Crossbones (9 page)

Like a wolf pack taking down stragglers at the back of a herd, the dead followed the living onto the peninsula, taking down the slow and steadily increasing their numbers. By the time the last of the living were through the gates, there were the dead surging immediately behind. The five armed Coast Guardsmen on duty went down firing, falling in minutes and then rising to join the horde soon after.

Before
Joshua James
was even on the horizon, the only living beings at the air station were scattered pockets of frightened, hiding refugees and a handful of Coast Guardsmen.

Corpses covered the runway, drifting without purpose and wandering slowly between the buildings at the west end of the base. Few noticed the cutter gliding silently into the long pier, but distant gunfire, followed by the not-so-distant blatting of a commercial fisherman's diesels, got them moving.

•   •   •

C
hief Petty Officer Newman, a boarding party team leader who had a nose for sniffing out contraband and concealed drugs, was well satisfied with what he and his small crew had accomplished in a short time. All four flatbed carts were loaded with foodstuffs and bottled water and he'd found a crate of foul-weather clothing, four medical kits, a surgical kit, and perhaps the biggest score of all, eleven cases of toilet paper.

He pointed to a young seaman. “You're driving,” he said, spreading the rest of his men into a protective square around the tractor and small trailers. Those who hadn't been carrying firearms had managed to put their hands on fire axes.

The tractor engine fired and was pulling out of the warehouse when two men with crew cuts and wearing flight suits almost ran past the doors, then slid to a stop as they saw their fellow coasties. Newman was startled and almost shot them.

“That your cutter?” one of them shouted.

“Yeah, and you're coming with us,” Newman said.

“Goddamn right we are,” yelled the second man, and the two new arrivals began sprinting ahead of the slow-moving tractor, heading for the big white ship at rest against the base's long pier.

•   •   •

T
he armory was small, far smaller than the warehouse, and that made sense to Coseboom. Ship crews needed a lot more food than they did arms and ammunition. He was glad he'd brought the bolt cutters, because as his captain had warned him, the stout, brick armory building was encircled with a high fence topped with razor wire, its gate chained and locked. The bolt cutters got them through and then into the building's roll-up bay door. Two of Boomer's crewmen drove their forklifts right inside the structure.

It didn't take the shore party's leader long to locate what they wanted, and in short order both forklifts were loaded with heavy pallets and smaller crates stacked on top.

“Commander!” one of his men yelled, a two-stripe damage controlman left at the fence as security. Coseboom ran outside to see him pointing. A mob of dead people were swarming from between two buildings and across a lawn that led to the access road. Another cluster was on its hands and knees on the grass, tearing at screaming, thrashing shapes. Boomer thought he saw bloody flannel and duffel bags. Passing left to right, two men in flight suits raced down the access road, heading for the docks.

“Haul ass,” he barked to the men in the forklifts, then stood aside as they roared out of the armory, through the gate, and onto the road. “Don't stop for anything,” Boomer shouted, then ran back inside. He returned a moment later with a pair of M4 assault rifles and several magazines. “We're their cover,” he said, handing the damage controlman a weapon and taking off at a jog after the growling forklifts.

To their rear, a tractor hauling loaded trailers, ringed by four men, followed closely.

•   •   •

B
ecause of the fishing boat directly across the pier from him, Charlie Kidd lost sight of the first forklift as it neared the entrance to the dock, and he couldn't see what was coming at the shore party from between the buildings. He could see to the left, however, and there the dead were surging in a wave across the lawns.

Letting off a string of curses, he swiveled the M2 in that direction and ripped off bursts of fifty-caliber. At once, the three other weapons mounted on the port side did the same, chopping into stumbling bodies, knocking them down. Chick saw most of them get back up, and even those with their legs cut from under them began dragging themselves across the grass by their arms.

He cursed again, firing shorter bursts, and tried to aim for the heads of the crowd. A few exploded in red and gray, but most of his rounds either slammed into dead flesh or sailed harmlessly overhead.

The first forklift came into view and shot up the dock toward the cutter. Then Chick saw the second take the turn from the access road too sharply. Its load shifted, and the weight, angle, and speed carried the heavy vehicle, along with its cargo, right off the dock and into the water, its screaming driver still gripping the wheel.

“Son of a
bitch
,” Charlie snarled, and kept firing.

•   •   •

T
hey were coming in too fast, Boomer saw, a dead horde crossing the lawns in a shambling wave. He and the damage controlman knelt and fired their rifles into the mass as the tractor and its loaded trailers hummed past behind them. He spared a look to see Chief Newman standing at the head of the dock, motioning the men on foot to keep up, and waving the tractor on. Once it was past, he turned to add pistol fire to the defensive action.

“Fall back to the ship,” Boomer ordered, and the damage controlman took off at a run. The officer changed magazines in his rifle and trotted to the head of the dock, stopping next to Chief Newman. With fifty-caliber rounds rattling overhead, the two men aimed and fired, trying to be calm, making sure their shots hit the mark.

Back at the gangplank, both the tractor and the surviving forklift had arrived, and every available hand was racing off the ship to meet them, struggling back up the gangplank with crates and cartons. The sounds of the fifty-calibers dropped off as new ammo belts were loaded, and both Boomer and Chief Newman took turns reloading so that someone was always firing.

The horde pressed in, savaged bodies of adults and children stiffly, inexorably approaching. Thirty yards out. Twenty. Ten.

“Last magazine,” Newman called, slamming it into his pistol.

Boomer slapped at a cargo pocket, finding it empty. “I'm out.” He dropped the M4 and pulled his sidearm, risking a look back. The supplies and arms they had found were being loaded, but not quickly enough.

“They need time,” Coseboom said.

“That's why we're here,” Newman replied.

The two men lasted another two minutes, and then the swarm overtook them.

•   •   •

N
o!”
Liz cried, slamming a fist against the steel above the bridge window, watching her XO and chief go down. She snatched up the mic, switching to the PA. “Deck gunners, concentrate fire as they come up the center of the dock. Loading party,
get it done
!”

The dead were forced into a narrow channel as they swarmed up the dock toward the much wider long pier. At this range, with bodies packed close together, the storm of fifty-caliber rounds chewed them apart, blowing off limbs, tearing torsos in half, and detonating
heads. Though many still lived in these new, mangled forms, they began to slide off into the water or pile up, forcing the newly arrived dead to crawl over them. The fifties kept up their fire.

Amy Liggett, sent to lead the loading party after her fight belowdecks, radioed to her captain that all supplies and surviving team members were aboard, along with two new arrivals, and that she was raising the gangplank.

“Gunners,” Liz said, her voice booming across the ship from exterior speakers, “maintain your fire until we're away.” She called to the quartermaster, standing near the helmsman. “Mr. Waite, take us out of here, flank speed.”

A moment later the harbor's water boiled at the cutter's stern, and the ship leaped forward, throwing up a white crest. It roared away from the long pier as the machine gun fire stopped, and the dead arrived to follow the departing cutter into the water, arms still reaching.

Liz didn't look to see if Boomer was among them.

They were just coming around the tip of the Ediz Hook, turning north, when the Guard channel buzzed with a transmission that made Elizabeth's blood turn cold. “Coast Guard seven-five-four, this is DDG ninety-two. Respond.”

Liz snapped a look at her quartermaster, who quickly shook his head. “The
Momsen
is not on the scope, Captain. Maybe they're trying to draw us out, get a fix on our position.”

“That destroyer has two helos,” she said, picturing a pair of gray birds flying fast just above the waves, preparing to drop torpedoes. “Mr. Vargas,” she said over the intercom, calling the operations specialist down in the combat center, “do we have any airborne contacts?”

“Captain, the air search radar is not online at this time,” Vargas reported.

It was too close. Whatever was happening in Seattle, the destroyer
had found the time—or been ordered—to hunt them down. There would be no going back.

“Mr. Waite,” Liz said, dropping into the padded swivel chair with
CAPTAIN
stenciled on the back, “maintain flank speed and take us to sea.”

An hour later, with the last strip of U.S. soil well behind them,
Joshua James
steamed into the vast Pacific.

January 12—San Francisco Bay

Michael limped along a passageway, blackness all around him and the flashlight his only illumination. Jumping down the last four steps of the ladderway had landed him in a puddle of seawater and slime, and his right leg shot out from under him, twisting his ankle and making him cry out. There was no time to sit and cradle it, no time to cry. The dead sailor was already tumbling down the ladderway after him. Michael ran, moving in a painful, limping gallop, similar to the dead.

Choices of corridors presented themselves, most with the dark spots of open hatches running their length, none of them attractive. He went right, hobbling as quickly as he could, hearing the thing land behind him with a wet, crumpling noise.

God, it stinks down here.

His flashlight swept across walls covered in vertical piping and valves, cables and colored conduit overhead, and hatches with their purposes stenciled on them in white letters, going by too fast to read. He nearly tripped over a decaying corpse in the center of the
passage, leaping over it and tensing for a gray arm to shoot up and grab him. It didn't—the body was long dead—but Michael came down his injured ankle with a flare of pain.

A moan traveled up the steel tunnel behind him.

At an intersection, Michael stopped and panned the flashlight in each direction, biting his lip at what he would see. All three passageways were empty. The moan came again, and that got him moving, to the left this time. Moments later his sneakers kicked several shell casings that rattled across the deck, and he slowed. A closed hatch to his left read
CAT SUPPORT 3
. A metallic
bang
came from behind him, accompanied by a moan. It was answered by another moan from the corridor ahead.

Michael worked the handle, prayed he wasn't stepping into a nest, and went through the hatch, closing it behind him. He held his breath and listened, heard only his own thudding heartbeat, and turned with the light. It was a workshop of some kind, with grinders and clamps bolted to metal tables, tall green bottles stored behind a chain-link fence with a
Flammable
sign on it, unlit fluorescent lights set in the ceiling behind wire mesh. An open hatch led into darkness on the right.

His light found a tool locker, and he eased open the metal door, careful not to let it swing into the wall. Inside was a confusion of equipment, the uses for which he couldn't begin to understand, but he saw the hammer and grabbed it at once. It had a long handle and a heavy head, flat at one end and rounded into a steel ball at the other. He gave it a practice swing and nodded. Also in the locker, clipped to one side, was another flashlight. After testing it, he shoved it in his waistband.

Cautiously, he approached the interior hatch and put his light through the opening. Another workshop was beyond, appearing much like this one, with yet another open hatch on its far wall, opposite where Michael was standing. Again, nothing moved.

Michael went back to a worktable and crouched behind it,
peering around one end at the hatch through which he had entered. It was damp down here, and he shivered, his ankle aching. Everything smelled of the sea, and death. After months aboard the aircraft carrier, the ten-year-old had become accustomed to the stench of death, but down here it was different, sour, more
corrupt
somehow, though he couldn't quite articulate that word.
Extra
dead, he decided.

He was nervous about his flashlight beam but didn't dare allow himself to be completely in darkness, so he held the lens close against his stomach to reduce the glare. He was breathing slower now.

Wind and Denny had gotten out, he was sure of that.
They would tell a grown-up, and people would come looking for him, wouldn't they? His dad would come. He'd be pissed, but he would come. And maybe Father X too. How would they find him? It didn't matter, they would. All he had to do was stay put and keep quiet.

He froze as there was the sound of something thumping against the outer hatch, followed by the creak of a handle being lifted.

•   •   •

R
osa and Tommy's flashlights cut through the darkness, Tommy in the lead with his light clamped against the forward stock of his assault rifle. Rosa held her own light, and the Glock in the other hand. Wind was pressed against her, gripping the medic's scrubs in two fists.

So far they had yet to encounter any of
Nimitz
's former crew and had seen none of the slimy puddles the girl described. Wind led them to the safety meeting room, and had to bite back tears when she saw the picture Michael had drawn, and which she'd smeared with her sleeve. She wished she hadn't done that.

“Through there,” she whispered, pointing across the room. Tommy advanced on an open hatch, poking his light and rifle muzzle down another passageway.

“You're sure, honey?” Rosa asked, and the girl nodded.

They went through, moving carefully down a corridor where voices at play had only recently echoed. Within minutes, they came upon a deck surface streaked with water and putrescence.

“It's seawater,” Tommy said, sniffing.

Rosa wrinkled her nose. “They're coming up from flooded compartments.”

“It almost got us right here,” Wind said, near tears again. “Michael made it chase him that way.” They moved slowly in the direction Wind was pointing. Soon they came to the end of the hallway, with its choice of two closed hatches and a steel ladderway that only went down. Streaks of water and gore, as well as the imprint of a small sneaker, led to the stairs.

A pair of moans, sounding close together, echoed through the passageways, their direction unknown. The three of them stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, listening, and the moaning came again, accompanied by the soft thud of something hitting a hatch or a bulkhead.

“Take her back, Tommy,” Rosa said.

He started to protest but then caught himself. They couldn't take the girl down there, and they couldn't send her back on her own. This area was now active. “Let's all go back and bring reinforcements,” he said at last. “More guns and lights, maybe a map.”

Rosa knew he was right, even as she shook her head. “Wind said she heard a scream; he could be hurt. By then it could be too late.” Not her brightest idea, but the urgency of finding Michael moved her forward.

Tommy wanted to say more, but he also knew it was pointless to argue once she'd made up her mind. “I'll come back with help. Don't go too far.”

Rosa didn't respond and started toward the stairs.

“Doc,” Tommy said, handing her the M4 and two magazines. He unholstered his own pistol. “See you soon.”

Rosa nodded, and as the orderly hurried away with Wind now
holding on to the edge of his scrubs, the medic aimed the light and the rifle into the darkness and went down the ladderway. There was a mess at the bottom, a spread of water and a sticky, yellow substance. A rotting, gray ear sat in the puddle, along with a piece of what might have been scalp with some hair still attached to it. A dead thing had come down hard here, and the marks on the floor indicated it had crawled to its feet and headed to the right. She saw no fresh blood, a very good sign, and was even more relieved when she saw a pair of wet sneaker prints headed in the same direction.

She advanced with her light and rifle leading, trying to move on her toes and flinching each time her rubber soles made a loud
squeak
on the metal floor, reminding her of the echoing noises made in a school gymnasium. A closed hatch on the right was marked
CATAPULT ENGINE ROOM
, but she had no interest in it. The wet trail led forward.

Rosa wanted to call out to the boy, the sound of her voice perhaps keeping him from moving deeper into the ship. She decided listening was better, and following the trail. The darkness was like a heavy blanket all around her as she moved through it, kept at bay only by the beam of white light. More hatches went by, many with only numbers stenciled on them.

A rasp came from behind her and she wheeled, putting the light on the passage. The beam extended a long distance, but it revealed nothing in the corridor. Turning back, she saw something lying on the deck about twenty feet away and moved slowly toward it. A rotting corpse in a blue uniform, long dead. Streaks of water and gore showed where a drifter had stumbled over it.

Rosa thought about all the water. The thing she was following must be waterlogged, dripping constantly, the pressure of movement forcing liquids out of its tissue. Had it been submerged somewhere, and found a way out? Hundreds of
Nimitz
crewmen were still unaccounted for, and the hunting parties had encountered only a few of the creatures they called
wet ones
. Was the bulk of the dead
crew in these flooded areas? There had certainly been speculation. Rosa hadn't expected to be the one to prove the theory, and certainly not alone. She knew she was no hero, and she was frightened, her heart tripping at an accelerated rate. She didn't want to be here, but Michael didn't, either, and she couldn't leave him to face his fate alone, not a child, not anyone. She would bring him out.

The rasping came again, followed by a wet gurgle, and Rosa turned spun once more. There it was, a woman in khaki stained almost black, the front of her shirt torn away to reveal savaged gray flesh, and an open chest cavity where white bone gleamed amid wet, black organs. She was pale, like the belly of a fish, and her eyes were bulging white orbs. Lips peeled back, and she hobbled down the corridor toward Rosa.

The medic put the rifle to her shoulder and sighted, resting the green pips of the combat sight on the woman's head. She took a deep breath, thought about the coming noise, and then tensed on the trigger.

A boy's scream, Michael's, rebounded down the passageway behind her, making her jump. The shot went wide, the bullet whispering through limp hair at the side of the corpse's head, the gunshot echoing. The scream came again, and Rosa gritted her teeth, aiming, firing. A wet mass exploded onto the bulkhead, and the creature sagged to the deck. Rosa turned, searching the corridor, and saw an intersection up ahead. She ran for it.

•   •   •

H
ad he made a sound? Could it smell him through the steel, follow his scent?
Michael put his flashlight beam on the opening hatch, his hand trembling as he crouched frozen at the end of the worktable. The waterlogged zombie that had been pursuing him from the start pushed the steel oval aside and stumbled over the knee knocker, white eyes reflecting the light. But it wasn't alone. A corpse that looked withered and mummified, dressed in coveralls,
followed it in, with a third that simply looked rotten pressing close behind.

Michael bolted for the hatch to the next workshop, and the trio let out a chorus of moans. He heard them banging against tables as they hurried after him, and the boy raced through this new room, putting his light on the next open hatch, speeding toward it. He ducked and leaped at the same time, clearing the knee knocker and avoiding the low overhead frame as he burst into a third workshop.

A corpse came at him from the right, a withered thing with a ball cap still on its head. It growled and lunged, raking his shoulder with dirty, ragged fingernails. Michael screamed, felt his flesh tear, and dodged left, smacking his hip painfully into a worktable. The creature snarled and galloped at him, catching the back of his shirt in one hand, teeth snapping within inches of the boy's ear. Michael screamed again, jerking free.

There was an open hatch to the right, but yet another creature was coming through it, tripping over the knee knocker but quickly getting back to its feet. Hungry moans came from the middle compartment, and the trio stumbled through the hatch as the thing with the ball cap pawed its way down the length of a worktable. Michael's flashlight threw spastic beams of light, and in every direction were milky eyes staring out of dead faces, and snapping teeth.

To his left, one wall of the room was stacked high with eight-foot lengths of loose steel pipes, held back by canvas straps. Directly beneath the pipes was an open, black rectangle in the floor: another stairway down.

There were five of them in the workshop now, coming around both sides of the last table where Michael was, the ball cap zombie croaking and scrabbling up onto its surface. All were snarling as they closed in for the kill.

Michael let out a whimper and hurried down the stairway.