Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead (16 page)

Angie and Skye moved swiftly up through the compartment marked with a yellow
02
, encountering closed hatches and the sailors they had killed from below, and then continued upward. Here, the stairs ended in a room with
03 GALLERY
stenciled on the wall. Three open, oval-shaped hatches gave them a choice, none of which they wanted. Both women had hoped the stairway would take them all the way up to the flight deck but realized it was probably asking for too much.

“Let’s go this way,” Angie said, indicating the hatch on the right.

Skye moved past her, taking the flashlight out of Angie’s hand. “You can’t carry the Barrett and the Galil, and still hold the light.” Her voice was like the rasp of a file across a cinder block.

Angie nodded, wishing she had left the Barrett behind. It offered an incredible amount of standoff firepower, the capability of reaching out and touching a target at extreme range, but in addition to its tremendous weight, it had a low rate of fire and was really useful only in open spaces at long range. Like the flight deck that eluded them, she thought. Still, she couldn’t bear leaving it behind, and so she bore the weight and let the younger woman lead.

The overhead lights were out in the corridor beyond the hatch they had chosen, but Skye’s flashlight was sufficient. The hallway was narrow and packed with piping and cables, and multiple hatches on both sides. Signs beside the oval doorways read
CAT-1 ACCESS
,
ELECTRICAL
,
HYDRAULICS
,
CAT-2 ACCESS
. All were closed, and they did not attempt to explore any of them.

Skye stopped them by holding up a fist, something she had learned from Taylor and Postman, the two National Guardsmen who had rescued and trained her, then given their lives for her. It seemed a lifetime ago. “I feel air moving,” she said.

Angie whispered, “You can’t smell it? That’s outside air.”

The young woman breathed deeply through her nose. Nothing. It confirmed something she had been suspecting for days now; in addition to the hand tremors, the headaches, and the loss of vision in her left eye, she was also losing her sense of taste and smell. Wonderful. What would be next?

“I feel the draft too,” said Angie.

Skye moved forward, the M4 muzzle leading, and came to a turn. She held her breath and listened, then stepped around the corner, ready to blow away anything waiting on the other side. There was nothing but another ten feet of corridor, which led to a heavy hatch standing partially open. A sliver of daylight fell through the opening, and a puff of breeze accompanied by a soft whistle issued from the hatch. Skye used her shoulder to open it slowly.

The sunlight made her wince and draw back, as the headache spike sank into her brain like white fire. She gasped but shrugged off Angie’s attempt to reach for her. Skye fumbled her aviator sunglasses out of a pouch on her ammo vest and went through, Angie close behind.

A soft, salty breeze blew in from the bay as the two women stepped out onto a metal grid catwalk with a four-foot steel-pipe railing. The surface was nearly ninety feet below, reflecting the day’s light as above the sun ducked in and out behind a generally gray cloud cover. Both breathed deeply of the clean air.

The catwalk began at the hatch from which they had emerged, quite near the extreme back end of the warship, and extended ahead along the starboard side. The flight deck directly above them stretched another ten feet out over the catwalk, creating a shady overhang, and both imagined what the noise level would have been to stand here while fighter aircraft thundered so closely off the deck. They could see Alameda half a mile away, and the urban sprawl of Oakland beyond. Nothing could be seen moving on the streets, in the skies above, or on the calm waters of the bay. A dead world.

The movement was much closer, and Angie pointed it out. At the edge of the overhanging flight deck, the line of safety netting jutted out another five or six feet. They had seen it from the water as they circled the massive vessel, and now, as then, several corpses flopped in the netting. Here, a figure in a yellow jersey and helmet, steel-toed boots, and tan “float coat” made the mesh sag as it thrashed facedown, groaning and reaching through, arms and legs entangled.

“Tango,” Skye said, and shot the creature under the chin, blowing its brains out through a new hole in the top of its helmet.

“Tango,” Angie echoed, tapping the girl’s shoulder and pointing down the catwalk. A young sailor in a red long-sleeved jersey was shuffling toward them along the structure’s length, one shoulder shredded by an old shotgun blast, a gaping hole in the center of his torso. Liquefied, blackened organs dripped from the wound and pattered onto the young man’s boots as he moved.

Skye aimed and fired.
CHAK.
The bullet clipped off an ear. Skye bared her teeth at the headache spike, ticked left, and fired again.
CHAK.
A hole appeared above the sailor’s right eye and he collapsed. Skye frowned and looked at her M4, not liking this new, metallic sound it was making.

“Your suppressor’s wearing out,” Angie said. “They don’t last forever.”

Skye cursed.

“When we get back to my van, we’ll make you a new one,” Angie offered. “I have all the equipment we need.”

Skye smirked and raised an eyebrow. “You really think we’re getting off this ship alive?”

The face of Angie’s daughter, Leah, flashed before her eyes. “Yes,” she said, her throat suddenly tight, “I do.”

Skye shrugged and moved down the catwalk.

Thirty feet past the sailor in the red jersey they came upon a pair of low steel lockers bolted to the catwalk, both of them open and empty. Just opposite, set in a heavy, pivoting mount in the railing, was a pair of side-by-side fifty-caliber heavy machine guns, each with a large ammo box affixed to the side. Both were loaded, belts of long, copper-jacketed rounds snaking down into the boxes.

“This makes sense,” said Angie. “They would have been at general quarters. Do you know what these things would do to any boat stupid enough to come within range?”

“Open them up like zippers, I’ll bet,” Skye rasped.

“You better believe it.”

Skye patted one of the heavy weapons as she walked past. “Too bad they don’t count for shit against the walking dead,” she said. “Making a head shot would be pure luck.”

Angie nodded. Skye was right; the twin fifties would tear hell out of small boats and even knock down planes, and against human targets they caused catastrophic damage. In one of the episodes of her show, the fifty-caliber heavy machine gun had been demonstrated, with a retired Army master sergeant there to provide commentary. The man had dispelled the myth that the use of such a weapon against human targets was prohibited, explaining that JAG, the judge advocate general’s office, had declared it legal.

A human being hit by full-auto fifty-caliber fire didn’t leave much behind to even identify. Unfortunately, Angie knew, against the walking dead it would at best chop them up into lots of smaller infectious pieces, and if it didn’t destroy the brain, it would still leave a dangerous enemy behind.

They passed the weapons by, heading for a steep stairwell that would lead them finally to the flight deck. Skye went first, the metal risers taking her up through a rectangular opening. She stopped with only her head exposed in order to assess their new environment.

Skye knew the supercarrier was big, having seen it both from a distance and from the water up close as they made a circuit of the ship before tying off at the swimmer’s platform. Their climb up from the depths gave the impression of being inside a large building. Yet it was not until now that she truly had a sense of just how massive
Nimitz
was, and for a moment she was overwhelmed.

The flat deck, covered in a rubberized nonskid coating, stretched away like a stadium parking lot and continued so far forward that from this angle there was no clear definition of where it ended and the drop-off to the water began. There were very few protrusions, which immediately made sense to her, as anything poking out of the deck would be a hazard to aircraft. A pair of low, glassed-in viewports amidships and farther out jutted up a few inches from the surface. She remembered that the people who controlled the launch catapults would be in there, something she had learned from seeing
Top Gun
, but all other equipment, elevator platforms, lights, and arresting wires appeared to be flush-mounted and out of sight.

The superstructure was another matter.

About a third of the way forward, rising on the starboard side—their side—was a haze-gray structure climbing over eight stories above the deck, its uppermost levels ringed with tipped-out, bluish glass windows and ringed with catwalks. Above this towered a high mast bristling with antennae and radar equipment. A large American flag hung from the mast, waving in a light breeze.

Between Skye and the superstructure stood a high crane derrick, apparently used for clearing objects off the deck or even swinging out to recover things from the sea. What appeared to be storage sheds or garages were built into the space between the crane and the superstructure.

Based on what she had seen in a movie that was a hit even before she was born, Skye had expected to see the deck covered in dangerous-looking fighter aircraft, and she was a bit surprised to see that it was empty. But then hadn’t someone, that Navy medic Rosa, said that the planes might have already left? Skye decided that if the sailors on board had started turning and eating each other, anyone who could fly would have taken off without a second thought.

“What do we have?” Angie asked from the stairway below.

Skye moved to the side and motioned her up. Angie poked her head out and took it all in. Despite the impressive nature of a supercarrier’s flight deck up close, it was the dead that interested them most.

Sailors wearing an assortment of colored jerseys, some with helmets and some without, others in camouflage or coveralls, wandered the deck in their stiff-legged gait, arms dangling at their sides. A few stood at the edge of the deck and seemed to stare out at the haunted cities in the distance. None of them were making noise. As they watched, a pair of creatures stumbled up from a catwalk on the far side of the flat expanse, and another emerged from an opening in the superstructure, tripping over the knee knocker and falling onto its face, only to slowly climb to its feet and shuffle away. On the catwalks high above, another half dozen bumped along handrails and into each other.

“Once we start,” said Angie, “it’s going to get them worked up and bring them down on us.”

“Yep,” said Skye, clenching her teeth against the headache that had subsided from a blinding spike to a painful throb, one that flared every now and then to remind her it was never far away.

“I had hoped to get up onto those catwalks,” Angie said, looking up. “Elevation would be better.”

Skye shrugged. “So we run for the tower, or whatever it’s called.” Her blind eye was watering again. “You saw the drifter come out, so that’s our way in. There must be stairs.”

Angie thought for a moment. “Let’s thin them out a little first, then make our move.” When Skye nodded, Angie led them up and across the extreme rear end of the flight deck at a jog. Skye paused once to drop a drifter in a green jersey who she thought was a little too close. It took three rounds before she scored a head shot.

The two women dropped prone on the rubberized deck, about five feet between them. Angie snapped out the bipod at the front of her Galil and set it before her, along with a bandolier of magazines. Skye similarly laid out full clips close to her left elbow as she settled into a comfortable position.

Still on her stomach, Angie scooted left a few feet and unfolded the steel bipod of the Barrett, lining up stubby magazines of heavy fifty-caliber rounds. She embraced the stock, pulling it close, and put her eye to the large scope, clicking a few adjustments. Her right hand found the pistol grip, index finger lightly locating the trigger. To Angie West, the Barrett was an old friend, and she was an expert marksman with the legendary weapon. It was the same rifle used by Navy SEALs, some of whom she had competed against and had come out on at least a level footing.

“I’ll go long,” Angie said. “You take the targets closer in.”

Skye wiped an unsteady left hand at her weeping eye and pulled the M4 tight against her shoulder. She sighted on a thing in a tan vest and white helmet, a rotting thing with a drooping shoulder, a hated thing of a species that had destroyed everyone she had ever loved. She put the luminescent green chevrons of her optics on its wavering head.

“Let’s go to work,” said Skye, her voice like the gravel at the bottom of a grave.

They fired together.

Rosa had no sooner said the words
jet fuel
than three of the hippies opened up on the horde with assault rifles and shotguns. The crash of gunfire thundered in the tight hallway, muzzle flashes reflected in the pooling fuel and splitting the vaporous air.

“No!” Xavier cried, involuntarily ducking, expecting the bright flash that would herald ignition and death.

It didn’t come.

JP-5, also called AVCAT for
aviation carrier turbine fuel
, was kerosene-based, a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, alkanes, naphthenes, and aromatic hydrocarbons. It was highly flammable with explosive vapors; those who handled it without proper gear were at constant risk of being incapacitated by benzene fumes. Both Rosa and Brother Peter felt the hallway spin as they became light-headed and had to hold on to the walls to keep from falling.

Because of its nature and the dangerous environment of jet aircraft operating on a busy flight deck, AVCAT had been designed with a flash point of 140 degrees and had to be moderately heated before it would ignite. It was considered a stable fuel, even under fire conditions, and was normally impervious to small-arms fire.

That they had not blown up did not replace the fact that they were all being steadily poisoned.

The hippies at the rear poured fire into the surging dead, trying to pull bandanas over their faces at the same time. Xavier grabbed Rosa and Brother Peter by their arms, choking out, “Come on!” as he stumbled back the way they had come. The other three members of Calvin’s Family who were with them—Tommy, Eve, and Lilly—had already run in that direction, flashlight beams bouncing frantically. Those at the back attempted a fighting retreat, battling the overpowering fumes while trying to make their shots count as they backed up.

One of them slipped in the pooling JP-5 and went down hard, striking her head. Another was overcome with benzene and sagged unconscious to the deck. A bearded young man named Tuck, who claimed he could commune with Native American shamanic totems when he did peyote, stood over the bodies of his fallen friends emptying his rifle at the galloping dead, screaming, “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!”

The dead slammed into him and took him to the floor. They pursued Xavier no farther down the corridor as they dropped to their knees amid the fallen humans in a savage feeding frenzy.

The priest had neither the time nor the strength to look back at the rear guard. Rosa and Peter were heavy and sluggish, even in his powerful arms, and he barely noticed that he had dropped his shotgun in order to grab them. He was light-headed too, and his vision was quickly shrinking into a constricting tunnel with gray at the edges as a wave of nausea hit him in a rush.

He was going to fall, and then they were going to die.

Xavier stayed on his feet, hauling his companions forward and keeping his narrowing sight on the bobbing lights up ahead. If he could reach them, if he could just . . .

The flashlights disappeared, leaving only a long corridor with a few fluorescents in the distance. Under the lights, a crowd of
Nimitz
’s former crew was headed this way. Xavier stopped to catch his breath, his chest burning as he struggled to inhale, his throat raw and the inside of his nose scorched and red. He gagged, fought it, and then vomited on the deck in front of him. He couldn’t tell if there was blood in it, though he expected there would be, then heaved twice more.

The growling and ripping sounds of the feeding behind him filled the hall, and from the approaching shapes up ahead came a long, low moan. He looked at his companions, both on their knees and barely conscious, Peter’s shotgun dangling from a strap around his neck and Rosa’s nine-millimeter still in its holster. He doubted he even had the strength to retrieve the weapons, much less use them, and as he reached out for the shotgun another surge of vomit doubled him over, bile searing his already raw throat on the way up.

This is how we end,
he thought, one arm still outstretched for the shotgun when many hands fell upon him and pulled at his flesh. He couldn’t even fight back, could only keep his grip on Rosa and Peter and hope they were too far gone to feel the teeth.

It took all three of them, Tommy, Lilly, and Eve, to drag Xavier into the hatchway through which they had disappeared, into the safety of a barnlike room holding the vessel’s emergency diesels. They pulled Brother Peter and Rosa in next, closed the hatch, and secured the dog handle with a three-foot-long socket wrench.

Xavier fell over the corpse of a sailor with a freshly crushed head—courtesy of Tommy and the same wrench that now held the door—and collapsed to the deck. Rosa and Peter were stretched out beside him, both fully unconscious now. The room reeked of diesel, but compared to the gas chamber created by the leaking JP-5, it was like high mountain air. Xavier focused simply on drawing breath, and just before he passed out, he had a moment to consider how cool the rubberized floor felt against the side of his face.

While Eve kept watch over her unconscious companions, worried that they might not awaken from the exposure to the fumes but not knowing what to do about it, Tommy and Lilly conducted a more detailed exploration of the generator room. They returned fifteen minutes later, confirming that they were alone, and that the space had a small attached workshop, several exiting hatches, and an open stairway that led both up and down. Tommy stacked two small pyramids of tin lubricant cans at the entry point of both stairways, hoping that if any of the clumsy dead staggered up or down into their room, they would at least get a warning.

Xavier and Rosa didn’t come to for another hour and spent even more time just sitting propped against a wall, not speaking. Brother Peter rose a half hour after that, moving away from the others and leaning against a generator with his eyes closed, holding his head against a pulsating pain that threatened to split his skull right down the middle.

“I thought we were dead,” Xavier said at last, his voice weak.

Tommy was squatting in front of him and offered bottles of water to the priest and Rosa. “So did we. You got lucky; the others didn’t. I guess they bought us some time.” There was no recrimination in his voice, only a tone of resignation. “I think we’re safe for now.”

Rosa produced two bottles of saline solution from her medical bag and passed them around, insisting everyone flush their eyes. Lilly brought a bottle to Brother Peter and had to nudge him several times to get his attention before he obediently took it from her hand.

After a while they huddled together in hopes of figuring out where they were. It didn’t take long before they decided that other than being on Fourth Deck and somewhere near the back of the ship, they were hopelessly turned around. A
thump
interrupted the conversation, the single
bang
of a fist on a steel hatch, and all eyes went involuntarily to the wrench.

“Maybe it’s one of the others,” Lilly whispered.

Another
thump
, followed by a muffled moan.

“Maybe,” said Xavier, “but not as you knew them.”

They moved away from the door, in among the towering generators. The priest looked around at the group, seeing a fatigue that seemed to have overridden their terror. He checked his watch, only to find it had been smashed at some point.

“We need to rest,” Xavier said. “We need to find a safe place to hide for a while, have something to eat, get some sleep. We’re pretty much shot right now.”

The others nodded their agreement.

Xavier ran a hand over his face, rubbing at tired eyes. “Trouble is, where can we go?”

•   •   •

T
he Air Force shrink who was also God stood beside Brother Peter with His arms folded, frowning.
“I saved your life again,”
He said.
“I could have left you for the lions, but I spared your life. Do you still disbelieve?”

The minister quickly looked around at the others. He had only spoken with the Lord when he was alone or away from the group, but now here He was in their midst. What would the others think? Immediately he noticed that they seemed to neither see nor hear the savior. Did that mean they couldn’t hear Peter speaking as well?

“I believe,” the minister said softly, glancing around. No one noticed. He said it louder. “I’m not a pussy!” Again there was no reaction from the group, not even the priest, who, of course, believed he could speak with the Lord.

“They are heathens,”
God said.
“They do not even feel my presence. You are the chosen, Peter, and thus granted special gifts.”

The minister smiled.

“But you’re still weak.”

Brother Peter’s face reddened. “I’m not! Don’t say that!”

“Hmm, sounds like you might have a little spunk left in you after all,”
God said, standing close enough to polish His eyeglasses on the tail of Brother Peter’s shirt.

“I’m not weak,” the minister repeated in a mutter.

“Okay, cool your jets, tough guy. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
The shrink shifted forms into the hated, touchy gym teacher, making the minister recoil.
“Naughty boys get punished, oh yes they do,”
said God.

“I told you I don’t like that form,” Brother Peter said, his voice becoming a petulant whine.

God shrugged and turned into Anderson, Peter’s trusted and loyal aide whom the minister had fed to the undead. He was naked and covered in bites and torn flesh, scraps of zip ties dangling from His wrists and ankles. He held up His palms, both with bleeding stigmata.
“WHO . . . AM . . . I . . . ?”
God’s voice thundered, making the steel deck tremble.

Brother Peter clapped his hands to the sides of his head. “Stop! Please, you’re confusing me!”

Anderson became the shrink once more, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of His nose and chuckling.
“Lighten up, Petey,”
God said.
“I’m just messing with you.”

Brother Peter wanted to lighten up. He wanted to understand why his savior was behaving in such a (fucking annoying) mysterious way. It was making clear thinking difficult. And why was God so (fucking sarcastic) displeased with him all the time? Wasn’t he God’s chosen (fucking murderer) disciple?

God simply looked at him and frowned.

Brother Peter forced himself to stand straight and rubbed his fists at his eyes like a tired little boy before looking his savior in the eye. “What should I do?”

God gave him a patient smile, the kind reserved for clumsy children, and shook His head.
“You can’t be a puppet if you serve me. Figure it out.”

Now it was the minister’s turn to frown, and he thought for a moment.

“You wanted me to be on the ship, and I am,” said Peter. “You want me to be your avenging sword, the vessel from which you will pour your cleansing fire.” He wasn’t actually sure if God had said that to him, or if he just imagined that was what God intended. It didn’t matter. He knew what God wanted. It was what Peter wanted too.

“Excellent!”
said God, shifting from the Air Force shrink to Sherri. Only She hadn’t been slashed, or bitten, and She looked, well, Peter thought She looked sort of sexy, and he remembered the things the young woman had done in order to keep herself alive a bit longer. God stepped close and draped Her arms around the minister’s neck, tipping Her head back, lips slightly parted. She sighed, and Brother Peter found himself growing aroused, instantly ashamed that he should feel this way about
God
, but unable to control himself. His face grew flushed.

“Or do you like this better?”
God asked, becoming Angie West in heels and a see-through black nylon catsuit, just like the outfit his mistress in Cincinnati used to wear.

“Oh, yes,” Brother Peter said thickly, reaching for Her.

God slapped him sharply across the face.
“No touching!”

The minister looked down, face burning. And that was just how the bitch was, wasn’t she? Strutting around with that tight little body, throwing it in a man’s face, then threatening violence if he should want to give her what she so richly deserved.

God lifted his chin and met his eyes.
“I’m distracting you. Please continue.”

Peter thought about the training class in Omaha, when the Navy instructor spoke about comparative security measures. About the carriers. When he spoke it was with a sense of pride. “It was a highly classified subject. Only the best of us were allowed to attend.

“The Navy was bragging,” Brother Peter said, his eyes distant with a memory. “They talked about how easy we had it, how simple it was to maintain security measures so deep underground, and that they had it tougher at sea, which made them so much smarter than us.”

God began rubbing Brother Peter’s shoulders, slowly, patiently.

“They claimed they took them off the carriers in 1997,” the minister said, “and that’s why Marines were no longer on board, because there was nothing left to protect.”

“But you knew they were lying, didn’t you?”
God was walking in a slow circle around him now, trailing Her fingertips across his neck.

“Of course they were lying!” Peter said, nearly spitting the words. “I could see it in that commander’s face, standing up there in his pretty dress whites. He was bearing false witness. And besides, no matter what they said, no one would really give up that kind of advantage.”

“Of course they wouldn’t,”
said God.

“Up-to-go-down,” Peter said. “They thought they were so clever with that. Up-to-go-down. They even showed us what they looked like. The arrogance! Showing us photos and then claiming they didn’t have them anymore. They thought we were stupid.”

“The sin of pride,”
God whispered.

Brother Peter’s distant gaze became focused. “MARS, named after Jupiter’s son, the god of war. A wing-mounted weapon fired from the
Hornet
. But instead of blast fragmentation, it carried a nine-kiloton nuclear warhead.”

“Praise Jesus,”
God whispered, and then stepped in front of the minister and gripped his shoulders with two powerful hands.
“And you know where to find them.”