Crossbones (2015) by John L. Campbell

Author:John L. Campbell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic, SFX
ISBN: 9780425283752
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-14T12:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

January 12—Nimitz

Rosa was cold, and the thin scrubs, now soaked to the waist, did little to protect her. Her sneakers slid across a metal deck two feet below the surface of waters that were only a few degrees north of freezing, and her teeth chattered behind clenched jaws. Rosa’s medical knowledge told her that hypothermia wouldn’t be far off if she didn’t find a way to get out of this water and warm up.

But there was no time.

Michael was down here somewhere, and he would be cold too. Would he be smart enough—would he be able—to get himself out of the water? A baritone gurgle came from the darkness somewhere ahead, and she knew that Nimitz was not only taking on water but also moving. She felt the motion in her body, a subtle tremble and the vaguest of rocking. When she put her light on the corridor she saw the surface canted slightly to the left, in line with the ship’s list, and as the ruptured hull took on more of the bay, every space in that direction would flood more quickly than those to starboard. When she reached an intersection, she headed to the right. Hopefully Michael would have done the same.

A new stench filled the air, and her light revealed a blanket of trash covering the water’s surface. With each step the odor sharpened, making her wrinkle her nose. This wasn’t a dead smell, it was something else.

Two open hatches faced one another across the passageway, and she aimed her light and pistol into each. On the right was a small compartment filled with pipes and valves, and a heavy-duty stainless steel washer and dryer. Plastic bottles of bleach and detergent as well as a few shirts had collected in the corner where the list was greatest. When she looked through the hatch on the left, she recoiled at the vile odor inside. The lid to a trash disposal unit was raised against the far wall, and the opening beneath it—as well as whatever foul depths the trash chute led to—was flooded and overflowing into the compartment, the waste from below floating up and out.

As she quickly moved away, she couldn’t help but wonder if somewhere down in that black hell, a dead crewman clawed at filth-streaked walls.

There was a long, deep metallic groan that seemed to come from everywhere, and she stopped, still shin-deep in putrid, freezing seawater. It was not a sound the dead made, she decided. It was the ship. The subtle, rocking sensation intensified slightly, and deep here in the lightless bow she had a moment of disconnection, her sense of direction gone. She was lost in a dank, frigid purgatory where the dead hunted the living and the living were doomed to wander until they froze to death or were devoured.

That’s panic you’re feeling. Stop it.

Only the angle of the water showed her port versus starboard, and though she knew the carrier was moving, she didn’t know if it was floating in the direction of its list, turning in a circle, or even drifting backward.

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