Carney and TC climbed the stairs with the horde in pursuit, up two floors, ignoring side passages, always moving up. The stairway finally led them through a large rectangular hatch set in the floor above, held open by a pair of hydraulic arms. With barely a glance around the new compartment in which they found themselves, the two men worked together to press the hatch to the floor. It had a rubber seal all the way around it, and as Carney spun the wheel on top, it let out a long, pressurized hiss, locking down tightly.
The moaning from below was cut off at once, and then there was only a dull thumping.
Carney smelled corpses, but also a puff of fresh air. Looking around, they saw that they were in a long compartment with multiple hatches down the left side, more stairs leading up, and rows of shelves and hooks holding colored helmets and vests with numerous pockets. A line of clipboards hung beside a dry-erase board covered in acronym scrawls.
There was also daylight.
In the middle of the right wall was a wide hatch, crowded chest-high with the bodies of sailors, all with head wounds. The top three feet were open to the outside, and a blend of morning breeze and early sunshine passed through.
“I need some fresh air,” said TC, shoving the bloody wrench through his belt and setting to work dragging the bodies from the opening.
Carney searched the area instead. All the hatches on the left were closed, and he opened them cautiously, shining his flashlight and pointing the Beretta. Each revealed a small office or what appeared to be a waiting room. By the time Carney was certain no former crewmen were lurking nearby, TC had cleared the main hatch and stepped outside.
The older inmate followed him out of the superstructure and onto the flight deck, and for a long moment both men simply stood with their eyes closed, heads back, breathing deeply and taking in the warmth of the sun. When they opened their eyes they saw that the deck had become a field of fallen bodies.
“Someone’s been busy,” said Carney.
TC stripped off his body armor and shirt, letting them fall, and stretched his powerful back muscles, rubbing at his chest. “That’s better,” he groaned.
“You’re going to want that back on,” Carney warned.
“No need for it,” said TC. He turned and grinned at his cellmate. “I’ll go Tarzan for a while.” He lit a cigarette.
Carney went back into the superstructure, looking through the compartment for anything useful. He found no weapons, only paperwork, flight deck gear, and a tool belt hanging near the hatch. TC appeared silently beside him and made him jump.
“Stop creeping,” Carney said. “I don’t like it.” In fact, he didn’t like most things TC did anymore, and decided that the truth was he didn’t like TC anymore.
“You’re like an old lady, bro,” TC said. He started pulling off one of his gloves. “I want to show you something. It’ll blow your fucking mind.”
Muffled gunfire came from somewhere up above the stairway, pistol shots. They looked up, seeing only gloom.
“What was—” TC started.
“Shut the fuck up,” Carney barked, straining to listen. More gunfire, and then the distant voice of a woman cried, “Skye!”
Carney’s fist tightened on the pistol’s grip, and he started up the metal stairway. He hadn’t climbed two steps before TC’s wrench crashed into the back of his head. There was a dazzling white, and then Carney plunged into black oblivion.
His cellmate’s body collapsed and slid down the steps, back to the floor. TC took the pistol from Carney’s hand. “Sorry it ended like this, bro.” He flicked away the cigarette. “You turned into a bitch. We should have left when I said so.”
Blood pooled around the older man’s head.
From above came more gunfire, and a woman called out again, “Skye!”
TC began to stiffen at the sound of the name, and he mounted the steps two at a time, a hungry grin on his face. “Daddy’s coming, baby,” he murmured. “We’re gonna finish our party.”
• • •
S
kye and Angie worked their way methodically down through the superstructure, cautious on the stairs, taking turns at hatches and covering each other’s back. Pistols and flashlights probed every corner, every shadowy space.
They found navigation compartments with both digital and conventional chart tables, an entire floor dedicated to meteorology, and still another for radar. An additional floor was packed with a confusing array of communications gear. Some chambers were lit by the red general quarters lights, others with only the glow of computer screens and control boards.
They weren’t alone.
In a navigation compartment, a sailor who’d had his pelvis blown apart by an old shotgun blast was lying on the floor behind a chart table. Angie almost stepped on him, and he caught her boot in his hand, nipping fabric from her pants. Angie leaped back and Skye was there with a pistol shot. After that, they were careful to watch where they stepped.
Two ghouls were found seated in swivel chairs in front of radar consoles, seeming to stare at the blank, glowing green screens. They looked up and moaned before dying for the second time.
“I can’t figure them out,” Angie said, her voice low. “Sometimes they cluster together and stay on the move. Other times they’re idle, like these two, staring at nothing.”
Skye shrugged, slipping a fresh magazine into her pistol. She despised them and couldn’t care less about why they did what they did. They were nothing more than tangos. They killed without mercy, and that was the end of it. In that way, she realized, she at last discovered something they shared. It hadn’t taken much time after the end of the world for Skye Dennison to decide that her most effective weapon was, and would forever be, a hard heart.
“Let’s go,” Skye said, easing out of the room.
Angie stared at the two corpses a moment longer. “Maybe they’re dreaming,” she said softly. Then she joined her partner.
The next level down was claustrophobic: narrow corridors with a couple of intersections, every wall lined with gray metal access panels. Black numbers and letters were stenciled on each, once holding meaning for something now sliding dead along the ship’s passageways or already lying still with a bullet in its brain. The women opened a few of the panels, revealing complicated circuitry and switches. They decided the entire level had to be computer and electrical systems necessary to feed all the technology they had seen in the superstructure. There was no place for the dead to hide in here.
The stairway leading down, located at the far end of the access panel maze, was a different story. A drifter in shredded khaki—a slender, bald man with his throat blackened and torn—stepped up from below as they arrived, and growled.
Skye shot him. The bullet punched through his ruined throat and he galloped forward, reaching. Both women fired together, and he went down face first. More drifters surged up the stairway, clawing and scrambling, their moans long and eerie in the tight space. Angie and Skye stood close together, firing until their slides locked back, and they grabbed for new magazines.
The corpse of a blond girl no older than Skye was on the floor, two others dead on top of her. A bullet had shattered her right cheekbone and orbital socket but hadn’t pierced the brain, and she was down only because of the falling weight of her shipmates. The dead girl lashed out with both arms, locking her hands around Skye’s calf, and she pulled herself forward with teeth snapping.
“Skye!” Angie yelled, shoving the young woman back, kicking the biting face loose, and putting a round in the back of its head.
“Bitch,” Skye said, giving the blonde’s head another kick. Then she was firing again, quick shots that were poorly aimed as she advanced, entering Angie’s sight picture. Suddenly a corpse had Skye by the shoulders, snapping at her face, and she shoved the barrel of her pistol under its chin and splattered its brains across the ceiling. More of the dead trudged up the stairs, packed in close, and Skye stood her ground at the top, firing until she was dry. Angie was still looking for a shot.
“Skye!” she yelled again.
This time the younger woman fell back, reloading as Angie moved up and fired. She tried to take them while they were still on the stairs, and a few tumbled backward. Others pushed the bodies aside and pressed upward, their growling reverberating down the metal panel walls. Then Skye was back up and firing, and both women pulled their triggers until nothing else emerged from the stairs, and their pistols were empty.
There was grunting from below, accompanied by thuds and cracks. It went on for a few seconds, and they looked at each other.
“Don’t shoot,” a voice called from below, sounding hollow. “It’s Carney.” Boot steps on the stairs.
Angie and Skye let out pent-up breath.
The figure that rose from the darkness below was not Carney. This man had stripped himself completely naked; his powerful chest, covered in tattoos and fresh, bleeding bites, was heaving, and the bloody wrench he carried dripped with blood. His other hand held a pistol. The eyes above the mad grin were a cold, wild blue.
“Hey, bitch,” TC said, and shot Angie.
Skye reached furiously for a magazine and saw the wrench swinging. She raised an arm to stop it but was a moment too late, and she caught the blow just behind the ear. It threw her against an access panel with a metallic bang, and then there were two TCs, three, spinning and spinning. She sagged limp to the floor, blood coursing down the side of her head.
Angie was down, gasping, one hand holding her chest, the other reaching for her dropped pistol.
“Unh-uh,” said TC, raising a boot and stomping on her outstretched forearm with a sickening crack. Angie screamed, and TC silenced her with a second bullet.
The inmate cast the wrench and pistol aside. Grinning, he grabbed Skye by both arms and dragged her a few yards away from the stairs and the corpses, stretching her out flat. Then he crouched over her, drinking her in with his eyes.
TC slipped the boot knife from the sheath at Skye’s ankle and quickly cut away her combat vest. Then he slit the knife up the front of her tank top and sports bra, baring her breasts. He touched the tip of the blade to one nipple.
“Now it don’t matter if you infect me,” he said, beginning to cut away her fatigue pants, stroking himself with the other hand. “Par-ty time . . .”
They quickly realized that even though it was a mere half mile, the service barge was not designed even for the fringe waters of the San Francisco Bay. It rocked side to side with each swell, and on a particularly large wave it tilted so steeply that people screamed, hugging the deck and each other as plastic totes of supplies and a wooden crate of Claymore mines tumbled into the water.
Maya manned the helm in the small wheelhouse, trying to guide the long, narrow craft the way she had seen Evan do it. The vessel was painfully slow and the aircraft carrier seemed to draw no closer. Another swell cast the barge to the right and more supplies slid off the side. Someone shouted, “There! There!” and heads turned to see a gray-and-white dorsal fin cut through the water not ten feet away.
Maya wasn’t distracted by screams or any other sounds. She felt the thumping of the old diesel radiating through her hands on the wheel, felt the roll of the waves with her body. She tried to time her acceleration with the rhythm and remain on her feet.
Something bumped against the bottom of the hull. More fins appeared.
Just ahead and to the right Maya saw a body in an inflated vest wearing a helmet and goggles. The zombie’s mouth was opening and closing, but it wasn’t reaching. Its arms had been bitten off, and it bobbed slowly past them.
A boy lost his grip when a wave flung the barge to the right, and he slid toward the edge, yelling and grabbing at whatever he could, unable to catch hold, legs going over the side. A beefy hand clamped down on the boy’s wrist and Big Jerry, lying flat on the oil-stained deck, hauled him back in.
At last the aircraft carrier did draw closer, and minutes later the barge was in its shadow, a speck of lumber floating alongside a steel behemoth. Maya piloted the craft toward the stern, where she had seen the assault team’s two boats tethered and bobbing.
Green and black liquid pattered onto the deck, and all eyes went up. A sailor in flight deck gear was entangled in the safety netting above, reaching through, thrashing. He was swollen and green. People moved to keep out from under it, and a pair of hippies picked up the old man with MS and moved him away. A young man in a leather vest pointed a rifle at the creature.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Big Jerry said, still lying on the deck and holding on to the boy who had almost gone overboard.
The hippie considered for a moment and didn’t fire.
Maya brought them around the wide back end of the carrier, its presence seeming to stabilize the movement of the water around it. She drove the barge in, tried to reverse too late, and crumpled the bow against haze-gray steel, throwing people off their feet.
Evan rammed a dock, I rammed an aircraft carrier,
Maya thought.
I win.
They tied off quickly, and Margaret began getting them together, keeping an eye on another zombie tangled in the netting directly above them. This one wasn’t green, but it looked like it was working itself free, wiggling toward the edge.
“Gather food and water, and don’t forget flashlights,” Margaret barked. “Everyone carries a weapon and as much ammo as you can.”
The group moved quickly, stuffing backpacks and shoulder bags. One man opened the crate of antitank rocket launchers, but Margaret told him to fill a bag with rifle ammunition instead. She kept an eye on the creature above. It had freed itself and was crawling over. Margaret readied her shotgun as the zombie hurled itself over the netting.
It dropped, missed the barge, and sank.
Maya had been watching too, gripping her ice-climbing pick. She let out a shaky, silent laugh as it went under.
When she was satisfied everyone was ready, Margaret told them to stay close and stay together. Then she went through the hatch at the swimmer’s platform and entered
Nimitz
, followed by a long line of people. One man helped Larraine along as the old woman sucked at her oxygen, eyes wide above the mask. Two others carried her husband, Gene, stoic and uncomplaining, eyes closed against his pain. Some of the women shepherded the orphans, and Sophia walked in a silent daze, not speaking. Big Jerry insisted on going last.
“You don’t need a gimpy fat guy blocking a stairway in an emergency,” he told them, limping and trying to take pressure off his blown knee, using a shotgun barrel as a cane. “Of course it would take them so long to eat me,” he added, “that the rest of you could make a clean escape.”
It didn’t get any laughs, and Jerry decided that was why he was an
amateur
comic.
• • •
T
here were no messages left for them, no sign of where the assault group had gone. But then they hadn’t been expecting the Alameda refugees to follow on their own. Margaret decided to take them up, perhaps reach the open space of the flight deck where at least they could see their attackers coming and have an open field of fire.
Their upward progress felt like an inchworm scaling a redwood. People froze at the sound of a distant rattle or bang; frightened voices rose when a moan echoed from somewhere above. Starting and stopping, backpacks bumping into faces, flashlight beams crawling nervously in every direction.
The smallest of the children were crying.
The adults tried to shush them, to distract them, but it was dark, it smelled bad, the grown-ups were visibly shaken, and even these little ones knew that monsters were real, and they ate little kids. Their cries and whimpering echoed and carried, and this ratcheted up the panic level within the entire group.
The sound was a summons, and it was answered. The dead from multiple levels homed in on it and started moving.
The head of the group reached a chamber where
MHG
was stenciled on the wall, and like those who had gone before them, they had a choice of three closed hatches or more stairs. Wanting the flight deck, Margaret started moving up.
The dead started moving down.
A sailor in a shredded hospital gown descended, gray legs and feet marching stiffly on the risers. The sailor moaned, and the sound was picked up by others behind him.
“Another way!” Margaret shouted, triggering her shotgun. The buckshot shredded the sailor’s features and sent his limp form tumbling down the stairs. More followed.
Maya threw the dog lever on a hatch to the left, shining her flashlight down an empty corridor. She went through and waved for the others to follow. Margaret’s shotgun roared again, and now all the children were wailing. The adults herded them quickly along as two men joined Margaret at the stairs, firing alongside her. Children covered their ears and hurried through the hatch, one little girl barking her shin on the knee knocker. A mother swept the shrieking girl into her arms and followed the others.
Big Jerry watched them.
Too slow,
he thought,
they’re going too slow.
Then he saw the dog handle on one of the other hatches slide up, the metal door slowly swinging open. A gray hand curled around the door frame. The big man planted his wounded leg and charged the hatch, hurling his weight against it. The slam severed four thin fingers, which scattered at his feet.
“Get moving,” he shouted, shoving the handle back in place.
Slowly, slowly, the refugees filed into the new hallway, pushing the people ahead of them, urging them to hurry, hurry.
The stairway was jammed with the dead, and Margaret and the hippies took the opportunity to reload. When the last refugee went through the hatch, Jerry hobbled after them as one of the hippies took over his dog handle. Margaret produced a roll of duct tape from her backpack and strapped the handle down, putting on multiple layers.
“My dad says you can fix anything with this stuff,” she said through clenched teeth. Then she chased the hippies through the new opening and slammed it shut behind her, going to work again with the duct tape.
Up at the head of the refugee line, Maya led with her flashlight and pistol, checking openings, coming to an intersection. She knew Margaret wanted more stairs, and since she didn’t see any here, Maya led them straight across. The intermittent lighting revealed nothing waiting for them up ahead, at least not in the passage, but she didn’t accept that as safety. She was careful at every door and opening, thankfully able to avoid the pressure of the frantic voices behind her. She couldn’t hear the crying children, but she sensed it in the air, knew that the line behind her was making the kind of noise that would travel great distances in these steel tunnels. It was going to bring the dead down on them. She knew that too.
Her flashlight came to rest on a hatch at the end of the passage marked
FANTAIL
. It was a few inches ajar, and she peeked through the opening. She saw daylight, and lots of it, along with fresh sea air, and a high, wide open space. There were drifters moving in there too, but within her limited view she couldn’t see too many. Maya turned to pass along what she had found and immediately felt the heat of frustration in her cheeks. Most of the people here couldn’t sign, and even if they could, signing in the dark was pointless.
Maya panned her flashlight over those behind her and saw a man named Clyde who, for as long as she could remember, had been the Family’s resident auto mechanic. He was carrying a lever-action Winchester rifle and wore two revolvers like an Old West gunfighter. Maya grabbed his shirt, hauled him to the door, pointed two fingers at her eyes, and then pointed at the opening.
Clyde looked through the hatch, then up at her, and nodded.
Maya made a talking gesture with her hand and waved at the group. Clyde nodded again and went back down the line, sharing what he had seen. Within a few minutes, Margaret and a dozen armed people joined her at the hatch. Maya pulled it open, and they went in firing.
The fantail of the
Nimitz
was a lofty, airy chamber three decks high, level with the hangar deck, and divided from that space by a thick, steel fire wall. Aft was the big rectangular opening seen from outside, sun, sea, and sky revealed beyond, as well as a view of the haunted city that had been San Francisco. The air in here was fresh and untainted, despite the presence of the dead, and there was no need of lighting.
Within the space stood several large metal stands where jet engines could be mounted and test-fired out the opening, two of which held partially disassembled Super Hornet fighter engines. In the center closest to the open air stood a pair of gigantic spools, tightly wound with cable and affixed with what appeared to be long, ventilated steel tubes. The refugees couldn’t even guess at their purpose. Small forklifts and gang boxes of tools were scattered across the floor space.
On the wall nearest to the group, and on the far wall, narrow steel ladderways led to catwalks and hatches on all three levels. On the floor level alone, no less than a dozen wall and deck hatches stood open.
There were more zombies in the fantail than Maya had glimpsed through her narrow view, and they reacted to the gunfire at once. Some fell to the first volley, and the rest began angling in from every direction. More entered the space through hatches, tumbling down catwalk stairs or flipping over railings, rising immediately, unmindful of fractured bones. Those unable to walk, crawled.
Maya, Margaret, and the hippies tried to stay in a line as they moved forward, but they were untrained, and very quickly the attack disintegrated into individual battles where lone refugees reloaded and fired as fast as they could at whatever they saw.
A dozen sailors went down. Then a hippie shrieked as he was pulled to the floor by dead hands. More zombies collapsed, but fresh replacements shuffled through open hatches. Margaret saw this happening, spotted Clyde, and ran to him.
“Find some chain or cable and start locking down these hatches.” Margaret had to shout to be heard above the gunfire.
The hippie shook his head. “There’s no way! We have to go back!”
Margaret looked over at the hatch through which they had come, seeing crying children being moved into the fantail, followed by two men carrying Larraine’s husband. Gunfire and muzzle flashes came from the corridor behind them.
“There is no back,” the woman said. “Get moving or we’re all dead.”
• • •
B
ig Jerry heard the duct tape let go with a ripping sound, and he put his flashlight on the hatch to his rear. The dead had managed to force the dog handle up despite the impromptu lock, and now they poured into a passageway filled with the helpless and sick.
The comic leaned against a wall, tucked the flashlight under an armpit, and opened up with the shotgun, trying to be calm and precise as Angie West had taught him. They hadn’t had many lessons.
“Get them out of here,” Jerry bellowed to no one in particular, firing three times, cutting down an avionics technician, a basic seaman, and a lieutenant commander. The empty shell hulls rattled at his feet. The line of refugees screamed and moved forward. Jerry fed fresh shells up the tube, trying to think of any jokes he knew about zombies.
What do you call a zombie cow? Dead meat.
His shotgun decapitated a Navy plumber.
That one sucked. I wouldn’t even try it onstage.
A blast cut a female sailor in half, and her fellow corpses trampled her torso even as she tried to drag it forward.
Where do zombies come from? Rotterdamned.
Jerry made a face as he blasted a boy in a green jersey, and then another in white.
That one sucked even worse. It was a wonder I got any bookings at all.
A glance over his shoulder told him the corridor was emptying, but slowly. His knee was the size of a cantaloupe and pulsing, and the dead came on steadily. He fired, racked a shell, fired, racked, fired. Not every trigger pull resulted in a head shot, and the dead were relentless, the misses not slowing them in any way. A couple more shots and he would be empty. They would never let him reload. At least he had bought some time for the others.
What do you call a fat guy who runs out of shells? A feast.
CLICK.
The shotgun trigger snapped back empty, and he reached for his ammo pouch as they galloped at him, knowing he would never make it.