by Jeff Thomson
Or he’s not thinking of you at all...
The nugget of realization sat in the pit of her stomach like an undigested meal. He’s using you. You’re nothing to him but a receptacle, she thought. Just ;like all the men who had used her body - for a time - only to cast it away like yesterday’s garbage when they’d had their fill.
Except Teddy... Teddy had been good to her. Teddy hadn’t treated her like a piece of meat.
Teddy hadn’t defended her against those bitches on Midway.
The thought gave her pause - or would have had she not been in the middle of being fucked. Was that it? Was that what bothered her? Was it that she was once again being fucked (both physically and metaphorically) by yet another man - a man she’d tossed Teddy away for, a man who might very well kill her when he finally got what he wanted from her?
She tried to ignore the maudlin, possibly paranoid (and possibly realistic) idea, tried to ignore the suddenly unclean feeling it gave her, tried to concentrate on the sensations of sex, instead, but it wasn’t working. Why not?
From the first fumblings in the back seat of Daddy’s car with the jock at her Freshman Prom, through high school, and college and everything that came after, she’d known that, first boys, and then men only wanted her for one thing. And she’d given it to them, willingly, happily, with a lust for sex that surprised even herself, from time to time. She loved it, loved the feelings and pleasure and rush of the thousands of orgasms she’d had along the way. And the power. Don’t forget the power.
Men wanted one thing, and she controlled it. There was power in that - authority - and it had given her everything she’d gotten in this life.
Which was what, exactly?
What did she have? What had she ever had?
The pirate captain grunted behind her, his thrusts taking on a more aggressive, more insistent pistoning, as he neared his own climax. She wasn’t even close, yet.
Did that matter? Had it ever mattered?
She mentally slapped herself, as his pelvis slapper her backside.
“That’s it, baby, she said. “Cum for me.”
This was how the world worked, how it had always worked. How it would always work, forever and ever, Amen.
“Oh, God!” the pirate said, as he pulled out and spewed his seed all over her bare back. It felt hot. It felt sticky. It felt like...
Power.
Why? Because he was the Top Dog, the Man in Charge, the Pirate King. And she had him right where she wanted him.
89
Ground Team
The Tank Farm
“Run away!” Jonesy shouted, as he loped the arm off a lunging big son of a bitch who’d been about to rip Harold’s head off.
Harold needed no engraved invitation. He ran like the hounds of Hell itself were snapping at his heels. Glenn Newby, however, moved like a trained Coast Guard Ninja - which was weird, because he hadn’t had the training. Double tap, back step, double tap, back step, each of his 5.56mm M-4 rounds hitting their target with a precision Jonesy didn’t think he could match, himself. The New Guy was impressing the living shit out of BMC Socrates Jones.
For his part, Jonesy sheathed his right-hand machete, pulled one of his forty-fives, and started matching Newby’s measured pace. The Marine Gunny at Lejeune would have been impressed. The maneuver was textbook. Where had the guy learned it? He made a note to ask later, when they weren’t otherwise engaged in trying not to be killed.
He tossed a look over his shoulder, gratified and a little surprised to see Nailor still tying the fuel hose off to the side of the concrete shoreline. Harold had stopped his headlong retreat and was helping him, and McBride was bringing the RHIB back to the place where she’d dropped them off. He’d have been filled with pride in the teamwork, except, for the thing about not wanting to get eaten by zombies. Pride could come later.
“Are you guys coming?” Harold shouted, his voice muffled as usual by the gas mask, but still audible.
Time to go.
90
The Skull Mobile
USCG Station Honolulu
“Ow! Fuck!” Greg Riley shouted, as the truck pulled a violent U-turn just past the Small Boat Station (slamming Greg’s back into the side of the sunroof) and began to back down toward the Sassafras. “A little warning next time.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Duke replied, braking to a stop in line with the Buoy Deck, where the cutaway bulwark had already been removed, exposing the deck itself, and the pallet of three blue barrels waiting for them.
Lane Keely, Sherman Malone, and Jennifer Collins had already moored and were tying the ship off to bollards on the pier, fore and aft. It looked haphazard, compared to the way they normally moored a ship, but Greg supposed it would be good enough for government work in a zombie apocalypse. The plan was to offload the pallet directly onto the trailer with the Sass’s Buoy Deck crane, then throw off the lines so the ship could get away from the pier and thus avoid any unpleasantness that might result from the sudden appearance of a zombie horde.
Greg had about three seconds to contemplate how unlike any evolution he’d ever witnessed the current situation seemed, before the three of them piled out of the truck and made ready to receive their new cargo. Said cargo was the weirdest aspect of all. The barrels contained nothing more or less than homemade Napalm.
Gus Roessler and Harrison Dodge (Greg still couldn’t get over the guy’s name) had mixed the stuff yesterday, apparently following the recipe of the guy who got killed blowing the bridge - a tidbit of information that didn’t exactly Greg him full of confidence. But wait, there’s more...
As if the questionable nature of the explosive they’d be hauling across the wreckage of the base and Container Port wasn’t enough, the next phase of this truly insane plan (in Greg’s not-a-bit humble opinion) was to haul it to a preselected location, position the barrels with some form of strategy of which he was not aware, then get the zombie horde currently being chewed by the Assateague to break off their suicidally stupid attempt to get at a patrol boat in the harbor, and, instead, play follow the leader to the Napalm, with the Skull Mobile acting as bait. Sure. Right. What could possibly go wrong?
91
Sass Two
Honolulu Harbor
“Get us to the Station,” Jonesy said to Tara McBride, as he hopped onto the RHIB, the last to leave the tank farm. They’d cut it awfully damned close. The lunatic battalion of pissed off and hungry assholes had cleared the last tank and were staggering their way toward the concrete edge of the pier. Two of them actually made it as Tara goosed the throttle and propelled them away. As if to demonstrate their enthusiasm for rending human flesh, the two kept going when they reached the water’s edge, and in a bizarre parody of a thousand Saturday morning cartoons, seemed shocked when they discovered nothing but air beneath their feet.
The tail and dorsal fins of a gig-ass Black-Tipped Shark made a bee-line for the splashing zombies. Jonesy turned away before he could see the inevitable reddening of the dirty harbor water from infected blood. Not that he was squeamish about such things, but the human mind could only absorb so many nightmare images before cracking, and his was well-past overload.
“Oh fuck,” Nailor gasped.
“Don’t see that every day,” Newby said - making it a comment, rather than an expression of horror. “Should I shoot the shark?” He asked Jonesy.
“Can sharks catch the virus?” Tara asked, sounding curious.
“Zombie sharks?” Harold asked, sounding freaked-out.
“No,” Jonesy replied with an authoritative voice - not at all sure whether or not his answer was one hundred percent bullshit. “Higher-order primates are the only ones susceptible.” It sounded reasonable, and knowledgeable, and quite a bit like he actually knew what he was talking about. Keep telling yourself that, Boy.
He switched his comm unit back on. Time to check in.
“Sass, Sass Two. Over.”
“The prodigal son returns,” Wheeler answered
in his Boston accent.
“Mission accomplished,” he replied. “Though I hereby volunteer to not be the one who turns on the spigot.” Somebody was going to need to go back into the tank farm and open the valve on the tank end of the hose - somebody whose name wasn’t Socrates Jones.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Wheeler replied.
“I would appreciate it,” Jonesy said. “Heading to the Station for Phase Two. Please tell me Duke is there.”
The voice of his Bosun Mate friend cut in. “I am,” Duke said. “Why aren’t you?”
“I stopped for coffee,” Jonesy replied.
“Well hurry your ass up,” Duke said. “It’s getting kinda busy here.”
92
USCGC Sassafras
ISC Sand Island
“Zombies inbound,” Molly’s voice sounded over the 1-MC.
John, sitting more or less comfortably in the Buoy Deck crane doghouse, leaned to the side and took a look, instantly wishing he hadn’t. A crowd of the fuckers were, indeed, stumbling their way toward the pier from the direction of the Base Mess Hall.
His hands were poised on the crane controls, waiting for that idiot, Peavey to give him the order to hoist the barrels of napalm. He’d been waiting for far too long. The question remained, however: what the Hell was Peavey waiting for?
The truck and trailer had been siting there, in position, for what seemed like half an hour, although John’s watch told him it had only been a bit under seven minutes. Still far too long. It would have been far too long before the apocalypse. Zombies, however, added an extra incentive for swift action, but apparently, the Warrant Bosun/former Marine Science Technician didn’t seem to be in any great hurry.
In point of fact, all the moron seemed to be doing was leaning over the rail to stare at the incoming bad guys. And those bad guys were getting ever-closer to the good guys, still waiting on the pier.
Granted, the zombies still had several hundred yards of empty pavement to cross before coming into contact, and their typical staggering and stumbling wasn’t exactly fast, but - seriously - what the fuck? Do something, you idiot, he thought, but did not say.
Peavey was supposed to be in charge. Peavey was supposed to be running the evolution, and giving John the hand signals to hoist and boom out. Peavey was supposed to be doing something, god dammit, besides staring at the zombies. He was about to take matters into his own hands, and start hoisting the load on his own, when movement caught his eye.
Sass Two zipped into the small boat dock and Jonesy leapt off before it had even come to a complete stop. He looked to the right, toward the idling truck, looked toward the left, at the incoming zombie army, then broke into a run, heading toward the Buoy Deck.
Pausing briefly to give Peavey the universal spread arms of a non-verbal what the fuck, he pointed directly at John, then raised his right hand and began twirling his forefinger in the air: raise the hook. Thanking the sun, the moon, the stars, and anything else non-ecclesiastic he could think of, John obeyed, and the load slowly raised off the deck. Jonesy dropped his right hand, and raised his left arm ninety degrees out from his body, with his thumb extended: raise the boom. John did. He made a fist, and John stopped booming up, then started booming left when Jonesy pointed in that direction. The pallet with its highly explosive cargo cleared the Buoy Deck and hung over the concrete pier. Jonesy raised both closed fists: stop boom, stop hoist.
John watched him point to Duke, and watched Duke spread his arms in his own non-verbal what the fuck? The radio in John’s ear cracked and Jonesy’s voice broke through the silence.
“Drive under it, moron.”
Duke gave him a thumbs up, hopped in the truck and eased the trailer back until it was directly under the suspended load. Even before Jonesy could point to him and give the signal for lower the hook, John was already doing it. Technically, he should have waited for the command, but one glance down the pier at the approaching bad guys threw standard procedure right out the window.
Harold and that electrician - Newby or New Guy, or whatever the fuck his name was - joined the gang on the pier. Harold seemed to be looking everywhere at once - as were both Pat Querec and Greg Riley - but Newby only had eyes for the zombies. John watched him raise his M-4 and take aim.
93
Ground Team
ISC Honolulu
“You trying to blow us up?” Jonesy said, gripping Newby’s M-4 by the barrel and lowering it toward the ground. He thumbed toward the pallet, which sat perhaps a dozen feet away. “Homemade Napalm.”
Newby’s eyes grew to the size of baseballs. Okay, not really, but the guy’s eyes showed he understood just how close he came to an act of suicidal stupidity. He nodded, and relaxed his stance. “What do we do?” He asked. Jonesy was gratified to hear no panic in his voice.
Duke, Greg Riley and Pat Querec were strapping the barrels onto the trailer. It wouldn’t do to have them tip over while they drove to their destination. No. That wouldn’t do at all. Glancing toward the incoming homicidal maniacs, he answered Newby’s question by drawing the twin kukri-machetes from their backpack sheaths.
“Time for slice and dice,” he said. “Help strap that load,” he added, then turned away and headed for the bad guys, calling back over his shoulder: “Duke, we need your hammers. Harold, grab your bat.”
“Are you nuts?” Harold’s voice asked through the receiver in Jonesy’s ear.
“Do what you’re told,” Duke barked.
There were maybe twenty-five of the crazy fuckers headed their way. Twenty five looked like two hundred, when Jonesy considered the odds of surviving this hand-to-hand. But he was damned if he’d start firing guns around barrels of homemade Napalm. He didn’t even want to sneeze around them. Not after the bridge. Not after Dan McMullen.
He spun his blades and advanced.
His earpiece crackled with Peavey’s voice. “What do you think you’re doing?” The man sounded shrill and frightened.
“Inviting them over for tea,” he replied, adding enough sarcasm to fill a small super tanker. What the fuck does it look like? He thought.
“Get back to the truck!” Peavey shrieked. “Get back to the truck!”
Jonesy ignored him. Two reasons: One, the asshole was obviously an idiot; and Two: the first zombies had come within striking distance.
Slice, slice, spin, kick to the chest. Keep moving. Slice, slice, spin.
A hammer swung through his peripheral vision and connected with the skull of a skinny, naked man who’d been reaching for him. To his left, Harold introduced a large man wearing a tattered tee-shirt and the remnants of board shorts to his spiked bat.
Jonesy sent a snap kick into the face of a tiny woman who looked like she might weigh ninety pounds, soaking wet. She might have been pretty once, but the insane rage on her face made her the ugliest bitch he’d ever seen. She flew back into the clutching arms of man with dred locks and a Metallica shirt.
“I order you to return to the truck!” Peavey’s voice screamed. Jonesy answered by chopping his right-hand machete into the skull of the heavy metal enthusiast.
Harold, still to his left, seemed to be having trouble with his bat - to whit, it was stuck into the chest of a dock worker in dirty overalls. The zombie was hanging onto it for dear life, in spite of having just had his chest caved in and pierced by the makeshift weapon, and the struggle was pulling Harold down.
“Let go, idiot!” Duke’s voice called through the earpiece. Harold didn’t seem to hear. Either that, or he didn’t want to relinquish his only hand weapon in the middle of a fight with a gang of zombies. A big fucker tackled him, and suddenly, Harold was on the ground and covered in screaming zombies.
94
USCGC Sassafras
The Flying Bridge
“Do something!” Samantha shouted to no one. She was alone on the Flying Bridge, watching in horror as the battle unfolded before her, through tear-streaming eyes.
She saw Jonesy wade into the zombies
, all alone, as she was all alone, with every nerve in her body humming like high-tension wires, the electrical impulses zipping and zapping through her brain, heading straight for OVERLOAD. Then Duke and Harold joined him, and the tension eased - just a bit, just enough to avoid tripping her internal breakers. But now, as Harold disappeared beneath the swarm of writhing bodies, it felt like her head might explode.
She heard a noise behind her. Not a loud noise, not anything worth interrupting her horrified vigil, but then a thought bloomed inside her head, and anger replaced the fear, overwhelming it, building toward rage.
Molly. It had to be her, and this was All Her Fault!
She spun, ready to lunge, ready to attack and gauge the eyes out of her cousin, her family, the bitch who’d ripped out her heart. She stopped. A woman stood there, at the bottom of the ladder leading to the Signal Bridge.
One of the new girls. Lydia, something. Why was she here?
Even through the plexiglass lenses of the gas mask the woman wore, Samantha could see the shock in her eyes. Was I really going to attack Molly? The thought scampered through her brain like a herd of feral cats, scrambling for a few scraps of food. She backpedaled until her butt hit the forward rail, as the woman stepped backward, herself, raising her hands in clear surrender.
“Are you okay?” The woman - Lydia - asked, shouting. Even through the muffling mask, Samantha could hear the Southern drawl. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No!” She said, nearly shouting. “It’s...” She let the words hang in the air, and instead, turned and pointed toward the pier.
Lydia climbed the few steps onto the Flying Bridge and - a bit hesitant (who could blame her?) - joined Samantha at the rail, in time to see Duke grab a zombie and heave him (her? it?) off the pile. Sam watched as Jonesy dropped one of his blades, pulled a pistol, and started firing, the pop-pop sound echoing through the desolated landscape. He chopped at one zombie, shot another, kicked a third, as Duke continued tossing pieces of the pile through the air.
