“Goddamned right!” Gary King agreed.
It wasn’t like the man, who’d always seemed to Frank to be exactly what he appeared to be: a good-natured cook whose only concern was taking care of his crew. He couldn’t remember the man ever losing his cool. The guy seemed damned-well about ready to do so now. Frank felt the same way.
“Break, break,” the male voice from the Star broadcast. “Cutter Assateague, Polar Star, Two-Two.”
Frank pulled the handset from the VHF unit and tried to say: “Go,” but with the gas mask on, he might as well have been reciting the preamble to the US Constitution: We, the people... He ripped the mask from his face and dropped it to the deck, caught the incredible stench of death and decay, and nearly puked, but forced the bile down and pinched off his nose with the fingers of his left hand. With his right, he depressed the handset transmit key and repeated the word: “Go.”
“What’s your fuel state?”
He scanned the indicator panel next to the helm, found the appropriate readout, and replied: “Hair above three-quarters, so roughly fifteen hundred miles at top speed.” The gruff voice (which Frank felt sure belonged to a Master Chief - because only a Master Chief could sound that salty) hadn’t asked for their effective range, but his head had automatically done the calculation, so he’d given it anyway.
“Roger,” the man replied. “Stand by.”
“Fuck that,” Gray snapped. “Let’s just pull the anchor and go.”
Frank waved him off with a raised hand, even though he felt exactly the same way. Time was wasting. Time they may not have.
178
Buoy Tender Pier
ISC Sand Island, Oahu
“About time you got here,” Tara McBride said, as Lydia came upon the gathered crowd, with Mac, the dog, trotting along beside her. “You almost missed the excitement,” she added, gesturing toward Ms. Gordon and Jonesy, who were kissing like lovers who’d been apart for weeks. The assembled survivors were watching the public display of affection with detached interest. Some, however, weren’t paying attention at all, and Lydia could sympathize. They’d been through Hell - quite literally. She’d never been one for religious iconography, but surely Dante’s depiction of the various circles of the Underworld had fallen far short of the reality these people had witnessed.
The Coasties, however (what few of them there were), were paying rapt attention. Some were cheering. Some were whistling and catcalling. Duke, the large and intimidating Bosun’s Mate, echoed Tara’s greeting, with a bit of added profanity for good measure.
“Bout fucking time,” he said.
Bout fucking time, indeed, she thought, as her eyes shifted from the happy couple to the person she’d been thinking about and worrying about and wanting to do the same thing to since the nightmare began. Since before it began, comes to that. Since the kiss.
She wanted to do it now, wanted to gather Tara into her arms and not let go as they pressed their own lips together; to become lost in her touch and her scent and her everything.
Give yourself a really good orgasm, then get on with it.
The words popped once again into her head. This time, though, and maybe for the first time (but if she had anything to say about it, it wouldn’t be the last - not by a country mile), the remembered quote didn’t scare the crap out of her, didn’t threaten to send her running for the hills.
Bout fucking time...
“Mac-attack!” Wendy Micari called, as she and her husband, Marc, arrived, arm in arm, and headed straight for their dog, whose tail was wagging so ferociously, getting hit by it might cause serious damage. The slim Asian woman dropped to her knees and accepted a sloppy dog-kiss from her pet, as she gave him a good scratch behind the ears. Marc joined in by scratching Mac’s flanks, much to the dog’s delight. Heartwarming as the reunion might be, Lydia couldn’t care less. She handed the leash to Wendy, then turned to Tara and shut out the rest of the world.
They stood there, looking at each other, neither one moving. Tara smiled, at first, happy to see her friend (or so Lydia hoped). She watched as the realization of a fundamental change in status reached the younger woman’s eyes, which went from happy, to curious, to confused, to delighted.
She reached out, and took Tara by the hand. “You’re coming with me,” she said, and led her friend - her new girlfriend - away.
Bout fucking time...
179
Ocean-Going Tug Mahalo
21.579561 N 158.954757W
“What are your orders?” CWO4 Bobby V Vincenzo asked, impatiently.
LTjg Carol Kemp could sympathize, but his clear disrespect was beginning to piss her off. She turned to BM3/OPS Steve Bohenna, who’d come up on the Bridge to see what all the fuss was about, just in time to hear the little nugget about nukes headed for Honolulu.
“Hundred and ten miles,” he said, in answer to her question of the distance to the cargo vessel. “At the speed this slow pig goes, it’ll take a little under seven hours.”
Seven hours. She looked at her watch. ETA, zero three hundred...
“Let’s go,” Bobby V snarled.
She ignored him.
Three in the morning... By then, there’d be no telling where the cargo ship would actually be - or whether or not Honolulu would be glowing. She didn’t know much about missiles - damned little, in fact - but the Corrigan’s last known position put them no more than a hundred miles from Oahu, which had to be easily within range. They could launch at any time. They could have launched already.
She peeked her head out the bridge door and scanned the sky to the southeast. Whatever it was she expected to see wasn’t there. No contrails crossing the twilight air, no dark speck zipping toward Honolulu. She turned eastward, in the direction they were heading. The city lay no more than seventy nautical miles away. No glowing halo in the gathering darkness.
She could see Vincenzo out of the corner of her eye. He fidgeted angrily. Too damned bad, she thought. This was her responsibility, not his, and if he didn’t like it, too damned bad about that, too.
There were three options. The first two were obvious: continue on their course toward Honolulu, as ordered, and possibly head straight into a nuclear hot zone, or divert to the last known position of the cargo vessel, which almost certainly wouldn’t be there when they arrived. Neither sounded viable. Both sounded almost pointless. The same question applied to either destination: what could they do when they got there?
Nothing. Not a goddamned thing. The cargo vessel would be gone, or everyone in Honolulu would be dead - and maybe both.
The third option would be to respond to the one thing they might be able to do something about. She turned toward Bohenna.
“Give me distance and ETA to Midway,” she said. Turning to address Vincenzo, she was about to tell him to check the fuel state, when one of the three options became null and void in a flash of nuclear fire.
180
Harbor Edge
Midway Atoll
“This is the last of what I could sneak away,” Samantha Gordon said, setting the final case of bottled water onto the ground, near a sizeable stack of supplies she and her new friend and co-conspirator, Shilo Grant, had been creating for the better part of the last four hours. It had been a slow process, and judging by the twinge she felt in the small of her back, a painful one, as well.
They were concealed in a clump of trees, just north of the old seaplane ramp Mister Barber and the crazy British pilot had been using. It was as close as they could get to where the sailboats were anchored without anybody seeing them. That was key.
The main problem was sunlight. Midway Atoll wasn’t exactly lush to begin with, and the area surrounding the harbor was even less so. Bright sunlight, plus nowhere to hide, equaled their happy butts being caught, and the oh-so concerned adults stopping them from setting sail.
Part of her knew it was a good thing. People cared about her. People worried about her. That was good, right? And maybe, in the past, she would have tak
en it. She would have done so in dramatic, begrudging fashion, publicly lamenting the unfair cruelty, of course, but all the while, she’d be secretly warmed by the Hallmark sentimentality.
In the past.
That was before Pomona; before seeing her would-be boyfriend, and that conniving bitch, Cheyenne, ripped to shreds in Grosvenor Park; before Honolulu. That girl was gone. She didn’t exist anymore. In her place was the new Samantha Gordon. New and improved...that’s me! She mused, trying to lighten her dark mood, and failing miserably.
“We can grab the rest once the sun goes down,” Shilo said, glancing at her watch. “About two hours.”
Two hours, and she could cast the carcass of her old self out to sea. She checked her own watch. Call it eight o’clock. She frowned.
“Eight’s too early,” she said. “Too many people up and about.”
“So...ten?” Shilo asked.
Ten o’clock. Twenty-two hundred. Slack tide was eleven-fifteen, coming off of an ebb, so conditions would be almost perfect for their departure. Close enough, if she’d done her calculations correctly - and she knew she had. Her Dad taught her; so had Molly; so had Jonesy.
She belonged with them, whether they saw it, or not, agreed with it, or not. They were making a difference. She would go help them, if it killed her.
They drove the golf cart they’d hijacked back to the pier, where the True North used to sit. Crates of supplies were stacked in haphazard disarray, thanks to the hurried departure of her father and the rest. They’d been pilfering from those stacks all afternoon.
Her mother, brother, and the other families who hadn’t gone with the ship to Honolulu, had moved into one of the nearest barracks buildings that had been cleaned and repaired, and sat waiting for the flood of refugees who would arrive when the True North returned. They weren’t air conditioned, and that would pose a problem, but it wasn’t going to be Samantha’s. Not if they made good their escape.
“Think we should grab one more load, just to be safe?” Shilo asked, eyeing a stack of canned goods.
The trip to Oahu would take about six days, if the wind was right and they could average eight knots. If Mother Nature didn’t cooperate, however, it could take upwards of two weeks. That was sailing. It didn’t pay to be impatient, but it did pay to be prepared.
They had enough food and water to last them about ten days. The sailboat they’d chosen, the ironically-named Children’s Inheritance, carried a solar still, so they could make fresh water, as long as the sea didn’t get too rough (which didn’t seem likely), and they could augment their food stores by fishing, so - on paper, anyway - they already had what they needed. Still, better to have more than they needed.
More was good. More would keep them from starving.
“Why not?” She replied.
Movement caught her eye, when she was half in/half out of the cart. She squinted into the setting sun, caught the flash of whatever it was, lost it in the glare, then found it again in time to identify it as another one of the atoll’s many golf carts, before it pulled onto the pier, with Mister Teddy Spute at the wheel.
He braked to an abrupt halt, when he was still ten feet away, lunged out of the driver’s seat and ran up to them, breathless, even though he’d only run about three steps.
“You need to follow me,” he said in an excited voice that raised the hackles at the back of Sam’s neck.
“What’s going on?” Shilo asked.
“Pirates,” he gasped. “They’re on the way here.”
181
M/V Point of Order
26.797950 N 176.906417 W
“Can you feel it?” Clara Blondelle whispered into the ear of Felix Hoffman. She had one hand on the back of his neck. The other was...elsewhere. Both of his were on her backside.
“Oh, yeah,” Felix breathed.
“Not that, silly,” she cooed, giving him a squeeze where it would do the most good. They were in the radio room, ostensibly to have more privacy, since the door had a lock on it. At least, that what she’d told the science geek she currently had wrapped around her little finger - or rather, five fingers of one slowly stroking hand.
His reason for being there was obvious. Hers’ was a bit more subtle.
“I mean this whole thing.” She clarified. “Can’t you feel it falling apart?”
He stiffened, though not in the way she intended. “What?” He said, and began to pull away.
“Shh,” she soothed. “It’s alright,” she whispered, making her voice as sultry as she could. He still tried to pull away. That wouldn’t do.
Taking one of his hands that were no longer busy with her ass, she stuffed it down the front of her unbuttoned jeans and demonstrated that she had neglected to wear undergarments. It proved to be just the distraction she needed to keep Felix compliant.
This was key. This was vital. She needed him - if only for a little while longer.
Because the fact of the matter was, she could feel it all falling apart. Word about the loss of the Corrigan, and the failure of its deadly mission had spread through the yacht like water flowing beneath the hull. The whole purpose to that mission was to create a big enough disturbance to keep unwanted eyes away from their true target: Midway, and in the process, kill off the majority of their enemies.
Midway was where the vaccine was. Midway was where people who knew how to make it were. Midway was where those cold-hearted bitches who’d shunned her were sitting fat, dumb and happy, and where they were supposed to be completely unaware of their impending danger.
Now, however, the secret was out. The cat was out of the bag.
So why were they still steaming, full speed ahead toward Midway? The answer was perfectly simple, though she doubted most of the testosterone-stupefied pirates had a clue.
If Blackjack Charlie turned back now, then his entire plan, upon which he’d pinned every bit of his power and influence, would fail, in spectacular fashion. Everyone would know, and it wouldn’t be long before someone decided to challenge the Pirate King.
He had to keep going. No choice. She smiled, thinking about it, as she wiggled her hips to make her pants drop down around her ankles.
The necessity was Charlie’s weak point.
She kicked the pants off her feet, took Felix by both hands, and walked backwards to the one and only bare spot on the desktop, where she sat, and spread her legs.
Blackjack Charlie had one other weak point, though she doubted he was aware of it: the man whose cock she now guided into herself. Charlie ignored the science nerd, thinking Felix so far beneath him as to be scarcely worth noticing.. Everybody did. Everybody except Clara.
“I’m afraid what he’s going to do,” she moaned, as Felix began his rutting motion. “I’m afraid what he might do to me,” she added, sucking on the lobe of the ear into which she’d been whispering.
“No,” Felix protested.
“You have to help me, baby,” she pleaded, moving her hips the best way she knew how - the way years and years of practice taught her.
“Oh,” he breathed.
“You have to protect me.”
“Oh, yes,” he replied, his humping rhythm already becoming shaky and frantic.
She slammed her hips into him, squeezing his penis with all that the years of Kegel exercises had produced. His moans began sounding like sharp, barking, coughs, as he neared his orgasm.
“Kill him for me, baby,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Felix cried. “Oh, yes!”
182
USCGC Sassafras
ISC Sand Island, Oahu
“I need a beer the size of my head,” Duke proclaimed, as the water from three fire hoses washed the accumulated, dirt, mud, blood, and gore from his still-clothed body. He wasn’t alone, in either his position within the makeshift shower, or his desire for alcohol. Harold, Greg Riley (who, Molly noticed, was still looking utterly shell-shocked), Scott Pruden, Glen Newby, Marc Micari (whose drenched clothing made the malnourished civilian look even more
like a scarecrow than he had the first time they’d met), and Chief Warrant Officer Socrates Jones were all getting pressure-washed. Several others stood in exhausted patience, waiting for their turn at the shower. Molly, herself, who hadn’t been splattered with zombie-goo, stood back on the Buoy Deck, out of the spray, just trying to keep the tears filling her eyes from spilling down her face.
“Tequila!” Jonesy cried. “My kingdom for a bottle of tequila!”
“Rum,” Harold added.
“I’m good with beer,” Glen Newby announced.
“Me too,” Scott Pruden agreed.
“And you shall have them all,” Molly declared. “No matter who I have to kill to make it happen.” She was so proud of these guys - even the civilian. And she loved them - all of them. One in particular.
They could have all died. Some of them nearly did. And Jonesy - as usual - had been right in the thick of things, dangling his life in front of the danger like a taunting carrot.
Idiot, she thought. He stepped out of the improvised shower and splashed toward her, wiping the water from his face. His clothes were drenched and torn in places. His sodden boots squelched with every step. He smiled.
“You’re an idiot,” she said aloud, as he came up to her.
“Guilty as charged.” His eyes - those damnable, delicious, hazel eyes - twinkled at her.
“You could have been killed,” she said, trying to keep her voice down so the others didn’t hear.
He peered down at himself, examining his front and sides, taking in the wet and bedraggled condition of his uniform, then smiled back at her and shrugged. “Still here, apparently.”
“We are, too,” Harold said, demonstrating that her voice hadn’t been quite as low as she thought. Duke smacked him upside the head in response.
She frowned, torn between the need to keep up the appearance of a military officer, and the desire to take Jonesy in her arms again and not let go. That kiss had been pure impulse. She hadn’t thought, hadn’t considered the consequences, hadn’t cared what might happen next. Take this any goddamned way you like... Had she meant it? Had she really shoved aside all her fear, all the walls that fear had built, all the objections her brain could raise about what her heart had wanted since she was sixteen years old?
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 30
