The Savage Dead (26 page)

“Do you think—”

Gunfire cut him off mid-sentence.

He spun around and saw Monica Rivas with a submachine gun. She was advancing on the stairs, firing down at the zombies trying to make their way up. He lost track of the number of rounds she fired. They came so fast, so constantly. But then she stopped firing, ejected her magazine, and slapped in a new one from her belt.

When she turned to him the look on her face was so horrifying he flinched. She was covered in sweat and grime and smoke seemed to cling to her black hair. Her eyes were on fire. Her black shirt was soaked with blood.

“Where is she?” she growled.

Paul couldn't speak. He set the little girl down and she backed away. Kelly grabbed her and helped her down into the lifeboat.

Paul said, “Monica, I—”

“Quiet!” She raised the muzzle of the submachine gun and he could swear he saw smoke leaking out of the barrel. “Get your hands where I can see them.”

“Monica, please—”

“Shut up! Hands behind your head!”

He did as she ordered.

“Get down on your knees. Move. Faster. Face the water.” She spun him around, and then jammed the gun into the back of his neck. “Get down on your knees.”

“Okay, okay.” He knelt down. He could barely breathe.

She moved in close and pressed the muzzle against his cheek.

It burned his skin.

“Where is she? I swear I'll blow your brains all over this deck if you don't tell me.”

“Senator Sutton? I don't know.”

“Bullshit.”

She pressed the muzzle down into his cheek so hard it hurt his teeth. He tried to pull his head away, but she kept the pressure up, pressing his face against the railing to stop him from moving any farther.

“I'm not playing with you. I want to know where she's at right now. Tell me!”

“I don't know,” he said. Tears were running down his face. “I swear, I don't know. I haven't seen her since last night.”

She pressed the rifle deeper into his cheek, and he could feel the inside of his mouth tearing against his teeth. But she didn't say anything, and for a long, terrible moment there was no sound but the wind whistling through the deck struts and the pennants slapping in the breeze.

Then she pulled the rifle away. He could see her walk over to the lifeboat and look inside. When she turned away, the look on her face was different. She looked softer, hurt somehow, more like the girl he thought he'd come to know that night at the Washington Hilton.

But the look was gone in the next instant.

She turned on Kelly and motioned her toward the lifeboat with the barrel of her gun. “Get on board,” she said. “Move.”

Kelly obeyed without another word.

Then she turned her full attention on Paul. She put the gun in his face and her expression grew hard, unrecognizable.

“Tell me where she's at and I'll let you live.”

“I don't know,” he said again. “God, I swear. I don't know. Please don't.”

She slapped him.

Startled, he stared at her. No one had ever slapped him before.

“Where is she?”

He was breathing hard, but he was in control of himself now. He looked her right in the eye, his gaze going right past the rifle, and said, “I told you I don't know.”

She nodded. She had been right in front of him, but she took a step back now and pointed the rifle at his chest.

“Go ahead,” he said, his hands still locked behind his head. “Go ahead, Monica. Shoot me. Do it. But please,” he said, and nodded over his shoulder toward the lifeboat, “let them go first. They're just kids. They didn't do anything to anybody.”

“Everybody dies,” she said.

“Yeah, but not kids. Kids shouldn't have to die.”

She moved so suddenly he barely had time to register the change. One moment he was trying to bargain with her, the next her rifle was pressed between his eyes and she was so close he could smell the sweat on her skin.

“Kids die,” she said. “Kids die every fucking day. You Americans, you don't get it, but kids die every fucking day where I come from.”

He swallowed. For a long moment he was too scared to respond, but then his courage found him.

“But not these kids. Not today. Monica, please. Not today, not these kids. If you need someone dead I'm right here, but not them. Please.”

He could feel her breath on his skin, hot and angry.

Paul wanted to look away, but knew he couldn't. Too much was at stake.

She said, “Where is Senator Sutton? Tell me and I will let you live. I'll let you all live.”

“I don't know,” he said. “I swear it, I don't know.”

She stared at him. Paul could only look at the front sights on the gun, the hole in the muzzle looking like a mouth that might swallow him in a sea of blackness. He was shaking, though he barely noticed.

“Stand up,” she said.

He forced himself to look past the gun and into her eyes. He didn't recognize the person he saw there.

“Move!”

He climbed to his feet, his hands still raised over his head.

“Get on board,” she said, and flicked the end of the rifle toward the opening in the lifeboat, where Kelly stood holding the hatch. “Hurry.”

He moved in a daze.

He turned in the opening and studied her, the woman he thought he knew.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. She said nothing, just stood there with her gun aimed at his chest. “Monica, tell me please.”

She reached up to the lever that controlled the davits. She pulled it down and the lifeboat lurched like a carnival ride, then swung out over the ocean. They were going down to the waterline.

“Monica, why are you doing this?”

“You don't know me,” she said as the boat lowered down. “And my name is not Monica.”

C
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39

Tess watched in disbelief as the woman she knew as Monica Rivas lowered Paul's lifeboat over the side. She thought she was about to watch him die. Instead, she sensed she'd just witnessed some kind of act of contrition.

She sank back down behind the ice machine she and Senator Sutton were using for cover and tried to sort it all out.

“Did you see that?” Sutton said, too loudly.

“Shh,” Tess whispered. “Keep your voice down.”

“I don't understand,” Sutton went on. “Why did she do that? I thought she was going to kill him.”

“Keep your voice down,” Tess said through gritted teeth. “You're gonna get
us
killed.”

Sutton looked like she'd been slapped. She started to object, then seemed to come to her senses. She sank down to the deck next to Tess and whispered: “Sorry.”

“Just . . . no more noise,” Tess said.

She fingered the trigger on her Colt, trying to figure out how they were going to get out of this. They had come down the aft stairs, threading their way through one crowd of zombies after another, before finally ending up in the right place. They were stepping out onto the deck when they heard gunfire, and ducking down behind this ice machine, they had witnessed the cartel's assassin with a military-issue machine gun at Paul Godwin's face.

For a moment there, it really did look like she was about to kill him.

And then she'd just let him go.

He'd collected the last of the kids he had with him, and that older girl, and together they'd gotten in the lifeboat and she'd actually pulled the lever to lower them down.

What was said, she hadn't heard.

What that woman had seen that made her change her course, Tess could only guess. But to her, watching from sixty feet away, it looked like someone trying to apologize to ghosts that could never be appeased.

She'd come within a breath of firing on her then. The woman was standing in the middle of the deck with absolutely nothing for cover, her rifle slung over her shoulder. She was a sitting duck. Hell, at that range, Tess could have put a bullet right through her ear. And she was about to do just that when the first zombie staggered out onto the deck, attracted by all the shooting.

Tess eased off the trigger. Where there was one of those things there were always more, and she couldn't take the chance with a standup fight.

A moment later, her caution proved her right.

Four more zombies staggered out of the same doorway.

The cartel assassin turned at that moment, her gaze going from the zombies on the deck to Tess, with her rifle aimed straight at her.

Beyond the reticle of Tess's sights, the cartel assassin smiled.

And then she dove for cover around a corner and disappeared.

Tess had sunk down behind the ice machine at that point and barked at Sutton to keep quiet. But it was too late for that, because already more zombies were piling out of doorways behind them. It took only a few seconds, but they were surrounded.

“Agent Compton,” Sutton said. She pushed herself up until she was standing, her back to where the assassin had just been.

Tess fought the urge to pull her down. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps this was the time to move. Perhaps it was their only option.

“Come on,” Tess said.

“Where are we going?”

“There,” Tess said, and pointed a lifeboat hanging from one of its davits.

“What? No. I . . . I can't do . . .”

Tess pushed her to the door on the side of the lifeboat. “You can and you will.” Tess threw the door open, grabbed Sutton by the collar of her blouse, and pulled her toward the door. It was swinging in and away from the hull, a good four feet down from the opening in the railing.

“Get in,” Tess said, and shoved her forward.

Sutton screamed and tumbled into the open door.

Tess heard her knocking about in the fiberglass tub of a hull and knew she was safe. At least she'd made it into the lifeboat, which was one step closer to safety.

“Just keep your head down,” she said.

“What about you?” Sutton's voice echoed up from the lifeboat.

“I'll jump. Just hang on.”

As the zombies closed in on her, Tess hit the lever that released the lifeboat from its one remaining davit. She figured it must have malfunctioned when the cartel assassin released the other lifeboats and she hoped the manual control would be enough to reengage it.

The lifeboat lurched and creaked, and then dropped free of the restraints holding it to the
Gulf Queen
.

“Yes,” Tess said. “That's it. Keep going.”

The pulley snapped and creaked against the cables, but the lifeboat was going down.

“Oh, thank God,” Tess said.

A noise behind her made her spin around. The zombies were closing in. There were at least twenty of them now. Certainly more than she could shoot. She glanced over the railing and saw Sutton's lifeboat dropping rapidly down the side of the
Gulf Queen
. Below the lifeboat, the Gulf of Mexico, a deep black now with the setting sun, was shifting and indistinct. But it was a long way down, she knew that.

If she was going to do this, she needed to do it now.

Swallowing hard, she swung her legs over the railing and held her breath. “Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit,” she said, trying to muster up the courage to jump.

The lifeboat was rocking so much, swinging back and forth. It looked like a postage stamp there against the ever-expanding distance down to the sea.

“Go!” the voice in her head roared.

She couldn't, wouldn't, go.

The zombies closed in. They clutched at her hair, at her clothes.

And then the voice in her head turned to that of Juan Perez's. She could see him standing in the air in front of her, beckoning to her.

“You have to jump,” he said. “Do it now!” Without a moment's hesitation, she jumped, and for a terrible moment, she doubted everything.

Right until her feet hit the lifeboat's roof.

C
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40

He picked up her trail again near the back of the ship. She had gotten here ahead of him, and maybe even gotten to Tess and Sutton. He prayed that he wasn't too late.

Her footsteps indicated she'd suddenly veered to her right, down a passageway that looked like it might go all the way through to the other side of the ship. That was where the few remaining lifeboats were, which wasn't a good sign. Not at all. But he was surprised to see that she hadn't followed that passageway. She'd gone past a gift shop, where nearly every window and breakable object seemed to have been destroyed, and then turned down a flight of stairs. It was dark down there, but with his NVGs he could see down to the next landing and it looked clear.

But why had she come this way? It made no sense.

Her tracks were there, so she must have seen something down there. She must have had her reasons.

He went after her, quietly working his way down the stairs. Juan made it halfway down the first flight when he stepped on broken glass. The popping sound echoed down the stairs, and he froze. He looked down at his feet. There, carefully arranged so as to cover the entire step, was a layer of shattered wine glasses.

“Holy crap,” he said. She'd tricked him. “You clever fucking bitch.”

But there was no time to beat himself up for being careless. From below he could hear the pounding of running feet, and he knew what that meant.

As if in answer to him, a man appeared on the next landing down. He was infected. His glowing eyes told Juan that.

He'd spotted Juan, too.

More just like him were climbing the stairs right behind him, and they all sprinted toward Juan.

“Time to go,” he said, and ran up the stairs and around the corner. His arms and legs pumping with all he had, he ran for the lifeboats.

It looked like they'd all deployed.

He ran to the railing and looked down. Sure enough, two lifeboats were drifting away from the side of the ship, one much farther out than the other.

A huge explosion rocked the ship and Juan had to catch himself against the rails to keep from going over the side. He looked down the length of the ship and saw a slowly dissipating fireball clinging to the side of the
Gulf Queen
. The water below was choked with trash and debris . . . and bodies.

“Oh, no,” he said.

He took off his NVGs and looked at the dark water around the closer of the two lifeboats. Sure enough, the water was clogged with dead bodies, many of them beating against the water without really managing to get anywhere.

But there was someone else down there. A swimmer.

It was Pilar, and she was swimming toward the lifeboat.

Juan looked over the side.

It had to be an eighty-foot drop, maybe more.

Darkness had fallen while they were making their way to the lifeboats and now the sea below looked as black as ink. He could see zombies writhing in the water but couldn't make out any details. All he could discern was movement.

Which made Pilar easier to spot. He raised his rifle and sighted in on her back and squeezed the trigger. But instead of hitting Pilar, the bullets slammed into a zombie. Whether out of luck or skill it didn't matter. At the last possible moment, Pilar had grabbed a zombie in the water next to her and rolled under it. Juan saw its body jerk with the gunshots, and knew right away he'd lost the element of surprise. She would stay under as long as she could now, and every time she surfaced, it would be somewhere else. He couldn't anticipate where. Not with any accuracy anyway. He was going to have to go in there and get her.

Juan looked back over his shoulder and saw a crowd of zombies coming for him. He didn't have the time to stay up here and play sharpshooter anyway.

He had to go.

Juan dropped his rifle to the deck and pulled his pistol. He stared down at the water, breathing fast.

“Go,” he ordered himself, thinking of the aircrew boss that had yelled in his ear right before his first parachute jump. “Go, go, go!”

He jumped.

For one long moment, one terrible moment, he was weightless, suspended over blackness that wanted so very desperately to consume him. Free fall seemed to go on and on, and yet he couldn't form a single coherent thought. He couldn't even breathe.

It took hitting the water to do that.

He hit hard, and he was pretty sure he hit a glancing blow on one of the zombies, too. He went under, went deep, but now he was in a known element. Water survival had always been one of his strengths. He tucked and rolled, flattening his body out to stop his descent. Then, when he'd gone as deep as he was going to go, he relaxed and let his body drift upwards so that he knew which way was up.

He kicked for the surface.

Juan was almost there when he ran into a mass of legs. He didn't panic though. He stayed under, dolphin kicking away from the mass of zombies.

When he tried to surface again, he was more careful. He felt above him, waving his arms in a circle to make sure he was coming up in a clear spot. He broke the surface a moment later. Treading water, he turned around to see where he was, and found himself staring a zombie right in the face.

The man started clawing at him, slapping at the water, but he was clumsy. He was staying afloat from the decomposition gases in his belly, and he couldn't control himself. He was like a balloon with arms. Juan spun him around easily and kicked away from him. Pilar was still far out in front of him. He had to reach her though. He ducked his head and swam.

It didn't take him long to catch up with her. Pilar was clearly a pro, an expert in survival, evasion, resistance, and escape, as good, maybe, as any operator he'd ever known, but she wasn't a particularly good swimmer. He closed the gap easily, and when she realized that, she started shooting.

He ducked behind a badly burned mattress, lowered himself into the water and tilted his head back so that only his face remained above water.

But he had seen enough. He had a plan.

He took a deep breath and slid under the water. To control her rifle she needed both hands, and that meant she was kicking frantically to stay afloat. He had little trouble following the sounds of her distress.

Except that it wasn't her he was after.

At least, not directly.

There was a female zombie a few feet to her right, and Juan swam for her. She was much like the man he'd dealt with before, bloated and out of control, and it was easy to turn her in whatever direction he wanted her to go. He pulled the zombie down and spun her around so he could grab the back of her shirt. She tried to put her hands on him, but he was able to keep her at arm's length without much effort. Only then did he chance opening his eyes. The ocean was nearly black, and the salt water stung his eyes terribly, but a few feet away he saw the bubbles rising from Pilar's kicking, and he pushed the zombie in that direction.

When he surfaced, he shoved as hard as he could, praying at the same time that he'd guessed right about Pilar's location.

Turned out he had.

The zombie, in its own dim way, realized it had prey right in front of it and went into kill mode. Pilar was caught off guard. She swung her rifle at the zombie's head, and over the splashing Juan heard her scream,
“Suéltame!” Get off.

He saw his chance and he took it.

He gulped a deep breath and went under. He found Pilar's legs and wrapped her up in his arms. She couldn't fight the zombie and his pressure pulling her down, and as soon as he felt her start to buck and twist, he grabbed her belt with one hand and her ponytail with the other and swam straight down. He swam until he felt the pressure build against his eardrums, which he knew from many hours in the pool was about fifteen feet. There he stopped, and there he held Pilar at arm's length. She thrashed, she kicked, she tried to throw her hands over his arms and fight, but he wouldn't let her go. He held her there until her thrashing turned to spasms, and until even those stopped.

Just like he'd been trained, he kept the time in his head. He counted two minutes, and then he let them both rise to the surface.

She wasn't dead, though. Not yet. It takes five to ten minutes for the human body to fully die by drowning, and he wasn't going to take any chances with her. Besides, he didn't have that kind of time. In fact, by his watch, he was out of time already. He kept her motionless body at arm's length though, refusing to give her an opening in case she was faking it, which he wouldn't put past her. He swam with her to the nearest zombie he could find and shoved her motionless body into the zombie's arms.

It tore into her with a ferocity that made him retreat in horror. How in the hell such things existed he couldn't begin to describe, but at least this was the end of her.

He watched until her blood hit the water, and then he swam for the lifeboat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of light. He glanced at his watch. His time was up. The missiles were on their way.

Desperate now, he swam for the lifeboat and circled around it.

He could hear the high-pitched Doppler shriek of the missiles' approach, and he knew this was it. He reached the lifeboat and swung around the far side of it, putting it between himself and the
Gulf Queen
. There was a life preserver hanging off the side and he grabbed it, pulled it close.

Overhead, the missiles shrieked.

He braced himself against the lifeboat, his mouth open, muscles tensed against the impending shock wave. The missiles hit a moment later, and every cloud overhead, every burning ember sent aloft on the blast wave, every shred of sky filled with light, and though he held on to the life preserver for dear life, he was thrown clear, far away from the lifeboat.

His vision blurred and dimmed.

He felt his weight sinking beneath the waves. He gulped for air and took in water. He panicked. His mind knew what to do, how to save himself, but his arms and legs wouldn't work, and the water pulled him down. He was drowning, and he was powerless to stop it.

Juan sank beneath the waves.

He felt hands on him, pulling him up. He fought against them. In his delirium he thought for sure it was Pilar coming for him, joining the fight one last time.

But then he saw Tess's face, felt her arms around him, her hands on his back, but it didn't register. In that moment, he didn't know her.

“Easy,” Tess said. “Juan, I've got you.”

Juan thrashed against her hold, but he couldn't break free. She had him wrapped up tight. She wasn't about to let him go. Not until she put her hands on his face and made him look at her.

“Juan, it's me. It's Tess. I've got you.”

He stopped fighting. He stared about, stunned by an ocean on fire, and by the burning
Gulf Queen
sinking below the waves. He turned to her, and though he couldn't hear for the ringing in his ears, he could kiss her. He pulled her to him, and this time, he was the one who wouldn't let her go.