Ship of the Damned

by James F. David

  Finally, they were led outside on the port side of the Norfolk and pushed toward the stern. As they cleared midships, Elizabeth saw something new; the Dawson part of her reacted, too. The Norfolk had a sister ship on this level, and it was massive.

  Directly astern of the Norfolk was an aircraft carrier that towered above the cruiser. At least twice the size of the Norfolk, the massive ship was lined up directly behind as if it was chasing the smaller ship across the desert. Jett was ahead of Elizabeth and stopped, staring at the ship. Elizabeth, in Dawson’s body, stood to one side of Jett, and shoulder to shoulder they gaped in awe at the giant war machine.

  “It’s the Nimitz,” Jett said.

  Elizabeth’s mind flashed back to something Dr. Birnbaum said—there had been rumors on the Internet about something happening to the Nimitz. Seeing the great ship here frightened her in a new way. Supercarriers were the greatest war machines on the planet, and only something with cosmic power could snatch one from the ocean and deliver it here.

  Their view of the Nimitz was obscured by part of the Norfolk’s superstructure and by the cranes and catapults on the stern. Still, they could see aircraft parked on the deck. They were fighters mostly, but also other specialty aircraft—two with elliptical radar domes—and helicopters. Elizabeth felt like a country bumpkin seeing a city for the first time, staring up at the skyscrapers. The Dawson part of her shared the feeling, intensifying it.

  Compton shoved Jett from behind to get them moving again, pushing him after the other Crazies who were moving toward the stern of the Norfolk, following Prophet.

  “It’s the Nimitz, Compton. It’s what we came for. Can’t you snap out of it?”

  “Move or I’ll hurt you,” Compton said, her tone emotionless.

  “Prophet wouldn’t like that,” Jett said.

  Compton dropped her gun to Jett’s knee.

  “I said I’ll hurt you, not kill you,” Compton said.

  Jett didn’t move, daring Compton to shoot.

  “Let’s go,” Elizabeth said to Jett through Dawson’s body.

  Jett didn’t move.

  “This isn’t the time or the place,” Elizabeth said.

  Jett nodded, then he followed Roberto, who was still supporting the wounded sailor.

  Ahead, Elizabeth could see that a rope bridge had been rigged from the Norfolk to the Nimitz. The bridge sloped steeply from the stern of the Norfolk to the flight deck of the carrier. It was a flimsy-looking contraption, essentially four cables drawn tight between the Norfolk’s cranes and two towers erected on the flight deck of the Nimitz. Ropes were woven around the cables, partially enclosing the sides of the bridge. Planks made up the bottom. People were crossing it now, coming from the Nimitz to the Norfolk, and Elizabeth could see more people on the flight deck. The Crazies seemed to have moved their base of operations from the Norfolk to the Nimitz. Above the bridge was another cable, one end strung from higher on the superstructure of the Norfolk and the other end attaching somewhere on the flight control island on the starboard side of the Nimitz’s flight deck.

  Elizabeth studied the Nimitz. Held perfectly balanced on its keel by the strange forces that had brought it here, the carrier was fully exposed. She could see the twin anchors pulled up tight to the ship, the sharp curves of the hull, and the protruding sponson which supported the runway angling across the flight deck. Then she noticed a man hanging by his hands from the flight deck, held by a rope around each wrist. After seeing the first man, she could see others, a half dozen of them hung across the piece of the bow that was visible.

  As they neared the stern, Elizabeth spotted something in the desert below. Jett saw it too, drifting toward the rail. Two large machines sat on the desert floor, each shaped like a snail’s shell, cables running from them. Compton saw Jett’s interest and ordered him away from the side. Jett complied, but his eyes busily took in details of the machines in the desert, the bridge, and the placement of guards.

  As they approached the bridge they were turned inboard and pushed through a hatch just forward of the catapults. They climbed down to the ship’s hangar. The hangar was by far the largest open space below decks on the Norfolk. Around its perimeter were repair facilities, parts storage, and barrels of oil and grease. The overhead hatch was open, and cables and hooks from the crane dangled above as if it had recently been used to lower something. Twenty men and women were gathered in the hangar. They were dirty, wearing homemade jewelry, decorated with tattoos, and brandishing weapons. They parted for Prophet like the Red Sea for Moses.

  As Elizabeth and the others were led to the center of the group, she realized that three men here were different. All three lacked the jewelry and tattoos of the Crazies, two of them wearing green jersies, the third a khaki uniform. Elizabeth guessed that the men were from the Nimitz. They stood by what looked like pieces of aircraft.

  “All finished?” Prophet asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the sailor in khakis said.

  “Excellent.”

  Prophet waved Elizabeth and the others forward. Roberto still helped the wounded sailor, whose breath was even and regular now, even with the bloody hole in his chest.

  “I want you to see this,” Prophet said with his mouth closed, his voice reverberating in their minds.

  They were pushed forward until they stood face to face with Prophet.

  “Do you know what these are, Nathan?”

  Prophet was talking to Jett like a father to his child, calling him by his first name.

  The devices were large silver cylinders set in metal cages. Three black boxes were fixed below the cylinders, thick coils of wiring running from box to box and to the cylinder. Covering the cylinder were smaller devices that looked as if they were made out of plastic, two wires running from each.

  “Well, Layton,” Jett began.

  Prophet was shorter than Jett by three inches, but he was powerfully built with thick arms. He was also quick-tempered and fast; his right hand slapped Jett across the face before Jett could react.

  “You will call me Prophet,” Prophet said directly to their minds. Then, with his voice, he said, “I ceased to be Layton McNab when God called us to this place and anointed me his Prophet.”

  “You ceased being Layton McNab when you lost your mind,” Jett said.

  Prophet struck with his left hand, knocking Jett back a step. The man’s face was flushed, his lips tight. He was determined to bend Jett to his will, and Jett would rather die than bend.

  “Not the time or the place,” Elizabeth said to Jett.

  Jett spit blood from his mouth.

  “You tell me when and where,” Jett said to Elizabeth.

  Jett had been briefed on the Nimitz’s arsenal. He knew what Prophet had spread out on the deck.

  “You’ve removed the thermonuclear warheads from two Tomahawk cruise missiles,” Jett said.

  “That’s right, Nathan. Of course, I don’t understand exactly what makes them work—something about the atoms banging into each other. We didn’t have these when we fought the Nazis but I heard the Japs got a taste of a couple of these babies. I understand they pack as much explosive power as a thousand-plane raid.”

  Prophet smiled, revealing yellow teeth discolored by years of chewing tobacco.

  “Know what?” Prophet continued. “We just set one of these off!”

  Prophet chuckled, and his people laughed with him.

  “I know what you’re thinking—really, I do,” Prophet said, chuckling at his own joke, the Crazies joining in.

  “You’re thinking that if one of these warheads has been detonated, then why haven’t we all been blown to pieces?”

  Prophet turned slowly, dramatically, building suspense.

  “We are here because God himself holds the atoms in the warhead tight in his protective hand, just like he holds us in his hand.”

  Prophet held his hand out, slowly closing his fingers and clenching them tight as he spoke. The Crazies mumbled approval, some whispering “Amen.�
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  “And when the time comes—God’s time—he will release his mighty grip and the world will feel his wrath.”

  With his arm still outstretched, Prophet flicked his fingers out, opening his fist. His face was red, his jaw set, his voice loud and firm. Then his lips curved into a smile. In seconds he had gone from maniacal to whimsical.

  “Like I said, one of these bombs has been detonated, but you know, I can’t exactly remember which one.”

  Prophet turned slowly, showing his smile to his followers.

  “One of them is going to be sent home, but since I can’t remember which is which I’ll just have to guess.”

  His followers laughed, enjoying his game.

  “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,” Prophet said. “Which one back to earth should go?”

  Prophet pointed back and forth between the warheads as he spoke, enjoying the captives’ discomfort.

  “Do you know one potato, two potato, three potato, four?” Jett said suddenly. “Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.”

  The Crazies were stunned into silence by Jett’s audacity. Prophet kept his smile, but his eyes stared hard at Jett. Elizabeth cringed, thinking Jett foolish to taunt a madman.

  “Another good one is bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish, how many pieces do you wish?” Jett said.

  Prophet lost his smile, his stare cold and hard.

  “Quiet!” Prophet boomed in their heads.

  His game spoiled, Prophet was red with fury.

  “Bring the bomb,” Prophet ordered. “And bring them!”

  Crazies dragged Elizabeth and the other captives across the hangar. The warheads were both on dollies, and one was pushed ahead of them toward an inboard hatch.

  “Let’s see what’s in here.” Prophet said, smiling again.

  Prophet opened the hatch a crack, peeking inside, then turned his head to them with an expression of mock surprise.

  “What could it be?” Prophet said.

  Pulling the hatch open, Prophet stepped back, revealing a glowing green mist.

  “I wonder where this leads?” Prophet said.

  Prophet’s eyes bored in on Jett, waiting for a reaction. He got none.

  With a quick hand motion from Prophet, the warhead was rolled to the hatch. When they lifted the front wheels of the dolly over the lip of the hatch, Jett tensed. Elizabeth stiffened, too. If Prophet had managed to detonate the warhead, once it reentered the world it would be released from the forces that kept it from going off.

  “The scroll!” Prophet commanded.

  A Crazy with long, dangling copper earrings made out of hammered shell casings stepped forward, holding out a paper roll tied with a ribbon. Prophet put the scroll inside the metal framework. Then he raised his hands toward the sky and spoke directly to their minds.

  “To glorify you,” Prophet said.

  At his signal, the dolly with the warhead was pushed into the green mist. Closing and latching the hatch, Prophet looked pleased with himself.

  “It’s time for you to be judged for your sins,” Prophet said. “Take them to the Nimitz.”

  At the mention of judgment, excitement rippled through the Crazies. Prophet led off, Crazies falling in behind him like a palace guard. Elizabeth and the others were pushed after Prophet, guards in front and behind. Compton kept behind them, gun trained on their backs. Their path led them up to the deck of the Norfolk and to the stern, where the makeshift bridge connected them to the flight deck of the Nimitz.

  Two could walk side by side on the bridge, but it would be tight; the Crazies crossed single file, spaced ten feet apart. The bridge creaked and groaned with each additional weight, swaying and bouncing with the movement of the Crazies. Roberto and the wounded sailor were the first of the captives onto the bridge. Then Jett motioned Elizabeth forward.

  Pausing at the edge of the bridge, Elizabeth studied the planking, which was made up of a variety of wood and metal pieces. The sides were of rope strung between the upper and lower cables. The ropes merely outlined the sides of the rickety and steeply sloped bridge, hinting at safety but not promising it. With her hands tied behind her, Elizabeth couldn’t hold the cables for support.

  Growing more confident as she crossed, Elizabeth looked around. The men farthest ahead appeared to be climbing a ladder to the deck of the Nimitz. In the desert below she could see the shell-shaped machines. Cables trailed from them, one running back into the Norfolk while two others stretched out in either direction, running all the way to the opaque walls that marked the border of this world.

  As the bridge’s incline increased, Elizabeth concentrated careful that each foot was squarely on a support. Risking only quick glances now, she saw the huge anchors, each bigger than a car, and then the hanging men strung along the sides of the ship. They all wore modern uniforms; she guessed that they were Nimitz crew survivors who were resistant to Prophet. With another glance, she saw movement. The sailors were alive, twisting in agony, pulling up with their arms, and trying to ease their breathing.

  The deck was near now, and Elizabeth concentrated on the climb. She reached the flight deck, where the planking ended and makeshift stairs led down. A crowd of Crazies was waiting for her. Like the other Crazies she had seen, they were a rag-tag collection, mostly sailors, with a few civilian men and women sprinkled among them. They wore ragged clothes and bizarre jewelry, and their bodies were decorated with tattoos. Among them she saw the unadorned bodies of the Nimitz’s crew, who were acting as is if they had always been Prophet’s followers.

  Now on the deck, she could see that the Nimitz was badly damaged. The planes parked on the stern were scorched; the paint was blistered and blackened, the canopies opaque and bubbled as if they had been exposed to extreme heat. The deck of the ship was blackened too. And the crew of the Nimitz had suffered the same fate as crew on the Norfolk. Pieces of bodies protruded from the flight deck in places—half a man here, head and shoulders there, just an arm farther down the deck. But while the men on the Norfolk looked whole and healthy, the Nimitz crew that had merged with the ship were burned and blackened. Instinctively, Elizabeth looked for Anita, making sure that the little girl wasn’t seeing this new ugliness.

  ‘Whatever had happened to the Nimitz, happened in the middle of flight operations. Three arresting wires were still stretched across the runway, ready to be snagged by the tail hook of a landing jet. An F-14 was just off the other end of the runway, as if the disaster had struck just as it cleared the runway for the next plane. The fighter’s exterior was burnt black like the other planes.’

  The deck was vast; on acres of steel, the island on the starboard side of the ship was the only protruding structure. Gathered at the stern was a large throng of Crazies, who were milling about and generating crowd noise like fans filling a football stadium. More Crazies were coming across the bridge from the Norfolk, wild-eyed with excitement, hurrying toward the stern.

  Elizabeth, Jett, Roberto, and the wounded sailor were surrounded by armed Crazies. Compton kept her gun on Jett, even with his hands tied. The Crazies were waiting silently, looking down the deck toward the stern. Then came the booming of a crude drum.

  “It’s time,” one of the Crazies said, motioning with his spear.

  “This might be the time and the place,” Elizabeth said to Jett.

  Jett looked at Compton, who still had her gun on his back.

  “Not yet,” Jett said.

  Elizabeth didn’t know if there would be another opportunity. She feared suffering in Dawson’s body, not only for her sake but for Dawson’s, too. They shared enough consciousness for her to know that he came from a large, boisterous family which he missed dearly, and that he was a brave man who had volunteered to fight for his country. Elizabeth also feared for Anita, who would die unless they could find a way to stop the dream.

  As the drumming from the stern fell into a steady beat, their guards took up positions in front and behind, marching to the rhythm. Despite the wild appearance of the Crazie
s, their procession was formal and solemn. The crowd ahead jeered.

  The captives were led to the edge of the crowd, which refused to part. Guards pushed men and women aside to make room. As they plunged into the mob, it reformed around them, swallowing them like a malevolent amoeba. The guards kept them moving but made no attempt to protect them from the mob. They were jabbed and prodded by surly men and women who cursed them. Elizabeth realized that, like the scourging of Jesus, the abuse from the crowd was part of the judgment ritual. Dawson’s body was more rugged than Elizabeth’s and absorbed blows she knew her body could not. A vicious kick to her knee collapsed her leg, and Elizabeth fell. Peals of laughter rippled through the Crazies. A blow came from the tangle of legs, kicking her in the side. Defensively, she rolled into a ball and took the next kick to her kidneys, her back arching with the spasm of pain.

  “You’re gonna burn now, Dawson,” a man shouted.

  “A little taste of hell before you go,” another said and then laughed.

  Others shouted insults and cursed the body Elizabeth occupied, and whose pain she felt as if it were her own.

  “Elizabeth, this is Shamita. Can you understand me?”

  “Yes, Shamita,” Elizabeth mumbled.

  “Your vital signs are dangerously high. What is happening?”

  “Don’t bring me out,” Elizabeth said. “I haven’t found them yet.”

  “I’m worried,” Sharnita said.

  “I’ll be fine,” Elizabeth lied.

  “What’s he saying?” someone above her asked.

  “He’s out of his head,” another shouted.

  “He’s faking,” another said. “Prophet will see right through it.”

  Then she was pulled roughly to her feet. She found herself facing an angry woman whose eyes were dark with hate.