As the helicopter touched down on the deck of the Conqueror, Kyle toyed with the notion that he should once more jam the barrel of the rifle into the pilot’s neck and demand that he take off again.
It wasn’t the two armed men scurrying toward the chopper as the whine of the rotor blades began to lower in pitch that made his heart leap; hell, everyone seemed to be armed these days. Kyle had managed the best part of thirty years without ever seeing a gun; five minutes ago he had been threatening to blow somebody’s head off with one.
No, it wasn’t the guns that scared him. Not anymore.
It was the bodies.
In the distance, behind the approaching men, he saw a stack of bodies, like something from some grisly old photograph depicting the hideous result of a brutal war.
What the fuck happened here?
He stepped out of the chopper, half-wondering if somehow the game was up, and Sullivan knew he had two interlopers in his bizarre private army. Maybe the two men running toward the chopper were here to execute Kyle and his brother. Certainly Kyle couldn’t imagine them doing any arresting. Law and justice was definitely a thing of the past, and not a matter that Sullivan had overly concerned himself with even when it had meant something.
True to form, Tom remained in the chopper, presumably hoping that he could somehow make himself invisible and avoid the inevitable shit-storm to come.
And you thought you were going to kill Sullivan, Kyle thought bitterly.
He had often felt guilty for labelling his brother delusional, but not where that was concerned. Two men with no military experience and one gun that neither of them could fire with any degree of accuracy were never going to get anywhere near Fred Sullivan.
Kyle lifted his arms aloft in surrender as the two men reached the chopper, and grunted in surprise when the younger of the soldiers pushed him aside and leapt aboard.
“Wait,” Kyle said, “What’s going on?”
His answer was an ear-splitting roar, and he turned in astonishment to see one of the nearby destroyers unleashing a devastating salvo of rocket fire at a ship further to the west. Another huge explosion tore the air over the North Sea apart.
Even more incredibly, a second or so later, Kyle heard the noise of another crunching impact and felt a sudden tilting of the deck. No more than a degree or two, barely noticeable. Kyle wouldn’t have noticed it but for the fact that nothing caused the Conqueror to tilt. Previously, he had suspected it would have taken a tsunami wave to make the gigantic ship feel like it was actually at sea.
But he saw no tsunami.
“That’s going on,” the younger soldier growled, as the older one—clutching an assault rifle identical to Kyle’s own—hauled himself into the helicopter.
“The mutation is free,” the older soldier said. “And I think it’s just arrived.”
“Here?” Kyle said in astonishment. “But we just left it on the other ship.”
“You were on the McIntosh ship?”
Kyle nodded.
“Well,” the older man said. “A lot’s happened since then. It’s already been through two ships that we know of.”
“In five fucking minutes?”
“Yeah,” the younger soldier snarled. “Nice chat. Now get on the chopper or don’t, but you”—he jabbed the barrel of a pistol into the pilot’s neck—”get this fucking thing back in the air now.”
The pilot bristled.
“That’s the second gun I’ve had pointed at me in-”
“Then I guess you’re just unlucky, mate. Pilots are pretty valuable at the moment. Trust me, the way things are going on this ship, you’re going to have someone pointing a gun at you one way or another. You’ll be glad it was me, because I really don’t want to have to pull this trigger.”
The pilot stared at him, his eyes narrowing, and sighed. He fired the engine again, and the rotor began to howl.
“I don’t have much fuel. Where is it you want to go?”
“Not far. We’re landing on the fastest ship out there, and then we’re getting the fuck out of here before Sullivan kills us all.”
The pilot pouted almost comically.
“Well,” he said. “You could have just said that.”
Kyle heaved himself back onto the helicopter, and moments later he felt the deck of the Conqueror fall away. As the chopper rose into the sky, he stared down at the enormous ship. At a glance it looked quiet and still, and it was difficult to believe that anything at all was happening beneath the surface.
*
Jake stood in a shallow lake of blood, and felt a certain amount of disappointment.
The destroyer he had torn through like an Act of God hadn’t been the challenge he had hoped for after all, and after charging through two vessels without meeting meaningful resistance he had expected that the largest ship in the fleet—an enormous aircraft carrier—would also have the largest crew.
As fatigue began to set in it had taken him two attempts to punch through the thick steel hull, which was a little disconcerting, and what he had found inside was mainly corpses. It was as if the humans aboard the carrier had been aware of his imminent arrival and had formed some sort of mass-suicide pact.
All the bodies looked peaceful; unmarked, almost as if they had all just decided to go to sleep. As ever, the enormous energy expended by Jake’s preternatural movement had taken a massive toll, and the first thing he did was take a huge bite out of one of the bodies.
He spat the meat back out in disgust.
The blood of the dead had been poisoned. If this was the old man’s attempt to prevent the inevitable, Jake thought, it was poorly planned.
He wandered cautiously through the piles of bodies, until finally he registered some actual living humans nearby, and he made straight for them, tearing them apart eagerly and shuddering in ecstasy at the powerful rush of energy their blood provided. Yet there were only a handful.
Puzzling.
At least, once the energy began to course through him, he was able to move faster, but still Jake found himself hesitant to proceed. The ships and the humans he had encountered thus far had been entirely predictable in their reactions: they fired their ineffectual weapons until the bullets ran out, and then they died in spectacular fountains of blood that made Jake feel giddy.
Yet this was different.
Surely the old man would be on this ship: the biggest in the fleet; the one at the centre. Sitting at the middle of things like a fat spider on an enormous web.
Unless, just like a spider’s web, the aircraft carrier was a trap; just a big piece of irresistible bait to lure him in.
Jake had underestimated Sullivan once before, and the result had been catastrophic. The old man was cunning and ruthless. Charging forward blindly might well end in disaster and darkness and the horrific noise that had made his nerves shriek in agony.
The incessant need that burned in Jake’s twisted mind urged him forward, relentlessly exhorting him to give in to the monster that he had become, and to blindly pursue the blood and violence he craved so desperately.
Only the part that remained vaguely human held him back. The part that had once been a simpering coward that he detested with all his soul.
Controlling his impulses had always been a problem, but in the past it had been one that he had learned to overcome when necessary. He had never been the sort of lunatic that was completely blinded by their lust. Those sort of killers were sloppy; easily apprehended. Detachment and the intelligence to see the bigger picture were vital, he had always believed, if you were to forge out a successful life in the business of serial murder.
The thought that he was now in thrall to his own twisted genes and the addiction to the narcotic rush of human flesh; helpless as a shivering junkie, mortified and enraged him.
This is a trap.
You should run away.
Shut the fuck up, coward.
With an enormous effort, Jake forced himself to move slowly, creeping through the belly of the ship on high alert and conserving the energy that leaked away from him with such appalling ease.
The ship was gigantic, but he could sense the presence of humans not too far away. Somewhere above him. Fighting to suppress the dark desire that screeched in every cell of his mutated body, and refusing to acknowledge the familiar voice in his mind that told him to flee, Jake began to ascend.