Domain of the Dead

by Iain McKinnon

  “Shall I show them how to clear a jam?” the nervous marine asked Bates.

  “No point,” Angel chipped in before Bates could answer. “If they have jam they won’t be quick enough to clear it. Give them two guns instead.”

  “And no John Woo stuff,” Bates added.

  “Take one of these so we know how we’re all doing,” Angel said, placing a walkie-talkie and headset into her hand. “I’ve set the channels so all you need to do is press this button on the headphone cable to talk.”

  Sarah pushed the button and there was a hiss of static on the radio Angel still held.

  Nathan and Sarah loaded their vests with ammunition and both slipped their spare gun into an integrated holster inside.

  Bates handed flashlights around and asked, “Are we all ready?”

  There was a muttering and a nodding of heads.

  “Good. See you all on deck,” Bates said.

  He nodded for French to open the door.

  The door swung open and in the corridor a flaming zombie staggered towards them.

  Angel stepped forward.

  “Mine,” she said as she rested her pistol’s muzzle on her plaster cast and squeezed the trigger.

  The ghoul collapsed to the floor, flames sweeping behind it as it fell.

  “Happy hunting! See you on deck!” Bates called out as the two groups went their separate ways.

  Chapter 9: Abandoned

  The beams of light swept through the increasingly deepening smoke.

  Nathan rasped out a cough.

  “Should have brought gas masks,” Bates complained.

  Bates had mistaken Nathan’s cough as irritation from the smoke. Nathan chose not to correct him.

  “Is this it?” Sarah asked, unsure of her bearings in the dark.

  “This is it,” Bates confirmed.

  Sarah reached out and tried the handle. It was still locked.

  “Jennifer, it’s Sarah,” she said as she knocked on the cabin door. “You in there, honey?”

  “Sarah!” came the muffled but excited reply.

  Sarah smiled to the rest of her companions. “Yeah, it’s me, honey. Open up.”

  From behind the door came some grunting and scraping.

  “Are you okay?” Sarah asked nervously.

  Jennifer’s anxious voice came back, “I can’t move the bed! It’s stuck!”

  Bates looked at Sarah with a puzzled expression. “The bed?”

  Sarah called through the closed door, “Jennifer, what’s going on?”

  Jennifer sounded close to tears. “I pushed the bed against the door, but I can’t move it. It’s caught on something.”

  Suddenly shots rang out. The noise caused Jennifer to scream from inside the cabin.

  Bates and Sarah spun round, guns at the ready. Before them, Nathan stood, his gun smoking, and on the ground a few feet down the corridor lay a motionless zombie.

  “Whoa!” Bates shouted, cuffing Nathan’s arm a little too strongly.

  “What?” Nathan protested.

  “You scared the shit out of us!” Sarah chastised.

  “But I got him,” Nathan said, gesturing at the corpse on the deck.

  “Next time let us know so we don’t wet ourselves or step into your line of fire,” Bates said.

  “Would you quit raggin’ on me?!” Nathan retorted. “There was one of them. I wasted it. Simple.”

  Sarah interjected, “Boys! How do we get into the room?”

  “It’s not a bulkhead door,” Bates said. “We can just smash it open.”

  “But there’s a bed against it,” Nathan reminded him.

  “The bed’s what, two feet high? We can break open the door above that.”

  Sarah looked around. “Okay, let’s find a fire axe or something to use as a battering ram.”

  “Got a quicker plan,” Bates said, holding up the lump of plastic he had fumbled with back in the armoury.

  Sarah pressed herself up against the door. “Jennifer, go into the bathroom and shut the door. Crouch down in the shower into a tight little ball.”

  “And cover your ears,” Bates added.

  “Okay,” came the reply through the door.

  “There’s going to be a loud bang in about fifteen seconds, so get going.” Bates adjusted the primer. “Okay, let’s go!”

  The group scurried off back down the corridor.

  “Cover your ears,” Bates instructed and waited for his companions to comply. “Fire in the hole.”

  When the plastic explosives went off, the noise was disappointing. In comparison to the deafening gunshots, the explosives were pedestrian.

  Sarah uncovered her ears and ran back to the shattered door.

  “Jennifer, are you all right?” she called through the splintered hole.

  The figure of the eight year-old girl emerged through the dust.

  “I’m fine,” Jennifer said, climbing onto the pile of debris that had once been her bed.

  Sarah stretched out her arms and the two connected in a massive cuddle, but their embrace was wrecked by the distant bark of gunfire.

  Nathan jumped. “What the fuck was that?!”

  “Is that the only word you know?” Bates asked.

  “It’s the best one,” Nathan replied.

  “Shall I radio Angel?” Sarah asked, marking how nonchalant Bates was.

  “No, she doesn’t like it when you call her at work.”

  “What if she needs help?”

  “She’ll call if she needs us,” Bates explained. “And if she’s busy she won’t thank you for the distraction.”

  Nathan heaved up a hoarse cough. This time he spat out a wad of dislodged mucus onto the deck. He spluttered, “Let’s get to the life boats then!”

  A rip of static burst across Sarah’s earpiece. She asked into the mic, “Angel, is that you?” When there was no answer she looked at Bates for confirmation that she’d done everything right.

  “Try again,” Bates suggested.

  Sarah toggled the transmit button. “Angel, come in. Can you hear me?”

  “The shooting’s stopped,” Nathan observed.

  There was silence. No shooting, no hiss across the radio. Even the ship seemed to be holding its breath.

  Bates kicked the bulkhead next to him, hard, sending a dull clunk through the wall. “Aw, shit. Angel’s down.”

  “Then we need to go after her,” Sarah said.

  “What?!” Nathan squawked.

  Sarah started to repeat herself, “We need to go aft—”

  “No,” Bates said firmly.

  “What do you mean no?”

  “If Angel couldn’t hack it down there, neither can we,” Bates said, trying to keep his composure. “And besides, the lower decks are on fire. We might not even be able to get to her.”

  “But we don’t know if they’ve radioed that Russian sub,” Sarah pointed out.

  Nathan coughed to clear his throat and tried to make it sound as if he’d only done it to attract attention. “We can do that from the bridge, can’t we?”

  Bates nodded. “As long as the fire hasn’t damaged any of the equipment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, there’s no power,” Bates explained, “but the radio has backup batteries, only...”

  “Only what?”

  Bates shifted uncomfortably. “They’re in the radio room.”

  “But you said we could call from the bridge!” Sarah said.

  “Only if the wiring is still intact.”

  Sarah felt a gentle tugging at the hem of her vest. “Sarah,” came Jennifer’s soft voice.

  Bates continued to explain the situation. “If the fire has severed the connection, or damaged the transmitter...”

  The tugging at Sarah’s vest grew stronger. Jennifer’s voice sounded more frantic. “Sarah.”

  “Just a moment, Jennifer,” Sarah said without paying her any attention.

  “Isn’t there a spare?” Nathan asked.

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sp; Jennifer tugged again. “Sarah!”

  The adults were too engrossed talking through the problem to pay attention to the little girl.

  Bates put pay to Nathan’s idea: “It’s in storage and that’s in the hold. We’d—”

  Tired of being ignored Jennifer let out a scream, “Zombie!”

  The three adults spun round to see Jennifer pointing at a figure lumbering down the corridor.

  With a shower of muzzle flashes, hard booms filled the corridor. The zombie jolted with the impact of the shots before collapsing to the deck.

  “Thanks, Jennifer!” Sarah shouted over the buzzing in her ears.

  Jennifer stood with her head shrugged down to her shoulders and her hands clasped over her ears. The sound of the guns had been painfully loud for the small girl.

  Sarah holstered her pistol and stretched her arms out. Jennifer immediately recognised the offer of comfort and let Sarah lift her into her arms.

  The pair embraced in a strong supportive hug. Sarah sensed her young ward relax, at which she bent down, letting the girl stand on her own.

  “Okay?” Sarah asked with a smile.

  Jennifer nodded and smiled back.

  “Lets get to the bridge,” Bates said, leading the way.

  Nathan let the rest of the group pass him, mustering a smile for Jennifer as she passed. He shone his torch on the globule of mucous he had spat onto the deck earlier. It was brown with streaks of blood through it.

  Unbuttoning the sleeve of his shirt, Nathan popped the hilt of his flashlight into his mouth. He angled the beam onto his forearm and apprehensively unrolled the cuff up past his elbow. The blue veins stood out against his pale skin, but the network of blood vessels darkened the closer they got to the scratch mark. Hidden under his wristband, Nathan couldn’t see the wound and he wasn’t brave enough to look. All around the wrist band the skin was cracked like a dry riverbed, the flesh black and the split canyons a raw red.

  “Nathan,” a sweet voice called out.

  He looked up to see Jennifer standing a short distance away, looking back at him.

  “Is your arm okay?” she asked in all innocence.

  Nathan hastily covered it back up. “Yeah fine, just banged it… bruise… you know, the one from giving blood.”

  “It looks sore,” Jennifer said.

  “No, it’s fine,” Nathan replied. He stepped over and rubbed his hand across Jennifer’s head, mussing up her hair. “Come on, squirt. We’d better catch up to the others. Don’t want to get them worried.”

  * * *

  Bates shone his flashlight across the corpse. The dead body wore an all-in-one bright orange survival suit. Beads of water had dripped off it to form a brackish pool on the deck. He’d never liked Patterson, tight assed moron that he was, but he suddenly realised he’d always trusted him. Patterson had always been true to his word and predictable in his action and that was more than Bates could say about most of his friends.

  Seeing the second in command lying dead on the floor shook Bates more than all the zombies he’d encountered.

  He turned to Sarah and said simply, “Patterson.”

  Sarah looked down at where Bates was shining his torch.

  Bates tracked the torchlight over the deck to a second corpse. “And over there Captain Warden.”

  “Both dead,” Sarah said absentmindedly. “I wonder what happened.”

  “Patterson came round the corner or out of a room right into Captain Warden. The captain must have turned by that point ‘cause he bit Patterson.” Bates shone his torch over the bite marks on Patterson’s face. “They scuffled. Patterson got to the Captain’s side arm. Judging by the number of shots…” Again Bates moved the beam onto Captain Warden’s body, pointing out the areas of note. “Stomach, chest, neck and head. I’d say the two of them were in a close scuffle. That’s why Patterson couldn’t get a clean shot to the head.” Bates swung the torch back to Patterson. “Commander Patterson, feeling weak from the blood loss, sat down there and decided he wasn’t coming back as one of those things, and shot himself.”

  “Did you get a merit badge in making that shit up or what?” Nathan jibed.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Bates snapped.

  Nathan recoiled, surprised by the weight of emotion.

  “You okay, Bates?” Sarah asked.

  Bates shook his head, staring at Patterson’s corpse. “We’d look at the W.D.’s from the chopper. We’d joke about them. How come so many of them were naked?” Bates pushed out a laugh. “Do W.D.’s get undressed when they reanimate? Shit like that.” Bates let his shoulders sink, dispelling the pretence of his forced joke. “I always wondered, did they see a loved one turn and just not know or believe what was happening? Did they go down fighting, or scared, or what? Every one of these poor bastards got bit. Made me wonder how. See them standing there in the clothes they died in. We’d make up little stories about them, you know, based on what clothes they were wearing. Shirt and tie: office worker from some soulless corporation cubical. There’s a commotion outside, the receptionist screams. Next thing he’s rammed up against a filing cabinet fighting those things off him. It was always easy to dehumanise them. Hell, most of them didn’t look human anymore. They just wander about in a trance when they’re not trying to eat you.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “They don’t think like us—they’re dead, they’re not us—they’re the enemy. But it ain’t even like a real fucking war ‘cause you’re not shooting a real fucking person, are you?” Bates wasn’t looking for vindication; he was just stating the facts as he saw them. “It’s not killing to put a bullet through their brain, ‘cause they’re dead. Right? Ain’t no worse than shooting a deer. Hell, shooting an animal is worse, right? ‘Cause it’s a living, breathing creature like you or me. Right?”

  This time Bates was looking for approval.

  Sarah nodded, too frightened by Bates’ growing mania to speak.

  Bates sniffed back a tear. “But these ain’t rotting corpses like on the mainland. These are fresh. These are the people I lived and worked with for years. I know their stories.” He stared at Patterson’s corpse, and added, this time a little louder and with a tinge of desperation in his voice,” I know these people. I know they were human.”

  He turned around to look Nathan in the eye. The muscles around his mouth were tough and he snorted sharp breaths through his nose. His anger exploded. “I don’t have to make shit up because I knew them!”

  He lunged forward, pushing Nathan against the wall.

  Pinned under the chin by Bates’ forearm, Nathan squirmed for room to breathe. He grappled hold of his assailant’s arm and tried to prise it free, but the soldier was far too powerful and rage-fuelled to budge.

  “Bates!” Sarah shouted.

  Bates stood, his eyes wide, taking panting breaths.

  “Bates,” Sarah said more softly as she stepped up beside him. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  Bates looked up at her with tears in his eyes.

  Sarah wanted to say something warm and comforting, but all she could say was, “Bates, let Nathan go.”

  Bates relaxed his hold and took a pace back.

  Nathan slid down the wall gasping for breath.

  Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, Bates mourned, “Shit, this is fucked up.”

  Sarah looked down at Nathan as he sat crouched over and coughing.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “No!” he rasped back. “That psycho tried to kill me!”

  Sarah bent down. “Let me take a look.”

  “No!” he snapped as he recoiled away from her.

  Sarah lent in and touched her hand to his cheek, “Jeez, you’re burning up, Nathan.”

  “I’m fine. And I’ll stay fine if jerks stop trying to kill me.”

  “Will you be okay?”

  Nathan nodded back at her. He felt terrible, but it wasn’t because of the throttling, and the last thing he wanted was Sarah taking too close a look at him.
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br />   When she stood back up, Bates was gazing at the bandage over his stump.

  “Let’s keep going,” Sarah told him, gently rubbing the bicep on his good arm. “You said the bridge isn’t far.”

  Bates didn’t move.

  “Bates,” Sarah said a little louder.

  The soldier flicked his eyes up to make contact with her, almost as if he’d been startled to find her there.

  Sarah lowered her voice. “The bridge?”

  “It’s just up here,” Bates said, snapping out of his trance.

  As they walked away, Nathan raised his gun and aimed it at the back of Bates’ head. The muzzle of the gun shook as the frenzy rattling around inside Nathan’s mind manifested in his muscles. His lips pursed, Nathan snorted out a half whispered, “Bastard.”

  He pulled his finger against the trigger.

  “Nathan,” Jennifer said in a sharp, stern tone.

  Nathan flicked his finger off the trigger and lowered the gun. He looked down at the young girl, a frown still clenched on his face.

  “You don’t understand,” Nathan protested.

  Just then a voice called back down the corridor.

  “Nathan, Jennifer this way!” Sarah called.

  Jennifer stretched her hand up for Nathan to take. Ignoring her gesture, Nathan stormed off down the corridor.

  * * *

  The bridge door was unimposing. A small metal plaque was all that announced it.

  Bates shot Nathan a cold stare as he coughed again. He hissed, “Can it.”

  Nathan flipped his middle finger up at him but kept quiet.

  Bates ignored Nathan and signalled for Sarah to open the door. Positioning himself to be the first inside, he nodded his readiness.

  In time to a mouthed countdown, Sarah threw the door open. The corridor flooded with light and Sarah watched as Bates disappeared inside.

  “Clear!” Bates called out.

  Sarah stepped onto the bridge. The lights were still working, something Sarah found just as creepy as the dark corridors. Raindrops peppered the panoramic window. The blackness of the storm outside and the bright light from the room turned the window into a mirror. This little island of functionality protected from the squall outside was pristine except for two things. Firstly there were no people here and secondly the blood. Long streaky smears of blood swept around the bridge. It wasn’t a slaughterhouse, just a dozen or so dragged handprints or spurts of blood, but in the stark light the crimson was harsh.