No help there...
Jonesy hadn’t told the helo to do an ammo drop. He hadn’t thought of it, though, in retrospect, it seemed like a no-brainer. At the moment, however, he didn’t have time for retrospect, and in any case, it didn’t matter one bit, because yet again, somebody else had fixed his fuckup.
“Uh...,” he said into the radio. “Okay... Cool. Any way we can get out by going through your building?”
He watched the Marine staff sergeant take the question in, tilting his head sideways, as if the possibility hadn’t occurred to him, then cranking his neck around to look behind him into the shadows of the warehouse where he and his men had been trapped for weeks. He looked at Jonesy again and shook his head.
“Not without an Abrams tank,” he replied.
Another explosion, behind and to the right of the truck, sprayed blood across Jonesy’s face shield.
“Last grenade,” Marc Micari called from the rear compartment.
He absent-mindedly wiped the disgusting mess away with the back of his gloved hand, leaving a cloudy smear to fog his vision. If his face shield was bad, the windshield of the Skull Mobile was much, much worse. Duke had been using the washer fluid like he had an endless supply of the stuff, but it hadn’t done a whole lot of good. Now the reservoir was empty and all his wipers did was move the blood and bone and guts and brains in twin arcs that all-but completely obscured the view.
A zombie quartet staggered over the bodies recently blown to bits by the grenade, and headed for the squad in the warehouse door. Jonesy sprayed them with .45 ACP from his Thompson. He patted the pouch at his side, trying to feel for how many full magazines remained. He felt two of them - just two. Whatever they were going to do, it needed to happen soon, or it wouldn’t happen at all.
“Skull Mobile, Duck Bus,” Molly’s voice sounded in his ear.
“Go,” he replied.
“I think I see a way out,” she said. “As usual, you’re not going to like it.”
251
The Duck Bus
Warehouse 14
It had been staring her in the face the whole time. The bus sat at the edge of the parking lot, just off Garnet Street, which passed much closer to the smaller, NAVSUP building, than it did to the warehouse. It was yet another H-shaped structure. Something apparently hardwired into the brains of government planners made them choose the same design over and over again, for building after building, regardless of its size or use. As was typical, the cross-piece of the H included a glass-enclosed atrium that separated the two wings. Some of those atriums would have easily been big enough to drive the Duck Bus straight through, but as this was a much smaller version of the design, the glass enclosure was only twice the width of a standard doorway. “I don’t like any of this,” Jonesy replied. “What’s one more thing?”
She crouched down to peer through the windows on that side of the bus. Snarling, blood-caked, thoroughly insane faces peered back in at her, as their attempt to somehow rock the bus until it opened continued. Over the heads of the foul creatures, she could see through the glass, all the way to the other side of the small building and beyond where the pier lay, and, beyond that, the harbor. What she didn’t see were more zombies.
“What’s the plan, ma’am?” Jim Westhoff asked, as he reloaded his weapon.
In answer to his question, she keyed her helmet mic, and said: “We’re gonna have to exit on foot.”
252
USCGC Sassafras
Off Liscomb Bay Street
“I think she’s finally lost her mind,” Amy Montrose said from her position at the helm.
“You may be right,” Wheeler said. His back was to her, as he stared out the port windows. From their vantage point, they could see both Warehouse 14 and the smaller building that lay between the Sass and their pathetically small, totally surrounded force - the sight at once both appalling and maddening.
There wasn’t a single damned thing they could do to help them. She searched the shoreline, as if something would suddenly appear out of thin air to solve all their problems. Waste of time, she thought, gloomily.
So why did that annoying tingle she got when some fact, some idea, some possibility or warning floated in the recesses of her mind, just out of reach, keep snapping its intellectual teeth at her? Was she missing something? If so, what?
Their options were limited, to say the least. They couldn’t send reinforcements, because there wasn’t anybody left to send. There were plenty of people, back on Sand Island, but the only Coastie was YN1 Lydia Claire, who’d been left behind to herd the refugee cats. Amy didn’t envy her that job. The refugees, themselves, were useless, or, at any rate, too weak and malnourished and shell-shocked to be of any real help. They had three men, manning three MG 240 machine guns on board the Sass, but they couldn’t fire, for fear of hitting the fuel barges and setting the whole damned shoreline ablaze.
Then again...
The vast majority of the zombies were now squeezed into the space between the two buildings. Only a couple dozen roamed the pier, as if they were somehow above the mundane festivities being enjoyed by their less refined infected brethren. A few well-aimed bursts of machine gun fire would take care of them, so...
She switched her comm unit from intercom to radio. “Break, break,” she said. Wheeler whirled and raised surprised eyebrows at her. “Trust me,” she said, then keyed the mic again. “All units, this is Sassafras...”
253
The Pier
Midway Harbor
“Heads up!” Lane Keely shouted from the converted buoy tender’s bow, then threw the heaving line, straight at Samantha Gordon. She ducked sideways, narrowly avoided getting a skull fracture from the lead-filled monkey’s fist, and raised her arm by instinct, whether to ward off the potential head injury, or to catch the line as it went by. Either way, it worked. She wasn’t unconscious, but she was in possession of the thin nylon line, at the far end of which hung True North’s much larger mooring hawser. “Good catch,” he called through cupped hands.
She waved at him, then began pulling the line from the ship to the pier. Shilo Grant came to help her as the eye of the three inch hawser reached the pier, and they dropped it over the bollard.
Bob-Bob Stoeffel did the same with the stern line, all by himself. In her defense, Sam had to admit, one Bob Stoeffel equaled at least three Samantha Gordons, so she should probably cut herself some slack for needing a little help.
Her father appeared in the bridge doorway, and her heart did a celebratory dance, while her mind tried to feel happy, but still couldn’t quite shake the image of the man she’d killed laying on the dead grass, maybe a quarter mile from where she now stood. He searched the pier, caught sight of her, and shot down the ladder, sliding his hands along the rails, and not landing on his feet until he reached the bottom. He didn’t wait for Lane to maneuver the brow into place with the ship’s small crane, just leaped across the gap between the ship and the pier.
His feet didn’t stop moving, didn’t stop running, until he slammed into her and lifted her into the air. And then she was happy - all the way happy - in her heart and her mind and her soul - because her Daddy was there. She wrapped her arms around him and didn’t let go.
254
The Skull Mobile
Warehouse 14
“Oh, Hell no!” Duke protested. Only the not insignificant need to keep moving or be overwhelmed by zombies kept him from slamming on the brakes, Jonesy felt certain. He’d just have to get over it.
“It’s the only way,” he said.
“But...,” Duke tried to argue, the anguish on his face almost comical. Laughing at this juncture, however, would be an extraordinarily bad idea, so Jonesy resisted the urge. “My truck...?”
“How’s it coming back there?” he asked Marc Micari, who was busily turning their five remaining pounds of C4 into a bomb.
“Almost ready,” Marc answered.
The solution cooked up by the combined minds of Molly Gordon
and Amy Montrose was brutally simple. Jonesy’s explosive addition to it, might just make it brutally effective.
“Nothing good comes without sacrifice,” he told Duke. Didn’t look as if it helped much.
Duke had maneuvered into position, through the combined crush of live zombies and what remained of the steadily-growing pile of dead ones. The assholes were dropping like diseased flies, but it wasn’t happening fast enough, and they were running out of time.
The plan had three elements, none of which were overly complicated. The first was to clear the path between the Duck Bus and the small building. This would be the easy part, thought it hardly looked that way.
Jonesy pointed. “Go,” he said, and Duke (with a face so forlorn, he almost felt sorry for the poor guy) floored it.
255
The Duck Bus
Warehouse 14
“Everybody to the right side of the bus!” Molly shouted. “Fire everything you’ve got and be ready to run.”
Thanks to the design of the odd, hybrid, duck-billed platypus of a bus/boat, the windows were positioned almost two feet above the heads of the zombies. Were it not for all the dead bodies piled beside the bus, and creating a barrier between it and the still-live ones, the insane assholes might have been able to reach up and grab the barrels of the M-4s as they were firing. As it was, they couldn’t.
Score one for good luck. They needed all they could get.
The Skull Mobile plowed through the mass of infected lunatics, bouncing over some, knocking others to one side or the other, and crushing a few against either the building, or the side of the bus. The zombies could reach its windows just fine. Only motion, and a constant barrage of fire kept them from doing so.
Carnage was a word Molly had heard, of course, and she’d certainly seen her share of it during the past several weeks, since the Old World went away, but that was nothing compared to the gore fest taking place in the square created by Warehouse 14, NAVSUP 12, and the confluence of Liscomb Bay Street, Gannett Street, and the alleyway stretching between Liscomb, and another large conglomeration of buildings to the southwest. The bodies were piling into a mess of blood and guts, and more zombies were arriving, all the time.
Scott Pruden helped plow the way with his MG 240 (the barrel of which was smoking - not the business end where the bullets came out, but the entire barrel), from his lofty position in the big truck’s sunroof. Molly half-expected the gun to start glowing red. It would, and soon, if they didn’t get this plan going.
Marc Micari waved out the back, as the Skull Mobile lurched past the window from which she was firing her own M-4. His grin looked almost demented.
“Hey baby!” Wendy Micari yelled to her husband, then double-tapped a zombie the truck had somehow missed.
“Let’s go!” Molly shouted. “Everybody out. Head into the building and don’t stop running till you get wet.”
256
The Skull Mobile
Warehouse 14
“You guys ready?” Jonesy asked through the radio.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Staff Sergeant McNaughton replied.
Now came the hard part.
Phase Two of the plan was Jonesy’s contribution, and the thing Duke looked as he might cry over. Couldn’t be helped. If they survived this latest adventure, Jonesy strongly suspected an extraordinary amount of alcohol would be involved in his friend’s recovery. Odds were, it’d be getting awfully damned drunk out that night, for everyone involved.
If they survived.
All they needed was a miracle. Not a big miracle, not a Parting of the Red Sea-type of divine intervention, but a little help from on high would certainly be nice. It came in the form of a black and orange angel with a Coast Guard racing stripe.
“Skull Mobile, Eight-Three,” the dulcet tones of Carrie Scoggins sounded across the airwaves. “Did you miss us?”
“I could kiss you!” Jonesy shouted with glee.
“I think someone would be rather upset by that,” Carrie replied. Apparently, news traveled fast. “But thanks for the sentiment.”
“Plow the road between us and Warehouse Fourteen,” Jonesy ordered.
“Roger that,” she replied, as Jeri Weaver complied, by spraying the designated, crazed, cannibalistic assholes from beyond Hell with a rain of 7.62mm fire.
Jonesy, Scott Pruden, and Marc Micari joined in the fun. As if demonstrating the proper military method of killing a veritable shitload of enemies, the Marines of First Squad, Hotel Company, Third Combat Logistics Battalion, Third Marine Regiment cut through the zombies with a wall of 5.56mm rounds so precise, so well-timed, it reminded Jonesy of the end of the battle in the movie, Zulu, about Rorke’s Drift, where about a hundred British soldiers held off repeated attacks by three thousand African warriors. He tried not to make too close of a comparison, though it sure felt like the odds were about the same. In almost no time, the only thing between the Skull Mobile and the Marines in Warehouse 14 was a mass of dead bodies.
Plenty more where they came from.
“Time to go!” Jonesy yelled, and popped open his passenger door.
257
USCGC Sassafras
Pearl Harbor
“There they are,” LCDR Wheeler said, pointing unnecessarily toward the glass exit of the small building, through which the first person from the Duck Bus burst, running like mad.
Seaman Apprentice Tabinski was followed by Seaman Malone, then PA3 Jim Westhoff, YN1 Dave Ablitz, and all the rest, with BM3/DECK Harold F. Simmons, jr., and LTjg Molly Gordon bringing up the rear. She waved them all ahead of her, pausing to take out a lone zombie with her nine millimeter pistol. Amy saw the slide lock back, on an empty magazine.
The three MG 240s on the Sass had chewed up the couple dozen zeds who hadn’t joined the party on the other side. Amy had thought they’d gotten them all, but obviously not.
The VHF radio above the helm crackled with static.
“Sass, this is Assateague,” Frank Roessler’s transmitted voice said.
Amy looked out the forward Bridge windows, and there came the patrol boat, steaming its way toward them from the northeast.
“Go,” she said into the microphone in her helmet. Strictly speaking, she didn’t need to wear the protective headgear, since she was only a not-so casual observer of the action, but she did need to wear the gas mask to avoid projectile vomiting from the ever-present stench of death, so the helmet’s integrated comm unit was infinitely more convenient (and less potentially messy), and so she wore the thing.
“Anything we can do to help?” Frank asked.
She looked to Wheeler, who shook his head and said: “No room,” as he waved his hand to indicate the obvious truth of the matter.
If they positioned the patrol boat further up the shoreline to the northeast, their line of fire would be blocked by the buildings on that side. If they moved to the southwest, where the Sass had originally been positioned until the helo warned them of their error, they’d be firing directly over the fuel barges, which might explode and kill the very people they were trying to rescue.
She keyed the helmet mic and said: “Negative. Take station there.” She had another thought and added: “If you can launch your small boat, please do. We can use it to pick people up.”
“Roger that,” Frank replied.
“Break, break,” she said, returning her attention to the shoreline. “Rapid Response Boat and Sass Two, head in. Let’s start bringing our people home.”
258
Warehouse 14
Ford Island
“Shut the door,” Jonesy said, as Scott Pruden staggered into the warehouse, nearly tripping over the body of a male zombie wearing a blue Speedo, and nothing else. “Mind some company?” He asked the Marine staff sergeant. Without waiting for a reply, he added: “We’ll save the introductions till later. Not terribly sure how big a boom five pounds of C4 will make, so I suggest we get everybody back and under cover.”
“Roger that,” McNaugh
ton said. He turned to his babies. “You heard the man. Move your asses!”
Once everyone had found whatever there was to hide behind so as not to be blown into bits, Jonesy gave a questioning look to Marc.
“Ready whenever you are,” the civilian said.
“Do it,” Jonesy replied.
“Fire in the hole!” Marc shouted with glee, and pushed the detonator.
If this had been a Hollywood movie, Jonesy supposed, in the split-second before the explosion rattled the warehouse, the C4 wouldn’t have gone off, necessitating the super-human effort of whatever action star happened to have top billing. Thankfully, they were in Pearl Harbor and not on some hundred million dollar movie set. Their resident mad inventor’s bomb worked just fine. So well, in fact, that it blew a hole the size of a Buick in the bay door.
“That’s handy,” Scott Pruden commented, as they all peeked their heads out of cover and stared into the smoke-filled parking lot, where chunks of what used to be the Skull Mobile, and slabs of what used to be human flesh rained down from above.
Jonesy turned to McNaughton. “I suggest we don’t hang around.”
“Roger that,” McNaughton replied, standing. “Marines, on your feet!”
Jonesy marveled at the military precision. None of them moaned, none of them bitched, none of them offered a smart-assed commentary on the current state of affairs. He looked at his own worn and bedraggled team, and said: “Are you waiting for an invitation?”
259
Ocean-Going Tug Mahalo
23.443812 N 164.912758 W
“What are your orders? “CWO4 Bobby V Vincenzo asked.
LTjg Carol Kemp had been tired of the constant questioning before, and now she was doubly so, and she was equally tired of the crusty bastard’s condescending attitude; all of it compounded by the validity of his questions.
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 39
