by Jeff Thomson
“No...” Samantha stammered, trying to act as if she were in on the joke, passing it off as a bit of sophisticated adult humor. Naturally, she failed miserably. But, in for a penny... “Just concerned about your safety.”
“Don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “I’m indestructible. Didn’t you get the memo?”
“Must have missed it,” she replied, her voice sounding for all the world like a scared little kid. Just kill me now...
“Seriously, though,” Molly said, favoring Samantha with a final expression of concern. “Polar Star is sending us their helicopters. They’ll be here in about an hour.”
Jonesy scanned the surrounding devastation. “Where are they planning to land?”
“The base, I guess.”
“Are they nuts?” He asked.
Molly shrugged. “Probably.”
He stared off toward the distant base. Sam could only imagine the thoughts going through his head.
Thoughts that don’t include you, her Inner Nag said, though the comment was hardly necessary. Deep down, away from the schoolgirl crush, away from the jealousy, away from the raging adolescent hormones, she knew there wasn’t a hope of a chance of a prayer Jonesy would ever choose her over Molly. Or any grown woman, for that matter. She was a kid - just a kid - and in his eyes, she’d always remain that way.
“You sure I can’t just quit?” He asked. “Take a break? Maybe find a secluded beach, with a cabana and a pool boy named Serge to fan me when I get hot, and a bikini-clad waitress named Conchita to bring me fruity drinks with umbrellas in them?”
Molly gave him a fly-shooing motion. “Go...do what you do,” she said. “And quit trying to be charming.”
“Can’t help it,” he replied.
Truer words..., Samantha thought.
Molly stared at him for a moment, a look of obviously affectionate exasperation in her eyes.
She’s in love with him. The thought popped into Sam’s head, fully-formed, realized, categorized, and accepted.
It wasn’t any kind of Grand Conspiracy, meant to destroy Samantha’s heart - to rip the feelings out of her chest and stomp on them like a herd of buffalo. She honestly loves him.
“Carry on, Chief,” Molly said, deadpan.
He snapped to exaggerated attention. “Aye, aye, Ma’am!” he said, snapping a truly ridiculous Royal salute, worthy of that crazy Brit, Harvey Walton. Then he turned, lowered his sunglasses, gave Sam a wink that nearly turned her heart into a pile of goo, then hopped down onto the Signal Bridge, shot down the ladder to the Boat Deck, and disappeared from sight.
Molly turned and stared at her for a long moment, then said, softly: “We need to talk, don’t you think?”
110
USCGC Polar Star
21.784021N 160.317245W
“Captain on the Bridge,” BM1/OPS Jeff Babbett called out, as Gideon Hall came through the interior door. LTjg Carol Kemp actually expected him before now, but the Captain of a ship keeps his own time.
“Six-Five-Eight-Five is fueling now, Six-Five-Eight-Three is hovering and keeping watch for bad guys,” she reported, not waiting to be prompted, as a good junior officer should.
“Very well,” Hall said. “Time to completion?”
Carol’s heart sank. She didn’t know the answer.
Ensign Devon - the ambitious little prick - however, did. “Pumping rate on the fuel truck is slow,” he said, his eyes flickering a look of joyful malice in Carol’s direction. “But the first bird should be fueled and airborne shortly, and the Eight-Three should only take thirty minutes from the time they land.”
“Assuming the fuel truck has enough fuel,” Carol interjected, eager for the chance to show the Bull Ensign who was boss. “Which it may not, since the seaplane has been drinking off of it for the last couple of days,” she added. “According to the chatter we’ve overheard on the radio.”
If Hall noticed the competition between the two officers, he didn’t comment by either word or expression, but then, Carol wouldn’t expect him to, given his habit of keeping his cards close to the vest. She, on the other hand, knew exactly what Ensign Jaime Devon was doing. It’s what he always had done since reporting aboard shortly before the ship left Seattle, a lifetime ago, when Carol had been the Bull, and he had been fresh from the Academy.
She’d known officers like him her entire career - all two and a half years of it, plus the four at the Academy. Granted, it wasn’t a lot of time, in the Grand Scheme of things, but her mother always said there was a world of knowledge out there for anyone who kept their eyes open and their mouths shut. Ensign Devon clearly didn’t follow the same cautionary edict.
“I’m sure Lieutenant Commander Sagona knows what he’s doing,” the little weasel countered.
Carol glanced toward Babbett, who rolled his eyes. When she’d done her cadet summer on the three-hundred seventy-eight-foot USCGC Midgett, one of the High Endurance cutters out of Seattle, the BM1/OPS who’d trained her (and with whom she’d had one wildly inappropriate night of drunken sex in Kodiak, Alaska) kept stressing how and - more importantly - how not to act, by pointing out the behavior of certain officers and saying “Don’t do that.” She’d taken it to heart. One of the things he’d shown her was the tendency for some officers - the ones he felt convinced had been picked on as children - to overcompensate for their own feelings of inadequacy by accentuating their self-perceived superiority and patting themselves on the back so hard it was a miracle they didn’t throw out their shoulders. Devon was one of those.
Hall pointed to the Ensign. “Contact Six-Five-Eight-Three and have them confirm.”
“Yes, sir,” the ambitious little prick said, all-but leaping toward the Air Comm radio.
The Captain turned to Babbett. “ETA to Honolulu?”
The BM1 glanced at his watch, did a quick mental calculation, and replied: “Approximately zero-six-forty-five tomorrow. Shortly after sunrise.”
“Very well,” the CO said, then turned and addressed Carol. “And the Sassafras?”
111
USCGC Sassafras
First Class Berthing
“Skating again, as usual,” Duke said, entering the two-man stateroom Harold shared with ET2 Scott Pruden, using the general term for dicking off. “You lazy bastard.”
“But I’m injured,” Harold protested from his bunk. “I received life-threatening wounds. I could still be at death’s door.”
“Nice try,” Jonesy said, coming in behind Duke. “But we talked to Professor Asshole. You’re going to be fine.” He had a bruised shoulder, bruised ribs, and a mild concussion, but otherwise he’d gotten off easy, considering he was dog-piled by a gang of homicidal zombies.
Christopher Floyd - asshole though he was - had done a decent job patching up their shipmate. At least, that’s what Weaver had told them. The corpsman-turned- 25mm auto cannon gunner had stopped in to check on the young man before heading off to...do whatever his new part in Wheeler’s Grand Plan might be.
Things were starting to get really damned complicated. Jonesy balanced on a thin line between resenting their new CO, because of a desire to maintain more control on what they were doing in this insane world, and being immeasurably glad he didn’t have the responsibility anymore. Toss in that he’d had maybe three hours of actual sleep in the last month, and...
Okay...Bit of an exaggeration. He wasn’t quite that sleep deprived. He was tired, of course - exhausted, if he wanted to avoid gilding the lily about it - but mindless sleep deprivation wasn’t so bad, all things considered. Nothing a week at some resort, with drinks made in a blender, and in the company of a willing (Molly) woman wouldn’t cure. It could be worse. He could be dead.
Harold, however, clearly was not.
“Okay Duke,” he said, slapping his large friend on the shoulder. “We’ve confirmed he’s not a corpse. Time to get back to work.”
Duke grunted, still staring at his protegee.
“Thanks for checking on me, guys,” Harold s
aid.
“Oh, dude, you should have seen him,” Jonesy said, thumbing toward the Bosun Mate. “I almost thought he was going to cry, he was that worried about you.”
“Fuck off,” Duke retorted.
“Really?” Harold asked. “I didn’t know he cared.”
“I don’t” the big man replied. “Just don’t want to have to break in a new guy,” he added, with a grumble. “Enough of them around as it is.”
“Sure, sure,” Harold said.
Duke took a menacing step toward him, waggling his pointed finger. “If you ever do anything that stupid ever again,” he said. “I will kick the living shit out of you.”
“Any more of this sentimental latent homosexuality, and I’m going to hurl,” Jonesy said.
“Blow me,” Duke, replied, then turned, and walked out into the passageway.
112
M/V Point of Order
9.020613N 163.318037W
Clara Blondelle awoke, feeling sore - but it was the good kind of sore she got after a night of vigorous fucking. Old Blackjack had left her screwed and blued, but (once she’d examined her body to be sure) not tattooed Finally, she thought. She’d made it to the big leagues. At last, she’d found herself the Top Dog. Woof, woof, she chuckled inside her mind. Who let the dogs out? She might get up and start twerking, if this big bed weren’t so damned comfortable.
She examined her surroundings from her current, luxurious position and smiled. The room was opulent, grand, expensive. She’d done it. She was now in the catbird seat, the woman behind the throne, the queen of the roost.
She could - and would - take advantage of this lofty status. She could - and would - be the power behind the throne, influencing and (if necessary) manipulating things to her liking. Sure, it would take delicacy and finesse. Sure, it might entail some risk on her part, since powerful men also tended to be violent - and this particular specimen of that rarified animal was, after all, a pirate. It would be a challenge, to be sure, but she felt certain she was up to it. Hell...might even say she was born for it. She’d waited all her life, dreaming, plotting, hoping for just such an opportunity. She gazed in triumph at her surroundings. Well, she thought, with supreme satisfaction. You made it, girl.
The door popped open, without ceremony - without so much as a knock - and Blackjack Charlie entered, followed by that Australian hunk. What is this? She wondered, feeling the heat rising from the tenderest of her sore body parts. A threesome? A bit soon for such an escalation in the sexual aspects of her new relationship, but who knows? New world, new rules, new sexual adventures.
Blackjack stopped in mid-stride and stared at her, as if he’d forgotten he’d left her there. The hesitation did not last.
Pointing, he said to the Aussie: “Take her and put her with the rest of the crew sluts.”
112
USCGC Sassafras
Kapalama Basin
“Mother superior jumped the gun,” Jonesy sang out through the filter mask, keeping in time with the Beatles song Happiness is a Warm Gun, from The White Album. Wheeler picked the musical stylings for this phase of the operation, and Jonesy had to admit to being impressed.
In his experience, people had questionable tastes in music, art, books, TV - hell, everything. His own tended toward the classic and traditional, Duke’s leaned heavily into the hard core, and Molly? He wasn’t sure what hers were, after the frequent absences they’d had during their odd and prolonged relationship.
He’d known her since she was a teenager, and tastes change. Back then, she’d liked Cold Play, which he couldn’t stand, and her reading tended toward the esoteric and intellectual, whereas his preference was pulp fiction, such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. She preferred chick flicks and that insipid scourge of human sensibility known as Twilight. He preferred old school movies, like John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Clint Eastwood’s Outlaw Josey Wales.
Her tastes had no doubt changed as she grew into adulthood, but when they were on the Healy, he’d been far more interested in the wonders within her uniform pants than the mysteries of her mind. Sexist, true, mildly misogynistic, perhaps, but honest.
And as for LCDR Wheeler, their new Commander Officer, who hailed from Boston (which he made known to all who would listen was the Center of the Known Universe), there was no telling what he would like. He was older, came from a completely different part of the country, and he was an officer, which as anyone knew, had a tendency to remove one’s soul upon becoming commissioned. And yet, he liked the Beatles - and not just the I Want to Hold Your Hand variety, either. The White Album - thanks to that sick fuck Charlie Manson saying it gave him subliminal messages to start a race war - was infamous, but as a part of the Beatles song book, it stood separate from the likes of Sergeant Pepper, or Let it Be. So to pull something like Happiness is a Warm Gun out was telling, to say the least.
What’s more, it fit. They’d taken station near Assateague, fresh from slaughtering who the Hell knew how many zombies at the north end of Sand Island, and were floating, more or less stationary in Kapalama Basin, waiting as the crazy and diseased bastards shuffled and stumbled their way into the kill zone, where they’d left the Napalm. The music from the Sass served to draw them, as did what sounded like blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa, coming from the Patrol Boat. Apparently Frank had taken over as music director.
“Just about got them all where we want them, don’t you think, Chief Jones?” Wheeler said, coming up to him on the Flying Bridge.
“Yes, sir,” Jonesy replied.
“Good to see you changed into your regular uniform,” Wheeler observed.
It was true. After the (admittedly) theatrical I quit, civilian clothes seemed appropriate, but once time came to get back into the game, resuming his uniform sounded like a good idea.
“I was trying out a new ensemble,” Jonesy countered.
“I think we should stick to the original, don’t you?” Wheeler replied. He wore the full gas mask. Jonesy couldn’t blame him. Even with the application of liberal doses of Vapo Rub, the stench of Honolulu was overpowering. And it was about to start smelling like petroleum-based barbecue.
“Perhaps you’re right, sir,” he agreed. The kill zone had filled with homicidal maniacs, all trying their luck at the impossible task of getting to the live, sane, potentially tasty humans on board Assateague and Sassafras. “And I think we can probably start the fires, as it were.”
“I concur,” the CO said, his Boston UR sounding like AH. “Would you like to give the order?”
“With pleasure,” Jonesy replied, releasing the commco from his belt and bringing it to his lips. “Assateague, Sassafras, Two-one.”
“Go, Sass,” Frank’s voice replied.
“Open fire.”
113
Lihue Airport
Lihue, Kauai
“Just shoot the fucker, Spute,” Jim growled - again. He’d said so often, it had almost turned into a mantra. That’s it, he thought, the last straw having been reached and stomped into the ground. Next trip to Midway, we’re dropping his ass off.
The guy didn’t have it in him. Not his fault, really. Some people could deal with the fact they were killing what used to be humans, some couldn’t. Spute fell into the latter category. But coupled with his past failures - Clara Fucking Blondelle, chief among them - it made him fundamentally unsuited for this shit.
They were holding a perimeter, about fifty yards around the fueling helo, taking out any zombies that staggered into sight. There weren’t a whole lot of them, maybe a dozen so far, but one was too many. An older gentleman from the town, wielding a scoped deer rifle, took the shot and dropped the large woman.
“Dolores Hennepin,” Bob McMaster, on the other side of Jim from Spute said, bringing home the awful realization that the Lihue survivors were killing neighbors - people they’d known for years and seen on a regular basis. Had to be tough.
“Sorry for your loss seems pretty lame, at a time like this,” Jim offered.
>
“Never liked the bitch,” McMaster replied. “Bossiest, most opinionated busybody on the planet.”
“Ah,” Jim said, lame as could be. What else could he say in response to the revelation?
Harvey disconnected the fuel line from the second helicopter, tapped on the windshield, and twirled a raised finger at the pilot, then backed off toward the fuel truck, sitting some thirty feet away. The aircraft engine immediately began to whine.
“That’s all she wrote,” Jim called, as the flight mechanic, Mark Columbus, climbed back through the side door and slid it shut. “See you on the next trip,” he said to McMaster, and headed for the Wallbanger.
The helos would get to Honolulu before the much slower seaplane, but Jim really wasn’t in any hurry. That wasn’t exactly true. He sincerely wanted some serious rack time, and there was at least a remote possibility he’d get some when they landed. Anything was possible, but given past experience, he wasn’t about to start holding his breath.
“Well, that was fun,” Harvey said, as Jim dropped into the copilot’s seat. “Shall we carry on?”
Jim surveyed the result of their latest trip to this once quiet and picturesque tourist destination. Once again, bodies were strewn across the tarmac. The thought that perhaps they should harvest a few more spines for the Mad Doctor crossed his kind, but didn’t stay long. He was too tired. They were all too tired.
“A bit of butchering first, or...?” Harvey asked, as if reading his mind.
“Fuck it,” he yawned. “Let’s go.”
114
USCGC Sassafras
Kapalama Basin
“This should be fun,” Tara McBride said, slipping her arm around Lydia’s waist.
It made her uncomfortable. Hell, most things were making Lydia uncomfortable these days. It often felt like she needed to crawl out of her own skin and find more suitable accommodations. In Aruba, or Tahiti, or some other tropical location that wasn’t Honolulu Harbor in an apocalypse, waiting to detonate homemade Napalm to slaughter a whole bunch of what were being referred to as zombies, but were really just diseased humans.
