Children Of Fiends

by C. Chase Harwood

  MacAfee smiled and gave a nod to Hernandez. “The rest of my team is here now. They’ve observed us on our two land excursions and at the beginning of today’s trip. Part of their assignment has been to determine whether our current helmet tech can shield us completely from the twins.”

  The pucks stopped chewing and looked at each other. Gretel turned to the rest, “We have not been aware that others have been watching us.”

  Hernandez let a brief smile escape from her lips. “That’s been our assessment as well.”

  MacAfee said, “When we get back to the main lab, you’ll get to meet them. I think we can move forward as planned.”

  The Ginger Girl was safely anchored and battened down against the continuing squall. The guests had returned to shore and Dean instructed his crew to meet in the galley. It was there that he told them of the gene therapy. That Elizaandra Sherr was a successful test. That but for a small bit of inactive bacteria harbored in the most primitive part of her brain, she showed no evidence of FNDz (aka Cain’s) in the rest of her body and was considered incapable of passing the disease to others. The ramifications of this were obvious. The entire crew would be offered this therapy – the only catch being that they had to volunteer to continue the mission. The government wasn’t prepared to administer any therapy without it being in a controlled situation. He then asked if there was anyone who was not prepared to move forward. No one raised his or her hand. When Dean left to return to his cabin the galley erupted into speculative glee.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sea Battle

  Eighteen hours later, Plum Island fell below the horizon line as the Ginger Girl sailed south. The newcomers had been assigned a bunk and had already spent hours on a first, second and third attempt in a Virtusim training mission. Inside the sim, they were attempting to get an old N&W class steam locomotive up and running. Sergeant Tim Green was bored with his watch for potential Cain’s-addled zombies and/or their slightly more vicious children. A firm that hadn’t been informed on the real details of the mission had quickly built the simulation. This portion was focused on the team working through the myriad of difficult steps that would be their actual mission of getting a train engine, which had been built in the 1940’s, and most recently commissioned for tourist rides twenty years before, up and running and out of the purpose-built museum space that it was supposedly housed in. Then onto real working train tracks and fetching enough coal to make the thing independent enough to steam its way across the country. Oh, and find water for the engine and its canteen. The logistics were daunting. Given the short notice, the programmers had pulled some sims from the very Virtu-tactics war-gaming programs that Green used to train regular soldiers up in Nova Scotia. Having never met a puck, and given the fact that the government wanted to keep a lid on how dangerous the things could be, the programmers simply made the infected human’s kids a bit smarter and ten years old. Meanwhile, Wen and his “team of helpers,” as he called them (actually mechanically minded Ginger Girl crew members), were having a devil of a time getting the train out of the station, much less on its way across the country. While they struggled inside the museum, Sergeant Green and his squad mates, corporals Katherine KK Kelly and Ida ID Gomez, had wiped out their potential adversaries in short order. The simulated infected people and their frightful but poorly simulated children were stacked up like cordwood down Hull Street. Green spotted Chief Hernandez – Dez – who had positioned herself along with Colonel MacAfee between the goings on in the train museum and the massacre on the street. MacAfee was armed with a Glock and a dictation stick. Green could see the colonel’s lips moving as he spoke into the stick. He caught Green’s look and paused to nod a good job before continuing with his verbal note taking.

  Wen and his team had managed to lubricate all the moving parts of the big locomotive. The huge glossy black painted machine appeared in the Virtusim to be fully restored to mint condition. Wen figured that after a decade of winter, that was probably optimistic, but that was beside the point. Getting the monster out the door was proving to be much more difficult than he ever considered. His team had put water in the boiler and had gotten a fire going in her belly using nearby timber. In the sim anyway, there hadn’t been any coal lying around. Coal and the cars to carry it were down the line at the Contex power plant.

  As Green watched from his position across the street, he heard yelling, then smoke began to pour out of the museum and everyone had to evacuate. Blakely stepped out of the glassed-in train showroom last, cursed at the sky, then made a gesture toward his head like he was taking off a hat and disappeared from view.

  In the real world, all of this was taking place in the galley of the Ginger Girl while the whaling vessel was under full sail. Her destination: Richmond, Virginia and the Old Dominion Train Museum. Wen finished ripping his helmet off and screamed for real in front of all the others who sat around him still immersed in the simulation. One by one they took their helmets off too.

  MacAfee, who had a real dictation stick in his hand, glared at Blakely. “You can’t do that, Wen. You can’t just walk out of the simulation. We have the simulation so that we can get it right. If we get smoked out when we are really there, we have to figure out what to do to solve it.”

  Blakely slammed the table. “This fuckin’ sim, pardon my French, is a piece of shit. The only thing that’s gonna happen that is real down there is that old train isn’t going nowhere, cause it’s a rotting hulk in a weather-beaten old building with snow-buried, iced-over, rusty old tracks and switching gear that’s rusted solid. Whoever wrote this piece of shit program, pardon my French, had his head up his ass. This is a stupid waste of time. And fuck if, pardon my French, them Virtu children zombies is nothing but a joke compared to Hansel and Gretel here, who given half a chance, could mess our shit up and we wouldn’t even get out of the station anyway. The only thing this sim has been good for is showing us the reality of the folly you got us on.” Wen held up a hand and counted off his fingers. “Sail up the Chesapeake as far as we can, hike to this train with all of our gear, get a nearly hundred year old steam engine up and running, get it out on to the main track, get ourselves some water.” He started on the next hand. “Get ourselves some coal and then get ourselves all the way across the country against who knows what kind of fucked up, pardon my French, mess left over after the Exodus and years of nuclear winter and maybe Cain’s folks and their young’uns. Get ourselves to a big ass ship in the Port of Los Angeles that none of us except one dude on this whaling ship is remotely qualified to operate.” He started counting on the other hand again. “Get that big ship out of what must be a disaster of a harbor, sail all the way down to Nicaragua and hope, hope that big ass, pardon my French, new canal is open enough and still working, so we can get to the other side, then come all the way back up here and expect not to be long dead. What was I thinking when I signed up for this shit? Pardon my French. That’s right, I don’t have rights anymore! Oh, and trying to do all of this while not puking under sail.”

  McAfee smiled. “Well, when you put it like that, Wenfrin, you make it almost sound like a romantic saga.” Blakely offered a gruff chuckle in response. “That’s why we have the sim,” continued the Colonel. “Now let’s get back in there and figure out how not to smoke ourselves out.”

  Wen looked sideways at the Colonel then shrugged. “Heck with it. Not like I’ve got better to do.” He looked at the handful of sailors who were his engineering team. “Let’s get that room aired out, boys.” He put his helmet on and everyone else followed suit.

  After another two hours of seemingly fruitless labor, and the gunning down of the occasional wandering zombie, the front end of the big black steam engine slowly emerged from its resting place. Suddenly the sim froze and like a god from above, George Sander’s voice broke through. “All hands. We have a vessel sighted two miles off our starboard bow.” Everyone pulled their helmets off and immediately scrambled up the gangway.

  It was wintery dusk
topside with patches of ice and small icebergs drifting by. A light but steady breeze kept the Ginger Girl’s sails full. Dean and his officers stood along the starboard rail holding various binoculars. Though it was getting late in the day, the full sails of a three-masted barque could be seen on the horizon. The boat was on a reach and was clearly pointed in a way that would cause it to intercept the Ginger Girl. McAfee, Dez, Wen and Eliza joined the men at the rail. McAfee said, “Down here? We should be approximately twelve miles out from Ocean City. A dead city. No reason for a sail coming from that direction.”

  “Nope,” said Dean.

  Sanders said, “Jamesbonds would have spotted it sooner but mistook it for another iceberg. Fact, there’s enough bergs out here I was, with the Captain’s permission, about to angle us toward shore. We need to find an anchorage until tomorrow’s first light.”

  McAfee let his binoculars rest on his chest. “Well, clearly they mean to have a conversation.”

  Wen spoke up. “Not to stick my nose where it don’t, but Marshals Service has been receiving bulletins on upticks in piracy. Now that there’s some trade happening again…. Old time occupations and all. Ruthless stuff I hear.”

  “We’re well aware of the piracy issue,” said McAfee. “There’s been no reports from down this way. No reason for anyone to come down this way.”

  “Well, that’s somebody,” said Dean. He turned to Sanders. “Have Mr. Kneedham and Mr. Kile man the guns.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Boatswain Palmer kept peering through his binoculars. “It’s the Eagle, sir. Could only be.”

  “You’re talking about the Coast Guard cutter?”

  “The same, sir. Steel hull. More than eighteen hundred tons. Two hundred ninety-five feet. Trainer for the academy. I know. Served on her in my first stint with the Guard. They’ve painted out the CG colors, but that’s her without a doubt.”

  The approaching tall ship was big and white and they could now spot with the naked eye sailors moving about the foredeck and amongst the rigging.

  “What else?” asked Dean.

  “We can maneuver better than her, sir, but in a race she’ll run us down. No weapons when she was a commissioned vessel. Just a trainer for junior officers and underclassmen at the academy.”

  “Hmm,” said McAfee. “As far as I know, she’s not part of the existing Navy. God knows where she’s hailing from. Let’s hope she’s still friendly and unarmed.”

  When the big tall ship was within half a mile a signal lantern flashed on the Eagle’s foredeck. Palmer observed the pattern and said, “They want us to heave to, sir.”

  “I’m not feeling they’re friendly,” said Dean. He turned to the helmsman. “Mister Burrows, come five degrees left. I want to put that iceberg between us.”

  “Aye aye, Cap.”

  The Eagle adjusted her course to stay on an intercept. Suddenly a short burst of 30mm cannon fire came from the Eagle’s foredeck. Tracer rounds crossed the Ginger Girl’s bow. “Battle Stations!” yelled Dean. The crew scrambled to preset posts. Some, including MacAfee’s team of soldiers, racked and readied their arms.

  “They are continuing to signal for us to heave to, sir,” said Palmer as he took an offered 12-guage shotgun under his arm.

  “Maintain your course, Mr. Burrows,” said Dean with steel in his voice. “I want that iceberg between us. When we pass it, angle for that next one.

  The Eagle was nearly twice their size and under full sail, and the tall ship seemed to tower over the Ginger Girl as it approached to starboard. Armed men stood at her rail with weapons pointed. 30mm canons were aimed menacingly from her fore and aft decks. More worrisome looking were the two mat black machines that clung like spiders to the rigging, their six legs spread amongst the stays and the ratlines. Their torsos and heads were extravagantly sculpted like Roman centurions, while a belt-fed Atchison assault shotgun hung independently below two human-like arms.

  “What do they have in the rigging, George?” asked Dean.

  MacAfee accepted an M4 from KK while his astonished eyes took in the spiderlike machines. He yelled to Dean, “Those are drones, Captain. Bad ass drones.”

  With perfect unison, the crew of the Eagle reduced and angled their sails to slow the big ship down and allow her to maneuver around the iceberg. Six men could be seen spinning her multi-wheeled helm.

  Dean barked out, “Mr. Kile, put your weapon on their helm. Don’t fire unless fired upon.”

  Jamesbonds Boonmee had climbed down from the crow’s nest and grabbed one of his harpoons. He stood in awe of the big ship. He had only seen pictures of such things as a child and had almost forgotten what a big ship with spars and square sails looked like. The bow had a golden eagle affixed to it that appeared to be soaring off the frigid water. Looking around him, he spotted an emergency ax, a tool that stood-by in the event of a dismasting and the resultant mess that would be the rigging on the deck. He grabbed it and stood with determination, doing his best to stare down the men on the approaching vessel.

  The captain of the Eagle stood on the forecastle and lifted an old fashioned hailer to his mouth and called out to the group on the Ginger Girl’s poop. With a distinctive Mid-Atlantic accent that almost sounded 18th Century British he called out, “No point in a fuss Captain. You’ll not outrun or outshoot us. Please, if you will, heave to so that you may be boarded.”

  Dean turned to Burrows. “Keep the bergs between us if you can.” He took his own hailer from where it was hooked and called back. “This is the U.S. ship Ginger Girl under commission of the United States government. By what authority do you command such actions?”

  “By the authority vested in us by the nation of The Shore. You are in our national waters and you will be boarded.”

  Dean turned to MacAfee, “The Shore? What the hell’s he talking about?”

  Ensign Palmer jumped in, “The peninsula that’s part Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.”

  “Pretty much an island,” said MacAfee. “But there’s no record of survivors there, not that I know of.”

  Dean lifted the hailer again and called out, “Do you mean to say that there are people on the Delmarva Penninsula?”

  The captain of the Eagle lifted his hailer. “I’ll not ask again. You will heave to. If I don’t see you drop sails in ten-seconds you will be boarded by force.”

  “Stay on course, Mr. Burrows.” Dean called down below the stern rail where the second gunner sat at the trigger of his Bushmaster chain gun. “Mr. Kneedham, how are you doing down there?”

  “Fine, sir. I can shred that steel hull.” He made a sour face. “Afraid, they’ve just made the turn on us.”

  The Eagle had turned with tremendous momentum. Burrows was doing his best to keep an iceberg the size of a four-bedroom house between them, but already, the maneuver seemed hopeless. He headed for the next one that was perhaps three hundred yards away, but this put them back into open water. Within minutes, the Eagle was bearing down on and then sliding up to their port side. “Prepare to be boarded,” hailed her captain.

  Just then, the black machines in the rigging came alive as grappling hooks shot out, trailing thin black cables from their chests. The hooks arced across the one hundred foot space between the two vessels, the first landing in the rigging of the Ginger Girl’s main mast, the second skittering amidships where it was quickly retracted until it clawed into the port rail. The machines let go of their own rigging and were suddenly launched off their perches by the self-reeling cable pulls and dropped into the ocean. The tension on the cables listed the Ginger Girl to port while simultaneously slowing her down.

  “Fire!” barked Dean.

  Both Mr. Kneedham and Mr. Kile let lose with their guns, strafing the railings and rigging of the Eagle. The rest of the armed crew joined in. The Eagle did not return fire, the sailors on her taking cover instead. Then one of the black machines appeared at the side of the Ginger Girl’s port rear quarter. Like a mythical sea
monster, it began to climb the stern.

  Jamesbonds stood at the rail where the other hook had imbedded itself and watched in disbelief as the top of the second machine broke through the water. Like some kind of mythological creature, the black-eyed thing had a head with a Trojan helmet looking affectation sitting on top of an armored humanoid torso. Six steel spider legs sprouted from beneath that, each leg working independently of the other. Without even thinking, Jamesbonds hacked down on the cable with his ax, denting it, but not cutting it. The machine slammed up against the hull with a loud thud. He hacked again, this time fraying the steel. Six spider legs with miniature hands at their ends snapped their finger tips together into single points and dug themselves into the Ginger Girl’s wooden freeboard, then it began to climb, its auto shotgun trained on the man with the ax. Jamesbonds hacked again with everything he had and the cable broke. The machine didn’t fall, instead grabbing the railing with one of its human-like hands. The Roman head had black eyes that looked directly into Jamesbonds’. He was mesmerized for just a moment, before he dropped the ax and instead rammed the chest of the machine with his harpoon. A single shot from the Eagle rang out and a bullet pierced Jamesbonds’ shoulder. The determined man hardly seemed to notice as he pushed the harpoon with everything he had. The robot (if that’s what it was) lost its handhold. For a moment the thing seemed to be able to hold on with the sharp tipped legs burrowing themselves into the wood of the hull, but Jamesbonds gave it one more shove and it plunged into the water.

  The transfixed crew of the Ginger Girl let out a cheer, which was immediately extinguished by the second black machine coming over the rail with its shotgun on full auto. On its way up, it had taken a moment to decimate Mr. Kneedham and his chain gun with a handful of explosive rounds. Now it landed on the deck sending a shudder through everyone’s feet. It grabbed Mr. Burrows from the helm and heaved him screaming into the frigid sea. Dean, MacAfee, Wen, Dez and Eliza dove for the deck as the vicious looking thing trained its weapon on Corporal Gomez. The soldier was fearlessly, efficiently, shooting it with extreme accuracy, but her bullets were ricocheting off thick armor. Gomez kept firing with confidence. She knew she was good at her job. Though she’d never actually killed anyone (or thing) she’d done plenty of Terminus border recon. She’d killed uncounted infected in Virtusims and she had more than proven herself a steady and accurate shot. She could feel her poise, noting her rising but stable heartbeat, taking pride in her controlled breathing as she focused her aim at the spider-like machine’s human shaped head, imagining that its eyes were its most vulnerable spot. In another second the machine’s AA-12 automatic shotgun dismantled her into bloody red chunks and splattered them across the base of the mizzenmast.