He wondered how the other group was doing.
THIRTEEN
Xavier put his binoculars on the forklift as Angie jumped to the ground and sprinted toward the front of the truck. Little Bear was driving, with TC sitting on the back, firing his cylinder-fed shotgun. Lou, the hippie who had gone with them, was jogging behind at a distance.
The dead followed.
There were over twenty of them, staggering across the yard in the wake of the forklift, more emerging from the sheds and workshops, walking stiffly into the open. As Xavier watched, Lou stumbled and fell, then began howling and clutching at his ankle. Before the priest could even cry out, the dead fell upon the man and began tearing.
“Dear Lord, have mercy,” Xavier whispered. He scanned and shouted, “I don’t see Darius with them.”
Carney jumped down from the cab of the semi holding a large plastic envelope of paperwork. “Found the boat keys,” he said, shaking the packet.
“C’mon.” Angie jogged past the trees, back out into the open of the yard. The forklift roared toward them as Carney fell in on her left. Angie’s Galil and the inmate’s M14 came up as they waited for the vehicle to arrive. They cringed at the forklift’s blatting diesel engine and the crash of TC’s shotgun. Both were certain to summon the dead from a distance. Bear drove past and stopped near the eighteen-wheeler as TC jumped down to join his cellmate.
“What happened?” Carney demanded.
“We found the forklift,” he said, grinning and gesturing back at the machine.
“No, with them.” Carney sighted down his rifle at the corpses coming across the boatyard.
“Where’s Darius?” Angie asked.
TC pointed. “That warehouse down there, the one with the rusty sides. That’s where we found the forklift. While the other two guys were figuring out how it worked, me and the black dude went into a back room to look for stuff we could use. We walked right into a nest of them.”
“Where’s Darius?” Angie repeated.
The inmate shook his head. “They got him. Nothing I could do.”
Carney watched his cellmate’s eyes as he delivered what sounded like something rehearsed on short notice.
Xavier and Little Bear joined them. “They came out of everywhere,” the big hippie said, winded.
“Has anyone here ever owned a boat?” Angie looked at each of them. No one had. She thought about what she and her husband, Dean, had learned back when they were considering such a purchase, back before . . . all of this. It wasn’t much.
“Let’s keep it simple,” said Xavier. “Line up the forklift to pick the boat up from the rear, cut the straps holding it to the truck, and then get it into the water somehow. We can figure out the rest once we’re aboard and away from them.”
“People back boats down a ramp with a trailer,” said Little Bear, “and ease it in that way.”
There was no such trailer waiting conveniently for them, and Xavier suspected this boat was too big for that anyway. As if to remind them that time was an issue, the dead began to moan. They were closer, and there were more of them than a few minutes ago.
“Use the forklift,” said TC. “Just drive that fucker right into the water with the boat and let it sink. It’s not like we’ll need it again.”
They looked at the inmate in surprise, then at each other. Why not? All they would need was a ramp. Angie got on the radio and called Rosa, telling her to scout for one from the water. Rosa acknowledged.
“Carney and I will stay here and hold them back,” said Angie. “We’re past the sneaking-around portion of this little adventure. You guys get that thing off the truck, and be careful not to crack the hull or this will all have been a waste.”
They nodded and headed to the truck.
“And watch the rear!” Carney shouted after them. He turned and raised his rifle. He and Angie opened fire together.
Little Bear drove the giant forklift past the tractor-trailer and turned around on the access road, then approached slowly from the rear. The fork controls took a few moments to figure out, and then he began to creep forward, making small adjustments to the angle of the vehicle and the height of the forks.
TC stood nearby, reloading his shotgun as he kept watch, a faint grin on his face. He hadn’t felt this free and satisfied in a very long time, and decided the end of the world was the best thing ever to happen to him. It had become the devil’s playground, he thought, words he had possibly heard on TV. His playground. A handful of figures appeared on the road behind them, walking slow and crooked, but too far out of the shotgun’s range. “Here, kitty, kitty. . . .” TC chuckled and made faces at the lurching creatures.
Xavier moved along the length of the flatbed trailer, examining the canvas tie-down straps holding the boat in place, studying the buckles until he had them figured out. He waved Little Bear forward.
Not every round was a head shot. The Galil’s 5.56-millimeter tore holes in chests and throats as well, which the dead did not notice. Most found their mark, however, and a body would drop to the ground. Carney’s powerful 7.62s did more damage when he missed the head, blowing away chunks of flesh, breaking bones, even spinning them around or knocking them flat. His on-target shots blew heads apart like rotten fruit. The others just got back up and kept coming.
Two dozen went down for good before they each paused to load new magazines.
As anticipated, more arrived, flowing into the boatyard in a growing stream from the street beyond, drawn by the sounds they associated with live prey. The rifles were keeping them at a distance, but the group as a whole was drawing closer. Angie and Carney knew they couldn’t hold for long.
“I think you’re good!” Xavier shouted to be heard over the rumbling engine. Little Bear idled forward as the priest guided him with hand signals. Move to the left. Raise the forks a little. Too much, lower. Come forward. TC watched them, still wearing his little grin and glancing occasionally at the corpses steadily coming on from the rear. He’d let them get a little closer, just to be fair.
The long forks were designed for this work, both heavily wrapped in some sort of padded carpeting. Little Bear slid them forward carefully, still making corrections as they rubbed against the fiberglass hull. He braked when the forklift could approach no further, and Xavier immediately began unbuckling the straps.
In the boatyard, Carney sighted on a cluster of bodies a hundred feet away. “How many do you think?” He squeezed off a shot, and a middle-aged man in a shirt and tie went down.
“Maybe a hundred,” said Angie. The Galil barked, blowing out the back of a woman’s head.
“More coming,” said Carney. “Not enough ammo for this.” He fired again, cursed when his shot clipped off an ear but nothing else. He adjusted and stopped the target with the next one.
“We still need to find a boat ramp,” she said. The Galil kicked, and a chubby Hispanic guy in a greasy apron fell over.
At the truck, Xavier finished with the straps and gave Little Bear the signal to lift. The man raised the forks a foot, the vehicle creaking under the weight, and both of them wondered at how it didn’t simply tip over. Then he tilted the forks back, felt the tension lessen, and backed up slowly. When Xavier signaled that he was clear of the trailer, Little Bear lowered the boat until it was only four feet off the ground. Xavier trotted over to the shooters as Little Bear drove slowly around the tractor-trailer, leaning far out to one side in an attempt to see around his massive cargo.
Carney and Angie received Xavier’s news with a nod and increased the tempo of their firing, wanting to create as much of a gap between them and the dead as possible.
“Oh, no,” said Xavier, and the shooters looked to where he was pointing.
It was Darius.
The man was walking slowly into the boatyard, arms limp at his sides, head down.
“Maybe he’s just—” Angie s
tarted.
“He’s dead,” said Carney, but Xavier held up a hand and used the binoculars. Darius filled his view up close. The man’s beaded braids swung back and forth as he moved unsteadily, looking down at the ground. Xavier saw no blood on the man’s expensive, camel-colored overcoat, and none of the savage wounds he had come to expect from the walking dead.
Darius raised his chin. His eyes were smooth and white, the color already draining from his skin. His mouth hung open, moving wordlessly, the muscles of his face slack.
Xavier noticed his neck at once. There, pressed deep in the flesh, were twin bruises he had seen far too many times in the tragic, poverty-ridden tenements of his parish. Bruises in the shapes of thumbs, one on each side of the windpipe, the calling card of a strangler.
“He’s dead,” the priest choked.
Carney immediately shot Darius in the forehead.
They fell back to where Little Bear was waiting with the big Bayliner perched on the forklift blades. Carney retrieved the plastic envelope containing the keys, and Xavier looked at TC, standing along the side of the access road, cradling his shotgun with a content, easy look on his face.
“Let’s head for the water,” said Angie, pointing at a space fifty yards away between a commercial fishing icehouse and a corrugated metal storage building. The shimmer of gray light on water peeked from beyond. “Go slow, and do not drop the boat.”
Little Bear gave her a thumbs-up.
“Carney and I will go ahead and look for a ramp. Xavier, stay close to the forklift and watch them coming in from the left.” She pointed at TC. “You come up last and watch the rear.” She had already turned away before she could see the man’s eyes narrow to slits. He spat on the road, watching her.
The forklift’s engine grumbled as Little Bear moved his load forward, Xavier helping to guide him while he watched the mob from the boatyard come closer. Soon he would have to use the shotgun and leave Little Bear on his own. Angie and Carney jogged ahead and disappeared through the space between the buildings. Little Bear plodded along with his load, trying to focus on his task but unable to keep from looking at the crowd of corpses on the left, their feet kicking up dust as they shuffled over the ground. The yard was full of them now, and even more shambled in behind them.
Xavier looked back at TC. The man had removed his riot helmet and was tossing his mane of hair, strolling casually behind the forklift with his shotgun over one shoulder, smoking a cigarette. Three corpses were angling at him from behind, only thirty feet away.
Murderer.
Hadn’t Carney said so in the hangar? Why wouldn’t his “partner” be the same? Yet the priest had trouble believing they were cut from the same cloth. Carney had killed, yes, though Xavier admitted he did not know under what circumstances, but the man he looked at now was pure predator.
For an instant, the rage that lived inside the priest crept to the surface and suggested that Xavier should simply walk over to the man, disarming him with a smile, then put the shotgun against his forehead and pull the trigger.
Monster. Kill the monster.
Xavier’s body shook as he forced the thought down. He wouldn’t, couldn’t do such a thing. He suddenly realized he had stopped walking, was standing and staring, and that TC had caught him at it.
“See something you like, bro?”
Xavier blinked. “Behind you.”
TC nodded. “You too.”
The priest turned to see a boy of fifteen with greenish-black skin galloping toward him out of a patch of high weeds, not ten feet away. He cried out and swung the butt of his shotgun at the boy’s head as he closed, connecting, making the corpse fall to the side. Before the boy could get back on his feet, Xavier stepped in and took his head off with a close-range blast. Behind him, TC quickly dispatched the creatures that had been stalking in from the rear.
Bear stomped the brakes at the booming shotguns, and the rear tires lifted six inches as the Bayliner carried it forward. “Oh shit,” Little Bear said through clenched teeth.
The forklift settled back down with a thump, the boat shifting several degrees to one side. Little Bear let out a gasp and squeezed the steering wheel until his hands hurt. “Are you okay?” he shouted at Xavier.
Xavier stood over the fallen boy, the shotgun trembling just a little in his hands. It wasn’t a person, he told himself. It was a monster. I didn’t just kill another child. A wall of approaching dead cared nothing for his guilt and doubt, damaged throats gurgling as they began to move faster, all eyes on the priest.
TC rapped his knuckles on the forklift’s roll bar. “Let’s get this fucker moving, big man.”
Little Bear accelerated toward the space between the buildings, and TC chuckled at the priest before following. In that moment, Xavier had no questions as to who was the real monster here. The forklift picked up speed, and the priest was forced to stop and fire until he was dry, dropping five, missing three others. He trotted behind the departing vehicle, reloading on the run.
Gunfire was coming from up ahead.
A lot of gunfire.
• • •
Rosa brought the patrol boat in slowly, the slips and docks to her rear now, a long concrete wharf ahead. It was lined with the commercial fishing buildings she had seen earlier, old tires hanging on ropes along its length, there to provide bumpers for long-departed fishing boats. To the right was the main pier, stretching away toward the restaurant with many windows, a parklike section of trees dividing the waterfront from a row of high-rises.
The walking dead were moving along the pier, stumbling down through the trees, all headed for the gunfire. A breeze carried their stench out over the water and caused Rosa to gag. Out in front of the icehouse, Carney and Angie stood side by side, pouring fire into a crowd coming toward them.
Bodies dropped, some pitching over the side and into the water, more instantly taking their place. The two shooters took turns changing magazines, never at the same time and shouting their actions to one another.
Rosa wanted to help, wanted to roar up beside the pier and use one of the assault rifles on board to add to their fire. Instead she forced herself to look for a boat ramp as instructed. She spotted a sturdy wooden dock far to the right, where a four-wheeled, metal-framed contraption stood with heavy straps slung low between the crossbars. It took only a moment to determine its purpose; motorized and quite clearly intended for larger vessels, it would straddle a boat either on land or already in the water, position its sling beneath the craft, and hoist it out. It looked complicated and time-consuming, and it was on the other side of the dead. She kept looking.
There, off to the left near the end of the pier, away from the shooters and the advancing horde. She grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Angie, the ramp’s behind you.”
On shore, the other woman didn’t react and just kept firing.
Rosa tried twice more without result before realizing the radio was being drowned out by the rifle fire. She grabbed the handset off the dash and flipped the patrol boat’s radio switch to PA. Her voice blared across the water. “The boat ramp is to your rear, about fifty yards, near the end of the wharf.”
Both shooters began falling back at once, still firing.
The elevated bow of a large black-and-white boat appeared between two buildings, and then the forklift was out on the concrete, Xavier standing beside it. Rosa waved her arms and gestured to the left as if she were a ground crewman directing a plane. Xavier saw her, and a moment later the forklift turned and rumbled toward the ramp with its heavy cargo.
TC was falling back through the space, a wall of the dead advancing into his shotgun. Xavier appeared beside him and added his own firepower for a moment, and then the two of them retreated to where Carney and Angie were waiting.
“Let’s go!” Angie shouted, running after the forklift. The others followed. Seconds later, the two groups of the dead,
those from the boatyard and those on the pier, merged into one snarling mass and surged after their prey, completely filling the pier.
Little Bear risked a glance behind and realized there would be only one shot at this, and no time for finesse. He leaned out one side of the roll cage, spotted the concrete slope descending into the water, lined up, and floored it. The powerful engine belched diesel smoke as it leaped forward, picking up speed as the pier steadily ran out beneath its tires, the Bayliner bouncing madly on the prongs.
Rosa turned the patrol boat and followed, as her four companions chased after it on shore.
Little Bear’s last glance at the oil-smudged speedometer read thirty miles per hour as he pointed at the boat ramp.
He missed.
The giant forklift left the stone pier on an angle a good fifteen feet in front of the slope, plunging straight down; the Bayliner was flung free and forward of the twin prongs, airborne for seconds, then slamming bow first into the water with a tremendous splash, surging up again and coasting away.
The forklift hit the water at the edge of the pier while their newly acquired vessel was still in the air. Little Bear lunged to clear the seat as the vehicle hit the surface. His right boot, however, had slipped under the brake pedal and become wedged. Before he could twist it free, the full impact of water hit him in the chest and face, jarring him back against the seat. He gasped and the water cut him short, several tons of forklift pulling him down fast. The big man panicked, trying to breathe and free his foot at the same time, as the gray light from above quickly turned to ink.
Rosa saw it happen. She cranked the wheel and throttled forward, reversing as she neared the spot where the vehicle had gone under, killing the engine as she coasted in. She rapidly kicked off her combat boots and dropped her sidearm belt, then snatched a yellow waterproof flashlight from a clip on the cockpit wall and dove over the side.
Xavier saw it too and sprinted past the others, dropping his shotgun and launching himself off the wharf and into the water. The rest of them reached the boat ramp but could see nothing of the forklift, only a disturbance of bubbles on the surface.
Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead Page 11