Under a Graveyard Sky-eARC

by John Ringo

  “Just sip the water…”

  * * *

  “So, about Faith,” Fontana said. “The zombies don’t bother her. Much. This shit is killing her.”

  “I know,” Steve said. “But the damned stretcher teams will barely come up into the dark areas. And they won’t go anywhere we haven’t cleared for zombies. Even when all the zombies are dead. Find somebody who’ll do this besides you, Hooch, me and Faith and I’ll send Faith zombie hunting.”

  “Get the Coasties,” Fontana repeated. “This is their kind of shit.”

  “I will,” Steve said. “When they get here. Some. Some are going to have to help with just keeping these poor bastards alive. We’ll go back to heavy clearance. But for now, we’re all we’ve got.”

  “And we can’t do this all day and all night, twenty-four seven,” Fontana pointed out.

  Steve reached up and changed the frequency on his radio.

  “Dallas, you got me?” Steve asked, walking into the exterior cabin. There was a body on the bed. He pointed.

  “Gone,” Fontana said. “No pupil response.”

  “Dallas, here.”

  “Can you retrans to squadron ops, over?”

  “Roger.”

  “Squadron ops. Jesus, Wolf…”

  “Yeah,” Steve said. “Isham, we’re going to call this at twelve hours from when we went over the side. Whenever that is. The clearance teams that is. If the Coasties are on site by then I’d like them to manage the recovery work. But nobody works on it for more than twelve hours at a time. The clearance team is going to need some bunks on the Alpha or the Grace. And somebody who has a clue about gear to get this shit cleaned up. All that we’re going to be able to do for the next… God knows how long is clear, eat, sleep and clear. Can you manage that?”

  “I’ve got it under control, Wolf,” Isham replied. “I’ll get all that set up.”

  “All the zombies are dead in the passenger cabin areas,” Steve said. “We’re getting about one survivor per ten cabins. As soon as some of the Coasties get on site, have them replace Faith and Hooch. Then us. Faith and Hooch go down for longer than we do. We’ll both start again tomorrow at the same time but get them replaced as soon as possible. We are going to be clearing this…floating den of horrors for a long time. We need to think about how we’re going to sustain this.”

  “Roger,” Isham replied. “Got all that.”

  “Thanks,” Steve said. “Wolf out.”

  He changed the radio back over to the medical channel, then shrugged.

  “Best I can do,” Steve said.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Any decisions you need me to make?” Steve asked as he stepped off onto the flush deck of the Alpha.

  The waves were chopping up and the deck was awash but he didn’t really care. It would clean some of the crap off his boots.

  “None,” Isham said, shaking his head. “It’s not a power grab. Everything that can be got under control is under control. Just…trust me on that and get some rest.”

  “I want to drink myself to sleep,” Steve said.

  “Hang on,” Isham said. “Hang on to that grab rail and just stand there. We’re going to wash you down out here.”

  “Makes sense,” Steve said. He was covered in wet weather gear top to bottom. “The guns are going to need…”

  “To be cleaned off in fresh water, dried really well and then lubed up really well,” Isham said, backing up the stairs. “Just let them wash you down…”

  * * *

  “Steve,” Stacey said, hugging him. “Oh… God…”

  “It’s bad,” Steve said, nodding. “I’m really regretting bringing Faith onboard.”

  “She’s having a lot of problems with the…” She stopped and grimaced. “She likes the zombie hunting…”

  “I’m going to switch her to that as purely as possible,” Steve said, nodding. “I mean, there are horrors to that. But this has been… Different.”

  The cabin was excellent. Steve wasn’t sure how Isham had procured the materials to return it to if not its former glory than very liveable. But it was nice. And the meal that had been waiting for him after his long, hot, shower looked really, really good. He wasn’t sure that he could eat it, though.

  “You have to eat,” Stacey said.

  “Reading my mind?” Steve asked, smiling faintly.

  “Always,” Stacey said.

  “Talk to me about something,” Steve said, taking a forkful of the dish. He wasn’t sure what it was but it was excellent. “When did Chris go back to being a cook?”

  “That’s Sari,” Stacey said, smiling.

  “The one that was on here?” Steve asked, then winced. The horrors of the Voyage had nearly blotted out how bad the Alpha had been when they boarded.

  “She’s a really good cook,” Stacey said. “And Mike is overseeing the maintenance on the weapons and gear. I made sure they were all clear. He knew how to clear them but I checked first. He’s going to fine tooth them.”

  “How’s Isham doing?” Steve asked. “This is the sort of thing I need to talk about.”

  “Doing fine,” Stacey said. “He found one of the SSLs that’s a premier scrounger who turned up, among other things, boxes of Cuban cigars. Isham’s up in Mickerberg’s old office smoking big black cigars and running things like he’s General Patton. It’s funny to watch in a way. I think until this came up he really wasn’t… In the game? But now he is. And he’s doing a good job at it.”

  “Keep an eye on him,” Steve said.

  “I am,” Stacey said, shrugging. “But when we had a moment alone he brought it up. And he pointed out that you’re the one with the subs backing you. That headquarters gave you the authority. Not him. He said ‘Broken down and busted or not, I’m not going try to buck the United States Government. It’s still got nuclear weapons.’”

  “Now that sounds like it might be honesty,” Steve said.

  * * *

  “Okay, wow,” Faith said, shoveling down the breakfast. “This is really good. Do I want to know what it is?”

  “Eggs,” Sari said, laying the plates out for the clearance team. “With more eggs.”

  There were the scrambled eggs, which were awesome, a really good canned fruit salad and fried potatoes. There was even fresh baked english muffins. With butter.

  “It’s got a bit of a fishy taste but a good one,” Fontana said. “What’s the meat? It tastes like…lobster?”

  “Scrambled eggs with lobster,” Sari said. “And some secret ingredients.”

  “I’m going to let you keep the secrets,” Steve said, looking out the window of the “dinette.” The small compartment, relatively it being the Alpha, had a good view of the growing flotilla of boats working on the Voyage. He could even see the Campbell drifting in the distance. The Alpha and Grace had rendezvoused with it overnight and transferred clearance materials as well as medical supplies. Fortunately, it had lots of both. The cutter had seemed like a big ship when they first cleared it. Now they had a new appreciation for “big.” But for its relatively small size, it was absolutely packed with disaster material. Which made sense given its jobs.

  “Today is pure clearance,” Steve said.

  “Oh, thank God,” Faith said. “Wait… Zombie killing clearance or checking cabins clearance?”

  “Zombie killing clearance,” Steve said. “We’re going to sweep all of the remaining untouched areas on the port side cabin zone, then work our way across the ship and sweep the starboard side. If we run into survivors doing that, unlikely, we’ll call for extraction or extract them ourselves. The Coast Guard personnel are going to manage the extraction in cleared areas and provide security. That’s mostly for the people doing the actual removal.”

  “I can handle that,” Faith said. “Sorry, but I’m just…”

  “Nothing, at all, to be sorry about, Faith,” Fontana said. “This is getting to me. And I thought I’d seen pretty much every horror possible in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact that y
ou’re not completely round the bend is pretty remarkable.”

  “I know the Trixie thing is freaking people out,” Faith said, shrugging. “But…”

  “It’s a way for you to compartmentalize,” Steve said, nodding. “People who do this sort of thing have to do that. Everyone does. You just happen to have an outward expression. The question, since you raise it, is are you going to be okay continuing?”

  “I’m fine if it’s killing zombies,” Faith said, shrugging. “And I can handle the usual sort of stuff. But Hooch had to take over checking the cabins. I… I can’t do that right now. Even finding live ones… Half the time I was like: What’s the point?”

  “We’ve lost some,” Steve said. He’d had a quick briefing that morning before breakfast. “And according to the doctors at the CDC we’ll probably lose some more over the next week. But most of them are making it. We’re saving people. But for today… We’ll just blow some zombies away.”

  “That’ll help,” Faith said, grinning.

  “Weaponry,” Steve said. “There are some large areas we’ll be clearing. Despite my fear of bouncers, I think we need at least one rifle. There are sure to be more security zombies and we need to start conserving our shotgun rounds to the extent it’s possible. Sergeant Fontana, you’ll carry that.”

  “Roger, sir,” Fontana said. “Any word on the ammo from the Campbell.”

  “We got a resupply of two hundred rounds of shotgun,” Steve said, grimacing. “That was all that was in the ready locker or found scattered onboard. There’s a magazine but it’s apparently a vault. And nobody can find the keys. And since it’s a magazine…”

  “You can’t exactly cut it open with a blow torch,” Fontana said.

  “There’s a team looking for the keys at the moment,” Steve said. “According to what I got, there should be two thousand more rounds of twelve gauge in there. Another reason to use the rifles whenever possible. We have, also, a limited amount of seven six two but we’re currently better on that than on shotgun. So when it’s possible, Sergeant Fontana will take the shot. Please make sure that all rounds go into the target.”

  “I will,” Fontana said. “But you get bouncers from shotgun as well.”

  “They tend to be caught by the body armor,” Steve said. “And the spots not covered by armor that are likely to kill us are small. With the exception of the face, of course. Which is why in addition to all the other stuff we’re carrying, we’re going to be adding ballistic face shields. The Campbell had six onboard. They’ve already been mounted to the helmets.

  “Kuzma has set up a fresh-water decontamination shower on the lifeboat deck, forward. If we get as bloodied up as we did yesterday, Faith, we’ll run through that. There’s also a forward support post set up with food, water and ammo, and we can drop back to it and take a break. One thing we’re going to have to look for is a forward point that we can set up as a permanent secure point on the Voyage. Not too big, not too small, some exterior light and most of all secure.”

  “That’s all I’ve got for now. Let’s eat.”

  * * *

  “Just sip,” the lady said, putting a straw to his lips. “It’s chicken broth…”

  Rusty still could barely do that. He was feeling better. Not human but all the water they’d been pumping through him was helping. He still could barely lift his arms.

  “Thank you,” he said, leaning back on the pillows when the small cup of broth was down. He was so far gone, he actually felt full. “Are you a nurse? And where…?”

  “Okay, first of all, you’re on a support ship called the Grace Tan,” the lady said. “I’m Amanda. No, I’m not a nurse. We’ve only got one nurse survivor and she’s organizing this. I’m a survivor like you. I was on a lifeboat. I was on the Voyage, too. The way things worked out… I’m glad I made it to the lifeboat. But a lot of those…” She shook her head.

  “So… Is it the Navy or…?” Rusty asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Amanda said, smiling. “If you feel you’re up to some reading, they’ve made a little pamphlet…”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe we’re trying to unrep from a cruise liner,” Gardner said.

  Unrep, or “underway replenishment,” was a tricky business in the best of times and circumstances. The basic idea was to create sort of zip-lines between two ships and slide stuff back and forth. Simple on land. Two rocky points tended to stay reasonably the same distance apart down to the subatomic level. Ships, however, did not. So what usually happened was that your package, be it ammunition or food or toilet paper or, God help them, people, tended, if the ships closed, to go into the drink, or if they separated, be flung upwards at a high rate of speed. In extreme circumstances the package could fail to choose between being crushed as the too-close following ships collided or being flung upwards, the rope part and go flying into the far distance.

  One unfortunate, and extremely disliked, lieutenant commander in the Navy in the 1960s had all four happen on a single attempt at moving between a destroyer and a carrier. The lieutenant commander was first dunked, then popped back out rapidly enough to thoroughly dry the ropes as they hyperextended. This, of course, had the effect of bouncing him up and down like a tightened rubber band. He was then dunked, again, repopped at which point the carry line parted, throwing the unfortunate officer upwards in a ballistic arc. The lieutenant at the conn of the destroyer panicked, ordered a radical course correction to starboard, towards the carrier, just as the officer landed in the water between the two vessels, which promptly collided. The lieutenant commander was assumed to have been crushed as his body was never found. The irony that the lieutenant commander, the carrier vessel battle group’s inspector general, had just written a scathing report on the conn training of the officers of the destroyer was not lost on the incident report board.

  Thereafter the Navy went to all helo or boat transfers for personnel at sea.

  * * *

  “You know we just hit the four hundred mark?” Steve said, keying the double doors.

  “Four hundred days?” Fontana asked, popping the hatch with the Halligan and moving back.

  “Four hundred people,” Steve said. “Four hundred known survivors of humanity. Plus the Hole and CDC and whoever they’re in contact with.”

  “Holy crap,” Faith said softly.

  “I know it’s not a lot,” Steve said, shining his taclight around the cavernous room. A zombie in the distance growled, then howled. It couldn’t even be seen, but it alerted others who stumbled to their feet and headed to the lights. “But we’re getting there. Back to defense positions.”

  “Not that,” Faith said, taking up her position behind a counter. “That room. What was it?”

  “Casino I think,” Fontana said. He began slow aimed fire at the blinded zombies stumbling through the door. He already had four magazines laid out on the counter.

  “It’s huge,” Faith said, sticking a finger in her ear to cut down on the cracks from the AK.

  “Should have seen the ones in Vegas,” Fontana said.

  “Maybe someday,” Faith said. “When I’m, like, ninety. Zombie clearance, Vegas.”

  “Resident Evil: The Cruise Ship. You can see the game, right?” Hooch said.

  “I think we’re playing it,” Steve pointed out.

  * * *

  “How come when I’m shooting, my ears don’t ring?” Faith asked, tagging a zombie in the chest as it tried to figure out how to get around a roulette table with a Surefire in its eyes. “The beauty of this ride ahead…” Tap, tap…

  The zombies were having trouble with the complex layout of the casinos. Casinos were designed to get people to change directions so they’d go “Oooo…I bet I can win that game!” The zombies could see the lights, they just couldn’t figure out how to get to them. Then, all of a sudden, they would. For that matter, it wasn’t always clear where the open areas, or the zombies, were to the clearers.

  Clearing them out was a painstaking process o
f zombies howling and thrashing in the darkness. When they could, they took them at range.

  Faith had had to break out the kukhri. Twice.

  “Aural damping,” Fontana said.

  “Checking right,” she said, shining the light around the other side of the roulette table. For some reason, the chewed up people just weren’t horrible anymore. She could even slide her eyes right over the kids. “There’s an answer? I was sort of asking one of those rectangular questions.”

  “Rhetorical,” Fontana said, chuckling. “Clear left. Clearish. I think we’re going to have to sweep and resweep.”

  “Works for me,” Faith said. “Hang on, stumbler coming around my side.” She took the shot. She’d stopped double tapping to conserve ammunition but the .45 round was usually good enough with one shot. It didn’t kill the zombies immediately, but they bled out pretty quickly. “Reloading. Hang on. Da?” she said, over the radio.

  “Go.”

  “I’m running out of forty-five mags. I’ve got ammo but I don’t exactly want to reammo in here.”

  “I’ve got mags,” Fontana said.

  “Like I’m gonna use a Colt if I don’t gotta,” Faith said. “I could also use a break.”

  “Roger. Pull back to the entrance.”

  “This does get the adrenal gland, don’t it?” Fontana said, firing twice in rapid succession. “They just seem to come out of nowhere.”

  They’d learned when they cleared the theatre to shut the door behind them. It meant they didn’t have a way out. It also meant they didn’t have leakers that suddenly appeared when they thought they were at a “secure” point.

  “And I think if we’re going to keep clearing this thing we might as well all go to carbines,” Faith said, starting. She fired two rounds into a body on the floor. “It moved. I swear it did.”

  * * *

  “How long can I stand under here?” Faith shouted as the water from the fire hose poured over her.

  “As long as you want!” the guy manning the system wasn’t Coast Guard. She didn’t even recognize him. “It recycles!”

  “Cool,” Faith muttered, giving him a thumbs up. She was just going to stand there for a while then.