phone connection was bad. She was on the inner loop of the beltway, stuck in traffic. There was some kind of accident with an ambulance. She wasn’t hurt, wasn’t even involved, but the highway was shut down and she couldn’t go anywhere. That was the last time I talked to her.”
“The inner loop,” Mitch whispered. “Wasn’t that where the—”
Sniffing, Basil nodded. His voice was choked with emotion. “Yeah. There was a zombie in the ambulance. It got free. Killed somebody. More zombies came out of the woods and onto the highway. You all saw the footage on WBAL. My wife was there.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said, and I was. Basil had been kind of a jerk in the short time I’d known him, but still—you don’t wish ill of someone when he’s telling you how his wife died.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I kept looking for her on television. Kept looking for her car as the news chopper did flybys, but I didn’t know what had happened to her. Her cell phone wasn’t working. Kelli never came home. I waited all night but she never came home. I fell asleep around four in the morning. When I woke up, I thought she’d be there. She wasn’t. I tried calling in sick to work but by then all the phone lines were down. So, I decided to find Kelli myself. Figured I’d check the highway and if I didn’t have any luck there, then I’d check with the hospitals. Hopped in the car and made it to the highway before the National Guard turned me back. I got caught in the detour and ended up downtown. After that, I went to the zoo. You’ve got to understand—I couldn’t find her. Thought that maybe she was looking for me, too. So I went to the zoo and I waited. It was closed, but I hopped the fence and waited for her to show up. She never did. She’s out there somewhere still, along with our baby.”
“Basil,” Tony said. “I’m really sorry that happened to you and your wife, man. Seriously, I am. But that doesn’t explain why you’re afraid to go ashore. You need to pull your weight if you’re gonna be part of this group. I lost my whole fucking family. I had to smash my daughter’s head in with a goddamn shovel…”
His voice cracked. Basil looked at him with red-rimmed eyes.
“At least you know what happened to them. I don’t. I have no idea! Do you understand what that’s like? I hid in a restroom at the zoo. It was too late to leave—the zombies had already broken in. You can’t imagine it. I know, I know. All you guys hid out, too. All of you saw zombies. But you didn’t see anything like what I saw. The animals… the elephants and the zebras and the monkeys. They all turned. The rats got through the bars of their cages and attacked them and then they turned into zombies. They rotted inside their cages. And the lion, when it got loose…”
Runkle frowned. “There was a zombie lion on the loose?”
Basil nodded his head. “Yeah. Some gang members let it loose. I think they were looking for somebody. They had guns, and I didn’t have shit, so I hid from them. I heard one of them say they’d let the lion out of its cage by accident. And then it showed up and it was horrible. The way it smelled… the sounds it made. How it looked. While the lion was killing them, I managed to escape. I ran…”
He paused again, and asked for water. Turn gave him a sip from his bottle.
“Thanks,” Basil said. “As I was escaping the zoo, I saw a woman. She was dressed like a prostitute or something. Very skinny. Track marks on her arms. She was a zombie, but it looked like she’d just turned. You know? She still looked fresh. She had a baby with her. It was dead, too—and it was nursing.”
“That’s impossible,” Runkle said. “Are you saying these things are smarter than we thought?”
“I don’t know,” Basil admitted. “Probably not. But one of her nipples had been bitten or cut off and she held the baby to her breast and it… it
He closed his eyes and shuddered.
“After that, I ran. Managed to get a pistol off one of the gang members. I was out of ammo by the time I reached the Inner Harbor. There were zombies all around by then—I guess the fires were flushing them out. But so many of them were children. So many…”
He stared at Tony, unflinching.
“If I go back out there and I see another dead child, I’ll kill myself. It’s that simple. I don’t want to die, but I know my limits. I can’t do it. Does that answer your question, Mr. Giovanni?”
“Yeah,” Tony said, placing an arm on Basil’s shoulder. “Yeah, man. You don’t need to say any more. It’s okay.”
“That’s bizarre,” Mitch said. “All the zombies I saw before boarding this ship, I didn’t see any of them displaying traits like that. Maternal instinct? Does that mean they can learn? Evolve?”
“If it does,” I said, “then we are truly fucked.”
“Like I said,” Basil whispered, “she was fresh. Maybe she still had some rudimentary instincts left in her.”
Chief Maxey cleared his throat. “So who replaces Basil on this mission?”
I raised my hand. “I’ll go.”
“You?” Hooper snorted. “I don’t want you watching my back.”
“That’s a shame,” I snarled. “You’ve got such a nice ass.”
“Motherfucker…”
“Knock it off, Hooper,” the chief warned. “Lamar, are you sure about this?”
I nodded. Mitch slapped me on the back. The others seemed okay with it.
“Okay,” Chief Maxey said. “Then let’s take inventory. Mr. Bollinger, how many weapons did you bring aboard?”
Mitch gave him a rundown of his guns and grenades, and how much ammunition he had left for each. In addition to those, Runkle, Tony, Hooper, and many of the others also had weapons. There was also Basil’s empty pistol, which Mitch said he had ammo for. We divvied up the firearms and agreed that Runkle should act as team leader.
And then we were ready.
“Okay,” Chief Maxey said. “Turn, you prepare the lifeboat. The rest of you arm yourselves. I’ll go relieve Chuck on the bridge and take us in.”
We should have smelled them first, but the breeze was blowing toward the shore. We saw them soon enough, though. Lined up along the ship’s port side rail with several pairs of binoculars that we’d taken from the ship’s displays, we stared in horror and disgust. The summer heat and exposure to direct sunlight and the elements had done a job on them. The dead looked like bloated, oversized ants shuffling along the beach. They crawled through the sand and sprawled in the surf, wandering aimlessly in search of prey. Seagulls darted down out of the sky and plucked away bits of rotting flesh and the insects that burrowed inside the zombies. Then they’d take flight again and fight each other in midair for the choicest morsels. Decaying ears, cheeks, eyeballs, and noses dangled from their beaks. Occasionally, a bird moved too slowly or sat on a zombie’s shoulder for a second too long. Then, dead hands lashed out, seizing the birds-ripping and chewing in an explosion of blood and feathers. As we stared through the binoculars, we saw more zombies on hotel balconies and patio decks. Virginia Beach’s boardwalk was actually off the beach, hidden behind a row of hotels and restaurants and stupid trinket shops. We caught glimpses between the buildings as we sailed by. Both the boardwalk and the streets were choked with corpses. I couldn’t believe how many of them there were. We saw no signs of anyone still alive—the zombie’s food source had to be running out. Why didn’t they move on?
“Look at them all,” Chuck gasped. “If you didn’t know they were dead, it would be like a regular day at the beach.”
Joan paled. “I can’t watch. I’m going to be sick.”
She handed her binoculars to Nick, and then leaned out over the rail and threw up. Nick adjusted the focus, peered through the binoculars, and then closed his eyes and turned away.
“Jesus.” He sounded like he might be getting sick, too.
“I want to see,” Malik said, reaching for my pair of binoculars.
“No,” Carol admonished. “You don’t need to see that.”
“Damn straight I do. Let me get those binoculars, Lamar.”
“Malik.” Carol’s voice grew stern. “What did we agree in regards to your cursing?”
“You said I shouldn’t use swear words, but I don’t remember agreeing to it.”
Tasha slapped him on the head. “Quit being a dork.”
“Stop hitting me! Lamar, Tasha hit me.”
