Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  The boarders would find a way around from the other locked hatch, she knew, and were probably already on the move. Even during all that time at the firehouse, Sophia had never gone on a supply run, had never fired a weapon at anyone, living or dead. Chief Liebs taught them all how to shoot during their time aboard Nimitz, but that was target practice. Could she shoot another person?

  The whimpering shapes scurrying behind her were helpless, harmless children who had done nothing wrong. Little Ben was among them. Sophia knew the answer was yes.

  Try me, you bastards.

  • • •

  The two women moved along the passageway, one carrying a shotgun, the other a pistol. They wore dirty flannel, jeans, and hiking boots. The woman with the handgun was more of a girl, a high school dropout who’d been working as a part-time cashier in a Brookings supermarket. The older woman was stout, her hair worn in a short brush cut, a former logging truck driver who preferred football and drinking with the boys to book clubs and cooking shows. She liked the cashier, and not just for her looks. A short while ago the girl had slit a man’s throat with a kitchen knife, allowing the two of them to pick up these weapons from the sleeping area he’d been exiting.

  As they came to a choice of corridors, left or straight ahead, the truck driver motioned for the girl to keep moving past hatch after hatch. The closeness of the low ceiling covered in pipes and cables made the older woman a bit claustrophobic. At the next intersection the trucker put a hand on the girl’s shoulder to stop her, and they both listened.

  Footsteps, down to the left.

  The truck driver patted the girl’s back and pointed to the left, then continued ahead on her own.

  The cashier crept down the left corridor, raising her pistol.

  • • •

  Xavier and Calvin moved one ahead of the other, Calvin leading with his assault rifle to his shoulder, Xavier with the shotgun up and ready, turning frequently to watch their backs. Both tried to step carefully and quietly, and Xavier clenched his teeth as the grenade fragment deep in his thigh tissue shifted, touching a nerve. For the priest, the hunt brought back bloody memories of patrols as a young Marine in Mogadishu. For Calvin, there was only the area in front of his rifle muzzle, and a seething rage.

  They were moving aft, just to starboard of the center line of the ship. The passageway seemed to have more cross corridors and hatches than ever before, so many places for a threat to hide. They would approach a hatch, Xavier would turn the handle and push, and Calvin would go in with the rifle. Each compartment got only a cursory inspection before they moved on. It was a slow process, but they didn’t dare leave an unexplored space behind them, just as they hadn’t while hunting zombies in this maze.

  As they came to a point where yet another passageway crossed, Calvin pointed to himself and then the right, then at Xavier and to the left. The priest nodded, and both men moved.

  She was only ten feet away, Xavier saw, startled at her presence, a girl with greasy hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing layers of thermal and flannel. She was crouched against the wall and might have been cowering and hiding except for the pistol she was aiming, and Xavier’s finger touched the shotgun’s trigger.

  The supermarket cashier fired twice, and the priest felt a pair of hammer blows to the chest that knocked him flat and stole his breath. Before he went down he saw the girl pause in surprise and, through his pain, Xavier had the thought that the girl had never shot anyone before.

  Calvin triggered a full-auto burst, the heavy 7.62-millimeter rounds shredding the girl from chest to hairline in a haze of pink and gray. The hippie pivoted in the intersection, checking each hallway as he stood over his friend, rifle muzzle searching. The priest was gasping for air, and Calvin grabbed the man’s ammo vest and hauled him into the hallway opposite the dead girl.

  Xavier wheezed as Calvin helped him to sit, propping him against a wall.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Calvin asked.

  It was close to a minute before the other man regained enough breath to whisper, “Yes.” His hands slid across his armor, fingertips finding two flattened slugs lodged in the Kevlar.

  “Lucky she didn’t have a rifle,” said Calvin, peering back into the intersection to see if any of her companions had been drawn by the gunfire. “At that range it would have punched through your armor, and you’d be talking to God now.”

  Xavier was still drawing tight, shaky breaths. “Left him . . . behind . . . remember?”

  Calvin nodded. “Good. Then it’s up to you to be faster on the trigger next time.” The hippie collected the dead girl’s handgun and handed it to the priest, helping him stand. “You okay?”

  Xavier nodded.

  “One down,” said Calvin, leading them back into the corridor.

  • • •

  Kay took the line of sock-footed children down a hallway, paused when it came to a T, looked both ways, and led them left. Aside from the whimpering of the younger ones, the kids were wide-eyed and quiet. The older children whispered encouragement to the most frightened among them. Near the middle of the line, three-year-old Ben kept whispering, “Papa.”

  Sophia kept her eyes to their rear, still moving backward, glancing behind her to see the linked chain of children making a turn into another passageway. We’re so exposed out here, she thought, and moving so slowly. She looked back in time to see a bearded man with an axe and a pistol walk out into the same passageway she was watching. He saw her and stopped, startled.

  Making a noise that was half scream and half snarl, Sophia fired, the shotgun kicking hard into her shoulder. The bearded man let out a howl and fell on his ass, then scrambled back out of sight.

  “Bitch!” came a cry from down the hallway.

  Behind her, the children reacted to the shotgun blast with cries of their own, moving faster. Sophia racked another shell and stayed at the corner, aiming at the place where the bearded man had retreated.

  Your life is precious, my love, she heard Vladimir say in her head. Sell it dearly.

  A second bearded face poked out from the distant corner, and Sophia fired again, the stock slipping out of position a bit, the kick making her cry out as the weapon nearly dislocated her shoulder. Down at the corner, buckshot sparked off the bulkhead just above the man’s head, and the face disappeared behind a scream. Then Sophia moved, pumping the weapon with some difficulty—her right arm felt numb and it hurt to move it. She ran after the fleeing children.

  Kay made one more turn, and then she was hurrying the children through a hatch, telling them to find a place to hide and stay quiet. Sophia joined her a moment later, both women happy to see one another. They followed the kids inside and slammed the hatch, Kay holding the handle down while Sophia did a quick search and returned with a power cord ripped from the back of a TV. They wound it between the handle and a large hinge, pulling it snug, then used a bedsheet as a rope to tighten it further.

  Calvin’s girl and Kay got the kids settled into racks out of sight at the back of the compartment, sending them to the toilet in groups. Sophia picked up the handset of a wall-mounted phone and looked at it. The device had no PA features, and right now she couldn’t remember a single extension to where anyone might be. Frustrated, she slammed the receiver back into its cradle, then pressed an ear to the hatch.

  Nothing.

  She tested the handle once more, then pulled a folding chair up to sit in front of the hatch. Sophia pointed her weapon at the only way into the compartment and waited.

  • • •

  It was almost dark, and the temperature was dropping as the rain fell harder. Maya remained on the flight deck, hoping Banks had somehow been wrong, searching the sky for blinking red-and-white lights. Rain plastered strands of hair against her face, and she shivered. Was Evan cold too? Was he hurt? She couldn’t let herself think about the alternative.

  Maya saw tha
t the drifting aircraft carrier was gliding toward the Bay Bridge at an oblique angle, something unnatural for a ship. It looked as if it would pass directly under the span without coming near the supports. What would happen then?

  The wind drove wet, gray curtains across the flight deck, and Maya hunched into her poncho, unable to endure it any longer. She headed back toward the superstructure. Pat Katcher ran communications, and he would be able to tell her more about Evan. Maya went through the wide hatch and started the climb up the tower.

  Had she stayed on deck, she might have seen the ghostly silhouette of a ship gliding toward Nimitz out of the coming night. She might also have seen the mass of drifters that were gathering at the edge of the bridge high above, climbing over the railing as the flat, wide deck of the aircraft carrier began moving below them.

  • • •

  Up in the superstructure’s comm center, Pat Katcher sat at his station wearing headphones, glancing on occasion at the empty sweep of the air search radar, and scanning through radio frequencies.

  “Nimitz calling Navy zero-two, come in.” He drummed his fingers on the console. Either Evan or Gourd should have answered by now, with either the Seahawk’s radio or their personal survival units. Seeing nothing in the air and getting no response from either man wasn’t a good sign. The fact that he wasn’t picking up any rescue beacons was even more grim.

  “Nimitz calling Navy zero-two. Evan, Gourd, can you hear me?”

  Still nothing.

  Suddenly there was a squeal from one of the frequencies he kept tuned and recording at all times after both he and Father Xavier had heard talking and the word Reno. Now that channel was alive with garbled transmissions, voices he couldn’t quite make out, but definitely more than one, talking to one another. Then the signal dropped to a line of dead static.

  “Shit!” Katcher said, reaching for the playback controls.

  Just then another voice came over the military-only Guard channel, a strong, clear signal. Pat Katcher’s eyes widened as he heard a woman’s voice.

  “USS Nimitz, you are ordered to surrender your vessel. Muster your crew on deck in fifteen minutes or we will fire upon you.”

  Then the electronics tech heard a deep boom from somewhere beyond the superstructure’s steel walls, followed almost immediately by the scream of a fifty-seven-millimeter shell sailing across the flight deck.

  “That was your first and only warning,” the woman’s voice said over the radio. “Fifteen minutes only. This is Adventure Galley, out.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  November—Brookings, Oregon

  “Ensign, did you just use the word extortion?” Liz asked, looking up from a plotting table. They were down in the cutter’s combat center, the room filled with mostly nonoperational equipment and lit by dim, red overhead lights. Petty Officer Vargas, the operations specialist and weapons section head, was sleeping on a narrow mattress in the corner of the room.

  Ensign Liggett, standing opposite her captain with the plotting table between them, cleared her throat. “That isn’t what I meant to say, ma’am.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Liz murmured, looking back down at a map of the Oregon-California coastline. Although both women still wore blue uniform trousers bloused into combat boots, Amy now wore several thermal shirts with a hooded University of Oregon jacket over the top of them. Liz wore a once-white Irish cable-knit sweater with a turtleneck. Her cap was still pulled over her eyes at regulation distance above the bridge of her nose. Both wore sidearms.

  “I meant that it could be perceived as that,” Amy said. “By the civilians. They’re the ones doing the work and taking the risks.”

  Liz made a notation on the map with a red marker and didn’t look up. “And they’re living here under our protection,” she said, “receiving medical care from our Petty Officer Castellano and using our ammunition.”

  “Yes,” said Amy, “but they’re finding their own weapons and ammo now. During the scavenging runs.”

  “Confiscate them,” Liz said, using a ruler to measure distance, then converting inches to miles in her head.

  “But—”

  “Confiscate them,” Liz repeated. She looked up at her XO. “We can’t allow a force that outnumbers us to have uncontrolled access to weapons, especially a potentially hostile force this close to the ship.”

  “Hostile? Captain, those are civilians looking to us for safety. They’re not hostile.”

  “No?” said Liz. “We disagree on that.”

  Amy thought Kidd’s eyes looked red in the shadows beneath the bill of her cap. It was the combat center lighting, she knew, but it was still unsettling.

  “Weapons are for the sentry positions only,” the captain said, “and are to be issued to those going on runs, on a limited basis. They are to be collected immediately upon the group’s return, and all ammunition accounted for.” Liz went back to her map.

  “Some of them are going on runs without telling anyone,” Amy said. “There’s close to four dozen of them now, and only one of me. It’s impossible to keep track of them at all times.”

  Liz sighed and straightened. “It sounds to me as if you’re not in control of your command, Miss Liggett. The shoreside station and the refugees are your responsibility. I need to know if you’re up to the task.”

  Amy stiffened. “Of course. It’s not an easy task, though, and like I said, I’m the only—”

  “Enough,” Liz said, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes. “You know how I feel about whining.”

  Amy’s face reddened, and not from embarrassment, but the change was lost in the light.

  “I’m hearing about refugee issues from other sources,” Liz said, “when I should be hearing them from you.”

  “I am reporting to you, Captain,” Amy said.

  “Yes, I hear about water collection efforts, ammunition expenditure, I hear about who is sick and who needs medicine. I hear you complain about how difficult it is to keep the Whiskey-Deltas back.” Liz leaned forward on the table. “What I’m not hearing from you are reports that the civilian scavenging parties have begun raiding into the town, and that they’re having some success.”

  “They’re also experiencing losses,” said Amy.

  “Which concerns me not a bit,” Liz replied. “I’m hearing about runs on nearly untouched grocery stores and pharmacies, on sporting goods shops and even a police station. I hear about wheelbarrows full of kerosene cans and bottled water, cases of booze, and yes, even firearms. Either you don’t know about this,” Liz said, looking at the younger woman, “or you haven’t thought it was important enough to tell me. Either answer is unacceptable.”

  Amy looked down. The statement was a trap, and anything she said would be wrong.

  Liz let her stew for a moment, then said, “I don’t want to hear the word extortion again, do you understand? Nothing is free in this world, certainly not safety and security. Call it rent if you have to call it something, but these people will contribute to the welfare of the ship and crew that keeps them out of harm’s way, or they’ll be expelled to fend for themselves out there.”

  Out of harm’s way. Amy managed to keep the disgusted look off her face. Close to fifty civilian refugees were living in the Coast Guard station now, squatters sleeping where they could, using patched-together kitchens only feet away from toilet buckets. They stood their own watches to guard against the dead, and risked their lives venturing into unsecured parts of Brookings in hopes of finding enough food to keep them and their families alive. Coast Guardsmen no longer manned the sentry positions in front of the station, and participated in none of the raids.

  The only time the crew left Joshua James was for coastie-only raids, carefully planned in advance and only to locations that could be reached in the launches. Only Amy Liggett went ashore to the station, now more of a liaison than anything else. And Chief Kidd, of cou
rse, who had a lady friend there, a situation the captain was pointedly ignoring.

  In the three months since the outbreak, Amy discovered that not only had she come out of the Academy filled with the unrealistic rhetoric of things like duty, honor, and others before self, but she’d been blind as well. Elizabeth Kidd once seemed larger than life, a career female officer who would mentor and guide Amy through an honorable profession, dedicated to her crew and to saving lives. Now Amy knew that only one thing drove her captain: hanging on to her precious command at any cost and justifying her agenda with words like responsibility. The young officer wondered just how far Kidd would go to keep what she had.

  “My order stands,” said Liz. “Half of everything they collect. Half the food and water, half the fuel and camping supplies, half of what they take from pharmacies. In fact, they are to surrender all medication. Petty Officer Castellano will continue to oversee their medical care. We can’t have them wasting resources by self-medicating.” She went back to her maps.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I want all alcohol dumped in the harbor,” Liz said without looking up. “We don’t need the kind of trouble it can bring. And you are to confiscate all firearms and ammunition, parceling it out for sentries and raids only. I want a daily accounting of that.”

  “Captain,” Amy said, “without actually conducting a search, I don’t see how we can keep them from hiding weapons.”

  Liz looked up again in annoyance. “Make it clear that anyone holding out on us will be hanged.”

  Amy stared at her, unsure of what to say. Part of her earlier question about how far the captain would go had just been answered, though.