You're Never Ready for a Zombie Apocalypse

by Jeff Thomson

  Nobody knew that Hank Lazardo was delighted to be there with a shotgun in his hand. Nobody (particularly Old Joe, who had told Lazardo he must be quick, and above all quiet) knew the idea of killing somebody had given him a stone-hard erection.

  But when Jason Gilcuddy, with his head in the clouds, turned and saw the intruder, and when Hank Lazardo, with the rocket in his pocket, blew a hole in Jason’s chest the size of a bowling ball, suddenly a whole bunch of people knew that everything had gone seriously wrong.

  77

  YN2 Lydia Claire stared in anger at the team prepping the hoses aft of the Boat Deck, and then in horror at the crowd on the pier, as they started to run away from a spot about two-thirds down its length. At first, she couldn’t see what had caused it. She glanced toward the hose team, toward CWO4 Vincenzo leading it, and saw that they had seen whatever it was, as well. And then she did, too.

  Someone had turned zombie. This person (a man) had tackled the woman next to him and was ripping at her flesh with his hands and teeth. Nobody seemed to be trying to stop it. Everybody was running.

  And then someone screamed directly across from Lydia’s position. Another person had turned - or was turning, because this one (a woman this time) was tearing at her own clothes, and flailing at her body, as if to rid it of a thousand stinging insects.

  A third person, a man, about twenty feet down from the second, had leapt upon another man, and was trying to rip the other’s throat out with his teeth. The effect on the refugees of this triple threat was like a tornado touching down on a clapboard house. The crowd exploded outward in every direction - including into the water off the side of the pier. People dove or jumped or were shoved over the side. Screams filled the air, like a thousand fingernails on a thousand blackboards.

  Even through the protective clothing and the gas mask, the tumult send daggers from the pit of Lydia’s stomach, up her spine and directly into the pain centers of her brain. She dropped to her knees, covering her ears, and screamed. Jeff Babbett, the BM1/OPS who had been doing the soundings at Station Six, was to her in moments, kneeling beside her and ineffectually rubbing her back in an effort to sooth her terror. Didn’t work. She continued screaming. And she continued watching, unable to tear her eyes away from the growing bedlam on the pier.

  There were dozens of people in the water, some of them flailing, some of them drowning, some of them swimming toward the supposed safety of the Polar Star. “Stand by to repel boarders,” she heard CWO4 Vincenzo shout, and it sent her world sideways.

  She stopped screaming, shoved Roberts away with her left hand, and stood, staring at the hose teams as they charged the hoses and prepared to open them up on the fleeing refugees. “Stop!” she yelled. “You can’t do this! We have to help them!” But Bobby V and his team heard none of it. They just charged the nozzles and started spraying.

  She barely heard it herself through the muffling gas mask. Well, she could change that, right quick!

  She stalked toward them, pulling at the bottom of her mask, but it wouldn’t budge. The restraining straps at the back were too tight. They’d been bothering her the whole time, actually, but she hadn’t even thought of loosening them, since she had no desire to get infected. None of that mattered now. She needed to get the mask off, needed to yell at the hose team, needed to make them stop this madness before it was too late. Those people were dying out there! They needed help - their help - the help of the United States Fucking Coast Guard! She reached behind her to the straps, but Babbett was on her in a flash, covering her mask at back and front with his large hands.

  “Don’t do it, Lydia,”: he said into her ear. It was soft, almost a whisper, but undeniable, just the same.

  Don’t do it, Lydia. Don’t do what? Don’t save these people? Don’t do their fucking job as the fucking “Lifesavers?” Don’t do what she had joined the Coast Guard to do in the first place?

  She could have gone into the Air Force. The recruiter had been relentless trying to get her to sign the contract. But she had wanted to do good, to help people, save people, not practice for what any sane person hoped would never happen - not to bomb the shit out of hundreds of people at a time, thousands of feet below.

  Saving people was their job, their purpose, their whole reason for being; not pushing people away, not hitting fleeing refugees with fire hoses so they drown or get eaten by fucking zombies! They couldn’t do this, they had to help them, had to save them. She had to make them stop.

  But Babbett had her in a death grip, and wasn’t about to let go.

  Well, we’ll just see about that!

  Lydia had grown up a Southern Girl, an Alabama girl, to be precise, living in the country with three brothers who picked on her relentlessly, as brothers will. Probably dead now - the thought flashed through her head and was just as quickly shunted aside. She had learned how to defend herself. She kicked Babbett square in the shin.

  “Ah fuck!”: he shouted, and let her go - but only long enough to swing around behind and grab her in a bear hug, trapping her arms at her side. She struggled like a wildcat, but all it did was make his hand slip on the slick MOPP material, and grab her left tit in a vice-like grip.

  ”Ouch!” she screamed, and kicked her heels back to try his shins again, but he kept shifting back and forth, from one wide-spread leg to the other, avoiding her blows, lifting her feet of the deck, and grabbing her tit even tighter.

  “Easy, Lydia,” he said, softly into her ear, even through the muffling masks, as if she hadn’t been struggling at all, hadn’t been trying to kick his legs off. “Easy.”

  It was no use. He was too big. He was at least twice her size. She wasn’t going to get away from him.

  “But we have to stop them,” she cried. “We have to rescue those people!”

  “We can’t Lydia,” he said, his voice still soft, still soothing. “They’re infected. We’re not. We can’t help them.”

  “But...” she started to protest again, but then the screech of a bullhorn rendered her attempts useless.

  Roberts put her back on her feet, but didn’t loosen his grip on her torso - or her tit. They stared up at the Bridge wing and saw the Captain, as he raised the bullhorn to his lips.

  “Secure from Fueling Ops. Secure from Fueling Ops. Cast off all lines.”

  78

  LT Richard Medavoy wasn’t sure what he was seeing when he entered the Cabin. He was certain his wife was standing there with her back to him, but she looked a bit...off.

  For one thing, she was standing funny: not her usual stance, either as Manic Marissa (which was a sort of jittery perpetual motion, even when still), or as Morose Marissa (which always seemed deflated). She stood with legs two feet apart, her back straight, her head down, and her arms in front of her body and out of sight, as if she were looking at something in them.

  For another thing, the silhouette created by the overhead lights showed that her body beneath the floor-length robe was naked, and that the robe was open. Odd as it might be, it would be fine, if she was in the sweet spot between manic and depressive phases. The sex was phenomenal at those moments, brief though they always were. It was pretty much the only reason he’d stayed married to her. Well...and Carson. Always Carson... But the sex-phase should still be a couple weeks away, if she remained true to her bipolar routine, which hadn’t changed in seven years. Something else was going on.

  “Marissa? Honey?” He said.

  She didn’t respond at first, didn’t move, until two things happened at once, and Richard Medavoy’s life twisted on its axis, as violently as if the magnetic poles had just flip-flopped. Her arms fell to her sides, and the scrawny body of their son - his boy, his Carson - fell to the carpeted deck with a THUNK.

  He stared, gape-mouthed, feeling nothing, for perhaps three seconds, and then the horror of what it must mean hit him like a ball pein hammer. She turned, slowly, and the horror shifted into shear, unadulterated terror.

  Her face was blank, though tears had been flowing fre
ely down her cheeks. Her eyes were hollow, her mouth, slack. None of which caused his reaction. What did, was her left breast. Thick, red blood had coursed down her torso and onto her legs, like Carrie, after the bath from a drained pig bucket. The worst was the nipple. It was gone. It had been eaten.

  He looked from his wife’s face, to her breast, to her nipple, and then to the body of his son on the deck. Carson’s face, his small, beloved face, was white. His mouth was slack and covered in blood and bits of flesh. But his neck was clear enough, clean enough, to recognize the strangle marks around his skinny throat. Medavoy looked at his wife’s blank face again.

  “Our baby was hungry,” she said, her voice a sort of sing-song. “So I breast fed him.”

  His heart shattered into a million, razor-sharp shards of glass, shredding his mind and his soul. He opened his mouth to scream. Nothing came out but air.

  79

  OS3 Bill Schaeffer picked up his tray from the Mess table and brought it over to the scullery. The remains of the Midrats meal (Monte Cristo Sandwiches) looked as if he’d just moved it around on the tray - which was more or less what he’d done. Shame, too, since he liked those - especially when Gary King made them. The older black man peered out through the serving window, saw the nearly full plate, and nodded, understanding.

  Nobody seemed to have much of an appetite. Bill looked around the Mess. Frank Roessler was there, swirling his fork through what had been mac and cheese. Comfort food, Bill thought. Gary knew his business.

  EM3 Dan McMullen sat at a table nearby. Neither of the two engineers looked at each other. Neither of them spoke.

  Mad Dog sat at a table with BM3/OPS Hebert, but they weren’t talking, either. BM3/DECK Eddie Brown came in, grabbed a cup of coffee, then headed back out again. Not one word. It seemed to Bill as if everyone was waiting. For what, he didn’t want to think. Neither did anyone else. The normally rambunctious Mess Deck, was silent as a funeral home.

  It was broken when Mad Dog, looking around, said: “Shit! Forgot my cover. Hey Brownie!” He called out, and the BM3 turned from the passageway heading toward the Wardroom. “Tell them I’ll be up in a minute,” Mad Dog said, getting up from the table. “Gotta go get my hat.” Mad Dog departed, heading toward the athwart ship’s vestibule, and Brown continued on his way aft.

  Bill deposited his tray in the scullery, then headed out.

  The glare of white light on the Mess Deck had totally fucked his vision, so when he got into the red light of the port passageway leading to the Bridge ladder, he could barely see where he was going. It didn’t matter. They had, from time to time, conducted Emergency Egress training, to prepare themselves for the possibility of having to move around in a ship with no lights, due to loss of power. For the people who worked below, it meant learning how to get from their work space to an exterior deck area, blindfolded. For those who worked above the main deck (all the OPS personnel) the blindfolded egress began in the berthing area.

  When it had been his turn to stumble along, the XO had been monitoring and Bill took great pleasure in walking backwards up the ladder from his stateroom, through the passageway, and up the ladder to the Captain’s Vestibule, which was where he exited (still walking backwards) onto the Quarterdeck. The XO had not been pleased, but Bill had done that same walk (forwards) while brain dead from sleep deprivation, every time he’d had the 0400 - 0800 watch, and so backwards up a ladder while blindfolded was child’s play. He did so now, though it was 2330, rather than 0330. Since he hadn’t slept in about a day and a half, for fear one of his roommates might turn zombie, the brain dead feeling remained the same, or worse.

  He reached the vestibule, and thought he could hear something strange coming from inside the Cabin, but his give-a-shit level was about as low as it had ever been, and so he kept going up. He reached the door to Radio, keyed in his security code, and entered to discover that OS1 Carlton Bertram had become a zombie.

  80

  OS2 Amber Winkowski peered around the edge of the head door and found an empty corridor. She breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. The sound of shuffling feet said hello to her frightened ears, coming from the Commcen, along with what sounded like snuffling, as if some curious beast were trying to sniff out a tasty morsel.

  She opened the door all the way and started down the corridor, then stopped, backed up, and moved a roll of toilet paper to hold the door open - just in case. Grabon was a skinny little fuck, and she didn’t really think he’d give her too much trouble, but zombie fighting had never exactly been Amber’s forte. Fighting anyone had never exactly been her forte, but it had taken her all of about three seconds to realize she wouldn’t survive long, trapped in a head with no food and minimal water.

  She couldn’t run, because the world outside the Commcen door had become a scary place, getting worse by the moment, and she couldn’t hide, because then she’d starve to death. Simple math: A, plus B, divided by C, equaled OS3 Gabon-Zombie needed to die. But she left the door open just in case this didn’t work.

  She stepped forward, creeping her way toward the junction of corridor and Commcen. Something wasn’t right. She was making a mistake, and she knew it, but couldn’t think what it might be. Then it hit her, and she smacked herself upside the head for being an idiot - or would have, if her hands hadn’t been full of spear.

  She didn’t know where he was.

  He was out there, somewhere. But was he to the left? To the right? Just around the corner, or halfway across the room? She didn’t know, but suspected the answer to that question would mean life or death - quite literally.

  But how to solve this? Obvious: bring him to her. How? Make a noise? Her hammering heartbeat should be loud enough to attract him from across the building, let alone inside the next room, but that was the abject fear talking. She thought for a moment, didn’t like the solution her analytical mind came up with, but didn’t see any better alternative. Reluctantly, she held out her makeshift spear, and smacked it against the wall three times.

  The snuffling noise stopped. She gripped her spear in both hands and waited. Nothing happened.

  “Hey! Jackass!” She called, and OS3 Jackson Grabon appeared at the end of the corridor. She screamed and charged.

  81

  Jim Barber darted to the aft Flying Bridge rail at the sound of the shotgun’s boom. He couldn’t see Gilcuddy, or the person who’d just ended his search for a wife with a blast of twelve gauge double-ought. What he did see was one man standing on the Fantail, near the port rail, and a second (actually third, though he didn’t know it) man coming over the side. He didn’t hesitate.

  The M-1 Garand, semi-automatic rifle he brought to his shoulder was a storied weapon that no less an authority than General George S. Patton called: “the greatest weapon of battle ever devised.” Its 30-06 round, held in an eight-shot clip, was designed with but a single purpose: to kill. Unlike the 5.56mm of the M-16 and, more recently, the M-4, designed with the idea that wounding enemies created a greater logistical difficulty than did killing them outright, the 30.06 and the M-1 were unquestioned man-killers. Jim put two rounds into the chest of the man crawling over the port rail. The body flipped over backwards and into the sea.

  On the Buoy Deck, Mick Fincham and Lane Keely, the former with an M-1 Carbine (which also belonged to Jim, but the man wasn’t going to get stingy when pirates were involved), and the latter with a Remington Model 870, pump shotgun, Lane had brought himself, heard the shotgun blast, then the two cracks of the M-1 from the Flying Bridge. They turned and looked at each other, hesitating. As if by some nonexistent pre-determined signal, they both started running aft. Mick went up the port side, and Lane went to starboard.

  John thought his heart might stop at the first shot, but it didn’t, and he raced to the port Bridge Wing, arriving just as Jim opened fire above him. All he had was his Colt 1911, retrieved from its case and cleaned free of the dust of neglect. The .45 was a great weapon, but firing from high ground, over and around parts of
the True North’s superstructure and Boat Deck, at a moving target, seventy feet away would have been a waste of ammunition, so all he could do was stare in horror. He could see Jason Gilcuddy’s body, and wished, with everything he had, that he couldn’t. There wasn’t a single question in his mind. His friend was dead.

  He heard Jim fire again, and in the booming echo, heard him curse his failure as the third round pinged off the deck, sending a chunk of non-skid into the air. The man he’d been aiming at skirted the end of the superstructure and disappeared from sight.

  Lane Keely crept forward, past the black RHIB in its cradle on the starboard Boat Deck. He was mild-mannered as they come, had never seen the sense in getting worked up about this, that, or the other thing, because if it wasn’t those particular things, it’d be something else. Why waste time? He did, however, take life seriously.

  He’d been a Boarding Officer many times during his twenty-three years in the Guard, as well as a Cox’n on 41-foot, 44-foot, and 46-foot motor surf boats, and had done who knew how many hours of Law Enforcement Operations, so this wasn’t his first rodeo. He’d never shot anybody - never came close to it - but never having done something didn’t mean he wasn’t trained and ready to do it. So he held the shotgun in a tactical carry position, with a round jacked into the chamber, and the safety off. And when Hank Lazardo turned the corner around the superstructure, holding a shotgun, stopped, ten feet away from him, and laughed, mild mannered Lane Keely blew that son of a bitch into the next world.

  He stared down at the death he had caused, at first feeling nothing. But then the enormity of it hit him like a Mack truck. He sped to the rail and promptly lost his dinner. Just because he was ready to do something didn’t mean he had to like it.