Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  The girl’s name was Wind. She was eleven and an orphan, having lost both her parents during the taking of Nimitz. The nine-year-old boy on the table with her was Denny, the child who had come into the Alameda firehouse with Tanya, Margaret Chu, and Maxie, and was now the only one of that group still alive. The artist was ten-year-old Michael, Calvin’s youngest son who, along with his brother, endured childhood diabetes. He knew he shouldn’t be here, not because the bow was off limits—it was—but for a deeper reason. He shouldn’t be here because he had nearly been devoured during the battle of the fantail, when he’d fallen with a twisted ankle and a corpse grabbed hold of him. Only the fast and savage actions of his oldest sister, Maya, had saved his life.

  It should have given him a cautious respect for the threat the dead posed, but that incident was months ago, he was ten, and kids quickly grew numb to horror.

  “Look!” Michael shouted, putting his flashlight beam on the drawing.

  “Gross,” said Denny.

  “Is that supposed to be you?” Wind asked.

  “Yeah. Cool laser cannon, huh?”

  “I meant the other one,” she said, then stuck out her arms and did a stiff-legged walk across the table, head cocked to one side and groaning. Denny immediately did the same.

  “Ha-ha,” Michael said, then wrote the word Wind on the board with an arrow pointed at the zombie’s rear end. He laughed and added the word break in front of her name. “Now it’s perfect.”

  Wind leaped down from the table and darted across the room, swiping a sleeve at the drawing and smearing it as she went past. “C’mon,” she yelled, headed for a door across the room. Denny ran after her. Michael made a face at what had become of his drawing, then followed.

  The door opened onto another dark passageway, and the three kids ran down it, bouncing from wall to wall, flashlight beams jerking across the ceiling.

  “I’m a craaaazy person!” Wind shouted, rebounding off a wall.

  “Craaaazy!” parroted Denny.

  Michael bounced off a door. “A looonatic!”

  More laughter and screeching, and as they neared the end of the corridor their sneakers splashed through a puddle of water. They slid to a halt, Denny running into Wind with a grunt, and the laughter stopped.

  Michael shone his light on the floor, revealing a long, narrow puddle streaked with green and yellow, along with a distinct, wet boot print. The water smelled bad, and in fact the entire corridor reeked. The puddle and boot print went in the direction from which they had come, so he tracked his light back along it, turning to see its origin. The gore-streaked water came from the head of a ladderway that descended into darkness. An even more repugnant odor came from that opening in the floor.

  Denny pointed. “That’s—”

  Wind clamped a hand over his mouth. “We know what that is,” she said, her voice soft. Then she looked at Michael, who stared back with wide eyes. “We need to go.”

  Michael nodded. They weren’t supposed to be in the bow, they all knew it, but the grown-ups had been clearing this area, hadn’t they?

  Was it clear? Michael wondered. Who, exactly had said that it was? Had anyone said that, or was that just what he wanted to hear, not wanting to give up the coolest playground in the world. As he stared at the trail of slime on the floor, more thoughts leaped at him. The three of them were unarmed. How many drifters had come up from below? Who else knew they were up here playing in the bow? His dad was going to kill him for being here. Michael was suddenly certain that the grown-ups would have marked the areas not yet cleared. Had he and the other two kids simply not seen them? Had they cut through some compartments and missed them? His heartbeat accelerated.

  “Back the way we came,” he whispered to Wind, who nodded. Flashlights panning ahead of them, the three children moved back up the corridor, keeping to the balls of their feet and avoiding the water on the floor.

  A moan echoed somewhere in the darkness, and the children froze. In front of them, or behind?

  “Go, go,” Michael hissed from the back of the little trio, waving them forward. Wind hesitated for a moment, peering into the darkness, then gripped Denny’s hand and crept forward. Michael panned the light behind him to see an empty corridor and closed hatches. They went slowly at first, and then Wind picked up the pace, hurrying along and pulling Denny. A moment later she was running, a wail of panic starting low in her chest and rising.

  “Wind, wait, don’t!” Michael called after them, worried that her cry would draw attention, that she would run straight into—

  —the dead thing lurched into the hall from a doorway on the right, only feet in front of the two running children. In the glare of a flashlight Michael saw a rotting blue uniform, patches of hair clinging to a gray scalp that was sloughing off the side of its face, and yellow eyes. It was still dripping and reeked of seawater. The thing snarled with blackened teeth and reached.

  Wind screamed and fell, sliding into its legs, Denny piling up behind her. Liquid drooled from the thing’s open mouth as it dropped onto the little girl.

  “No!” Michael cried, swinging the flashlight and bashing it in the temple. The blow made a spongy sound. The creature jerked, head snapping up, eyes glaring into the light. “No!” the boy shouted again, and hit it once more, harder this time, rocking its head to the side. Beneath it, Wind kicked furiously and scrambled past its legs, dragging a wailing Denny with her. They got to their feet behind the drifter and began to run.

  The thing started to turn in pursuit, but Michael bashed it again. “Over here, ugly!” When it turned back to face him, Michael backpedaled. “Over here!”

  The creature began to crawl quickly toward him, then struggled to its feet. Michael quickly judged the width of the hallway, knew he would never get past it. He backed up instead, drawing it in, away from the echoes of Wind and Denny’s running feet. The thing snarled, pale fingers hooking into claws, took two jerking steps, and then broke into that obscene gallop they had all seen the dead do just before they took down prey.

  Michael turned and ran.

  He didn’t get far. In seconds he was back at the point in the corridor where they had first encountered the puddle. Closed, oval-shaped hatches stood to the right and ahead, and on the left was the stairway from which the thing had originally come. Michael reached for a hatch handle, then heard the squishing of waterlogged flesh galloping in boots, splashing as it ran through the puddle. He would never get the hatch open before it was on him.

  There was no choice. Michael bolted for the top of the stairway just as the creature reached him, leaping down four and five steps at a time into the darkness below.

  Michael’s abrupt scream rose from the stairwell.

  The dead thing followed him down.

  • • •

  Waiting room’s empty, Doc,” said Tommy, poking his head into the curtained ER cubicle. Tommy was one of the hippies who had helped take back sick bay and now worked there as an orderly while studying to be an EMT. His beard was gone and he felt more comfortable in scrubs now.

  Rosa looked up from the patient notes she was making, sitting on a rolling stool and using the exam table as a desk. She wasn’t tall, but even without makeup and with her hair pulled into a ponytail, she was a very attractive woman. Beneath her scrubs and white doctor’s coat was the full figure of an exotic dancer, remnants of another lifetime.

  “I’ll clean up next door and then hit the books, if that’s okay,” he said. The doc had just finished stitching up a lacerated forearm. There were a lot of sharp edges on this ship.

  “Sure,” she said. “What are you working on today?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Today? Doc, I’ve been on the pulmonary system for four days. I didn’t know there was so much to learn about a person’s insides. I thought being an EMT was, like, stabilizing, and patching people up.”

  Rosa smiled. “Yo
u need to know how it all works on the inside before you can fix the outside.”

  “Off I go,” he sighed, then paused before leaving. “Doc, you look beat.”

  “When am I not, Tommy?”

  “This place is quiet. Why not grab a meal, maybe a nap? I got this.”

  Rosa scratched another note on the chart. “I’ll get to it.”

  The man shrugged and let the curtain fall back into place. As he walked away, his voice called, “Don’t make me rat you out to Father X, Doc.”

  “Up yours, Tommy,” she called after him, smiling. It wasn’t a threat without merit. The big priest was forever after her about pacing herself, reminding her that she wouldn’t be able to tend to the needs of others if she didn’t look after her own needs, and other assorted nagging remarks along that vein. Father was the right title. Rosa didn’t know what she would do without him.

  It was more than his gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) guidance that drew her to him. He had a particular strength, something Rosa desperately wanted to possess. He knew what it was to be responsible for others, understood the fear and constant worry that went along with leadership, the frustration of never being able to do as much as you wanted. Even after her time spent serving as a Navy corpsman in combat overseas, and as an EMT on San Francisco’s streets, she had never felt the same, sometimes unbearable weight of responsibility as she did now. In both those lives there had always been someone to turn to, backup waiting if things got too intense. Now, in this new life, this new world, there was only her; not nearly a doctor, but counted on to be just that.

  Rosa left the cubicle and dropped the patient file in a plastic wall holder. Tommy was seated at a desk nearby, face pinched in concentration as he used a highlighter to work over a medical book. She pulled a different chart from the same wall holder and scanned it, standing near the desk and not looking up.

  “Name the anatomical features of the respiratory system in mammals,” Rosa said.

  Tommy grumbled but closed the book as she expected. “Trachea, bronchi, bronchioles, lungs . . . that’s it.”

  “And diaphragm.”

  “Right, diaphragm.”

  Still reading the chart, she said, “The process by which oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules are passively exchanged?”

  “Diffusion,” Tommy said, “and before you ask, it takes place in the alveoli air sacs in the lungs.” He grinned triumphantly.

  “The respiratory system, in Latin.”

  “Ah . . . systema . . . resp . . . respiratorium. Did you use a lot of Latin riding the ambulance, Doc?”

  “You’d be surprised. But it’s part of being a professional. The real reason is that it makes you sound smart, so your patients won’t catch on that you’re about to kill them with your lack of skills.” Oh, no, I’m starting to get snarky like Vlad.

  Tommy snorted. He was used to it. “You’re such a peach to work with, Doc.”

  She threw him a wink. “Good, because the peach would like you to list the anatomical terminology of the entire respiratory system, top to bottom.”

  Tommy swallowed. “I don’t know it all.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  He drew a deep breath. “Frontal sinus, sphenoid sinus, nasal cavity . . .”

  She nodded slowly, looking at a simple stitch job on a lacerated shin. Those damned knee knockers. She would have to do a follow-up in a couple of days to ensure the stitches had held, and that the antibiotics were keeping away any infection.

  “. . . oral cavity, pharynx, epiglottis, vocal fold . . .”

  It was also time to do an A1C blood test on Calvin’s boys. Their father had done a good job monitoring their sugar levels and giving them the proper doses of insulin, but they were growing, and as their bodies changed, so would the treatment. Her greater worry was that the insulin Calvin had on hand, as well as the supply aboard the ship, would not last forever. Rosa had been staying up late researching its manufacture, discovering that she had all the raw elements as well as the equipment to make it right here in the medical lab. Fears of getting it right, though, and risking injection into a child, kept her awake long after the research was done for the night.

  “. . . thyroid cartilage, cricoid cartilage . . .” Tommy was touching points on his throat and chest as he spoke, using his body as a mnemonic device. Everyone did something different, and whatever worked, worked. The doc remembered that when learning the names of all twenty-seven bones in the human hand, she had turned it into a song.

  “. . . trachea, apex . . .” He split his fingers into a V and touched his breastbone. “. . . main bronchi right and left . . .” He sighed. “That’s all I got, Doc. I start getting jumbled when we get into the lungs.”

  Rosa sat on the edge of his desk. “For the most part, you only have to learn one side, because the other is just like it. There are exceptions, though. The left lung has the cardiac notch, for example.”

  Tommy was taking notes. For all his grumbling, he wanted to learn.

  Rosa smacked his shoulder with the patient file. “You’re doing great, and you got them all in order, didn’t miss one until the lungs. They’ll be calling you Doc before you know it.”

  That gave her a smile. Tommy was about to say something when the double doors to sick bay banged open, and two crying children rushed in. Their sobs rose in volume as they saw the adults and ran to them.

  Rosa dropped to her knees and collected both in her arms, and Tommy was by her side a moment later, a first-aid kit in his hands appearing as if by magic, looking the children over for injury. And more importantly, bites.

  Both kids were talking loud and fast between the sobs, pointing back at the doors. As soon as they said the word zombie, something hard came into Tommy’s eyes and he set down the kit, snatching an M4 assault rifle from where it leaned against his desk. He snapped the charging handle, dropped to one knee between the children and the entrance, and aimed the muzzle at the double doors. He hoped a survivor didn’t come pushing in. If so, he was so tense they would die before he could stop his trigger finger.

  “Shh, slow down,” Rosa said, looking them over as well. She didn’t see blood or bites, thank God, but both would need a full exam just to be sure. Her mind didn’t allow her to consider what would come next if indeed they had been bitten.

  Denny was crying too hard to be understood, but Wind was trying to get herself under control and managed to speak between deep gasps and tears. “We were . . . playing in the bow . . . I know we . . . shouldn’t be there. . . .” More sobs, and Rosa rubbed her back.

  “You’re not in trouble, honey. Just breathe and tell me.”

  Wind sucked in a pair of shaky breaths, rubbing her palms at her eyes, and told Rosa what had happened.

  “Tommy,” Rosa said softly as the girl spoke, but the orderly was already up and moving. “Did it get him?” she asked the girl.

  “I didn’t see. But we heard him scream, like he was a long way off.”

  That wasn’t good, but it didn’t mean the boy was dead or bitten. “Can you show us where?” the doc asked. Denny shook his head emphatically, so Rosa gave him a hug. “I want you to go straight down to the mess hall, find Miss Sophia or Big Jerry, tell them what happened. Can you do that?” He nodded. Rosa was confident that the spaces between here and the mess hall several decks below were safe enough for the boy to travel alone. For now, anyway.

  Wind wrapped her arms tightly about herself as if to still her own shaking. “I’ll show you,” she said in a small voice.

  “Nothing will hurt you, honey, I promise.” Rosa looked in the girl’s eyes, and Wind gave her a little smile. Tommy reappeared with a bright orange backpack for Rosa and another like it already on his back. He handed her a pistol belt with her Glock and spare magazine pouches. As she strapped on the weapon, she found herself wishing for boots and fatigues instead of sneakers and scr
ubs. There was no time. Rosa shrugged out of the white doctor’s coat and grabbed a pair of Maglites from the desk.

  “Let’s go,” she said, leading them out of the sick bay.

  • • •

  Denny didn’t make it to the mess hall.

  Alone and frightened, he heard a metallic bang from somewhere up ahead in the empty passageway he was traveling. Stifling a sob, he looked around quickly, then darted into an unoccupied crew berthing compartment. Far in the back, he crawled beneath a bunk, curled into a ball, and started to cry softly.

  SEVEN

  August 13—Seattle

  USCGC Joshua James was a Legend Class Maritime Security Cutter, the very latest design and the fifth of its class, with four others already in service and more in various stages of the building, design, and funding process. The Legend Class was intended to replace the much older Hamilton Class cutters, and the upgrade was laughably overdue. The United States Coast Guard was operating some of the oldest naval vessels in the world; of the world’s forty largest navies and coast guards, the USCG had the thirty-eighth oldest fleet.

  The term cutter referred to any Coast Guard vessel sixty-five feet or more in length, with an assigned crew and accommodations for their extended support. The National Security Cutter was not only the biggest boat the USCG had ever put in the water—418 feet long—it was capable of a flank speed of twenty-eight knots, had a range of twelve thousand nautical miles, and could stay out for sixty days without replenishment. Its state-of-the-art radar and navigation systems, combined with a lethal weapons package, were testament to the fact that the cutter had been built to ninety percent military specifications. The design made it a more valuable asset to the Department of Defense, and although the Coast Guard carried out a wide variety of missions—environmental and fisheries protection, drug interdiction, and search and rescue—the new class of cutter was primarily intended for the role of maritime security and patrol, interception, and counterterrorism.

  It should have been the perfect boat for the crisis unfolding around them, Elizabeth thought. Unfortunately, as she was quickly learning, Joshua James was so inadequately outfitted and crewed that saving lives, including those already aboard the ship, might be an impossibility.