Up From the Depths (15 page)

“We need to find soap and disinfectant. That’s more important than cereal,” Drewett said.

“I think I saw some soap back that way,” Stone said around a mouthful of peanut butter flavored cereal.

Drewett spun the wheel and they headed back down the racks towards the loading bays.

“You see anything?” Cassie asked.

“Don’t see shit,” Mecceloni said. Another arrow struck the boxes he was behind.

“This shit is beginning to piss me off,” he muttered. He leaned back out and saw the golf cart that Drewett and Stone had taken approach. Drewett pulled up and parked then got out. Stone got out the other side, a box of cereal tucked under one arm and his rifle, though slung, under the other.

“Hey, what are you guys doing?” he asked, looking back and forth at Cassie and Mecceloni. A meaty thunk and the bloody point of an arrow punched through the side of Stone’s right thigh just below his holster.

“Goddamnit!” Stone said as he dropped the box of cereal and fell over. Mecceloni grabbed him and pulled him behind the stacks of pallets.

“The same fucking leg! Jesus Fucking Christ! The same leg!” Stone exclaimed. Drewett dropped flat by the cart and brought her rifle up.

“All of you! Leave now!” A voice called out from the depths of the warehouse.

“Fuck you!” Stone yelled back. “You shot me! When I find you, I’m going to fuck you up!”

“Leave now! No further harm will come to you!”

“Fuuck you!” Stone yelled, stretching out the first word as he struggled to stand up. Mecceloni grabbed him and pulled him back down.

“Are you open to trade negotiations? Maybe we have something that you need,” Mecceloni called out. There was silence and no more arrows in their direction.

“I need you to leave!”

“Maybe we can trade you something!” Mecceloni called out. There was a long pause.

“What do you have?” the same voice called back.

“Ammunition!” Mecceloni yelled out. Stone, lying on his side against the shrink wrapped boxes of the pallet, glared at him as he tried to grip the arrowhead with the pliers’ attachment of his Gerber Multipurpose tool. Each time he gripped the head, he lost grip of the shaft due to the blood that now coated his fingers and seeped out of the wound.

“It had to be the same goddamn leg,” Stone muttered.

Drewett saw what he was trying to do from her position on the floor near the golf cart.

“Leave it alone,” she hissed.

“It fucking hurts!” Stone said.

“No shit. Leave it alone. You’ll make it worse,” she said.

“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s stuck in my fucking leg,” Stone said as he gripped the arrowhead firmly. “Fucker could have killed me.”

“Oi, mate. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already,” a voice said from behind Stone and Mecceloni. Mecceloni spun around and aimed his rifle at the man while Stone fumbled his multi-purpose tool and then drew his Glock. Stone studied the boxy rifle the man held. The weapon wasn’t pointed directly at them but it wasn’t pointed away either. He lowered his Glock. The man could take them all out with just a few rounds.

“USAS-15?” Stone asked as he slowly holstered his pistol.

The man nodded.

“Twenty round box mag?” Stone asked, ignoring the pain in his leg.

The man nodded again. “You know your weapons.”

Mecceloni studied the man. He looked well fed not emaciated like some of they had come across. He wore sturdy boots, tan Crye Industries tactical pants, a black, long sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A desert camouflage boonie hat with the front brim turned up complemented the attire. Slung diagonally across the man’s back was some kind of white pipe. It was PVC piping formed into a bow. There was a quiver of arrows on his left hip opposite a drop down tactical holster. A large crowbar, oddly neon green, was tucked into his belt just forward of where the quiver attached.

“I’ll let you leave. You can even take your weapons with you,” the man said. “But I want to know what kind of ammunition you might have to trade. Aisle 22 has First Aid supplies.”

Cassie and Drewett stood up and looked at the man. He was calm, not even openly concerned that there were now more armed people.

“What’s the catch?” Mecceloni asked. He knew that there was no way this man was alone in here.

The man lifted the combat shotgun and pointed the barrel at the roof.

“No catch, mate. You tell me what you have to trade ammo wise or just leave and don’t come back. It’s that simple. Or I open up with old Betsy here and you all kark it in a pool of blood and piss. Beg pardon, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat to Cassie. “But, you are trespassers.”

Mecceloni stood up and let his rifle point to the floor.

“We need supplies and this place has them. We also have an injured man,” Mecceloni said looking at the newcomer. “We should be able to work something out. What kind of ammo you looking for? You tell me what you need, and I’ll tell you if we have any.”

The man squinted his eyes at Mecceloni, looked him up and down then nodded.

“Fair dinkum. Names Trevor, Trevor Colby,” Colby said, shifting the shotgun from his right hand to his left and extending a hand to shake. Mecceloni lowered his rifle and shook his hand.

Colby looked down at Stone who was now being attended to by Drewett.

“Sorry about the leg, mate. I took you for raiders not traders.”

Stone started to say something but was cut off as Drewett used her own Gerber to hold the shaft still then with Stone’s she unscrewed the arrow head. Once the head was off, she reached back, grabbed a squeeze bottle of antiseptic alcohol, liberally sprayed the exposed shaft then slid it back out of his leg.

“Oh shit,” Stone said as his body involuntarily shuddered when the alcohol was wiped through the wound channel. He laid his head on the floor and closed his eyes as Drewett slapped a gauze pad over the exit hole then taped another over the entrance wound.

“Aisle 22?”Drewett asked, looking up from cleaning the wound.

“Aye. Twenty-Two for First Aid,” Colby said.

“Cassie, I could use more gloves, some 3X4 gauze pads and butterfly closures,” Drewett said. “Think you could get all that for me?”

“I can do you one better,” Colby said. He put a couple of fingers in his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. From the shadows and other locations, people appeared. A woman and three young girls each armed with a PVC bow, a quiver on one hip and a sidearm on the other.

“Alice, can you show this nice lady where the gloves, gauze, and suture kits are?” Colby asked, addressing one of the girls.

“Sure, Da,” Alice said, starting off in the direction of the needed supplies before looking back to see if Cassie was following her.

“Let’s get right down to it, shall we?” Colby said as he slung the combat shotgun over one shoulder. “I need some 12 gauge for old Bets here and I could use a fair amount of nine millimeter.”

“What’s a fair amount? We have both but I need some numbers,” Mecceloni said.

“What say you to two hundred rounds of nine and three hundred of 12 gauge?” Colby said.

Mecceloni looked at the man. They had that and more back at Safeguard. In fact, what he was asking for wouldn’t even put a dent into their stores.

“Two hundred of each. One hundred up front and the other hundred when we leave,” Mecceloni said.

Colby squinted his eyes, stared hard at Mecceloni then nodded.

“Deal, mate,” he said as he offered his hand to shake and seal the deal.

“We have two more people in the office over there,” Mecceloni said. Colby looked over and saw Durst and Burnett peering over the windowsill.

“Send those two for the ammo. The rest of you can stay here and get what you need. When those two come back, we trade then you leave the rest of it on the dock,” Colby said. Mecceloni looked sideways at the man. He had his family here yet he was willing to take the word of total strangers who just minutes earlier he was engaged in combat with.

“You trust us to hold up our end of the deal?” Mecceloni asked.

“There’s a time when you have start trusting people. You didn’t shoot back when I was throwing arrows at you. You could have,” Colby said. “Besides, we let the air out of one of your trucks tires. All four wheels.”

Mecceloni studied Colby then nodded slowly. The man had a point. He and his family knew this area like the back of their hand. They could have killed them at any time and taken their weapons and supplies. But that hadn’t happened. Mecceloni understood what Colby meant by trust. In order to survive, you had to establish some kind of trust. His personal motto was trust but verify.

“Don’t worry. There’s a compressor outside that you can use to refill them. I wouldn’t leave you stranded here,” Colby said. “Its not like we don’t have the room for you all. Its just that I don’t need you here.”

“I understand that,” Mecceloni said, thinking about how the options would have been had Colby and his family unexpectedly arrived on Safeguard’s doorstep. “Tell me about this place. You’re inside here but all the doors are locked and the gates are closed.”

“Used to work here. Before all this,” Colby said. “Was working the graveyard shift slinging dog chow onto pallets when we all heard the news. The managers let us all leave early. I went home, boarded up the house and we waited. Things got worse. The police couldn’t stop it. The army couldn’t stop it. We hid out for a while. When our supplies started to run out, we came here,” he said.

“And no one else was here?” Mecceloni asked, looking around. This warehouse was a literal treasure trove. He could see why Colby kept the doors locked and maintained a low profile.

“No. This place is way off the beaten path. The closest freeway interchange is over ten miles away,” Colby said. “This whole area was supposed to be an industrial park. Warehouses, manufacturing businesses. Don’t know what happened but this was the only place ever occupied,” Colby said with a shrug. “The other buildings are just empty shells.”

“The only way I got in was because I had the keys to the kingdom as it were.” He reached into a pocket and removed a large key ring. “When we showed up, the owner was here locking the gates. He saw me, recognized me and tossed me the keys. Said it was my responsibility now,” Colby said as he slowly shook head.

“Then he got in his caravan and left,” Colby said.

Colby remembered the frightened faces that had been pressed against the rear window of the recreational vehicle as it drove off.

Cassie and Alice arrived back with the supplies Drewett requested. Drewett grabbed the box of gloves, wiped down Stone’s leg eliciting a wince from him, and then began to clean and close the wound.

Stone watched Drewett suturing up his leg, again.

“You’re damn lucky this didn’t hit bone,” she said as she worked.

“You shot me,” Stone said, looking up at Colby.

“Yeah. But that was before I knew you,” Colby said with a grin. “We’re best mates now.”

***

Chapter 32

Bremerton Naval Shipyard, Washington State

The weather had cleared enough for a search crew to begin moving from ship to ship. All the vessels moored to the pier had been secured for severe weather and soon proved to have no infected onboard. Or supplies of any kind. Costelucci and Olivera stayed on the
Missouri
while the teams searched. Costelucci because he had said he was too damn old to be climbing ladders and dodging knee knockers. Besides, he wanted to watch the gangway and the gates that secured the quay.

“How’s that gate look?” Costelucci asked, squinting in that direction. The constant drizzle prevented him from wearing his glasses.

“Still holding. For now,” Olivera said. “I don’t understand where they’re all coming from.”

“They probably lived here at one time,” Costelucci said.

Olivera looked at the senior citizen.

“We know what they are,” he said. “We’ve always known. It’s them and us. Only thing is, they
are
us. Or they used to be. Now, I don’t know what they are.”

Costelucci looked up at the big Samoan.

“Fuck me, Manny. You’ve gone and gotten all philosophical,” he said with a grin. “Just leave it simple. They’re the hostile force that wants to kill us. That being said, we need to kill them first.”

“It’s not that simple,” Olivera said. “Those things were someone’s family once. A husband, a mother, a son. It’s never that simple.” He left out that some of the infected were still wearing remnants of US Navy uniforms.

Costelucci reached up and put a hand on the larger man’s shoulder.

“Manny, we’ve all lost people since this started. If we stop and consider that it had a family every time we encounter one of those things...” he slowly shook his head. “That kind of thinking will get you killed.”

Olivera looked at him. He knew that he older man had lost his wife years ago and that his family had abandoned him at the retirement home that he had been wasting away at.

“Breach! Breach!”

Both men looked at the bow watch, the man was pointing at the gates. One of the gates had bent out of shape from the constant pressure that the throng of infected had placed against it.

Costelucci brought up the Thompson M1A1, there was a 50 round Type L drum magazine already in place. Yanking back the cocking knob as he strode down the gangway and walked into the center of the pier.

“Get onboard! Raise the gangway!” he yelled out. Squinting, he could barely see the dark shapes that pushed through the opening.

“Al! Get back here!” Olivera yelled as he tried to stop the deck crew from raising the only way to get to the ship.

Costelucci ignored him, braced himself, brought the Thompson up to his shoulder and took aim. The infected raced towards him.

“Hey! What’s he doing? Why isn’t he shooting?” one of the deck watch asked Olivera.

“He can’t see until they get close. He has vision issues,” Olivera said.

“Holy shit.”

Costelucci could see some dark shapes approaching. He breathed in and out slowly then took aim at the largest shape.

“Yeah boy! Get some!” he said as he triggered the first short burst.

The first wave of infected through the fence were greeted by a storm of .45 caliber rounds that dropped them before they could advance further. Costelucci fired short, controlled bursts even though the Thompson was set for full automatic. Ever since he had liberated it from the onboard museum, he had never moved the fire selector from full automatic. His precise bursts, never more than three or four rounds each time, dropped infected before they could gain a foothold. Sweeping the barrel back and forth across the expanse of the pier, he emptied the drum magazine. Ejecting it and letting it drop to the concrete, he inserted a 20 round stick magazine, jacked back the cocking knob and searched for more targets.

“C’mon! I know you want some more!” he taunted the infected not knowing that he had dropped enough to stall the rest with his first magazine. He looked towards the gates, searching for more targets but all he could see was the blurry grayness of the fence line. The rain increased its tempo and a sudden gust of wind whipped his poncho up temporarily obstructing his vision. Using his left hand, he batted it back down then looked up.

“Is that all you got?” he yelled out to the weather. “I’ve farted harder than this!”

A strange looking aircraft appeared out of the rain and low clouds. It hovered overhead tossing up spray and wind as long ropes were deployed from the rear ramp. It looked like a small version of a C-130 cargo plane but there were only two engines and those had seemingly over-sized propellers. The other difference was that those propellers and wingtip engine nacelles were currently rotated upwards like a helicopter. Costelucci squinted at the plane then at the shapes that fast roped down. He heard shouts and orders then the ropes dropped to the pier, the plane shifted laterally exposing a door gunner who immediately opened fire on the horde of infected.

“Push them! Push them back to the gates!” a man yelled out over the firing. The armed and camouflaged dressed men laid down heavy fire and with the support of the MV-22, decimated the horde. Bounding quickly down the dock, they cleaned up any stragglers and secured the gate. One man with the look of an officer, waved to the hovering aircraft as he walked back to where Costelucci stood.

“Are you in charge here?” he asked Costelucci once the MV-22 had rotated its engine nacelles and disappeared back into the low clouds.

“Oh Hell no,” Costelucci said, shaking his head and wiping his face from the rain. He was able to see that the man’s uniform was the digital pattern that the US Marines had adopted.

“Fucking Marines,” Costelucci muttered. “About goddamn time you jarheads showed up,” he said louder. “Right after all the real work is done.”

Captain Frank Burgess frowned a little then sized up the senior citizen.

“Be thankful we showed up when we did,” Burgess said as the rest of this unit arrived. “If we didn’t drop in to rescue you, those things would have torn you apart.”

A large man pushed through the crowd of Marines until he reached Costelucci; he arrived just as the octogenarian was talking.

“Rescue me?” Costelucci asked. “You think I needed rescuing? That’d be a goddamn cold day in Hell I need some fucking Marines to rescue may ass!”

“Al! Al!” Olivera called out, interrupting Costelucci’s tirade. The old man, who had appeared frail at times, had engaged a horde of infected with nothing more than an antique submachine gun and more guts or stupidity than Olivera had ever seen, didn’t even have a scratch on him.

“What were you thinking?” Olivera asked. “All we had to do was raise the ramp and they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.”

“That wouldn’t have been any fun. Those things would have still been there waiting for us to come ashore,” Costelucci said. “These Goddamn Marines showed up and ruined everything. Hell, they think they rescued us.” He brushed past the Marines and deck crew and made his way up the gangway and into the ship.

“I’m hungry,” he called back. “I’m going to get something to eat. I need to take a piss. And some hot coffee. This rain goes right through me,” Costelucci said before he stepped into the bowels of the ship.

Burgess watched the old man leave then turned to Olivera.

“Where’d you sail this ship from?” he asked.

“Hawaii,” Olivera replied before he followed Costelucci inside.

“No shit?” Burgess asked. He studied the ship, slowly looking at it from stern to bow. When he saw the large white numbers on the hull, he mentally took a step back. This was one of the old Iowa class battleships. He had thought they’d all been turned into museums or scrapped.

“I’ll be damned. All the way from Hawaii,” Burgess muttered before he headed up the gangway, pausing at the top and rendering a salute to the ensign that hung limp from the stern rail mast. He looked at the deck crew member manning the gangway.

“Captain Burgess, United States Marines. Requesting permission to come aboard.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Permission granted.”

Burgess looked hard at the man then realized that he wasn’t military.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked.

“Cap’n O’Reilly.”

“Let’s go see him.”

***