Ship of the Damned

by James F. David

  Seeing Compton go down, Prophet charged Jett from behind. With a one hundred and eighty-degree turn, Roberto swung with his machete, catching Prophet in the midsection and stopping his mental broadcasts once and for all. Without Prophet’s manipulation, those advancing on Jett stopped, faces blank. With another shudder from the Norfolk they panicked.

  “This way!” Dr. Kellum shouted again from the corridor where Roberto had found the nexus.

  Only Dr. Kellum’s face was visible. The corridor was nearly filled with wreckage, except for a hole at the bottom through which Kellum was shouting.

  Roberto herded the last survivors toward Kellum. Elizabeth and Wes were trapped behind the wreckage of a biplane on the other side of what was left of the hangar.

  “What about the other door?” Jett shouted to them across the chasm.

  “We never found it,” Wes shouted back.

  “Climb through to me,” Jett shouted.

  “There’s no way,” Wes said.

  “Take Ralph and go,” Elizabeth shouted from Dawson’s body.

  The ship continued to twist slowly; by now, the original decks and bulkheads nearly unrecognizable.

  “Take care of Ralph,” Wes called.

  “Like I would a brother,” Jett shouted back.

  Jett turned away and then stopped, stepping back to the blockage and shouting to Wes and Elizabeth.

  “There’s a nuclear warhead in here somewhere,” he told them. “If you make it out, get away as fast as you can.”

  “You can let Gertie go now, Ralph,” Jett said.

  Gertie turned on Jett as soon as Ralph released her, but she was uncertain, not angry.

  “Come with us?” Jett said.

  After a glance at Prophet’s body, she nodded, then turned and climbed over the wreckage toward the hole where Dr. Kellum continued to call. Compton was only half conscious. Even though she had tried to kill Wes, she was still part of his team. Helping her to her feet, he wrapped his arm around her waist. The left side of her face was swelling, her left eye merely a purple slit. She spoke through a split lip.

  “I want a rematch.”

  “Anytime,” Jett said.

  Gertie climbed like a mountain goat, but Ralph was clumsy and slow. They were walking bent over by the time they reached the opening, with no more than five feet of headroom left in the hangar. Jett supported Compton up the climb, shoving Ralph into the opening behind Gertie.

  “I can do it myself, Wes,” Ralph protested.

  Compton went next, crawling behind Ralph and pushing gently on his bottom to keep him moving. Jett climbed in last. It was a tunnel through twisted steel. Halfway through he found Peters. He was punctured in several places, pinned in the wreckage like a butterfly in a collection. He still wore his weapon, but there was no time to retrieve it.

  Jett continued through, pulled the last few feet by Monica and Roberto. What had been a corridor was now a steel tunnel ending in the green glow of the door that Ralph had found. Holes that had been compartment doors were all along the tunnel, some below, some above. There were the body parts of frozen men here too, but none moved now. Gertie was ahead of them, maneuvering through the slowly twisting tunnel toward the green light. Monica helped Dr. Kellum, and Roberto helped Compton. Jett took Ralph’s arm.

  “I can do it myself, you know,” Ralph protested.

  “I know, Ralph, but is it okay if I hang on to you to keep my balance?” Jett said.

  “Okee-dokee, Nate,” Ralph said.

  They reached the green glow without losing Ralph. Kellum and Monica stepped in as they arrived.

  “A maze of these doors?” Jett said to Roberto.

  “Hundreds, maybe thousands,” Roberto said, his face creased with worry. Then, with a smile, he said, “They’ve got to lead somewhere.”

  He took Compton’s arm and disappeared into the mist.

  “Want I should go get Wes and Elizabeth?” Ralph said.

  “No, Ralph.”

  “I wouldn’t get lost or anything,” Ralph said.

  “I know,” Wes told him. “It’s time to go.”

  “And when ya gotta go, ya gotta,” Ralph said.

  “And I really gots to go,” Jett and Ralph said together.

  Then, arm in arm, they stepped into the green mist.

  WRECKAGE

  The ship was being crushed and twisted by a force beyond Wes’s comprehension. If he and Elizabeth were to survive, they would have to find Ralph’s other exit without him. Wes wanted to leave the wounded Crazies behind, but Elizabeth was already helping the one she had clubbed, getting him to his feet. In Dawson’s body she was stronger than Wes, and held the man up with little strain. Wes struggled to get the man with the broken leg over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. When they were both ready, supporting or carrying semiconscious men, they started down what was left of the corridor. There was a green glow at the end of the corridor, but no way to know where it led. The Norfolk continued to twist and elongate; what precious little headroom remained was fast disappearing.

  “Don’t leave me,” Rust shouted from behind.

  Wes turned slowly, causing the wounded man over his shoulder to whimper. Rust was conscious again, his face pressed between the steel beams that held him.

  “We can’t get you free,” Wes said.

  “You’re not leaving me here!” Rust shouted.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Wes said.

  Elizabeth started forward again, supporting the injured sailor. Suddenly the air in front of Rust glowed and a fireball streaked toward Elizabeth. Wes’s warning came too late. Elizabeth and the sailor burst into flame.

  “Scramble Anita!” Elizabeth screamed as she fell, rolling to put out the flames. “Shamita, scramble Anita!”

  Wes dropped his man and ran to Elizabeth, beating the flames with his hands. Dawson’s clothes were blackened from the waist to the head and nearly indistinguishable from the burned skin around his neck. Blisters covered most of the left side of his face. When the flames were out, Wes checked the sailor Elizabeth had been helping, feeling his smoldering body for a pulse. He was dead.

  “Wes, don’t let Dawson die to save me,” Elizabeth said through blistered lips.

  With a flash, Rust launched another fireball, striking the man Wes had been helping. The sailor writhed on the ground and Rust hit him again. Soon he lay still.

  “Help me or you’ll burn,” Rust said.

  “Shamita said my body is almost gone,” Elizabeth said. “You can’t save me, but you can save Dawson. He has a wife, and brothers and a sister. He’s a brave man, Wes, a good man. I have no more right to live than he does.”

  Then Dawson’s face contorted with pain; pain that Elizabeth was feeling too.

  “This is your last chance,” Rust said.

  “I’m coming.”

  Wes hurried back to Rust and looked at the steel that held him. It was impossible for one man to move.

  “Maybe if I use a lever,” Wes said.

  Rust watched him warily.

  “You need to get me free before you try to lift again,” Rust said.

  Leaning forward, Wes looked behind Rust, trying to see where the steel piercing his body attached.

  “I can’t see,” Wes said. “I need to reach behind you.”

  “Carefully,” Rust said.

  Wes reached into the ruined latticework of the catapult, moving slowly. Then, extending two fingers, he rammed them into Rust’s left eye. Rust screamed, striking blindly at Wes and then clamping his hands over his ruined eye.

  Bent nearly in half, Wes hurried down what was left of the passage, careful not to fall into one of the open hatches that were twisted into the deck. Taking Elizabeth by the arms, he dragged her toward the green light.

  Rust was incoherent now, his angry screams blending into the cacophony of metal being contorted. Then the steel that held Rust lifted and he became part of the mass forming the tunnel. Rust hung from above now, still alive. His head moved slowly b
ack and forth, searching for Wes. When he locked on Wes, a fireball materialized, rocketing toward him and Elizabeth. Wes ducked, and the fireball disappeared into the green glow. Now Wes crawled, dragging the body that held his Elizabeth. Rust fired again, his fireball hitting the side of the shrinking corridor and coming apart in a shower of candle-sized flames.

  More fireballs were launched, impacting around Wes, spraying him with embers and singeing his skin. Then the structure holding Rust twisted sharply, and with a last scream the Special was pressed into the steel mosaic making up the top of the collapsing passage, his crushed body indistinguishable from the other debris.

  Wes reached the green mist and paused, not knowing what waited on the other side. It didn’t matter. It was the end of this world. The remaining passage was just big enough to crawl through. Gathering his strength, Wes dragged Dawson’s unconscious body into the mist.

  ERUPTION

  Absorbed by the remarkable contortions of the field, Dr. Lee and his technicians were slow to notice the alert signal indicating a breakout. When they did, they realized that the hole in the field was in their own backyard.

  “What’s going on?” Woolman demanded, hovering at Dr. Lee’s shoulder.

  Dr. Lee ignored Woolman. They had monitored the changing shape of the field and its slow collapse. Slowly it had assumed a cigar shape with each end of the cigar representing a magnetic pole. One pole terminated near Rainbow. The other pole couldn’t be detected locally, nor by the agency’s Keyhole spy satellite.

  “Patch in the cameras,” Dr. Lee ordered.

  A dozen security cameras monitored the compound day and night. Now it was nearly dawn and the sky was glowing in the east, but the desert was still steeped in darkness, and the cameras could distinguish little. Every thirty seconds the image switched to a view from a new camera. Finally camera eight was called up, and in one corner of the monitor Dr. Lee saw a small fire.

  “Zoom in,” he ordered.

  The camera moved clumsily, but soon the fire was in the middle of the screen. A small patch of sage was burning. Opposite the fire was a soft green glow, like the light from a television in a dark room. Then a figure appeared, a silhouette in the green light. He was dragging a body.

  “We have a breakout,” Woolman said.

  Woolman turned to an agent who acted as his bodyguard.

  “Take a team and pick them up. No exceptions, no matter who it is!”

  The agent nodded once, understanding that Woolman’s orders meant that anyone escaping from Pot of Gold was to be killed, even if it was one of their agents. Woolman had carefully prepared his people for the possibility of having to kill their own with a cover story about Jett and the others having been turned into Specials.

  “We’ll have them in a few minutes,” Woolman said. “Now close that opening so no one else gets out.”

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Dr. Lee said. “But Pot of Gold is still collapsing.”

  “There are no other breakouts?” Woolman asked anxiously.

  “No other breakouts.”

  Dr. Lee turned his attention to the tube-shaped field displayed before him, wondering what form the final collapse would take. Then the computer-generated model representing the field reshaped again, the center of the tube flattening first and then collapsing toward both ends. The final sealing of Pot of Gold was coming from the inside out, and half of what was left of the Norfolk was coming toward them.

  A technician shouted for Dr. Lee’s attention. The fact that the young woman was seated against the far wall indicated that her function was of secondary importance. In fact, so peripheral was her station that Dr. Lee couldn’t remember what it was for.

  “We have incoming aircraft,” the young woman said.

  Then Dr. Lee remembered that Rainbow monitored air traffic over the facility. Rainbow hid itself by pretending to be an abandoned military facility, but the airspace over the military reserve was still restricted.

  “What?” Dr. Lee said, having difficulty shifting his attention from the collapse of Pot of Gold. “Are they yours?” he asked Woolman.

  “No,” Woolman said. “Number and type of aircraft?”

  “Two. Judging by signature and speed I’d say they are helicopters,” said the technician. Then, after another look at her radar screen, she said, “They just dropped below our radar.”

  Woolman pulled his cell phone from his pocket and punched the number pad.

  “I want air cover over Rainbow, and I want it now,” he ordered.

  PILE UP

  Wes found himself in a desert just like the one that had surrounded the Norfolk, a green oval still glowing behind him. There were lights from a building a short distance away, but he had to rest before he could hope to lift Dawson’s body again. It was dawn, and the sun was just peeking above the horizon, driving the shadows slowly back to their daytime hideaways. Elizabeth moaned through Dawson’s body, reminding Wes of her last words. She wanted this man saved, and Wes would honor her request if at all possible.

  Without the field to nurture him, Wes found his weakness lingering. He had come to depend on the quick recovery from exhaustion he had experienced on the Nimitz and the Norfolk. But Dawson needed immediate medical attention, and there wasn’t time for Wes to recover his full strength.

  Studying Dawson’s wounds in the dim light, Wes realized that there was no way to carry him without aggravating his injuries. Wes squatted, sliding his hands under his body. Then he heard an engine.

  A van was coming from the buildings in the distance. It raced across the desert at a reckless pace. Wes’s heart sank when he realized that the van was identical to the one that had attacked them in New Mexico. There was nowhere to run, and he wouldn’t leave Dawson and Elizabeth, so he stood between the injured man and the approaching van.

  Then there was a screech behind him, and Wes turned to see a mass emerging from the green mist. What was left of the cruiser Norfolk was coming home.

  Wes dragged Dawson’s body away from the aperture. The metal was pouring from the opening now, piling up and tumbling toward him. He heaved Dawson to his shoulder, feeling a sharp stabbing pain in his back. Dawson gasped as his baked flesh was torn. Wes staggered away from the emerging mass, angling away from the metal and the van. Dawson moaned with every step.

  The steel of the Norfolk piled up behind them, only to be pushed away by more emerging from inside. The mass was so great that the ground shook as tons of compressed steel poured into the desert with the sound of a nonstop auto wreck.

  The van had stopped; men were hanging out the doors, looking at the spectacle in the desert. Wes continued walking away, his legs as well as his back hurting now as he hurried deeper into the desert. Looking back over his shoulder at the growing mound, Wes remembered Jett’s warning. There was a nuclear warhead somewhere in that mass, and it could be live. Wes jogged, quickly using up his energy reserves. Finally, exhausted, he collapsed to his knees, first laying Dawson down as gently as he could. Dawson was unconscious, the pain too much for him to bear. Wes was glad, because it meant that Elizabeth and Anita were unconscious, too.

  The van was coming again. It would be over soon; the men in the van would make sure that they never told their tale. Wes lifted Dawson’s head and cradled it in his lap, stroking the man’s hair. Still unconscious, Elizabeth wouldn’t know that he was holding her when the end came, but he held her just the same.

  The steel was being expelled toward the buildings in the distance. The sound was painfully loud, and mixed with the clanging and screeching was a sound like fingernails on a blackboard. It was this cacophony that hid the sound of the approaching helicopters.

  The sun was nearly over the horizon now, and the helicopters came out of the sun, skimming over the desert, flying recklessly low. There were two of them, both black like the one that had rescued them in New Mexico. One helicopter veered toward the van, the other coming toward Wes and Dawson.

  A door opened in the helicopter approaching
the van and the barrel of a machine gun protruded. The gun fired, the slugs stitching across the desert toward the van, then across it; the side windows shattered. The van swerved, tilting up on two wheels, and came to a stop, slamming back to the earth. The helicopter roared past the van, turned in a tight circle, and headed back, strafing the van again. Wes saw no movement in the van, but the gunner continued to fire. In the distance Wes saw two more vans coming across the desert.

  The thump of the helicopter rotors and the explosive sputter of the machine gun could hardly be distinguished from the racket created by the expulsion of the Norfolk. Wes watched the second helicopter approach and land as if it were a silent movie. He covered Dawson’s head with his body as the helicopter landed and its backwash scoured them with a miniature sandstorm. Wes opened his eyes to see two men running toward them. Both were dressed in black flight suits; both wore black helmets with dark visors.

  “I’m Doctor Wes Martin,” Wes tried to explain as they reached him, but they ignored him.

  One man lifted Dawson over his shoulder, the second helped Wes. They hurried to the helicopter and were helped inside. Wes sat with Dawson’s head in his lap, stroking Dawson’s hair but seeing Elizabeth. Then the helicopter lifted off and the door was closed. The last thing Wes saw was the twisted remains of the cruiser Norfolk still pouring into the desert.

  Remembering the nuclear warhead, Wes pulled one of the helicopter’s crew down to him and put his lips to the side of the man’s head, shouting so that he could be heard inside the helmet.

  “There may be a live nuclear warhead in that wreckage. It could go off!”

  Leaving Wes and Dawson, the crewman hurried forward to the cockpit. Abruptly, the angle of the helicopter changed, the ship climbing as the pitch of its engines shifted. The pilot was racing for cover.