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

by Thomson, Jeff

  Duke took out the zombie he’d tripped with a blow from one of his hammers. She stared at him for a moment. While she couldn’t see his lips behind the mask, there was no doubt they were turned upward in a smile. He’s enjoying this just a bit too much...

  Gary busied himself with carving and stripping the spines from the corpses. That ought to be making me vomit, she thought. But it wasn’t. Once again, she felt nothing. Should I be worried? Another zombie - this time a man in soiled coveralls, with a naked woman staggering right behind him - came toward her. Nope. Too busy... Dropping into a defensive stance, with the machete held in front, she glanced toward the huge Maintenance Building. A battalion of stumbling, lurching, homicidal former-humans came marching around the far corner. Way too busy..,

  “Open fire!”

  123

  Medical Clinic

  Midway Atoll

  Stephanie Barber checked her gas mask to ensure a proper seal, by blocking the filters with her hands and breathing in - sort of. If she’d actually been able to draw breath, it would mean the thing wasn’t sealed. That would be bad.

  An unopened blue bag of Polyacrylamide Gel Powder sat on the table, ready to do its job. Unfortunately, the monomer - so necessary for the vaccine process - was incredibly toxic to the human nervous system. Since she didn’t want to wind up convulsing on the floor, excessive caution was exactly what the situation called for.

  This was one instance where she did not mind the Nutty Professor being an annoying ass. He’d drummed the caution into her head and there it remained, ready to be exercised every time she came within rock-throwing distance of those blue bags. The scalpel in her hand did not waver, did not shake, did not jitter with the fear coursing through the very same nervous system she so assiduously wanted to protect. She brought it closer to the bag.

  A whining sound - high-pitched and far away, but getting closer - pierced the hood of the MOPP suit she wore. She knew that sound - had heard it a hundred times over hundreds of days spent at Coast Guard Air Stations where her father worked:

  Helo, inbound...

  124

  COMMSTA Honolulu

  Sand Island, Oahu

  “If you stand over here,” Scott Pruden said from the opposite end of the roof. “You can almost - but not quite - not see a damned thing.”

  “Helpful as always,” Amber replied. They knew something was up, knew the Sass and Assateague crews were doing something on the pier, but the configuration of the ISC buildings conspired to block their view. They could, however see the zombies.

  They came in a steady - if staggering - stream, from roughly everywhere on the Northwest to Southeast axis of the island. But they shouldn’t be, because this latest zombie invasion consisted primarily of civilians. Of course, she couldn’t tell naked civilians from naked Coasties, but not all of them were au natural, and most of the clothed ones wore civies.

  To the Northwest lay the container port, separated from the base by a rather sturdy fence, topped with the obligatory concertina wire. The base entrance lay to the South and East, in the direction toward which the hoard was stumbling. This could only mean...

  “Sassafras, COMMSTA. Over.” She said into the handheld radio.

  “Go,” Bill Schaeffer’s voice came through the tiny speaker.

  “I think the container port fence has a hole in it,” she said.

  “Lots of holes,” Scott commented, missing the point. “It’s chain link.”

  Amber didn’t bother showing him the disdain on her face. “It must be breached someplace.”

  No immediate reply came through the commco - not even static. Talk about a pregnant pause...

  If the fence was breached, that meant there wasn’t anything separating the base from the thousands - maybe tens of thousands - of crazed zombies crossing Sand Island Bridge from Honolulu. If that was true, then they were truly, irrevocably fucked.

  She moved from her position above the cafeteria at the far side of the building from the Comm Center, and to the end nearest the baseball diamond, which lay between them and Sand Island Parkway, the island’s main drag. At least fifty of the crazed fuckers were in sight, crossing the ball field. The fence had to be breached.

  “Roger COMMSTA, understood,” Bill’s laconic voice droned through the airwaves. “Request you switch and answer Channel Two Three and talk directly to the ground team.”

  She clicked the channel selector just to time to hear:

  125

  USCGC Assateague

  Honolulu Harbor

  “...Open fire!”

  “Hot diggity,” Jeri Weaver grinned. “Hang onto your hats, sports fans,” he added, and pulled the trigger.

  Pistols were loud. Rifles - like the M-4 - were louder. The fifty-caliber machine gun was loud as fuck. They were as firecrackers to the explosion of the 25mm auto cannon.

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP. The sound ripped through the silent evening, and sent vibrations through the deck, through the steel-towed boots Jeri wore, into the bones of his feet and through his skeletal system, straight to his skull. The oncoming crowd of zombies coming onto the pier at which the gun was aimed vaporized in a cloud of red. Or, at least, he thought it must be red. Had to be, though he couldn’t see the color in the waning evening light.

  The high explosive rounds went through the first line as if through air, treated the second line like wet tissue paper, and decimated the third, forth and fifth lines of disease-ridden victims of the Pomona Virus, and finally crashed into the unsuspecting, innocent former home of the Small Boat Station. The clapboard and masonry structure didn’t stand a chance.

  “Hope nobody’s alive in there,” Frank yelled, beside him. He could barely hear the man, through the industrial hearing protection they both wore.

  Jeri fired another three-round burst, with similar results, then pointed to the Small Boat Dock. Two, forty-seven-foot Motor Surf Boats were tied there, alongside two, twenty-five-foot Defender Class Rapid Response Boats (basically the same RHIB the ships carried, but one Hell of a lot beefier, and with an enclosed compartment in the middle, and a machine gun mount in the bow). The Small Boat Station’s compliment was two 47's and two RRBs. All present and accounted for; ergo, no survivors inside the Station.

  Frank nodded, saying nothing. More dead Coasties.

  Well, dead or... He fired another burst.

  126

  USCG ISC Honolulu

  Sand Island, Oahu

  “I hate fucking zombies!” Harold yelled, dropping the baseball bat he’d just used on the cranium of a naked fat guy, and grabbing the M-4 from the telescoping chest rig beneath his weapons harness.

  Couldn’t agree more, Molly thought, drawing one of the two 9mm pistols from its thigh holster. From a shooter’s three-point stance, she fired three rounds - two in the chest, one in the head - of the small Hispanic-looking gentleman who seemed intent on having her for his evening meal. Textbook combat training, straight out of the Academy - which is exactly what her emotional response to it was: textbook - two to the chest, one to the head. Just another in an endless series of exercises.

  Only it wasn’t. Only it shouldn’t feel this way. It shouldn’t feel like nothing. Yet it did. This set off every one of the alarm bells in her psychology-trained brain - or, it should have. Not a flicker. Not a twitch on an imaginary needle of the mind-fuck meter inside her head.

  She shook her head in self-derision. Now was not the time to be shrink-wrapping her brain. Sigmund Fraud, meet Rambo. She fired at another zombie - this one a redheaded naked woman. One of the woman’s boobs looked chewed.

  “How we doing, Gary?” She said into the integrated microphone.

  “Eight, so far,” came the reply.

  Only eight. Eight human spines stripped from the corpses of fellow Coasties and stuffed into plastic bags. This translated into roughly forty doses of the vaccine. Nowhere near enough.

  “Lotta bad guys headed our way,” Duke’s voice came through her earpieces. Sure enough, a crowd
of the insane bastards were making their stumbling way toward them. They looked hungry.

  Lane Keely, on the fifty-cal opened up from the forecastle of the Sass, chewing into the advancing horde. This is what Hell must look like, she thought. It floated into her consciousness, as disconnected as if she were observing a passing cloud of no particular interest.

  “Jonesy,” she called, ignoring standard radio procedure.

  “Go.”

  “Are there any sharks in the harbor?” She asked, dropping the non-sequitur like a rock into his lap.

  “What?” He replied, his voice sharp and clearly confused.

  “Sharks,” she repeated. “Are there any sharks in the harbor?”

  “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” he said. “Over.”

  “Answer the damned question,” Molly snapped.

  “Not to my knowledge,” he said, the words edged like his Bowie Knife. “May I ask what you’re planning?”

  127

  M/V Point of Order

  12.493106N 165.521408E

  “The plan, dumbass, is to tow the thing to Palmyra,” Blackjack Charlie said, getting in George’s face. The man had just about tread on his last nerve. “I should have thought that would be obvious, even to you.”

  “Fuck you, Carter,” the engineer replied. “And anybody unfortunate enough to look like your sorry ass.”

  The blackjack came out, quicker than shit, but George was ready for it this time. He stepped inside of Charlie’s swing, grabbed his swinging arm and crashed into him with a vicious headbutt. A galaxy appeared before Charlie’s eyes. Before he had a chance to shake the stars loose, George popped him in the right cheekbone. He staggered back, slamming into the dining room bulkhead.

  The larger man came in on him, but this time, Charlie was ready for him. His right hand still held the namesake blackjack, but his left came out with the pig sticker he’d kept hidden for just such an occasion.

  Once he’d started using the leather pouch filled with tiny ball bearings, so many years ago, he instinctively knew that if life continued on the shit path he seemed to be walking, sooner or later, trouble would come his way - something a blackjack wouldn’t cure, wouldn’t cover, wouldn’t help keep him alive. For that eventuality, he’d always kept a knife hidden either up his sleeve or behind his back - in easy reach, should the moment arise. Even in Soledad, he carried a shiv, made from a toothbrush he’d stolen from one of the new punks. No one - not inmate, not guard, not even the succession of assholes with whom he’d shared a cell, knew of its existence.

  After the breakout, and the escape from the apocalyptic plague, he’d acquired this new version - a four-point-eight-inch Gerber fixed blade, with a sheath they’d taken off the body of that survivalist douchebag they found and killed not long after they picked up the Honorable Henry David Goddard. Mister President wouldn’t like Charlie using said pig sticker on his butt boy Georgie, but Blackjack Charlie Carter gave not one nanogram of shit.

  The knife slid out of its sheath and into that motherfucker’s gullet just like butter. The jagoff’s eyes widened, and his lips puckered in and out like a goldfish, as he staggered back into the dining room, tripped over one of the chairs overturned in the scuffle, and fell flat on his useless, annoying ass. He stared at Charlie, dumbfounded. The knife hadn’t hit an artery, so the blood flowed from the wound, rather than spurting, but the same couldn’t be said for George’s windpipe. Bubbles formed and popped, and the man clearly couldn’t get any air into his lungs. He tried rising to one knee, and failed.

  Three other men - Hennessy, and Davis McGee and Felix Hoffman were witnesses. Back in the day, before the plague, Charlie might have worried, might have had to think about a trial, might have had to decide whether four bodies were the same as the one he just killed. But this was the New World. He eyed the men now. Well, okay, two men and Felix. The chemist stood plastered against the far bulkhead. No problem, there. Hennessy and McGee, on the other hand...

  Hennessy shifted his gaze between Charlie and Davis. He shrugged. “I guess I owe McGee a bottle of hootch.”

  “I drink scotch,” the other man said.

  Seeing Charlie’s blank stare, Hennessy explained: “I bet him my booze ration the moron would piss you off enough to make you kill his ass.”

  Blackjack took the two men in. He relaxed. Good, he thought. Good.

  “Let’s head South,” he said, heading toward the pilothouse. In passing - as if an afterthought - he said to Felix: “Get that piece of shit off the carpet.”

  128

  M/V True North

  Midway Atoll

  “...Midway Harbor Master, this is Coast Guard 6585, Channel One-Six. Over.” The crisp clear voice came through like a sign from Heaven. Teddy Spute smiled and keyed the mic he’d been holding ready in his hand.

  “Coast Guard 6585, this is Motor Vessel True North. Switch and answer Channel Two-One.” Just the ability to use correct comms procedure felt wonderful. No more were they an ad hoc force. No more did they have to play catch-as-catch-can games. A helo meant one thing, and many things - maybe every thing: The Polar Star was coming to Midway.

  They had a full crew - at least according to what Jim Barber said. And they had a full four-striper Captain. Nothing against Molly Gordon. He liked her (and she had a really nice ass - which he would never in a million years say in front of John - especially after being so utterly taken in by the ass of that conniving bitch, Clara) - but she was just a kid, and a wet-behind-the-ears Boot Ensign. They needed somebody in charge with experience, gravitas, and the full faith of the US Government - or what used to be the government. Not much of that anymore.

  “Good to see you guys,” he said into the radio. And, yeah, so much for procedure, but having them there...

  “Roger that, True North. Need a place to land. Over.”

  They were going to land? Were they nuts?

  “Is that advisable?” He asked. No member of that crew had been vaccinated. True, everyone on the island - with the exception of the twenty-five from Port Allen and Johnston Atoll - had been, and the survivors had at least received Primer, but those doses were the last. And why were they the last?

  Clara.

  That bitch fucked him again. How could he have been so stupid? How could he not have seen her for the conniving cunt she was? One hundred and twenty doses - forty each of Primer, Primary and Secondary Booster gone. In the sailboat he taught her how to use. How the Hell would he ever redeem himself after that?

  Stephanie Barber was making more vaccine, sure, but it took time, and with Floyd in Honolulu... How much could she realistically do?

  And yeah, okay, all those survivors - themselves included - were almost certainly not carrying either the respiratory virus or Pomona. But the pilots and crew of the helo were clean, uninfected and unexposed to any of it. Most likely didn’t cut it, in Teddy’s considered opinion. As usual, his opinion didn’t mean shit.

  “Will explain upon landing,” came the cryptic response.

  Spute dredged up a mental map of the island. He needn’t have bothered. “One flat spot is good as any,” he said. “Nothing’s been cleared of debris.” And he sure as fuck wasn’t going to do a runway walk.

  Stephanie’s voice cut in. At first, Spute wondered how it was possible. Then he knew: commco. “Recommend the empty lot, roughly center of the island,” she said. “That’s closest to the Clinic.”

  “Roger that,” the presumed pilot replied.

  Teddy Spute shook his head in disgust - at himself, not Stephanie. Cut out of the loop, yet again. No more than he deserved...

  129

  USCG ISC Honolulu

  Sand Island, Oahu

  The corpse fell into the water with a SPLAT, sending spray into Harold’s face. He barely seemed to notice. Looping a pre-made bowline knot around its neck, he added it to the line of five dead former humans floating next to the RHIB on a long line, like fish on a stringer.

  Molly lowered the cooler, containing the spines of n
ine additional zombies, then followed it down the ladder. Off to the left, the fifty caliber machine gun banged away at a crowd of bad guys, and to the right, the 25mm on Assateague killed several more, but did more damage to the surrounding buildings than to the horde. Up above, Duke emptied his shotgun into yet another crowd of diseased and crazed victims of the Pomona Virus. Flinging one more body over the side of the pier, he started down the ladder as well.

  All-in-all, the mission was a failure. Fifteen spines would only net seventy-five doses. Nowhere near enough. And the more time it took them to harvest the material, the more that material would become useless. Eighteen hours, the Professor said. Eighteen hours and the virus bodies would start to degrade.

  The city loomed in shadow off to her right. She couldn’t see the hundreds of people still trapped there, but she could feel them. Maybe Floyd was right. Maybe they should abandon Oahu altogether, and abandon those people to the fate that had been sealed since the virus began.

  Not gonna happen, she thought.

  They wouldn’t abandon them, wouldn’t tuck tail and run because the mission was too hard, too dangerous, too impossible. They would find a way.

  Duke dropped into the RHIB, nearly landing on Gary King, who sat on the landward sponson, slumped, with his head down. She didn’t think he was sick, though, on the surface, it seemed like the natural response. While she might be transferring her own reaction onto him, Molly imagined he felt the same as she did: nothing. Maybe that wasn’t right, either. Maybe it was a new brand of nothing - somewhere beyond the point of numbness and into some new realm of feeling drained, world-weary, empty, lifeless.

  The motor revved and they were off. She hadn’t noticed Harold releasing the line tethering them to the barnacle-encrusted concrete columns supporting the pier. Wasn’t noticing much of much of anything, for that matter.

  The string of bodies bobbed in the light wake caused by the slow-moving small boat. She watched them for a moment, still feeling nothing.