It started as a deep groan, and then the entire ship shuddered, deep in its keel. Unsecured items slid onto the floor, and everyone standing staggered drunkenly as the Lucas slid to a halt, grounded on the seafloor.
“Commander Nunez, get to the bridge and report back ASAP. I need to know how far offshore we are, and what zulu’s doing about it.”
“Aye, Captain.” The XO turned and sprinted out of the CIC.
Wilhite turned back to the rest of the crew. Even if they got the power back on, they’d still need to send divers down to check the propellers to ensure they hadn’t dug into the seafloor. All of which took time that they didn’t have. “That tears it, people.” She closed her eyes and counted to five. “I’m calling it. We’re abandoning ship. Lieutenant Butler, scram the reactor. I want every hatch closed and secured on our way out. We’re coming back for our girl, and I don’t want zulu getting inside while we’re gone. Weapons and provisions in the RHIBs. I’ll plot a course—we may have to tow the lifeboats, but there are a few islands around here. Worst case scenario we have to clear one of them while we wait for relief.” She winced as she realized she still had to report her failure to the higher-ups. “Comms, get command on the horn and I’ll update them on our situation.” As the crew moved to act on her orders, she continued her train of thought. “Water’s going to be the biggest concern. Anything that can hold water, fill it from the ROWPU. The life rafts have desalinators, but they’re liable to break when we need them the most.”
As other members of the crew ran out of CIC, her XO pushed in past them.
“If I didn’t know better I’d say zulu is excited, Captain,” Commander Nunez said in a weary tone. “They’re pushing out onto the surf, making a bridge out of each other. We’ve grounded well out from the beach, but if they keep pushing there’s enough of them to ramp up onto the bow, ma’am.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it. “How long, Javier?”
“We’re a thousand feet out, I’d guess. We’re in something less than forty feet of water. And Lord knows how many of them.”
“We still need to slow them down.” The crew numbered less than two hundred, and they could abandon ship in short order, but loading the needed supplies was going to take some time. “The big guns are useless, but the .50s are still good. Get some of the gunner’s mates on the bow guns. Haul all the ammo we’ve got up there and let them have it. We keep knocking them down, we keep them off the ship until we’ve got what we need.”
“Aye-aye, Captain. I’m on it.”
Chapter 35
April 3, 2026
Lockheed Skunkworks
Z-Day + 3,089
When zulu split into two groups and headed for opposite ends of the warehouse, things got a little chaotic. Pete and McFarlane ran around, shifting Marines over to cover each end. On the way, they divided the stocks of ammunition and spare weaponry in half.
Charlie ended up on the east wall, between Del Arroz’s fire team and that of Sergeant Mebane, a tall and pale Marine. His exposed skin had already turned red in the midday sun.
McFarlane bellowed. “I want claymores hung on the top edge of the knee-wall! Daisy-chain them together and pitch them down at forty-five degrees, Marines. We hold until the major’s call, then we blow the claymores to break contact.”
On the opposite end of the warehouse, Pete’s yells were impossible to make out, but Charlie assumed that the message was much the same. He stepped back out of the way as the men around him got to work. He figured that untrained assistance would not be appreciated in the realm of explosives.
Once the claymores were in place, they resumed their vigil at the wall. He wished it were a bit taller, but if he sat cross-legged, it was the right height for him to prop the barrel of his rifle on. When zulu got closer, he’d have to stand in a crouch to fire down, and he didn’t look forward to the that. The call had gone down the line almost immediately after the horde split—they were carrying spears. It was no surprise to Charlie given that the stage-twos back home had, as well. Thankfully, the Marines had removed the roof-access ladder to the warehouse. With the office blocked off, the only ways in were the roof or the sliding doors of the warehouse. With all the tantalizing bait right on the edge, he figured they’d go for the former. Even if they surprised him, the heavy steel doors had looked strong enough to hold up when he’d helped clear the warehouse.
Charlie took a sip of water and looked back out over the wall. The zulus on this side had swung out and were starting to come back toward the warehouse, straight on. They were a thousand yards or so out. No one shot, waiting for the order to fire. If not for the makeup of the crowd, the maneuver was precise and orderly enough to almost be pretty.
“A last stand like this calls for some tunes,” Del Arroz muttered to his side.
Charlie kept his eyes on the advancing horde. “I hear you’ve got an iPod.”
“Yeah, but Hansen was all grimdark and metal. This calls for some Tay-Tay.”
“No offense, Sarge, but you’re a weird dude,” Corporal Robb interjected. Charlie grinned and shook his head.
“Haters gonna hate,” Del Arroz said.
“Machine gunners, keep your fire to the outside!” McFarlane bellowed. “Riflemen, keep to the center! Short, controlled bursts, Marines!”
“Top has seen Aliens way too many times,” PFC Rogneby muttered under his breath. Charlie snorted a laugh, but fell silent as the line of zulus approaching them came to an abrupt halt about fifty yards beyond the outer fence.
A ripple of confusion went up and down the line. Even McFarlane seemed at a loss for words, but he composed himself. “Easy. Easy, Marines.”
Charlie only half-heard the master sergeant. His ears buzzed with an entirely different form of communication. He fell sideways into Del Arroz and ended up on his back, clutching at his head.
Del Arroz and McFarlane bent over him. “Chuck! What is it?”
Charlie gritted his teeth and managed, “Pete. Get Pete.”
The cacophony swelled, and worse than the reaction it caused in him was the knowledge that the noise wasn’t real—none of the Marines reacted to it. Several stole bewildered looks at him but McFarlane rebuked them.
“Eyes front, Marines!”
Charlie forced himself to his feet. The noise was narrowing, in a sense. The volume hadn’t diminished, but the buzzing of the bees struck him as more localized, now. It was a bit like the difference between a pair of headphones and a set of massive speakers.
Pete made it across the roof just as the crowd on the ground below parted to allow a lone zulu to step through. It was obvious that this one was different in some way. Though he carried a crude spear like so many of the other members of the horde, the resemblance ended there. If not for the ash-gray cast of his complexion and the knots of dark gray twisting through the surface of his mottled flesh, Charlie might have believed that it was a survivor—a bodybuilder, even. The zulu was squat and powerful, with massive muscular thighs and a torso shaped like an inverted V. As it raised the spear over its head and issued a silent challenge, he realized with dawning horror that the knots cutting through the skin were not over-developed musculature shredding dried-out flesh, but something far worse. The knots themselves moved, and in directions contrary to the flow and shift of the zulu’s muscles. Dark material had infested the dead body to a point that mere flesh could not contain it, and he wondered if it even needed it any longer. Charlie recalled the shredded body in the warehouse below. Had it been a victim to one such as this? Had the monstrous specimen called the very nanomachines out of its fellows? If so, how many had it drained? As he cocked his head and considered the silent sound of the zulu before him, he realized that the very term was outdated. Eberman had mused on the possibility of stage three infected, but even that term was too simplistic, too clinical to fully describe the horror that stood before them.
This was an alpha.
“I hear him, Pete.” Charlie whispered, “He’s buzzing in my head.”
<
br /> His friend stared at him briefly in shock, then shook off his surprise. “What is he saying?”
“There aren’t any words, really. It’s more imagery and sensation.” Charlie shuddered. Some of the visuals that popped into his head were so sickening that it was all he could do to hold back the urge to vomit. “They want us to surrender, to submit.”
Pete gave Charlie a wicked grin. “That a fact? Top, detail someone to shoot that big gray bastard.”
“Mebane! Target!”
The range was close enough that the suppressed thump of the designated marksman’s rifle occurred at nearly the same moment as the explosion of the alpha’s mottled skull. The body wobbled back and forth for a moment before collapsing to the tarmac.
The majority of the buzz in Charlie’s ears faded but didn’t disappear. He held his breath, allowing himself to hope as the ordered lines of the horde dispersed somewhat, looking almost as if they were milling about in confusion.
That hope vanished as the milling zulus lifted their heads and rushed the warehouse en masse.
The order to open fire was drowned out by the instantaneous response. The machine gunners on either end of the formation opened up, laser-like tracer rounds walking into the ragged, charging swarm as the Marines along the wall hammered out aimed, semiautomatic fire. As Charlie had feared, the splitting of their forces meant that there weren’t enough guns on target. Scores tumbled to the ground, trampled underfoot even if they weren’t fully out of the fight, but even so, the leading mass slammed into the perimeter fence mere moments after Mebane had taken the alpha down.
Charlie realized he was still standing, and he leaned over to scoop up his own rifle. Every little bit helped, he reasoned, and Pete must have thought much the same because his friend slapped him on the back in farewell before heading back to the other side. The fire there was just as heavy—both wings must have charged as one.
He got his rifle on the knee wall and started shooting. At first, he couldn’t tell if he was even hitting anything. To his dismay, after he pulled the trigger for the fourth time he realized that he hadn’t released the safety. The only bullets coming out of his gun had been the ones he’d imagined. He fired again, and the thump of the stock into his shoulder was somehow comforting. At this range, and through the fancy optic bolted atop his new rifle, he was hitting far more than he missed. The bolt locked back on an empty magazine, and he fumbled a new one into place as someone on the wall screamed, “Incoming!” Charlie wanted to duck, but he resisted the urge and kept firing. The other Marines tucked into the small amount of cover they had available
For Lance Corporal Conrad Ray, one of Charlie’s poker buddies, it wasn’t enough. The spear arced in and nosed over at just the right moment, the sharpened bone at the tip plunging through his calf from back to front. The Marine wailed, and with a sickening sensation in the pit of his stomach, Charlie realized that the scream was more in mourning for what was to come than the pain itself. Ray leaned his rifle on the ledge and braced both hands. Del Arroz whispered something in the man’s ear, then touched the barrel of his rifle to the back of his squad mate’s head.
Charlie turned away, but not before he saw the twin streamers running down the other man’s cheeks. The tears seemed to be in a race with the gray tracery of infection shooting up Ray’s neck.
In all the hubbub, he couldn’t even make out the gunshot that ended the Marine’s life before the nanos could claim him. Another wave of spears rippled out. The fence had come dangerously close to buckling under the combined weight when they’d fallen back before. No order came this time, but each man had enough experience to know that their best chance was to keep the horde at arms-length.
“Grenades!” McFarlane called out. Corporal Robb and one of the other Marines—Charlie didn’t know his name—exchanged their rifles for weapons that looked like giant revolvers with shoulder stocks. They canted the barrels of their new weapons up and began firing, though he couldn’t hear much of anything — the constant crackle of rifle fire and the staccato thump of the machine guns was far louder than these new weapons. That changed suddenly, as explosions bloomed in the rear of the mass of zulus. Bodies and pieces of bodies flew and a ragged cheer rose up from the firing line.
The sudden gap in the line didn’t relieve any of the pressure on the fence, but it gave the machine guns a spare handful of seconds to rake the crowd with concentrated fire. Even as the front rank pressed the wires into their very flesh in their effort to break through, the ones behind were climbing up on top of the ones in front. The machine gunners kept the majority of their fire above the coils of barbed wire, tumbling the highest zulus down to the bottom of the pile. The growing stacks of bodies broke up the mass, at first, but as more and more fell it exacerbated the problem, and the zulus began to crush the razor wire with their bodies. The stack threatened to spill over into the parking lot. “Grenades!” McFarlane called again, and another barrage went out. A third, ragged flight of spears rippled through the air, and two more Marines went down. Rogneby was one of them. Of the men who’d welcomed him into the fold, only Del Arroz and Robb remained.
Screaming Marines fell silent as their brothers administered the coup de grâce. McFarlane called for more grenades, and the explosions tore another gash through the horde.
Charlie allowed himself to hope, just for a moment.
And then the fence folded over, and the horde poured in.
April 3, 2026
Aboard the USS Jack Lucas
Z-Day + 3,089
Lucas had originally come equipped with a pair of 25mm Bushmaster cannons to augment her firepower—five-inch Naval rifles being overkill for the typical ill-equipped pirate or jihadi attempting to ram the ship with a boat bomb.
Command earmarked most of the 25mm ammunition scavenged or produced was for ground forces, what with the Marine light armored vehicles using the same weapon. Even if Lucas had carried its full complement of rounds for the Bushmasters, it would have been moot. The big guns were electrically-driven and as dead in the water as the ship herself.
Wilhite and the rest of the bridge crew had realized that they needed some less apocalyptic firepower the first time they provided shore support to a Seabee salvage team. The rail guns were great and all, but it was a bit like swatting flies with a baseball bat. Thankfully, there were more than enough spare Browning machine guns lying around to allocate four of them to the ship. Lieutenant Butler’s engineering team set up pintle mounts and mounted a pair of each, fore and aft. Each set of guns had their own, dedicated ready ammunition storage.
Now, the bow guns were nearly dry.
Which meant that she, the COB, and a few nervous-looking EMs were hauling the last of the ship’s stock of .50-caliber ammunition to the bow to resupply the gunners who’d been hosing down the approaching zulus ever since she’d given the order to abandon ship.
The thumping of the heavy machine guns exploded into a roar as the chief threw open the bow hatch. They hustled across the deck between the silent rail gun turrets, loaded down with olive-drab ammo cans. It wasn’t much, considering.
The deck at the feet of the gunners overflowed with spent brass, and the exhausted-looking gunner’s mates didn’t even seem to be aiming as they traversed the smoking barrels of the Brownings back and forth in a narrow arc. As they approached, the gun on the left went dry, and the GM on the gun fumbled the top cover open with gloved hands as his helper loaded up a fresh belt. The loader backed away, and the GM racked the gun and resumed firing. All told, the evolution had taken under ten seconds.
As Wilhite led her party to the bow, she got a closer look at the situation toward the beach and winced.
Despite the near-continuous streams of fire, the writhing pier of undead had crossed the halfway point to the ship. Wilhite had allowed herself to hope that the beach would drop off fast enough to prevent them from continuing on in such a fashion, but that hadn’t played out. And while the numbers onshore were smaller, there were still
a hell of a lot more waiting to soak up fire. Each hit went through multiple bodies, doing progressively less damage as it went. The initial impact was still catastrophic.
Before the outbreak, one of her nephews had given her a zombie book and insisted she read it. She didn’t recall much of the story, now—the movie version with Brad Pitt had been superior, in her mind—but she’d never forgotten the annoyance and derision she’d felt when she’d read the author’s description of a battle in which the army of zombies had marched forward, unaffected by modern ordnance. The venerable .50 BMG was officially an anti-material round, for God’s sake. A hit to a living or undead torso resulted in overwhelming trauma and dismemberment.
Which was moot, of course. There were enough zulus stacked up to soak up the incoming fire and keep coming. All they were doing was buying time, one round at a time.
As they loaded the ammo cans in the ready boxes, a new noise momentarily overwhelmed the hammering of the machine guns. They looked up as the Sea Hawks, each hauling a dangling cargo container, pulled into a hover over the ship’s bow. After a moment, during which she supposed the crews of the helicopters were taking stock of the situation below, the door guns on each chopper opened up, adding their weight of fire to that of the Brownings.
She realized that the radio she’d clipped to her belt was buzzing, and she trotted back to the hatch for a little bit of quiet. “Wilhite, here,” she replied as soon as she got the door shut to dampen the hammer of the guns enough to hear herself think.
“Captain, this is Lieutenant Franklin. I took lead once Lieutenant Brumley bought it. What would you like us to do, here? There’s not much room on the aft deck to set our cargo down, much less land.”
A Place Called Hope (Z-Day Book 2) Page 37