We moved on again, and found a few more rigs, but they were either useless, hostile, or overrun. There were several of those oil rigs on a ship things too, and one of them, the Ensco DS-5 (stupid name for a ship, I know) took us on for a couple of nights. We traded news and they were a good bunch of men and women. They knew that the US was gone, and didn’t want to go back to the mainland, but fuel was going to be a problem over the next year. They were talking about acquiring some type of fuel ship, but that might be a battle as well. The oil produced from the rigs was useless to them until it was refined, so they also talked about snagging a refinery ship, in which case they would have an indefinite amount of fuel.
They fed us and told us to watch out for pirates. Yes, pirates. As in bad guys with boats who want your shit. Probably effing rednecks. Redneck Pirate Zombies. Sounds like a bad comic book.
We wished them luck and they did the same. They also gave us the coordinates of a huge oil and gas platform about two hundred miles south of New Orleans that was accepting survivors. That’s where we headed, and it took the better part of the day to get there. It was almost ten at night when we saw the platform off in the distance. It was light up like a Christmas tree, and it was BIG. We hailed them (like on Star Trek) and they told us to come on up and that we wouldn’t be fired upon. We would have to be inspected by a doctor and may need to surrender our weapons.
Both of those things filled me with dread, and I not-so-absentmindedly rubbed my collarbone bite. One time I submitted for inspection, I was shot in the dome. Not my favorite. This would be interesting, that’s for sure. I didn’t think we would part with our weapons, so I didn’t know if they would allow us on board anyway.
They did.
We pulled up to the lower docking area, and there were a dozen or so boats there already, including two huge ship oil rigs not unlike the Ensco DS-5. I was to learn later they are called drillships. We were met by some of the oil rig security force, all armed to the teeth. A doctor was there and she inspected all of us for bites. Again, the bite on my collarbone looked like any other boo-boo, as did the one on the back of my shoulder, but the one on my leg screamed zombie bite to everyone who saw it. And see it she did.
“When did this happen?” she asked pointing to it.
“Almost three months ago,” I lied.
“Pre-outbreak? Who bit you?”
“Bar fight. I knocked the bastard down and the drunken prick grabbed my leg and gnawed on it.”
She furrowed her brow. “Well, it’s healing nicely, but human bites can be extremely serious. You’re lucky it didn’t get infected.”
“I think I’m luckier that the guy was alive when he bit me.”
She smiled and I was in love, even though I was lying my ass off to her at our first meeting. “Agreed.”
She kept looking at me with her gorgeous brown doe eyes, and I swear to Christ my heart skipped a beat. ‘Course I was standing in my shorts so I had to spin quickly and get dressed. It had been a long time since I had gone twenty toes, and this chick was hot, so Mr. Happy had come to town. And the little bastard decided to set up shop in my pants. Little bastard might not have been the best choice of words to describe my penis. Rest assured, I could beat you to death with it, and we’ll leave it at that.
So my stiffy and I left the room, and the doc might have even giggled. Utterly unprofessional and degrading, but holy shit it was cute too.
Then came the bad stuff. The rig security team, which consisted of a couple of marines that had found their way to the rig in small boat, and some roughnecks with guns, demanded that we give up our guns. They were nice about it at first, but when we said no, they flipped the safeties of their weapons. So after all the shit we had been through, we were going to have a firefight on the lower dock of an oil rig.
One of the roughnecks was looking at me with a half-smile, like he really wanted to drill me, but they were all kind of staring at Ship. His size does demand attention. Alvarez stepped forward to try to calm things down, and every one of the rig guys raised their weapons and pointed them at him.
Alvarez had his M4 on a single point sling on the front of him, and he slowly raised his hands.
“We’re taking your guns,” Half-smile said, “and then we’ll decide what to do with you.”
This shit was about to get very real.
“If you try to take our shit we’re all gonna die,” I told him, “all of us, you too.”
Mexican standoff. Except we were shit out of Mexicans. Well, Alvarez was of Mexican descent, so I guess he counted.
Half-smile turned into no smile, and I know in my heart of hearts he was about to start a very quick and very deadly gun battle, when one of the roughnecks, a scrawny guy, stepped out from the crowd.
“Greg?” The guy’s eyes actually bugged out of his head. He moved past Alvarez, who still had his hands up, and grabbed one of our guys. “Greg!” To my amazement, the guy hugged one of the soldiers and started to cry. Everybody still had their weapons ready, but now nobody seemed to know what to do.
“Hi, Bobby,” Greg said.
Bobby backed up a step and said, “Shit! Guys, this is my brother in law! I know him, for Christ’s sake put your guns down.” They did, and so did we, but Half-smile was pissed about it. One of the marines used his radio to call up to the rig, and in a couple of conversation-filled minutes, some rig royalty showed up. The guy was dressed in jeans and a white T shirt. He walked up to us with his hand outstretched. “Gentlemen, and lady, welcome to Atlantis.”
Atlantis
It always amazes me what humans, as a species, can accomplish. This structure we were now on was a fucking marvel. Firstly, it was big. I mean, huge like a skyscraper huge. Maybe not as tall, but I guarantee you there was just as much space on this rig as in most office buildings. They had thought of everything too. They make their own water, nearly endless supplies of fuel and power. Food for fifty people for a solid year, and not shit food, good food. Really good food. My first meal aboard Atlantis was lasagna that would have made a fat Italian nana soil her granny panties. They even had a movie theater with over a thousand relatively new titles stored on a couple of giant hard drives.
Hot showers, hot meals, a medical staff, an engineering staff, a gym, and plenty of things to do. I always thought roughnecks were all musclebound dumbasses, but every one of them has some kind of degree, and a lot of them are Ship-quality smart. No, not ship like a boat, Ship like my Sasquatch-esque genius pal.
Did you know that a lot of the bigger oil rigs float? They don’t sit on giant pilings that are sunk into the ocean floor like I thought. They have those big pilings, but they are just for weight and balance. The actual rig is anchored to the bottom with even bigger weights, with bunches of twelve-inch cables attached to the underside of the pilings extending all the way to those weights I just mentioned.
Genius, I shit you not, there were even plans to get some farms going on the helipad.
Of course, there are the bad things too. There were a hundred and thirty two people now on this rig, and it was made for a crew of seventy. A lot of the original crew left when the last few helicopters or boats took off for the mainland in search of their families. Many of the crew stayed though, and eventually Atlantis started taking on survivors.
There were a few military guys, and a bunch of civilians, even a few kids. All of whom now had important jobs. Some were security, some cooks, and some did whatever they were told. When the elevator to the docks below was locked up, nothing without ninja skills was getting on board either, so defense from bad guys who didn’t have flying or floating military vehicles was sound.
There had been an outbreak of the plague in the early days when an older roughneck had had a heart attack, turned, and killed another guy. The two of them were put down fast, and since then steps had been taken to alleviate this problem should it occur again. Not everybody had a weapon, but every door had some type of lock, and if anybody saw an infected, they would start screaming, and
someone would set off the fire alarm. When the alarm sounded, everyone was to get to a locked room and get a weapon. Blunt objects, such as wrenches, rebar, pipe, and other heavy tools were everywhere already, so close quarters weapons were prevalent. Security would use the fire location system to see where the fire alarm had been tripped, and ten heavily armed and armored men would be scouring the area inside of two minutes. There hadn’t been another death since the first ones, so the system hadn’t been tested, but it sounded good to me.
What didn’t sound good to me was the math. There was food enough for the crew for a year, but we now had double the capacity that was designed to occupy the rig, so that food supply would go fast. Austin, the guy in charge, said he would not turn away anyone who wasn’t infected either, so we had the potential to overfill this place fast should more survivors show up. He did say that we were the first survivors they had seen in two weeks other than the crew from the Ensco DS-5.
The thing that bothered me the most about this place was the name though. I might not be a history buff, but I’m fairly certain that the mythical city or continent of Atlantis fucking sank. What a stupid name for something that is supposed to be sea worthy. It was like naming a jet liner Lynyrd Skynyrd.
All the positives outweighed the negatives, and eventually even Ship had to admit this place was great.
After that great lasagna dinner, our group of twelve was asked to meet with Austin for news of the mainland. All the information that the rig had was from the television, the internet, and survivors. We met and talked, and one of the biggest toughest roughnecks on board cried like a baby when we told them about Keesler. His whole family had been there.
“So it really is all gone then,” Austin asked.
“No,” I answered, “no, it isn’t. We’re all alive, and if we do things correctly, we can live a long damn time.”
Have you heard the term ear-splitting silence? Yeah. I experienced it first hand for a couple seconds there.
And then everybody clapped and we lived happily ever after.
Yeah, right. Remember when I said I was a magnet for bad shit to happen? It just might be true.
We integrated nicely into the Atlantis family. So much so, that I thought of them as my family. Every person on the rig, even Half-smile, who I know you were thinking was going to be a bad guy, and who’s name ended up being Ralph, was like a brother or sister or father or mother to me.
We all lived well, ate well, and got along. There weren’t any castes or I’m better than you’s. We initiated trade with four other rigs and some drillships, and soon we had friends all over the gulf. Most of the mechanics on all the ships and rigs had left to go back to the mainland during the initial stages of the outbreak. So when I went on a visit to another rig, the Atwood Condor, I helped repair their forklift and a drive motor on one of their windmills. They had the same type of engineer geniuses, but couldn’t figure out the old Cat lift or the mill motor, so I helped them. Word got around, and I became the official mechanic of all the rigs and drillships in our family.
We lived happy and healthy for almost three months. Had plans to go mine some earth to start the farms, and were having a meeting about it when one of the radio operators came down to talk to Austin. He told him he had the Prague on the line, and they sounded concerned. Prague was another rig a few miles away, far enough that we couldn’t see their lights at night. Austin left with Ted (the radio guy), and he came back about twenty minutes later. He sat down, and I could tell he was itching to tell us something.
I interrupted the earth-stealing meeting and asked Austin what was up.
“We may have a concern. Jeff on the Prague just told me that a massive container ship, the Majestik Maersk, just steamed by them on a heading of one hundred ninety degrees. They tried to contact the ship, and even tried to get aboard, but they couldn’t. The vessel is travelling at a speed of six knots, which is too fast for the current, but seemingly very slow for a ship of that size.”
“So how does that impact us?” somebody asked.
“One hundred and ninety degrees puts them on a collision course with us.” He held his hands up when the room got a little antsy. “Now the odds of this ship hitting us are extremely remote. It’s a big ship, yeah, and we’re a big stationary target, but it would be exceptionally unlucky for it to come within a mile of us, really.”
Fuck.
Exceptionally remote? Extremely unlucky? Do you remember who I am? Fecal attractor. Double fuck.
I truly believe he was going to leave it there, and go back to the meeting, but Ship passed him a sheet of paper, which he read aloud: I don’t do unlucky. We need to get aboard to evaluate that vessel.
Before Austin could ask how, Ship had scribbled and passed him another note: The Beaumont has a helicopter. At some point my prestigious comrade here will have to repair it, we borrow it and call it a trade. At the very least the other rigs will want us alive to help if something bad happens, and this vessel could kill us all.
“He’s right,” a bunch of folks said at once. Murmurs of assent and worry went around the table, and we shelved the soil appropriations summit for the time being and talked about this possible threat. It never got heated, none of our meetings did. That was how our life was: good.
Things got thrown around and talked about, but it was finally decided that a small team would go aboard the Majestik Maersk and see what the hell was happening.
Something I haven’t mentioned up to now was that everybody had been calling me Captain. They did this because I was the guy who flew our boat to Atlantis. Jesus, that statement sounded ridiculous… Anyway, they asked me if I could sail or at least stop the Majestic Maersk, and I immediately told them no. One of the drillship captains was visiting, and we brought him into the meeting and told him what was happening. He seemed considerably more alarmed than we did.
“That ship was built this past year,” he told us, “and it will have the new course correcting software in the wheelhouse.”
We all stared blankly.
He shook his head. “Means that if the course is set for one ninety degrees, that’s where she’s gonna go. Somebody get me a chart.” Two guys ran out for a chart. “The software accounts for moderate weather and current, and will auto correct heading should the need arise. The captain or his designee is still supposed to be in the wheelhouse. Your rig being only five hundred feet wide will probably be enough for her to miss you, but we should still take a look.”
Austin asked the captain if he would go with the team to check out the Majestik.
“Of course,” was all he said.
A kid came running in with a chart, and we spread it out on the table using coffee mugs to hold it straight.
“This is the Prague,” the captain said pointing at a red dot. He pulled a red grease pencil from thin air and a folding straight edge from his pocket, “and this is Atlantis,” he drew a line connecting the dots, “gimme the coordinates of the ship?” The radio guy read off of his piece of paper. The captain found the coordinates on the map and traced a line from them on a one hundred and ninety degree heading. Wouldn’t you know it, that fucking greasy red line ran dead across our little red dot.
It just isn’t fair.
Austin and the captain assured us that there was no chance this ship could hit us, but I wasn’t so sure. Lady luck had abandoned us in the past year and had been replaced by something downright malicious.
The captain pulled out a compass, not one that tells direction, one of the little pointy things that you always see ship captains flipping back and forth on a map in the movies. He did the same thing mumbling something about six knots and then looked at his watch, “Should be able to see her by morning.”
The helicopter from the Beaumont arrived just before midnight. A team of twelve of us would go, including the captain, Ship, Babe, Alvarez, Greg, and myself. Ship was an engineer and a computer genius, I was a mechanic, and Alvarez, Babe, and Greg were our muscle, along with five other guys with
guns and a medic. Not my doctor hottie. We hit the rack at just before one AM, and were back up by five thirty. I stretched, got my gear and met the fellas at the helipad.
It was absolutely the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen. The sky looked like it was on fire to the northeast. We were boarding the helicopter when the radio guy came running. He handed something to the pilot, and the pilot looked at his co-pilot like some shit was about to happen. The pilot handed the something, which was a computer readout, to the captain, who then showed it to us.
“This is printout of a reading from the Atlantis Doppler radar. We need to get on that ship soon.”
The printout was color, and there was a big fucking green swath coming in our direction. I didn’t know what a radar depiction of a hurricane looked like back then, but I sure as shit do now. As it turns out, the weather was the least of our worries with that damn Majestik Maersk.
Ship of Fools
It took thirty minutes to reach the ship. They had painted it a shitty sky-blue, and it had MAERSK LINES on the side in letters you could undoubtedly see from the moon. We circled the ship once in the chopper, and Captain Bob (no shit) pointed out that there were no life boats or those orange floaty circle thingies left on board. There were tents and stuff on the deck, and it looked as if some of the containers had been used as housing, at least from the air. Captain Bob said that there weren’t that many containers on board, but there had to be a thousand of them. No people though, and nobody answered the radio even with repeated attempts.
The ship was massive. Much, much bigger than the Atlantis. It was easily a quarter mile long, and tall, really, really tall. We circled a few times, and had the pilot, Billy, called back to Atlantis to get a couple of boats out just in case. Billy looked at the sky and it was black as shit in the distance, but the wind here was light and variable and the waves were almost non-existent. Billy looked nervous and that made me nervous.
Chaos Theory: A Zombie Novel Page 17
