Sanctuary in Steel

CHAPTER 1

Zombies ten thousand strong massed along the Santa Monica shore, plodding through the sand, lumbering into each other in their unstoppable death march toward the onrushing surf that crashed and boiled at their feet.

They’ll do anything to get to us, said Halverson at the wheel of a twenty-foot sailboat plying the waters some fifty yards from the littoral.

They can’t walk on water, said Victoria, her blonde hair blowing in the gusting wind that billowed the sails.

Eight years younger than Halverson’s thirty-six years and a mother as well, the couturiere looked like a teenager with her slim figure.

She did a double take. Can they? she added.

Halverson watched three of the walking dead as they traipsed into the churning surf, bound and determined to reach him and Victoria aboard the sailboat. The waves pounded the ghouls back.

The creatures stumbled in the water and collapsed to their knees, but got up again in their headstrong, albeit mindless, assault and headed toward the sailboat, defying the waves and trudging through the water till their entire decrepit bodies were submerged and only their heads remained visible to the naked eye.

And then their heads were submerged as well.

Doesn’t look that way, said Halverson. They may be the next phase in the evolution of man, but they don’t fare too well in the water.

You really think we’re evolving into those things? Victoria shuddered at the thought.

Halverson scanned the beaches swarming with ghouls. They do seem to be taking over at man’s expense.

Victoria shook her head in bafflement. What the hell happened? she muttered.

Halverson knew what had happened, but it was classified intel. As a black ops agent for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service he could not relate the eyes-only information to a civilian like Victoria. Though at this point, Halverson wondered how much of the CIA was left intact.

He heard a rumbling overhead, tilted his head up, and gazed into the sky.

It was becoming overcast. Too, smoke hazed the sky. A smattering of clouds scudded across the canopy of diminishing cerulean. Flying among the clouds was a drone—an MQ-1 Predator drone, to be exact, armed with hundred-pound laser-guided Hellfire missiles.

It was all the proof Halverson needed that some part of the federal government still existed.

Victoria followed his gaze. How many of those drones are there?

Too many.

Is that one gonna shoot at us, too?

Halverson’s eyes followed the drone. It may just be doing recce.

He doubted the drone would fire at them as long as it couldn’t make a positive ID of him. Convinced the government had him in its crosshairs, he nevertheless believed the drone could not ID him at this moment. There was still enough smoke roiling in the sky from the burning ruins of the city to obscure the vision of the drone’s cameras.

Like that other one that fired a missile at us at the bank? she said sarcastically.

That drone was keying on the GPS signal emitted by my satphone, which I threw away.

Why would it fire at us?

I don’t know, he lied.

The less he told her about his job, the better off she would be in terms of life expectancy, he figured. The eyes-only intel he carried around in his head concerning the government’s involvement with the creation of the plague would only serve to get her name added to the same hit list his name was already on if he imparted the knowledge to her.

As far as he knew, the government was seeking to whack him alone. That would change if Victoria knew as much as he did about them, specifically about the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and about the superbug the scientists there, by design and aided by American funding, had created in a lab where they mutated H5N1 into the so-called zombie virus that was well on its way to wiping out the human race.

She bowed her head and massaged her brow. This is hopeless. What’s the point?

We’re trying to survive.

You call this surviving? Floating in a sailboat surrounded by flesh-eating creatures?

We’re still alive.

This is more like death on the installment plan, she said, surveying the slew of ghouls straggling all over the beach.

No. We’re not dead yet.

What are we trying to prove?

We’re not trying to prove anything. At least, I’m not. I don’t know about you.

I’m not trying to prove anything. She shook her shoulder-length hair in the steady sea breeze impregnated with the ocean’s briny odor. Why do I want to prove anything?

As long as we’re taking breath, we keep going.

OK, Dr. Feelgood.

He gave her a look. If you don’t like it, you can always leave.

You forget. I can’t swim.

I didn’t forget.

She glared at him.

Noting her reaction he said, Then you must want to live as much as I do.

With one qualification—not on these terms.

Why are you blaming me? These aren’t my terms. We’re both victims of this mess.

Touchy, touchy. Why do you think I’m blaming you?

She picked up on Newton the iguana who was standing motionless on the sailboat’s prow. The two-foot-long fluorescent purple and orange iguana shifted his head to take in the walking dead that infested the beach. Hissing, Newton inflated his dewlap at the sight of the creatures.

Newton hates those things as much as we do, she said.

Anything living hates those things, said Halverson.

You know what scares me more than anything else?

That the earth will never be the same again?

She stared at the riot of ghouls that seemed to undulate like a single living creature on the beach’s sand, all gawky arms and legs flailing about.

No, she said.

Then what?

That it’s all pointless. That there’s no point to any of it at all.

Why does it matter to you if there’s no point? He steered to port so he wouldn’t drift too close to shore where the ghouls awaited with drooling, putrescent mouths.

We have to suffer through this nightmare for no reason. Doesn’t that annoy you?

Why should it? It just is.

She shook her head disconsolately. It seems like a whole lot of hurt for nothing.

Halverson knew what she was getting at. He surveyed the palm-studded beach that stretched from the bluffs to the sea.

Where once there had been beachgoers screaming with glee as they charged into the ocean, there were now hordes of walking dead battling the waves in confusion. Where once there had been lifeguards patrolling the sands in yellow Land Rovers with surfboards strapped to their roofs, there were now armies of ghouls plowing through that very same sand in search of living meat.

Where once the beach had teemed with life in the guise of roller-skaters, skateboarders, and cyclists coasting down the asphalt bikeway that snaked through the sand, there were now punch-drunk ghouls streeling about.

Where once the beach had smelled fresh with the invigorating scent of brackish sea breezes, the fetid reek of rotting corpses permeated the air.

Where once children had flown kites on the sand cheering as their kites soared ever higher, now there were only ghouls that didn’t know which way was up. Where once tykes had ridden the Ferris wheel and the rollercoaster on the Santa Monica Pier screaming with delight, there were now ghouls groaning with desire for the taste of living human flesh.

Where once bright-faced volleyball players had spiked balls down over the nets on the volleyball pitches, now the living dead moved in an obscene danse macabre through the shifting sands.

Where once city workers clad in orange Velcro vests had cleaned the beaches of litter, there was now the litter of walking corpses plodding under the swaying palms.

The beast was indeed slouching toward Bethlehem, Halverson decided. It was more than he could stand. Yet he knew he had to stand it.

Yes, he well and truly knew what Victoria was getting at. A whole lot of hurt for nothing.

A flicker of motion in the rolling dark green and blue waters off to starboard caught his eye. Something was bobbing to the surface. The object was large, bordering on five eight in length.

Victoria let out a gasp at the grisly sight.

It was a drowned human stiff, rising to the surface on account of its belly being bloated with gas, Halverson realized. The cadaver had towy black hair about an inch in length, a bulbous nose, and blue eyes. The body was wearing an off-the-rack blue button-down oxford shirt whose buttons had popped off thanks to the extreme distension of the belly. Charcoal grey slacks rounded out the corpse’s uninspired wardrobe.

For some reason that Halverson could not fathom—considering its appearance and condition—the stiff seemed to be holding its head up in self-importance. It must have been a trick of the light or the rolling of the waves that achieved the effect, Halverson decided. Indeed, how could a cheesy decaying corpse even come close to looking arrogant?

Is it one of them? Victoria asked, shying away from the drifting body.

It doesn’t seem to be moving, answered Halverson, scoping out the floater that was lying on its back rocking in the gentle waves. Anyway, those things can’t float.

Are you sure?

Not really, he decided, but said, That’s probably a beachgoer who ran into the ocean and drowned trying to escape the ghouls.

Except—

Except the corpse’s eyes suddenly snapped open.

Victoria screamed.

CHAPTER 2

The fat man’s eyes stared straight out of his head up into the sky. Hazed with white, they focused on nothing in the vast emptiness of the heavens. His bloated cheeks and blubbery rotting cyanotic lips gave his face a gruesome cast as rolling seawater sluiced over it. His hands appeared deeply furrowed like prunes, precipitated no doubt by long-term saturation, decided Halverson.

Attached to the corpse’s bottom lip was a crab with its teeth buried in the blue flesh. The fat man didn’t seem to mind.

Why should he? decided Halverson. The guy was already dead. Then why did his eyes just flick open?

Did you see that? said Victoria, blue eyes wide.

The guy’s eyes?

Yeah. They just popped open. I thought you said he was dead.

He is. He must be. Look at him. His skin. It looks like he’s been submerged for a couple hours at the very least. Probably more.

Then why did his eyes open like that?

Some kind of rigor mortis, I guess. Your nerves can still function after you’re dead.

Is that why he’s moving his arms now?

The corpse was indeed stroking its arms, Halverson could see. It was nearing the sailboat’s starboard gunwale. Though the corpse was moving its arms, you couldn’t exactly call it swimming. It was more like the corpse was thrashing its arms in its eagerness to reach the boat.

Was it a revenant? Halverson wondered.

How can it be swimming if it’s dead? said Victoria.

Halverson stroked his chin in bewilderment. If it’s a ghoul, it shouldn’t be able to float. The other ghouls can’t float. They have no air in their lungs and they have no buoyancy. And for sure they lack the coordination to swim.

Victoria squinched her face into a grimace of disbelief. Then you’re saying that guy’s alive?

No. Look at him. He’s all swollen up. He died from drowning.

The fat man was approaching the hull of the sailboat as he flailed his arms and kicked his legs.

If he’s dead and not a ghoul, why is he swimming toward us? asked Victoria.

I can think of only one scenario. He was on the beach when the creatures attacked him. He swam into the ocean to escape them and drowned in his attempted flight. Before he reached the surf, one of the ghouls must’ve bitten him and infected him.

I still don’t get it.

When he drowned, his body sank. Then later, after the gases expanded in his stomach and floated him to the surface, he morphed into a ghoul.

Victoria jacked up her eyebrows. That simple, huh, Sherlock?

It’s the only explanation I can think of.

The corpse was moving dangerously close to the sailboat’s hull, even as the crab devoured the entirety of the stiff’s lower lip.

Halverson abandoned the wheel, strode across the deck, and snagged the boat hook. He aimed the tip of the hook at the ghoul’s head and thrust the steel point at one of the ghoul’s open eyes.

The undulations of the boat and the waves threw off his aim and caused him to miss his target. The boat hook sank into the ghoul’s cheek, tore the decaying flesh open, then glanced off the skull and into the water.

All but stumbling off the edge of the deck, cursing, Halverson contrived to fetch up at the gunwale in the nick of time before he plunged into the sea, maintaining his grasp on the boat hook all the while.

The ghoul continued floundering within five feet of the boat’s hull.

With no one in the wheelhouse, the boat was veering starboard, closing the gap between it and the spastic ghoul.

Halverson had no other choice but to bucket across the deck to the wheel, grab it, and steady the sailboat.

You’ll have to take care of that thing while I steer, he said. Here’s the boat hook.

He tossed it to the deck.

Victoria retrieved the boat hook. She looked as though she didn’t know what to do with it.

You know the drill, he said. Puncture its head. You have to kill the brain to kill the creature.

She stepped unsteadily on the rocking boat toward the gunwale. She could see the revolting bloated thing flapping its arms and legs in the water. She brought up the boat hook and drew a bead on the ghoul’s head as the creature rode the waves.

The thing keeps moving, she said. I can’t get a good aim at its head.

You’ll just have to take your best shot, said Halverson at the wheel. If you miss, try again.

She stepped nearer to the gunwale.

Watch your step. Don’t fall overboard, whatever you do, said Halverson, following her with his eyes.

Trying to keep her balance on the rocking deck, she held the boat hook with both hands and brought it to bear on the floating ghoul.

She risked a jab at the thing with the boat hook. The hook’s point drove into the creature’s throat and ripped it apart.

Meanwhile, the creature swiped at the hook with its arms, managed to snatch it with one hand, and then got a grasp on it with both hands. Victoria stumbled toward the gunwale as the creature yanked on the hook, drawing itself closer to the sailboat.

It was all Victoria could do to brace herself against the gunwale and prevent herself from falling overboard as she maintained her grip on the boat hook.

Bobbing against the side of the hull now, the creature let go of the boat hook with one hand and grabbed the wooden rail on the gunwale with that same hand and commenced to haul itself up out of the water, all the while gripping the boat hook with its other hand and using the hook’s shaft for purchase.

Let go of the hook! cried Halverson, seeing her dilemma.

Barely able to continue bracing herself against the gunwale, she released the boat hook.

The portly creature fell away from the hull and hung from a single hand that gripped the gunwale’s rail.

Victoria recovered her equilibrium then backed away from the hull and kicked at the creature’s hand on the rail. The first time she missed the hand. The second she didn’t. The kick landed squarely on the decrepit hand, crushing the water-bloated fingers and dislodging their grasp on the rail.

The creature splashed back into the ocean.

Gouts of chilly water splattered Victoria’s face as she beheld the creature’s plunge from the gunwale where she clung for dear life.

The creature with its distended stomach floated on the rippling waves and batted its arms to no effect, unable to steer itself.

Victoria was watching the ghoul when she caught sight of a dorsal fin slicing through the ocean in the direction of the flailing creature.

CHAPTER 3

Grey on its flanks with a white belly, the sixteen-year-old twenty-foot-long great white cut through the ocean at speed and homed in on the flubbing ghoul.

Halverson watched in fascination as the struggle pitted one killing machine against another.

The great white, aka white death, launched the first attack. The shark zeroed in on one of the ghoul’s windmilling arms. Its jaws gaping, the great white snagged the ghoul’s humerus, champed down on it with eighteen thousand newtons of force, jerked its grey head back and forth, and tore the humerus away from the glenohumeral joint that attached the humerus to the scapula.

If the ghoul had been a living thing, a torrent of blood would have been unleashed at its mutilated shoulder by the great white’s vicious assault. But the ghoul was dead and did not bleed.

The ghoul’s arm in its mouth, the great white swam away. Unhappy with the rancid flavor of the decomposed flesh and bone, the shark spat the arm out into the ocean then circled back for a second pass at the ghoul.

The ghoul opened its mouth wide, exposing its green, rotting snaggleteeth and awaited the great white.

The ghoul didn’t have to wait long.

In a matter of seconds the great white was careering through the water, bearing down on the ghoul. As the shark wrapped its jaws around the ghoul’s stomach, the ghoul bent its purulent head down and clamped its jagged teeth into the shark’s skin.

The great white reacted instantly, veering to its right at the instant of the zombie bite, carrying the ghoul attached to its left flank like a giant remora as it swam away. The shark tried to shake free of the ghoul, but the living dead creature held fast with its teeth buried into the shark’s flesh.

Halverson watched the great white slalom through the sea as it tried to dislodge the ghoul from its side. The one-armed ghoul held on with the death grip of its jaws.

The shark bore the ghoul out to sea, continuing to back and fill in its attempts to free itself from the ghoul.

We don’t have to worry about that ghoul attacking us anymore, said Halverson.

That leaves only the thousands of them on the shore to worry about, said Victoria.

You can waste your time worrying if you want. I’m getting out of here.

If those ghouls on the shore can float out here like fatso on the shark, we’re in deep trouble.

They can’t float. I told you. If they’ve already turned, they can’t float.

Halverson steered north up the California coast.

You also told me before that fatso was just a drowned corpse, said Victoria.

I made a mistake. OK? Is that what you want me to say? Are you happy now?

I’m not happy in any sense of the word. I just don’t think I can believe everything you tell me.

That was true, he knew. After all, he was a black ops agent for the CIA and he could not tell her about that, no matter how much he wanted to. It was part of his job to keep his own counsel about his clandestine profession—even if he was aching to burst out to her that the Agency was trying to kill him because he knew the truth about America’s involvement in the scientific mutating of the bird flu into the zombie virus that was in the process of wiping humanity off the face of the earth.

But he could not tell her.

He could not tell anyone. He was sworn to secrecy by the organization that hired him. It was driving him nuts, though. He felt like he had to tell someone in order to retain his sanity.

Then he told himself to calm down.

He thought about it. After all, what good would it do if he told her the truth? Would it change matters any? No, because the truth about the origin of the virus wasn’t the problem at this moment. The problem was the consequence of the origin. The problem was the superabundance of ghouls taking over the planet.

He settled on a plan of action.

We have to find out if anyone is still alive and link up with them, he said at the sailboat’s wheel as a wave flung ocean spray into his face.

What good will that do?

Then we can band together and destroy these things.

What if nobody’s left?

He glanced at the drone soaring over the zombie-infested beach. Somebody’s telling that drone what to do, and for sure it’s no ghoul.

You forget. Whoever’s flying that drone wants us dead.

Which was true, he knew. Piloting that drone was the CIA and what was left of the government that had put him on their hit list.

They’re not gonna help us defeat the ghouls, she added.

Not everyone’s gonna be on our side. I never said that. We just have to keep looking.

Victoria shrugged then held onto the gunwale and, her spirits sinking, considered the ghouls swarming the beach. See for yourself. The infected ghouls are taking over. Nothing can stop them.

We can do it.

She eyed him somberly. You’re in a state of denial.

You need to snap out of the funk you’re in.

Open your eyes and look at the beach. That’s our future.

Not if we refuse to accept it.

You can refuse to accept it all you want. It’s still gonna happen.

If you think like a loser, you’re already beat.

Breathing in the salty air refreshed Halverson. He felt like he had a chance, no matter how slim.

Everything sucks, she said. Haven’t you figured that out yet? She shook her head incredulously.

I never said otherwise. The point is, we have to keep trying.

I’m tired of arguing about it.

What’s your solution?

She said nothing.

She rucked her face into a frown as she squinted at something swimming toward them in the water between the shore and the sailboat.

I thought you said those things couldn’t swim, she said in horror.

CHAPTER 4

Something was in fact swimming from the direction of the shore toward the sailboat, Halverson could see.

He could not believe his eyes.

He refused to believe it was a ghoul. Those things simply didn’t have the muscular coordination to swim. And yet he had been wrong about the floater as Victoria was so eager to point out.

Was he, like she said, in denial? he wondered. Was he looking at the world with the eyes of an optimist instead of with those of a realist? Was he seeing things the way he wanted them to look instead of the way they really did look? He didn’t accept the notion that his judgment was that clouded.

Somebody was swimming toward them. Of that he was certain. The question was, who or what was it?

At that moment he heard someone screaming. At first he thought it was Victoria, but he soon realized it was a man’s voice and it was coming from the swimmer.

Help! he cried as he stroked through the waves in the direction of the sailboat.

We both know those things can’t talk, Halverson told Victoria.

I don’t know what to think anymore, she said.

He’s one of us.

Are you sure?

Halverson didn’t answer her. Instead, he steered the sailboat toward the swimmer.

Throw him the life preserver, he told Victoria.

She demurred, thinking about it.

Look at him, said Halverson. Does that look like a ghoul? He’s just as alive as you or I.

It looks that way, was all she said.She made no movement to retrieve the life preserver that was hanging on the mast behind her.

You can’t just let him drown. He needs the life preserver.

She watched the man struggling to swim toward them. He looked exhausted and seemed to be slowing down, mustering all his strength to manage another stroke.

She didn’t know what to do.

At last she made up her mind.

She turned around, snatched the round white life preserver from the