“Mommy’s Boy, wake up!”
Matt looked up. Everything was a ghostly white, as if a skim of milk had seeped over his eyeballs. He nonetheless recognized the gunner’s mates who’d pinned him down.
“You gonna soup us or what, Mommy’s Boy?”
Matt felt nothing but the relieving tingle of blood discharging into the soup. The first gunner’s mate snorted, snatched the ladle away from Matt, and dipped himself a big serving. He did not seem to notice the darker, filmier bits floating amid the tomato purée. Matt squinted. The last thing he saw, behind the gunner’s mates, was a line thirty or forty sailors deep. He knew from experience that many of them would want delicious tomato soup, the most comforting chow they’d find on this wet, stressful day.
On this carrier, Matt Sears was a carrier too. He died standing up, knees locked, forehead pressed to the sneeze guard. His last thought was of the clear cups of red bug juice on everyone’s trays. To Matt’s milky eyes, it looked thick and salty, and he wanted to drink it, and find more of it, wherever he could. Earlier, he’d thought the boat was well stocked for feeding, but he’d had no idea.
Patterns
Karl Nishimura registered the flight-deck stoppage the same moment as Jennifer Angelys Pagán. He would have been aware of it first if he hadn’t ill-timed his long trip to the head, It had been a hell of a day, and the coffee had taken its toll. He was reaching for the navy’s patented brand of toilet paper, formulated from a blend of sandpaper and steel wool, when the spring-loaded, chrome-colored paper holder quit rattling and the basin water beneath him quit sloshing.
All he could hear was the boat’s air cycling and electrical hum. Only between 2130 and 0600 were such functions audible. Of all the bad things that had happened in the past sixteen hours—the strike-force irregularities, Chuck Corso’s ghouls, dead air from navy brass—this was the worst. It was the sound of surrender.
He wiped like a beast (his recurrent hemorrhoids, a side effect of the glow, did not appreciate this) and threw together his uniform before charging past a chart room still buzzing with Corso’s grim narration. The state of the nav bridge horrified him. Henstrom, Lang, Legg, and the others had plastered themselves against the wraparound windows to ogle the flight deck, as if it wasn’t something they saw all day, every day.
Nishimura joined them and confirmed it: no one had ever seen a flight deck like this.
It was navy cliché that a carrier’s flight deck in motion operated like a ballroom dance. On crystalline mornings, when the sun at the stern made crinkled red foil of ocean swells and turned both runways into long, blinding bars of gold, the deck became a stage. Groups of dancers entered, left or right or center, attired in colors appreciable from the cheap seats: royal blue for aircraft handlers and drivers; blood red for ordnance and crash crews; canary yellow for plane directors; and so on. Their moves were as precise as a bourrée or fouetté: the dexterous setting of catapults, the nimble fastening of tow bars, the LSO’s hand signals as graceful as any port de bras. It was an elite company; a misstep on this stage ended not a corps de ballet career but a human life.
Nishimura saw not one element awry or even two. Below were two dozen sailors who did not belong, spreading across the rain-roiled deck without heed of safety protocols. The intrusion was as unthinkable as theatergoers climbing the stage.
Every carrier had a pass-down log, an informal daily planner listing all of the day’s expected visitors—military VIPs, foreign dignitaries, politicians. Nishimura thought to request it, to ascertain the identity of these lummox tourists. Except They couldn’t be visitors; They wore navy uniforms. Even from his height, Nishimura saw the dress-code violations of loose shirttails and stained fabric. It did not matter if They were hull technicians or nuclear machinist’s mates who never saw the sun, They knew better than to go near the runways.
One man was within several feet of an EA-18G Growler about to take off. Nishimura held his breath as the Growler was shot from Catapult 1. It sliced through the rain and, silently to all those watching, lopped off the man’s head with the end of its forty-four-foot wingspan.
It was the single worst thing Nishimura had ever seen, A beheading. Aboard USS Olympia. Everyone in the world would know about it in hours. It might take slightly longer for one of the internet’s death sites to mystically acquire security video. The six months of Big Mama’s last deployment, if not her entire honorable career, would be a footnote to this accident. Nishimura saw the black jet of blood and the head’s casual volleyball roll.
Navy soldiers were not given to gasping, but every person on the nav bridge drew in a screech of air.
“Halloween,” Lang sputtered. “Master Chief, could it be Halloween?”
Nishimura’s hope surged as if by injection. He knew what Lang meant. Halloween was seven days off, making this the right time for pranks. Petty officers showing up for inspection dressed as Power Rangers. XO Peet broadcasting in his soberest voice the news of a sea monster attack, all hands on deck. But those pranks were okayed by Captain Page. Those pranks were safe. Sending sailors onto a working flight deck meant certain death.
Catapult 2 shot a C-2A Greyhound into the sky, the force of its jets tumbling an intruder one hundred feet, onto Elevator #2, The man wore neither float coat nor cranial; he ought to be down for the count. Instead, he got up, hobbling, one leg contorted sideways at the knee. His white uniform was razed by an asphalt streak that had split open his shirt as well as the flesh beneath it.
He walked back onto the deck.
“It’s exactly what I said!” Henstrom cried, adding a hasty, “Sir! It has to be a biologic agent! That’s why we need to button up! What if the agent gets up here, sir?”
Nishimura had no idea. He felt the approach of a Nishimura Delay, perhaps the one to end them all, Ten years from now, he might still be waiting for it to pass, a skeleton cobwebbed to a ghost ship.
Deck operations were jolting to screeching, smoking halts. It was shocking how quickly training fell apart. Signalmen abandoned their usual battery of signals to frantically flap their arms at queued pilots. Others rushed right at the trespassing sailors, waving Them toward the superstructure. A Super Hornet unchained from the deck had been abandoned, and Nishimura watched it roll starboard, forty-seven thousand pounds of lurking catastrophe.
“Who should we call, sir?” Lang asked.
“Should I look for the OOD again, Master Chief?” Legg asked.
Any sailor stationed on the island grew used to seeing patterns indiscernible at ground level. The port and starboard lines of parked jets looked like the rating stripes of an officer, first-class. The spray hosing of jet-blast-deflector troughs, when done by two sailors in tandem, created butterfly wings when the sun caught the oily plumes. At first, the deck intruders seemed incapable of method or sequence, Patterns, however, were emerging.
When an intruder came up against a jet, refueling equipment, or a support vehicle, Their paths changed. They redirected toward the nearest sailor, no matter who They’d been pursuing. Nishimura saw that the group had formed a perfect oval around the deck, as if in psychic agreement.
A woman in a khaki service uniform bit off a sailor’s fingers. Nishimura saw blood fire into the woman’s face, who lapped at it, a kid drinking from a backyard hose. Like that, Nishimura quit thinking of Them as intruders. They were what Chuck Corso warned them about. They were ghouls. And somehow, against every odd, They’d accomplished what no enemy in history had done: infiltrated an American aircraft carrier, the military’s most protected asset.
Henstrom, Lang, and Legg did not need to repeat their panicky questions. Nishimura’s response came two minutes late, but come it did.
“Down to five knots, Hard left rudder.”
“The OOD,” Legg said weakly.
“I have the deck, Quartermaster,” Nishimura said. “You have a problem with that?”
“Why are we slowing down, sir?” Henstrom whined. “San Diego’s just—”
“I
have the deck, Henstrom. I don’t know the nature of the situation, but we are not taking this boat to the mainland, is that understood? Five knots, left full rudder. Head into a circling pattern. Alert the strike group.”
Dimly, darkly, Nishimura recalled that Hickenlooper had been circling all morning.
“A circling pattern?” Henstrom exclaimed, “No—sir—we have to get home! You can’t decide this for the rest of us! You have to ask the captain!”
He was correct, of course, that Captain Page had final say of anything that happened on his boat. But the captain’s illness now felt more suspicious than ever. What if his deterioration had spread to others the same way a cult leader’s edict poisoned his followers? It was a mutinous thought Nishimura couldn’t stop thinking.
“Will you relay the order to the engine room, Boatswain’s Mate, or will you be relieved of duty?”
Nishimura turned his glow on Henstrom. The O-3 shrank like an imperiled dog, rippling lips back from his canines. Nishimura did not like the display but had other concerns. He swiveled on a heel and gave the rest of the nav-bridge crew, one by one, the same challenging gaze.
“Does everyone have their orders clear? Are we together on this?”
Nishimura inhaled, held his breath. Yessirs, rogers, and aye-aye, Master Chiefs erupted, signaling the syncing of a unit no threat could possibly derail. The crew took the stations at which they were so proficient, the diligent clatter of their shoes and bark of their voices obscuring both Tommy Henstrom’s mutters and Chuck Corso’s pleas for vigilance. Nishimura let out a held breath, which fogged the window like a splash of silver blood, not as dark as the liquids spilled on the flight deck but just as shocking.
The Full Armor of God
Father Bill did not recognize the two sailors, one Black, one white, who pitched into the chapel, but felt toward Them instant, unchristian wrath. No doubt Their unscheduled appearance was related to the flight-deck shutdown, but this was his time with My Sweet, which he awaited every sweaty day and restless night. When My Sweet turned to look at Them, her thigh shifting away from his fingers, Father Bill was aggrieved.
He bolted upright. A slug of blood inched down his leg, and the tape that banded his swollen penis to his thighs pulled harshly. He was angry; he nearly yelled. But he was Father Bill, Padre, Chaplain, Chaps, Chappy, and anger did not become him.
“I am blessed by guests,” he said as calmly as possible. “You are most welcome. If you would be so good as to come back in, say, thirty minutes, after I finish this consultation?”
Few people aboard a carrier received his kind of deference; it was convention for religious leaders to assume the rate of whoever they were meeting with, whether it be an E-1 apprentice or an O-11 fleet admiral—and even then, the religious leader was a smidgen above the fleet admiral, wasn’t he? These two sailors looked ignorant of any of this. Instead of waiting to be recognized and invited, They blundered forward, the Black man’s shoulder driving the white man into a row of chairs. As the chairs scattered from the assault, Father Bill noticed that the knees of the white sailor’s trousers were soaked with blood.
My Sweet had flattened herself to the starboard wall. She was a fighter pilot and, as such, carried a sidearm in case she was shot down and captured. Her hand was pawing her holster awkwardly, and understandably so. Surely she’d never had occasion to draw the weapon.
Unimpeded by chairs, the Black sailor cruised up the aisle. His chin and neck were shiny with wet blood. His eyes had an alabaster gleam. Parishioners were known to embrace Father Bill in grief or gladness, but They did not reach for him like this, fingers clawing the air.
Drugs did not have to be the culprit. A carrier was a giant bottle of emotions being constantly shaken, and when deployment went too long without action, half the ship would start complaining of the need to blow up something.
That’s how you ended up with murders. That’s why the ship had a morgue.
“Run.”
It was My Sweet, and Father Bill felt his face go as hot as when he paged through Fresh Meat. He heard fresh distrust in her voice. Had it been so horrible to be touched by a man of God? She should be grateful, supplicant, on her knees to kiss the blood from his feet! Oh, he’d take her now if he could, with both hands and both legs and all his teeth, so they could meld into one of the beasts birthed of his mother mind and father loins, an angel-devil, a god of cock and tit, tentacle and wing.
My Sweet slid away, toward the exit, but the sailors pressed too close for Father Bill to follow, with his old legs and box-cuttered thigh. He felt a clench of frustration that My Sweet had not used her gun, but that judgment cooled. If these sailors were simply intoxicated, killing Them would be a sin. He slipped into the invisible vestments of holiness, put on a smile capable of soothing the most frazzled members of his flock, and lifted a genuflecting hand.
“‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.’”
He gestured to the first row of seats just as the white sailor, with jerking kicks and thrashing arms, obliterated it. The tumult seemed to excite the Black sailor; when he grinned, pink foam, raisined with black tissue, squeezed from between his jaws. Both sailors collided and, as if on musical cue from the chapel’s keyboard, They lifted Their four arms and reached for the priest’s neck.
A dark shape shot past Father Bill and collided with the sailors. It was a man, stocky and strong, the sinew of his back and arms clear from a short-sleeved black workout shirt. It was, of course, the priest’s nemesis, the Psych. Some time back, Father Bill had concluded that while the smug nonbeliever nodded respectfully at everything the boat’s religious leaders said, privately he believed them all fools. He had his holy books and the Psych, his prescription pad. Guess which one sailors preferred?
Each of the Psych’s linebacker shoulders struck one of the sailors in the gut, sending all three tangling into folding chairs. Father Bill searched for My Sweet, thinking they might finish what they’d started, but she was gone.
“Father—Bill—”
The Psych’s double-tackle, though impressive, hadn’t knocked the wind out of the sailors. They did not look the least bit distracted. They tore at the Psych with what looked like great interest, which suggested the priest hadn’t been singled out as a target. Father Bill mused on this while the Psych held back the Black sailor’s head by his scruff and used a forearm to deflect the white sailor.
“Help me—Father Bill—pull one of Them—”
The Psych screamed, a wild, womanly sound that flooded Father Bill with righteous feeling. It was the perfect sound for the Psych, the dying yowl of a quack profession that held no weight against customs of old. The white sailor’s jaws were embedded in the Psych’s forearm, teeth squealing atop the ulna. The sailor jerked his head, tearing away a hunk of the Psych’s arm, white as blubber and trailing red tissue. The Psych stared at the hole in disbelief until it gushed blood.
“Fathum—” He gagged on his own gore, “Holp, holp.”
When the Black sailor bit off the Psych’s upper lip like taffy, the Psych didn’t scream. His face was a purple froth, some of it siphoning inward, some puffing out. Despite the unpleasantness of the sight, Father Bill heard the ting of a justice bell when the lip, along with the Psych’s mustache, was sucked down the Black sailor’s throat like a noodle. For a moment, both sailors chewed pensively, quietly.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence, Father Bill prayed.
The two sailors stared up at him like he’d rattled Their food bowls. They stood. Their mouths opened and chewed chunks of the Psych tumbled out.
Up came Their arms, forward shuffled Their feet. In seconds, Their fingertips had snagged Father Bill’s beige sweatshirt. He stepped backward, his right foot landing badly and squeezing fresh blood from his thigh cuts. He seized in pain, and just like that, one of the sailors had a full handhold of sweatshirt, while the other fumbled for a grip on his ear.
He could not go down like the Psych, he was better than that—he was
a soldier of Jesus! Father Bill dove away, the leap of a major-league shortstop. His hip cracked down, and agony shot all the way into the soles of his feet. But he was free, at least for a moment, and he saw, just a few feet away, the place he felt safest: the supply closet. He pushed with his toes, gripped the doorframe with aching fingers, and pulled himself inside.
The sailors dove too, eyes white and mouths red, slavering to take communion of his body and blood. Father Bill slammed the closet shut, the door whacking aside the Black sailor’s outstretched fingers. There was no lock, of course, but to conserve hallway space, the door opened inward and that was something. Father Bill braced his back against a box of hymnals and shoved his feet against the door, which began to pound with the sailors’ fists.
Lieutenant Commander William Koppenborg had experienced war, from the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Suez Canal, to the warlike operations following 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. All from the safety of chapels, true, but he knew what war looked like. Sailors showing up for service with slinged arms and bandaged skulls, while others died screaming as he performed last rites. He knew what war sounded like too, beyond the whang and whoosh to the shriek and rumble.
He understood the men on the other side of the door to be War. They might, in fact, be a revision of the very idea of War, just as the lone operants of terrorism had modified the surgical technologies of the Persian Gulf, which had revised upon the chessboard subterfuge of World War II, which had revised upon the industrial, meat-grinder collisions of World War I, which had revised upon the troop-shifting deceptions of Napoleonics. Ever changing was the art of death.
Father Bill’s legs shook, The door opened a crack. He pistoned his legs, shoving it shut, Ephesians 6:11 came to him like the cavalry: Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. There was no verse he recited more often to anxious soldiers, and never before had he doubted its efficacy. He was armored by God, that he knew, yet it might not be enough, now that he’d done what basic combat training had taught him never to do: corner himself with no way out.
The Living Dead Page 23