Bear saw more of the chemical containers and grabbed another one, “Hey!” he called to the female sailor, Bear tossed one to her and she caught it.
“Throw it at them and shoot it!” Bear shouted.
She did just that and the container exploded into sticky fire at the feet of the dead. Their heads shook violently and their arms flailed in the air as they ran to get away from the hot, scorching flames. Bear tossed some to the other sailors and they all threw them at the monsters, fiery bombs exploded everywhere amongst the dead. The sailors created a barrier of fire between them and the ghouls, which gave them some temporary relief. They stood there and watched them burn. Ardent looked at the undead through the wall of fire, swarming as fish do in giant bait balls, circling around the ones aflame like tribal members at a ceremonial pyre.
It was primal.
A moment later and the ship’s fire system kicked in, the sprinkler system coated everything. The water didn’t help many of the ghouls as their brains were fried and they dropped.
They were drenched as Ardent looked at Bear. “We’ve lost her,” he said to him.
Bear thought about it, “Yes, sir, we have.”
“Goddamnit!” Ardent said under his breath.
It was time to leave.
He walked over to a communications station, picked up a handset and activated it.
“Attention!” Ardent said and his voice rang through every functioning speaker in the ship. “This is the captain speaking, to all remaining crew members, I order you to abandon ship! I repeat, all hands abandon ship!” he dropped the handset.
“We need to get out of here,” Ardent said to Bear.
“The flight deck so we can grab a helo, sir.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen up!” Bear shouted to the sailors. “We are leaving! We’re headed to the flight deck to get a chopper and get off the ship!”
Ardent and Bear led the way and the sailors followed as they moved away from the crematorium.
The sun illuminated the mayhem on the flight deck with frightening clarity. The bridge tower was now completely engulfed in fire that produced a thick plume of black smoke; it stretched into the sky as far as the eye could see. The undead were everywhere as they searched for anyone to kill and eat. There were a few normal crewmembers fighting in the midst of them, but they were being slaughtered one group at a time as the dead overwhelmed them. Some crewmembers and pilots attempted to leave in helicopters, but the dead gave them no chance.
One helicopter took off and more than a dozen fast moving corpses rushed the aircraft—stormed inside and killed everyone they could, including the pilots—the helicopter spun out of control and crashed on the deck. It exploded and burst apart into shrapnel that hit others, the dead and alive alike, and cut them into chunks.
Near the bow of the ship, Ardent and his group appeared on the flight deck through a hatchway. They saw the scene and couldn’t absorb the reality of it compared to when they left just under two hours ago. Ardent looked away from the violent scene toward the ocean and where his ship was heading—the San Diego shore was only two miles away—they were moving straight for it and nothing or no one could stop the one hundred thousand tons of the Ronald Reagan from reaching it.
The group realized there were no aircraft to be had—only death was left—and it immediately came for them. Right away they were in another battle as the dead charged at them and they opened fire. The stenches were dropping left and right, some within arm’s reach, and the sailors had no where to go, but towards the bow of the ship.
Towards the edge of the flight deck.
They retreated and kept a firing line formation; this was a last stand.
It was definitely their last stand.
Bear abandoned his shotgun for an assault rifle that he took from a dead sailor.
The dead had killed off just about everyone else on the flight deck and the gunfire from Ardent’s group attracted all of them. They were looking at a few hundred that were turning in their direction.
“Oh my dear God!” one of the sailors shouted at the sight of the approaching horde.
They reached the edge of the flight deck, only the ocean waited below as waves of water crashed off the bow of the ship’s hull. Two sailors rushed to the side of the deck and dove off haphazardly.
“No!” Bear shouted at them. “Don’t jump like that!”
But it was too late, the sailors hit the water that was some sixty feet down and they instantly broke bones and drowned.
Ardent yelled at the other sailors, “Remember your deep-water jump training, feet first! Go, all of you, we’ll cover you!”
The sailors wasted no time as they jumped off the flight deck, leaving Ardent and Bear to cover them. The security force leader, Commander Jansen, remained. “I’m not leaving you, sir!” he yelled and kept fighting.
The horde grew as it closed the gap between them.
“Bear, get out of here!” Ardent yelled.
“You first, sir!”
“Damn it, get in the water!”
The shore was less than a mile away…
Bear fired his last shot and his weapon went empty.
“Go, Bear!”
“Gimme another mag!” Bear shouted.
“Here!” Jansen said and tossed him a fresh magazine.
The mob of the dead was less than a hundred feet away, they were going to mow over the three of them in seconds when—suddenly—two missiles came out of nowhere and struck the deck at the head of the horde. The explosions vaporized dozens of them, blasting them apart and ejecting many off the ship. Ardent and his companions ducked and covered their faces from the blast because it was close, too close. The dead that survived the attack gathered themselves and got back on their feet. They continued to run at the three of them when they were attacked again—a volley of large caliber bullets swept across the horde and blasted them to pieces, spraying the deck with blood and body parts.
Ardent and Bear saw the origin of their salvation—a full size navy drone flew overhead—the dart-shaped aircraft streaked over them like an alien spaceship and fired its cannon again, destroying more of the stenches.
“That’s one of our X-47s,” Ardent said.
They watched the drone arc into the blue to circle for another pass.
“You hear that, Commander?” Bear said to Jansen, but he got no reply.
Bear turned to the man; he was on his knees with his face to the deck, dead.
“Shit.” Bear said.
Suddenly, the corpse jumped to its feet and roared for flesh as it looked at Bear.
“Shit!” Bear shouted.
The thing lunged for Bear and then its head exploded—Ardent shot it.
“Next time I tell you to jump in the water…jump in the water,” Ardent said.
“Yes, sir.”
Ardent saw that Jansen had a radio. He grabbed it off the body and tuned it to a certain frequency. “This is Captain Keller to drone operations center, do you copy?”
Static crackled from the radio and then a reply came through—
“Yes, sir. This is Ensign Hicks, sir.”
“Ensign, was that you who saved our butts?” Ardent asked with a smile.
It was dark in the drone operations center, its main source of light provided by the twenty or so computer screens that displayed tactical data and other combat information of the carrier drones. There were only six crewmen, two of which were naval aviators that sat behind drone control stations. Ensign Hicks was a twenty-two year old kid that looked fifteen because of his dimples.
“Sir, that was Lieutenant Van Lee piloting the X-47.”
“Tell him I said thank you.”
The pilot at the drone controls gave
thumbs up
to that.
“He heard you, sir,” Hicks said.
Something was going on in the control room—some kind of continuous noise in the background.
“Ensign, I gave the order to abandon ship, I want you and the others to get out of there, immediately.”
Hicks glanced behind him at the
banging
sound that wouldn’t stop, “We will, sir, we’re just gonna cover you until you leave.”
Ardent looked at the horde the drone had blasted—there were still many of them intact and they were gathering themselves. They would be at them soon…
He looked ahead—the shore was less than half a mile away.
“Son, get out of there now, that’s an order,” Ardent said into the radio.
Hicks and the rest of them in the drone operations center knew they couldn’t follow that order, even though they wanted to. The banging noise came from the hatches of the room they were locked in—the dead were outside their doors and pounding as hard as they could for entry.
One hatch was very near defeat; the latches and hinges were near their breaking points from the force of the dead. A one-inch gap in the hatch seam was the growing result of the efforts of the relentless ghouls. Many decaying hands were jamming in and out of the gap like stabbing knives. Their cracked fingernails scratched at the metal, some breaking off as they tried to grab a hold of anything. They were feverishly slamming their dead bodies against the hatch and their blood spilled in through. They were beating themselves into pulp to get in. The room had three hatches and the corpses were outside all three.
There was no hope of escape for them.
“Sir…” Hicks said with despair, “I’m afraid we can’t follow that order, sir.”
Hicks stopped talking and held his microphone in the direction of the hatches—
Ardent and Bear heard it, and they knew that those men were trapped in a tomb.
“Do you…” Ardent tried to think, “do you have any weapons?”
“Yes, sir, some small arms, but not enough.”
“We’re coming to get you out,” Ardent decided and meant it.
“No, sir, you are not,” Hicks said hard, “There’s too many of them; get off the ship, sir, save yourself, Captain.”
Ardent looked at the horde—
They were coming…
Ardent didn’t want to leave them, but he had no choice.
“What’s your first name?”
“James, sir,” Hicks answered.
“God bless you, James, and thank you,” Ardent said and his voice almost broke as he struggled to keep his composure.
“Thank you, sir, it was my life’s honor to have served under you,” James said proudly.
The sailors with James echoed the same in the background, Ardent heard them and even though he tried to keep his wits about him, tears tracked down his trembling cheeks.
“Take care, sir,” James said and the radio went silent.
“Sir!” Bear said.
Ardent knew what Bear wanted to tell him…
The horde was about to reach them…
Both of them strapped their weapons over their backs, turned around, and ran for the edge of the deck, just as the horde was upon them. Ardent saw the shore only a few hundred feet away and as they launched themselves off the deck…
The hull of the massive aircraft carrier hit the bottom of the bay—
The dead on the deck were jolted and tossed around from the impact force…
Ardent and Bear were in the air as they kept their legs together and their arms across their chests and they went straight down like spears, feet first…
Dozens of the corpses were thrown off the deck above them as Ardent and Bear hit the water and disappeared with white water splashes…
Below the surface, they swam away like the professionals they were.
They swam for their lives and so far—they still had them…
The aircraft carrier’s nuclear powered engines kept on giving its four huge propellers power…
The metal of the hull structure moaned and wailed massively as it dug into the shore. It finally came to a stop after it cut through all the sand and hit bedrock, but the propellers still thrust millions of gallons of water. They wouldn’t stop until someone turned off the engines and that might be never. The huge ship listed to one side and anything on the deck that wasn’t tied down slid off into the sea—some aircraft, including a few burning wreckages, and many bodies, dead and undead, fell off the ship.
The X-47 drone dived down from the clouds and fired its machine guns at the undead in the water and on the beach—destroying many of them with hundreds of projectiles—the drone ceased fire, pulled up and spiraled into the clouds…
In the drone operations center, Van Lee, the drone pilot, was happy with his skills, “How do you like that, you dead fuckers?”
The undead at the hatches were still hitting them with everything they had; the weakest hatchway now had a two-inch gap between it and the frame as the steel latches and hinges continued to weaken. It would fail soon and they knew it.
Scores of the undead wanted in.
Their roars were deafening.
The six men looked at one another…
This was their decisive moment…
“Are we gonna do this?” Van Lee asked.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Hicks said.
“Do it, Lee,” the other aviator said.
“Okay,” Van Lee answered.