Season of Rot

scattered about the sickbay to fashion a splint. Then he did get up. He hobbled across the room to check on Nurse Jones and found her lying in a pool of blood.

Tilting his head like an animal would as he observed her, he watched her eyes flutter open, then dart this way and that as she realized she couldn’t move. A huge medical cabinet had fallen on her and had broken her neck.

Taking pity on her, Gallenger picked up a piece of debris and smashed in her skull.

He found the remains of his desk and the .45 he’d kept in the drawer. Feeling suitably armed, he left the sickbay. Soon he would taste flesh for the first time.

#

Everyone on the Queen had been tossed about as the destroyer’s shell had hammered into its hull. Hannah struck her head against one of the children’s lockers in the daycare center. As her vision focused through the blood in her eyes, she became aware that she was still alive. She hurt too much to be dead. Her head especially. She also realized she was alone. She felt a twinge of anger at Jessica for leaving her for dead, but then realized she would’ve done the same. It was the kids who mattered, not them, and Jessica had probably taken them somewhere safer in the ship.

Hannah dug inside her jacket and produced her .38. She had no idea how the fight outside was going, but she knew Jessica would need help. Jessica, as the saying goes, was not the sharpest tool in the shed, and Hannah didn’t trust her to see the children through this battle. She pulled herself up and headed out of the daycare.

“Jessica!” she screamed as she ran down the corridors, hoping the woman was still in earshot.

She rounded the corner of the passageway and came face to face with a dead man dragging his insides across the floor. He lunged at her, grunting, but she narrowly sidestepped his attack and shoved him as he went by her. He toppled to the deck and twisted about, already trying to get up and come after her. She popped off three rounds into his forehead, spraying his brains onto the wall.

Hannah stood a moment afterward, her breath coming in ragged gasps; she tried to collect herself and calm down. The Queen’s machine guns chattered above—the fight hadn’t been lost yet. She took a deep breath and set out in search of Jessica, though with much more caution.

#

The two yachts had swept in quickly, managing to evade most of the Queen’s defensive fire. Both of them came up along her portside, close enough for the dead to scale the Queen’s hull as they traded small arms fire with those left alive on her decks. The Queen’s gun emplacements were useless with the yachts so close. They couldn’t be angled downward to engage the dead, so Scott had abandoned his post and began to spray the climbing dead with an AK-47 instead. One of the attackers, a middle-aged man covered in burns, lost his hold as Scott’s rounds peppered his back, and he plummeted into the water.

While Scott was sidetracked, a creature hauled itself onto the Queen’s deck beside him—Roy’s twelve-gauge thundered and sent it careening over the side of the ship.

Scott motioned his thanks to Roy, then returned his attention to the dead and loaded a fresh magazine into his weapon.

25

The struggle for control of the Queen raged on. Her whole exterior deck was a war zone, and smaller battles filled her corridors.

“Sir,” O’Neil said, trying to draw Captain Steven’s attention away from the carnage below the bridge. “Captain, we can’t hold her. The Queen is lost. We need to give the order to abandon ship.”

O’Neil’s words jarred Steven out of his own thoughts. Abandon the Queen? Had O’Neil gone insane? He turned to argue, but the door to the bridge opened and Doc Gallenger staggered inside. Before anyone could react, the good doctor’s corpse raised the .45 in its blood-smeared hand.

The first shot slammed into Steven’s shoulder. The second and third burrowed into his chest. Benson, the communications officer, took a round to his throat before O’Neil managed to draw his own sidearm and shoot the doctor in the face.

O’Neil rushed to Steven’s side and squatted beside him.

“Leave me,” the captain ordered, coughing blood onto his lips. “I’m staying with the Queen.”

The other command personnel were fleeing the bridge as O’Neil stood up. Most of the Queen’s lifeboats were gone. Finding a way off the ship would be difficult, but not as difficult as surviving afterwards. The dead would be waiting.

In a corner of the Queen’s main deck portside, Scott and Roy were holed up behind one of the large metal cooling pipes and were running out of ammo fast. “Roy, you’re a good man,” Scott said, “but how would you feel about leaving all this and not looking back?”

Roy could see the gleam of an idea in Scott’s eyes. “I reckon what’s gotta be is gotta be. I’m guessin’ you have something in mind to save our asses.”

Scott grinned. “You could say that. Come on!” He charged across the deck through the ranks of the dead and the few humans left alive. Scott reached the railing and didn’t stop. He hurled himself over the side and landed on the yacht below, completely surprising the five corpses still aboard it. With his AK-47 on full auto, he cut them down where they stood.

Roy followed him, but skidded to a halt at the edge of the deck. “Crazy mother fucker!” he shouted and took the leap. He landed on the yacht with the sound of snapping bones.

#

O’Neil dispatched a corpse blocking his way in the corridor. If he’d counted his shots right, he had three rounds left in his pistol. It was beginning to sink in that he was royally screwed.

From outside, someone called his name. He jerked open the hatch to the exterior deck, and Hannah threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his body. He hugged her back tightly, then forced himself to push her away, despite how much he wanted to hold her forever. He knew she didn’t feel the same about him; they barely knew each other, yet she’d won him over the night he’d met her on the docks, had given him more purpose to his life than anyone or anything ever had. “The captain’s dead,” he informed her. “We’ve got to get off the ship if we want to stay alive.”

A dead woman darted towards them through the open hatchway, a piece of glass raised like a knife in her rotting hand. O’Neil tried to get a shot, but Hannah was faster. She emptied her .38 into the woman’s neck and face.

O’Neil moved to lead them outside onto the deck, but she grabbed his arm. “Wait! What’s that noise?”

“Oh God no.” O’Neil stuck his head outside and looked up at the sky. “It can’t be.”

An F-16 fighter roared over the Queen. Its wings wobbled; whoever was flying it certainly wasn’t an experienced pilot.

O’Neil and Hannah stepped outside to watch the jet turn and streak back at the Queen on a collision course.

“Would this be a bad time to tell you that I love you?” O’Neil asked as they watched the plane race closer.

“No, I don’t suppose it would.” Hannah tried to smile weakly as she took his hand in hers.

26

Scott could still remember the death throes of the Queen after the jet had plowed into her, the way the flames had danced over her frame as she sank into the waves. The image haunted his dreams