Crossbones (26 page)

January 12—Richmond

A sound awoke Evan, and at first he thought it was because the rain had stopped. He no longer heard the steady patter in his water-collecting bowl, so he crawled through the dark on hands and knees out to the balcony, where indeed the rain was no longer falling. Evan cupped his working hand into the bowl and took several small drinks. He wished for pain relievers to go with the water; the fractured wrist was aching.
What time was it? Ten? Eleven?
He hadn't put on his watch today.

The sound came again and he froze.
Not the rain.
It was a thump, and it came from inside the house somewhere. A chill ran across his skin as Evan realized he had a visitor, probably the dead kind.

A look outside revealed little. Although the rain had stopped, it was still overcast, and darkness blanketed the empty neighborhood. He strained to see down onto the burned lawn, the driveway, the street beyond. If anything was moving down there, he couldn't tell.

Because it's already inside.

Evan gathered his few possessions and tucked them into the pockets of his survival vest, then considered: knife or pistol? He would prefer to engage at a distance, but it was even darker inside the multilevel concrete house, and he couldn't be sure he would hit the mark. Then there was the sound, and what that would attract. Reluctantly, he holstered the Sig Calvin had given him last summer and pulled the survival knife.

A scraping noise floated through the house, and Evan crept to the bedroom doorway, holding his breath and listening. Another scraping, followed by the scuff of a footstep.
Coming up the stairs. But which floor?
The gutted house was an echo factory, making it difficult to judge the distance and location of sounds.

How many in the house? How many already on this floor?
He could picture them, burned corpses standing in the shadows with clicking teeth, sensing for movement. He imagined the hallway outside his room filled with them, just waiting for him to step out so they could rush him with claws and jaws open, incinerated nightmares screeching and—

Stop that shit!
His writer's imagination was trying to unhorse him. But now the nightmares were real, weren't they? Evan clenched his teeth and stepped into the hall, the survival knife raised and ready to plunge into a blackened head. The hallway was empty.

The sound of something rough sliding against a concrete wall came from the darkness ahead. Evan wished for one of those pistol attachments that permitted a small flashlight to be snapped in place under the barrel, but he had seen no need for one while he was choosing his equipment. He was a pilot, there were no zombies in the sky, and because of his rare and newly acquired skill, he was not permitted to go into the unsecured areas of the carrier with the hunting parties. He supposed he'd never considered actually surviving a crash, and he regretted the decision now.

A mournful, broken wail came from the darkness, closer than he expected, a cracking sound that reverberated through the house
and gave him another chill. It was answered a moment later by a chorus of similar cries coming from beyond the balcony.

They're on the lawn too. Are they communicating? Jesus, they don't do that!

Evan forced his imagination into neutral. Why he'd never tried writing fiction was beyond him.
Okay, less storyteller, more Vladimir.

That thought propelled him down the hallway, knife pointed ahead of him now. He remembered a landing that overlooked switchback stairs from his daytime tour of the house, and a hallway that continued on toward the bedroom where he'd found the remains of the murder-suicide. Evan stopped at the edge of the landing and looked over the solid banister.

It took a moment to focus, for his eyes to distinguish the grays from the blacks. Where blue-tinted windows once climbed the face of the house at the central staircase were now only empty frames, and what outside light there was resolved the grays into walls and stairs. A darker shape, black against the gray, was past the turn at the switchback and halfway up the stairs to Evan's level. It was one of the burned things, and as it climbed, its right shoulder scraped against the wall, leaving a sooty smear on the concrete.

Evan risked a look down and saw no others but wasn't reassured. There could be more on the floor below him, just out of sight. Most certainly
would
be more.

A dry croak from below confirmed his fear.

The thing on the stairs let out another parched wail and scraped the wall again, nearly at the top.
More Vladimir.
Evan waited until it set a foot on the uppermost hallway floor, then stepped in and swung the survival knife overhand, driving the blade into its forehead. There was a cracking sound, and the charcoal orb split in two, spilling cold wet sludge onto his knife hand as the body collapsed. It rolled down to the switchback, a brittle arm snapping off in the process.

A groan from below came again, but this time as a pair.

Evan held back a cry of disgust as he wiped the sticky hand violently on the leg of his flight suit. He wanted to run, forced himself to stand still. How far would he get in the dark? The street could be full of them, and
they
didn't need light in order to find him.

Should he figure out a way up to the roof, use one of his two flares?
He'd seen no stairs leading up from this level, and anyone wanting to get onto the house's roof would need a ladder.
Perfect! He would be safe up there; the dead couldn't climb.

The throbbing in his left wrist reminded him that neither could he, not one-handed.

Shit.
What was he going to do, stand here all night and take each one as it reached the top of the stairs? And then what? Morning would be no different. And what would happen the one time he missed, or when his arm grew too tired to swing?

Evan saw another black figure climbing toward the switchback below, followed closely by a second. Their moans came out as a dry wheeze, and more scrapes and thumping could be heard from somewhere downstairs.

What would Vladimir do?

He'd tell you you're fucked, Evanovich.

Taking a deep breath, Evan readied himself to meet the next creature.

•   •   •

January 12—San Francisco Bay

South of Richmond, USS
Nimitz
was drifting steadily into the centermost point of the East Bay, still on an oblique with its port side facing northeast. The Bay Bridge was a dark silhouette behind it.

Stone handed a heavy belt of fifty-caliber ammunition to Chief Liebs, and the older man finished loading the left side of the twin-barreled heavy machine gun he and his younger partner had
fitted into the gun mount on the port catwalk beneath the flight deck. They repeated the process for the right side of the weapon. The fifty's position was approximately a third of the way up this side of the ship from the stern. They couldn't mount any weapons farther back; when
Nimitz
rubbed the Bay Bridge's massive concrete supports last summer, the collision had torn away not only a Phalanx gun system and a battery of surface-to-air missiles, but that stretch of catwalk as well. The walkway ended at a twist of steel and a ninety-foot drop not far from where the two men were working.

“That one's ready,” said the chief, slapping the large weapon. “The next position is amidships, under the port side catapults.” He pointed forward.

Stone nodded, then in a flat tone said, “Be careful,” pointing above and behind the chief. A broken corpse, its ribs jutting out of a narrow chest, was tangled in the flight deck's safety netting over their heads, a system designed to prevent crewmen from being blown overboard by jet blast. The thing reached a twisted arm down through the netting, kicking with legs bent at odd angles, and gnashed its teeth. Dark liquid drooled from its mouth and fell to the catwalk.

Chief Liebs shot it in the head with his M4, and the creature stopped moving. It continued to drip.

“How many of those dropped on us when we went under the bridge, do you think?” said Stone.

“No idea,” growled the chief. “Too many. Hopefully they're too fucked up from the fall to be able to get around much. But then,
hope
is not a strategy.”

“I've heard that before. Who said that?”

The chief led them forward along the catwalk, careful to avoid the dripping fluid. “I'm not sure. Probably a Republican. The officers used to wear that phrase out on us.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yes it does,” said the older man.

Liebs used the Hydra to call Xavier, wanting to inform him that the first fifty-cal was loaded and in position, and to report they had seen nothing of the mystery ship that fired on them. There was no answer on the radio. Liebs thought that maybe the priest and Calvin would be waiting for them at the next gun position, as discussed.

Liebs was walking toward a short stairwell that led from the flight deck down to the catwalk when a corpse staggered down the stairs and crashed into the railing. It wore the remains of a business suit, and its neck was broken so that its head hung to the side. The rest of it was intact, and it lurched toward them with a growl.

Liebs fired, dropping the dead businessman just as two others, a black woman and a teenage boy, both withered and drawn, stomped down the stairway behind it. Stone's M4 came up and he dispatched those two. A rotting soldier in camouflage followed, its left arm and side crushed from the impact with the deck, creamy eyes glaring at them. Liebs took it out.

When no more appeared, the two men approached the stairs slowly and checked them. Empty. They hurried past.

“They're even nastier when they're broken like that,” said Stone.

“As bad as your greenies?” Liebs was referring to the nickname Stone had coined for the color and condition of the ones that were especially bloated and juicy, like balloons filled with spinach dip. The boy had also come up with the term
wet ones
for the seawater-bloated corpses in the bow.

“No, nothing's as bad as those.”

The chief smiled. “Keep an eye on our six, shipmate.” He led them down the catwalk to the next fifty-caliber position.

January 12—
Nimitz

Calvin had been hunting for hours, entering and clearing compartments, sweeping back and forth across second deck. There was no sign of his prey, and she'd had numerous opportunities to climb to an upper deck or drop to a lower one, but he sensed she was still here. There were so many places to hide.

Now he heard boots running on steel up ahead, and as Calvin came to an intersection he didn't hesitate, coming around the corner with the rifle up, trigger finger tensed. The corridor was empty, and the sounds of running had stopped. The hippie padded back the way he'd come, passing wardrooms and briefing compartments, storage lockers and heads for both men and women. In minutes he was back at Broadway and moving forward, his rifle muzzle trained on the corridor ahead.

Distant gunfire had sounded in this direction quite a while ago, brief and violent, followed by silence. Calvin was tracking the noise when the sound of running drew him away. Now he was back on target.

The stocky woman wearing a flannel shirt, who had shot at them and put a buckshot pellet in Calvin's thigh, suddenly darted across the passage up ahead. Calvin triggered a three-round burst that sparked off steel and ruptured a vertical pipe. The hiss of steam filled the intersection ahead, and the hallway was quickly obscured by mist.

Calvin crouched and duckwalked forward. The moment he did, a shotgun fired from inside the steam, pellets whining over his head. He put two bursts into the mist, walking the bullets from floor to ceiling where he thought the corner was. If she was there, this would finish her.

There was no cry, no sound of a body hitting the deck, and the shotgun didn't fire again. When Calvin reached the intersection he found an empty, red twelve-gauge hull on the deck, warm to the touch. The sound of running boots came again, from the right this time. The woman had crossed back the way she'd come, concealed in the steam.

That, or there was someone else down here with him.

The hippie moved right, into the starboard side of the ship. A grunt and a rattle came from an open hatch up ahead, and Calvin followed his rifle inside, sweeping it left and right. It was a compartment filled with helmets and boots, racks of vests and shelves of flight deck gear. At the far end was an open hatch, and a cluster of float coats was swinging from hangers where someone had stumbled into them. He moved into the next compartment, a ready room of some kind with rows of benches facing a lectern and projection screen. Hatches stood open to the left and right, and he caught a blur of movement on his left.

Calvin dove to the floor just as a shotgun blast blew apart a wooden bench beside him. He crawled backward, and a second blast destroyed the bench he'd been hiding behind a second ago. Calvin kept crawling until his sock feet connected with a bulkhead. There was nowhere left to go.

The clicking of shotgun shells being fed up a tube came from the
left, and Calvin rose to his knees, swinging the assault rifle in that direction, his thumb coming up in the same instant to move the selector switch from semi to auto. Ten rounds ripped from the muzzle in an instant of white flashes, sparking off steel, blowing out a light, and tearing apart conduit. There was a scream, followed by more running boot steps.

Calvin leaped over the splintered benches and reached the hatch, finding that it led to a short corridor with a sudden turn. There was a splash of red on the wall, and a blood trail on the deck. He changed magazines while still behind cover before following.

Numerous turns and a multitude of hatches in these tight spaces might have easily thrown off a pursuer, but the blood trail and her boots thumping as she ran gave the woman away. The blood soaked into the hippie's socks as he followed, and he noticed how dark it was.
Hit in the liver. Won't get far.
The man slowed and checked before passing an opening or turning a corner, following the growing pools of blood.

The trail took him past a scattering of shell casings and a pair of bodies lying in the passageway, both torn up by automatic rifle fire, each with a safety shot to the forehead. They were bearded, dirty, and not part of the
Nimitz
family. Calvin moved past, following the trail.

On the other side of the hatch where the bodies lay, Sophia never heard the man go by.

Calvin came upon a shotgun lying on the deck, the grip and stock slick with blood. Staggering, bloody boot prints led away from it down a right-hand corridor. A red palm print on the steel showed him where the woman had kept herself from falling.

Soon, now.
He kept going.

•   •   •

C
hief Liebs's watch said it was approaching midnight, and neither Xavier nor Calvin had appeared. He and Stone completed the mounting and loading of the twin fifties both amidships and at the
bow, this last one done on a catwalk tilting toward the water at an uncomfortable angle with the ship's list. Liebs noticed it was more pronounced than earlier.

“I think I see it,” Stone said, pointing. He was looking into the darkness to the west, the carrier still drifting north on the oblique.

Chief Liebs stood beside him, peering into the night. The two of them were back at the gun mount amidships, still thinking the priest and hippie might show up. “I don't see anything.”

“Right there,” the younger man said. “See the wake?”

The chief stared, then thought he saw a strip of white against the black background. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out a black shape ahead of the wake, the sleek silhouette of a warship several miles out.

“Damn, your eyes are good.”

“It's out of range, isn't it?” asked Stone, resting a hand on the twin heavy machine guns.

“It might as well be. Remember what I taught you about these?” The chief indicated the heavy weapon. “Effective range is just over a mile. It
can
hit targets out to four miles, but that's just praying and spraying, and you have to be willing to expend a serious amount of ammo while you try to work out the range. That gives your opponent plenty of time to zero in on your muzzle flashes and use his own weapons to put you to sleep forever.” He shook his head. “Our aggressor is well beyond effective range, and that's not by accident. If he
does
have a deck gun aboard, and he must since PK said he put a round across our bow, you can bet we're within
his
effective range. He doesn't have to get closer than he is right now to chop us up.”

Stone looked at the Navy man. “Could something this big
get
chopped up? This thing's a monster.”

Liebs stared out at the wake in the distance. The vessel appeared to be circling, moving around to their stern now. “It's a ship, and it needs to float. You put enough shells into her waterline and she'll go to the bottom. Water comes in through the holes and”—he snapped
his fingers—“the sea does the rest. Shell hits also cause fires, and that will sink a ship just as quickly.”

“Why would they want to do that?” Stone asked. “Aren't they going to try to take us?”

“Probably.” Liebs watched the black ship slip from sight behind the carrier. Thinking about what he'd told the boy about range made him wonder if they should even bother to mount the fifties on the starboard side, whether it would even matter. Then something Stone said made him pause, thinking . . .

“We need to move,” the gunner's mate said.

A bullet sparked off the bulkhead next to Stone's face, making him cry out and drop. Liebs went down too, crouched and looking both ways down the catwalk. More bullets buzzed past, cutting the air like lethal, flying insects or ricocheting off steel. He saw the muzzle flashes, about a hundred feet down the catwalk toward the stern by the ruined section.

Before either man could bring up his rifle, one of those muzzle flashes went full auto, turning into a stuttering white spark. Liebs and Stone went flat and hugged the gridwork of metal as snaps and hisses cut the air around them and more bullets caused sparks and dings as they found the catwalk railing and the flight deck overhang above. It was wild, unaimed fire, but there was a lot of it.

Liebs felt something punch through the top of his right boot. “I'm hit,” he grunted. Another round plowed a red gash down his arm, and a third creased his scalp. Stone let out a hiss as a bullet punched in and out of the meat in his upper arm, narrowly missing the bone.

The gunner's mate pushed his rifle ahead of him, but before he could fire, a bullet smashed into the muzzle, bending the steel opening. A fragment of lead tore a chunk out of his left eyebrow.

“Fuck this,” Stone snarled, leaping to his feet and charging, M4 to his shoulder and squeezing off three-round bursts as he ran. The staccato of full automatic stopped and was replaced by pistol fire. A
hot buzz kissed the boy's ear, and then four slugs hit him center mass, dropping him to his knees. Fighting for breath, Stone put his green combat sights on the shapes behind the muzzle flash and squeezed, squeezed, squeezed until the firing pin clicked on an empty magazine. He let the rifle drop against his chest on its strap as he struggled to stand, jerking his nine-millimeter pistol from its holster and stumbling toward the now-motionless shapes.

The firefight had ruined his night vision, but moonlight was now beginning to poke through breaks in the cloud cover as the storm front dissipated, and the boy crouched over the bodies. Two men and a woman lay on the deck in a pile, all of them refugees he'd seen coming in on the boat earlier today. They were torn up, and for a moment he thought that under the moon, the blood looked like motor oil.

The injured woman snarled and sat up, slashing at his face with a straight razor. Stone jerked away, the blade missing by millimeters, and sprang to his feet. Without a conscious decision he lashed out with his right boot, kicking sideways, catching her under the chin. There was a sharp
CRACK
and her head lolled bonelessly to the side, her eyes open.

Stone used his Beretta and put a round in each of their heads.

“You okay?” Liebs asked. He'd come up behind the young man, and waited until Stone finished his work.

The younger man ran a hand over his body armor, finding the pistol slugs. “That hurt like a bastard.”

“Well what did you expect, John Wayne? Did you think you were storming Normandy?” The chief shook his head. “You're going to bruise up nicely. Anything else?”

“A round went through my arm, but it still works.” He looked at the other man's boot, and the red line across his scalp. “How about you?”

“I've been better,” said Liebs, “and I'm limping, so I'll be slow. Can you keep moving?”

Stone snorted. “I'm good to go, Chief. Where to?”

The chief dropped his damaged M4 and replaced it with the identical rifle lying beside the dead woman, then kicked the rest of the pirate weapons over the side. It was too dangerous to leave them where others boarders might find them. He led them back to the short stairway leading to the flight deck, and both stopped to reload before going up.

“Remember,” the gunner's mate said, “there's going to be dead things up there left over from the Bay Bridge. Just drop them when you see them; don't worry about making noise. The sneaky part of this mission is over.”

“Where are we going?”

“The stern,” said Liebs. “You said it, they want to take us, and you don't do that with a deck gun.” He started up. “They're going to launch another boarding party, and they'll head for the swimmer's platform.”

When they reached topside, the two men stopped and stared. A hundred corpses were standing on the flight deck, but none of them were moving. All were facing southeast with their heads tilted.

•   •   •

X
avier was stretched out flat on the rubberized deck, his body pointed straight back and away from the Seahawk's right tire, trying to keep himself as narrow as his cover. The tire was shredded from gunfire, but the rim and the landing gear strut—though bullet scarred—had kept him safe for the hours he'd been hiding here, pinned down and unable to move in either direction. Ten feet behind him was a sheer bulkhead with no exits, and nothing to hide behind. To his left was fifty feet of open space he'd never be able to make it across before he'd reach the cover of a forklift, and to his right was a twenty-foot gap between this and another parked helicopter. He didn't know if there were any exit hatches in that direction, either.

Every time he tried to move, rifles cracked, bullets tearing up the decking around him, banging into the tire rim or hitting the helicopter above. They knew where he was but didn't dare advance; there was too much open ground between the crate behind which they were hiding and Xavier's position. They also knew he wasn't afraid to shoot back. Empty twelve-gauge hulls littered the deck around him. He didn't know if he'd hit anyone.

He couldn't move, they couldn't move. A stalemate. But Xavier didn't have time to wait them out. Every hour that slid by meant the other boarders were moving deeper through the ship, causing more destruction, taking more lives. He had to do something.

They're counting on that, aren't they? Waiting for you to do something stupid.
He forced himself to remain still, peeking around the edge of what remained of the tire, concealed in the shadows under the helicopter's belly. The hangar bay was well lit, and he had a good view of the splintered crate that was their hiding place. Every now and then a face would poke out from one side or the other, then duck back out of sight, nothing at which he could shoot. Xavier was certain one of those faces belonged to the man who'd introduced himself as Charlie.

•   •   •

T
his had gone on far longer than Charlie expected; hours, in fact. The son of a bitch was patient. During that time, the hippie he'd killed earlier turned and rose, but instead of wandering off to make trouble for other people, it had come straight for Charlie. He'd had to finish it with a head shot.