LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (13 page)

She pounded on the glass once in frustration, and looked up as she stifled a frustrated scream.
 

That’s when it caught her eye. All this time, a solution had been there. A way to move in the building without the creatures seeing her. A way to get food or to escape.
 

For the first time in months, Liz smiled.

The road upon which we were slowly moving east had great rifts torn in the concrete, with multiple tree branches and other debris in our path. I moved slowly but with urgency, knowing that one fallen tree, one huge canyon in the tarmac, could be the end. We would have to abandon the truck and make our way on foot.
 

The road paralleled the swollen river to our left, and we could almost make out the flooded areas between our pathway and the angry banks. It must have been twice its normal volume, and whitecaps crested the rapidly flowing water. It hadn’t dropped down as much as we had thought it would, which meant that much of the water was seawater that had pushed its way inland and hadn’t receded. That, in turn, meant that the earth had slipped down—the massive earthquake had vastly altered the geography in the region and the land was physically lower than it had been before.
 

As the volcano to the south roared again, I realized that it probably wasn’t finished.

Ky’s eyes were glued to the rear window as we moved forward, and I silently cursed every foot we wasted going east—never had time been more valuable, and we were wasting it fleeing the herd behind, looking for a bridge. Kate’s eyes were glued to the map and she spoke finally as she located another potential crossing.

“Here,” she said, jabbing her finger at a nameless black point on the weather beaten map. “Looks like they have a small bridge—and it’s far enough upstream that it might not have gotten washed out.” She glanced at the swollen river and the crumbled banks and back at the map.
 

“Okay,” I said, not offering the obvious doubts. She knew. We all knew.

The larger bridges—like those in the town we had just passed—might have survived the earthquake and the movement of the land beneath them. But the smaller bridges were more likely to be twisted hulks of steel and concrete—unusable and impassable. Not many could stand up to the massive elemental forces that accompanied a tsunami.

The miles came slowly as we crawled forward. In several places, the road no longer lined up across newly formed gullies—with yellow lines askew and gray pavement reaching forlornly into the sky—and we had to take the pitiful truck into the adjoining fields to avoid the broken pathway. The interminable gray was both a relief and a curse—the diffuse light allowed only limited visibility, and we felt that at any moment, thousands of those things would appear from the cloudy forests set back from the lonely road.
 

I watched the mile markers—those that had survived—until we were drawing closer to Kate’s intended crossing. A single farmhouse stood next to the road, rubble where its walls had been, but the front door strangely intact, standing alone like an abandoned sentinel, staring at the road.

“Where do you think all the people are?” Ky asked softly, scratching Romeo’s ears as she stared at the remains of the farmhouse.
 

“Don’t know, kid,” I answered briefly, then pointed as a crossroads appeared from the sooty mist. “Is this it?”

Kate nodded, eyes narrowing as she looked to our left, the northern fork of the road.
 

“Should be a bridge about two hundred feet along that road,” she said.

I nodded, releasing the brake and letting the truck creep forward on idle. The air felt heavy, here. The ash sucked in noise like a blanket of cork and I yearned to hear the squeak of a brake or the rumble of a broken axel.
 

The silence was too heavy—too much. The gray was unrelieved by details—only vague shapes in the shadows. In the distance, I could hear only the sound of rushing water.
 

To either side of the gravel road, trees grew closer, further reducing our visibility. The branches above our heads created a foliage tunnel, with fell limbs lining the pathway. Several smaller limbs, unavoidable now in the narrow roadway, crunched beneath our wheels. The sound of rushing water got louder as we moved forward, and I willed the gray mist to clear slightly.
 

“Hey guys,” Ky whispered, staring out the left rear window. Kate glanced back at her briefly before focusing on the road ahead.
 

“Yeah kid, what’s up?” she said absently.

Ahead, a massive dark shadow appeared, thrusting above the treetops over our heads. Sharp angles and bright splashes of red and white paint were barely discernible.

“Shit!” I cursed as the brakes locked and our tires pushed through the loose stones, coming to a halt abruptly. A massive torrent of water was streaming across the roadway, debris thundering through the wash that had been created by the floodwaters. Kate’s mouth was open, and she leaned her head out of the passenger side window.

“Guys,” Ky whispered again. I heard Romeo whimper once.
 

“Is that what I think it is?” said Kate softly, not hearing Ky’s plaintiff request.
 

“What’s up, K?” I asked, opening my door and dropping softly to the ground, staring straight ahead.
 

Suddenly, I realized what Kate was seeing.
 

There was no bridge here.
 

There was something much larger.

The flood waters were surging around the metal carcass of a massive car ferry.
 

Nearly a city block in size, the huge monstrosity lay on its right side, bow firmly planted in the bank closest to where we were parked, stern lost deep in the gray powder that fell from the sky. Dark windows stared at us from behind the mist.

“Guys!” Ky shouted this time, slamming her door as she and Romeo dropped from the truck. “We have company!”
 

I whipped my head around, finally following her arm as it stretched toward the tree line to our left. Multiple forms were moving between the branches, many soaking wet and looking horridly disfigured—as if they had been dropped in vats of acid.
 

“Where did they …” I began, but Kate yelled sharply.
 

“Okay, this is the end of the line,” she started grabbing packs from the bed, detaching our huge bags and throwing them to us. “We’re hoofing it from here, people.”

“Uh,” I began, raising my rifle. The creatures were only twenty meters from the tree line and closing fast. “What are you talking about? We can’t just leave the truck. We have to try further up the line. We leave now, we’re on foot … possibly for the rest of the trip. We don’t know what’s on the other side of this river. Assuming, that is, that we can cross it. In case you didn’t notice, this bridge is out. There’s a boat in its place.”

Ky cinched up her pack and slung her rifle, crossbow in hand, eyes on Kate, who was moving with purpose.
 

Didn’t anyone understand me? Was I even speaking out loud?

Kate looked up, glancing at the zombies behind me before moving toward the surging water.

“End of the line, sweetheart,” she said. “After this, the river moves into a large valley, about forty miles long. No bridges until a major highway overpass fifty miles away. We have ten miles of gas left, tops. We either try for a crossing here, or we’re hoofing it after we get ten miles further on, with no guarantee at a crossing.” She looked at the large ship, wedged across the river as water battered its hull on all sides. “Nope, this is our shot.”
 

She grinned quickly before turning away.
 

“Nut up, McKnight. It’s just a wrecked ferry spanning white water in an earthquake-ravaged riverbed that might dislodge at any moment and send us to a waterlogged grave under a press of trapped zombies. Ain’t nothin’.”
 

I was starting to regret meeting this woman.
 

Pulling the pack tight on my back and grimacing at the load, I grunted once and glanced back at our approaching friends.

Ky shot past me as Kate made her way to a piece of the roadway that had survived the washout. It jutted out above the rushing water, a torn guardrail reaching into thin air. Evergreens beyond the railing dipped into the dark waters as the earth eroded quickly under the onslaught.
 

The piece of roadway was a slender bridge between two pieces of intact road, separated by the rushing water. Beyond the second stretch of concrete, rubble from the torn and broken bridge made a barely discernible pathway toward the broken ship. A deep gash in the hull, facing the roadway, could be accessed from the faint pathway. I noted that it hadn’t yet been filled with water due to the angle of the ship, whose stern must be much deeper in the river as the bow jutted into the air.
 

“If we’re going, we should go now,” said Ky, anxiously watching as the first creature reached the back of the truck and started toward us across the broken concrete.
 

Kate took a breath and leapt, landing firmly in the middle of the concrete island and turning to Ky. She needn’t have worried. Following her athletic canine companion, Ky’s leap was spot on, and I was suddenly alone on the bank. I glanced one more at our faithful steed, now surrounded by the undead, sighing heavily as I turned toward the two women and jumped forward.
 

The creatures were emerging in greater numbers from the tree line, gruesome flesh sagging from their bones, their limbs swollen and distended. I stared, unable to help myself, before realizing why they looked different.

They had come from the ship, and the water had soaked into their bodies, which had absorbed the seawater like a bloated sponge, pushing their flesh to its limits. Bulging eyes stared out from leaking sockets as they shambled forward.

No, sir. This apocalypse was not getting prettier as time went by.
 

Every day was something new. And every day was something more gruesome and fucked up.
 

Kate led the way across the concrete islands. As we jumped between safe spots amid a torrent of rushing water, I watched as pieces of the embankment we had left began to erode before our eyes. Concrete was still calving from the bank. The water was not yet done creating new pathways for its destruction.

Ky chuckled as several zombies stumbled head first into the raging waters, getting whipped instantly downstream, their limbs flailing into the sky as they disappeared under white water.
 

“Mind the gap, bitch-wads,” she muttered, flashing me a grin.

“Watch the edge here,” Kate threw back, as she reached the end of the concrete where a massive gash in the side of the hull had been opened by a shattered piece of the steel bridgeworks. Nearly seven feet long and four feet wide, it was sufficiently large for us and our huge packs as we negotiated the approach. Edges of sharp, torn metal lined the jagged tear.
 

Romeo flew into the space lithely, landing firmly on the other side and turning to Kate, who carefully stepped into the dubious safety of the steel hull.
 

“I still want to go on record as saying this is a bad idea,” I said, eyeing the dark confines of the large ship—a ship that could have been a tomb to more than a thousand commuters at the height of the outbreak. A ship that had already disgorged a number of hungry creatures.
 

“Noted,” said Kate, moving into the darkness as Ky entered the ship.
 

“Good then. Glad they’re paying attention to me,” I muttered. “Awesome. Just …” I stared into the yawning unknown, then back at the crumbling bank, where countless zombies were still diving into the rushing waters like lemmings on a cliff.
 

“…Awesome.”

***

The ship had come to rest with its keel pointed east and the starboard side straddling the rushing water of the river. Amazingly, the entire bow half of the huge ferry was propped up, out of the water, its hull mashed and crushed together with the steel girders and other remains of the much smaller bridge. The high water that had pushed the beast this far inland had left the bow stranded, propped against the remains of the embankment on the south side with water flowing beneath it, while the stern was lost in the gray haze ahead of us. The gentle slope of the floor—what used to be the wall of a large interior passageway—indicated that the stern was much lower, perhaps partially submerged in the river waters ahead.

Our lights illuminated a barren metal passage, and we crouched in the odd space. Assorted hatchways opened above us into various rooms in the ship, and we were careful to stay to the side of the hall—just in case something had survived and wanted to drop in on us.
 

“If there are more of those things on board, where would they be?” asked Ky, looking around warily. An automatic rifle was clipped to the single-point harness on her chest, looking absurdly large on her small frame. Her trusty crossbow was held in one steady hand and I watched her ponytail swish back and forth underneath her baseball cap.
 

I marveled again at what a brave kid she was.

“Depends,” said Kate, scanning the hallway as we approached an intersection. Since we were walking on the starboard side hull, the only way forward was actually up—a passageway that had been a hallway leading into the interior of the ship. Another hallway continued toward the stern only five feet above our heads, and I saw the small red signs Kate was isolating with her flashlight.
 

Bar, Restrooms, Engine Room (Authorized Personnel Only).
 

“On what?” Ky answered, watching as Kate slung her rifle over a shoulder, pulled her pistol, and climbed awkwardly with one hand, using the frame of a nearby door and a fire extinguisher as footholds.