by Frank Tayell
“To declare war on?”
“No, to look for oil.”
Chester mentally pulled the lever that switched his brain onto a parallel track. “I thought he was interested in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Yeah, but if the U.S. mainland is too full of zombies, then we need an island,” Jay said. “Like Cuba.”
“Well, let’s see if we ever get to the U.S.,” Chester said. “And going ashore in Newfoundland comes first.”
“Yeah, but what do you think?”
“About what?” Chester asked.
“Whether we should go south from Newfoundland.”
“We wouldn’t reach Cuba,” Chester said.
“No, but we need fuel, right? And we can’t get the diesel from Calais now, so we’ve got to go and find it somewhere else. We’ve got the fuel we didn’t burn going to Iceland or Greenland. So if we continued south, we’d reach somewhere.”
“It won’t be Cuba,” Chester said. “Not on this trip. As for the rest, it’s all just names on a map, and it’s not going to be us who decides which to visit. The admiral’s the boss now. She gave us a job, so she’s the one who’ll have to change it, but I don’t think she will. Once we get to St John’s, we’ll only be a few days sailing back to Faroe. And that’s what we’ll do, where we’ll go. The next voyage? Well, that’s down to the admiral, too, so there’s not much point debating it. Down you go.”
They’d reached the stairs, as steep as any ladder, leading down to the engine room. Jay had managed two steps downward when there was a burst of noise over the P.A. system.
“Action stations,” Sholto said, his voice echoing across the corridor. “All-hands, action stations. Ship sighted, dead ahead.”
“Dead is right,” Chester said, lowering the binoculars. “It’s dead in the water, isn’t it?”
“Jay, you’ve better eyes,” Nilda said. “Scan the ship. Any lights, any movement?”
“Aye, aye, cap’n,” Jay said.
“And be serious,” Nilda said. “Chief, what kind of ship is that?”
“That’s what we call a feeder ship,” the gruff submariner said. “A small freighter for carrying cargo short distances. Sometimes between ports. Probably carried cargo between the Canadian mainland and Newfoundland. She’s three hundred feet in length, so she’ll be rated for around four hundred containers on deck.”
“I only count twenty,” Jay said.
“You can only see twenty,” Chief Watts said.
“That’s what I said,” Jay said.
“There’s a crane at the stern,” Nilda said quickly. “I bet they dumped the useless cargo overboard. How many crew would it have?”
“Between ten and fifteen,” the chief said.
“I tried the radio,” Sholto added. “No one’s broadcasting a mayday. It’s a ghost ship.”
“It’s not ghosts I’m worried about,” Nilda said.
“She’s not listing,” the chief said, raising the binoculars again. “But her hull isn’t rated for thick ice. I don’t think she usually strayed this close to the Arctic Circle.”
“How did she get this far north through the strait without running aground on Labrador or Newfoundland?” Nilda asked.
“She wouldn’t,” the chief said. “Either she’s recently come loose from her moorings, or we’re following her as she drifts south into the channel. Give her a couple of tides, and she’ll wreck herself.”
“Or there were people aboard,” Jay said. “And they ran out of fuel yesterday, took to the lifeboats, and went ashore. Someone dumped the containers over the side, right? But not all of them. Maybe they left some treasure behind.”
“We’ve got the crown jewels,” Nilda said. “We don’t need any more treasure.”
“I mean food and stuff,” Jay said.
“Another ship would be a real prize,” Sholto said. “What d’you say, Chief, could we take her back to Faroe?”
“How can I tell without going aboard?” he said, without the glimmer of patient civility he afforded Nilda. “I doubt she can make more than fifteen knots. It would take weeks.”
“But you need to see the engines first?” Sholto asked. “Then let’s go do that.”
“But how, precisely?” Nilda asked.
“Send Jay swinging across on a rope with a knife between his teeth,” Chester said.
“Yeah, you first,” Jay said.
“I’ll take the launch,” the chief said. “I don’t want to get too close to her in these swells.”
“But you’re okay sending the launch?” Sholto asked.
“I’ll be aboard, so yes,” the chief said gruffly. “Anyone who’s coming, you’ve five minutes before I depart.” He marched out of the bridge.
“He’s taking the news of Calais hard,” Nilda said.
“As best I recall, he was always like that,” Sholto said. “I’ll go wake Thelonious and the Marines.”
“Can I go, Mum?” Jay asked. “Please? It’s not going to be more dangerous than London.”
“I was thinking of going, too,” Chester said quickly. “We’ll let the Marines do their job, and stick to the looting.”
Nilda nodded. “Okay, but I think I’ll sit this one out.”
“Are you feeling okay, Mum?” Jay asked.
“I’m fine. I just can’t get used to the swaying, that’s all. Just come back, both of you, and bring everyone else back, too. And quickly. If we can’t salvage the ship, and if there’s nothing aboard worth taking, we really do want to move on before dark.”
“Check the radio’s working,” Chester said, as he found a perch in the crowded cockpit.
“New World, this is The Golden Pelican, has your radio set broken in the last twenty minutes, over?” Jay said.
“Reading you loud and clear, over,” came the more professional reply, given by Norm Jennings, another submariner who’d tied his flag to Nilda and Jay’s mast after arriving in London as George Tull’s bodyguard.
“How do we do this?” Chester asked, as the launch bounced across the waves.
“I check the engines, you keep out of my way,” the chief said.
“Three teams,” Sholto said. “Sergeant, you go with the chief. Take Petrelli with you. Private Torres, you’ll come with me, we’ll check what’s in the remaining shipping containers. Private Gonzales stays with the launch. Chester, you and Jay can follow Thelonious inside. See what you can find in the living quarters.”
“Simple enough,” Chester said. “I like that.”
By the time Chester climbed aboard, Jay was peering at the deck while Sholto and Torres were prowling prow-wards, towards the handful of remaining containers.
“Clear,” Sergeant Thelonious Toussaint said, having swept rifle and torch inside the open bulkhead door.
“You coming?” the chief asked in what was nearly a demand.
“You go ahead,” Chester said. “We’ll check out the bridge.”
Chief Watts, Private Petrelli, and Sergeant Toussaint disappeared inside, and Chester walked over to Jay. The young man was running his hand along a gouge in the metal bulkhead close to a porthole window.
“I think a bullet did that,” Jay said. “The same bullet that’s lodged in the deck down there.”
“Was it mutiny, or self-defence, that’s the question,” Chester said.
“There’s a lot of rust by this gouge,” Jay said. “So it wasn’t recent.”
“Well spotted, but let’s keep our wits about us, okay?”
“We’re going to the bridge?” Jay asked.
“Yep, but we can take our time, because I don’t think there’s much to see on this barge.” He stepped inside the open door. “Blimey, this is like an airlock.”
“You mean a water-lock,” Jay said.
A water-secure hatch, now open, was set in the floor. Chester took out his torch, and shone it downward. That was the direction the chief had gone. There was no ladder leading to the deck above, but there was another sealed door in the chamber, this one leadi
ng to the interior of the ship.
“The corridors will be narrow,” Chester said. “Torch and bayonet, I think, with one eye on our retreat at all times. Ready?” He spun the wheel-lock, then drew his bayonet before opening the door, only realising as it swung outward how easily the lock had turned.
Beyond, the corridor was dark, and so was the emergency lighting, but it was empty, except for a few inches of water.
“So much for the water-lock,” Jay said, splashing after Chester.
Chester shone his light along the corridor, then on the doors leading from it. “Might as well try them all. You ready?”
“Oh, sure,” Jay said.
Chester turned the lock, and opened the door to a two-bunk cabin that was as empty as the corridor, but twice as dry. Pinned to the wall, however, were sheets of paper covered in neat lines of text.
“What are those bits of paper?” Jay asked, stepping into the room.
“You tell me. Despite the two bunks, I don’t think there’s room in there for both of us.”
“It’s numbers and letters,” Jay said, peering at one of the pinned sheets. “Then more numbers. Lots of them.”
“Look for words,” Chester said. “Or a journal, a log book, something like that. I’m going to take a look next door.”
The next door led to a small locker containing mops and buckets, of which they had a surplus on The New World. The door after that belonged to another small cabin, this one without pieces of paper stuck to the wall, but with more evidence of having been recently slept in. Both bunks were unmade, with one of the lockers filled with soiled clothes. The other locker was empty.
“I’m done,” Jay said. “Didn’t find anything. You?”
“Not yet.”
“I took photos, though,” Jay said. “Of those bits of paper. I’m going to figure out what it means.”
“You know you could have just taken the pieces of paper instead?” Chester said.
“But I’ve got the phone,” Jay said. “Oh, hey, there are books there, on that shelf.”
“We can get books when we go ashore in Canada,” Chester said as he squeezed back out into the corridor. “Ah, there, that’s more like it.”
“You found a sign for the bridge?” Jay asked.
“No. The medical room.” Chester said, bouncing his light off the white cross on a green background. “Medicine doesn’t go off as quickly as food.”
There were no pharmaceuticals inside the med-bay, but there was treasure.
“No way!” Jay said. “You were right. Look at this!” He’d opened a locker built into the wall. Inside, held in place with thin nylon straps, were cans of food.
“Is that spinach?” Chester said, adjusting his glasses.
“Yep,” Jay said, pulling out a bag. He began stuffing the cans in. “Check the other locker.”
“Oh.”
“Nothing there?” Jay asked.
“Just beans,” Chester said.
“What do you mean, just?” Jay asked, abandoning the spinach to grab a can.
“Back in the day, I ate a lot of beans,” Chester said. “Beans on toast, three times a day, sometimes. Sometimes cold, when they’d turned off the power in whichever derelict property I was kipping in. Then, this year, it became a bit of a staple before there was fish.”
“You can have the spinach then,” Jay said. “Do you have a bag?”
“Pass me the full one. Here’s mine.” He slung the bag over his shoulder. “You done?”
“Not even close,” Jay said. “We’re going to need more bags.”
“How many more?”
“I dunno. About ten.”
“Bridge first,” Chester said. “Then we’ll get the others, and get the rest of this before we sink the ship.”
“Sink? You don’t think they’ll get it fixed?”
“We’d have heard the engines by now. No, I reckon the ship sprang a leak, that’s why the crew abandoned her. So let’s get up to the bridge and find where they went.”
Five seconds later, he heard something that told him that guess was wrong.
Beyond the med-bay was a pair of doors, then a ladder leading up. The hatch above was open. If that wasn’t clue enough, there was a hint of daylight reflected on the uppermost rung. But before the ladder, from behind the door closest to it, came a soft scraping.
“Zombie,” Chester whispered, raising his bayonet.
“It might not be,” Jay said. “It might be a person, alive, trapped, abandoned.”
“Easily discovered,” Chester said. He rapped the knife’s hilt against the door. “Hello!” he called. He tapped the door again. “You alive, mate? Can you hear me?”
A bang came in reply. A splash. A scrape.
He knocked the bayonet against the door in a rhythmic rat-a-tat, but only got a scratchy rasp in reply. “It’s a zombie,” he said. “Hold the light steady, now.” He pulled the lever down and pushed. The door wouldn’t open. “Locked.” He tried again, then slammed his shoulder into it, but only got a bruise for his efforts.
“Maybe it’s barricaded,” Jay said.
Chester flipped the lever back up. “It can’t hurt us, so let’s leave it be.”
He turned to the ladder just as a body tumbled down, still moving, still thrashing. It hit the landing hard with a squelching crack, spraying pus across the bulkhead, but the fall hadn’t killed it. Squirming, crawling, it splashed across the inch-deep water until Chester stamped his foot down on its shoulder, pinning it to the semi-submerged deck before plunging his bayonet into its skull. “You okay, Jay?”
Before Jay could answer, a shot rang out from somewhere below.
“The chief’s in trouble,” Jay said, “we’ve got to go help.”
“Nope. We go back to the launch,” Chester said. “Come on. Move. We fall back, count heads, then go on a search when we know who needs rescuing.”
Pushing Jay before him, glancing back to make sure they weren’t being pursued, they splashed along the corridors until they reached the chamber with the door leading outside and the ladder that led down. Private Gonzales stood outside, on deck, her rifle aimed at the down-leading deck-hatch until she suddenly sprang around, facing towards the prow.
“It’s us!” Sholto called out, his voice faint.
Chester shone his light below. “Chief? Sarge? Luca?”
“You leave without us, I’ll haunt you forever!” Luca Petrelli called from below.
“You okay down there?” Chester asked, turning his torch to shine back along the corridor in the direction he and Jay had just fled.
“Zombies,” Petrelli said, as the chief climbed the ladder.
“We saw one ourselves,” Chester said. “Killed it. Heard another trapped behind a door. Couldn’t open the cabin.”
“Signs of a battle on deck,” Sholto said. “No bodies, though. How many undead below?”
“Two,” the chief said, as Petrelli and the sergeant followed him back up the ladder and onto the deck.
“Okay, we’re all here, and we’re all alive,” Chester said, beginning to relax.
“And we’re leaving,” the chief said. “The ship’ll be at the bottom in a day. The engine room’s partially submerged. We’d need pumps to clear it, divers to patch the hull, then a cable to tow her back to port for repairs. You need me to explain why we can’t do any of that?”
“I’m calling it,” Sholto said. “Back to The New World.”
“Wait, we can’t leave the food,” Jay said.
“What food?” Sholto asked.
“Beans and spinach, in cans, in the first-aid room,” Chester said, hefting the bag on his shoulder. “About ten bags left behind. Maybe a couple of hundred cans.”
“We can’t leave it,” Jay said. “It’s food. A lot of food. And not that many zombies. Not really.”
“It’d make a change from fish,” Petrelli said.
Chester sighed. “I’ll show you the way.”
“You took too great a risk,” Nilda s
aid, looking at the cans now lining the counter between the mess and the galley. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. Oh, so grateful, but it was too dangerous.”
“Not so much,” Chester said. “Didn’t see a single zombie on our way back inside. Grabbed the cans, got out. Only took us one trip.”
“In hindsight, with everyone having survived, yes,” Nilda said. “I’ll say no more, just that I’m glad you all came back. Spinach and beans.” She picked up one can and then the next. “U.S. spinach. Canadian beans. What do you think their story was?”
“The food, no idea. But the people, the ship, we discussed it on the boat-ride back. The consensus we reached is that the ship was abandoned a few weeks ago. The chief says it wasn’t more than three months. The people must have gone ashore, one of them, probably thinking they were immune, got infected. You know how it goes. Some of the others were infected. The rest fled.”
“Maybe to Newfoundland?” Nilda asked.
“Could be,” Chester said. “Thaddeus said he looked in three containers. One contained gardening equipment, still wrapped, waiting to be delivered to a store for sale. Another contained flat pack furniture, and the third contained clothing.”
“All supplies that would be useful to a survivor.” Nilda said. “I can picture them being loaded onto a freighter in February to be taken to Newfoundland for retail in spring.”
“We reckon they went through all the containers, and dumped the useless stuff over the side, leaving them with the things that today, tomorrow, next year, they thought they might need. Like Robinson Crusoe, if he’d had a chance to plan ahead.”
“But where were they going? Was it Newfoundland? Where did they come from? And where did they go after?”
“Dunno,” Chester said. “But I’m more interested in where they found that food. Was it in a shipping container, and was the rest eaten? Or is there more wherever they came from? But I don’t know that, either, and don’t see any way we can find out without going back aboard that ship. And I don’t want to. None of us do. The food will be a welcome relief, but the rest of their story is just a distraction, a diversion. An interesting tale to keep us entertained as we head south.”
“I’ll tell you one thing I’d like to know, though,” Nilda said. “Where did they go ashore that they got infected?”
