Convoy 19: A Zombie Novel (21 page)

Chapter 33

Pam stepped quietly toward Cubicle Twenty-Six. She reached down to her sidearm, and a sickening sense of vulnerability washed over her. She suddenly realized that she had left her weapons in her cube before visiting Carl and Miguel. ‘There’s no need to carry a weapon,’ she had thought – ‘the ships were safe.’ Taking a deep breath, she gripped the sheet covering the cube’s entrance. She then slowly lifted it to glance inside. The interior of the cubicle was dark, but the storage bay lights cast the silhouette of a kneeling figure through the blue translucent tarp.

“Hello?” Pam asked. She hoped that her imagination wasn’t getting the better of her. She told herself the noise that she had heard was not what she feared it might be.

“Uhhhhhhh…” the kneeling form let out a piercing moan and began to amble toward her.

“WD!” Pam yelled. She dropped the sheet and took several steps back. A chorus of screams erupted all around her. Hundreds of men and women who had been soundly sleeping within the cubes all around her awoke in terror. Their nightmares were realized and panic spread like wildfire.

Pam glanced around frantically, trying to remember her cube number. She dashed down the aisle to retrieve her weapons.

A young woman emerged from Cube Twenty-Five, which was directly across the walkway from Twenty-Six. She was wide-eyed with fear, and stood in a daze just outside cube’s entrance. A crying little girl in pajamas hid behind the woman, clutching a teddy bear. They stood together watching a clumsy woman with a matted mop of blonde hair stagger out of Cube Twenty-Six. The woman’s vacant eyes locked upon prey, and the zombie rose to its feet. A waterfall of gore drenched the front of its shirt.

The young mother screamed in terror. With an inhuman growl, the ghoul dove to tackle the woman. Bodies tumbled backward into her Cube Twenty-Five, and the linen door of the improvised living space tangled around the violent struggle. In seconds, the white sheet became soaked in blood.

The little girl scrambled away from the carnage in horror. She stood dumbfounded in the aisle for a moment, unable to tear herself away from her mother. Terror overtook her as another moan from within Cube Twenty-Six rose up behind her. She slowly turned to face a young boy with shredded lips and a gore-stained maw. The “boy” stared back at her with lifeless eyes. The little girl let loose a high-pitched wail as the ravenous child-ghoul wrapped its arms around her, sunk its teeth into her neck, and dragged her screaming into the darkness.

Mayhem consumed Cube City. Men, women, and children emerged from their living quarters to dart toward the exits. Navy security guards ran through the aisles against the traffic of panicked civilians. A crowd formed at an interior gate just as two guards were closing it. One attempted to hold it shut against the tide of panic, while the other fumbled with a steel padlock.

“Let us out!” a woman screamed.

“We can’t! We’ll lose the whole…” One of the soldiers pleaded. A gunshot cut him off. The guard with the lock dropped to his knees. A dark red stain spread over the front of his uniform. The gate burst open, and the guard who had held it closed caught an elbow to the face before being knocked to the ground and trampled.

Three more guards stood just outside the main gate, aiming their rifles at the oncoming swarm of terrified civilians. Hundreds of people were screaming and shouting at each other as they pressed through the aisles toward the exit. A navy clerk rushed over to a phone on one wall, picked it up, and looked back fearfully at Cube City, while she reported the situation to security. More gunshots rang out, some from the civilians, some from the navy guard. The armed guards looked at one another with uncertainty and fear. If they tried to hold back the stampede, they would be overwhelmed. The outer fence shook violently and bulged outward as the weight of hundreds of people fought to escape.

Pam had reached her cube where she collected her sidearm, rifle, and laptop. She quickly checked the clips and gathered her courage. There was no telling how many ghouls were lurking about through Cube City, and she was out of her element. She was trapped on this strange ship.

Stepping back into the aisle, Pam stumbled over a body that had been trampled to death. She regained her footing and backed away as the corpse rolled its head with reanimation. The cadaver of a young man blinked its eyes and locked on the commotion of the mob. With floppy broken arms, the shattered heap drug itself away from Pam and toward the compacted mass of panicked people.

Pam drew her rifle and took aim. Suddenly, a small child, a boy no more than four years old, darted into her line of fire. She took her finger off the trigger “Dammit!” She cursed.

More gunshots rang out, and someone else screamed. The outer fence toppled over. There was a torrent of more gunfire, and Pam crouched down. The newly animated shattered corpse flopped along, leaving a trail of blood as it went. With a gurgling moan, the fleshy blob reached toward the nearest prey. The civilians at the back of the mob turned to see the monstrosity crawling after them, and another chorus of screams rolled through Cube City. Some people panicked and redoubled their press against the mob. A few simply dove atop the mass and began crawling over fellow civilians. Others realized they were trapped, and they darted back into Cube City in desperation.

“Pam!” Miguel’s voice called out.

“Miguel!” Pam yelled back. She quickly poked her head up above the cubes to spot Miguel struggling on crutches to make his way down an aisle toward her. Carl followed behind, rifle at the ready.

A woman in a nightgown lumbered out of a cubicle near Pam. The experienced convoy team immediately recognized her slow and stiff undead motions. Carl fired, and additional gunshots rang out from all directions. A few navy guards as well as some terrified and confused civilians had spotted the undead creature and joined the fray. The zombie’s head erupted in a torrent of brains and gore.

Loud cracks of stray bullets sang off the walls of the storage bay. A terrified teenage boy running shirtless through an aisle was taken in the back by a ricochet. He jerked violently and tumbled out of view. A bullet thudded into a cubicle wall near Pam’s head, and the convoy team ducked down. The entire storage bay had become a deadly gauntlet of random gunfire as civilians and guards let fly.

“This can’t be our luck.” Miguel crawled towards Pam with crutches in one hand, rifle in the other. He took a seated position on the ground next to her and began scanning the vicinity for ghouls with his rifle. “This cannot possibly be our luck!”

The storage bay was filled with a cacophony of moans, screams, and gunfire. Confusion and mayhem favored the dead, and with every passing moment, their numbers were growing. Gunfire had already begun echoing throughout the rest of the ship. The infection had in mere minutes, begun to consume the titanic military vessel.

“What’s the plan?” Pam watched a ghoul stumble out from an aisle between cubes, a navy guard in a blood-soaked uniform. It locked eyes with Pam and lurched mindlessly toward her. Pam took aim at the creature’s head and pulled the trigger. The walking corpse’s head snapped back and it tumbled lifelessly to the ground.

“We have to get off this boat,” Carl stated.

“Let me talk to Cap!” Pam replied. She sat next to Miguel, her back against a cubicle, and popped open her laptop. Mind-bendingly slow seconds passed as the computer booted up and connected to the ship’s combat network. She slid on her headset, and resumed the role of a military specialist.

A little boy and little girl wandered into the aisle, their bare feet pattering on the cold steel ground. Carl examined them through his scope and held up his hand indicating to Miguel and Pam that they were living children. The kids turned and began calmly walking toward the soldiers.

A blood-drenched civilian staggered into view and clumsily grabbed after the kids.

“Hey!” Carl shouted and the monster turned and snarled at him. The creature’s head erupted with a spray of blood before it fell backwards against a cube.

Tears streaked down the children’s faces as they continued toward the convoy team. Carl and Miguel looked at each other as the kids approached. The little girl, the slightly older of the two, whispered: “If we can’t find daddy, we’re supposed to find soldiers.”

Miguel sighed as he took the children’s hands. “I wish I had known before I joined up that Day Care Provider was part of the job description of a United States Soldier.”

“Control, this is Private Grace aboard the Boxer. We have a WD outbreak. Please advise.” Pam spoke calmly into her headset.

Instantly, an answer came back. “Quarantine is now in effect for the Boxer, Specialist Grace. We will be unable to send…”

“Give me that.” The familiar voice of Captain Sheridan interrupted the speaker on the other end of the line.  “Specialist Grace, who is with you? What’s the situation?”

“It’s me, Sergeant Ramos and Sergeant First Class Harvey. The situation is pretty fuc… er screwed, sir.” Pam noted the two children as she looked around at her friends. “Things have gotten bad pretty quickly.”

Gunfire and shouting came from somewhere else in the storage bay, but a peculiar calm began to take hold. The majority of civilians had managed to force their way into the rest of the ship, leaving the infected Cube City behind – but many carried the infection with them to every deck.

“Specialist Grace, put Officer Harvey on,” Captain Sheridan ordered.

“Yes sir.” Pam handed the headset to Carl and stood to scan their surroundings.

“This is Officer Harvey…” Carl nodded as he listened to his orders. “Yes sir… yes sir… no sir… yes sir.”

The little girl walked over to Pam. “Can you help me find daddy?”

Pam looked back to Miguel, and shook her head in disbelief. “The more things change…the more they stay the same.”

Carl handed the headset back to Pam. “Okay… there’s a VIP on board. We have to get him, make our way to the Humvees on deck, and a helicopter will take us to the Reagan.”

“Do we know where this guy is?” Miguel asked as he pulled himself to his feet with his crutches.

“Deck three, officer’s quarters, room four. We ready to do this?” Carl glanced down at the children. “You stick close to us no matter what. Understand?”

The children nodded. Miguel and Pam got to their feet, and they began scanning the area for living dead. Growls indicated that they had been spotted, but a few well-placed gunshots put an end to any immediate threat.

“Follow me!” Carl ordered.

Chapter 34

For the first time in too many months, Dr. Henry Damico held his wife. Their warm bodies pressed together, and they both realized how deeply each had missed the other’s touch. The stress of the decisions they had been required to make, the pressure from the military, the threat from the living dead…for a moment, it was all washed away. The gray officer’s quarters Henry had been assigned were cold and dingy, but in this moment, his world was warm and small.

“I love you.” Kelly nestled into her husband’s chest.

“I love you, too.” Henry replied, as he gently hugged Kelly.

For a long while, they lay in silence, reveling in each other’s presence. They had so much to talk about, so much to catch up on…but all they could think about was how grateful they were to be together.

“Is the rest of the world as bad as San Diego?” Kelly eventually broke the silence.

Henry weighed his response carefully before speaking. His wife had seen the horror of a dense population center overrun with the undead firsthand, and it served no purpose to shelter her from the truth. Before they had been separated by their duties, they had shared one another’s counsel on important issues. There was a part of Henry that needed Kelly’s help to bear the burdens he had endured in directing the fleet. Kelly was brilliant, and she had often helped to guide him during his time in the Department of Health and Human Services. Now that he was head of that department, he valued the input of his wife that much more. “It’s worse.”

Kelly nodded in understanding, her dark hair brushing gently against Henry’s neck. “What’s the plan?”

“This fleet is most likely the human race’s only hope. We need to get to the Gulf of Mexico. There hasn’t been any substantial contact with any Caribbean islands in months, and there’s a good chance they are overrun with the undead. We can raid them for food resources or clear them and build civilian settlements while we set up oil refining capability using the rigs on the Gulf Coast. Eventually, we can establish a base of operations on the American mainland. It would be somewhere in Florida or ideally, Louisiana…where we could launch expeditions up the Mississippi River, but…” Henry hesitated, “there’s some resistance to that plan in the government. If it doesn’t fly, I’ll have to think of something else.”

“Why?” Kelly asked. She could feel the tension in Henry’s body as he spoke, and she felt her husband struggling with something.

“There are a lot of good reasons… a large part of the fleet won’t even make it to the Gulf. Once we’re there, we have to figure out how to transform a population that consists largely of business people, lawyers, bankers, service workers, and retailers into farmers, oil refiners, carpenters, and mechanics. We haven’t even begun to see the tip of the iceberg in terms of social challenges – petty crime, organized crime, orphans, PTSD, God, Kelly, the list goes on and on. I don’t even know where to start.” Henry’s mind drifted out of the Nirvana of the moment and back into the challenges he had been wrestling with for months. “
I’m
not even sure this plan will work, and I have to sit in meetings defending it from the assholes that got us in this fucked up situation in the first place. I mean…” Henry rubbed his temples, “what if I’m wrong?”

Kelly hugged her husband. “What if you’re right?” she tried to reassure him.

“If… if I’m right.” Henry sat up on the bed and put his feet on the cold metal floor. The sheet fell away from his naked back, and his bare skin looked to Kelly as if it had aged twenty years. “Then we have to hit Mexico with nuclear weapons. Their military will dog us at every turn. We have to wipe them off the map if we’re going to be safe. We’re…” Henry sighed as he voiced his darkest fears, “we’re going to kill a lot of innocent people for the crime of living under a shitty government.”

Kelly sat up next to her husband, put her arm around him, and rested her head against his shoulder.

Henry slipped his arm around his wife’s waist. “Damn… if that’s a reason to die, then our heads should be the first on the chopping block.”

“The world’s a really shitty place these days.” Kelly kissed his shoulder and looked up at him. “Is this our only option for survival?”

Henry was silent for a moment. “Yes…” he eventually answered.

“Then I want to live… and so does everyone else in this fleet,” Kelly continued. “We get to live because we have the power to live. Maybe that’s barbaric. Maybe that’s heartless, but there are thousands of people in the fleet who would scorch every inch of the earth if it meant the people they cared about would survive. I want
you
to live. If this fleet is truly our only hope, then we have to protect it. We have to protect humanity.”

“I love you… so much,” Henry replied after a minute. “This is a really shitty situation.”

“I love you, too.” Kelly hugged her husband again. “It is what it is. We’ll get through it.”

The blaring sound of a ship’s alarm shattered the quietness of the cabin. Kelly and Henry looked at each other with confusion and disappointment.

“What is it?” Kelly asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe Mexico launched another attack.” Henry suggested, as he sat up on the bed and began putting his pants on.

“Or?” Kelly could read her husband well, and his body language suggested that he was worried about something else.

The echo of gunfire from somewhere within the ship answered her question.

Henry locked eyes with Kelly, his gaze a mask of dread, “The ship’s infected.”

“What? How?” Kelly asked as she pulled her shirt over her head and slid on her pants. “What… what do we do?” The idea of being trapped in the bowels of a labyrinthine boat while the undead consumed the living outside, seemed a very real and very terrifying possibility.

The sound of booted footsteps moving quickly through the corridor outside punctuated the gravity of the situation. Shouts and gunfire rang through the ship, and periodically, a scream would signify that someone, somewhere, had joined the ranks of the living dead.

Henry considered their predicament. “We’re in quarantine. The military won’t send help. If the crew can’t get the situation under control, we’ll be sunk.”

“What? Why?” Kelly asked. Her head began to spin. She had fought against all odds to get herself and as many civilians as possible to the fleet. Now that they were here, the salvation they had all waited for could now be their doom.

“They can’t help us. If they try, they risk infecting other ships!” Henry shuddered at the thought. He and his wife were now doomed to the very policy he had created. He knew that, in theory, bulkheads and portholes would seal and protect a ship from taking on so much water that it sunk – but the living dead were an entirely different, much more insidious type of flood. Soldiers could not be counted upon to kill or abandon their infected friends. Civilians would be dishonest about being bitten, and they would spread the infection to others once they succumbed. Uninfected would panic and kill innocent people…who would rise up to consume anyone they encountered. The interior of an infected ship was a hellish nightmare. “We’re on our own.”

“We have to help!” Kelly slipped her shoes on. She opened the door to their room to be confronted by a horrifying site. A gore-covered ghoul, – a shirtless and grey-skinned young man clad in boxer shorts, crouched over a body just outside the door. Its victim was a sailor who lay lifeless on the ground with his throat ripped out. Hollow eyes locked onto Kelly. An unearthly moan joined Kelly’s terror-stricken scream.

With a snarl, the monster lunged. Kelly swung the heavy metal door closed. The blood-drenched corpse was caught full in the chest and pinned within the doorway. It screeched in hunger and flailed wildly with one arm. With the other, it fought to push the door back open. Kelly kept her weight against the door. She struggled to keep the beast from gripping hold of her and dragging her into its dripping red maw. The ghoul was stronger than she was, and it forced itself further into the room.

Henry drove his shoulder into the door to keep their attacker pinned. “Get back!” he screamed. The thrashing zombie caught his wife’s hair, and it yanked her to within inches of its snapping fangs.

Henry sent one powerful elbow after another to the monster’s head. He was slowly turning the creature’s orbital bone to pulp, but the ghoul ignored its injury. It pulled at Kelly’s hair…snapping, snarling, and spraying viscera in its wild cannibalistic rage.

Kelly grunted as she ripped a hunk of her hair free and tumbled backward. The zombie made one final swipe at her, before fixing its ruined gaze on Henry and redoubling its attack. Inch by inch, it wriggled and writhed its way into the cabin. Frantically, Kelly looked around for a weapon to aid her husband.

The sound of a second hollow moan from the other side of the door signaled the reanimation of the dead sailor who lay beyond. The door shuddered violently as the weight of a second body pressed against it.

Henry locked his legs against the ground and pressed his shoulder against the door. A bloody arm snaked into the room and wormed about for purchase. It eventually found Henry and latched onto his thigh. The first ghoul grabbed Henry by the collar, and it dragged him toward its gaping maw. Henry caught the monster by the neck with one arm to hold its snarling teeth at bay.

It was a battle of pure muscle, and Henry was losing.

Kelly stood helpless. Her mind flashed back to the Tierrasanta DDC. There, soldiers had struggled against an onslaught of undead and failed. The door was their only defense, and if the monsters forced themselves in…there was nowhere to run. Her eyes had gone over every inch of the bare room a hundred times in five seconds, assessing the utility of every object within. Resolved that there was nothing lethal, she grabbed the pillow from the bed and drove it into the face of the zombie that was snapping at her husband.

With the pillow protecting her and Henry from the infectious bite of the beast, she smashed her fists and elbows into its head relentlessly, shoving it out of the room with every blow. “Get away, you fucker! Get away!” The first ghoul loosed its grip on Henry’s neck and wriggled about helplessly as Kelly pounded it – her hands and elbows bruised and bloodied from the effort.

Kelly thrust the first ghoul out of the cabin with one final shove and then added her weight to her husband’s…driving the door closed. The sailor’s arm that had wormed through was pinned as it flailed about. With their weight pressed firmly against the metal portal, Henry began to ease off the door slightly before slamming back into it. Kelly began to perform the same motion in synchrony with her husband. The door bounced repeatedly against the ghoul’s limb, until they heard a stomach-turning snap.

A growing puddle of blood oozed down the wall and onto the floor. The arm lost mobility as muscles were crushed beyond function. Any living creature would have ceased its attack, but ghouls felt no pain, and the arm continued to claw after them feebly. Finally, the metal door closed with a wet slosh of blood. The severed limb fell lifeless to the ground in a puddle of black and red gore.

Henry turned the lock, and he and Kelly slunk to the ground to catch their breath. Safe for the moment, but they were still trapped by their attackers.

“What the hell do we do?” Kelly asked.

Henry shook his head slowly. He and his wife were smart people. He had never once felt the discomforting sensation of facing a crisis that they were unable to resolve. They were problem solvers. Individually, their intellects were formidable enough, but together they were unassailable. Yet, here they sat, trapped in an officer’s cabin aboard a ship infested with undead. They were on a timer that would eventually run out and see them sunk. “I… I don’t know.”

Kelly sighed. “If we wait, maybe they will get distracted by something and we can run to the landing deck. There have to be life rafts…”

Henry nodded. Rationally, he knew that there was a long way between their quarters and the landing deck. There wasn’t much chance they’d make it without weapons. Even if they did, the deck would most likely be infested with undead soldiers, sailors, and civilians who’d had the same plan before succumbing. “These Amphibious Assault vessels have an open bay below deck. If we can get there, we might find a raft or maybe swim…”

“Do you know where that is? I don’t think it’s a good idea to go deeper into this ship if we don’t know where we’re going,” Kelly countered.

Henry nodded and said, “Then all we can do is wait.”