by Jeff Thomson
And tomorrow...? What would that bring? What new challenge? What new horror? Would they be ready for it? It was all fine and good to spout the Coast Guard motto: Semper Paratus - Always Ready, but how could anybody be ready for this New World?
Bobby V dropped his gear onto a spot directly across the basketball court, and made his way toward her. The other eighteen members of the shore team scattered themselves around the perimeter of the gym - everybody apparently wanting their own piece of the white wall against which to lean - amid grumbling and soft, barely audible cursing. Nobody swore too loud. Nobody wanted to piss off Vincenzo. Herself included, she supposed.
He arrived in front of her, his face expectant, waiting for her next orders. This was mere form, of course. She outranked him, technically. But in much the same way nobody questioned the words or actions of Master Chief Wolf too closely, she wasn’t going to push her rank around with Bobby V. Still, she needed to come up with something to tell him.
“Let’s set a Watch Bill,” she said. “Not sure it’s needed, given the security measures taken by the locals who’ve been surviving here since the beginning,” she added. “But this is unfamiliar territory for us, so let’s do it anyway.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied - or, at least, not openly contemptuous of her inexperience and general stupidity - then turned and went to carry out her orders.
Unfamiliar territory, she thought, then heard - off in the distance, almost inaudible above the general sounds of the shore team getting settled, but still chillingly clear enough to know, without question, what the sound was: the keening howl of a zombie. Unfamiliar territory, indeed, she thought. Here, there be monsters...
To be continued...
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