Man Eaters (Book 2): The Horde Page 15

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, the sailor, who said he had not seen his family for six months, revealed that with the annexation of Hawaii, the Japanese government was considering pulling its vessels out of the Atlantic and placing them in the Pacific. He said that the expense of the global army was beginning to weigh heavily on many countries and that some countries were wanting to just nuke the United States.

  She remembered that conversation as if it was yesterday and that was when the light bulbs went off in Butcher’s head, and she realized something Einstein probably knew long ago.

  “You’re thinking they didn’t pull the ship—just the men on it.”

  Luke said nothing.

  Butcher thought back to how the sailor had dropped to his knees and began going through the torturous transformation from living to undead.

  “Should I pop him one to end his suffering?” Einstein had asked.

  Butcher had studied the man as he vomited, contorted—a hazy film covering his eyes as he transformed into the living dead. “Let him suffer a little, then shoot him. We’ll watch him die just as he’s been watching us.”

  She never regretted that decision. After all, the rest of the world had turned its back on them, and was waiting for them to die a slow, torturous death.

  “It makes total sense, Butcher.” The disembodied voice came from the shadows. It was Einstein. “Sorry to interrupt an incredibly unromantic moonlit conversation, but I’m the one who put Luke up to this so I ought to be part of the dialogue. Not only are there arms and supplies on the ship, there’s intel. There’s news. We haven’t had any of either in a long time. We need to know whether or not the man eaters are the only enemy we’ll have to fight. If the United Nations refuses to conquer us, then maybe we do have a chance to rebuild. Can you imagine what a boost to our morale it would be to know that? We could then let the rest of the country know that we still have a chance.”

  “And you think we can actually get close to that ship before they blow us to bits?”

  Both Luke and Einstein nodded, but Luke answered. “We can go tonight. I’m betting they don’t even pay attention at night. Eight months with nothing to do. Trust me, those guys stopped caring a long time ago. Think about it. If they cared, how come they didn’t send anyone after those three skiffs? They just let us blow them to bits without retribution?”

  Einstein stepped up next to Luke. “They should have come after us…shot at us…something. But we’ve been sitting here for a few hours and nothing. Not a damn thing. Does that seem right to you?”

  Butcher released Luke’s hands. “I can see I’m outvoted.”

  “Does that mean you’ll let us go?”

  She laughed. “Us? Like I’d let you go without me.”

  Luke shook his head. “One of us needs to stay with the boat and, no, it has nothing to do with you being pregnant. I need a translator, and that’s Einstein, and our group needs a leader, and that’s you. I’ve been on way more military vessels than you. Do I need to go on?”

  In the end, Butcher acquiesced and helped Luke and Einstein with the skiff hanging from the side of the boat. They made sure they had arms, life preservers, and enough gas to get them there and back.

  “You ever been on one of those things?”

  Luke nodded. “I did some training a few years ago on one. I have a pretty good idea of what’s where. We’ll be back before you know it,” Luke said, hugging her tightly to him.

  As he released her, she kissed him for a long time and whispered into his mouth, “You don’t fool me, Lucas Scott. I know exactly what you’re after. If it wasn’t so sweet, I’d kick your ass. Come home to me.”

  He kissed her back. “You are my home.”

  ****

  Dallas’s Log

  Can’t sleep.

  The thought of moving such a large group of people, most I barely know, has me all nutted up. Also, the fact that there are ten dissenters who must surely be coveting our stuff makes me doubly anxious, so I feel like I need to keep one eye on them as well.

  Just before I sat down under the tiki torch to write, Churchill pulled me aside and told me that Roper’s decision to leave Michael was based on what she thought I would have done. It was truly at that moment I felt the incredible pressure of caring for these people and getting them to safety.

  When Churchill asked me if Roper’s call was the right one, I nodded because it was. Every survivor, both good and not so good, is precious. I cannot lose sight of that. I cannot sit in judgment over how anyone lives their life in the midst of the outbreak. If ever to each his own were true, now is that time.

  But you can’t put others in danger.

  We’re all in survival mode. Every one of us. Each of us is desperate to do whatever it takes to see the sun rise. Once we start passing judgment, we create sides. There’s only one side. Ours. I think I need to reiterate that to our group. It’s easy to forget we’re all fighting for the same thing:

  To see that sun rise.

  After everyone went off to do whatever they do here at night, Sully came to me to explain his position and why Ben reacted the way he did. I didn’t really want or need to hear it again, but the man was clearly troubled by the unfortunate turn of events.

  He told me he couldn’t, in good conscience, support Roper’s decision to leave Michael because Michael begged Sullivan not to ever leave him behind. Sully and some of his people had made a pact similar to ours.

  A pact I’d broken.

  The funny thing is, my people are far safer on the water than we are here on land. I shouldn’t worry about them, but I am. I just have to have faith that Luke and Butcher will get our people to safety.

  Our people.

  My people.

  I guess it’s time I own it.

  They really are mine and I am their leader whether I want to be or not. Every decision I’ve made has been for the greater good. That being said, I don’t trust Ben. When I was a kid, my Nona taught me that people always show you who they are.

  He did just that today when he charged my partner.

  I won’t soon forget that.

  ****

  Luke cut the outboard engine and grabbed the oars when they were three or four hundred yards from the ship. “From here on out, no conversation until we get on the ship.”

  Einstein nodded, the binoculars stuck to his face.

  The Japanese ship was far larger than it looked from the bayou, but there was no activity above board that Einstein could see, and he had a hunch of why this was. After a year of seeing no small vessels coming out of the Gulf, the sailors had become complacent. Luke was right: the soldiers and their leaders were bored with no action, no sightings, nothing but day in and day out of the same thing.

  The same thing day after day.

  If, as Luke suspected, the Japanese had relocated many of the men from this vessel to the Pacific, it was entirely possible they could get in and out without detection. After all, who in their right mind would row out to a destroyer on a skiff and climb aboard it in the dead of night?

  Einstein grinned as the ship came within a stone’s throw.

  Nobody, that’s who…at least that’s what Luke was counting on, and it was just crazy enough to work.

  “You ready, Einstein?” Luke whispered in his ear.

  Lowering the binoculars, Einstein nodded, then realized Luke probably couldn’t see him. The fact that they hadn’t been shot at meant no one was looking at or even listening to radar, which surely had detected them, right?

  “Yes,” he whispered back.

  The moon was nearly full, and its light rippled with the movement of the water. The waves had died down earlier in the evening, making only three-foot white caps to roll the light.

  As Luke silently rowed up to the side of the ship, Einstein heard him chuckle under his breath as he reached for a ladder which clearly hadn’t been pulled back up after the three boatful of men had left. It almost felt like a trap.

  After secu
ring the skiff and climbing the very long ladder, Luke and Einstein popped up onto an empty deck. Luke pulled his AK-47 around to the front and Einstein held his Turkish sidearm out in front of him in a moment that immediately became surreal to the teenager.

  How many hours had he spent playing Call of Duty? Merchant Marines? Armed Combat? Who would have thought as he gunned down monsters and enemies in the comfort of his bedroom that he’d actually ever be aboard an enemy destroyer with a real gun in his hands? It was as exciting as it was frightening, and he blinked away the drop of sweat that slid into his eye.

  “We’re headed to the Medical Unit, right?” Einstein asked quietly.

  Luke hesitated before answering. “How’d you know?”

  “You are an incredibly transparent man, Luke. Don’t think for one second that you pulled one over on Butcher. She knows exactly why you would risk coming here.”

  Luke couldn’t help but smile. “So I have an ulterior motive? I’m not the one who suggested this little trip, so clearly you and I are on the same page.”

  Einstein shook his head. “On Walking Dead, Lori was pregnant and had to have a Caesarian. It killed her. I don’t want that to happen to Butcher.”

  “Walking Dead?”

  “Popular show about zombies and…never mind. Not important.”

  Luke laughed. “There’s a lot of other shit we need as well, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get the medical supplies and get out of here.”

  Sneaking around the nearly empty ship was easier than Einstein expected it to be. This ship was definitely running with a skeleton crew, and as big a ship as it was, it took a long time before they even saw another human being.

  As Luke crept lower into the ship, he found the transmitter room empty as well. Nodding to Einstein, Luke watched the door as Einstein put on headphones and listened. At first, there was nothing. So he reached out to change the channel and heard German, then French, and then finally, British English.

  “Bingo,” Einstein said softly, giving two thumbs to Luke. Grabbing a pencil and paper, Einstein waited to hear something, anything, in the headphones.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  Scribbling as fast as he could, Einstein translated the conversation between a British sailor and a German soldier who were playing a game of chess via the radio. The German accent made it almost too hard to understand, but Einstein managed a word here and there—enough to begin to get a general understanding of the conversation, and it was a very interesting one.

  It was just casual conversation between two guys playing chess and dropping a few opinions along the way. After about twenty minutes, Luke gave him the signal to cut it off. Returning the station to the original one, Einstein took the headset off and joined Luke at the door.

  “Down!” Luke commanded, sliding down the wall.

  They both pressed their backs against the wall as a sailor walked by, eating an apple or something crunchy. When the footsteps faded, Luke took off down the hallway in the opposite direction with Einstein right on his heels.

  It took a few minutes for them to find the Medical Unit, and when they did, Luke murmured, “Jackpot.”

  Luke grabbed a plastic bag and began filling it with pills, syringes, and everything not kept under lock and key. After he swept all he could into the bag, he grabbed another and then used the butt of his gun to smash the glass cabinet door and grab the medications he knew would come in handy.

  Einstein heard the apple cruncher as he came back. Quickly turning the light off, Einstein stood in the dark corner with his gun aimed at the door. The apple cruncher took several steps past the door, stopped, listened, and turned around. Slowly walking back to the door, he reached in and turned on the light. Einstein lowered his gun just slightly at the smaller Japanese sailor, and as the man opened his mouth to yell out, Luke hit him in the head with the butt of his gun. The sailor fell hard to the floor, apple core bouncing across the tiles.

  “Shit.” Luke grabbed the man, flung him over his shoulder, and carried him to the top deck, where he dropped him over the side. It took forever for him to splash into the cold water below.

  “Get in the boat,” he ordered.

  “But what about weapons? And—”

  “That’s what I’m going back for. You take the meds back to the boat. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes––”

  Einstein shook his head. “No. We need to stay together. We need—”

  “We need ammo. We need a lot of things on this tub. But, I need to make sure Butcher gets what she needs. Please. Fifteen minutes. Promise me.”

  “If you think I’m gonna return to Butcher without you, you’ve lost your mind. She would never forgive me for leaving you behind, so uh uh. No way.”

  “Einstein, you have to listen to me. Butcher needs that medication. She’ll need that other medication when she is having the baby. Please.”

  Einstein could hear the ticks of the clock they were wasting with every passing moment.

  “Uh uh. I’ll wait fifteen minutes, but if you aren’t back, I am coming looking for you.”

  Luke checked his ammo. “Butcher needs those drugs, that scalpel, the sutures, all of that in the event she needs a Caesarean. You’re just going to have to trust me on this. I don’t have time to explain. Just go.” And then he went back down below.

  Einstein waited topside, crouching low and trying not to look at his watch every five seconds.

  He wondered what Luke was really up to. They didn’t need ammo badly enough to take such a big risk. Besides, the skiff would only be able to hold so much, so what was it he was really after?

  Looking up at the moon, Einstein sighed. This move was already proving to be more difficult than anyone had anticipated. It should have been easy to just sail up the river, but even that had gone south on them. They never should have split up, and he wondered where Dallas and Roper were. They would begin to worry, and Einstein hated to worry them. Dallas and Roper had been watching over him for a year. They were family.

  Then Butcher came along, and their family grew.

  And it was going to keep growing if he had anything to say about it.

  Glancing down at his watch, Einstein realized twenty minutes had passed. He couldn’t leave Luke, but he’d made a deal. Einstein stood at the ladder and looked down at the small boat. He shouldn’t stay. He couldn’t go. He was frozen between duty and desire, family and friend. Whatever Luke had in play, Einstein would have to trust that Luke knew what he was doing, so he grabbed the bags of drugs and medical paraphernalia and climbed down the ladder.

  Einstein waited another five minutes before slowly rowing away from the enormous ship.

  He wasn’t looking forward to telling Butcher that Luke had other plans that he didn’t share with him.

  No, that wasn’t going to go over very well at all.

  ****

  When the bus was loaded and everyone was ready to go, Dallas addressed the group. “I appreciate everything you’ve done,” she said. “And I’ll do my damnedest to keep everyone alive. If you ever change your mind, you are always welcome in Angola.”

  “I wish you luck, Dallas. We’ll still let people know about your plan. We just…well, you know.”

  “I do.” Getting into the Fuchs, she turned to the group of all CGIs who anxiously awaited her orders. Each pair of eyes stayed glued to her face. “We ready?”

  “Can’t wait,” Roper said, staring out the small window and into the darkness. “I’ve always been a fan of new beginnings. This just feels right, you know?”

  Dallas nodded. “Felt like you were going a little stir crazy in the bayou.”

  Roper held up her thumb and index finger. “A little.”

  “Everyone else?”

  To a one, they were all ready to move forward.

  They drove in silence for an hour with no incidents, no zombies, nothing but the road ahead of them and the bus behind them. Moments like these were deceiving; they gave everyone a
false sense of reality—that life had momentarily returned to normal. But they were a long way from that, and there was a lot more they needed to do before they could feel safe.

  Suddenly, Roper leaned forward and peered out the window. “Oh shit, Dallas, slow down.”

  Dallas looked up from her thoughts and saw a an old, beater van with five men dressed in paramilitary on the roof and a horde of eaters surrounding it clawing at their ankles and feet.

  “Dallas?”

  Dallas veered left toward the van. “We have to help.”

  She screeched to a halt. Roper jumped out and signaled to the bus to back up. “Hunter! Take them out from atop the Beast. Careful shooting. We don’t want to hit any of the men on top.”

  After climbing up the turret, Hunter skewered two of the undead before Ferdie was out of the Fuchs. The zombies were all dead less than a minute later, each with a bolt protruding from some part of their heads.

  When the five men realized what was happening, they did not leave the top of the van but instead, stared at the group of armed survivors who had just saved their lives.

  “Nice shooting,” Roper said, patting Hunter’s back when he climbed down.

  “You can come down now.” Dallas motioned to the truly dead undead. “They’re toast. They won’t be bothering you anymore.”

  The five men stared at each other and then back to Dallas.

  “How…how did you—” This came from a man who looked like the lead singer for Z.Z. Top: a long, raggedy gray beard hung half way down his chest.

  “It’s a long story. I’m Dallas.”

  ZZ hopped off the van and shook her hand. “Henry. Where you headed?”

  “Headed? Do people head anywhere anymore?”

  “No clue. We were just out looking for food.” Henry ran his hand over his expansive beard. “Getting pretty scarce out here, ya know?”

  “Well, we’re headed someplace. We’re setting up a base camp in Angola.”

  “Angola? As in the prison? Lordy, Gary here done just got out before the end. Said he ain’t never gone back.”

  “I don’t blame him. Well, if you ever feel like fighting back just come to Angola and tell ‘em Dallas sent you.”