The Savage Dead (17 page)

The change of tone in Mr. Crouch's voice made Juan take notice. The sudden familiarity had an ominous ring to it.

“Yes, sir?”

“I want you to know my recommendation was to blow that ship out of the water. We can't afford the infection that's onboard that ship to reach a civilian population.”

“Yes, sir,” Juan answered, nearly choking on his reply. He was thinking about Tess. He couldn't stop thinking about her, how she'd been so eager to impress him that she'd jumped on this assignment.

“But I've got my orders,” Mr. Crouch went on. “You've got your team. You extract Senator Sutton and any other of our people you can, and then abandon that ship. Thirty minutes after you board her, I'm going to send in a pair of F-15s to make sure that ship never sees port again. Thirty minutes. No more, no less. And I won't call off the birds for any reason.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Good luck, Agent Perez.”

Juan started to respond, but Mr. Crouch had already hung up.

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Paul was still running on fear, blind with adrenaline, when he stumbled onto the Lido Deck. The blinding sun and the hot wind off the ocean hit him in the face like a slap, and all at once the reckless panic that had driven him to run for his life left him and only the cold, jittery numbness of shock remained.

He turned, scanning the deck.

A few pieces of trash, cocktail napkins and Styrofoam cups and bits of bloody clothing, had been blown by the wind against walls and chaise longues. Some of it floated in the pool. But aside from the trash, the deck was empty and relatively undisturbed. Row after row of chaise longues stood in orderly, undisturbed rows, like soldiers on parade. All the bar stools were neatly tucked up against the bar. Everything looked normal. Or close to it. That surprised him. After what he'd seen below, he figured destruction would be general all over the ship. At the very least, he thought passengers would have assembled up here in the hopes of signaling for help.

But he was alone.

He turned toward the green-blue sea and realized they were dead in the water. The sea was glassy; the sky calm with only a few tattered gray clouds high in the atmosphere. It was a beautiful day, and it was completely at odds with what he'd just experienced. Shouldn't the horizon be crowded with battleships and hospital ships on the way to help? Shouldn't the sky be smeared a coal black by smoke? He remembered the images he saw of that Italian cruise ship that had crashed and partially capsized, the way it had listed in the water and the way other ships surrounded it like lions on a fresh kill. Weren't disasters like this supposed to bring every available ship to help out? Wasn't that some kind of sailor's code or something?

Confused and frustrated by his own mounting feelings of helplessness, he turned away. Not knowing what else to do, he took his phone from his pocket and tried to call Senator Sutton. At the least he could tell her to get Tess and stay in her cabin with the door locked.

But the phone wasn't working. It wouldn't connect. He tried the e-mail and all he could get was the old stuff he'd already read. There were no new messages.

The Internet was down, too.

He was scrolling through apps randomly, desperately begging the phone to work, when a commotion on the opposite side of the pool caught his attention. A veranda cast a shadow over the chaise longues and the bar and part of the pool and he leaned forward, straining his eyes against the dark.

Something was moving in the darkness over there, and while he couldn't make it out, he knew he didn't want to face it.

Paul ducked into a bar and knelt down out of sight.

A woman ran out of the shadows, obviously terrified, stumbling over chairs, nearly tripping headlong into a column next to the pool. She was panting, breathing hard, looking behind her every few seconds like hell itself was on her heels.

“What are you doing?” he muttered. “Run, lady. Get up and run.”

She pulled herself up on the post and started around the pool, coming Paul's way.

“Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no. Stay over there.”

But she kept coming. She was almost directly in front of his hiding spot now, less than ten feet from him, when a crowd of zombies ran out of the shadows, searching for her.

She saw them coming and sagged to the deck, her sweaty hair hanging over her face.

“Run,” Paul said. “Please don't give up. Run.”

But she was in a place his words couldn't reach. She was beyond exhaustion.

Paul stood up, and almost called out to her. He wanted to, but his fear was crippling. His mouth went dry. When he tried to speak, his throat felt tight, like he was choking. In the end he lost all his nerve and sank back into the shadows behind the bar, trembling and ashamed.

The zombies were coming around both sides of the pool. Some of them running, others hobbling along on busted legs, but they came on fast, and soon the woman's whimpers turned to screams.

“Help me!” she yelled. “Oh, God, please help me!”

The first few zombies to reach her fell on her, clawing at her face and arms.

She wasn't forming words anymore, just guttural screams and grunts, each one making Paul flinch. He hated himself for being such a coward.

Once, he mustered the strength to open his eyes.

He wasn't sure if she could see him or not, but she was staring right at him, her gaze locked even as her body jerked and danced from the zombies pulling on her.

Paul squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears.

It didn't do any good. He could still hear them tearing her to pieces.

 

 

Paul stayed behind the bar, arms wrapped around his knees, huddled as small as he could make himself, rocking back and forth and trembling, for several hours. The sun was almost directly overhead when he finally stood up and took in what had happened. The woman he'd been too scared to help was pawing at the wooden deck. She was trying to move, but there wasn't enough of her left to do it.

How could she still be alive? Her torso had nearly been torn in half. There was blood everywhere . . . on the deck, the chairs, the edge of the pool. It was everywhere. Her guts were spread out behind her like a spilled bag of yarn. And even still, she was moving.

Paul let out a gasp of disgust, and the woman turned her head his way. He turned his head almost immediately. The woman's face was pale and spattered with blood. The lower jaw was nearly gone. From her upper lip down to her collarbone she was one continuous open wound, little jagged bits of skin hanging on the edges like crudely torn paper.

When he looked back, she was trying to crawl in his direction. Her eyes showed no pain whatsoever, only a vacant, bottomless yearning, and every inch she slid through her own blood, every snap of breaking fingernails was an indictment of his cowardice. He could have saved her. He could have. He was sure of that. If only he'd been able to make himself move, or at least call out to her, he could have hid her with him. She'd still be alive.

My God, he thought. That's it. They're dead. They're zombies!

It was the only thing that made sense.

And the fact that that made sense made no sense at all.

He felt his stomach starting to turn. Bile rose up in his throat and he forced it down, but that made him feel worse.

He had to get out of there. Not just to be away from the wreck of a woman still clawing her way across the floor, but because of this new thing, this idea that the world had become so messed up, so very wrong, that it could have zombies in it.

With his mind reeling, he stumbled out of the bar and back below decks.

He had to find Tess Compton. Had to. The truth of that was solid in his mind. It was, perhaps, the one solid thing upon which he could focus. She alone had the guns, the training. She alone could save him.

And Senator Sutton would be there, too. He felt certain of that. Tess could protect him, and Rachel Sutton could tell him what to do.

That was what he wanted, he realized, someone to take charge, to tell him what to do. He was alone out here, exposed, forced to rely on his own resources, and that scared him even worse than what those deranged people up on deck had become. Even more than what that half-eaten woman had become.

Staying in the shadows whenever possible, he made his way aft, and down. He was on Deck 8, three levels up from the main level of the mall, when he heard the unmistakable rattle of gunfire.

He ran to the railing and looked down.

And gasped.

The main level of the mall was a writhing carpet of bloody faces and mangled hands. There had to be hundreds of those zombies down there, all of them packed together and pushing, fighting against each other. The sweet-sick stench of vacated bowels and blood rising from the knots of the dead made him gag. It almost made him forget about the gunshots he'd heard.

But then he heard two more shots, and saw movement near the stairs, on the level just above the mall's main floor.

He was about to call out to them, but movement above and to his right caught his eye.

It was Monica!

“My God,” he said. “It can't be. . . .”

She was holding a pistol. Where in the hell had she found a pistol?

She was looking away from the railing, toward the stairs on her level. He followed her gaze and saw a zombie in a black cocktail dress hobbling toward her on broken legs. Monica didn't seem surprised though, or even worried. She kept her pistol down by her side and waited for the zombie to close the gap between them; and when it looked like the zombie was too close, easily within striking distance, Monica spun around in the air like in those kung fu movies and kicked the zombie in the chest, knocking her back against the railing.

The zombie never had a chance to react, for the next moment Monica side-stepped into another kick that caught the zombie under the chin and sent it flying backwards over the railing.

Paul watched it sail down to the writhing horde below, and his face twisted with disgust as the zombies fell upon one of their own, tearing the body to shreds.

But when he looked back at the next level up, Monica was gone.

He looked everywhere.

“Where did . . . ?”

He looked down again, trying to find Senator Sutton and Tess, but they were gone, too.

“Senator Sutton?” he yelled. “Tess?”

He instantly regretted it.

The horde below suddenly went still, and as one turned their faces in his direction. Their faintly luminescent eyes shone like stars in the summer sky.

A few started to run up the stairs, coming his way.

“Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no.”

He turned toward the stairwell on the opposite side of the landing. He took a few steps that way and then stopped. Paul could hear footsteps, and lots of them, charging up the stairs.

And something else, too.

Guttural panting and growls.

“Oh, no, oh, no.”
What do I do?
“Come on, come on. Think.”

Already some of the faster zombies were on the level right below him. If he was going to make a break, it had to be now.

Right now.

He broke into a sprint, running for the open corridor that continued on to the left of the stairwell. Paul was thirty yards from the mouth of the corridor when two zombies started up the last flight of stairs.

“No!” he said. He was panting, barely able to breathe. “No. Not gonna make it, not gonna make it.”

But he knew he had to. He had to clear those stairs or he would die here, torn to pieces like that woman up at the pool.

“Not gonna get me!” he shouted, and lunged ahead.

The zombies, as though in answer to his challenge, extended their hands, clutching for him.

Paul turned on the speed, running with everything he had. One zombie crested the stairs and then a second, and a third appeared behind him. They turned from the stairs to the mouth of the corridor just as Paul got there and lunged for him.

The lead zombie grabbed Paul's shoulder and spun him around. Another flew into him like football tackle, causing Paul to crash against the windows on the left side of the corridor. Paul, two of the zombies, and the heavy gold curtains on the windows all came tumbling down.

Paul landed on one of the zombies, his knee coming down hard on the man's back. It was a lucky landing, for it allowed him to stay upright. He slapped the curtain away from his face and scrambled forward, breaking contact from his attackers just as more zombies charged off the stairs.

Screaming, running for his life, Paul took off down the corridor. His lungs were burning. His heart was pounding. The muscles in his legs were on fire. His body was screaming at him to stop, to just quit, but he didn't dare.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw the corridor behind him was crowded with zombies, all of them running after him. Desperate, lost, hardly able to breathe, he rounded a corner and nearly tripped over a man sitting in a puddle of his own blood and vomit. Paul jumped over the man's nearly severed legs, ducked his shoulder, and rammed a woman who was reaching for him with a badly damaged hand.

He didn't let her slow him down. The lead zombies were pawing his back, pulling at his shirt. Even over the growls of his pursuers he could hear his Birkenstocks slapping on the floor. He seemed to be standing still, like he was caught in a dream where he pumped his legs harder and harder but never moved.

Just ahead of him was a housekeeping cart. He reached it just ahead of his pursuers and pulled it down. Those right behind him went tumbling forward, hitting the ground hard. The zombies were fast, some of them anyway, but they were still uncoordinated and when they went down it was hard for them to get up again. The first few to fall were still trying to climb to their knees when those behind them trampled them.