by JT Sawyer
“Nora is right,” Shiro said. “Our future survival depends on forming alliances with others, regardless of where it might take us. This land of our fathers is now nothing more than a tomb but if we go to America, we can keep the flame of our ancestors alive and begin over.”
Shiro seemed more enthusiastic than usual and his face grew animated with each sentence as he spoke about having the others finally free from their ordeal here. He occasionally glanced over Nora’s shoulder at the Sun Goddess Ameratsu whose shrine was in the corner, hoping that his debts in this world might finally be fulfilled.
Chapter 25
Jared’s attempt to jumpstart a speedboat had failed, the engines being too fouled. He had instead secured a small sailboat near the edge of the pier and set it adrift while Eliza swam over and climbed on board. As he unfurled the sail of the twenty-one-foot boat, Eliza kept watch on the waters around them. She could see the hungry hordes of rotting creatures massing near the shoreline, a hundred yards off. Some had even jumped into the frothy waters only to be swept back by the incoming tide into the metal embankment where their heads were quickly pulverized like soft melons. Most of the zombies were well past surface decay due to the humidity and saltwater-laden winds which had intensified over the summer. Their skin, if they had any, hung like strips of peeled bark, revealing their wiry musculature, bone, and sinew. The most disturbing feature was their eyes, which were creamy white and bulbous but still intact, rimmed by sunken cheeks and pronounced bone like donuts encapsulating golf balls.
I hope Carlie, Shane, and the others made it out of that plane. Eliza’s mind bristled and a cold chill ran down her back as the horrific images of Air Force One plummeting into the ground in Idaho last fall came to press upon her. The pain of losing her father and Lewis, the agent she had fallen in love with—she couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to her friends. They must have made it out! They’re probably already at the hospital wondering where the hell we are and planning for their extract. She grit her teeth and glanced over her shoulder at Jared, who had moved up to the helm.
Eliza saw a creature flailing in the water a few feet from the boat. At least she thought it was a creature as her vision kept going from blurry to clear in spurts as her head still throbbed. She squinted and saw that it was an immense zombie wearing only a tightly-wrapped white loincloth and resembling a sumo. How is that thing even floating? It was bobbing closer to the rear boarding ladder below the rim of the boat. Not wanting to waste any bullets, she slung her rifle and removed her machete. She squatted down near the ladder, hoping the rotund rotting beast would be pushed out to sea but instead the waves kept moving it closer. The salty water was washing over its swollen purple lips, causing its hungry moans to sound like a sputtering engine. As it crested the rear plank by the ladder, the creature managed to grab hold of a low rung and pull itself up. Eliza’s machete cleaved through the skull, blasting right through the mushy cartilage of the pancaked nose and into the upper gumline. She put her boot on the massive chest and shoved it back into the water while holding onto the brass railing to her left. The creature cannonballed into the waves and floated away into the whitecaps.
Jared had moved up behind her. “Damn, that’s a fat bastard. He’s so big it’d take two dogs to bark at him.”
“How much longer?” she said, resheathing her blade.
“Why—don’t you wanna keep playin’ Marco Polo with the floaters?”
“Ha ha.”
“Almost there,” said Jared, craning his head up at the sail and then walking back over to the wood console. “You know, all these months of fighting and training together, this is the first time we’ve ever really worked alone, you and I.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
“I was kind of expecting you to be like, ‘Well, Carlie says this,’ or ‘Here’s what Carlie would do,’ or ‘Wait until I tell Carlie what happened.’ But you’re OK, kid.”
Eliza moved beside him and turned to stand face to face with him, sending him a cold glare. “For all the talk there is about you, I’ve never heard it said that you were known for being very courteous.”
“Ooh—yeah, you’re a live wire at times alright. I can see why the guys on the other teams have a thing for you.”
Eliza shook her head and folded her arms. “Lord, all I can say is that Amy is even more of a saint than I thought.” Eliza had to lean back on the console. She saw Jared’s face harden as he turned away at the mention of Amy.
“Yeah, I’m worried about everyone too,” Eliza said, patting him with her fist on his shoulder. “We have to keep focusing on the fact that we will see them at the hospital and then be out of this hellhole.”
He flung the wooden steering wheel to the right as the sailboat veered into the center of the bay, heading towards the mouth of the river a mile away. “Righto, my good lady. Righto.”
Chapter 26
Duncan was tapping a pencil on his desk as his eyes floated over the red highlighted images on the wall map ahead. Each red circle indicated an intact region in the world that had secured its borders and dug in during the past year. Some of these circles had an “X” through them. These represented communities that had fallen to the undead and outnumbered the others that remained on the map. None of these marked areas were in large cities, those having completely collapsed and never recovered. Instead, the last remaining outposts of survivors around the globe were situated in fortified makeshift towns in areas that were less populated to begin with even before the pandemic.
The communities who fared the best and had the largest numbers were those located in temperate coastal regions. This provided them with a good year-round climate for growing crops along with the bounties of both the forest and the ocean. With the exception of large pockets of survivors in remote regions in Sweden, Malaysia, Brazil, and Puerto Rico, the rest of the human population dwelled in frontier-style fortress villages in the countryside. These operated on a medley of blended technologies from solar and wind generation to pioneer-type handcrafts. Farming, hunting, fishing, trapping, and occasional bartering had returned in full force along with frequent salvage runs to larger cities to scavenge for first-aid supplies, clothing, and spare parts.
As Duncan stared at the map, he could hear the radio chatter in the operations center across from his office. There were more frenzied voices from outside of the Pacific Northwest pouring over the airwaves inquiring about the vaccine. He anxiously waited for the drone of noise to be interrupted by the triumphant voice of Shane radioing back in from the submarine in a few hours. He looked down at his watch. They should all be on the ground by now and inbound on a speedboat to the hospital. Sure as shit hope they got there without a hitch. Duncan leaned his head forward and rubbed a knot in his shoulder. He should’ve been there with them, running point. The office he sat in was more akin to a prison and he longed to be running alongside his fellow warriors again in the field. Though he had taken the reins of command at Fort Lewis and turned it into a highly efficient base of operations for the remaining U.S. military forces, he had no desire to live out his life under the ceiling of the operations center or his office.
He resumed studying the map then snapped the pencil in his fingers and flung it against the wall. He got up and moved over to retrieve the splintered objects, tossing them into a receptacle with a dozen other similar fragments. A knock on the door penetrated his thinking and he walked over and opened it to see Pavel’s face.
“May I have a few moments of your time?” said the older man.
Duncan waved him in and closed the door. He returned to his desk and pulled out a bottle from a lower drawer. Pouring some whiskey into two shot glasses, he handed one to Pavel and then both men moved to the large window overlooking the airfield.
Duncan swigged his down. Pavel sipped his amber elixir while squinting into the western horizon.
“Any word yet?” said the scientist, whose other hand remained firmly tucked in his armpit, his fingers twitching at the fabric of h
is cotton shirt.
“You’ll be the first to know if I hear anything.”
“Hard to believe that we’ve come this far—surviving for so long, making our stand here, and then finally arriving at an antidote only to be left hanging in the wind because of a piece of machinery that, in previous days, would have been easily obtained or manufactured.”
“You don’t have to remind me what hangs in the balance here.”
Pavel threw back the rest of the whiskey then set the glass down on the windowsill. “Not my intention at all. Just marveling at how, in one year, we’ve gone from being an apex species to being at the mercy of nature’s whims like a single-celled organism swimming in the ocean all over again.”
“We’re still an apex predator and we will defeat this virus and destroy those drooling freaks. Next year at this time, I plan to be sipping a toast with you, Carlie, Shane, and the others when we celebrate the anniversary of when we kicked nature’s whimsical ass.”
Duncan folded both his arms across his chest. “Was there anything else you wanted to see me about, because I’ve got to head down to C-Wing and check on the results of a little experiment of my own?”
Pavel shook his head in the negative and continued staring at the sky as if hoping for some sign.
“Why don’t you walk over with me? I could use a scientific opinion on this new food-harvesting method we’re trying out on a few lakes in the outlying areas.”
They exited Duncan’s office and walked downstairs through A-Wing, passing between the secure perimeter that kept each wing compartmentalized, then strode into an immense storage warehouse in C-Wing. Duncan and Pavel walked up to a ten-ton army truck that had just returned.
At the sight of Duncan approaching, the driver flung open the rear canvas cover. Inside was a glistening pile of assorted fish that was three feet deep by twelve feet long and spanned the width between the wheel wells.
He looked at the young driver whose blond hair shone beneath his boonie hat. “How much C4 was required on the river for this batch?” said Duncan.
“Less than expected, Sergeant Major. We did like you said and blew the two narrowest passages of the gorge in the river which created a temporary dam on two sides. We followed that with small charges of C4 in the pool to harvest this catch. Then we had two teams in boats string up nets and motor across the river scooping up as much as we could get.”
“You used dynamite on the river?” said Pavel. “Won’t that wipe out everything in it?”
“C4 actually,” said Duncan. “And, no, we can selectively hit small patches of rivers and lakes to take what we need then leave the rest of that water source to recover, hopefully. With the absence of large-scale angling operations like we had before the pandemic, we’re kind of assuming there are going to be more of our scaly pals in the water than before. With this in mind, one of my biologists calculated the potential fish population for the regions we are targeting and then came up with some rough parameters to use so we don’t decimate the entire body of water.”
“Ah, these things always sound so good on the whiteboard with the numbers and flowcharts but the natural world has her own parameters, remember,” said Pavel.
Duncan rested a hand on the tailgate and studied the pungent mass of glistening bodies. “For now, we’ll have to trust that this method will deliver while keeping some reserve in place for the future. I’ll worry about being environmentalist of the year in another lifetime.”
Chapter 27
Carlie was running into the char-black innards of the dark tunnel, the smell of mold and decaying meat filling her nostrils. She turned on the tactical flashlight mounted on her suppressed M4, scanning the tiled walls of the round passageway while she heard the footfalls of the remaining team behind her.
“I’ve got at least twenty tangos behind me that squeezed in through the opening,” yelled Matias from behind her as he struggled to keep up.
Ahead of her were the remains of six derailed subway cars, the pale decaying occupants inside pawing at the runners as they sped by.
Carlie tapped on her earmic and shouted out in between breaths, “This is Team Leader Two. We are headed northeast through the subway tunnels, making our way to the hospital, over.” She only heard static in between her own breaths and the nervous huffing of those on her heels. Carlie paused and checked on Matias, who was at the rear, his gait slowing as his labored breathing overtook him. The scraping of footwear on the pavement behind her caused her to spin to her left. She saw two gaunt, pus-oozing zombies lunging for her. She shot the first one in the head but the other moved too fast. She swung the butt of her M4 into its head, shattering bone fragments onto the wall, then stomp-kicked it in the chest, sending it over the guardrail to the tracks below. Beyond the mangled corpse, she saw a gray utility door. Carlie waved to the others to head down while she sniped a zombie that had moved in too close behind Matias. She ran forward and put her arm under his to help him along but felt his weight pressing down on her shoulder wound, causing her to cry out. The two limp-trotted towards the railing as the growing crowd of flesh-eaters poured into the tunnel.
By the time they arrived at the utility door, Amy was inside. Carlie handed off Matias to her then she yanked a grenade off her vest and flung it into the tunnel. “Fire in the hole.” As she swung the door closed and covered her ears, a shower of concrete chunks impacted the door, sealing it off from the hungry mob.
Chapter 28
“We will help you and then leave on the submarine,” said Shiro. “Yoshi and I, along with Yamiko and Naoki, will take you in a boat up the river to the nearest service tunnel by the hospital. I know those well and they will put us under the basement of the building. From there, I will leave it in your hands to get what you need.”
“Sounds like a solid plan. I’m indebted to you for doing this—and for saving my ass out in the ocean back there,” Shane said, extending his hand towards Shiro who responded with a firm grip as the two warriors shook for the first time. When they were done, Shiro looked back at Nora, who was packing some food provisions while Tyler clung to her pant leg. “Do you know what ‘giri’ is?” Shiro said.
“Nope.”
“Giri means obligation. You can repay your giri to me by making sure that the woman and child make it back to your Fort Lewis.”
Shane looked at the man’s meaty forearms and tattoos. “By the looks of it, I’d say you got no worries about making it out of here, with all you’ve been through.”
The Yakuza moved forward quickly, grabbing Shane’s wrist. “Shane-san, promise me that you will look after them.”
He nodded and patted Shiro on the shoulder. “We’ll be on board the sub in a few hours raising our beer bottles in a toast, don’t you worry, amigo.” Shane turned and walked away while he tried hard to push down the fear in his belly from what they were about to undertake and felt the weight of Shiro’s request, wondering if giri also meant burden.
Shiro walked upstairs to gather his things. When he was finished stuffing a small green pack with first-aid items, water, and food he grabbed several more knives and tucked them into his beltline. Nora was behind him when he stood to leave.
“Is this all really going to be over soon? I can’t believe what he said about their base.”
Shiro bowed his chin at her, trying to hold back a smile. “Arisu, Haru, and Daichu will stay behind. I will take the others with me. Soon, you and Tyler will be safely aboard the submarine and on your way to a new life.”
She moved forward, resting her hand on his forearm. “Our life together involves you, too. We’ll see you soon.”
He patted her hand and tried to pull away but she glided forward and kissed him on the lips. He was torn between wanting to push her away and craving more of her touch. He grabbed her arms and drew her in, pressing his lips passionately against hers. His heart felt like it had grown two sizes and, for a moment, he forgot about the harsh realities of his life. Then he abruptly pulled back and took a deep breath wh
ile trying to clear his throat. Shiro stared deeply into her longing eyes then he rested his hand on the hilt of his tanto blade and felt his stony façade return. He forced out another exhale and moved a few feet over to Tyler, who was sitting on a blanket on the ground playing with a stuffed dinosaur. Shiro knelt down and ran his rough hand over the tiny child’s sandy hair. “The world is a better place with you in it, my sweet boy.”
Shiro forced himself to his feet without looking at either of them again, hoisted his pack from the floor and walked forcefully down the stairs.
Chapter 29
“I gotta remove this piece of metal,” said Amy, who was dabbing gauze around the protruding splinter sticking out of Carlie’s shoulder under the view of her headlamp. “Can’t believe you were able to tolerate this for so long.”
“Get it over with then,” Carlie said, gripping her pant legs with both hands.
“Take this first—it’ll help.” Amy gave her a vial of painkillers.
“Hell with that—just yank it out. I don’t need my head fogged up by any pills.”
Amy looked over at Matias, who had his shirt off and was getting help wrapping his ribs from Hadley. “There’s no arguing with the boss—you know she won’t back down,” said Matias, struggling to talk.
“Shane’s the boss on this one, remember,” said Carlie. “We just gotta link up with him and the others and get back on task.” She tried to say the words with confidence to squelch her fears about the others.
“OK, here we go,” said Amy, who had a wad of gauze around the pencil-sized piece of jagged shrapnel. “Ready? On the count of three—count with me.”
Both voices melded as they counted down. “One…two…”
Amy yanked out the piece while Carlie bit down on her lip, muffling her guttural shriek. She turned white and nearly fell back but Amy caught her. Carlie gritted her teeth through a dozen paced deep breaths as she tried to regain her composure. “Shit—what the hell happened to ‘three’?
