As I went, I found things which were clearly from the Abraham Lincoln, stained with seawater and grime. An officer’s cap. A headset and microphone. A plastic jerry can stamped U.S. NAVY. I thought about how long he’d been able to hold his breath underwater, swimming back from the Canberra. The Lincoln’s superstructure wasn’t far below the surface – at low tide, some of it was actually above the waterline. Had he been swimming down there? Some of this stuff was clearly from Moreton Island, or crap that had washed ashore from Brisbane, but it looked like he’d been swimming down to his old ship as well.
Eventually I found a serrated bread knife and managed to cut through my bonds, tossing the fragments of rope and metal bracket aside, wrists and hands wet with my own blood. I shoved the knife into my belt and took another weapon as well, a metre-long rusted pipe. If that fucking loon thought he was going to get the jump on me, he could think again.
Out in the corridor there was more junk, more candles. How could he be so clearly off his head and still think to light candles? How could he swim out to the Canberra and cut two throats, for that matter?
I could still hear water somewhere. I picked a direction and went, stepping carefully and quietly, keeping my ears pricked for the American. There were other rooms and other corridors leading off from this one, marked with faded signs reading MAGAZINE or SIGNALS. I was quite sure this was an old World War II bunker now, long derelict and abandoned.
Of the American, there was no sign.
I didn’t enter any of the rooms. I didn’t poke around. The curiosity and obsession I had with the man was gone. I had the answer to my mystery: he was a sad, lonely survivor of the Abraham Lincoln, far from home during the end of the world, driven mad out here by what had happened. And dangerous, yes – someone I wanted to get the fuck away from.
As I headed further up the corridor – further uphill – little rivulets of water were running down the floor to meet me. The sound of water I’d been able to hear was rain. It was getting darker as I ventured towards what I hoped was the exit. The American had lit no candles along here.
The passage ended in a rusted metal door, the rainwater from outside coming in underneath. I glanced back down the hall, then pushed the door open and stepped out into the rain, into the jungle, into the night.
What with the forest canopy and the rainclouds, it was almost pitch black. I didn’t care, I just wanted to get out – get away, get back to the shore, figure out where I was and how the hell I could get back to the Canberra. I set off blindly, stumbling into the undergrowth. It was about ten steps before I collided with something – a tall pole, driven into the earth, something on the end.
I stepped back, my eyes still adjusting, trying to glimpse what it was. The light was terrible, but it became clear to me fairly soon. It was a head. A severed human head, driven onto a stake.
I looked at it for a moment, shivering, teeth chattering, rainwater running down my face. And as I turned to go I stumbled into another pole, and another, and another.
The crazy fucker had surrounded his hideout with severed heads on stakes.
Zombies? Or other survivors?
I pushed my way on through the undergrowth, away from the bunker. I was scared, I don’t mind admitting it. I wanted to run, but in this light I’d be likely to run face-first in a tree, so instead I was stumbling and groping my way along, gripping my rusted pipe, checking the knife was still at my belt. I was terrified. In the back of my mind I still thought of the dream, of being dragged into a chair in a concrete room. I’d escaped. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Literally.
A bolt of lightning split the sky, suddenly illuminating the world around me: trees, shrubs, water running down everything. Nothing particularly dangerous. A moment later came the thunder, an ominous rumble somewhere over the distant city. The wind was howling harder than before, shaking the treetops, filling my world with sound. I’d never hear the American now, if he snuck up on me. Or anybody else. I pushed on through the forest.
A second bolt of lightning lit up the sky, and this time helped me spy a path. Another bushwalking track. I stumbled out onto it, in the rain and the thunder, wondering how long it would take me to find the beach. Moreton was big, but not that big. Only a few kilometres wide at its widest point. If I could pick a direction and stick to it, I’d have to find the coast…
I hadn’t been on the path for more than a few minutes before I felt something tug at my ankles. Before I knew what was happening there was a sudden tightening around my leg, something knocking me off my feet, and then I was being yanked up – up into the air, flipped upside down, dangling from my ankle, yelping out.
Another fucking trap. That crazy asshole. I’d dropped the pipe when I’d been suddenly caught, but the knife was still wedged into my belt, thank God. I pulled it out, reached up and started cutting at the rope around my leg. It was surprisingly hard to reach up that high – the world’s hardest crunch.
Another flash of lightning, and I saw the zombie approaching down the path.
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said.
I picked up the pace, ignoring the pain all over my body, sawing at the rope. It was tough shit, and I kept glancing at the zombie, and realised suddenly I wasn’t going to make it through before the fucking thing was on me. I kicked at its head with my free foot – bad move, that sent me spinning – reached out and grabbed its forearm as I came rocking back, tried to pull it, get it off its feet, and it was lunging down at my arm with its teeth and everything was topsy-turvy and I was disoriented and bleeding and confused, but I still had the knife in one hand and I managed to swing it around and sink it into the zombie’s neck. It was howling and screeching at me but over the rain and the thunder I couldn’t hear a damn thing, it was like fighting in a silent movie. The knife had gone into its neck and wedged, and hadn’t done a damn bit of damage – I’d managed to get my other hand around its throat, holding it away, and it was still waving at me with its arm – and it only had one arm, I saw that now, the other was missing at the elbow, and maybe that was why, there was a machete sunk into its shoulder, just about down to its heart, somebody had had a go at this thing before.
I grabbed the machete, knowing it was my only chance now, and yanked it out with my free hand. At the same time the zombie came loose and I was spun away again, still dangling from a rope ten metres in the treetops above me, then swinging back, the inevitable parabola, right back into danger. I was a metre off the ground, my eyes level with the zombie’s waist, and I could already see it lurching back towards me. I lashed out as I came in on the swing, aiming for its neck, knowing I’d only get one chance.
I got lucky. I must have hit the spinal cord. Another fork of lightning flashed out above the leaves as it fell, and I could see another approaching, and more movement behind that. The handle of the machete was so slick with rainwater and blood that I nearly dropped it, but seized my grip just in time – that would have been the end of me, if I lost that too. I reached up, cut through the rope, dropped down onto the muddy ground beside the body of the zombie I’d just killed. Staggering to my feet I could see more coming down the bushwalking path, one of them already reaching up for its final lunge. I sank the machete into its head, pulled it free, and then darted off into the forest. The American clearly favoured the paths for setting up traps – maybe there’d be some in the jungle too, but there were definitely more waiting on the path.
So there I was again, minus the knife and the pipe, but with a machete now, gasping for breath, struggling blindly through the forest with a pack of zombies on my heels. Now that I’d mostly made it out I was ready to curse my stupidity. What the fuck had I been thinking, to run off on my own like that? Unarmed? In the middle of the night?
I stumbled on through the darkness, wet and sore and miserable. When the thunder wasn’t going, I could faintly hear the hoots and cries of the zombies, stumbling through the undergrowth behind me. I was exhausted, but to stop was to die.
&
nbsp; Eventually I emerged from the trees out onto the beach. There was only one source of light – the HMAS Canberra, much further north than I thought it should be. The American must have dragged me some ways south – either that or I’d gone south myself, in my blind trek out of there.
The zombies were still moaning in the trees behind me, getting closer. I headed out onto the beach, going north. As I pushed across the sand I could eventually turn and see them coming after me, about a hundred metres behind, maybe a dozen of them.
Any able-bodied human should be able to outpace a zombie. But I wasn’t able-bodied – I was bleeding from the calf and the wrists, I’d taken a knock to the head, I was exhausted and soaked and shivering with cold. That was okay. I could get back up towards the northern end of the island, I was sure. And then, I thought, I could swim to the Canberra. The thought of it filled me with dread – entering the water at night with fresh wounds, an open invitation to bull sharks for miles around. I was exhausted. I was sort of hoping maybe the Canberra would have a search party out. It was certainly lit up, I could see that, spotlights aplenty.
There was some kind of town or resort on the way – maybe the same place I’d glimpsed south of the shipwrecks, the day Rahvi had brought me to the island. As I drew closer I realised that it was nothing of the sort. Just a ferry terminal and a few shops, surrounded by a hasty barricade of embanked sand and wood from the forest. It must have been early on, for people to think they could hole up behind something like that.
It was deserted now. A weathered noticeboard still read FERRY SUSPENDED DUE TO QUARANTINE, but the ferry was right here, a big triple-decker thing, mouth gaping open but no cars inside it. I looked down the beach at the zombies coming after me. I knew I didn’t have the energy to keep going, to make it to the north side of the island, not tonight. But the Canberra was there. I could see it. If I could find a flare or something…
I headed inside the ferry. On the car deck there were stairways and doors leading up to the upper part, which were locked, but I went back outside into the rain and managed to climb up and over a railing, pulling myself up onto the upper deck. The doors there were unlocked, and inside it was a quiet respite from the rain.
Ranks of felt-covered chairs, dark TV screens mounted on wall brackets, a long-cleared out bar or canteen that must have sold nuts and chocolate bars. It was safe, at least. I took a moment to sit, and gather my breath.
And here I am now. I feel so tired. It must be two or three o’clock in the morning. It feels like a long time since I was attacked by a zombie on the Canberra. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the party that landed on the beach. I don’t know where the American is now. I don’t know what the others must be thinking, Blake and Rahvi and everyone – maybe they think I got myself killed.
The rain’s still pouring down. I’d have thought they’d get choppers in the air, out looking for me – for us, if anyone else got lost – but I can’t hear any. Maybe the weather’s too bad.
I can feel Aaron still nudging at my mind, wheedling, stubbornly pressing for me to contact him. I will, now that I’m safe for the moment, but I’m so tired.
Just need to rest my eyes for a bit.
10.00am
No surprises. I nodded off. Could you blame me? I’d taken some Chux from the little canteen on the ferry and wrapped it around my calf and my wrists as best I could. There was a first aid kit on the wall but it had been cleaned out. I was just tired. I needed rest.
It was the chopper that woke me, thundering overhead, startling me out of a dream about Ellie. Dim grey light was flooding through the ferry windows – it was dawn, though still overcast.
I got to my feet, my calf muscle flaring with pain, and limped over to peer out one of the windows. The chopper was a Black Hawk, from the Canberra, cruising south along the beach. I went over and yanked one of the exterior doors open, glancing down at my leg. The Chux was caked with blood and the skin around the wound was red and puffy.
The rain had stopped but the sky was still gloomy and grey, a cool southerly wind cutting across the bay. The Black Hawk had gone south, but it wasn’t a big island – if they were looking for me, they’d soon circle back. The zombies that had been following me were down in the car deck now. I went down the starboard side, clambered out onto the jetty, and was soon trudging across the wet beach sand to the north – a nice human speck on a blank page, for when the chopper came past again.
The zombies must have sniffed me out or heard me leave, because before long they’d emerged from the car deck and were tracking me up the beach, a few hundred metres back. Well, that was all right – it would make it even easier for the chopper to spot me. It was somewhere around the south end of the island now, barely visible, hovering above the treetops. Even if it didn’t plan on doing multiple circuits of the island, it would have to cross my path just to get back to the Canberra.
I was more worried about the American. I kept a close grip on the machete as I trudged north, keeping my eye on the treeline, waiting for him to emerge.
It probably wasn’t more than ten minutes before the Black Hawk came thundering over the forest again, crossing right past me on the way north – then stopping, hesitating, coming back. It made a loop of me, circling past the zombies, then came to a brief rest on the sand about fifty metres ahead of me. A few soldiers in black uniforms piled out, holding M4s, some of them scanning the eastern treeline while others went past me to the south, taking careful aim and shooting at the heads of the pursuing zombie pack.
One of them came straight out to grab me. I’d vaguely assumed, for some reason, that Sergeant Blake would be aboard, but this was one of the clearance divers – their CO, I think, Lieutenant Sullivan.
He didn’t say a word to me. Just grabbed me, guided me, bundled me up into the chopper and strapped me into a chair. A moment later the other soldiers were falling back, piling into the chopper themselves, and we were taking off again. The pilots hadn’t even powered the rotors down.
As the view out the Black Hawk’s open door swung and tilted, I glimpsed a scattered group of a dozen bodies on the beach south of us. The zombies that had been chasing me, silent at last, their congealed brains seeping out into the wet sand.
Lieutenant Sullivan was sitting across from me. They were all clearance divers, I realised now, not soldiers, dressed for land operations. He motioned for me to put on a headset. “You been bit?” was the first thing he said.
“No,” I said. “Stake pit, that was the leg. Then the fucker hit me on the head – that’s the blood here – then tied me up. That’s the wrists.”
“You get him?”
“No,” I said.
Sullivan grunted. “He killed three men. You should have killed him.”
“He’s fucking nuts,” I said.
“You should have killed him,” Sullivan repeated.
I would have been happy to explain how I was just happy to get out of there – what with the crazy looter junk and the ranting and the heads on spikes, and all that – but it was a short helicopter trip. Only a few minutes after we took off from the beach, we were touching down on the flight deck of the Canberra.
Sergeant Blake was waiting to greet me with a small retinue. Some of them were Navy officers, some were clearance divers – mostly I was interested in the medical team, who hooked me up to an IV bag and gave me low-grade morphine. I guess Sullivan had radioed ahead, and I guess I looked like absolute shit. I felt embarrassed, though. I’d been through worse than this before. I was particularly annoyed when they brought the wheelchair out.
“I don’t need that fucking thing,” I said. “I’ll walk.”
They fussed, tried to get me into it, but Blake cut them off. “Let him walk.” It was the first thing he said, and I could tell that below the surface he was seething with anger.
We went to the medical bay first, where they cleaned and disinfected my wounds, sutured up the tear to my calf, and put me on a course of what looked like pretty strong an
tibiotics. Blake stood by the doorway as they worked, arms folded. When they were done we walked up towards Commodore Norton’s office, neither of us saying a word.
Well, the commodore was in a rage. I’d never seen him that angry – never seen anybody that angry. He ranted and bellowed about how reckless I’d been, how foolish I was, how I had no appreciation of the importance of my presence here, how I was incapable of working as part of a team.
The worst part was that he was right. I sat there in hangdog silence, because I knew he was right. I’d been driven by some inexplicable urge to hunt that scavenger down. What did I have to show for it? Nothing. Because there was nothing to gain from it. There never had been.
“All right, sir, maybe that’s enough,” Blake said eventually, when Norton’s rage began to abate. “Let’s hear his report.”
I hadn’t thought I’d be expected to make one, but I guess it stood to reason. I told them what had happened the night I went out on deck, and was attacked by a fresh zombie. I told them about going over to the island with a crew in a RIB, driven by the hasty pursuit of the perpetrator. I told them about getting separated from the others, attacked by the interloper, and waking up in his lair. And I told them he was American, with a demeanour that strongly suggested he’d been part of the Lincoln’s crew.
“Gold stripes? Star above them?” Blake said. “That’s a captain’s uniform.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s the captain,” Norton said sourly, finally sitting down behind his desk and rummaging in his drawers for a bottle of whiskey. He poured a glass and didn’t offer either of us any. “He could have taken that uniform off a zombie.”
End Times (Book 4): Destroyer of Worlds Page 19
