“Sir, I’m sorry,” was all Fleming could muster.
“I’m sorry too, Donald. It looks like we are both in the same boat. This thing is so global that even Iceland isn’t safe. Reykjanesbær, Keflavil, the air base—all of it—overrun. God knows how, but it is.”
“Overrun?”
“Completely. Personnel and local civilian contractors were killed—or fled and will soon be killed. It’s not safe. Just let your cargo rot and disintegrate in those containers.”
“What am I supposed to…?”
“Don’t worry, Donald. Just be on the bridge when the captain slows the ship to head into the quay. I hand-picked the aide you have. He’s a good soldier and is there to help you.”
“Help with what, sir?”
“I’ve got to go, Donald. May God be with you.” The satellite phone went silent leaving Major Fleming determined to reach the air base and hunker down in one of its bunkers, despite General Madsen’s fatalistic outlook. Just because he’s left out on the cold doesn’t mean I have to be.
Fleming had spent the rest of the day mentally preparing for debarkation in Reykjanesbær. Not knowing what he’ll find when they reach land or how difficult it will be to get to the base; he steeled himself for the worst.
#
Captain Johansen’s had taken on government contracts through the shipping company before, but none that were as FUBAR as this one. One of his crew lay dead on the floor, he and the rest of his men were essentially held hostage, and he’s hauling zombies by the ton with some sort of stow away to boot. He was convinced that the major was going rogue, or worse, certifiably insane.
He looked around at the armed soldiers and wondered if they were as crazy as their C.O. He thought for a moment that there may be a chance that he could appeal to one or more of them. They were young. Surely, the major’s actions were extreme to them as well. Johansen scanned the soldiers for any tell that any one of them was uneasy with the whole situation. He observed one young private whose eyes kept darting back to his crewman’s dead body on the floor. He was obviously distraught over the shooting, but none of his comrades seemed to express the same concern. Although, the private seemed to not favor the major’s actions, Johansen felt the boy was too scared to defect alone. He needed more than just one of the soldiers to go against Fleming, but he wasn’t sure which ones. The major’s aide was out of the question, content to follow orders standing stoically, AR-15 rifle in hand. Johansen would have to evaluate them more closely once they reached the air base.
With a keen eye on the approaching land markers, the captain began to give commands to his helmsman.
“Helmsman. Left full rudder.”
“Aye, sir. Left full rudder.”
Part 5
The macabre nature in which Fleming looked upon Tom’s demise as sport was not surprising to Tom. What would you expect from the fiendish hand behind the spread of the zombie virus, shooting Tom, brainwashing him into thinking his daughter Holly was dead and programming him to kill a congressman? Fleming had single handedly made every perp Tom had ever arrested seem as harmless as a jay-walker. Even Roger Norton came up smelling like roses compared to this mother fucker.
Tom Dexter’s ruse of having Fleming think that he’d been devoured by zombies was the thing that finally provided him what he’d wanted since leaving Chicago—the element of surprise. The time had come to put an end to a monster once and for all.
Without hesitation Tom knew that he had to get these munching zombies up the stairs and down the hall that he saw Fleming enter. The only bad part was that he wasn’t good bait anymore. He was covered in the sticking fluids of the gutted corpse Major Fleming thought was Tom on the floor, its hide still draped around Tom’s shoulders making him feel as if he were wearing some sort of cloak of invisibility.
The rat that the pack had gone after was now a thing of the past, the last morsels being sucked down by whoever had the best hold on it to snag the largest hunk. There was nothing left, not even the tail, to wrestle away from them to use as bait. Even his bladder was drained of his homemade pheromone juice.
Tom saw a greasy rag nearby lying under a spanner wrench by some other supplies where someone had obviously done some machine maintenance. Remembering how he’d lured a pack of creepers away from Jemma and Mark in Chicago, Tom wiped the corpse crud from the chef’s knife, sterilized the blade in acetone cleaner from the can amongst the mechanic’s tools, and then dragged the knife tip as if he were etching another, much needed, life line across his palm. Blood trickled onto the floor in deliberate drops. Tom snatched up the rag and allowed blood to soak into it until he was satisfied it was saturated enough. He brought the rag down to the floor with a soppy slap, then once more for good measure drawing the nostrils of the ragged people. Those already on the floor lapped at the blood as Tom backed away, retreating toward the stairs dragging a trail of blood up to the next level and down the hallway to Major Fleming.
#
Fleming stood up from the chair and felt the ship cause him to lean slightly. He observed the digital display on the engine room console. The rudder position was changing drastically indicating that the ship was preparing to head into the quay.
What was it that General Madsen had said on the sat-phone this morning? Something about when the ship was reaching land. Make sure I’m on the bridge and my aide will help me. He’s a good soldier, hand-picked by the general. A good solider?
Fleming had heard that phrase before. He’d used it when referring to his programmed test subjects in Project Living Dead. They were all ‘good soldiers’ obeying every preprogrammed instruction to the letter.
“Oh, my God!” Not wanting to waste time trying to scramble up to the bridge, Fleming grabbed the engine room’s walkie-talkie from a nearby charging station.
“Captain Johansen. Captain Johansen! Do you read me? It’s Fleming.”
Johansen rolled his eyes at the sound of the major’s voice and lackadaisically picked up the walkie to reply. Before he could press the talk button, Fleming barked once more.
“Captain. Let me speak with my aide? Immediately!”
Johansen held down the talk button to speak, but realized he had dodged a bullet. Fleming didn’t want to speak with him after all. Thankful that he could now deflect the conversation to avoid the major completely, the captain held out the walkie absently to the major’s aide, still pressing the talk button so the major could hear, “If you want to talk to your boss, then come and get it.” As the aide advanced, Johansen continued his next command to the helmsman.
“Slow to half speed”
“Aye, sir. Slow to…”
Suddenly, gunfire rattled through the bridge as if the command to slow the ship was a queue for the gunman to open fire. Rounds of ammunition sprayed across the entire bridge bringing down the captain, the entire crew, and all of Fleming’s men—except for his aide, who was now laying down his hot AR-15 in favor of the service revolver that the major had left with him. In one motion he placed the weapon under his chin and pulled the trigger. His mission was complete. Every person on the bridge was now dead.
#
Fleming had heard the gunfire through the walkie-talkie. His deciphering of what the general had told him came just a little too late. The general must have known all along that things were getting way out of hand with no hope of turning the tide. This was all a wild goose chase. Fleming stood silent for a moment knowing full well that he was intended to be on the bridge. That’s how he was going to help me—by putting me out of my misery like it were some mercy killing? Did he really think I couldn’t survive in this new world? Well, he may be weak, but I’m not.
Fleming knew he had to get up to the bridge to try to slow the ship down or it would slam into the quay at full speed. As he yanked open the control room door, his eyes widened at what met him.
Tom Dexter’s ghastly face, smeared in mottled colors, his body shawled in an ill-fitting limp hide of some kind. Tom’s fist connected with Flem
ing’s jaw hard enough to slam the major backward into the control room’s chair. Were it not for the chair anchor bracing it to the floor his dead weight would have toppled it backward smashing Fleming’s head into the edge of the console.
Tom stood waiting for a retaliatory move, but none came. Instead, Fleming sat slumped and unconscious. Tom tossed the bloody rag onto his body and ushered in the hungry fiends he’d purposefully gathered in his wake, leaving Fleming to the same fate he intended for Tom.
#
From Tom’s location, and with the ambient noise below deck, he had not heard the gunfire on the bridge. However, he did feel the ship turning that almost threw him off balance. He shed his rancid skin cloak and raced to the main deck to see what was going on that necessitated such a hard turn.
Tom emerged topside like a diver punching through the water’s surface gasping for air. He was glad to see that they were headed toward shore, but was confused by the daylight. By his watch it was supposed to be evening. The sun should have set hours ago.
The ship was turning toward the quay, but Tom notice that they were not slowing down. On its current path and speed the ship was coming in way too fast to anchor alongside the quay cranes in the container terminal for unloading. Instead, the wide turn had them on a path to collide with the terminal itself.
Tom looked to the bridge jutting up from the deck of the ship and saw no detectable movement in its large panoramic windows. Is no one navigating this thing? Tom glanced from the bridge to the approaching shore, then back again in quick secession. He thought he detected the splatter of blood on the glass. What the hell is going on? No time to investigate. The ship was going to make impact in a matter of minutes and Tom’s only thought was that he had to jump overboard.
The side of the ship he was on was facing the quay and the gap between the two was narrowing fast. He had to make it around to the other side facing the North Atlantic. Given the length of the ship, it would take too long to run around the deck to the other side, but thankfully, Tom spotted a cut through at mid-ship. As he ran across the deck, the ship’s bow collided with the mass of the quay like a battle of wills between steel and concrete—a battle that the bow conceded, skipping down the length of the dock as the ship’s enormous side slammed into the concrete with the sound of thunder. The quay cranes in the terminal wobbled from the blow, but held fast and erect.
The ship tilted more than forty degrees on its left side from the force and, as Tom leapt over the railing in a near perfect swan dive, the weight of the containers began to shift. Groaning metal gave way to a chain reaction of containers dislodging from the tops of the stacks. Like forty foot long projectiles they entered the ocean falling from the left side of the ship, following Tom into the cold water. From the right side containers tumbled down the steep angle, steel frames deforming; popping locking bolts loose, allowing doors to wildly spit out their contents. Bodies flung in all directions, the bulk of them dumped into the roiling water only to be waylaid moments later by massive steel boxes hurled from above. Locked containers bobbed, and then slowly gurgled beneath the surface as they took on water through exposed seams, their eerie contents sealed in a mass tomb.
The loss of cargo made the vessel less top heavy, allowing it to right itself with a mighty splash, tossing the flotsam of mangled metal and flesh together; the wake of the great vessel lapped onto the dock.
Tom was disoriented beneath the surface, coming up only to gasp for air. His body felt good to be cleansed of the DNA of a corpse, but it made him vulnerable. Zombies floated through the cloudy water like driftwood with limbs flailing out of impulse, reaching for him with each tug of the current that put him in proximity. They did not fear drowning. They couldn’t drown, only fill with briny seawater to be bloated and waterlogged.
Tom was more nimble beneath the waves and swam in the direction of the rungs of the nearest dock ladder. Like a porpoise he breached the surface to inhale along the way. Only thirty yards to go. He didn’t stop to look over his shoulder, for if he had he would have seen the wayward container door panel careening in his direction. It clipped him in the back of the head, causing the unusual sunlight for this hour of the night to dim abruptly.
Part 6
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jemma Line shouted, surprised to see Holly Dexter enter her comic book store, which was devoid of any customers.
Holly held up the plastic bag bearing the store’s logo and address, but was a bit stymied about how to approach the topic of the bag’s contents when faced with such a greeting from the zombie-faced girl with Goth attire. Before she could find the words, Jemma shouted again. “Well, just don’t stand there gob smacked. We’ve got to get out of here.” Jemma had finished clearing out her cash register, stuffing its contents into her pockets, and fumbled with some papers before snatching up her suitcase she had rested on the counter; filled with essentials she’d taken from her upstairs apartment. She bolted for the front door and grabbed Holly’s arm, practically dragging her out of the shop.
Jemma ushered Holly to the alley and shooed her up the nearby fire escape. From the top of the building Jemma would be able to have a better vantage point to determine the best route in which to flee.
“Don’t you know it’s not safe to be traipsing through the city nice as ya please? The army must not have made it out to suburban neighborhoods yet to spread the word, but we’ve got to bug out before we’re trapped here with the bleedin’ zombies.”
“I saw the news last night and they didn’t say anything about leaving,” Holly said, starting to panic.
The last news reports, before the radio and TV studios were all abruptly abandoned, still spoke of how local law enforcement and the military were holding back the zombie menace. To the last, spinning the story to prevent mass hysteria.
In the early morning hours, the military had driven Humvees through the business district, working their way to outlying areas, broadcasting that everyone should evacuate to a safer location. No instruction as to where safer locations might be. No escort was offered. Simply one last ditch effort for authority to clear its conscience before civilization crumbled. No time estimate was given as to when the city would be under siege by a full blown zombie rampage, but the warning made it apparent that it was imminent. It was every person for themselves.
Jemma looked down on her little corner of the city, crisscrossing the rooftop to check the surrounding streets. In the midst of Jemma’s frenetic scrambling back and forth, Holly removed the comic book from the bag and studied it. For several days she had thought about the significance of Jemma showing up to drop off a comic book entitled Zombie Resurrection. Holly played it over and over in her head. What was it this girl had said? She said she IS a friend of dad’s. He IS a hero. Why not speak of him in the past tense. He’s dead. I saw him get shot! Maybe the comic book is a message. What other significance could the cryptic title mean? Holly seized the opportunity to blurt out a burning question. The reason she’d come to see Jemma. “Is my father still alive?”
Jemma turned from peering over the edge of the building and faced Holly, who was holding up the comic book to let Jemma know that she’d understood its significance.
Jemma hesitated momentarily before answering. “Yes, but look… I didn’t mean for you to come here asking questions. He just asked me to give that comic to you. That’s all.”
Holly’s eyes flared wide with excitement and disbelief. It didn’t matter how this Goth girl, who was obviously suffering from the same virus as her father, knew her father. The fact that she knew he was still alive was like a miracle.
“Luckily, you were smart enough to figure out his clue in the title. Zombie Resurrection. A bit morbid, I’ll admit, to imply your dad rose from the dead, but it did the trick. He said you were smart.”
“Then you know where he is?”
“That I don’t know. The last time I saw him he told me he was going to a place called Fort Sheridan. He discovered that the government was someh
ow involved with the epidemic that’s going on and he said he was going to get some answers.”
That was it. Fort Sheridan was the name of the military base Holly couldn’t quite remember, and now it brought back the recollection of being there and the horrifying image, now burned into her memory, of watching her father get shot. The major had consoled her and made sure she made it home safely to her mother, but there never was a sense of closure. It never felt right. She remembered arguing with her mother about not having a funeral for her father.
“Tom has no family,” Paula Dexter had told her daughter, refusing to refer to him with the familial title of Holly’s father. “And we are divorced, so it certainly wasn’t my responsibly. The army handled his arrangements.” Her mother’s coldness was incomprehensible.
“I was his family mom! He was my father, for God’s sake.” Holly had cried. “I should have been there. He was there for me. He saved my life.”
“Holly, if it wasn’t for your so-called father you wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place. The army saved you.”
Her mother’s bitterness towards her father, which began before the divorce, had become even more unnerving to Holly when her mother spilled not even an ounce of grief. She didn’t even know where her father was buried. But now it was all irrelevant. Her grieving was abruptly, thankfully, over. Knowing that her father was alive was enough for now. It had to be enough.
“You never told me your name,” Holly said wishing to establish some sort of connection to the last person she knew had seen her father alive.
“It’s on the bag you’re holding,” Jemma answered as she began scanning the street below once more. Many of the people in the business district had left soon after the warning was broadcast in the streets. There were a few stragglers, like Jemma, and they all seemed to be headed west. She looked to the east as saw several streets with zombies advancing in their direction.
The Tale of Tom Zombie (Book 3): Zombie Resurrection Page 4