“That piece of shit almost killed me!” Gus stormed as he reached the rooftop redoubt. He stared at John, the anger obvious. Molly felt glad it wasn’t directed at her.
John stared back at him a moment, concern evident in his eyes, but this slowly turned to mirth. “You know what Jim would say right now?”
Gus sputtered, his eyebrows climbing into his fuzzy white hair, his face turning red. “What?” He finally managed to blurt.
“Don’t give yourself an aneurism,” John soothed. “You know what he’d say.” It came as a statement, not a question.
Gus stood there, his fists clenching and unclenching at his side. His eyes searched the assembled crowd, looking for what, exactly, Molly didn’t know. Slowly, by degrees, his shoulders slumped, his fingers stopped their violent spasms. He blinked, once, twice. “He’d say don’t be such a baby.”
John nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “You survived. The rest is just details.”
“Fuck...” Gus replied, the word coming out as an expulsion of steam, releasing the tension, releasing the anger. He chuckled.
“So where are all the assholes?” Harold asked.
Molly’s head snapped toward the ground below. Sure enough, none followed Gus onto the vacant lot. There were no zombies.
“There were at least a few hundred behind me!” Gus swore.
“You must have gone too fast,” Dan McMullen said.
Gus waved toward the ground. “You want to do it, be my guest.”
Jeri Weaver, who’d remained silent throughout their vigil, walked over to the far end of the roof, where he could get a better look at the approach road. His eyes grew wide. He pointed.
Molly, John and Gus joined him. Harold apparently decided he liked where he was, and McMullen stooped and pulled what looked like remote for a garage door opener from a gym bag he’d carried up.
From the new vantage point, Molly saw the zombies - hundreds of them - milling around in aimless confusion, fifty yards down the street. A few were starting to wander away. This was bad. This was the plan falling apart. This would put Duke and Jonesy right in the path of all those homicidal creatures, with no warning and no place to hide. They needed to do something. She needed to do something. She was in charge, she was the Captain. Her inexperience and inability to take control of the situation was going to get Jonesy killed!
“Un-bunch your panties, boys and girls,” McMullen said, pressing a button on his remote. At first, nothing happened. They waited, breathless and uncertain. McMullen only smiled. The first strains of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love blasted through the speakers of the boom box, which sat perched upon the fifty-five gallon barrel of homemade Napalm. They could hear it clearly, even from their position more than twice as far away as the zombie hoard.
“Thought we might run into something like this,” Dan said, smiling with pride. He bounced upon his steel-toed boots.
“I thought that was the trigger,” John said, amazed.
McMullen shook his head and reached into his back pocket, withdrawing a commco. “This is the trigger,” he said, waggling it at them.
“What’s powering the boom box?” Gus asked.
“Batteries, of course!” he replied. “What do you think I’d use? Solar power?” He added, waving at the slowly dawning sky.
Molly looked toward the hoard. They were moving. Toward them. This might actually work, she thought.
80
COMMSTA Honolulu
Sand Island, Hawaii
“Why isn’t it working?” Pruden asked, really starting to annoy Amber.
“You want me to explain thermal inversion and wave propagation to you?” She snapped, playing with the gain yet again.
“No,” he replied, holding his hands up in surrender.
“Then shut the Hell up. You’re not helping.” As soon as the words left her mouth, regret came calling. “Sorry. It’s just...”
“No worries,” Scott said. “I know you’re trying.”
Polar Star was out there, trying to communicate. The constant, interrupting static was as if the universe didn’t want it to happen. Knowing Sassafras survived - however reduced their crew might be - made everything that came before - all the loneliness and anxiety, all the mind-numbing terror, all the killing - worth it. Almost. But Sass was a shell, a remnant; the busted wreckage of the world before Pomona. The Star, on the other hand, was intact, fully equipped, fully manned, and fully under the command of an actual Captain - someone to take charge, someone who wasn’t an Ensign with the ink still wet on her commission.
She knew nothing about Ensign Molly Gordon, but everybody knew Captain Gideon D. Hall. He looked like a captain, acted like a captain, sounded like a captain, and instilled quiet faith like a captain. They could rest easy, knowing they were in good hands - better ones, anyway, than those of a boot Ensign.
If only she could keep this fucking radio working.
81
Port Allen Wharf
Hanapepe Bay
“Holy shit!” Harold exclaimed. “I think this is going to work!”
The CD player on the boom box switched from Whole Lotta Love, through What Is and What Should Never Be, and thence to the infinitely more ribald Lemon Song, as the zombies gathered in the rectangular paved lot below the warehouse redoubt, like a slow-moving, drunken mob. Those at the center, nearest the mousetrap barrel of Napalm, with its musical cheese, seemed to be staring at it in brain-dead fascination.
Molly watched them come like zombies to the slaughter, watched them fill the parking lot, her heart beating, hard and heavy, as if the blood had somehow solidified, frozen in her veins. Hundreds of them would soon be dead (if this makeshift explosive device of McMullen’s actually worked) and it would be on her orders. She would be responsible.
A quick - if disconnected - check of her emotions on the subject, revealed she didn’t feel anything. Odd. Seemed like there should be some reaction to it, some recognition that she was about to execute enough people to fill the building upon which they now stood.
The conversation with Jonesy on the fantail, after he’d killed Scoot, flashed through her head as if the memory of a dream. Nothing, he’d said. I feel nothing. All her training, all the years of psychology at the Coast Guard Academy, pondered the phenomenon, searched its database for a suitable term, a way to classify the emotional flatline, and came up with a doozy: Disassociated Affect. Sounded good, sounded like a nice, neat little pigeonhole. Sounds more like psychobabble bullshit, she thought, then shook her head to clear it of such nonsense. Didn’t make any difference. Didn’t change the fact.
“Are you set?” She asked McMullen.
He’d explained the device to her, back on Sassafras. Seemed like days ago, but it was only yesterday, as they were skirting the Southwest corner of Kauai. Screaming Alpha, he’d called it, to uproarious laughter from the assembled gaggle of John, Duke, Harold, and Jonesy. She hadn’t gotten the joke.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, waving the trigger. “All I have to do is press the button.”
Shipboard fires were split into four categories: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta - Alpha, for paper and wood; Bravo, for flammable liquids, such as fuel; Charlie, for electrical fires; and Delta, for minerals, like phosphorus or magnesium. Screaming Alpha, in the sick and twisted minds of sailors, was what happened when the burning thing was a human being.
Moment of truth, she thought, turning to Weaver, stationed at the far end of the roof to keep an eye on the approach. He gave her the thumbs up.
“Do it,” she ordered.
Dan McMullen grinned. “Might want to get down,” he said. With an air of theatricality, he cocked his thumb and held it suspended above the trigger for a pregnant moment. This was it. His thumb twitched. Everyone held their breath.
He paused, and gave everyone a sheepish, apologetic grin. “Uh...” he said. “Might want to keep an eye on an alternative exit,” he added, shrugging toward the barrel of Napalm. “Just in case.”
The Bread Truck
Port Allen, Kauai
“What are we waiting for?” A voice squeaked from the back of the truck.
That stupid blonde bitch, Jonesy thought, recognizing the annoying whine. They were packed in like an immoveable mosh pit; twenty-two survivors, all totaled - including one in a wheelchair. How they were going to get the old woman aboard the Sass - much less how she would maneuver up and down ladders and over hatch combings once they did - remained a mystery. He filed the question away, under Not My Problem.
A hand the size of vinyl record album landed gently upon his shoulder, and the gigantic head of yet another Samoan man leaned into the driving compartment.
“Ignore her, Brah,” the deep voice said. “She’s always been a pain.”
Jonesy gave him a questioning look. The large man shrugged.
“Boss’s wife.”
“I heard that!” The bitch snapped.
“I don’t care,” Jonesy mumbled out the side of his mouth, so only the Samoan and Duke could hear. The list of things he didn’t care about seemed to grow exponentially, every day
Duke chuckled, and adjusted the shotgun he held in his lap. “Valid question, though,” he said. “What are we waiting for?”
Jonesy grinned and nodded out the windshield. They were parked, with the engine running, pointed toward the wharf. “I’m waiting for a sign from God,” he said.
As if on cue, the dawn erupted in fire.
83
Seaplane Wallbanger
15.485625N 176.009548W
“What is that?” Harvey asked, pointing toward a small orange dot in the sky just to the right of straight ahead. They were flying at a thousand feet, over the calm Pacific Ocean. They hadn’t seen a single thing for miles.
Jim pulled the binoculars from their pouch in front of him and below the instruments. Peering through them, he found the dot in question and smiled. “I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Won’t we all?” Harvey replied.
Jim dropped the binoculars, ignoring the pointless comment. “Not today,” he said, switching the internal microphone on his headset to external, and dialing in the channel. “Coast Guard Helicopter, this is the seaplane Wallbanger, two-forty three megahertz. Over.” The frequency was reserved for military aircraft. Harvey’s plane most decidedly was not military, but it hardly mattered at this point.
“Seaplane...uh...Wallbanger?” the voice on the radio said, amused at the name. “This is Coast Guard Six Five Eight Three. Over.”
“Good to hear a friendly voice,” Jim said, watching the orange dot turn into a sleek, orange and black helo with a Coast Guard racing stripe.
Harvey cut in through the intercom. “I don’t usually regard them as friendly.”
Jim waved at him to shut up. “I take it you’re from Polar Star.”
There followed a definite pause. Security protocols, Jim thought. Never let the enemy know where you’re from.
“What’s your status? Over,” came the reply. All business.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Jim said.
84
Port Allen Wharf
Hanapepe Bay
The barrel of Napalm erupted like a miniature Vesuvius, spreading gasoline, acetone, and .dissolved Styrofoam in every direction - including straight up. The gout of flame mushroomed fifty feet over Molly’s head as she watched the carnage below in morbid fascination. The zombies nearest the device were killed in less time than it took the synapses of their diseased brains to register: Oh shit, I’m on fire! Those more than ten yards away, however, were something else, entirely.
“Screaming Alpha!” Dan McMullen shouted with glee, as at least a hundred former humans ran in chaotic conflagration, their bodies consumed by fire. They were, indeed, screaming.
Molly’s head felt blank, numb, empty, as she tried to wrap it around the scene straight out of Dante, taking place in front of her eyes. Somewhere at the back, a tiny red warning light blinked at her, insistent and annoying, trying to pass a message she simply could not receive. There was something she needed to do, some action she needed to take, some order she needed to give, but nothing distinct sprang to mind.
“Stragglers are getting away!” John shouted.
There it was. Now she knew. “Open fire!”
They’d positioned the fifty caliber machine gun at the center edge of the roof facing the parking lot. Jeri Weaver, Hospital Corpsman though he may be, had also been a Deckie on a buoy tender, where he served as part of the gun team. Harold stood to the side, ready to feed him the ammo belt. Weaver yanked the cocking handle back towards him, drew a deep breath, then started depressing the trigger in three round bursts of heavy weapons fire. Aiming was pointless. He couldn’t miss.
The fifty caliber round was capable of killing at over a mile. At twenty-five yards, it turned human beings to mush, penetrating half a dozen at a shot.
The rest of them, including Gus, Dan, John and Molly, opened up with single shot M-4's, taking out those the fifty-cal didn’t destroy. The zombies never stood a chance.
85
M/V Point of Order
12.493106N 165.521408E
“I’ll be damned,” Hennessy said, gaping in wonder and a little fear at the damaged hulk of the USS Paul Hamilton. The five-hundred and five-foot Arleigh Burke-class Destroyer, listed about ten degrees to starboard, its rigging (cables and steel railings, mostly) hung motionless in the almost non-existent wind. The glass in the bridge windows was shattered, with chunks of it still protruding from the frames.
Blackjack Charlie Carter noticed the nearest yardarm on the mast hanging straight down, suspended from a guy wire, the anemometer - used for measuring wind speed, and looking like a prop plane without wings - still attached, but no longer spinning. The small motor surfboat, still tied into its davits, was missing a large piece of its side. It - and the entire side of the ship, itself - looked as if King Neptune had risen from the sea and punched it with a fist the size of three Mack trucks.
The aftermost exhaust housing and superstructure were gone. What remained was a jagged hole, open - Charlie noticed with both satisfaction and fear - to the elements. Naval warships were notoriously hard to break into, he mused. This, however, would not be.
“What the fuck happened here?” he asked aloud.
“And where is the crew?” Hennessy added.
Both, good questions with no immediate answers.
“Two weeks, or so ago,” the Australian they’d “rescued” from Palmyra, said. “Or maybe it was three...”
“Doesn’t matter,” Charlie said.
“There was a really bright flash of light coming from this direction,” the man continued. “Too bright to be anything but an explosion - and a big one, at that.”
“Really?” Charlie said, not meaning it as a question - more of a deadpan exclamation of hopeful disbelief. He didn’t like where this was going, didn’t like the possible scenario that crept into his head. Only two kinds of explosions were big enough to be seen as far away as Palmyra, and there weren’t any volcanoes in sight.
“You’re thinking it was a nuke?” Hennessy said. His voice had a nervous edge to it.
“Nothing else it could have been,” the Aussie said.
The three of them pondered it from a distance Charlie suddenly felt wasn’t great enough. A nuke? Really? Why? Another question popped into his head, calling the rest of their speculation into doubt.
“How could that have been nuked and still be afloat?” he asked, pointing at the ship. “And where’s all the fire damage?” The hull was damaged - wrecked, if you wanted to be technical - but there were no scorch marks, no globs of twisted and melted steel, no evidence of God’s Own Fire. So what the fuck happened?
Hennessy’s head jerked up, as if the Invisible Man just popped him in the jaw. “Shock wave,” he said. “Close enough to be damaged, far enough not to explode?” It came as a question, but might as well have been an answer. It certa
inly fit the evidence of their eyes.
“But where are all the people?” the Aussie asked.
As if in answer, a naked zombie lurched into view from behind the towing windlass on the fantail. It looked at them, looking at it, and howled.
86
The Bread Truck
Port Allen, Kauai
Jonesy cracked open the back of the truck and motioned for the civilians to begin filing out. “Quiet,” he hissed, as one of them - not the blonde bitch this time - opened his mouth to complain.
They’d been complaining for the last half-hour, stuck inside the standing-room-only bread truck. He couldn’t exactly blame them. The accomidations were less than desirable. But they’d been doing this whining to the accompaniment of small arms and fifty-caliber machine gun fire, and, seriously, what did you expect in a zombie apocalypse: limousines and valet service?
The truck sat on the water side of the Marina Services Building, parked with the back facing the small boat ramp, where they’d left the RHIB. Duke readied the boat, while Jonesy herded the civilian cats toward it. That was the easy part. The hard part was keeping half of them - including the complaining, blonde, boss’s wife - near the truck, while the other half ran to the boat. They were taking eight on the first run, including the elderly woman in her wheel chair. It was not a smooth operation.
“Why do we have to wait?” the blonde whined. Her voice carried - even with the sound of the gunfire in the background.
Jonesy turned to the super-sized Samoan, whose name, he learned, was Ralph. “Keep her mouth shut. Gag her if you have to.” He stared at the wide-eyed response from Misses Fake Tits. “Or even if you want to,” he added.
“You got it, Brah,” Ralph replied, grinning.
“How dare–“ the bitch started, then shut up when a hand the size of a serving tray covered her mouth, the large fingers wrapping the bottom of her chin and tickling her nose, as if threatening to cut off her supply of oxygen.
Jonesy patted the big man’s shoulder. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “If she gives you any trouble, toss her in the bay,” he said, then added: “I think there might be sharks.”
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 2): Zombies In Paradise Page 20
