by John Ringo
“Scrambled eggs with lobster,” Sari said. “And some secret ingredients.”
“I’m going to let you keep the secrets,” Steve said, looking out the window of the “dinette.” The small compartment, relatively it being the Alpha, had a good view of the growing flotilla of boats working on the Voyage. He could even see the Campbell drifting in the distance. The Alpha and Grace had rendezvoused with it overnight and transferred clearance materials as well as medical supplies. Fortunately, it had lots of both. The cutter had seemed like a big ship when they first cleared it. Now they had a new appreciation for “big.” But for its relatively small size, it was absolutely packed with disaster material. Which made sense given its jobs.
“Today is pure clearance,” Steve said.
“Oh, thank God,” Faith said. “Wait… Zombie killing clearance or checking cabins clearance?”
“Zombie killing clearance,” Steve said. “We’re going to sweep all of the remaining untouched areas on the port side cabin zone, then work our way across the ship and sweep the starboard side. If we run into survivors doing that, unlikely, we’ll call for extraction or extract them ourselves. The Coast Guard personnel are going to manage the extraction in cleared areas and provide security. That’s mostly for the people doing the actual removal.”
“I can handle that,” Faith said. “Sorry, but I’m just…”
“Nothing, at all, to be sorry about, Faith,” Fontana said. “This is getting to me. And I thought I’d seen pretty much every horror possible in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact that you’re not completely round the bend is pretty remarkable.”
“I know the Trixie thing is freaking people out,” Faith said, shrugging. “But…”
“It’s a way for you to compartmentalize,” Steve said, nodding. “People who do this sort of thing have to do that. Everyone does. You just happen to have an outward expression. The question, since you raise it, is are you going to be okay continuing?”
“I’m fine if it’s killing zombies,” Faith said, shrugging. “And I can handle the usual sort of stuff. But Hooch had to take over checking the cabins. I… I can’t do that right now. Even finding live ones… Half the time I was like: What’s the point?”
“We’ve lost some,” Steve said. He’d had a quick briefing that morning before breakfast. “And according to the doctors at the CDC we’ll probably lose some more over the next week. But most of them are making it. We’re saving people. But for today… We’ll just blow some zombies away.”
“That’ll help,” Faith said, grinning.
“Weaponry,” Steve said. “There are some large areas we’ll be clearing. Despite my fear of bouncers, I think we need at least one rifle. There are sure to be more security zombies and we need to start conserving our shotgun rounds to the extent it’s possible. Sergeant Fontana, you’ll carry that.”
“Roger, sir,” Fontana said. “Any word on the ammo from the Campbell.”
“We got a resupply of two hundred rounds of shotgun,” Steve said, grimacing. “That was all that was in the ready locker or found scattered onboard. There’s a magazine but it’s apparently a vault. And nobody can find the keys. And since it’s a magazine…”
“You can’t exactly cut it open with a blow torch,” Fontana said.
“There’s a team looking for the keys at the moment,” Steve said. “According to what I got, there should be two thousand more rounds of twelve gauge in there. Another reason to use the rifles whenever possible. We have, also, a limited amount of seven six two but we’re currently better on that than on shotgun. So when it’s possible, Sergeant Fontana will take the shot. Please make sure that all rounds go into the target.”
“I will,” Fontana said. “But you get bouncers from shotgun as well.”
“They tend to be caught by the body armor,” Steve said. “And the spots not covered by armor that are likely to kill us are small. With the exception of the face, of course. Which is why in addition to all the other stuff we’re carrying, we’re going to be adding ballistic face shields. The Campbell had six onboard. They’ve already been mounted to the helmets.
“Kuzma has set up a fresh-water decontamination shower on the lifeboat deck, forward. If we get as bloodied up as we did yesterday, Faith, we’ll run through that. There’s also a forward support post set up with food, water and ammo, and we can drop back to it and take a break. One thing we’re going to have to look for is a forward point that we can set up as a permanent secure point on the Voyage. Not too big, not too small, some exterior light and most of all secure.”
“That’s all I’ve got for now. Let’s eat.”
* * *
“Just sip,” the lady said, putting a straw to his lips. “It’s chicken broth…”
Rusty still could barely do that. He was feeling better. Not human but all the water they’d been pumping through him was helping. He still could barely lift his arms.
“Thank you,” he said, leaning back on the pillows when the small cup of broth was down. He was so far gone, he actually felt full. “Are you a nurse? And where…?”
“Okay, first of all, you’re on a support ship called the Grace Tan,” the lady said. “I’m Amanda. No, I’m not a nurse. We’ve only got one nurse survivor and she’s organizing this. I’m a survivor like you. I was on a lifeboat. I was on the Voyage, too. The way things worked out… I’m glad I made it to the lifeboat. But a lot of those…” She shook her head.
“So… Is it the Navy or…?” Rusty asked.
“It’s a long story,” Amanda said, smiling. “If you feel you’re up to some reading, they’ve made a little pamphlet…”
* * *
“I can’t believe we’re trying to unrep from a cruise liner,” Gardner said.
Unrep, or “underway replenishment,” was a tricky business in the best of times and circumstances. The basic idea was to create sort of zip-lines between two ships and slide stuff back and forth. Simple on land. Two rocky points tended to stay reasonably the same distance apart down to the subatomic level. Ships, however, did not. So what usually happened was that your package, be it ammunition or food or toilet paper or, God help them, people, tended, if the ships closed, to go into the drink, or if they separated, be flung upwards at a high rate of speed. In extreme circumstances the package could fail to choose between being crushed as the too-close following ships collided or being flung upwards, the rope part and go flying into the far distance.
One unfortunate, and extremely disliked, lieutenant commander in the Navy in the 1960s had all four happen on a single attempt at moving between a destroyer and a carrier. The lieutenant commander was first dunked, then popped back out rapidly enough to thoroughly dry the ropes as they hyperextended. This, of course, had the effect of bouncing him up and down like a tightened rubber band. He was then dunked, again, repopped at which point the carry line parted, throwing the unfortunate officer upwards in a ballistic arc. The lieutenant at the conn of the destroyer panicked, ordered a radical course correction to starboard, towards the carrier, just as the officer landed in the water between the two vessels, which promptly collided. The lieutenant commander was assumed to have been crushed as his body was never found. The irony that the lieutenant commander, the carrier vessel battle group’s inspector general, had just written a scathing report on the conn training of the officers of the destroyer was not lost on the incident report board.
Thereafter the Navy went to all helo or boat transfers for personnel at sea.
* * *
“You know we just hit the four hundred mark?” Steve said, keying the double doors.
“Four hundred days?” Fontana asked, popping the hatch with the Halligan and moving back.
“Four hundred people,” Steve said. “Four hundred known survivors of humanity. Plus the Hole and CDC and whoever they’re in contact with.”
“Holy crap,” Faith said softly.
“I know it’s not a lot,” Steve said, shining his taclight around the cavernous room. A zombie in t
he distance growled, then howled. It couldn’t even be seen, but it alerted others who stumbled to their feet and headed to the lights. “But we’re getting there. Back to defense positions.”
“Not that,” Faith said, taking up her position behind a counter. “That room. What was it?”
“Casino I think,” Fontana said. He began slow aimed fire at the blinded zombies stumbling through the door. He already had four magazines laid out on the counter.
“It’s huge,” Faith said, sticking a finger in her ear to cut down on the cracks from the AK.
“Should have seen the ones in Vegas,” Fontana said.
“Maybe someday,” Faith said. “When I’m, like, ninety. Zombie clearance, Vegas.”
“Resident Evil: The Cruise Ship. You can see the game, right?” Hooch said.
“I think we’re playing it,” Steve pointed out.
* * *
“How come when I’m shooting, my ears don’t ring?” Faith asked, tagging a zombie in the chest as it tried to figure out how to get around a roulette table with a Surefire in its eyes. “The beauty of this ride ahead…” Tap, tap…
The zombies were having trouble with the complex layout of the casinos. Casinos were designed to get people to change directions so they’d go “Oooo…I bet I can win that game!” The zombies could see the lights, they just couldn’t figure out how to get to them. Then, all of a sudden, they would. For that matter, it wasn’t always clear where the open areas, or the zombies, were to the clearers.
Clearing them out was a painstaking process of zombies howling and thrashing in the darkness. When they could, they took them at range.
Faith had had to break out the kukhri. Twice.
“Aural damping,” Fontana said.
“Checking right,” she said, shining the light around the other side of the roulette table. For some reason, the chewed up people just weren’t horrible anymore. She could even slide her eyes right over the kids. “There’s an answer? I was sort of asking one of those rectangular questions.”
“Rhetorical,” Fontana said, chuckling. “Clear left. Clearish. I think we’re going to have to sweep and resweep.”
“Works for me,” Faith said. “Hang on, stumbler coming around my side.” She took the shot. She’d stopped double tapping to conserve ammunition but the.45 round was usually good enough with one shot. It didn’t kill the zombies immediately, but they bled out pretty quickly. “Reloading. Hang on. Da?” she said, over the radio.
“Go.”
“I’m running out of forty-five mags. I’ve got ammo but I don’t exactly want to reammo in here.”
“I’ve got mags,” Fontana said.
“Like I’m gonna use a Colt if I don’t gotta,” Faith said. “I could also use a break.”
“Roger. Pull back to the entrance.”
“This does get the adrenal gland, don’t it?” Fontana said, firing twice in rapid succession. “They just seem to come out of nowhere.”
They’d learned when they cleared the theatre to shut the door behind them. It meant they didn’t have a way out. It also meant they didn’t have leakers that suddenly appeared when they thought they were at a “secure” point.
“And I think if we’re going to keep clearing this thing we might as well all go to carbines,” Faith said, starting. She fired two rounds into a body on the floor. “It moved. I swear it did.”
* * *
“How long can I stand under here?” Faith shouted as the water from the fire hose poured over her.
“As long as you want!” the guy manning the system wasn’t Coast Guard. She didn’t even recognize him. “It recycles!”
“Cool,” Faith muttered, giving him a thumbs up. She was just going to stand there for a while then.
* * *
“Be careful not to fire in the direction of the other team,” Fontana said nervously. “And watch the bouncers.”
“No worries,” Faith said, hefting the AK variant. The Arsenal SLR-107 would only have been vaguely recognizable to Mikhail Kalashnikov. It had an improved safety, AR buttstock, rail with lights and Trijicon TA11F. But the guts were still the reliable system Kalashnikov had stolen from various WWII assault rifles, then refined. “I have fired this thing before…”
A zombie charged out of the shadows to her right and she turned and double tapped it in the chest. The rounds continued through the body and bounced off a bar on the other side, and pinged off into the darkness.
“Oops,” she said as the infected collapsed on the floor.
“You hit?” Fontana asked.
“No. You?”
“I’m good.”
“I hate full metal jacket…”
* * *
“Okay, okay, okay,” Faith said. “I just… Seriously? An indoor pool? Seriously?”
The cavernous room was marked “spa.” Faith had always wanted to go to a spa. She’d sort of envisioned small rooms with hot tubs and massage tables or something. She’d always wondered what a “walnut scrub” was.
There were hot tubs scattered around in various styles. There were Roman baths, Japanese baths, stone flagging and walls… The ceiling, far, far overhead, was a massive skylight, which gave them an unfortunately clear view of the interior.
Zombies would eat each other for food. All they really needed to survive was something resembling water. And the “spa” had had lots of water.
So there were lots of zombies. And although they’d been awakened by Steve’s whistle, it had echoed in the cavernous interior and they weren’t sure where to go. The room was lit well enough they’d turned off their taclights. Not to mention, there were pools of water all over the place so even the zombies that noticed them were having a hard time getting to them.
Except for the close ones.
“I’m really glad we went to rifles,” she said, targeting one of the nearer zombies. It was having to go around a counter to get to them and she got it with a deflection head shot on the run and it dropped out of sight.
“Nice,” Fontana said, taking two more down.
“Is it just me, or was that exactly like shooting a duck in an arcade?” Faith said. She fired at another one but missed. “We going to move forward?”
“Yes,” Steve said, firing. “But one team. Head for that high ground over there.”
The “high ground” was what had probably been an indoor waterfall.
“Hug the wall,” Steve said. “Take them down as they come to us. Don’t engage over twenty five meters unless I say so.”
“What’s the fun of that?” Faith asked.
“I’d like as many of the rounds to go into the zombies as possible,” Steve said.
“Don’t shoot til you see the reds of their eyes,” Fontana said. “Gotcha.”
* * *
The one problem with the “high ground” was that once they’d gotten up there, all the zombies could see them and closed in. And they couldn’t exactly retreat.
“This is getting sort of hot,” Fontana said, doing a fast reload. He had to pat for magazines until he found one.
“Hot, yeah,” Faith said, firing steadily at the mass of infecteds clawing their way up the former waterfall. “But it’s not in the dunny, yet.”
“Dunny?” Hooch asked.
“Aussie for a latrine,” Steve said.
“What is, in your opinion, in the dunny?” Fontana said. “Cause I could sure use some time to reload mags.”
“Being in the dunny isn’t no time to reload magazines,” Faith said, reloading. “Being in the dunny is all your knives are stuck in bodies, you’re tripping over your mags and brass and your Halligan tool is bent.”
“I can’t wait for you to get legal so I can propose….”
* * *
“We in the dunny, yet?” Fontana asked as he stuck the pry base of his Halligan into a zombie’s eye.
“Nope,” Faith said, pounding one on the head with her AK. “I haven’t had to shoot one off me and I’ve yet to pull a knife…”
* * *
“….dunny yet?” Hooch yelled, sticking his bowie knife into a zombie’s stomach and ripping up.
“Halligan tool bent?” Faith asked, firing into a zombie’s head. Another one grabbed her legs and her feet slipped out from under her. The zombie dragged her down the rocks of the waterfall as she kicked at it. Others piled on, trying to bite through her armor.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Fontana said.
“Okay,” she yelled. “Now we’re getting there!”
“We’re going to have to melee down to her,” Steve said, smashing his Halligan into a zombie’s head.
“We’re barely holding here,” Fontana said.
“When we’ve winnowed them down…”
* * *
“Nice thing about being in a scrum,” Faith said as Fontana dragged her out from under the bodies. Steve was doing the same thing for Hooch. “You don’t have to worry which direction you’re aiming and there’s no real way to miss. That was in the dunny.” She looked around, sitting up, her legs still covered by zombie bodies.
“Hey, look, the waterfall is working again. Sort of…”
* * *
Day Four
Faith stood under the decontamination shower and made a motion with one hand for “more…”
* * *
Day Six
“Okay, seriously, like, how many of these damned things are there…?”
* * *
Day Nine
“This is why I hate five five six.” Faith fired three more times. “Oh, just die already!”
As the supply of rounds for the Smiths’ AK variants dwindled, they had switched to the Coast Guard M4s, which used the much smaller 5.56mm round. The arguments for or against 5.56 were complex but the fact that it generally took multiple rounds to stop one of the infected was notable.
“You need to shoot them in the head,” Fontana said, double tapping a zombie.
On the other hand, a team had finally found the key for the Campbell’s ammunition magazine, which had a plentiful supply of 5.56.
“The United States started to go downhill when it changed from a round designed to kill the enemies of our glorious republic to one designed to piss them off,” Faith said, shooting a zombie five times, then walking up and shooting the still-thrashing infected in the head. “Seriously, just die, okay?”
