, but the other guy grabbed him and pulled him back down.
“If you stand up, they can fuckin see us on radar, idiot!”
“Yeah, but…”
The first man drew his sidearm and pointed it at the face of the second. “They can hear us too!” he whispered. “That thing can hear a mouse fart a half a mile away! Shut the fuck up!”
The second guy raised his hands slightly and nodded. The first holstered his weapon and put his finger across his lips. He didn’t know if his stupid colleague could see his finger in the darkness, but he had seen the gun, so maybe.
A black shadow sat between the two men and the island of Alcatraz. They couldn’t see the sub, but they knew where it was as it blocked the light from th
e island. The man cut the motor when they were a hundred yards out. He passed an oar to the other man. “Stay low,” he whispered. “Paddle light but strong and don’t make any bubbles. If they see any type of wake, we’re dead.”
Seaman Lillie pulled the binoculars from his eyes and sighed. “This sucks. I can’t see shit because there’s nothing to see.”
“You can’t see shit because it’s dark,” Petty Officer Second Class Guimaraes responded. “Keep looking.”
The two had drawn deck watch this evening and stood on the aft deck of the Florida. They scanned the city and occasionally glanced at the bay if they saw any whitecaps.
“Dude, you gotta be kidding me. What the fuck is gonna attack a nuclear submarine? Those dead fucks can’t get to us and the hostiles don’t have the equipment to do anything.”
“You forgetting about the TOW they fired at us? If they had hit us, we would have been fucked. Just follow orders and we can get some chow in a few hours. I’m going forward to take a look at the bay.” Guimaraes moved off to scan for possible aggressors, even though he knew there would be none. This was his forty-sixth time on deck watch, and he had never seen anything other than some birds and a couple of seals. Not that he could even see those at night.
Guimaraes had stashed a fishing rod on the foredeck of the Florida. He and several other sailors used it when they were on deck watch. Captain McInerney knew about it and had told Pitt to inform the sailors on watch that as long as they kept a weather eye, they could make a few casts here and there. McInerney also loved fresh striped bass, so anyone catching a good one got a wink from the captain, and he got a filet from the fisherman.
The Petty Officer Second Class opened the communal bait-box left on the foredeck. Whenever someone caught something too small or inedible, it went in the box and was used for bait. Guimaraes baited his hook and made a great cast. Within ten minutes, he felt a nibble and a few seconds later he had a fish on. After a considerable battle, he held his prize in front of him: a beautiful striper, forty-five inches at least. He would eat well tonight.
Guimaraes moved back toward the aft deck, where he had left his watch mate. “Check this out!” he told the seaman. Lillie began to move toward Guimaraes and his fish. The petty officer smiled and put the striper on the deck, trying to extract the hook. He held the fish up by the gills just as Lillie reached him.
“Who’s the man?” Guimaraes asked through a smug smile. He noticed too late something sticking out of Lillie’s neck. Lillie grabbed him and sunk his teeth into his friend’s throat, pulling back with a mouthful of flesh. The petty officer struggled briefly, but the initial damage to his neck had been substantial, and he weakened quickly, bleeding out. When he collapsed, they both went over the side with a small splash, sinking below the surface of the inky water.
“Good shot,” the man with the grease-paint blackened face said to his colleague. The quiet sound of a crossbow being cocked and a bolt sliding into the firing mechanism wouldn’t give them away. The two men watched as they rowed to the rear of the sub. The sailor who had been hit with the bolt began to rise before they reached the steel hull of the submarine. The man raised the crossbow again and took aim, but the first man told him to wait. They watched as one sailor killed the other, both toppling into the sea. The first man spit into a diver’s mask and rinsed it with bay water. He slid over the side of the small boat, the second man passing him a large bundle. A light came on under the water shortly after the diver swam toward the aft-most portion of the sub’s hull. The man in the boat smiled, but the smile turned to a frown when a light from the conning tower swept the area and quickly found him. He raised his rifle, but was immediately cut down by submachine gun fire from the sub. He slumped back, both he and the inflatable boat riddled with holes.
“Clear!” a black-clad sailor shouted. Several other shouts of Clear! echoed the first. The searchlight continued to pan around the sub, but nothing was revealed. One of the sailors jumped in the water and made his way to the small boat. The occupant had taken two hits to the head and wouldn’t rise. There was nothing else in the small boat that the sailor could see.
“Boat is clear!” he shouted.
“I want divers in the water now!” the officer in charge shouted from the conning tower. The sailor in the destroyed boat did not get a chance to reply before a huge explosion rocked the rear of the submarine.
Alcatraz
Captain McInerney fumed. “What the hell happened, Commander?”
“Sir,” Pitt began, “they were going for the prop or the rear dive planes. Either would have crippled us, but had they blown a few ballast vents, the Florida would have been on the bottom of the bay. They knew what to target, but didn’t get a chance to get to it, or we’d be dead. As it is, not much was damaged.”
“How bad is it?” McInerney demanded.
“We’ll need some body work and a paint job, sir.”
“Casualties?”
“We lost Lopes, Guimaraes, and Lillie, sir.”
McInerney turned to stare at the lights in San Francisco. He gritted his teeth as he told Pitt, “This happy horseshit stops today. We’re taking this to them.” It was clear he meant the aggressors from the city. “Assemble two teams.”
“Aye, sir!” Pitt exclaimed and turned to leave, but McInerney forestalled him.
“Commander?”
“Aye, sir?”
“Are you comfortable with allowing the MARSOC and Army assets that showed up yesterday on the mission?”
Pitt let loose with a sigh. “I heard their debriefing and they seem capable. Also, Dallas has vetted them, sir. That alone would have been enough for me. But,” he took a deep breath then let it out quickly, “we are running low on capable men. In addition, one of them risked his life to save Dallas and help Dallas bring Clara to you. I would allow them on any mission, Navy or not. Yes, sir. I think it’s a good idea to bring them along.” Pitt dropped his gaze. “I only wish they could have been around to get Kim.” Kim, commander Pitt’s wife, had been in Austin Texas when the plague struck. Pitt hadn’t heard from her.
“Me, too,” McInerney said, nodding. “Commander, is there any way we can fake the sinking of our boat?”
“Sir?”
“I want the hostiles to think we’ve sunk and that the Florida is no longer a viable threat.”
A wicked smile crossed Pitt’s face. The commander didn’t smile much. “Yes, sir. We can do that.”
Marina Blvd, San Francisco
Several shadows were silhouetted against the top floor windows of the Festival Pavilion warehouse on Pier 1. A smile creased the face of Malik Phillips, AKA Doc Murda. He shifted his gaze to his father, Cyrus, whose face held a similar grin.
“Well played,” Cyrus told him.
Doc Murda accepted his praise with uncharacteristic glee. “Thanks! Hopefully, our surprise was enough to sink the submarine, or at least disable it. This is going to be a good day!” He glanced over his left shoulder at his captain, Masta G, and his bodyguard and enforcer, Pee Wee. Both were impassive as ever. “Live a little, fellas. We have the world at our fingertips. If we were able to kill any of the soldiers or sailors, I call this a win.”
Masta G and Pee Wee glanced quickly at each other, but neither said a word. It would take considerable resources to mount a successful attack on Alcatraz with the sub and her crew protecting the island. Dozens of civilians, all potential soldiers or slaves, had escaped the clutches of the New Society and made it to Alcatraz as well. All of the escapees would fight to the death to protect their sanctuary. The New Society had the numbers, but the military on Alcatraz had both the tools and the training to keep attacks at bay.
“We’ll ensure the sub is damaged then launch an offensive.” Murda cast a sideways glance at his father. “This time, we’ll send two hundred men and attack under cover of darkness.”
Cyrus nodded his approval. He reached his hand out to accept a large pair of binoculars, but he really couldn’t see much in the dark
ness. The bay looked placid.
A figure with its arms crossed leaned against an unlit streetlight immediately below Doc Murda’s crew. He watched them watch the bay. An undead UPS worker shuffled by and he nodded to it. Had the thing looked up, it may have seen the men in the warehouse window above it. Oblivious, it continued on its way.
The figure shook its head, knowing that the explosion in the bay had been the work of the men above him. “Can’t we all just get along?” Billy asked himself under his breath.
He had appropriated a few rounds for his shotgun from the folks he had gotten to Alcatraz, and he loaded them into his weapon. He could get two of the gangers, maybe three before they got him. They were armed to the teeth, and he needed to make sure he got the leader, and hopefully Cyrus.
Plus, he didn’t want to die.
A smile split his face as a contingent of twenty or so dead wandered down the pier.
He glanced up at the guys then back at the dead, who seemed to be milling about at the far end of the sidewalk.
“I could bring friends to this party.”
Billy whistled, the dead turning instantly to come toward the sound. The men in the warehouse hadn’t heard the whistle. When the dead reached him, they began to mill about again. Billy strode to an access door located one floor directly below the aggressors. The door was unlocked, and the cocky young man stepped inside and called under his breath to the dead. The creatures shuffled through the door and into the warehouse.
He counted twenty-four shamblers as they entered the building single-file. Smiling, Billy stepped back out the door as the last of the undead procession faded into the darkness of the warehouse. He returned to his light post and saw the men above talking and gesturing toward the bay. Billy aimed his shotgun at the second floor and fired.
Run_Book 3_Long Road Home Page 29