They strained to look for any sign that creatures might blanket their landing zone. They were not yet low enough to see the ground in any detail with their optics.

The goggles provided only the illusion of depth perception. The rules were: keep your eyes on the horizon, knees slightly bent, don't antic.i.p.ate the impact. Variations of this were repeated subconsciously as they fell the last hundred feet. The stench of the creatures was nearly overwhelming as they plummeted down into the dark well of the undead badlands.

Disco was the first operator to hit the deck. He immediately recovered, scanned for threats, and unhooked from his chute. They all suspected that Hawse was likely unconscious or dazed from the hypoxia. Hawse annoyed the s.h.i.t out of the team most of the time, but they generally respected him-he did escape Washington, D.C., in one piece. More important, none of them welcomed the idea of being one man down on a four-man team. Especially now.

As Disco reached up to adjust the intensifier on his goggles, Billy Boy hit the ground twenty feet to his left with a curse and a soft thud. Doc impacted ten seconds later. They regrouped on Disco and scanned all sectors looking for Hawse's IR laser. They saw nothing until the flash of a suppressed carbine drew them west to a finger of terrain.

Hawse had blacked out at some point below a thousand feet, not realizing he was headed fast toward a large spruce tree. His chute had caught a branch with a loud crack. He hung there for a few minutes, dazed, until the creature started chewing on his left steel toe boot. Both of the corpse's bony hands were gripping his foot. His carbine was hanging at an odd angle, forcing Hawse to take a shot with his weak side. After nearly shooting a hole in his foot, he scrambled the creature's brain on the third shot, crumpling it to the ground like a bag of wet leaves.

Hawse activated his IR laser and started waving it around. After a minute, he discovered that his earpiece had fallen out during the descent. After feeling for the coiled clear wire, he pushed the mic back into his ear.

Doc was transmitting, "I see his laser. Looks like he's on a hill. Everyone spread out, twenty meters, I'll take the front with Disco; Billy, you take our six."

Disco gave the verbal thumbs-up on the order.

Billy replied via radio with only "Six."

Comm brevity was king in this dead world. Hawse wouldn't break in on the chatter unless it was absolutely necessary. The men could hear the crack of underbrush telling them they were not alone. They quickly closed the fifty meters to where Hawse hung in his spruce.

Doc's radio crackled with Billy Boy's voice. "Tango seven and nine, thirty meters, strength five."

There were five undead thirty meters behind the three.

Doc gave the order, "Kill 'em, Billy."

The sound of Billy's suppressed carbine throwing lead down range was soothing to their ears.

"Tangos down," Billy reported.

Topping the terrain finger, they could see Hawse hanging in the tree, straining to keep his legs pulled up to his chest.

Shaking his head, Doc said, "What the f.u.c.k, Hawse?"

"Man, I blacked out in my chute and woke up to that chewing on my boot," Hawse said, gesturing to the corpse. "What do ya want from me?"

"Disco, cut him down," Doc ordered.

"My pleasure."

Disco climbed the tree high enough to slice through the lines, dropping Hawse to the ground with a thud. He landed only a few feet from the corpse.

"Disco, you f.u.c.k! I could have fallen on that thing's face! Quit f.u.c.kin' around!"

"You're fine. Don't be such a b.i.t.c.h."

"Disco, you're a little outnumbered, man," Doc added jokingly.

"I guess so, but one Delta equals three frogs any day," Disco sarcastically retorted, believing it.

"Okay, enough grab-a.s.sing, let's get our chutes and take a fix on the terrain to see how far out we are," Doc ordered.

Three acknowledgments resonated simultaneously in their earpieces.

Billy pulled out his map and compa.s.s. He marked the jump point on the map and noted the wind during his descent by the direction of the smoke from the areas that still burned. He refined and pinpointed their position off of nearby terrain features before they all agreed on the fix.

"Doc, we gotta hump three miles north by northwest to ballpark the access doors," Billy said.

"Better than I expected."

They gathered their chutes and stored them in a large trash bag from each of their kits, marking the location on their maps. The chutes would come in handy later, but they were not worth stuffing into their packs and humping the extra weight right now. Time was of the essence. Being caught in daylight was a very bad thing in these parts.

4.

Tara lay in her bed, looking up at the ceiling. It was not unlike the way she would look through a boring professor back in college, a lifetime ago. The rectangular-shaped fluorescent lights were switched to red. Her bunk rolled slightly as the ship made its way through the churning seas.

The loud bells from the PA speaker mounted above her door forced her attention back into focus. Some of the crew called it a one MC. It was on her list of things to learn. So much to absorb. Her boyfriend had been gone for only a few days. They evacuated Hotel 23 a week ago-seemed like much longer; it was all such a blur.

She could still hear the noise beacon in her head. The lot of demons in h.e.l.l couldn't have frightened her more. She didn't believe in h.e.l.l in the sense in which it was portrayed in churches and horror novels, but knew only the real h.e.l.l she had seen with her own eyes the day they fled Hotel 23.

Tara had been ushered onboard a helicopter with Dean, Jan, Laura, and the others. Laura clutched John's little white dog, Annabelle, tightly out of fear. No one knew what was ahead for them as they evacuated the last place they had briefly called home.

Saien had pushed her onboard, rea.s.suring her, "Don't worry, I'll take care of Kil for you. He'll be safe with me. Go on!"

Scarred into her consciousness and fueling her recent dreams were the snapshots of the battle from Hotel 23 to the Gulf just a few days ago. The helicopter hovered over the compound and Tara began to see what seemed like millions of undead come into focus. Pure death converged on the nexus, Hotel 23. The survivors convoyed out in military vehicles, as well as in cars and trucks, and even on foot. Only the women and children were airlifted to safety.

She vividly remembered the marines blasting away at the hordes, instantaneously disa.s.sembling ma.s.ses of them, gunfire tossing rotting limbs in all directions. Some of the bullets looked like laser beams, she thought, as the marines swept down thousands on the undead front. Even so, legions more advanced beyond the gun's sweeping lines.

There were just too many to stop.

The helicopter flew south and she caught her first look at the USS George Washington, a speck on the horizon growing by the second as they flew quickly inbound to the ship.

A man named Joe Maurer debriefed her yesterday. She was politely asked to start from the beginning-months ago, the car where she was found and rescued. She had felt a small hint of embarra.s.sment when Joe asked her how she survived so long inside the vehicle.

Her blushing intensified when he asked, "How did you go to the bathroom?"

It wasn't just embarra.s.sment, but fear that struck her like a bolt when he asked that question. She remembered the creatures. They watched her inside the car as she slept, watched her as she cried, watched her as she cursed and spit at them, and even watched her as she relieved herself in a large McDonald's cup. Thank goodness they were not strong or intelligent enough to break the gla.s.s using rocks, like she had seen before. They kept pounding on the gla.s.s with b.l.o.o.d.y, pus-filled stumps-what was left of hands. They even used their heads as rams, trying to get at her. One of them pried its own teeth out of its rotting mouth attempting to bite through the gla.s.s to reach her through the cracked window. They are primally driven, she had thought.

She had been in the early stages of heat stroke when he rescued her. Kil was not her only savior, but it was Kil whom she saw first as her eyes focused from the brink of death. Now he was gone, ordered away on an a.s.signment that probably wouldn't make a difference. The mission really didn't matter to her-she just wanted him here. Tara now understood how her grandmother had felt when Papa had been ordered away to Vietnam.

At least she had John and the others.

John was what held the group together. He had stood by them all during their darkest times-the day at Hotel 23 when the helicopter never returned. She cried for days after that. Never giving up, she lived near the radio. Every waking moment she monitored the distress frequencies; every sleeping moment she made John promise to do the same. John did so without complaint or question. It was very likely he'd have been dead if it had not been for Kil.

Truth be told, they'd all probably have been dead if it had not been for John himself. His network engineering and general Linux computer savvy were what had enabled the survivors of Hotel 23 to take advantage of at least some of the complex and cla.s.sified systems. His ability to control the security cameras, satellite imagery feeds, and communications gear was crucial to the group's situational awareness.

Tara heard the bells again and wondered what they meant this time.

John had made it a point to keep himself busy since Kil's departure. He was still somewhat angry, and maybe a little hurt, but he understood the reasons for Kil's decision to choose Saien. Putting that behind him, he was quick to volunteer to help the ship's communication division keep the critical communications circuits up and running. The ship's email systems were useless, as there was no World Wide Web with which to connect. There was, however, a robust radio communications network established between the USS George Washington and several other information nodes still active both at sea and on the mainland. Although John hadn't been given access to the circuits, it was only a matter of time before the shipboard communications technicians became familiar with him and let their guard down, granting him full access. His knowledge of basic RF theory and computer systems made him a crucial a.s.set in the carrier's skill pool.

A few decks below and aft of the communications shack was the ship's sick bay. Before the anomaly, it had resembled a general outpatient clinic, but now looked much like a war zone trauma center. Most of the doctors had been killed in the line of duty since the anomaly had been detected in the United States. This wasn't hard to imagine, as the doctors...o...b..ard were often the first exposed to the infected. The ship had five doctors before the anomaly. Reanimated corpses quickly infected the first two-ironic how the same doctors p.r.o.nouncing death were killed by the creatures that had fooled them. A third was killed after an infected sailor blew his own head off, sending splattered blood into an open shaving cut on the doctor's face. The doctor's own preference was also a bullet to the head, followed by burial at sea. The fourth doctor went the nonviolent route via morphine overdose. At least he had been decent enough to his corpsmen to strap his lower body to a gurney before injection. His suicide note was so disturbing that it had been confiscated and destroyed by the ship's security officer, fearing it would prompt further suicide attempts or even mutiny.

The last doctor standing was Dr. James Bricker-a consummate professional and a Naval Academy graduate, as well as a lieutenant commander. Anyone who has spent time in the navy will tell you that doctors are a different breed of military officer. Many high-ranking doctors don't give a d.a.m.n if you call them sir, ma'am, rank, no rank. They just care about their job-about making you better.

Bricker had been near the point of insanity, or possibly even the old reliable morphine drip himself, when Jan arrived fresh from Hotel 23. Upon arrival and after debriefing, the new pa.s.sengers were instructed to fill out a practical skills form. The screeners knew whom to look for and knew what the top priorities were at any given time. When the screening staff reviewed the forms and noticed a fourth-year med-school student, they practically ripped Jan out of her seat and away from her husband and daughter, rushing her to the sick bay.

On arrival, Jan immediately felt as if she had walked into bedlam. Infected but living patients screamed in their beds, struggling deliriously against their restraints. Volunteers hovered between the hospital beds like bees. A lone mad doctor with wild, unkempt hair hunched over a microscope, cursing at whatever it was he saw between the slides.

The screener interrupted, "Dr. Bricker, I have-"

"Not now."

The screener waited a few seconds, seemingly deciding whether or not to interrupt again. "Sir, I have a-"

With eyes still in contact with the microscope eyepiece, Dr. Bricker lashed, "Let me guess, you have an Eagle Scout with a medical merit badge, perhaps a CPR cla.s.s graduate, or hmmm . . . how about a mail-order medical records transcriptionist?"

"Sir, she's a fourth-year med student."

Bricker paused for a moment, still fixated on the microscope and the secrets underneath it. "Are you certain?"

"Sir, she's right here. Go ahead, interview her, give her a um . . . I don't know, a doctor's test? Whatever you want to do. I have others to screen so I should get going. She's all yours."

Jan looked over at the screener, annoyed by his candor.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry. I don't mean to talk as if you aren't here. It's just been a long day."

Jan's expression eased from one of annoyance to understanding. "Don't worry about it."

The interview began immediately and went on for some time.

"Where did you attend . . . What is your experience with viral . . . Do you have any theories as to the origin . . . How fast have you seen them . . . What are your personal thoughts on where they derive their . . ."

Jan was exhausted when Will tapped her on the shoulder, interrupting Bricker's inquisition-style interview. Murder board was more like it.

"Who's your friend, Miss Grisham?"

"It's Missus and that's Mister Grisham. He might let you call him William, though," Jan said.

Bricker reached out awkwardly to shake Will's hand; Will gripped it like a vice. Jan took notice, giving him a facial expression to tone it down.

"Pleasure to meet you, doctor. Want to tell me why you were questioning my wife as if she were a terrorist in an interrogation room?"

"Uh . . . well, I mean you must understand . . . understand that I'm the last doctor left onboard. It's beyond triage now, Mr. Grisham."

"You can call me Will."

"Thank you, Will. We are lucky to have Mrs. Grisham, or Jan if I may?"

Jan nodded in agreement.

"I am in limited contact with doctors abroad via the ship's radio networks. Unfortunately, as I told you, I'm the only medical doctor on this floating city. I'm afraid your wife, Jan, has stumbled into a critical position onboard. She's now a member of the priority-one, protect-at-all-cost, and kill-to-defend list. She, along with myself, the senior leadership, the nuclear engineers, the welders, communicators, and a handful of other personnel, are absolutely critical to the success and survival of this station."

Jan let that set in for a moment before asking, "What exactly are we doing here, doctor?"

"My orders are as simple as the line officers that command this ship. Find out what is causing the dead to rise and find a way to stop it. At least stop new infections, perhaps."

"What about the health of the people onboard now?" Jan asked, as the patients' screams underscored her point.

"Secondary, I'm afraid," Doctor Bricker said, sighing. "By my calculations, we are far beyond the point of no return. Mankind is on the edge of abyss; good science is our only chance. A hundred ships at sea, armed to the teeth and well provisioned, would make little difference. It's not a secret that we're outnumbered by millions of those things in the U.S., billions worldwide."

5.

USS Virginia-Task Force Hourgla.s.s Six coils of thick rappelling line dropped from the helicopter doors nearly simultaneously. The intense rotor wash whipped the team about as the lines uncoiled like mamba snakes, hitting the deck of the USS Virginia just behind her sail. The boat rolled from side to side, obedient to the randomness of the Pacific. The submarine's hull was not designed to sit on the surface; she was much better suited to black-ops commando insertion or delivering quiet death to the doorsteps of enemy subs.

A few seconds after the ropes slapped the deck, the six pa.s.sengers followed. The first four descended with timing and comfort that only came from years of special-operations experience. The two that followed seemed sloppy and uncoordinated in comparison. Halfway down, one lost his balance and flipped about in his harness like a snared animal, nearly hitting his head on one of the masts as he flailed in the lines.

After some period of hot rotor wash and clumsy rappelling antics, Kil and Saien joined the other four already on deck. The lead operator stood there, wash from the powerful engines above blasting their clothes about. His sea legs and feet gripped the steel deck like magnets, and he effortlessly kept his balance. He gave a hand signal up to the crew chief in the helicopter. A few seconds later, five large black canvas duffel bags full of weapons and equipment slowly descended to the deck. The men gave a thumbs-up to the hovering pilot and the crew chief started pulling up the black lines. The pilot saluted the men on the submarine deck and immediately pulled the cyclic controls. The helicopter bolted north.

The noise and rotor wash quickly faded into the distance. The men were now at the mercy of the Pacific. The operators said good-bye to the surface and moved up the spine of the boat along the rough nonskid walkway to the sail.

Kil and Saien followed, one saying to the other under his breath, "When in Rome."

They made their way what seemed like a good distance, down the ladder, through the hatch, and into the belly of the boat. They descended down into the control area of the submarine, the light from the sky fading and the red internal lighting of the submarine intensifying. The four operators disappeared aft into the complex internal organs of the submarine, leaving Kil and Saien standing on the bridge among strangers.