Pirates and Zombies (Guardians of the Apocalypse Book 3)

by Jeff Thomson

  “The problem,” Hennessy began. Charlie scowled at him, but the man ignored it. If he wasn’t so goddamned useful... “They swore an oath when they joined the military. I know most civilians think it’s bullshit, but most military people don’t.”

  Charlie didn’t like having that thrown in his face. Hennessy had been in the Navy. McCabe had been a Seabee, for Christ’s sake. He didn’t know about Parker, and didn’t give a fuck. Bottom line was, he, himself, never served, and Hennessy kept reminding him. But it hadn’t helped George Potter, now did it? He’d been a Marine. Now he was fish food.

  “That Minooka kid says he tried to talk them into it, but he’s still meeting resistance from some of the lifers,” Hennessy continued. Charlie knew the term. A lifer was both someone who’d chosen to make a career out of the military, and (from the perspective of the younger, four-years-and-out members) someone who couldn’t function in the civilian world.

  “If we keep shooting them, they might fall in line,” Parker argued.

  “They might,” McCabe said. “Or they might only act like they’re falling in line. We could create a mutiny waiting to happen.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Charlie snapped. “Serve them tea and crumpets, and ask them nicely?”

  Charlie saw McCabe and Hennessy exchange glances. They’d been talking about this behind his back!

  He looked at Parker, tried to gauge his own sentiment. Which side would he come down on? The winning side, Charlie thought. Fuck a duck. Was he really going to have to put those two down? They’d been useful, and seemed willing enough - on the surface, anyway. Maybe that was it. Maybe they were telegraphing their move by saying that shit about a mutiny waiting to happen. Could he move his hand quick enough? Pull his forty-five before they had a chance to pull theirs?

  “I think we need to involve Goddard,” Hennessy said, taking Charlie completely by surprise.

  “What?”

  “He thinks he’s the President,” McCabe shrugged.

  Hennessy nodded. “Maybe it’s time we make use of him.”

  82

  The Skull Mobile

  Container Port

  “Mobile Unit, Sassafras. Over.” Ms Gordon’s voice sounded over the radio. Greg Riley could barely hear it over the ear-splitting sound of AC/DC blasting through the truck’s speakers. He nudged Duke with his toe. This was easy to do, since he was standing with his head and half his torso through the sunroof, hanging on for dear life to the M240, as the large Bosun Mate careened through the Container Port.

  They’d found the gap in the fence between the port and the base - one of them, anyway - and had, first, chased zombies, then slowed and let them do the chasing to the prearranged site chosen for their future demise: the corner of land nearest the Sand Island end of the now demolished bridge, where the Assateague’s 25mm waited. Greg, who’d only fired the machine gun once, briefly, a year and a half ago, had quickly became an expert in mowing down former human beings. Not that it took much talent. The crazy fuckers just stood there, waiting to be turned into zombie-burgers.

  He felt at once both sick to his stomach and more excited than he could ever remember being. A lesser man might have felt his head exploding at the dichotomy - or at the very least have been totally fucking freaked about it - but Greg Riley was apparently not a lesser man. Keep telling yourself that, Greg, he thought. Maybe it’ll keep the nightmares away.

  The next phase of their part in the Grand Plan, was to locate and hook up to a trailer of some sort, suitable for hauling three, fifty-five gallon barrels, to be used for something he really didn’t want to think about, to be perfectly honest. It sounded barbaric. Not that shooting and/or running over zombies was civilized, but...Damn!

  After much searching (which mostly consisted of driving around in zombie-killing circles) they located a likely candidate parked behind the Shipping and Receiving office, near the gate to Sand Island Parkway. Duke and Pat had hopped out, kicked the trailer tires to make sure they weren’t flat, then hooked it to the hitch at the back of the truck, while Greg happily stood watch from the safety of the sunroof machine gun nest.

  They’d just pulled away from that lot and were working their way back toward the Small Boat Station when the call came in. Now if only Duke would turn down the damned stereo so the guy could hear the damn radio.

  As if they’d rehearsed the unlikely action, the music suddenly cut off, and he heard Duke’s voice say: “Go, Sass.”

  “Mobile Unit, Sass. Head to the Small Boat Station. Rendezvous with the Rapid Response Boat.”

  “Roger,” Duke said, his voice calm in Greg’s ear. “Out.”

  “Bad guys on your left,” Pat Querec called on the intercom circuit, tapping Greg’s leg from the passenger seat.

  Sure enough, four zombies were advancing on the truck. It seemed odd and totally wrong. What idiot would run toward a big ass truck, as it came barreling down on them, spewing machine gun fire. But Chief Jones said they’d be doing something totally insane. Man, oh man, was he ever right.

  Riley pulled the trigger. Two went down. The Skull Mobile took out the other two. They flew through the air like drunken acrobats, flipping and cartwheeling, and crashing to the ground - one of them suffering the indignity of having the trailer bounce over his body like a speed bump, as an extra-added bonus. It hurt just to watch.

  “That’s going to leave a mark,” Querec commented.

  Welcome to the new normal...

  83

  Sass Ground Team

  The Tank Farm

  “Get your ass up there,” Jonesy said through the muffling gas mask. Comms without the internal microphones really sucked. Blowing up would suck more. Jonesy wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

  “But I’m scared,” Harold complained, starting to climb the steel ladder attached to the big-ass fuel tank.

  Locating what they needed turned out to be a simple matter of reading the words stenciled onto the sides of the huge tanks. This particular one said: 750K gals. DFM, followed by a long series of numbers. DFM stood for: Diesel Fuel Marine, he knew. The Damage Controlman they’d picked up from the base said they needed to make sure the tank was vented on the top, and so Harold (naturally) got the unenviable task of climbing.

  On paper, he should have sent the most junior guy, who would have been SA Jerry Nailor, but the kid was doing good just staying on his feet. Hell, most of the refugees from the base were in marginal condition, at best, and they should have kept them on the sidelines for this operation, but with only thirty-one people on the crew (thirty-two, if he included the Asshole Professor - which he didn’t), the sidelines were a luxury they couldn’t afford. Nailor couldn’t climb the tank, and DC3 Harrison Dodge was in no shape to even leave the ship, so Harold got the duty.

  They still hadn’t seen a single zombie, which felt wrong in so many ways. Jonesy kept wondering when a hundred or so of them were going to stumble around the corner and find lunch. Nailor, to his credit (or because he didn’t know any better) was holding up well, and Glenn Newby, the Electronics Technician, seemed both alert and relatively relaxed.

  Harold waved from the relative safety of the top of the tank. Seeing him up there, Jonesy was overcome by the desire to smack himself upside his own head. He should have told him to use the elevated position to scout the area. So much for not making mistakes...

  Movement to the right caught his eye at the same moment Nailor tugged frantically on his arm. Two zombies staggered through the gap between the two large tanks nearest them. They both paused, seemingly just as stunned by the discovery as the Ground Team. Not for long.

  With a howl Jonesy swore could be heard all across the entire harbor, they charged.

  84

  Rapid Response Boat

  Honolulu Harbor

  “Talk about destruction,” Jennifer Collins said, as she slowly maneuvered the boat past the twisted wreckage of the burned-out freighter still tied to the Container Port Pier.

  She was doin
g a good job, Lane thought, trying to concentrate on her boat handling skills, and not her well-formed backside on display in the tight uniform pants she wore. He chided himself for being a fool, considering that she truly was young enough to be his daughter, and Malone (standing in the bow near the fifty cal) was young enough to be his son. Concentrating on his daughter, with her family, and his son, with his family, both up in Alaska and both (hopefully) still alive and uninfected, made his job easier - and harder, all at the same time.

  With a jolt of paternal guilt, he realized he hadn’t thought of them for...how many days was it? He didn’t know. What kind of father was he, if he didn’t spare a single thought to his children? He blinked, as if that might click the mouse in his brain to move on to the next image, but it didn’t help. His eyes were suddenly wet, but behind the gas mask, there wasn’t a single thing he could do, except look away from his young trainees. Doing so, gave him the answer.

  Through the plexiglass lenses, the sight that confronted him was nothing less than the devastation of Honolulu. This was why he hadn’t thought of them. Part of his mind scrolled through the list of the world’s cities - London, Paris, Madrid, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Rio fucking De Janeiro. San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, St. Louis, Miami, Anchorage fucking Alaska... He didn’t think of his children for the counterintuitive reason that as long as he wasn’t thinking of them, they might still be alive. Because if he started thinking of them in the context of this destroyed world, then he’d know they were almost certainly dead.

  “Bad guys off the Starboard Bow,” Collins said, snapping him out of his downward mental spiral.

  He followed her pointing finger to the northwest corner of the Honolulu side of the harbor, where it cut in toward the thankfully empty cruise ship terminal. The cruise ships themselves, he knew, had remained out to sea, or headed out to sea when it became clear the Pomona Virus wasn’t going to stop spreading. Whether they were still floating around like some twisted horror movie nightmare, he did not know and did not care, because on that corner of land, on the eastern shore, were what looked like hundreds of zombies, milling around in confusion, and staring toward the distant gunfire coming from Assateague. Two quick thoughts flashed through his mind: the zombies are just down from the tank farm, and, Jonesy turned off his radios.

  “Get us over there,” he ordered, then headed toward the bow, where Malone was waving his arms like he was trying to ward off the nightmare to come. Lane joined the young seaman, and unlimbered the fifty caliber machine gun. Time to get to work.

  85

  Sass Ground Team

  The Tank Farm

  Blood sprayed in a nearly perfect arc, hitting Jonesy’s face shield square, and obscuring his vision. He flipped it up, surveyed the scene, and saw no more zombies. The two who had been there were dead, and his MOPP gear showed the result. That’s going to leave a stain, he thought, bending to wipe the blood from his kukri machetes on the one clothed zombie. The other had been naked, and female, and in such deplorable condition, the horniest man in the world overdosing on Viagra wouldn’t have given her a single thought.

  The blades slid smoothly into the backpack sheaths as he headed back to the team in time to see Harold come scrambling down the ladder. The young man did not look happy.

  “Shitload of zombies,” he shouted, pointing toward the north and west. He needn’t have bothered. The fifty caliber gun fire from the RRB told Jonesy everything he needed to know - except:

  “Did you vent the tank?”

  “Zombies!” Harold shouted again, still pointing.

  “Got that,” Jonesy replied. “Answer the fucking question. Did you vent the tank?”

  “Yes,” Harold snapped. “But forget that shit. We need to leave.”

  Newby and Nailor gathered closer. Newby looked relatively calm. Nailor did not.

  “Everybody take a breath,” Jonesy said. In front of them lay a whole bunch of fuel tanks, each with maybe ten feet between them. To their left, lay the big building, and that was the direction of both Harold’s still-pointing finger and the gun fire. To their right, lay empty pavement, and to their rear lay the harbor, where Tara McBride stood just offshore with the RHIB. They had time. And they had a job to do.

  “Harold, Glen, head to the gap between this tank and that building,” he directed, pointing. “Shoot anything that moves.” Newby moved. Harold didn’t. “Move your ass, Harold.” The young man blinked, nodded, and followed Newby.

  Jonesy looked at Nailor, who seemed to be trying to look in every direction at once. The kid was visibly shaking. “Get a grip,” Jonesy said, punctuating the order with a smack upside the kid’s helmet. They didn’t have time for the niceties. One more good thing about this Brave New World. In the old days, he’d have probably had to sit through Sensitivity Training, or something equally annoying, for that head-slap, but now it was par for the course.

  He pointed to the coiled fuel hose, hoping the kid had enough strength to do what needed to be done. “Let’s get this hooked up,” he said, grabbing the business end and heading toward the tank, just as he heard the distinct sound of two M-4 Rifles.

  86

  USCGC Sassafras

  ISC Sand Island

  “I hear gunfire coming from the Honolulu side!” Samantha Gordon’s excited voice said through the Bridge voice tube. She was in her usual position as lookout, and had continued her new and highly unusual silence around Molly, which confused her cousin to no end. What had she done to piss the girl off? Couldn’t think of a single thing. Then again, she’d been so busy lately, so wrapped up in her own bullshit, that anything could have happened - just as something was happening right now.

  “Bridge, aye,” BM3/OPS Rees Erwin - the helmsman - said into his end of the tube.

  Molly pulled binoculars from one of the boxes beneath the forward windows and scanned, but really couldn’t see anything. The Sass was maneuvering to what had been its normal pier, before the apocalypse - the same pier where she’d almost made the huge blunder of trying to use the Dynamic Positioning System without GPS. Thankfully, this time, their new CO, LCDR Wheeler, had the Conn. He’d said: “If anybody’s going to bang up the ship during this exercise, it ought to be me,” and she was more than happy to let him do it.

  But because they were maneuvering, so as to put the port side against the pier, with the bow pointed toward the harbor, the view toward the tank farm and beyond was obscured. A stab of fear pierced her heart.

  Jonesy’s in trouble.

  And so were the rest of the ground team. She chided herself for letting personal feelings interfere with her job. Besides, nothing had changed. She couldn’t have a relationship with an enlisted man. Period. She couldn’t have what her heart wanted, and her mind ran away from her desires like a scared little girl. She couldn’t have anything but The Mission.

  Bullshit, that inner voice said - for once saying something positive, sort of. It usually just told her to pull her head out of her posterior. So why wasn’t it doing so now?

  Didn’t matter.

  “Right full rudder,” LCDR Wheeler said.

  “Right full, aye,” Erwin replied.

  The mission comes first.

  87

  Seaplane Wallbanger

  Lihue Airport

  “Back and forth,” Spute complained, having stuck his head through the hatchway between the rear compartment and the cockpit for that very purpose. “Back and forth. How many fucking times are we going to keep coming back here?”

  “As many fucking times as we have to,” Barber growled. “Or would you rather be sitting on your ass with the women and the refugees on Midway?”

  “Or fighting zombies on Oahu?” Walton added. Even he seemed to be annoyed at the constant complaining. Jim certainly was.

  He still hadn’t forgiven Spute for bringing that Clara bitch onto their ship, or for leaving her unattended and allowing her to steal their stock of vaccine. Both transgressions could have been the death of them a
ll, either by pirates, or zombies. His only saving grace seemed to be that the conniving slut was now gone, and so couldn’t cause them any more trouble.

  Or could she?

  A chill trickled along his spine - not fear, exactly, and not anxiety, either. More a sense of unease. Where had she gone?

  Jim had argued in favor of a full-blown search for the sailboat she stole. He’d have been happy to locate it, then shoot it full of holes and send it to the bottom, with her still on board, but he’d been outvoted. The wives were mainly glad to be rid of her. Bob-Bob didn’t express an opinion, one way or the other, and Spute’s vote didn’t count. Harvey thought the whole thing was funny, but then, Harvey Walton was functionally insane, so...?

  John, when he was asked about it, had passed it off as a nuisance they didn’t have time for - which was true enough on the face of it. They had just essentially told the CO of Polar Star to fuck off, and were about to begin assaulting Sand Island, so, yeah, they were pretty damned busy.

  Still, Jim didn’t like it. Where had she gone? To Blue Blazes, as his father used to say, when he didn’t want to cuss in front of company? Was she lost out there in the middle of the Pacific? Was she dead?

  Teddy Spute backpedaled - without actually moving his feet. “No, no,” he said. “Nothing like that. I”m just commenting on the fact that we seem to be flying back and forth an awful lot.”

  “That’s the job, Teddy” Barber said. “Accept it, or start swimming.”

  Where was Clara?

  88

  M/V Point of Order

  9.020613N 163.318037W

  “That’s it, baby,” Clara moaned. “Give me your blackjack.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew she’d taken it a step too far. Too much of a cliche, too much like some parody of a Seventies porno. The only thing missing was the porn star mustache that did not adorn her new lover’s face.

  Blackjack Charlie didn’t seem to notice. Of course, she really couldn’t tell, with her face planted in the pillow and her ass sticking in the air as the pirate captain slammed into her from behind. His rhythm didn’t stop, didn’t slow, didn’t change. Either he was too caught up in the passion of the moment, or...