by Jeff Thomson
“Masur,” he said, lifting the bottle toward the heavens. He took a swig, and nearly gagged. “Good God that’s foul,” he swore, took another drink and passed it to Frank.
“Revolting,” he choked, took another drink, then passed it back to Jonesy.
“Let’s hope it burns better than it tastes,” Jonesy said, and heaved the bottle across the compartment to smash against the far bulkhead. Alcohol fumes instantly filled their nostrils.
Frank picked up one of the other bottles. “Butterscotch Schnapps?” He asked, incredulous. “Who the fuck drinks this shit?” he asked no one, then tossed the bottle over his shoulder, where it smashed against a different bulkhead.
A bottle of rotgut vodka Jonesy had seen at several of the seedier bars he’d frequented went crashing into the galley. Another of disreputable bourbon went sailing through the open door of the smaller stateroom. They both ignored the NASCAR decorations and child-sized bed.
Soon, only two bottles remained: one of some unpronounceable Greek shit smelling of licorice, and a full bottle of Everclear.
Frank pointed to it and asked: “What?”
“No idea,” Jonesy answered. “That couch, however...”
They both stared at it, at the strange, blue paisley sort of pattern, bordered by green, yellow and purple flowers.
“Hideous,” Frank said.
“Truly,” Jonesy said, pulling his eight-inch Gerber from the sheath on his left hip. It looked like he could use it to carve a cow. He motioned with his head toward the Master Stateroom, where the Master himself hung swaying in the gentle swell. “Take the Greek shit and douse the bed and carpet, then leave the door open.” He added, as he began to shred the couch cushions.
The red flare shot a nearly flat trajectory from the RHIB to the sailboat, ricocheted off the superstructure, and bounced on the after deck, where it met the puddle of Everclear trailing from the deck, through the door, and into the trashed main cabin. Nothing happened for a moment. Then two... Then three... With a muted whump, the alcohol fumes ignited, and flames leapt out of the open port holes.
Jonesy turned the RHIB toward the Sassafras, and left the S/V Pretty, Pretty to its fiery, and watery grave.
133
Lydia Claire stood to one side of the Flight Deck, watching some of the Golden Dragons set up the chute that would eventually be filled with assorted garbage that had been fermenting in the Engine Room for days, thus turning it into the Whale’s Belly. She was not participating.
She hadn’t joined in during the Fashion Show, nor the Talentless Show, which word on the Mess Deck said was hilarious. She hadn’t had the desire; hadn’t had the heart. Truth be told, she didn’t have the heart for much of anything, and it sort of worried her.
She knew the root cause, of course: Guam. What happened there, what they had done, what she, by extension as a member of the crew, had done, filled her mind and her heart and her soul with a sickness that wouldn’t go away. She cried herself to sleep each night - when she could sleep, which wasn’t often, and wasn’t much when she did.
The Captain accepted full responsibility, took the blame upon himself, and that was right, that was true. It was his fault - but it wasn’t his fault alone, in spite of every officer and chief she talked to insisting it was.
That seemed real odd. She’d been in for quite a few years, this being her second enlistment, and she’d never heard of such open hostility and disrespect being not just allowed, but encouraged. It didn’t make any sense. Only, it did.
By accepting sole responsibility, by encouraging the crew to direct their anger at him, and him alone, he was keeping it from becoming a general sense of rage and hatred, that could, if given its head, eat away at the crew until there was nothing left but the darkness. That wouldn’t do anybody any good.
So she understood it, intellectually, but that didn’t change a single thing. They had done this. The crew of the USCGC Polar Star had not just refused to help those in distress, but actively repelled them when they were screaming to be rescued. Those screams haunted her nightmares, which was why she didn’t sleep much. But that had its own price tag. The dreams needed to be dreamt, the system needed to be cleansed, and so if she wasn’t allowing it to happen in the normal manner, if she wasn’t sleeping and allowing herself to dream, then the dreams would come of their own accord while she was awake - if for no other reason than she went through the motions so tired, she might as well have been sleepwalking.
As if to provide proof, she felt, rather than heard, one of those screams swelling inside her mind, growing and pulsating, like a living, breathing thing, which was why she let out a tiny scream of her own, when somebody tapped her on the shoulder. LT Wheeler stood there, looking at her.
“Lydia,” he said, in a bemused tone, the corners of his lips curling into a smile. “Somebody walk over your grave?”
Yeah, she thought, as her heart raced away to who knew where. The entire fucking world.
“You...startled me,” she said.
“Sorry about that,” he replied, giving the obligatory response. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
“Oh?” was all she managed to say, as her heart finally dropped from her throat and resumed its rightful place in her chest cavity.
“I’ve been talking to some people,” he began. “People who care about you.”
Her heart began to sink, now, heading toward her belly or her nether regions or just looking for another way out. She didn’t respond.
“You aren’t participating in the festivities. People have noticed.”
Anger began to swell within her. What right did anybody have to talk about her behind her back - to an officer, no less? This was betrayal! This was bullshit!
He seemed to sense what she was thinking. “You have friends on board, you know,” he said. “Quite a few of them. And they are concerned,” he added. “So am I.”
“I’m fine,” she said, giving an obligatory answer of her own.
“Bullshit,” he said, flatly. She looked at him. “You’re not fine. I’m not fine. Nobody on this whole damned ship is fine.” She continued to stare at him. This wasn’t officer talk. Sure, the Coast Guard was far less formal than the other services, but there had always been some sort of separation. You didn’t make friends with them, you didn’t hang out with them. If you met them on liberty in some foreign port, it was always uncomfortable, always strained. And you never ever heard them suggest that the world was swirling down the toilet, and yet he just had.
She didn’t reply, so he kept talking. “What happened was terrible, but you understand, we had no choice. It was quite literally them or us.”
“So we chose ourselves,” she said, her voice low, almost a whisper.
“Yes, we did,” he said. “And for one simple reason.”
“Which is?” she asked, her tone bordering on outright insubordination. He ignored it.
“We are the Lifesavers, Lydia.”
“Yeah, we did a great job of that!” she spat.
“We did the only thing we could do,” he said. “The entire world needs saving, in case you haven’t noticed.” She cocked an eyebrow at him, but didn’t respond. But she wanted to. Oh boy did she want to. She wanted to give him a piece of her mind that would drop him like a punch from Mike Tyson. He didn’t give her the chance. “As far as we know, we’re the only intact Coast Guard platform left. We haven’t heard from anyone else in days. Not PACAREA, not Honolulu, not any of the other ships. Not from the Navy, or from some headquarters in Cheyenne Mountain, or wherever the Command structure is hiding and waiting this out. We are alone, and the entire world needs saving.”
She locked eyes with him, trying to spot the lie, trying to sense the bullshit that must be there, but she saw nothing.
“What good would we have done anyone if we allowed ourselves to get infected?”
She said nothing. She knew this stuff, logically, at any rate; knew that what he was saying was true. But that didn’t make the horror
of it, the wrongness of it, any less harsh, any less heartbreaking.
“Are you familiar with the Serenity Prayer?”
She nodded. It was her mother’s favorite. The memory stabbed at her heart, but on top of everything else, it felt like a pinprick. Her mother was dead, most likely. Everybody she knew or cared about back in Alabama was probably dead. But added to all the rest, it seemed insignificant, somehow, as if her brain couldn’t fit any more bad news, bad thoughts, bad feelings into it.
“Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” he said. “You remember that bit?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice feeling small and insignificant.
“We can’t do anything about the plague. We can’t do anything about all the death and horror and tragedy. It’s there, it’s real, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.”
She nodded, as she felt tears begin to well in her eyes.
“The next part is the important bit,” he said. “The Courage to change the things we can.” She nodded. “What we can do, what we will do, is rescue what’s left. But to do that, we first need to survive. Can’t save anybody if we’re dead.”
“No,” she said. He hadn’t asked for her opinion, but it felt right to give it, anyway.
“So the last bit, the Wisdom to know the difference, says we did exactly what we had to do. No dishonor, no betrayal, no failure. We did the right thing, the only thing. And because we did that, we can get on with the rest of it.“ he said, and then took her by the shoulders. “To do that, we need each and every one of us, and that includes you.”
“What does swimming through garbage have to do with saving the rest of the world?” she snapped, gesturing toward the now complete Whale’s Belly.
“This crew needs to blow off steam,” he said, simply. “I need to. You need to. We need to clean out the pipes, as it were. Purge ourselves of the past, so we have the strength to face the future. Can you understand that?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, automatically, though she wasn’t at all sure that she did, or could, or ever would.
134
Molly pulled the throttle to All Stop, and engaged the DPS. The Bow and Stern Thrusters kicked in with an almost imperceptible whir.
“Looks like Midway,” Jonesy said laconically, scanning the atoll with binoculars.
Laysan Albatrosses (commonly known as gooney birds), flitted about the shoreline of Sand Island, dotting it with moving specs of white. There were hundreds of them. Molly knew - both from conversations with her Uncle John and from reading the Sailing Directions - that there were, in fact, thousands of them throughout the Atoll. Why the birds picked this remote bit of rock in the middle of nowhere, she did not know. What had once been the scene of the most significant battle in the Pacific War, during WWII, was now a bird and wildlife sanctuary.
The Entrance Channel, between Sand Island and Eastern Island was clearly visible, and it would have been a simple matter in the past to steam right in and tie up at the pier. But, number one, the Coast Guard, who used to maintain the Aids in this area in days gone by (with the original, 180-foot version of the Sassafras), pulled the last of them out in the mid-Nineties, and the last Naval personnel departed the island in Ninety-Seven. There were supposedly Marker Buoys and Range Boards within the channel and harbor, but supposedly didn’t cut it when the alternative was grinding to a stop on some rocky shoal. The second problem, of course, was the possibility of zombies.
“Midway Harbormaster, Midway Harbormaster, this is United States Coast Guard Cutter Sassafras, United States Coast Guard Cutter Sassafras, channel one-six, over,” Molly said into the radio mic. All she got for the oxygen expenditure was static. It’s all any of them had gotten for the last three hours.
“Well, shit,” Jonesy said.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Molly replied, in an offhand way. “Better get Duke and Harold into the RHIB.”
“Be a good idea to make it Duke and me,” Jonesy said. She gave him a questioning look. Jonesy nodded toward the atoll. “Just in case.” She nodded. He picked up the 1-MC. “Duke, contact the Bridge,” he said, and she could hear the pipe echo both through the bowels of the ship and into the quiet of the summer’s day from the loudspeakers on the superstructure.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. At first it just looked like a flurry of gooney birds, but she quickly saw the reason for it: a human figure stepped out of the brush and onto the sandy beach. The birds seemed to avoid him like the plague.
“Either Midway just became a nudist colony,” Jonesy said, pointing to the naked man.
“Or there are zombies,” Molly said, finishing the thought and the sentence.
The phone rang and Jonesy picked it up. “Duke,” he said, without waiting for the usual exchange of greetings. “Gear up. All the toys. And get the RHIB ready,” he said. “You and I are going hunting.”
135
Blackjack Charlie peered into the distance. He’d once heard a quote somewhere (wasn’t sure where, and it really didn’t matter) about the sea and sailors: The sea to a sailor is like a blank page to a writer: filled with adventure and endless possibilities. It seemed apt, in the current situation. He had no idea where they were going, no idea what they were going to do when they got there, but the possibilities seemed infinite.
He glanced back over his shoulder at his two remaining crew. Felix Hoffman, the chemist, and George Potter, the Mechanical Engineer (one, a drug dealer, the other, a murderer), who joined him on the Bridge because they - not surprisingly - wanted to know the plan.
“What are we doing, boss?” Felix asked. At least he was still being respectful. At least there didn’t seem to be the imminent threat of mutiny. That was good. He’d hate to have to kill them.
“And where are we going?” George asked, although his tone wasn’t so polite. Have to watch him, Blackjack thought. The man was drunk - had been drunk, pretty much since they’d set sail. The booze would last longer now that there were fewer mouths to feed, as it were, but he really should take tighter control of the supply.
None of which negated the validity of the questions, for which he had very few answers. He had goals, he had concepts, but no actual plans to back them up. When in doubt, he thought, baffle them with bullshit.
“Well, me boyos,” he said, affecting a theatrical accent. “Tis the life of Pirates, for us.”
“That didn’t work too well for Joe-Boy and the others, now, did it?” George said, derisively.
“That didn’t work,” he snapped, “Because we didn’t know what we were heading into.” He turned to face them. “I’ll admit it,” he continued. “That was my mistake, but it’s not one I’m likely to repeat.”
“Especially if we don’t give you the opportunity,” George replied, looming toward him.
Quick as a rattlesnake, Blackjack Charlie whipped out his namesake and smashed George just over the left temple. The drunken bastard dropped like the proverbial puppet with cut strings. He turned to look at Felix. “Any problems?”
“No!” he yelped, backpedaling. “Sir,” he added, to Charlie’s great pleasure and relief.
“First thing you do,” Charlie said, “is gather up all the booze and put it in my cabin.”
“All of it?”
“Don’t worry,” Charlie soothed, adopting a friendlier tone. “It may be a while before we get more, and so it’s high time we started rationing.” He looked at the unconscious form of the Mechanical Engineer. “Don’t think he’ll be arguing much after he wakes up.”
“No, sir,” Felix was quick to agree.
“I do have a plan,” he lied. “But I’m still working out the details.” He was about to elaborate, had a really good line of bullshit just waiting to come out, when the VHF radio interrupted him.
“...Mayday,” the voice crackled through the static. “Uh, Mayday. This is the Point of Order. Anyone up on sixteen?”
Blackjack Charlie smiled. Chance favors the prepared mind, h
e thought, as he reached for the radio.
136
“Alright, Harold. Take us in. Carefully,” Jonesy said, waving in the general direction of the entrance channel.
He and Duke were fully rigged up this time. They wore the standard black tactical uniform, plus the addition of a firefighting hood, tucked into the shirt, with the shirt collar buttoned all the way up. Their pant legs were tucked into, and taped to, their boots, and their long shirt sleeves were taped to their full dexterity tactical gloves, which were themselves worn over nytrile medical gloves they’d gotten from Sick Bay. Over the uniform, they wore full MOPP gear, with yet another hood, over which they placed their helmets, with ballistic face shields, and carbon fiber mouth and chin guards, equipped with integrated, voice activated microphones, tuned to channel twenty-one. Over all of this, they wore knee and elbow pads, plus body armor.
Naturally, of course, they were also wearing sunglasses. It was, after all, important to look cool.
Feeling cool, however, was not on the menu. Taped up and sealed in, then wrapped in MOPP Level Four gear was like standing in a sauna upon a volcano in the middle of August during a heatwave. But given the choice of sweating for a (hopefully) short while, or becoming either dead or a zombie after being bitten, they chose to perspire.
Jonesy wasn’t completely, absolutely, one-hundred percent guaranteed sure all these precautions would keep them from getting bitten, but if they didn’t work, it would not be from lack of trying. Heat stroke, however, might be a different kettle of fish, so they both carried water bottles.
On top of everything else, they wore the tactical harness and carried both weapons and ammo, but also an assault pack, containing more ammo, as well as line, flashlights, and various other items they thought might prove useful. Duke carried two 9mm pistols in thigh holsters, a kukri-machete in a sheath, and his two hammers. Jonesy questioned the addition of the hammers, but Duke had said, simply, “They work.” Couldn’t argue with that. He also carried a 12 gauge riot gun.
