A few minutes later Sergeant Varley’s radio crackled to life: Len calling in to say there was nothing to report, no signs of movement aboard, at least not above deck.
“Right,” Varley said, when he’d finished deciphering Len’s radio-warbled chatter. “Len reckons it’s deserted. It looks like it’s drifting. We’ve got two boats, they should hold about five people each. Saddle up.”
Varley wasn’t taking volunteers this time; he picked the team out himself. Colin, Geoff, Jonas, Simon, Matt, me, and three others I remembered from the Esperance run: Luke Carlisle, one of the Eucla locals and boat owners, and Zach and Stephen Heller, a couple of brothers from the Wheatbelt. Rounding out the ten was Varley himself.
We went back up to the town to fetch our weapons. Matt and Ellie were having some spat about danger and risk; I was walking ahead of them, trotting through powder-white sand. All I could think about was the ship.
I mean – well, not that ship. Not the one off shore. Or not just that one.
Last night, Matt and I had that dream. More than a dream. A sign. A signal. An indisputable summons, an order to travel east. Matt didn’t get it, Matt wanted to ignore it.
Matt’s wrong.
And now – the very night after that dream – a cargo ship had floated over Eucla’s horizon. It was a sign. Everybody else may have been thinking about the containers, about the bounty they might yield, but I was thinking about the ship itself. As a vehicle.
We retrieved our weapons. Since Eucla’s population took a hit during the zombie siege there’s more than a few guns to go around; I’d been issued a Steyr, and had my Glock strapped to my thigh. Varley no longer seemed to care about keeping Matt in time out, not after the long night we spent with Ash in one of the police cells. He was given a Steyr right alongside me. Varley and Geoff and Colin had the M4s. He really wasn’t holding back this time.
I could see why. This was Eucla’s chance to be set up for life. This was Eucla’s chance to never have to go on a supply run again; to never have to leave the Nullarbor again, never risk Esperance or Ceduna again. There could be enough tinned food in those containers to last us a lifetime. Or tools, or vehicles, or medicine, or pretty much anything else you could imagine.
We piled into the tinnies, shoulder to shoulder, others on the shore pushing us out, knee-deep in cold autumn seawater. Luke and Colin yanked the starter cords, the engines roared to life, and there we were - two little boats cutting across the waves towards the ship, every bump and thump showering us with freezing brine. Above Eucla the skies were clear, but out towards the southern horizon there were gathering clouds, the morning sun peering down past the long rope of an arcus cloud rolling in towards the coast like a gigantic skyborne worm. “Storm coming!” Simon said, as though it was some kind of fucking homespun rural wisdom instead of what everyone could see with their own eyes. “We’re going to have to be quick about this.”
I wasn’t sure about that. It didn’t look to me like the ship would be bothered by anything short of a cyclone. A strange trick of perspective happened as we drew closer: I realised it was actually still quite far away, and much bigger than I’d thought. The shoreline behind us had already been reduced to a smudge of grey and brown. Ellie and Liana and the other Euclans had shrunk to dots.
We arrived at the ship, the two boats cutting beneath its shadow, the bulk a welcome break from the frigid southern wind. The hull was painted robin’s egg blue, and high above us I could see the name standing out in big black letters: REGINA MAERSK.
She’d seen better days. The paint was chipped and peeling and rust dripped from the scuppers and seacocks. Luke and Colin cut the engines, and our two little tinnies drifted into the shadow of the ship, all ten of us craning our necks up at it in silent wonder.
Then it was time to climb. Colin, who’d worked a couple of years as a cook in the merchant marine in the ‘90s, had been confident there was no way we’d find any convenient ladder dangling over the edge for us to climb up. “Pirate attacks,” he said. “That’s the last thing you want. When it was real bad they used to actually string barbed wire across the outside.” We’d bought boltcutters just in case, but the hull of the Regina Maersk looked pretty clear.
It was, however, a good seven or eight metres above sea level. We’d brought ropes and attached them to gaff hooks and small anchors, and spent some time hurling them up at the guard rail. Colin’s first throw sent the gaff hook glancing off the hull to come right back down, missing the guys in the other boat by a metre, so we learned to throw at an angle. Unfortunately that just increased the distance. It was all a bit ludicrous, standing up and trying to keep balance in these tiny overloaded fishing boats, our ropes spooling harmlessly back off the hull into the sea. Somali pirates would have been ashamed of us.
Eventually, one of Jonas’ throws got lucky – a gaff hook snagging around the guard rail. A few faint cheers, and then Varley was looking around the group. “Right,” he said. “Who’s lightest?”
Which was how I found myself first to go up the rope, with another coil wrapped around my neck and shoulders, my Steyr left back down in the boat. I’d made Varley push the boat away from the hull once I started climbing; if I fell, I wanted to land in the water, not break my spine on top of the others.
It was hard going – and I had to keep going, and not stop, because I knew if I did I wouldn’t be able to start again. Near the top I made the mistake of looking down. The deck hadn’t seemed that high up from the surface, but when I was dangling on a rope off the edge of it the sea suddenly looked quite far down indeed. I focused on the hull in front of me, my hands burning on the ragged, salty rope, and then…
…then I was up, dragging myself over the railing, lying on the deck, panting for breath. There was a solid wall of brightly-coloured cargo containers in front of me, like gigantic stacked Lego blocks. Not a sound other than the wind. As far as I could see, the Maersk really was deserted.
As far as I could see.
I was about to tie the rope around a fitting when I noticed something better: an emergency station on the bulkhead, with a fire extinguisher, life buoys and a rolled-up rope ladder. It was already affixed to the deck. I just had to crack it open and unfurl it over the edge. It spilled down the hull, neon polyfibre orange, the edge splashing into the water, and a moment later the others started climbing up.
“Nice work,” Varley said, unshouldering and handing me my Steyr. “No sign of life?”
“Or death,” I said.
We started moving down the side of the ship, along the solid wall of containers. Not all of them were in place – whatever had happened to the Maersk over the past few months, some had been lost, swept overboard in bad weather maybe. Eventually we came to one that had tumbled down and was blocking our path entirely. No matter; there was another gap we could move through, into passages between the containers.
“This thing’s only half loaded,” Colin whispered. “A cargo ship shouldn’t be packed like this, it shouldn’t have these gaps.”
“Maybe it had to leave port in a hurry,” Stephen Heller said.
Fremantle? Albany? It could have come all the way from Africa or India or Europe, for all we knew.
The passages between the containers became more mazelike. Colin was right, it definitely hadn’t been intended; the Maersk must have been caught in the harbour with its pants down while loading or unloading, and had fled the scene. Sometimes we could find no way on without climbing up onto some containers, a row where they were only packed one deep instead of five; sometimes we had to double back and try to find another route. Every now and then we could catch a glimpse of our destination: the superstructure, the control tower at the rear of the ship. If there was anyone here still alive, Colin said, that was where we’d probably find them. If not, it’s where we could try to get the power running and either figure out how to pilot her closer to shore, or at least drop the anchors to prevent her from drifting out of Eucla’s grasp entirely.
We’d been making our w
ay through the container maze for about ten minutes when we found the first bodies. There were six of them, close together on the deck, scattered little ragdolls – men and women and a child, maybe two or three years old.
And they were fresh. “Jesus,” Geoff said, looking at Varley. “They can’t be more than a week old.”
“If that,” the sergeant said, standing over the child. He pushed at her cheek with the barrel of his M4, turning her over to reveal her face. There was a ragged bullet hole in her forehead.
“Oh, fucking hell,” Zach murmured.
Varley straightened up. “Look, we knew this thing didn’t get out here by itself,” he said quietly. “Maybe there are people still alive onboard, and maybe there aren’t. Stay alert. Don’t talk unless you have to. If we come across anything we can’t handle, we fall back to the boats. Agreed?”
We all nodded, and stepped carefully over the bodies. The superstructure wasn’t far away now. A few raindrops were starting to plop down on the deck, and I glanced nervously at the encroaching storm clouds.
We emerged from the container maze at the stern of the ship. I’d thought the Maersk itself had looked big, down in the tinny at sea level; but the superstructure rose up even further, a good six or seven storeys, an enormous white tower. At the very top was a row of wall-to-wall windows: the bridge.
We came to the bottom of the superstructure, and Colin opened a door – a curious little ship door, with a valve you had to turn to unseal it. It swung open to reveal a dark and gloomy corridor.
The rain was starting to come down properly now. I was shivering. The ten of us stood there, lingering at the doorway, while Varley fished a few flashlights out of his pack and passed them around.
“Are we really doing this?” Luke said, teeth chattering in the cold.
“We have to,” Varley said. “Come on.”
And so we ventured inside the darkened superstructure, with three flashlights for ten people, shadows dancing around and everybody’s heart on edge. We moved as quietly as we could, keeping our ears pricked for distant zombie moans, but all I could hear was the shuffle and squeak of our own boots on the deck.
We came across other signs of violence: blood splattered across the wall, a dead body, bullet casings underfoot. No signs of life. Down one cross-corridor there was a crude barricade, a few bits of furniture and packing crates stacked up, but somehow it had been set alight – a while ago now, the power must have still been on and the sprinklers had activated and put it out, but the paint had peeled from the walls and the air had an acrid tang of burnt chemicals. “Fucking hell,” Stephen said.
“Quiet,” Varley growled.
We came to the stairwell, and started making our way up to the bridge. “Remember, even if we can get the power on…” Colin said uneasily. “I was just a cook. I don’t know how to run it.”
“Can’t be that much different from driving a semi,” Jonas said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“Shush!” Varley said. “We’ll deal with it when we come to it.”
We climbed the rest of the stairs in silence.
The bridge was at the very top of the superstructure, sealed behind another door. This one was tight: it took both Geoff and Varley hauling at the valve to get it open, the squeaking metal sounding like it must be echoing around the entire ship. Eventually it swung open and we stepped onto the bridge.
A wall-to-wall set of windows, like an airport control tower, looking out over the vast sweep of the Maersk: the containers, the bow, the ocean all the way to the distant horizon. The rain was coming down in earnest now, gusting across the containers in thick, wind-slanted sheets.
Like the rest of the ship, the power was out and the bridge was abandoned. Blank computer screens and TV monitors, papers scattered across the floor, a splatter of blood near the stairwell door. A telephone dangling from its cord, bumping gently against the wall in the otherwise imperceptible ocean swell.
Geoff lowered his M4. “So much for survivors,” he said.
“Well, you know what they call that?” Varley said. “Salvage rights. Let’s get this thing into gear.”
Colin, Varley, Geoff and Jonas started looking over the consoles and the computers, trying to figure out how to get the power back on – if that was even possible. The rest of us poked around through drawers and lockers, looking for supplies.
I found myself drawn to the windows, looking out over the ship. The Maersk was pointed east, drifting along the coast, but in the far left side of the windows – port side, I think – I could just make out the distant blur on the rainy horizon where land was. It felt strange to be out here, in this self-contained world. I’d always thought the next step from Eucla would be down the highway, east or west, one direction or the other. But the zombies that had attacked us that horrible night had come from the depths of the northern desert, and now this gargantuan platform had lurched up from the trackless southern ocean. The world is always bigger and more unexpected than we think.
I stood at the windows for a while longer, Steyr slung over my back, raindrops streaking the glass. With ten of us inside the bridge the windows were starting to fog up, and they were slashed with rain anyway, but suddenly I caught a glimpse of movement and swore.
“What’s wrong?” Matt said.
“Down there,” I said, rubbing my hand across the foggy glass, trying to make it out again. I’d seen movement down in the containers. Not just one, but a few figures, shambling across the deck.
“Hey, sarge!” Matt yelled. “There’s zombies down on the deck.”
It was alarming to know there were zombies aboard at all, but they seemed comfortably distant from us up here in the superstructure. Varley came over to peer out with us; Zach and Stephen, too. “There’s another one!” Matt said.
“Where?”
“Over – no, he’s gone. Fuck, I can’t see a thing.” Matt buffed the glass again. “It’s coming down out there.”
“All right, look, we knew there’d be a few of them,” Varley said, as the rest of us pressed our faces up against the glass, peering and angling, trying to get a good viewpoint of the deck. “I’d rather be dealing with zombies than other survivors. Just keep an eye on things. I’ll shut the door, we’re fine up here…”
All of a sudden there was a hum from the computers, and the bridge was bathed in red light. “Heyyy!” Colin said excitedly from the main console. “Auxiliary power, boys! How ‘bout that?”
Backup power, emergency power – just a strip of red lights across the roof. But a few of the computers were booting up, the dangling phone was suddenly spitting what sounded like a dial-up tone, and out on the deck – through the blurry sheets of rain – I could see safety lights coming on. “Nicely done!” Varley said.
“Hang on,” Colin said, his face bathed in the glow of a computer monitor. “I think I can get full power on, too, it was just an emergency shutdown by the look of it, so if we just…”
For a second the auxiliary power dropped out – the bridge was lit only by gloomy, overcast daylight again – and then, only a few seconds later, full power was restored.
It unleashed hell with it.
Klaxons blaring. Fire alarms shrieking. The entire bridge was suddenly bathed in full electric light, an assault on our dilated pupils, and most of us were left blinking and recoiling. Over the whole ship, emergency systems were engaging and alarms were going off. As far as the Regina Maersk was concerned, we’d awoken her from her slumber right back into the middle of whatever crisis had shut her power off in the first place.
Varley had rushed back to Colin, leaning over the computer monitor. The rest of us ended up right there with them, looking over his shoulders, shouting useless contradictory shit. “Shut it off!” Varley screamed. “Shut it the hell up!” After silently making our way all through the ship and up into the superstructure, it felt like we’d awakened a sleeping dragon.
“Alright, hold your horses!” Colin yelled, slapping a few of our hands
away. He was navigating through the computer – not Windows, nothing familiar, but some kind of archaic industrial operating system for a cargo ship. Soon it was clear to all of us that he wasn’t really sure what he was doing, that he’d stumbled onto the power controls by a fluke. Both Varley and Geoff both tried to reach in and take over the controls.
And over all the squabbling, without anybody keeping an eye on the door, the undead had arrived.
Luke was the first to see them, yelping in terror and levelling his Steyr at the door, unloading a clip. The noise in the confined space of the bridge, right next to most of our ears, was deafening. We turned as one – a scrambling, panicked mess of people – to see a crowd of zombies stumbling in through the door.
Luke had felled some of them, but more were coming, drawn by the noise. His burst of gunfire had been right by my head and left my ears ringing, not to mention all the sirens and klaxons that were still going. Being deaf made the experience seem strangely peaceful: flashing red lights, Varley’s face screaming instructions, bullet casings vomiting forth from Geoff’s M4 as he opened fire on the doorway. I couldn’t hear a fucking thing.
I scrambled backwards, trying to get away from the group, trying to pull my Steyr off my back even as I’d slipped and fallen to the ground. I stumbled around a console, found a bit of breathing space and flicked the safety off. The others had already gunned down dozens of zombies but more were still coming through – fresh, every single one of them, with the unsullied skin and clouded eyes of zombies who’d been survivors, like us, just a few days ago.
Matt was screaming something in my ear – “Behind us,” I realised, after a moment – and I turned to see more undead stumbling in from the starboard side of the bridge. That was when the panic really hit me: the realisation that we were caught on both sides, that there was no escape route.
I turned around and fired with Matt, focusing on the starboard stairwell, ears still ringing, the warning lights still flickering silently around us, panic creeping up my throat. My hearing was starting to come back: I could feel the dull thud of the Steyr against my shoulder, the bark of someone’s shotgun, the ever-constant wailing of the sirens. We’d had no time to warn the others about the starboard zombies, and they’d lurched right up into the bridge and closed on our position, the others still with their backs to them. We tried to point them out, tried to gun them down, but it was all happening in a matter of seconds and nobody could hear us over the alarms and the gunfire. Stephen whirled around to see a zombie lurching right up into his field of vision, pushing him to the ground.
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 39