Each time they reached a new deck, the two members of team C at the back would stop to guard the area. It got significantly brighter once they got past the lowest decks to where windows let in light. It also appeared the promenade still had lights running, but none of the hallways or staircases did. It would have been brighter still if they were on the side with the sun, but it was too dangerous to switch over now. They had to stick to their present course.
As they reached the sixth deck, a howl echoed down the halls. Everyone stopped, searching around for the source of the noise.
“It might have been the wind,” Brunt finally whispered, “continue on.”
The guards on the lowest levels were already chatting in whispers over the radios. It was too quiet on the ship, and standing silently would make them overly jumpy. Jon didn’t listen much, picking up only a few things, like the fact that one of them thought this ship had better artwork on the landings than the Diana did.
“Contact,” a voice spoke above a whisper over the radio.
Everyone stood perfectly still.
“Taken care of,” the same voice then said. “It was a slow bitch.”
Jon didn’t need the man’s words to know it was a slow one. If it had been alive, there would have been spoken words, and if it had been a fast one, there would have been a gunshot. Slow zombies could be taken out with knives, machetes, and even blunt objects, as long as one was careful, but when it came to the faster, smarter ones, it was always preferable to shoot first.
At least now, they knew what they were dealing with: zombies on board. It was what the people on the Diana feared most happening to them.
Brunt urged them onward, and upward.
Once they reached the tenth deck, they left the final two members of team C, and headed down the hallways. The ship’s hallways were nerve-wrackingly narrow, and completely dark outside of what their flashlights revealed. With Brewster’s huge frame leading the way, they fell into single file. Jon’s eyes flicked from door to door, expecting one of them to be ripped open at any moment, and hundreds of moving corpses to spill out. It didn’t happen.
Upon reaching the door to the bridge, Brewster and Shaidi shifted to one side and allowed Rose to step forward. Rose had the best hearing of the group; she placed a glass against the door, and then pressed her ear against its bottom. With her eyes squeezed shut, she listened for any sounds originating from the other side for several tense seconds. When she opened her eyes again, she shook her head back and forth. She hadn’t heard anything.
Brewster tried the handle, only to find that the door was locked. Brunt took over then, pulling out a pair of thin tools with which to pick the lock. They had more brutal ways of getting in, like the mini battering ram Brewster carried, or the small amount of explosives Shaidi had hidden about her person, but those would only draw the attention of the zombies.
The presence of people from the Diana wasn’t going unnoticed. Jon had heard a few more voices over the coms that spoke of contacts. None of the contacts had been survivors so far.
Brunt got the door open and went in first, keeping low and checking the nearby corners. He soon waved for the others to follow him in. Brewster and Brunt went to the controls to stop the ship, while Shaidi and Rose went to check the far corners and the break room. There was no one on the bridge.
Then how was the door locked? Jon thought. A scuffling sound came from a small closet, quickly drawing everyone’s attention.
Jon was the closest to the closet. Holstering his pistol, he drew the katana from the sheath he wore under his backpack. Robin had given him the blade, which had belonged to a friend of hers, hoping it would keep him safer than it had her friend.
His brow was sweaty as he gripped the handle, but his hands were bone dry. Raising the blade in one hand, he yanked open the door with the other.
“Not bit!”
Despite the man’s words, Jon still nearly decapitated him, surprised by his explosive exit from the closet.
“Not bit! Not bit! Not bit, not bit, not bit!” the strange man kept screaming over and over.
“I get it, you’re not bit,” Jon said as he quickly sheathed the blade. He kept his distance from the man, while everyone else held their guns pointed toward him.
A loud roll of thunder reached them from outside, lightly vibrating the bridge’s windows. It had been a clear day, and they weren’t expecting any storms any time soon.
“Oh, my God,” Shaidi gasped, looking out the wall of windows.
Jon turned and saw what she was looking at.
Black smoke was pouring out of a hole in their ship. The Diana was on fire.
***
“Not bit. Not bit,” the man continued to repeat, although he had calmed down somewhat.
Jon stood over him where he had been tied up in the corner. The man was barely more than a skeleton, with large, bulging eyes, and extremely thin hair. He smelled rank, and was clearly crazy, saying only those two words, over and over again.
“What’s going on?” Jon asked Brunt, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.
“Give me a second!” Brunt snapped. “Everyone on this damn radio won’t shut up.”
Their organized boarding was falling apart. The fire on the Diana had panicked everyone, but worse, the thunder they had heard beforehand—which Jon was beginning to realize was an explosion—had woken all the zombies on board. The dead were crawling out of all the cracks and alcoves they had been lingering in, and were now wandering about, seeking the living. The guards on the fifth deck saw too many coming at them, which caused them to flee their posts. The guards on the fourth and sixth decks followed suit, not wanting to draw that large a group their way. It was now impossible to make out any of the chatter over the radio.
“Hail the Diana,” Rose suddenly suggested out of the blue.
“Our radios aren’t powerful enough for that. Only the one on the tender boat is,” Brunt frowned at her.
“I’m not talking about our radios. This ship has one, doesn’t it?” Rose waved an arm at the control console.
“Of course!” Brunt quickly slid back into the seat he had vacated upon seeing the Diana belching smoke.
As he was calling across the water, a loud banging started up on the cabin door.
“Identify yourself!” Brewster bellowed, striding toward the door.
The response he got was a loud, hollow groan. It wasn’t one of their own men.
“Get back to the tender boat!” James’s voice cut through the chatter. “Get back to the tender boat in any way you know how! If you cannot reach us, stay put! We will get you when we can!”
Jon looked to Brunt.
Brunt shook his head. “The Diana is still figuring out exactly what happened, but it was definitely an explosion of some kind. The fire fighting brigade is already dealing with the flames.”
“Let’s get back to the boat. There’s another door out of the bridge on this side.” Rose moved toward it.
“No,” Brunt said, stopping her in her tracks.
“But James said to get back to the tender boat. It sounds like they’re going to bug out until things calm down a bit.” Jon was worried. The smoke was coming out close to where he and his family lived.
Brunt shook his head. “We still haven’t stopped this ship completely. We’re going to stay and finish our assignment. If we don’t, and someone ends up trapped on board overnight, it’ll pass by the Diana and be even harder to get to in the morning. Besides, by staying on the bridge, we can relay information between those trapped aboard, and those on the Diana.”
“Not bit, not bit,” the man’s voice was increasing in volume as tensions on the bridge elevated.
“Shut up!” Rose screamed at him.
“Rose.” Shaidi placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her. Rose shrugged Shaidi’s hand off and stalked toward the windows, crossing her arms tightly across her chest.
Everyone’s nerves were snapped. They were used to being in d
anger, they were even used to being trapped with no immediate way home, but this was different. On a normal off-ship trip, they didn’t have to worry about those left behind. They went out and focused on their mission, knowing that their loved ones still on the Diana were safe. But now, the Diana had suffered a blow, and no one knew anything about what was happening over there. Anyone could have been hurt, or killed. They weren’t used to this.
Brunt and Brewster returned to their original job of putting the brakes on the cruise ship. Stopping a boat this large wasn’t an easy task. If all they did was shut down the engines, they could coast for a mile, and that wasn’t including any winds or currents that could catch them. They actually had to put the ship into reverse until it came to a rough standstill, and then drop the anchors.
“Rose, why don’t you and Shaidi see if there are any supplies in the break room?” Brunt suggested. “And Jon, despite what he says, could you check that man over for bites?”
“Sure thing.”
Jon told the strange man what he was going to do, but he was ignored. The man just stared off into space, his lips still forming the words, with barely a whisper escaping from them. He was indifferent as Jon lifted his T-shirt, inspecting his belly and shoulders, then turned him around to look at his back. Jon rolled up the man’s shorts, and pulled off the worn shoes, but didn’t find any injuries there either. Despite the man’s thin hair, Jon also inspected his scalp, which was an unpleasant affair even with Jon’s gloves protecting his hands from the greasiness. This survivor appeared free of bites, or any other major injuries. Although it was possible he had been bitten around the hips, groin, and buttock areas, Jon wasn’t about to check those. He felt he would have seen evidence of blood or bandages had the man been bitten there. Even though he had cleared him for bites, Jon didn’t untie the man. There were other ways he could have become infected, and he could also turn out to be more dangerous than the dead while alive.
“Dropping anchors,” Brunt announced over the coms in case someone was in their area. Six other people had been left behind and were hiding out in various locations around the ship.
“What do we do now?” Rose asked. Apparently, there hadn’t been anything useful in the break room.
“Now, we wait for orders,” Brunt told her, leaning back in the control seat.
Rose huffed and sat on the floor, leaning against one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. A zombie battering itself against the door, a seemingly insane man, their home on fire without any information as to why or who was hurt, and no sleeping supplies: it was going to be a long night.
“You know, it doesn’t sound like there’s any zombies at the starboard side door. Why don’t Rose and I go out for a little bit of recon? We can see how many zombies are against the other door, and maybe dispatch them if there aren’t many,” Jon suggested.
“I agree with this plan.” Rose bounced back up onto her feet.
Jon had been working with her ever since he became an off-shipper three years ago. She was like the big sister he never had growing up in foster homes, and he understood her. He knew that the best thing for her now was to keep busy, and he wouldn’t mind doing the same.
Brunt looked from Jon to Rose and then back to Jon. He clearly didn’t like the idea, but he could see the benefits of it.
“What if you bring some zombies back here and we end up having both doors blocked by them?” he asked.
“We can always break out through a window.” Jon knocked on the glass for emphasis.
Brunt sighed. It was the sigh of a middle-aged man dealing with two young adults. Jon had heard that sigh a lot over the course of his twenty-one years, and he was betting that Rose had heard it even more over her twenty-six. Brunt waved his hands at them, indicating that they could go.
Jon drew his katana while Rose pulled the hammer off her belt. They would want to stick with the silent weapons as much as possible for now. Opening the door, Jon headed out into the hallway first. He kept his flashlight off, allowing the sunlight from the bridge to reveal the area ahead of him. The hallway was empty, so both he and Rose clicked on their lights once the door was closed. They listened as someone, most likely Shaidi, locked it behind them. Shaidi would probably stay by that door until they returned.
Following the break room’s outer wall, they eventually came to a hallway that crossed from their side of the ship to the other. Looking across the way, they didn’t see any zombies, and so headed in that direction. The sounds of the zombie smacking itself against the other door were easy to hear. Upon reaching the corner, Jon poked his head around it for a second, taking in the scene at a glance. They had gotten very lucky; there was only one zombie there.
Turning around to face Rose, he used hand gestures to tell her what he saw. They had a brief kind of conversation in a butchered version of sign language, which resulted in Rose telling Jon why she wanted to be the one to kill it. Jon thought it would be safer and quicker with his sword, but she refused to listen. Eventually, he stepped aside and let her sneak up on the corpse with her hammer.
Jon didn’t watch, choosing instead to face the other way and guard Rose’s back. He heard the sick crack from the hammer’s first strike, followed by the crunches of repeated blows. Rose was taking her anger out on this one dead person, each impact sounding wetter, and squishier than the last. When it was over, she poked Jon’s left shoulder. He turned around and inspected her for wounds. There was a lot of blackened blood on her shirt, but her goggles and the bandanna she had tied over her lower face had protected her from getting any of it in her eyes or mouth. If that happened, there would be nothing that Jon could do for her.
With both of the entrances and exits to the bridge cleared, the two of them moved deeper into the ship. Passing by room after room, Jon realized that most of the doors were propped open by their deadbolts. Maybe the people on this ship didn’t have a card reprogrammer like the Diana had, and couldn’t program key cards to unlock the doors. A handful of times, Rose or Jon would push open one of the doors and take a look inside, but there was never anything of immediate use. There were mostly a lot of empty drawers and a few abandoned items. Later, they would systematically scavenge the ship for everything, but for now, they looked only for things like food, ammunition, and medical supplies.
As they neared a stairwell, they heard the sounds of more zombies. The explosion on the other ship had stirred them all up, so they were all groaning, and moaning, and making whatever other vocal wheezes they could. Jon remembered there had been a lot more screamers back when it all began. Those first few days, it seemed like smart and fast ones were everywhere. As time went on, those disappeared, and the slow, dumb, shambling hordes took their place. Thomas, a supplies keeper who was friends with Brunt, Brewster, and Shaidi, had a theory. He thought that the fast ones died quicker because they ran into the living more frequently. Survivors were more likely to put down a fast one, whereas, they would just out run or avoid a slow one. The fast ones were also more likely to damage their bodies from colliding with things, essentially crippling themselves until they were slow. Jon didn’t care what the reasons were, he was just glad for them. Granted, large swarms of shamblers were like a terrifying flood, he still preferred them to the lightning strikes that were the quick bastards.
Reaching the stairs and elevator banks, Jon suggested they take a look out over the promenade, where the lights were still on. The tenth deck was too high to look down upon it, but by silently moving down two decks, they got a clear view of the whole thing.
There were a lot more of the dead here than Jon, or anyone else, had realized.
The zombies weren’t packed in shoulder to shoulder, but there was at least one for every five square feet of space. The stench was bad, suggesting these people hadn’t been dead for very long. The ones that had died a long time ago, tended to lose their stink after awhile, becoming dried out and withered. These were maybe a few weeks old, give or take a week. If some people had escaped in the lifeboats, then how
many had been on board in the first place?
Rose gestured that they should return to the bridge. Jon was inclined to agree, especially since the sun was already sinking into the sea. It would get a lot darker soon. They tiptoed their way back to the stairs, but the deck above them wasn’t as empty as it had been before. Jon grabbed Rose’s shoulder and pulled her back toward the elevators.
Whereas Jon wanted to either wait for the dead thing to leave, or go up the other staircase, Rose clearly wanted to bash its skull in. This time Rose gave in, agreeing they should try the other staircase.
Between the two staircases was some sort of café. It had a large statue of Neptune, or maybe it was Poseidon, standing imposingly before it. As they passed by the statue, a rustle of clothing was the only warning they had before a zombie lunged out at them.
Jon didn’t have time to bring his sword to bear. The zombie grabbed his wrist, while Jon used his other hand to grab its throat. Jon’s gloved fingers sank slightly into the dead flesh, making him queasy, but he kept the thing’s teeth away from him as they snapped at the air. The zombie’s other hand clawed impotently at the long sleeve of Jon’s shirt. Rose didn’t dare risk using her hammer, because Jon’s bandanna had slipped down when his back had been pressed into the railing. Instead, she grabbed the zombie by its shoulders and pried him off Jon. Her momentum swung her and the zombie around so that when she let go, it was thrown into the railing. The zombie’s hips struck the bar, while its torso continued over it. The dead thing folded in half for a moment, and just when it looked like it was going to stand back up, it over balanced, its feet leaving the carpet as the whole body went over.
Jon and Rose listened to the crunch as it hit the promenade below. They then heard a single moan rise up from the crowd. Looking down at the promenade, they could see that every single zombie was looking back. As one, the horde began to move forward.
Survival Instinct (Book 3): Fighting Instinct Page 3
