of tearing metal and grinding rock. Silt and mud sucked at the hull, creating a vacuum and holding the ship tightly to the shallow bottom. As before, seawater rushed in and filled whatever space it could before the engineering design allowed it to go no further. Nimitz came to rest a half mile off shore, listing on an eight degree angle to port.
Without the appropriate responses to its queries, the master computer shut down all but one reactor, and reduced power on that one so that it could run internal systems only, power but no propulsion. Scattered, desperate battles flared in isolated spaces of the ship, and then died out. Bodies thumped against metal bulkheads or floundered in flooded compartments, feet dragged across decking and stumbled up and down stairways, low croaks and moans echoing throughout miles of passageways.
America’s greatest naval weapon was now a ship of the dead.
SEVENTEEN
Questions about how and where the Omega Virus started, how it managed to spread so fast, and why no one was prepared to deal with it ceased to matter. It was here, it was a pandemic, and for most it was an extinction level event. For those who cared, the generally agreed-upon outbreak date for OV was mid-August. The first two weeks of the plague, and the devastation which came with it, forced the remaining survivors to wonder if life had moved into its final act.
For many of them, that question was swiftly answered.
Long Beach
Hank Lyons lived in a two story apartment complex not far from the industrial parks and shipyards. A single man in his fifties, he watched the news until he could stand it no longer, and then shoved as much canned food as possible into a piece of rolling luggage and headed out in his Ford Escape. Baxter, his Jack Russell, rode in the front seat beside him, eyes bright and stubby tail wagging at the adventure.
The airport was shut down, the roads were rapidly jamming with panicked motorists, buildings were burning. At one point a bullet punched through his back window.
“Screw this,” he told Baxter. The dog barked in agreement. Hank headed for the docks, thinking he and his dog might get aboard a ship – any ship, it didn’t matter – which could carry them to safety.
He wasn’t the only one with that idea. Three blocks from the port, the Escape became trapped in a sea of unmoving traffic, people streaming between the cars on foot. He snapped on Baxter’s leash and joined them. Within minutes, the dead poured out of Long Beach and into the traffic jam, and people started running, dropping their bags and possessions and fighting to move faster, pushing and trampling the slow to move. Hank ditched the rolling luggage, lifted Baxter into his arms and ran with them.
What few ships there were, tankers and freighters and car carriers, had already raised their gangplanks and were casting off. People shouted and waved, pleading for them to come back, and many even leaped into the oily water to swim after them. The dead slammed into the crowds packed along the edges of the piers. Hank sped away into a maze of long steel containers, still carrying Baxter.
The dead were in there, too.
Cut off on all sides, he climbed to the roof of a forklift and hurled his dog onto the top of a rusty blue cargo container, then jumped after him. Both man and dog made it. Baxter barked in approval, and Hank discovered with relief that although several of the dead managed to climb onto the forklift, they weren’t coordinated enough to make the jump, and tumbled off into the gap.
Once the hordes were done with their victims on the piers, they wandered, and soon discovered two meals trapped on top of the container. By the end of the day there were more than a thousand of them surrounding the long metal box, groaning and reaching. They didn’t go away, and no one came to the rescue.
Hank Lyons lasted four days in the open before lack of water claimed him. Baxter nervously licked Hank’s dead face for five minutes, until his master groaned and climbed slowly to his hands and knees. The Jack Russell danced around him happily, and then leaped into outstretched arms.
After Hank ate Baxter, he wandered to the edge of the container and fell off into a crowd which no longer cared about him.
Bakersfield
Francis Miller Presbyterian Hospital swelled to capacity and beyond, and Bakersfield General had been turning people away