02 Flotilla of the Dead

by David Forsyth

  Their destination was actually right across the street from the south-east gate of the giant refinery, but they had driven the long way around in an attempt to draw many of the zombies away from the fence line. They passed the Plaza El Segundo, their intended destination, and continued south on Sepulveda with hundreds of zombies in toe. Then the big Cat turned left, per plan, onto the dirt access road next to the train tracks leading away from the refinery. The earth mover went through a locked gate as if it wasn’t there and the rest of the convoy followed, throwing up a dust cloud in their wake. The zombies followed as well, but they were obscured by the dust as the convoy accelerated to over 30 mph. A quarter mile down the tracks the convoy turned left again at a rail siding that circled around the back of the shopping center. A horde of zombies followed them up the tracks, but had literally been left in the dust.

  There was a chain link fence and locked gate separating the train siding from the shopping center. Carl sped to the gate and parked in front of it as the other vehicles pulled up behind him. Gus leapt out of the passenger door with Carl’s bolt cutters and made short work of the lock, swinging the gate open to allow Carl and the rest of the convoy to pass. As soon as the fire engine passed through the gate Gus swung it closed again and attached a new lock. When the dust along the train tracks settled, the horde of pursuing zombies appeared. There were hundreds of them running towards the gate. Gus turned and ran back to the fire truck, which had stopped and was training its water canon on the approaching horde. The fireman waited until the first zombies were smashing into the gate, then he unleashed a torrent of water against them, throwing the zombies back in fear and agony. He shut down the canon to conserve water and proceeded to release short blasts of water to keep them back.

  Carl led the rest of the convoy down the service road behind the shopping center, stopping next to the rear entrance of the supermarket. The area appeared to be free of zombies, so he stepped out of the Suburban with his shotgun in hand and directed the eighteen wheel big rig to back its trailer up to the loading dock. The shuttle bus opened its door and half a dozen armed men emerged, making their way swiftly to the back door of the supermarket. It took less than a minute for them force entry with crowbars. The interior of the stock room was dark and seemingly deserted, but they didn’t take any chances. The six armed men swept the room in teams of two while Carl tried to open the roll-up doors. With the power out it was necessary to disengage the motor and use the chain to roll it up, but first he had to bust the locking mechanism. Once that was accomplished, he rolled up the door and shed more light on the enormous room. Carl let out a low whistle at the sight of all the crates and boxes of food stocked in it.

  “Let’s start packing it up,” he instructed. “Look for cases of canned food and bottled drinks first, those will last. Check the crates of unrefrigerated produce over there. It’s only been about a week, so most of those fruits and some vegetables should still be good. I see a couple of pallet jacks over there. Use them to start moving full pallets into the trailer. Don’t be too selective. Grab anything that looks edible.”

  “Good plan, Carl,” said Chuck who had joined them on the loading dock. “You heard the man, let’s move.” The refinery workers scrambled to follow their instructions and began sorting and loading the stacks of supplies.

  “Frank, bring a few men with shotguns and follow me,” said Carl, knowing that he could now exercise some authority over these men, after all of his plans had worked out so well for everyone.

  “Comin’ Boss,” replied Frank, a heavyset black man with a kind but serious demeanor. “Luke, Joey, and Boomer, you’re with us.” The four oilmen followed Carl to the closed doors leading into the public area of the supermarket. “You want to sweep the rest of the store?” Frank asked.

  “Maybe,” Carl answered. “We should at least see if it’s secure from entry out front, and if there are any zombies inside.”

  “Makes sense,” Frank agreed. “Get ready boys, no telling what’s on the other side of these doors.” He turned to unlock the double doors. There was no key required from the stockroom side. He turned the lock and swung the door outward, into the supermarket. The doors swung less than a foot before something blocked their path.

  “Hold it,” said Carl as he moved forward and bent down to inspect the obstacle. “It’s a body,” he announced. They could all smell the stink of decay now and Carl’s announcement confirmed that it wasn’t just spoiled fish and hamburger meat. “I see a lot of blood on the floor too,” Carl continued. “Maybe we shouldn’t…” SLAM! The doors were thrown back into the closed position, hitting Carl in the face and causing all of the men to jump back in surprise. Luckily the doors to the stockroom were made to swing into the store, so that full carts could push through them. Whoever, no whatever, was on the other side had only succeeded in closing the doors against the jam.

  “Shit,” growled Carl as he reached up to make sure his nose wasn’t broken. He felt a trickle of blood on his lip as he mumbled, “Lock the damned doors!”

  Frank was quick to comply with that directive. He held the doors closed and twisted the dead bolt to lock them securely as fists pounded against the other side and said, “The rest of the store must be infested.” To which Carl nodded, even though Frank had simply stated the obvious.

  “Good thing you came up with the plan to come in the back door, Carl” commented Luke, a thin blond man in his thirties. “This is like taking candy from babies.”

  “Let’s just hope it stays that way,” said Carl as he got to his feet. “You can stay here and guard this door, Luke. You too, Joey. The rest of us will try to get upstairs and check that out.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” said Frank.

  Just then they heard new and strange sounds coming from the other side of the door. The pounding on the doors stopped, but the noise behind them increased. Carl froze and listened to the sounds of combat beyond the door. He heard the impacts of at least one weapon on flesh, a sound he had only recently come to know, and a few high pitched exclamations that sounded human.

  “Unlock the door,” said Carl firmly and Frank swiveled back from the door with a dubious look on his face. “I think someone is alive in there,” Carl explained. “Open those doors! Now!”

  Chapter 3: Fame and Misfortune

  “The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything” – Albert Einstein

  Scott felt totally spent as he climbed down the stairs from the vehicle deck to the First Crew Deck where the sickbay and marine biology lab were located. The Sovereign Spirit didn’t have a real hospital, but Michelle had insisted that they carry a ship’s doctor and have a fully equipped emergency room when she agreed to bring their family and friends on a round the world cruise. It had been an expensive addition to the ship, but Scott was quite glad now that he had agreed to her ultimatum. The marine biology lab had been added at the pleading request of his niece who wanted to be a marine biologist – and also because Scott harbored personal desires to study the ocean and everything in it. That lab was now assigned to Professor Bernhard and his assistant for their zombie research activities.

  Scott ignored the “Z Lab” – as some were now calling it – and went straight to the ER. Knocking once, he opened the door and walked in to find out how Clint was doing. Scott was hoping for the best, but fearing the worst. Dr. Grace Greenburg was sitting at her desk in the ER’s anteroom, working on the computer. She looked up and gave Scott an unreadable smile, displaying sadness and hope at the same time.

  “Welcome home, Scott,” she said. “I’m glad you made it back alive and in one piece, which is more than we can say for your friend Clint.”

  “Is he alive?” asked Scott abruptly.

  “Oh yes,” she replied confidently. “He’s alive, but certainly not in one piece, is he? I hear that you were the one who performed the amputation.”

  “That’s right, Grace,” Scott answered slowly. “And I’m
sure I did a horrible job of it.”

  “Actually, it’s one of the better field amputations I’ve seen, although I must admit that the only other ones I saw were at a MASH unit in Iraq where bullets and explosives had done most of the job already. But you actually chose a good place to sever the arm. If he survives, I might even be able to give him a controllable prosthesis. By connecting his severed tendons to a ball joint we could restore some elbow action to whatever we attach below it. Now the only question is, if he’ll survive.”

  “He’d just been bitten on the forearm by a zombie a minute earlier and I thought that cutting off the arm was his only chance for survival. Do you think it worked?”

  “It’s too soon to tell, but you are right that it was his only chance,” replied Dr. Greenburg. “Right now he is under heavy sedation and his vital signs are relatively stable, although he is developing a slight fever. That’s normal for an amputee. Nevertheless, I had him placed in restraints, just in case he wakes up as one of them. I really don’t have any books with case studies on what symptoms to look for in a person who is infected by this damned super rabies, or zombie plague.”

  “So what is your best guess, Grace?” asked Scott sincerely. “Will he pull through?”

  “I just don’t know, Scott,” she replied. “He might. Or he might not. But don’t dwell on it tonight. All I can tell you for sure is that I think you did the best thing possible to give him a fighting chance at survival. You should be proud of that, whatever the end result may be.”

  “Can I see him?” Scott asked. “Just for a few minutes?”

  “Not tonight,” the doctor said. “I don’t want anything to wake him up. It’s important to keep him unconscious during the worst of the post-amputation trauma period. He needs at least twelve hours under sedation for his nerve endings to stop sending constant phantom pain to his brain. It could become chronic, if he experiences it now. But if he’s still human tomorrow morning, it will probably be safe to say that you saved his life. Now go upstairs to your family and friends. I’ll look out for Clint.”

  “Thanks Doc,” said Scott with a deep sigh. Then he turned away reluctantly and headed up to discover what new problems needed his attention on the ship that he once thought of as his escape from the worries of reality. As he walked down the length of the vehicle deck on the Sovereign Spirit, taking a moment to appreciate each vehicle and “toy” in turn, he decided that he was still very lucky, or truly blessed. The world as they knew it had indeed ended, but not for him and most of the people who meant the most to him. The recent economic crisis had devastated the livelihood of millions of people, but left Scott virtually unaffected. Then the zombie plague had literally ended the lives of what he now had to assume were millions, if not billions of people, but left Scott and most of his loved ones untouched. He had even kept a lot of his wealth, if such a thing existed anymore, since there were 10,000 one ounce gold pieces in the ship’s safe, worth tens of millions of dollars last week. The gold might not be much more than ballast at the moment, but Scott realized that it was another of the assets that made the Sovereign Spirit uniquely suited to help reestablish some semblance of civilization somewhere, if he could help enough people survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

  *****

  Captain Fisher, Captain McCloud, Sergeant Major O’Hara and George Hammer were all waiting for Scott when he returned to his private office on the Sky Deck. They had planned a post mission conference, but Scott had been preoccupied with his concern for Clint. If any of the others were bothered by his tardiness, they didn’t let it show.

  “Mission accomplished,” said O’Hara to break the ice. “Not as many weapons as I might have hoped for, but more than enough for our current needs. And those LAVs and HUMVEEs from the DHS unit are a Godsend. I hear the Coast Guard found a lot more small arms than we did too.”

  “Yes,” confirmed Captain McCloud. “We collected over two hundred rifles, shotguns and machine guns, with close to a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, but it came at a heavy cost. The zombies killed two of my crew.”

  “Oh shit,” said Scott. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Shawn. And I guess you heard that my friend Clint was bitten on our mission too. I amputated his arm, so he might survive, but I know the anguish you must feel.”

  “Yes, Scott, and thank you for those sentiments,” said McCloud. “It’s a heavy burden that commanders like us must shoulder at times like these, but my crew and I had the minor consolation of eliminating over five hundred zombies before we left the Coast Guard Station.”

  “That many?” asked Scott with more than a touch of surprise. “How could there be so many zombies loose on that end of Terminal Island?”

  “I suspect that most of them were prisoners from the federal facility next door. Someone must have let them loose,” McCloud speculated.

  “Tough break,” O’Hara interjected. “At least you took them out of action, so they won’t get anyone else. And now we have a mobile force that can sweep all of Terminal Island clear of zombies in a day or two. The good news seems to be that once these things find a target they just keep coming for it, no matter how many of them get wasted in the process. With half a dozen armored vehicles and a good supply of ammunition, we can clean up thousands of them, if necessary.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” said George Hammer. “If you want to leave me here to collect and distribute all the supplies from the port, I don’t want to be fighting zombies every damned day to do it.”

  “Okay, George,” said Scott. “I get the point. But I’m not sure we can ever get rid of every zombie here. What we can do is seal off all the bridges to Terminal Island and make sweeps to wipe out as many of the infected as we can attract, including any left at the prison. But if some of the zombies are smarter, or less likely to attack our vehicles, or even locked up inside a building or a ship, well, we won’t be able to find them all in the time we have here.”

  “So you’re leaving soon?” asked George.

  Scott nodded and said, “The way I see it, we need to load up and head out within the next two days to deliver fresh water and supplies to the boat people who have been out at sea, or trapped in marinas. We can help a lot of survivors now that we have access to all of the resources here, but if we don’t get some help to them soon, a lot of them will start to starve, or come back on shore and be attacked by zombies. I won’t leave you defenseless, George. Now that we have the LAVs, I think we can leave you one of the bigger Amtracs, along with some of the HUMVEEs, including the one with a grenade launcher and the ambulance. And I think it’s wise to leave you a squad of Marines to man them too, if that’s okay with you, Sergeant Major?”

  “Yes, Commodore,” O’Hara agreed. “I think a few good men would be very useful here, to hold the fort so to speak.”

  “I have some more news for you gentlemen,” said Captain McCloud. “I flew over and landed on the Cape Inscription this afternoon. Their captain sounds ready to join the Flotilla and the ship is fully operational. I told him that I would return tomorrow with the rest of you to explain how we can work together. And I asked him to invite representatives from the Sea Launch ships too. After looking at their position on the old Navy Mole, I think that should be one of the first places on Terminal Island that we secure from zombie infestation.”

  “And just what is a Navy Mole?” asked George Hammer.

  “Well, it’s not a blind rodent or a growth on your body,” said Captain McCloud with a smile. “The Navy Mole refers to the third definition of the word mole: a massive manmade breakwater that creates a harbor or anchorage for ships. In this case it’s a narrow spur of manmade land with deep water on both sides. We can seal off the landward end with empty cargo containers and fences to make a secure stronghold,” McCloud explained. “There’s a big empty pier with a fueling station there, and the north side of the pier were the Cape Inscription is docked is empty and designed for ships with vehicle ramps. It’s a much better place for the Sovereign Spirit to dock
and deploy vehicles than this passenger terminal. The Mole also has a commanding view of the entrance to the port, so we can monitor the vessels coming in and out better from there too. You’ll see what I mean, if you come with me tomorrow.”

  “Count me in,” Scott confirmed.

  “Me too,” agreed George.

  “I want to see the rocket ship,” said O’Hara with a smile.

  *****

  After the meeting Scott went down to the Grand Salon to get something to eat from the buffet that was set up there every afternoon. There were about fifty people in the big room, including some Marines and members of the crew, mostly sitting around watching the GNN news feed on the projection TV. Fox Rusher was back on, looking a little worse for wear, with bags under his eyes from the strain of living in a television studio surrounded by zombies for more than a week. Scott grabbed a plate of assorted cheese and crackers and walked over to listen to the news for a moment. Mick Williams was already sitting alone in a booth near the TV, so Scott nodded a greeting and sat down across the table from him.

  “Reports continue to trickle in from isolated individuals and communities around the world, mostly via the internet. They confirm that virtually all major cities have been overrun and normal communications have broken down. However, the statements coming from Camp David, NORAD, and the CDC continue to be optimistic and report significant progress in combating the zombies and the infection. Citizens are still being told to remain at home and avoid contact with the infected until organized relief efforts arrive to assist them. In the mean time, the only sources of information for most people comes from portable radios or, for those who still have electricity, from satellite TV and the internet. With telephone service interrupted, the only forms of long distance communication left are radio or the internet.