Tankbread 02 Immortal (16 page)

Gasping for breath, Else stumbled to her feet. The dog lay on the floor, convulsing with bulging eyes as it choked to death. With an overhand swing she slammed the blade into the top of its skull.

Jerking the weapon free, she started jogging down the hallway. If her sense of direction was right, this corridor should take her to the stairs. The door to the stairs on this level was open and it smelt strongly of the dog marking his territory.

Else crept down the stairs, drawing the machete and hefting it in her other hand. Somewhere below she could hear a door opening and closing, the thin cries of her son acting as a beacon. Above she could hear the pounding of the engineers working on opening the door. There was no time to wait for them—she had to keep going. Finishing this the way she started, alone.

Reaching the next level, Else lifted her blades and ducked down. The doors were wooden, with grime-encrusted panes of colored glass. Figures moved on the other side. Else tucked the machete under her arm and reached out and turned the handle. The door brushed over faded carpet; this part of the ship must have been where the passengers lived. She ducked back as two crew turned to look in her direction.

They moved silently on the carpeted floor. The first one, a woman with blonde braids that had coagulated into two thick, tentacle-like dreadlocks, opened the door.

“Hi,” Else said, and swung the scythe down into the woman’s shoulder. The zombie grunted, turning her head to stare at the curved sliver of steel impaled between her collarbone and shoulder. With a frown she tried to reach up and pull the blade out. Else jerked the weapon upwards; the wound welled black blood.

Else struck again, with the machete this time. The ceiling was too low to swing overhead at the woman’s skull, so she swung upwards, like the pictures of golfers she had seen. The blade burst through the woman’s jaw and punched out the top of her head. She collapsed, dragging the blade down. Else yanked it out, readying both weapons as she stepped through the door.

The second crewmember lunged at her. Else sidestepped and, with a truncated swing, buried the scythe in his back as he stumbled past. The evol collapsed; she pulled the blade out and split the zombie’s skull with a final blow.

Signs on the walls indicated various attractions available to on-board guests. A murmuring rose as Else headed down the wide hallway. Double doors opened into the balcony restaurant that overlooked the grand ballroom. She walked out into the deserted room. Tables, draped in white cloth, waited for diners who would never come. A brass rail ran along the edge of the balcony and Else peered over into the scene of carnage below.

Blood lay in thick swipes along the ballroom floor, splatter patterns ran up the walls, and an audience of hungry dead moaned and clawed at the doors at the other end of the room.

Else leapt on the rail, caught in a moment of momentum, her arms flung wide, her head back, eyes closed. She dropped in a graceful dive that folded into a somersault before landing with a dull boom on the marble tiles of the dance floor. The seething crowd of dead, mindless and frenzied in their blood hunger, stopped clawing and hammering on the door opposite. In ones and twos they turned their limited senses towards a new sound—the sharp scrape of sharpened steel on ironwork.

Else crouched on one knee, twisting slowly, back and forth, the tips of her blades inscribing two gleaming crescent lines in the floor. The shriek of metal on stone took on a rhythmic pulse, like the dying heart of a metal giant beating its last.

Snarling, fresh blood and torn flesh spilling from their mouths and dripping from their hands, the evols advanced. The noise and the pulsing warmth of Else’s body drove them into fury. As one they surged forward, bearing down on the crouched figure that, in the last moment before they reached her, spun to her feet. The blades in her hands flashed bright and cold as the killing began.

Else saw only teeth and dead flesh. She struck, slicing through bone and virus-laden muscle. Everything within her was focused on destroying the walking dead. Skulls shattered and severed limbs flew across the hold to bounce off the rusting walls. The freshly risen dead oozed blood that was still darkening to the black ichor of the waste-laden slime of the older zombie.

Else ignored the pain of the teeth that sank into her body. She cut, slashed, and cut again. Stabbing one evol through the eye, striking another and splitting his head down to the jaw. She almost lost her grip on the machete as the blood sprayed and made the handle slick.

Trampled corpses crawled towards her through the rain of blood. Broken bones jerked like marionettes desperate to join the feast of her warm flesh.

Those unlucky enough to draw blood from Else convulsed and spewed dark blood as they staggered. They writhed in a frenzied tarantella dance, the antiviral cells in her plasma tearing through their infected flesh.

Else fought on, killing them all. Killing them for the father of her baby; the man who gave his life that this nightmare might end. Killing to avenge Jirra. Killing for Bindi, for Lowanna, and for her own son. Killing for all the children yet to be born if humanity was to ever have a chance to survive. Else killed because it was all she had ever known, and she did it well.

The stinging wounds on her arms and body burned. Else pirouetted and decapitated a dead fisherman whose face was a screaming mask of blood and hate. With a snarl she raised her weapons to kill again, but there were no volunteers. The ballroom was awash with the spilt blood and severed body parts of a hundred dead. Blades ready, Else picked her way through the battlefield. A broken body bared its teeth and snapped at her ankle. She stabbed it through the ear and twisted, destroying enough of the brain to end the viral control.

The door at the end of the ballroom creaked open. Else stared into the gloom, ready for an attack. Instead a pale blonde girl stepped into view and surveyed the carnage.

“Sarah?” Else asked. “You’re alive. Hob was so worried about you.”

“You have ruined everything!” Sarah shrieked. She stamped her foot, splashing blood across the hem of her faded sundress.

“Where is my baby, Sarah? Where is my son?”

Sarah’s mouth curled into a sneer. “He’s on the butcher’s block!”

Else took a deep breath to stop from screaming. “This isn’t the way you should live, Sarah. The crew can’t give you anything.”

“The Captain said he would make me one of them. I could live forever! Up in the bridge! I would be safe and special and everyone would be afraid of me!” Sarah’s face contorted in frustrated rage.

“The Captain is going to die,” Else replied, her voice steady and commanding.

“No!” Sarah extended her right arm, a shard of glass glinting in her left fist. Else rushed forward as the girl slashed a deep wound along the white skin of her own forearm.

“Stop!” Else screamed.

Sarah plunged her bleeding arm into the shattered remains of the fallen dead at her feet.

Else grabbed the girl around the waist and pulled her back, almost throwing her against the wall.

“I did it,” Sarah giggled. “I did it. I put the blood of the crew on everything so the holders would die and then kill you. Then the Captain would choose me. Just like he promised.”

Else squeezed the girl’s arm above the wound, muttering “no, no, no” as she watched the dark lines of virus-tainted blood surging through the girl’s veins.

“I’m going to live forever now . . . Up on the bridge, where you can see the whole world and never want for nothing.” Sarah’s eyes started to lose the focus and shine of the living. She tilted her head back and laughed one last time. “The Captain says I can eat your shitty little baby too . . .”

“I wanted to save you!” Else screamed as Sarah slumped in her arms. She laid her down, not ready to strike the final blow until it was too late.

“Saraghhh . . .” a phlegmatic gurgle spoke from behind Else. She stood, turning slowly, the hot fury of battle now tempered by the death of the child.

“You must be the Captain,” she said to the evol looking down on her from behind the balcony rail. He was in excellent condition for a dead man. His skin was firm and almost pink, the uniform he wore was well mended, and his beard was neatly trimmed. Even the buttons on his crisply pressed uniform shirt were polished to a high sheen.

“You argh the mainlander. The woman who has been causing so much distress to argh tight-knit community,” he spoke well enough. A trace of thickness and a slight slur to this speech was the only sign that his heart did not beat naturally.

“I am Else. I was created to destroy your kind, and I was made well.”

The Captain’s lips twitched; it was less a smile than a grimace. “I’ll kill you and your dreams tonight,” he said.

Else stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the erect figure high above her. The ship shuddered and the sound of tearing metal echoed through the infrastructure. Else dropped into a crouch while the Captain steadied himself against the balcony rail, looking about in sudden confusion.

A second explosion followed and then they came in a rapid series, each shuddering blow making the metal moan, until something buried nearby detonated and the ballroom floor cracked. Spars of rusting steel burst up through the floor in a gout of black smoke and searing fire.

Else rolled aside, narrowly avoiding being impaled on a broken girder. The Captain backed away from the balcony edge and vanished from view. Else yelled at him over the metallic screams of the wounded ship. She holstered her weapons and ran up the broken girder, jumping over the rising flames. Leaping off the jagged tip, she flew through the air, her fingers brushing against a rotting wall hanging. Sliding down, she gripped the cloth, which disintegrated in a cloud of dust and mold.

Else snatched at a supporting cord; it held as the mass of rotting cloth crumpled onto the spreading fire on the floor and exploded into flames. Climbing up, she felt the threads parting under her slight weight. The rising fire below caught the rope and started climbing after her. A few brief seconds later, Else seized a grip on the edge of the balcony. The rope parted and dropped past her, the floating embers of the fire catching on other dry curtains and flaring up into a boiling wall of flame that quickly licked the ceiling. Pulling herself up, Else dropped onto the balcony. Another explosion rocked the ship. The world turned on its side as the room suddenly sagged. She grabbed the rail as the floor tilted.

With the fire spreading behind her, Else scrambled for a nearby table. The restaurant chairs tumbled past but the tables were bolted to the floor. Shielding her head, Else rode out the attack of the falling chairs. Gripping the carpet with her fingertips, she crawled towards the exit.

The steel of the ship’s bones moaned as an explosion tore through its guts. The smoke was rising, clouding Else’s view and tightening in a band around her chest.

She tumbled out of the restaurant, the spreading fire sucking the air from the corridor in a howling wind. Else lost count of the explosions. The destruction had spread beyond Eric’s dynamite; some ancient reserves of oil fuel had been ruptured and were now burning deep beneath the deck.

The door the Captain had fled through hung open. Else jumped and grabbed the doorjamb, pulling herself up and onto a staircase that with the current degree of roll would have given M. C. Escher eyestrain. The ship moved again, rolling back on an even keel, the force of the motion slamming Else into the stairs.

Climbing to her feet and coughing against the rising smoke, she ran up the stairs. The Captain would tell her where her son could be found. She would burn him until he told her exactly where he was.

A sign warned that she was approaching an area restricted to authorized personnel only. Else yanked the door open and ran up the last flight of stairs to the bridge itself.

The Captain stood at the controls, staring out through the wide windows that overlooked the prow of the ship. The storm had arrived with the full fury of nature. The sky was lit up with the white-hot flash of lightning, and the wide windows ran opaque with rain. Five evol crew stood at their positions around the bridge, rifles held across their chests. They tilted with the pitch of the ship as it rocked in the stormy water and the sundering explosions in its belly.

Else drew her blades, ready to get started, when a sixth evol stepped into view from behind the Captain. A tiny naked figure hung by its ankles from the evol’s hand, his face red with outrage and his howls stifled by the dead hand clamped over his mouth. “My baby,” Else said.

“Yes,” the Captain agreed. “Will you watch him die, or will he watch you die?”

Else just shook her head. Everything ached and her lungs burned from the smoke curling up through cracks and vents. “Your ship is going down, Captain. Are you ready to go with it?” Her voice came out as a croak. The Captain narrowed his eyes. “Enough,” he spat. A drip of black spittle landed on his chin. He took a perfectly folded handkerchief from his pocket and scowled as he dabbed at it.

“Kill her,” he ordered. The evols stepped forward, rifles rising to the ready.

Else readied her weapons. If it ended here, she would die fighting. She didn’t care how many bullets they fired; she would cut them down. If her son was going to die, then his last moments would be in her arms.

A blaze erupted on the forward deck, the fire’s light reflecting off Else’s steel. Her head snapped to the wide glass windows that spanned the bridge. The evols charged forward, guns firing. Else threw herself to one side as the windows exploded inwards in a hail of gunfire. A man wrapped in smoldering black clothes swung into the bridge at the end of a braided rope. His long hair and beard singed and trailing smoke, he crashed into the control console and fell to the floor. Scrambling up, he yelled something, the words lost behind the thick covering of his gas mask.