His shoulders and arms were burning from the dead weight. He wasn’t sure how much longer he can keep up the pace. He wished he’d stayed with Soozie and the others, at least then he would have backup.
His mind drifted back to the man. He couldn’t believe Smokie would allow him to walk around free. She must have her reasons; he thought. He was also worried about how she would react when he saw her – after he’d run off with their boat like a crazy person, while leaving Smokie asleep in the chair next to his bed.
He checked the girl again. She bounced around in his arms. He noticed the small wet tag sticking out of her jumper. It said, Lucy.
Fuck!
Knowing her name made her more real, more personal. He wished he hadn’t seen it.
A sound made him stop dead. He tilted his head to the side. It sounded like something sniffing, like a large animal. It was not a sound he’d come to expect on the cargo ship.
Fuccccck!
Stu looked around, while repositioning the weight in his aching arms. On the section of corridor, there was only one hatch. He made his way over to it.
Shit!
He could not open the large hatch mechanism while holding onto Lucy. He had to put her down and use both hands.
He laid her on the metal deck, while trying to get the door unwedded. Her body slumped to the floor like a rag doll. He could just about see her injured chest rise and fall. Her top was sodden with blood from the puncture wounds. He couldn’t bear to look at her disfigured face.
What were you thinking, Soozie, she’s already too far-gone. I’m carrying around a dead person. She might be breathing, but the tentacle must have mashed up her brain.
Then he remembered she was someone’s daughter.
How would I feel if I heard someone talking about my Hanna like that?
The strange sound was getting closer. It pulled back his attention.
Come on, give me a break!
The mechanism was stiff, as if the room was hardly ever used. Finally, after straining his already fatigued muscles, the hatch clicked and the handle started to turn. Then, just as he swung the door inwards, his peripheral vision caught a movement out of the corner of his eye.
He spun around.
One of the deformed men was at the end of the corridor, staring at him. It was crouched on all fours, ready to spring forward.
Stu stared at the tentacle through one eye. However, it had also grown bony protrusions all over its body, almost like organic armour.
These change so much faster. Now it doesn’t take days or weeks, now they are ready to go within no time at all.
His hand gripped the handle of the gun. He only had five bullets.
Am I good enough to hit a moving target? Would they even stop it?
The body was covered in a type of crablike shell armour.
Stu was aware that Lucy’s motionless body lay on the cold metal deck. He couldn’t get her inside and shoot at the same time.
Then the creature charged, flinging itself forward with phenomenal speed, while grunting like a wild animal. It tore down the corridor.
Stu didn’t have time to think. He jumped forward, leaving the child’s body on the floor, and swung the metal door shut.
326
Naomi
Down on the deck of the cargo ship
Somewhere off the shore in New York State
Naomi struggled along the decking. She somehow managed to get outside. She’d tripped over the hatch lip and stumbled onto the wet deck. The weak sunlight stung her sensitive eyes. See could see shadows of some kind of birds circling above her, but they ignored her presence.
Her head was banging like a bass drum.
She knelt and grabbed both sides of her head. It felt like her skull was going to split asunder.
So much noise! She screamed inside her head to try to drown out the other sounds – thousands of overlapping voices, screaming, begging, and crying. It sounded like she could hear the thoughts of every other living soul on the planet at the same time. She couldn’t concentrate on any single voice – the overall chaos was too much for her to comprehend – it was driving her crazy. It was overwhelming her senses.
She struggled back to her shaking feet, while using the metal hull to gain her balance.
I need to get to the others, was all that she could comprehend of her own thoughts. She had a driving need to reach them, as if the thought had been planted in her mind, and she had no control over her actions.
Her legs felt like jelly as she continued to move towards the superstructure. She half leaned against the metal wall and shuffled along, using it to keep her balance.
Everything around her was blurs and shadows – her eyes had difficulty picking up any details, due to her head ringing, making her eyes ache and distort. They felt raw. As she wiped at them, she felt wetness, but she couldn’t concentrate on such menial things, as she wiped the blood away, her whole purpose was to reach the others – no matter what.
I must reach the others… I must reach the others…
She could just make out the huge main superstructure. She leaned forward and used her body’s momentum to head towards it, while clutching her head in both hands.
327
Bachman, Emma, Ralph, Pete and Tes
Zone 6
The underground bunker
Quirauk Mountain, Pennsylvania
The door crashed inwards, with the frame splintering to the side.
Ralph unloaded the rounds from both clips of his handguns. While Emma peppered the opposite wall with bullet’s, spraying it with a long controlled burst.
“Wait!” Bachman shouted from behind.
There was nothing there to hit, simply the opposite wall, which had plaster falling away in chunks along with flacks of stone. On the floor was what looked like a homemade battering ram, left where it had been dropped.
“Hello!” shouted a voice from the hallway. “We come in peace!”
“Dude, what a fucking stupid thing to say!” another voice stated.
“What? I thought it was the perfect opening line.”
“Who are you?” Emma shouted to cut through the arguing.
Pete groaned on the floor.
Tes was now close to Emma. All the weapons were aimed at the remains of the doorway.
“We’re just two men.” Silence filled the hallway. The voice sounded like it came from a teenager, not a man. “We are trapped down here as well. We thought we heard something in this room.”
“So you broke the door down?” Emma stated.
“We find it better not to knock; you never know what is going to answer.”
“He has a fair point,” Bachman said, even though he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to head towards any strange sound, rather than away from it.
“Show yourselves,” Emma demanded, while still staring down the sights of the Israeli Galil rifle.
A hand appeared, waving from around the corner. It was holding a baseball bat. “Don’t shoot us,” the voice pleaded.
The hand was followed by a body – a tall, skinny early twenties young man stepped around the corner. He was kind of leaning forward, as if awkward about his height. His hair was brown and short and his face was ravished by acne, but even giving everything he had obviously been through, he still had a lopsided smile on his face.
“I’m Carl Ducamp,” he stated. “And this here is Eric Green.” Another early twenties man stepped from around the corner. He had a head of wild hair that seemed to explode in all directions. Eric held an unlit Molotov cocktail in one hand, and a lighter in the other. Both wore grey overalls.
“Were you going to burn the building down?” Emma asked, nodding towards the bottle.
“If we found a squid in here, then yes, we were gonna fry the fucker!” Eric said.
“A squid?” Emma asked.
“One of those tentacle things. You know, what’s left of the people. Don’t ya think they look like squids, all black tentacles lashing a
bout and shit?”
“Who are you, how did you get down here?” Bachman asked.
“We were part of the cleaning crew,” Carl said. As if to prove the point, he turned around so they could read the stencilled word, CLEANER off the back of his overalls. “Worst fucking job I’ve ever had.”
“Amen to that brother,” Eric said.
“How did you survive not getting turned into tentacled creatures?” Ralph asked as he holstered his weapons.
“Same as you, we’re just lucky I guess,” Carl stated.
“Is there just the two of you?” Emma asked.
“No, there’s Bobby and Aleksander as well. They’re waiting at the end of the corridor. You know, as backup.”
“There’s just the four of you?” Bachman asked.
“There used to be six of us, but Kim and Dave didn’t last very long,” Carl stated.
“I tell ya, Dave was ripped apart by two squids. He just popped man, like a fucking balloon. And Kim, well, Kim, Kim was just too slow… and… well; she just didn’t make it,” Eric said quietly. He lowered his eyes to look at his trainers.
“Fuck, what the hell happened to him?” Eric asked when he noticed Pete on the floor with his severed arm lying next to him.
328
Smokie, and most of the crew
Inside the superstructure of the cargo ship
Somewhere off the shore in New York State
There was only Frank and Lindell, along with the two men still wandering the ship, everyone else, as far as Smokie knew, was gathered inside the mess hall. Apart from Sue who was manning the controls. Smokie told Sue to head toward the object on the horizon, and to work out how to slow the cargo ship down so they could pull up along side it, if possible.
“Quieten it down people, Smokie is trying to talk,” Caroline shouted out to be heard over the muttering and arguing.
Smokie had described what was on the horizon – what they were now heading towards.
“An oilrig?” Kathy said. “I’ve never heard of any in these parts before?”
“And do any of us really know where we are any more?” Kate asked.
A few people shook their heads. With all the running and hiding, and sailing, it was difficult to say for a fact where they were. Not that locations mattered any more. All that mattered now was where there were zombies and where there wasn’t.
They couldn’t check their GPS location via smart phone Apps because no one’s phones worked anymore – they were simply lumps of metal and plastic. Something that once governed their lives were now superfluous.
“Maybe it’s not a fixed platform, maybe it’s one of those moving ones, you know?” Sherry stated.
“Maybe, without anyone monitoring it, it broke loose from its pylons, and it’s floating free?” Emma said.
“Until we get there, no one can say for sure what it is, or how it got here. I’m sure all the questions will be answered soon,” Smokie stated.
“But surely a ship is better than an oilrig? Right? I mean, at least we can steer this thing,” Sherry said.
She got a few murmurs in agreement.
“Have you forgotten the creature in the belly of this ship? A creature big enough to fold Troy in half?” Smokie added.
That quietened them down.
“We have weapons now; we can hunt it down; there are enough of us with plenty of firepower,” Andy announced.
Andy returned unhurt from the engine room. He’d stated there wasn’t anything else he could do to make it run more smoothly. And after hearing about the creature down there with him, there was no way he would be heading back down anytime soon.
“We don’t know what it is, or how big it is, or even how many there are. There could be more than one,” Smokie stated. “And let’s not forget the mutated birds and the new strain that changes a person in a heartbeat compared to the old strain.”
More murmurs of agreement echoed through the mess hall.
The group meeting was interrupted by Kathy. “Someone’s approaching,” she stated, as she pointed down onto the deck where a lone figure could be seen heading towards the superstructure.
“Jesus Christ is that Naomi?” someone in the background muttered.
329
Stu
On the cargo ship.
Somewhere off the shore in New York State
As Stu managed to slam the hatch closed, and twisted the locking mechanism with all the strength he could muster, he heard and felt the creature hit the door. He stumbled back, tripping in the process and landing hard on his coccyx bone. Pain shot up his back, making him grit his teeth.
A cold puddle of seawater started to gather around him as he held his hands over his ears to muffle the sound. Because the creature couldn’t get to him, it was now consuming the meat lying on the deck – the girl.
Stu hoped that because Lucy had been taken over by the invading creature – even for a short time – then the other like it would see it as one of its own and leave her alone.
No such luck.
Stu could hear the small girl’s fragile bones snapping and muscles tearing as the creature ripped her body apart. He couldn’t tell if it was eating her, or just shredding her.
He couldn’t move; he was afraid to take his hands away from his ears. He kept his eyes closed, but all that did was enable him to picture what was happening on the other side of the hatch with more gruesome details.
Where were the others? Soozie and Frank and Lindell and the two boat men? They had weapons; they could have killed the creature before it reached the hatch and the girl. All I have is five meagre bullets.
Stu knew he was reaching, making excuses, trying to put the blame on someone else. But the cold hard truth was; he’d left Lucy to die, and he knew it. There was no getting away from the cold facts.
“She was already good as dead. She was hardly breathing. She’d had a thick tentacle go through her eye into her fucking brain!” he shouted, with spittle flying from his mouth.
“It’s not my fault!” he hollered at the hatch.
The creature outside ignored his shouting. He could hear it scuffling around, rubbing up against the metal.
He imagined it was his little girl lying on the cold deck, left to die. Left by someone who didn’t care because they didn’t share blood.
The worst part was not knowing. If Hanna had died with the rest of the family, then he would’ve had closure. No body meant no finality, no moving on. He knew that for the rest of his life, no matter how long or short, he would always be thinking about Hanna and where she could be, or what had happened to her.
He thought he’d moved on, since returning to the boat, after his little breakdown. But, deep down, he knew he could never get over it – how could he. How could a parent ever be okay with outliving their children?
Stu removed his hands to rub the tears from his eyes and snot from his face. Then it dawned on him that he had no idea what kind of room he had run into. He turned to scan the area.
In that instant, he forgot all about what was happening outside the hatch.
“Oh fuck…” he muttered.
330
Frank, Lindell, Soozie, and two men
Inside the superstructure of the cargo ship
Somewhere off the shore in New York State
“That was Stu; I’m sure of it,” Soozie stated.
“If that’s the case, then why are we heading towards the commotion?” the Boss asked. He rubbed his lip where the rifle butt had slit it open.
“Is that what you do, run away from people in need?” she asked.
“If it means I live longer, then yeah, sure honey.”
“Don’t call me honey,” she muttered through clenched teeth. She gripped the rifle harder, as if she wished it was his neck.
“No problem, sugar tits!” He gave a crooked smile due to the slit lip. He showed teeth covered in blood. His eyes moved up and down her body inside the leather motorbike leathers. Then his tongue raked across his
bloodied lips.
“Stop your arguing, I cannot hear what’s going on,” Frank stated as he moved ahead of the group.
Soozie gave the Boss a Fuck-You look before spinning around.
They started to jog down the long corridor. They slowed as they reached a corner.
“Jesus!” Lindell said when they turned the bend.
The creature was one of the Boss’ men who’d been turned.
“That’s fucking Jimmy!” Eddy said with a horrified look on his face.
Frank swung his arm around, trying to get the man to shut up.
Jesus they’re fast. How did it get in front of us? Frank wondered.
The creature had its back to them. It was crouched on its hunches while feeding. It ripped at the flesh before gobbling it down nosily.
Soozie could see the bony protrusions.
Fuck! Soozie thought, look at it. It’s more a predator than the other kind. It even has fucking armour!
Then realization dawned.
It’s eating the girl!
Her free hand rose to her mouth to stop herself from screaming.
Where’s Stu?
There was blood and brown smears all over the deck and hull. With globs of flesh, cracked bones and organs spread everywhere, but she was sure there wasn’t enough to be two people.
Frank knelt down and raised his weapon. He sighted down the long barrel and breathed out before slowly pulling the trigger.
The sound the bullet made rang in all their ears.
However, Frank expected the bullet to blow the creature’s brains out. Instead, it made it fall forward from the ricochet, as the bullet bounced off the thick bonelike armour.
The creature quickly sprung up onto all fours, facing them. Blood poured from its wide-open mouth as it hissed in their direction. However, it wasn’t a mindless killing machine; it knew it didn’t stand a chance against their numerous weapons. So as more bullets glanced off the hull around it, the creature raced off in the opposite direction.
The Sixth Extinction America Omnibus [Books 1-12] Page 66
