Under a Graveyard Sky-eARC

by John Ringo

  The other issue was what was on deck. Besides lashed down cargo, there were two zombies. And between the hydrocarbons and not knowing exactly what was in the cargo on the deck, they couldn’t exactly shoot them off.

  “It’s good,” PO3 Ruth Gardner said. “Again.”

  For this op, Steve simply had to have some trained people. While Isham cleaned up the Alpha, he’d pulled Geraldine and Dugan off to come try to recover the support ship. But he’d also had to dip into the Coasties for support. Ruth Gardner was a fueling expert, called POL in the military. She was trained in unrep as well as “issues” with fuel and fuel systems. What she wasn’t trained in was repairing fuel systems. Different MOS. Dugan was pretty sure that if it was repairable at all he could do it.

  “I’m okay with input on how to do this,” Steve said. “Cause I’m sort of buggered.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Fontana said. “But I don’t know if it’s a good one.”

  Steve was just fine with “normal” danger, like, say, a zombie apocalypse, for Faith. This was something different. So he’d dropped Hocieniec off on the Endeavor with Faith to go do some light clearance and brought along Fontana.

  “Which is?” Steve asked.

  Fontana went over to a bag of gear he’d brought along and rummaged through it. After a moment he brought out a machete in a sheath and drew it with a flourish.

  “You’re joking,” Gardner said, munching on a cracker.

  PO3 Gardner was pregnant. So were many of the women. There had been a noted sociologial response to societal stress called “the replacement factor.” After major disasters, women had a habit of getting pregnant at a higher rate than during good times or during the stress period. The post-war Germany was noted as an example as well as post-Black-Plague Europe.

  In the case of the zombie apocalypse, it had much more to do with men and women trapped on lifeboats and in small compartments with no access to contraceptives and exactly zero to do. In a few cases, that had definitely been due to force. Those men were on a special boat in Coventry. There were a few cases were the jury was still out. In Ruth’s case, like the young lady found with Fontana, there seemed to be no issue. The only real issue was that she was found in a compartment with two other, male, Coast Guardsman and she honestly had no clue which was the father. The “dads” didn’t really care. They were both good naturedly arguing over who was the “real” prospective dad.

  “In 1994, eight hundred thousand people were massacred in Rwanda,” Fontana said. “Mostly by having an arm hacked off by a machete and being left to die. These zombies are not walking dead.”

  “No,” Steve said. “But they do spread a blood pathogen.”

  “I’ve been exposed at this point,” Fontana said. “And I’ll wear raingear. Cause clear sky or no, it is gonna rain.”

  * * *

  “The question is how you’re going to get up close enough to chop off an arm,” Steve said, conning the inflatable closer.

  The supply ship had a midships deck that was, for a ship its size, remarkably low to the waterline. Steve couldn’t see how it wouldn’t get swamped in heavy seas.

  Low did not mean flush to the waterline. It was well above Fontana’s reach while standing on the deck of the fifteen foot, center console, inflatable.

  “No offense but I’m not going to step up on the pontoons,” Fontana said, looking up at the zombies. They weren’t howling or keening, but they were drooling.

  “Not with those down there,” Steve said, gesturing to the now familiar sharks.

  A wave caught the inflatable and pushed it closer to the ship. As it did, one of the infecteds saw its chance and jumped over the low side-rail with a shriek.

  Keeping your feet on a small boat was a skill that everyone in the flotilla had mastered at this point. And Fontana had spent two months on an even smaller raft before being rescued. He easily backed away as Steve reversed to avoid the zombie. But it had leapt well out and still managed to sprawl face down on the foredeck of the boat.

  Fontana stepped forward and cut down as the zombie was pushing itself to its feet. There was a sound very similar to a frozen melon being hit by a large knife.

  “That’s one,” Fontana said, levering the machete out of the infected’s head.

  “It’s times like this I wonder how my children are doing…” Steve said.

  * * *

  “How do you like being back on the Endeavor, Hooch?” Sophia said, sitting down at the dinette.

  “Better than a liferaft, skipper,” Hooch said.

  “I can’t believe Da stuck me on this tub,” Faith said, crossing her arms. “Especially with you.”

  “Is that seditious speech I hear out of you?” Sophia said. “That’s lashing round the fleet.”

  “You and what army, Tiny?” Faith said. “Try it and while I won’t exactly mutiny, you’re going to have to learn to swim really hard.”

  “So, what’s the op?” Hooch asked, quickly.

  “General clearance,” Sophia said. “There are plenty of boats that can and do pick up life-rafts and life-boats. Those that have survivors, about one in ten, they just pick ’em up. Like, say, you. Which was what we were on before. But when they spot boats like, well, this, most of them don’t have the guns…”

  “… Or the guts,” Faith said, picking at her fish.

  “Or the experience or the, yeah, guts to go clear them,” Sophia said. “Which is where you come in.”

  “Roger, skipper.”

  “Skipper,” Faith said, under her breath. “Heh.”

  “Faith,” Sophia said. “You can cop attitude in front of my crew. They all know us. You can even do it with Hooch. Hooch, we’re sisters, that’s all this is.”

  “No, I get it, skip,” Hooch said. “I’ve got two sisters and they…” He stopped and his face worked.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Sophia said, frowning. “We really… Our family is the only family that hasn’t lost people to the plague. It’s hard for us to truly understand. But… I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “It’s…” Hooch shrugged. “I’m not going to count them as lost until I can’t find ’em, skip. Simple as that. But about the two of you. It’s sort of…comforting. Listening to sisters argue is sort of like being back home. Doesn’t bother me.”

  “I get it,” Sophia said. “But, Faith, don’t give me crap, at least at first, if we find survivors. If there’s an emergency, I don’t want them doubting my orders. I can’t have that. We can’t have that. Okay?”

  “You and what army?” Faith repeated. “Yeah, yeah, got it.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I said I got it,” Faith snapped. “What is it about ‘got it’ you don’t understand?”

  “You can just feel the love,” Paula said, laughing.

  “I just love you so much, sis,” Faith said. “You’re just the biggest baddest captain of a dinghy in the whole fleet!”

  “I sooo want to rename it Minnow,” Sophia said. “Next time we get time, I swear. But it’s mine, all mine.”

  “The captain she was a mighty sailing man,” Paula caroled. “The mate, that’s me, was brave and true…”

  “Hey!” Patrick called from the helm. “I thought I was the mate?”

  “We’re all mates,” Sophia said. “Well, actually, I think me and Paula are sheilas.”

  “God, I hope so,” Hooch said. “Cause you look like sheilas. And one deployment to Okinawa was enough…”

  CHAPTER 27

  “Hydrocarbons, sure enough,” Gardner said. Her voice was barely audible between the silver suits they were wearing and the air-pak. She knew this so she tapped Fontana on the shoulder and made sure he saw the blinking indicator. “Take off your mask in here and you’re going to hit the deck, fast.”

  “No worries,” Steve shouted. “The same could be said for the zombies. There is some good news.”

  “And one spark and we’re going to go sky high,” Fontana noted. He used his hand to bang on the
next hatch. “Anybody home?”

  There was an answering banging, regular not frenzied like zombies.

  “I knew we forgot something,” Steve said. “Spare air.”

  “How many!” Fontana shouted. He put his ear to the hatch to hear the reply. “I think they’re saying four.”

  “Stand by here,” Steve said. “I’ll take Gardner back to the ship. But I’m not sure how to… We’d have to fit them…”

  “They must have a clear, or reasonably clear, air supply in there,” Gardner said. “And if there are females, they’re probably pregnant. Not good to have them exposed. I suggest we run blowers down here and clear out this passage, then extract them.”

  “And we get blowers, where?” Fontana asked.

  “There are some on the cutter,” Gardner said.

  “Which we already had to do a six hour run up to and a seven hour run back,” Steve said. He was either going to have to figure out how to tow the damned thing or strip it soon. That was one of his nagging issues.

  “It’s a supply ship,” Fontana said. “Would they have some?”

  “We can try to ask,” Steve said.

  “Do you have blowers?” Fontana said. “Blowers! Where are the blowers? If they’re answering I can’t hear. They’re saying something…”

  “We passed an aid station,” Gardner said, pointing back the way they came.

  “Which would have blowers?” Steve said.

  “No,” Gardner said. “But it might have a stethoscope.”

  * * *

  Fontana ripped off his mask and leaned into the hatch.

  “Where do you have air blowerthisairyoucan’tbreatheitwhereARETHEAIRBLOWERS!”

  “OW!” Gardner snapped, holding her ears that the stethoscope was inserted into. “That hurt!”

  Fontana quickly redonned his mask and took a deep breath.

  “Wow, that really is foul.”

  Gardner waved a hand for silence as she listened.

  “Ask them if they said ‘locker by engineering’?” She pulled the stethoscope away from the hatch and covered it with her hand.

  “LOCKER BY ENGINEERING?” Fontana shouted through his mask.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Gardner said, nodding and taking off the stethoscope. “Okay, you can bellow as loud as you want, now.”

  * * *

  “You got a clue how to use these?” Steve asked, looking at the fans and big coiled duct stuff. Mechanical wasn’t his gift any more than singing.

  “As a matter of fact I do,” Gardner said. “But I’ll need some help moving them. Ooo, ooo, My. Poor. Pregnant. Back.”

  “There’s a reason Sadie is back on the Large,” Fontana said.

  * * *

  In the end, Gardner did pretty much all the work but the toting. And in thirty minutes, they had the blowers evacuating and replacing the air in the corridors to the survivor compartment.

  “How long?” Steve asked, looking at the descending sun. It wasn’t red. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. A bad sign was if the dawn was red.

  “When this says it’s okay,” Gardner said, holding up the hydrocarbon meter.

  “Picky, picky,” Fontana said. “Women!”

  “You know, Fontana, on a boat like this I know ways to just catch you on fire. Ah, god. Not now…”

  “What?”

  “I gotta puke again,” she said, hurrying to the rail. “Be right back.”

  * * *

  “You gonna be okay?” Faith said as Hooch puked over the rail.

  “Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry, that’s not what… I mean…”

  “I’d say I puked the first time but I didn’t,” Faith said, then shrugged. “I mean, I have puked. Trust me. But I’ve seen worse than this. You should have seen some of the stuff on the Alpha.”

  “How many of these have you done?” Hooch said. The scene in the lower deck was fucking awful. The male of the group, presumably the dad, had survived. By feeding on his family in what had been the master’s cabin. From the looks of it, they’d all zombied and had been fed on one by one. As he’d killed them he’d brought them down into the cabin as a nest and slept with the dead and decomposing corpses. Hooch had managed to hold it in until he noticed one really totally, what the fuck?, detail. At the head of the bed, not covered in filth, almost like a little shrine, was a teddy bear. Like somewhere in the thing on the boat’s brain it almost remembered that it had somebody it cared about. It just couldn’t recognize that it was the tiny little corpse it was feeding on.

  “People keep asking me that,” Faith said. “I need to get a count…”

  * * *

  “Five,” Steve said, nodding. “That’s not bad for a boat this size. Come on, we’ll get you over to the rescue boat.”

  “Wait,” one of the men said, holding up his hand. “I’ll stay onboard.”

  “Why?” Fontana said.

  “If we leave the boat it’s salvage,” a woman said.

  “Heh,” Steve said, grinning. “It’s salvage already. You’re not going to get screwed but you kind of want to sit down and have a chat about the new reality.”

  “You do, you really do,” Gardner said. “And I’m saying that sort of officially as a member of the Coast Guard. In fact, as far as we can tell, I’m the number four senior United States Coast Guard officer. Cause there’s only six of us left.”

  “What?” the man said, his face going ashen.

  “Just come on over to the boat and get some fresh air,” Steve said. “We’re not going to pirate your boat.”

  “Not exactly pirate,” Fontana said. “Hey, I wonder if I’m, like, Senior NCO of the Army.”

  “In that case, I think Hooch is the Commandant…”

  * * *

  “How much fuel in the tanks, Hooch?” Faith asked, looking at the form. She was letting him do it for the experience. Besides the post-clearance tasks were getting old.

  “Like, half a tank?” Hooch said.

  “But dead batteries,” Faith said. “Okay. Hey, Paula! Toss me the slave!”

  “Slave cable?” Hooch asked.

  “Got it in one,” Faith said as Paula hefted the cable up from the other boat’s engine room. “Vicky make it up from cables and stuff they found. They do a little salvage in the harbor when the zombies aren’t real active or boats they can get to that don’t have any. But it’s stuff like this. I mean, I’ve had a couple of other people say they’ll try out clearance and they see one boat like this and give it up. It’s not just the zombies.”

  “Who clears ’em out?” Hooch asked.

  “Oh, the crews do,” Faith said. “If you want a new boat, that’s the catch unless it’s a hand-me-down like the Endeavor. Okay, engineering deck hatch is over here…”

  * * *

  “This is confusing,” Hooch said, looking at the electrical panel.

  “Confused the shit out of me the first time I looked at it,” Faith said, throwing a breaker back and forth. “But this isn’t complicated. The Large, the Vicky, that fricking Alpha. Those are complicated.” She hit the “Start” button and the engine started whining. “Come on, baby…”

  The engine rumbled to life and she grinned.

  “And we have a working boat,” Faith said. “I think we get some sort of spiff for that but I don’t really know what it is.”

  “Spiff?” Hooch said.

  “Bonus,” Faith said. “Like, extra rations or booze or something. Speaking of which.” She keyed her radio. “You want the good pickins, come and get ’em. And it works.”

  “Awesome,” Sophia replied. “Maybe I’ll ask for an upgrade.”

  “Might want to look at the master cabin before you say that.”

  * * *

  “Oh, my God,” the man said, his face white.

  “I know, zombies, right?” Faith said to the “captain” of the “prize crew.” The group were recent rescuees, mostly from liferafts, who had volunteered to join the Flotilla. “They’re worse than a rock band.
Just try to avoid the crap. The flying bridge isn’t too bad and it’s a nice clear day. All you got to do is run it into Bermuda. The course is laid in on the GPS. Just follow the marked route. That’s the current channels, whatever the markers might say. Don’t necessarily follow the markers. They’re getting filled up. Follow the marked route, got it?”

  “Yeah,” the man said.

  “If you get in trouble, we’re always up on sixteen,” Faith said. “ Don’t go into the lower decks unless you’ve got a really strong stomach. The Marine with me puked put it that way.”

  “Who cleans these up?” the guy asked looking at the feces and blood smeared interior.

  “First test of a captain in the Flotilla,” Faith said, grinning. “Can you find a crew who’s willing to clean the boat?”

  * * *

  “You drink, Hooch?” Sophia asked.

  “There’s two reasons for my nickname,” Hooch said.

  “Twenty-five-year-old Strathisla,” Sophia said, handing him a highball half full of dark whiskey. “One of the real reasons to be a clearing boat.”

  “And stuff like this,” Faith said, admiring the new gold and diamond tennis bracelet. She’d had to “extend” it with a bit of parachute cord since it was for a much smaller wrist. “Especially since I don’t drink.”

  “This is authorized?” Hooch asked, taking a sip of the scotch. “I’m not really into scotch but that’s pretty good.”

  “And enough of it and you forget what you see,” Sophia said, taking a pull. “Balancing doing this job half hammered and just doing it is the tough part. And we’re authorized one third of the salvage from cleared boats as the clearance boat. We really don’t have the room for it. Basically, we can take anything we can carry.”

  “Hell, you don’t even clear,” Faith said. “What do you see that’s so bad? And I don’t drink.”

  “Remember that raft with the kids in it, Faith?” Sophia asked, taking another drink.

  “Yeah,” Faith said, looking at the deck.

  “Kids?” Hooch asked.

  “Life raft,” Sophia said. “Two kids. Maybe six and eight.”