Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution

by Schubert, Sean

  Emma had closed the emergency exit door long before any of that had happened. When she did, she was excited to see windows were lighting the narrow hallway. There were stairs at the end of the corridor and William was even then disappearing up the next flight. Emma was quick to follow the others up and away.

  The hallway at the top of the stairs was as diminutive as the one below but led to a substantial looking door, which quite obviously led to the outside.

  Pulling the massive door’s handle, Neil swallowed hard and pushed it open. They were indeed standing outside again. Neil couldn’t remember a time in his life in which he was so elated with the briny smell of the sea. It was snowing again and the air felt quite a bit cooler since they had entered the floating charnel house. The sun, once again wrapped in its gray quilt of a sky, was preparing to bid farewell for the night.

  Neil didn’t know how comfortable William was with navigating the rough waters of the Prince William Sound at night, but he was fairly certain they would all be better off if they didn’t have to do it. They needed to keep moving.

  The four of them were standing on a steel deck, all business and no frills. Below them was the main deck. They would be required to descend a slippery-looking ladder and, unfortunately, Neil couldn’t get a clear view of the space directly below them. He could, however, see that there were a half dozen or more zekes several strides to their left, but it appeared that the creatures were unaware of the quartet’s presence.

  Neil knelt behind the solid railing and signaled for everyone else to do the same. “Okay,” he said. “There are a handful of them over that way but there may be more.” He caught Emma’s irritated look and apologized, “I’m sorry. That’s all I can see.” He nodded toward her, “You and I will go down first. William and Jess come down after. William, which direction should we go to get back to Serenity the fastest?”

  William stood, carefully glanced in both directions, and lowered himself. “We could go either way. We’re about mid deck right now and Serenity is tied up on the other side.”

  Rolling his eyes in frustration, Neil said, “Well, I guess we’ll just follow the path of least resistance. We ready?”

  “Reload first,” Emma reminded them.

  They both removed the emptied ammunition magazines from their pockets and started to carefully feed bullets back into them. For a moment, Jess watched the two of them, amazed at their efficiency. She was still catching her breath and trying to settle her mind. She wondered how either of them could even be thinking about bullets.

  She understood that was why the two of them were still alive when so many others had fallen. They were just ordinary people without specialized training of any sort, but they took the time to do the little things to be better prepared to face the big things.

  Jess realized if she had any hopes of survival she needed to be more like them. Still trying to wrestle control of her breath, Jess pulled out her own spent ammunition clips and began to load bullets from the box in her backpack into them.

  If she entertained any thoughts of searching for her daughter, she would have to start thinking and acting the way Emma did. Emma was strong and decisive and didn’t seem to fear anything or anyone. Jess doubted she could ever be that...impervious, but she could certainly add some much needed toughness.

  Neil and Emma climbed down the ladder carefully. Once down, Neil and Emma plastered themselves against the wall behind them, trying with all their might to disappear from view. When they paused long enough to look over their shoulders, they were frustrated to see that the wall behind them was actually a very large window. Even more frustrating than that was the collection of despondent, decaying faces gawking out at them from the other side.

  “Shit! So much for stealth.” Neil looked up at William and Jess and motioned for them to hurry down the ladder. “They know we’re here. We need to bust our asses if we hope to get off this damned boat.”

  In the handful of seconds it took for Jess and William to climb down, scores of hands and foreheads pounded against the windows. The moaning too began to vibrate the glass and everyone’s chests.

  “This way,” William said decisively. “Follow me.” He led them to the right. He wasn’t necessarily leading them away from the group Neil had spied originally although their presence helped to seal his decision. The aft of the boat was to the right and he thought that there would likely be fewer people on that side. On that first day all those weeks ago, when the horrible plague was still consuming everything and everyone in Whittier, the crew of the cruise ship would likely have directed all of the oncoming people to well controlled areas, most of which were toward the front of the ship.

  He didn’t know if his figuring was correct or not, but it was something to go on and his adrenaline was telling him that he needed to go. There was no need for concealment. Their presence was known by everything within earshot, so William started to run.

  The deck was littered with personal affects and other items, creating a makeshift obstacle course. William dodged in and out of lounge chairs, making excellent time, and the others were keeping up with him.

  William didn’t see the gang of creatures who burst through a partially broken door and slammed into him like a freight train. Jess screamed while Emma pulled her trigger, catching one of them just above the ear. Neil was stepping forward to try and pry William loose when the unthinkable happened. William was holding the AK47 in his right hand, which was swinging out and away wildly. His hand reflexively gripped a little tighter to the firearm and his finger, pressed against the trigger, pulled slightly.

  There was a single pop but it silenced all other sound in the world. When the bullet hit Neil in the upper chest just below his clavicle, his breath shot out of him with the force of a hurricane. There was pain and some burning, but the combination of his body’s endorphin output and adrenaline helped to quiet most of the immediate sensation from the terrible wound.

  He didn’t lose his balance, though he was set back a couple of steps. He was, however, frozen like a statue, seemingly cast in stone permanently in that position.

  William couldn’t know what he had done, but he did think enough to know that there was only one thing he could do. He grabbed hold of the gaggle of ghouls and took them with him over the railing of the ship.

  Jess screamed in disbelief. What had just happened? Where was William? His gun was still on the ground deck and all the zombies were gone. She wouldn’t accept that the splash she heard had included him. And, Christ, what about Neil? The bullet went right through him. Jess saw it explode out the back of his chest.

  More than pain, Neil felt confusion. He saw William topple off the edge of the boat and thought he may have heard the resounding crack of a firearm just before the man disappeared from view, but most of that was immediately clouded in a thick haze.

  In the next moment, he felt himself being ushered along the deck by a pair of hands, which latched onto his coat and didn’t let go. There was more shooting and maybe some crying, but all he could recall from those terrifying minutes was movement; harried, frantic, desperate movement.

  Somewhere in the midst of all the running, Neil slipped from consciousness.

  Chapter 64

  William’s lodge and the lot on which it sat was hemmed in on all sides by a dense wall of trees, a few still stubbornly holding onto their leaves. Each individual tree was narrow and insignificant, but taken as a whole, the forest was quite imposing. The rise of winter and its lean days had only the most minor effect on it by thinning the attending foliage.

  When the moose wandered within view, everyone stopped to wonder at it, especially the three children. Danny, Jules, and Nikki had never seen a moose and to have such an intimate view of one as it went about its daily business was astounding.

  The great gangly beast moved with a confident agility, which surprised the children. At one point, the moose reared up on its hind legs to get a better bite of some arboreal treat and held its position like that for wha
t felt like forever. The children couldn’t contain their wonder and expressed it with a series of oooohs and aaaahs.

  Mia and Betsy were continually called back to the window to see another of these natural wonders that each had seen countless times before. Interestingly, as the children discovered and shared, the two women seemed to be experiencing for the first time again as well.

  In time, Danny grew tired of watching and wandered off to find something to eat. The time spent inside was beginning to wear on his nerves and patience. He had become accustomed to a more frenetic lifestyle and was having a hard time trying to stay settled in the lodge, especially now that Neil was gone.

  Danny was smart enough to know that staying at the lodge was a luxury he should enjoy. There was no guarantee that their time in the lodge would last for very long and perhaps that was why he wasn’t getting attached to it.

  He wandered upstairs to find Jerry and eventually found the young man sitting on the balcony in the cold. Danny sat quietly and didn’t interrupt Jerry’s tranquil moment. He couldn’t decide if the expression on Jerry’s face was one of contemplation or self-persecution. Either way, Jerry’s look was not warm or friendly. He barely acknowledged the boy’s presence. So Danny just sat and watched the peaceful forest.

  The fire brazier warmed the air immediately around the two and helped to make the time more bearable. Danny kind of hoped he would see Neil coming up the path from the cove soon. He also had an interest in firing the rifle Neil had given him again.

  Danny was in full daydream mode, imagining a scenario involving an assault on the house, which wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, when Danielle’s sudden appearance startled him back with a jolt. Danny could tell that something was wrong.

  “It’s Nikki. She’s gone.”

  Jerry shook his head from side to side but said nothing, flabbergasted. His eyes were full of questions though, and Danielle didn’t have any answers.

  “C’mon,” she urged. “We gotta find her. We need your help.”

  Jerry entered the lodge and immediately heard voices shouting in worried tones over and over, “Nikkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiii!”

  Jerry ran down the stairs and into the main room. He saw Mia and Betsy moving purposefully from room to room. They looked behind furniture and in closets. They looked everywhere but it was Jules who finally pointed out, “I think her coat is gone.”

  As one, the adults all asked, “What?”

  “Her coat’s not hanging by the door anymore. Maybe she went outside to look for that moose.”

  Danny added, “She did like that moose an awful lot.”

  Jerry closed his eyes and shook his head. “Okay, we gotta go now. We find her and get back in immediately. We haven’t seen any zekes recently but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t out there. Jules, I want you to stay here with Mia in case she comes back. Can you help Mia keep an eye out for her?”

  Jules nodded her head and paced off to find a good spot from which to watch.

  “Abdul,” Jerry asked, “can you take the veranda and watch for Nikki?”

  Abdul nodded and Jerry added, “Please keep them safe. Here,” and handed an AKS assault rifle to him. Abdul reluctantly took the rifle, all too familiar on the continent from which he had come.

  He offered, “Maybe I should go.”

  Jerry shook his head, “No. You don’t have the clothing or the boots. We need to get you better gear first. Just keep watch on the lodge and the woods. Keep those things away and if you see Nikki, get her inside. We won’t be gone long.”

  Abdul’s mind was struggling with the mixed emotions his order produced. He should be going out after the little girl. He was the fastest and was older than Jerry. It only made sense that he would go, but there was no denying the relief he felt in not having to go back out into the fray. He had no interest in being a hero or a martyr. He also didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to hunt or track anything in the woods. He donned one of the several coats hanging on the wall mounted rack, hefted the assault rifle over his shoulder, and then went upstairs to fulfill his order.

  The others walked determinedly into the cold, finding some tracks in the snow which led away into the woods. As an anxious group single-minded in purpose, they followed the little footsteps cut into the fresh layer of snow. There were deeper prints alongside the smaller ones, so they all figured Nikki was following the moose.

  With that thought in mind, none of them figured she could have gone very far and spotting a moose in the backdrop of white shouldn’t pose the most challenging of feats, even from novices like Jerry and Danny.

  The deeper they walked into the trees, the thinner the snow on the ground was until there was virtually none at all. Trees, leaves, and silence surrounded them. After a few worried minutes had passed and they had only accomplished walking themselves further into the forest, Jerry turned to everyone else hoping for some direction, some suggestion, anything. The others’ faces were of no help whatsoever. They wore the same desperate expressions. They were the school group having lost a student at the zoo. They were the parents who couldn’t find their child at the supermarket. None of them knew what to do.

  Danielle suggested, “We’d cover more ground if we split up to search. Betsy and I can go this way and you and Danny can go the other. We’ll keep moving to the right and you keep moving to the left. When you get to the road, just head back to the lodge. She couldn’t have gone far. One of us will find her.”

  Jerry nodded in agreement, despite his reservations, and added, “Nobody takes any chances. You see anything; you shoot first and then get the hell back to the lodge. Like Danielle said, she has to be close. Those little legs couldn’t have carried her far. She’s probably just lost.”

  Jerry was definitely reluctant. He wasn’t excited about splitting up their firepower but he also didn’t want to take too much time in finding Nikki. She was so fragile and so little.

  He shook his head in frustration as they went their separate ways, chastising himself for letting all this happen. For months, Jerry’s confidence had grown and blossomed like at no other time in his life. Nikki’s disappearance was threatening to derail all of that. Deep down he knew it wasn’t his fault, but he harbored a growing sense of guilt.

  Jerry’s deep sigh and sagging demeanor was fairly easy to decipher, even for a boy of Danny’s age. “It’s not your fault that Nikki ran away,” he said reassuringly.

  Needlessly defensive, Jerry corrected, “She didn’t run away. She’s just following the moose.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  A nearby crackle in the woods stopped both of them in their tracks. Jerry scanned the trees, simultaneously raising his rifle to his shoulder. Neither of them saw anything. Jerry began to think that maybe it wasn’t anything, frozen clumps of leaves falling to the forest floor perhaps. Danny nudged Jerry and redirected his focus in another direction. There was something scrambling through the trees with such a pace Jerry was unable to identify it. He thought that it might be a moose for a few seconds which gave him hope Nikki wouldn’t be far away.

  Hope was quickly dashed when Neil realized it was a zeke and it was still fresh enough to be moving with a horrifying pace. Jerry hated it when they could still run. It was bad enough that they were indefatigable, vicious monsters bent on killing and eating everyone but to have them running at the pace of a charging grizzly was enough to take one’s breath away.

  Jerry took a moment to process what he thought he was seeing. The wretch was running parallel to Danny and Jerry. It didn’t seem to know that they were even there. Jerry watched it sprint deeper into the forest as if it was...chasing someone.

  Jerry uttered, “Oh shit,” and peered through his scope. He didn’t have a clear shot but tried nonetheless. The bullet zipped and cracked out amongst the trees but did little else.

  “Why didn’t you just let it chase after... oh.”

  “Yeah. We better hurry but keep an eye out. If there’s one, there’s probably more. T
hat gun ready to fire?”

  Danny lifted his rifle and showed it to Jerry to assure the man he was ready to do his part. They started to run after the zeke but were unable to keep pace with it. In running, they almost tripped over another of the creatures pulling itself along a footpath cut through the forest. Its left leg was a seeping stump of violated flesh with a partially gnawed femur bone protruding from it. Despite its obvious handicap, the fiend moved along the path at a respectable pace.

  Both young men retreated a few steps and discharged the rifles in their hands. One of the bullets struck the creature in its shoulder, shattering the clavicle and pitching it forward. The other bullet pierced the top of its skull and drove itself through its head and out the soft stretch of skin between its chin and neck.

  Still standing in a firing stance, both men spotted another one coming at them along the same trail. Danny fired first, his bullet sailing harmlessly high.

  Jerry said, “Settle yourself. Don’t let your fear....” Jerry pulled his trigger, “...cause you to waste ammo or time.” He looked down at Danny and smiled.

  Danny smiled back. “I coulda’ hit him but I didn’t want to show you up… especially in front of Danielle.”

  Smiling even more, Jerry demanded, “What do you mean by that?”

  “Shouldn’t we—”

  “Yeah. But don’t think we’re done with this conversation,” Jerry playfully warned, trying to calm both of them with some levity.

  The two of them tried to follow the original ghoul they had spotted but it had run well out of sight. Neither of them had any skills or experience tracking. There were sounds and movement in the trees all around them, and they stopped to listen.

  It was by sheer luck that Jerry and Danny found the road leading to the lodge’s driveway. Breaking into a jog, they hurried back to the fortress-like lodge at the end of the paved, but now snow covered drive.