It was at the end of the third day that Hartliss found us in the mess again, as I shoved down a third helping of some sort of meat with what appeared to be potatoes. Kate was sipping a cup of coffee that, given the amount of time she had been nursing it, must have been tepid at best.
“Tonight looks good, chaps.” He looked around, making sure no one was within earshot. “Can’t say when, but be ready. I left some clothes in your bunks for you; don’t put ‘em on til I come for you. Don’t want our secret to get out, eh?”
He got up quickly, looking down at us seriously. “It’s gotten right nasty out there, just so you know. I’ve been out twice, and there’s nothing on the ground moving faster than a crawl, if you get my drift. Don’t know about your landing site, but can’t imagine it’s much better.”
He paused, smiling. “Not that I thought I’d deter you crazy blokes, but just thought you should know.” Still grinning, he threw us a fake half-salute and slipped out.
Making our way back to the cabin, we tried to get some sleep. I moved the clothes surreptitiously under the bed and laid down, watching Kate make her way back to her own bunk. She waved at me with a half smile as she laid her head down, and I smiled back.
Sleep didn’t come easy that night, but it came. There were no dreams.
I awoke to Kate’s urgent whisper.
“Mike! Wake up! Time to go!”
An alarm was sounding, consistently bleating out some sort of alert tone, red light twirling above the hatch casting a Hades-like glow about the shared room. She stood over me, eyes quick and darting.
I bolted upright, still in a daze.
“Is it time?” Jesus I was tired. My eyes would barely open. Sam and Anaru stood behind her at the open hatch door. They wore the black and white camouflage fatigues that had been left for us, identical to the ones worn by the marines on board.
Kate reached under my bed and tossed me my clothes and a pair of boots, glancing toward the open hatchway as she did so. She ducked back into the room and pulled off her standard-issue refugee shirt as she spoke, unconcerned with modesty as she stripped down to her skivvies in front of everyone in the room. I couldn’t help but notice that she had nothing to be ashamed of.
“Some sort of drill or something. Apparently Hartliss thought this would be a good time to take a ride in all the confusion,” she answered, her voice briefly muffled as she pulled the new shirt on over her head and hastily pulling on the matching pants, pulling the belt through the final loop as she moved close to the open door again. She watched crew pass the cabin through the crack in the door as I followed her lead, tossing my pants and shirt in a pile on my bunk and quickly pulling on the fatigues.
The others in the room watched us mutely and curiously, unsure as to what was happening.
As I tied my boots over the heavy pants, I wondered what kind of drill they would be running under these circumstances. Anti-aircraft? Anti-submarine? Damn military always has to drill something.
I rose from the bunk as a man from the back of the room got up and spoke to Anaru. “Where are you going? Is there something wrong with the ship?”
Anaru shook his head. “Nothing wrong with the ship. Something wrong with him, though. He wants to go back to shore.” He paused, then said to the man, “Wanna come?”
The man backed off, shaking his head at me as he did so.
“You are crazy, you murdering SOB! Good riddance!”
Ignoring him and the looks his comments brought, I followed the others out the hatch and quickly down the hall. Crewmen rushed past, but our presence went largely unheralded in the commotion. Everyone had a place during the drill, and nobody’s place was checking on us.
The chopper had been pushed onto the flight deck and the rotors were already spinning slowly, getting ready to start in earnest. Hartliss was in the cockpit, speaking heatedly with a crewman through the open front door. He slammed it shut, still yelling into his microphone. The crewman turned quickly, sprinting past us into the ship. Kate’s head appeared from inside, hand motioning insistently toward us.
“Come on, we don’t have a lot of time!” The crewman must be alerting the Captain.
I jumped on board behind Anaru as the rotors spun faster and faster, kicking up wind and sound. I pulled the headphones over my ears as activity from the hangar deck caught my attention. The hatch had opened and Fred came lurching out, having tripped over the edge. Seeing my face from the open door of the helicopter, he sprinted toward me as five marines emerged behind him.
“Pancake!” he screamed as I felt the chopper lift off. He reached the open door as we hovered inches from the ground. He jumped into the cabin as Hartliss pulled up and back quickly. Fred’s feet still hung precariously out over the side as we moved over the water behind the ship. Marines gesticulated wildly as our headphones came to life and Fred threw his leg over the edge of the floor, pulling himself on board with Anaru’s help.
“Helo 1, this is Liverpool Actual, respond.” It was the Captain.
“Cheers, Cap’n,” responded Hartliss over the radio as he rose and banked to the North. “Just taking care of your overcrowding situation, sir. Be back soon.”
“You will return now, goddamn it. We have- ” It was cut off as Hartliss terminated the connection, leaving the intercom open.
“I think I bloody well know he’s not a fan of this idea,” he said calmly, pulling us to a level thousand feet.
Suddenly from the starboard side of the ship, six bright trails of light followed by massive columns of smoke filtering into the night sky.
“They’re shooting at us!” I screamed into the microphone, having been in enough military movies to recognize the look of missiles being fired.
“Those are cruise missiles, mate. Ground to ground; not ground to air. They’re firing on a ground target.” Hartliss spoke resignedly. His tone indicated agreement with the course of action but disapproval of the cause.
“You knew about this?” I asked, incredulous.
“What better way to get you chaps off the boat than during a live fire?” he said, banking to the left.
Made sense, I suppose.
“Orders from the fleet,” he explained, “Take out the heavily infested areas before it spreads. Other countries don’t want your disease, and nobody’s itching to help you folk right about now. Not a lot of friends in the world right now, apparently. ‘Cept me of course,” he finished. His jaunty tone was heartily out of place at a time like this.
“There were almost a million and a half people in Manhattan before this thing hit,” he explained as we banked slowly away from the ship. “Fleet figured this is a bloody good way to destroy a bunch of those wankers in one shot. Million and a half fewer carriers to worry about.”
I glued my face to the window, watching the six streaming trails of fire lift awkwardly into the air and arc toward the city, each of the six breaking off slightly in various directions, all staying on target directly into the heart of a city that had already witnessed so much pain and devastation.
Despite the nagging feeling that this was the right course of action to be taken, I was unable to believe the signals my eyes were sending to my brain.
“Holy shit,” this from Sam who, ignoring her dislike for me personally, had pressed her face next to mine against the window in a farcical semblance of intimacy.
It was as if we were moving in slow motion, the glare of the rockets bright in my eyes as they ascended, reached their zenith and turned to plunge quickly and purposefully to their nadir, six streaks of bright light heading for six minutely different targets within New York City.
Suddenly, six more bursts from the Liverpool in sharp succession. They were firing again. This time, however, the rockets reached about three thousand feet and veered sharply to the South, leaving a trail of fire and smoke in their wake.
Flowers of fire blossomed between buildings, illuminating the early morning skyline. Between one second and the next, vast swathes of the city were transformed into raging infernos of roiling heat and destruction. We could make out very little detail from our vantage point, but as we turned upriver, we were afforded a front row seat to the final destruction of the center of the world.
Buildings bearing the initial brunt of the explosions toppled against one another, causing a series of collapsing structures. Dust, debris and fire fell from above, blanketing the ground and infusing the air. In the streets below, creatures boiled out from the shadows of the demolition, ignorant of the fires burning around them, but pushed out by the sheer force of the blasts and the pressure of other zombies.
Avenues full of cars, trucks, buses and bodies became moats of flaming death as the city now destroyed itself from inside, the proximity of its structures now condemning itself to incineration. Flaming bodies could be seen running, shambling or collapsing in mute supplication, marked as undead by the speed with which they fled from the flames and debris.
The reasoning behind the strike was clear as we moved along the shoreline, crossed over where I knew the Holland Tunnel to be, and moved West, away from the inferno. There was no sign of life in the pre-dawn hours-no humans running for cover or crying out in agony. It was a city of the undead, and it was now burning in a hell befitting its occupants.
Over the intercom, no one spoke. There was nothing to say. We knew that this was only the harbinger of more to come.
From my side, a hand sought my own and I squeezed tight, knowing it to be Kate. We flew away from the light of the rising sun in silence.
Chapter 19
We flew over city and then suburbs, all touched and infected by the same plague that had decimated Long Island. Buildings burned as testament to human fear and folly.
Kate was the first to speak, more to me than anyone else, although there were no secrets over the intercom. Her voice crackled over the headphones. “He was able to get us some weapons from the Royal Marine stash on the ship. Only side arms and a rifle each with some ammunition, but you know…beggars and choosers and all that.”
From across the cabin Anaru handed me a pistol in a holster attached to a thick, military belt, followed by a short, stocky semi-automatic rifle and several additional clips for it, which fit handily into pouches attached to the belt.
“SA-80,” he said briefly, referring to the make of the rifle.
“Better than an ax from the sporting goods section, huh?” I said to Kate, holding the rifle up and examining the stock and barrel. She nodded in agreement, concentrating on and handling her pistol with more than a modicum of familiarity.
“You know how to use those?” Sam asked me from across the cabin, the sneer as evident in her voice as it was on her face, “Or are you going to shoot yourself in the ass before you can cap one of these zombie fucks?”
Although the make was unfamiliar, the rifle was similar to ones I had handled in previous films and I knew the basic handling procedures. Enough, at least, to prevent myself from serious harm. Voiding the chamber and sighting the piece in demonstrative fashion, I looked up at her, sounding more confident that I felt.
I had been trained in several different types of weapons, although rarely using live ammunition. As an action movie star, one was rather compelled to know the workings of the tools of the trade. A friend of mine from college lived in Montana, and although I rarely ever saw him anymore, when we were just out of college, he forced me to go hunting with him in Canada.
I had never been so cold and miserable in my life, but I learned how to fire a gun with real ammunition. Come to think of it, that was one of the reasons I jumped on my first action movie part. It was kind of exhilarating. I know that as good Hollywood liberal type I wasn’t supposed to enjoy the phallic American obsession with guns, but God help me, I liked shooting. Although, truth be told, when I saw a moose, I aimed high. Couldn’t bear the thought of shooting something so fuzzy.
Didn’t think I’d have much of a hang up about wasting any of these flesh-eating ghouls, though.
“I’ll be fine. If I shoot myself in the foot, you have permission to finish the job. But until then, try to play nice.” She smiled a fake smile, venom dripping from her gaze. Jesus. I wondered if she’d ever be laid. I wondered if she liked guys.
Better warn Kate, just in case.
From beside Kate, a meek, quiet voice. “Pancake?”
Fuck! Fred! I had almost forgotten him!
What the hell did he think he was doing, following us out like that?
Ah, yes. He wasn’t thinking. Mind of a child. Right. I looked at him and smiled, trying to reassure him. As I smiled, I spoke into the headset, “Hartliss, can you give Fred here a ride back to the ship after our drop?”
“Can do, but you have to make sure he stays put. Can’t babysit and fly at the same time.”
I wound the belt around my waste and made sure my weapons were loaded. I examined the rifle, finding the switch and selecting semi rather than full automatic. From what we had seen, we needed to take them in the head or not at all. Spraying twenty rounds into the torso wasn’t as effective against the undead as it was against their human counterparts.
I looked out the window, watching interstate and suburbs turn slowly into forest and towns. We rarely saw signs of human activity. What little we witnessed appeared frantic and panicked. No organized fighting, no fortresses of holdouts. Merely a week after the outbreak, the land appeared calmly destitute and abandoned to the undead. I sighed heavily. It may already be too late.
I heard Kate shift behind me.
“I was 19.” Kate said suddenly, peeling my headset from my left ear and speaking to me directly.
I chuckled, not understanding at first. “So was I. It was a good year.”
She made a face. “That first night on the ship, what I told you. You had a look on your face like you were confused. I had her when I was 19. Her father and I met when I was in college. A one night thing, but then nine months later… We share custody, every six months.”
“Good thing it was his turn,” I said, not knowing what else to say.