He had to find a place to hide.
Up ahead, some crewmembers crossed a walkway intersection and the senator froze like a baby gazelle trying to avoid detection by lions. They didn’t see him and he ventured on. He saw a companionway and descended to the next level.
This level looked just like the one he came from, he didn’t know where he was, but he did know the direction he was going, which was toward the stern of the ship. He kept moving. He came across more sailors going about their routines and he avoided detection. He descended another level and came across what looked like the laundry services for the ship, there were many sailors cleaning hundreds of pieces. He avoided that section because they would see him for sure. He descended another level and found himself in the engine room, which he did recognize, but there were many of the crew here as well, maintaining the power plant that was the heart of the ship. His ankle was throbbing harder now. All he wanted was a place to hide and rest.
Anywhere.
He saw a dark corridor; a light fixture was flickering intermittently and would fail soon. The senator chose that path and came across a doorway. When he opened it, he discovered what he needed—it was a storage room—he entered and drew the door closed, but stopped to glance down both ways of the corridor. Nothing caught his eye, so he closed it. He was disappointed to discover there was no way to lock the door from the inside, but he didn’t have the strength to look for another place, so he compromised and hoped he wouldn’t be discovered. He turned on the room light and it gave sufficient illumination. There was no chair or anything to sit on, so he sat on the floor against the back wall.
The senator lifted up his pant leg to examine his right ankle and saw the severity of blood loss. His sock had soaked up most of it, but he still felt a wet
squishy f
eeling in his shoe, which wasn’t good. He took off his footwear and then slowly peeled his sock off; some of the blood was dry and stuck to his skin as he pulled. Once he got it off, he saw the extent of the damage—four nail marks were dragged across his ankle—his skin was torn badly and the deep scratches were caked over, for the most part, but some areas of the wounds were oozing a greenish liquid.
“Oh my God!” he said in mortal fear.
He wiped his ankle with his sock, the act and the sight of it disgusted him, but he needed to clean it and there was nothing else available. The wounds kept oozing pus and he couldn’t think of what to do to stop it. He wiped it again, and then he reached into his pocket and got his wallet. It was expensive calfskin and he placed it in his mouth and bit down on it. He retrieved a gold plated Zippo lighter from his coat pocket and flicked the flame on. The flame danced in his eyes as he thought, but he saw no other choice. He bit down harder on his wallet and put the lighter to his wounds, he traced the fire across each scratch mark slowly. His skin turned to charcoal and he moaned hard in pain that surged to his brain like an electrical jolt.
What seemed to take a lifetime was finally done, he pulled the lighter away and spat out the wallet. He huffed and gasped from the trauma as smoke from his burnt flesh drifted past his tear-swollen eyes that were pale colored. It was too much for him to handle and he slumped over in unconsciousness.
He dropped the lighter and it tumbled through his fingers, off his foot, and
cling-clanged
on the floor. The seal of the United Sates was embedded on the side of it.
Along with a smear of blood.
His ankle, burned black now, still dripped pus…
• • •
A couple hours went by and the situation in hangar bay two was still in progress, more than half of the four hundred survivors had been checked by the display of many yellow bracelets that polka dotted the area.
Away from the group, at the far end of the hangar, where the aircraft elevator was, sailors were hosing down blood stains from the edge of the deck, where they had to shoot a certain number of survivors that were discovered with bites or scratches from the infected. The atmosphere in the hangar was a mixture of despair and hope as those that had been cleared watched as others, some of whom they knew as loved ones or friends; waited in line to be examined. The air was palpable, an almost veil over the uncertainty of their future, if they were going to have one.
Bear was still in charge, which during the time after the senator had left, he had brought in more armed sailors. Confident that everything was under control, he called over a subordinate.
“Yes, Commander Reyes?”
“I need to go to the bridge to report to the captain, I’m putting you in charge until I return,” Bear said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember, you know what to do if you come across any wounds on these people.”
“Yes, Commander, I do.”
“No matter how small the wound is, if they can’t explain it to your satisfaction, shoot them and be done with it.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Call me if you have any problems.”
“Will do, sir,” the sailor replied.
And Bear took his leave.
• • •
Two sailors came down the corridor on a mission—
“You realize that if the part isn’t in this storage room, then you have to go to the only other place that has it, which is on the other side of the ship.”
“Yes, yes, you’ve mentioned that before, three minutes ago, but I’m not worried about it. The part will be here.”
They arrived at a door.
“After you.”
“No, after you, I insist.”
“Shut up,” the sailor replied smiling.
They opened the storage room door and walked in, and the movement of the ship closed the door behind them.
They immediately noticed the man in the black suit huddled in the rear of the room; they couldn’t see his face because he had his back to them.
“What the hell?” the first sailor said.
“Hey, buddy, you all right?” the second one asked.
The senator turned in a snap and they saw what looked back at them—a dead man—
“Fucking shit!” one sailor cried out.
Before they could act, the dead thing snarled and sprang at them, it swiped at the closest sailor and grabbed his throat—its claws tore into his skin and penetrated his wind pipe—the second sailor ran for the door and the dead senator jumped on his back, it bit into his scalp and thrust its fingers into his mouth and pulled so hard that the sailor’s cheeks ripped. The sailors gurgled in agony as the corpse devoured them both.
• • •
Back on the bridge, Ardent and Bear watched the carrier’s aircraft return from the battle on shore.
“How long until all of our birds are back onboard?” Ardent asked.
An officer checked a screen, “A little under an hour, sir.”
They watched as a few helicopters landed on the deck and then moved over to the aircraft elevator and lowered to the main hangar. Out in the sky, several jet aircraft circled the carrier in a landing pattern to approach.
• • •
In the same corridor where the storage room the senator was in, another crewmember that looked impatient, headed toward the room.
“Hey!” he called out. “You guys in there?”
He didn’t get a reply, but he heard
movement f
rom in the room.
“What’re you guys doing?” he said.
He opened the door and was immediately attacked by three of the undead; they slammed him against the wall and ripped him open in torrents of spraying blood. The senator creature had its fill and ran off down the corridor. One of the two sailors abandoned the fresh kill and ran down the opposite direction of the corridor, but the other dead sailor kept feasting.
The dead were loose in the ship…
• • •
In hangar two, all of the examinations were complete and everyone was cleared and the ones that weren’t—were gone—plain and simple. A sailor looked out into the crowd of survivors, this particular sailor was the one that allowed the senator to go to the bathroom a couple hours earlier, now he was looking for him, but didn’t see him in the sea of faces.
He kept on searching…
• • •
In the carrier’s engine room, the senator creature was in the middle of killing another crewmember in a doorway, it was biting into his chest and neck, and then another sailor walked upon the scene. Shocked, the sailor ran for his life and the senator chased after him. The crewmember it was consuming slid to the deck and was dead, but a moment later—the lifeless body came back to life as an undead, jumped to its feet and ran off in search of a kill.
The dead senator wasn’t far behind the crewman it chased—the terrified young man ran to a phone and grabbed the handset.
“Bridge, engine room—” he shouted.
He couldn’t wait for a response because the dead thing in the black suit just swung the corner and came for him. He dropped the handset and ran.
“Engine room, bridge. Go,” a voice said on the handset as it swung back and forth. “Engine room, bridge. Go,” but they got no response.
The senator thing was incredibly fast and was catching up with the crewman, he didn’t know where to go or what to do and then he saw a fire alarm pull station—he ran to it and yanked the handle—strobe lights filled the corridors, along with a wailing alarm horn. With the strobes illuminating many corridors in the area, the dead could be seen darting back and forth as they chased crewmembers down.
They were everywhere…
In the bridge as they were aware of the alarm—
“What do we have?” Ardent asked.
“Sir, a manual pull station has been engaged in the engine room, sector seven,” a crewmember said. “Fire crews are responding, sir.”
The fire department section of the carrier was busy as firefighters were in an organized hurry to suit up and respond to the fire call. Over a dozen of them made way to where the fire alarm was triggered.
In the engine room area, the fire alarm strobe lights created confusion in the dead chaos, the undead were many now and moved in a collective horde in search of anyone to kill. The fire crew arrived at the beginning of the engine room and headed toward the sector where the alarm originated. Up ahead of them—
The horde was coming and the firefighters had no idea.
The first of the stenches appeared and ran straight for the fire crew upon sight. The firefighters assumed they were running from the fire.
“Hey, where’s the fire at?” one crewmember asked.
He didn’t get an answer as the dead runners attacked him and tackled him to the floor. The other firefighters couldn’t believe what they saw when the dead tore into their friend’s face.
“Hey!” a firefighter yelled and ran to help him.
“What the hell is going on here!” another firefighter shouted.
Then more cannibals came, about fifty of them.
They overwhelmed the unsuspecting fire crew and killed them all in splashes of blood and flesh. None of them had time to inform the bridge. The horde continued on, running through the bowels of the ship in a frenzied search for anyone, for any warm flesh.
Their numbers were increasing…
Rapidly.
In hangar two, it was lunchtime for the survivors. The one guard was still looking for the senator; he was at the back of the hangar, near the porta potties, when he approached another guard at a hatchway.
“Hey, have you seen that senator anywhere?”
“What senator?”
“What’s his name, the one in the black suit, chubby sucker.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Let me know if you see him,” he said and walked on.
The hatch guard continued his stroll back and forth, he was bored and it showed. He heard a muffled
thud
and looked around for the source, but saw nothing. He heard it again, more than one this time and in faster succession. He followed the noise to a hatchway—someone was pounding on it from the other side—someone that didn’t know how to open an unlocked hatch.
“What the heck?” the sailor said aloud.
He opened it and was tackled to the deck by three of the undead, they ripped into his body as his blood splashed all over them. The survivors saw what unfolded before them and they were frantic.
“Oh God!” a woman shouted.
The sailor bled out and died with the three corpses packed over his body and then they saw the survivors, over four hundred of them.
More of the dead spewed out of the hatch, dozens and dozens of them. They ran into the crowd and attacked anything within their grasps. The survivors suddenly broke out running, all of them, running in every direction to get away from the dead. People were trampling over each other and pushing anyone out of their way, it was a stampede of pandemonium. The security force tried to engage the dead and destroy them, but so many people ran past them, through them, to get away, that it was impossible to shoot at any of them, let alone defend themselves. The sailors fired, but missed a lot and actually hit survivors, or even each other, by accident. Many were attacked and killed at a frightening pace. The screams of the dying and the cries of those that ran for their lives were deafening and the tearing of clothes and the splashes of blood was the only thing that was just as loud. The gunfire was like the pops of a child’s cap gun. They were insignificant in this whirlwind of blood and terror.