Zombie Anthology (14 page)

    
Hannah pointed through the trees. “The door's been busted open. The windows are shattered. And that appears to be dried blood smeared all over the outer walls."

    
Given little choice, Scott followed Hannah on into the clearing in front of the cabin. Several bodies, all dead from head wounds, littered the grass around the place.

    
"Looks like somebody put up a good fight,” Scott commented as Hannah headed straight for the main door without slowing. It dangled barely attached to its hinges. Hannah stepped by it and into the building. A partially devoured body missing its legs and arms watched her enter. Old blood stained the area about its mouth and chin. Hannah was sure its tongue had been cut or bitten out otherwise the thing would have been screaming obscenities at her. Its eyes burned into her as she glanced about the remains of the simple room. Someone had taken shelter in this place seeking safety in the wilderness just like her own family had done; only these poor people must have been discovered before they could run.

    
Hannah jumped as a gunshot split the air sending the limbless monster on its way to hell once more. Scott shrugged as she glared at him. “It was creeping me out, okay?” He offered in way of apology.

    
The pair carefully searched the place over for others of the dead or anyone miraculously left alive to find they were alone. They met back in the cabin's main room.

    
"We'll take what we can. Food, ammo, whatever but we're not staying,” Hannah informed Scott.

    
Scott was too delighted to be put off by her air of superiority. “You're not going to believe what I found out behind this dump!” He smiled. “Come on, I'll show you!"

15

    
The cabin had been a godsend. Scott couldn't believe their luck. With their stock of replenished and stomachs happily full of dried tomatoes and corn from among the cans they'd looted, they started the journey east again much richer. Hannah still carried her .30-.06 refusing to let it go but she also now carried a functional AK-47 assault rifle. Scott had added a pump action twelve gauge to his arsenal. Their best find however had been the bike. It allowed them to continue traveling off road while giving them a much faster rate of travel and mobility.

    
Scott held onto Hannah's waist as she kept the gas flowing hard to the small bike's engine. She jerked the handlebars from side to side dodging trees as they bounced over the forest floor at over forty miles an hour. Scott wasn't sure but he thought for the first time since they'd met he saw the slightest hint of a smile on Hannah's lips.

    
"If you don't mind if I ask,” he yelled over the bike's roar, “Why the hell are you so set on going east?"

    
Much to his surprise, Hannah answered him. “I want to see the ocean one last time before I die!"

    
Scott mulled over this revelation for a second. “Works for me!” he shouted as the ground sloped ahead of them and Hannah took them charging down the tiny hill.

16

    
The Queen
sat in the harbor motionless and far from the docks. No organized attack had been launched against her yet. Henry O'Neil admired her as the lifeboat he sat in drifted toward the shore. There were four boats each carrying an equal number of members of the raiding party. O'Neil's heart pounded in his chest. A long time had paused since he'd been in the “heat” of things on shore. Sure he'd fought numerous battles aboard
The Queen
or venturing onto a dock to help hold back the hordes of dead as she set sail after a raid but this was different. He was both excited and scared shitless at the same time. An African American man named Roy sat across from him loading a shotgun. O'Neil didn't know Roy well, but he knew him to be a veteran of raids like this one.

    
The plan was simple. Land on the beach near the warehouses along the dock, hit the shore running, and stock up on whatever nonperishable foodstuffs they could get their hands on, then steal some means of transporting both it and themselves back to
The Queen
from the boats that lined the port. This operation would cost them the most of what remained of
The Queen's
lifeboats but if they could steal some decent motor boats that still worked, it would be more than a fair trade.

    
Jennifer and Jason also shared his lifeboat. The twins were inseparable. Jennifer was the warrior of the pair. Muscles bulged from underneath the jump suit she wore. In addition to the rifle and sidearm she carried, she hefted a machete. She was something of a legend among
The Queen's
“raiders". Just looking at her confidence, made O'Neil feel safer. Jason by contrast, though he shared his twin's frame, was not well muscled. He was the party's medic and served as an assistant to Dr. Gallenger onboard
The Queen
. The young man's brow was creased in thought as he checked over the med. kit he carried. O'Neil was sure the young man hoped he wouldn't need it or any of its contents tonight.

    
O'Neil held no official rank having come aboard
The Queen
after the plague started and the world begin its descent into the hellish nightmare it had become. Yet everyone knew he was second only to Captain Steven and treated him with an air of respect. He hoped he lived up to it out here where it mattered the most.

    
The lifeboats reached the sand of the shoreline. O'Neil screwed a silencer onto the barrel of his pistol and stepped off the waves. His land legs were clumsy initially but he soon got the hang of it as he raced after the others towards the docks. The party split up, each heading out for a different section of the warehouses to loot expect one group who went off in search of their much needed means of escape and transport back to
The Queen
. There was no sign of the dead but O'Neil knew it wouldn't be long.

    
Within minutes, suitable transport for the return voyage was located. Already crates of freeze-dried and canned foods were being loaded onto to the pair of small motor boats, which were the only ones around that appeared still functional. That's when the shit hit the fan. One of the raiders named Gary screamed, “They're coming!” Before O'Neil could open his mouth to shout orders the docks were ablaze with gunfire and the dead were racing at the raiding party from the town beyond.

17

    
The would-be raiders quickly found themselves pinned down and outnumbered. “It's a trap!” someone shouted. O'Neil cursed whoever it was for being an idiot. The dead hadn't had anyway of knowing they'd be here, there were just that many of the creatures everywhere these days. Jennifer shoved O'Neil from his feet as a bullet whizzed through the space he'd been standing in. “Better keep your mind on the fight, sir!” she advised him, raising her M-16 and holding the trigger squeezed as she swept her line of fire across the ranks of the charging dead.

    
O'Neil hated the dead. Why couldn't the dead be unthinking, slow moving automatons driven purely by instinct alone like in the movies he'd seen as a kid, he wondered. Life freakin’ sucks he thought as he pushed himself up and took aim at a creature running at the team of raiders with a hole through its ribs and a butcher knife raised above its head ready to strike. With a single shot from his pistol he dropped the dead thing permanently to the ground.

    
The dead were attempting to push around the raiding party, to flank them and cut them off from the docks where the half loaded motor boats waited. O'Neil knew if that happened they were all screwed. He bolted, running for the team's only way out as he saw Jennifer wrestling with a dead woman who'd made it past their wall of fire. Jennifer's rifle was gone and she struggled to bring her machete into play against the woman. She never got the chance. The woman lashed out with something that looked like a straight razor. Jennifer's throat opened, spraying blood.

    
As O'Neil reached the boats, Roy was there waiting for him.

    
"We've got to get the food back to the ship!” O'Neil shouted. Jim nodded. Most of their party was already dead or dying and they couldn't risk trying to save the others. Too many people on
The Queen
were depending on them. If they failed a lot more would die than just those here on the docks.

    
"What the hell is that?” Jim yelled, pointing at something behind O'Neil. O'Neil turned to see a dirt bike zigging and zagging its way towards them through the midst of the battle. Two human shapes rode it, one clearly a woman at the handlebars. “Fuck that,” O'Neil swore bringing up his pistol to take a shot at her. If the dead thought they could send a suicide bomber on a damn dirt bike crashing into the motor boats they had another thing coming.

    
Jim struck O'Neil's arm, knocking his pistol's barrel downward to fire into the wood of the dock as he pulled the trigger. “Why the...” O'Neil started but Jim cut him off. “Those ain't dead folk,” the older man snarled.

    
O'Neil glanced at the bike again as Jim leapt off the docks into the more heavily loaded of the two boats and fired it up. The bike skidded to a halt a few yards away from O'Neil. A haggard looking young man with lashing scars covering his naked back jumped off the rear of the bike and said, “Going our way?"

    
O'Neil felt his breath leave him, ignoring the young man's joke, as he gazed into the green eyes of the woman who stood before him. “Get in!” Jim screamed from the boat below and O'Neil stood watching this woman, this angel, dart by him and leap off the docks into the boat. The shirtless man shoved O'Neil off the dock as he moved for the boat himself. “I think he means you too!” The young man laughed as they crashed into the boat near Jim together. Jim kicked the boat into high gear and left a trail of waves in their wake. The docks and the nightmare of it all faded into the distance behind them as a few desperately shot rounds thudded into the sides of the boat and the dead howled in vain at their escaping prey.

18

    
"Who are you people?” Scott asked, “And what was all that back there about?"

    
The taller, redneck looking black man answered, “I'm Jim and this is Mr. O'Neil. We're from
The Queen
."

    
The man identified as O'Neil just kept staring at Hannah as she asked, “What's
The Queen
?"

    
"That,” Jim pointed out into the water in the direction they were speeding for.

    
"Holy shit,” Scott muttered.
The Queen
was a ship and a damn big one from the looks of her. She was as long as a battleship but certainly not military in nature or at least, she hadn't started out that way. Her overall hull was a tarnished white spotted by the odd piece or plate of wielded on armor. Jury rigged gun emplacements ran the length of her decks from port to stern. She'd definitely seen better days but even with the tiny amount Scott knew about ships he could tell she had a lot of power left in her yet.

    
Jim piloted the motor boat right up to her side. Heavily armed men and women threw down cables from her deck to haul up the crates of supplies the raiders had returned with. “Too bad we can't keep this baby,” Jim said mournfully to no one in particular, “She's a fine little boat in own right."

    
"We're keeping her fuel,” O'Neil ordered as he finally snapped out of the stunned haze he'd been in. “Make sure you drain her tanks before you go up.” Then O'Neil turned to Scott and Hannah. He caught one of the ropes that were raining down around them and handed it to Hannah. “Welcome aboard, ma'am,” he said with a sincere smile that lit up his face.

    
Scott and Hannah scurried up the rope into the crowd of people on
The Queen's
main deck. Both were overwhelmed by their welcome. Hannah couldn't remember the last time she'd seen so many real, living, breathing people. O'Neil pulled himself up behind them and was barking orders at the crowd before his feet even hit the deck proper.

    
"Let's get loaded up quickly people,” he yelled at the top of his lungs over the chaos, “We need get out of here before the dead get it together and come sailing after us."

19

    
A yeoman named Pete led Scott and Hannah to their quarters. Two Spartan bunkrooms side by side on the same hall. “I know it's not much,” Pete apologized, “but here you're going to be safe."

    
Scott was still trying to absorb it all. “You mean you guys have really been sailing about out here since it all started?"

    
Pete nodded. “
The Queen
was at sea when the dead woke up. We haven't put to port yet except to raid places for food or supplies yet. The Captain figures we're safer on the waves."