This was just as well, in Scott’s estimation, because the cabin would be cramped enough with three people inside - forget having five. The machine was clearly designed to accommodate only one person. Two could be squeezed with minor difficulty, considering the slight build of their mad civilian genius, Marc Micari, but three would be decidedly uncomfortable.
And then, of course, the thought became just that much more uncomfortable still. Three people would be virtually impossible. One would need to stay outside the cabin, clinging to the sides of the gargantuan yellow leviathan, just inches from the clawing hands of the infected assholes, and since he, Scott (Jurgen McAwesomeness) Pruden, manned their one and only MG 240 machine gun, he knew, with ball-crawling terror, just who that one person would be.
“Fuck,” he said aloud.
Duke looked at him for a long moment, and for the briefest of seconds, Scott actually thought he might have seen the glimmer of sympathy in the man’s eyes, but then it was gone. “Deal with it,” Duke said, then he put the machine in gear, turned the tracks to point them toward North Nimitz Highway, and proceeded with their mission, calling into his radio: “Follow me,” as he did so.
123
The Duck Bus
Pier Two Cruise Terminal
“Die motherfuckers!” Wendy Micari screamed at the two zombies staggering their way across the parking lot leading to the place the Duck Bus sat parked, and still as yet not running. She jacked a shell into the chamber of her twelve gauge and was moving the shotgun to her shoulder when Molly grabbed it by the barrel and pulled it toward the ground. The civilian stared at her with a mixture of surprise, manic rage, and an expression that said - loud and clear - just what she thought of LTjg Gordon’s level of sanity.
“No firing!” Molly said, loud enough for everyone to hear - a simple task, since they were all connected by comm units.
“Are you fucking insane?” Wendy demanded, getting right into Molly’s face.
“Do you want to bring every fucking zombie within the sound of your shotgun down on our heads?” Molly shouted back, giving the woman a taste of her own profane medicine.
This seemed to give the woman pause. She looked from Molly, to the approaching zombies (still a good twenty yards away) to the Duck Bus (where DC3 Harrison Dodge and SA Martin Tabinski were struggling to replace the batteries), then back to Molly again, finally relaxing her shoulders and easing her struggle to wrench the shotgun out of Molly’s grasp. She jerked her thumb toward the stumbling former humans.
“What about them?”
By way of reply, Molly reached back over her shoulder and unsheathed the kukri-machete she had strapped there.
“Now we’re talking!” Wendy said, as Molly strode toward the creatures who would probably like nothing better than to take a tasty chunk out of her backside.
The weapon felt slightly cumbersome in her hand, as she spun it few times to try and get a better feel. Jonesy made wielding the deadly blade seem easy, and he carried two of the damned things. Then again, he’d studied with Baston sticks in whatever form of Philippine martial arts he’d taken, whereas Molly’s Krav Maga concentrated more on disarming opponents, rather than engaging in sword play. Still, she had little choice but to make it work.
The two infected creatures weren’t exactly shambling toward them in tandem. The first, a mid-sized man in what remained of a business suit had about a three yard lead on the second: a small, stark naked woman who looked to have been in less than stellar shape when the apocalypse began. Her body was covered in dirt and... other things... and the dirt was caked in various cracks and crevices of her loose-hanging skin. She also sported a number of obviously infected open sores. Killing her would be a kindness.
This last thought nearly brought Molly up short. When had she become so callous? She didn’t know, and in any case, she was about to be a bit too busy to care.
The male zombie gave a low, moaning growl as he reached for her. The standard Krav Maga technique would have been to defend against this attack, and had her intent been to simply survive the experience, she would have countered by using her opponent’s momentum to throw him to the ground, where she could pummel him at her leisure, or with either a kick or a knee to the solar plexis, or, failing those, an elbow strike or a knife hand punch to the jaw or throat. Her actual intent - the reason for letting the vile thing get so close - was so she could kill the poor bastard without making the noise of, say, a twelve gauge shotgun. The kukri machete, therefore, was an offensive weapon. She put it to good use, slicing the thing’s throat and spinning to avoid the gout of blood, as she made her way toward the woman, whose obvious misery she ended by cutting off her head.
She paused on her way back to wipe the blade clean on the remnants of the male zombie’s suit jacket. As she stood to return to the Duck Bus, the sight of every member of her team staring at her in a mixture of wonder, awe, and maybe a little fear gave her pause - but only for a moment. She realized what they’d just witnessed - what she’d just done - and waited for her psyche to exhibit some negative response: remorse, guilt, shame... something. What she felt, however, was nothing. Nothing at all.
She remembered what Jonesy said about the shooting incident a lifetime ago, before any of this happened, and before Molly reported aboard the Sass. He’d felt nothing then. She felt nothing now.
Nothing except a strong desire to rescue Jonesy.
“Now would be a good time to get the bus running,” she said, as she started forward.
124
Seaplane Wallbanger
Sand Island, Hi
“So sorry,” Harvey Walton said, leaning his head into the passenger compartment of the old seaplane, “but no playing with your toy until after we’ve delivered our cargo.”
“Spoil sport,” Jim Barber replied, as he removed the mini gun from it’s recently-fabricated bracket in the aircraft doorway.
“Oh yes, well, as I said, I am sorry, but you see I have this strange aversion to being blown up,” Harvey replied.
The cargo in question - fifteen, five-gallon containers of homemade Napalm, with as many hand grenades taped to their tops - lay upon the deck in three rows of five cans each. The stench of acetone, gasoline, and still-dissolving Styrofoam filled the cabin with highly flammable fumes, smelling not at all like victory, Jim thought, in spite of the epic line from Apocalypse Now.
BM3/OPS Rees Erwin stuck his head into the open hatch. “Permission to come aboard?”
He stood upon the end of one of the two small boat piers nearest the Station, looking utterly out of place in his clean, light blue Tropical Dress uniform shirt, complete with collar devices, plastic name tag, and ribbons, and with his feet covered in shiny, black patent-leather shoes. Everyone had been wearing either working blues, or the black tacticals of the Special Boarding uniforms worn by CWO2 Jones, BM1/DECK Peterson, and the others who’d been out there killing zombies since the Sass bugged out seven weeks before. Jim stared at him, running his eyes up and down the young man’s form, taking in the unusual attire.
“Who are you trying to impress?” Jim asked. He couldn’t actually see it, given that Erwin wore the full gas mask, unlike himself and Walton, who were sporting white filter masks slathered with medicinal-smelling Vapo Rub, but he felt certain the poor kid was blushing.
“Sorry,” Rees replied. “Laundry day.”
“Quite proper,” Harvey interjected. “One should look one’s best when going into battle.”
Jim turned to look at the odd man who’d become his partner over several hundred hours of flying back and forth between Midway and Honolulu, and snorted. “What’s your excuse, then?” he asked the crazy Brit. “Have you even showered in the last three days?”
Walton looked down at the faded Hawaiian shirt and shorts he wore over battered leather work boots, then sniffed in the general vicinity of his left armpit. “Do I offend?” He asked. He stared at Jim for a moment, with a half-smile on his face, then added: “If I do, then you must, as we
ll.”
Truth be told, Jim did feel somewhat disgusting, but as to whether or not he stank, the aroma of Napalm covered all potential olfactory sins. He replied by flipping the pilot his right middle finger.
Rees Erwin, still standing, resplendent in his uniform, shifted on his feet and said: “The Captain sent me to help.” He pointed to the fifteen canisters. “With that.”
“Better get on board, then,” Jim said, then turned to Harvey. “And you’d better get this thing started, or the fight will be over before we get there.”
125
M/V Corrigan Cargo III
15.847580 N 160.404953 W
“We’ve got one of the Tomahawks ready,” Morris Minooka told Davis McGee.
“Excellent,” McGee replied. “How long till we’re fully operational?”
“That’s a harder question,” Morris answered. “And don’t be too happy about the one we’ve got working. Launching it would probably set off all the others.”
They were on the Bridge. Morris had waited to deliver the information to their pirate captain, specifically so that he’d need to do it there. Why? Simple.
Reconnaissance.
If they were to have any chance at all of taking over the Corrigan, they needed to learn where the various pirates were at any given time. Being at sea meant being on a schedule. Certain people had to maintain a watch on certain places, namely the Bridge and Engineroom. Without a schedule, nobody would get any sleep.
The various navies throughout the world had long ago established a specific routine, revolving around either four, six, or eight hour watches. Four hours on with eight hours off, was the norm. It was the most sustainable in the long term. Six on, six off could be done, but before long, attrition would begin to take its toll, as the watchstanders grew more and more exhausted. Eight on, eight off could be done in a pinch, but only for a couple of days, and only if safety concerns were basically ignored. This had been tried and tested over centuries.
The most common routine began at midnight, and ran in four hour increments from there: midnight to zero four hundred, zero four hundred to zero eight hundred, zero eight hundred till noon, noon till sixteen hundred, sixteen hundred till twenty hundred (eight pm) and twenty hundred till midnight. Unfortunately for the pirates, there simply weren’t enough of them to do four on, eight off. For that matter, there weren’t enough to do six on, six off - not if they wanted to leave enough men to watch the former Hamilton crew members as they readied the ship for a launch on Honolulu. This left eight on, eight off, which the pirates had been doing for the last three days.
They were tired. Morris Minooka could see it in the eyes of Davis McGee, as he gave the man the bad news. He’d also seen it in the eyes of the pirates scattered throughout the ship on guard duty. They, also, were on an eight on, eight off rotation.
This would give them their opportunity. But they needed intel. They needed to know where each pirate was at each part of the rotation. So Morris had waited until McGee - the man in charge, since the Pirate King, Blackjack Charlie, rode the Point of Order, on its way toward Midway. There weren’t any Navy personnel on the yacht. The people on Midway would need to take care of themselves.
Davis McGee yawned, and looked at his watch.
“You’ve got exactly five hours,” McGee said. “Get it done, or I’ll kill you all.” He yawned again.
Good..., Morris thought. Very good...
126
M/V Point of Order
22.443873 N 174.731124 W
“Oh, yeah, baby, that’s good,” the pirate said, as Clara Blondelle slid her mouth down on him. He was a nobody, an underling, one of Dirk Parker’s thugs, which begged the question of what he was doing on the yacht, rather than on the cargo ship, with his Australian icon - or whatever the torturing bastard was to the man. Not that it mattered. She didn’t even know the guy’s name.
You’d think they’d come up with some better material, after all these years, Clara thought as she worked her oral magic. But no. The same old lines, from the same old pigs. All men were pigs. She’d learned that at an early age. She’d learned to give blowjobs at about the same time. Coincidence? She doubted it.
She’d become used to their rutting and squealing, as the years progressed, had grown accustomed to the patter, and to the feel of a dick in her mouth. This nothing of a wannabe pirate, was no exception to the rules she’d discovered along the way. Everything in life was a game. Everything. And like any other game, sex had rules. Or maybe not rules. That might be too regimented a word. Maybe routine would be more accurate.
The routine went something like this: once the foreplay had been dispensed with (which, depending on the man, could take anywhere from two hours to two minutes), then it was time for the oral sex. Thinking about it gave her a jolt of recall, as she remembered the famous scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Sir Galahad comes upon a castle on a dark and stormy night. It is filled with nuns of a truly bizarre order. He discovers that they’d been projecting the image of the False Grail into the sky, to lure in unsuspecting knights, such as himself. First you must spank me, the head nun declares. And me! And me! The others say. And then the oral sex!
The scene playing out on the movie screen of her mind nearly made her gag. Laughing with a dick down her throat? Never a good idea.
“Yeah, baby. Choke on it,” the pirate said, from his position, sitting in an easy chair in the salon they’d been using as their lounge. It was a public space - anyone could enter at any time - but at the moment, only he and she were there. His words were also part of the routine - for a certain sort of man.
Most men were so delighted just to be getting laid they went to great lengths to ensure the comfort of their female partner. Some, like this asshole, like Dirk Parker, however, liked it rough - liked to make it hurt. He grabbed her by the back of the head and jammed himself into her throat.
This, too, was part of the routine. She’d become used to it, and so, she knew what to do when a man’s piggish actions went too far. Biting would be the obvious response, but would also serve to cut off what little airway she had through her mouth. Fortunately (for her and unfortunately for him) giving a blowjob put her hands in close proximity to every man’s weakest point: his balls.
She gave him a good, hard squeeze, and he released the back of her head. She pulled off him and took three big, gulping breaths before he slapped her right across the face. She fell back, onto the carpeted deck.
“Bitch,” the pirate growled.
“Sorry, baby,” she replied, making sure to add a sufficient whimper to her voice. All part of the game.
The blowjob resumed. Of course it did.
She’d also learned that giving them what they wanted - what they expected - gave her the power. She pondered this as she brought him toward his climax - because this, too was part of the routine. All men - every last swinging dick of them - became exactly the same as they neared orgasm: mindless, utterly self-absorbed, and thus, not paying attention to anything else. It gave her power, and made the recipient of her ministrations susceptible to suggestion.
“When do you stand another watch in the radio room?” She asked, easing his member out, so she wasn’t talking with her mouth full.
“W-what?” He asked, sounding a million miles away.
“The radio room,” she repeated, then explained: “It’s more private,” she cooed. “We can do more things.”
She didn’t give him the chance to reply. Her mouth saw to that.
This was where she wanted him.
Why?
Because another bit of British pop culture from the Seventies came to mind as she worked her magic: a bit of Pink Floyd she’d picked up from a lover who listened to almost nothing but. It came from a song called (appropriately) Dogs.
“You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you, you’ll get the chance to put the knife in...”
127
Ra
dio Room
Midway Atoll
“Lunacy and insubordination,” CWO2 Peavey muttered. Whether he’d intended to say this under his breath or to have the assembled crowd of people actually hear his words, Samantha could not guess, but in either case, she immediately wanted to give him a swift kick where it would do the most good.
“Try not to be an idiot, Peavey,” Teddy Spute said, from his position at the radio console. He, Samantha, her Mom, Stephanie Gordon, Doctor Delicious (a.k.a. Sam Bonaventura - who seemed to be standing a little closer to Stephanie than was strictly necessary, in Samantha’s opinion), the civilian woman that Mr. Barber and the Crazy Brit picked up on Johnston Atoll with the constantly-complaining Duprovniks, Shilo Grant, and the eternal jerk-face, CWO2 Peavey, were gathered in what passed for Midway’s Comm Center. It had once been a thriving building, filled with activity and state of the art communications equipment, when the base was in operation, but since the atoll became a bird sanctuary, some thirty years ago, the “state of the art,” now looked more like a museum display, and the “thriving,” had taken retirement.
They were gathered, of course, to listen in on the rescue operation taking place in Honolulu. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t be able to hear a thing, since the comms were broadcast over VHF radio frequencies, which didn’t have anywhere near the range necessary to reach from Oahu to Midway, but Spute had talked OS2 Amber Winkowski into re-transmitting the broadcast over the HF radio, which (thanks to the repair of the repeater on Ka’Ala Mountain) did have the range.
Peavey puffed up his nearly-nonexistent chest and turned on Spute. “I am the ranking military officer on this base,” the pompous jackass said. “You will show me the proper respect!”
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 22
