by Jeff Thomson
He took a stance, left leg slightly forward, Bowie held against his right forearm and down, dive knife in his left, held aloft. The door creaked open.
The first thing he saw was the barrel of a twelve gauge shotgun. The next thing he saw was Duke’s face, his lips cracking into a crooked smile.
“Nobody here but us zombies,” he said.
“Fuck a bunch of zombies,” Jonesy replied, happier than shit to see his friend and shipmate, and then even happier to notice none other than Harold F. Simmons, jr., poke his head around Duke’s shoulder.
“What the fuck, Jonesy?” the young man said, grinning. Both were dressed in full LE rig, as was Jonesy. They, on the other hand, were armed to the teeth.
“I see you raided the Armory.”
“Medavoy can book me later,” Duke said, with supreme unconcern.
“No, actually, I don’t think he can,” Jonesy said.
“Is he dead?” Harold asked.
“Yes, sir,” Jonesy replied.
“You?” Duke asked.
Jonesy nodded. Duke grinned. Harold pumped his right fist up and down.
“How’d it feel?” Duke asked.
Jonesy theatrically looked around to see if there was anyone within earshot, which of course there wasn’t, since - aside from the three of them - everyone else appeared to be dead.
“It was awesome!” Jonesy said, breaking into a wide smile. “You should have seen it.”
“Wish I had,” Harold said. “Fucker needed to die.”
Jonesy’s face darkened at that. Make no mistake, he’d wanted to kill the bastard almost since the day they met. The prick had been universally hated and reviled by the crew - and that was before he took command and proved what an absolute fuckstick he actually was, but saying that he “needed killing,” brought the reality of what happened home, straight to whatever humanity and morality remained inside Jonesy after all the death and killing. Ultimately, technically, and (most important of all) legally, what he’d done was mutiny. Yes, okay, Medavoy had turned zombie, and anyone with a lick of sense would have done what he’d done in response - though probably without such violent relish. But common sense and reason didn’t apply to the Headquarters weasels who might be sent to investigate this after it was all over. They, like the half-wits who’d comprised his after-action hearing on the LE shooting, might not be so ready to take into account certain things like self-preservation and a zombie fucking apocalypse. Best not to be so cavalier about killing their Commanding Officer.
“Let’s not get carried away, shall we?” he said.
“So what’s the what?” Duke asked.
“We control the Bridge, the Engineroom, and I guess the Radio Room. You guys are alive. I’m alive. Bill Schaeffer is alive. And Ensign Gordon is now our CO.”
“No shit?” Harold asked.
“None whatsoever,” Jonesy replied. “Oh, and Frank’s alive, too. He’s the only one left in the Engine Room.”
“Anybody else?” Duke asked.
“Don’t know yet,” Jonesy said. “And it’s high time we found out.”
122
Amber steeled her nerve, one hand on the COMMCEN door, one on the tattered collar of OS3 Jackass. Her heart hammered in anticipation of going out there, into the Great Unknown, where there may or may not be Dragons. Adrenaline pumped into her bloodstream, preparing her for fight or flight or abject terror, whichever came first, last or in between. She took a deep breath.
Then damned-near jumped out of her skin as she heard: “COMMSTA Honolulu, COMMSTA Honolulu, this is USCGC Sassafras, USCGC Sassafras, two-one-eight-two, over.’
She dumped Jackass back onto the deck and ran around the console, because diving over, while certainly quicker, could just as certainly result in a broken neck, and since she liked it in its current condition, she refrained from leaping and just ran, instead. As it was, she almost tripped over one of the chairs getting to the GSB 900 handset.
2.182mhz, or 2182khz, was similar to Channel 16 on the VHF band, and similarly used as a distress frequency, but the Upper Side Band nature of 2.182 gave it a much greater range. It also made the voices coming through it sound as if they were calling from the bottom of a well, using one of those Scream voice scramblers, but that was hardly the point. It was all she could do to keep herself from screaming when she said into the handset: “Cutter Sassafras, Cutter Sassafras, this is COMMSTA Honolulu, over.” In fact, she was quite surprised to hear her own voice sounding like a radio announcer, instead of like some scared idiot.
There was a pause, then the voice replied: “Can we go secure? Over.”
Now that was interesting. Not necessarily the desire to go secure - that was normal in normal times. 2.182 was supposed to be monitored by everyone - military and civilian - and so anyone at all could be listening. But it’s not like they were keeping secrets from anyone...or were they? “Roger,” she replied. “Current key, this date.”
They had a wide variety of cryptological gear at the COMMSTA - more, in fact, than most of the cutters. Face it, Buoy Tenders rarely needed to be involved in top secret missions, but they did have secure radios, accessed by a numerical key, which changed daily. These changes were promulgated by Top Secret messages with the key information disseminated weekly. As luck or fate would have it, the last change was less than a week ago. She went to the appropriate piece of gear, consulted the appropriate message on the TS Board, and keyed in the code.
In a few moments, the now even more distorted voice came through the speaker. “COMMSTA Honolulu, Cutter Sassafras, Over.”
“Good to hear your voice, Sassafras,” she replied, throwing standard comms procedures out the window. “What’s your status? Over.”
“We’ve had an outbreak. Bad one. Most of the crew is dead. But we still control the Bridge and Engine Room, and are currently assessing the extent of the problem. How about you? Over.”
“As near as I can tell, I’m the only one left in the COMMCEN,” she said, and it sent a stab through her heart, as if uttering the words brought the reality home like nothing else could. “Honolulu is gone, the Base is gone, and I think I’m the only one in the building who isn’t infected. The generator hasn’t kicked in yet, so we still have shore power, but no telling how long that will last. I have enough food and water for about a month, but that’s about as good as the news gets. Over.”
“Have you heard from the other Cutters? Over.”
“Negative,” she said. “But then I’ve spent most of the time locked in the head, waiting for the zombie that was in here to bleed out. Far as I know, however, you and I are it. Over.” Listening to herself voice the litany of disaster, things really did sound like it was over - maybe for good, maybe forever.
“Roger that,” the voice on the other end of the ether said, sounding strangely calm. Her own voice sounded the same, oddly enough, but the steadiness of their respective tones belied an incongruity of colossal proportions. Things were not calm. Things were not steady. Things were totally fucked, when it came right down to it, and the fact they were both relating this information to each other as if it were a normal conversation was just wrong. But what else could they do? Start screaming and crying and begging for God to take this poisoned cup from their lips? Hardly. If there was a God, if there was some Supreme Being in charge of this current cluster fuck, then He, She or It, had some serious explaining to do.
“Not sure if we can help, but we’ll see if we can work something out,” the voice continued. “Don’t hold your breath. Over.”
“Roger that,” she said, in return.
“Sassafras, out.”
123
Jonesy spun the wheel on the Dry Stores scuttle and heaved it open. “Any zombies down there?” he yelled.
“Nobody here but us chickens,” came the voice, and then the head of CS1 Gary King. He was holding two frying pans, and had a big assed knife stuck in his belt, which, ordinarily would have looked bizarre as Hell, but this had been no ordinary day.
>
After hooking up with Duke and Harold, they’d gone back to the Armory, where Jonesy gleefully armed himself to the fucking teeth, with two .45 pistols (one had been his own and the other belonged to CWO2 Larsen), with thigh holsters for each. He’d also grabbed an M4, which he now had strapped to his chest, on a retractable rig. He complained about losing the LE batons, but Duke presented him with something much better: a seriously sharpened kukri-machete, the sheath for which was currently stuck through the left side belt of his harness, along with ammo-filled magazines for all of his firearms. ”Anybody else down there with you?” he asked.
“Not a soul,” Gary said, climbing up through the round scuttle. It didn’t look easy, since the man clung onto the frying pans, as if he might never let go. The Culinary Specialist looked from Jonesy, to Duke, then to Harold. “Please tell me this isn’t all that’s left.”
“Pretty close,” Harold said.
“Frank’s in the Engine Room, Bill’s in Radio, and Ms. Gordon - who’s now the CO, by the way - is on the Bridge,” Jonesy said. “Other than that, we haven’t found anybody.”
“Well slap me nekked and call me Bubba,” Gary muttered in disbelief.
“No thanks, I’ll pass,” Jonesy said. “But you can accompany us on the rest of the sweep, if you like.”
“Pass,” Gary said, vigorously shaking his head.
“Wimp,” Duke chided.
“Damn right!” Gary agreed.
“Head on up to the Bridge, then,” Jonesy said. “Tell Ms G... - The Captain - we’re continuing the sweep.” He closed the scuttle and spun the wheel again to secure it, then stood and looked to Duke and Harold. “Let’s go.”
124
Old Joe felt dizzy from blood loss, in agony from the wound in his right shoulder, and scared, because he was also lost. On the way to the boat they’d tried - and failed - to hijack, he’d steered due South from the Daisy Jean, and if they had been attacking someplace on shore, all he’d have to do was head due North to get back, because on shore, things like buildings didn’t move. But they hadn’t been attacking on shore, they had attacked on water, and water did move, just as the boat they’d attacked had been moving.
He’d kept an eye on the compass, and their course had been just South of due West, but he wasn’t sure how long they’d been there, or how fast the other ship had been going, so he had no accurate way to judge how far he was now off course, as he continued to speed northward. He had no idea where the Daisy Jean was, and he was running out of time.
The RHIB steering console once held a marine radio, but Blackjack Charlie removed it, saying he didn’t want the other boat to be able to do what they had, which was follow their radio signal right back to them. It wouldn’t have mattered, if the plan succeeded, but it had not, and Old Joe held the sinking suspicion that Charlie had gone into this - had sent them on this fucked mission to begin with - knowing it would probably fail.
He’d stopped to toss Sugar’s body over the side as soon as he was sure he’d gotten out of range, and the other boat wasn’t following. It had been agony, and uncoordinated as Hell, with only one good arm, but he’d managed, primarily because Sugar had fallen onto the inflated sponson, half-on/half-off the boat. It had still been a bitch.
He scanned the horizon, but it was dark, the RHIB was low to the water, which didn’t give him much range, and even if it had, his vision was blurry from fatigue and blood loss. In short, he was fucked, and he knew it.
Fate.
Fate brought him here, all right. Fate, the California State Department of Corrections, the Pomona Zombie Virus, and Blackjack Charlie Carter, had turned Old Joe’s life into a world of pain and blood and shit.
Fate.
Once upon a time, he hadn’t been a bad guy. Oh, sure, he’d stuck up a few liquor stores, but the owners were all Pakistanis and Iranians and other kinds of probably terrorist assholes. There was that one Korean place, but they were probably North Korean, so again, what did they matter? Old Joe had been alright, though. He’d been a good friend, a solid man to have at your back in a fight. And he’d paid his taxes, dammit; taxes that paid for his trial by jury and inevitable incarceration, because he wasn’t rich enough to afford a good lawyer. Wasn’t that a stone cold slap to the face?
Fate.
Something, some flash of movement caught his eye off to the right. He lost it, found it, lost it again. His head swam, as he tried to concentrate. Then he saw it again: the Daisy Jean, big and beautiful and coming toward him, less than a mile away.
Fate.
Maybe the fickle bitch wasn’t so bad, after all.
He tossed the line to Blackjack Charlie, who stood alone at the back of the motor sailor. Strange that he didn’t have at least one of the others helping, but what the fuck?
“Didn’t think I’d find you,” Old Joe said, taking Charlie’s outstretched hand up and out of the RHIB.
Blackjack didn’t say anything at first, but Joe figured he was just busy making sure the small boat was tied off. Finally, the man looked at him and said: “Saw you on radar.”
“Thank the blessed mother for that,” Old Joe replied with relief.
“What happened?” Charlie asked, leading him toward the absolute back of the Daisy Jean.
“Cluster fuck,” Joe replied. “They were waiting and armed to the teeth. Everybody is dead.”
Blackjack Charlie Carter nodded. “Too bad,” he said, pulling a 9mm pistol out from behind his light jacket. He pointed it at Old Joe. “For you,” he concluded, and pulled the trigger.
The last thought passing through Old Joe’s dying mind as the bullet slammed into him and as he toppled over the side was: Fate.
125
With a heave, Amber shoved the body into the corridor. It fell with a muffled thump as it hit the carpet. That was more work than it should have been, she thought, as she struggled to catch her breath, which seemed to want to run away and never come back.
The problem had been figuring out how to get Jackass out of the COMMCEN and through the door without having the door shut behind her, and thus lock her out. The building still had power, the security door would still work, as long as she didn’t suffer severe memory loss and forget her code, but Amber believed in Murphy’s Law, which guaranteed that as soon as she had three or four bloodthirsty zombies on her tail, the power would cut out and she’d be royally fucked.
In short, she didn’t want to get locked out, and so she contrived a way to wedge the door open. Of course, there being only one of her, and her having only two hands (both of which were occupied getting Jackass’s body through the door), putting said wedge in place had been an exercise in weight, balance and contortionism she never wanted to have to repeat.
She leaned against the door jam and drew a large, slow breath. Her heart resumed its less rapid normal rhythm, and her temples no longer throbbed with an excess of blood rushing into her skull, but she wasn’t quite ready to begin the next phase of her mission.
No sound greeted her ears; no telltale growling or howling or insane vocalizations indicated the presence of any infected personnel. She was - as near as she could detect - alone.
Two options - three, if she included saying to Hell with it and just locking herself back in: she could leave the body where it was for the time being and reconnoiter the area to find a suitable place to dump it, without dragging the thing all over the building, making noise, and bringing all the zombies down upon her head; or, she could just risk it and drag the body, thus reducing the amount of time she had to spend exposed. Neither option filled her with puppies and bunnies. Then again, standing there thinking about it wasn’t going to do her any good, either, so she pushed off the door and made her way down the corridor, sans Jackass.
The COMMCEN building was shaped like a squashed sort of “H;” long in the middle and short on both ends. One end held the offices and conference rooms, etcetera, of the Admin portion, where the officers hung out and looked busy. The other end held the Communications Cente
r itself. The officers had windows, the enlisted scum in the radio room did not. Of course, this was for security reasons, but it seemed to fit the downtrodden lot of enlisted pukes everywhere, and so that was the excuse everybody gave, sometimes calling her workspace, the “Depravation Chamber.”
The immediate pathway to and from the COMMCEN was narrow and lined, on one side, by the Executive Officer’s office (empty, but too close for her comfort), the COMMS Officer’s office (ditto), the OSC’s office (locked), the YNC’s office (also locked) and then the main exterior glass-doored entrance. Beyond, were other offices and a cafeteria, of sorts, for those few who brought their own lunches, rather than availing themselves of the Base Mess Hall. The opposite wall held maintenance closets, an equipment room, housing all the gear for the myriad antennae on the roof, another set of glass doors leading to the back of the building, and the fire and sound-protected Emergency Generator room. None of these rooms immediately seemed like a great place to stash a body.
The corridor appeared empty, clean, and quiet, which seemed wrong. This was an apocalypse, wasn’t it? There should be bodies and debris and stuff laying all over the place. It shouldn’t look so normal.
She reached the corner of the entrance atrium and peered inside. This is more like it, she thought, upon seeing the carnage. She might have lost her lunch if she had eaten any in the last twelve hours. A body, that had apparently been used as a battering ram to shatter the glass outer doors, lay mangled and covered in congealed blood three feet into the space - just far enough to have been invisible from the corridor. Flies buzzed and crawled around and on it. Another two bodies lay just outside. They appeared to have been...chewed. A fire axe hung embedded in the near wall. Be careful what you wish for, Amber...
