"And what if they refuse?"
"Then Lamar and I will shoot them."
Carol looked shocked, but then the chief grinned. She smiled back at him.
I checked our pursuers, but they were gone from sight. There were signs of battles being fought below the surface all across the open water-splashes and plumes and red-tinted surf. But none of it was close enough to the lifeboat to cause me any immediate concern. I hoped the fish would continue fighting each other and ignore us long enough to get aboard the oil rig.
We drew closer. The massive jack-up loomed over us. We scanned the decks and catwalks, looking for signs of life, but all we saw were seabirds. They covered the rig, perched on every antenna, crane, building, and safety net. There were hundreds of them. At least now we knew where all the ones we'd seen earlier had come from. They must have flown back and forth from the mainland. And with all the offal now floating on the waves, they wouldn't even have to make that trip.
The chief pulled alongside the lower level dock and shut off the engine. I stood guard with the rifle, watching the sea for signs of trouble while Carol, Malik, and Tasha climbed up onto the platform. The ocean remained clear, but the signs of the terrible battle beneath its surface increased. Huge clouds of blood now floated on the tide like pools of oil. Severed heads, tails, and organs rolled on the waves. A seagull darted down and gripped some fish entrails in its claws, but before it could take flight again, a large blue-and-green fish leaped from the water and seized the bird in its mouth. The bird squawked in alarm. Its wings beat at the water. Then it was pulled below. I turned back to comment to the others, but none of them had seen it happen.
Once Carol and the kids had safely disembarked from the lifeboat, the chief handed the supplies up to them. They set the containers and bags on the deck. Malik started to explore, but Carol warned him to stay close to the rest of us. Sulking, Malik complied. To distract him, the chief handed the shotgun to Malik, stock first, and Malik set that aside as well. Then the chief turned back to me.
"Are we still clear?"
I nodded. "So far, so good."
"Okay. You go on up, and then I'll tie us off."
I eyed the drilling platform. "Is this thing stable? Seems like its just floating out here."
"It is," he said. "Basically, the oil company just floats it out to wherever they want to drill. But there are jacks that extend down to the ocean floor, raising it up and stabilizing it. Kind of like an anchor. So we're not going anywhere."
I passed my rifle to Carol, who took it hesitantly. It was obvious that the weapon made her nervous. Smiling, I clambered up onto the dock and took it back from her. Her posture and expression relaxed again. I stared up into the rigging. If the jack-up was occupied, nobody had come out to greet us. Maybe it was abandoned, or maybe they were dead.
In the lifeboat, the chief began whistling while he gathered up the ropes.
"Hey, Wade," I whispered. "We still don't know if this thing is deserted. Maybe we should try to be quiet."
"You're right," he agreed, lowering his voice. "I'm sorry. Shouldn't be whistling anyway, I guess. It hurts my nose. I'm just excited."
He turned back to the ropes and hauled them over to the side, grunting with the effort. I turned my attention back to the jack-up. Malik and Tasha followed my gaze. Carol watched the chief.
None of us saw it in time.
Our only warning was when the creature surfaced. There was a rushing sound, like a blast of steam from the world's biggest iron. We turned back to the ocean and the chief froze, the ropes hanging from his hands. The ocean's surface rippled with a motion not caused by the pull of the tide. A huge black bulk surfaced from the depths, rocking both the lifeboat and the dock. The motion knocked the chief off his feet.
Water streamed down the creature's sides as it rose higher. It was a whale-an undead whale. Horrible wounds covered its bulk, and the stench wafting off its hide was worse than anything I'd ever smelled. It was like every corpse in Baltimore had been bottled up and brought here. Gagging, I bent over and wretched. Carol did the same. The kids turned away, coughing. When I turned back, I caught a glimpse of one huge, soulless eye-bigger than a dinner plate and black as night. Then the lifeboat capsized, turning over completely and tipping the chief into the sea. A mouth the size of a car opened up beneath him, swallowing him whole. He didn't even have time to scream. Carol screamed for him. Screamed for us all.
Ignoring the rotting beast's smell, I snapped the rifle up and fired a shot. It was like shooting spit-balls at a dinosaur. The whale slammed against the dock, and the entire platform shook. I emptied the magazine into it. Beside me, the shotgun roared as Malik did the same. I don't know if our rounds had any effect. The zombie sank again beneath the waves, taking Chief Maxey with it. The lifeboat drifted away on the tide. The air trapped beneath the hull kept it from sinking. There was no way for us to retrieve it. The lifeboat was already out of our reach.
Carol fell to her knees and sobbed quietly. Tasha and Malik just stared in disbelief. I knew how they felt. It had all happened so quickly. It just didn't seem real somehow. I mean, a zombie fucking whale? If circumstances had been different, I could have almost laughed. You go through life believing only in what you can see. What science can prove. Things like ghosts and monsters are the stuff of fantasy. But then, one morning, you wake up and the dead are out in the streets hunting down the living. Your world comes crashing down when that happens. But even when you get used to the idea that the dead can walk, a zombie whale still seemed incredible. In a way, I think it shook our world view all over again.
The lifeboat drifted farther away. I watched it go, wondering where it would end up and if there'd be anybody left to find it.
"Why him?" Carol sobbed. "Why Wade? He was such a nice man. So gentle. He saved us all. Why did it have to take him?"
I put my hand on her shoulder. "I don't know, Carol. I don't know."
We'd lost yet another member of our group. And now we were stranded. If there were zombies aboard the drilling platform, we'd have no means of escape-except for the weapons we held in our hands.
"We'll grieve for the chief later," I said. "Grieve for them all. But right now, let's check our ammunition and then make sure this place is safe."
Malik shuffled over to me as I dug through a bag and found more bullets.
"If there's dead folks onboard, how we gonna get away?"
I reloaded my magazine and refused to look up at him.
"We'll find a way," I said softly, fingering the rounds. "We'll find a way…"
The floor on the jack-up was about twenty feet off the ocean's surface, but there were levels under the rig as well. We stowed the supplies on the dock, intending to come back for them once we'd determined that the drilling platform was safe. A metal sign affixed to one of the girders said
PROPERTY OF BLACK LODGE OIL &
GAS-A DIVISION OF THE GLOBE CORPORATION-AUTHORIZED
PERSONNEL ONLY.
I hadn't heard of Black Lodge, but Globe Corp. was massive. One of those big international corporations that seemed to be everywhere. They had their hands in everything before society collapsed: electronics, defense systems, financing, energy sources, telecommunications. They'd been one of the big darlings on Wall Street. Their shares traded for hundreds of dollars. Now those shares were worthless.
We approached the elevator. I took a deep breath and pressed the arrow button. There was still power. We heard the whine of an electric motor and squeaking cables as the car came down to us. The doors clanked open and we stepped inside. The elevator slowly rose. I tightly gripped the rifle and tried to reassure the rest of them with a smile. My fatigue was gone, replaced with nervous energy.
We explored the jack-up level by level, sticking together as a group. Tasha and Carol were cautious, but Malik was excited. He wanted to run off on his own, and I had to keep hauling him back, warning him over and over not to do it again. We talked in whispers and communicated with hand signals. The silence was eerie. Everywhere we went, the birds watched us warily. We found a skeletal arm on one level, and a disembodied head lying between two drums of oil. The head barely moved, ravaged as it was by the birds. It had no eyes with which to see us. Its lipless mouth moved soundlessly. The zombie's tongue was missing, too. I kicked it over the side and watched it sink. Then I wiped my shoe off with some greasy shop rags that had been stuffed into one of the barrel's openings. Finally, we climbed back into the elevator and took it to the top level.
The elevator doors opened and a dead man was there to greet us.
Carol shrieked. The dead man was dressed in dirty, faded dungarees and a red flannel shirt. A bright yellow hard hat covered his head. Time and the elements had not been kind. The zombie was in an advanced state of decomposition. His flesh and the clothes had melded together. His face was a gleaming skull, stripped clean of all flesh. A few ragged pieces of skin and matted hair hung down from underneath the hard hat. With no eyes left in the sockets, I saw right away that the zombie hunted by sound, just like the corpses back at the rescue station. It had been attracted to us by the sounds of the elevator. Carol's scream had confirmed our location. It reached for us, bones sticking through the split skin of its fingers. Malik raised his shotgun, but I knocked it aside.
"No," I said. "He's too close. The backsplash will hit us."
The zombie lurched into the elevator and we shrank away, hugging the walls. The doors slid shut again, bumped against the corpse, and then opened. The zombie turned toward them in confusion, grasping blindly. I took advantage of the distraction, pushing it out of the elevator with the butt of my rifle. It stumbled back out onto the platform, arms pinwheeling. Before the doors could close again, I darted forward and clubbed it over the head, hoping to knock it down long enough to shoot it. The zombie collapsed to the deck and the hard hat came off its head, spilling soupy liquid. Two grayish-pink lumps-its brains-splashed into the puddle a second later. Gasping, I turned away. Apparently, it had decomposed so badly that the hard hat was the only thing still holding its brains intact. When they splashed out over the deck, the zombie ceased moving. I struggled to keep from throwing up.
Malik fanned his nose. "Oh man, that stinks!"
I nodded. "That's the worst one yet. After all the things we've seen…"
I shuddered, unable to finish. Sour bile rose in my throat.
"Let's hope that it's the last one," Carol said. "That would be fine with me."
And it was the last. The rest of the jack-up was deserted. Once we'd finished exploring it, Carol and the kids got settled while I brought our supplies up from the dock. Basically, the jack-up was a giant barge. One end held the actual drilling apparatus. At the other end was a three-story building. On top of the building were a heliport and several big antennas. They even had a satellite television dish and a Sirius satellite radio unit, though I doubted there were any signals still being broadcast. Inside the building were the crew's quarters, a galley, a gym complete with free weights and an exercise bike, a laundry room with three washers and dryers, several restrooms and shower stalls, and finally, a crew's lounge with couches, a television and DVD player, and-much to Malik's delight-an XBox videogame system, a foosball table, and a slate-bottom pool table. On the top floor, there were also several offices. Placards over the doors said things like company man and pusher. I wondered what those were. Where I'd lived, company men and pushers had been very different things.
There were also half a dozen storage rooms. One of the supply rooms held janitorial and maintenance supplies. Another held medical supplies and other things we desperately needed, like toiletries and vitamins. But we breathed a sigh of relief when we opened the door to the last storage room. It was filled with food-boxes of dry and canned goods stacked all the way to the ceiling. The chief had said that a jack-up's crew usually numbered between fifteen to twenty people. I figured there was enough food here to last them a month. Since it was just the four of us, it would last us much longer, which was important since we could no longer rely on the sea for food. Not with Hamelin's Revenge infecting the fish.
On the surface of the barge, in between the rig and the building, was a fenced-in area where the drilling pipe and other equipment were kept. It also held a big garbage compactor. There were other pieces of machinery tied down to the rig to keep them from falling into the ocean. The fuel truck that I'd noticed earlier was also strapped down and the wheels were chocked. I peeked inside the cab and found the keys dangling from the ignition. At the end of the maintenance yard was a giant fuel tank filled with thousands of gallons of diesel, and a small trailer housing a generator. Beyond that was another big tank, holding fresh water, according to the sign stenciled on the side of it.
One thing that still bothered me was how the zombies had gotten on the rig in the first place. We'd encountered one, and saw signs of others the severed body parts and carnage. Had the lone zombie that we'd destroyed been responsible for the other deaths? If not, where were the rest of the creatures? The rig was deserted. And if that single, hard hat-wearing corpse had been responsible, how had he been infected in the first place? I had no answers, and thinking about it made my head hurt. There was a story here, but it wasn't mine. It was somebody else's monomyth, and it had ended badly.
I returned to the building. We set up in the crew's quarters. For a while, we didn't do much of anything. Exhausted, we simply sat there, grateful for the respite. Then we got ourselves cleaned up. I spent twenty minutes in the shower, letting the hot water caress me, feeling my aches and pains subside, washed away with the dirt and grime. It was the most wonderful thing in the world. When I emerged from the stall and toweled myself off, I felt like a new man.