Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  Water remained a problem. The three remaining contractors were able to get the desalinization system working again, but only for a single afternoon before it failed once more. Mr. Leary, the older electrician and the unofficial leader of the contractors, reported to the captain that he didn’t think it would run again until numerous mechanical and electrical parts were replaced, pieces very specific to the system. The brief time it did run provided them with a quarter tank of drinking water, but despite the filtering system, it tasted vaguely oily. Rain collection buckets were set out, and several fire hydrants on shore were opened only to find there was no pressure, and no water to be had.

  In the weeks since their arrival, refugees hiding in Brookings had seen and made their way to the big white ship anchored at the mouth of the harbor, some approaching by small boats but most coming in overland. There was a trickle at first, but that quickly swelled to more than three dozen. Liz put Ensign Liggett in charge of shoreside security and gave her a four-man detachment. The young ensign was responsible for disarming refugees—most had one type of weapon or another, mostly for hand-to-hand combat—inspecting them for bites (none were bitten), and settling them into quarters at the Coast Guard station. The captain also ordered her to screen the new arrivals for useful skills and assign them to work parties.

  “So far we don’t have much,” Amy told her commanding officer during an afternoon meeting aboard ship. “A lot of motel and restaurant workers, retail and shop employees, office clerks, a couple of painters and construction workers. At least a third are children. There’s a pair of fishermen, a kid who was an auxiliary sheriff’s deputy, and a fish and game warden.”

  Liz had looked at Amy’s list. “We’re a nation of baristas and video game designers.” Then she looked at her XO. “Everyone works, Amy, or they can’t stay. Anyone can collect water and wash laundry and dishes, and you have a few skilled laborers here. Find them jobs. Incorporate the deputy and the fish and game officer into your security detail. If you get pushback from anyone—”

  “I can handle them,” Amy said.

  Liz smiled at her. “You’re turning into a capable and dependable officer, Miss Liggett. Keep up the good work.” Amy had smiled and doubled her efforts, just as Liz intended.

  Having both the opportunity to go ashore and something of a home improved morale immediately, and the atmosphere of quiet reserve in the wake of John Henry’s hanging appeared to have passed. It was also no longer necessary to restrict the crew from monitoring the radio. Two months after the outbreak, the airwaves were eerily silent.

  Although the Coast Guard Cutter Dorado was stationed only twenty-six miles to the south on the California coast, it never appeared, and Liz decided the other cutter’s captain would have more important worries of his own. Even if it had shown up looking for trouble, Liz was confident that she would have easily outgunned the much smaller vessel, but she had no wish to fire on her own and was glad not to have to give the order.

  The dead were an ongoing problem.

  Amy Liggett’s shoreside security was regularly tested. Corpses from the nearby RV park were drawn by the activity at the Coast Guard station. There were more than the young officer had expected, and her team was forced to expend more ammunition than she wanted to stop their approach, often coming in waves like a tide. In response, she organized a team of refugees armed with hatchets, axes, and improvised stabbing weapons to meet the oncoming dead. It worked; the dead were slow, and she had enough manpower among the civilians to put them down without wasting bullets.

  She also created a pair of shooting platforms on the station’s lawn, parking a pair of dump trucks on the grass forty yards apart, and posting round-the-clock, rotating sentries armed with M14s up in the beds. Whiskey-Deltas that slipped past her skirmishers were engaged from there. Refugee work parties collected the bodies, dragged them out to a breakwater, and burned them.

  “I’m concerned,” Amy told her captain. “The shooting incidents are increasing because the numbers of the dead seem to be climbing, and sometimes it’s too much for the people on the ground.” So far her team of civilians had avoided being bitten, but there were some close calls.

  “By now the RV park is probably empty,” Amy said, “but I think they’re starting to come from those hotel and seaside condo complexes farther south. I’d like to lead a clearing operation.”

  Liz denied the request. There simply wasn’t enough manpower or ammunition, the same reasons the scavenging parties couldn’t go exploring much beyond the immediate marina areas. A residential area to the east could provide them with much-needed supplies, and the town itself on the other side of the river would be a real boon, but—at least for now, she conceded—they couldn’t risk the losses.

  Still, there were three losses in as many weeks. Fortunately, to Liz’s thinking, only one had been a coastie while the other two were refugees on work details. Those deaths weren’t as significant as trained crew. Including the two surviving men from Klondike, and the pair of airmen they had picked up in Port Angeles, Joshua James was down to a total of eighteen serving Coast Guardsmen.

  • • •

  Charlie knocked at his sister’s door, and she let him in. He was wearing a black knit watch cap and a dark gray fleece pullover under his combat vest. In addition to the grooming standard, Liz had loosened the uniform regs, in part to conserve water used for laundry, but also to boost crew morale. The chief wore his sidearm as well as a machete-like blade he’d found on a fishing boat, and his M4 was slung on his back. He brought coffee.

  Liz smiled in appreciation and took the cup, waving him into a chair. She was able to drink without wincing now, the knife wound to her face less painful and healing in a ragged pink scar, just as Castellano said it would. This had become a routine for them, some quiet time in her quarters late in the evening before third watch began. She asked the same question she did every night.

  “How’s the crew?” Since their time at sea, her brother had changed, making a real effort to win over the crew, eliminating the derogatory sea slang from his vocabulary (terms such as deck ape and bilge rat) and treating the young men and women as human beings. As a result, and as the only chief on board now, he had become something of a father figure and big brother seeing to their needs, keeping them positive, encouraging them when they were low. He now had both the respect and pulse of the crew, and that was important to any captain.

  Chick eased into a chair. “They’re holding it together. Keeping busy helps, and so do regular meals. Having the civvies handle some of the workload is a big relief. Getting the chance to kill a Whiskey-Delta really helps some of them, helps with their anger and fear.”

  She nodded. “Any problems?”

  He gave a shrug. “Homesickness. Questions about their families, worry about being infected. Nothing too serious; I’m dealing with it. No one is speaking against you.”

  “And my officers?” Liz knew Charlie watched and listened and would give her the straight story, a very valuable asset.

  “The girl is too busy to gripe. She’s trying really hard, and she listens when I talk to her.” In the Coast Guard, it was the chiefs who typically trained and looked after junior officers. “She’ll be okay. Lt. Riggs was a little bent out of shape when you wouldn’t let him recon the airport down south, but he’s over it. It would be great to get him a helicopter.”

  “And I’d love to get him one. It would change everything for us,” Liz said.

  “Otherwise he’s a fair leader and a good watch-stander,” said Charlie. “He’s just itching to fly.”

  The captain nodded. She hadn’t been speaking lightly. A working helicopter would open up all sorts of doors: improved recon, extended scavenging efforts, and the ability to send out longer ground patrols that could depend on air support and medevac if needed.

  “Hey, I got you something today,” Charlie said, and pulled a black square of folded clot
h from a pouch on his combat harness. “I found it on that booze cruise schooner in the marina.” He opened it for her to see.

  She looked at it and shook her head. “You have a sick sense of humor, Chick.”

  He laughed and tucked it away.

  She leaned back in the chair and sipped her coffee. “How are you holding up?”

  The patented Charlie Kidd grin appeared. “Never better.”

  He looked it too, but that hadn’t always been the case. Charlie had forever been rough around the edges, and he’d had his share of problems. In school there had been truancy, underage drinking, and fighting. Lots of fighting. He didn’t get along well with other kids, and not being as large as most of them, he was often picked on. Charlie compensated by going on the offensive, taking on boys much bigger than he was and taking his share of beatings in the process. In time, when kids realized the small but scrappy boy wasn’t afraid to fight back—sometimes by ambush in a school hallway followed by a ruthless pummeling—they left him alone. In high school Charlie discovered the weight room, put on mass and muscle, and became a real threat that people avoided.

  He used his new size to settle old grudges, and was expelled several times. Teachers began to label him a bad kid.

  Liz’s mother and father, both professionals working in Boston, grew increasingly worried that their son was headed down a road that ended in either prison or self-destruction. It was Liz who persuaded Charlie, after he’d kicked around aimlessly after high school for a few years, to join the Coast Guard, where he would be provided with much-needed focus and discipline. Charlie consented and quickly began to thrive in the structured world of the military.

  He faced obstacles and setbacks, however. Learning to play well with others didn’t come easily to him, and there was still the occasional fight. These were almost always off-duty with alcohol involved, but he’d once gotten into a confrontation aboard ship with a larger man who outranked him, but who said the wrong thing to Charlie.

  I said step lively, short stuff. And what the hell are you smiling about?

  The senior man ended up with four missing teeth and Chick landed in the brig, minus one stripe.

  Surprisingly, Charlie had come back from the incident and worked to improve himself, changing his attitude and committing to a career in the service. Liz was proud of him for that. A lot of people would have used the setback as an excuse for self-pity, choosing failure over hard work, but not him. He was still rough-around-the-edges Charlie, and he still struggled with relationships. He had never had a woman in his life who was more than a fling, although recently Liz had noticed he was spending time with a refugee named Ava, and in his case she looked the other way regarding fraternization. He had made something of himself, rising to the rank of senior chief. A comfortable retirement would have been in his future.

  A retirement where he could go out on his boat and murder drug traffickers. She tried to push that aside.

  Despite his many improvements, Liz knew her brother better than anyone, and she could tell that inside, he hadn’t changed all that much from the little boy always on the alert for attack, prepared to meet it with a disproportionate level of violence. It seemed that something was always simmering just beneath Charlie’s surface, a darkness behind those smiling eyes.

  Liz knew where it came from.

  “I finally heard that one of the civvies you shot was a teacher,” Liz said, her voice soft as she watched him.

  Chick looked right back at her. “I heard that too.”

  • • •

  Mom and Dad are getting sick of this, Chick,” Liz said. They were in her 1980 sky-blue Mustang, two years old now but new to her. All her friends thought it was cool that she had a car at sixteen, and Liz was in love with the sleek, powerful machine. And maybe in love with Scott Darby too, a boy one year older than her, though she was less sure of that. Eight-year-old Charlie rode in the Mustang’s passenger seat.

  “It’s bad enough you get held for detention almost every day,” she continued, “but now Saturdays too?” She lit a cigarette. Mom and Dad didn’t know she smoked, but she wasn’t worried about lighting up in front of her brother. If there was one thing the little turd did well, it was keeping his mouth shut.

  Like he was doing right now. Charlie rode in silence, hands clasped in his lap, looking at his Keds.

  Liz held the cigarette below the door as they stopped at a traffic light. Lexington, Massachusetts, wasn’t that big a town, and she didn’t want someone who might know her mother to see her smoking and make a phone call.

  “Why can’t you just be normal?” Liz demanded.

  Charlie said nothing.

  Liz went to the public high school, but Charlie was still in elementary school, and the teachers didn’t care for her little brother’s foul language, lackluster schoolwork, and playground scuffles. He was held after class as punishment all the time now, and it was Liz who had to break away from whatever she was doing—as if she were being punished for having a life!—to collect him at the end of the day. Mr. Drummond, the athletics coach, finally announced that what the boy needed was the disciplines of sports and physical exercise, and he took on Charlie’s correction personally, forcing him into four hours of Saturday detention every week.

  And Liz was expected to drop him off and pick him up. It was embarrassing. This was the fourth Saturday in a row, and it wasn’t fair. Why should she suffer because Chick was a little snot bag?

  “I’ve had it too,” she said, flicking her butt out the window a full block before they reached the school. “You better cut the shit, Chickie.”

  He said nothing as the Mustang rumbled to a stop at the side door to the elementary school, and made no move to reach for the door handle.

  “Well? Get out.”

  Charlie looked at her, and when he did there were tears in his eyes. “Don’t make me go, Sis,” he said, his clasped hands coming up. “Please just take me home.”

  “What are you doing, you little creep?” she said. “Mom and Dad will beat your ass. This wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t act like—”

  The boy seized her arm in both hands, tears running down his cheeks. “Please.”

  Liz pulled her arm free. “Why?”

  Chick just shook his head.

  “Fine.” She reached across him and opened his door. “Get out right now. And you better be here when I come back at three o’clock.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then climbed out of the car. Liz watched the eight-year-old walk slowly toward the school, his head down as he wiped at his eyes. Mr. Drummond stood in the doorway smiling, and waved to Liz as she drove away.

  • • •

  She hadn’t learned about what had been happening until many years later, right after Charlie graduated from his Coast Guard basic training in New Jersey. Liz, a young officer by then, had gone to the ceremony dressed in her whites, glowing with pride for her little brother and the service branch they now both shared. Their parents had passed several years earlier, and Liz was all Charlie had left.

  In a quiet moment under a tree on base, Charlie finally told her about Mr. Drummond, and in a voice devoid of emotion he described what the man had done. There had been no sexual molestation, he assured her, but the physical abuse was something else entirely. Drummond made him run endless basketball drills, and when he was too slow or lost his grip on the ball, he was forced to drop his gym shorts while the man beat his bare buttocks with a leather belt. Drummond assured him that if he told anyone, Charlie would not be believed, and then Drummond would creep into his bedroom one night and strangle him. Sometimes Charlie was forced to drink glasses of water until he could no longer swallow, then had to stand on the court’s foul line until he peed himself.

  “He did other things,” Charlie had said. “All in the name of discipline. All of it hurt. And sometimes he caught small animals, pets mostly
, and made me watch while he killed them in the gymnasium basement.” He didn’t add that eventually he was made to do the killing. Charlie went on to describe a menu of abusive acts perpetrated by the man. After that moment in his sister’s car, right up until now, Charlie had never spoken of it. He endured.

  Liz felt like she might be sick, cried, and held her brother before becoming angry and demanding justice. All that passed quickly as guilt hit her like a bullet.

  “You tried to tell me, Chick,” she had cried. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

  Charlie didn’t know why he waited until what should have been a happy moment to break the news. He didn’t blame her, but he also never said as much, and wasn’t able to explain that, either. He told his sister she was to do nothing, and had never spoken of it again, to her or anyone. Mr. Drummond was never revealed for what he was, and if the school knew, they covered it up quietly.

  Now, as Charlie Kidd sat drinking coffee across from his sister, he examined her lean face, the lines around her eyes, and realized how very long ago that had been. He waited to see if she would press the issue about the man he’d killed in the cannery. The fact that he’d been a teacher was purely coincidental, and Charlie had been more bothered by the fact that the man was allowing a child to be held like cattle for a future meal. Not much, however, for Charlie Kidd knew he was no crusader. It had been more for the sport.

  Liz said nothing more. Charlie knew his sister continued to carry the guilt for what had happened, that she had tried so hard in the years following to look after him. Though it might have helped her feel better, Charlie never felt the need to talk to her about it. He supposed it was too painful. He had, however, found an outlet for that pain.

  Nearly a dozen murders in twenty-one years. Henry Blake was nothing, merely the latest.

  The Coast Guard had taken him to ports all across America and the Caribbean, and he’d always waited until the need was truly upon him before taking a nocturnal trip off the ship to find someone worth killing. They were usually men, though two had been women. He didn’t act impulsively, careful to cover his tracks. There was nothing sexual about it, no ritualism or bloody messages. And he never spoke to his victims, gave no explanations as they watched him screw a silencer onto the end of his pistol, some pleading, others praying.