Carter lifted his tumbler and tilted it toward the Colonel, who pulled the bottle’s cork and filled the glass.
“Please tell me about the surprise you have for me,” the Colonel said. “But first, have you dealt with the problems out front?”
Carter poured his glass’ contents into his mouth, savoring the burning the alcohol created when it came into contact with the open sores on the insides of his lower lip. The pain helped to center and focus him. “Yeah, we cleaned up the street a little but that won’t be the last of ‘em. I think they know we’re here now. They’re gonna keep coming at us. This isn’t gonna end.”
Rolling that over in his mind, the Colonel nodded his head, acknowledging that he understood. “And the other?”
Carter then related to Colonel Bear that he had watched a boat pull alongside the derelict cruise ship. When he saw the people climb out of the fishing boat and board the monstrous ship, he thought that perhaps one of them was a woman he might have recognized. He thought that she might be a survivor from Skyview in Soldotna. He even went so far as to suggest that perhaps she had been working with the outsiders that attacked them. If it was her and she had worked with them, then it stood to reason that the people with her were probably the ones for whom they were looking.
Carter enjoyed several glasses of whiskey while he talked. The Colonel split his time between listening intently to Carter’s observations and refilling Carter’s glass.
Chapter 62
“I didn’t know it would be this dark,” Jess remarked. She tilted her flashlight to make certain it was working properly. It barely did anything to mitigate the oppressive darkness into which they were walking.
“Yeah,” Neil said. “It kind of...kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe we should quiet down a bit,” Emma said. “No point in drawing them to—” She cut her comment short when she spotted the duo of ghouls appearing in the tight hallway from one of the several open doors. “See?” she whispered.
The beasts’ duet filled the narrow corridor with an aggressive buzz that tickled the backs of all of their throats. Not facing their prey yet, the two sniffed the air like hungry predators trying to get a fix on their quarry, their beastly profiles casting themselves on the walls as wicked shadows. Slowly they pivoted themselves so that they were facing the four humans, glowing red in the darkness with delicious life.
Neil and Emma marched down the hallway, armed and driven by deadly intent. Neil was carrying his faithful blue aluminum baseball bat he had used countless times to dispatch the undead. Emma had become more accustomed to using her rifle as her primary weapon, but she had recently acquired another option, which had caught her attention at William’s lodge. It was a long fire poker that William typically used at his outdoor fire pit. The tool was a single piece of solid cast iron that had been honed to a sharpened point and boasted an equally sharp hook close to the same end, adding additional heft to its hitting power. To Emma, the poker resembled a weapon from the age of armored knights. She hadn’t been given the opportunity to use it yet, so she was excited for the chance.
She stepped ahead of Neil and swung her new weapon in a wide arc, sinking the hook into the side of one of the creatures’ heads. Afraid that it was irretrievably stuck, Emma pulled desperately and nearly fell backward when the heavy poker came away very easily. Recovering quickly, Emma spun around and hit the second zombie with all the force of a freight train. The former woman’s head came apart like over ripened fruit, leaving from only her chin down still intact.
“That may be the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.” William’s facial expression, a sagging grimace, proved his point.
Emma chuckled. “I don’t do a lot of that sort of thing. I usually watch you do it and then clean things up with my rifle. Geez! That can really take it out of ya.”
“You don’t have to hit them that hard anymore,” Neil said. “I think their skulls are really starting to get brittle. Most of the ones we’re seeing have been dead for quite some time. We should put a better handle on that thing when we get back. Make it easier to hold and swing.”
Emma smiled and said wryly, “Yeah. This probably wasn’t how designers envisioned these things being used I guess. The all-purpose tool. No home should be without one.”
William looked at the clawed hammer in his hand and wondered about his choice. Did he want to let those things get that close to him? He shuddered at the prospect. He would have to do something about that. They would just have to figure something out with the flashlights.
Her voice cracking , Jess asked, “How far down is the infirmary?”
Neil answered, “Two.”
The four of them continued down the hallway, closing every door they passed to ensure against surprises. Coming to a set of stairs that led further into the ship, Neil remarked, “We should have brought Jerry, or maybe Danielle.”
“Why?” William asked.
Emma understood Neil’s reasoning and agreed with him. She said, “The zekes, they make a pretty distinctive sound.”
“Yeah,” William said. “When we were on foot back in Whittier...when you guys happened along…we heard it. It’s their moan. It’s worse than a banshee wail.”
Looking over the stairway’s railing and into the gloom, Emma said quietly, “Younger ears are sensitive to an underlying buzzing.”
William nodded. “Yeah. I heard it too.”
“The more there are and the more agitated,” Neil said, “the louder the moan gets, and so does the buzz. We can hear it too when they’re in groups. It’s different with Jerry, and I suspect Danielle too. Danny saved our butts more than once out on the road when he heard...felt.... whatever it was. We think that as we get older, our ears lose that sensitivity. We could really use Jerry right about now.”
Emma snarked, “Hindsight’s a bitch.”
“Yeah. Let’s go,” Neil said and started down the stairs into the pitch.
The air in the lower deck was stale and musty, reeking of the grave. It was much cooler as well, though the air was still, almost stagnant. Perhaps most striking was the darkness, however. There was virtually no light at all. Their flashlights were foreign, alien in the black void.
Looking at a placard he had taken from the wall, Neil whispered, “According to this map, we go to the end of this hall and down the next set of stairs. The infirmary will be right...” He cut his words short when they heard the scraping of lethargic feet across the cold floor. This corridor was narrower than the one on the deck above and there were more doors.
William was shaking so much he couldn’t hold the light steady in his hands. The light skittered on the walls as if it too were afraid. He tried to control his breathing and calm his fears, but his efforts produced little in the way of effects. The terror in his veins was as wild and untamable as a wild mustang.
If whatever was out there would just show itself, William could get past the nearly crippling fear. Waiting...anticipating...dreading… all were more poisonous than facing the monsters in the dark. He exhaled a stilted breath and came to an abrupt stop.
From multiple doorways on both sides of the hall, first arms and then heads and legs, and full bodies spilled into the corridor, oozing like the rancid wave of foulness that it was. Emma leaned back, dropped the poker at her feet, and quickly had her assault rifle in her hands.
She growled, “Fuck this!” and began firing.
The creatures were coming at them three abreast and filling the flashlights’ beams several ranks deep. Emma’s first rounds brought down two zekes from the front rank and one from the second. Stifling her fear, Emma brought the rifle to her shoulder and aimed the M4, firing well-placed rounds into several gray foreheads. Her bullets plowed into them like a strong wind through tall grass. The beasts fell left and right, their legs tangling themselves with those still stalking forward.
Emma could feel her heart rate rising considerably and her jaw tightened. Her breathing too was starting to
change. Emma thought she was starting to enjoy this. She devoured the rush like candy and yearned for more. She was surprised at herself, but there was no denying her burgeoning passion for the fight. She made no effort whatsoever to mask her pleasure from others.
Through the lazy wisps of smoke and barking thunderclaps her rifle was making, Emma shouted, “I need to reload! Your turn!”
Neil raised his own M4. He was more practical and businesslike in his approach. His face didn’t change much as he squeezed off round after round. Emma watched him in awe. He wasn’t doing this because he enjoyed it. Neil did it because it was needed of him.
It may have been an odd moment, but Emma felt a sudden rush of respect for Neil. She saw what Meghan had seen; what had attracted Meghan to Neil in the first place. He was a good man and a good friend.
Smiling warmly over at him, she said, “Okay, I got this.”
Neil once again stepped back and allowed Emma to go to work. Firing surgically and conservatively, Emma and Neil killed more than three dozen of the monstrosities until the floor was carpeted with still bodies.
Picking their way carefully through the carnage, Neil swept all around their feet with his own flashlight, ensuring they wouldn’t be fatally surprised. Emma had her poker again and was jamming its sharpened point into any suspicious looking skulls. Anything that looked like it still harbored the torturous life of the undead was dealt a firm and vicious jab. She wasn’t sure if she was killing any of them or not but she was certain that none of the demons would be killing her or any of her friends.
William and Jess watched all of this from behind Neil and Emma, stunned at the efficiency and ease with which the two of them essentially killed close to forty people. Under any other normal circumstance, their actions would have been nothing short of psychopathic and evil. As it was, both William and Jess were thankful for their companions’ abilities.
“They know we’re here now,” Neil cautioned. “We have to move quickly. Keep up.”
They moved down the hallway further into the darkness, closing doors as they went. There was no time for looking around. Neil wished he could see more, but was thankful for the light they had. He couldn’t imagine wandering through this maze in absolute darkness.
Standing near an open door, Neil reached forward to grab the door handle and retreated with a gasp when a shriveled, skeleton of a hand touched his own. A wave of terror gripped him from his groin to the back of his neck, locking his jaw and drying his mouth in an instant.
“Jeeeeeeesusssssss!”
He fell backward into the opposite wall and slid down until he was seated on the floor. He looked over at the still open doorway and gasped as well when the little child zombie slithered out of the dark room. Its legs had been gnawed all the way up to its thighs but the feast had ended when the little ghoul reanimated. It appeared as if it had been a boy about the same age as Danny. Looking at the wriggling inhuman body with its pulpy rotten stumps, it was easy to spot other wounds he had suffered in his agonizing death. He was missing a few fingers and his face bore gaping wounds still detectable despite the setting in of mortal decay.
The pitiful creature pulled itself along on its legless frame with its frail, emaciated arms. It was hard to believe that the thing had once been a human child. William couldn’t take his eyes off of Neil while Jess couldn’t pull hers away from the sickening fiend.
When Emma’s poker swung out of the darkness, smashing the zombie’s skull and scrambling its infected brain, everyone but Emma jumped. She leaned forward and finished shutting the door, having to kick the lifeless carcass deeper into the room in the process. “We need to keep moving if we want to make it outta here alive,” she said.
“Maybe we should just call it a day and get back,” Neil said from the floor.
“What?” Emma demanded. “We’re almost there for Christ’s sake. Why the hell would we turn back now?”
“I don’t know, Emma. Who knows how many more of those things are down there waiting for us? Hell, that’s probably where all of them are anyway. People brought onto the ship from Whittier when all of this started were probably taken down there. Right? I mean, there could be hundreds.”
Emma looked at Neil sharply. “So we came here...for nothing?”
Neil was about to answer when he thought he saw something from further down the hall. He picked up his flashlight and pointed its beam in that direction. None of them could tell for sure what they were seeing. There was just so much surging movement, it was hard to get a fix on any one thing. When they did finally see that it was a herd of undead perhaps a hundred deep or more coming at them, Neil leapt to his feet and they turned about in the hallway to retreat.
William stopped in his tracks, confronted by another group coming at them from behind. “Shit!”
Emma stepped around him. “No time.” She pulled the trigger on her assault rifle and cut down four ghouls. She stepped forward and fired again. With each pull of the trigger, Emma forced herself to move forward.
Jess had joined her, using the old Mini-14 carbine Emma had given her. Her gun’s voice was much more metallic than Emma’s M4, which sounded like a deep-throated growl.
The women’s combined firepower quickly made a difference in the pack behind them, dropping more of them than either could count. Jess’ rifle popped and clicked, indicating she had fired through all twenty of its rounds. She pulled the empty magazine from the rifle, dropped it, and then tried to reload but her hands were shaking too badly to accomplish the task.
“Get behind me to reload,” Emma said. “Concentrate and relax. I’m gonna need you back right away. I’ll need to reload pretty quick. Grab your empty clip too.”
Jess did as she was told, stuffing the retrieved clip into her sweatshirt pocket. In a matter of seconds, she was standing next to Emma and firing again. If Jess had any time to do so, she would have felt a sense of pride in herself.
There was neither time nor room in her mind for anything other than trying to count the number of times she had pulled the trigger and finding her next target. Her ears were ringing as if she had the Liberty Bell inside her head. Still, she continued to fire her rifle and step alongside Emma, pressing further and further into the hall.
Neither woman had given a thought to what was happening behind her. The unfortunate reality was that developments in that direction were not going as well. While both Neil and William were armed with assault rifles, there were many, many more zekes coming at the two of them.
Holding his flashlight against the side of his rifle, Neil felt a sick feeling rising in his stomach at the realization that no matter how many they were able to shoot, there were still be more to kill. They didn’t have enough ammunition.
His worries were punctuated when he slammed one of his last full magazines into his rifle. The other thing they were running short on was time. They couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He chanced a look over his shoulder and was disheartened to see that, despite their best efforts, Emma and Jess had not been able to destroy the mob behind them.
The air was growing thick with smoke and the rising din of the chorus of moans. Seeing that William was still pounding away at the press of reanimated ghouls, Neil opened a door to their left and scanned the other side.
It was a big room, perhaps a banquet room or some other similar space. He was excited to see with a sweep of his flashlight that there were doors on the opposite side. They had a way out.
Seeing a fire extinguisher compartment near to him, he shot forward, pulled the red canister from its perch, and set it on the floor. Neil bellowed, “We gotta run! Now! Everyone, c’mon!”
Emma turned away from her still approaching targets and quickly moved to where Neil was pointing. Jess followed and soon so did William. Neil rolled the extinguisher into the hall and shot a hole in it.
The pressurized vapor rushed into the hallway in a thick white mass. The sudden appearance of the cloud befuddled the senses with its forceful presence, creating the
optimum screen for Neil’s departure. The four of them disappeared into thin air...well, thick air.
Chapter 63
The room into which Neil, Emma, William and Jess retreated was cavernous compared to the claustrophobic tightness of the hallway from where they had come. Unfortunately, there was no time to catch their breaths; they had to keep moving.
They crept across the room toward the doors. At the first one, Neil grabbed the door handle and counted silently with his mouth and on three, he opened the door while Emma stood with her rifle pointed straight ahead.
Chairs. Tables. Serving carts. More chairs. Coat racks. And no exit to be found. Their hearts sank with the disappointment. There was only one door left and their hopes were dimming.
To make matters worse, the throng in the hallway had discovered their escape into the banquet hall and were banging fists and feet into the door and wall surrounding it. The thumps were erratic and uncoordinated, doing little more than shaking long dormant dust loose. It was only a matter of time and all of them knew it.
They hurried to the next door but this time Neil looked at each of them and nodded. He pulled open the door, closing his eyes to shut out any potential disappointment. Emma pulled on his sleeve and shook him until he opened his eyes.
Peeking around the edge of the door, Neil looked into a full kitchen with a stocked pantry. More importantly, in his flashlight’s beam Neil could see a door that was aptly labeled Emergency Exit.
Neil plunged into the kitchen and led them to the exit. Emma was pulling the door closed behind her when they heard the crash in the banquet hall behind them. The other door had finally collapsed, after sagging, creaking, and popping with the combined weight more than a hundred of the undead pressed against it.
Through the compromised doorframe, a deluge of knotted arms, legs, bodies, and heads spilled into the room and threatened to spread to every corner like quicksilver. A never ending stream of walking corpses quickly flooded the banquet hall with their staggered, spasmodic gait and sickening siren moan.
Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution Page 35
