Cheers went up on the bridge and the decks of the Queen as it angled towards the remaining enemy ship, which fired. This time the Queen was hit dead on. The blast ripped a hole in her side, killing many of her defenders instantly.
“Damage report!” Steven snapped, knowing full well that the Queen faced a new problem now—and not just the damage to the ship. Those killed or mortally wounded by the blast would soon reanimate.
“No damage to the engines!” O’Neil reported. “The hull breach is being contained. We’re not taking on water!”
Finally, Luke reached the deck and positioned himself to get a shot at the enemy ship. He extended the black metal tube he was carrying and slashed out a section of power cables on the wall near him to hook into the weapon. He had spent all of his free time in the last few months refining the invention; he was fully aware of its capabilities. What he was about to do would cripple the Queen in some respects, and he certainly wouldn’t survive, but it was worth the risk. He aimed the tube at the destroyer and pulled the trigger.
A beam of energy leapt from his weapon, striking the destroyer’s ammo stores for the main guns. The energy melted through the destroyer’s armor and reduced the ship to a ball of flames, which lit up the sea even under the midday sun. Luke, his weapon, and a large chunk of the Queen vaporized in the energy weapon’s backwash. People screamed, both inside and abovedeck, as the Queen’s engines blew from the surge.
“What in the hell was that?” Steven cried.
“I don’t know!” O’Neil yelled over the chaos on the bridge. “We’ve lost main power, and the engines are burnt out. Power is out everywhere on the ship. The backup generators are keeping the internal comm. system and the emergency lights working, but that’s about it. We’re dead in the water, sir!”
“Shit!” Steven whirled about to the officer at the radar station. “What about the other three dead ships?”
“I… I don’t know, sir,” the officer stammered. “It looked as if the big one was keeping back, maybe even changing course away from us before the screen went dead. The two smaller ones were still on an intercept heading. They should be on us in the next few minutes, tops.”
Steven slammed his fist against the radar station. “Somebody tell Luke I want those fucking engines back on-line now!”
24
Dr. Gallenger got to his feet—or tried to. As he attempted to stand up, the fractured bone of his left leg tore through his flesh, and he hit the floor hard. He felt no pain as he examined the rest of his body, saw the piece of shrapnel protruding from his right lung. He had to get up. He could sense that his brethren would be here soon, and he was hungry. Hungrier than he’d ever been.
He deemed the shrapnel to be irrelevant, but snapped his broken leg back into place and used the materials scattered about the sickbay to fashion a splint. Then he did get up. He hobbled across the room to check on Nurse Jones and found her lying in a pool of blood.
Tilting his head like an animal would as he observed her, he watched her eyes flutter open, then dart this way and that as she realized she couldn’t move. A huge medical cabinet had fallen on her and had broken her neck.
Taking pity on her, Gallenger picked up a piece of debris and smashed in her skull.
He found the remains of his desk and the .45 he’d kept in the drawer. Feeling suitably armed, he left the sickbay. Soon he would taste flesh for the first time.
Everyone on the Queen had been tossed about as the destroyer’s shell had hammered into its hull. Hannah struck her head against one of the children’s lockers in the daycare center. As her vision focused through the blood in her eyes, she became aware that she was still alive. She hurt too much to be dead. Her head especially. She also realized she was alone. She felt a twinge of anger at Jessica for leaving her for dead, but then realized she would’ve done the same. It was the kids who mattered, not them, and Jessica had probably taken them somewhere safer in the ship.
Hannah dug inside her jacket and produced her .38. She had no idea how the fight outside was going, but she knew Jessica would need help. Jessica, as the saying goes, was not the sharpest tool in the shed, and Hannah didn’t trust her to see the children through this battle. She pulled herself up and headed out of the daycare.
“Jessica!” she screamed as she ran down the corridors, hoping the woman was still in earshot.
She rounded the corner of the passageway and came face to face with a dead man dragging his insides across the floor. He lunged at her, grunting, but she narrowly sidestepped his attack and shoved him as he went by her. He toppled to the deck and twisted about, already trying to get up and come after her. She popped off three rounds into his forehead, spraying his brains onto the wall.
Hannah stood a moment afterward, her breath coming in ragged gasps; she tried to collect herself and calm down. The Queen’s machine guns chattered above—the fight hadn’t been lost yet. She took a deep breath and set out in search of Jessica, though with much more caution.
The two yachts had swept in quickly, managing to evade most of the Queen’s defensive fire. Both of them came up along her portside, close enough for the dead to scale the Queen’s hull as they traded small arms fire with those left alive on her decks. The Queen’s gun emplacements were useless with the yachts so close. They couldn’t be angled downward to engage the dead, so Scott had abandoned his post and began to spray the climbing dead with an AK-47 instead. One of the attackers, a middle-aged man covered in burns, lost his hold as Scott’s rounds peppered his back, and he plummeted into the water.
While Scott was sidetracked, a creature hauled itself onto the Queen’s deck beside him—Roy’s twelve-gauge thundered and sent it careening over the side of the ship.
Scott motioned his thanks to Roy, then returned his attention to the dead and loaded a fresh magazine into his weapon.
25
The struggle for control of the Queen raged on. Her whole exterior deck was a war zone, and smaller battles filled her corridors.
“Sir,” O’Neil said, trying to draw Captain Steven’s attention away from the carnage below the bridge. “Captain, we can’t hold her. The Queen is lost. We need to give the order to abandon ship.”
O’Neil’s words jarred Steven out of his own thoughts. Abandon the Queen? Had O’Neil gone insane? He turned to argue, but the door to the bridge opened and Doc Gallenger staggered inside. Before anyone could react, the good doctor’s corpse raised the .45 in its blood-smeared hand.
The first shot slammed into Steven’s shoulder. The second and third burrowed into his chest. Benson, the communications officer, took a round to his throat before O’Neil managed to draw his own sidearm and shoot the doctor in the face.
O’Neil rushed to Steven’s side and squatted beside him.
“Leave me,” the captain ordered, coughing blood onto his lips. “I’m staying with the Queen.”
The other command personnel were fleeing the bridge as O’Neil stood up. Most of the Queen’s lifeboats were gone. Finding a way off the ship would be difficult, but not as difficult as surviving afterwards. The dead would be waiting.