Prit and Lucia had also spit on the strip of paper. The results must have been acceptable since the crew gave them the same jovial welcome they’d given me.
My friends were as bewildered as I was by the crew’s religious fervor. Our best guess was that most of them came from the southern United States, where deeply felt Baptist beliefs prevailed and preachers abounded. But I wasn’t convinced that was the whole story.
Our questions about the mysterious Reverend Greene went unanswered. All they said was, “You’ll meet him when we get to Gulfport. You’ll see what a wonderful man he is.”
The Ithaca’s propellers stopped and we drifted for the last few miles. When we were right alongside a massive steel structure with three towers, the captain gave the order to drop anchor. With a splash, the ship’s giant anchors sank into the sea. A couple of minutes later, the chains tensed. The ship crept forward a bit, then came to a stop.
Strangärd turned to Captain Birley and saluted. “Anchoring maneuver completed without incident, sir. Ready to secure the ship.”
“Well done, Gunnar,” Birley said. His eyes didn’t miss a single detail on board his ship. “Proceed with security checks, and prepare to load the cargo.”
The Swedish officer saluted again and left the bridge to carry out his orders. The entire crew worked with the precision of a Swiss clock.
The “divine mission” that Reverend Greene had sent them on turned out to be more worldly than I’d imagined. They weren’t bringing the word of God to Africa, distributing food to survivors stranded on the coast, or anything usually associated with a divine message wrapped in light and accompanied by blaring trumpets with angels and cherubs fluttering around as a voice thundered down from heaven. The mission was much simpler: fill the Ithaca’s holds with crude oil.
When Captain Birley told me their mission, I asked what seemed like a logical question. “Why Africa? Why not Texas or the Gulf of Mexico? They’re a lot closer to Gulfport.”
“The land route to the Texas oil fields is impractical,” the captain explained. “Those oil fields are infested by millions of Satan’s children and the roads are impassable. We’d need a fleet of trucks just to reach the wells. On top of that, the trucks wouldn’t provide us with enough protection once we got there, let alone transport all the oil we need. The drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico are out of commission due to hurricanes and lack of maintenance. This is the nearest reliable oil supply. Besides, Reverend Greene said that this is the Lord’s will, so it must be.” He shrugged as if that explained everything.
Prit and I exchanged a knowing look, but kept our mouths shut. I discreetly stepped on his foot just as a smart remark was about to pop out of his mouth.
Let it go, I mouthed.
So there we were in Luba—population about seven thousand—on Bioko Island, part of Equatorial Guinea. The island would have been just another forgotten corner of Africa if the country’s dictator, Theodor Obiang, hadn’t had it surveyed in the eighties. The survey revealed that Bioko was floating on a sea of oil. Eager to get their hands on the wealth lying beneath them, the Guineans started drilling almost immediately. The port in Malabo, the country’s capital, proved too shallow, so the multinational companies doing the drilling created a deepwater port in the nearby town of San Carlos de Luba.
I had to admit that Reverend Greene’s choice was a good one. We were anchored near a charming tropical city whose port looked to be in pretty good condition; its deep waters allowed our ship to sail right up to the oil rigs. With only seven thousand inhabitants before the Apocalypse, the number of Undead was much lower than in other ports with oil rigs. But seven thousand were still way too many.
The small, sonar-equipped Zodiac pulled alongside the ship, but didn’t stop to be raised up by the crane. Instead, it motored along parallel to the Ithaca’s bow, almost on the other side of the ship, about three hundred feet away.
Prit elbowed me. “Look at that,” he murmured, pointing to a covered area on the ship’s deck about two hundred feet from the bow.
I trained my binoculars on a spot where the tangle of pipes and hoses was sectioned off by a metal barrier about four feet high. It ran from one side of the ship to the other and was topped by barbed wire. No door seemed to connect it to the rest of the ship.
“Whaddya you think that’s for?” I asked.
“Not a clue. You?” Pritchenko replied.
“I have no idea. It could be a line of defense in case some Undead get on board, or maybe it’s to ward off a pirate attack on the high seas. These people have traveled thousands of miles. Who knows what’s going on in other parts of the world.”
“Well, my gut tells me it has something to do with those guys.”
The Ukrainian pointed at the bow again. About three dozen people emerged from a hatch on the far side of the barrier. Through our binoculars, we watched them file out in orderly fashion. They wore US Army fatigues and were heavily armed. A tall, muscular black guy with a shaved head and tattoos covering one arm quickly organized the men and women into five-person squadrons. Then they unrolled a net like the one we’d climbed up on and scrambled down to the Zodiac as it swayed rhythmically against the tanker. Three other Zodiacs appeared from around the other side of the tanker. When all the boats were full, Captain Birley radioed his orders and the boats approached the dock, which was filled with Undead.
“See that?” Prit asked, glued to his binoculars.
“Yeah. That dock is crowded with Undead. They’ll have a helluva time getting through.”
“I don’t think they’ll have much trouble,” Prit replied. “But did you notice there’s not a single white person on those teams?”
I looked closer. Most of the soldiers were black, Native American, or Latino, and a couple were Asian. The rest of the soldiers looked puny next to the tattooed giant running the operation.
“What’s so unusual about that? Even before the Apocalypse, the American army was full of Latinos and blacks.”
“Yeah. And a lot of white country boys who enlisted when their farms failed. I don’t see a single one down there. If any of those soldiers are white, I’ll shave off my mustache.”
Prit was ex-military; his trained eyes picked up on things like that. Once he pointed it out, it did seem strange that there were no white soldiers.
Just as I was about to ask Strangärd about the soldiers, the boats reached the dock and they started to disembark. From the deck of the ship, we had a clear view of the harbor. I grabbed my binoculars—I didn’t want to miss a single thing. For once, I was watching all that shit from a safe distance instead of being in the thick of it.
As if he’d read my mind, Prit whispered, “Too bad we don’t have any popcorn.”
I didn’t answer him because the action was starting.
The first boat landed at the dock alongside the oil deposits. About thirty Undead were wandering around. They were all black except for one white guy wearing a torn REPSOL oil company uniform—he must’ve been a technician. Four of the Undead had on army fatigues. The strap of an assault rifle was wrapped around one guy’s leg. His calf was in shreds and the bone was sticking out. The rifle was in pieces. The poor devil must’ve been dragging it around for months, the way a prisoner drags his chain.
The other two boats landed nearby and the soldiers climbed onto the dock, but one of them slipped on the ladder. He comically waved his arms in the air trying to get his balance, then hit the water with a loud splash.
The sound set the Undead in motion. Hundreds of rotting heads whipped around in unison and headed for the end of the dock. The other soldiers were busy dragging their comrade out of the water and didn’t notice the tide of Undead until the monsters were nearly on top of them. The scene gave me chills.
“Those filthy beasts amaze me,” commented one of the officers as he leaned on the rail. “It’s like those sons of bitches have
fucking telekinesis or something.”
“You mean telepathy, dummy,” another voice said. “And you better watch your language. If the captain hears you blaspheme like that, you’ll get a look at those Undead up close.”
As the two officers chatted away, the soldiers on shore were running down the dock. One group opened fire on the Undead. The gunfire broke the town’s silence.
“According to our calculations, they have twenty minutes,” said Captain Birley, who had silently appeared beside me.
“Calculations?”
“Yes. Based on the soldiers’ speed, the estimated number of Undead, and the size of the town, we calculate that, in twenty minutes, there’ll be so many of those evil creatures that our helots won’t be able to get out of there. So they’d better hurry.”
The first row of Undead had fallen like bowling pins, but more kept coming. One group of soldiers was out in front and about to be surrounded. The group’s leader realized the danger they were in and ordered his team to retreat, but it was too late. About thirty or forty Undead had already gathered and were almost within arm’s reach. One of the Undead lashed out at the nearest soldier and grabbed his rifle. The soldier pulled away and tried to recover his rifle, but another Undead pounced on him. Before anyone could do anything, the Undead sank his teeth into the soldier’s neck. He let out a gut-wrenching howl you could hear all the way up to the Ithaca’s deck. With a twist of his head, the Undead ripped off a piece of the guy’s neck just before another soldier shot him in the head. But it was too late. The man lay sprawled on the ground, blood shooting from his carotid artery as his heart kept pumping. The group continued their panicked retreat as the poor guy bled to death on the boiling pavement.
By then the shooting was everywhere. Two-thirds of the soldiers were climbing over a retaining fence as the remaining third struggled to connect long hoses to the rusty pump spouts that stuck out of the huge reservoirs. Someone inside the fence had started up a small portable generator, presumably to run the pump. The gunfire and the pump’s piercing screech were deafening. I looked in horror at the other end of the dock. Drawn by the noise, hundreds of Undead were lumbering down every street toward the soldiers who were distracted by their work.
“They’ll be slaughtered!” I couldn’t contain myself. “Captain Birley, you’ve got to get them out of there! Order them back!”
Birley shrugged with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about them,” he said impassively. “They’re just helots doing their job. But maybe we can help them out. It’ll be fun. Culling!”
“Sir?” One of the young officers snapped to attention next to the captain.
“Bring up the M24s. Let’s have a little target practice.”
A murmur of excitement spread across the deck. I wondered what he meant by fun. Another six or seven men in the landing party had fallen, and the circle of Undead was slowly but surely closing. Three other soldiers had bites on their arms and legs. Considering how contagious the virus was, the bites were fatal, but they gripped their weapons and fought on admirably.
An officer dragged several heavy metal boxes across the Ithaca’s deck and started handing out rifles with telescopic sights. There was pushing and shoving and some sneaky elbowing to get one of the guns. Some walked away empty-handed, grumbling, while other hopefuls tried to bribe those with rifles into sharing them for a while. Pritchenko snagged one of the rifles without much effort.
“A Remington M24,” he muttered as he examined the rifle with an expert eye. “Snipers’ weapon. I wonder where our friends got them.”
Suddenly, all hell broke loose on deck. A dozen rifles fired on the crowd of moaning Undead as they advanced toward the dock. With a continuous staccato, the shooters cocked their weapons, aimed carefully through the scopes, fired, then started all over again. The audience cheered each bull’s-eye. Some guys were even placing bets on their aim.
I focused my binoculars on the port. At such short range, the shooters couldn’t miss the Undead teetering on the dock. In the blink of an eye, three of the monsters went down. Exploding bullets hit two of them in the head, spraying flesh, bone, and gore everywhere. Another bullet hit the third Undead in the chest and threw him back ten feet. The creature lay on the ground, with a puzzled look on his face as if he wondered what the fuck happened and why he was lying on the ground with a tunnel-size hole in his gut.
It would’ve been fun, but I couldn’t stop thinking that those monsters had been people once. When the head of a little girl in pigtails went flying and the shooters cheered, I stopped watching. For God’s sake! She couldn’t have been more than seven! I could handle killing Undead in self-defense, but here they were sitting ducks.
The team that had scrambled up the reservoir fired a flare, filling the air with thick red smoke. Several other soldiers pulled a guide wire that dragged a thick hose connected to the reservoir to the nearest Zodiac. With a slow purr, the boat pulled up to the tanker.
What was left of the ground team realized that the hose was secure and retreated to the shore. From the safety of the ship, I watched in fascination as twenty men and women slowly walked backward in a strange choreographed motion, dragging their wounded comrades. The muscular black guy towered over them and covered their retreat. He was one brave fucker. The guy rhythmically fired his M16 until he ran out of ammunition. He was too close to the Undead to reload, so he grabbed the gun by the barrel (it must’ve been red hot) and swung it like a club.
The officers on the Ithaca cheered as if they were watching a football game. The giant man with all the tattoos was cut off some fifty feet from the shore. The Zodiacs had pulled back a little to keep the Undead from hurling themselves on board, but one of them stayed in close so the guy could jump on. The soldiers on the boats yelled for him to get on, but he was too busy fending off Undead to hear.
The M16 whirled over his head with a shrill whistle, striking the head of an Undead with a brittle crunch. The blows probably weren’t fatal, but they were enough to help him break through the line as the Undead fell like sacks of potatoes. Seconds later, though, three new Undead closed in. The soldier split open the heads of the two closest to him with the butt of his rifle, then gave the third a kick to the solar plexus that must’ve broken some ribs.
The officers stopped shooting and cheered like crazy as the guy fought for his life.
I whipped around to Prit. “What the hell’s going on? Why aren’t they shooting?”
“Clearly they don’t want to shoot. If we don’t want any trouble, we shouldn’t either,” the Ukrainian muttered as he cast a furtive look at the officers.
I couldn’t read his mind right then. I was too upset.
“That’s murder!” I protested.
No one paid any attention to me. The soldier continued swinging his rifle, fighting his way to shore, and for a second I thought he’d make it. He was just a few feet from the dock with only two Undead between him and salvation. He tackled one of them like a defensive linebacker. The Undead flew into the water and sank with a splash. He grabbed the other beast by the arm and swung him around, letting him fly into a nearby group. The monsters fell in a tangle of arms, legs, and heads.
I got carried away and started to yell too, then suddenly the cry died in my throat. The soldier took a step back to make a running leap onto the Zodiac. Just as he started to jump, one of the Undead lying in the dirt a few feet away reached out and with his rotting fingernails snagged the man by his bootlaces. The soldier fell hard onto the dock and two Undead pounced on him. One of them sank his teeth into the guy’s bicep, leaving a deep, jagged wound. The other ripped into one of his calves. With a grunt, the soldier used his free foot to lash out at the head biting his leg and landed a kick that would have broken an elephant’s neck. He crawled to the edge of the dock and let himself fall into the water. After a second, his head popped up alongside the Zodiac. The soldiers dragged him on boa
rd, leaving a trail of blood across the boat’s canvas hull. Then they tacked and started their slow return to the Ithaca.
It was a monstrous crime. The guy was a dead man. Millions of TSJ virions had entered his body through those two bites and were reproducing wildly. In a few hours, that giant of a man would be a very large, very dangerous Undead. All because the men laughing and cheering beside me didn’t feel like helping him.
“Come on, Prit. I can’t take another minute of this. I’m just glad Lucia’s not on deck.”
“That was very strange,” Prit replied. “A landing party made up entirely of black, Latino, Asian, and Native American soldiers, but not a single white one. And they let their own people die like flies. Doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing has made sense for a long time.”
“Yeah, but that was really strange,” the Ukrainian insisted.
The battered landing party finally reached the ship. Sailors connected the hoses to the tanks as the battle-weary soldiers climbed the net back onto the tanker. They lowered stretchers to the boats to bring up the most gravely injured.
Although it was heartwarming that they hadn’t left any wounded behind, their efforts were futile. The virus would transform the injured soldiers into Undead in minutes. In fact, some of the officers were firing down at the dock, targeting the fallen soldiers who’d already risen as Undead.
Prit, the officers, and I left the deck, which shimmered in the tropical midday heat, and headed down to the dining room, where Enzo directed waiters in white uniforms laying out a fabulous lunch. The contrast was deeply disturbing. Looking through a window, I could see the exhausted survivors sprawled on the deck, shedding their heavy equipment and greedily gulping down bottles of some liquid. Inside the dining room, the officers chatted, smoked cigarettes, drank gin and tonics, and bowed politely as Lucia passed among them. Only minutes before, they’d fired on the multitude of Undead on the dock, then allowed several of their own men to die without lifting a finger. The dock was still packed with Undead, rocking back and forth. Their monotonous moans could be heard above the hum of the air-conditioning. It was like being in the cocktail lounge of an exclusive country club, looking out a window onto hell.
The Wrath of the Just (Apocalypse Z) Page 4
