Outrage (26 page)

“Okay. What's a SAW?”

“A squad automatic weapon. Like an M16, but with a little more ass to it.”

Shay was standing on the deck with her gun still in her hand. “Listen. You hear that? What is that sound?”

It sounded almost human, a low humming, muted by the steel of the ship.

“We'll go look,” Harmon said. He peered at the crew quarters looming overhead: still nothing but a stack of blank, unlit windows. “I wish I knew if there was anybody up there, on the high ground. Not really a good way to check, though.”

“I need to tell Twist what we're doing,” Shay said. Without thinking, she walked over to the rail next to the gangway and sent a text: “Two guards secure, searching hold.” She couldn't see anyone at the dirt berm, but as she started to turn away, a silvery streak suddenly crossed it and sprinted for the boat.

X had seen her and was coming to help: he covered the hundred yards from the berm in five seconds and was up the gangway and at her knee.

Shay said, “Good doggy.”

Harmon touched the dog's nose and said, “Glad to have you.” And to Shay: “We need one last backup before we start looking around.” He jogged back to the bow of the boat, with Shay and X following. They found a light hawser coiled on the deck. Harmon tied one end to a capstan, then tossed the other end over the bow. “Always set up a second exit if you have time,” he said.

They went back to a stairway leading into the bowels of the ship. X sensed the mission and led the way down. At the bottom of the stairs was a steel door, painted gray. Locked. Harmon took out the key ring, tried a few keys, found the right one, and they went through.

They were in another stairwell, which appeared to go all the way to the bottom of the hull. Dark. Shay found a light panel outside the door, flipped a switch, and a dim overhead light came on in the stairwell, barely enough to see the steps as they worked their way down.

The humming now almost seemed to be a chant, though still low in volume and deep—deep, perhaps, because only the deeper tones were getting through the steel plating that was everywhere. “What the heck is it?” Shay asked.

“I'm afraid it's bad, whatever it is,” Harmon said.

At the bottom of the stairway, they found another door, and another light panel. Shay tried a switch, and the humming, the chanting, stopped instantly. “Was it electrical? It didn't sound electrical, it sounded more human.”

“Maybe a radio, and the switch is plugged in here….”

Even as he said it, the sound came back, but at a much lower volume than before, and then it began to swell. Harmon tried the keys again, found one that worked, took his pistol out of its holster, and said, “Stand back….”

He popped the door: everything inside was in darkness, but the sound again switched off. Harmon reached back to the light switch and flicked it on.

And they found themselves in hell.

Fifteen human beings, all Asian, and dressed in loose blue uniforms, were shuffling through the hold of the old ship. Like zombies. Everything stank: at the far end of the hold was a row of portable toilets that apparently hadn't been recently pumped. All of the people were young, all but three were male, and all but two had shaved heads. Most of their heads showed the same kind of golden beads that covered Fenfang's, while the skulls of the other two were covered with carefully fitted metal plates.

Shay stood frozen and unbelieving for two seconds, five seconds. Then X yipped and jolted her out of her trance. She had the presence to be sure her camera was filming.

The three of them went forward. The victims began humming again—the noise now resolved not into song, but into a shared groan of despair. They turned wide, blank eyes on their visitors and started shuffling forward in eerie unison.

Harmon was stunned. “Oh, sweet Jesus…”

Shay said, “We gotta get some help here, we need help….” She looked at her phone: no reception in the steel hold.

“We've got another door,” Harmon said. He was pointing across the hold at a smaller, squatter door. There was no light switch next to it.

Harmon found a key for the door, opened it: the other side was in total darkness. He pulled a powerful LED flashlight out of a cargo pocket and turned it on: inside the next hold were a series of short container boxes, turned so that their doors opened into the hold where Shay, X, and Harmon were standing.

The doors on the containers were held shut by simple swing latches, iron bars that dropped into hooks. Harmon stepped over to one and pulled up the latch and opened the door. They could make out the ends of a mattress, and the stink of human waste washed over them. A few seconds later, a man crawled toward the door. He was white, European or American, and he said something that sounded like English as he looked up at them, said it again with more fervor, clear enough that Shay understood:

“Please kill me, please…”

The man reached out and grabbed hold of Shay's ankle as she filmed, but his grip was weak and she shook her leg and he let go, collapsing onto his stomach at her feet.

“I'm sorry, sir, I'm sorry,” she said, and bent to touch his shoulder, his scalp all beads and wires, and he turned up his chin, pleading again for death. “We're here to help you, we're going to get you out of here….”

Shay turned away and ran, through the first hold and up the stairs, looking for a cell phone signal. About two-thirds of the way up, the first signal she got was from Twist: a series of missed calls, spaced only seconds apart. She ran a few steps higher, and the phone rang.

Twist was screaming.

“Get out of there, get out of there, there's a whole convoy coming, you gotta get out of there….”

Twist was screaming, “Get out of there, get out of there….”

He could see the convoy a block away, closing in fast. Danny, at his shoulder, said, “Too late to come down the gangway; they've got to go down that rope.”

Shay was trying to say something, but it was garbled as Twist talked over her: “Too late to come down the gangway. Go over the side, go over the side….”

Then she broke through. “They're here! Prisoners! Like zombies…Total cut-up zombies, Twist, it's awful, you gotta get somebody here!”

Twist: “You gotta get off!”

Odin was there, one hand gripping Fenfang's upper arm, and Fenfang turned to him, asking “What are these zombies? What are these zombies? Zombies are in movies….”

“They found…test people,” Odin said. “Jesus, they've got to get off the ship.”

Shay and Harmon, crouching by the rail, watched as three RVs the size of Greyhound buses and four more SUVs rolled into the parking area. A half-dozen men and a couple of women were getting out of the SUVs, and one of them called, “Ladder's down.”

Harmon said, “Too late to try the bow rope—they'd see us from down there.”

“How about pulling up the gangway?”

Harmon dropped to his knees, crawled over to the rail, opened the gangway control panel, and pushed the power button. The gangway started up, slowly, and they both heard a heavy, meaty impact. Shay risked moving up and saw that one of the Singular security men had jumped on the bottom step and was riding the gangway up.

“Guy on the gangway,” Shay called to Harmon. “He's got a gun.”

During their exploration of the ship, Harmon had rolled his mask up, wearing it like a watch cap. Now he rolled it back down, and peered over the rail. He shouted, “Get off the ladder. Get off the ladder.”

The man lifted his pistol and fired a single shot through the space where Harmon's head had been a split second before. Harmon poked his pistol around the rail and fired three quick warning shots. Risking another look, he saw the man bail: he slid to the bottom of the stairs, then jumped back onto the pier and ran for cover behind the RVs.

“He's off,” Shay called. Harmon pushed the power button again, and the ladder started up. When it was too high for anyone to jump on, he crawled backward to Shay and said, “We gotta go.”

At that moment, lights began blinking on in the crew quarters. Harmon looked up at the lights and said, “There is some kind of a crew here. They'll be coming. If they've got guns…from up there…they'll kill us.”

Twist and the others heard the single pistol shot, then three fast shots, and saw the Singular security man jump down from the gangway and run off the pier. As that was happening, a group of chained men had shuffled off the RVs.

Fenfang: “Some of my people! There are some!” She pulled free from Odin and suddenly bolted to the top of the dirt berm and screamed, “Liko! Liko!”

A shaved head popped up on one of the chained men, and everybody looked at Fenfang as she screamed, “Liko!”

The chained man seemed to call back, a raven-like croak, and began moving toward her until one of the security men grabbed him. Twist was screaming, “Get down, stay down,” and Cruz and Odin were scrambling toward Fenfang, trying to stay below the brush line, and then—

BANG!

A single gunshot from the direction of the vehicles.

Fenfang didn't blow backward the way the bodies do in Hollywood: she simply folded up like a broken kite.

Odin screamed, “Fenfang!” and broke away from Cruz, running out in the open toward the fallen girl. At the same instant, Danny opened up with his M16 on fully automatic fire. Bullets rang off the boat, and the Singular troops scattered and ran for their lives.

Odin got to Fenfang and picked her up in his arms, standing upright, calling to her, then to Twist and Cruz. There was a sudden silence. Danny's gun stopped, and Twist shouted, “Run! Run!” and Odin turned and ran back over the berm, toward the cars, Fenfang cradled in his arms.

Twist shouted, “Put her in the Jeep, in the back of the Jeep….”

Odin shouted, “No key, I got no key….”

“I got one, I got a key!” Twist shouted back.

Cruz held the Jeep's door, and Odin put Fenfang in the back, and Twist jumped into the driver's seat as Danny fired another burst of bullets at the RVs and the ship, and then they were moving, with Fenfang and Odin in the back.

“I can't wake her up, I can't wake her up,” Odin cried.

Twist wrestled the Jeep onto the main road, took out his phone as they sped away. He punched up Cade's number and said, “Zero, Zero, we need the nearest emergency room, get us to an emergency room.”

“Which way you going now?” Cade asked, his voice low and calm.

Odin shouted, “Headed west from where we were at.”

“Wilbur hits a T-intersection ahead of you. When you get there, turn left.”

“Left, yes…”

“Turn left and stay on that.”

Harmon had said, “They'll kill us.”

Shay: “Can't let that happen. We've got to go up.”

At that moment, they heard Fenfang: “Liko! Liko!”

They both reacted without thinking and stood up to see the Chinese girl bolt from the cover of the berm, and then the single shot. 
BANG!

Fenfang went down and then Danny opened up with his M16, the bullets pounding in a steady stream off the side of the ship. They saw Odin get to the fallen girl and carry her back across the berm.

“Oh, jeez, oh, jeez, they shot her,” Shay groaned. “My God…”

“Focus! Focus!” Harmon said. “We can't help her, and if those guys up on top see us…”

“But they—”

“Yeah, that happens sometimes,” Harmon said. “Let's go.”

In the exact middle of the ship, there was a hallway that appeared to go through the ship's castle to the stern. Off that, a stairway went up. “Got to do this fast, if we're gonna get off,” Harmon said.

“I'll watch our backs,” Shay said. And to X: “C'mon, dog.”

Nothing on the second level. On the third level, a sign said
BRIDGE
, with an arrow pointing down a hallway. As they crossed the top of the stairs, they heard the gangway moving below them. Harmon said, “Must have controls up here, too. When that gets down, they'll be coming. Gotta hurry.”

They ran light-footed down the hallway, and as they got to the end, a short, thin Asian man stepped into the hall, talking on a cell phone. He saw them only at the last instant and tried to get back through the door of the cabin he'd come from and slam it in their faces, but Harmon got there as the door was closing and hit it with his full weight, barreling into the cabin, knocking the Asian man down. Shay stepped over him, her pistol leveled at two additional Asian men in what turned out to be the glassed-in bridge.

She shouted, “Lift the ladder! Lift that ladder!”

One of the men said, “No understand,” and she twitched the pistol to the side of his head and pulled the trigger
BANG!
The bullet smashed through the glass on the bridge, and the man ducked and the second man reached behind the first and hit a switch. Down below, the gangway stopped extending.

Harmon was back on his feet with his gun, and he waved it at the three men: “Go down, go down….”

They had their hands over their heads, and they let Harmon hustle them to the main deck. From there, he pushed them along the through-passage to the stern, and when they got there, he said, “Jump!”

They did, one at a time, dropping into the deep water on the river side of the boat, then swimming toward the bank.

At the turnout, Cruz shouted into his phone, “Where's Shay?”

Cade said, in his calm voice, “She's not coming—she says you'll have to pick her up later. Right now, get out of there. Get out of there.”

Cruz cursed and jumped into the truck and rolled out after the Jeep, and Danny fired a last burst from the M16 at the ship, ran back to the Volvo, and followed the others out to the main road and west.

Both Danny and Cruz could hear on the open phones Twist talking to Cade, and Cade directing traffic, and then Cruz shouted, “If they come after us, we'll separate and lead them away from the hospital. Danny, stay close.”

Twist took them left at the T-intersection and onto Highway 4, and Danny called, “Nobody's behind us, I think we're okay.”

“Keep coming,” Twist called back. And he called out streets as they crossed them so Cade could track them.

Cade guided Twist under a freeway, they never noticed which one, but the street they were on got bigger and wider, Cade's voice calm all the way, calling out directions. Odin was crying, saying, “You gotta go faster, she's hurt bad….”

Danny shouted, “Zero, where's the hospital?”

Cade said, “You should be right on top of it, it's off to your left….”

There it was. Twist made the hard turn into the hospital and Cade guided him through the parking lot around to the emergency room and Twist said over his shoulder to Odin, “We've got to leave her. She's been shot, the police will be all over us. We've got to leave her.”

“Can't leave her,” Odin cried. “Can't just dump her.”

“We have to,” Twist said. He jammed on the brakes immediately in front of the emergency room doors. Cruz and then Danny pulled in behind.

On the boat, all the lights came on. “Dammit, we missed someone,” Harmon said, looking up toward the ship's castle. He, Shay, and X were crouched by the rail at the bow of the boat. They couldn't see the bridge from there, but then, whoever was on the bridge couldn't see them.

Shay, on her phone, told Cade, “We're stuck here. Tell everybody to keep going, they can get us later. Tell Cruz, make sure you tell Cruz, or he'll try to hang back.”

Shay said, “Okay, Harmon, what now?” As she said it, a searchlight at the top of the mast, apparently controlled from the bridge, burned across the boat and, from there, probed down the riverbank, and then into the open water of the river.

“Looking for us,” Harmon said. “Don't think going for a swim would be a good idea. Not right now, anyway.”

“And so…,” Shay said, like a kid waiting for the magician to pull the rabbit out of the hat.

Harmon had nothing. “There's a saying in the Special Forces,” he said. “When in doubt, hide.”

Shay called Cade back and said, “Call all the cops! Has anyone called the cops yet? We're gonna hide.”

Before she hung up, Harmon said, “Tell him if we're down inside the hull, we won't be able to use our cell phones. Tell the cops we're down there—don't shoot us.”

Shay repeated that and then said, “Gotta go,” and punched off.

Twist ran across the sidewalk to the hospital entrance and held the door for Odin and Cruz to carry Fenfang though. As they passed, Twist looked down at Fenfang. Her eyes were closed, and a small bloodstain had soaked through her shirt, immediately over her heart. Cruz glanced at Twist and gave a terse shake of his head.

There was a nursing station inside the door, staffed by a single nurse, and Odin cried, “She's hurt bad, she's hurt bad.”

The nurse hurried out from behind the station and a few feet down a hallway, got a gurney, pushed it toward them, and said, “Put her on this, put her head on this end….” As Odin did that, she picked up a phone and pushed a button and asked, “What happened?” and Odin said, “She was shot. Somebody shot her.”

The nurse spoke into the phone, and they heard it come from overhead: “Dr. Rice to ER, code blue. Dr. Rice to ER….”

Cruz said quietly to Twist, “Hold the hospital door open, then open the back door on the Jeep and stand by to close it.” Twist nodded, understanding, and Cruz walked up behind Odin, wrapped his arms around him from the back, pinning Odin's arms at his sides, then picked him up and staggered back toward the door as Odin kicked and spit and fought against him. The nurse said, “Wait, you can't go, the police—”

Twist said to her, “Take care of Fenfang. X-ray her head. You'll see.”

His tone stopped the nurse in her tracks, and he said, again, “X-ray her head. Call the newspapers, call the police, show them what they've done to her head.” The nurse looked back at Fenfang on the gurney. The wig had slipped partly off her skull, and the gold electric knobs winked in the overhead lights.

Odin was twisting, fighting, crying, but Cruz ground on through the doors. Danny was there, and Cruz yelled, “Get the door on the Jeep.” Danny popped the back door open, and Cruz stuffed Odin inside, then climbed on top of him and held him down.

Twist was in the car two seconds later, said, “Okay,” and Cruz hopped out and slammed the door before Odin could sit up, and Twist peeled away. Odin got upright and tried the door handle, but the Jeep was out on the main street and moving too fast. “You gotta let me stay!” he shouted at Twist.

“Can't let you stay, Odin!” Twist shouted back. And then he was on the phone to Cade: “Get us out of here!”

Cade's voice, still calm and clear: “You're heading toward the freeway, Highway 4. Go west….”

They drove west, listening to Cade. He told them that Shay, Harmon, and X had been trapped on the ship and that they were hiding, waiting for the police to arrive.

“Shit,” Twist said, fear clutching at him again.

After they'd driven a handful of miles, Cade directed them to an exit, and they pulled into a closed Chevron station, Twist and Odin, then Cruz, with Danny coming up behind. Odin virtually fell out of the backseat of the Jeep. He sat on the concrete, head between his knees, and began vomiting. Cruz went over and sat next to him, putting an arm around his shoulders.

Danny looked at Twist, the question written on his face….