“Are you worried there might be something wrong with them?” Mercy asked, her face showing a hint of alarm. Next to her, Evan suppressed a grin. The walking dead were trying to eat them at every turn of a corridor, and Mercy waded into them like she was Special Forces, but she was still afraid of radiation.
The nuc shook his head. “I’m sure they’re fine, I’m just thinking about maintenance. If there were a problem like you’re worried about, you’d already be dead.”
Mercy was oddly comforted by the blunt words.
Stone asked, “What’s the deal with all the dead firefighters?” When the chief looked at him, obviously not understanding, Stone said, “Everywhere we go, no matter what part of the ship we’re in, we find unrolled hoses and zombies in firefighter gear.” He gestured at examples among the heaped dead around them. “But there’s no sign of a fire.”
Liebs got it. “That’s because we were at general quarters. Every sailor on board is trained in damage control, and that mostly means firefighting. General quarters is battle conditions, when fire is most likely, so lots of people without combat assignments suit up and prepare to fight fire.” He shook his head. “Fire on a ship is no joke. I’m glad you haven’t seen any.”
Chief Liebs looked into the faces of his liberators. “I can’t believe a bunch of civilians got it in their heads to board this monster and take it by force.” He shook his head in wonder and respect. “I’m glad you did. I’m just amazed you’re still alive.”
“We won’t be for long,” said Calvin. “We used up most of our ammo clearing this room.”
“You said something about an armory?” Evan asked.
The chief nodded. “I’m a gunner’s mate. We handle ship’s security and tactical training, man the crew-served weapons, and maintain the magazines.” He produced the key again. “We also run the armory.” He looked around at them. “We’ll need to get there if we’re going to survive.”
“Do you know where it is?” Mercy asked, and abruptly blushed at the stupid question.
“Yes, ma’am,” the chief said, giving her a smile. “It’s only about a hundred feet from here. We just need to get there.”
Angie was awakened by a single, muffled pistol shot.
She scrambled to her feet and yanked open the bridge’s main hatch, pounding up the metal stairs to the level above. “Skye?” she called, her heart hammering, eyes already welling up. She went over the knee knocker and into Primary Flight Control, looking around the small compartment at the uppermost tip of the aircraft carrier.
It was empty.
She approached the open hatch leading out to the catwalk overlooking the flight deck. It was still dark, but the sky was lightening a bit. There was Skye, her body seated on the metal gridwork facing away, legs dangling and arms draped over the pipe railing, head slumped.
“Oh . . . Skye,” she whispered, walking out to her. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” Skye asked, lifting her head. “I got him.” She gestured with her pistol at the body of an officer lying nearby on the catwalk with a fresh bullet hole in his head.
Angie sobbed and laughed and dropped to her knees, hugging the young woman from behind. “I thought . . . oh, I thought . . .”
Skye hugged at the arms encircling her. “The shot—I didn’t think about that.” She turned and looked at Angie. Her skin was the color of lead, her left eye a milky orb, but otherwise she appeared fine.
Angie looked her up and down rapidly. “You’re okay? What about the fever?”
Skye shook her head. “I’ve been waiting for it all night. No fever, no symptoms.” She held up her bandaged arm. “This hurts a lot; the bastard bit me hard. I hope it doesn’t get infected. Human mouths are dirty.”
Angie laughed and hugged her again, crying. “That we can deal with.”
Skye let herself enjoy the hug, and felt a twinge in her chest she hadn’t felt in a long time, a good twinge. She pulled away slowly. “My headaches are gone,” she said, then lifted her left hand. It was steady, without a hint of tremble. “That’s gone too. Angie, I haven’t felt this good in . . . in I don’t remember.”
Angie stared at the hand, at the girl, and suddenly realized that the gravel quality of her voice was all but gone. Skye had a nice voice. “Are you sure?”
Skye nodded. “I know my body. I’m fine. If it were going to hit me, it would have happened by now, right?”
“I don’t want to . . . to get too hopeful,” Angie said, “but . . .”
“I think I’m immune. The blood exposure, maybe it was like—” Skye waved a hand, frustrated. “Like a vaccine? Maybe the slow burn worked like that. I don’t know, but maybe it’s like a childhood disease; once you get it, you can’t get it again.”
“Rosa might be able to tell us,” Angie said.
Skye nodded. “I might still turn if I get killed, I can’t tell, but that thing had to have given me a full dose with that bite.” She smiled. “Nothing.”
Angie liked this smile. It wasn’t like the crooked, sarcastic lip curls she had seen. This one was real.
They climbed to their feet, and Skye holstered her pistol. Below them, the walking dead of the
Nimitz
had once more begun to crowd the flight deck, coming up from below.
“Ready to go to work?” Skye asked.
Angie loaded a fresh magazine into the Galil. “You bet your ass.”
Skye smiled again, and it made the other woman’s heart soar, compelling her to give another big hug. Then Skye touched Angie’s arm. “Now that I know they can’t infect me, I want a machete as soon as we can find one.” Her eyes hardened. “It’s fucking
on
.”
• • •
T
here was enough starlight, and the quality of their rifle optics combined with their elevated shooting position helped in their work. Nothing that moved on the deck could escape them, and with the superstructure’s location just aft of midships, there was nothing they couldn’t reach. Brass tinkled down through the levels of catwalk grid and spun through space as below, bodies crumpled and fell. At various points around the flight deck, where stairways led up onto the perimeter, corpses lurched up into the gunfire one after another, bullets dropping them flat or spinning them over the side to sag motionless in the safety netting.
By the time the sun began to peek over the Oakland foothills, their rifles and bandoliers were empty except for pistol ammunition. On the deck below lay two hundred fifty fresh kills.
The women slung their rifles across their backs and checked their sidearms, their next move a room-to-room hunt down through the superstructure. There had been armed sailors who had tried to prevent the ship from falling, and although they had failed, they would still be around, along with their weapons and ammunition. Angie and Skye would find them.
As they left the catwalk and reentered the ship, neither woman looked toward Alameda, and neither one saw it fall to the dead.
The sky was a cool pink as the sun approached, and beneath its pale glow, more than ten thousand of the walking dead flowed silently down the access road beside the seaplane lagoon and into the mouth of the main pier. Close to the end of her overnight watch, a young woman named America, positioned as a lookout on the stern of a World War II frigate, had wrapped herself in a blanket to ward off the chill, and nodded off. She was asleep when the horde began to move, asleep when they turned the corner and started down the pier, and she was only just coming around when half a dozen drifters made their way up the ship’s gangplank and found her at the stern.
She didn’t even get a chance to scream.
Among the dead were Alameda natives, drifters from Oakland and Sacramento and some that had crossed the Bay Bridge, along with the first of many that had torn down the fences of NAS Lemoore. Among these was a fighter jock nicknamed Rocker. His flight suit was black with old blood and ragged from many miles of travel, and his head flopped to one side.
Vladimir Yurish was up early, as was his custom, and he stood on the deck of the same vintage destroyer where only last night Maya had been, staring out at the
Nimitz
just as she had done. Vlad stood at the bow, which pointed toward the open bay, and quietly smoked a cigarette as he gazed upon the first touches of light on water. The
Nimitz
remained little more than a silhouette. A light, cool breeze tugged at his flight suit and ruffled the hair of the small boy beside him.
Ben, three years old, stood beside the pilot with his small hands gripping the wire railing encircling the deck, a mere sprout beside the towering oak that was the pilot. He was looking out at the water as well.
Vlad had planned a peaceful morning by himself before the others awoke. When he crawled from his sleeping bag, he walked away stretching and swinging his arms, trying to work out the stiffness from sleeping on hard ground. He quickly found, however, that he was not the first one up. Small Ben was seated alone on the pier thirty feet away from the others, playing with a little blue-and-yellow plastic truck and making engine noises. Vlad glanced back to Sophia, knowing she would panic over the boy’s absence. She was motionless in her bag.
Let her sleep,
he thought, and knelt beside the child.
“What sort of truck do you have?” Vlad asked, not expecting much of a response. Sophia had told him about the boy’s rescue from the street in front of the Alameda firehouse, and how Angie had run at the dead and laid waste to them with the ferocity of a she-bear defending a cub. Sophia knew nothing about the boy, and he spoke very little. Ben had taken to Vladimir at once, however, sitting in the big Russian’s lap without invitation and handing over a book to be read, or standing on Vlad’s legs and tugging on the man’s protruding ears with his little hands, laughing as if they were the most delightful two things in the world. Vlad put on a show of patient endurance, but he somehow always ended up near the boy, and Ben often wandered into Vlad without seeming to notice, casually wrapping a small arm around one tall leg. Sometimes Vlad would take great long steps with the boy clinging to his leg like a small chimp, and it never failed to make Ben laugh.
“It’s a blue truck,” said Ben. “And yellow.”
“Yes, but do you know what it does?”
Ben nodded. “It’s a dumb fuck.”
The Russian’s eyes widened. “A
what
?”
“Dumb fuck.” Ben showed him how the back tilted as if pouring out a load.
Vladimir burst out with a laugh. “A
dump truck
.”
Ben looked up and nodded, smiling as if Vlad might not be as bright as he appeared. Then he drove the truck up the pilot’s leg.
“Rrrrrrrr . . .”
Vlad let him play a bit, then asked Ben if he wanted to go for a walk. He did. They headed up onto the deck of the destroyer, Vlad careful to go slow and take small steps to accommodate quick but short little legs.
Now, at the rail with a fresh sea breeze making Vlad wonder if he should have brought the boy’s jacket, Ben looked up and said, “
J
is a letter.”
Vlad nodded solemnly. “Yes, it is.”
“So is
B
. I know some
B
words.” The child bounced on the balls of his feet. “
Banana.
Bird
is a
B
word.
Big.
”
The Russian leaned on the wire railing and grinned down at his little companion.
“
Jelly
starts with
J
. And
juice
. And
giggle
.”
“That is a
G
word,” the pilot said, making the boy pause and look at him for a moment.
“Is
good
a
G
word?” When Vladimir said it was, Ben smiled. “
Giggle.
I said that.
Go. Google.
That’s a computer.”
Vlad was looking the wrong way, down at Ben, so he didn’t see the horde moving along the pier. He couldn’t hear the shuffling feet or whispery gasps over the wind and the song.
“
Dog
is a
D
word,” said Ben. “
Danny.
He’s at my school. . . .”
The dead flowed past the destroyer’s gangplank, moving steadily toward the row of parked vehicles and, beyond them, stacks of plastic totes and dozens of shapes still in their sleeping bags.
“. . .
Dig.
Daddy
. . .”
Vladimir closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of his daughter, Lita, coming home from preschool, proud of a new word or song she had learned. She would dance in the kitchen of their tiny apartment, twirling in circles as she sang. His throat tightened, and he wondered when the memories would stop hurting. He thought never. Then he noticed Ben was no longer reciting words he knew, and opened his eyes.
Ben pointed past him. “Monsters.”
Vlad spun and saw the horde, thousands strong, about to reach the vehicles. The group slept not fifty feet beyond them. Knowing there was no time for anything else, he jerked the Browning pistol from his shoulder holster—he had upgraded to a bigger frame and heavier caliber—and fired a shot in the air. Ben huddled tight against his leg.
The group was startled awake, sitting upright in sleeping bags, heads turning, seeing the oncoming dead. Then the screaming started.
The creatures at the head of the mass reacted to the screams and sudden movement, and broke into a gallop. People scrambled for their weapons, mothers snatched crying children from sleeping bags, and a few people, those closest to the wall of drifters, panicked and tried to crab-walk backward, tangled in their bags and shrieking.
The dead fell on these unfortunates first, tearing them apart.
Vladimir lifted Ben in his left arm, his right hand gripping the pistol. “We will be moving fast and quiet, my little friend,” he said, his voice low. “Can you be quiet?”
Ben nodded and buried his face in Vladimir’s shoulder, small arms hugging his neck tightly. Vlad moved, not toward the destroyer’s gangplank, for he knew they would be coming to the sound of his pistol shots, and instead jogged down the deck on the side of the ship facing the lagoon. He kept the vessel’s long superstructure between them and the horde, staying out of their sight. It took less than three minutes to reach the stern, where a battery of aft-mounted cannon pointed back toward the frigate where the lookout should have been. He crept beneath the long barrels and looked toward the gangplank.
A dozen drifters stumbled up the ramp and onto the deck, dead eyes searching. Seven wandered away from him, toward the bow and where he had been. Five headed in his direction. He could hear them rasping, whining, and in the background, gunfire rippled among the screams.
Shit.
He glanced around the deck, looking for something they could hide behind until the dead went past, but the deck was bare, stripped of anything that might trip or impede tourists. Vlad backtracked down the starboard side, hunting for a way into the superstructure. Ben hung on tight and didn’t make a sound.
He found a hatch. It was locked.
Shuffling footsteps on the deck behind him.
Vlad moved farther down the ship. Another hatch. Welded shut. The screaming was climbing like an out-of-control choir, and there wasn’t as much gunfire now. The pilot ran for another hatch, this one at the center of the ship. Tugging. Welded like the previous one.
The dead that had gone to the bow discovered this side of the ship, coming around the end of the forward gun battery. They spotted their prey, snarled, and hurried down the starboard side. To the rear, the other five came into view and slouched toward the man and the little boy.
Vlad looked back and forth between the two groups, hefting the weight of the Browning. It was a close-range weapon, and he was no marksman. They would have to be
very
close, and even if he scored a head shot with all five of his remaining rounds, he would be empty before they all went down and would never get the chance to reload.
He thought about the water below. If he lost his grip on Ben, the boy would drown.
He thought about a bullet for Ben, and one for himself.
Never.
And it was that last thought that made him bare his teeth.
God,
he thought,
it is Vladimir again. We will not speak again, you sadistic son of a bitch. But I want you to know that you will not take another child from me. Fuck you, Groundhog-Seven signing off.
Vladimir hugged Ben close and strode toward the group of five, the Browning coming up.
BLAM. BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM.
CLICK.
With the slide locked back on an empty chamber, Air Lieutenant Vladimir Yurish stepped over the bodies of five fallen drifters, each one down with a perfect, black-edged hole in the forehead. He walked to the stern, ejecting the empty magazine and slamming a fresh one home.
“You killed the monsters,” Ben breathed, peeking over the man’s shoulder.
The Russian’s face was hard, and yet tears filled his eyes, his voice a rumble between clenched teeth. “Papa will kill
all
the monsters, little one.”
He rounded the aft gun battery and headed down the port side, toward the gangplank, right arm fully extended. A drifter in a janitor’s uniform walked stiffly onto the deck.
BLAM.
The creature fell.
Vlad reached the ramp, where a teenage girl, whose face would have been torn completely away except for the multitude of piercings holding it together, was walking up the ramp.
BLAM.
The head shot spun her right over the gangplank’s rail and dropped her into the oily water.
Ben hid his face in Vladimir’s neck and began to whimper. “Shh, little one,” Vlad said, descending the gangplank, “you are safe in my arms.” Below them, a river of the walking dead moved by left to right, an impassable current of teeth and death.
• • •
H
old the line!” Margaret shouted, standing with Elson and Big Jerry to her right and left, Maya and a few others strung out to the sides. Pistol, shotgun, and rifle fire poured into the wall of the dead as they neared their prey, clutching at air, mouths hung open and moaning. Bodies fell, but not enough.
Ahead of them, the white van from the senior center groaned and tipped sideways from the press of bodies. It let out a long creak and fell onto its side, windows exploding. The black
Angie’s Armory
van moved as well, sliding at an angle as the dead forced their way forward, tires dragging across the pier as it was pushed aside, and then leaned before toppling over the edge to land on its roof in the waters between the pier and the
Hornet
, sinking quickly in a gurgle of bubbles.
“There’s too many!” shouted Elson, feeding shells into his shotgun, several slipping through his fingers.
“Stand your ground!” the small Asian woman bellowed, pumping rounds into galloping creatures. Some were knocked back by center-mass hits only to rise again, while others were exterminated with faces full of double-aught steel buckshot.
Behind them, everyone was boarding the service barge that had rescued many of them from the Oakland Middle Harbor days ago. Older kids jumped to the deck while adults handed smaller children down before jumping themselves. A pair of hippies helped Larraine and her oxygen bottle to the splintered deck, then two more arrived to help with her husband, Gene, nearly immobilized by his MS. Some of the adults and older kids stood on the barge and used the edge of the wharf as a battlement, firing into the endless mass of oncoming corpses.
Margaret spotted a female zombie half in and out of a sleeping bag, crawling forward by pulling itself along with its hands, teeth snapping. She and the dead woman had shared coffee and stories of their pre-plague life only last night. A breath hitched in Margaret’s chest as she aimed her shotgun, but Maya’s nine-millimeter pistol did the job first, a single round through the eye.
Maya knew the woman too, and had grown up with her in her father’s traveling Family.
On the left side, a gang of galloping corpses broke through the gunfire. Elson turned and fired, blowing one off its feet, and then the rest swarmed him, carrying him to the ground. Snarling, ripping, and biting blended with his screams as he thrashed beneath them.
Margaret saw it, cried out, and began firing at the tangle of bodies devouring her friend.
Big Jerry grabbed her arm. “It’s over! Get on the barge!” He pulled hard, dragging her back toward the end of the pier, pushing her to the edge, forcing her to jump. A rotting corpse naked from the waist down galloped at Big Jerry’s back, lips peeled back from its teeth. Maya shot it in the side of the head, and its momentum carried it off into the water.
Jerry yelled for those on the barge to “Stand clear!” and hurled his three-hundred-plus pounds off the wharf, landing on the deck with a tremendous thud and a loud
POP
that curled him into a groaning ball as he clutched his knee. Maya leaped down behind him and spun, pistol up and ready, putting a bullet in the face of the first drifter to appear at the edge.