Pirates and Zombies (Guardians of the Apocalypse Book 3)
Page 7
He’d also seen the Sass make the approach on the pier, then suddenly, and violently veer away, as if recoiling from a big-ass bee sting. Not a clue what that was about. He’d find out sooner or later.
For now, however, he was perfectly content to sit and wait, stuck in the middle with his old pal, the corpse. John would not be happy. His niece would be devastated. It happened on her order. Not that it was her fault, by any stretch.
This was the one great trap of being in the Coast Guard - the one thing with which he’d never gotten comfortable. Their’s was a dangerous business. You gotta go out. You don’t gotta come back. And if you were in charge, if you were running the show, then any time people didn’t come back, you had to live with the fact that they went out on your orders.
He’d been there. He’d ordered men out on a SAR case, one dark and foggy night, and the four man crew of the Motor Surf Boat hadn’t come back. And yeah. It sucked. It happened years ago, but he remembered it - would always remember it - as if it happened last night. Nature of the beast.
People die. Fact of life. And when they do - for whatever reason, either natural or unnatural, your fault, their fault, nobody’s fault - there isn’t a single goddamned thing you can do about it, except pick your kicked ass up off the ground and get on with it.
He stared at the tarp-covered form in the bow. Dan McMullen has left the building. What a waste. What a pity. What are you gonna do? Nothing. Not a single goddamned thing.
“Sass Two, Sassafras,” the radio in his hear crackled with Molly Gordon’s voce.
“Go, Sass,” he replied, pulling himself out of his contemplative trance.
“Any reason you need to stay where you are?” she asked.
Other than sparing you the knowledge of what’s under that tarp for as long as we possibly can? “Not...really,” he replied.
“Come on back to the ship,” she ordered. “We could use someone down in the Engineroom.”
Maybe, he thought. But you can’t use what this boat is carrying. “Roger that,” he said, reversing the boat off the sand.
34
Seaplane Wallbanger
23.288564N 163.578545W
“You guys want some of this?” Bob McMaster asked, holding out a bottle if Jim Beam. Jim Barber hesitated. Harvey Walton did not.
Jim’s jaundiced eye watched the British pilot knock back a long swig of the whiskey, large enough to incapacitate a man twice his size. Well, maybe not, but it was a pretty damned big swig. The man shouldn’t be drinking, and certainly shouldn’t be drunk while flying, but the alcohol didn’t appear to do more than calm an already placid man. Harvey was that, sure enough. Certifiably insane, of course, but still...placid.
He waved the bottle off as Bob tried to offer what little remained. Booze made him sleepy, and they had a long flight ahead of them. And if recent history was any indicator, they’d be, more likely than not, flying somewhere else as soon as they got to Midway.
They needed to get Polar Star - and more importantly, their helicopters - involved. To do that meant moving the ship much closer to Honolulu, and to do that, they needed vaccine. Cocking his head toward the passenger compartment - such as it was - he saw Bob sit down on the bench across from where the tall and thin man, Darren Yardly, sat, next to Spute, who held one of the three coolers between his feet.
There were seven women and five children in their group, back on the island, in addition to the eleven men, ranging in age from six to sixty-two. Twenty-three people would have been a bit beyond the plane’s capacity, and Harvey thought he could make it with two trips, but the men talked amongst themselves and decided they weren’t quite ready to trust their families to three heavily-armed strangers they just met. Bob and Darren were elected to accompany the coolers of spinal tissue - which had been stripped from the recently-killed zombies with the help of four of those men - back to Midway and scope the situation out for themselves.
Made sense to Jim. Of course, as he feared, it also meant they’d be flying back and forth at least two more times - without rest - once they saw the truth in what Jim and Harvey and Spute were offering.
The people in Lihue were in pretty good shape, all things considered. They had food and water, some medical supplies, and an actual Medical Doctor, and they could secure themselves inside the high school Unfortunately, the rest of the town was overrun with homicidal assholes, which, ultimately, made it an untenable position.
The pre-plague population of Kauai was somewhere north of sixty-six thousand - not including however many tourists were trapped once air travel was shut down, in a closing the barn door once the horses got out attempt to stem the spread of Pomona. Capable as the remnants of Lihue’s residents might be, brave and resourceful and skilled at the use of firearms though they may have considered themselves, there wasn’t much their handful could do against several tens of thousands of murdering freakazoids. Like it or not, Midway was their only viable hope. But if they wanted to check things out before diving head first into an unknown situation, who was Jim Barber to argue? Odds are, he’d have done the same thing.
Harvey looked at him and grinned.
“If your drunk ass crashes this plane...” Jim grumbled.
“You’ll dismember me and feed me to the sharks,” Walton finished the sentence for him. “Yes, yes. I’m quite sure.”
“I’m just saying.” Jim said.
Harvey waggled a finger at him. “Admit it, Mister James Barber,” in what should have been a slurred voice, considering the jolt of alcohol he’d just swallowed, but somehow wasn’t. “You’d miss me if I were gone.”
Jim stared straight ahead, giving nothing away. “Fly the fucking plane,” he said.
35
Mess Hall
ISC Honolulu
“Zombie, table for a dozen,” Duke said, slamming his right hand hammer into one skull, and smashing the elbow of another with his left.
“Need to talk to the maitre ‘d,” Jonesy quipped, slicing across the abdomen of a large man in cook’s whites. He turned away before he could see the guts spill out onto the tile floor. Some things can’t be unseen, and he didn’t want that to be one of them. “The service here is appalling.”
Since grabbing the Skull Mobile, they’d refrained from making an excessive amount of noise - Duke’s stereo notwithstanding. His speakers kicked out some serious sound, to be sure, but Black Sabbath through car speakers didn’t hold a candle to the rat-tat-tat of a Thompson Submachine Gun. Zombies were attracted by noise. The auto cannon and fifty-cal from the Assateague and Rapid Response Boat were making plenty of it - on the far side of the island, which was the point. Keep the assholes over there, so he and Duke could rescue the survivors over here. Sounded good on paper, but apparently, the zombies in the Mess Hall hadn’t gotten the memo.
Half-a-dozen now lay dead, spread amongst the tables and chairs and food trays, along with cups, flatware, and garbage. No food scraps, however. Hungry zombies licked their plates clean, along with the tables and the floor, and at least one or two of their fellow infected compatriots. One had definitely been devoured. Large chunks were missing from its thighs and calves, and several ribs poked through the shredded uniform of what may or may not have been a female Coastie at one time. Another one, a dozen or so feet away, just looked chewed. Possibly, he’d been their midnight snack, but Jonesy was far too busy to give it much thought. The only good zombie is a dead zombie, he mused. Even if it is disgustingly gnawed.
Four infected fuckers burst through the door from the galley in a group. “Oh shit!” Jonesy swore, dropping his right hand kukri machete and grabbing a forty-five from his thigh holster. “So much for stealth mode,” he said, firing one-handed. Two went down, but it took six rounds to do it. From a nine, that was to be expected, but a forty-five should have dropped them just from a flesh wound. Clearly, one-handed was not his forte. Dropping his other blade, and holstering the pistol, he unlimbered the Thompson and cut loose, shattering both the already-shattered silence a
nd their bodies.
“Get to the front door,” he told Duke. “See if we’ve got company coming.” The big man nodded once, and took off.
The four-zombie party appeared to be the last of the ones inside the building, however, so he should be okay without backup, but he wasn’t taking any chances. They knew, from conversations with the redoubtable Amber Winkowski, people had been sighted on the roof of the Mess Hall. How they’d gotten up there remained a mystery, however, since Jonesy didn’t see any doors labeled Roof Access. Logic dictated there had to be one somewhere, and the question, then, became how many other zombies he would run across before he found it.
Given its purpose, the building’s floor plan was, of necessity, fairly wide open. An entrance hall in the front gave access to the Chief’s Dining on the left, and Officer’s Dining on the right. He and Duke cleared both of those first and found them blessedly empty. An open set of double doors led to the large Enlisted Dining area, where the party started in earnest. It now looked like the scene from a bad horror movie, if it hadn’t before. Beyond, lay the galley area, with large walk-in refrigerator and freezer compartments, and a dry storage room. The place was a shambles - zombies, not being the most fastidious creatures on the planet - but now appeared empty, except for the one poor bastard he found in the freezer, frozen solid. Whether he’d turned before or after getting shoved in there hardly mattered. The fucker was dead now, and his torn clothing gave testament to his status as a zombie.
At the back, lay a small loading dock. He peered through the window in its access door, saw no one, and eased it open. Straight ahead, he saw the baseball diamond, to the left, one end of the Comm Center Building. That was next on their list. There were supposed to be survivors on the Admin roof, but that building lay to the far side of Facilities Maintenance, which Amber had assured them was devoid of live, sane humans. Plenty of zombies though, so he’d put it further down on his list of priorities. There would be supplies and stores in there, which they would need at some point, but people first.
What he could not see was any way to access the goddamned roof. How the fuck did they get up there? He wondered. Receiving no answer from his clueless brain, he went back inside the galley area, and started searching every room again.
He finally found it, tucked away at the back of the dry storage area: a small maintenance room, with a ladder leading upwards. He climbed it, found the access door blocked, and started pounding.
The receiver in his ear crackled. “We’re starting to get some customers,” Duke said.
“Drive around to the loading dock,” he replied. “There’s nobody back here, and I think I found where the survivors are hiding.”
“Hurry the fuck up.”
“Blow me,” Jonesy replied, as footsteps sounded above his head. He banged on the access hatch again.
He could hear muffed voices beyond, and it sounded as if an argument of some sort was taking place. Could they maybe be thinking he was a zombie, scratching to get at them? That’s idiotic. Hadn’t they heard the gunfire?
In an effort to sound more human, he tapped the dot-dot-da-dot-dot, of Shave and a Haircut. If that doesn’t give them a clue, then fuck ‘em. Let them die out of sheer stupidity, he thought.
The hatch lifted and sunlight poured down. A face appeared above his head, attached to the emaciated body of a man wearing Lieutenant’s bars.
“About fucking time you got here,” the officer snapped. He did not appear to be joking.
Jonesy stared at him, tempted to just turn and walk away from the ungrateful bastard. Then his sarcasm switch flipped and he said: “Pleasure to be of service. If you’ll come this way, we’ll get you seated. We have a wonderful table. Great view of the base. Hardly any zombies.”
36
USS Paul Hamilton
10.450253N 164.784516W
“You’re a fucking traitor!” GM1 Ernie Swoboda swore.
“Think, Ernie,” FCA2 Morris Minooka implored, getting more than a little tired of being accused of treason, and even more so of having to explain simple shit to simpletons. “Abernathy got himself killed by refusing to give them what they’re going to get sooner or later.” He stared into the man’s pissed-off eyes. “And when they do, what do you suppose your life is going to be worth? They won’t need you anymore.” He let the idea sink in. From the expression on Swaboda’s face, the odds were three-to-two against. Time to try a more personal approach.
“I’m trying to save your life, you dumbshit,” Minooka said. “And here’s the thing...” He leaned in close for a confidential whisper. “You can’t fight them if you’re dead.” Morris didn’t think he’d go so far as to say the light of understanding shone in the man’s eyes, but it did look as if the guy was starting to get a clue.
“But if I give them the code, won’t they just kill me anyway?” Swoboda asked. “They won’t need me anymore.”
There was the Catch 22. He could be right. Hell, he probably was right. But there was always a chance, which was more than Morris would have if he failed to get the code from the fucker. Time to bring it home.
He made a show of checking the empty compartment to make sure they were alone, then leaned in closer and whispered: “If we show them we’re willing to cooperate, to work with them, to help them...” he began, but before he could continue, Swoboda interrupted.
“By giving them access to our small arms, so they can kill us?”
“If we can get them to trust us,” Morris began. “We’ll also have access to those guns.” He leaned back and watched as the light of understanding filled the eyes of his shipmate. “And then we can kill them.”
The only question remained: how much of what he’d just said was bullshit?
37
COMMSTA Honolulu
USCG ISC, Sand Island
“COMMSTA Honolulu, this is The Skull Mobile, Channel Two-One. Over.”
“What the Hell?” Amber asked, through the wide grin on her face.
Scott Pruden shrugged. “They can call themselves whatever they damn well please,” he said.
“Send your traffic Skull Mobile,” she answered, exaggerating the name.
“We have room for two more, if you’d like to tell us how to get to you.” The man’s voice sounded cheerful - if muffled by the gas mask she knew he wore. Given the circumstances (and the gunfire she’d heard coming from the Mess Hall) they must have just gone through a nightmare, but the guy sounded happy. Come to think of it, she was pretty happy at the moment, too.
After the horror of what she’d experienced - first alone, with just the corpse of Jackass to keep sentinel on the Comm Center door, then the bizarrely uneasy relationship with Jurgen McAwesomeness - her PTSD should be extreme. She should be catatonic with stress and fear and shock. But she wasn’t. Hell, she felt about ready to break into a dance. She looked at Scott, who gave her a thumbs up.
“If you go around to the far side of the building, you’ll see a large stake-bed truck parked near a window,” she told the voice, thinking of their escapade at the Facilities Maintenance Building. Seemed like a lifetime ago, and maybe it was. Maybe the future would be split between what happened before and what happened after they were reunited with fellow Coasties - after they were rescued from a fate truly worse than death itself. “We’ll meet you there.”
“Roger that,” the voice said.
“Careful,” she cautioned, not wanting to take any chances. “There could be zombies.”
“Story of my life, Amber,” he replied. “Story of my life. See you in a few.”
“Roger that,” she said, throwing ketchup, mustard and a shitload of relish into the reply, then she put the mic back into its cradle and started heading for the ceiling access. One last trip on the catwalk...
But then she stopped, turned and headed toward the GSB 900.
“What are you doing?” Pruden asked.
“One last thing to take care of,”: she said. “One last radio call.”
38
&nbs
p; USCGC Polar Star
25 NM off Midway
“Any word from Sassafras?” Captain Hall asked, coming onto the Bridge without any semblance of a greeting.
“No sir,” LTjg Carol Kemp replied. She’d recently been promoted to Assistant Ops Officer, with the departure of LT Wheeler and LTjg Montrose. She was okay with that - even if the Captain didn’t seem too comfortable, at the moment. “Nothing from the COMMSTA, either.” He scowled. “We’ve heard some comms between Midway and the seaplane,” she added. “It’s been broken, but readable.” He gave her his signature single raised eyebrow. Whether this meant the obvious question, or that he was pissed - yet again - that he hadn’t been immediately informed, she did not know. “Apparently, they’ve gathered enough material to make all the vaccine we need.”
“Their status?” He asked.
“On the way back,” she replied. “ETA fifteen thirty.”
“Any idea how long the vaccine takes to make?”
“None, sir,” she said. “The Nutty Professor, as they call their chief chemist, was taken to Honolulu to set up a lab there for all the civilians.”
“And?”
He wasn’t giving an inch, still pissed about being snubbed by a boot Ensign. Holy crap on a stick, she chuckled to herself - but only to herself. Outwardly, her face remained placid. Molly Gordon had balls.
“And the woman still on Midway - Miss Barber - is having to make the stuff herself. It’s a long, slow process, from what I understand,” she said.
Hall started pacing - never a good sign, but especially now, since his ass had to be truly chapped. He’d ordered - or attempted to order - Miss Molly Gordon to hold off on her planned liberation of Sand Island. The order was met with silence, both from the Sass and the COMMSTA, either from an unlikely equipment malfunction at a conveniently coincidental time, or from defiance. Carol - Hell, the entire crew, pretty much - was betting, and hoping, on the latter.