39
“You got any fours?”
“Nope. Any kings?”
“Go fish.”
Anna had found a deck of cards in one of the galley cabins of the
Brilliance
. She, Stenner, and Wilcox were occupying themselves with a game at one of the galley tables while they waited for word from the rest of the team. The
Brilliance
was anchored in the center of the Charles River, and the day was getting hot.
The radio crackled to life. Keleher, the lookout, called from the top deck. “Stenner, we have company.”
“Live or dead?”
“Living, unless the dead can operate a Boston Whaler. Four contacts, all armed, coming up on our stern slowly.”
“Military?”
“Negative. Or they changed gear and went native.”
“Shit. Call them on the radio and…”
“Already tried. No response.”
Anna and Wilcox grabbed their weapons and checked the loads. Stenner limped up on deck and they followed behind. All were armed.
The boat with the newcomers stopped moving forward about ten meters from the stern of the Sundancer. The weapons on the Whaler were a mixed bag. A shotgun, a hunting rifle, an old M1 Garand, and a wicked-looking crossbow. The man with the shotgun pointedly laid it on the deck and put his hands up. “Hello. My name is Tim Straith. We would like to know why you’re here.”
Stenner called back, “We are elements of the United States military on a mission in Boston, that’s all I can tell you.”
The man visibly brightened, and looked at his friends. “The military! Have you come to help us?”
“Uh, no. As I said, we’re here on a mission.”
The woman with the crossbow shouted next. “We’re from Fort Warren. We’re in desperate need of medical supplies and information.”
“I can give you what information I can, but we haven’t got any meds, sorry.”
“Can you tell us when we’ll be rescued? We’ve been on that damn island for months! There are more than a hundred of us now. When is the government going to send soldiers, or have they just written us off in a quarantine?”
These people were completely ignorant of how global the pandemic had become.
“I’m sorry to tell you, sir, there is no more government. This plague isn’t just in Boston, or on the east coast. The entire world is infected. Every major city on the planet is dead or dying.”
All four survivors in the Boston Whaler looked at their feet. “So that’s it then,” the woman with the crossbow said. “It’s over.”
The man with the hunting rifle looked at her. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you a hundred times? There’s nobody left to save us. Nobody to come get us.”
The man who had the shotgun, Tim, sat in one of the fishing chairs on the bow of the small craft and began to sob.
Stenner felt absolutely helpless for a second, then he got angry. “Listen up,” he shouted, “I know this must be hard to take, but believe me when I tell you, if you’re on that island and you’re not near infected, then you’re doing better than most of the rest of the folks in America. Hell, most of the world is dead, you folks are lucky! You should go back to your island. I will speak to my CO about stopping in when our mission is complete. We can have a long talk and let you know what’s happening out there, what we’ve seen. The bottom line is you shouldn’t give up! You’re alive!”
Tim wiped his face with his arm and nodded. “Let’s get back.”
“Monitor channel six,” Stenner shouted, “we’ll contact you at some point.”
The taller man with dark sunglasses and the M1 shouted back, “And if you don’t?”
“Then we’re dead.”
The woman with the crossbow waved to them as they turned the Whaler around and made for Boston Harbor.
Tim turned to his three friends as he picked up his shotgun. “What do you guys think?”
The woman sighed. “We’re all going to die.”
“That about sums it up,” said the man with the hunting rifle.
The taller man with the sunglasses was sitting down, looking back at the
Brilliance
. Tim asked a second time, “I asked what you think, I know you’re kind of new to Warren, but your opinion is important buddy. You’re part of the family too.”
“Greg?” Tim smiled and picked up a wet rag from the deck of the small vessel. He squeezed the water out of it, crunched it into a ball and pitched it at the guy with the sunglasses. The man whipped around and caught it in mid-air.
“I’ll never get tired of that,” Tim said with a small smile. “What do
you
think, Brooksy?”
“We’ll have to wait and see,” the man said, looking back at the
Brilliance
, “we’ll just have to wait.”
Dallas yanked Seyfert back by his tac-webbing as a body flew past them, impacting the bottom of the elevator shaft with a sickening crunch. The yelling above continued, and the SEAL and the Texan were able to make out panicked yelps. Both men flashed their lights down and saw barely perceptible movements coming from a body a few feet lower in the shaft. Seyfert put a round in the broken thing’s head and shifted his beam up so he was able to see someone fighting on the ladder above.
“Get it off me,” screamed Henry. “It won’t let go!”
An undead thing had snaked its arm and shoulders through the open door to the second floor, and had latched its dead hand on to Henry’s dirty shirt. Dallas and Seyfert helped the colonel and Brenda into the loading area. As they were helping Linda, they heard Rick yelling, “Quit moving, I can’t get a shot!” A single shot rang out, and three pings echoed in the elevator shaft. Seyfert and the Bourne dove for cover, but Dallas, Brenda, and Linda stood their ground.
“Ricochets,” growled Seyfert. “Get down!” They moved further into the room as another body came crashing down. Ravi leapt into the room, Seyfert grabbing him. Another body fell, and another. Three more shots sounded, and then silence. Seyfert shone his light into the bottom of the shaft. “Dammit.” He fired twice, and then Phil and Rick were coming through the doorway.
Rick wiped his hand across his face. “One of those God damned things grabbed him and they both went down.”
“Where’s Henry?” demanded Ravi.
“Dead,” the SEAL said, shining his light into the bottom of the shaft. “Truly dead.”
Linda put her hands to her mouth, “You shot him?”
Seyfert pulled the screwdriver from the base of the elevator doors. “He was already dead. He landed on one of the Limas, and another landed on him. There was blood everywhere, I could see…” The SEAL sighed. “He was dead.”
“One of the students grabbed him,” Phil said helplessly, “and then the whole damn campus was coming down the hall. Rick shot two through the door, and then he nailed the wedge holding the door open. It closed before the others could get to us.” He looked at Rick. “Damn fine shot.”
“Too damn late more like,” Rick said
Bourne put his hands on Ravi’s shoulder. “Did he have any critical data on him?”
“Yes, he had—”
“Is that all you can think of?” screamed Brenda. “The data? A man just died. Your man shot him!”
“Ms. Poole, we didn’t come—”
“He’s dead! He was alive two minutes ago and now he’s dead because of you!”
“Because of us,” Rick whisper-yelled. “Us? Dammit, woman, look around! He’s dead because of this plague!” He pointed his finger at her in the dim light. “If anything, he’s dead because of you! Now shut the fuck up and do what you’re told, or so help me we will tape your damn mouth closed.”
Brenda looked shocked, but she kept quiet. Seyfert was already looking through the tinted glass on the garage door, but everyone else was looking at Rick, Dallas with a small smirk.
Seyfert broke the tense silence with a whisper. “Multiple hostiles outside, sir, a hundred at least coming this way.”
Bourne looked directly at Brenda. “Nobody yells again.” He picked up his radio. “Tin Can, Lead. We need a smash and grab, hostiles imminent, over.”
Seyfert was prying the elevator door back open when Androwski’s voice came back, “
Copy that, Lead, inbound now, thirty seconds. We have a visual on the loading dock doors. Be ready, over
.”
Seyfert climbed down the last few feet into the bowels of the elevator shaft and retrieved two hard drives and a notebook from Henry’s corpse. Dallas gave him a hand up and they closed the doors again. The growl of the LAV’s engines, and then the roar of the Bushmaster were heard. Tin Can was close.
“Seyfert, Rick, cover,” Bourne said, holstering his sidearm. “Dallas, you and I will hoist the door. Civilians, get close together in the center behind the weapons.” He pointed at Rick and the SEAL. “We need to do this quickly.”
Two steel L-shaped slide-locks held the door closed. Dallas and the colonel reached down and put their hands on the locks, ready to pull them and push the door up when the LAV made its grand entrance.
“
Lead, you have two Limas in front of the door, we can’t fire or we could hit you…disregard, they are tracking us. They walked off of the loading dock. Ten seconds, over!”
The rumble of the heavy vehicle was loud even through the steel door, and the group inside the building heard a hatch open followed by five quick reports. “Open the door, quick!”
The last was shouted, but not over the radio. The colonel and the big Texan slid the locks and threw the door up. Seyfert and Rick turned left and right and both shouted, “Clear!” The ramp to the LAV was descending, an army of the living dead thirty meters and closing. Androwski popped back into the open turret and got on the light machine gun. “Move it, people!”
Rick and Seyfert ushered the civvies in followed by Bourne and Dallas, and finally themselves. Seyfert slammed his hand against the red button and the ramp began to ascend. It closed, and he jerked the yellow lever locking it in place. “Piece of cake,” he said and sat down with his back against the hull.
“This is nice,” said Phil as he looked around the inside of the LAV. Stark didn’t need marching orders, and he gunned the accelerator, the standing occupants in the back stumbling. There was no way around the oncoming horde, so Stark plowed through them at medium speed.
Linda looked horrified at the first thump. “What was that?”
Ravi looked at her. “Undoubtedly an assembly of former Beantown residents.”
Eight minutes later, the LAV entered the Charles River.
“
Brilliance
, this is Tin Can, we are in the Chuck, with the city of Boston in pursuit. Personnel transfer will commence at the mouth of the river, there are too many hostiles too close, and the natives are restless, over.”
“
Copy that, Tin Can, we see you. Copy on the rendezvous
.”
Ravi, Linda, and Brenda were looking at the water sloshing around their feet. Brenda and Linda lifted their feet out of the water and put them under their legs on the seats. Ravi reached down and stuck his finger in the water. He pulled it back up and smeared his fingers together. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but Seyfert cut him off with a sardonic half-smile. “Relax, professor. We won’t sink.”
40
The orange and pink glow of the sunset was heartening, even if it was over a ruined town. The last vestiges of a dying day glinted off of thousands of small wave crests in Massachusetts Bay. A dingy olive drab military vehicle, looking much like a floating tank, stuck out in stark contrast next to a large pleasure boat in the harbor of the tiny town of Marshfield. The town had not been spared from the plague, and evidence of hasty retreats and watery graves were present at the small dock the survivors had chosen for anchorage. Several boats had been attached to a fuel dock when the dock had exploded. Burned pilings, and the ruin of several piers held melted fiberglass hulks that used to be boats. Bullet holes and brown stains covered a small shack near one end of the semi-sunken dock. A corpse was in a fetal position on the charred boards. Not much more than a skeleton, the body had been picked clean by sea birds and anything else brave enough to dine.
“I’d rather not leave her moored like this, sir; I think solid ground would be better.”
Bourne looked up from his torn and folded atlas, the GPS in the LAV having ceased to function through an internal fault a half hour before. “I understand, Stark, we should only be a few more minutes here and we can get underway.”
The grind of a bilge pump echoed through the LAV as a black-eyed Stark ducked back in the top-side turret. The survivors had been anchored at the last unburned dock for approximately an hour, working out how they would get to a small industrial park in the low hills outside town. The park was actually an NSA front for computer research and training. Ravi told Bourne and his crew that there were four buildings on three acres surrounded by a nine-foot-tall stone wall. An electric fence twenty feet inside of the stone wall was another barrier would-be spies or terrorists would have to surmount should they attempt to break in to the facility. In addition, the entire computer research installation was underground, and it was six miles away.
Not everyone would fit in the LAV, so another ride would have to be appropriated. The
Brilliance
would move a half mile off shore with everyone but the three SEALs, and Stark, Androwski, and Seyfert would commit grand larceny, stealing a local vehicle.
Two hours after they left, Stark and Androwski returned, rowing a small boat out to the
Brilliance
, who had seen them and moved to intercept.
“Where’s Jersey?” demanded Dallas, nervously looking about.
Androwski held up a finger telling Dallas to wait a second, his hands on his knees and breathing heavy on the deck. “With…with your new vehicle.”
“Ya winded, Navy?” Dallas folded his beefy arms. “Thought SEALs was tough.”
Androwski switched fingers. “You try rowing for half a mile, Chief. That is if the boat would haul your giant, sasquatch-ass anyway.”
Seyfert and the new vehicle, a blue dualie Ford F350, were in a good spot, and he would rendezvous with the team as soon as they radioed him. It was decided that after an hour’s rest, they would get underway. Stenner, Wilcox, Anna, Rick, and Dallas would use whatever new vehicle they had, and the rest would ride in the LAV. Phil adamantly refused to leave his scientist friends.
“I’m surprised you didn’t want to go with your wife,” Anna said to Rick when they were once again, anchored almost a mile from the beautiful beach.
“Ex-wife.” Rick sat on the plush couch and put his dirty, booted feet on the glass table, closing his eyes. Dallas sat down beside him.
Anna whispered to Wilcox, “Not surprised anymore.”
Stenner called from the above decks, “They’re out of sight. And none too soon, the beach has some tourists.”
Anna climbed out from below decks and made her way to Stenner. He passed her a bottle of water and pointed toward the coast. Two figures were walking the beach, very close together.
She stuck her hand out while she was drinking from the bottle and Stenner passed her the binoculars. She raised them to her eyes with one hand. “Oh shit, that’s awful.”
“What?”
“Those two dead people are hand-cuffed together.”
“Aw shit, that
is
awful… Lemme see.”