Tankbread 02 Immortal (14 page)

“I’m different. They bite me, they die. They bite you, you die,” Else said.

“What are you?” Rache asked.

“It’s a long story,” Else replied.

“Well . . . why don’t you just go around letting them bite you and kill them all?”

“For one thing, it fucking hurts, and for another, there’s not enough of me to destroy them all. It’s more efficient to kill them.”

The engineers regarded the woman with open-mouthed awe. Rache stamped her foot and punched the air in the sudden silence. “Yeah! We’re taking the ship!”

The crowd shouted their approval and drummed on the floor with the hafts of their weapons.

Else stepped aside and let Rache lead the charge down the empty corridor. These were her people and the engineers needed to see Rache on the front line, leading them to some semblance of freedom.

The flood of people impacted the doors that led to the hold. A crush ensued as the doors were forced open and then they plunged onwards, down another stairwell and into the close and stinking confines of the holders’ dormitory.

The place lay in ruins. Bedding and the few salvage items they claimed as their own were strewn everywhere. Blood had sprayed up the walls and pooled on the floor. Around the room, torn corpses, some writhing and struggling to move, made guttural moans and clawed at the air with blackened fingers.

“They’re all dead!” Rache cried as her engineers set to and dispatched the evols that remained.

“Some of the holders might have survived,” Else suggested as she casually lopped off a snarling boy’s head.

“Where are they then?” Rache asked.

“The Hole,” Else said. “They might have gone down to the fighting place they call the Hole.”

“Do you know where it is?” Rache asked.

“Yes,” Else replied. “I remember everything I’ve ever seen.”

The engineers swept on, down corridors into the belly of the ship. The evols were ahead of them, crowding around a door and snarling at the scent of terrified flesh almost within reach.

“Kill them all!” Else shouted, her blade swinging and cutting deep into the neck of the nearest evol. Rache’s people followed her into the fight, howling their own rage and smashing the risen dead into black-blooded piles of severed limbs and shattered skulls.

They fought their way into the room. Else could see the surviving holders; they had retreated into the fight ring, where they now fought a desperate battle against the ranks of risen dead who pressed in on all sides. Men and women leaned in, flesh tearing on the crude barbs woven into the tight wires, clawing at the living just out of reach. The holders fought back with scraps of salvage and anything they had been able to snatch up in their desperate flight down to the Hole.

The engineers fell on the dead from behind, cutting them down until the floor ran with slick blood and the greasy smears of crushed brain matter. When the holders realized they were being rescued, they counterattacked with renewed vigor. Else could see Hob, a metal pipe nearly as long as she was tall swinging in his hands like a club. He brought it down on an evol’s shoulder, nearly tearing the dead man’s arm off and driving the zombie to its knees.

The evols reacted slowly to the attack from a new front. They turned to face the engineers and were cut down. Heads flew from shoulders and squirming bodies were hacked up, the guts spilling out across the floor.

Finally, stillness descended. The walls dripped dark fluids and the sound of panting breaths echoed through the room.

Rache’s engineers ended the lives of seven friends and loved ones who mostly sat slumped, grim faced and silent, clutching deep bite wounds on their arms, necks, and hands. The wounded engineers died without a sound. The survivors struck hard and moved on, keeping their grief to themselves.

Hob and five other holders crawled out of the ring, all looking haggard and wide eyed.

Else regarded the three men and three women they had found. “Are there others?” Rache asked.

“Yeah,” Hob snorted and spat a wad of phlegm on the pile of dead. “Some of us came down here. Rest ran up topside, or fuck knows where.”

“That means there will be more evols. Feral ones like these,” Else said. “Where is Sarah?” Else asked, looking around the room.

Hob narrowed his eyes at the sound of his daughter’s name. “Isn’t she with you?”

Else scowled at him. Her instincts were to not trust any of the holders, Sarah especially. Not knowing where the girl was made her uneasy.

“Last time I saw her she was up on the high decks,” Else said.

“Who’s Sarah?” Rache asked.

“My daughter. She knows this ship better’n anyone. She’ll be fine. I’d like to find her, though,” Hob growled.

“What about the fishermen and the church man?” Else asked Rache. “They might need help too.”

“You lot,” Rache gestured at the engineers and surviving holders. “Head topside, secure the open decks. Check on the fishermen; find that god fella too and if he’s not turned, bring them all back to the hold.”

The holders and engineers moved off without a word. Else noted that not one of them had questioned Rache’s seizing of the leadership.

Else waited while the group filed out of the room. She put a hand out and stopped Hob as he walked past.

“You and I, we need to talk about your kid,” she said.

The crowd in the Hole seethed with trapped tension. A lust for violence lay thick in the air. It showed in the flash of their eyes, the baring of their teeth, and their clenched fists that curled around crude weapons crafted from salvage.

Else held back until, at Rache’s urging, the engineers lifted her above the crowd and carried her up to the barbed wire ring, where she could be seen and heard above them.

“My name is Else,” she said. The mob swelled and heaved like a debris-strewn ocean. The murmuring voices fell silent and someone shouted from the back, “Speak up!”

“My name is Else!” She lifted her head and spoke to those against the far wall. “My name is Else, and I am Tankbread.”

The crowd muttered in confusion. They had been out here, trapped in this sanctuary for so long they had never heard of the solution that ended the war that was nearly the extinction of them all.

“Tankbread,” Else repeated. “Scientists made us from cloned cells. We are like people, but grown real fast. We were fed to the evols. In return they left the survivors of Sydney alone. Tankbread is what ended the war. They ate us, so they didn’t eat you.” She looked out over the sea of grim expressions. The engineers with black painted faces and the symbols of tools scratched in the dark grease painted on their skins. The holders with colored and chrome markers tied in their hair and beards, and the fishermen with their salt-crusted dreadlocks and deep tans. But so few children. Less than ten here were younger than Sarah, a girl on the verge of becoming a woman. She represented a new generation of savage who knew nothing of the old world. These children would only ever know fighting, and fucking, and dying for a scrap of salvage and the promise of immortality through the rebirth of being chosen as crew. Else took a deep breath and spoke to them all.

“There’s a world out there. A whole world. The land on the edge of the sea is wide and open. You can live in the sun. You can make your own salvage. You can stop fighting each other and start fighting the dead. Working together you can defend your homes and be strong. You can have babies and raise them. You can create a future.”

The murmuring started within the ranks of the holders. Else ignored the priest, Jonah, as he pushed his way through the crowd. He climbed up next to her and banged his driftwood staff on the floor of the ring.

“Blasphemy!” he roared. “This woman is possessed! She seeks to destroy us all!” The believers among the holders echoed his anger. A scuffle erupted in the audience. Engineers shouted down the faithful and a brawl erupted as the fishermen started throwing punches at anyone who was not one of them.

Rache’s shouts for order went unheeded as the crowd in the Hole erupted into a free-for-all, with blood being shed as angry snarls took the place of words.

Else kept silent. She had no patience for those who would not listen. Let them fight; she would tell her story to the survivors, or she would fight them, rescue her son and baby Lowanna, and then be on her way.

Hob slid under the wire of the fighting ring, Standing up, he nodded at Else and then turned to face the rioting crowd.

“Shut the fuck up!” he bellowed. His voice echoed off the walls and ceiling, rattling the lights and drowning out the crowd’s angry shouts.

The fighting crowd settled. Blood streamed from noses and split lips. A few loose teeth were spat on the floor and the last grumbling voices were shushed to silence.

“Y’ll listen to her and y’ll show some fuckin’ respect!” Hob snarled. “Right,” he nodded, “Y’were sayin’?”

“My name is Else,” she started again. “You don’t have to live like this. You can make your own place on land. No crew telling you how to live. No one taking your babies from you. You can live and build your own society.”

“The dead are everywhere out there!” someone shouted from the crowd.

“Yes,” Else nodded. “The dead are a threat. But you can fight them. You can build walls and fences. Teach your children to fight. Protect yourselves and live by your own laws.”

“We belong here!” a woman yelled, and others shouted their agreement.

“You belong in a stinking hole? You belong in a floating prison where your lives are worth nothing? A place where your only purpose is to breed food for the dead?”

They started muttering again, “Whaddya gonna do about it?” a man in the front row demanded.

“I’m here for one reason. I have a son. He’s only a few days old. The crew keeps the babies alive. They keep women in cages; these women feed the newborns until the crew eat them. I’m here to get my son back and Jirra’s baby, Lowanna, too. If I have to destroy every evol on this ship to get them back, then that’s what I’ll do. But that’s just me. You want to be asking yourselves, ‘What am
I
going to do about it?’”

The muttering rose again. People turned and started telling their neighbors what they thought. The volume climbed and Hob scowled at them, waiting for the first fist to be clenched.

As Jonah opened his mouth to speak, Hob turned on him. “And not one more fuckin’ word out of you cunt.”

Jonah blinked and stared at Hob for a moment, before stepping back, his gaze dropping to the floor.

Rache slipped under the wire and stood in the ring. “I’m Rache, of the engineers. I dunno about you lot, you holders, fishermen, and other limp pricks, but us engineers, we’re here to sail this ship. We’ve waited too long. Listened to too many empty words and promises. From the Foreman, from the Captain, and from all you other fuckers. If this ship ain’t sailing, then we’re leaving. We’re taking our smarts, our tech, and our people. You know ’em, the ones who keep the lights on, keep the rust from eating the hull, and the ones who were gonna fire up the engines when the Captain gave the order!”

The engineers in the crowd cheered and pumped the air with their fists. Rache grinned. “We’re going to be free! Free to sail our own ships and go anywhere we want!" The crowd erupted in a frenzy of excitement. Holders, fishermen, and engineers jumped and hooted.

Rache raised both fists in the air. “But first we’re gonna have to fight! Destroy the crew! Take the ship for ourselves! Live free!”

Hob lifted Rache by the legs and sat her on his shoulder for a victory circuit around the ring. The roar of the crowd’s bloodlust brought fresh memories to Else’s mind. She climbed over the wire and pushed through the close crowd, the air in the room getting too thick to breathe.

Gasping for air, she stumbled out into the stairwell and headed upwards. The crowd responded to Rache’s orders and surged out as well. A tide of humanity, foaming at the mouth with pure savagery, spilled out onto the open deck. Else got to the rail, leaned over, and threw up. Thin, acidic bile rained down on the choppy water below.

The sun had set and the lights running from the solar-powered batteries were already dim. The war party didn’t seem bothered by the lack of light as they swarmed up the outer stairwells and started forcing the doors open on the upper decks.

Evols came at them from all sides, mostly the recently deceased, with crew behind them, giving orders and pushing the more frenzied ones in the right direction. Some of the crew had guns and they aimed carefully, shooting the rebellious ship dwellers in the chest or gut so they would have a better chance of rising again and joining the crew’s side.

Else wiped her mouth and snatched up a dropped weapon. The fight still needed her, her son still needed her. She sidestepped a fisherman, locked in a life-or-death grapple with an evol, and swung her blade into the back of the zombie’s head. The dead man howled and struggled to break free of the fisherman’s grip. Else jerked the blade free and decapitated him.

“Use weapons,” Else said in response to the fisherman’s gasped gratitude. She pushed on into the fray, slashing the salvage blade left and right, cutting limbs from the dead. Blood, still turning black from the activated virus, sprayed from the stumps and made the footing treacherous. Else dropped to her knees, sliding in the wash of gore under the grasping hands of the evols bearing down on Rache’s forces. Her blade flashed and evols tumbled, amputated legs twitching and standing on their own.