by JT Sawyer
She stood up and motioned for Matias to go. Once he was inside, she squatted beside the corner of the building and fired a round into the gas tank of the farthest truck. As it went up in flames, the force rocked the other vehicles enough to slow down the clamoring creatures on top. Carlie rushed to the manhole entrance and slid halfway down. She gripped the heavy lid which was still partly over the entrance and yanked on it, her injured shoulder stabbing waves of pain through her exhausted body. Using her weight as ballast she let the lid slide partway closed as she glided down the ladder away from the smell of burning metal and charred flesh.
Turning into the glow of flashlights dancing off the tubular passage ahead, she saw Shane speaking with Shiro, who was hunched over his friend, wrapping his ankle. Though she barely knew the older Japanese fighter, she knew, all too well, the grim look of someone who knows the fatal outcome of a bite. Tamiko and Naoki were gathered around Yoshi’s side and everyone was muttering in Japanese while sending worried looks up to Shane and the others.
Shiro stood up and moved towards Shane. “I will carry him, which may slow you down, but I will not leave him behind.”
“Nobody’s asking you to. We will all help.”
“They will be coming through that passage soon.” Shiro pointed to the manhole entrance. “I’ve seen hundreds of goryo like that tear through pavement to get to a single person hiding in the drains below. “Soon there will be thousands in this tunnel.”
“How much farther to the subway car that Carlie mentioned?”
Shiro knelt down to lift Yoshi in his arms. “Ten minutes.”
Chapter 38
Commander Ellis was squinting into the viewfinder of the periscope, scanning the shoreline along the eastside of Osaka Bay. The Olympia had just emerged, and he was eager to retrieve Shane’s team and be on his way. He had witnessed too many missions gone to hell in too many ports around the world, including one time when four mutants swam over from the mainland and climbed up on the outer deck of the submarine, killing his XO and four others.
Ellis prayed that everything was on track this time. He pulled his head away from the device and glanced down at his watch. They said they’d be at the east dock by the airfield at 2130. That’s one hour from now. After that, it means something went wrong or they’re all dead. No way I’m sending my crew into that city to get Duncan’s prize package. We can’t operate this sub if we lose any more people and I’m not risking having all of us die here. He leaned back and grabbed a mug of coffee from the map table, swigging down his fourth cup of the hot tarry substance as he tried to reduce his hangover.
As he resumed looking through the periscope, he caught sight of an immense white light emanating from behind the downtown skyscrapers. He paused in mid-swallow and held his breath. Jesus, they didn’t say it was this bad. The reactor cooling and feedwater systems must be compromised. The entire fucking country is gonna go up. If that thing blows it could knock out all of our electronics and send a shitload of fallout along the western U.S. and Pacific.
Ellis walked over to the front of the operations room and stood behind two young sailors at the helm. They were responsible for diving and steering the leviathan. He looked at the console, reassuring himself that everything was functioning smoothly. Then he moved over to the weapons engineer and inspected her computer readouts and inventory. “Seven ballistic nuclear missiles left—very good. I want those inspected and primed,” he said to the woman sitting before him.
“Yes, sir. Is there a bearing I should enter in?”
“The Junekai Nuclear Reactor in Kyoto. Once Shane’s team is on board, we’re gonna send four missiles into the heart of that thing and implode it. If there’s time—if there’s time.”
“Sir, we’ve got a small vessel approaching from the northwest on radar,” said a red-headed man sitting at a separate computer station next to the helmsmen.
“That could be them,” Ellis said, rushing back to the periscope, his pulse quickening. He strained his eyes, studying the scene, then sighed. “Damn, no such luck. It’s a few survivors from the mainland.” He grabbed the radio receiver and turned it on. “I want an armed detail and a medical officer up to the deck. There’s a group of three people inbound and one is holding an infant. If they check out, then get ’em down below ASAP. Otherwise, contact me…” he paused, lowering the receiver momentarily and pressing his head against the periscope, recalling the last time they encountered survivors that bore signs of infection, “…and I’ll handle it.”
Chapter 39
Tamiko applied the handbrake on the small cart, its metal wheels shooting off sparks along the railway as it came to a halt before the two motorcycles driven by Shane and Amy. They were nearly at the end of the subway tunnel near the airfield. Shiro pointed to the door of the maintenance room, the same one Carlie had come through earlier. “Go inside—in the corner of the floor, there is a crawlspace. Follow that until you reach the bay. It’ll put you near the last set of docks by the runway.”
In unison, everyone turned at the shrieking sound emanating from the bowels of the tunnel in the direction of the hospital. There were thousands of desiccated freaks pouring through the passageway, bent on locating the last humans left in Osaka. Shiro motioned the others to head up to the room and get into the crawlspace.
As the group ran up the steps, Shane fell behind, unslinging the pack and removing several bricks of C4. He carefully slipped in a detonator and looked up at Shiro. “I’ll set this to blow in ten minutes. We should all be out by the docks by then.”
“No need,” said Shiro, raising the tip of his sword towards Shane’s throat. “That won’t be enough time to get everyone out safely. But if I can stop them at the last junction with the cart, then you will have a chance.” He nodded for Shane to get into the room while sliding the C4 over with his boot.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“If those creatures reach this point, you will all be overtaken and this whole thing will have been for nothing.” He moved forward, the tip of the sword causing Shane to keep backpedaling. “Go—and remember what I said about keeping Nora and Tyler safe.” As Shane stepped through the doorway, Shiro slammed the entrance shut and dropped a wooden beam in front of it. He heard Shane pounding on the door, yelling his name as he retraced his steps down to the railway, stopping to place the blocks of C4 on the cart and staring into the mouth of the inky tunnel ahead.
“Now this madness can end.” He climbed atop the cart and with his powerful arms began cranking on the hand lever. Just as the cart started moving, he caught a flash of movement out to his right. Shiro fluidly withdrew his sword and turned to see Yoshi staggering over. The young man climbed on board, the thick gauze along his ankle soaked through with blood.
“Did you think you would go alone, my friend? I would like just one more trip with the last of the great warriors.”
Shiro knew there was little point in refusing his dying comrade’s wish and there was no place else to send him. He scrunched his eyebrows together and then resheathed his weapon. The two men stood erect and began working the motion lever.
As their speed increased, Yoshi looked back down the tunnel and then to Shiro. “So is this your destiny—to die here in this tunnel?”
Shiro resumed jerking the handle while trying to ignore the comment but Yoshi continued talking. “You have a chance to start over with a woman who loves you and a boy who needs a father.”
Shiro’s cheeks were flushing red. “Be silent.”
“You’ve spent so much of your time suffering that you have forgotten how to live, my friend. Ending your life in this tunnel, going out in such glory, would be easy for you, Shiro. But forgiving yourself and picking up the pieces of your life—that would be a challenge that only a true warrior could face.”
As the cart came to the end of the junction near a rise in the tracks, Yoshi kicked the brake lever with his boot. Shiro rushed forward and grabbed Yoshi by the collar. “What are you doing?”
Shiro’s grip on his own soul was slipping, touched by the man’s selflessness and his words. He felt a nauseating wave of dormant emotions forcing their way past his granite exterior. His jaw trembled and his throat was on fire.
The man reached up and pulled away Shiro’s hands, letting out a partial smile. “The world still needs you, Shiro Hatsumi.”
Yoshi leaned back and grabbed the bundles of C4, sliding them closer to him. “Please, go—and live.”
Shiro looked down the tunnel that ran towards the airfield, and, for the first time in decades, felt a ping of hopefulness coursing through his veins. Shiro held his head up and placed his hand on his trusty tanto blade. Moving away, he heard the echoes of thousands of goryo flooding into the tunnel behind Yoshi.
“Go,” yelled Yoshi. “I’ve got this.”
Shiro shot a firm look at him and then bowed towards Yoshi. The younger man flipped up the brake and continued his journey into the oncoming horde in the distance.
Shiro turned and sprinted in the opposite direction until he reached a service door. He smashed off the round handle with his metal pipe and then proceeded up the steps to the main subway level. The first rays of moonlight over the bay were shining in through the windows and he could see eight goryo that had just turned towards him. Unlike other opponents he had faced over the years, these creatures never hesitated. There was no fear constraining their movement. They didn’t study him for weakness or examine his moves like other fighters he had faced in dank alleys. Theirs was a predatory rage driven by pure hunger on some twisted cellular level. He unsheathed his sword and rushed the first two, sticking the smaller directly through the throat past the spinal cord, then backslashing the other across the cervical region, removing its head. He wheeled to the left, downcutting a stocky beast along the knee then slicing another across the abdomen, its entrails smacking the walkway with a splashing sound. Shiro ran ahead twenty feet, leaving two of the goryo to slide around on the newly painted surface while he engaged the remaining monsters. He feinted to the right and then leapt off to the left, giving him enough time to remove another’s head while stomp-kicking a wispy goryo backwards onto the tracks below. He ran to his right, decapitating an armless beast in a red dress.
From the opposite stairwell, he caught sight of twenty more creatures shambling towards him. Shiro bolted towards a window overlooking the bay. He resheathed his sword and slammed his metal pipe into the glass. The building rocked from the massive explosion of C4 as Shiro stood with his arms on either side of the mangled window frame. “Yoshi,” he whispered up to the moon. Then he jumped into the frothy whitecaps below, clutching his sheathed sword in his hand.
Chapter 40
“There!” said Carlie. “Two zodiacs at my eleven o’clock.” She was standing atop a steel platform beside the tunnel while the others piled in around her. Though the moon had just risen, casting light upon the shoreline, Carlie flicked on her flashlight and began emitting patterns of three flashes to signal the boats.
Shane was the last one to extricate himself from the tunnel. As he stood up, he heard the sound of shattering glass and saw a lone figure with a sword in his hand dive out of a window into the ocean.
“They’re almost here,” said Carlie. “We need to start moving to the docks while the creatures are clear of this area.”
Shane peered back inside the tiny crawlspace, searching for Yoshi, when the explosion in the subway tunnel a half-mile distant rocked the entire platform. Fingers of flame erupted from every sewer grate and tunnel entrance along the waterfront. The violent blast knocked the group back off their perch. Half of them landed in the water while the others crashed hard onto the unforgiving planks of the dock. Within seconds a gaping maw in the crawlspace entrance had ripped open from the explosion, causing seawater, debris, and pieces of the dock to rush in, as if the city itself was conspiring to swallow its last living denizens.
Carlie, Amy, and Hadley got sucked into the tumult. Eliza managed to lunge out from her grip on the dock to grab Carlie by the collar and hoist her out of the current. Hadley was clinging to a section of bent rebar jutting out of the concrete around the jagged mouth, pulling himself up into the hands of Matias, who struggled to retain his grip. Jared and Shane raced towards Amy, who was on the other side opening, clawing at the foundation. A cluster of fishing nets that had detached from the dock swept by her, catching her boots. The tangled mass began yanking her back just as Jared arrived along the crumpled walkway. He lay flat with one hand gripping the damaged railing as Shane held onto his beltline while trying to retain his cumbersome pack.
“Where do you think you’re going, cutie?” Jared said, wrenching his arm forward, grasping her outstretched hand and staring down at her face, which was illuminated by his headlamp. “Hold on, baby, I got you!”
The raging waters tugged at her body, pulling her down. “Jared, don’t let go.”
“You hold on.” His voice was guttural as he strained every fiber in his tense body.
The force of the current yanked the balled netting further into the tunnel, causing Amy to begin to slip through his wet hands. He lunged forward to retain his grip, the pull nearly dislocating his arm. “You’re not getting away from me this easy, darlin’.”
Amidst the sea spray pelting her body, he could see tears running freely from her eyes. “Jared—I love you,” she said, crying. “I love…” Her face disappeared from his sight as she was plucked away from him into the hungry current and swept away amidst jumbles of broken beams.
“No—no—Amy,” he shouted into the watery abyss while trying to free Shane’s hold on him. “Let me go, goddammit! I have to get her.” Jared was thrashing his arms wildly while hollering, “I have to get her.”
Shane was fighting his own anguish back, trying to control Jared’s manic movement. Above the nearly deafening pulsing of the waters below, he could hear the terrifying groans of zombies on the streets above them. “Jared—she’s gone. There’s nothing we can do—we have to leave or we’re not going to make it.” He strained his arms, pulling Jared back up, and then held him firmly as Jared pressed his back into him while yelling up at the indifferent sky. Shane saw muzzle flashes coming from the deck-mounted guns on the Olympia followed by the impact of rounds on the streets near them.
“Let’s go,” shouted Carlie as she and Eliza waved to them from the shadows below. Then they ran forward to help Hadley and Matias, who were already firing upon several creatures near the embankment above.
Shane helped Jared up, his rubbery legs barely keeping him from falling back. They walked together along the brittle walkway and rejoined the group. The zodiacs were a hundred yards out from the mangled dock. Shane’s weary group trotted into the waiting arms of the boatsmen while the subway system behind them continued collapsing.
Chapter 41
Despite congratulations from the boatmen on the ride back, all of the passengers were silent, oblivious to the praise and the accomplishment of the mission. Jared pressed his white knuckles into the sides of the boat, his wild eyes staring into the distant tunnel where he had just been holding onto Amy. His granite face held back a tidal wave of anguish as his thousand-mile stare remained fixated on the crumbling aperture beneath the docks.
Shane placed his hand on Jared’s shoulder but knew the man was oblivious to the sensation. How can Amy be gone? thought Shane as he looked across the water. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
When both zodiacs arrived back at the Olympia and everyone was safely on deck, Shane refocused his attention out to the bay. He made a hasty introduction to the commander and pulled him aside.
“Welcome aboard,” Ellis said, extending his hand towards Shane and then Carl
ie. “Your mission was a success, it seems.”
They both looked at each other then cast their gazes down, reflecting on the toll. “Success—yeah, I reckon it was,” said Shane.
Shane stepped forward. “Sir, I’ve got one man unaccounted for. I’m pretty sure he’s either in the bay or at the aquaplex on the western edge. Request permission to take a boat crew out to search for him.”
“No chance. That reactor could go at any time. We need to get underway.”
“How long will it take before you’re ready to submerge?”
Ellis put his hands on his hips and gave Shane a stern look. “I’m not putting my crew at further risk.”
“How long?”
“Thirty minutes—that’s it. If you want to take your own personnel out, I can give you that time but then we’re gone.”
Shane ran back to Matias and Eliza. “Give me your remaining mags,” he said.
“You’re not going back out there?” said Matias. “Is this guy worth it? You hardly know him.”
“He is, trust me.”
“Then I’m riding shotgun,” snapped Carlie from behind him. “You’re not leaving me out of the picture again.”
“Right, right—I know that. I was gonna grab you as soon as I was done reloading here.”