Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 2): Zombies In Paradise

by Thomson, Jeff

  Another zombie - big fucker - staggered around the corner of a blue container and ran at him. Two shots, center mass, and it dropped, just like the others. He checked the magazine: two rounds left; dropped it into his waiting hand, stuck it in his back pocket, pulled another from the pouch on his belt - all smooth, all unhesitating, all under the watchful eyes of Davis McGee.

  The man had proven himself useful. Hell, he’d been damned-right enthusiastic about “salvage,” as they’d taken to calling it. Charlie liked the word piracy, but he could see others might have a hard time with it, so they used a euphemism. Whatever worked, right?

  If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit, he thought, with an internal chuckle. Even when - especially when - the “them” in question turned out to be yourself.

  McGee popped the seal on the blue container with a crow bar, and swung the huge door open, then reached inside for the manifest. “What’s behind door number three?” He said, almost mumbling as he deciphered the jumble of part numbers and hieroglyphic abbreviations. “Nope...plastic piece of shit toys, looks like,” he said. “From Taiwan, no less.”

  “Make America Second Rate Again,” Charlie said, bastardizing a political slogan.

  “Nobody buys American, anymore,” McGee echoed.

  “Ain’t any America left,” Charlie said, and the banter died like the half-dozen or so zombies they’d taken out since boarding. Sometimes the truth really did hurt.

  McGee popped another seal on another container, reached inside, pulled out the manifest, and stared in disgusted disbelief. “Jesus wept,” he said, crumpling the papers and tossing them back into the container, which he closed with a bang.

  “What?” Charlie asked.

  “Fucking sex toys,” McGee said. “Can you believe it?” He wiped his hands on his chest, as if they’d gotten soiled by opening a door and reading a piece of paper.

  “Great,” Charlie said, moving aft through he maze of containers. “We can open a store when we get to Palmyra.”

  “Call it Dildos R Us,” McGee suggested.

  “We can have a sale on butt plugs,” Charlie joked, as two more zombies shambled around yet another corner. He opened fire.

  39

  USCGC Sassafras

  23.2811148N 172.890001W

  Harold’s shotgun blast took the zombie square in the chest and pulped the Hell out of it. Blood sprayed everywhere, plastering what had been a pristine, white bulkhead. The noise made Lane’s ears hurt, even inside the helmet.

  His bosun’s eye looked closer, saw the salt residue, and a bit of running rust on one of the stanchions. So much for pristine.

  The sixty-five-foot motor sailor, Bottomless Pit, had great lines, and all the rigging seemed intact. Somebody (presumably the guy Harold just blew away) had put a lot of care and love into her, in spite of the derogatory name. The Mainsail and Flying Jib were up and billowing in the stiff breeze. They’d needed to station the RHIB off the Port side at about a quarter-throttle, just so Lane could get a line on her. He found the winch controls, next to the steering console and pressed the starter button. No sound, but the digital readouts beside it glowed red, so they had power. Good. One less thing to worry about.

  He lowered the Mainsail, but didn’t see an indicator for the Flying Jib. They’d have to lower it the old fashioned way.

  Many of his contemporaries thought the technology took something essential away from sailing, but Lane thought they were misguided, at best, and morons, at worst. Work smarter, not harder. It had been his father’s catch-phrase for as long as he could remember. The Old Man died a few years back, sparing him the horror of the Pomona Virus, but his pithy wisdom remained.

  Why work at something when there were tools available to make it easy? Made sense to him. To Hell with tradition.

  Moving forward, they found the body of a woman. Half her torso was gone - and not from any shotgun blast. It had been ravaged. Then it had been eaten. His stomach lurched at the sight, but nothing came up. Was he getting used to this shit? Maybe so...

  “That’s just fucked up,” Harold said. He looked a bit green around the gills.

  “Best not to look at it, then,” Lane said, sidestepping the corpse, careful not to step in the congealed blood. He undid the nylon line from the cleat, and lowered the Flying Jib. One job down, who knows how many left to go...

  40

  Medical Clinic

  Midway Atoll

  “Fuck, it’s dark out there!” Jonesy swore, entering the makeshift lab.

  Stephanie Barber watched him stagger in, carrying a large and (judging by his stagger) heavy, blue and white cooler. He dropped it onto the first table with a thunk, just as her father came in behind him.

  “Excuse my English,” Jonesy said, smiling at her. “But damn, it’s dark on this island. We couldn’t see more than five feet in front of us.”

  “And those god-blasted goonie birds just wouldn’t get out of the way,” Jim (her father) said, giving her a one-armed hug.

  “Yeah, yeah...,” Professor Floyd said. “I’m sure you were traumatized by the experience,” he added, as she gave him a disapproving stare. She’d been trying all afternoon to school him on the proper way to act around his fellow human beings. At times, she’d thought he might actually grasp the concept. Then his mouth would open, he’d say something else asinine or insensitive, and they’d be right back at square one. He returned her look with one of his own, which may, or may not have been contrite. “What have your brought us?”

  “Today, we have a special on infected zombie spines. A cool half-dozen for only ninety-nine ninety-five,” Jonesy said, in a decent imitation of a southern huckster.

  “How old are they?” Floyd asked.

  “Ranging in age from early twenties to early forties,” Jonesy said, in a snarky tone. “Didn’t really stop to check ID.”

  “How long ago did they die?” Floyd asked, showing great effort to remain civil, and almost succeeding. Almost.

  Her father looked at his watch. “Ten hours,” he said. “A little less.”

  Floyd’s expression darkened. “Have they been on ice the whole time?” He’d been irritating in his insistence that the samples needed to be kept cool, but not frozen.

  Jonesy flipped open the lid of the cooler. Inside were several plastic-wrapped, narrow, yellowish tubes, about three feet long, the plastic smeared with blood. “Ice packs on the bottom, covered by canvas, as you ordered, Professor Floyd, sir!” He said, tossing the scientist an exaggerated salute.

  If Floyd took notice of the sarcasm, it was not apparent in his manner. He removed one of the packages and examined it in the florescent overhead light. He nodded once, then handed the package to Stephanie. “You know what to do.”

  “And so do you,” she replied, not taking the spinal tissue.

  He stared at her in annoyed exasperation. She folded her harms across her chest and returned the stare, not caring one bit for his attitude. He sighed after a moment of impasse, and said: “Thank for you for your help, gentlemen.” The words and delivery were stiff, and sounded as if they might have hurt coming out, but at least he said them. She took the proffered package and headed toward the sealed back room. “Now if you’ll excuse us,” Floyd added. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  She thought of the procedure he’d been drilling into her head as she was teaching him human decency in polite society. They did have a lot of work to do. And it would not be fun.

  “See you in the morning, Dad,” she called over her shoulder, and disappeared behind the large rubber sheet delineating the hot room. She already felt tired, but shook it off. Time to get to work.

  This would be an all-nighter.

  41

  COMMSTA Honolulu

  Oahu, Hawaii

  “That’s the last of them,” Scott Pruden said, behind her. Amber turned, the glare from the portable, nine-volt flood lights they’d used, blinding her.

  “You have officially earned the
title of Juergen McAwesomeness,” she replied, meaning it. He’d accomplished in a few hours what would have taken her days. The solar panels were hooked up and ready to start storing power. Of course, at the moment, they were useless, it being well after sunset, and all, but they were one step closer to getting the power back on.

  She returned to gazing out into the darkness, the after image of the flood lights making it seem darker than it already was. She saw nothing, except for the hoard of zombies in the parking lot below.

  They’d followed the pickup from the Mess Hall, just as she’d feared. And they’d stayed for the zombie party. Worse still, they’d found their way inside the building, through the smashed glass entrance at the front atrium. She’d heard them howling and scratching at the Comm Center door. They couldn’t get through there, of course, couldn’t get into the secure area, but any chance she and Pruden had of getting out of there, of escaping their prison, had gone the way of the pet rock. They were trapped.

  She looked back toward the once glittering shoreline. Gone. All the tourists, all the beautiful people in their casual clothes and their bathing suits and their vacation tans, all the lights of the city gone forever.

  She’d always found the English language to be excellent for a wide variety of things: it excelled at technical jargon; it made complex ideas simple, or obfuscated them with a simple turn of phrase; it described the beauty and wonder of the world better than any language, except, perhaps, French. Couldn’t beat the French for romantic notions. There were times, however, when English fell far short of the mark. This seemed to be one of those times.

  What once had been the brilliantly lit southern shore of Oahu, and the expanse of Honolulu, from Sand Island, through Waikiki Beach, and all the way to Diamond Head, had now turned invisible in the blackness of a moonless night. Not a twinkle of water, not a flash of neon, not a single goddamned light shone before her. Nothing, except the fires, which still burned, here and there. How many buildings had been destroyed? How many people?

  Civilization was gone, disappeared, consumed by the greatest catastrophe in human history. Words like eerie, or creepy, or frightening passed through her forebrain and were found wanting. How did one describe the end of life as they knew it?

  FUBAR.

  She rolled the acronym around in her head, examining it from side to side. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Absolutely Goddamned Right.

  She turned to Pruden. “Let’s get back inside,” she said aloud, and then to herself: Before I get too freaked out to move.

  42

  USCGC Sassafras

  23.360209N 171.205441W

  “I can see Laysan,” Samantha said, holding the binoculars in one hand, and pointing with the other. The sun had risen, morning had broken, as the saying went, and Molly felt the burning in her eyes that meant they’d been open for far too long.

  “And I can see the seaplane,” she replied. She stood by the port windows, looking Northwest, and the dot she’d been staring at for the last couple minutes had finally resolved itself into the Catalina.

  Sam was supposed to be up on the Flying Bridge, acting as lookout, but Molly brought her down, because, in the first place, she needed the company. These six-on/six-off watches were brutal, but with the limited man (and woman) power, they didn’t have much choice. In the second place, she’d been trying to teach her cousin the basics of navigation. Sooner or later, she needed to get some damned sleep. She yawned. Sooner or later they were going to need more qualified people, if they had any hope of executing the mission they’d set for themselves.

  Correction: she had set for them. The idea she could be the Commanding Officer of a Coast Guard Buoy Tender still seemed odd. She’d gotten used to it - more or less - but getting used to it and accepting it were proving to be two different things.

  Take teaching the girl to navigate, for example. Talk about the blind leading the blind. Yes, she’d had four years at the Academy. Yes, Uncle John had taught her a whole bunch of things before she went there. Yes, she’d learned a lot from Jonesy (some of it navigation-related, she thought with a rueful pang) on the Healy. But learning something in an academic setting, and being taught by a loved one (or a lover) for the shear entertainment of it, were both far removed from having the responsibility of teaching it to somebody else.

  “Cutter Sassafras, this is the Wallbanger, Channel One-Six, over,” Jonesy’s voice came over the VHF radio. Speak of the Devil...

  Samantha, being closer, picked it up. “Wallbanger, this is Sassafras, over,” she said, looking to Molly for approval.

  The girl had taken to this new environment - this new reality - like a duck to water. She felt a momentary pang of sorrow and regret. Sixteen, not quite past the hormonal lunacy of puberty, and the poor kid had to deal with this...this...Oh call it what it is, Molly: This zombie fucking apocalypse. To call it unfair would be a monumental understatement of Biblical proportions, and yet Sam seemed to be taking it in stride.

  “Good morning from the Great Blue Sky,” Jonesy said through the radio.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Samantha replied with a giggle. Was the girl blushing?

  “We’d like to rendezvous, if you can fit us into your busy social schedule,” Jonesy said.

  Samantha’s young, yet world-weary face grew even redder, which Molly hadn’t thought possible. Could she have a crush on the lad? The thought warmed her heart. But what was that deep down in a place she stubbornly ignored? Could the Green Monster of Jealousy have just rolled over in its sleep? No way. Not a chance.

  Thatwas her story, and she was sticking to it.

  “We’d love to have you,” Samantha said, her knuckles white as she gripped the radio handset.

  “The water looks lovely from this rarified position, but how’s it look down there?” Jonesy asked. “How bumpy is it?”

  Molly walked to the center console and gestured for the microphone. Samantha did not look happy, but handed it over, regardless. “I got this, Sam,” she said. “Wallbanger, this is Sassafras, Actual. Swell is one-to-two feet, period fifteen seconds, from the Northeast,” she added, then looked at her cousin. “Just easier for me to say it than to fill your head with jargon,” she explained, and Samantha seemed to accept it, though she still looked a bit angry. The girl had it bad. “We’ll come to all stop. Relative wind also from the Northeast. Will provide a better reading once we’ve stopped. Over.”

  “Roger that,” Jonesy said. “Request you lower the small boat for passenger transfer.”

  She looked at Sam. Passenger transfer? She wondered who it could be. She shrugged, and Sam returned it in kind. It appeared new things were afoot.

  43

  USCGC Sassafras

  23.360209N 171.195257W

  “Chrys-Samantha-Mum!” Jonesy said, pulling Samantha into a bear hug. He twirled her around once and set her back on her feet, suddenly realizing she wasn’t a little girl anymore. When did that happen? Last time he’d seen her, she’d been the proverbial little girl in pigtails. Now, she was kinda hot. Don’t go there, asshole, he chided himself. She’s just a kid. John’s daughter. And you’re old enough to be her...handsome older brother...

  “Allow me to present HS3 Jeri (with an “I”) Weaver,” he said. “Jeri, Ensign Gordon, our Commanding Officer.” The newcomer snapped a pretty good salute, then extended his hand. Molly took it and smiled.

  “Welcome aboard,” she said.

  “And this is Samantha Gordon,” Jonesy indicated Sam. “Or should I call you Seaman Recruit Gordon?” Sam turned the color of a ripe pomegranate, and said nothing. Jonesy remained oblivious.

  “Nothing so official,” Molly said.

  “Glad to be aboard, Ma’am.” Weaver smiled at Sam and shook her hand. “Ma’ams.”

  Jonesy walked to the chart table and eyed the chart. He tapped his finger on the dot above the latest fix information. “Told him it was Laysan.” He turned to Molly. “Walton said it was French Frigate. I think he’s drunk.” She gave him
a look of shocked anger. Drunken pilots were no laughing matter, but there wasn’t a whole lot she or he or anyone could do about it. Harvey Walton was a civilian, a Brit, and the one and only pilot, so if the man wanted to get drunk, they had to allow it, and hope the fucker didn’t kill them as a result.

  “You’re making good time,” he observed, lifting the top of the chart table and pulling out the chart of Kauai. Molly joined him. He pointed to Hanapepe. “This is where Assateague is. No fuel, but otherwise in decent shape. Mister Perniola said the plant is good, so she should start right up.” He shifted his finger to the Southeast corner. “And here is Lihue. We flew over yesterday afternoon. Didn’t see a single zombie.” He looked at Molly and smiled. “Of course, we’ll need to do a bit of breaking and entering, but...” He shrugged. “If there are any cops left, they can arrest me.”

  “Sure you won’t need a Corpsman along?” Weaver asked. He’d been asking, pretty much since he’d been told of the plan. Jonesy had to hand it to the guy. Trapped in the darkness for days on end on a zombie-filled ship, and first thing the man wanted to do was get out there and kill zombies.

  “That’s up to the Skipper,” Jonesy replied, thumbing toward Molly.

  She looked from Jonesy, to Weaver, then back to Jonesy again. “Go through the plan one more time,” she said, finally.

  They’d been through most of this before the first flight - all except the location of the Assateague, but the military was nothing, if not redundant. Both Molly and John had objected to the raid on the Fed Ex Shipping Center at the Lihue Airport, and Jonesy won them over with his argument. Still...couldn’t hurt to show proof they’d been unnecessarily cautious. What could go wrong?

  Famous Last Words...

  44

  Lihue Airport

  Kauai, Hawaii

  It started well. It did not stay that way.

  They landed on the runway, for a change, proving the seaplane had wheels, since the shoreline went from ocean, to shoal, to cliff, and then to land. None of them were in the mood for any sort of rock climbing, so they’d chosen the more traditional method. Of course, it meant they wouldn’t have the added security of a rally point off shore, and thus away from any unpleasantness they might find, but Jonesy was convinced they wouldn’t find any.