“Are we, indeed?” Walton asked.
“We are,” Barber replied.
“Might I inquire where we’re going?”
“You said you have a fuel stash on Kauai?” Jim asked.
“Yes,” Walton replied, his voice wary.
“We’re going to top off the tanks, do a quick recon of the Assateague, then we’re heading south as far as we can go, to try and find the Polar Star.”
“Are we, indeed?” Walton asked again.
“Yes.”
“And if I refuse?”
Jim grinned at him. It was not a friendly grin. It was not designed to be. Small animals and children would run for their lives at the sight of such a grin.
“I see,” Walton said. “Shall I warm up the plane, then?”
“What a great idea!” Barber replied. He poured himself a cup of the mud as he watched Harvey trot off the Mess Deck. This was turning into one long fucking day.
55
USCGC Sassafras
Hanapepe Bay, Kauai
Jonesy snapped the carabiner into place on the yardarm safety cable and leaned back into his harness. The climb made him winded. He thought he was in better shape, but apparently not.
The Sass sat at anchor in the bay, not far from Assateague, where Harold, Gus, and Frank were busy trying to get her restarted. Jonesy had taken it upon himself to climb the mast and get a look at their surroundings.
The radar antenna sat motionless nearby. This was a good thing. He questioned whether he wanted to bring children into the fucked up mess the world had become, but he’d learned the wisdom of never say never, long ago. Having those children come out with three eyeballs and a second head where their ass should be, would be less than ideal, and so he tagged out the radar to ensure his future progeny didn’t suffer such a fate. This had probably been unnecessary, since Molly was down on the Bridge, but why take chances?
The binoculars felt cold to his eye sockets, and his eyes blurred for a moment before he got used to the strange new view. Port Allen came into sharp relief beyond the freight terminal and boat harbor. It looked like any suburban community, with single family homes and cul-de-sacs, speckled with trees and various bits of shrubbery. The tropical splendor might be idyllic, if not for the complete lack of people.
Well, no. That wasn’t true, now was it? There were people - or, at least, what used to be people. Zombies wandered the streets, alone or in groups ranging from two, through a large one of a dozen or more over by what looked to be some sort of shopping plaza.
To his left sat a large park. To his right, the port buildings and fuel farm shimmered in the afternoon sun. Between them lay the town.
Movement caught his eye. Nothing strange about it. There was movement all over the place, as the newly-made raving lunatics shuffled and stumbled their way along. But something about this particular movement made him take a closer look.
It wasn’t on the street. It was on the roof of one of the houses - more than one, he saw, as more and more heads popped up onto balconies and rooftops.
“I will be dipped in shit,” he said aloud. He dropped the binoculars back onto his chest, the strap digging into his neck, but he didn’t care. Shifting his weight onto the safety wire at his feet, he glanced down at Duke, waiting on the Flying Bridge below. “Guess what?” He shouted.
“You found the lost city of Atlantis?” Duke shouted back.
“What?” Jonesy replied, the non sequitur making his brain hurt.
“Never mind,” Duke called. “Whatchya got?”
Jonesy pointed. “Survivors.”
56
Harbor Entrance
Midway Atoll
Clara steered the forty-two foot sailboat, Annie’s Birthday, in past the Channel marker. Teddy had worn her out - both in her sailing lessons and in the “lunch break” they’d taken, while floating a dozen miles offshore. Her bottom still tingled a bit - and not in a bad way, she thought, with a touch of chagrin. Her growing knowledge was worth it.
The boat was under power, with the sails down, running on its small inboard engine, but they’d spent most of the day sailing, after spending the entire afternoon of the previous day tacking, running, beating, jibing, and a score of other bits of sail terminology so numerous and varied, it sat inside her head like a rat’s nest after a whirlwind. But she was learning.
He’d taught her how to trim the sails and how to navigate by the sun. He’d even dragged her out of bed before it rose, so they could still see the North Star, and he could teach her something called latitude sailing, which she sort of understood, but not quite. She learned knot-tying and how to calculate latitude and longitude by what he called local apparent noon.
Her head hurt, her hands were raw from handling rope (sorry...lines), and her back was sore from an odd position they’d tried during the lunch break. But she was learning.
Soon - in a day, maybe two - she would know enough, be confident enough, to take the sailboat out on her own. And she was never coming back. Teddy Spute didn’t know this, of course, and what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
She might throw him one more bang for old time’s sake. Then again, maybe not. She would scrape this bad memory from her mind, and go...where? North? South? Didn’t matter, as long as it was away.
57
M/V Point of Order
08.419565N 160819525W
Blackjack Charlie tapped his fingers on the chart. “We can be there tonight,” he said, glancing at his watch. George blinked at the chart table and scowled.
The asshole had a hangover and smelled like the Jack Daniels factory after the sour mash had spoiled - if that were even possible. Somehow he’d gotten more than his ration of booze. Charlie wanted to rip out his liver.
“For all the good it’s gonna fucking do us,” the drunk fuck slurred. “Nothing but a useless rock in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s a place to hole up,” Charlie replied, through gritted teeth. And to hide, he did not say aloud. Word of the Coast Guard being out there - somewhere - remained between himself and Hennessy. Best if it stayed that way.
“So that’s your great plan?” George spat, leaning in and giving Charlie a hefty dose of his toxic breath. “Crawl in a hole and whimper like a little bitch?”
My plan is to find another engineer, he thought. And when I do, your ass won’t be worth the shit I took this morning. His fingers played with the handle of the blackjack he had tucked beneath his shirt. It would be so easy. One whack to knock him out, another three or four to do the job right, then throw the motherfucker over the side.
But not yet. Not yet.
“My great plan, as you call it, is to stop burning a bunch of fuel we can’t replace, until we find a bunch more,” Charlie replied. “Even a dipshit like you should be able to grasp the math.”
George leaned in again, breathed on him again. Charlie’s fingers tightened on the blackjack.
The interior door popped open, and the Honorable Henry David Goddard stepped onto the Bridge. “Gentlemen,” he said, seemingly oblivious to the tension. “We need to discuss swearing me in as President.”
58
Seaplane Wallbanger
16.891227N 169.514887W
“Big goddamned ocean,” Jim Barber commented, apropos of nothing. Except, it was appropriate, he supposed. It was a big goddamned ocean, they were in the middle of it, and yet, somehow, Harvey Walton had been able to find Johnston Atoll, without benefit of modern technology.
GPS no longer functioned with anything resembling reliability. The satellites still orbited the Earth, of course, but it wasn’t as simple as a direct link between satellite and receiver. The position information was based on time, as calculated by the atomic clock in Cheyenne Mountain, which may or may not still function, because Cheyenne Mountain may or may not be overrun by zombies. In addition, part of the nuclear defense plan placed a random error into the signal, in the event some crazy fucker started lobbing nukes, or, say, an apocalypse happened.
It wouldn’t do to have the United States’ enemies using the United States’ signal to blow up their cities. So now, the Global Positioning System might be as likely to show them in Cleveland, as in the big damned ocean.
“It is,” Harvey replied. They hadn’t said much in the six hours since they left the fuel stash at a remote and rocky beach on Kauai.
Jim had never been one for idle chatter, and this went double for people he didn’t like. Well, now, that wasn’t exactly true, either. He didn’t dislike Walton, he just didn’t particularly like him so much. A trust issue, he supposed, as in, he didn’t trust the man. But, Harvey had taken them to the Assateague, showed them the Tommy Guns, and he was at least playing along with their stated mission - such as it was. So he supposed he should cut the guy some slack.
“How the Hell did you find it without GPS?” He asked. The Atoll grew in the windshield as they flew towards it. This was another of Harvey’s little stashes. Jim wondered how many there were, then decided it might be better not to know.
“Would you believe me if I said magic?” Walton quipped.
“No.”
“Would you believe Dead Reckoning, combined with years of experience?” Walton asked.
“Probably,” Jim replied. He was about to expand on his answer with something sarcastic, when the soft hiss in his headphones began to shriek with static. “Fuck!” He winced, pulling the offending ear pieces away from his head.
“Seaplane north of Johnston Atoll, do not approach,” the radio voice said. “Repeat. Do not approach. Island is overrun.”
Evidence of the claim could be seen as they flew closer. The landmass (what there was of it) looked sort of like a scaled down version of an aircraft carrier, without the superstructure. It held a runway, with a long, low, rectangular bit of pavement to one side, and a smaller, also rectangular paved area, set back on the other. A few structures dotted the landscape, far outnumbered by the bare foundations of buildings long-since removed, and interspersed with sparse trees, shrubs and grasses - all of which seemed to be hanging onto life by their fingernails. The whole thing had a man-made feel to it, which fit, because that’s what it was.
The original Johnston Island had been a whopping forty-six acres, until the Corps of Engineers did a bit of coral dredging and increased it to almost six hundred, in the early Sixties. The reasoning was classified, but general consensus held it had been enlarged to allow for the dumping of weaponized chemicals.
It was, essentially, the North Pacific’s red headed bastard stepchild, alternately serving as military base, nuclear test site, chemical waste dump, and finally, bird sanctuary. This last seemed counterintuitive as could be, but the designation remained.
There were two permanent members of US Fish and Wildlife stationed there: a husband and wife. Jim adored his own wife, Denise, but being stuck with her alone on an island in the middle of nowhere would have driven him right out of his fucking mind, so he didn’t know how they stood the strain, and in any case, it no longer mattered. Much like Midway, two sailboats were anchored in the tiny lagoon, and zombies now roamed the island.
Jim could see five - no, six - of them milling around near a square building on the northeast end of the island. Antennae poked up from the roof of the structure, so, presumably, this was where the man on the radio had taken refuge.
“I don’t think six zombies wandering aimlessly qualifies as having overrun the place,” Walton observed. Jim grunted in agreement. “Suppose we should do something about it?”
“You mean kill the zombies, rescue whoever’s left?” Jim asked.
“That would seem to be indicated.”
“Where’s your fuel stash?” Jim asked.
Walton pointed. “See that square bit of land off to your right?”
Jim squinted. “The one with the little jetty?”
“Very good!” Harvey beamed.
They were circling the atoll at perhaps fifty feet, scaring the local bird population. Like the land, they appeared to be clinging to life by a thread. What there was of the indicated patch, sat off by itself in a blue pool, more or less in direct line with the axis of the larger island. It would be simple to splash down, refuel, then take off again, leaving whatever survivors there may be to their own fate.
Jim wasn’t remotely tempted. Didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Fuck,” he said, with an exasperated sigh. “Let’s go kill some zombies.”
59
USCGC Sassafras
Hanapepe Bay
“They’re not fucking zombies!” Harold insisted.
“I swear, if you say that shit one more time, I’m going to rip out your spleen,” Duke growled in reply.
Jonesy let it wash over him, as he continued to scan the town of Port Allen through the binoculars. They were seated in canvas beach chairs on the Flying Bridge, anchored in Hanapepe Bay, not far from Assateague, where Frank Rosseler and Gus Perniola were struggling to get her running Their reason for being there was to develop a strategy for rescuing the survivors Jonesy spotted earlier. He had one that might work, but he didn’t like it, and he doubted anyone else would, either.
The essential problem was the zombies. They were everywhere, spread throughout the port and the town, milling around with no clear purpose, no design, no rhyme, no reason. There needed to be a way to get the zombies to leave where the survivors were. Jonesy doubted they would just march in lock stop to a new destination, however. They needed an incentive. He looked at his shipmates, and sighed.
The uniform of the day had been modified (by Jonesy) to be whatever made them comfortable. Harold wore uniform pants, trimmed into shorts, and a white tee shirt. Duke wore his tactical trousers and a wife beater, his gigantic arms exposed and looking like Schwarzenegger on steroids. Jonesy’s uniform had become faded green board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned and revealing his tanned six-pack abs.
The “discussion” as to proper nomenclature for the Pomona-infected residents of Port Allen had been going on for some time. Jonesy stayed out of it (because he simply did not care) but it had begun to look as if Duke might make good on his threats.
“What do you suggest we call them, then, Harold?” He asked.
“I don’t know...” The young man shrugged. “Crazies?”
Jonesy shook his head. “Automatic disqualification because of the movie.”
“Oh, right,” Harold conceded.
“That movie sucked,” Duke offered his opinion.
“I don’t know,” Harold replied. “I kinda liked it.”
“You would,” Duke said.
“Behave, children,” Jonesy said. All just good natured fun - at least he hoped so.
“We could call them assholes,” Duke suggested, glaring at Harold.
“I like it,” he replied.
“Not bad...” Jonesy said, considering. “But people might mistake you guys for one and blow your brains out.”
“We gotta call them something,” Duke said, grinning. “I like zombies,” he said, then added: “Shut the fuck up,” when Harold started to protest.
“You’re an idiot, and your mother dresses you funny,” Harold retorted.
A female voice interrupted the ludicrous exchange from behind. “Hate to interfere in this highly intellectual discussion, but...”
Molly stood at the bottom of the ladder from the Signal Bridge. Jonesy rose from his beach chair. Harold and Duke began to follow, but she waved them back into their seats. “Do we have a plan yet?” She asked.
Her eyes kept wandering to Jonesy’s exposed abs. He felt a momentary frisson of excitement, then shoved it aside. That door was closed. No key in the world would open it again. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but now was not the time for inner reflection.
“I have the beginnings of one,” he said. “But nobody’s going to like it.”
“I already hate it,” Harold quipped.
“Shut up,” Duke said, shoving him.
“I’m all ears,” Molly sai
d.
The ship was pointed more or less straight down the demarcation between the port and the community. Jonesy pointed to the right. “You see that open area?” He indicated a large parking lot in the middle of all the port buildings. The main port warehouse and a tank farm sat nearest the bay, to the south, a solar farm to the west, and the community lay beyond to the north and east. The paved lot was surrounded.
Molly shuffled over to stand right beside him and sight down his arm. He could feel her proximity, her body heat, and smell the shampoo she used in her hair. The combination threatened to turn him from a man, to a dog in heat - never a far journey.
He had to stop this shit; had to quell the desires, and ignore the feelings that kept creeping out from the dark recesses into which he had shoved them. He was a guy, for Christ’s sake! A man’s man! He wasn’t supposed to be pining away for an ex-lover. He wasn’t supposed to be having feelings.
What he really needed to do was get laid - find some willing woman of questionable moral fiber, and have his way with her, bed her, use her to drive out this emotional bullshit. He scanned the surrounding vista. The pickings weren’t just slim; they were positively anorexic.
She squinted where he pointed. “Okay...”
“We need to get the zombies there. Into that lot, and away from the houses,” Jonesy continued, quashing all the other nonsense.
“Makes sense,” she agreed.
“Can’t exactly send them an engraved invitation, though,” he said. “We need to give them a reason to go there.”
Molly, Harold and Duke all stared at the empty lot. Molly, Harold and Duke considered the possibilities. Jonesy waited for them to come to the obvious conclusion.
“Shit,” Duke said, in an unhappy expulsion of breath.
“No fucking way,” Harold said.
“A reason...” Molly concluded. Her voice sounded hard and cold.
“Yep,” Jonesy said. “And once we get them there, we need a way to kill them.”
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 2): Zombies In Paradise Page 16
