Under a Graveyard Sky

by John Ringo

  “Waiting to make sure you weren’t going to shoot us,” Astroga shouted. She was in the heavy vehicle like a shot.

  “Thanks,” Faith said. “I think. You nearly tagged me back there.”

  “A miss is as good as a mile,” the vehicle crewman said. “Who’s got the count?”

  “Me,” Tom said. “And we’re good,” he added as Durante boarded.

  “Ow!” Sophia said, banging her head. “We should have worn helmets.”

  “Military vehicles are designed for them,” Steve said, leaning forward. “Hunch and you probably won’t hit your head as much.”

  “When did we go hot?” Copley yelled. The inside of the MRAP was like being in a rock crusher. It also was occasionally tossing around as if it was hitting potholes.

  “When the lights went out and every zombie in New York City headed for anything with lights on,” the crewman shouted. “Every team’s been hit and just about every headquarters. We are ‘redeploying for active clearance.’”

  “About fucking time,” Randall snarled.

  “It’s going to get really tight in here,” the crewman said. “We’ve got two more teams to pick up and they’ve got some civilians, too. I guess the zombies are enforcing the curfew for us!”

  * * *

  It was nearly dawn by the time Tom was able to arrange pick-up for the group and get back to the Bank.

  “So are you pulling the handle?” Steve asked.

  “I’ll have to see what the Fed and the Board say when they get around to meeting,” Tom said. He was looking out the window of his office at the darkened skyline of New Jersey. There were a few lights. And although he couldn’t see them, he was sure that each was surrounded by a wall of “infected persons.” “I can’t pull the handle until the tipping point has clearly been reached, the Fed orders temporary suspension of all operations or the Board orders suspension.”

  “I’d say last night was a tipping point,” Steve said.

  “For us, maybe,” Tom said. “But I’ve got to stay until they pull the handle. You can go. The evac plan is solid. Everybody involved in critical actions or in the evac group has been vaccinated and boosted.” His phone rang and he picked it up.

  “Smith . . . Roger, sir . . . Understood . . . I’ll send a team to pick them up . . . Roger, it’s under control . . .”

  “Pulling the handle?” Steve asked.

  “Sounds like it,” Tom said. “The chairman and his family are holed up in their apartment on Park Avenue and apparently they can’t get out. Zombies, don’t you know? Do me one last favor?”

  “Short on teams?” Steve said.

  “Very,” Tom said. “Take the BERT truck and go get them. There’s a few other board members as well. Then take it over to the dock and trade places with Kaplan. I’ll send Durante with you, but he may need some fire support.”

  “I’ll contact you on Channel 47,” Steve said, standing up wearily. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

  “We both are,” Tom said. “Brother . . .”

  “We’ll see you when we see you, Tom,” Steve said. “You going to say good-bye to the girls?”

  “Faith would blow me away like a zombie if I didn’t.”

  * * *

  “As a last job for Uncle Tom, that sucked,” Faith said, collapsing onto a couch in the saloon. “I’m done. I’m sooo done.”

  It was nearly sundown. They had been up all night, and the way things were going they were going to have to be up another night.

  The thirteen-year-old was barely out of the hospital. She was toast.

  The “simple” job of moving the chairman of the board of the Bank of the Americas—along with his “immediate family,” which included not only children and grandchildren but some cousins he thought would be helpful, other board members, their “immediate family” and some hangers-on that Steve thought probably fell into the category of “mistresses,” or in one case “boyfriend”—had been a nightmare.

  The only people who seemed to understand words and phrases like “urgency,” “emergency evacuation” or “get in the fucking truck, lady” were the chairman and his wife, Nancy. The chairman had had to leave in the first lift to get to the meetings at the Bank. There were essentially no electronic communications working. That left his wife trying to persuade a group of wealthy, entitled cats that they needed to move. Didn’t happen quickly and it wasn’t helped by the fact that they had to ride in the BERT van.

  In one of the last lifts, Faith had finally lost it when she heard:

  “I am not riding in the back of a simply horrible vehicle like that!”

  The woman was the wife of a president of something or another at the Bank. A president, as she repeatedly had pointed out. Hubby had long since left to attend “meetings.”

  Faith, who was working the loading point, pulled her .45 and put it to the woman’s head.

  “You can get into the van or I can turn you into vaccine,” she said, coldly. “Your call.”

  “You wouldn’t!” the lady snapped.

  “Look in my eyes, lady,” Faith said. “Get in the fucking van and get in the van now!”

  The lady got in the van.

  “Well, I don’t think we’re going to be asked for our services again, all things considered,” Steve said now. “I understand there were complaints.”

  “I hope so,” Faith said. “I thing a was a . . .” Her eyes closed and she started to snore.

  “It reminds me of when she was four and she used to fall asleep in her plate,” Stacey whispered.

  “The difference being she’s not four, she’s not small and she’s still got all her gear on,” Sophia said tiredly. “Faith!” She shouted, kicking her sister’s boot.

  “Wasat?” Faith said, sitting up and reaching for her pistol.

  “Whoa,” Steve said, clamping her hand. “You need to get undressed and into bed.”

  “Ogazada . . .” Faith said and her eyes closed again.

  “Mile Seven, this is Thunderblast,” the radio crackled.

  “That’s Tom,” Steve said, stepping into the cockpit and keying the radio. “Thunder, Mile Seven.”

  “Code is Goose, say again, Goose.”

  “Confirm, Goose,” Steve said. As he replied there was the sound of a distant explosion behind him. Looking north he saw the center of the George Washington Bridge collapsing into the river. “Bloody hell . . . Roger, Goose. Good luck.”

  “Same, same,” Tom replied. “Out here.”

  “And we are away to better climes,” Tom shouted. He hit the anchor winch switch and looked towards the darkened skyline. There were fires burning out of control in Harlem and more from the direction of Brooklyn. The same seemed to be the case on the New Jersey side with widespread fires in every direction.

  He raised the mainsail and jib, catching the strong northeast breeze, then straightened away to the south.

  When he was underway he pulled out his iPod and scrolled through it for the playlist he’d created. There was a recessed input for it right on the console so he plugged it in and started the playlist.

  “Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wind . . .” he crooned. “Onward the sailors cry. Carry the lad that’s born to be king, over the Sea to Skye . . .”

  BOOK TWO

  I WILL NOT BOW

  Watch the end through dying eyes

  Now the dark is taking over

  Show me where forever dies

  Take the fall and run to heaven

  All is lost again, but I’m not giving in

  I will not bow, I will not break

  I will shut the world away

  I will not fall, I will not fade

  I will take your breath away

  “I Will Not Bow”

  Breaking Benjamin

  Dear Agony

  —

  PROLOGUE

  “It is requested that passengers move to their designated lifeboats . . .” the enunciator purred over the screams.

  “Gwinn
! Come on!” Chris Phillips yelled from the lifeboat.

  Chris had spent ten years in the Royal Navy as a chef. That was not a cook, as he liked to point out. He was a Royal Navy chef. There was a difference. And Steven Seagal didn’t know the difference.

  But after a while, the “allure” of Navy life palled. He still enjoyed the sea. The problem was he never got to see it except from land. He was a very good chef. Good chefs served admirals, and admirals generally were also land-bound.

  So he’d quit and put out some resumes. Which was how he ended up as a chef for Royal Caribbean Cruise lines and met the love of his life, Third Officer, Staff, Gwinneth Stevens. After years of bachelorhood that had most people joking about his actual tastes, he’d proposed only two months ago.

  Then the H7 virus had broken out.

  They’d pieced together that the bastard who spread it had left one of his calling cards at the cruise terminal in New York. Which meant that there were at least fifteen “patient zeroes” on the boat. And by the time they found that out, there were more.

  The boat had been put in “at sea” quarantine. Then the “afflicted” had started to turn. And without antigen testers, they couldn’t screen for who was infected and who wasn’t. And then it spiraled.

  The captain and other “ship” officers were already gone, taking all the powered lifeboats. But Staff Side had stayed on. The ship officers, Greeks, as was common, considered themselves only responsible for the ship. When it was clear the infected had control and there was nothing to do about it, they had given an almost Gallic shrug and fled, the bastards.

  Staff Side was responsible for the passengers. And they were chosen from people, like Gwinn, who took that job seriously. The senior officer, Staff, had already turned when the first officer gave the order to abandon ship. Thomas, though, was still standing his post. He intended to go to full lockdown as soon as the boats were away. Since passengers had been issued water and food in their quarters, assuming that help arrived soon, a major assumption, perhaps a few would survive.

  Gwinn kept looking for one more passenger who could make it.

  “There might be more—” she said.

  The infected came from out of nowhere and hit her like a rugby player, taking her down and biting at the back of her neck.

  “Gwinn!” Chris yelled, scrambling up the short steps. He grabbed the infected and punched him in the back of the neck, hard. It knocked the thing out for a moment.

  “Gwinn, come on, honey,” Chris said, pulling her up. “Please . . .”

  “Go,” Gwinn said, holding the back of her neck to staunch the blood flow. “Just go . . .”

  “I can’t, honey,” Chris said. “Please! Darling—”

  “Go!” Gwinn screamed. “I’m infected! I can’t board! GO!”

  She stood up and pushed him to the boarding steps. Normally the slight woman couldn’t have moved his nearly two-meter, fifteen-stone mass. But he backed up.

  “It’s duty, darling,” Gwinn said, sobbing. “Just duty.”

  “One last kiss?” Chris said.

  “One . . .”

  He gave her a hug and kissed her, then allowed her to push him into the raft.

  “Love,” Gwinn said, tears streaming down her face. “And survive . . .”

  Gwinn closed the hatch and Chris took his seat under the big red lever that said “Do Not Pull.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please assume what are called in the airline industry ‘crash positions’ bent over at the waist, arms wrapped around your legs,” he said tonelessly to the mostly shocked or crying passengers. “There will be a brief sensation of falling, then a light impact. I’m told it’s a bit like a carnival ride.” He reached up to the bar and pulled down, hard. “Last ride of the day . . .”

  CHAPTER 15

  Blood-splattered blue curtains rippled to the rocking of the boat as Steve stepped over the corpse of the former owner. From the loose skin, the man had probably been heavy-set before turning zombie. By the time they boarded the boat, he was clearly on the edge of starvation.

  “Who chooses blue curtains with a maroon interior?” Faith asked, her voice muffled by her respirator.

  “At a guess?” Steve said, gesturing at a gnawed corpse in the corner. “Her.”

  The body had been chewed down to the bones. There was still a mass of goo from decomposition staining the maroon carpets.

  They’d lured the zombie to the rear sliding doors, then when Faith jerked them open Steve had “terminated the hostile infected.” At least that was how he was going to write it up in the ship’s log.

  “This one useable?” Faith asked.

  “Too early to tell,” Steve said. “But we’re definitely going to have to fumigate.”

  The Hunter was about done. Three weeks after leaving New York harbor they’d hit a heavy tropical storm that had ripped away the wind-generator as well as half the deck rigs and railings. Steve had seriously reconsidered his choice of zombie plans as the craft pitched uncontrollably through fifty-foot swells.

  But, based upon what they were getting, or had stopped getting, from land, a tropical storm was better than a zombie storm. One by one, shortwave radio stations had stopped broadcasting. First the major commercial news stations, then governments. The last “official” station to broadcast was the Beeb from “a location in Scotland.” And then one day it was silent.

  That left only amateur ham radio operators, who reported large crowds of zombies roaming even through rural districts. One station, Zombie Team Alpha, from Kansas, had boasted it was prepared for any zombie attack. Then an attack. Then silence. There were still a few broadcasting out there, mostly from deep in the arctic, but they were doing it quiet.

  What puzzled Steve was that GPS was still up. As he understood it, GPS depended upon an atomic clock somewhere in Colorado. Since it was unlikely that that facility had held out, he wasn’t sure why it was still working. But he was glad it was. Sophia and Stacey had waded through a book on celestial navigation and learned how to do it, but he wasn’t looking forward to the day they had to use that method.

  Whatever the case, they needed a new ride. And the Fairline 65 twin diesel, christened Tina’s Toy, looked to be a pretty good choice.

  The boat was the first they’d tried to board. They had had a few of what might have been attacks in the couple of weeks after leaving New York. The waters, then, in the area were fairly crowded, and the sailboat filled with mostly women must have looked like an inviting target. But whenever a boat tracked towards them, they’d just started breaking out the equipment, and as more and more body-armored and heavily armed people came on deck . . . boats would just sort of turn away.

  To avoid the crowded NYC-Bermuda-Norfolk corridor, Steve had turned northeast into the deep Atlantic. The family had basically sailed in the direction of Iceland, then back down into the U.S. region. By the time they came back, there were far fewer boats. At least, boats under power and control. They had seen several boats, and even freighters, under power but clearly not in control. One encounter at night had nearly resulted in what would surely have been a fatal collision. Only quick action on Sophia’s part had gotten the tiny sailboat out of the way of the massive freighter.

  Just adjusting to being shipboard had been hard. None of them had any serious at-sea experience. It was the one flaw in Steve’s zombie plan, and a couple of times it had nearly cost them. Forget that the girls had to learn to find their own “space” on the relatively tiny craft. And learn that there were tasks that had to be completed. And that they had to find their own entertainment. Some of the tasks, like fire drills, had proven out when they had their first galley fire. Then there had been the possible “attacks,” the tropical storm and just learning to adjust to being on a boat, which was a big enough problem.

  In the last two weeks they hadn’t had any similar problems. They hadn’t seen many small boats, but floating freighters and tankers seemed to be everywhere.

  However, in the two months t
hey’d been cautiously avoiding contact, they’d also used up the bulk of their stores. They were flat out of fuel for cooking, nearly out of fuel for the generator and when that ran out they wouldn’t be able to produce drinkable water.

  Definitely time to find another home.

  “Ooo, I want,” Faith said, getting a good look at the saloon.

  “Even with the maroon interior?” Steve asked.

  “The maroon I can handle,” Faith said. “It’s the blue curtains that suck.”

  “Oooo,” Steve said, stepping forward. “I want.”

  “Nice helm,” Faith said, looking at the enclosed helm forward of the saloon. “Who came up with this idea?”

  “I dunno,” Steve said, examining the controls. “We’ll need to get it powered to check its fuel and water stores.”

  “You gonna be able to figure all this out?” Faith asked.

  “If I can’t, your mom and sister can,” Steve said. “Now to find the way down.”

  They quickly found a companionway, which was blocked by a hatch.

  “Hello!” he shouted, banging on the hatchway. “Any zombies down there?”

  “I think I hear something,” Faith said, taking out an earplug. “Yeah, I hear something.”

  “Is that a zombie?” Steve asked, cocking his head.

  “I don’t think so,” Faith said, then cocked her own. “Wait . . . I dunno.”

  “It’s not on the other side of the hatch,” Steve said. He readied his shotgun anyway and then pulled at the hatch. Which was stuck. “I don’t think this has a lock . . .” he said.

  “You’ve sort of got a master-key,” Faith pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Steve said. He pulled out his magazine, ejected the round in the chamber, then pulled another round out of his vest, loaded it in the chamber and reinserted the magazine. “’Ware bouncer.”

  “Roger,” Faith said, turning and ducking her head so any bounce-back from the door would be taken on her body armor and helmet.

  Steve tapped the edge of the hatch until he found where something had been installed to make it lockable. He placed the barrel against the blockage and fired.