Convoy 19: A Zombie Novel (22 page)

Chapter 35

“Don’t look at it, Roger. Look at me.” Miguel held the eye of the young boy as they passed another corpse in a pool of gore. The back half of its skull was hewn away and a bloody axe lay on the ground next to the lifeless body. The wall and floor were drenched in blood. The fact that the axe had been discarded, indicated that whoever had killed this woman was likely now wandering about the ship as one of the living dead.

Going was slow, and Miguel’s broken leg did not speed their process. Ascending the stairwell to deck three had been time consuming and painful, but they were making progress. The ship’s corridor was long and narrow, but the maps on the walls indicated they were approaching Dr. Henry and Kelly Damico’s quarters.

Roger and his older sister, Renee, had behaved. They had stayed silent, stifling screams of terror whenever a ghoul wandered into their midst. They had held Miguel’s crutches when he needed to use his hands. The notion that their missing father was most likely dead seemed lost on them. They calmly accompanied the convoy team, confident that they would eventually be reunited with him.

Carl, at the lead, had run out of ammunition during their last encounter. He crouched down to pick up the bloody axe while keeping his eyes focused on the junction ahead.

Pam had been able to conserve some of her rifle ammo. She scanned the area behind them. Occasionally, a corpse would wander into the hallway, moan, and then drop dead with a well-placed shot. The sound of shooting was thunderous, but the echoes of distant combat indicated that struggles were taking place in every corner of the vessel. This would draw the attention of the undead. Though the living was losing their fight to save the USS Boxer, they would not go quietly.

“Hide!” Carl whispered harshly as he pressed himself up against the wall. He attempted to hide behind some vertical pipes.

Pam and the children pressed themselves against the opposite wall and behind a grey steel crossbeam. Miguel looked around helplessly for a moment before dropping to his stomach and lying motionless behind the dead woman on the ground.

Carl looked down the hallway toward an intersection about ten feet in front of them. A group of over a dozen men and women lumbered slowly through the junction from the left. Their clothing ranged from pajamas to blue jeans to uniforms, but one thing was consistent – they moved with the slow gait of the walking dead. Their eyes stared blankly forward as they limped down the hallway perpendicular to the convoy team. Ragged bite marks, bullet holes, and missing limbs dripped with blood and left a slick red trail behind them as they went.

A little girl—no more than ten—followed at the back of the procession. She stopped in the intersection and cocked her head awkwardly. She turned down the hallway, revealing the missing flesh over the left half of her face and the severed arm below the elbow. Her one good eye fixated on something, and she stumbled towards the group.

As she moved to within a foot of Carl, he brought the axe down hard on her head with a sickening thud and a wet splatter. Roger and Renee buried their faces in Pam’s leg and sobbed. Carl brought the axe down again for good measure, and he paused for a moment to ensure he had not drawn the attention of the undead procession.

“Come on,” Carl ordered. Miguel struggled to his feet, and the group continued forward until they arrived at the intersection. Several closed doors down the long hallway to the right indicated that they had found the officer’s quarters.

Carl watched the wandering pack of ghouls turn right down an adjoining corridor that ran parallel to the one they had come from. There were now no undead in sight. A stairwell at the far end of the hall would connect them to the landing deck where they could make their escape.

Quietly, Carl stepped up to the first door within the hall and knocked.

“What are you doing?” Pam asked, noting the number on the portal indicated that this was not the officer’s quarters they were looking for.

“I’ll be goddamned if these VIP’s are they only ones with a ticket off this boat,” Carl replied. “There may be people hiding in here who think help is coming. We’re it – we’re their only chance.”

“WDs!” Miguel warned as he hobbled on crutches into the corridor with Carl.

The children and Pam followed as a mass of shadows shuffled quietly into the other end of the corridor they had just vacated. They were clumsy and slow, but they would eventually arrive at the junction. If Carl, Pam, Miguel, and the children were still here, they would be noticed. There was no time to waste.

A young man in a sailor’s uniform opened the door Carl had knocked on. He poked his head into the hallway and looked around.

Carl put his finger against his lips to signal the need for quiet, and he motioned with his head for the sailor to move.

The young sailor turned back inside and addressed some people out of view “Everyone… shhh.” The door opened, and three adults and two children followed behind him as he stepped into the corridor.

“Pam, get this group to the stairwell and guard that junction.” Carl gestured toward the stairwell. “Miguel, knock on the rest of these doors.”

Pam and the two children hurried to the stairs at the end of the hallway with the other civilians behind them. A dim yellow light flickered within the shaft, illuminating gore-covered walls…but no bodies.

Miguel swung himself on crutches toward the next door in the hall. He knocked, waiting patiently for a few moments before knocking again. He confirmed no answer was coming and moved to the next.

Carl stood with his back to the group. He gripped his axe like a baseball bat, awaiting the first ghoul to turn the corner into their passage. The pack behind them would soon fill the corridor. Carl’s axe and a handful of Pam’s bullets were all that stood between the civilians and a wandering horde of hungry corpses.

“Ruhhhhh…” The unmistakable groan of the unhallowed signaled that their group had been noticed.

Miguel moved to the next door and knocked. It cracked open, and a blood-covered woman stared back at him with discerning blue eyes. “Go! Go!” He hissed.

The woman and an old man dashed up the hall towards Pam.

Pam stood anxiously in the stairwell’s portal, aiming her rifle down the perpendicular hallway. “C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!” She growled quietly. “They’re coming!”

THUNK. The sound of Carl’s axe connecting with a skull caught Miguel’s attention.

A bloody corpse fell to the ground in front of Carl, and he began to backpedal toward Miguel. A press of ghouls filled the hallway in front of him, moaned with hunger, and fixed on their fresh prey with maniacal stares. The vanguard stumbled and fell over the body on the ground, but they merely crawled over one another.

Gunfire rang out from Pam’s position. She knelt, aiming down the adjacent corridor. “Come on! Come on! WDs! You’re gonna get cut off!”  Another pack closed on Miguel and Carl from behind. The window for the two men’s escape was closing rapidly.

Miguel arrived at Officer’s Quarters Four. The gore-stained door did not bode well for the cabin’s inhabitants, but he knocked anyway. He anxiously looked back to where Carl backpedaled toward him in front of a growing swarm of undead. He then cast his glance up the other where Pam was quickly spending the last of her ammo.

His heart thumped with realization. If Pam’s position were to be overrun, he and Carl would be trapped between two converging packs of undead.

The door to Officer’s Quarters Four cracked open and Kelly and Henry Damico cautiously peered out.

“Run!” Miguel turned and swiftly hobbled toward Pam and the civilians.

THUNK. Carl’s axe made contact with another zombie, and a second body fell headless to the ground.

“We’re quarantined.” Henry and his wife stepped into the hall. “There’s no place to go. We’ve got to try to get this ship under control.”

“You’re a VIP, Doc. Someone high up wants you alive, and we’re going to make sure you stay that way.” Miguel replied through labored breaths. The effort of moving quickly on crutches was wearing on him. “You’re our only ticket off this boat.”

“Run!” Pam shouted.

Henry and Kelly rushed up to Miguel and started to help him down the hallway.

“No! Go! You can’t stay here! Go!” Miguel rejected their attempt to help him.

Henry and Kelly understood – without them, the military would not rescue anyone else. If they were caught, everyone was doomed. They reluctantly left Miguel and rushed towards Pam.

Henry arrived at Pam’s position, and looked down the corridor she was defending. His countenance became one of horror. “Holy shit!”

Kelly pulled her husband into the stairwell, and pleaded with Carl and Miguel. “Hurry!”

“I’m almost out!” Pam slung her rifle around her back, drew her sidearm, and resumed firing.

The young sailor stepped into the hallway next to Pam after getting Henry and Kelly safely behind him. Holding a long bloody knife, he confronted the approaching swarm with resolution.

In seconds, the last of Pam’s ammunition was spent. She took her rifle back out and held it like a battering ram. She and the sailor stood in the junction—prepared to defend it with their lives.

Carl turned from defending the corridor behind him, broke into a run, and in one motion, scooped Miguel up over his shoulder. Miguel twisted around onto his stomach and drew his combat knife.

“God damn! That’s a lot of ghouls!” Miguel gasped. The undead pack behind them was closing. Their numbers seemed to crowd the hallway into a single writhing mass of hunger.

Suddenly, something hit Carl hard in the side, and Miguel’s world twisted into a tornado of gray metal, red blood, and terrifying screams. He was overcome by a sensation of weightlessness before hitting the hard metal floor with a bone-jarring thud. The wind was knocked from his lungs, a sharp pain throbbed in his head, and a lightshow of stars clouded his vision.

A single thought ran through Miguel’s mind as unconsciousness took him: “This is it. I’m dead.”

Miguel felt the weight of writhing bodies on top of him, hands gripping his arms, and the hard scrape of metal against his back as he was dragged violently across the ground. A commotion of grunts shouts and yells filled Miguel’s mind until he fixated on one constant sound. It was familiar, yet strange in tone. He opened his eyes and pushed the dizziness from his mind.

“No! No! No! No!” Pam repeated over and over again in a shrill, panicked pitch. She stood over Miguel with her back towards him, thrusting the butt of her rifle into the horde of undead raging in the doorway. Gore smattered in all directions as her rifle came away with a spray of viscera. Tangled gray arms reached through the portal, bruised and bent at unnatural angles.

Miguel regained his senses, and realized that he was in the stairwell. He was surrounded by a dozen screaming and terrified civilians. As he regained his bearings, he looked around for Carl.

“Get to the Humvees!” Carl shouted. “Go! Go! Get to the Hummers!”

Miguel’s friend and commanding officer lay on his back in the junction outside the portal. Carl was fighting madly for his life. He held his axe by the head and used the hilt to fend off a dozen grasping claws and snarling maws.

Miguel struggled to his knees, his head throbbing with every beat of his heart. Weak and disoriented, he lunged to Carl’s defense with his knife in hand.

“No! No! No!” Pam continued to scream, tears streaking down her cheeks as she crashed the butt of her rifle into the eye socket of a ghoul.

“Go! Run!” Carl’s pleas grew more frantic and panicked. There was desperation in Carl’s voice that Miguel had never heard in his friend before. “Go now! Go now!  Please!”

Miguel stabbed a zombie through the eye socket and reached into the melee to grip Carl by the collar. He was beginning to pull him to safety when Miguel noticed Carl’s wounds. Four or five vicious bites were hemorrhaging blood from Carl’s legs, abdomen, and arms. Miguel’s heart dropped, and he slackened his grip on Carl’s collar.

His strength pooling red on the floor beneath him, Carl was fighting against the monsters to buy time for Pam, Miguel, and the civilians. “Go! Please Go! Leave me! Please go now!” He screamed madly.

Miguel heard himself shout an order to the civilians behind him, “Go!”

“Go!” He backed away from Carl’s struggle, gripped Pam by the shoulder, and yanked her toward the stairs.

“Leave me! Run!” Carl’s orders rang through the stairwell over the moans and snarls of the raging undead.

Miguel looked down at his friend as he began to ascend the stairs. Beyond the pain and fury in Carl’s eyes, there was something else – a resolve, a refusal to lose another person under his command. He was prepared to die here, to keep the undead from pursuing his friends, but he could not keep up the struggle forever.

“Carl!” Pam sobbed as she turned away from her commander.

“Carl!” Miguel fought back tears as he pulled himself up the stairs on his back. His eyes locked on his friend. Carl was fighting like a wild beast. He was buried under a writhing swarm of undead in a growing puddle of his own blood.

“Go! Get to the Humvees! Get out of here! Go!” Carl gasped.

Chapter 36

“Help him!” Pam ordered.

A couple of civilians supported Miguel by the shoulders, and they helped him to ascend the stairs. Carl’s shouting from below had ceased. It was replaced by screams and gunfire from the open portal leading to the flight deck above.

“And you stay next to me!” Pam grabbed Henry by the arm and led the group up the stairs.

Bright white ship lights cast long black shadows on the enormous deck. Sporadic muzzle flashes cut through the darkness – the accompanying noise echoed for miles. Cries of the injured and dying joined the chorus of moans that carried over the cool ocean air.

Near the front of the ship, two blood-covered marines stood atop a jet fighter. They protected a family of four that was huddled in terror on the plane’s wing. Two dozen walking corpses reached for them hungrily, as they sat just out of reach. Occasionally, one would manage to climb atop the plane, only to be knocked off the aircraft by the marines. They tumbled to the ground with a thud before regaining their feet and resuming their attack.

Henry thought of the story of Sisyphus, damned forever to roll a boulder up a hill. Just like the boulder, the zombies were repeatedly cast down from the summit. While the undead could play this game for eternity, however, the marines could not. They, and the family they protected, would eventually be overwhelmed.

At the rear of the flight deck, a collection of over a dozen civilians sat huddled inside a semicircular barricade. Munitions carts, clothes, guns, and chairs, formed a makeshift and waist-high perimeter around the group. Its rear faced the empty blackness of the ocean beyond the aft edge of the ship. It was assailed by a raving mob of howling monsters. A handful of soldiers and civilians fought with blades and clubs to defend those behind them. Bodies that fell became part of the barricade.

Countless bodies littered the deck. Some moaned mindlessly. Others cried in anguish at the pain of their mortal wounds, but most lay still. A naval officer sat lazily against a nearby wall. He cast a lethargic gaze on the group as they emerged from the ship. If not for the pool of blood beneath him and the gruesome wound on his leg, he would have appeared drunk.  Several bodies sat piled around him, and he pointed his pistol clumsily at Pam…unsure if she were friend or foe. He looked at her for a few seconds, smiled an awkward smile, and lowered his weapon. He rested his head against the wall. He was guarding the door – attempting to prevent any more ghouls from reaching the flight deck. His effort had cost him, but he continued doing his duty even though his life was coming to an end.

“Get to the Hummers!” Miguel shouted, gesturing to the vehicles that were strapped to the port side of the ship.

The ragtag group dashed across the deck toward the Humvees. Pam flung open a passenger side door and began flinging the cargo on the deck.

“Everyone! Start unloading.” Miguel noticed a handful of ghouls breaking off from the fighter jet and beginning to wander curiously toward them.

“Is the Navy really going to break quarantine?” Henry was dumbfounded. He helped Miguel to the driver’s side of the vehicle. “For me?”

“Hurry! Get inside!” Pam threw Renee and Roger into the back seat. When there looked to be enough space, the civilians piled into the Humvee with Kelly and Henry. Miguel slid into the driver’s seat, and Pam slammed the passenger front door. Snarling undead faces instantly pressed up against the windows. With a sigh of relief, Pam slid out her laptop and put on her headset.  “Control, this is Convoy 19. We have the VIP’s in car four. Get us the hell out of here!”

“Copy that, Convoy 19. Air transport inbound,” a voice came back.

Kelly watched as a large group of ghouls poured onto the landing deck from the flight tower. The wounded soldier who had been guarding the exit fired his pistol three more times…before turning the gun on himself. Kelly averted her eyes to watch the marines fighting atop the fighter jet.

“Oh my God” Henry gave voice to Kelly’s thoughts as they watched one of the soldiers lose his footing, slip, and tumble into the ravenous hordes below. The monsters descended upon him like a pack of wild dogs. The lone marine who remained, drew his pistol, took careful aim at his comrade below, and fired.

“We can’t leave these people!” Kelly exclaimed.

The sound of approaching helicopter rose in the distance. Two bright searchlights hovered in the blackness beyond the living nightmare of the U.S.S. Boxer.

Miguel nodded. “They’re going to pick up this car and carry us to the Reagan. Everyone else is on their own.”

“Start up the car,” Kelly instructed.

Miguel looked back at her, confused.

“Start up the fucking car!” Kelly repeated. “Draw the ghouls away from the other four Hummers. Go get the people on that jet and behind that barricade and whoever else you can. We’ll empty the rest of the cars and load everyone up.”

“They won’t take us,” Pam replied. “They only want Dr. Damico. The rest of us are just tag-alongs.”

“They’ll take us.” Henry shot back, his gaze meeting his wife’s confidently. “I’m not going anywhere until these vehicles are full.”

Miguel looked at Pam, and Pam looked at Miguel.

“Fuck it.” Miguel started up the vehicle and turned on the headlights. “This is for Carl.”

“For Carl,” Pam nodded.

“What’s going on down there? Why is that vehicle running?” Captain Sheridan’s voice came through the communications network. He was, no doubt, looking on from the Chinook helicopter above and assessing the situation.

Pam responded to Captain Sheridan. “Change of plans, sir…stand by.”

“Let me do one quick pass to pull the WDs away from the Hummers. I’ll drop you off on the return trip.” Miguel buckled himself in.

The Humvee lurched forward, slammed into a walking corpse, and crushed it beneath its bulk. The vehicle’s tires squealed as it sped around in a tight loop…taking out ghouls as it went. He repeated the maneuver again, taking out even more undead. After a third rotation, the immediate area was clear. Miguel pulled the vehicle back up to where the remaining Humvees were parked. The doors flung open and Kelly jumped out. Henry moved to follow when Pam grabbed him by the arm.

“No! You stay with Miguel.” Pam then stepped out of the vehicle.

Henry hesitated. Everything in him wanted to stay with his wife, to help her unload the remaining vehicles and usher other survivors to safety…but he forced himself to stop and heed Pam’s order. Without him, no one was getting off this ship. If anything happened to him, everyone—including his wife—would be doomed.

“I’ll be okay…” Kelly looked lovingly into her husband’s eyes. “Stay here, Henry.”

Henry nodded fearfully.

“Here!” Pam flung off her headset and handed her laptop to Henry. “Keep Command in the loop.”

Miguel floored the gas before Henry could even close the Humvee door. He slammed into another wandering zombie before aligning the vehicle with the mob that surrounded the fighter jet. Henry kept his gaze locked on Kelly as she turned toward the task of emptying the other Humvees with Pam.

“What the fuck are you up to?” Captain Sheridan’s voice boomed over the communications network. “Pull over! NOW!”

“Um… this is Dr. Henry Damico…” Henry answered. “We’re going to try to save some people.”

Miguel pulled his vehicle up to the wing of the fighter jet and rolled the window down a crack. “Come on! We’re getting out of here!”

“We can’t take anyone except you and the VIPs! We can’t risk infection spreading to the Reagan.” Captain Sheridan shouted impotently. “Put Officer Harvey on!”

“Officer Harvey’s dead,” Henry answered. Henry cast a furtive glance at Miguel as the last of the survivors jumped atop the Humvee.

Captain Sheridan did not respond, and silence fell over the network.

“Captain… You’ve got doctors aboard the Reagan, right?” Henry mustered his most authoritative tone.

Captain Sheridan, still shocked by the news of Carl’s demise, took a few moments before he answered. “Yes…”

Miguel returned to Kelly and Pam with his civilian cargo, dropped them off, and peeled away toward the aft barricade. He swerved into wandering corpses as he drove, and their bodies thudded off the front of the vehicle. The undead packs were dense, but nowhere near as dense as the writhing walls of flesh-eating corpses that roamed San Diego. This vehicle had survived much worse.

“Have the DDC doctors ready to screen the Humvee occupants as they land on the Reagan flight deck. I’ll help… but I am not going anywhere until every last Humvee is loaded up with as many survivors as possible and taken off this ship.” Henry hoped his hypocrisy would be forgiven in the court of martial law. He had ordered that infected ships be quarantined – mandated that countless soldiers and civilians be sentenced to death, because it was too risky to help them. Now, because he was important, because the military needed him to continue doing his job, he had the power to break that mandate at will.

‘Is this how it starts?’ he wondered, thinking back to the letter written by the former Secretary of Health and Human Services. That letter had so plainly illustrated the incompetence and corruption of leadership.

“No, sir. There are protocols in place to protect the fleet. No exceptions!” Sheridan answered back. “Now pull over!”

“You made exceptions for me!” Henry replied.

The communications system was silent, and for a moment, Henry was struck by the terrifying possibility that he had overplayed his hand. He worried that he, his wife, and everyone aboard the Boxer would be abandoned after all. A few seconds passed, and the helicopters slowly hovered into place above the lead Humvee that was loaded with civilians. The Chinook was outfitted with a mounted machine gun, and it began to cover the area. A long hook descended to the deck from the aircraft and lifted the vehicle into the air.

“Thanks, Captain.” Henry nodded gratefully.

Miguel and Henry made one trip after another across the deck of the U.S.S. Boxer. They gathered civilians and soldiers from the barricade, and they returned them to the Humvees. When additional survivors emerged from the nightmarish innards of the Boxer, they retrieved them. When a fresh pack of raging ghouls burst from the flight tower, they ran it down. One by one, the Humvees were filled with marines, sailors, men, women, and children. They had fought their way through hell for one final chance at survival. Against all odds, they had made it.

By the time Miguel’s Humvee was all that remained, the sky shone faintly red with dawn. The deck was piled high with corpses and stained red with gore. A soul-crushing stillness had come over the vessel. The dead and the living had destroyed each other, leaving only an empty floating ghost ship.

Kelly and Pam, filthy and exhausted, slipped quietly into the protection of the armored vehicle as they watched their helicopter ride approach. Henry slid his arm around his wife, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

“Think Cap’s still gonna want to give us a medal after this?” Pam asked Miguel.

“It’s just a medal,” Miguel answered. “We saved a lot of lives…”

“I wish Carl could have been here,” Pam muttered.

“So do I.” Miguel stared blankly at the flight tower exit. Carl’s animated corpse had not emerged – he had looked for it. There had been a part of him that imagined Carl emerging victoriously from the Boxer wounded, but alive. He knew that was impossible and that all he could have hoped for was the opportunity to put Carl to rest.

That opportunity never came.

The vehicle groaned as it rose into the air under the power of the helicopter. The Boxer—and the hell that had engulfed her—began to shrink away.

Pam, Miguel, Kelly, and Henry sat in silence…staring out over the morning ocean. The fleet was still. It floated peacefully on the gentle tide in the orange light of dawn.