“You should not assume we are all mindless. Many of us manage to function quite successfully postmortem.” Doctor Clay lunged at Else. She stepped aside and threw a surgical tray at him.
Clay knocked it aside and came on, his face twisting into a savage expression of hunger.
“We are the new dominant species.” Clay’s gums were as white as his teeth.
“You feed on the living. You do nothing but destroy!” Else flinched back as the dead doctor slashed at her face with an open hand.
“We are the answer to your destruction of the natural world. We are the Earth’s revenge.” The doctor strode towards Else, his fingers curled like claws. “I’m going to eat my way in through your belly,” Clay said. “Then I’m going to gorge myself on your heart. And once I’ve sucked every last shred of meat from your warm bones, then I’m going to eat your kid.”
Else stopped backing away. A cold certainty settled over her shoulders. “There’s no way you will touch him. No way in hell,” she growled.
“You are nothing but animals, to be kept in cages and bred for food,” Clay sneered, but he stopped walking to speak. Else could see his brain firing, slow and steady. She took the opportunity to look around; anything could be a weapon. She’d killed evols with guns, knives, swords, baseball bats, rocks, and once, a sheep skull. Stepping sideways, she tore open a high wooden cabinet. A pile of soft bandages and cotton balls spilled out onto the floor.
She twisted aside as Clay smashed his fist into the cabinet door next to her head.
“I’ve been more than patient with you!” he barked, black saliva spitting from his mouth.
Else ripped a foot-long chunk of wood from the shattered cupboard door. Spinning it in her hand, she held it like a stake and stabbed down. The shard of wood plunged into Clay’s shoulder. It caught on his collarbone and Else twisted it with one hand. With the other she punched Clay in the jaw, snapping his teeth together with a loud crack.
Howling, Clay grabbed Else by the throat and threw her back across the room. She hit the empty bed and tumbled over it on to the floor.
“Adrenaline is limited. Human endurance is finite. We are the superior species,” Clay said and almost stumbled as he advanced.
“What’s the matter, Doctor?” Else sneered. “Can’t walk and talk at the same time?”
“I’m gonna eat your fucking tits!” Clay shouted, shards of broken teeth spraying out of his mouth in hard crumbs.
The doctor swung a fast, hard punch. Else blocked it with her right arm and smashed her fist into his face. They traded blows, nearly every strike being knocked aside and countered with another punch. Clay lashed out with a booted foot, kicking Else hard in the side and throwing her back against a metal table that collapsed under her weight. She lay there, feeling her strength draining through the freshly opened wounds in her back. Clay’s face was set with a grim focus. He would never stop. The flesh could tear from his fists and he would beat her down with the cold bones of his dead knuckles. She thought she could hear the baby screaming somewhere in the dark. Alone and afraid, he cried out for her to come and save him.
Clay staggered over her. His face was a pulped mess of shattered teeth and grey flesh, oozing black ichor. He paused a moment, assessing how best to start feeding on her prone form. Else reached out and snatched up a metal leg from the broken table. Kicking upwards, she shattered Clay’s knee and swept his feet from under him. Springing up into a sitting position, she rammed the jagged end of the aluminum pipe under his chin as Clay collapsed forward. The pipe pierced the doctor’s jaw and his falling weight drove it up through his brain. Doctor Clay finally died as he slid down to be at eye level with Else.
“I’ve never counted how many of you motherfuckers I’ve destroyed,” she whispered into his face. “Because you don’t matter to me. Not a fucking damn.”
Pushing the corpse aside, she crawled over to the bed and pulled herself up.
There were no other clothes in the clinic that Else could see. The homemade cotton shift she wore was soaked with blood, sweat, and black gore.
Pulling the aluminum pole out of Clay’s skull, she cracked open the door and peeked. A young soldier type stood guard at the end of a narrow hallway. He carried an automatic rifle and wore black pants, boots, and shirt. Else watched him for a long moment. He did not move and didn’t appear to breathe.
Satisfied that he was an evol, Else opened the door wider and slipped out of the clinic. They shouldn’t be like this, she thought to herself. Adam was destroyed. The evols lost their minds. Here though, on this ship, they managed to keep it together. They had survived the destruction of the Adam organism and were still walking and talking.
Else moved quickly on silent feet. The guard turned at the last moment. She swung the metal pole up, like a golf swing. The sharp tip tore his body open from navel to chin. A belly full of stinking guts and grey slime spilled out on the floor. The soldier grunted. Raising his weapon, he fumbled to drag the slide back. Else twirled the pole and stabbed him through the eye, pinning his head to the wall. His legs kicked, arms jerking and slapping against the wall. Else grabbed the rifle as it fell from his dead hands.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Else said to the dead soldier as he shuddered and went still. With practiced ease Else checked the weapon. It was well maintained, and the magazine was full. The soldier carried no other ammunition. Else clicked the rifle over to single shot and tried the door at the end of the hallway. It opened a crack and she waited a few seconds, listening hard for any sound.
Else guessed the ship had once been a special place. The walls of the room beyond the door were decorated with framed pictures. Gold and glass glittered everywhere. The passage of the years had done little to dull the brightness and the wealth. She wondered what it would have been like to walk through the lounges and the bars when they were filled with people. Did they try to escape the horror of the end and find themselves trapped here? The crowd of people living in squalor far below decks seemed afraid to leave the ship for more than scavenging missions. But what kept them here? Was this a real sanctuary or just a better prison?
She crossed a restaurant where the chairs and tables had been broken down for firewood. The kitchen ahead of her stood silent and dusty. Any food left in there had been stripped out long ago. Even the knives were gone.
Else looked for a way out, her back burning in lines of fire where the stitched cuts were raised in weeping red welts. She reached over her back and pulled the cotton away from her wounds, hissing slightly when the fabric caught on the tender skin.
Lowanna must still be held somewhere below decks too. Else couldn’t leave without either of the babies; she felt she owed Jirra that much. Wincing, Else stood up and peered through the frosted glass to an outside deck area. It was daytime, the sun-cast shadows flickering across the window. Else ducked down; the silhouettes were too small to be people, alive or dead. She opened the door and the stench of stagnant water and nesting birds assaulted her nose.
The outside deck, thick with guano and shed feathers, surrounded a filthy pool. The pool water was a dark brown color. Seabirds roosted around the pool; some sat on makeshift nests while others squabbled and flew off on urgent errands from the rails. The air reverberated with their squalling cries and the flash of their grey and white wings.
Else stepped out of the restaurant and into the edge of the flock. They exploded skyward, a blizzard of birds taking flight. She clutched the automatic rifle against her chest and blundered blindly through the storm. Wings buffeted her and she slapped at the twisting bodies with her free hand. Crusted shit and shed feathers crunched underfoot. Else pushed on, thinking there had to be something beyond the storm of flapping wings. She found a rail and followed it.
At the end of the rail she found another covered area and a large set of glass doors. Else ran the last steps and the door opened in front of her.
“What are you doing up here? You’re scaring my birds!” a man, filthy and bearded
, yelled at her. His long hair and beard had been braided with bits of plastic and metal. He wore faded jeans and a shirt, stained with guano, sweat, and dirt. “You can’t be stirring them up like that! They’ll abandon the nests, and they might not come back!”
Else spat a feather out of her mouth and raised the rifle. He grabbed the barrel, pushing it aside as he dragged her inside, slamming the door against the cacophony of birds.
“You don’t come up here. You know what the Cap’n’ll do if you fuckers come up out of the hold,” he said.
“I’m not from down there. I came from the land,” Else replied, her grip still locked on the rifle.
“Shit?” the guy said, his eyebrows rising in surprise.
“The Sea People, they took my baby. I’ve come to get him back.” Else pulled free of his grip and hefted the gun.
“How old is he, this kid of yours?” the bearded man frowned.
“Just born. Two nights ago. I think. Maybe three.” Else felt a sick realization that she might have lost a night to unconsciousness.
The man rubbed his face and sighed. “You should go home, girl. Go back to your people and forget about him. Your boy’s gone.”
“No!” the word burst from Else in a near scream.
“Keep your damn voice down,” the man snarled.
“Not dead. I can feel him. He is still alive. I hear him.” Else felt the rare sting of tears in her eyes.
“Yeah? Well he won’t have long. The crew’ll make short work of him.” The bearded man spat on the stained carpet. “Did you come here on a boat?”
Else nodded.
“Alright, I can get you back there, but you gotta get away from here quick.”
“Not without my baby. Or Lowanna.”
“Now who the hell is Lowanna?”
“Jirra’s child. She’s only a few days old too.”
“Sweet fucking Christ. Did you bring a full beer tanker on board with you as well?”
Else looked at him in confusion. “I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“It means you gotta get the hell out. Go back and live your life. Forget this place.” The man walked away and Else followed.
“My baby is all I have. I’m not leaving without him.”
“Well then you’re fu—”
The man went silent. Else heard a door open somewhere above them. They stood in frozen silence for a second and then the man jerked Else under the shelter of a balcony. His hand went to his lips in a shushing gesture.
Else heard another door open and then the sound of a baby’s cry. She would have cried out, but her companion pressed his hand to her face, shaking his head. Above them the door closed and the silence returned.
“You can’t save him,” he whispered.
Else pulled his hand away from her mouth. “Why not?” she replied.
“There’s too many of them. They run this ship.”
“What about the dead? Why are the dead here?”
The man shook his head. “What are you talking about? The dead are the ones who run the damn ship.”
It was Else’s turn to shake her head. “No. We killed him. We destroyed the Adam, the one that controlled all the evols. He’s gone. They are just mindless zombies now.”
“I wouldn’t know shit about that,” the man said. “Here they stay smart by eating fresh meat.”
“That’s not enough,” Else retorted. “There’s no more Tankbread.”
The bearded man gave a grim smile, “The dead are smart. They gave a bunch of folks a safe place to live. A place to live without fear of being eaten. There’s a price, though. Always a price. Every time one of those folks in the hold squirts out a baby, they gotta toss a coin. Heads, they give it up to the Captain and him and his crew eats the babies. Keeps their brains working. Keeps them smart and almost human.”
Else felt cold winds roar through her mind. Newborns, bodies loaded with stem cells. The same combination of biological perfection as Tankbread. So even without the Adam the dead still functioned.
“Oh no . . .” Else whispered.
“Yeah, so you can forget your kid. You just brought Sunday lunch for these bastards.”
Else stepped away from the wall, the gun steady in her hands. She stared up at the balcony. Babies were up there. Probably hers and Lowanna too. “How many of them?” she asked.
“Don’t be stupid, girl. Just walk away.”
“I said, how many of them?”
The man sighed. “There’s maybe twenty. They choose folks sometimes, special ones. There’s a few who choose to die and come back as one of them, you know. They give them poison so they die as easy as going to sleep. Makes them come back smarter.”
Else nodded. She knew how it worked. She’d learned all she could about evols in the last nine months. “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.”
“Are you crazy?” the man asked.
“A man called Sun Tzu, lived a long time ago. He wrote a book about how to win wars. I’ve read it,” Else replied.
“Well there ain’t a lot of use for that samurai shit here, sister. Best you come with me and we get you back on your boat and on your way.”
“What’s your name?” Else asked.
“Uhh . . . Eric . . . Eric Valman.” He looked a little embarrassed. “No one’s asked for my name in a long time.”
“My name is Else. I traveled with a man once. He never gave me his name. I didn’t know to ask until it was too late. I always ask now.” Else stepped out of the shadow cast by the setting sun.
“I’m not leaving without my baby. He doesn’t have a name yet. I need to get to know him so I can give him the right name.”
Eric sighed. “Do you know why I’m up here and not down in the shit with those other dumb arses?”
Else shook her head and Eric continued. “It’s because I know how to survive. I know not to get noticed. I know how to get by without making a fuss. You, missy, are making a fuss. You are going to get us killed or tossed down the hold with the rest of them.”
“I’m going up there. I’m going to kill every one of them. I’m getting my babies back. Then I’m going to leave.” Else turned her back and started for the stairs.
Eric grabbed her arm. “Not that way. You’ll get yourself killed, and then bring the crew down on the rest of us. By which I mean me. I won’t stand for that. Sooner kill you myself.”
“Why not just kill the evols?” Else wrenched her arm free.
“Why’d you wanna come in here and start messing things up? We can survive just fine without you screwing with the quorum.”
“Status quo,” Else corrected.
“Whatever. Follow me.” Eric led her through a door and down stairs. The ceiling was hung with empty tin cans; when Else’s head brushed against them they jangled softly.
“Mind yer head,” Eric said and a moment later a match flared. The small light touched against the wick of an oil lamp and the space glowed. Else breathed again; the darkness always felt so suffocating.
Eric unlocked a steel door and they went into a cramped space filled with boxes of canned food and cases of bottled water. He pushed the door shut and locked it from the inside as soon as Else passed through.
“Excuse the mess,” he said, sweeping empty tins off the table and onto the floor. “Take a seat.”
“You live alone here?”
“Always have, I was one of the first aboard. When people started trying to escape by boat, it was chaos. They were still allowing ticket holders to get on the ship; I got a ticket. Twenty-four hours later and I would’ve been one of them that were crushed in the dock stampede. Lot of people died that day. The crew and some navy boys started shooting people on the gangplank. It was a slaughter. I didn’t muck about, got myself a secure spot and started gathering supplies. Whole ship was in an uproar before they cast off, but no one paid any attention to me. Even got myself a crew uniform to help blend in. By the time the i
nfection started in the crew, I was locked up good and tight.
“They were smart ones, but not as smart as me. They started out by snatching babies and then they got the people to make more. Sacrifice the kids and live in sanctuary. No one knew what was happening back on shore, but no one sure as hell wanted to go back. So here they stayed. Now they go out salvaging and fishing, but they’re shit scared of the land. Better the devil you know, I suppose.”
Silence fell over the small room. Else stared steadily at Eric until he blushed. “You hungry?”
She nodded. “The last thing I ate was grilled fish. Jirra cooked it. That was at least two days ago.”
Eric busied himself among the stacked cartons of tinned food. “I don’t get visitors. I don’t encourage them. I prefer being on my own. No need for other people; they just get you killed or die themselves.” Cans of various colors and ingredients were set down on the table. “Spam, beans, and fruit salad for dessert,” he announced. “As it’s a special occasion, I’ll even heat it up.”
Else sank down to the floor and curled up on her side in a fetal position. The gashes on her back stung where her dressed wounds rubbed. She cradled the rifle in her arms and closed her eyes as Eric ignited a small camp burner. He poured tins of salted meat and kidney beans into a battered pot, and then set it over the flame.
Else snapped awake, a defensive hand lashing out at Eric who was crouched over her.
“Easy!” he scuttled backwards, one hand raised in a passive gesture. “Don’t try to move too much. I can change those dressings. I have a few bandages.”
The fire in her back had eased; the deep cuts were already healing. In a few days she wouldn’t even have scars.
“I dreamed of my baby . . . I heard him crying,” Else muttered.
“He’s not here.”
“Water?” Else asked, her voice a dry rasp.
“Here, drink slowly.” Eric took a battered plastic cup from the table and water trickled into Else’s mouth. She swallowed, feeling her insides soak up the moisture like a sponge.
Tankbread 2: Immortal Page 5
