by Jeff Thomson
Her dream of diseased justice popped like a thought balloon when she heard another SNAP, off in the distance, this time to her right. Then she heard another. And another. And another. Whoever it was out there had brought friends.
When she saw the first of them - a naked man, covered in some kind of paint, or something - she was shocked. Not every day you see a naked man wandering around in a public park. Maybe in New York, or someplace like that, but not in Astoria. When she saw the second, then the third, then the fourth - all of them naked, and all of the men - her broken heart began to pound and her spidey sense began to scream.
She’d heard about the “zombies,” of course. Who hadn’t? The rumors were flying like the Wicked Witch’s monkeys, and they ran the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. She’d thought the one about them being naked had been ridiculous. Now she wasn’t so sure.
They hadn’t seen her - at least she didn’t think they had, and she wasn’t going to test the theory by yelling or something equally stupid. But they had seen Justin and Cheyenne, a fact demonstrated when they all began to converge on the pair. She thought about calling out then, thought about shouting a warning, but something - maybe some sense of self preservation, or maybe - GULP - a sense of revenge, held her voice in check.
And then Cheyenne saw them. And when the first of them reached the park bench and grabbed the girl by her long, golden blonde hair, Cheyenne began to scream.
34
John was ten feet from the SUV when he heard the scream. He stopped in mid-stride, unsure of where to go or what to do - but only for a moment. The scream had come from a woman. Or maybe a girl. Or maybe Samantha. He ran back to the still-running SUV (the thought of turning it off hadn’t occurred to him) yanked open the door and threw the truck into drive - then realized he was pointed in exactly the wrong direction.
He spun the steering wheel hand over hand, jamming it all the way to the left, and stomped on the gas pedal. The power steering whined in protest, and he did not care. There was a dog-crap disposal box on top of a stanchion on the opposite side of the road. He also did not care when he took it out with the right rear quarter panel. Jim could bill him.
The SUV jolted over the curb as he shot across the grass and toward the sound of the scream. The truck bottomed out, and John realized, in an offhand way, that the back was still full of ammo. The wooden cases bounced and crashed together, but he drove on.
He switched on the brights and the small service road leading from the groundskeeper’s building appeared out of the darkness. He shot toward it, jolted off the grass and onto the road, and floored the accelerator. The truck hit forty when he saw a clearing to his right. He braked hard, swung the wheel, then braked again when he saw the hellish scene in front of him.
Four naked men were tearing apart - literally tearing apart - two fully-clothed people: one boy and one girl. His heart felt like it had been hit with a baseball bat, and a moan of pure anguish escaped his lips.
No! Oh please Dear God, if you exist, NO!
He didn’t believe in God - hadn’t believed in any kind of benevolent higher power since he found his mother hanging in the garage, all those years ago. But at the moment, he was willing to grab anything - any straw, any lifeline - for it not to be his little girl getting slaughtered before his eyes.
A rage filled him, so deep, so pure, so white hot, it seared his heart like phosphorus, consuming it, cremating it, as one thought cavorted across his mind, like some crazed demon from Hell: Kill... Kill... KILL! He slammed his foot down on the accelerator, vision tunneling toward a pinpoint aimed at the motherfucking zombies.
Just before his eyesight zoned down to nothing but the horror in front of him, his last bit of peripheral vision caught movement off to his left. Even so, he might have ignored it in his lust for violent revenge had two things not happened: some minute portion of his brain registered the girl being ravaged was a blonde, and the movement off to his left screamed:
“DADDY!”
The SUV skidded to a stop on the damp grass, then hit a hole big enough for a gopher the size of a poodle. His body jerked forward, and only the unconscious defensive move of throwing his arms in front of his face stopped him from cracking his skull on the steering wheel. The cases in back crashed and crunched against each other, with a sound of splintering wood and the unmistakable tinkling of brass spilling out and bouncing against who knew what else was back there.
Dizziness swept through him, either from the sudden impact, or from the unbridled relief of hearing his little baby’s voice, but he shook his head to clear it and damn near threw out his spine turning around to look. She was there, running toward him, an expression of pure terror frozen on her face.
“DADDY!” She screamed again, then stopped dead in her tracks and began to point.
Two of the zombies had apparently tired of the massacre at the park bench and decided to investigate the screaming. They lurched forward, in a staggering, shambling run, right at Samantha.
His hand slapped at the passenger seat, where he’d tossed the gun when he jumped back into the SUV. It wasn’t there.
“Fuck!” he shouted, scrambling to find the gun. He looked between the seats. Not there. He looked behind the seat. Not there. He looked in the floorboard. Not fucking there! Panicked, he dove across the passenger seat, slamming his head against the far door, as he craned his neck to see if the damned thing had fallen to that side. Where the fuck was it!
His left hand scrambled for the seat to throw his weight back toward his own side of the vehicle, but it slipped, nearly spilling him into the foot well. Then he saw it. The shiny polished metal barrel was just poking out from beneath the seat. With a cry of anxiety and relief and anger at his own clumsiness, he grabbed at it, but it wouldn’t come. The fucking gun was stuck.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” he screamed, pounding the seat with his right hand as his left grabbed the barrel and yanked. It stuck for a moment, then jerked free, the sudden release spilling him into the foot well again. He didn’t care. He had the damned gun. And now he was going to use it.
He heaved himself back onto the drivers’ seat, transferred the pistol to his right hand, and pulled at the door handle. Nothing happened. The door was locked.
He slapped at the lock release, nearly ripping the fingernail off his middle (FUCK) finger, then yanked at the handle and shoved the door open, spilling himself onto the ground.
John often enjoyed slapstick humor. He was a huge Three Stooges fan - had even attended a midnight Stooge-Fest just last year. But now was abso-fucking-lutely NOT the time. He stumbled to his feet.
“Daddy?” Samantha said, in a surprised voice, eyeing the large weapon in his hand.
The brief idea she had never seen him with a gun before swam through the murk of his overloaded brain, but he shoved it down.
“Get in the truck,” he said, then turned to face the two approaching zombies.
“Daddy?” she said again. It seemed to be all her shocked mind could produce.
“Get in the Goddamned truck, Samantha.” She stated at him in disbelief. He never swore around his kids - never - and it dawned on him, she had to have heard him through the open window, screaming profanity as he was coming unglued, looking for the gun. With all of the other mental malfunctions the night had piled upon her, this latest incongruity had simply hung her up and froze her in place. But, again, now was not the time.
“MOVE YOUR ASS!” He shouted. It did the trick. As she scuttled in through the driver’s door behind him, he cocked the pistol, took aim at the closest zombie, and opened fire.
Turned out, the Magnum worked just fine.
35
The scuttlebutt throughout the ship was in high performance mode as the final preparations for getting underway were nearing completion. While checklists received their last notations, and the last of the stores were secured for sea, the general consensus on the Sass was that Jonesy and Duke were prepping to “deal with” anyone who turned zombie. Opinions d
iffered as to what, exactly, “deal with” meant, but it seemed clear it didn’t bode well for anyone who succumbed to the neurological pathogen.
They all knew what was happening out in the world, had all watched it unfold on TV and in Social Media, and they knew it was bad on toast. People were dying out there - some of them people they knew: family, friends, and even (as in the case of Ensign Ryan, who had died when his plane went down) shipmates.
Word was (fairly well confirmed) that anyone who went neurological was as good as dead, even if they didn’t get put down. The virus caused irreparable damage to the brain. There was no coming back from it. And once you went zombie, you were better off as a corpse, because when you turned, you might just eat one or more of your friends.
Being sailors in what was (up until Ms. Gordon’s arrival that morning) an all male crew, and thus more than a bit sick and twisted, the black, gallows humor had been flowing thick and furious all day. Hardly an hour went by without two or three people pointing at two or three other people and saying: “Look out! It’s a zombie!” And the typical followup would be to suggest the accused should start by munching on the accuser’s asshole, which, in turn, would be expanded into a discussion of the solid waste coming from said orifice, and thence, naturally, to the current status of the corn they’d had for chow at lunch, which would then conclude when somebody or another finally made a suggestion far too disgusting for any of them to bare, at which point, the perpetrator of this breach of decorum and anything resembling good taste, would then be pelted with whatever might be at hand.
One comedic genius suggested they have a George Romero, Night of the Living Dead zombie movie marathon, to which another half-wit suggested to CS1 Gary King that he make up a batch of Tripe, to simulate a zombie feast. Gary himself, a thirty year-old, ebony-skinned excellent cook, with a calm demeanor, remained above it all, in spite of being on the Mess Deck - center of more gossip than any girl’s locker room. He simply ignored the suggestion and carried on making his specialty: spinach lasagna. He knew it was Jonesy’s favorite, and had decided to make it, instead of the pork adobo originally on the approved menu, because he figured his friend would need at least one good thing to happen this day. Jonesy, himself, quickly got labeled with the name Petty Officer Khevorkian, after the assisted suicide Doctor. Duke remained simply Duke, but, then, they always knew he was kind of screwy from the word go, and took great pains to point that out, over and over again - just not in front of either one of them.
One look at their uniforms, complete with body armor, knee and elbow pads, helmets, face shields, knives, batons, and (so it was rumored, though not confirmed) tasers, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out somebody - maybe several somebodies - were going to have a very bad day. Few, however, were either brave or stupid enough to confront them about it.
One of those few, a short and ruddy-faced Electronics Technician with ginger hair named Terry Proud, long known for his near-complete lack of tact, saw Duke grabbing a cup of coffee on the Mess Deck and simply couldn’t resist. “Hey, Duke?”
“Yeah?” Duke asked, the expression on his face amiable, as usual.
“What do we do if you and Jonesy go zombie?”
The assembled crowd of people fucking off on the Mess Deck (instead of doing something more constructive) drew a collective breath and waited for some revelation of things to come. Would Duke confirm or deny what had become known as Zombie Plan Alpha: Death to anyone who turned? Inquiring minds wanted to know.
“Well then, Terry,” Duke replied, no longer amiable. “If I were you, I’d start running.” And so saying, he left the compartment without another word.
OS3 Bill Schaeffer, Jonesy’s roommate, had been sitting off to one side, by himself, as was his habit. It wasn’t that he was anti-social, or anything along those lines. He just didn’t think he needed to fill the air with idle chatter about stupid shit. But he also was no great fan of cruelty, which was, in essence, what he’d just witnessed. From Jonesy and Duke’s perspective, this situation had to suck.
“Proud,” he said, disgustedly, getting up and starting to walk away. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yes, sir, I am,” said Terry Proud, proudly. The assembled crowd laughed.
Fun times at the Dawn of a Zombie Apocalypse, Bill thought, leaving the Mess Deck.
36
After killing the two zombies (one of their heads exploded from the point blank impact of the .357 bullet), John had scrambled into the SUV and drove the flying fuck out of there, before the other two zombies, still engaged in mauling the two kids at the picnic table, could react and head their way. Once out of the clearing and onto the road near the groundskeeper’s building, he slowed to a less insane speed, returned to the access road, and headed out of the park.
He drove on in silence for the same reason he’d tried to ease out, rather than scream out of the park, once the immediate danger passed: Samantha was curled into a ball and had jammed herself into the corner created by the edge of her seat and the door. He could hear her whimpering, and the sound broke his heart.
He stared through the windshield with blurred vision he couldn’t, at first, explain, until he felt the tears rolling down his own face. His little baby nearly died. More than any other thought he’d had any of the days since making the decision to evacuate, this fact filled him with anxious resolve. They needed to leave, right now. They needed to get as far away from there, and as far away from anything remotely resembling what just happened as fast as they possibly could.
But first, he had one more important thing to do.
He scanned their surroundings, surprised to see they were back at the crossroads. The night around them seemed still and quiet. More to the point, their location left them with at least thirty yards of empty space in every direction, so nothing...unpleasant...could come upon them without warning. Granted, it placed them in the middle of the intersection, but there was no one in sight, nor did he think there likely would be, anytime soon.
He braked to a stop, put the truck in park, and undid his seatbelt, then turned in his seat and looked at his daughter.
“How ya’ doing, sweety?” He said, softly.
She twitched, but otherwise didn’t budge.
“Sam, honey... Are you okay?” He knew it was a monumentally stupid question the moment it passed his lips. Of course she wasn’t! She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head. “Yeah, I know. Dumb question, Dad,” he said, laughing at himself. “But that’s my job, isn’t it? To ask the stupid questions, act like a clown and keep you entertained.” She shook her head again, this time more visibly. “That’s me - Dad, the Circus Clown. Buffoon for hire. Still haven’t got the knack of making balloon animals, though. Shame really,” he shook his head, as if sad at his incomplete knowledge. “I’d really like to learn how to make that giraffe walk.”
“Dog,” she said, in a small voice.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a dog, dummy,” she said, picking her head up and wiping her eyes. “You walk a dog, not a giraffe, you goof.”
“You sure it’s a dog?” He asked. “Not a two-toed tree sloth?”
She chuckled. “You’re an idiot,” she sniffed.
“Yeah, but you love me anyway. So what’s that make you?”
She stared at him for a moment, then slid across the seat and into his waiting arms. “Your daughter,” she said.
That’s right, he thought, trying with his hug to express the inexpressible depth of just how much she meant to him. Absolutely goddamned right.
“Does this mean I’m not in trouble?” She asked, snuggling.
“Oh, no. You’re totally doomed,” he replied. “The payment will be high,” he added, kissing the top of her head. “And it’s going to take a very long time to pay off.”
37
“Be careful with that!” Christopher Floyd shouted, watching as the net-covered pallet of scientific equipment was lowered into the hold.
Lane Evan Keel
y, age forty-nine, balding, wearing glasses, and feeling every moment of this long night, sat in the crane doghouse and briefly contemplated dropping the load the remaining twenty feet onto the steel deck below. He wouldn’t really do it - probably - but that didn’t stop him from wanting to. This “mad scientist” John picked up was a jerk.
Lane had been a real Bosun Mate during his Coast Guard career, not one of those half-assed ones created when the Guard, in its infinite lack of wisdom, combined the rate with Quartermaster. Taking one group of people who were masters of all things Deck related and mashing them together with another group of people who were masters of all things OPS related, then tossing them higgelty pigglelty into one position or another, regardless of experience and training, had been an exercise in madness - at least in his opinion. That it had worked - sort of - was more a testament to the men and women in the rank and file than a verification of the bureaucratic wisdom of the clueless officers who planned it. And so, his real Bosun Mate status and experience was offended by this new guy’s meddling in something he had done countless times throughout his career. He knew what he was doing. He doubted the professor could say the same.
Still, he just smiled and nodded, and kept doing what he knew.
“Three feet,” Mick Fincham’s voice crackled over the radio, and Lane slowed the descent. “One foot,” the voice said from the depths of the hold. “Down.” Lane paid out an extra three feet of cable, then released the controls and sat back.
Mick was an odd duck, or so Lane thought. He’d been a Machinists Mate on one of the many ships John had served on, and had only arrived two weeks ago, so Lane didn’t really know him. What he did know, he wasn’t sure he liked. The guy was a dog, for one thing, sniffing after every woman he saw - including Lane’s wife, Janine. She’d flicked him aside in her friendly way, and he went without argument, but it still stuck in Lane’s gut. He’d have to watch that guy.
