Season of Rot (12 page)

Hannah dug inside her jacket and produced her
.38. She had no idea how the fight outside was going, but she knew
Jessica would need help. Jessica, as the saying goes, was not the
sharpest tool in the shed, and Hannah didn’t trust her to see the
children through this battle. She pulled herself up and headed out
of the daycare.

“Jessica!” she screamed as she ran down the
corridors, hoping the woman was still in earshot.

She rounded the corner of the passageway and
came face to face with a dead man dragging his insides across the
floor. He lunged at her, grunting, but she narrowly sidestepped his
attack and shoved him as he went by her. He toppled to the deck and
twisted about, already trying to get up and come after her. She
popped off three rounds into his forehead, spraying his brains onto
the wall.

Hannah stood a moment afterward, her breath
coming in ragged gasps; she tried to collect herself and calm down.
The
Queen
’s machine guns chattered above—the fight hadn’t
been lost yet. She took a deep breath and set out in search of
Jessica, though with much more caution.

#

The two yachts had swept in quickly, managing
to evade most of the
Queen’s
defensive fire. Both of them
came up along her portside, close enough for the dead to scale the
Queen
’s hull as they traded small arms fire with those left
alive on her decks. The
Queen
’s gun emplacements were
useless with the yachts so close. They couldn’t be angled downward
to engage the dead, so Scott had abandoned his post and began to
spray the climbing dead with an AK-47 instead. One of the
attackers, a middle-aged man covered in burns, lost his hold as
Scott’s rounds peppered his back, and he plummeted into the
water.

While Scott was sidetracked, a creature
hauled itself onto the
Queen
’s deck beside him—Roy’s
twelve-gauge thundered and sent it careening over the side of the
ship.

Scott motioned his thanks to Roy, then
returned his attention to the dead and loaded a fresh magazine into
his weapon.

25

The struggle for control of the
Queen
raged on. Her whole exterior deck was a war zone, and smaller
battles filled her corridors.

“Sir,” O’Neil said, trying to draw Captain
Steven’s attention away from the carnage below the bridge.
“Captain, we can’t hold her. The
Queen
is lost. We need to
give the order to abandon ship.”

O’Neil’s words jarred Steven out of his own
thoughts. Abandon the
Queen
? Had O’Neil gone insane? He
turned to argue, but the door to the bridge opened and Doc
Gallenger staggered inside. Before anyone could react, the good
doctor’s corpse raised the .45 in its blood-smeared hand.

The first shot slammed into Steven’s
shoulder. The second and third burrowed into his chest. Benson, the
communications officer, took a round to his throat before O’Neil
managed to draw his own sidearm and shoot the doctor in the
face.

O’Neil rushed to Steven’s side and squatted
beside him.

“Leave me,” the captain ordered, coughing
blood onto his lips. “I’m staying with the
Queen
.”

The other command personnel were fleeing the
bridge as O’Neil stood up. Most of the
Queen
’s lifeboats
were gone. Finding a way off the ship would be difficult, but not
as difficult as surviving afterwards. The dead would be
waiting.

In a corner of the
Queen
’s main deck
portside, Scott and Roy were holed up behind one of the large metal
cooling pipes and were running out of ammo fast. “Roy, you’re a
good man,” Scott said, “but how would you feel about leaving all
this and not looking back?”

Roy could see the gleam of an idea in Scott’s
eyes. “I reckon what’s gotta be is gotta be. I’m guessin’ you have
something in mind to save our asses.”

Scott grinned. “You could say that. Come on!”
He charged across the deck through the ranks of the dead and the
few humans left alive. Scott reached the railing and didn’t stop.
He hurled himself over the side and landed on the yacht below,
completely surprising the five corpses still aboard it. With his
AK-47 on full auto, he cut them down where they stood.

Roy followed him, but skidded to a halt at
the edge of the deck. “Crazy mother fucker!” he shouted and took
the leap. He landed on the yacht with the sound of snapping
bones.

#

O’Neil dispatched a corpse blocking his way
in the corridor. If he’d counted his shots right, he had three
rounds left in his pistol. It was beginning to sink in that he was
royally screwed.

From outside, someone called his name. He
jerked open the hatch to the exterior deck, and Hannah threw
herself at him, wrapping her arms around his body. He hugged her
back tightly, then forced himself to push her away, despite how
much he wanted to hold her forever. He knew she didn’t feel the
same about him; they barely knew each other, yet she’d won him over
the night he’d met her on the docks, had given him more purpose to
his life than anyone or anything ever had. “The captain’s dead,” he
informed her. “We’ve got to get off the ship if we want to stay
alive.”

A dead woman darted towards them through the
open hatchway, a piece of glass raised like a knife in her rotting
hand. O’Neil tried to get a shot, but Hannah was faster. She
emptied her .38 into the woman’s neck and face.

O’Neil moved to lead them outside onto the
deck, but she grabbed his arm. “Wait! What’s that noise?”

“Oh God no.” O’Neil stuck his head outside
and looked up at the sky. “It can’t be.”

An F-16 fighter roared over the
Queen
.
Its wings wobbled; whoever was flying it certainly wasn’t an
experienced pilot.

O’Neil and Hannah stepped outside to watch
the jet turn and streak back at the
Queen
on a collision
course.

“Would this be a bad time to tell you that I
love you?” O’Neil asked as they watched the plane race closer.

“No, I don’t suppose it would.” Hannah tried
to smile weakly as she took his hand in hers.

26

Scott could still remember the death throes
of the
Queen
after the jet had plowed into her, the way the
flames had danced over her frame as she sank into the waves. The
image haunted his dreams at night. He remembered Roy as well. The
black Southerner had been as tough as they came, but with two badly
broken legs and the meager amount of worm-infested food they’d
found on the yacht, Scott had no choice but to kill him. So he shot
Roy in the stomach with his own shotgun and dumped him overboard
before he could reanimate as one of the dead.

Only a week had passed since their flight
from the
Queen
, but it felt like months. He lay stretched
out atop the cabin of the yacht and stared up at the stars. The
engines were shot and he was thirsty. Sweat glistened on his bare
chest in spite of the cool night air. He knew he was sick, whether
from the rotting food he had been eating or just the fact that his
body had finally suffered all it could take. If he could make it to
land and get some medicine, proper food and a little rest, he might
be his old self, but those things seemed like pipe dreams in the
face of what the world had become.

He felt his eyes close, then forced them open
to glance at the shotgun propped up on the deck near him. Scott
started to consider
all
his options again as a gentle rain
began to fall and the heavens wept.

The Wave

1

Jeremy lay shirtless, sprawled out on the
wood of his deck and looking up at the Carolina night sky. The
breeze, a gentle cool circulating through the warm air, carried the
smell of his freshly mowed lawn, and the portable stereo beside him
belted out the chorus to Rush’s “Working Man.”

He glanced at the bright green display of his
watch. Almost two o’clock in the morning. The witching hour was
long gone, but he felt pumped up and wide awake. He leaned over and
hit the skip button on the stereo. “Fly by Night” replaced “Working
Man,” and he smiled.

His heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t
explain it, but for some reason he felt on edge, eager. He lay back
down and listened to the music.

Astronomy was not normally one of his
interests, but tonight the sky seemed different, the stars hotter
and pulsing bright. It wasn’t something he could explain, just a
feeling he couldn’t shake.

He reached into the darkness beside the
stereo and lifted a mug of sweet tea to his lips, arching his back
a bit as he sipped.

In that moment, the world changed. A piercing
light danced like lightning across the summer sky, and everything
seemed to go white.

Jeremy dropped his tea, cursing as the cool
liquid splashed over his naked chest. The light grew brighter and
he had to shield his eyes. At the same time, the alarm of his
wristwatch went off and the stereo erupted into sparks. Geddy Lee’s
voice shrieked upwards, almost deafening, the music growing louder
and louder until it finally went silent. Beneath the deck, his car
came to life. Its horn honked randomly as its headlights lit up and
blew out, the shards clinking onto the gravel driveway like
rain.

Jeremy screamed, and the light was gone.
Spots lingered before his eyes, swirling purples and greens. His
temples throbbed.

Fumbling blindly, he grasped the railing of
the deck and pulled himself up. His vision cleared, but around him
everything was black. The stars seemed to have vanished from the
sky, and the lights in the neighborhood had blinked out, the houses
on the distant hills invisible in the darkness. Even the normal
specks of headlights moving along I-40 below the mountains were
missing.

He stumbled across the deck to the sliding
glass door of his bedroom and went inside, flipping on the light
switch. Nothing happened. He flipped the switch twice more. No
light.

Bumping his way from the bedroom to the
kitchen, he managed to reach the island in front of the sink. He
yanked open the top drawer and grabbed his plastic emergency
flashlight. It didn’t work. He bashed the light atop the island and
shook it, but it didn’t come on, so he tossed it.

He felt his way along the island to where the
phone hung on the wall. As he guessed, it was dead. His cell was
too.

An irrepressible fear began to grow within
him. Sweat beaded on his sticky skin, mixing with the droplets of
spilt tea. He stumbled back to the bedroom’s large walk-in closet
and found the shelves. As he pulled down his hunting rifle, his
knees gave way and he dropped to the carpet. “Jesus Almighty,” he
whispered, “what the hell is going on?”

He shoved a bullet into the rifle’s breech
and jerked the chamber closed. Pulling his knees to his chest, he
sank back against the closet wall to wait for dawn, his knuckles
white as he held the rifle.

2

Pittsburgh

“What the fuck is going on?” Howard asked as
he pushed his way into the crowded control room of the reactor
plant. It seemed as if the plant’s entire staff had gathered in the
small space. There were no alarm klaxons, no red glow of emergency
lights. Only a small fire burning in the metal trash can beside
Gibbons’ console. The flickering light seemed alien and out of
place in the heart of the plant.

A wave of pleads, questions, and fear slammed
into Howard as he entered.

“Shut up!” he ordered. “Shut the fuck
up!”

The cacophony in the room dampened but did
not end.

“Gibbons,” Howard barked, pointing at the
pimply-faced engineer. “What the hell is going on? Twenty words or
less. Now!”

The young man’s eyes went wide with terror in
the pale light. “Everything has gone down, sir. Backups, outside
lines... everything. The core will breach, sir. Without the cooling
units functioning, it’s just a matter of time.”

Howard’s mind raced. Backups? Everything?
That was supposed to be impossible. This was his damn plant. Things
like that didn’t—couldn’t—happen here.

“How long?” Howard asked.

“There’s no way to know, sir. Ten seconds, an
hour. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Howard opened his mouth to yell at Gibbons,
but a heat wave blasted him. His flesh melted and burned away as
the reactor ruptured.

The meltdown was visible for miles around as
the night lit up like an exploding star, and a mushroom cloud
blossomed toward the heavens.

3

New York

The freeway had become a war zone. Amy lay
against her steering wheel, wondering how she had survived.

Even at this late hour, the freeway was
crammed with traffic. When the light had appeared, a light more
blinding than the sun itself, everyone’s engine had died and
stalled. Cars slammed into trucks, into each other. Vehicles hit
the concrete sides of the freeway while some overturned on the
median. Flames blazed in every direction, and explosions ripped
through the night.

Some people bolted from their cars, ran from
the freeway as if their lives depended on it, while others tried to
help those trapped inside the wrecks.

Amy watched as the driver of an
eighteen-wheeler jumped out of his cab and opened up on the crowd
with some sort of rifle; another traveler shot him in the forehead,
and he crumpled to the asphalt.

Amy sat in her seat, sobbing, too frightened
to move. Irrationally, she wondered what her boss would say when
she showed up late at the hospital. Her only injury was a scrape on
her hand, sustained when she had rear-ended the silver Dodge Shadow
in front of her and had reached out to brace herself.

She tried to turn on the car radio, but
nothing happened. She tried again and again until the knob broke
off in her hand. Finally her head sank to the steering wheel, and
she started to mutter a prayer as people screamed into the night
across the freeway.