“High altitude, bad,” Jonesy said. “Got it.”
“Succinctly put.”
Jonesy scowled, then pointed at the dim outline in the distance. “That’s Kauai, isn’t it?”
“It is!”
“I can see it,” Jonesy said. “Line of sight...?”
Walton gave him a condescending smile. “Ah, American education,” he said, shaking his head. “Were the Assateague sitting atop the highest peak on the island, we might be able to hear them, and they might be able to hear us, but as they are not...”
Jim Barber poked his head into the cockpit. “Are we there yet?”
“If by there you mean still a hundred miles out, then yes, as a matter of fact we are,” Harvey replied, grinning back at him.
Jonesy rolled his eyes, trying to convey, with the expression, the tedium he’d been enduring. It went over like a fart in church. At least he’d had some form of padding beneath his butt. All his companions had were hard, wooden benches.
“About an hour,” he told Barber, hoping to mollify the man.
Jim growled, then dejectedly returned to the back.
They flew on.
“Holy Christ!” Jonesy swore, gazing in dull horror at the scene growing beneath them.
They had reached Kauai, the first of what could be considered “populated” islands in the Hawaiian chain. The tiny atolls comprising the Western end of the chain might or might not have people on them, and they’d been unable to get a response from any but French Frigate Shoal. Kauai, on the other hand, would. Whether or not they were infected, whether or not the island was overrun by zombies, remained to be seen.
What could be seen, however, turned out to be maritime devastation. Ships of all types and sizes, ranging from small civilian pleasure craft, all the way up to a thousand-foot oil tanker, were wrecked and aground on the shoreline below. The tanker lay on its side, two of its three propellers in the air, a massive oil slick surrounding it. Less than a mile further on along the Southern coast of the island, a fishing trawler looked as if it had lost an argument with the stand of palm trees into which it had become entangled, bow deep, its center-line super structure where the beach began, its stern almost high and dry.
Jonesy’s heart sank with each passing mile. Walton, on the other hand, seemed to get happier and more excited.
“You might think me a cold-hearted bastard,” he said, in his refined accent. “And you would be right. But the salvage down there alone would have been worth millions, before the plague.”
Cold-hearted bastard is right, Jonesy thought, hating the man.
“Now, however, it might be the difference between survival and...” Walton let the sentence trail off, the implication having been made.
Jonesy’s dislike remained, regardless of the truth of what the man said. The salvage would mean the difference between surviving and dying. Everything, everywhere, that could be salvaged, needed to be salvaged. Some of it would be worthless, to be sure, but a lot more would be essential. Cold, hard math.
Jonesy had always hated math. It was why he’d become a navigator, in the first place. Counterintuitive as the idea might be, he believed in fighting fire with fire - seizing any opportunity to wrestle with those things he most hated, as if by defeating them, he could control them. Naive, perhaps, but it had always worked in the past, and he saw no reason to change it now.
They flew over an airstrip, one of many along the shore. “I have fuel stored down there,” Walton said. “We’ll need to stop in on the return trip.”
“Zombies?” Jonesy asked, surprised by how much he was hoping for an affirmative answer. He wanted to kill something.
“As a matter of fact,” Walton said,” “No.”
Anger burned inside Jonesy’s heart. Whether from the devastation he saw everywhere he looked, or from the cavalier attitude of the man in the pilot seat, he didn’t know. They flew on.
The town of Waimea - not to be confused by the bay of the same name on Oahu, known by surfers everywhere for its gigantic waves - looked as if a conflagration had swept through the place, destroying everything in its path. The village of less than nineteen hundred souls, believed to have been the first visited by Europeans in the Eighteenth Century, had burned to the ground.
So much death. So much destruction.
They crossed the bulb of land housing the Port Allen Airport, and then Hanapepe Bay opened beneath them. There, just inside the breakwater, lay the Assateague.
Several small craft were moored alongside, probably in the hope they might find salvation from the Coast Guard. It appeared to have been a lost hope, from the start. Two were tied to port, one, larger one, to starboard, and one each at either corner of the stern.
The decks of all were crawling with zombies.
29
M/V True North
Midway Atoll
“I don’t trust him either, Mom,” Stephanie Barber said, walking down the brow to the pier. “I don’t like him, either. But he’s doing important stuff, so I’m going to help him.”
Her mother, Denise, had been trying to dissuade her from helping Professor Christopher Floyd, their resident Mad Scientist, in setting up the lab for vaccine production. Stephanie countered the argument with the fact of the necessity for the lab, over and over again, for the last half-hour. She’d finally given up, and was leaving.
“Just be careful,” Denise said - again. Stephanie waved, as her feet hit the tarmac, but she did not look back.
The afternoon had turned warm, the sun beating down on her bare head, but the Northeasterly breeze off the ocean kept it pleasant as she walked down the road, past the old seaplane hangar, and turned up Nimitz. She’d spent the morning cleaning off the solar panels, along with Janine Keely, Davy Gordon, and George Stoeffel. They had been covered in bird guano, and now shone in the bright sunlight, taking its energy and converting it to electricity.
They had worked before, but needed constant maintenance, thanks to the presence of several thousand albatross. One of them snapped its beak at her as she walked by - CLACK, CLACK. They were, in all probability, the dumbest creatures she had ever encountered - probably the dumbest creatures on the planet, come to think of it.
There were a number of golf carts on the island, but driving them often took longer than walking, because the damned goonie birds refused to get out of the damned way. They stared in utter stupidity at whoever was driving and clacked their beaks. Each cart carried a broom - not for cleaning, but for sweeping the annoying birds out of the way. Stephanie found it much simpler to walk.
After sitting on her backside for more than two solid weeks as they made the Pacific crossing, she needed the exercise. The backside in question had begun to feel flabby, which would not do, at all.
Not that she wanted to maintain her “girlish figure,” or any nonsense of the sort. Wasn’t much opportunity for showing off her body to achieve a desired effect - although, there were a couple guys on the Sass she might consider. No. Bullshit. Romance was as far from her mind as Astoria, Oregon from Midway Atoll. Simply put, she did not like being out of shape. Really. That was her story, and she was sticking to it.
She’d changed into jeans - wearing actual pants for the first time since they set sail (or steam, or whatever it was you called getting underway in a diesel-powered ship). Her father would hate that she didn’t know the proper terminology. The thought made her smile.
She loved her dad - adored him, though she’d never admit it. Theirs’ had been a relationship of friendly antagonism, ever since she turned the dreaded age of thirteen. He would give her a hard time, and she would give it right back to him, with relish on top. It seemed odd - even alarming to the people who didn’t know them, but it worked, so they kept it up. Her decision to help set up the lab had, to a large degree, been part and parcel of the ongoing fun of pissing off her dad.
The “Nutty Professor,” as they had taken to calling Floyd, would be a chore, and a pain, and a constant reminder of why she disl
iked overbearing men - overbearing people. She had no love for Teddy Spute’s idiot girlfriend, Clara, who acted as bossy and bitchy as they come, always demanding, always complaining if things didn’t go her way.
How could the stupid c-word of a woman have told the pirates they had vaccine? Okay... To be fair, she hadn’t known they were pirates at the time, but telling anyone over the radio, broadcasting the sensitive information through the ether for anyone to hear, had been borderline suicidal. In the first place, when they’d left Astoria, possession of vaccine made from human tissue had still been a serious felony. Everyone knew it - including Miss Tight-Ass Hot Pants. In the second place, it had been the one thing ensuring their safety and keeping them alive in a zombie freaking apocalypse. Such a thing needed to be kept secret, as anyone with an ounce of common sense knew. Of course, common sense had proven itself to be one of the most uncommon things in human history, but still...
She strolled past the Midway Mall, rather enjoying her intellectual evisceration of the people she disliked, as well as the pleasant afternoon breeze, then turned down Halsey, towards the Gooneyville Lodge. Birds interposed themselves into her path, and she avoided them, as if they were little more than part of the scenery.
At first, she had been appalled by the idea of using them for food. After all, they were an endangered species, though you couldn’t tell by the thousands of them covering Midway Atoll. But then, of course, humans were an endangered species, at the moment, as well, so her compassion for the idiotic birds had faded to nothing. Plus, they were delicious. The Sass cook, Gary King, had done some wonderful things with the gamey meat, and she felt certain Bob Stoeffel would only improve the recipes.
As if on cue, her stomach grumbled. She had, in theory, gone back to the True North, after they finished cleaning the guano off the solar panels, to shower and eat lunch. She had showered, but the argument with her mom had taken the appetite right out of her. Now it seemed to be back, with a vengeance. Couldn’t be helped. Too much work to do.
She turned down the unnamed road toward the Medical Building. The road had a name - of course it had a name - but the sign for it had long since disappeared, so she didn’t know it. Not that it mattered, there being only twenty miles of road on the entire island. If she got lost because of a lack of street names, then, number one, she was an idiot, and, number two, all she had to do was keep going, and sooner or later, she’d hit the ocean. She did not, however, want to be there after dark.
Darkness had never frightened her, even as a child, but darkness on Midway took it to a whole new level. Once the sun went down, you couldn’t see shit out there. No street lights, so no way to see where to walk. But sunset was hours away, and she shoved the thought from her head.
The Medical Building looked like all the other buildings - at least those that hadn’t been abandoned. There were plenty of them throughout the island. Most had been built before or during the Second World War, and were now unsafe. But not the Medical Building. Painted white, like all the rest, and made of wood, it held two floors, and had a sign out front, which said: Clinic.
She entered, and called: “Professor?”
He didn’t answer, but she did hear the sound of movement toward the back. She headed into the building, peering inside rooms as she went by, until arriving at the source of the sound in time to hear: “Shit!” And the crash as something heavy fell to the ground.
“Professor?” She called again.
“What!” he snapped, coming into view from a room at the back of the large operating theater. The place was crude, compared to the modern facilities she’d gotten used to at NYU, but she could still recognize it for what it was.
Heart and EKG monitors and a respirator had been pushed against one wall, and a large, ancient gurney lay on its side - apparently the source of the crashing noise. The professor himself looked disheveled, though in truth, he always looked disheveled, so, to her, it seemed a question of degrees.
An autoclave sat on a counter top next to a centrifuge and a blender. The blender seemed familiar, but most blenders looked like all the other blenders, so she couldn’t be sure. Still, she suspected it had come from the True North. If it had, Bob Stoeffel would be pissed, and he was far too large to want to cross, She privately planned to be elsewhere, when and if he ever found out.
“Oh, it’s you,” Floyd said, the derision evident in his voice.
“Yes, Mister Floyd, it’s me,” she said. This needed to be addressed before they went any further.
“What do you want?” He asked, going back to searching through a stack of boxes near the door to the adjoining room.
“Look, Doc,” she said, drawing a deep breath to keep from yelling at his arrogant ass. “We need to get something straight.”
“If you say so,” he replied, but did not bother to look up.
She breathed in again. Calm, Stephanie. Calm...
“Any idiot would know enough to look at a person when they’re talking to them,” she said. “Especially when that person is the only one on an entire fucking island who volunteered to help.” He looked up - though if it was a result of what she’d said, or the fact she’d dropped an ‘F” Bomb, she did not know, and did not care.
“You need help to get the lab set up,” she said. “And you know it. So there are two ways we can proceed. You can show me the common courtesy of any one human being to another in a professional environment, and together we can make this work. Or you can continue acting like an asshole, in which case, I’ll turn around and stroll back down to the ship.” She stared at him, standing straight and tall with hands on hips and a look of fierce determination - every inch her father’s daughter. “Choice is yours.”
It was, she knew, the second such confrontational speech he’d had thrown in his face in as many days, having overheard her father and John Gordon talking about Molly Gordon’s ultimatum on the Sassafras. Part of her wished she’d been there, just to have seen his expression. Then again, she was probably seeing it now.
He straightened from his semi-stooped position and looked at her. He gave her a faint, humorless smile, and nodded once.
“Very well,” he said, formally, and nodded toward what appeared to be a mass spectrometer on a hand cart, tucked just inside the door of the operating theater. “If you could grab the mass spec, and bring it in here...” He pointed to the adjoining room.
She did as he asked, though he didn’t immediately move out of her way as she got to the interior door. He looked into her eyes, his own mere inches away, and then did something so out of character, she almost missed it, due to shock.
“Thank you,” he said, in a small quiet voice. His face flushed - actually flushed - then he looked away and went back to whatever he was digging for in the box.
She pushed the hand truck inside, thinking: Louis, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. She stopped, and tipped the cart upright. Not a chance in Hell.
30
COMMSTA Honolulu
Sand Island, Oahu
“Twenty points!” Scott Pruden yelled, as he ran over yet another former Coastie-turned homicidal maniac. The nude woman bounced off the left front headlight like a pinball and flew off to the side.
“Minus ten, because you failed to run her over,” Amber corrected. She had been appalled - should be appalled - by the senseless violence of what her new-found companion had been doing. Part of her felt sickened by it. They were killing former co-workers and shipmates for sport. It was wrong. It was unconscionable.
Another part of her, however, a part buried deep inside, had been awakened by the constant adrenaline rush of running and fighting and killing. It seemed as if she’d been doing it for days, though in truth it had only been hours. But they were non-stop hours; no time to think, no time to process and consider and dwell on the not-rightness of it all. Karma was a bitch, and when the bill came due, she would be scratching at empty pockets.
Then again, part of her called bullshit on all that touchy-feely
nonsense. It was a zombie apocalypse! She had been and would continue to be killing zombies. In the do or die, us or them world the Coast Guard Base had become, she felt a certain sense of triumph and glee, as the three-quarter ton truck smashed into zombie after zombie as they made their way back to the Comm Center. She was happy about it, glad for the visceral thrill of making the creatures go SPLAT, and saw no reason - whatsoever - to feel the slightest bit bad about any of it.
Conflicted, thy name is Amber, she thought, as Pruden deftly swerved to hit another one, who dodged out of the way at the last moment.
They had burst through the bay door of the warehouse - there being no electricity to make the truck’s door opener worth more than a paper weight - and found themselves out on the concrete pier. It seemed odd, incongruous to have been so devoid of any ships. She couldn’t remember a single time when they had all been gone. That was before the Plague.
There were still zombies stumbling around, of course, but not many of them. She’d been wondering about the low numbers. Hadn’t seen more than five or six in a group yet, but she knew there had to be a whole lot more, somewhere. The Base employed several hundred - both military and civilian - and she hadn’t seen more than maybe two dozen. So where were the rest?
The Chow Hall.
The answer came to her out of nowhere, but she knew at once she was right. Had to be. Zombies had to eat, or they’d eat each other, so where would they go? Where the food is.
Of course, this sudden insight had no effect on their current situation. It didn’t matter where the zombies were, as long as they weren’t where she was. Except...
“Swing by the Chow Hall,” she said.
“Please tell me that ain’t where you stashed your food?” he asked, clearly thinking along the same lines.
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 2): Zombies In Paradise Page 10
