by Jeff Thomson
The team at the truck were struggling with the straps, trying to get the Napalm tied onto the trailer. On the Buoy Deck, she saw her father centering the crane over the deck, and a couple of the new people, securing the hook into its anchor. The new officer - that Peavey idiot - stood at the rail, waving his arms at apparently nothing. No one was paying any attention to him, everyone was busy doing what needed to be done.
Just below her, on the Bridge, she saw the new Captain - Wheeler - staring out at the same scene, with that new woman (Amy?) and Molly standing next to him. A stab of jealousy ran through her young body, joined with the anger already firmly in possession of her psyche, and coalesced into a ball of rage in the pit of her stomach.
But that’s crazy, the Inner Nag said. She didn’t do anything to you. She didn’t rip your heart out, herself. She probably doesn’t even realize she hurt you.
Samantha brushed the thoughts aside. The fact that every single one of them held the ring of truth just made them more annoying. Bad on Molly for not noticing.
More shots rang out from below, drawing her attention back to the melee on the pier.
“Oh my Lord,” Lydia said, next to her. She’d almost forgotten the woman was even there.
Duke heaved the last zombie - a monster - off of Harold, who lay still on the ground. The sight sent her heart plummeting like a skydiver without a parachute, down and down, disappearing into the black abyss. Without a moment’s hesitation, the big Bosun Mate scooped Harold into his arms and took off running toward the ship, as Jonesy covered their retreat, firing repeatedly into the crowd of zombies, that seemed to be growing, rather than shrinking, as he backed his way toward the ship, as well.
She saw her father jump from the crane doghouse, race down the ladder onto the Buoy Deck, and arrive at the opened side of the ship, right as Duke arrived. Two of the new guys - whose names she still did not know - got there just as Duke tossed Harold into their arms, turned, and headed toward the truck.
95
USCGC Sassafras
The Bridge
“Take him to the Mess Deck,” Molly said into the radio, as she headed toward the 1-MC. Ripping the mask off her face, and catching some of her hair in the process, she keyed the microphone and just managed to get: “Professor Floyd, lay to the Mess Deck on the double,” out when the stench hit her like one of Duke’s hammers.
Both Bridge doors were open. She ran to the one not on the pier side, and arrived at the rail with seconds to spare before her lunch went spewing into the filthy water of Honolulu Harbor.
Whether the regurgitating reaction of her stomach was due only to the smell, or to the combination of it, and the redlining levels of stress she’d endured since the evolution began, she had no idea, and less inclination to care. Out went the soup and grilled cheese Gary King had whipped up from yellow slices of what might be considered cheese in the most processed and artificial extreme of the description, and bread that had been frozen until that morning. Fresh anything, save fish or Goonie Bird were things of the past.
Why culinary availability might be going through her mind at the current moment baffled her, completely, but her brain grabbed onto it like someone hanging by fingernails above a thousand-foot precipice. Anything, any morsel of thought not associated with what was happening on the pier, on the other side of the ship, was a suitable life ring, like those hanging from brackets along the superstructure, stretching aft and below her, toward the Fantail.
The image of Harold’s limp, and possibly lifeless body being tossed to her uncle on the Buoy Deck danced across her mind’s eye, like a mocking court jester, as if trying to goad her into a complete meltdown, which seemed like a more probable outcome as each second passed. No please. Not another one. Not another death.
Her stomach convulsed, her knuckles growing white as they gripped the horizontal railing. How much more could she take? How much more could any of them take?
Jonesy.
The name flickered inside her head, like a shorting light fixture. Jonesy. Blackness. Jonesy. Blackness.
Another light, red and angry, pulsed, deep down, and far away, but nearing with every second. He’s still alive, you idiot, the crimson neon seemed to be saying. It was still in the recesses, still in the darkness of her psyche, but she could read its words - if just barely - in fleeting moments of illumination. He’s still alive.
And so are the others. So get off your ass and do your job.
Her thumping heart slowed. The throbbing in her temples eased. The self-induced hallucinations disappeared. Jonesy was still alive. And she had a job to do.
96
The Skull Mobile
ISC Sand Island
“Take in Line Two,” Molly’s voice boomed through the 1-MC. It sounded clear - not muffled. She must have taken off her mask. Is she nuts? Jonesy thought, but he was too damned busy to think anything more of it. Pulling the eye of Line Two from the bollard on the pier, he shoved it toward the water, watched it drop and splash without catching on anything, then he was moving again, running toward the Skull Mobile.
Duke was already climbing behind the wheel - a maneuver made uncoordinated by the fact that he kept cocking his head toward the Sass deck, where John and the new people were carrying Harold into the ship. He looks freaked. The idea shocked him.
The big bastard had never expressed any emotion but glee or anger since this whole shit show began, but Harold getting dog piled had clearly pushed him past the point. Jonesy could relate.
Was he alive? Was he dead? Worse still, was he going to turn zombie and were they going to have to put his ass down? That little though balloon exploded in his gut like one of McMullen’s satchel charges, the thought of which might as well have been a kick in the nuts.
No time, the asshole inside his head declared, loud and clear. He glanced down the pier, at the zombies, who were nearing the trailer full of napalm. No fucking time.
“Pile in,” he shouted, though, in truth, everybody but Newby and Nailor already had. He pointed at Nailor. “Head to Sass Two. Tell McBride to haul ass into the bay.” The kid didn’t need a second invitation. He took off at a run. Just in case, though, he hedged his bets by keying the microphone and saying: “McBride. When Nailor gets there, head into the harbor. Rendezvous with the RRB.” He didn’t bother giving the next obvious order, for the Rapid Response Boat to get underway. Mister Lane Keely knew what he was doing.
The first two zombies reached the back of the trailer. “Ramming speed,” Jonesy said, as he got in the passenger seat.
“Roger that,” Duke replied, jamming the truck into reverse and flooring the accelerator.
One of the insane bastards got slammed to the side, but the other fell under the right wheel. The trailer bounced over it, tilting crazily to the left. “You boys better hope you did a good job of securing those barrels,” he said toward the back seat, where Glenn Newby, Greg Riley, and Pat Querec, were falling into each other, as the zombie rolled under the truck tires. They didn’t respond, and didn’t need to, as evidenced by the fact the barrels remained solidly on the trailer. Duke jammed the truck into first gear, and rolled back over the zombie. Jonesy just caught a glimpse of the Sassafras pulling away from the pier, as the Skull Mobile pulled a large U-turn and headed toward the kill zone.
97
USCGC Assateague
Kapalama Basin
“Assateague, Skull Mobile,” Jonesy’s voice blasted through the receiver in Frank’s ear. “Headed your way. Don’t shoot us.”
“Party poopers,” Jeri Weaver said.
“Oh yeah,” Frank replied. “Where’s their sense of humor?” He switched to transmit. “Roger, Skull Mobile.”
“Better fire a few more rounds, just to be sure,” Jeri said, cutting loose with a burst of the auto cannon named Belinda. A gaggle of zombies on Sand Island Parkway disintegrated in blast of blood and incendiary ammo.
They’d been killing a lot of the fuckers, that was for sure, Frank thought. At least dozens, and
probably hundreds lay in a mass of guts and gore and brains and bone, spread all over the approach to the now-defunct bridge, and throughout the North end of the container port. Some of the other zombies were gnawing on the bits and pieces. The word ghastly came to mind, and it was that, to a tee.
Problem was, there were one Hell of a lot more of the insane former humans wandering around Sand Island. Hopefully, the Napalm would take care of them. Of course, none of the carnage they were creating or would create would provide specimens for their resident Mad Scientist, but if you want to combat an apocalypse, you were going to break a few zombified eggs - or a shitload of them.
The Kill Zone, as they’d designated it, was a bare patch of pier and tarmac that lay where the shoreline banked toward the bridge. A big-ass crane sat at the corner, and another, smaller one, book-ended the area, about a quarter of the way down. Assateague had been firing Belinda and otherwise making a general commotion at the North end of the island, about five hundred yards away; the idea being to draw all the zombies there, kill as many of them as they could, and keep the rest more or less occupied, so that the Ground Team could set up the Napalm in relative safety. Of course, the current concept of relative safety would be unrecognizable to anyone who arrived in a time machine from the pre-plague past, but the odds of that happening weren’t worth the effort to calculate.
The Skull Mobile came into view. “Okay boys,” Frank said into the intercom. “Show time.”
98
USCGC Sassafras
Honolulu Harbor
“I’m a scientist, dammit, not a doctor,” Christopher Floyd argued, fully aware that he was doing a bad impersonation of Bones McCoy, from the original Star Trek.
“Twenty-five points for the SciFi reference,” Gary King said. “But a zero on my give-a-shit meter. Fix him.”
The young black kid lay on the First Class Mess Table, along the forward bulkhead of the Mess Deck. It might have seemed incongruous, if not for two facts: the first was that the Mess Deck of any military ship was designated to also serve as an operating room, during time of battle. John had explained to Floyd - seemed like months ago - that the requirement to “uncover,” or take off one’s hat upon entering the Mess Deck was a sign of traditional respect for the sailors of the past who’d died, as the result of wounds. Of course, no one had, in the history of either the Sassafras, or the True North, but the tradition remained. The second reason it didn’t seem incongruous was that Floyd simply didn’t give a rat’s ass.
The Professor grunted, which was about as close to acknowledging the cook’s order as he would get. Fix him, he thought. Am I supposed to wave a magic wand? “Cut the exposure suit off him, and let’s see what’s wrong,” he said, then waited for the older black man to slice the MOPP gear away.
The kid was unconscious. That much was obvious. He was breathing, and, therefore, still alive, but beyond that, Floyd had no idea. The wrist pulse felt steady, if a bit slow. Nothing to worry about. Peeling back an eyelid, the pupillary response seemed relatively normal - although that was, in itself, a relative term. Not being a physician meant he didn’t really know what normal should look like.
That wasn’t exactly true. He understood basic physiology, and pupillary reaction was one of the quickest ways to gauge the effects of certain drugs, so he knew what it should look like - more or less.
A cursory exam of the body, once the suit was removed didn’t show any obvious puncture wounds or bites. The latter was the big one. Bites were bad. He didn’t need several doctorates to understand that much. There could be internal bleeding, but he couldn’t tell, just by looking. There could also be spinal damage. Nothing he could do about that. Either the act of wrestling the kid onto the Mess Deck had worsened his condition, or it hadn’t.
“Alright,” he sighed. “Take off the rest of his clothes, and let’s get started.
99
The Skull Mobile
The Container Port
“Slow and steady wins the race, and keeps us from getting killed,” Jonesy said, as they wove their way through the maze of shipping containers laid in what appeared to be haphazard fashion, all across the Port. He knew this wasn’t the case, of course, knew there was both rhyme and reason for their placement, but everything else was chaos, so why not this, as well?
“Right,” Duke grunted.
Jonesy looked at his friend, his shipmate for the last seven months (or was it eight?), which felt like a lifetime, and may as well have been. They’d been through Hell together - figuratively, if not physically - and they were still alive. What about Harold? He thought. Was he still alive? Would they have to do yet another burial at sea?
A group of seven zombies appeared as they rounded a corner. The assholes were faced away from them, probably staggering their way toward the blast of music coming from Assateague. Was that...Joan Jett? Well I don’t give a damn ‘bout my bad reputation...
Duke growled and floored the accelerator. “Careful, you idiot,” Jonesy warned. “Explosives,” he added, thumbing toward the trailer. “Remember?”
Duke ignored him, zeroing in on the target.
“Hell yeah!” Pat Querec shouted from the back seat - or he would have if there had actually been a back seat. The three of them - Querec, Newby and Riley - were wedged as best they could be into the empty cargo area, with an assortment of coolers and boxes of ammo. The coolers were for storing Professor Floyd’s specimens - should they actually find any spare time to collect them, and should they find any that hadn’t been blown to blood pudding by Belinda. The boxes of ammo were for the M240 machine gun clamped to the edge of the wide open sun roof. “Ramming speed!”
“Don’t encourage him,” Jonesy tossed over his shoulder.
“Don’t need any,” Duke replied, moments before the front bumper of the Big-Ass-Truck collided with the mini-swarm of zombies in its path. It missed three of them entirely, sent two spinning off to the left, one off to the right, and one flipping head over heels past the windshield, and over the roof, where it bounced on the back end, then dropped between the truck and the trailer, where it was subsequently run over by the left trailer tire, sending the platform which should have remained steady - considering the homemade Napalm it carried - leaning and twisting to the right.
“You worry me,” Jonesy said.
“Get over it,” Duke replied.
This behavior was so unlike his friend. Sure, he was as surly as they come, when he wanted to be - which was most of the time - but this was something else, something deeper, something darker. Jonesy knew what it was, of course: Harold. The big bad fucker was worried about his sidekick, the only surviving member of the Sass Deck Force, other than himself. In spite of all the grumbling, all the smacks upside the head (which were usually warranted), all the growling at him to shut the fuck up, when it came right down to brass tacks, Duke actually cared. Will wonders never cease?
That was all fine and good, in a touchy-feely, kinder-gentler sort of way, but Jonesy needed Duke’s head in the game, not hovering over the young kid hopefully being worked on aboard the Sass. The final, fatal alternative couldn’t be considered - not yet, not now. What this situation needed was sarcasm.
“You’re worried about Harold,” he taunted.
“Fuck you.”
“It’s okay, dude,”“ Jonesy said. “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell is over. You can admit it.”
“Fuck you.”
“You looove him,”
“Go fuck yourself.” Even through the muffling gas mask, the menace was loud and clear.
“Duke and Harold, sitting in a tree,” Jonesy sang.
“One more fucking word, and I’ll cave in your skull.” It sounded like Duke might actually carry through on the threat, but at the same time, it also sounded like a bit of the familiar asshole humor was edging its way back into the Bosun Mate’s voice.
“You’ll have to wait for another time,” Jonesy countered, pointing. They had reached the kill zone - and there were zombies. Time to ge
t busy.
100
The Walmart (Part Two)
Lihue, Kauai
“Zombies, incoming,” Bob McMaster said, as he cut loose with his Uzi.
Jim Barber saw them, registered their presence, labeled them as the threat they were and opened fire with one of his forty-fives. The Thompson submachine gun lay strapped across his back - kept there for the simple reason that .45 ACP ammo was getting scarce. Unfortunately, this particular Walmart didn’t stock firearms in its Sports Section.
It did, however, carry beer, which they were hurriedly scooping into the shopping carts. Wouldn’t want to open any of them any too soon, Jim mused, the random thought flitting through his brain the way random thoughts do. Happened all the time. Of course, having it happen during a zombie apocalypse while on a speed-shopping spree, surrounded by the insane assholes in question, was probably not ideal, but there you go. Best to ignore it and move on.
His head felt fuzzy, disconnected, and mildly painful, from sleep deprivation, as if he were on the tail end of a hangover following a three-day drunk. He’d never actually had a three-day drunk, but he’d experienced the two-day variety, and this felt worse. He could extrapolate. At the moment, however, he was too busy shopping to care.
They’d flown the first load of supplies back to Midway, dropping off the survivors from Base Honolulu. In keeping with the pattern they’d established, they then hopped back into the Wallbanger and returned to Lihue, because they hadn’t gotten everything they needed from the first run.
Armed shopping was the new normal, he supposed, as the last of the latest batch of zombies hit the deck with fatal gunshot wounds. Spute, and three of the Townies, having exhausted the alcoholic possibilities, started scooping dried rice and beans and stuffing mix into their carts, which were already half-filled with canned soup, pasta, and bottles of spaghetti sauce. The beer-filled carts were already on their way out to the waiting truck.
