“We better get it over with, then.” He closed his eyes and hung his head, accepting their predicament in quiet agony.
Tom tensed as they rounded the last corner before coming into view of the gangway, and the special force’s transport tethered to it, tearing at the bowline in the choppy sea like an angry dog. The operators hadn’t returned yet, but it would be but a matter of minutes, perhaps only seconds, before they would emerge from their fateful mission below. Mama S struggled as they hurried down the ramp; whether it was the paralysis of despair or the virus’ first effects that slowed her, it was hard to tell.
Eager to make their getaway Tom had just begun to usher everyone on board the special operations craft when a thought hit him like lightning: Whoever had sent the demolition team would surely be tracking its members’ movements, and along with that, their transport’s. Great care had been taken to minimize the risk of anyone on board leaving, by their own volition or at all. Leaving 5 operators stranded while sailing off into the sunset aboard their ride would hardly go unnoticed.
“Wait, we can’t take the boat!” Tom pulled back Nadia, who was about to step off the gangway.
“Check for an inflatable instead.”
He had trained with teams just like this before, and with an operational range of 500 nautical miles or more, no self-respecting Special Forces unit would go to sea without at least one means of contingency transport. In fact, many operations crafts were designed to carry and deploy multiple small units via secondary crafts. He jumped on board, quickly assessing the boat’s equipment, while Amadou moved back up the gangway and took position at the open port. If there had to be a firefight, at least he wasn’t going to allow the enemy to take the high ground.
It didn’t take long to find the heavy Zodiac storage bags, and Tom dragged one of them to the stern of the boat, where he quickly unrolled the craft. He opened the rapid inflation valve, and it responded with a hiss as the boat’s compartments began to fill. Nadia watched in concerned bemusement, but Tom was in no mood to answer questions.
“I’ll explain just as soon as we’re on our way.”
Within minutes, the craft expanded to its full size, and Tom pushed it off the stern ramp into the black chop, urging the others to get in.
“We’re about to have company!” Breathless, Amadou jumped across into the inflatable without missing a beat just as Tom pushed it away from the main boat and into the swell.
Carried by the returning Equatorial current, it quickly floated away from the ship, the last remnants of ambient light soon swallowed by the pitch black of a moonless night. They watched anxiously and then ducked as the first of the soldiers appeared at the top of the gangway, careful to screen the exterior before signalling his peers to follow. The economy of motion visible in each of their well-rehearsed steps, they swiftly moved down the ramp in a single file. Virtually drifting across the planks, they completed their furtive exfiltration by climbing aboard and taking their seats without making a sound. Tom held his breath as one of them started looking around the inside of the boat, before pointing at the empty space where the inflatable had been stored alongside the other Zodiacs. The man mouthed something to the operator at the helm, but then seemed to relax as the engines roared back to life, the craft’s bow heaving as the skipper increased the throttle, propelling them into the dark, away from both the Nautica and the survivors.
Nobody dared to speak for a long while, the group instead watching the large ship fade into the distance, its faint lights soon little more than pinpricks in the seamless canvass of ocean and night sky.
The air was noticeably colder now out on the open water. Trying to fight the effects of the elements, which compounded by exhaustion and fear, were already beginning to take their toll, they huddled together as best as they could. Mama Samaki, shivering more than the others, at first resisted. Like a condemned prisoner, she felt an outcast now, the virus coursing through her veins having delivered her into the no man’s land between the living and the dead. To her, the touch of the non-infected now felt awkward, inappropriate, even. They continued to float in silence until, but the last glimpse of the vessel was gone, and nothing but the sound of the cold depths of the ocean merciless splash against the inflatable’s hull remained.
“So, what now?” Nadia barely dared ask, hugging the others tightly with her back to the wind.
“For now we wait, and float until morning. Then we’ll see where we are at. Or not. It all depends.”
Tom felt the pressure of the group’s survival bearing down on his shoulders, but there was little he or anyone else could do. The current ebbed and flowed, and the Zodiac seemed to move in one direction for a bit, only to shift course again a short while later, nothing but a pawn of the sea and her whim.
They had drifted like this for an hour or so when they heard the faint hum of powerful engines somewhere in the dark. Probably miles away, the sound was unmistakable even across the waves and the low howl of the constant wind. Amadou sat up, trying to gauge its direction.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Tom cautioned.
From what they had seen so far, whatever ships were out there were unlikely going to be friendlies.
“Best to lay low for tonight.”
It was at that moment that somewhere a few miles out a brightly lit orb rose into the starless sky, its vapour trail glowing in a wake of white light. The survivors followed its arc as it, despite still gaining altitude, headed in their general direction.
“Oh no, no, no.” Tom’s anger returned with unbridled vengeance.
Reaching its zenith high above, the object seemed to lose energy, stood still for a moment, and then began its descent back towards the ocean.
“What is that?” Nadia wondered out loud, tracing the object’s course with her index finger.
“Not coming for us, that’s what it is.”
As he watched the emergency flare trail off into the distance, Amadou’s relief instantly turned to horror. The explosion lit up the sky in a massive burst of virtual daylight. Fuel tanks ruptured into orange clouds billowing black smoke that mushroomed in the firestorm. Another explosion followed, this one even bigger and brighter. Metal roared and creaked under tension, and structures snapped, the Nautica bellowing, groaning as it broke in half. Hundreds screamed, but almost instantly, their voices fell silent, drowned out by the explosives’ shockwave of heat and wrath. Rogue waves in rapid succession threatened to topple the Zodiac, the survivors hanging on to the boat and each other for dear life. Somewhere in the dark, a deep, menacing gurgle escaped, as the ship, in an agonizing hiss of steam and fury, finally went down, the ocean pulling it under with unfeeling hands. The operators’ mission was complete. The Nautica was no more, any trace of it expunged, its human cargo drowned or drowning. The powers that be had won.
“Bastards!” Tom hissed into the cold breeze.
Amadou and the others, still blinded by the light of the explosions, stared helplessly into the black void. A gust of aerated froth blew over them. The Nautica’s last gasp from beneath the waves. An eerie silence fell over the water, the elements pausing as if to pay their respects, and for a few minutes, the survivors, each left to their own thoughts, allowed their emotions to wash over them in quiet grief. Anna sobbed softly, and Tom drew her in tightly. Shielding her with his jacket, he couldn’t help but wonder how much more she would have to see and suffer and what kind of world his generation would bequeath to hers, or already had.
CHAPTER 17
It started as a single wail. Faint and distant, barely audible. But soon voices joined, their siren song of desperation carrying across the currents of the expanse, slashing its stillness like a knife through a blackout curtain. An unholy choir of the despondent, its volume rising and falling, conducted by the swell, magnified in the minds of the group aboard the Zodiac and whipping up a whirlwind of painfully vivid images. The innocent, gone overboard in a last ditch attempt at survival and now floating helplessly, their cries to no avai
l, burning precious remnants of resilience to the uncaring elements, their life force all but flickering, soon to give way to icy numbness.
Mama Samaki covered her ears and wept, rivulets of tears trickling down her face. Amadou and Nadia looked out over the waves, their faces set in stone, fighting to retain composure as the chorus of lost souls splintered inside them. As morning approached, fewer and fewer voices could be heard, one by one losing their struggle, finally surrendering to the callous elements until eventually there were none and the waves and the wind once again reclaimed supremacy. As gusts turned to breeze and the swell soothingly gave way to the gentle lapping of water against the rubberized hull in the early hours of the new day, sleep finally found them. Huddled together, slumped forward aboard their inflatable refuge, all energy expended and consumed by grief, their heads bobbed and lulled listlessly in sync with the ocean.
The first fingers of light fleetingly glittered across the endless, moving carpet of tiny peaks, whipped up by the morning breeze, when a rhythmic noise, like a distant drum through fog, rose Tom from his trance-like stupor. Rubbing his red, itchy eyes, he looked over the boat’s interior. The others were still asleep, their bodies resting atop one another at awkward angles, tossed into position by the ever-flexing hull. His gaze wandered from the sides, across and beyond the long shadow of the Zodiac’s V-keel. The boat definitely faced west now, drifting back towards the coast, with the Horn of Africa still but a barely noticeable slither on the horizon.
Tom wiped at the sleep in his eyes and tried to adjust focus. There was something odd about the ocean’s surface ahead of them. The bumping noise was back. Something struck the boat, sending vibrations across its tight rubber skin. There. Another one, this time on the side, just across from him. Careful not to wake her, Tom held Anna’s head as he lowered her down onto the boat’s air deck floor. She stretched and yawned, but quickly went back to sleep cuddling up against Nadia’s thigh. Tom rose to his knees, looked over the side, and quickly rubbed his eyes again, unsure what he was seeing.
A blackened form, not unlike a piece of driftwood, listless and bobbing about aimlessly, intermittently connected with the boat in a wet thud. First, a crooked arm, then a charred head, a trunk, a twisted leg, it took on human form the longer he looked. There were more. Some turning sideways like lazy swimmers, their stiffened limbs reaching skyward one minute only to disappear beneath the surface of the murky waters again the next. Murky waters. What had happened to the pristine twilight blue of the sea? A thick dead flotsam of oil, floating rubble, and riffraff swished around where outriggers once had taken wealthy tourists to marvel at abundant life in crystal clear waters.
Tom lifted his gaze and swallowed hard. Up ahead, as far as the eye could see, a thick smothering blanket of death had spread like an oil slick of human debris. An endless wave of human heads, some blackened, some half caved-in, yet others with flesh barely clinging to bone, like floating corks intertwined in a net of random flesh and bone. A carpet of mismatched pieces, of fragments, of random dross. As if the banks of Cocytus itself had broken, washing its wandering souls from the depths of Hades and into the earth’s sea, thousands of corpses now formed an ever-expanding floating carpet of lamentation. Tom felt nauseous. Nearby a face appeared from beneath the human sludge, and its jaws snapped up at him, its dead eyes locking on with moronic evil. Following suit, others joined, their stiff, bloated limbs flailing about as they sensed the futility of their undead desire. Putrid froth foamed from disfigured mouths in hateful gurgles of blood and water, eyes fixed on their target with insatiable hunger.
The excitement of the corpses closest to the boat flowed like a current. Rippling through the slick in ever widening circles, it invigorated every able floating body along its path, the sea soon churning, seething with black mucous as a thousand choked gurgles erupted, repeating, growing, echoing far into the distance and reverberating within the rubber walls of the Zodiac.
The rest of the group woke, with Amadou, startled by the noise’s sudden onset and trying to retreat, almost going over the side. Nadia opened her eyes and uttered a suppressed cry, quickly placing her hands over Anna’s eyes as she struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. Tom looked over to Mama Samaki. She was not moving. He recoiled slightly when he reached out to feel her pulse. Her skin felt clammy, unusually cold even for the prevailing conditions. Gently, he nudged her side and shook her shoulder and sighed with relief as she slowly opened her eyes.
“Where are we?” She whispered, barely conscious.
Her body felt heavier than it had ever before, and her joints screamed with pain from the fever that had already taken a firm hold. She felt numb as if a thick layer of cotton wool had been wrapped around her senses, voices, and sounds around her amalgamating into a cone of muffled, indiscernible noise.
“Purgatory. Or something like it.” Amadou looked over the mass of corpses and detritus and shook his head.
“What’s worse,” Tom studied the horizon, where the slither of land had begun to grow in size ever so slowly, “it looks like we are heading back to where we came from.”
Perplexed and horrified, they all watched the Zodiac, agonizing as the current ceaselessly carried it westward with the kind of remorseless determination otherwise only reserved for the walking dead. Soon their meagre supply of emergency rations and water would be expended, and before long, the floating debris with its sharp edges and lurking obstacles would triumph over the rubber walls of their emergency transport. It was but a question of what would come first.
They dropped back onto the air deck, trying not to think of what lay beneath it and looked up at the clear blue sky, each one sending a silent prayer into the ether.
‘If hell is here, then chances are heaven still awaits.’ Nadia had never been a firm believer in either, but looking at their present situation, there seemed to be logic in the argument.
She closed her eyes and made amends, attempting to drown out the cacophony of death invading from every direction. By mid-morning, the heat had become unbearable, and the sun quickly scorched every inch of uncovered skin. Using a small tarp, they sheltered Anna as best as they could, saving the last few precious litres of water for her. If they failed to get her out alive, then all hope would be lost. Worse, everything they had gone through, the ultimate sacrifice friends had made along the way, would have been in vain. Yes, they had survived in the process, but there had been alternatives. Alternatives providing sustainable shelter and food and relative safety. Nadia had always been self-sufficient, independent to a fault, even. She had chosen solitude over relationships, a life of what others back home would consider adventure, over half an acre, and a picket fence. And she had always succeeded in getting what she wanted. Looking out for number one was what she did best. As much as she tried though, now sitting in a rubber tube in the middle of the ocean, without supplies and with death coming for her with a thousand hungry mouths, she couldn’t summon the anger she knew she should feel at her decision to join a bunch of strangers in their plight to save a little girl.
‘Well done, Nadia,’ she thought to herself and smiled a sarcastic smile.
Meanwhile Amadou was inspecting his weapon for the umpteenth time, taking it apart and wiping down the parts with an oily rag from his pocket. He would not go out without a fight and as always, the only way to ensure this was to keep the tools of the trade in good shape. Pressing the latch button he released the slide from the pistol’s frame, before removing spring and guide-rod. He had done this a million times before and at one point managed to get below the 20 second mark, an enviable time even for professional soldiers. But now there was no hurry. Death wasn’t rushing. Patiently confident, it was merely waiting in the wings.
Amadou relaxed as he felt the steel of the barrel gliding through the rag in his hands. He had always known his luck would run out sooner or later. And as much as he felt remorse over and even hated the inescapable path he had spent most of his life on, he felt comfort with the notion the
moment was perhaps nearer now more than ever. His only regret was that he had found redemption so late. Redemption in the form of a little girl and her father, and the effort to finally accomplish something for the greater good. Maybe something, even, that in the end would save millions of lives. And if that came true, then whatever lay around the corner made everything else worth it. Having reassembled the pistol he racked the slide several times, before inserting the magazine and chambering a round. 15 rounds and some rubber tubing was all that stood between him and becoming part of the undead army all around them, but only one round was needed to escape. Never in his life, not even when others had made that choice right in front of him, had he contemplated taking the easy way out. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of shame. For someone who had spent the better part of two decades taking lives, his own suddenly seemed inappropriately precious. Waxing lyrically about the past had never been part of his repertoire, but now that he had found something as close to a purpose as it got, he couldn’t help but reflect. He sat there, thus, the gun in his lap, smiling at Anna benevolently, radiantly and finally at peace with who he was.
Tom turned his back to the sea. Angry at himself, at the world and what it had become and what it meant not for himself, but for Anna, he tried to focus on working out their water rations. If he gave up now, then the past was meaningless and their future non-existent, the former a disservice to the memory of Julie and her dedication as a mother and the latter an inexcusable abandon of the one thing he had promised to protect. He knew his anger wasn’t rational. But right now, it was a welcome funnel for his emotions.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 2): Dead Hemisphere [Keres Rising] Page 33
