Chris gave a low whistle when she was done. “You’ve been in the shit, haven’t you?”
Megan exchanged a glance with Jack. “You could say that.”
Chris nudged the throttle, and the deck thrummed harder beneath her feet. He gestured at the bloody bandage covering Jack’s stump. “So, Jack, what’s going on with your arm?”
Fuck. Megan cringed inside. That was the same question she would have asked had their situations been reversed. “We had an accident in Houston,” she said before Jack could speak.
“An accident, huh?” Chris cocked his head.
“That’s right.”
Luke spoke up. “A zombie bit him! But Megan cut Jack’s arm off like it was nothing. She saved his life.”
Chris yanked back on the throttle, and the boat began to slow.
“Thanks, Luke,” Megan said, shooting him a withering glare. “He’s right. I caught it before it spread.”
The boat lost its forward momentum, and the world began to spin around them as the storm cupped them in its hands and shook them like a pair of dice. Megan quickly lost all sense of direction.
Chris put his hand to his forehead and rubbed hard. “Damn it! I was afraid of that. You can’t come with us.”
A sudden panic gripped Megan. She stepped between the men. “And why not?”
Chris took his hand off the control stick and turned to face her. “Why not? How about because he’s infected?” He craned his head to look past her. A pistol cocked somewhere to her rear.
“I told you!” Ben said accusingly from just over her shoulder. “We should have left them there.”
Chris snapped, “That’s enough.” He sighed. “Look. It’s simple. We can’t take anyone onto the platform if they’re showing signs of infection.” He pointed at Jack’s stump. “And if that’s not a sign of infection, I don’t know what is.”
Megan wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “Did you say platform?”
“Yeah. The Gulf Star. It’s an oil platform about a mile out.”
Megan opened her mouth to speak, but Chris put up his hand. “Look. I want to believe you. I really do.”
“Then, why don’t you?” Megan seethed inside. She hated herself for putting Chris in this position, for demanding he break the very same rules she had instituted in Scorpion Canyon. God knew she had turned away enough people over the years, and for far less. She would have done anything to protect her community. “I’m telling you, it’s been two days. He’s clean.”
Chris ran his hands through his hair and cursed. “I’m going to call Hines.”
Alarm bells rang in Megan’s head. “Who’s Hines?”
“Captain Hines,” Chris said. “He’s the boss on the platform. This is his call.”
“And if he says no?”
Chris stared at her. “If he says no, then Jack stays here. We’re not going back to shore.”
Jack sucked in his breath.
“Make the call,” Megan said.
She returned to Jack’s side and laced the fingers of one hand into Jack’s good one. She looked him in the eye and forced herself to smile. His gaze, she noticed, was a little less distant. She desperately wanted to reach out and check his fever, but the action would no doubt become only another piece of ammunition for Chris to use against them.
Chris pulled the radio handset from the console and pressed the transmit button. “Chris to Hines. Over.”
The radio crackled, and a deep, masculine voice boomed through the cabin. “Did you get them?” Rich and sonorous, almost liquid, it was the voice of a man accustomed to being in charge. It was also a voice full of undisguised relief.
“We did,” Chris said. “But we’ve got a situation.” His gaze slid to Jack.
“A situation?”
Chris exhaled. “Yeah. One of them was bitten. It happened a couple of days ago, they say, and he hasn’t turned yet, although he looks sick as hell.”
Damn it! She had hoped Chris wouldn’t notice Jack’s pallor.
Hines didn’t answer right away, and Megan began to imagine the worst. The seconds ticked by. She shifted on her feet, continuously adjusting her weight to counter the unpredictable rise and fall of the deck.
“Sorry,” Hines said finally. “Someone was in here with me. You said this man was bitten two days ago?”
“That’s the story.”
“Dump him. And get your ass back here as fast as you can. The storm is about to get a whole lot worse.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Megan saw Justin take a step toward Jack. She drew her pistol and with two quick steps, she had it pressed tightly against Chris’s forehead. “Make another move, and he dies.”
Justin froze in mid-stride. His eyes, full of indecision, flashed to Chris.
Chris removed his finger from the transmit button. “It’s okay. Do what she says.”
Megan repositioned herself so she could see the entire cabin. “You’re not dumping him.” She felt tears threatening and willed them back.
“The storm is getting worse,” Chris evenly. “We need to get back before we lose our window.”
Megan shook her head. “We will. All of us.”
Chris keyed the transmitter. “Hines. We’ve got a problem. One of the other survivors is insisting we bring the infected man with us.”
“What do you mean insisting?” Hines asked. “Just dump him and get on your way.”
“Negative,” Chris replied. Megan thought it odd he wasn’t mentioning the gun pointed in his face.
Hines came back right away. “Let me talk to them.”
Chris shrugged and passed the microphone to her.
“This is Megan Pritchard.”
The calmness in Hines’s voice was gone when he spoke. “Do you have any idea of the risks our people took coming to get you? To pull your asses out of there?”
Megan swallowed. “I do, and I appreciate their efforts. Really. But we’re not leaving my friend behind. He’s not infected.”
Hines muttered under his breath. “Let me talk to Chris again.”
Megan frowned in confusion, then returned the microphone to Chris.
“Can you secure the infected man?” Hines asked.
Chris gave Justin and Ben a questioning look.
“We have plenty of duct tape,” Ben said with a shrug.
“That’ll work.”
He returned his attention to the radio. “Yeah. We can secure him.”
“Do it, then. We’ll sort this out when you get back.”
Chris motioned at Justin and Ben, and they started rummaging through cabinets.
“Can I have the mic again?” Megan asked. “Please,” she added when she sensed Chris’s reluctance.
He gave it to her.
“Thank you, Captain Hines. You have no idea how much this—”
Hines cut her off. “Don’t thank me. I don’t take kindly to people threatening me or my crew, and by bringing an infected to the platform, you’re doing just that. I hope for all our sakes you’re right. If you’re not…”
Megan got the message. “I understand.” She handed the microphone back to Chris.
“Hines? This is Chris again.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s under control. We’re on our way. Over.”
The radio squawked. “Be safe.”
Chris hung the microphone on the control panel and locked eyes with Megan. “Would you mind putting that gun down now?”
Reluctantly, Megan lowered the pistol and slipped it into her holster.
She moved to Jack’s side. “Are you okay?”
He gave her a grim look. “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
Justin and Ben set to work securing Jack. They wrapped his arms, both good and bad, with multiple layers of silver duct tape, crisscrossing his entire body. Justin was about to lay a strip across Jack’s mouth, but Megan stopped him. “He’s got to be able to breathe.”
All the while, Luke watched in dejected silence.
When Justin and Ben fi
nished, they guided Jack across the cabin and sat him on a narrow bench next to Luke. Megan squeezed in beside him and braced herself for whatever came next.
Thirty-Four
Gulf Star Oil Platform
Gulf of Mexico
Chris clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on the control stick. He cursed himself for taking such a risk with his own life and that of his crew. His earlier confidence was fading by the second, and he was beginning to wonder if they would, in fact, make it home in one piece. He was in way over his head, and he had no one to blame but himself.
If not for the remnants of the GPS network, they would never have made it as far as they had. That the satellites were still functioning at all was a miracle as far as he was concerned. The collapse of the global navigation system, slow at first, was accelerating as orbits decayed and necessary maintenance went unperformed. Chris guessed the network had perhaps another six months to a year before enough pieces went dark that it became unusable. Somewhere between now and then, they were going to have to learn how to navigate the old-fashioned way. That meant trips like this one would be a thing of the past. Not that he would miss them.
He snuck a glance over his shoulder at Megan. She was sitting beside Jack, her head resting on his shoulder. Chris watched her mouth move as she murmured to the man, the words lost under the roar of the engines and the relentless crash of the hull against the waves.
His thoughts drifted to their earlier confrontation. He had been furious at first when Megan had shoved her gun into his face, mostly at himself for not seeing it coming, but also at her for biting the hand he had offered her. When a few seconds passed without her pulling the trigger, his anger had turned to a mix of sadness and grudging respect as he realized the woman was simply doing what she had to in order to survive. The passion burning in her eyes ignited something inside of him, something he hadn’t known was there.
Chris forced his attention back to the sea and tried to focus. He couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy at the way Megan doted on Jack. It reminded him of life before everything went to shit. The Gulf Star, for all the comforts it provided in their broken world, was a lonely existence. The lack of eligible women on the platform was a constant source of frustration to the mostly male population, and each time a party went ashore, there was a barely-disguised undercurrent of tension as they all wondered if a new woman would return. Megan’s arrival would no doubt cause quite the stir, even though it was clear she and Jack had already paired off.
Chris wiped his brow. Surviving on land for three years, under constant threat of zombie invasion, couldn’t have been easy. Whatever Megan had been through had no doubt turned her into a ruthless, yet pragmatic survivor, and that was something they could use, not to mention her experience with the outside world. It had been a long time since they had met anyone from beyond the Houston and Galveston areas. It might even help in his argument with Hines.
Only a week earlier, before Big Bitch had exploded across the horizon, Chris and Hines had had a heated debate about their future in the gulf. Chris was concerned they were getting soft, becoming too comfortable in their isolated existence. The undead were still out there, he had argued, waiting for them. The Gulf Star was a good place to regroup, but it couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be their only future. Hines had vehemently disagreed, pointing out there were plenty of other platforms in the gulf, hundreds in fact, and that if they ran into problems with the Gulf Star or the Dixie Sunrise, they could simply move to another.
That plan hadn’t sat well with Chris. The idea of ceding the land to the undead felt wrong on some fundamental level. He loved the feel of dirt beneath his feet, and he missed it with all his heart. He longed to feel the hot Texas wind scratching at his face, to smell the fragrant scent of freshly turned dirt. How Hines could consider abandoning it all was unfathomable.
“Chris?” It was the kid, Luke.
“Yeah. What is it?”
“You’re not going to throw Jack overboard, are you?”
Chris swallowed. “I don’t know yet. If he’s really infected…”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not. You know it.”
Chris averted his gaze, pretending to check the GPS. When he looked up, Luke was still there, waiting. “Look,” he said. “We’re taking a big risk in bringing him with us. We haven’t had an outbreak on the platform in a long time, not since…”
“Since when?” Luke asked.
“Since a long time ago.” Chris recalled the last outbreak, and the terror he had felt as a lone zombie rampaged through the facility, infecting six of his crewmates before they caught him and put him down.
“Jack will be okay,” Luke said. “He has to be.”
Chris fixed him in his gaze. “I hope you’re right.”
The navigation console beeped, startling him.
Chris straightened. “Look at that! We’re almost there. It should be just ahead.”
Luke inched closer to the front window, straining to see through the storm.
As if on command, they crested a swell and lightning illuminated the sea around them. The towering structure of the Gulf Star platform rose out of the depths a few hundred yards directly off the bow. Then it was gone, swallowed up by the night.
Luke pointed. “Was that it?”
Chris toggled the searchlight on, once again illuminating the concrete base of the platform. “It is.”
He turned to face the rear of the cabin. “We’re here! Justin. Ben. Get ready!”
Without a word, the men donned their rain slickers and slipped outside the cabin.
Megan left Jack and came to Chris’s side. “What happens now?”
Chris feathered the controls as they drew closer, putting the boat on a course that would take them directly under the southern edge of the deck. A few more seconds… Now. He pulled back on the throttle, cutting their speed to half. “They’re going to hoist us up.”
Megan’s stared at him in shock. “Are you kidding?”
Chris grinned. “I wish.” He picked up the radio and hit the transmitter. “This is Boat Two calling Gulf Star. We’re home.”
The radio crackled, and a man’s voice came through. “Boat Two. We read you loud and clear.”
“How?” Megan asked.
“Not now. I need to concentrate.” Chris worked the controls, doing his best to maintain their position relative to the deck. If things went according to plan, he would feel it soon.
A tortured metallic groan erupted from deep within the hull. There it is. Chris let out a sigh of relief. “That’s one.” The boat spun slowly, pivoting around the bow as the seas tugged at the hull.
“What’s happening?” Luke asked, alarm filling his voice.
Chris kept an eye on the platform, willing the next step to happen quickly, before they were dashed against the looming barnacle encrusted support pylon.
After a teeth-rattling clank, the boat stopped spinning. That was what Chris had been waiting for. “That’s two!” He placed the radio to his lips and held it there, his thumb hovering above the transmit button.
The door banged opened, and Justin and Ben dashed back into the cabin. Under their sopping exteriors, both men wore looks of grim satisfaction. Justin slammed the door and announced they were ready to go.
“Hold on everyone!” Chris yelled as he grabbed a nearby handhold for support and pushed the transmit button. “Bring us up.”
“Copy,” came the reply.
The boat twisted violently as the cables attached to the bow and stern drew taut. With a giant sucking sensation, the boat was wrenched free from the face of the gulf. Luke lost his balance and tumbled across the cabin into Justin’s arms. Jack slid a few inches, sending Megan rushing to his side with a curse that would make a sailor proud.
Chris killed the engines and breathed a sigh of relief as they began the long, slow climb to the deck of the Gulf Star.
“Cool!” Luke said with an excited grin.
Chris couldn’t help b
ut smile. It was cool. It would be even cooler, though, if they weren’t carrying an infected passenger.
Thirty-Five
Gulf Star Oil Platform
Gulf of Mexico
The RB-M settled onto the deck of the Gulf Star with a hollow thud.
Megan moved to the window facing the platform superstructure. Several men, all dressed in the same yellow rain slickers as Chris and his crew, scurried about, lashing the boat to the deck with thick steel chains. She shook her head in amazement at the practiced efficiency of their movements. After so many years spent languishing in the desert, the casual manner in which the people of the Gulf Star applied technology seemed almost like magic.
A sharp clang rang out from the port side of the boat, and she heard the slip-slap of multiple pairs of feet ascending a metal ladder. Two men appeared in the doorway a second later. The rain on the glass obscured their features.
Megan returned to Jack’s side and took his hand. Luke crowded onto the bench on Jack’s other side. “Is this Hines?” she asked Chris.
Chris nodded and flipped a switch on the control panel. The electronic screens went dark, leaving the overhead light as the sole illumination in the cabin.
“Un-huh. That’s him. The tall one.”
Megan stomach turned to a hard knot.
The door swung open, and Hines stepped through. His body filled the entire doorway, and he had to stoop to avoid brushing his head on the ceiling. The second man followed close behind, carrying a doctor’s bag in his right hand. Both men wore guns on their hips.
Ben and Justin slipped out behind the men, closing the door behind them.
Hines nodded in Chris’s direction. “Chris. Glad to see you back on in one piece.”
Chris chuckled. “It’s good to be back. Thanks for coming.”
Hines gave him a dismissive wave.
Megan wasted no time going on the offensive. She leaped to her feet and crossed the room in two quick strides, stopping in front of Hines and his companion. “Captain Hines?”
Hines glared at her. “That’s right. And you must be the reason I’m out here instead of in my office where it’s warm and dry.” He extended his hand.
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