The Savage Dead (24 page)

Carter got up and motioned for Garrity to take the lead. “We're headed aft,” he said over his shoulder, “to the miniature golf course. Lead us out.”

Garrity nodded and headed that way.

Carter stood over Juan, hands on his hips. “You need to make up your mind, and you need to do it pretty damn quick.”

Juan didn't move.

“Hey, Garrity,” Carter said. “Hold up a sec.”

Garrity stopped and waited.

“What's with this?” Carter said. “You got a thing for this woman, is that it? You want to go risking your life and the life of my men because you're afraid you'll lose your favorite piece of ass. Is that it?”

Juan stood up.

“Oh, I get it,” Carter said, without looking away. “You love her. That's it, isn't it? You did all this because you're in fucking love with her.”

“I did it because it's my fucking job!” Juan said.

“Uh-huh,” Carter said. “You know what? You never could lie for shit.”

He turned away and motioned for Garrity to lead on. Garrity started up the stairs that would lead them around the pool deck, his weapon at the ready. Carter got as far as the second step before he stopped and turned back to Juan.

“According to the game grid, you've got thirty-two minutes. If you're gonna do this, that'll have to be enough.”

Juan nodded. “Thanks, Rick.”

“Just make sure I don't regret it, okay?”

Garrity led them up the stairs and they crossed another observation deck. Below them, the pool deck was a mass of broken bodies and spent shell casings glittering in the setting sun. A crowd of zombies was keeping up with them on the opposite side of the pool, but couldn't figure out how to get to them.

“You're gonna have to get by them if you want to get below,” Carter said.

“Yeah.”

“How you gonna do it?”

Juan scanned the three levels of deck space he could see, trying to figure his way through them.

No matter where he turned, it looked like he was in for a fight.

And then, without warning, a zombie ran up the stairs in front of Garrity and lunged for the young soldier. Garrity's response was automatic. He raised his rifle and fired a three-round burst into the zombie's chest.

It had no effect.

The zombie launched itself at him, wrapping him up and sending him into Carter's legs.

Carter staggered back, but managed to keep his feet.

“Get off him, you fuck!” he said as he kicked the zombie in the side of his head. The zombie's head snapped back, but he didn't let go.

Garrity got his hand under the zombie's chin and pushed it up and away from him.

“That's it,” Carter said. “Hold him there.”

He stuck the muzzle of his rifle into the zombie's ear, his finger on the trigger, when more zombies lumbered out of the stairway. There was little room to maneuver. Carter leveled his rifle at the approaching crowd and started to fire, but the weight of the group surged forward, overrunning Garrity and the man with whom he was fighting. They ran into Carter and knocked him down, too.

Juan grabbed Carter by his pack and tried to pull him away from the crowd, but there were too many hands on him. Juan pulled and they pulled back, and somewhere in that mass of bodies, a few began to tear into Carter's legs with his their teeth, ripping through his uniform.

Juan fell back . . . and into the arms of more zombies.

He lurched to the side, crashing into the railing. They surrounded him, pressed in upon him, pulled his goggles from his face and tore at his body armor.

In desperation, he rolled over the railing and let himself fall to the deck below.

He landed on his back, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs.

Juan stared up at the railing from which he'd just fallen, gasping for breath, and saw the crowd staring down at him, frantic for the kill that had literally slipped through their fingers.

In between gasps, he told himself he had to get up.

Just get up.

C
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33

The fires were getting worse. All the smoke was making it hard to breathe, and even harder to see. Pilar struggled through the worst of it with her shirt pulled up over her mouth and nose, slowly but surely working her way up to the Lido Deck. She'd been hearing gunfire, a lot of it, and explosions, too, and she was afraid she knew what that meant.

She'd run out of time.

Still, she had no idea if the senator was dead or not, and she had to have that confirmation. Get it or don't bother coming home.

But the smoke was making it hard to find her way and she didn't even see the zombie until she ran into him. It was a man of about twenty, tall and skinny with a full sleeve of tattoos on his right arm, most of which was caked with dried blood. Part of his foot was mangled; otherwise, he might have been faster. As it was, Pilar had time to get behind him and shove him hard into the wall. His face hit the metal and he bounced off, tumbling to the floor.

She'd used up all her ammunition up on the bridge, and without a weapon couldn't afford to stay and fight with this zombie, especially as there were likely to more of them. With all the noise up on deck, they'd almost certainly be flocking her way.

Pilar left the man flailing on the ground, still trying to get at her, even though hitting the wall had shattered his teeth, and ran for a nearby flight of stairs.

They led up to the pool area, where the gunfire was starting to slack off.

She crawled behind a line of chaise longues to a small bar, careful to keep her head down. What she saw both surprised and thrilled her. A pair of black helicopters were circling overhead as though searching for somebody. There were bodies everywhere. Hundreds of zombies lay chewed to rags by automatic gunfire, and here and there amid the bloody piles of mangled bodies lay soldiers in black Nomex flight suits. There were no insignia on any of the uniforms, but Pilar didn't need to see any to know with whom she was dealing. These men were either SEALs or Green Berets, possibly Delta Force. She'd seen their kind, always equipped with the most amazing weapons, working clandestine raids in Ciudad Juarez. They hit hard and fast and were always deadly.

Except that today didn't seem to be their day.

There were three still alive that she could see. They were moving along the deck above her, covering each other as they fell back one at a time toward the front of the ship. There was a helicopter landing pad just in front of and below the bridge. Perhaps they were headed there for extraction.

They didn't make it far though. As she watched, a wave of zombies poured out of a doorway directly in front of the soldiers. Even with their automatic weapons, they never stood a chance. Two of the men were knocked down and swarmed, while the third fell over the railing and landed on the deck next to the pool directly across from her.

She saw him roll over onto his back, staring up at the balcony where his fellow soldiers were dying, and it was then she recognized him. It was the Secret Service agent from the Washington Hilton, the one who'd stopped the assassination. He was tenacious, that one.

But the zombies weren't done with him. Several of them jumped over the railing, and the agent was forced to scramble out of the way as they fell all around him.

He got up and ran.

They charged after him, and the next instant he disappeared into a darkened corridor, twenty of them right on his heels.

And then there were none, she thought. Very nice.

She scanned the carnage left over from the botched raid, her gaze finally settling on one of the soldiers. He was facedown in a pool of blood, the back of his uniform torn open and his body shredded. But his weapon was intact, and so too were the extra magazines he carried.

One of the helicopters was still circling, and she waited for it to pass overhead and orbit away from her. When it did, she ran over to the body and took his rifle, an imposing-looking M4 carbine with a collapsible stock. The best money could buy, she noticed. These guys had to be Delta Force.

“Too bad it didn't do you any good,” she said.

She went through the man's magazine pouches, pulling out as many as she could carry. She was stuffing them in her pockets when she heard a woman yelling at the helicopter from across the pool.

Pilar's mouth fell open. It was Senator Sutton. Right there in front of her.

“Hey!” Sutton yelled, waving her arms at the helicopters. “Hey, down here!”

Pilar glanced up at the circling helicopters. They were starting to come back around. She had no idea if the gun crews had seen the senator yet, but it didn't really matter. Pilar only had a few seconds to move. All the noise Sutton was making was drawing a crowd, and zombies were already running toward her from the deck above them.

Pilar raised the rifle, stepped over the dead soldier, and started firing.

Sutton must have seen the movement out of the corner of her eye, for she gasped at the sight of Pilar and ran inside a video arcade just as the bullets started flying.

“Damn it!” Pilar said.

She started after Sutton, who was headed for the stairs at the back of the arcade. If she managed to get down those steps she would find herself in a junction from which she could take any number of paths through the ship. That couldn't happen.

Pilar sprinted after her, gaining on the older woman almost immediately.

Just outside the doors of the arcade Pilar slowed, raised her rifle, and sighted in on the senator's back. It was a clear shot, a kill shot, but before she could pull the trigger, the senator turned and fired a spray of bullets from a pistol. Several of her shots hit the video game next to Pilar and exploded sparks all over her.

Pilar ducked behind the doorframe.

Holy crap, she thought. Where'd she get a pistol?

Pilar turned, pointed the rifle toward the stairs, and backed away from the doorframe so she could put some rounds down range as soon as she got a glimpse of the senator. But what she saw was the senator's shadow sinking down the stairs. She didn't have a shot.

And she was running out of time. The zombies that had attacked the soldiers above her were coming off the stairs now, and they were running right for her.

More were coming out of the café next to the video arcade.

For a moment, Pilar thought of charging down the stairs after the senator, but she knew she'd never reach them in time. She looked behind her and saw a gap in the zombies that would take her around the far side of the pool.

There were stairs there.

She'd have to go that way. It was her only chance of cornering the senator, even if she had to do it down there in all that smoke.

And what other choice did she have, really? She had been put on a set of rails by decisions—her own and those of others—long ago, and those rails led inexorably to this end. Kill Senator Rachel Sutton or die herself. There was no other option.

Not for her anyway.

And so she ran.

C
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34

Rachel Sutton got to the foot of the stairs and had to stop. So out of breath. So scared. Where in the hell was she going to go? That crazy cartel woman was everywhere.

Before her was an enormous open area three stories high and ringed by colonnades that offered a view of the main floor, where half a dozen zombies were picking their way across the mosaicked floor. She was on the third floor, at eye level with a blue, white, and red chandelier so huge and bright it reminded her of the belly of the alien spacecraft from
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
. On the far side of the main floor was a curling staircase, carpeted in blue that led to the second floor. The ship's casino was there.

Where to go, where to go?

She needed to find a place fast. That cartel woman was right behind her, and while she'd managed to surprise her with a few shots from her pistol, she knew she wouldn't get that lucky again.

Her best bet was to hide and wait. Hopefully those SEALs would come soon.

But everything was so open. Where could she go?

She was still trying to make up her mind when the cartel woman emerged from the stairs to her left.

The assassin saw her and immediately broke into a sprint, charging her.

Sutton ran without any idea of where she was going. She was too scared for that. She just ran as fast as she could go, arms and legs pumping, her breath leaving her in short, panting bursts. But Rachel couldn't run as fast as the younger woman, and almost immediately she began catching up. With a desperate burst of speed, Rachel sprinted on, the only sound the roaring of her blood in her ears. A moment later, Rachel glanced back over her shoulder, her mouth dry from panic and exertion, and in her confusion nearly slowed to a stop.

The other woman wasn't chasing her anymore. She had stopped running. Now she was leaning against a metal column, her rifle aimed at an open spot in the railing just ahead of Rachel.

When Rachel realized what was happening, she did stop. Her heart was pounding out of control, but she was alert, hypersensitive like an animal in a hunt, and she saw the sniper's trap the woman was setting for her. Had she gone another ten steps, she'd have crossed that open area where the scrollwork on the railing ran out. She'd have been an easy target.

Wasn't going to happen, she told herself. Not today. She had no intention of going down that easily.

There was another stairwell just ahead of her, to the right, and she flew down it, legs pumping as fast as she could go, arms out to catch herself in case she fell.

She came out on the second level and doubled back the direction she'd been running. With luck, the assassin would try to follow her down the stairs. Or maybe she would stay in place, hoping to catch a clear shot of her again. Either way, it didn't matter. The stairs leading down to the casino were just ahead. All she had to do was get there.

But then, from somewhere above and behind her she heard the clang of metal on metal and she made the mistake of looking back.

The younger woman hadn't taken the bait after all.

She had her rifle slung over the railing again, trying to sight her in.

Rachel veered hard toward the wall as bullets chewed up the floor beside her. She screamed and tripped, catching herself against the wall. Pure fear was driving her now. She struggled to her feet and ran on. She reached the stairs a moment later, took them two at a time, and didn't stop running until she was inside the casino. To her right, she saw a number of blackjack and craps tables; to her left, row upon row of slot machines.

She went left.

Rachel meant to head for the back, but as she rounded a bank of slot machines, a hand stabbed out of the shadows and caught her by the shoulder.

Gasping, she twisted away from it and fell over, landing on her hip. The zombie holding her shoulder didn't let go, though, and it came down on top of her. Rachel twisted again, and succeeded in pushing the man off her. She rolled over onto her hands and knees and with a breathless grunt pushed herself upright.

The man was dressed in a bloody waiter's uniform. The nametag still hanging from his chest read

MARIO
. He shoved his bent and bleeding hands into her face and she somehow managed to swat them away.

Then she turned and ran, only to find herself walled in by slot machines.

She spun around, unable to believe she was trapped. But she was. The only way out was through that zombie.

“Stay back,” she said. She pulled the pistol from the waistband at the small of her back. “I mean it, stay back!”

The waiter lumbered toward her, oblivious to the gun.

It felt enormous in Rachel's hands, like some kind of cannon. She tried to aim it, tried to hold it steady, but she was shaking too badly to hold the sights on the man's forehead.

And then he was too close. She had to fire. She winced as she squeezed the trigger, and when the thing went off, it jumped in her hands. She let out a startled gasp. The noise was deafening, especially in here, but when she looked, the man was facedown on the floor, moving, but only a little.

At the same instant, the cartel woman ran into the casino.

Rachel saw her coming and hit the ground. She crawled past a dozen slots before she found a small alcove that housed an ATM machine. There was a gap of maybe six inches to one side of it, just wide enough that she could crawl through, if she squeezed hard.

She had to turn her head to do so, and it still put a big scratch down her jawline, but she got in there and wedged herself behind the ATM.

Now, all she had to do was be quiet.

If that was even possible. Her heart was thundering in her chest. Every wheezing breath she took sounded so loud there was no way that woman could miss it.

But she couldn't do anything about that. She hunkered down, shivering, and waited.

Rachel couldn't see anything wedged back in that little space, but she could hear the cartel woman's footsteps passing by the front of the ATM machine.

Back and forth the woman passed.

Wayne had taken her hunting whitetail deer a few times over the long years of their marriage, and she knew the drill of following a wounded deer to the place it finally dropped.

Just follow the trail.

Move silently. Look methodically.

Sooner or later, you'd hear it wheezing, bleeding out. It was only a matter of time.

And if the cartel woman was doing that, it meant she knew Rachel was somewhere close. It would have been easy to figure out. Rachel had been forced to shoot that zombie, and the cartel woman had probably already found the body. There weren't many places to run from there. That woman was probably already picturing the kill in her mind.

She had to run for it. That was her only chance. Moving slowly, wincing at the pain in her legs, Rachel stood up. She peered out from behind the ATM machine and saw the cartel woman walking away from her, two rows over, machine gun pointed toward the gaps between the slot machines.

Her back was turned, and she probably had another ten steps before she rounded the corner and started searching the row one over from Rachel's hiding spot.

If she was going to go, it had to be now.

Rachel pushed herself through the narrow gap through which she'd just passed. It was easy this time because she was slick with sweat.

She got through it, the only noise coming from her cracking knees and the soft wheeze that escaped her nostrils. She crept quietly down the aisle to the middle of the casino floor and there stepped right into a woman's arms.

Rachel let out a startled gasp.

“Shh,” the woman said, and only then did Rachel realize it was Tess. She looked awful. Her face was smudged with dirt and spattered with blood. The hair on the side of her face was caked and matted with dried blood from her wounded ear. She looked every bit as bad as the zombies Rachel had seen wandering the ship.

Except for the look in her eyes.

There was still life in those eyes.

“How?” Rachel asked. “I saw you die.”

Tess tapped the shock plate on her bulletproof vest. She looked like she was about to say something else, but then her gaze shifted over Rachel's shoulder and her eyes went wide. “Oh, no,” she said. “Get down!”

Tess pulled her toward a blackjack table, practically throwing her behind the heavy wooden bar and into the dealer's pit. Rachel landed hard, her hip smacking against the opposite side of the bar. She looked up just in time to see Tess firing in the direction of the slot machines.

The next instant, bullets smacked into the table, exploding splinters of wood and bits of green felt into the air.

“Damn it!” Tess said, landing on the ground next to Rachel. “She's got us pinned down.”

Rachel could see the cartel woman's reflection in the windows at the front of the casino. She was moving like a soldier from one row to the next, always crouched behind the slot machines, firing every few seconds to keep them from moving.

With every step, she was drawing closer.

“What are we going to do?” Rachel asked.

“Just stay down.”

Tess fired back, and an instant later, her shots were joined by another burst of automatic rifle fire. At first, Tess seemed to think it was coming from the cartel woman, except that bullets had stopped hitting the blackjack table. “Oh, my God, yes!” she said, dropping down next to Rachel.

“What is it?”

“It's Juan.”

Rachel looked up at her, at the shocked half-smile on her face, and peered around the side of the table for a better look.

It was Agent Juan Perez, and he was firing on the cartel woman.

He had
her
pinned down now. Every time she tried to move, he fired again. The slot machines exploded all around her. Rachel could see her with her back to one of the slots, her hands thrown over her black hair against the flying glass and plastic.

“Get down!” Juan yelled at them.

Tess's eyes went wide. “Oh, no, grenade! Down!” she said, throwing herself over Rachel.

The explosion shook the entire room and left a ringing in Rachel's ears. A fine wave of dust and aerosolized ash drifted over the room, covering her. She couldn't see the assassin. That entire half of the casino was awash in floating dust and smoke, and there was debris everywhere.

Juan motioned for them to get down again, and Rachel had just enough time to see him throw another grenade before Tess pushed her face into the carpet.

The second explosion shattered every window in the place, and when Rachel finally pulled herself out from under Tess, she saw the ceiling was on fire. Tess wouldn't let her up, though. She kept a hand on her shoulder, her pressure gentle, but firm, and gave her a warning look to stay down.

Then Tess leaned her rifle against the blackjack table and started making hand signals to Juan. Rachel didn't speak sign language, but she could tell from Tess's body language that she was arguing with Juan.

“What is it?” Rachel asked.

“He wants us to go to the lifeboats.”

“But they're all gone. I watched them go.”

“That's what I told him. He said there's a few still onboard though, starboard aft.”

“But . . . ?”

“Don't argue. If he says they're there, they're there. Just get ready to move.”

Tess's pressure let up just a bit, and Rachel was able to push herself up onto her hands and knees. She scanned the rubble where the slot machines had just been, the dust settling down over the wreckage.

She was about to ask Tess what they were waiting for when a sudden blur of movement caught her eye.

It was the cartel woman.

She jumped up from behind a toppled slot and ran for the busted-out windows near the front of the casino. She was through the window and running around the corner before either Juan or Tess could open fire.

“Go!” Juan yelled at them. He motioned at Tess to go the other way. “Get her to the lifeboats. I'll meet you there.”

“Where are you going?”

“After her. I can't let her get to the senator.”

“Come with us. I don't want to get separated.”

He used sign language again, and when he was done, Tess didn't bother to respond. She simply reached a hand down to Rachel and said: “Get up. We need to go right now.”

“Why? What did he say?”

“We have eight minutes to get you on a lifeboat and away from here.”

“But why?”

“Because there are a pair of F-15s on the way to blow this ship out of the water.”