The Gathering Dead (26 page)

The bridge crew did as they were told. Some merely shrugged off the attacks as something to be expected. Others took longer to refocus on what they had to do, but they did it, one by one. Hassle watched this from his position on the bridge, and felt a stirring of pride in his chest. No matter what happened, the crew of the
Escanaba
were professionals, and they would see things through.

Sullivan grabbed the shipboard ICS handset. “Lookouts, Con. Stay sharp, we’re going to have to pass through those debris fields. Watch out for anything that’s lying right below the surface. Additional crews topside, we need all eyes on deck now.”

Hassle raised his glasses back to his eyes and surveyed the destruction ahead. The Air Force attack had been precise; only one section of the Brooklyn Bridge had been rendered impassable, which mean the debris in the water would be fairly localized. He gave the helm bearing and speed directions, and the
Escanaba
shifted her position from the center of the river and moved more toward the Brooklyn side. Her forward speed reduced to five knots, so slow that her knife-like bow barely produced a wake as it sliced through the water. More crewmen emerged on the main deck, clad in foul weather gear and holding large flashlights. Searchlights were powered up on either side of the ship and directed downward toward the water. Even though they were looking for debris that could penetrate the ship’s steel hull
—
or much worse, destroy her running gear
—
the lights revealed countless reanimated corpses floundering about in the river. They turned toward the
Escanaba
as if of one mind and thrashed toward the slowly-moving vessel. The vast majority of them had suffered violent, painful deaths. Even from his position on the bridge, Hassle saw many were missing limbs, or trailed their guts behind them like streamers. It was madness, total and complete madness, a horror show on a stage so vast that it was incomprehensible.

How are we going to survive this?
Hassle asked himself. And his thoughts weren’t about his ship or his crew, but about the human race itself. How could humanity survive what seemed to be a plague of the dead?

Knock it off. You have a job to do. Let echelons above reality figure out the big stuff. You just need to pick up some people before they become... non-people.

The
Escanaba
slowly picked her way past the debris zone around the Brooklyn Bridge, then crept past the smaller one surrounding the Manhattan Bridge. As they slid past the bridge’s stout pilings and emerged on the other side, something slammed to the foredeck, collapsing into a pile next to the
Nob
’s 76-millimeter main gun. Hassle heard a distant
thump
as something else landed on the pilot house. He immediately put down his binoculars and bolted for the port exit.

“Sullivan, you have the con!” he barked as he undogged the hatch and stepped out into the storm-torn night. Without pausing to zip up his coat, he scurried down the steps, made slick by rain despite their anti-skid coating. As quickly as he could, he made his way to the bow, moving from handhold to handhold as the big ship wallowed slightly in the wind.

By the time he made it to the bow, several crewmen stood around the huddled shape lying next to the bulbous shape of the main gun turret. They shined their flashlights on it. Whatever their beams exposed, it had completely captivated their attention. No one even looked up when Hassle pushed his way toward them.

The zombie was broken and battered, its legs snapped like kindling. Its body had been torn open by the impact, and a grisly black gruel leaked out from its punctured chest cavity. One eye bulged from its socket, and the left side of its face was crushed inward. Still, despite the incredible damage it had suffered, the ghoul still moved. It emitted a gurgling whine as it tried to right itself and crawl toward the clutch of Coast Guardsmen surrounding it. Its one good eye moved from man to man as it slowly inched along the rain-slick steel deck, using its one good arm to drag itself along.

“Holy fuck,” whispered one of the crewman, a female Guardsman clutching an M16.

“Never seen anything like that in my entire fucking life,” said another crewman, a short, slight kid Hassle knew came from Michigan. He didn’t seem to be repulsed by what he saw, which Hassle thought was odd. Hassle was at least twenty years older, and the sight of the oozing corpse slowly writhing on the deck like some sort of demonic snake almost sickened him.

“Somebody shoot it through the head,” Hassle said, raising his voice above the wind. When no one moved, he reached for his pistol and pulled it from its holster. Thumbing off the safety, he gingerly stepped toward the zombie as it crawled toward him. It hissed again, fixing him with its one good eye.

Hassle fired two shots through its head, and the zombie fell to the deck, motionless.

More gunfire from overhead caught his attention, and he looked up. A Coast Guardsman waved to him from the railing on top of the pilot house.

“One zombie dead up here, sir!” the crewman shouted.

From the rear of the vessel, where the helipad was located, came more gunfire. Hassle stepped back from the zombie he had shot and slapped a crewman on the shoulder, hard, getting his attention.

“Get a gaff and throw this thing off the side! Do
not
touch it! No one touch the thing with your hands, just gaff it and throw it over the side!”

The crewmen muttered their acknowledgements and Hassle sprinted to the aft section of the ship. Two more zombies had come aboard, but the crewmen there had dispatched them with shots to the head. No one had been bitten. Hassle repeated his orders to toss the corpses overboard without touching them, then returned to the bridge.

“We need to keep alert to make sure we take these things down the second they land,” he told Sullivan. He described how the crewmen at the bow just stood around watching the zombie before he had intervened and killed it. “Someone’s going to get bitten by one of these things if they’re not careful, and we can’t have that.”

“Understood. Connolly took out the one topside, and he and some of the other guys tossed it. They were smart enough to use gaffs. But we should check everyone, just to make sure. Just in case someone might be... you know, infected.” Sullivan clenched his teeth together after he had said that last part, his face hard set.

Hassle nodded slowly. “Have the medics check over everyone who was involved in handling the bodies. And have the chief of the boat put together a detail to dispose of anything that makes it aboard. And no matter what, those things get shot immediately!”

“Aye, sir,” Sullivan said. He saw to the arrangements as the
Escanaba
bore down slowly but relentlessly on the Williamsburg Bridge. The center section of its span was missing, and the suspension cables supported only empty air. But figures still milled about in the darkness, figures that occasionally slipped and fell into the dark water. Most were on the Manhattan side of the bridge, and as he watched, Hassle saw flashes of light wink in the darkness on the Brooklyn side. Petersen noticed them too and trained his binoculars on them.

“Muzzle flashes,” he said. “Looks like the National Guard and NYPD are taking out the zombies on the Brooklyn side of the bridge.”

“Good on them. The more they kill, the fewer will try to get to us.” Hassle ordered the helmsman to steer the
Nob
closer to the Wallabout Channel, which lay on the Brooklyn side of the river. The helmsman repeated the order and executed it flawlessly, bringing the cutter to within one hundred feet of the entrance to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Despite its name, the Yard was not a Navy facility and its piers and moorings were mostly vacant. Anyone who had a boat and who could get to it were long gone. The
Escanaba
plowed on at five knots, barely moving. It passed underneath the Williamsburg Bridge without any incident, and Hassle ordered the ship to mid-channel and an increase in speed to ten knots. The
Escanaba
’s diesel engines roared in response when the power was added, as if they had chafed at the mere five knots they had delivered for the past hour and half. As the ship left the shattered bridges behind, the crew seemed to sigh in unison.

Then the lights of Manhattan winked out, as if the entire city had suddenly died in its sleep.

By the time he made it to the cafeteria on the 27th floor, McDaniels was severely winded. His thighs felt like they were on fire, and his quadriceps spasmed and twitched, complaining at the demand placed upon them. Sweat poured off his face, and he coughed several times. He tasted blood in the back of his mouth.

Well, I guess I never should have stopped going on those fifteen mile road marches after all...

Finelly met him at the door. He took a moment to size him up, then said, “You look like shit, major.”

“At least try and sound respectful when you say that,” McDaniels replied, breathing hard. “Is the elevator here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did one of you guys contact Rapier?” McDaniels turned and leaned over the handrail and peered down into the stairway below. He couldn’t see anything down below, couldn’t hear anything, but he knew the dead were coming. And OMEN was leading them.

“We did. That Coast Guard boat’s approaching the East River now. They must’ve had a hell of a ride getting up here. Air Force just hit the bridges all around Manhattan, so we’re pretty much cut off.”

“Makes my day,” McDaniels said. He still looked down the staircase, waiting, watching. Finelly suddenly walked up and put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him away from the railing.

“We really need to get inside and button this place up, sir.”

“They’ll be coming up.”

“And we’ll be going down, sir. We can’t stay up here with a couple of hundred rounds each and shoot every stench in the city. Time’s up.”

McDaniels removed his helmet and leaned against the handrail, listening. He heard nothing but the wind slipping past the ill-fitting door above them and the slight sounds of machines doing their thankless labor. An army of the dead could have been marching up the stairs, but if they were, Cord McDaniels couldn’t hear them at the moment.

He straightened and nodded to Finelly. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road before a bunch of dead people try to freaking eat us.”

“Best plan I heard all day, sir. You want me to stand watch out here?”

McDaniels shook his head and pointed to the door. “Negative. Inside the hallway would be better, but we won’t be staying for all that long. Come on.” The two men left the fire stairs and closed the entry door behind them. After they tied it off with the fire hose, they set out in search of the others. They were waiting for them in the cafeteria’s dining room, standing near the freight elevator entrance.

“What’s going on down there?” Safire asked. It was a legitimate question, not a shrewish demand. Clearly, the scientist was finding a way to moderate himself, which suited McDaniels just fine.

Mindful of the young people, McDaniels quickly explained that they were in danger of being overrun from below. He turned to Leary and asked for an update.

“Coasties can talk to us on our frequency,” he said, tapping his radio earphones. “They won’t be in position to pick us up for another hour or so, but they’re on the way. They’ll hold the ship off the northern tip of Roosevelt Island, which is right across the river from us. Been doing some recon from the roof, and it looks like all the north-south streets are full of traffic, but a lot of the smaller cross streets were kept clear so official traffic could move cross-town. Still some abandoned vehicles, but we can make it around most of ‘em.”

“What about the ones we can’t?” McDaniels asked, voice low.

Leary shrugged. “Deal with that when it happens. I’m thinking we could push them out of the way, if what the first sergeant says is true about that van down there. But there is a barricade at the end of Seventy-Ninth”
—
he turned and pointed out the windows, but McDaniels couldn’t see anything through its rain-soaked surface
—
“with a couple of fire department tanker trucks. Before I joined Special Forces, I was on a fire team. I can drive one of those things and blast a path clear for us if that’s what it takes.”

McDaniels nodded slowly. “Yeah, that sounds great, Leary. We’ll worry about that when it comes, like you said.” He grabbed the shorter soldier’s elbow and guided him toward the rest of the group. “But we’ve got to work on getting the hell out of here, because those things are on their way up here. And OMEN is leading them.”

“Is it Keith?” Leary asked.

“I didn’t see him, but I saw some of the others. And there are other soldiers in the mix now, too. Saw some uniforms down below. If any of them remember even a tiny percentage of their skills...”

Leary got it. “Yeah, maybe we ought to get the hell out of here. But where are we going to go? If that boat isn’t in position yet...”

“Maybe we can find another boat and head out to meet them. Or maybe just push off the shore and wait for them in the river. I don’t know what, but we sure as hell can’t stay here for much longer. Let’s go, folks,” he said to the rest of the group. “Who’s got the keys to that truck down there?”

“I do.” Leary pulled them out of his pocket and showed them to McDaniels. McDaniels nodded as he stepped toward the waiting freight elevator. Its fluorescent lights shined brightly in the murky atmosphere of the cafeteria. McDaniels released Leary and grabbed Safire instead, and pushed him toward the elevator.

“We gotta move a bit smartly, folks,” McDaniels said. As the rest of the group moved into the elevator, McDaniels keyed his radio’s microphone. “Five, this is Six, you ready for us down there? Over.”

“Ready as we’ll ever be, Six. Over.” The static still messed with the communications, but McDaniels could make out what Gartrell said without having to think about it too much. He was the last aboard the elevator, and he stabbed the button marked G. The door began to slide closed.