by John Ringo
* * *
“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.”
“Sorry,” 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.”
“Down, Faith,” Steve said. “Mike, you can claim it as last survivor I guess. There’s no owners anymore that we know of. But what, exactly, are you going to do with it? You don’t have a boat to tow it to Bermuda. It’s drifting.”
“I’ll, you know, cut you in on it…?” Mike said.
“That’s what we were looking at anyway,” Steve said, shrugging.
“So…what do I get?” Mike asked.
“You mean besides being rescued?” Faith replied.
“What do you want me to offer?” Steve asked. “Mike, what you get in this world is what you make for yourself. I suppose at some point there will be enough people mobile that you can add ‘what you take from others.’ But right now all there is either running and hiding or doing what we’re doing, trying to save people like, you know, you. If you want some help to try to find a boat… I’m getting stingy with those, really. But I’ll do that. Trade you this for a functioning yacht and as much stores as you can carry. Hell, refuel as often as you’d like until the tanks are dry. But what are you going to do, Mike? Keep running and looking for that one ‘safe’ place? Good luck finding it. I haven’t heard where it might be.”
“I know boats,” Mike said, his brow furrowing. “I mean, I’m not a captain, but, hell, none of you are. But…I know repairs. And we’ve got repair materials. I don’t want to go around scavenging. Being in here… It’s scaring the shit out of me. I want the lights on and the whole thing cleared out. But I can repair boats…”
“Okay, we anchor the hell out of this in a protected part of Bermuda harbor,” Steve said. “And you can act as a base station? If we get a tanker or something, we’ll bring it in for fuel?”
“I’m getting the feeling we need to talk about how to organize this whole thing,” Faith said. “But can we finish clearing the boat first? Or do we let Fly do the rest?” she asked with a feral grin.
“Please, no,” Braito said.
“There,” Steve said, cocking his head. “The reason you’re willing to share the boat, then.”
“Point,” Braito said.
“So, let’s get finished clearing,” Steve said, heading down the corridor. “Then we’ll figure out how this is going to work in more detail. Zombies! Zombies! Any zombies…?”
* * *
“Toy, away team,” Steve said, taking off his respirator. They were running out of filters, which was going to suck pretty soon. It wasn’t bad on the deck but the air was still thick with rot.
“Away team, Toy.”
“Where’s the Cooper, over?”
“About fifty miles northeast.”
“Ask them to vector here,” Steve said. “There’s supplies and we need to have a meeting.”
“Roger.”
CHAPTER 19
“Chris, I swear to God I should have just kept you as a cook,” Steve said, wiping up the spaghetti sauce with garlic bread.
“It’s nearly as good as that place in New York,” Faith said, then grimaced. “Sorry, Chris, but…”
“Nah,” Chris said, taking a bite of green beans. “I know what you mean about those places in New York. Some of those old guys are wizards. And there’s only so much you can do with canned meat. Besides, much of it was Tina.”
“It’s great, Tina,” Sophia said. Stacey had stayed on the boat after talking with Steve and giving him her proxie.
“I didn’t do much,” Tina said, shyly. She’d transferred to the Cooper to get away from the Toy, which still had too many bad associations.
“I think I might transfer,” Patrick said. He’d been acting as assistant helmsman and deck hand on the Toy.
“Which kind of brings up the subject of this meeting,” Steve said. The saloon in the Cooper had enough room for most of the crowd and most people were done with dinner.
“I’d wondered what the agenda was,” Chris said, arching an eyebrow.
“This is Mike Braito,” Steve said, gesturing to Mike. “He’s the only survivor we found on the Victoria. Being a professional seaman he’s been a real help with figuring out how to board without killing ourselves…
”
“Here, here,” Faith said.
“And in finding our way around the tug. Which is full of diesel and packed with stores by the way…”
“That’s good to hear,” Chris said. “We could use a refuel.”
“And being a professional seaman he also pointed out that since he was alive it’s not, technically, salvage.”
“I’m not saying I won’t share,” Mike said as heads swiveled towards him. He held up his hands in surrender. “I just wonder what I’m going to get out of it. Okay? Is that so wrong?”
“People didn’t ask what they were going to get out of it when they rescued you,” Paula said, snappishly.
“Yes, actually, we did,” Steve said.
“What?” Paula asked.
“Well, I knew there was a good chance that it would have fuel,” Steve said. “And that it might have supplies. There was an… There was an economic reason to clear it. Call it logistic if you want. But there was a thought beyond ‘might there be survivors.’ Which brings up the point. I am going to go right on clearing as long as it takes. And I’ve got some ideas about how to clear the land…”
“How?” Patrick asked. “I mean… That’s a lot of bullets. We don’t have that many, do we?”
“No,” Faith said. “We’re even getting a little short on shotgun ammo.”
“I said ideas,” Steve said. “I’m not really willing to talk about what they are right now because they change based on what we find. But the point is…I think we need to talk about the…the theory of this whole thing. I’m going to go right on clearing and saving people. But how do we make some of the decisions that need to be made? What right, really, does Mike have to that boat? I’m not saying that he doesn’t have rights. I’m saying that, face it, this is not before the plague. There are laws of the sea. But those have changed over the years. Forget the laws. For one thing, there’s nobody to enforce them. How do we organize ourselves? Example: I said that if he wanted I’d try to find him a decent yacht and he could take as many supplies as he wanted in exchange for the tug…”
“Can we use the tug?” Chris asked. “That’s a lot for a derelict. Does it run?”
“No,” Steve said. “We need to tow it to Bermuda. But we’ll need Mike’s help to do that. But the real point is, do I have the authority to make that promise? That was the thought that crossed my mind after I said it. Chris, when we found the Cooper, you were the obvious choice to take it over…”
