A House Divided: Book 3 of The Of Sudden Origin Saga Page 11

  Nice how you made them stop yelling all at once.

  Can we be done with this? I don’t like the thoughts in their heads.

  I think it’s fun. They’re vicious. Insanely vicious

  We need to keep moving.

  Fine.

  As one, the rabid Fiends bent face down in the water and plunged their heads under. Their arms involuntarily thrashed as their bodies fought against drowning, but they did. Three of them managed to get within lunging distance of the boat and the disturbance caused water to broach the rim, leaving a half inch of water sloshing around everyone’s feet.

  As the drowned Fiends flopped into the water, floating face down, Hansel smiled at the stunned group of humans. “We learned that from our fellow Chosen in Nicaragua.”

  Eliza noted Hansel referring to himself as Chosen, and the big puck sensed rather than read her unease with the word. He smiled at her in a way that he hoped would ease her tension. There was part of him that was proud of being something bigger — that he and his sister weren’t alone in this world.

  While the twins focused on dispatching the Fiends, Gretel had let her anesthesia fall away. Sanders held his hand to his chest and grimaced.

  Jon said, “You better let me row, George. No need to be a hero. I’ve got plenty of experience myself.”

  Eliza said, “It’s a terrible wound you suffered, George. You’re looking pretty flush. Let Jon row.”

  Sanders offered a grim smile and screwed the cap off of his water bottle, taking a long draw. His face relaxed. “Thank you, Gretel. That feels much better.” But as the twin’s consciousness swirled into his mind, the prevailing sensation was one of sudden apprehension.

  There is illness inside you, George Sanders. I can feel it.

  Your heart is beating very fast, George Sanders. I can feel it.

  Sanders responded within the private conversation. Possible, I’m developing an infection. Blood pressure’s up, I’m sure. But I am fine for now.

  Jarvis noted the Navy Mark VI patrol boat causing a blip on his radar. One of an original squad of six, fuel rationing left it the only patrol for Nantucket. It usually hung near the wind farms several miles off shore and scanned for any oddities. Other than occasionally herding an overeager Halflie fishing-boat back toward the line of demarcation, it was a routine patrol. Though the Nantucket fishing fleet was permitted to work further out than most boats on the island, proximity bombs would still destroy any vessel that got past the Navy and within five miles of the mainland. By cozying up to the Navy men around the pubs on shore, Jarvis became well aware of how boring the detail was. His trips to the island were the highlight of the Navy men’s week. As a result, Pettybone wasn’t concerned about them looking into his activity while he was outbound to the colony. It was the inbound, and a required boarding as he returned to base, when they made sure there weren’t any stowaways.

  When he was within a mile of Nantucket harbor he began to slow down, bringing the vessels into a gentle drift. The barge was tied off to the tug in such a way as to keep it stable while under tow, but far enough away so that anyone who might gain access to the barge would have a devil of a time getting to the tug. Jarvis stepped to the stern and activated the winch that drew the barge in close. The winch had a governor, so it couldn’t draw the barge closer than 10 feet from the tug’s stern. He thanked God that the weather continued to cooperate. The breeze was almost imperceptible, leaving the tug and its charge floating in an easy rhythm. The seagulls that had circled overhead for most of the trip, became bolder as the boat bobbed. The two dogs barked with growing frustration over their inability to slaughter the invaders.

  As Jarvis heaved and shoved an aluminum gangway off the stern to bridge the two vessels, the dogs sniffed around his legs and tried to climb up to get closer to his coat, wagging their tails in anticipation. Kicking them away, he locked the gangway in place and took a tentative step up, then began to cross. A random series of swells passed, nearly causing him to fall as the motion between the boats sent the narrow bridge into a seesaw pattern. Clinging to the rails, he looked up to check if the god he had just been thanking was messing with him. The dogs rightfully stayed put as they watched him cross the rest of the way, then perked up their ears as the sweating human pulled a prize out of his jacket pocket. He had caught the squirrel the day before. It still hung from its snare as he held it up for the reanimated dogs to see. “Come on boys. Come come.”

  The dogs twisted their heads in confusion. Clearly the human was mad. What animal in its right mind would climb up on that twisting, bobbing bridge?

  Jarvis stepped back up on the gangway toward the tug and dangled the squirrel closer to them, his voice rising an octave. “Come here, come here. Come and get it.”

  Salt took a cautious first step. “That’s right. Come on, boy.”

  The dog whined and sat back down.

  “Get over here, you stupid mutts!”

  Swearing in rapid fire, he crossed the gangway again and held the squirrel right under Salt’s nose. The dog took a sniff and latched its jaws on the carcass. Jarvis snatched the beast around the waist and hoisted him into the air. Salt twisted, his legs swinging around wildly, but he didn’t let go of the squirrel. Jarvis awkwardly walked back across the gangway, the dog suddenly cooperative, its tail between his legs. He set the animal down and gave a yank on the squirrel. Salt wasn’t going to let go and it turned into a tug-of-war, resulting in tearing the rodent in half. With entrails hanging out of his half, Jarvis — swearing and muttering — turned to Pepper, who now stood at the edge of the gangway watching the proceedings with raised eyebrows, his tongue panting away, a modest wag in his tail. Jarvis quickly crossed, slapped the half squirrel into Pepper’s waiting mouth and then played another game of tug-of-war, slowly yanking the dog across to join the bloody faced Salt on the lumber pile.

  As both dogs drove their snouts back into their meals, Jarvis crossed to the tug and pulled the gangway back aboard. With his face scrunched up in disgust, he wiped his hands on his pant legs and climbed back up to the pilot house.

  Back underway, the dogs finished scarfing down their meal and roamed the barge, barking at seagulls.

  At the approach to the harbor, the occupants of the overloaded rowboat watched in awe at what was happening on shore. With no healthy people to pursue, eat and or infect, thousands of raging Fiends were immersed in an orgy of violence and sexual display. Gangs of men and women were preying on the weakest among them, torturing, hacking, eating, raping; all with sadistic glee. Whoops and laughter were just as loud, if not louder, than the sounds of agony pouring out of the victims. Everyone but Hansel and Gretel turned away when they saw a young man alternately laughing then crying and giggling as he watched his entrails being pulled out in long slippery ropes. Fires were raging throughout the quaint village, the flames casting mad shadows completely juxtaposed to the peaceful early morning light.

  When the rowboat was spotted for what it held, many Fiends jumped into the water and drowned in an effort to get to something fresh, the water churning with their spastic efforts.

  Hansel said, “There are so many. More than we can control.”

  “Don’t think about all of them,” said Dean. “When we get closer, stay focused on the docks around the Viento.”

  Sanders, with a look of astonishment and sorrow, pointed at the distance. “Will you look at that. Bob Jordan and Evan Brandt. Two of the finest sailors I’ve ever known… and Jesus, Adam Crowley.” Crowley was plunging a harpoon into the crotch of a woman over and over. The woman, who had her legs spread willingly, turned her head to face those in the water and screamed in agony while alternately smiling with some unimaginable pleasure. Dean reached to cover Billy’s eyes, but the boy was already looking away.

  Jon said, “There is a Hell, and we’ve found it. Again.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Damned

  The vast docks and boat slips of Nantucket Harbor were a village unto themselves. When
the island had first been settled by the Halflies, the abandoned yachts became home to hundreds of people who took work around the harbor laboring among the life-blood fishing industries. As the bulk of the boats were restricted from leaving the harbor, a shantytown of sorts was created among them. In the early years, it was a floating cluster of misery, which slowly evolved into a place of mirth, music, and comradeship — and now, madness.

  As the rowboat approached, more of the insane poured into the water, the gnashing lunatics crawling over each other across the drowning and the flailing in an effort to reach the boat. There were so many bodies in the water, that some were able to move with surprising speed across the writhing slippery surface.

  The quarters were tight — the ends of the docks a mere thirty feet from the center of the channel on both sides. Gretel and Hansel’s considerable skills became overwhelmed.

  Hansel called out, “Too many! Too many!”

  Dean and Jon took to beating and fending off the monsters with their oars, smashing fingers as quickly as they grasped the sides. Just as the Viento came into sight, the rowboat became fully swamped.

  “Swim for it!” yelled Dean.

  Screaming as they launched themselves into the water, the group swam with the panicked strokes of men being chased by sharks. The twins surrounded Billy, Gretel doing her mental and physical best to keep the snarling creatures at bay. Hansel focused on the ones who swarmed the slip around the Viento, causing that mob to turn against each other. He got a phalanx of them to turn around, and like a wall of riot police, shove, kick, slash and punch their comrades away from the sailboat.

  Jon, who had stayed behind the other swimmers in a rearguard action, felt a hand firmly grasp his ankle. He’d been in this exact position before in a lake in New Hampshire; two infected teenage boys spastically trying to get to him. Only then, he’d had a knife. He kicked as hard as he could while driving an elbow into the eye socket of a red headed woman just as she lunged in for a bite. Suddenly he was under the water, being pushed down by others that were trying to use his body as a step to get to the ones in front of him. He looked up through the murky green at the flailing arms and legs, the drowning slipping past him on their way to the bottom, some still gulping in gasps of water while relentlessly lunging out for him. As a foot pressed down on his back, on his face, he spotted Nikki above, being grabbed, surrounded. He swam with everything he had, his lungs burning, screaming for air, his panicking brain nearly overriding logic in an attempt to breathe in water instead. He burst to the surface and gasped while yanking a chomping man off of Nikki’s back, his jaw clamped to her coat, ripping back and forth like a rabid dog, she screaming and kicking and spitting water as another tried to get to the exposed skin of her face. Then her body was pulled under from below.

  Jon’s screams were as loud and desperate as the raging beings who surrounded him. Like a man lunging free from a pack of rabid dogs, a last spurt of adrenaline had him throwing elbows and head butts, while in his mind’s eye, a memory of yet another fight in the water — a helicopter swooping to the rescue. There was no helicopter this time. He took a deep breath and dove down, searching for Nikki. He spotted her falling slowly through the murk, her eyes open, but filled with the vacancy of someone who had had enough… enough of this. He swam past the drowning monsters and grabbed her arm, pulling her in tight. Nikki offered neither resistance nor help. He struggled to swim past the dangling legs, the falling swirling bodies, his clothes weighing him down. A last lunge got him to the edge of the boat slip, the Viento’s clean white hull a beacon among the slime and barnacle encrusted. He was spent, nothing left, just a grip on Nikki’s arm. He felt a hand reach down and grab his collar. He was heaved up and out of the water, feeling her slip away, anticipating the pain of a bite — remembering the pain of a bite.

  Then Dean in his ear, “I got you. I got you.” Then to Sanders, “Grab her. Don’t let her go.”

  Sanders on his knees; reaching down with a mooring hook; grabbing Nikki’s armpit; Billy grabbing also; pulling her up; Jon trying to regain his senses, trying to understand his surroundings. One of the pucks on the dock was looking out at the melee in the water with a big sharp toothed smile. The other, the female, Gretel, was looking at the land side of the dock and the madness on shore. The twins had created a bubble of safety of sorts, around the Viento. Jon breathed in the smokey air while spitting out water in hacking coughs. Nikki was coughing too, coughing hard and swearing, non-stop swearing. When the former husband and wife made eye contact, the only thing between them was an acknowledgment of temporary survival.

  In less than a minute, Dean, Billy, Eliza and Sanders had the boat rigged well enough to cast off. With Fiends beyond the puck’s grasp still pouring into the water to get to them, they shoved the boat out of the slip, Hansel leaping aboard last — a trail of maniacs leaping off the dock behind him.

  There wasn’t the slightest hint of a breeze.

  With Billy taking the helm, Dean ordered the rest to line up along the center of the deck, front to back. He called out, “Side to side now. One, Two, One, Two.” They rocked back and forth as a group, causing the boat to rock side to side, which slowly propelled it forward through a writhing sargasso of the drowning.

  With the sides of the boat too tall for the monsters to grasp the deck and pull themselves aboard, Billy aimed for the empty whale oil storage facility. The oil being a critical element to everyone’s survival, the big storage drums were secured against theft by heavy-duty fencing and razor wire.

  As they pulled up and tied off next to the fencing, Dean and Sanders grabbed a couple of heavy lines and tied them to the framing of the chain-link door. They wrapped the other ends around the biggest winches on the boat and started cranking. The padlocked chain protested with a loud squeal until it popped and the door swung with a snap and a bang.

  Like a wolf pack following wounded prey, the infected had followed the Viento along the waterfront. As they arrived at the oil storage facility, the Fiends started crashing against the land side of the fence, climbing and getting tangled in the wire. Hansel and Gretel got to work again, causing the ones who were already tangled at the top to kick and hack at their fellows down below.

  Dean and Sanders ran inside the fenced area. Dean grabbed the fuel hose, reeling it out as he ran back toward the boat. Eliza unscrewed the diesel fill cap and Dean plunged the nozzle in while Sanders worked the hand crank pump. More Fiends were coming, piling on one another like ants until they could climb right over the top of the razor wire. Hansel and Gretel were doing their best, but were again overwhelmed.

  Jon grabbed the broken chain that had held the gate and ran inside, swinging at the things to keep them away from Sanders.

  Billy called out to Eliza, “The spears!” He lifted the seat that covered the sail locker, jumped inside, and held up a couple of homemade spears to Eliza’s waiting hands. She passed them to Nikki who didn’t hesitate, running inside. “Jon!” She tossed the spear in an upright fashion. He turned just in time to catch it and brought it down slashing and stabbing while still swinging the chain. The two of them stood their ground in front of the still pumping Sanders, stabbing every one of the things as they got past the twin’s control.

  Sanders, wild-eyed with fear, yelled to Dean, “Counter shows ten gallons!”

  Taking another spear from Eliza, Dean yelled back, “Good enough! Let’s go!” He pulled out the nozzle with the oil still flowing and tossed it aside.

  Sanders ran back aboard, and in the fashion of retreating Roman legionaries, Jon and Nikki stepped back in unison, stabbing over and over.

  With all back aboard, the twins bottled up the Fiends in the tight space of the broken door, causing the things to bite, kick, punch and gouge each other instead.

  In seconds the team was pushing off, once again lining up along the spine of the boat to rock it back and forth, Billy back at the helm.

  When they were safely in open water, Dean turned for the gangway. “Keep roc
king, everyone.” He kissed his fist and gently tapped it on the solar trickle charger, then scrambled down the gangway. He pulled the ladder aside and lifted the engine cover away. “Neutral like I taught you, Son. Crank it when I say.” He whipped open a small tool box, grabbed a screwdriver and twisted the air bleed valve above the fuel filter, which was hopefully filling with whale oil. The engine had been run out long ago and the air needed to be bled from the lines before it would start. “Ok, crank it!”

  Up top, Billy steered while pressing the engine start button. To everyone’s relief, the batteries had enough charge to turn the engine over. It cranked and cranked, but wouldn’t catch.

  When oil dribbled out of the nipple, Dean closed that valve and moved down to the injector pump. “Keep cranking!”

  “Dad! There are healthy people rowing toward us. Heavily armed!”

  “Shit.” The rocking motion was making this tricky enough. He found and twisted the valve on the injector pump. More oil dribbled out, but the machine would’t fire. He yelled up, “How far away?”

  Sanders yelled down this time. “Five boats, both sides of the channel. They’re cutting us off. Maybe twenty of them or more. Healthy looking bastards. Ten boat lengths.”

  “Well, they can’t come aboard! Even if they’re healthy, they’re not healthy enough for Billy to be near them.” Dean grabbed a crescent wrench and twisted his body over the cranking engine. Too dark to see. He had to feel his way along the fuel lines squeezing himself between the top of the engine and the deck above to reach the injectors. Then he dropped the wrench. “Son of a!”

  Topside, Hansel and Gretel were able to disrupt a boat-full each. That left three others bee-lining it toward the Viento. The team shifting their bodies back and forth along the spine, lost their rhythm and the boat’s progress began to slow.