6.
Scavengers
Earlier that morning, Cale and Naeem were released from quarantine, but were still under constant surveillance. They were escorted to the galley where they were allowed to have breakfast with the other scavenging crews. Cale looked around the table after setting his metal tray down and taking his seat. The other scavengers kept their eyes focused on their meals and ate like mechanized automatons.
“English?” Cale whispered.
No one answered him, including Naeem; they all just kept eating.
“Shut up and eat,” Pashet ordered from a table in the corner.
Cale wanted to reply with a ‘Fuck you’, but he was hungry. The fat man had already demonstrated his lack of reserve when it came to punishment, so he wasn’t going to test him. Ensign Pashet sat alone at the officer’s table, while the other handlers sat together at another. They talked and laughed with one another.
Pashet’s arrogance was apparent even in the company of his own crew. Cale speculated that he felt everyone in the room was beneath him.
Quickly and quietly, they ate, until Lieutenant Commander Amun entered. Cale watched as one of the handlers immediately stood and walked toward the officer with vigor, offering a salute. Pashet climbed lazily out of his seat, and moped over to Amun. Amun waited for Pashet to salute, but the self-important ensign never did. The crewmen began discussing something in Arabic; sadly, Cale couldn’t, of course, follow the conversation. The group spoke in hushed tones, so that the scavengers who could understand them couldn’t hear. Pashet was mostly silent, nodding occasionally. Once everyone was finished with breakfast, the scavengers were marched into a room on the upper deck of the submarine. It was here that the handlers received their weapons.
Amun watched over the room as they prepared for the mission at hand. He didn’t normally observe these pre-mission preparations, but he wanted to keep an eye on the American. If it weren’t for the level of danger involved in these scavenging runs, he would tag along, but for now he’d remain on the ship. All the handlers checked their rifles for any malfunctions. They carried a variant of the AK47, a weapon Cale wasn’t very familiar with, other than the caliber round it fired. One of the men presented three separate lengths of iron chains; each one with a shackle on either end.
“Give me your arm,” Pashet ordered with an evil grin.
“What the hell?” Cale responded.
Pashet quickly un-holstered his baton and, with one motion, extended it and struck Cale across his outer thigh. He couldn’t help but fall to one knee as the pain shot up and down his body.
“What the fuck?” Cale said as he stumbled back to his feet.
“Give me your arm,” Pashet said again.
Cale did as he was told and extended it toward the fat man. Pashet locked the shackle around his left wrist, and then locked Naeem’s wrist into the cuff at the other end of the chain. The other scavengers held out their arms without being told, quietly accepting their restraints. Each shackled man was handed a large black pack, which they put on their back. The handlers started to herd them out of the room.
“Wait. Where are our weapons?” Cale asked, as he looked around at the handlers.
Amun stepped forward. “You won’t have one; it’s the handler’s job to ensure your safety.”
“Fuck that noise. I don’t trust that fat fuck not to shoot me,” he said as he pointed at Pashet.
Pashet readied his baton one more time, but Amun put his hand up to stop him. “For obvious reasons, we can’t allow you to have a weapon.”
“Give me a club, or a knife, or something.”
“No.”
“Give me my fucking knife,” Cale said, pointing at Pashet once more.
This time, Amun did nothing to stop him, so Pashet proceeded to beat Cale, striking him with overhead hits to the shoulders and across his body. Cale huddled on the floor in the fetal position, and Pashet continued his onslaught. Everyone in the room watched silently, and Pashet’s labored breathing and Cale’s quiet grunts were all that could be heard. After what felt like forever, the fat man was too winded to continue.
Naeem didn’t dare move.
Slowly, Cale steadied himself and climbed back to his feet. Before he was ready to move, he was pushed forward. The group was taken to an exterior hatch, an alarm sounded, and the vessel surfaced. After a moment, the alarm ceased and the hatch was opened. The cool, salty sea air blasted them as it rushed in. One by one they exited the hatch.
Cale looked at the sky; it was mostly cloudy, and it would probably rain. Smaller boats and civilian vessels were scattered around them. Toward the bow of the submarine, a boat was sinking. The sub had struck it when it surfaced. Cale could see people moving on board, but he soon realized that they weren’t people anymore. The infected sunk into the depths silently and swiftly. He looked around at the other boats and saw there were infected on every one. Cale looked down at the water, imagining how many were down there. There must have been hundreds of them walking on the bottom, probably swiping clumsily at the fish swimming by. He shuddered at the thought.
They were about four hundred meters from shore, where a large structure sat on a piece of land that jutted out into the sea. Cale didn’t know it, but it was Kaupay Fortress, also known as the Citadel of Qaitbay. It was once an important stronghold along the Mediterranean but later served as a museum. Currently, however, it housed thousands of infected. Many survivors had flocked there for protection, unaware that the infection already festered within its walls. The fortress stood at the opening of the bay.
A small group of vessels caught Cale’s eye. They were the remnants of the Egyptian Navy. Two U-boats moved into position, parallel to the sub. These were smaller vessels with machine guns mounted on the bow; each was equipped with numerous spotlights. Other boats continued toward the opening of the bay, carrying the scavenging parties from other ships. Once the U-boats were in position, the handlers moved their crews from the sub to the decks of the new vessels.
“Go,” Pashet barked.
Cale and Naeem, with the four feet of iron chain connecting them, jumped from the sub to the boat. The scavengers all took their seats as orders were exchanged between the sub crew and the boat crew. Of course this passing of information was in Arabic, and Cale didn’t understand a word of it. The men saluted Lieutenant Commander Amun, and then the craft was set on a course for land. Their wake caused the other boats to bob aggressively in the water. The salt-water mist struck them in the face as they travelled, and Cale looked for any sign of life on the boats they passed. Many of them had undead walking about their decks, some of which fell overboard and never resurfaced. Others were abandoned, their survivors ‘collected’ as Cale had been, or had been home to infected long fallen overboard to a watery purgatory.
The U-boat entered the bay, and then altered its heading. They were moving west toward another cluster of boats, and a marina beyond them. The Citadel of Qaitbay was toward the north now, and Cale looked to the bow of the ship, where a young man stood ready behind his machine gun. The model looked to be an M60, but Cale couldn’t be sure. The vessel weaved back and forth between abandoned boats, until finally reaching the marina. The other crews had already landed, and intermittently, gunfire could be heard. They were drawing a lot of attention, but they were armed to the teeth. As the ship docked, the scavengers jumped to their feet. With his heart thumping, Cale took his first steps into Africa.
Handlers began shouting orders to their men; Pashet was the only one shouting in English.
“Hurry up, let’s go! We haven’t got all day!”
They followed the other two groups up the pier. There were nine of them, including himself, three handlers, and six scavengers. They moved up the dock and onto land, where the path led them between buildings and through narrow walkways to the street. The street itself was littered with long-forgotten vehicles, and infected shambled among them. Cale could only follow as the lead group led them down the street to the southw
est, and then turned sharply west. By the time they reached the first checkpoint, which was a burned out bus with skeletal passengers still in their seats, the group was spread out.
Pashet, badly out of shape, slowed Cale and Naeem down.
“Stop moving and wait for me!” he shouted angrily.
Naeem gave Cale a confused look and gestured that they needed to stop. Pashet jogged to them, sweating excessively, only stopping to shoot an infected in his path. None of his shots were terminating, and he was wasting rounds by shooting the targets in the chest. He had, however, slowed them down long enough to get past and catch up. The other groups proceeded down the street toward the hospital, while Cale and Naeem stood and waited for the fat man to regain his breath. A legless woman crawled out from under the bus, and grabbed for Naeem’s leg. Surprised, he jumped back, and Cale quickly reacted, stomping on her head. Pashet simply watched, gasping for breath. Another of the undead walked out from behind the bus, his throaty moan alerting them to his presence. He was far enough away that Pashet could easily have shot him.
“What the fuck are you waiting for? Shoot him!” Cale yelled.
Pashet simply watched as the thing got closer, stumbling toward Cale.
He’d been dead a long time; his arm came clean out of the socket as he fell to the ground, his severed arm still clutching Cale’s shirt, and as he wrestled to detach it, Naeem stomped its head.
“Thanks,” Cale said, as he discarded the arm.
Naeem simply nodded. Pashet stood with a grin on his face.
“What was that?” Naeem asked in Arabic.
Glaring at Cale, Pashet replied in English, “Never tell me what to do. Now hurry up, and let’s go.”
Cale rolled his eyes, and they ran in the direction they’d last seen the other two crews. Cars and trucks surrounded the hospital, and the entrance doors had been smashed in, whether by the massive influx of human casualties or the undead, there was no way of telling. Some of the infected were still buckled into the seats of their cars, and they scratched at the windows, desperate to escape. The three men crawled over and through the maze of vehicles, stopping only so Pashet could catch his breath. As they stood on top of a small cargo truck, Pashet, again wheezing loudly, watched as five zombies began banging against the side, unable to climb up. Pashet fired into the group wildly, striking only two of them in the head.
“You have to shoot them in the head!” Cale yelled.
Pashet stopped firing and rotated the muzzle so it pointed straight at him. Cale raised his hands in surrender.
“What did I say? Never tell me what to do!” Pashet shouted.
“Come off it! We need to work together here!” Cale said.
“Keep talking. I dare you. Just keep running your mouth!” Pashet’s finger was tightening around the trigger.
Cale stopped talking and stood looking down the barrel of the rifle. He felt that somewhere inside it, there was a bullet with his name on it. After a few more seconds, Pashet turned back to the group, again firing wildly, again wasting ammunition as he did so. If this was going to be a reoccurring theme, Cale knew they’d all be dead long before they got back to the submarine.
After the infected had finally been taken care of, one by one they climbed back to the ground. They continued forward, glass crunching under their feet, and entered the hospital.
7.
The Fourth Floor
The waiting area of the emergency room was cluttered with overturned chairs and abandoned gurneys. Streaks of dried blood painted the floor. Body parts of people, too dismembered to reanimate littered the area. Discarded paperwork soaked up some of the mess, and the crusted pages crinkled under their feet. Outside the building, shots could occasionally be heard, but inside it was eerily quiet. The electricity had gone down long ago, but backup generators still powered floodlights.
Pashet looked around, discovering that to both the left and right of the triage desk, there were large double doors. The doors on the left were solid, but the ones on the right appeared to have small, narrow windows. Through them, he could see another door at the end of a long hallway. They had been charged with finding drugs and antibiotics, and had only ‘til sundown to get them. After that, the boats would leave whatever crews remained. Pashet didn’t want to be one of them.
“That way,” he said in Arabic, as he pointed.
Cale and Naeem went to the door on the right, but Pashet didn’t follow. Instead, he walked around the triage desk and up righted a chair, taking a seat.
“What are you doing?” Naeem asked him.
“Don’t question me. I was told to bring you here. Now go get the supplies.”
“But you have the gun,” Naeem protested.
“That’s right, I have the gun,” Pashet said, as he lifted and pointed the gun at him. “Now, get going,” he ordered.
Cale didn’t know exactly what had been said, but understood the gist of it. He and Naeem would be searching the hospital alone, without an armed guard. The duo moved into the hallway, letting the door close slowly behind them; no need to let it slam and alert any infected roaming the rooms and hallways. Cale held up the iron chain attaching him to Naeem, trying to make as little noise as possible. If they were going to find supplies they’d need to locate a supply storage room.
In the hall, an IV pole lay across the floor. Naeem picked it up and broke the wheels off the bottom. He’d inadvertently formed a spike at the end of the pole, creating a weapon. Cale looked for one of his own, but he didn’t see anything he could use. Quietly, the two continued down the hall, but the signs that Cale saw were all in Arabic.
“What does it say?” Cale whispered as he pointed to a sign.
Naeem knew what Cale was asking, but didn’t know the English words to answer. One sign read ‘Operating Room’ and the other said ‘Lobby’. Another, further down the hall, was labeled ‘Radiology’. Naeem contemplated which would be the best place to find supplies, and decided that the operating room was bound to have a supply closet somewhere. He took the lead, and Cale followed him down the ‘OR’ hallway. At the end was a door marked ‘No Entry-Authorized Persons Only’. Naeem ignored it and opened the door slowly. Its hinges groaned.
Inside was a large table, and the once white floor was stained brown with dried blood. Cale accidentally let the door slam behind him, and he and Naeem both jumped and turned toward it. Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones startled by the noise; a nurse who’d been huddled in the corner clamored to her feet.
Cale was the first to see her, “Naeem!” he shouted.
Naeem turned immediately. The woman’s dark skin hid the blood that covered her. Her blue uniform looked almost black, and her hair was loose, hanging to her shoulders. Bright red flesh drooped from her mouth, and bites covered her face, distorting it. Naeem struck her across the face as she approached, tearing open her cheek and sending her to the floor. He planted his boot on her throat, and her arms feebly grabbed at his leg. Naeem thrust his metal spike into her eye socket; her arms fell limply to her sides. Using his boot as leverage, Naeem pulled the spear out of his victim. Blood dripped off of it, and a knick in the tip had snagged some of her flesh. Naeem shook off the attack without a second thought.
Someone began beating on the door they’d just come through. For a moment Cale thought it might be the fat man, but since the door wasn’t locked, he concluded that it must be one of the undead. Cale and Naeem began looting the cabinets in the operating room, not caring how much noise they made.
Cale had filled his bag half way with various bottles of pills and liquids, and Naeem had done the same. The growls at the door grew louder, and more fists pounded on the large wooden door. The two of them shared a look of concern; all it would take for them to break through would be for one of them to be pressed up against the horizontal bar that served as the locking mechanism. As soon as Cale shouldered his bag, that was exactly what happened.
A wave of undead fell into the room; the front row was laid out
on the floor, while the next bunch tried to climb over them. Each wave pushed the previous one, causing them all to collapse.
Cale felt a tug on the chain as he watched; he turned to see Naeem pulling him through another door. Cale turned from the train wreck of dead and moved quickly. It was a pull for entry door, so there was no need to barricade it; in fact, it assured that the infected would be trapped in that room.
Together they stood in a dark hallway, with no floodlights working in the area, but sunlight shone through the open doors that lined the right side of the hall. Naeem watched for moving shadows crossing the light, as they journeyed down the corridor. At the far end, a figure emerged from one of the rooms. It was a man in a patient’s gown; his abdominal cavity was hollowed out, and his intestines hung loosely. An IV bag, attached to its tubing, dragged along behind him. He still had the needle in his arm, with the tubing taped to it. He let out a loud moan as he spotted his prey, and of course the moaning alerted the other undead. Shadows danced across the floor as the infected left the rooms and entered the hallway.
“Holy fuck,” Cale said.
Naeem didn’t understand, but deduced that it was a curse. He nodded his agreement at their predicament, and he quickly looked for an exit; the only door that wasn’t blocked by a wall of zombies was marked ‘stairs’. Naeem hurried Cale into the stairwell, and together they raced upward. By the time they reached the second floor, the infected were barreling through the ground floor door. Naeem and Cale looked over the railing and down the stairwell into the hungry gazes of their pursuers.
Z Plan (Book 2): Red Tides Page 4