Pandemic Page 3

She walked into the darkness of the crew’s mess. An aisle ran down the center. Small, four-person booths lined either side. In those booths, she could make out lumpy shadows, the still forms of corpses, the crimson shade of dried blood.

This was where they had tried to bring her.

A dim light filtered in from up ahead, shone down from the open, overhead escape trunk hatch.

Her eyes adjusted enough to make out something on the ground just in front of her.

A severed head.

And she recognized it: Bobby Biltmore, an ensign from Kansas.

Congrats, Bobby — at least you’re actually dead.

She stepped over the head and kept moving through the aisle, waiting for one of the corpses to rise up and grab her, pull her under a table, do to her what they’d done to the others.

The smell of rot, fighting for dominance against the scent of her own cooked flesh.

Only a few more feet to go. The shadows seemed to move, to take shape and reach out for her. Her hand tightened on the pistol’s grip, squeezed hard enough to somehow force back the scream building in her chest and throat.

Candice Walker felt another vibration.

Fish in the water … torpedo launch. The targets wouldn’t just sit there, they would fire back. That meant the Los Angeles only had minutes to live.

She focused on the light ahead. A ladder led up to the escape trunk hatch. The ladder usually hung from brackets on an adjacent bulkhead — someone had connected it.

Candice reached the ladder and started up, her only hand holding the gun, using her elbow and smoldering stump to keep her balance as exhausted legs pushed her higher.

She climbed up into the cylindrical escape trunk: empty, thank G.o.d. At five feet in diameter, there wasn’t much s.p.a.ce, but she didn’t care — salvation lay one more ladder up, one more hatch up into the dry deck shelter.

That hatch, too, was already open.

She stayed very still. She saw someone walk by the hatch. She saw a face, a flash of color. Wicked Charlie Petrovsky. He was wearing a bright-red SEIE suit: submarine escape immersion equipment.

Candice Walker’s pain didn’t vanish, but it took a backseat to the rage that engulfed her. Was Charlie like her? Or was he like them? Either way, it didn’t matter — she needed that suit.

The sub vibrated again. Another torpedo had just launched.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair! She’d done more than anyone could ask. She wanted to live.

Candice sniffed once, tightened her grip on the pistol, then quietly started up the ladder.

WICKED CHARLIE PETROVSKY

Wicked Charlie Petrovsky came to.

He lay on the floor of the dry deck shelter, bleeding from a bullet lodged in his neck. He kept his eyes closed, didn’t make any noise — he could hear her moving around nearby.

Candice Walker: the woman who had shot him.

Charlie was a guitar player. That was why he started calling himself “Wicked Charlie,” because he was wicked-awesome on the six-string. He’d known it was kind of douchey to give himself a nickname, but everyone liked him and he could flat-out shred on his vintage Kramer, so the moniker stuck.

None of that mattered anymore, though, because he knew he’d never play another note.

So cold. His eyes fluttered open to a view of Bennie Addison. Bennie’s eyes were also open, but they weren’t seeing anything because Bennie Addison had an exit wound above his left eye.

Charlie heard footsteps, heard the zwip-zwip sound of someone walking while wearing thick, synthetic fabric. She was somewhere behind him. The DDS was a squashed, metal tube some thirty-five feet long but only five feet wide — she’d have to step over him to reach the rounded door that led into the small decon chamber. The divers used it to clean themselves up after returning from a search, to make sure they didn’t bring any of the outside in.

The sound came closer, then feet stepped down in front of his face; right, then left, both encased in the SEIE suit’s bright red, watertight boots. He heard m.u.f.fled crying coming from inside the sealed hood.

Charlie stayed very still. If he moved, she would shoot him again. Couldn’t risk that; he was on a mission from G.o.d. He couldn’t complete G.o.d’s work if he was dead.

He didn’t dare to look up, but he knew what she was doing — opening the door so she could step through, close it behind her, then flood the decon chamber. Once that chamber flooded, she could exit it and enter the water.

She was heading for the surface.

That was wrong. Charlie was supposed to be the one heading to the surface. G.o.d said so. G.o.d told him where to go, and what to do when he got there.

Wicked Charlie Petrovsky would not fail G.o.d.

Candice stepped into the decon chamber. The heavy door clanged shut behind her.

Charlie waited until he heard the door wheel spin, sealing the chamber tight.

He pushed himself up on his hip. He felt his own blood coursing down his shoulder. He pressed a hand hard against his neck. He didn’t have long to live, he knew that. That he’d survived at all was a miracle, the hand of G.o.d obvious and undeniable.

Charlie tried to stand. He could not. One hand on the cold deck, the other pressed against his bleeding neck, one foot pus.h.i.+ng him along, Charlie crawled toward a life vest hanging from a bulkhead. He awkwardly reached it, slid first one arm through, then his head. His s.h.i.+vering, blood-covered hands fumbled with the straps.

Would G.o.d be mad at him?

The answer came immediately.

He heard a whump that shook the air a split second before the DDS’s starboard bulkhead ripped inward. A hammer blow of jagged metal tore into him, as did a simultaneous blast of high-pressure water that slammed him against the far wall, shattering bones on impact.