by Mark Rivett
“They can’t help us. If they try, they risk infecting other ships!” Henry shuddered at the thought. He and his wife were now doomed to the very policy he had created. He knew that, in theory, bulkheads and portholes would seal and protect a ship from taking on so much water that it sunk – but the living dead were an entirely different, much more insidious type of flood. Soldiers could not be counted upon to kill or abandon their infected friends. Civilians would be dishonest about being bitten, and they would spread the infection to others once they succumbed. Uninfected would panic and kill innocent people…who would rise up to consume anyone they encountered. The interior of an infected ship was a hellish nightmare. “We’re on our own.”
“We have to help!” Kelly slipped her shoes on. She opened the door to their room to be confronted by a horrifying site. A gore-covered ghoul, – a shirtless and grey-skinned young man clad in boxer shorts, crouched over a body just outside the door. Its victim was a sailor who lay lifeless on the ground with his throat ripped out. Hollow eyes locked onto Kelly. An unearthly moan joined Kelly’s terror-stricken scream.
With a snarl, the monster lunged. Kelly swung the heavy metal door closed. The blood-drenched corpse was caught full in the chest and pinned within the doorway. It screeched in hunger and flailed wildly with one arm. With the other, it fought to push the door back open. Kelly kept her weight against the door. She struggled to keep the beast from gripping hold of her and dragging her into its dripping red maw. The ghoul was stronger than she was, and it forced itself further into the room.
Henry drove his shoulder into the door to keep their attacker pinned. “Get back!” he screamed. The thrashing zombie caught his wife’s hair, and it yanked her to within inches of its snapping fangs.
Henry sent one powerful elbow after another to the monster’s head. He was slowly turning the creature’s orbital bone to pulp, but the ghoul ignored its injury. It pulled at Kelly’s hair…snapping, snarling, and spraying viscera in its wild cannibalistic rage.
Kelly grunted as she ripped a hunk of her hair free and tumbled backward. The zombie made one final swipe at her, before fixing its ruined gaze on Henry and redoubling its attack. Inch by inch, it wriggled and writhed its way into the cabin. Frantically, Kelly looked around for a weapon to aid her husband.
The sound of a second hollow moan from the other side of the door signaled the reanimation of the dead sailor who lay beyond. The door shuddered violently as the weight of a second body pressed against it.
Henry locked his legs against the ground and pressed his shoulder against the door. A bloody arm snaked into the room and wormed about for purchase. It eventually found Henry and latched onto his thigh. The first ghoul grabbed Henry by the collar, and it dragged him toward its gaping maw. Henry caught the monster by the neck with one arm to hold its snarling teeth at bay.
It was a battle of pure muscle, and Henry was losing.
Kelly stood helpless. Her mind flashed back to the Tierrasanta DDC. There, soldiers had struggled against an onslaught of undead and failed. The door was their only defense, and if the monsters forced themselves in…there was nowhere to run. Her eyes had gone over every inch of the bare room a hundred times in five seconds, assessing the utility of every object within. Resolved that there was nothing lethal, she grabbed the pillow from the bed and drove it into the face of the zombie that was snapping at her husband.
With the pillow protecting her and Henry from the infectious bite of the beast, she smashed her fists and elbows into its head relentlessly, shoving it out of the room with every blow. “Get away, you fucker! Get away!” The first ghoul loosed its grip on Henry’s neck and wriggled about helplessly as Kelly pounded it – her hands and elbows bruised and bloodied from the effort.
Kelly thrust the first ghoul out of the cabin with one final shove and then added her weight to her husband’s…driving the door closed. The sailor’s arm that had wormed through was pinned as it flailed about. With their weight pressed firmly against the metal portal, Henry began to ease off the door slightly before slamming back into it. Kelly began to perform the same motion in synchrony with her husband. The door bounced repeatedly against the ghoul’s limb, until they heard a stomach-turning snap.
A growing puddle of blood oozed down the wall and onto the floor. The arm lost mobility as muscles were crushed beyond function. Any living creature would have ceased its attack, but ghouls felt no pain, and the arm continued to claw after them feebly. Finally, the metal door closed with a wet slosh of blood. The severed limb fell lifeless to the ground in a puddle of black and red gore.
Henry turned the lock, and he and Kelly slunk to the ground to catch their breath. Safe for the moment, but they were still trapped by their attackers.
“What the hell do we do?” Kelly asked.
Henry shook his head slowly. He and his wife were smart people. He had never once felt the discomforting sensation of facing a crisis that they were unable to resolve. They were problem solvers. Individually, their intellects were formidable enough, but together they were unassailable. Yet, here they sat, trapped in an officer’s cabin aboard a ship infested with undead. They were on a timer that would eventually run out and see them sunk. “I… I don’t know.”
Kelly sighed. “If we wait, maybe they will get distracted by something and we can run to the landing deck. There have to be life rafts…”
Henry nodded. Rationally, he knew that there was a long way between their quarters and the landing deck. There wasn’t much chance they’d make it without weapons. Even if they did, the deck would most likely be infested with undead soldiers, sailors, and civilians who’d had the same plan before succumbing. “These Amphibious Assault vessels have an open bay below deck. If we can get there, we might find a raft or maybe swim…”
“Do you know where that is? I don’t think it’s a good idea to go deeper into this ship if we don’t know where we’re going,” Kelly countered.
Henry nodded and said, “Then all we can do is wait.”
Chapter 35
“Don’t look at it, Roger. Look at me.” Miguel held the eye of the young boy as they passed another corpse in a pool of gore. The back half of its skull was hewn away and a bloody axe lay on the ground next to the lifeless body. The wall and floor were drenched in blood. The fact that the axe had been discarded, indicated that whoever had killed this woman was likely now wandering about the ship as one of the living dead.
Going was slow, and Miguel’s broken leg did not speed their process. Ascending the stairwell to deck three had been time consuming and painful, but they were making progress. The ship’s corridor was long and narrow, but the maps on the walls indicated they were approaching Dr. Henry and Kelly Damico’s quarters.
Roger and his older sister, Renee, had behaved. They had stayed silent, stifling screams of terror whenever a ghoul wandered into their midst. They had held Miguel’s crutches when he needed to use his hands. The notion that their missing father was most likely dead seemed lost on them. They calmly accompanied the convoy team, confident that they would eventually be reunited with him.
Carl, at the lead, had run out of ammunition during their last encounter. He crouched down to pick up the bloody axe while keeping his eyes focused on the junction ahead.
Pam had been able to conserve some of her rifle ammo. She scanned the area behind them. Occasionally, a corpse would wander into the hallway, moan, and then drop dead with a well-placed shot. The sound of shooting was thunderous, but the echoes of distant combat indicated that struggles were taking place in every corner of the vessel. This would draw the attention of the undead. Though the living was losing their fight to save the USS Boxer, they would not go quietly.
“Hide!” Carl whispered harshly as he pressed himself up against the wall. He attempted to hide behind some vertical pipes.
Pam and the children pressed themselves against the opposite wall and behind a grey steel crossbeam. Miguel looked around helplessly for a moment before dropping to his stoma
ch and lying motionless behind the dead woman on the ground.
Carl looked down the hallway toward an intersection about ten feet in front of them. A group of over a dozen men and women lumbered slowly through the junction from the left. Their clothing ranged from pajamas to blue jeans to uniforms, but one thing was consistent – they moved with the slow gait of the walking dead. Their eyes stared blankly forward as they limped down the hallway perpendicular to the convoy team. Ragged bite marks, bullet holes, and missing limbs dripped with blood and left a slick red trail behind them as they went.
A little girl—no more than ten—followed at the back of the procession. She stopped in the intersection and cocked her head awkwardly. She turned down the hallway, revealing the missing flesh over the left half of her face and the severed arm below the elbow. Her one good eye fixated on something, and she stumbled towards the group.
As she moved to within a foot of Carl, he brought the axe down hard on her head with a sickening thud and a wet splatter. Roger and Renee buried their faces in Pam’s leg and sobbed. Carl brought the axe down again for good measure, and he paused for a moment to ensure he had not drawn the attention of the undead procession.
“Come on,” Carl ordered. Miguel struggled to his feet, and the group continued forward until they arrived at the intersection. Several closed doors down the long hallway to the right indicated that they had found the officer’s quarters.
Carl watched the wandering pack of ghouls turn right down an adjoining corridor that ran parallel to the one they had come from. There were now no undead in sight. A stairwell at the far end of the hall would connect them to the landing deck where they could make their escape.
Quietly, Carl stepped up to the first door within the hall and knocked.
“What are you doing?” Pam asked, noting the number on the portal indicated that this was not the officer’s quarters they were looking for.
“I’ll be goddamned if these VIP’s are they only ones with a ticket off this boat,” Carl replied. “There may be people hiding in here who think help is coming. We’re it – we’re their only chance.”
“WDs!” Miguel warned as he hobbled on crutches into the corridor with Carl.
The children and Pam followed as a mass of shadows shuffled quietly into the other end of the corridor they had just vacated. They were clumsy and slow, but they would eventually arrive at the junction. If Carl, Pam, Miguel, and the children were still here, they would be noticed. There was no time to waste.
A young man in a sailor’s uniform opened the door Carl had knocked on. He poked his head into the hallway and looked around.
Carl put his finger against his lips to signal the need for quiet, and he motioned with his head for the sailor to move.
The young sailor turned back inside and addressed some people out of view “Everyone… shhh.” The door opened, and three adults and two children followed behind him as he stepped into the corridor.
“Pam, get this group to the stairwell and guard that junction.” Carl gestured toward the stairwell. “Miguel, knock on the rest of these doors.”
Pam and the two children hurried to the stairs at the end of the hallway with the other civilians behind them. A dim yellow light flickered within the shaft, illuminating gore-covered walls…but no bodies.
Miguel swung himself on crutches toward the next door in the hall. He knocked, waiting patiently for a few moments before knocking again. He confirmed no answer was coming and moved to the next.
Carl stood with his back to the group. He gripped his axe like a baseball bat, awaiting the first ghoul to turn the corner into their passage. The pack behind them would soon fill the corridor. Carl’s axe and a handful of Pam’s bullets were all that stood between the civilians and a wandering horde of hungry corpses.
“Ruhhhhh…” The unmistakable groan of the unhallowed signaled that their group had been noticed.
Miguel moved to the next door and knocked. It cracked open, and a blood-covered woman stared back at him with discerning blue eyes. “Go! Go!” He hissed.
The woman and an old man dashed up the hall towards Pam.
Pam stood anxiously in the stairwell’s portal, aiming her rifle down the perpendicular hallway. “C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!” She growled quietly. “They’re coming!”
THUNK. The sound of Carl’s axe connecting with a skull caught Miguel’s attention.
A bloody corpse fell to the ground in front of Carl, and he began to backpedal toward Miguel. A press of ghouls filled the hallway in front of him, moaned with hunger, and fixed on their fresh prey with maniacal stares. The vanguard stumbled and fell over the body on the ground, but they merely crawled over one another.
Gunfire rang out from Pam’s position. She knelt, aiming down the adjacent corridor. “Come on! Come on! WDs! You’re gonna get cut off!” Another pack closed on Miguel and Carl from behind. The window for the two men’s escape was closing rapidly.
Miguel arrived at Officer’s Quarters Four. The gore-stained door did not bode well for the cabin’s inhabitants, but he knocked anyway. He anxiously looked back to where Carl backpedaled toward him in front of a growing swarm of undead. He then cast his glance up the other where Pam was quickly spending the last of her ammo.
His heart thumped with realization. If Pam’s position were to be overrun, he and Carl would be trapped between two converging packs of undead.
The door to Officer’s Quarters Four cracked open and Kelly and Henry Damico cautiously peered out.
“Run!” Miguel turned and swiftly hobbled toward Pam and the civilians.
THUNK. Carl’s axe made contact with another zombie, and a second body fell headless to the ground.
“We’re quarantined.” Henry and his wife stepped into the hall. “There’s no place to go. We’ve got to try to get this ship under control.”
“You’re a VIP, Doc. Someone high up wants you alive, and we’re going to make sure you stay that way.” Miguel replied through labored breaths. The effort of moving quickly on crutches was wearing on him. “You’re our only ticket off this boat.”
“Run!” Pam shouted.
Henry and Kelly rushed up to Miguel and started to help him down the hallway.
“No! Go! You can’t stay here! Go!” Miguel rejected their attempt to help him.
Henry and Kelly understood – without them, the military would not rescue anyone else. If they were caught, everyone was doomed. They reluctantly left Miguel and rushed towards Pam.
Henry arrived at Pam’s position, and looked down the corridor she was defending. His countenance became one of horror. “Holy shit!”
Kelly pulled her husband into the stairwell, and pleaded with Carl and Miguel. “Hurry!”
“I’m almost out!” Pam slung her rifle around her back, drew her sidearm, and resumed firing.
The young sailor stepped into the hallway next to Pam after getting Henry and Kelly safely behind him. Holding a long bloody knife, he confronted the approaching swarm with resolution.
In seconds, the last of Pam’s ammunition was spent. She took her rifle back out and held it like a battering ram. She and the sailor stood in the junction—prepared to defend it with their lives.
Carl turned from defending the corridor behind him, broke into a run, and in one motion, scooped Miguel up over his shoulder. Miguel twisted around onto his stomach and drew his combat knife.
“God damn! That’s a lot of ghouls!” Miguel gasped. The undead pack behind them was closing. Their numbers seemed to crowd the hallway into a single writhing mass of hunger.
Suddenly, something hit Carl hard in the side, and Miguel’s world twisted into a tornado of gray metal, red blood, and terrifying screams. He was overcome by a sensation of weightlessness before hitting the hard metal floor with a bone-jarring thud. The wind was knocked from his lungs, a sharp pain throbbed in his head, and a lightshow of stars clouded his vision.
A single thought ran through Miguel’s mind as unconsciousness took him: “This is it
. I’m dead.”
Miguel felt the weight of writhing bodies on top of him, hands gripping his arms, and the hard scrape of metal against his back as he was dragged violently across the ground. A commotion of grunts shouts and yells filled Miguel’s mind until he fixated on one constant sound. It was familiar, yet strange in tone. He opened his eyes and pushed the dizziness from his mind.
“No! No! No! No!” Pam repeated over and over again in a shrill, panicked pitch. She stood over Miguel with her back towards him, thrusting the butt of her rifle into the horde of undead raging in the doorway. Gore smattered in all directions as her rifle came away with a spray of viscera. Tangled gray arms reached through the portal, bruised and bent at unnatural angles.
Miguel regained his senses, and realized that he was in the stairwell. He was surrounded by a dozen screaming and terrified civilians. As he regained his bearings, he looked around for Carl.
“Get to the Humvees!” Carl shouted. “Go! Go! Get to the Hummers!”
Miguel’s friend and commanding officer lay on his back in the junction outside the portal. Carl was fighting madly for his life. He held his axe by the head and used the hilt to fend off a dozen grasping claws and snarling maws.
Miguel struggled to his knees, his head throbbing with every beat of his heart. Weak and disoriented, he lunged to Carl’s defense with his knife in hand.
“No! No! No!” Pam continued to scream, tears streaking down her cheeks as she crashed the butt of her rifle into the eye socket of a ghoul.
“Go! Run!” Carl’s pleas grew more frantic and panicked. There was desperation in Carl’s voice that Miguel had never heard in his friend before. “Go now! Go now! Please!”
Miguel stabbed a zombie through the eye socket and reached into the melee to grip Carl by the collar. He was beginning to pull him to safety when Miguel noticed Carl’s wounds. Four or five vicious bites were hemorrhaging blood from Carl’s legs, abdomen, and arms. Miguel’s heart dropped, and he slackened his grip on Carl’s collar.