The Gristle & Bone Series (Book 1): The Flayed & The Dying

by Roach, Aaron

  -66-

  The Shiloh was surging high above the seafloor at thirty-two knots when the ship’s inertial navigation system alerted the crew that they were approaching their intended coordinates. A few minutes later, it emerged from the depths like a breaching whale, landing heavily atop the water and sending waves radiating outwards. It hissed as large pumps removed the lingering water from its ballasts, filling them with air so that the submarine could remain surfaced and stable in the Arctic Sea. Once stabilized, her outer hull came alive with sailors and operators who crawled out through hatches, carrying equipment. In the biting cold, their labored breaths billowed steam as they set to work.

  Among the equipment they carried was a large heavy sleeve of rubber, which the sailors laid flat against the deck and to which they hooked a tube like an intravenous IV. On the other end, the tube attached to a pump and within seconds the rubber sleeve came alive, inflating into a large ten-person inflatable raft – a ducky – as the operators lovingly called it. Despite the ducky’s small size, it was the vehicle Sharpe and his operators were most familiar with, having been trained in its usage and operation since they were mere recruits at Operator Training School.

  With the ducky inflated, Maldonado and Neto lifted the heavy fifty-five horsepower outboard that powered the thing and mounted it to the transom. Then, as a team, they raised the bow of the ducky above their heads, so that with a slight push the weight of the engine on the transom pulled the raft over the side of the Shiloh’s hull and brought it to rest in the water next to the sub.

  Neto, Hyres, Maldonado, and Thaniel, laden with weapons and ammunition, and dressed in thermal arctic camouflage designed to keep them dry, boarded the ducky and waited for Sharpe to finish his conversation with Captain Perry.

  “We appreciate you getting us this far, Captain.” Sharpe said, holding out his hand.

  Perry shook it. “When can we expect you back?”

  Sharpe looked down at his watch. “Command is sending in the fire in eight hours and twelve minutes. If we’re not back by then, it means things have gone south and you can go on without us.”

  “Does it usually go south?”

  “I’m four men down and have an intelligence operative in their stead. With those odds…” he shrugged and looked over at Aptok Island, a massive and sinister-looking rock jutting out from the sea in the distance.

  Perry nodded his understanding. “Good luck to you, Sharpe. The Shiloh will be here in the meantime. I hope you find something, anything that will help get us out of this mess alive.”

  Sharpe nodded his thanks before joining his waiting men in the ducky. “Eight hours, gentlemen. Set your watches,” he said, settling into his seat near the bow. When the watches were ready, Sharpe turned to Maldonado. “Fire her up. Let’s get this done.”

  Maldonado hit the starter and the motor roared to life. The operators tightened their grips on the handles along the perimeter of the ducky and brought their postures low. Thaniel mimicked their movements and prayed he wouldn’t be thrown from the raft. Maldonado turned the throttle and the ducky surged forward, reaching a plane atop the water almost immediately.

  A few miles ahead, looming out of the sea, were the sheer basalt rock faces of Aptok Island. The cliffs were massive, standing at least sixty feet high at their lowest points.

  Thaniel turned to Sharpe and shouted over the noise of the engine, “What are we expecting up there?”

  Sharpe leaned in close to answer, “I suspect it won’t be much different than the Defiant, albeit on a smaller scale. Command reports that Neyra’s facility housed a team of forty scientists and techs, and a twelve-man security unit. Add the two teams of operators we’ve already sent in, then that’s potentially sixty-six infected total, give or take.”

  Thaniel watched the growing cliffs as the germ of an idea formed in his mind. “Have any of you ever been to Montana?” he asked aloud, turning to the others.

  The operators gave him odd looks and shook their heads. Maldonado spoke up, “That’s Frontier territory, Briends.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been. It was before the war, obviously. There’s a park there. Buffalo Jump State Park. It’s part of an old Native American hunting ground. My parents took me there for my thirteenth birthday, part of a family camping trip. There are these cliffs there, about a mile long and really tall. What they used to do, the natives I mean, is they would ambush wild herds of buffalo and corral them until they were forced off the cliffs and fell to their deaths. That way they were able to kill a lot of them at once, you know?”

  Sharpe smiled and turned a raised eyebrow at his men who laughed and clapped Thaniel on the shoulder.

  “Maybe you were right, boss,” shouted Maldonado over the engine. “This one might make an operator yet.”

  -67-

  “We have to kill Ibex-Face,” Gabe said to the group, “The bastards are already smart; we don’t need them organized, too. If we take out their leader, it might buy us some time while they fight to establish a new one.”

  “What makes you think that’ll work?” demanded Lou. “Why do you know so much about them?” He made no attempt to keep the suspicion from his voice.

  “I only know what Bishop and I saw. Those things have a definite hierarchy and Ibex-Face is the alpha. The skeletals will kill each other for the top position. With Ibex-Face out of the way, the rest of them will be at each other’s throats to take his place. When that happens, it might buy us some time to find more food – days perhaps, before a new leader takes control and they get organized again.”

  “And what if you’re wrong?” asked Lou.

  “Then we’re dead anyways,” Bishop snapped from the other side of the cave. “Gabe’s right. Killing Ibex-Face is the best chance we’ve got if we don’t want to starve up here.”

  In the days since the massacre on the mountainside, all work on fortifying and clearing the mountain had stalled. The dead had surrounded them, occupying the woods at the mountain’s base. The cave dwellers could no longer enter the forests to work or forage for food without being attacked, nor could the monsters get to the dwellers in their fortified underground home without being cut down in a hail of gunfire. It was a stalemate between the living and the dead, but the dead had the advantage of not needing to eat.

  “Okay,” said Huck, “we take out Ibex-Face. How do you propose we do that?”

  Gabe bent down, picked up a handful of soil from the cavern floor, and rubbed it against his forearm. “On the day we went to Darby, when Bishop and I became separated from the group, we were chased by the dead into a ditch. We slathered ourselves in mud and foliage to cover our scents.” He held up his arm so they could see the streak of dirt. “The skeletals couldn’t smell us and the groaners were too stupid to know we were there. I suggest we do the same thing again, head into the woods, find Ibex-Face, and light him up with all the firepower we got.”

  Across from Gabe, seated among the others, was Molly. She listened to her husband’s plan with growing apprehension but did not want to second-guess him in front of the others. When Gabe asked for volunteers a few moments later, she saw that Lou did not raise his hand, and she wondered where all his bravado had gone. She was still furious with the man for what he’d done to Little Brother. She wanted to retort that only volunteers would get to eat. But she didn’t. It wasn’t worth it.

  “I’m staying here,” groused Lou as he tossed another stick in the fire.

  “I’m in,” said Bishop.

  “I’m coming too,” said Molly. But Gabe shook his head.

  “I need you to stay here with Riley,” he said. When she opened her mouth to argue he nodded, almost imperceptibly, to Lou, before continuing, “And to watch things here.”

  She didn’t press the issue further and let four other volunteers take her place.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she saw Lou staring at her.

  The next morning, as the sun was rising, Gabe and the others picked up their weapons
and departed the cave to find and kill Ibex-Face. Molly watched them as they left, only to be joined by Lou who came to stand next to her, smiling as he waved the volunteers off.

  “When your husband doesn’t come back from this suicide mission, things are going to change around here,” he muttered under his breath.

  His smile never left his face as he said it.

  -68-

  “You want to do what?” Litz demanded, refusing to believe what Ward was asking of him. “Man, we just started earning our respect back among the guys here, and now you want to leave and prove them right? That we’re cowards and can’t be depended on?”

  They were in the barrack, which they shared with sixteen other soldiers who thankfully were not present at the moment. Litz continued to rage, pacing between the beds while Ward sat on his bunk, “I can’t believe you would ask that of me, Ward. Or that you would even be considering it yourself. What you’re talking about is desertion. What are you trying to do, get yourself executed?”

  Ward had expected a reaction like this. So, he kept his tone level, his argument logical. “Litz, they want to abandon these people and haul us across the country so that we can – what? Continue fighting from the desert? You know what’s out there, waiting for us beyond those hills. Come on, man, we saw in Boston what the dead can do. Now imagine that, but everywhere between here and Arizona – two thousand miles of enemy territory. And not just the dead, mind you, but all the pissed off civilians we’ll have to deal with when we inevitably raid supplies from them along the way. We couldn’t even make it to Darby and back without a few of us dying, Litz.

  “And then, if we do somehow manage to make it all the way out there? The Rangers won’t appreciate us setting up camp right on their doorstep. We’ll have the dead at our fronts and the rebels at our backs.” He paused to let the words sink in before continuing, “If Command could stop this thing, then why not stop it here, now, where it all started? It’s because they can’t, Litz. They don’t know how.”

  “That’s the point, Ward!” Litz shouted. “That’s why we’re going! So that we can launch a counterattack from a place where we don’t have to worry about the fucking sky coming down on us every time we try and bring the fight to them! But that plan won’t work if soldiers like you decide not to show up. What you’re talking about is cowardice, pure and simple,” he snapped.

  Ward stood up at that, his temper rising with him. “I’m no coward, Litz. I’ve fought the dead just as much as you have, and I’ve come out of those battles all the wiser. This world belongs to them now, Litz, we just happen to be fucking living here. Command might be able to stop the dead, maybe, but there’s no stopping the rain. This shit will just keep happening – every time it rains, people will flay and kill themselves until they become those…those fucking things. Then those things will kill more people, who will become groaners, who will kill even more people, and become more groaners! It’s simple math, Litz, and we are on the wrong side of the equation.”

  Litz opened his mouth to argue but found no point he could hurl back at his friend. Instead, he turned his back on him and kicked a bunk in anger.

  Ward took that as a sign that he was getting through to the man, so he continued, his tone softer, “The best plan, if we want to survive this thing, is to get the hell out of here. We find a location, fortify it, and hold it with a small group of people we can trust. We already have the beginnings of that here, with Kat and Sophia. I say we take what provisions we can, hijack one of the trucks, and go. If it’s just the four of us, and we’ve got wheels, we can move fast enough to outrun the living and the dead until we find a place we can easily defend. With all the departure preparations, Command may not even know we’re gone.”

  Litz turned, his eyes angry, “That’s your plan? To steal Federal supplies and trust our lives to an untrained civilian we barely know and a kid with a slingshot? That we take our chances with them over our brothers in arms here?”

  Ward’s face set stubbornly, “Yeah, I guess that is my plan. They’re good people and without our help… Have you thought about what would happen to them once we pull out of here? A good-looking girl like Kat, and Sophia even? There are predators all over this place, Litz, barely held in check by us being here. But once we’re gone?” He let the implication hang in the air.

  Litz stabbed a finger at his chest, “Don’t you fucking do that, Ward. Don’t you use them to guilt me into staying. I love that kid like my own sister. She’s family to me. That’s not fair.”

  “Yeah, well, what happened to your family when you were called to deploy to Boston? What happened to them when you left?” Ward retorted without thinking. Litz was from one of the smaller towns outside of Boston, one of those caught in the nuclear fallout of Command’s attempt to stop the dead. As soon as the words left his mouth, Ward knew he’d crossed a line. He didn’t even duck when Litz’s fist came plowing into his brow and sent him crashing to the ground. Ward knew he deserved it.

  Litz looked down at him, “This conversation is over, Ward. For Kat and Sophia’s sakes, I won’t report what you intend to do.” He walked over to his bunk and reached underneath to pull out a laundry sack filled with several cans of food and bottled water. “I won these playing poker with the fellas,” he said, holding up the sack before tossing it down beside Ward’s prone form. “That’s the last kindness you can expect from me Ward. Best of luck to you.” He turned at that and left the room, leaving Ward alone on the floor behind him.

  -69-

  Thaniel and the operators dragged the ducky over large stones worn smooth by the ages. They moved quickly, tying the raft off so the rising tide wouldn’t pull it back out to sea. When their craft was secured, they set about scouring the beach for a way up the cliff, and within minutes Maldonado called out to them from the far end of the beach. When they joined him, they saw that he’d found a path, partially buried in the snow, that went up diagonally across the cliff face. At the entrance to the path was an old wooden sign, weatherworn and rotting:

  DO NOT ENTER

  – ENDANGERED MIGRATORY BIRD RESEARCH SITE –

  ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE TAKEN INTO CUSTODY

  “A bird research site?” Thaniel asked.

  “Well, they couldn’t say ‘Highly Illegal Top-Secret Weapons Testing Facility.’” Hyres replied.

  “Don’t worry, Briends,” Neto said as he walked past the sign and onto the path, “we won’t let the birds get you.”

  Thaniel followed the men upwards, carefully watching where he placed his feet on the icy trail. He was so focused on not slipping that when he finally did look up, he found himself awestruck by his surroundings. To his right, the edge of the path dropped off into nothing but the calm arctic sea. The dark blue water was so clear that large slabs of rock were visible dozens of feet below the surface, like the gravestones of giants swallowed by some long-ago flood. In the distance, snowcapped islands rose from the water like unopened flowers, their white tipped peaks lost against an overcast sky.

  Save for Thaniel and the operators, there was no evidence of man or other life.

  This was an ancient and rugged place.

  The path brought them to the top of the cliffs and the flatter snowy plain beyond. As soon as they came out into the open, the operators crouched down low, with Thaniel following a heartbeat later. They remained there for several moments, kneeling in the snow with their weapons held at the ready, scanning their surroundings. Off in the distance they saw the wreckage of a plane partially buried in a snowbank, and beyond that, the low squat buildings of what they assumed to be Neyra’s facility.

  Nothing moved or made a sound.

  “Let’s get this done quickly,” whispered Sharpe. “Neto – the rope.”

  Neto moved ahead and jogged along the precipice at a crouch. He stopped when he found a spot where, on the other side, there was nothing but freefall and deep water below. He pulled out five metal spikes from his pack and a long length of rope which he uncoiled and cut into f
ive lines of about fifteen feet each. After the lines were cut, he lay down on his stomach so that his head and shoulders hung over the cliff’s edge and began hammering the spikes into cracks along the rock face. It was a delicate balance – hitting the spikes hard enough to dig in, but not loud enough for the sounds to carry over to the facility. When all the spikes were firmly set, a quick hand gesture signaled the others over.

  “Grab one of the ropes. Tie off an end to yourselves, the other end to the rock pins,” Neto instructed when they joined him.

  The operators set about the task while Thaniel fumbled with his rope. Sharpe saw him struggling and offered advice handed down from generations of sailors – “If you don’t know the knot, tie a lot.”

  “That sounds like terrible advice.”

  “It is,” he chuckled. “Maldonado, you’re on Briends.”

  “You got it, boss.” Maldonado approached and helped Thaniel to secure the rope. He yanked on the line to make sure it was taut before telling him, “When it happens, don’t hesitate. Just like when we leapt from the Defiant. Just go.”

  Thaniel nodded and tried to hide his growing apprehension.

  “Hey,” Maldonado said, seeing the look on his face, “this was your plan, remember?”

  “I’m starting to wish I hadn’t said anything.”

  “Too late now, friend.”

  Next to them, Sharpe asked the team if they were ready.

  “Hoorah.”

  Sharpe turned to Hyres, “Flash bang and go.”

  Hyres smiled and unclipped a canister from the cache of weapons strapped to his body. “Flash bang and go,” he repeated, slamming the canister into the launcher on his rifle. As he stepped forward to fire, Maldonado muttered to Thaniel to look away and keep his ears covered.

  Boom.

  The canister exploded, ringing Thaniel’s ears despite his attempt to muffle the noise. The ringing faded into distant groaning, which was picked up by the wind and carried over from the facility.