by Mark Tufo
The man was thin—bordering on starvation thin. He had on a tattered blue shirt, his ribs clearly displayed through the openings. He was filthy, like rolled in excrement, filthy, except for his pants, which looked as if they’d just been picked up at the dry cleaners.
“Help,” he muttered, raising his hand.
Reed looked down the hall, pulled the man into the room and then closed the door. The man’s feet were a bloody mess, not the United Kingdom swear version, but the literal translation. They were rotting away, as if he’d been forced to stand in water for weeks. Chunks of skin were missing, revealing the muscle structure beneath. Reed sucked in a breath as he saw what we all had. Trench foot barely scratched the surface of this. As bad as his feet were, as emaciated as the man was, it was those fucking pants that had struck a note of discord. I didn’t, or, more likely, couldn’t dwell on it for too long, as I was dealing with a stabbing pain in my head, also, the funk of smell that drifted the ten yards to me was all I needed to realize the man was decomposing, dapper trousers aside. It was doubtful we could do enough to save him. Antibiotics and amputations would be the only things that gave him a chance.
Tommy grabbed some sheets off one of the beds and cut them into some serviceable strips to wrap the man’s feet. Reed had turned him over and had propped the poor guy’s head in his lap as he slowly poured some water into his waiting mouth. I was resting up against the weapons cache, keeping an eye on the door. The man’s placement was too convenient; it was a trap, that much was clear. They were slowing us down, adding to our burdens while they gathered their forces. They knew we would bring a hopeless casualty back with us, thus making it even more difficult for us to fight back once the teeth started gnashing. And they had nothing to lose. If we did wise up and leave our stragglers, they would make easy meals.
“Are there more of you?” Bags asked, his head turned away. The wounded feet might be wrapped, but that was doing little to mask the smell.
“Hundreds,” he managed to sputter out as Reed gave him another sip of water.
“Where?” Baggelli pressed.
“Bags, give him a minute,” Reed said.
“Main…” He passed out.
“That mean anything to you?” I asked.
“Main machinery room, maybe. But for all we know, he could have been talking about where he was from,” Reed said.
“We need to get to them!” Baggelli looked haunted. The idea that hundreds of his fellow sailors were imprisoned by zombies, rotting, starving, was eating away at him and quickly.
It didn’t need to be said and it did. Unfortunately, I was the commanding officer, so I was the one that got to deliver the message.
“Bags.” I paused to gather my strength and the strength to say what I needed to. “We’re in no position to offer a rescue. We don’t have enough people. And if we were somehow able to get them out of what might be the zombie stronghold, where are we going to bring them that is safe? Where we can offer them food, water, and medical attention?”
“We’re just going to let them die then, without doing anything?”
If they were in half as bad a shape as the man we now had, they were already dead. I didn’t voice this mainly because I couldn’t, and it wasn’t necessary. The truth of it was not only staring us in the eyes but assailing our noses. It was likely he had sepsis; the best we could do would be to offer a modicum of comfort before he passed. Something I would have liked to offer to the rest of the prisoners, but the problem of how and where still prevented it.
“Think it through, Bags. I know, I absolutely know how shitty this is, but there’s nothing we can do, not right now. The best thing is we sweep this ship fucking clean, get the rest of our people on board, including the docs, nurses and medics and let them do what they can. We accomplish nothing by breaking them free from one jail only to deposit them into another.” I wasn’t sure reason was going to work with Bags, not in this case. I’d borne a resemblance to him once upon a time. Hot-headed, unwilling to listen to even the most stable voice of reason if it goes against my gut. Who am I kidding? I’m only marginally better now—or maybe marginally worse—as I figure my age lends validity to my stance. I felt like my words were bouncing off the wall of a cliff.
“Bags, listen to the Cap,” Reed said. “This man didn’t walk here, not on those feet. That means the zombies brought him here. He’s bait, man. What are we going to do if there are fifty just like him? We can’t carry even a portion of the wounded. The absolute best we could do, if we could even fight our way through, would be to grab three or four. Then what? I can bandage a wound with the best of them but this…this is beyond my skill set.”
“Fuck!” He walked away. I knew that reaction well enough. Anger and frustration when you’re told you can’t do something that you want to do, that needs to be done, that should be done. If he was going to launch into a tirade, that was quickly cut off at the pass as the door behind us was knocked on. Three solid, hard taps. It was too loud and sharp to be from a hand. Sounded like a baton rapping the door.
We looked at each other. The scared person inside of me wanted to ask in a sing-song voice “Who is it?” but the attempt at humor would be lost on the zombie and the squad. And just because that was my self-defense mechanism didn’t mean it was everyone else’s, in fact, it most likely wasn’t any sane person’s way of dealing with the abject terror and almost certain death staring us directly in the face. Like a clown popping up outside a window while you vacation alone in the deep woods of Maine. There you are, the night black as coal, a howling wind making the densely packed trees scrape their branches against the side of the cabin. You’ve decided to nestle up in a chair with a good murder mystery book; the room softly lit by the small fire you’ve got going in the fireplace, your glass of 12-year-old scotch glowing amber on the small table right under the living room window.
As you turn the page and realize it’s the start of a new chapter and time to wet your whistle, you look to the table to grab your glass and catch the white reflection of thick face paint shining in the freshly Pledged wood. You lift your gaze to the window. There you see the wide red lips pulled back and up, the over-applied lipstick making the mouth stretch wide, ear to ear, exposing teeth filed sharp like the vicious triangular fangs of a shark. The eyes radiate swirling redness that has nothing to do with the fire, which is suddenly guttering out. As if that’s not bad enough, the old oak tree you have been promising your wife you would cut down takes this inopportune moment to fall, taking out the power line. The cabin is now as dark as the outside; the only thing illuminated is the clown’s eyes. This is the paralyzing, abject fear I am talking about, and even if you could speak, you wouldn’t be able to diffuse the situation by asking if he would make you a balloon animal.
The rapping came again. Somehow the clown scenario was preferable to what we were dealing with. The only benefit to the cabin terror was it was only my life on the line. With each passing second, our chances of escaping this room diminished, let alone getting off this floating casket.
“What do you want?” I did my best to keep the tremor out of my voice, the results were mixed. No response except another trio of knocks. There was no doubt now that we were surrounded. Well, technically not encircled, but that mattered little to our predicament. “I’ll listen to arguments for whether we go forward or backward,” I said. A single cricket cricketing would have been voluminous. “Bags?” He shook his head. “This is going to be the one time you don’t say anything?”
“I don’t want to be wrong,” he stated simply. Of course. Who did? This wasn’t final Jeopardy where all you could potentially lose were your winnings thus far. I didn’t trust the way back. The reavers were there, the dead bulker was there, and there was the potential that it would not be an easy climb out, depending on how much damage we’d done.
“BT, you’re going to have to carry your toy. We’ll put the sailor up on the boxes.”
Reed shook his head. “His breathing is raspy�
�he doesn’t have long.”
I didn’t know what “doesn’t have long” translated to. An hour? A day? “Are you saying we shouldn’t move him?”
“I’m wondering if we should put him out of his misery. He’s suffering. If I had some morphine, I’d dose him into the afterlife.”
I wasn’t going to put that burden on anyone. Myself included. “We’ll wait,” I said.
BT gave me a questioning look. Wheeling a dying man around on a munitions dolly seemed sacrilegious, but leaving him still alive to be eaten was a far worse option. And just because two really horrible choices weren’t bad enough, we had the third and worst of the bunch, a knife to the heart. It had been close to an hour, the rapping came a dozen or more times, but on no discernible schedule. Sometimes the trio of knocks came within seconds of each other, other times, as much as five minutes would pass. Didn’t matter though, every time it happened, every one of us would look up and over, no matter what we were doing. The sailor’s breathing was more labored than it had been; there was a gasping fish out of water quality to it. A sharp intake followed by a shallow exhale. It wouldn’t be long. We’d say a quick prayer and go on. Eventually, my hope was we could bury him at sea, but a lot of other things had to fall into place before that became an option.
We were two knocks into the familiar three when a new wrinkle got added. It was a good one, still, almost made my heart burst.
“Captain Talbot, can you hear me?” It was Walde, over the intercom. “I’m not sure if this is working.” She was talking to someone else on the bridge. I made my way to the far side of the room and the panel that would hopefully allow me to speak to her.
“Walde, can you hear me?”
“Oh, thank god.”
“Didn’t take you for a religious person,” I replied.
“No atheists in a foxhole, sir, and maybe this doesn’t quite qualify as a fighting hole, but you get it.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“What’s your situation?” she asked.
I was hesitant to tell her. What could they do about it except risk themselves in a vain attempt?
“You debating how you want to answer isn’t making me feel better, sir,” she said. It was always difficult for me to talk to women. They were just so damned adept at language, the subtleties, inflection, and especially catching and throwing the words not spoken.
“No casualties. We made it to the armory and have enough ammunition and weapons to sustain a prolonged land war in Asia. What we don’t have is a clear exit back to you.”
“What are you not telling me?”
“She must know Tracy,” BT whispered.
“You need me to come down there?” Rose must have wrestled the microphone away from Walde as there was a loud shuffling noise.
“Shit,” I mumbled before I toggled the speak button. “Rose, don’t you dare. The zombies gave us one of their prisoners. They’re trying to bait us deeper into the ship.” I let go of the button after I said that. I was thinking. There were obvious reasons why the zombies wanted us to try and help the prisoners, but also possibly another, underlying, reason they didn’t want us to know.
“It’s true then?” she asked. I didn’t want to dwell on it right now; I couldn’t. It was impossible to think of the suffering the sailors had been going through for so long and not want to jump headlong into a rescue attempt. But I had no doubt it would be an attempt, not a success.
“I know that look. What have you come up with?” BT was genuinely interested.
“We need to go back the way we came,” I announced.
“Why?” Tommy asked.
“The zombies are doing everything they can to steer us toward where the prisoners are. The obvious reason is they want to trap us. The less obvious reason…”
“They don’t think they can stop us going back,” BT finished.
“I hate to step on anything, sir, but that’s a lot of stacked assumptions,” Reed said.
“It’s a leap, I’ll give you that, but not a huge one. They’re a lot smarter than we’re willing to give them credit for, but I get the feeling they’re still stumbling around in the dark a bit with this new-found ability. They’re trying to push us forward, like hunters in the woods banging on pots and pans, driving deer into a waiting line of riflemen. Personally, I’d rather face the pots people than the rifle holders.”
“This is a metaphor, right?” Bags asked Tommy. “They don’t have guns.” He didn’t seem so sure and neither did I. Tool use was already part of their repertoire; guns would be, soon enough. God help us all at that point.
“Sir, seriously, you can’t just drop off the radio like that.” This time it was Stenzel and she sounded angry.
“Sorry. We’re trying to figure out our next move. Working through some scenarios.”
“Anything we can do?” she asked.
“You know, I think there might be. I’ll get back to you in a few minutes,” I told her once I saw Reed motioning for me.
He shook his head as I approached. The sailor, whoever he was, had passed, even though I think he may have died a long time ago. He was no longer suffering, and I hoped wherever he’d gone was a far better place than this. More tapping from the way we’d come, and now a timid knock, decidedly human, from where we’d got the sailor. Psychological warfare at its finest. I looked like a fan at Wimbledon during a particularly vigorous volley.
“It could be another prisoner.” Reed was looking at the door where the soft knocking was coming from. I didn’t think it was a question at all. If they kept sending us the wounded, they knew at some point, due to our own moral superiority, or failing, perhaps, we would eventually be sucked into a rescue.
“Help me…” drifted slowly toward us like it was riding on the back of a particularly heavy fog.
“SIR!” blared through the intercom system. I was glad that I’d decided to wear my depends that day. “Video is operational!” Rose yelled.
“Video? There’s cameras in here?” I asked. It made sense. An aircraft carrier was a nearly priceless resource and it had a small city’s worth of inhabitants. But it was no Utopia; they’d have problems like any population center would, more, maybe, as there was no getting away from your fellow citizens. People are assholes, we can’t seem to help ourselves. The threat of severe military justice would keep most in line, but I was living proof that it wouldn’t keep folks completely in check. I wonder if there are other animals that lose all ability to think rationally and act out without thought of recourse. What flaw is it inside of us that snaps? That sees red and impulsively acts to the detriment of ourselves and those around us? Never watched a nature show where a pissed off monkey ran into a pride of lions and just started punching the living shit out of them. Throwing feces from a distance, that’s the civilized way.
“The door you’re looking at, don’t open it,” Gary said. “You know those news clips they show every Thanksgiving of the crazy people trying to get cheap televisions? That’s what it looks like out there.”
I wanted to tell my brother that more times than not, he was a part of those lunatic crowds, but I refrained. Who was I to say that waiting in line for hours in the cold during a holiday for a free toaster wasn’t worth it? Funny thing about my brother was he had three televisions that had never been removed from their boxes. It was almost like a “thrill of the hunt” thing for him. Strange way to get your rocks off, but I wasn’t going to turn that bright light on myself, I had plenty of things I didn’t want dragged out into the open.
“What about the way we came?” BT asked. I’d been traveling too far down a tangent to answer. BT was watching me. “Where’d you go?” he asked softly.
“Big box black Fridays, monkeys, flaws of humanity, that sort of thing,” I told him. Pretty sure that didn’t help.
“There’s zombies and a few reavers, but nothing like what’s there going forward,” Gary said.
“Can you find a path for us back?” I asked.
“How? We don�
�t have radios,” Gary shrugged. I let him stew in his own question for a moment. “Forget it,” he said when he figured it out.
“BT, want to clear a path?” I asked.
“Gladly.” He spun the fifty cal back around.
“Bags.” I motioned for the door.
The handle on the door behind us began to move. Tommy moved fast, fast enough that Baggelli and Reed looked to each other. They had suspicions and had at some point talked about them, but what could they actually think? Certainly not that he was vampire; maybe that he was some sort of genetically altered super-soldier. That was a cover story I was going to work on for Tommy, should it become necessary. That it would be something we needed was still very much in doubt. Not, winning the lottery as a means to retire, kind of doubt but rather, the Cleveland Browns winning the Super Bowl, type of doubt. Nope, that didn’t work because people won the lottery, another thing I’d work on later. Tommy was holding the latch in place, Baggelli was looking at me for the cue.
It got interesting quick, and by interesting, I mean shitty. And not literal shitty, but figuratively. I’d rather have handled literal. I got my rifle up and ready, though I wasn’t planning on shooting, not unless something somehow got by the deadly barrage BT was about to lay down. I gave Bags the go-ahead. He hit the handle and moved away as fast as someone is apt to do when there are zombies on one side and bullets that weigh as much as a quarter pounder hamburger on the other, especially when they’re going to be flying by in the hundreds. Sometimes I wished I’d never done drugs, as there was a flash in my brain of my body being pelted by cheeseburgers and I didn’t seem to mind. That changed quickly enough as the zombie that was tapping on the door was obliterated, or maybe it’s disintegrated. The truly fascinating thing wasn’t so much his look of shock to be suddenly thrust into the limelight but rather what he’d been using to tap on the door. The pistol fell to the ground, as there was nothing left of him to hold it up.