Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  Michael worked the handle, prayed he wasn’t stepping into a nest, and went through the hatch, closing it behind him. He held his breath and listened, heard only his own thudding heartbeat, and turned with the light. It was a workshop of some kind, with grinders and clamps bolted to metal tables, tall green bottles stored behind a chain-link fence with a Flammable sign on it, unlit fluorescent lights set in the ceiling behind wire mesh. An open hatch led into darkness on the right.

  His light found a tool locker, and he eased open the metal door, careful not to let it swing into the wall. Inside was a confusion of equipment, the uses for which he couldn’t begin to understand, but he saw the hammer and grabbed it at once. It had a long handle and a heavy head, flat at one end and rounded into a steel ball at the other. He gave it a practice swing and nodded. Also in the locker, clipped to one side, was another flashlight. After testing it, he shoved it in his waistband.

  Cautiously, he approached the interior hatch and put his light through the opening. Another workshop was beyond, appearing much like this one, with yet another open hatch on its far wall, opposite where Michael was standing. Again, nothing moved.

  Michael went back to a worktable and crouched behind it, peering around one end at the hatch through which he had entered. It was damp down here, and he shivered, his ankle aching. Everything smelled of the sea, and death. After months aboard the aircraft carrier, the ten-year-old had become accustomed to the stench of death, but down here it was different, sour, more corrupt somehow, though he couldn’t quite articulate that word. Extra dead, he decided.

  He was nervous about his flashlight beam but didn’t dare allow himself to be completely in darkness, so he held the lens close against his stomach to reduce the glare. He was breathing slower now.

  Wind and Denny had gotten out, he was sure of that. They would tell a grown-up, and people would come looking for him, wouldn’t they? His dad would come. He’d be pissed, but he would come. And maybe Father X too. How would they find him? It didn’t matter, they would. All he had to do was stay put and keep quiet.

  He froze as there was the sound of something thumping against the outer hatch, followed by the creak of a handle being lifted.

  • • •

  Rosa and Tommy’s flashlights cut through the darkness, Tommy in the lead with his light clamped against the forward stock of his assault rifle. Rosa held her own light, and the Glock in the other hand. Wind was pressed against her, gripping the medic’s scrubs in two fists.

  So far they had yet to encounter any of Nimitz’s former crew and had seen none of the slimy puddles the girl described. Wind led them to the safety meeting room, and had to bite back tears when she saw the picture Michael had drawn, and which she’d smeared with her sleeve. She wished she hadn’t done that.

  “Through there,” she whispered, pointing across the room. Tommy advanced on an open hatch, poking his light and rifle muzzle down another passageway.

  “You’re sure, honey?” Rosa asked, and the girl nodded.

  They went through, moving carefully down a corridor where voices at play had only recently echoed. Within minutes, they came upon a deck surface streaked with water and putrescence.

  “It’s seawater,” Tommy said, sniffing.

  Rosa wrinkled her nose. “They’re coming up from flooded compartments.”

  “It almost got us right here,” Wind said, near tears again. “Michael made it chase him that way.” They moved slowly in the direction Wind was pointing. Soon they came to the end of the hallway, with its choice of two closed hatches and a steel ladderway that only went down. Streaks of water and gore, as well as the imprint of a small sneaker, led to the stairs.

  A pair of moans, sounding close together, echoed through the passageways, their direction unknown. The three of them stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, listening, and the moaning came again, accompanied by the soft thud of something hitting a hatch or a bulkhead.

  “Take her back, Tommy,” Rosa said.

  He started to protest but then caught himself. They couldn’t take the girl down there, and they couldn’t send her back on her own. This area was now active. “Let’s all go back and bring reinforcements,” he said at last. “More guns and lights, maybe a map.”

  Rosa knew he was right, even as she shook her head. “Wind said she heard a scream; he could be hurt. By then it could be too late.” Not her brightest idea, but the urgency of finding Michael moved her forward.

  Tommy wanted to say more, but he also knew it was pointless to argue once she’d made up her mind. “I’ll come back with help. Don’t go too far.”

  Rosa didn’t respond and started toward the stairs.

  “Doc,” Tommy said, handing her the M4 and two magazines. He unholstered his own pistol. “See you soon.”

  Rosa nodded, and as the orderly hurried away with Wind now holding on to the edge of his scrubs, the medic aimed the light and the rifle into the darkness and went down the ladderway. There was a mess at the bottom, a spread of water and a sticky, yellow substance. A rotting, gray ear sat in the puddle, along with a piece of what might have been scalp with some hair still attached to it. A dead thing had come down hard here, and the marks on the floor indicated it had crawled to its feet and headed to the right. She saw no fresh blood, a very good sign, and was even more relieved when she saw a pair of wet sneaker prints headed in the same direction.

  She advanced with her light and rifle leading, trying to move on her toes and flinching each time her rubber soles made a loud squeak on the metal floor, reminding her of the echoing noises made in a school gymnasium. A closed hatch on the right was marked CATAPULT ENGINE ROOM, but she had no interest in it. The wet trail led forward.

  Rosa wanted to call out to the boy, the sound of her voice perhaps keeping him from moving deeper into the ship. She decided listening was better, and following the trail. The darkness was like a heavy blanket all around her as she moved through it, kept at bay only by the beam of white light. More hatches went by, many with only numbers stenciled on them.

  A rasp came from behind her and she wheeled, putting the light on the passage. The beam extended a long distance, but it revealed nothing in the corridor. Turning back, she saw something lying on the deck about twenty feet away and moved slowly toward it. A rotting corpse in a blue uniform, long dead. Streaks of water and gore showed where a drifter had stumbled over it.

  Rosa thought about all the water. The thing she was following must be waterlogged, dripping constantly, the pressure of movement forcing liquids out of its tissue. Had it been submerged somewhere, and found a way out? Hundreds of Nimitz crewmen were still unaccounted for, and the hunting parties had encountered only a few of the creatures they called wet ones. Was the bulk of the dead crew in these flooded areas? There had certainly been speculation. Rosa hadn’t expected to be the one to prove the theory, and certainly not alone. She knew she was no hero, and she was frightened, her heart tripping at an accelerated rate. She didn’t want to be here, but Michael didn’t, either, and she couldn’t leave him to face his fate alone, not a child, not anyone. She would bring him out.

  The rasping came again, followed by a wet gurgle, and Rosa turned spun once more. There it was, a woman in khaki stained almost black, the front of her shirt torn away to reveal savaged gray flesh, and an open chest cavity where white bone gleamed amid wet, black organs. She was pale, like the belly of a fish, and her eyes were bulging white orbs. Lips peeled back, and she hobbled down the corridor toward Rosa.

  The medic put the rifle to her shoulder and sighted, resting the green pips of the combat sight on the woman’s head. She took a deep breath, thought about the coming noise, and then tensed on the trigger.

  A boy’s scream, Michael’s, rebounded down the passageway behind her, making her jump. The shot went wide, the bullet whispering through limp hair at the side of the corpse’s head, the gunshot echoing. The scream cam
e again, and Rosa gritted her teeth, aiming, firing. A wet mass exploded onto the bulkhead, and the creature sagged to the deck. Rosa turned, searching the corridor, and saw an intersection up ahead. She ran for it.

  • • •

  Had he made a sound? Could it smell him through the steel, follow his scent? Michael put his flashlight beam on the opening hatch, his hand trembling as he crouched frozen at the end of the worktable. The waterlogged zombie that had been pursuing him from the start pushed the steel oval aside and stumbled over the knee knocker, white eyes reflecting the light. But it wasn’t alone. A corpse that looked withered and mummified, dressed in coveralls, followed it in, with a third that simply looked rotten pressing close behind.

  Michael bolted for the hatch to the next workshop, and the trio let out a chorus of moans. He heard them banging against tables as they hurried after him, and the boy raced through this new room, putting his light on the next open hatch, speeding toward it. He ducked and leaped at the same time, clearing the knee knocker and avoiding the low overhead frame as he burst into a third workshop.

  A corpse came at him from the right, a withered thing with a ball cap still on its head. It growled and lunged, raking his shoulder with dirty, ragged fingernails. Michael screamed, felt his flesh tear, and dodged left, smacking his hip painfully into a worktable. The creature snarled and galloped at him, catching the back of his shirt in one hand, teeth snapping within inches of the boy’s ear. Michael screamed again, jerking free.

  There was an open hatch to the right, but yet another creature was coming through it, tripping over the knee knocker but quickly getting back to its feet. Hungry moans came from the middle compartment, and the trio stumbled through the hatch as the thing with the ball cap pawed its way down the length of a worktable. Michael’s flashlight threw spastic beams of light, and in every direction were milky eyes staring out of dead faces, and snapping teeth.

  To his left, one wall of the room was stacked high with eight-foot lengths of loose steel pipes, held back by canvas straps. Directly beneath the pipes was an open, black rectangle in the floor: another stairway down.

  There were five of them in the workshop now, coming around both sides of the last table where Michael was, the ball cap zombie croaking and scrabbling up onto its surface. All were snarling as they closed in for the kill.

  Michael let out a whimper and hurried down the stairway.

  ELEVEN

  Xavier looked down from the superstructure catwalk using Stone’s binoculars. Passing under the Bay Bridge and coming toward the carrier’s port side was a boat similar to the rigid inflatable boats carried on Nimitz. Its hull was gray with an orange-and-blue stripe, Coast Guard colors, and a man piloted the craft from a central wheel station. There looked to be fewer than a dozen people aboard, all but the helmsman hunched against the spray and wind beneath blankets and ponchos. A square, white piece of fabric flew from a radio antenna.

  “Too far to see if they have weapons,” Stone said, standing beside the priest.

  The chief arrived on the catwalk a minute later, puffing from running up more than eight flights of stairs. He was a compact man, fit and with close-cropped hair silvering at the temples. Chief Gunner’s Mate Liebs was one of the Navy men Calvin and his group had rescued from a dry-goods locker during the taking of Nimitz, and the man had since proven to be a dependable person to have around, now part of Nimitz’s leadership core and a skilled zombie hunter. He was also in charge of weapons training and overall ship defense.

  “What do we have?” Liebs asked, and Xavier handed him the binoculars. After a moment the man said, “Well, we talked about this, didn’t we?”

  They watched the boat approach.

  “Stone,” the gunner’s mate said, “find me a bullhorn.”

  “Aye-aye, Chief,” the young man said, disappearing back into the bridge. He had become something of a right hand to the Navy man, carrying out any assignment without complaint, paying attention to what he was being taught, and growing increasingly proficient with a variety of weapons. It was clear to see the chief liked the boy.

  “Yes, we did,” Xavier said at last, gripping the catwalk railing and staring at the shapes huddled in the small craft. It had only been a matter of time, and the fact that refugees had not tried to make their way out here before now was a chilling reminder of how little human life remained in the Bay Area. Both men on the catwalk knew people would come eventually, though, and there had been not only discussions on how it was to be handled, but talk on a more philosophical and moral level.

  • • •

  The Alameda survivors had what anyone living in this postapocalyptic world would want: a fortress, one with high walls and ringed with water; a place with stockpiles of food and water; medical facilities and weaponry; and most importantly power. Nimitz was an island sanctuary where the dead could not reach them, or so outsiders would think, not knowing of the infestation that remained aboard. People who had survived this long would be no strangers to deprivation, fear, and death. To them, Nimitz would look like paradise. The question was, were they willing to share that safety, become part of a community of trust, and work toward a common goal? Or would they want to take it for themselves, preying upon those already aboard?

  The simplest and perhaps safest solution was not to permit anyone else to enter their world. This was Chief Liebs’s opinion, coming at the problem with a straightforward, military pragmatism. His strategy was difficult to argue with; it worked. But there had been argument—lively discussion was more like it, because those who had participated in the conversation trusted the others and respected their opinions. That talk had taken place in the admiral’s conference room not long after Nimitz was taken, as the dead were continually being hunted down and life was taking on a semblance of normalcy.

  “It’s like Skye has said repeatedly,” Chief Liebs said. The young woman to whom he was referring had been sitting on a leather sofa, leaning against Carney. “With the dead on board,” the chief continued, “every one we destroy moves the odds in our favor. This is as simple and direct as that, math and logic. If we don’t let anyone else aboard, we don’t run the risk of inviting in people who will be hostile.”

  “You’re so wise,” Carney had whispered into Skye’s ear. She gave him an elbow shot to the stomach.

  “What if Angie had been like that?” Big Jerry asked, the rotund, former stand-up comic now turned ship’s cook. He wore a black medical cam boot and a knee brace, souvenirs of the battle for Nimitz that he would have for the rest of his life. “If she hadn’t taken in strangers at the firehouse, a lot of us wouldn’t be here.”

  Angie West, the reality TV star who’d saved so many lives with her knowledge of firepower and had become a leader within their group, was still in sick bay when the meeting took place, recovering from multiple, close-range gunshot wounds inflicted by the late TC Cochoran. TC had been Carney’s murderous San Quentin cellmate and was now the late TC because of Skye’s well-placed bullet.

  “I know it’s a hard line to take,” said Chief Liebs, “but it’s the simplest answer, and it’s the only one that guarantees the ship won’t be compromised.”

  “That doesn’t make it the right answer, though, Chief,” Evan said. He was sitting across the table, Maya close to him. “What Jerry said is true for all of us. Calvin’s family took me in, Rosa took Father Xavier in, and we all sort of accepted one another that night when we came together on the airfield.” He smiled at the Navy man. “You and your shipmates would still be trapped in a locker if someone hadn’t shown you some trust, right, Chief?”

  Liebs shook his head and grinned.

  Xavier was at the head of the table. He’d been reluctant to sit there, as he didn’t like the superiority it might imply. Everyone on board had either openly or silently placed him in charge, and the Navy men had begun calling him Skipper, a term of genuine respect given to officers by enlisted sail
ors and Marines. He’d come to accept the responsibility without complaint, but he knew he was no commanding officer, and this was by no means a dictatorship. Any decisions made would be agreed upon by the group. It was their lives at stake, and for many of them, the lives of their families.

  The priest listened to the conversation, pleased with the thoughtful debate, and was once again reminded that these were good people gathered here with him. For that reason, it was even more important that they be protected, ruthlessly if need be, a thought that was at odds with his priest’s calling and yet felt absolutely right to the man.

  “If refugees come to us,” said Rosa, sitting on Xavier’s left and looking weary, “they could bring skills we don’t have within the group. Another medical person, perhaps. Technical skills that could make this place run better.”

  “Perhaps even a person with rudimentary culinary skills,” offered Vlad, and that got a laugh. Big Jerry put on a pretended hurt face, and the Russian flashed him a homely grin.

  Rosa laughed as well. “Maybe we could find someone who understands high-tech communication better than we do, or an engine mechanic, a dentist even. God knows none of you want me in your mouth with steel instruments.”

  A few of them silently wished for a person with bomb disposal skills, someone who could safely neutralize and get rid of the nuclear weapons still down in the ship’s magazines. Although Chief Liebs assured them the devices were safe, they all knew how close they had come to being incinerated by a madman, and the mere presence of those weapons on board was a chilling and frequent reminder.

  “It doesn’t matter what they know how to do,” Rosa said, as the discussion about theoretical refugees went on. “We can teach them, and every pair of hands makes us stronger.”