Under a Graveyard Sky-eARC

by John Ringo

  She took down the coordinates, then another voice crackled over the speaker.

  “Seawolf, Cooper, over,” Chris said.

  “Roger, Cooper,” Sophia replied.

  “Need to talk to your Da, over.”

  “Da,” Sophia said, keying the intercom. “Cookie’s on the horn. Says there’s a boat that’s a ‘Shewolf job.’”

  “I hate you!” Faith yelled from the saloon. She was engaged in cleaning some of the guns.

  “It’s not my fault your adopted,” Sophia sang out.

  “I’m not adopted,” Faith said.

  “She’s not adopted,” Steve said, walking onto the bridge. “Cooper, Toy actual, over.”

  “Got a big job here, Toy. Forty, fifty meter tug. Zombies, plural, on deck. Lots of corridors. Not our cuppa.”

  Steve had supplied Chris with some weapons to clear open boats but not something like that. Besides, he’d expressed an unwillingness to do serious clearance. “I was a chef not SBS.”

  “Roger,” Steve said, thinking about it. “We’re about to clear a purb. We’ll vector after that.”

  “Roger. We’re on to other clearance then?”

  “Roger. Continue clearance. We’ll handle the big job.”

  “Better you than I. Cooper, out.”

  “Shewolf job?” Faith said. “Big job?”

  “You are about to get your wish, I think,” Steve said. “Big ocean going tug. Hundred and fifty feet or so. Zombies on deck.”

  “Which means zombie city,” Faith said, excitedly. “Boo-yah!”

  “You’re too weird not to be adopted…”

  * * *

  The EPIRB had been another bust. The tug was another matter.

  “Assuming it didn’t run its engines out and it’s diesel that’s a boomer of fuel for the taking,” Steve said.

  The tug was enormous. Next to it the Toy looked like, well, a toy. And, as reported, there were zombies on the deck.

  “I can get an AK and try to shoot them off,” Faith said.

  “You mean I can try to shoot them off,” Steve said. They were certainly lining up for it. “I’m a better hand with a rifle.”

  “Bet I get more than you,” Faith said. “Bet you dishes.”

  “The problem is bouncers,” Steve said, considering the angles. “We’re going to hit low some of the time. We don’t want them bouncing back. That would be unwelcome.”

  “I was thinking from the flying bridge,” Faith said. “But if we fire from down here, they’re going to bounce up, right?”

  “There’s a bit of a lip,” Steve said, pointing to the metal balwark. “Either way, we’re going to have some come back and down. 7.62 tends to keep going you know. Like going through your mother, going through the hull…”

  “Frangibles?” Faith said.

  “We’re a bit short on those,” Steve said. “Full up body armor, ballistic glasses, shotgun and hope like hell we don’t kill anyone but zombies or sink the boat.”

  “Shotgun spreads, Da,” Faith pointed out.

  “It also is relatively low velocity,” Steve replied. “When, not if, it bounces it hopefully will not go all the way through the hull. The family will rig up, everyone else below decks.”

  * * *

  “Think you put enough holes in the boat, honey?” Stacey asked, nicely. There was a large one right in one of the saloon windows.

  “I’m just glad nothing worse happened,” Steve said. He was finishing rigging for the entry. This time an assault pack made sense. But they’d put lifevests on outside everything. They were going to have to climb a boarding ladder to get up to the tug’s deck. That was going to be a new experience. “We’re going to have to figure out a better way to clear zombies off the deck.”

  “Like water cannon maybe?” Sophia called. She’d taken off her helmet but was still in armor. And she hadn’t liked it when a bouncer had come through the cabin.

  “As I said,” Steve said, “we’ll have to find something better.”

  “I’ll go get the fiberglass patches…” Stacey said.

  “I still got more than you did,” Faith said. “You’re on dishes tonight.”

  * * *

  “We need to use the dinghy for this,” Steve said, grimacing. “I don’t want to put the boat alongside until we can get some of those big balloon things from the tug.”

  “Going up there from the dinghy is going to be tough,” Faith said.

  “Which is why we’re going to do it very carefully,” Steve said. “And wear lifevests.”

  * * *

  “Pirates make this look so easy,” Faith said, throwing the grapnel again. “Damnit!”

  “Don’t hole the dinghy,” Steve said as she pulled the rope back in.

  * * *

  “Son of a b-blug-blug…” Faith spit out a mouthful of water and flailed at the surface. “This vest isn’t…Blug!”

  Given the weight of her gear, the vest was barely keeping her at the surface.

  “Grab the rope, Faith,” Steve yelled. He was up on the deck already and dangling a recovery line to her. Fortunately, the vessel wasn’t moving much in the light swells.

  “Ow!” Faith said, as the hull hit her helmet and pushed her under. She managed to get a hand on the recovery line, though, and Steve pulled her back out from under the tug.

  “Tell me there aren’t any sharks,” Faith said, flailing with one free hand for the boarding ladder.

  Steve looked around and considered his answer carefully. The recently terminated infected had, after all, bled out. The scuppers were, in the old term, running with blood. And, yes, there were a few shadows. And fins…

  “You might want to hurry…”

  * * *

  “We need a better way to get onto boats,” Faith said. She was sprawled out on the deck of the tug.

  “You realize you’re lying in infected zombie blood, right?” Steve said.

  “I sooo don’t care,” Faith said. “We’re going to wash-down when we reboard, anyway. Christ that sucked. I was getting ready to dump my gear. If we didn’t need it and if I could figure out a way to do it without taking off the vest I would have. But all I could think was if I took off the vest I was doing the deep dive with sixty pounds of gear to take off on the way down.”

  “We’re going to have to figure out better protocols,” Steve said. “That’s for sure. But we’re still going to have to use the ladder.”

  “I hate those,” Faith said. “I really do.”

  * * *

  “Zombies, zombies, zombies!” Faith yelled, pounding on the exterior hatch with a crowbar. “Come to Papa Wolf! Zombies, zombies… And we’ve got customers, Da.”

  “Roger,” Steve said, taking a free-hand stance back from the hatch. “Make sure to cover yourself with the hatch.”

  “Try not to nail me with bouncers,” Faith said, undogging the hatch. She pulled it all the way open and hid behind it.

  Four zombies stumbled out into the light, blinking.

  “HERE!” Steve called, taking the first one out. “Here, here, here!”

  The zombies, half blinded by the light, stumbled towards the shouts and were dropped in a line.

  “All clear?” Faith asked, sticking her head around the hatch.

  “Step away and we’ll see,” Steve said.

  She moved back to his position and considered the darkened interior.

  “We’re really going to have problems with adjustment,” she pointed out.

  “I read an article where the reason that pirates wore eye patches was to keep one eye available for moving into darkness,” Steve said. “Go into a hold and switch it to the other eye.”

  “I guess maybe we should have flip-up sunglasses or something?” Faith said.

  “Maybe,” Steve said. “Zombies! Hello… ZOMBIES! Anybody home?”

  “Zombies, zombies, zombies!” Faith yelled, banging on the deck with her crowbar.

  “Ah, that’s got one,” Steve said as another zombie stumbled out
into the light.

  “Wait,” Faith said, dropping the crowbar and drawing her pistol. “We’ve still got more .45 than twelve gauge.”

  “Point,” Steve said as she fired. “I was afraid you were going to use the crowbar.”

  “Been there,” Faith said. “Prefer shooting them.”

  “Let’s dog it again and check the bridge,” Steve said. “Then we’ll clear down from that.”

  “Okay,” Faith said, shrugging. “Any particular reason?”

  “More light up there?”

  * * *

  There was a zombie on the bridge. A well fed one. Which was explained by the two corpses also on the bridge.

  “So…” Faith said, tilting her head. “One was wearing clothes. The other looks like he wasn’t…”

  “Zombies eat each other,” Steve said. “Interesting factoid.”

  “Whoops,” Faith said as a zombie came up the companionway. She fired and it tumbled back down. But there was sounds of more stumbling in the darkness below. “Think we’ve got a nest here, Da.”

  “If we have to, retreat through the door,” Steve said, stepping next to her. Another headed up the companionway and he terminated it. The following zombie stumbled over that one and then started crawling up the stairs.

  Faith let her Saiga fall on its sling and drew her .45. One shot to the head terminated that one.

  “I think I’ve got this,” Faith said.

  “I don’t think they were all crew,” Steve said, letting her take the shots. He had the Saiga up and pointed if any got past her. “This is too many for crew.”

  “And there are women,” Faith said as she took one down.

  “There are women in merchant marine,” Steve said. “But…yeah. I think they took on refugees.”

  “Or family,” Faith said, pausing. “Da?”

  “Got it,” Steve said, dropping his Saiga to its sling and killing the child zombie with one round of .45.

  “I hate shooting the kids,” Faith said. She didn’t have any trouble with the male following.

  “Here’s a puzzle,” Steve said, thoughtfully. “Zombie up here is dead and eaten. I’d see them killing the weakest first. Why did the child survive?”

  “You’re asking me?” Faith said. “That sounds like a Sophia question. I think it’s clear.”

  “We certainly made enough noise,” Steve said. They’d given up on earplugs and his ears were ringing. “We’re going to go deaf with all this fire.”

  “I’ll take deafness in old age over being eaten by zombies,” Faith said, shrugging. “Why are my ears ringing in rhythm?”

  “Because that’s metal pinging on metal,” Steve said. “I think we got us a survivor.”

  “Another salvage operation ruined!” Faith said.

  * * *

  “Ah, jesus,” the man said, turning away from the taclights and holding up his arm.

  “Sorry,” Steve said, turning the light away. The locker the survivor been hiding in had no portholes and the lights must have been like a nuke going off.

  The survivor was skinny as a rail with long, shaggy hair and a beard that must have started out long and gotten longer. He was also wearing only a pair of shorts. If he hadn’t responded verbally to their bangs, Steve would have thought he was a zombie.

  “I’m not going to be able to see for a day,” the man said. “Sorry, let me start again. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Steve said. He pulled a chemlight out of pouch and dropped it on the floor in the compartment. “Here’s some water,” he said, taking the bottle from Faith and getting it into the man’s hands. “We’re going to keep clearing and come back when we’re sure we can extract you safely. Just hang in there.”

  “Not a problem,” the man said, taking a swig of the water with his eyes still closed. “God that’s good. God almighty that is sooo good.”

  “Just hang in there,” Steve repeated. “We’ll be back.”

  * * *

  “This place is a maze,” Faith said, swinging her taclight around. “Do you know where we left that guy?”

  “I think we’re going to have to find the bridge again and follow the trail of bodies,” Steve said, opening a hatch. He held his hand up to the descending sun and grimaced. “Okay, based on the bodies, this is where we first were…”

  “Then the bridge ladder should be up and to the…left? Port, right?”

  “Starboard,” Steve said. “See why that’s important on a boat?”

  “Let’s just see if we can find that guy again…”

  * * *

  “Some of the guys brought their families,” the survivor said, pulling the blanket up as he sipped tomato soup. He still was wearing the sunglasses Faith had found for him. “We figured if we stayed at sea we could avoid it. Somebody, maybe a couple, were infected…”

  The survivor’s name was Michael “Purplefly” Braito, deckhand and assistant engineer on the oceangoing tug Victoria’s Boss.

  “Anybody else?” he asked, pushing up the sunglasses and grimacing.

  “I didn’t hear any more banging,” Steve said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s clear. It was sort of a maze.”

  “Not if you know it,” Braito said. “I could… Christ, I don’t want to back on but I could help you find your way around?”

  “Tomorrow,” Steve said. “And we’re going to need to figure out some better protocols for boarding and clearing…”

  * * *

  “Okay, why didn’t we do this the first time?” Faith asked. She had a line clipped to her gear which was being belayed by Steve from the deck. She’d held a line from the dinghy as he’d climbed the ladder.

  “Because I didn’t think about it,” Steve admitted as she cleared the railing. “Makes a lot of sense in retrospect.”

  “So does marking everything,” Faith said, pulling out a can of spray paint. “We’re going to need more of this. Okay,” she continued, unclipping and throwing the line over the side. “Your turn, Fly.”

  * * *

  “Zombies, zombies, zombies?” Faith said, banging on the hatch with the butt of a knife. “Sounds clear, Da.”

  “Open,” Steve said, taking a two-handed stance with his .45, covering the opening hatch. He’d picked up a head-lamp and had two more lights duct taped to his gear pointing forward.

  “Stuck,” Faith said. The dog had released but the hatch wouldn’t open.

  “Crowbar,” Steve said. “Carefully.”

  “There is no careful with a crowbar, Da,” Faith said, pulling it out.

  “Wait,” Braito said. “There’s something better…”

  * * *

  “I need, like, a sheath for this,” Faith said, hefting the Halligan tool. “This is, like, totally made for zombie fighting.”

  She jammed the adze portion into the seal of the door and pushed on the bar. The hatch gapped slightly.

  “There’s a rope holding it closed,” Steve said, shining a taclight into the interior. “No zombies. Not alive anyway.”

  “Can you get the rope?” Faith grunted. “Hang on, let me…” The tool slipped, fortunately missing Steve. “I need this in further.”

  “Hammer,” Mike said. “And you might want me to do it next time.”

  “No way,” Faith said, hefting the halligan. “I love this thing! I wanna have its babies.”

  * * *

  “No survivors,” Steve said. Getting the hatch open had involved hammering in the Halligan, gapping the hatch and cutting the rope with a machete.

  The room had held five people: male, female, three children. Now there were five corpses.

  “One guy with a gun,” Faith said, picking up the pistol. “Wife and kids went zombie and he killed himself?”

  “Looks like,” Steve said. “One of the kids is still dressed. Trapped in the room, no food, zombies outside… Murder suicide is my guess.”

  “Bill Carter,” Mike said, shaking his head. “He’s the engineer. Sort of my boss.”

  “Sorr
y,” Faith said.

  “He wasn’t the greatest boss in the world,” Mike said. “But I sort of liked his kids. Can we…”

  “We’ll clear all the bodies,” Steve said. “They’re people. We don’t do the full flag and sheet thing but we give them a burial at sea. We try not to just toss them to the sharks.

  “Thanks,” Mike said. “That’s…good.”

  “Onward,” Faith said, spraying a C on the hatch, then putting an arrow on the bulkhead next to it pointed to the nearest entry point. She shook the spray-can. “I don’t suppose you guys have some more of this onboard?”

  * * *

  “Lots of supplies,” Steve said, whistling thoughtfully. The small hold was packed with cases of Number Ten cans as well as general “groceries.” It looked like the back room of a grocery store except for everything being tied down under cargo nets.

  “We were figuring on being at sea for a while,” Braito said. “We were going to need it.”

  “So why the hell is she dead?” Faith asked, looking at the bloated corpse. “I think she. She’s been dead a while.”

  The corpse was clothed and lying up against the bulkhead. She, probably, didn’t have any evidence of wounds and was in a hold packed with food.

  “Remember how sick you got?” Steve asked. “The virus kills people twenty percent of the time.”

  “Moving all these stores is going to be a pain in the patootie,” Faith said.

  “We’ve got cranes,” Mike said, pointing up. “Open up the top hatch, winch it out.”

  “That…works,” Steve said. “If it’s flat calm.”

  “You can tow a tug boat,” Mike said. “The main transfer is shot but that doesn’t mean you can’t tow it. How far to the nearest harbor?”

  “Bermuda’s about a hundred miles away,” Steve said. “Last time I checked the position. Put it in Bermuda harbor and call in the boats to load up? Hell, it’s got enough diesel to keep us running for months.”

  “What about Isham?” Faith asked.

  “I think we can spare some,” Steve said.

  “I hate to point this out,” Braito said nervously. “But this isn’t, technically, salvage.”

  “You don’t have to finger your pistol, Mike,” Faith said. They had loaned him one for his own security on the boat as well as body armor. “And it makes me nervous when you do. You don’t want me nervous.”