Carlie Simmons (Book 5): One Final Mission (8 page)

Chapter 17

Shane spat out a mouthful of briny water
and bobbed his head above the waves. The smell of the sea air, combined with
searing metal and asphalt, pierced his nose. He saw the canted fuselage sixty
feet ahead in the dim light, its tail section set aglow by a plume of flame as
if it were a floating lantern. He heard shouting inside and the frantic clawing
of hands on metal as the fuselage began sinking further down into the inky
grasp of the ocean. He struggled to stay afloat under the weight of his fully
loaded vest and the M4 slung across his back. As Shane leaned forward to swim
towards the plane, he saw movement in the distance near the cement gangway
along the damaged runway of the airfield. In the blue-gray fog, he could make
out the torsos of hundreds of undead milling around the edge, staring at the
conflagration in the water. Their putrid faces resembled the zombies he had
become accustomed to seeing back home but these moved with surprising coordination
and purpose given their state of decay. He held still, treading water for a
second, then lowered himself beneath the surface and swam for the plane.

Chapter 18

Jared was furiously flailing his arms,
trying to stay afloat as another wave slammed into his face. He could see the
plane in the distance beginning to sink and behind it, for a moment, the face
of Shane bobbing in the waters on the other side as a crowd of creatures moved
along the cement retaining wall. Another wave rushed past him, slamming
something into his chest. He thrust his arm out and felt a slumped figure clad
in a nylon vest, her hair aloft in the water like fine thread. Jared yanked her
by the vest towards him and saw that it was Eliza, a four-inch gash on her
forehead leaking out into the moonlit waters. He twisted her around with her
head up and placed his forearm under her chin. Then he began swimming backwards
away from the flaming wreck, praying that the others had made it out. He swam
until his chest burned and he was sure there were no creatures around. Then he
pulled Eliza up under the rafters of a nearby dock and onto a storage platform,
checking her vitals while watching the plane disappear into the murky depths
below.

Chapter 19

When the fuselage stopped moving, Carlie
felt the rush of cold sea water at her feet. Her last image of Shane was of him
being swept away into the gaping hole shorn in the back of the plane. She saw
the plane slipping further into the ocean with each passing second. Carlie
unbuckled and swam over to the nearby bench seats, feeling with her hands for the
others. The back of her left shoulder was on fire but the adrenaline was
helping to mask the intense pain. She swam underwater to the cockpit, past the
bent doorframe. Carlie could feel the pilot’s body still strapped in his seat
but the man had a massive wedge of metal driven through his midsection. She
quickly leaned over to her right to search for the co-pilot, Hadley, but his
seat was empty.

She returned to the main cabin. Upon
emerging, she felt someone grab her sleeve and turned to see Amy only inches
from her face. “Where’s Jared?” Amy yelled as they both fought to hold onto
something as the fuselage rocked in the waters.

“He got sucked out the rear,” Matias said
from where the back of the plane had been, now a gaping hole whose jagged edges
resembled a shark’s jaws. He swam towards them, grimacing with each stroke. They
formed a circle, leaning their arms on each other’s shoulders and treading
water. The stabbing pain in Carlie’s rear deltoid was now shoving its way
through her psyche.

“Jared’s gone—where?” said Amy with
saucer-wide eyes.

“Not sure—the waters yanked him out of my
line of sight,” said Matias.

“What about the others?” Carlie said. “Did
you see anyone else?”

“Eliza got nailed in the head by a loose
backpack and was flung out the rear. I don’t know about the rest,” Matias
yelled, wincing with each word.

Carlie looked at the lithe Panamanian.
“You injured?”

“Think a few of my ribs are broken,” he
said.

Carlie canted her head to the back and saw
they were sinking fast. “We need to grab anything we can and get the hell out
of here. If we get separated, we’ll meet at the hangar as originally planned.”
As Amy and Matias nodded in response, Carlie felt something clutch her vest and
yank her back. She swiftly turned and saw the face of the co-pilot, his scalp
badly lacerated and several deep gashes lining his temple.

“The chief is dead,” Hadley said.

“I know,” replied Carlie. “This thing’s
about to go under. We need to go—you OK to swim?”

The man nodded and followed her out
alongside Matias and Amy. As they crested the shorn tail of the fuselage, Carlie
grabbed a lone backpack that was tethered to the side and swung it over her
good shoulder. Swimming ahead, they entered the fog-enshrouded waters of Osaka
Bay as the remains of the C-130 slid like a gnarled finger into the obsidian-colored
waters below.

Chapter 20

As Shane approached the plane, it quickly
receded as if yanked from underneath by a giant hand. The abrupt movement from the
leviathan displaced the adjacent water. Without warning the resulting power of
the wake whisked Shane out into the open bay. He tried frantically to swim
forward but was slammed by another wave that sent him under. When he came up,
fighting under the strangling weight of his vest and rifle, he was embroiled in
a thick mist. Another wave rushed him from behind but he managed to stay above
the water as it carried him further into the bay.

He choked on a mouthful of chilly water
and shook his head, trying to clear his stinging eyes. Shane thought he could
make out the figures of four people swimming towards shore but their murky
outlines were quickly swallowed by the fog. He fought to stay afloat under the
increasing tempo of the undercurrent. He was getting too far away from the
shore and knew he either had to start shedding precious items or make it to
safety before he was exhausted.

A fierce breeze wafted over his head and he
could see the fog part slightly, revealing a metal buoy in the moonlight, sixty
feet away. He grit his teeth and began swimming before it was lost. Minutes
later and with searing arms, he pulled himself up onto the donut-shaped
platform. Shane clung to the eight-foot-high metal tower that rose from the
center and tried to catch his breath. He could hear garbled voices crackling in
his earpiece—it was Carlie. He could hear her shouting at the others to follow
her to a nearby building. Shane frantically tapped his earmic, calling out her
name but got no response.
Shit
—
where are they? I have to get to them
—
must
save them.
He wanted to peel off all his accouterments and dive in after
his friends—after Carlie. His eyes darted wildly around the murky surroundings,
searching for any signs of the others while his heart sank with each wave slapping
against the buoy. He started to unzip his vest and was going to leap into the
waters after them when he saw the glimmer of a light approaching from his left.

Chapter 21

Carlie’s boots hit the rocky bottom of the
foggy shoreline. She stood, partially racking the slide on her rifle to cycle
out the water pressure in the chamber. She looked at the others who were going
through similar motions while nervously staring into the seemingly impenetrable
cloudy barrier before them.

“You’ve got something sticking out of the
back of your shoulder,” said Amy, who was gazing at Carlie’s left deltoid. “A
splinter of metal.”

Carlie could hear shuffling accompanied by
guttural moans emanating from her right, about a hundred yards distant. “We’ll
have to patch each other up later after we get off this LZ.”

The first rays of dawn were beginning to
streak across the waterfront, turning the gray fog into a blood-orange curtain.
Carlie caught a faint glinting of metal on the airfield and raised her right
hand, pointing it out to the others who were alongside her. She slunk forward,
making sure not to create too much disturbance in the water. Once they were on
the concrete boat ramp, she motioned for the others to line up behind her and
for Matias to provide rear cover.

Carlie trotted fifty feet to an aluminum
storage shed and secreted herself against the side while the others formed a
defensive arc. The fog around them was burning off in the morning sun which had
just crested the horizon and Carlie could make out more structures and the
layout of the airfield. She gasped when she saw the sheer number of creatures
pouring along the runway and those that were still hovering near the shoreline
where the plane had disappeared.
Lord
—
there must be five hundred or
more of those things already. How can there be so many?

She felt a tap on her shoulder and saw
Matias pointing to a distant subway tunnel a quarter mile in the opposite
direction past the traffic control tower. “Looks to be clear over there,” he
whispered while pressing his forearm against his ribs to contain his pain.

Carlie nodded and began to rise but
stopped and craned her head back, searching along the boat docks and shoreline
for any signs of Shane, Jared, or Eliza.
Shit
—
they must have made it to
land by now. Where are they? Shane got away
—
he had to.
Carlie
thought she saw the glimmer of a headlight in the bay but it disappeared too
quickly to confirm its origin.

The fog was dissipating faster, turning
into ghostly rivulets under the harsh scrutiny of the sunlight. She raised her
hand to indicate her direction and then they sprung up, darting for the mouth
of the tunnel to her left. She wove in and out of discarded fuel barrels,
overturned service trucks, and empty foodservice carts until she was a hundred
yards from the entry. The passageway was dark inside but she could make out the
faint framework of a derailed subway car that was partially blocking the
entrance, shards of shattered glass fanned out on the sidewalk below a canted
billboard of a woman in a pink dress holding up a bottle of lotion.

“Dammit, we got company,” snapped Matias.

“If anyone can hear me, this is Team
Leader Two,” said Carlie, tapping on her ear-mic. “We are headed northeast
through the subway tunnels adjacent to the bay. Hospital is two miles from our
present location.”

Carlie yanked her attention to her right
where sixty ravenous zombies were piling out of a ticket office. The skin was
missing from most of the creatures, their striated muscle strands twitching and
their milky eyes set back into deeply recessed sockets below the exposed bone
of their foreheads. The zombies wore shreds of clothing that barely clung to
their bodies and most were missing noses and ears. The creatures shrieked like
they had found a lost treasure and rushed towards the four survivors. The other
mass of undead near the shoreline turned in unison towards their location as
the waterfront mob became magnetized at the sight of the living residing in
their midst.

Chapter 22

Shane stood up, clinging with one hand to
the metal beacon whose emergency strobe light had long ago burnt out. He
started waving his other arm while shouting. Shane squinted, trying to make out
the figures on board, but the tiny spotlight was blinding him as it grew in
intensity.
Thank God
—
Jared must have secured a boat.

The engines on the eighteen-foot bowrider jet
boat quieted as it neared, the ripples rocking the buoy, causing Shane to grip
it with both hands. Shane saw the figures of two men in front. One was younger
and thin with a wispy goatee. The man was preparing to toss a coil of rope. The
other man was much taller and stood like a statue, his piercing gaze coming
into view as the boat swung sideways
. Other survivors
—
I knew there
must still be people holding on here. Just didn’t expect to have my own
welcoming committee.
Hope these lads aren’t averse to strangers falling
from the sky.
He looked back at the dark shoreline, wondering if his
friends were alive and how they would find him.
Right now, this seems like
my best chance even if I have to drop these guys and take their boat.
Hopefully
it won’t come to that
. He studied them for any signs of weapons and knew he
could get off a shot on one of them if things went bad quickly but he could be
just as easily fired upon given his precarious location.  

The younger man said something in Japanese
and tossed the nylon rope, which landed on his chest. He grabbed it and secured
it with a bowline to the buoy’s metal girder. Then he angled his body slightly
so they couldn’t see his hand hovering near his Glock. The driver shouted
something, nodding for him to move closer.

“I only speak English and Spanish, amigos,
so I hope one of those works for you.”

The driver of the boat just shook his
head, looking at the younger man and muttering something in Japanese while they
both chuckled. Then he turned back to Shane. “Another American—I wonder if you
are as talkative as our friend.”

“The name’s Shane and I’m with a group out
of Washington State. We’re here on a retrieval mission. Did you see any other
survivors from the plane crash?”

“Others?” said the driver. “No.” He arched
his head up, staring beyond Shane at the hazy shoreline in the distance as the
fog was burning off in the first rays of dawn. “If they are on the mainland
then they are in the hands of the goryo.”

“Can you take me over there? I need to get
to my crew,” he said, puzzled at the man’s last word but surmising its meaning.
Shane could hear Carlie and Matias’ voices more clearly in his earpiece, their
plan to sprint to the subway tunnels becoming evident.

“We must get back before the light of day
is fully upon us,” said the younger man, who was nervously motioning with his
hand for him to come aboard. “They will be out soon—all the shores and streets
will be filled with goryo, even by our own base if we do not hurry.”

The older man just nodded in confirmation,
giving Shane a stone-faced gaze as his rugged facial features crept out amidst
the plum skyline. His furrowed cheeks resembled the crags found in driftwood.
Both of the men were pale, a sign of their adaptive strategies of remaining
nocturnal.

Shane took his hand off the pistol and
slid his drenched boots forward along the slippery surface of the buoy then
leaped onto the swimming platform by the outboard engines. He climbed over the
edge into the main cabin.

Shane noticed that the older man was
wearing an inconspicuous long sword across his back and silently scolded himself
for not seeing it earlier.

“Sit. We must move quickly back to our hideout
if we are to avoid any encounters,” said the older man.

“Right now, I need you to turn this boat
the hell around so I can get to my people.”

The driver said nothing, only thrusting
the accelerator forward as the boat sped off in an arc to the right. The
younger man removed his black jacket and tossed it onto the console, revealing
two blades in his beltline and a metal pipe sticking out of an improvised sling.
He leaned back towards him. “I am Yoshi,” he said with a nod. “And that is
Shiro.”

“Nice to meet you, Yoshi,” said Shane, feigning
a handshake and then rushing forward and clutching the young man in a chokehold
while pressing his pistol to the man’s temple. He held the diminutive figure
tight against him. “Maybe my English wasn’t clear enough. Turn this boat around
before my friends disappear into the subway and I lose them.”

Shiro eased off the accelerator and let
the boat slow to an idle. He turned towards Shane with his one hand resting on
the hilt of a tanto blade tucked in his belt, his expression unflinching.

“If you are to be of use to your friends,
it will not be by returning to the mainland. There are other routes into the
subway that I can show you.”

Yoshi squirmed slightly under Shane’s
grip, freeing his trachea enough to speak in broken English. “I don’t know what
it’s like where you’re from, but the city streets here will soon be filled with
tens of thousands of goryo. We have to get back to our base.”

Shane swiveled his torso slightly to the
left, peering at the shoreline in the vicinity of where the wreckage had gone
down while keeping Shiro in his peripheral vision. All he could see were the
shadowy forms of what must have been over three thousand creatures around the
damaged concrete barrier on the edge of the airfield. They peered longingly
into the recesses of the rippling waters before making their way towards the
distant subway tunnel. His stomach churned at the sight until he heard Carlie’s
voice again—a few words about heading into the dark passageway ahead before the
signal faded into static. He had to rescue them—had to save his team, his
friends. It was all that mattered in his life at this moment but he knew
heading back to the airfield would be suicidal.

Shane pivoted back to the front of the
boat, looking at Shiro then at the peninsula ahead where they were headed.
“Alright, I’ll play by your rules for now.” He eased off the chokehold on Yoshi
and then released him while quickly stepping to the rear of the boat. Shane
lowered his pistol and stood facing Shiro while Yoshi massaged his throat.

The older man turned his head, emitting a grumble
at Shane before moving back to his position at the console.