LZR-1143: Evolution

by Bryan James

  A brief pause, then the voice humorlessly responded.

  “Stand by.”

  Laser sights cut through the smoky haze on the other side of the door. A single shot was fired, ending a stirring groan from close to the door, then the same voice, very close.

  “Hold your fire,” he said authoritatively.

  I sheepishly realized that I had relaxed my guard and was ignorantly and vacantly flipping the safety on and off as I waited.

  Kate’s hand snaked over mine and stopped my nervous finger as a head popped into view.

  A face, obscured with black and gray paint, preceded a large body in tactical gear. A large carbine with a laser sight affixed was in one hand. A bottle of water was in the other. He looked at each of us quickly and professionally, stepping to the side of the door and gesturing forward as he took a swig from the bottle.

  “Any day now, folks,” he said calmly as he stood there, rifle lowered and face nonplussed by the immense violence that his team had just unloosed on the small room.

  “We’re on a schedule here, and since your friend,” he nodded at Hartliss curtly, “insisted on going back for you, we are damn close to dying in a monumental shipwreck; we have about forty seconds to secure stations. Y’all can sit tight if you want, but I’m getting back on deck.”

  He disappeared into the smoke and dark of the machine shop.

  We jerked awake and followed, Kate coughing as she inhaled the acrid stink of gun powder and dead flesh. I felt like vomiting as we were again called upon to virtually wade through the bloody remains of numerous human bodies. A door ahead framed late afternoon sunlight, clouds visible in the distance. We rushed for the light of day, tumbling outside onto the flight deck.

  Droplets of rain fell lightly against the deck, and I rubbed my face dry as I stood in place, transfixed by the scene in front of me.

  Dead bodies covered the large flat space, blood washing off the tarmac in red rivers. Airplanes secured to the deck rocked with the high speed of the ship.

  Several men in dark uniforms and tactical gear stood flanking the door, and slammed it shut after we emerged into the daylight. Shouts arose from the doorway and around the corner, indicating that the area was clear. From behind the conning tower, several sharp cracks from a rifle indicated that not all access points were as secure.

  “Stations, people. Twenty seconds to impact!”

  Kate grabbed my arm as Hartliss sprinted forward, diving for the netting of an arresting device fastened to two thick metal stanchions. She sprinted after him and, as I looked up to the impending danger, my eyes widened, realizing where we were in a blast of recognition.

  I had driven on and through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel once on my way north from Williamsburg. Maria and I had vacationed in Ocean City one summer, years before I hit it big. It was a trashy sort of place, but quite fun. A consummate resort city, blessed by geography to be the largest beach community within 3 hours of Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.

  So, during the summer, it filled up with city folk with a hankering for sunburns and ice-cream. A room on the ocean wasn’t cheap, but had been doable. Maria and I had come here seeking respite from the heat of D.C. when she was working on her doctorate. We hadn’t had the money to stay long, but we had enjoyed the brief escape to the ocean. I had even won her one of those overstuffed bears at the carnival, but had promptly landed in the dog house for mistakenly losing it over the edge as I drunkenly pretended to violate the poor creature on the ledge of our twenty-second floor balcony.

  What can I say? I have that sort of sense of humor.

  Don’t judge me. You had to be there.

  The Bridge-Tunnel is a unique, and scary, kind of construction. It’s a long causeway with intervals of tunnels that go beneath the ocean in the middle of the channel. The causeway itself is fairly low, not standing far above the waves. The tunnel portions, on the other hand, sink fairly low into the depths of the channel so that large ships—commercial tankers, freighters, and warships—can move through. A fairly ingenious design, if you didn’t have an innate fear of sneezing and jerking the car into the drink.

  But I always wondered what would happen if it was struck by an incoming ship. To be fair, the roadway sat barely ten feet above the rough water of the Atlantic, and although it appeared to be constructed of hard stone and concrete, I couldn’t keep my mind from asking the obscure question. What if?

  Hence the irony as I wrapped a canvas tie-down around my wrist and slid to a seated position staring forward.

  The Enterprise was churning forward at roughly forty knots, causing a slight bit of vertigo as I glanced to the side. She cut through the waves with indifference, but a noticeable sway to the side as walls of the dark, brackish water slammed against the massive hull.

  She was heading straight for a large section of the bridge. At one time, the ship’s course must have been set for the gap that was roughly a mile to our port side. It wasn’t hard to guess what might have distracted the helmsman and altered the course of the massive vessel.

  Over the flat surface of the flight deck, I squinted against the lightly falling rain as I gripped the canvas strap tighter. The bridge was getting large, very quickly. Around me, the SEALs had hit the deck, lashing themselves to small tie downs, inset into the tarmac.

  The scene was unreal; I felt compelled to look away as the bow of the ship approached the guardrail of the rock and cement construction—a construction never meant to push back against a warship doing forty knots.

  But I couldn’t look away. My eyes were fixed on the scene unfolding in front of me.

  The roadway was large in front of us, and then it fell away beneath the flight deck.

  I cringed. Next to me, Kate grunted softly.

  Suddenly, the strap around my wrist tightened as my body was lashed forward. Next to me, Kate cursed loudly as her body was jerked around, almost in a complete circle. Her head whipped to the side and her free hand lashed out toward me a I fell forward. I grabbed for her arm, but missed, slamming instead into the hard deck.

  I felt, rather than heard, the grinding and tearing of the ship’s bow as it disappeared into the rock and steel below. Concrete exploded into the air, pieces of gray and black roadway rocketing into the air, some falling on the flight deck as it canted sharply toward the bow of the ship. A dark gray airplane slid past us on its belly, its landing gear having been snapped off by the force of the impact.

  Above our heads, a piece of antenna from the massive radar display tilted forward, ready to fall to the sea. Slowly, we ground against the rocks and concrete, and came to a stop. From below, I felt the engines churning, and then abruptly cut off. Thankfully, I realized that there must be some automatic cutoff designed to keep the engines from burning out. The ship was silent, then. No hum of electricity or of movement.

  Without power of its own, the carrier was now at the mercy of the waves, and began to rock slightly from side to side. I disentangled my wrist from the strap and tried to stand, but I failed to recognize the physics of the situation.

  The impact had dealt a monumental blow to the integrity of the ship. Roughly one quarter of the hull had imploded; crushed against itself like a tin can, it was taking on water. And with no one on board to man the damage control systems and seal off sections, the water was rushing in. We had initially tilted forward, bow down, after the impact, but with the bow now perched temporarily on the roadway and higher than the stern, the water began to follow gravity. It rushed into the ship and flooded the passageways and hallways, pushing into the stern, and filling it quickly with cold saltwater.

  The ship began to pull back from the road, stern moving quickly back into the Atlantic. Amazingly, she stayed afloat as she pulled back, her rear becoming heavier with seawater but not heavy enough to sink.

  Not yet.

  The flight deck shifted again, canting the ship again in the opposite direction. I fell, sprawling hard against the tarmac and cursing.

  From behind me,
I heard the SEAL who had met us in the machine shop.

  “Let’s go! The helos are standing by. We just need to unstrap them from the deck. We don’t have much time before the ship goes under, and if they have any sense of self-preservation, those things are likely to move up from the flooding.”

  Well, that was just silly. Of course they don’t have a sense of self-preservation. I knew that much.

  But I did have something else to take care of before we left.

  “I need to go to the bridge,” I shouted, struggling to be heard over the rushing sound of water from below and the grinding of metal as the ocean bent the damaged ship to its own will.

  “Like fuck you do!” was the predictable response.

  His voice was incredulous and commanding, as if he was a hair’s breadth from shooting me himself.

  My rage took over. I screamed to be heard over the sound of the sinking ship and angry waves. “Listen, we have maybe one chance of fucking stopping this disease and that chance is in the fucking bridge, with your idiot of a Captain! He caused this today, and I need to try to salvage what little I can from this gigantic ass-clown of a debacle. Now you can stand aside and let me go, or fucking shoot me, but either way, I am walking through that door.”

  I gestured, perhaps unwisely, toward the door with my nine millimeter pistol.

  His eyes narrowed and his hand didn’t budge on his lowered weapon as he glanced at the crew quickly unlashing the wheels of the two large helicopters.

  He looked down at the churning water below that was rapidly coming closer to the flight deck.

  “You have about seven minutes, Mr. McKnight. If you are not back by then, we leave your ass, no questions, no complaint. I told your friend we’d indulge his excursion because we needed the pilot. I don’t have to wait for you.”

  He emphasized the “mister,” as if to make clear that I had no real rank or power.

  I mentally shrugged. Who the hell cared about that right now? I was about to tromp up a narrow stairwell to a possibly zombie-infested bridge to try to steal back the plague juice that held the only possible cure to this mess.

  We could talk rank later.

  I wasted no time and sprinted toward the closed door at the base of the bridge tower. I looked up briefly, noting the seven story height of the tower. The SEALs standing guard near the closed hatch looked up as I approached and backed up at a shouted command from my friend, who appeared to be their commander. I grabbed the latch and pulled up, opening the door wide and jumping through.

  Chapter 10

  Sparing one more wistful glance for the idling helicopters and the firepower of the accumulated SEAL teams, I raced up the stairs, pistol in hand. I didn’t take the seven minute warning lightly. If I didn’t get down there soon, the helicopters wouldn’t be able to wait any longer since the ship they were parked on would be under water. They would have to take off, and immune or not, I would die on this tin can.

  The stairs were oddly canted to the side, a product of the slanted deck and sinking ship. This portion of the ship was sealed off and isolated from the remainder of the ship, with one access point belowdecks. The SEALs had closed off that access point, so in theory, assuming—as I was inclined to—that the special forces team downstairs knew their job, the only danger I needed to worry about was any of those things that were left inside the bridge and the conning tower at the time of the outbreak.

  It was hardly a comforting thought, but it was one that I found far more comfortable than the concept of thousands of undead sailors and marines flooding the stairwell and trapping me in the small bridge while the ship sank below my feet.

  My footsteps rang hollowly as I pounded up the narrow steps. I took each floor carefully, despite my belief that the SEALs had cleaned up in the open compartments. Better safe than sorry, and I was going to be really sorry if one of those ghouls took a chunk out of my ass while I wasn’t looking.

  I reached the top floor and moved toward the bridge. It was a pathway that we had taken only hours before, but it seemed like days. I briefly remembered the hope that I had felt in knowing that such a large bastion of American military power had survived the plague. Guilt shot through my system like a surge of adrenalin as I realized just how culpable I was in the death of her crew.

  My reason warred with my emotion, as my regret at not disclosing our condition and the possible cure slowly lost out to the necessity of keeping such things secret until we were sure of the effects of the vaccine. While I knew that we would have fared much worse, possibly with the same result to the crew, given the Captain’s zeal for progress with no regard for his test subjects, I still felt regret. And immense shame.

  Reaching for the horizontal handle with my left hand, I stood still momentarily, listening. From inside, I thought I heard an oddly out of place sound—that of a man laughing, softly. No sounds of movement, or of talking.

  I resolved to try to enter quietly, and pushed the handle down slowly. It threatened to squeak against its housing, as metal moved against metal, but stayed blessedly silent. As I pushed the door open and stepped cautiously through the door, pistol raised, I heard his voice.

  “No use trying to sneak in, Mr. McKnight. I know you’re there, and I know you’re you. So come on in.”

  His voice was off, slightly higher than normal, and he was speaking faster, almost frantically. Recognizing that he had some way of seeing me coming, I walked in, gun still raised.

  He sat in his chair, eyes staring into the distance. He had a bandage wrapped haphazardly around his left arm. A large brownish-red stain showed through the white gauze.

  “Good to see you again,” he said, eyes not moving, staying locked on the churning waves below. I glanced toward the deck, but the prepped helos were out of my line of sight, as were the SEALs and my friends. Sporadic popping sounded in the darkening afternoon, evidence of a renewed defense of the choppers. Somewhere, a door had apparently been overwhelmed or forgotten.

  “Wish I could say likewise,” I said, lowering my pistol. My eyes searched the room, sweeping over the consoles and the various banks of electronics. Four bodies lay sprawled on the deck, all with devastating trauma to the head. Two other forms lay slumped over the panels of dials and gauges in the front of the compartment, both bearing the unmistakeable evidence of having been shot in the back of the head while performing normal operations.

  I shivered then, imagining the scene. The reports filtering back to the Captain that the virus was on board and had infected those who he believed had been immunized; realizing that all six crewmen on the bridge had been given the shot, and taking it into his own hands to neutralize the potential threat. But somehow, he had been bitten nonetheless. It was poetic.

  “You look surprised, Michael,” he said, using my first name. Momentarily I had flashbacks to grade school and I had a brief feeling of unreasoning fear, as if I were in trouble.

  I shook off the feeling and watched him carefully.

  “Not entirely,” I responded, moving to my left, toward the large table with the flat map illuminated. “I imagine that they were infected, and you took ... steps ... to deal with them.”

  “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for,” he said coyly, eyes rolling uncontrollably from left to right as he laughed. His voice had gotten higher and faster. His hands were twitching on the arm rests. As his arms thrashed against the chair, and his head lolled from side to side, I discarded the pretext and crossed the room to his chair.

  “Where’s the blue vial? You know you fucked up big, and your only shot at making it right is giving it back to me before this ship goes down with the cure!” His eyes weren’t focused, and had sunk slightly into his sockets. His pupils were dilated and seemed to have lost some color, red rimming the whites and giving him an excited, slightly drugged out look.

  Laughter was the only retort.

  From below, the volleys of gun fire intensified and then stopped. The ship took a sudden and abrupt plunge forward, slanting
the deck further toward the sea, as the front of the flight deck neared the cusp of the thrashing waves.

  Suddenly, the sound of the wind against the windows of the bridge rose, and the metal seemed to vibrate violently. Heavy thumping resonated in my chest as a large gray shape lifted past the large windows and into the afternoon sky. A second shape soon followed.

  Black-clad forms hung from the open windows, automatic weapons at the ready. They disappeared, quickly clearing the dangerously yawing bridge. I sprinted to the windows across the heaving deck, realizing that my rides had just departed. I looked down to the flight deck, cursing as I watched the creatures pour from the open hatch below.

  I was out of time.

  I ran back to Allred, jamming my pistol against his temple and screaming.

  “Where is the fucking vial, Captain? I know you don’t have much time until you go the way of the goddamn zombie, so just redeem yourself one tiny little fucking bit. Where is it?”

  Finally, his eyes seemed to track.

  They locked on my own, as he whispered harshly, spittle flying freely from his rage-inspired lips.

  “You. You did this. You brought that goddamned virus on board my ship, and you have the temerity to lecture me, boy? I follow orders for a living, son. I spent my life protecting this nation, and was flying sorties into Baghdad when you were still popping pimples in junior high school. So you know what, movie star? You can go to hell.”

  He coughed wetly.

  “But I hope I get there first, because I will be waiting for your ass with a red hot pitch fork, you cocky son of a bitch.”

  He looked away, spitting blood on the floor as he did so.

  Time was up, and I was frantic.

  I flicked the safety off, and pulled the hammer of the pistol back with my thumb demonstratively. His eyes came back to mine, teeth bared in a vicious snarl.

  “What? You gonna kill me, son?” he taunted, gray skin reflecting the red glare of the emergency lights.