In the sickbay, Dr. Gallenger prepared for the wounded to start arriving, in case the coming battle couldn’t be avoided. Luke, meanwhile, darted through the corridors of the Queen, attempting to reach the main decks with a short, black metal tube gripped tightly in his arms.
O’Neil and Captain Steven watched from the bridge as the destroyers crossed the horizon and came into view. The ocean itself seemed to shake as the destroyer from the east fired its main guns at the Queen.
23
The shot from the enemy ship hit the water off the Queen’s portside, sending waves crashing against the hull, though it didn’t strike close enough to cause actual damage. The Queen lacked any sort of long-range weapon except for her jury-rigged torpedo launchers, which at the moment were facing away from the enemy vessels.
Captain Steven knew he had to do something. The destroyers were too fast to outrun, and at present the Queen was a sitting target for their guns. Closing with the two enemy ships for direct combat was a near suicidal option, but it was also the only one left.
“Bring us about!” he shouted. “Get us between them. Maybe they aren’t stupid enough to take the chance of hitting each other with their main guns!” Steven turned to O’Neil. “As soon as you get a shot with one of the launchers, take it!”
Scott and the Queen’s defenders stood helplessly at their machinegun emplacements as the Queen veered to engage the enemy. The destroyers were still not within range, but from the looks of things they would be soon. Scott shoved a belt of ammo into the massive weapon in front of him and began to pick a target for when the time came.
“Fire one!” O’Neil ordered.
A torpedo, dropped into the water, flared to life and raced towards the lead destroyer even as O’Neil ordered the remaining torpedo launched in its wake. Moments later, the first missile struck the destroyer just below the waterline, sending waves of fire and ocean spray up onto the decks of the military vessel. The second torpedo got lucky; it collided with something inside the destroyer, which turned the entire ship into a blazing wreck of secondary explosions.
Cheers went up on the bridge and the decks of the Queen as it angled towards the remaining enemy ship, which fired. This time the Queen was hit dead on. The blast ripped a hole in her side, killing many of her defenders instantly.
“Damage report!” Steven snapped, knowing full well that the Queen faced a new problem now—and not just the damage to the ship. Those killed or mortally wounded by the blast would soon reanimate.
“No damage to the engines!” O’Neil reported. “The hull breach is being contained. We’re not taking on water!”
Finally, Luke reached the deck and positioned himself to get a shot at the enemy ship. He extended the black metal tube he was carrying and slashed out a section of power cables on the wall near him to hook into the weapon. He had spent all of his free time in the last few months refining the invention; he was fully aware of its capabilities. What he was about to do would cripple the Queen in some respects, and he certainly wouldn’t survive, but it was worth the risk. He aimed the tube at the destroyer and pulled the trigger.
A beam of energy leapt from his weapon, striking the destroyer’s ammo stores for the main guns. The energy melted through the destroyer’s armor and reduced the ship to a ball of flames, which lit up the sea even under the midday sun. Luke, his weapon, and a large chunk of the Queen vaporized in the energy weapon’s backwash. People screamed, both inside and abovedeck, as the Queen’s engines blew from the surge.
“What in the hell was that?” Steven cried.
“I don’t know!” O’Neil yelled over the chaos on the bridge. “We’ve lost main power, and the engines are burnt out. Power is out everywhere on the ship. The backup generators are keeping the internal comm. system and the emergency lights working, but that’s about it. We’re dead in the water, sir!”
“Shit!” Steven whirled about to the officer at the radar station. “What about the other three dead ships?”
“I… I don’t know, sir,” the officer stammered. “It looked as if the big one was keeping back, maybe even changing course away from us before the screen went dead. The two smaller ones were still on an intercept heading. They should be on us in the next few minutes, tops.”
Steven slammed his fist against the radar station. “Somebody tell Luke I want those fucking engines back on-line now!”
24
Dr. Gallenger got to his feet—or tried to. As he attempted to stand up, the fractured bone of his left leg tore through his flesh, and he hit the floor hard. He felt no pain as he examined the rest of his body, saw the piece of shrapnel protruding from his right lung. He had to get up. He could sense that his brethren would be here soon, and he was hungry. Hungrier than he’d ever been.
He deemed the shrapnel to be irrelevant, but snapped his broken leg back into place and used the materials scattered about the sickbay to fashion a splint. Then he did get up. He hobbled across the room to check on Nurse Jones and found her lying in a pool of blood.
Tilting his head like an animal would as he observed her, he watched her eyes flutter open, then dart this way and that as she realized she couldn’t move. A huge medical cabinet had fallen on her and had broken her neck.
Taking pity on her, Gallenger picked up a piece of debris and smashed in her skull.
He found the remains of his desk and the .45 he’d kept in the drawer. Feeling suitably armed, he left the sickbay. Soon he would taste flesh for the first time.
#
Everyone on the Queen had been tossed about as the destroyer’s shell had hammered into its hull. Hannah struck her head against one of the children’s lockers in the daycare center. As her vision focused through the blood in her eyes, she became aware that she was still alive. She hurt too much to be dead. Her head especially. She also realized she was alone. She felt a twinge of anger at Jessica for leaving her for dead, but then realized she would’ve done the same. It was the kids who mattered, not them, and Jessica had probably taken them somewhere safer in the ship.
Hannah dug inside her jacket and produced her .38. She had no idea how the fight outside was going, but she knew Jessica would need help. Jessica, as the saying goes, was not the sharpest tool in the shed, and Hannah didn’t trust her to see the children through this battle. She pulled herself up and headed out of the daycare.
“Jessica!” she screamed as she ran down the corridors, hoping the woman was still in earshot.
She rounded the corner of the passageway and came face to face with a dead man dragging his insides across the floor. He lunged at her, grunting, but she narrowly sidestepped his attack and shoved him as he went by her. He toppled to the deck and twisted about, already trying to get up and come after her. She popped off three rounds into his forehead, spraying his brains onto the wall.
Hannah stood a moment afterward, her breath coming in ragged gasps; she tried to collect herself and calm down. The Queen’s machine guns chattered above—the fight hadn’t been lost yet. She took a deep breath and set out in search of Jessica, though with much more caution.
#
The two yachts had swept in quickly, managing to evade most of the Queen’s defensive fire. Both of them came up along her portside, close enough for the dead to scale the Queen’s hull as they traded small arms fire with those left alive on her decks. The Queen’s gun emplacements were useless with the yachts so close. They couldn’t be angled downward to engage the dead, so Scott had abandoned his post and began to spray the climbing dead with an AK-47 instead. One of the attackers, a middle-aged man covered in burns, lost his hold as Scott’s rounds peppered his back, and he plummeted into the water.
While Scott was sidetracked, a creature hauled itself onto the Queen’s deck beside him—Roy’s twelve-gauge thundered and sent it careening over the side of the ship.
Scott motioned his thanks to Roy, then returned his attention to the dead and loaded a fresh magazine into his weapon.
25
The
struggle for control of the Queen raged on. Her whole exterior deck was a war zone, and smaller battles filled her corridors.
“Sir,” O’Neil said, trying to draw Captain Steven’s attention away from the carnage below the bridge. “Captain, we can’t hold her. The Queen is lost. We need to give the order to abandon ship.”
O’Neil’s words jarred Steven out of his own thoughts. Abandon the Queen? Had O’Neil gone insane? He turned to argue, but the door to the bridge opened and Doc Gallenger staggered inside. Before anyone could react, the good doctor’s corpse raised the .45 in its blood-smeared hand.
The first shot slammed into Steven’s shoulder. The second and third burrowed into his chest. Benson, the communications officer, took a round to his throat before O’Neil managed to draw his own sidearm and shoot the doctor in the face.
O’Neil rushed to Steven’s side and squatted beside him.
“Leave me,” the captain ordered, coughing blood onto his lips. “I’m staying with the Queen.”
The other command personnel were fleeing the bridge as O’Neil stood up. Most of the Queen’s lifeboats were gone. Finding a way off the ship would be difficult, but not as difficult as surviving afterwards. The dead would be waiting.
In a corner of the Queen’s main deck portside, Scott and Roy were holed up behind one of the large metal cooling pipes and were running out of ammo fast. “Roy, you’re a good man,” Scott said, “but how would you feel about leaving all this and not looking back?”
Roy could see the gleam of an idea in Scott’s eyes. “I reckon what’s gotta be is gotta be. I’m guessin’ you have something in mind to save our asses.”
Scott grinned. “You could say that. Come on!” He charged across the deck through the ranks of the dead and the few humans left alive. Scott reached the railing and didn’t stop. He hurled himself over the side and landed on the yacht below, completely surprising the five corpses still aboard it. With his AK-47 on full auto, he cut them down where they stood.
Roy followed him, but skidded to a halt at the edge of the deck. “Crazy mother fucker!” he shouted and took the leap. He landed on the yacht with the sound of snapping bones.
#
O’Neil dispatched a corpse blocking his way in the corridor. If he’d counted his shots right, he had three rounds left in his pistol. It was beginning to sink in that he was royally screwed.
From outside, someone called his name. He jerked open the hatch to the exterior deck, and Hannah threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his body. He hugged her back tightly, then forced himself to push her away, despite how much he wanted to hold her forever. He knew she didn’t feel the same about him; they barely knew each other, yet she’d won him over the night he’d met her on the docks, had given him more purpose to his life than anyone or anything ever had. “The captain’s dead,” he informed her. “We’ve got to get off the ship if we want to stay alive.”
A dead woman darted towards them through the open hatchway, a piece of glass raised like a knife in her rotting hand. O’Neil tried to get a shot, but Hannah was faster. She emptied her .38 into the woman’s neck and face.
O’Neil moved to lead them outside onto the deck, but she grabbed his arm. “Wait! What’s that noise?”
“Oh God no.” O’Neil stuck his head outside and looked up at the sky. “It can’t be.”
An F-16 fighter roared over the Queen. Its wings wobbled; whoever was flying it certainly wasn’t an experienced pilot.
O’Neil and Hannah stepped outside to watch the jet turn and streak back at the Queen on a collision course.
“Would this be a bad time to tell you that I love you?” O’Neil asked as they watched the plane race closer.
“No, I don’t suppose it would.” Hannah tried to smile weakly as she took his hand in hers.
26
Scott could still remember the death throes of the Queen after the jet had plowed into her, the way the flames had danced over her frame as she sank into the waves. The image haunted his dreams at night. He remembered Roy as well. The black Southerner had been as tough as they came, but with two badly broken legs and the meager amount of worm-infested food they’d found on the yacht, Scott had no choice but to kill him. So he shot Roy in the stomach with his own shotgun and dumped him overboard before he could reanimate as one of the dead.
Only a week had passed since their flight from the Queen, but it felt like months. He lay stretched out atop the cabin of the yacht and stared up at the stars. The engines were shot and he was thirsty. Sweat glistened on his bare chest in spite of the cool night air. He knew he was sick, whether from the rotting food he had been eating or just the fact that his body had finally suffered all it could take. If he could make it to land and get some medicine, proper food and a little rest, he might be his old self, but those things seemed like pipe dreams in the face of what the world had become.
He felt his eyes close, then forced them open to glance at the shotgun propped up on the deck near him. Scott started to consider all his options again as a gentle rain began to fall and the heavens wept.
THE WAVE
1
Jeremy lay shirtless, sprawled out on the wood of his deck and looking up at the Carolina night sky. The breeze, a gentle cool circulating through the warm air, carried the smell of his freshly mowed lawn, and the portable stereo beside him belted out the chorus to Rush’s “Working Man.”
He glanced at the bright green display of his watch. Almost two o’clock in the morning. The witching hour was long gone, but he felt pumped up and wide awake. He leaned over and hit the skip button on the stereo. “Fly by Night” replaced “Working Man,” and he smiled.
His heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t explain it, but for some reason he felt on edge, eager. He lay back down and listened to the music.
Astronomy was not normally one of his interests, but tonight the sky seemed different, the stars hotter and pulsing bright. It wasn’t something he could explain, just a feeling he couldn’t shake.
He reached into the darkness beside the stereo and lifted a mug of sweet tea to his lips, arching his back a bit as he sipped.
In that moment, the world changed. A piercing light danced like lightning across the summer sky, and everything seemed to go white.
Jeremy dropped his tea, cursing as the cool liquid splashed over his naked chest. The light grew brighter and he had to shield his eyes. At the same time, the alarm of his wristwatch went off and the stereo erupted into sparks. Geddy Lee’s voice shrieked upwards, almost deafening, the music growing louder and louder until it finally went silent. Beneath the deck, his car came to life. Its horn honked randomly as its headlights lit up and blew out, the shards clinking onto the gravel driveway like rain.
Jeremy screamed, and the light was gone. Spots lingered before his eyes, swirling purples and greens. His temples throbbed.
Fumbling blindly, he grasped the railing of the deck and pulled himself up. His vision cleared, but around him everything was black. The stars seemed to have vanished from the sky, and the lights in the neighborhood had blinked out, the houses on the distant hills invisible in the darkness. Even the normal specks of headlights moving along I-40 below the mountains were missing.
He stumbled across the deck to the sliding glass door of his bedroom and went inside, flipping on the light switch. Nothing happened. He flipped the switch twice more. No light.
Bumping his way from the bedroom to the kitchen, he managed to reach the island in front of the sink. He yanked open the top drawer and grabbed his plastic emergency flashlight. It didn’t work. He bashed the light atop the island and shook it, but it didn’t come on, so he tossed it.
He felt his way along the island to where the phone hung on the wall. As he guessed, it was dead. His cell was too.
An irrepressible fear began to grow within him. Sweat beaded on his sticky skin, mixing with the droplets of spilt tea. He stumbled back to the bedroom’s large walk-in closet and found the shelves. As he pulled down
his hunting rifle, his knees gave way and he dropped to the carpet. “Jesus Almighty,” he whispered, “what the hell is going on?”
He shoved a bullet into the rifle’s breech and jerked the chamber closed. Pulling his knees to his chest, he sank back against the closet wall to wait for dawn, his knuckles white as he held the rifle.
2
Pittsburgh
“What the fuck is going on?” Howard asked as he pushed his way into the crowded control room of the reactor plant. It seemed as if the plant’s entire staff had gathered in the small space. There were no alarm klaxons, no red glow of emergency lights. Only a small fire burning in the metal trash can beside Gibbons’ console. The flickering light seemed alien and out of place in the heart of the plant.
A wave of pleads, questions, and fear slammed into Howard as he entered.
“Shut up!” he ordered. “Shut the fuck up!”
The cacophony in the room dampened but did not end.
“Gibbons,” Howard barked, pointing at the pimply-faced engineer. “What the hell is going on? Twenty words or less. Now!”
The young man’s eyes went wide with terror in the pale light. “Everything has gone down, sir. Backups, outside lines… everything. The core will breach, sir. Without the cooling units functioning, it’s just a matter of time.”
Howard’s mind raced. Backups? Everything? That was supposed to be impossible. This was his damn plant. Things like that didn’t—couldn’t—happen here.
“How long?” Howard asked.
“There’s no way to know, sir. Ten seconds, an hour. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Howard opened his mouth to yell at Gibbons, but a heat wave blasted him. His flesh melted and burned away as the reactor ruptured.
Season of Rot Page 9