Under a Graveyard Sky btr-1

by John Ringo

  Then the power failed and while he could still watch the zombies there wasn’t any more water. Along with the water stopping working, so did the shitter. That was okay, he wasn’t pooping much.

  He’d conserved. He’d sipped even when he was desperate with thirst. He’d heard you could drink piss. When he filled a bottle, he drank that instead of water til it got dark and nasty. Then he’d sip water…

  He could see the days go by but his iPhone ran out of power pretty quick and he had no idea what day it was. He had no idea how long he’d lived in that cabin. When he got up, he’d eat a teaspoon of that terrorist stuff, which somebody told him was made from ground up chickpea, though the guy called it “garbanzo beans,” drink piss and then a capful of water to wash it down, then sit and wait for all the zombies to die or somebody with, you know, guns to come along.

  The ones in the hallway stopped making noise after about two weeks. He was surprised it was that long without any water. But he still couldn’t get out cause the door was locked and it was, like, steel. He’d pulled off the veneer to check.

  He was thirsty all the time and he was down to pure piss in the bottles. And it turned out that piss turned. It was starting to smell like ammonia or something.

  The zombies had, like, moods. Sometimes they’d be quiet, sometimes it seemed like for days. Then they’d get active and usually start fighting each others. He started calling them “orcs” cause they reminded him of those movies with the hobbits.

  Then they day came when he could hear them getting really riled up. He could barely pay attention. He couldn’t really remember the last time he’d gotten out of bed. He knew he was getting bed sores but it was just too much trouble to get up. But he could hear the zombies making noise and some sort of odd thumping. It was different but he really could care less. There’d been thumps before.

  Then the door opened. He heard it but he realized he couldn’t even move his head.

  “Another terminal,” a muffled voice said. It sounded like a chick but he’d had that dream before.

  “I’ll check.”

  A bright light was flashed in his face and he flinched. That hadn’t happened before.

  “You’re real…?” he croaked.

  * * *

  “I need a stretcher team,” Faith said over the radio. “Some big guys. Even as a skeleton, this guy is big.” She unkeyed the radio. “I thought he was a deader. My bad.”

  “Just drink,” Hooch said, giving the guy a sip of water. All the survivors looked like they’d been in the death camps but this guy was particularly bad if for no other reason than being so big to begin with. His feet were hanging off the end of the bed. “A couple of sips. Your body needs to get used to it, again.”

  “You’re really real?” the guy croaked again.

  “We’re really real,” Hooch said. “Sorry it took so long but the world’s gone to shit. We’re going to get you over to the boats in a bit. Tell them to bring an IV or this guy’s going to go into shock.”

  “Bring an IV,” Faith said. “Cabin Three-Nine-Eight-Four. Hooch, we need to keep clearing.”

  “Can you hold the bottle?” Hooch asked, putting it in the guy’s hand. “We need to keep looking for survivors. Don’t die before the medical team gets here, okay? Don’t give up.”

  “I won’t,” the guy said. “Thank you. Who are you?”

  “Wolf Squadron,” Hooch said. “Long story. They’ll explain it later. Just hang in there. We’re going to prop the door. We’ve cleared the zombies.”

  The guy just barely nodded and tried to raise the water bottle. He couldn’t even manage that.

  “Straw,” Faith said. She’d spotted one in an old coke bottle. She cleaned it off, put it in the bottle and propped it where the guy just had to turn his head. “Can you do it now?”

  “Yes,” the guy said. “Thanks.”

  “Just hang in there,” Hooch said. “You made it this long. Don’t give up.”

  “Not gonna,” the guy said. “I want to kill zombies.”

  “Okay, now you’re talking my language,” Faith said, patting him on the shoulder and sticking the straw between his lips. “We’ll talk in a couple of weeks.”

  * * *

  Rusty couldn’t believe how good water tasted. It was, like, orgasmic. He didn’t have to worry about drinking too much. Every time he took a sip he had to let his body and brain settle down from the intensity of the experience. Sip, fireworks. Sip, twitch. Sip, more fireworks. There were, like, stars in his eyes. Then he realized it was a flashlight.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” a voice said. “The guy doesn’t have any veins to put a stick in!”

  “Let me try it,” another voice said.

  “Like you know how any better than me. Hey, guy, this is gonna sting a little.”

  Rusty felt the needle go in but he’d just taken a sip of water and the fireworks sort of made it unnoticeable.

  “Shit…” Another probe. “I cannot find a vein…”

  “Let me…”

  Rusty wasn’t sure how many times they tried to put an IV in but he did notice that he was out of water.

  “Water?” he asked. “Bottle…?”

  “Yeah, got it,” the guy said. Unlike the first two who had been covered in weapons and what looked like firefighter gear not to mention gas masks, the guy was wearing a raincoat and a gas mask but that was about all. He pulled the straw out and got another bottle, then inserted the straw back in Rusty’s mouth.

  “Finally,” the second guy grunted.

  The sensation coming up Rusty’s arm couldn’t be an IV. It felt like somebody had shot him up with freezing cold coke. Then it spread through his whole body. He wasn’t sure he was going to survive the rush. He groaned.

  “You okay?” one of the guys said. “You know, that’s like the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.”

  “It’s right up there,” his partner said. “Let’s get him on a stretcher.”

  “Should we call for help?”

  “Seriously? I think this guy might weigh ninety pounds.”

  * * *

  Rusty was in a haze the whole way out of the cruise ship. He could sort of recall swaying in the air. And the feel of wind. It was cold after so long in the stuffy cabin. They’d wrapped a blanket around him but his feet stuck out.

  He saw people climbing up ladders on the side of the ship and had a vague impression of what looked like charter fishing boats or something.

  Then he was in a room in a boat that was bobbing up and down. A girl with black hair was holding onto his IV bag. She was a girl, too young, but she was the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.

  “I need another bag,” the girl said. “This one is nearly out already.”

  “Going to have to wait,” a male voice said. “We don’t have any. They’ve got some on the Grace.”

  “I don’t think this guy can wait,” the girl said.

  “What’s your name, angel?” Rusty said.

  “Tina,” Tina replied. “You’re on the Changing Tymes. We’re going to take you over to another ship called the Grace Tan in just a little while.”

  A stretcher was set down next to his holding a woman who looked like one of those survivors from a death camp. Her skin was pulled back against her cheeks and she was, really, literally, was skin and bones.

  “Can you hold two?” one of the stretcher bearers asked.

  “I can for a while but we need some way to hold them up,” Tina said. “And more. This guy needs another one!”

  “We’re running out,” the stretcher bearer said, shrugging. “I’ll see if I can find something to rig up…”

  “…I said we need more IVs. These people are so gone…”

  “We’ll float everything we’ve got off. Charlotte is about two hours out with the Campbell. They have plenty…”

  “Roger, Dallas. Thanks again for the assist…”

  “Dallas, Squadron Ops, tell the Charlotte, we’re sending an inflatable up to pick some up. We’l
l handle the boarding…”

  Rusty wanted to hold on. He was afraid if he closed his eyes he’d die. But finally they closed.

  * * *

  The passenger cabin areas didn’t really involve “clearing.” It just involved opening the cabin door and seeing if the people inside were dead or alive.

  “I can kill zombies all day long,” Faith finally said, shaking her head at the door. “And I’m fine with this. But Trixie cannot walk into one more cabin and find a family dead of starvation.”

  “Tell Trixie that’s fine,” Hooch said. “I’ve got this. You and Trixie guard the door.”

  “Sorry, Hooch, but…”

  “Faith, you’ve got nothing to apologize to anyone, ever,” Hooch said, going in the cabin, then coming back out. “Empty.”

  “Really?” Faith said. They’d found some like that.

  “Shhh…” he said, leaning forward and whispering. “That’s all Trixie needs to know.”

  “Okay,” Faith whispered, nodding.

  * * *

  “You know your daughter’s going a little bat shit, right?” Fontana said, checking the corpse for pupil response. It seemed like some of them weren’t even decomposing they were so dried up. But this was a corpse.

  “I’ve noticed,” Steve said. “The question is if it’s functional bat shit or nonfunctional bat shit.”

  “There’s a difference?” Fontana asked as they checked the room across the hall. There weren’t any surviving zombies, period. And the only human survivors were those who had been very very careful using their supplies. And there weren’t many of those.

  “One of my grandparents had been a prisoner of war during The War, as it’s referred to Down Under,” Steve said, closing the door on the dead. “To his dying day he never drank more than one cup of water with breakfast, one with lunch and one with supper. That was exactly all he drank. Doctors told him it was bad for him. He didn’t listen.”

  The next room contained a family that had zombied. Or at least some of them had. One young male was still wearing scraps of clothes. All the corpses except one had been thoroughly gnawed.

  “And he had about a million other quirks. Like reading so slow it took him a year to finish a book. He’d read one word, savor it like the water, then read another. He’d developed what looked like bat shit habits that kept him alive and sane in the camps. This world isn’t going to get any better soon. The question is if Faith’s, face it, schizophrenia is a functional response or if it’s going to cause a real split personality. Because, right now it’s the only armor her brain has against this horror. And, face it, whereas Granpa’s bat shit was weird in the normal world, Faith’s going to have to grow up in this bat shit world.”

  “She’s only thirteen,” Fontana said, walking in the next room. That was the pattern. Fontana took outboard, Steve took inboard. “Ever thought about, you know, pulling her back? We’ve got the Coasties now to help with clearance.”

  “The Coasties have other skills,” Steve said. “And when they say ‘clearance’ they mean rounding guys up, searching for drugs and maybe getting shot out. They don’t mean blowing their way through zombies.”

  “They’re still adults with some weapons training. Got a live one. Not thirteen-year-old girls.”

  “On the face of it, you’re right,” Steve said. “I should pull her back. You wanna tell her? Medical team to cabin Two-Nine-Seven-Four.”

  “No,” Fontana said, giving the woman some water. “Hey, you’re gonna make it, okay? Just hang on. We’ve got medical teams on the way.”

  “Th’nk u…” the woman whispered.

  “Just sip the water…”

  * * *

  “So, about Faith,” Fontana said. “The zombies don’t bother her. Much. This shit is killing her.”

  “I know,” Steve said. “But the damned stretcher teams will barely come up into the dark areas. And they won’t go anywhere we haven’t cleared for zombies. Even when all the zombies are dead. Find somebody who’ll do this besides you, Hooch, me and Faith and I’ll send Faith zombie hunting.”

  “Get the Coasties,” Fontana repeated. “This is their kind of shit.”

  “I will,” Steve said. “When they get here. Some. Some are going to have to help with just keeping these poor bastards alive. We’ll go back to heavy clearance. But for now, we’re all we’ve got.”

  “And we can’t do this all day and all night, twenty-four seven,” Fontana pointed out.

  Steve reached up and changed the frequency on his radio.

  “Dallas, you got me?” Steve asked, walking into the exterior cabin. There was a body on the bed. He pointed.

  “Gone,” Fontana said. “No pupil response.”

  “Dallas, here.”

  “Can you retrans to squadron ops, over?”

  “Roger.”

  “Squadron ops. Jesus, Wolf…”

  “Yeah,” Steve said. “Isham, we’re going to call this at twelve hours from when we went over the side. Whenever that is. The clearance teams that is. If the Coasties are on site by then I’d like them to manage the recovery work. But nobody works on it for more than twelve hours at a time. The clearance team is going to need some bunks on the Alpha or the Grace. And somebody who has a clue about gear to get this shit cleaned up. All that we’re going to be able to do for the next… God knows how long is clear, eat, sleep and clear. Can you manage that?”

  “I’ve got it under control, Wolf,” Isham replied. “I’ll get all that set up.”

  “All the zombies are dead in the passenger cabin areas,” Steve said. “We’re getting about one survivor per ten cabins. As soon as some of the Coasties get on site, have them replace Faith and Hooch. Then us. Faith and Hooch go down for longer than we do. We’ll both start again tomorrow at the same time but get them replaced as soon as possible. We are going to be clearing this…floating den of horrors for a long time. We need to think about how we’re going to sustain this.”

  “Roger,” Isham replied. “Got all that.”

  “Thanks,” Steve said. “Wolf out.”

  He changed the radio back over to the medical channel, then shrugged.

  “Best I can do,” Steve said.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Any decisions you need me to make?” Steve asked as he stepped off onto the flush deck of the Alpha.

  The waves were chopping up and the deck was awash but he didn’t really care. It would clean some of the crap off his boots.

  “None,” Isham said, shaking his head. “It’s not a power grab. Everything that can be got under control is under control. Just…trust me on that and get some rest.”

  “I want to drink myself to sleep,” Steve said.

  “Hang on,” Isham said. “Hang on to that grab rail and just stand there. We’re going to wash you down out here.”

  “Makes sense,” Steve said. He was covered in wet weather gear top to bottom. “The guns are going to need…”

  “To be cleaned off in fresh water, dried really well and then lubed up really well,” Isham said, backing up the stairs. “Just let them wash you down…”

  * * *

  “Steve,” Stacey said, hugging him. “Oh… God…”

  “It’s bad,” Steve said, nodding. “I’m really regretting bringing Faith onboard.”

  “She’s having a lot of problems with the…” She stopped and grimaced. “She likes the zombie hunting…”

  “I’m going to switch her to that as purely as possible,” Steve said, nodding. “I mean, there are horrors to that. But this has been… Different.”

  The cabin was excellent. Steve wasn’t sure how Isham had procured the materials to return it to if not its former glory than very liveable. But it was nice. And the meal that had been waiting for him after his long, hot, shower looked really, really good. He wasn’t sure that he could eat it, though.

  “You have to eat,” Stacey said.

  “Reading my mind?” Steve asked, smiling faintly.

  “Always,” Sta
cey said.

  “Talk to me about something,” Steve said, taking a forkful of the dish. He wasn’t sure what it was but it was excellent. “When did Chris go back to being a cook?”

  “That’s Sari,” Stacey said, smiling.

  “The one that was on here?” Steve asked, then winced. The horrors of the Voyage had nearly blotted out how bad the Alpha had been when they boarded.

  “She’s a really good cook,” Stacey said. “And Mike is overseeing the maintenance on the weapons and gear. I made sure they were all clear. He knew how to clear them but I checked first. He’s going to fine tooth them.”

  “How’s Isham doing?” Steve asked. “This is the sort of thing I need to talk about.”

  “Doing fine,” Stacey said. “He found one of the SSLs that’s a premier scrounger who turned up, among other things, boxes of Cuban cigars. Isham’s up in Mickerberg’s old office smoking big black cigars and running things like he’s General Patton. It’s funny to watch in a way. I think until this came up he really wasn’t… In the game? But now he is. And he’s doing a good job at it.”

  “Keep an eye on him,” Steve said.

  “I am,” Stacey said, shrugging. “But when we had a moment alone he brought it up. And he pointed out that you’re the one with the subs backing you. That headquarters gave you the authority. Not him. He said ‘Broken down and busted or not, I’m not going try to buck the United States Government. It’s still got nuclear weapons.’”

  “Now that sounds like it might be honesty,” Steve said.

  * * *

  “Okay, wow,” Faith said, shoveling down the breakfast. “This is really good. Do I want to know what it is?”

  “Eggs,” Sari said, laying the plates out for the clearance team. “With more eggs.”

  There were the scrambled eggs, which were awesome, a really good canned fruit salad and fried potatoes. There was even fresh baked english muffins. With butter.

  “It’s got a bit of a fishy taste but a good one,” Fontana said. “What’s the meat? It tastes like…lobster?”