Season of Rot

by Eric S. Brown

  O’Neil ignored the young man’s joke, gazing into the green eyes of the woman who drove the bike.

  “Get in!” Roy screamed from below, and O’Neil watched this woman, this angel, dart by him and leap into the boat.

  “I think he means you too!” the young man said, grabbing O’Neil as he jumped into the boat; the stranger laughed as they crashed to the deck together.

  Roy kicked the motor into high gear and left waves in their wake. The docks and the nightmare faded behind them as a few desperate shots thudded into the sides of the boat and the dead howled in vain.

  18

  “Who are you people?” Scott asked. “And what was all that back there about?”

  The redneck-looking black man answered, “I’m Roy and this is Mr. O’Neil. We’re from the Queen.”

  The man identified as O’Neil just kept staring at Hannah as she asked, “What’s the Queen?”

  “That.” Roy pointed out over the water.

  “Holy shit,” Scott muttered. The Queen was a ship, and a damn big one from the looks of her. She was as long as a battleship, but certainly not military; or at least she hadn’t started out that way. Her overall hull, tarnished white, was spotted by the odd piece or plate of armor welded on. Jury-rigged gun emplacements ran the length of her decks from port to stern. She’d definitely seen better days, but even with the tiny amount Scott knew about ships, he could tell she had a lot of power left in her.

  Roy piloted the motorboat right up to her side. Heavily armed men and women threw down cables from the deck to haul up the supply crates. “Too bad we can’t keep this baby,” Roy said mournfully. “She’s a fine little boat in her own right.”

  “We’re keeping her fuel,” O’Neil said as he finally snapped out of the haze he’d been in. “Make sure you drain her tanks before you go up.” He caught one of the ropes raining down around them and handed it to Hannah. “Welcome aboard, ma’am,” he said with a smile that lit up his face.

  She and Scott scurried up the rope into the crowd of people waiting on the Queen’s main deck. Both were overwhelmed by their welcome. Hannah couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen so many people alive.

  O’Neil pulled himself up behind them and was barking orders at the crowd before his feet even hit the deck.

  “Let’s get loaded up quickly, people,” he yelled over the chaos. “We need to get out of here before the dead get it together and come sailing after us.”

  19

  A yeoman named Pete led Scott and Hannah to their quarters, two Spartan bunkrooms side by side on the same hall. “I know it’s not much,” Pete apologized, “but here you’re going to be safe.”

  Scott was still trying to absorb it all. “You mean you guys have really been sailing around out here since it all started?”

  Pete nodded. “The Queen was at sea when the dead woke up. We haven’t put to port yet except to raid places for food or supplies. The captain figures we’re safer on the waves.”

  “Have you heard from anyone else, other survivors like yourselves?” Hannah asked.

  “I hate to say it, ma’am, but… well, no. Benson, our communications expert, stays at it around the clock though. We’ve never come across more than a few at a time. We’re always glad to see new faces, and I’m sure you’ll fit right in among the crew. Either of you have experience sailing or know anything about ships?”

  Hannah and Scott shook their heads.

  “No worries,” Pete said, waving his hand. “I know we’ll come up with something for you to do. We try to pull our weight on this ship.” He looked them over again and stopped. “I’m sorry, you probably want to get some rest. I’ll leave you to it. Just one quick thing: the captain will want to meet you tonight. He likes to welcome everyone aboard and see if you know anything about what’s left out there. You’ll be having dinner with him in about five hours. I’ll be back to get you and show you around.”

  Pete shook Scott’s hand again and bowed to Hannah, then he was gone. Hannah and Scott looked at each other, as if asking whether they really wanted to be alone. Silence lingered in the air until Scott finally made a move. “See you at dinner then.” He stepped into the room he’d been assigned and shut the door behind him.

  He plopped onto his bunk and fell instantly into a deep sleep. His dreams were dark, but his exhausted body didn’t care.

  20

  Steven shook his head in disgust. “We lost fourteen hands and gained two. We can’t keep up this rate of attrition. Perhaps you’re correct, Mr. O’Neil. Maybe we should think of finding an island and starting over.”

  O’Neil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Captain Steven was agreeing with him after refusing for months to even consider the possibility.

  “There is an island not far from here, sir, the one I’ve told you about. I think it was called Cobble or something like that. It was just a tourist trap before the plague. You could only reach it by boat or helicopter. I doubt we’d find much resistance there, and it’s in a temperate zone so we could grow a wide assortment of food stock between the winters.” O’Neil grew excited as he let out all the details he’d been plotting. “I bet there’s even a fuel depot there, at least for the smaller boats. We could leave the Queen just offshore, and she’d be well within reach if we needed her again.”

  Steven smiled at O’Neil’s passion. “Sounds like you’ve really thought this out. All right, Mr. O’Neil, we’ll try it your way. As soon as we can be sure those creatures from the docks aren’t pursuing us, go ahead and plot a course for this island. And have those two new folks brought up here. I’m eager to hear news of the mainland.”

  “I think you’ll find the new woman rather captivating, sir,” O’Neil commented.

  Steven pulled a cigar from his desk and lit it up with an old fashioned wooden match. “Do I detect a bit of personal attachment in your voice, Henry?”

  The younger man blinked. The captain rarely called him by his first name. Most people didn’t. It put him on edge, though he knew the captain was only teasing, trying to provoke a response. “No, sir. I just… I thought you’d like to be prepared is all.”

  “Oh,” Steven snickered, “I see.”

  #

  Hannah lay on her bunk, staring at the ceiling. She’d tried to get some sleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Riley and Brandon. Brandon would have been so happy on this ship. The Queen would’ve been like a paradise to him, the adventure of the high sea and children his age to share it with. It would have been like something out of a story book. And Riley… she missed Riley so much. Without him, she felt hollow, incomplete. A piece of her soul had died along with her family, just like the world had died long ago. She’d adjusted to the world’s destruction, but the pain of her own loss stung at her heart.

  Someone knocked on the door of her quarters. Forgetting herself, she reached for her .30-.06 and slid a shell into its chamber as the door opened.

  “Whoa,” Pete said, raising his hands and taking a step back. “It’s okay.”

  Hannah lowered the rifle. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Old habits die hard.”

  “Better them than me,” Pete joked uncomfortably. “The captain is waiting for you to join him for dinner.”

  Hannah followed Pete out into the hall where Scott was waiting, clean-shaven and dressed in new clothes. His whole appearance was different on many levels. He actually looked handsome and, if possible, smugger than he usually was. “About time you got up, sleepy head,” he said to her as the trio made their way up to the captain’s quarters.

  Captain Steven and O’Neil greeted Hannah and Scott as they entered. Hannah looked the captain over. He was in his later forties, his hair mostly gray, yet he possessed strength not only in his short, burly frame but in the very grain of his character. He looked like a man who’d seen Hell firsthand and who’d beaten it back by the sheer force of his will. The necessary introductions were made and Pete and O’Neil seated everyone at the table.

  “Will th
ere be anything else, sir?” O’Neil asked.

  “No thank you.” Steven reached for a napkin to drape across his lap. “That will be all.”

  O’Neil and Pete left the quarters, closing the entrance behind them.

  The table was set with real china dishes and regal silverware, but it was the food that held Hannah and Scott’s attention. There was glazed salmon, freshly baked bread, spicy brown rice, stuffed crabs, and a bowl full of red apples placed alongside a salad of cabbage and chopped carrots. The captain must have noticed their hunger. “Please, help yourselves.”

  Scott wasted no time in loading down his plate with everything in reach, plus a double portion of stuffed crabs.

  “I assure you, we don’t eat like this all the time,” Captain Steven informed them. “We can’t afford to. Most of our meals are of much simpler fare, but tonight it seemed fitting to have this feast, not only to welcome you, but to celebrate a much needed change in the Queen’s plans for the future.”

  “The future?” Scott mumbled through a mouthful of fish and bread.

  “Yes,” Steven continued. “The future. I refuse to sacrifice more lives just to keep us on the sea. It’s time we found a new home and try to reclaim some of what mankind has lost to the dead.”

  “Do you really think that’s possible?” Hannah butted in. “The dead are everywhere. No matter where you go, they will find you eventually.”

  “But their numbers are dwindling too,” Steven explained. “Their bodies rot. Time takes its due. We only have to last a couple of years, perhaps, before we outnumber them once more. Then we can truly retake the world, as it was meant to be.”

  “How can you know the dead are dying? Have you discovered what brought them to life to begin with?” Hannah argued.

  “Our crew may be made of refugees, Hannah, but some are rather extraordinary people. We have two medical doctors on this ship and one real scientist who’ve been studying the plague since the moment they came aboard. We still don’t know the nature of the force, or whatever it is that reanimates the dead, but we do know it doesn’t stop the decay of their flesh; it merely slows it. So in time, nature itself will destroy our enemy’s ranks. But enough of this. I want to know about you two. Who are you? What did you do before the dead walked?”

  “Do you really want to know?” Scott asked, suddenly forgetting about the food.

  Steven nodded.

  “I was a professional killer,” Scott said. The table fell silent, but he continued. “I worked for the government when I started out, then went freelance. I couldn’t guess at how many people I put bullets in before the CIA caught me. When the plague started I was rotting away in a federal prison, and that’s where the dead found me, alone, unarmed, and locked up behind bars.

  “Obviously, they didn’t kill me. Maybe I was so starved by then I didn’t have enough meat on my bones to be worth their trouble. Who knows? So they took me to a new kind of prison that they had created. It was called a breeding center, a place where they herded us together like cattle and bred us for food.”

  “Well,” Steven ventured, “I, uh, don’t suppose it matters now what you did in those days. You’re one of us now, and I hope you will make the most of this fresh start.” He turned in his chair to address Hannah. “And what of you?” he asked.

  “I…” Hannah began, and her voice cracked, “I was a mother.”

  21

  As the days passed aboard the Queen, Hannah found work in the ship’s daycare. Over the last few months, the ship had picked up a couple of infants and nearly a dozen children who either had no parents at all or whose parents held jobs which occupied much of their time aboard the ship. Hannah found happiness in her work with the kids. She even got along with her sole co-worker Jessica, a young woman barely out of her teens, but Hannah didn’t know how Jessica ever handled the children by herself. She was a hard worker but lacked the emotional connection with her wards that Hannah developed instantly.

  Jessica, without resentment, let Hannah take the lead, and the children took to Hannah’s new lessons in crafts and educational projects with zeal. Hannah, despite herself, began to let go of her past and embrace her future. The memories of Riley and Brandon would always be with her, but she felt hope swelling in her again. These children needed her, and she could offer them so much more than just busywork to keep them safe and out of the way.

  Scott, on the other hand, was assigned to the Queen’s group of raiders and defenders, which was now sorely diminished. He worked closely with O’Neil, whom he grew to hate more and more with each passing day. O’Neil took a more military approach to organization and training, whereas Scott taught the men “dirty” tricks they needed to know to stay alive, discipline be damned.

  It wasn’t long until Scott met Luke, and the eccentric genius and the occasionally psychotic former hit man became fast friends. They’d attended some of the same schools in the old world and both had done work for the government on Black-Op projects, though Luke’s involvement was purely from a research and development standpoint. Scott wasn’t anywhere near Luke’s level, but he was sharp and he was a fast learner, fast enough to keep up with Luke when he droned on about his various theories.

  As the sun sank beneath the waves, Scott and Luke relaxed in matching lawn chairs atop the highest point of the Queen above the command center. Scott sipped at the glass in his hand, admiring the potency of the drink Luke had whipped up this evening. It had the punch of whiskey without the burn.

  “What was it like?” Luke inquired.

  “What?”

  “To kill people for money, man. How did you cope with it?”

  “To be honest, I just never thought about it. A job’s a job, ya know? Besides, it’s not that much different than things are today. Everybody has had to kill somebody to stay alive and keep breathing, whether it was by a bullet through the brain or watching someone you care about throw away their life so that you could get away.”

  Luke leaned forward and sat up on his chair. “So what do you think about Captain Steven’s new plan?”

  “I don’t think it matters, Luke. We’re all living on borrowed time. Whether we die out here on the waves or settle down and wait for the dead to come to us, they will get us eventually. We lost the war the moment they started thinking like we do.” Scott sat up and looked over the railing to the water below. “You’re the resident genius. You tell me: have you ever figured out what brought the dead back to life?”

  Luke shrugged. “Not really. It sure wasn’t radiation or a virus like something out of those old B movies, though their bites are infectious just like in those films. Nothing about the dead makes sense. They shouldn’t be able to move, let alone reason like they do. Sometimes a body will reanimate with partial memories of its life before death, and other times it’s like there’s a whole new entity in the host body. They’re all hungry for us though, memories or not. It doesn’t matter if they know your name and who you are—they’ll eat you anyway.”

  “So where does that leave you, since science has failed and can’t explain it?”

  Luke’s face flushed. “Science hasn’t failed, Scott. Just because I don’t have an answer today doesn’t mean there isn’t a plausible, quantifiable explanation to all this. It just means I haven’t found it yet. I don’t believe in spirits or Judgment Day. There is a sane reason for the plague, and I will find it. I’m sure.”

  “And you’ll just keep searching for it, huh?”

  Luke laughed. “Damn right I will. As long as I have to.”

  22

  Steven bolted onto the bridge of the ship. The whole area was a mass of activity. His crew darted about, double-checking the data they’d just gotten.

  “It’s true then?” Steven demanded as O’Neil approached him.

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” O’Neil said grimly. “There are five vessels closing in on our current location, as if trying to surround us.”

  “Jesus.” Steven scanned through the stack of reports O’Neil h
anded him. “Look at the size of them.”

  O’Neil nodded. “Some are military in nature for sure. This one has to be…” O’Neil pointed at a blip on a nearby radar screen. “We think it’s an aircraft carrier, and the two flanking it from the east and west are most likely destroyers. It looks like they’ve finally got us where they want us.”

  “Nonsense, Mr. O’Neil,” Steven said. “We’ve been in tight spots before. We’ll get through this one too.” He weighed their options in his head before he continued. “Can we out-maneuver them and make a run for it?”

  “We can try. I don’t think the largest one can match our speed, but if the two flanking the large ship are destroyers, they’ll be able to overtake us even at our top speed.”

  “Change course and burn the engines at their maximum,” Steven ordered. “And in the meantime, sound the alarm. I want to be ready if we do have a fight on our hands.”

  “Aye, sir,” O’Neil replied. He punched a button and sirens squealed throughout the Queen.

  A state of panic broke out on the ship. The raiders, who were also the Queen’s defenders, Scott among them, rushed to their battle stations. People and families ran for their quarters, locking the heavy doors of their rooms against the growing terror outside.

  The daycare was in chaos. Hannah and Jessica tried to calm the children and the parents who showed up demanding their kids. Hannah had left her .30-.06 in her quarters, but she concealed in her jacket a .38 revolver she’d looted from the ship’s armory, thanks to Scott. Weapons weren’t permitted in the daycare center, but right now Hannah was damn glad she’d been breaking the rules. She’d watched her own son die helplessly and had sworn to herself that these children would not share his fate.