He found a hatch. It was locked.
Shuffling footsteps on the deck behind him.
Vlad moved farther down the ship. Another hatch. Welded shut. The screaming was climbing like an out-of-control choir, and there wasn’t as much gunfire now. The pilot ran for another hatch, this one at the center of the ship. Tugging. Welded like the previous one.
The dead that had gone to the bow discovered this side of the ship, coming around the end of the forward gun battery. They spotted their prey, snarled, and hurried down the starboard side. To the rear, the other five came into view and slouched toward the man and the little boy.
Vlad looked back and forth between the two groups, hefting the weight of the Browning. It was a close-range weapon, and he was no marksman. They would have to be very close, and even if he scored a head shot with all five of his remaining rounds, he would be empty before they all went down and would never get the chance to reload.
He thought about the water below. If he lost his grip on Ben, the boy would drown.
He thought about a bullet for Ben, and one for himself.
Never.
And it was that last thought that made him bare his teeth. God, he thought, it is Vladimir again. We will not speak again, you sadistic son of a bitch. But I want you to know that you will not take another child from me. Fuck you, Groundhog-Seven signing off.
Vladimir hugged Ben close and strode toward the group of five, the Browning coming up. BLAM. BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM.
CLICK.
With the slide locked back on an empty chamber, Air Lieutenant Vladimir Yurish stepped over the bodies of five fallen drifters, each one down with a perfect, black-edged hole in the forehead. He walked to the stern, ejecting the empty magazine and slamming a fresh one home.
“You killed the monsters,” Ben breathed, peeking over the man’s shoulder.
The Russian’s face was hard, and yet tears filled his eyes, his voice a rumble between clenched teeth. “Papa will kill all the monsters, little one.”
He rounded the aft gun battery and headed down the port side, toward the gangplank, right arm fully extended. A drifter in a janitor’s uniform walked stiffly onto the deck.
BLAM. The creature fell.
Vlad reached the ramp, where a teenage girl, whose face would have been torn completely away except for the multitude of piercings holding it together, was walking up the ramp.
BLAM. The head shot spun her right over the gangplank’s rail and dropped her into the oily water.
Ben hid his face in Vladimir’s neck and began to whimper. “Shh, little one,” Vlad said, descending the gangplank, “you are safe in my arms.” Below them, a river of the walking dead moved by left to right, an impassable current of teeth and death.
• • •
Hold the line!” Margaret shouted, standing with Elson and Big Jerry to her right and left, Maya and a few others strung out to the sides. Pistol, shotgun, and rifle fire poured into the wall of the dead as they neared their prey, clutching at air, mouths hung open and moaning. Bodies fell, but not enough.
Ahead of them, the white van from the senior center groaned and tipped sideways from the press of bodies. It let out a long creak and fell onto its side, windows exploding. The black Angie’s Armory van moved as well, sliding at an angle as the dead forced their way forward, tires dragging across the pier as it was pushed aside, and then leaned before toppling over the edge to land on its roof in the waters between the pier and the Hornet, sinking quickly in a gurgle of bubbles.
“There’s too many!” shouted Elson, feeding shells into his shotgun, several slipping through his fingers.
“Stand your ground!” the small Asian woman bellowed, pumping rounds into galloping creatures. Some were knocked back by center-mass hits only to rise again, while others were exterminated with faces full of double-aught steel buckshot.
Behind them, everyone was boarding the service barge that had rescued many of them from the Oakland Middle Harbor days ago. Older kids jumped to the deck while adults handed smaller children down before jumping themselves. A pair of hippies helped Larraine and her oxygen bottle to the splintered deck, then two more arrived to help with her husband, Gene, nearly immobilized by his MS. Some of the adults and older kids stood on the barge and used the edge of the wharf as a battlement, firing into the endless mass of oncoming corpses.
Margaret spotted a female zombie half in and out of a sleeping bag, crawling forward by pulling itself along with its hands, teeth snapping. She and the dead woman had shared coffee and stories of their pre-plague life only last night. A breath hitched in Margaret’s chest as she aimed her shotgun, but Maya’s nine-millimeter pistol did the job first, a single round through the eye.
Maya knew the woman too, and had grown up with her in her father’s traveling Family.
On the left side, a gang of galloping corpses broke through the gunfire. Elson turned and fired, blowing one off its feet, and then the rest swarmed him, carrying him to the ground. Snarling, ripping, and biting blended with his screams as he thrashed beneath them.
Margaret saw it, cried out, and began firing at the tangle of bodies devouring her friend.
Big Jerry grabbed her arm. “It’s over! Get on the barge!” He pulled hard, dragging her back toward the end of the pier, pushing her to the edge, forcing her to jump. A rotting corpse naked from the waist down galloped at Big Jerry’s back, lips peeled back from its teeth. Maya shot it in the side of the head, and its momentum carried it off into the water.
Jerry yelled for those on the barge to “Stand clear!” and hurled his three-hundred-plus pounds off the wharf, landing on the deck with a tremendous thud and a loud POP that curled him into a groaning ball as he clutched his knee. Maya leaped down behind him and spun, pistol up and ready, putting a bullet in the face of the first drifter to appear at the edge.
The diesel engine fired, and others had already cast off the mooring lines. Half the people on deck pushed against the mossy surface of the wharf to help the barge move off, while the others began firing at the horde as it reached the end of the pier.
Zombies fell to gunfire. Dozens staggered off into the water, sinking quickly and each replaced at once by another corpse falling into the water. A handful flopped down onto the deck before the barge could gain much distance. More screaming as people tried to scatter from the creatures slowly climbing to their feet.
Maya snatched the handle of a yellow ice climber’s pick from an open Rubbermaid tote and waded in, her face contorted by a silent war cry. She planted the pick in a head, kicked the body free, buried it in another. A drifter came in on her side, close enough to bite, but the young man with the pregnant wife rammed the barrel of a shotgun under its jawbone and blew its head apart.
People scrambled clear as Maya swung her pick in a deadly arc, through an ear, through an eye, overhand and down through the crown of a rotting head. It ended quickly, and the deaf girl stood in the midst of a slaughter, chest heaving, wiping blood off her face with a sleeve. Members of her Family moved in quickly to clean her off with disinfectant wipes, while others rolled the bodies off into the water. Maya never let go of the ice-climbing pick.
The barge chugged steadily away from the pier, and many of those aboard were quickly reminded of a scene they had witnessed before: hundreds of reaching corpses stumbling off the end of the pier and sinking beneath the surface, still trying to get to the escaping prey.
Once the barge was away, Margaret and Maya knelt beside Big Jerry as a few others gathered around. The part-time stand-up comic cracked a joke about fat track stars, his grin failing to conceal the pain of his blown knee. They made him as comfortable as they could.
It was quickly decided that returning to Alameda, any part of it, would be impossible. They would head for the Nimitz. On the deck, Sophia moved through the refugees making a head count. They had lost four adults, including Elson,
and thankfully no children.
Another woman was doing the count with her. “No,” she said, “your count’s off. We’re short.”
Sophia counted again. Okay, the woman was right, she was off by two, but Ben was with Vlad, and Vlad was . . .
Sophia began to scream.
• • •
Vladimir crouched on the destroyer’s gangplank, looking at the moving horde. The drifters on the ship behind him were coming, and he knew he had only seconds before he and his small companion were discovered. He saw that the zombies below weren’t really packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, belly-to-back as they appeared from above. There were gaps, and if he moved fast enough, he just might make it.
Vladimir hugged Ben and ran for a destination on the wharf, sprinting into the horde, weaving like a ball carrier in one of the American football games he had come to enjoy, as snarls surrounded him, bodies lunged, and fingers clutched at his flight suit.
The group had left the car out on the wharf, alone and abandoned. He knew what it represented to them and saw the way Angie’s lip curled every time she looked at it. Because of their distaste they had, intentionally or unintentionally, separated themselves from it. Now, Maxie’s eighties-era Cadillac resembled a white-and-chrome island along the edge of a river of corpses.
Vladimir tore himself away from a drifter’s grip, dodged left, then right, shouldered another aside, and reached the car. He tore open the passenger door and hurled Ben inside, then scrambled after him.
Hands caught at his legs.
An arm encircled his waist.
Vladimir turned, lying half on the seat, and shoved the muzzle of the Browning into a snapping mouth, blowing its brains across half a dozen of its kind. The arm dropped from his waist. Another two bullets and his legs were free, and he hauled on the door handle.
A drifter pulled back, trying to rip the door from his grasp. Ben was screaming, curled up on the floorboards. Vlad kicked the zombie in the chest and it fell back. Teeth sank into the rubber sole of his boot, and he kicked that one away too. More pressed in, and with a curse bellowed in Russian, Vladimir slammed the door shut and slapped down the peg lock.
The driver’s door creaked open behind him.
Vlad rolled on the seat and brought up the Browning, blasting until the slide locked back, clearing the door. He pulled it shut, locking it, then checked to make sure the back doors were locked. They were.
Fists thundered against the sheet metal, covering it in dents, and horrid faces pressed against the glass, teeth biting and leaving scratches. It sounded like being inside an orchestra drum.
The back window cracked. A side window burst into a cloudy mass of shattered glass, still hanging in its frame.
The Cadillac lurched and slid a foot toward the edge of the pier.
Vlad pulled himself into the driver’s seat, reaching for the ignition, keeping his promise and refusing to pray to a sadist who wasn’t listening anyway. He found the keys dangling and started the well-cared-for engine.
The car slid another foot, tires at the edge now.
Vlad had never met the man and knew he never would, but he could tell Maxie had treated this automobile well. Now he would see just how much punishment this classic example of American manufacturing could take as he hauled the wheel over and accelerated into a squealing U-turn. Bodies thumped down the sides, banged off the grille, rolled across the hood, and streaked the windshield with gore. The right tires went up and over what felt like a row of logs, making the suspension twist, forcing Vlad to slow down—if they became high-centered it was over—and then bumping back to the ground with a bounce. The Caddy was pointed back toward the access road to the naval air station, and a wall of the walking dead was before him.
Ben crawled onto the seat and tucked into a tight little ball next to the Russian pilot. Vlad gripped the wheel with two hands and said, “Sing me your song again, little one.”
He stomped the accelerator.
THIRTY-FIVE
Rosa went in first, her pistol held in a two-handed grip. Her first impression was of something out of a carnival’s haunted house: white walls and divider curtains splashed with red, a white tile floor strewn with corpses and streaked with blood, a stuttering strobe overhead. Even on a reduced reactor, Nimitz kept the sick bay fully supplied with power, and every light bar would have been lit if not for the battle damage. Now, fluorescent tubes were shattered, metal housings dangled from the ceiling by conduit, and several lights flickered on and off. A few remained intact, which only served to deepen the shadows.
Every footstep sent empty brass casings skittering across the tile, and Rosa moved carefully, watching the decomposing bodies on the floor for movement. Tommy, Lilly, and Eve stayed close behind her, turning on flashlights.
The aircraft carrier’s sick bay was like a hospital wing, with waiting rooms and records compartments, X-ray and surgical suites, a full pharmacy, and nurses’ stations. To the right was a line of curtained ER cubicles, and up ahead was an eighty-bed hospital ward. At sea, six doctors and a surgeon were assisted by an army of corpsmen and enlisted orderlies, handling everything from garden-variety lacerations and fevers to ruptured appendixes, fractures, and even industrial accidents. In wartime, the facility stood ready to take on combat casualties.
It was the sick bay and the presence of everything she would need to care for the sick and wounded—sterile instruments, bandages and splints, medication, and a lab—that had convinced Rosa to support braving a warship infested with the dead. This facility, combined with someone with medical skills, could be the deciding factor between life and death for the survivors, not only now but in the future. Now that she was here, the medic was determined to take and hold the place.
Combat had taken place here, Rosa thought. Counters and walls were pocked with bullet holes, blood pressure and EKG machines were overturned and shattered, beds were flipped over, and curtains had been pulled down by frantic hands.
Most of the dead were dressed in scrubs; a few were in hospital gowns, and one was in a white lab coat. Near a tangle of bullet-riddled bodies, the corpse of a woman in blue camo sat propped against a wall gripping an assault rifle. She wore body armor and a bandolier of magazines and was covered in bites, one ear dangling by a string of sinew, her dead eyes the color of pewter. A single bullet had pierced her forehead.
Rosa motioned at the armed corpse, and Lilly went to relieve it of its weapons and ammo.
It had been a massacre, Rosa thought as she eased deeper into the hospital. But who had done the killing? How had it started? Something banged against hollow metal down a corridor to her left, and Rosa’s pistol snapped in that direction, Eve following with her flashlight. Open doorways in a darkened hall, blood-slicked tile and stillness in that direction. Behind them, Tommy parted bloody curtains with the barrel of his shotgun, peeking into ER cubicles.
“We’re not alone,” Eve whispered.
“Not since we came on board,” Rosa replied.
The two women moved slowly up the hallway, and when the banging came again, they froze, holding their breath. Then they moved forward. As they came upon an open doorway on the right, Eve put her flashlight inside.
“Holy shit,” she said.
Rosa turned with her pistol and looked to where Eve’s light was pointing. It was a small supply room, with shelves of neatly ordered items stacked in rows: folded sheets and blankets, hospital gowns and robes wrapped in plastic, bedpans, toiletries, slippers, and towels. Several folded wheelchairs leaned against a wall near stacks of red plastic bio buckets. Heaped on the floor in the center of the room, violating the sterile order of the place, was a pile of weapons, boots, and body armor, all of it covered in blood. There were ammo vests and bandoliers, boot knives, grenades, a backpack radio, assault rifles, pistols, and submachine guns. The blood had dried, leaving it all coated in a rusty smear. It looked as if everything
had simply been dumped.
It didn’t look Navy to Rosa; these were infantry tools, and the odd, personalized assortment of weapons indicated that it was not from a regular unit. The body armor was a digital black-and-gray pattern, as were the backpacks. Rosa looked at the weapons and ammunition and sighed. They had been down to their last magazines.
Bare, galloping feet slapping at the tile made her jerk left. Rushing out of the gloom was a bare-chested zombie muscled like a weight lifter, wearing black-and-gray camo pants and a black bandana. A skull with crossed daggers was tattooed on his left pectoral, the letters S.O.G. inked beneath it.
A Navy SEAL.
Rosa fired, two, three, four times. Two shots went wild, one grazed bone where the thing’s right arm had been stripped of flesh and muscle, and the fourth slammed into its groin. It didn’t slow, and let out a long rasp.
Eve emerged from the storeroom, put her light on it, and screamed.
Tommy’s shotgun went off back in the ER, three shots in succession.
The dead SEAL was twenty feet away, then ten feet. . . .
Rosa fired and the nine-millimeter slug punched through the SEAL’s cheekbone. It didn’t stop. She fired again, grazing the side of its head, and then it was on her, and she fired point-blank. The zombie’s weight slammed into her and threw her to the floor, dark ichor spewing out of the creature’s mouth and onto the tiles beside her, oozing out of the final bullet wound through the bridge of its nose.
Eve started to pull the dead SEAL off the downed medic as a corpse in bloody scrubs staggered toward them from the dark corridor. The woman let go of the heavy, limp body and tucked her flashlight in her armpit, racking the shotgun—ejecting a perfectly good shell—and firing. She had to do it three times before her buckshot hit the mark and put the thing down. By then, Rosa had shimmied out from beneath the SEAL on her own.
The medic went into the storeroom and soon emerged with a second nine-millimeter pistol belted around her waist, a full ammo pouch of pistol mags, two bandoliers of rifle magazines, and an M4, the same assault rifle she had carried overseas. She and Eve returned to the center of the sick bay.
Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead Page 26