The Tide: Breakwater (Tide Series Book 2) (12 page)

Hands slapped against the windows of the cafeteria’s entrance, and more cries escaped from under the door.

“Outside!” Abby managed between gasping breaths. She directed them toward the front of the hospital.

Navid didn’t look back. The sounds of clicking footsteps followed them as they ran toward the lobby. More creatures—many in hospital gowns, others in scrubs—turned toward them when they made it to the atrium. Their hunting cries joined with the yells of the other crazies. At least two dozen blocked their way outside.

Abby’s mouth dropped, and her eyes went wide. She froze in horror. The monsters started to run at them.

“Move!” Navid yelled. He dragged her with him toward another hallway and turned left at an intersection. The cacophony of wails and screeches chased after them. His lungs burned. He shoved through a door to another stairwell. This one was bathed in darkness; no emergency lights pierced the shadows. Outside, the crazies churned down the hallway, past where he’d turned left. Maybe they’d lost them.

Navid jumped when a face pressed itself against the window of the stairwell. Two bloodshot eyes stared at him above a crooked nose. The teeth chattered, and the crazy slapped the door.

“Let’s go!” Navid and Abby took the stairs two at a time.

“Where?”

Navid racked his mind. There would be no going outside. There would be no going back to the kitchen or cafeteria. The crazies stood between him and the graduate student office.

But there was one other place they could go. The place where they had usually spent over eight hours a day, back when the world wasn’t full of twisted abominations.

“The lab!” Navid said. “Let’s get to the lab!”

They dashed up the stairs until they came to another landing. Navid slowed. The sounds of the crazy struggling with the door downstairs followed them, but he no longer heard the telltale pounding feet. The hunting cries of the swarm of crazies seemed lost in the distance. They ran up one more flight of stairs, and Navid led them out into another hallway.

This one was empty. No trash strewn about. No lurking crazies. Only silence and darkness. Navid breathed a sigh of relief. They crept toward the door to the Neurodegenerative Drug and Drug Delivery Research lab, where he and Abby worked. He jiggled the door handle, but it didn’t open.

“Locked,” he said. Abby shot him a worried expression. “No problem. Just a second.” He dug into his pocket and took out a keychain. “Still got these.”

He unlocked the door, and they went inside. He checked between the lab benches and lab equipment, but no crazies showed themselves.

“It’s clear,” he reported.

“Good,” Abby said. She started shoving a bookshelf in front of the lab’s door. “Let’s block this off.”

They pushed another shelf to the makeshift barricade and pulled the heavy cart with the liquid nitrogen tank to reinforce the shelves. Any loose, heavy objects soon found themselves stacked against the door. After ten minutes of reinforcing their barricade, Abby slumped next to it and wiped the sweat from her brow.

Navid trudged to one of the lab benches and tentatively twisted one of the handles of the faucet. No water. But he felt a small sense of victory when he saw a squirt bottle full of tap water used to clean lab scoopulas, forceps, and other small tools. Every lab training video and course he had taken advised him not to drink it, but his thirst told him he didn’t have a choice.

He took a sip of the room-temperature water and then offered it to Abby.

“Thanks.” She gulped down a third of the bottle before handing it back.

Navid dropped to the floor beside her. “Too bad we don’t have anything to eat.”

Abby smiled and reached into her pocket. She took out a handful of granola bars. “It won’t last long, but we got something.”

They shared one bar, agreeing to ration the rest while they figured out their next move.

“So what do we do now?” Abby asked.

Navid pulled her close to him, and they sat, sides pressed together. “We wait,” he said. “We wait, and we pray.”

––––––––

G
lenn watched from the cargo bay as the Zodiacs sped off. A foamy wake followed the small craft.

The words Lauren had delivered still stung: “You aren’t cleared. Your bone density biomarkers are showing abnormally high bone loss.”

He felt frail and weak despite the muscles he’d worked so hard to maintain. Beneath them, according to Lauren, his skeletal system had suffered from the chelation therapy.

Thomas sidled up beside Glenn. He stared after Dom and the others. “Tough to see them go while we stay, huh?”

Glenn nodded solemnly.

“Now you know how I feel every time Dom demands I stay here while he plays cowboy.” He patted Glenn’s back. “You look like you could use a rest. The therapy hit ya that hard?”

“I’m a lab experiment.” Glenn shrugged. The Zodiacs turned into small flecks fading into the horizon. “Lauren said since I was one of their first patients, they overestimated the dosage I needed. They thought I’d need an extra-large dose given my size.”

“Is it permanent?”

“No, Lauren thinks as long as I continue to exercise moderately, it’s just a matter of time.” The bay doors started to close with a mechanical grind. Glenn’s eyes adjusted to the dim lights of the cargo bay. “I hate sitting on the sidelines like this.”

“Join the club.” Thomas gave him a knowing grin before exiting through a hatch to the interior decks.

Left alone, Glenn’s thoughts returned to the other Hunters. It wasn’t just the warriors on this mission; Lauren and her medical team had gone, too. Maybe it was a foolish, antiquated notion, but he wanted to be there to help Lauren. He wanted to protect her if things turned sour—which, with the Skulls, seemed inevitable.

He prayed he was wrong, and he pulled open the hatch Thomas had gone through. He vowed to make himself useful. But if he wasn’t going to be cleared to fight in the near future, he needed to find a new job. He could keep talking to Amir down in the brig. The Iranian mechanic might have new tidbits of info to help uncover the mystery of the Oni Agent’s outbreak. After all, Amir had been the only worker aboard the IBSL who had been saved from the Skulls and the rig’s destruction. He had to know
something.
But each conversation with the man seemed to end with the same response: “I don’t know.”

As Glenn strode through the empty passageway, he strolled by the medical bay. He knew Lauren was under immense pressure to develop a cure or a vaccine while having her team perform an endless battery of experiments in those occasional moments they weren’t trying to save someone’s life.

A thought struck him, and he whirled around. He barged into the medical bay and went to a shelf of textbooks near the entrance to the laboratory. He saw Divya working beyond the clear acrylic partition in the lab, but her focus remained on the plastic dishes and tubes on a lab bench.

Maybe it was foolish—maybe he had no business studying a subject he hadn’t touched since his undergraduate years. But Glenn picked up one of the books anyway. If he couldn’t battle the Skulls with a rifle, maybe he could do battle with the Oni Agent armed with a pipette and lab coat. He couldn’t help the grin cutting across his face at the ludicrous idea, but at least it kept his mind from dwelling on the mission underway without him.

***

S
unlight glinted off the whitecaps in the choppy waters. The
Queen of the Bay
was anchored in the middle of the Chesapeake. Around her floated a veritable armada of seacraft, though most paled in size compared to the two-hundred-foot-long dinner cruise ship. Dom had once taken his ex-wife, Bethany, on one of those cruises, though he’d sailed out from Baltimore. It was a romantic way to spend an evening drinking, dancing, and enjoying the sunset while at sea. A far cry from the floating doomsday ship that it was now.

He crouched over the prow of the Zodiac as it bounced on a wave, his fingers tight around the rope tracing the rubber gunwale. The sun climbed into the sky off their starboard bow. Dom found it hard to believe they had been defending the chopper against the Skull onslaught only hours ago, and now they found themselves embarking on yet another rendezvous with the beasts.

It had torn him up to say goodbye to his daughters once again, to leave them on the ship while he went off to fight. Especially when Kara was still lying unconscious and injured. But he had no choice. He had a crew to lead and a mission to accomplish.

Meredith gripped the gunwale beside him. “I won’t lie, I have butterflies in my stomach. Have you ever lost that feeling?”

“Not quite,” Dom said. “But I think it’s different now. Before, when we were still in the Agency, my nerves would be on fire when I thought I might be in danger. Now my concern is for my crew.”

Miguel clapped a gloved hand on Dom’s shoulder. “And your concern is appreciated, O Captain, my Captain.”

“Don’t get poetic on me,” Dom said, bracing himself as they hit a rolling wave.

“Can’t help it, Chief,” Miguel said. “On a crisp and clear morning like this, I can practically feel Whitman’s ghost in the air.”

“Did you break into Lauren’s medical supplies and take something you weren’t supposed to?” Dom asked.

Miguel smirked. “The salty sea air is intoxicating enough for me.”

“Better take it all in while you can,” Dom said as the Zodiac slowed near the
Queen of the Bay
. A gaggle of passengers waved at them. Some wore expressions of relief at seeing a paramilitary group. Other faces seemed green with sickness. Even from their vantage point, Dom could tell the refugees had overloaded the ship’s safe capacity. “I have a feeling it’s going to smell a lot worse when we’re aboard.”

Hector steered the Zodiac aft-ward toward the
Queen’s
stern. Along the lower deck, empty metal hooks swung behind the ship.

“Shouldn’t they have lifeboats?” Hector called out over the gurgle of the Zodiac’s motor.

A man in a white steward’s uniform waved at them from among a crowd of passengers pressing him into the safety rails. Dom threw a mooring line to him, and the man made quick work of knotting the rope around the rails. Renee followed suit from the second Zodiac after Dom’s boat had been secured.

Dom climbed from the Zodiac onto the deck. The steward shook his hand. “Thank you so much. I’m Jeremy Holtz. The captain’s up in the pilothouse. He’d greet you himself, but as you can see, it’s a bit of a madhouse around here, and he’s a bit indisposed.”

Voices carried up around them, and Dom struggled to be heard above the din. “No kidding. Has anyone else responded to the SOS?”

Holtz shook his head. “No.”

“You said the captain was indisposed. Is he...infected?”

“I’m no medical expert,” Holtz said. “But he did come in contact with one of those
things
while we were battening down all the hatches to keep the creatures inside.”

“Shit,” Dom said. “We heard there are survivors that may still be trapped below deck.”

“That’s correct, sir.” Holtz hung his head low. “We couldn’t mount any type of rescue effort. The best we could do was get as many passengers as we could above deck and throw any aggressors overboard.”

Dom gazed at the hanging cables from the painted white steel arms where the ship’s lifeboats should have been. “And what the hell happened to your lifeboats?”

Holtz’s cheeks flushed red, his eyes narrowing as he turned away, looking toward the choppy waves. “A few of the crew abandoned ship. We loaded up the remaining lifeboats, but the passengers were too panicked, too overwhelmed. A couple of boats are out there.” He pointed toward the orange vessels floating in the distance, closer to the shore. “But the rest took off underloaded. We have no idea where they went.”

“But you and a few others stayed behind to protect the remaining passengers.”

Holtz held his head slightly higher and adjusted his white jacket. “Of course. Dinner cruise or not, that’s our duty.”

“Absolutely.” The winds shifted, and the scent of body odor and sickness drifted over Dom. “We don’t have any time to waste. What’s the best way for us to get below deck?”

Holtz gestured to a glass door behind them. “We haven’t seen any activity on this deck, so I can let you in through here.”

“Perfect.” Dom raised his voice. “Hunters, on me!”

The group, clad in their black tactical vests and body armor, pushed their way through the crowd toward Dom. Lauren, Peter, and Sean continued to lug boxes of medical supplies aboard.

“How do you want to set up triage?” Dom asked Lauren.

She pulled back a strand of hair matted by sweat and sea spray. “There’s not enough room down here. How’s the top deck?”

“Not any better,” Holtz said. “Actually, probably worse up there.”

“We’ll make do here until you clear the interior lower decks,” Lauren said.

“You heard her,” Dom said to the Hunters. He motioned for the steward to unlock the door.

Holtz inserted his key into the door then stopped. He reached into another pocket. “Before I forget, take this. It’ll be more helpful to you than me.”

Dom took the laminated paper. It was a copy of the deck plans. “Thanks.”

Nodding, Holtz unlocked the door. Dom and the Hunters rushed in, rifles shouldered. The steward locked the door behind them, shutting out the cacophony of the crowd. Dom took a moment to evaluate his surroundings. An empty buffet bar took up the center of the open room. Chairs lay askew, scattered around dining tables, and white tablecloths and blue napkins were strewn about. The unmistakable scent of decay and death wafted around them, though Dom didn’t see an obvious source.

“Smells worse in here than above deck,” Meredith said. “Not a good sign, huh?”

“Not at all,” Dom replied.

Past the buffet bar, a wide, twisting staircase rose to a second level of the dining area. Expansive windows let sunlight in to illuminate the far wall, which held two doors, presumably leading to the galley. Dom led the group toward the stairs. He scanned the debris with his rifle as they approached, but nothing leapt out at them. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he held up a fist to signal the rest of the team to stop. He glanced up, but the entrance to the deck above was blocked with a pile of overturned dining tables and chairs. They wouldn’t make it through easily without making a considerable amount of noise and potentially attracting whatever Skulls might be milling about. They needed another route.