To Sail a Darkling Sea

by John Ringo

  Two of the Marines grabbed the PO by the arms and took him to the ground, face down, as he snarled and tried to bite.

  “Oh, Jesus, Terry,” Gowen said, turning away.

  “Fuck!” Januscheitis said. He looked at the coil of para cord in his hands and sighed. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

  When Petty Officer Third Class Richard Samson’s body had been placed in the corridor, Januscheitis began taking off his gear.

  “I said strip, people. . . .”

  * * *

  In two weeks they lost Toback, LCP Thomas Casad Mandell, one of Smitty’s team and PO3 Patrick “Murf” Murphy, the storeman who had been with Gowen. For him the worst was putting down Deter. But you did what you had to do.

  Murphy and Gowen had gotten pretty chummy in those two weeks. He’d stomped on that, hard. The subject of Gowen being the only split in the compartment had been raised nearly the first day. But he’d pointed out that zombie virus was a blood pathogen. Like, say, AIDS. Which had put the kibosh on fooling around. For a while. But you couldn’t have five guys and one girl in a compartment for forever without something happening.

  Which meant he had to have a “talk” with Gowen.

  “According to our brief before things went to hell,” Januscheitis started, “if you get the flu, you’re asymptomatic for a week. Then you’re sick with flu for a couple of days.”

  “I . . .” Gowen said. J had a long-duration watch with a glowing dial. It had never seemed bright until he was in a compartment in total darkness for two weeks. Now he could see her face panicking.

  “What, Seaman?” Januscheitis said.

  “I . . . got the flu, Staff Sergeant Januscheitis,” the girl said. “But . . .”

  “Not everyone who gets the flu turns,” Januscheitis said, shrugging. “It’s hit and miss. But the point is that while the neurological is building it can be a blood pathogen.”

  “Yes, Staff Sergeant,” Gowen said, her face working. “And if . . . If Murf hadn’t . . . It’s not an issue, Staff Sergeant.”

  “Oh, it’s a huge issue,” Januscheitis said. The compartment was big. Big enough to have a fairly private conversation. “Once you’re past that point, you’re past it. Nobody, at this point, in this compartment, is going to infect through blood pathogen. Hell, we might even be immune to bites but I wouldn’t bet on it. Thing is . . . Things can start to happen now.”

  “Oh,” Gowen said. “Are you . . . hitting on me, Staff Sergeant?”

  “No,” Januscheitis said. “I’m getting to the point that this is going to be a huge issue unless it’s addressed. There are five guys in this compartment. None of them seem to be homosexually oriented. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, they’ve been expending H2O jacking off in the back of the compartment.”

  “I’ve . . . noticed, Staff Sergeant,” Gowen said. “But . . .”

  “And in case you hadn’t been paying attention, things were going to hell in a handbasket back home before we hit the tipping point,” Januscheitis continued, inexorably. “It has been two weeks and there’s no sound of rescue, just howling zombies. Now, I think they’ll die before we run out of food. Don’t ask me about water. But we could be in here for days, weeks, months. Gowen, we could be in here for years.”

  “I— Yes?” Gowen said. “I don’t know where you’re . . .”

  “Gowen, I’ve been holding the guys back by my rank and the fact of the blood pathogen,” Januscheitis said. “Smitty and Derek both know the bit about it no longer being an issue. I think Patel probably does. Gowen, there is one female in a compartment with five males. The next part is the . . .” He stopped and grimaced.

  “Staff,” Gowen whispered. “If . . . If you really need to . . . ?”

  “I’m not the only one that will, does,” Januscheitis pointed out. “If we knew when we were leaving . . . No problem. But this is like prison. Except with an unknown date of release. If it’s not a death sentence . . .”

  “So you want to pass me around?” Gowen said angrily.

  “Keep your voice down,” Januscheitis said.

  “The hell with—”

  “Listen, you little idiot,” Januscheitis snapped, grabbing her arm. “I don’t want to use you as MWR issue. I’m trying to make sure you get some control, okay? But that will only last so long if you keep playing cock-tease in a compartment where there are five testosterone-laden males who haven’t had any in months and are thinking that you’re pretty much all they’ll have for the rest of their lives. So. There is no way in God’s green earth that I can legally order you to put out. But if you don’t agree to set up some sort of a schedule, if you think you’re going to do the guy you like and not the rest and play petty games with your body in this hotbox, pretty soon you’re not going to have a say. Hell, pretty soon I won’t have a say anymore, and then we might as well all be zombies. . . .”

  CHAPTER 1

  When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

  Sir Edmund Burke

  Robert “Rusty” Fulmer Bennett III wasn’t a guy to just sit around if he could help out. But he also wasn’t, still, in the best of shape.

  When he’d boarded the cruise ship Voyage Under Stars with his buddy, Ted, he’d weighed 337 pounds, nekkid. By the time the rescue teams from Wolf Squadron found him, Ted had long before zombied and Rusty weighed 117 pounds and was naked, covered in bed sores and mostly unconscious on his filth-covered bunk. Since he was still six foot seven and, honestly, big boned, 117 was pretty bad. The one nurse Wolf had found so far, no doctors, said it was a miracle he’d survived.

  So he still wasn’t in the best shape of his life when he sat down in the “Wolf Squadron Human Resources” office. In the four weeks since he’d been found he’d put on about twenty pounds but that wasn’t much. And he could barely work out at all. He wasn’t sure that he could hack it as a “clearance specialist” but he was all up for killing zombies.

  He filled in his name on the clipboard and took a seat. Then he opened up a packet of sushi and started to munch.

  “Still putting on weight, huh?” the guy next to him asked.

  “I never thought I’d like sushi,” Bennett said, offering some of the rolls. “Anything is, like, the best food in the world, now. Except hummus. If I never eat hummus again I’ll be so glad.”

  “Gotta try fish eyeballs,” the guy said, taking one and nodding. “Mmmm . . . tuna is sooo much better raw than dolphin. Brad Stevens.”

  “Rusty Bennett,” Rusty said. “Actually, it’s Robert Fulmer Bennett Third. But everybody calls me Rusty. Like, you ate a dolphin?”

  “Not the Flipper, ark, ark, kind,” Stevens said. “It’s a kind of fish. But, hey, when that’s what you’ve got.” He shrugged. “I’d have eaten a, you know, dolphin, dolphin if I could have caught one. There were a couple of times I’d have eaten the asshole of a dolphin . . .”

  “I’d have eaten the asshole of an asshole,” Rusty said.

  “You’re like a string-bean pole,” Stevens said. “How much did you lose?”

  “Two hundred pounds,” Rusty said. “I was kinda big when we got locked down.”

  “Oh,” Stevens said, wincing. “In one of the cabins on the Voyage?”

  “Yep,” Rusty said. “One of the reasons I want to go do something is every time I walk in the damned cabin I’m afraid the door’s going to close behind me and never open again.”

  “I thought I’d lost weight. I can’t believe they cleared you for work.”

  “I just walked down here,” Rusty said, shrugging. “The worst they can do is say no . . .”

  “Stevens . . . ?”

  * * *

  “You’re still in very poor shape, Mr. Bennett,” the lady said. Like most he’d seen, she was pregnant.

  “I really want to help out,” Rusty said. “And I’ve got to get out of that fu— forking cabin, ma’am. I keep having nightmares that the door won’t open
.”

  “I took this job on the Grace because it’s the biggest boat I could get on,” the lady said, smiling. “Try having nightmares that you’re back in a tropical storm in a life raft and you’re suffering from morning sickness and starving.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rusty said. “I’m good with my hands. But I’m not a mechanic or anything. I can shoot. I’ve been shooting my whole life. And I want to fight zombies, ma’am.”

  “You’d never make the medical requirements for clearance personnel,” the lady said. “They carry tons of gear when they clear.”

  “I heard there’s some thirteen-year-old girl that does it, ma’am,” Rusty argued. “If she can—”

  “Don’t compare Shewolf to your normal thirteen-year-old girl,” the woman said, laughing. “You haven’t seen the video, have you?”

  “No, ma’am,” Rusty said. “I haven’t gotten out, much.”

  “If you go up to the lounge, you can probably find somebody who can show it to you,” the lady said. “Shewolf led the boarding of the Voyage. She wasn’t supposed to, but it happened. The Dallas had used a machine gun to clear some of the zombies but while she was going up more showed up. She went over the side, anyway. There was a Marine in a little bit better shape than you, not much but a little, who was supposed to go right after her and got bogged down climbing. One of the reasons they want people in the best possible shape for clearance. At that point, most of the copies . . . You know that song, ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again . . . ?’ ”

  “Sort of?” Rusty said. “Kinda before my time.”

  “Go watch the video,” the lady said, looking at her screen. “Since you know she made it, it’s a hoot. But . . . I mean you can go try to track down Nurse Schoenfeld and get her to clear you. But I’d suggest something lighter. At least for now. And I’d guess you don’t like enclosed spaces . . .”

  “I don’t mind if I know I can open the door, ma’am,” Rusty said.

  “Being on a small boat is physically wearing,” the lady said, “but they need people for light clearance. Clearing life rafts and small craft. Not many people want to do it because you get beat up on those little boats. But—”

  “Ma’am,” Rusty said. “Being out in the air on a small boat . . . That’d be like heaven, ma’am.”

  “How strong of a stomach do you have?” the lady asked.

  “I . . . pretty strong?” Rusty said.

  “You’re on the assignment board,” the lady said, making a definitive tap on her keyboard. “Since you don’t have a defined skill that anyone is looking for right now, you’ve got a week to find something. After that, you get put on boat cleaning or you can go into the hold with the lame and lazy. People who don’t want to help out.”

  “Cleaning?” Rusty said.

  “Cleaning up a boat after zombies have trashed it.”

  * * *

  “I don’t want to have to clean out a new boat,” Sophia said mulishly. “I’ve seen these boats. And I’ve cleaned them up. Rather get knocked around on a thirty-five.”

  Sophia “Seawolf” Smith was one of the founding members of the Wolf Squadron. As such, despite being fifteen, she was a shareholder and not a minor one, as well as being a member of the Captain’s Board as skipper of the thirty-five-foot Worthy Endeavor. The boat had gotten beaten up by nearly six months at sea, not to mention the zombies that took it over, but it was still her boat.

  “You won’t,” Fred said. “You, especially, won’t.”

  Fred Burnell was the “Vessel Preparation and Assignments Officer” on the Grace Tan. The massive supply ship had an open center and rear deck. On it were, now, four “cabin cruiser” yachts on props in various stages of repair and refitting. Since all of them worked when they were brought alongside it was mostly a matter of cleaning them out.

  “Things change,” Burnell said. “We’ve got crews cleaning them up, now. But we’re retiring the thirty-fives. They’re just too small and don’t have enough range.”

  “So, what am I looking at?” Sophia said.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” Burnell said, smiling slightly.

  “No,” Sophia said, frowning. “Sorry. Should I?”

  “No,” Burnell said. “I guess if you’ve seen one castaway, you’ve seen ’em all. The Endeavor plucked me off a life raft. So let’s just say I owe you one even if you don’t know it. There’s a very nice sixty-five-foot Hatteras Custom sitting out there. Not too beat up by zombies. The only ones on it were below, and we’re changing out all the below materials. Good engines, low hours . . .”

  “I appreciate it,” Sophia said. “Sorry for snapping your head off.”

  “Not a problem,” Burnell said. “Can’t tell you how happy I was when you blew that foghorn. Oh, you’ll need two light clearance personnel and deck hands. Bigger boat.”

  “I guess I need to go do some scrounging,” Sophia said. “What happens in the meantime?”

  “Support for the clearance of the Iwo Jima,” Burnell said. “I think you know how that works?”

  “Hopefully better than the Voyage,” Sophia said.

  * * *

  “Okay, okay, seriously?” Faith “Shewolf” Smith said. The thirteen-year-old had gotten her height from her father and it had kicked in young. Nearly six feet, slender and with some of the look of a female body-builder, her fine blond hair was currently hanging limp and damp on her neck in the heat.

  “You say that a lot,” Sergeant Thomas Fontana replied.

  The thirty-two-year-old black Special Forces sergeant had become fond of his . . . well he couldn’t call her “protégé” since she’d taught him the ins and outs of close-quarters battle with infecteds. Partner was the right term but it was hard to apply to a thirteen-year-old girl, no matter how well she fought zombies.

  “The middle of this ship is missing,” Faith said, pointing pointedly. “There is a great big gaping hole in the middle of this ship. Below the waterline!”

  The foursome were looking, in amazement in Faith’s case, at the USS Iwo Jima, an Amphibious Assault Carrier the size of a WWII “Fleet” carrier. The combination aircraft carrier, troop ship and floating dock, while not as big as the Voyage Under Stars, was really, really big. Especially from the waterline looking into its cavernous well-deck.

  “It’s not missing,” Fontana said. “It can’t be missing if they never put anything there.”

  “That’s the well-deck, Faith,” her father said. Steven John Smith was six foot one, with sandy blond hair and a thin, wiry, frame. Although he was the putative commander of Wolf Squadron, so designated by the U.S. Navy no less, he did clearance as well. They still had only four hard clearance personnel and he was good at it. Besides it burnished the reputation and this “squadron” was all about force of personality. “Obviously, it’s where they pull landing craft in and out.”

  “That doesn’t make it not nuts,” Faith said. “I know nuts when I see nuts. Letting water into a ship? That’s nuts.”

  “The good news is the well-deck is open,” Smith said. “You don’t have to climb a boarding ladder up to the flight deck.”

  “They dropped the stern gate when we abandoned ship, sir,” Lance Corporal Joshua “Hooch” Hocieniec said.

  Hocieniec completed the foursome that had only recently finished clearing the cruise liner Voyage Under Stars, listed as the world’s second largest “super cruise liner.” Larger than any passenger liner in history, it was best described as a floating Disneyland and just about as damned large. While the Iwo was big, as large as a WWII aircraft carrier and with much the same look, it wasn’t the Voyage, thank God. The only larger ships on the ocean than the Voyage were supertankers, which had relatively small areas for zombies to inhabit, and a supercarrier. God help them, the Hole was sort of hinting they’d like one of those cleared. Steve had flatly told them “Not until we’ve got a lot more Marines.”

  Hocieniec was the only survivor of the Iwo they’d picked up so far. There were sure to be more o
ut there but all the life rafts from the amphibious assault ship found so far contained only the dead. And the few people picked up from the Voyage who might be potential reinforcements were still in too bad a condition to assist. With any luck there would be some Marines alive on the boat. They’d found that people were awfully inventive, given the slightest chance, at staying alive.

  “And, look,” Faith said, “a welcoming party.”

  Zombies, not so inventive. But very tenacious. It seemed like all zombies needed was fresh water. Which would seem in short supply at sea except their concept of “fresh” was about the same as a dog’s. And if one died from the water quality, well, the survivors would just eat him or her.

  Which was why there were at least thirty zombies waiting for them on the deck of a hovercraft inside the ship. Which was more or less exactly where they were going to have to go. Fortunately, the stern gate was down and conditions were calm. Very calm.

  The Iwo Jima had been, deliberately, “parked” in the Horse Latitudes zone of the Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso—the only sea not bounded by land—was surrounded by, but not affected by, the various currents of the North Atlantic. The Horse Latitudes were, in turn, a zone where there was always little to no wind and only very rare storms. They were the bane of early explorers of the Atlantic for the constant calm. They were called “the Horse Latitudes” because those were the latitudes where you had to eat the horses.

  The combination, along with the somewhat entrapping sargassum weed that gave the region its name, meant that the assault ship was going to stay there. Except for the minor waves transmitted from distant storms, the area was pretty much flat calm, a nice change from the storm they’d left behind in Bermuda.

  Since they’d gotten in contact with the Hole in Omaha, center for the Strategic Armaments Control, Wolf Squadron had found out that most Navy surface ships as well as many major commercial vessels had been similarly “parked” for the duration. The opinion of the “powers that be” prior to the Fall was that that way they’d be more or less impossible, or at least difficult, to find and they wouldn’t be blown away by hurricanes or other storms. The commercial ships had apparently gone into the normally untraveled zone to avoid the Plague and have a place where they could maintain minimal power. As far as anyone knew, none of them had been uninfected.