by Mark Tufo
“The bridge. And don’t ask me if I’m sure, because I’m not.”
“Wasn’t going to say anything, Cap.”
6
Mike Journal Entry 6
For all the action we’d been going through, the way to the bridge was exceedingly quiet. From time to time, we’d hear rifle fire. It was nice to know we weren’t completely alone, but the sound was so distant and muffled it was difficult to figure out where it was coming from, and even more so to consider offering help. We climbed up six flights of stairs. The fighting had been intense, and this far along it was impossible to tell zombie from crew person. Had to push more than a few bodies to the side so that we could step without being shin-deep in decomposition. Many years ago, I’d watched arguably one of the greatest movies ever: The Shawshank Redemption. I’d warn you I’m about to reveal spoilers for that movie but, right now, you’re too busy trying to secure enough food for the upcoming winter to worry about finding a copy and figuring out how to get power to play it on your DVD player. Where the hell was I? Oh yeah, Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted and sent to jail. He spends years figuring out how to escape, ends up crawling through the prison sewer system. Back then, a part of me wondered how he’d ever managed that; I mean, how could you quite literally crawl through chunks of shit and rivers of piss? And here we were doing the same damn thing only worse. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to erase the smell from my memory.
“Door’s locked,” Reed said as we came onto a wraparound catwalk.
“Another way in?” I asked, trying the door myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him, just what guys tend to do. Kind of like the Sword in the Stone myth, right? Just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean I can’t. In this case, it did mean exactly that.
We walked around the corner to see half a body sticking out of a window.
“Yeah, there’s another way in,” he said as he went to pull the sailor free. Wasn’t at all thrilled when the top half thudded to the deck inside the Admiral’s bridge and the bottom half by my feet.
“Fuck.” Everything I was wearing was getting tossed as soon as I had something to replace it with. I put my head through, careful of the jagged glass. I was worried that the area was going to be entirely shot up like a junked car at a shooting range. It appeared whatever battles had raged and been waged, none of them had made it here. There was one man sitting in a chair, his head resting at his console, a pistol in his hand. I pulled my head back out. Reed smashed out the remaining glass and went in first.
“Gary, lock the stairwell door. Stenzel, see if you can locate the rest of the platoon.”
Reed opened the door for us. “You want me to fire her up?” he asked. “One flight up is the navigation bridge.” He led the way to a staircase and we followed.
“You can do that?” I was looking around the control room. There were more buttons, dials, levers, switches, and monitors than I’d ever want to count.
“I can’t pilot the thing, but I should be able to get the power running,” Reed said.
“You realize, sir, that this is a nuclear-powered vessel,” Walde pointed out.
“I’m aware,” I told her.
“You just gave the green light to a career private to ‘power her up.’”
Reed gave her the finger as he looked over the instrumentation. I felt reasonably sure there wasn’t a self-destruct button or a scuttling option.
“I think I’m ready.” He was looking over his shoulder at me.
I’d fucked up a few things during my military career, both previously and recently, but I’d never before been in a position to trash something in the eight-billion-dollar range. I guess the only good thing to come out of my vampire blood was I could live long enough to pay it back, or at least brag about it.
“Do it,” I told him.
BT gritted his teeth, like that would be enough to stop the flash from a nuclear explosion. There was no warm-up period, no wondering if it worked. Everything lit up the moment he did whatever it was he did. We had overhead lights and the systems were all booting up and coming back on-line. We’d suffered a lot of losses this day; it was nice to have this small boost.
“Sir.” Stenzel had popped onto the bridge. I followed her out onto the catwalk. Far down toward the front of the ship were four reavers, all pacing around, but their heads remained riveted on our position.
“Safe to say they know we’re up here. Only the four?”
“Not really.” She was tight-lipped.
“Stenzel.”
“I saw it, sir, and I still don’t know what I saw.”
“Harley?” She was clearly upset, and I wanted her to know she could talk to me as a friend, as opposed to her commanding officer.
“Zombies seemed, I mean, they looked like they were leading people, soldiers, away.”
I didn’t doubt her. We’d already suspected as much, but suspect and have proof, though, those are two vastly different things.
“We need to get to that armory. In the meantime, kill them.”
“With pleasure.” She was able to take out two of the reavers before the other pair ran for cover.
“What’s going on? You look paler than usual,” BT said, and I don’t even think he was going for humor.
“The zombies are taking prisoners.” There was no need for him to ask why, and “prisoner” was most definitely the wrong descriptor.
“I’m through to the camp,” Sergeant Walde said, holding the oversized radio phone.
“This is Captain Talbot.”
“Where’s Major Overland?” It was Major Eastman, who now found himself in command of our unit.
“Fallen.”
Eastman said nothing.
“As has most of the platoon. We’ve made it to the bridge.”
“And the asset?”
“If you’re talking about the nuke that no one thought I should know about, I haven’t a clue where it is. We barely made it to the bridge, and we have injured. But hey, thanks for asking.”
“Captain Talbot, that asset is of the utmost importance. You will continue the mission and secure it.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear, fearful if I kept it there, I was going to tell him to shove a pineapple up his ass, green prickly part first to make sure all the pointy edges tore it up as it entered. I thought I might need to count to one thousand by fractions before I could speak in a tone that didn’t convey the extreme anger I felt.
“Major, did you not hear the part where I said most of the platoon is gone or captured, the major is dead, I have injured, we’re low on ammunition and barricaded on the bridge? Because I’m not so sure it got past the shit that must be caked in your ears.”
“Diplomatic,” BT whispered.
“The dipshit still wants us to go and get his party favor,” I said, looking at BT but talking on the phone. “Tell you what, Major, you want it so fucking bad, come and get it.” With that, I slammed the phone down. Had to admit it was nice to have a phone big enough to do that with. Ever since cell phones came into existence, you really couldn’t do that anymore for fear of shattering the thing. Plus, they didn’t really have the heft to give you a satisfactory smack. It’s the little things you miss most.
“Now what?” BT asked.
“We replenish our weapons, get the rest of the platoon back, and get that friggen’ nuke.”
“But…”
“I know what I told him. Reed, you’re going to come with us. I need you to get us to the armory. Stenzel, you’re on sniper duty; you are free to engage any combatants. Winters, I need you to look after Kirby and Grimm. Walde, how much of this ship can you get running, and do you need help?”
“I was on an aircraft carrier for a couple of years, but I was security. I know some stuff; I could use a couple of people.”
“Rose, Gary, you both help her out.”
I regretted that I hadn’t brought Harmon along on this mission, but the squad looked at her differently since she’d left an
d come back. They’d not held her decision against her, not in the traditional fashion, meaning they wouldn’t say anything about it to her or even talk about it behind her back, all the same, she’d abandoned post and they didn’t trust her to have their backs if and when the time came, and without that, she became more of a liability. Still, provided she stayed alive, it would have freed up my brother or Rose for this little jaunt.
“Sir, there are intercoms throughout the ship,” Walde said.
The dour part of me wanted to tell her, “Great, I’ll make sure to hit the button while we’re getting torn to shreds.” It wasn’t like they were going to be able to do anything if we needed help. Instead, I told her “Thanks.” We still had Tommy, and the kid was basically a pack mule on steroids. Good bet he could load up the entire contents of the armory on his back and bring it back to our new HQ.
“That’s not a good look on you,” BT said as he checked his gear.
“Shut up and help me get Grimm’s and Kirby’s chainmail. Rose, I need a little something in case the armory is locked.” She fished around in her bag and handed Baggelli a chunk of C-4 along with a detonator cap.
“Nothing personal, sir,” she told me.
“None taken.” I could be as much trusted with explosives as I could to the keys to a rental car. The representatives were always pleased as punch to sell me their over-priced, no questions asked, insurance policies, but not so much when I would bring back the much less than pristine vehicle. As far as I’m concerned, that fucking insurance was a free pass, making that vehicle more of something for recreation than travel. Never really knew how much damage you could do to a car hitting a speed bump at seventy. I once brought a Toyota Camry four-wheeling—pretty lucky a Jeep with a winch showed up. I’d suffered through him calling me a dumbass a half-dozen times because I’m pretty sure ripping out the undercarriage on the Waldorf Pass wouldn’t be covered, even by the deluxe, “get out of damage card,” I’d bought.
A few minutes later, Baggelli and Reed were donning their new duds. Stenzel’s lips were pressed tight as she watched us leave. Once we made it down the stairwell and could take a breath that didn’t reek, Reed halted us.
“Okay, we’re going to stay on the hangar deck, past the bomb elevators, then it’s down one flight of stairs. We’ll go past the dental offices, a couple of other doors, and then we’ll be at the armory.”
I knew why he was telling us this; if something happened to him, we still needed the weapons. We made it undetected through most of the hangar deck, but when we passed the bomb elevators we were spotted. It didn’t look like they were specifically looking for us, like maybe they were a random patrol or were heading to the bridge. All that changed quickly enough.
“Move,” I told Reed, who was wondering if we were going to stay and fight. I didn’t see the upside; it would just give them more time to reinforce. Bags had stopped as we got to the stairwell door and laid down a few rounds.
“Right behind you!” he yelled as I followed the rest down. It was great that the area was lit, even if it did give witness to the horror within. I had no idea why staircases tended to be hot zones, but I was getting pretty sick of it. We moved quickly but carefully—I know I was doing my best to not hit a slick and go for an ass-bruising ride. We’d no sooner got to the next floor when the zombies got to the door above us. Unfortunately, they’d not heeded Baggelli’s repeated 5.56 warnings. For as smart as they were getting, it would be great if they began to hesitate when faced with danger. Yeah, there were times they would withdraw when faced with overwhelming odds, but that was rare, and as of yet, I’d not seen them directly care for a fallen comrade. Except for the reavers, that is. They appeared to be able to make bonds among their groups. Did that make them more or less dangerous? In all likelihood, it made it worse; there was our own propensity to fight harder for the soldier next to us. We’d yet to come across a zombie advancement that worked in our favor.
They were too close, especially if we had to break into the armory, and then there was the all too imaginable issue that it could very well have been emptied during those first few chaotic hours. We had some ammo, but we were hardly flush with it.
“No sense in taking it with us,” I said as I flipped my selector switch to giggle, Marine Corps slang for fully auto. I don’t know who among you may have ever had the opportunity to fire a machinegun, but generally speaking, if you weren’t receiving return fire, it was fun as hell to spray and pray.
“Huh?” BT had pulled up. I would imagine trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about, like always.
“Gotta stop them here. Reed, keep going!” I was going to make my stand within the doorframe, BT joining me was an impossibility. “Go!” I told him as I opened up on the first few to come onto the landing, a half flight of steps away from me.
“I’ll hand you mags,” he said as he pulled some free from the pouch he was wearing. No wonder I liked BT; he was as stubborn as the bulldog breed. I didn’t know how big the patrol had been, but I’d killed seven so far and they were still coming. Lost a little ground as I switched out mags. I was proficient at the maneuver, having practiced and done it realtime over a thousand times, but the zombies, as I’ve said, never stop. They don’t pause to ponder, they just continue on their ceaseless and insatiable mission to eat. I knew full auto was wasteful, as I was plugging multiple holes into my enemy, didn’t care. I may have been yelling; I was too lost in the moment to take notice. The staccato bursts in the enclosure, the strange echoing patterns, the explicit blood sprays, all conspired to make me feel as if I were immersed in an intense virtual reality game. I would have even sworn that high up in the left hand most portion of my sight was a kill register notifying me of how many enemies I’d scored in this round. Twenty-four, and there’s so many more. Neil Young would be pissed if he realized how I’d bastardized his lyrics, using them in my grim count.
Bodies were flopping down the stairs, falling over the railings, and piling up and still, they came. They should have reached a point where they realized the folly of this tactic, but maybe they were defending what they felt was theirs. That was highly possible, and an enemy fighting for a cause, well, just ask any 18th century Brit how that had worked out.
“Last one!” BT shouted into my ear as he tapped my shoulder and I reached back to grab it. That meant I had three more.
“Go, right behind you!”
“Fuck you, Mike! Every time you say that shit, we end up separated.”
I shrugged, he was right.
“Armory is open!” Bags had to shout to be heard.
“And?” BT asked. Since he came back alone and announced it like it was noon at mess hall, it was probable all was good, but I couldn’t abandon this chokepoint under an assumption.
“Like Toys R Us for Jarheads!”
That was all I needed to hear. Loaded up one final mag and lead-hosed it to empty in seconds. After that, we moved quickly. Looking down the hallway, the door to the armory was visible, and the corridor was redirected around the bump-out. I was hoping that they'd had to make the room bigger to fit the extra weapons; I was not disappointed. Reed was standing in the doorway. Tough to be overly happy about anything these days, but he did have a slight grin as he waved us on. As we got close, Bags stopped and pressed up against the bulkhead so BT and I could pass.
“Still coming!” he shouted as he began to fire.
Tommy walked out of the room looking more like Rambo than any person I’d ever seen in real life. He strode past with authority, a rocket launcher resting on his shoulder. He tapped Baggelli’s arm. The man looked over and saw what Tommy was packing and wisely thought to join us in the armory. There was a loud whoosh, then a fireball inducing explosion that rattled my bones.
“Whooooo!” Tommy yelled, spreading his arms out low and throwing his head back. The kid wasn’t generally that expressive when it came to his kills, or much of anything, but the whole thing was playing out like a movie. Might as well act his role
. “That ought to hold them for a minute!”
Couldn’t see much down the hallway due to the smoke and twisted debris, but I picked up the movement of loping reavers quick enough. “Tommy, come on!”
“Motherfuckers,” he mumbled as he spent a moment watching before quickly turning and rejoining us. Sticking with the movie theme, it looked like something out of Alien, the reavers, in their haste to get to us, were not only running along the decking but also sideways on the walls, just like they had on the semi when I was trying to give Dallas some room to run.
When I played video games, I liked to play on normal mode and with save points before each boss. Right now, it seemed we were playing beast mode with one life to give. I didn’t like it at all.
Reed shut and locked the door once Tommy was in. The room was roughly twenty by thirty, so, a substantial-sized master bedroom, I guess, and it was packed with goodies. When the ship had fallen a few sailors or Marines had got here and had done their best to defend themselves but they were in the minority, the place was virtually untouched. There were M16s and their smaller brothers, the M4s. Some Benelli semi-automatic shotguns, the missile launcher that Tommy had used. Beretta and Sig pistols, two light machineguns and a much heavier fifty caliber one, and then something I immediately gravitated toward.
“What in the fuck is this beauty?” I picked up what looked like a rifle with a drum attached to it.
