There was a knock and Nikki let herself in without waiting for permission. “The kid asked us to come back down.”
As they descended the stairs, Jon said, “Smell that? Musky.”
“These folks haven’t bathed in days.”
“No. Something different.”
In the main downstairs hallway they passed a room that had its double doors pulled shut. Jon sniffed and said, “There. Musky. In there.” He tried the door, but it was locked. Then they both felt that familiar buzzing again and quickly finished walking back to the kitchen.
They entered to find Sanders, Gallagher and Eliza preparing a meal of sautéed fish, cabbage and potatoes. A portable gas burner served for cooking. There were places set for eight.
Eliza smiled. “Food is always a good way to break the ice.”
Sanders held out a chair for Nikki who said, “I’ll stand, thanks.”
There was the sound of the sliding doors opening in the hallway. Dean stepped out with the sent of musky air following him. He turned back toward the room, “It’s OK, guys.”
Eliza made an attempt at nonchalance. “Scientifically, we refer to the children as Homo Telepathus.” She called into the hallway, “Hansel. Gretel, please join us.”
They all looked down the hall as the first long hock-jointed leg stepped through the door.
Jon whispered, “No fucking way.”
The leg retreated back into the room. Billy walked down the hallway and looked through the doors. “Come on, you guys. It’s OK. Really.”
A male voice hissed. “It is not fine, Billy Stewart. They hate us.”
“No they don’t. They just haven’t met you. Don’t be a couple of sissies.”
A female voice replied, “Don’t call us names, Billy. We don’t like it and you know it.”
The twin pucks stepped into the hallway and walked with caution toward the kitchen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
An Act Of War
E-1 Seaman Lester Taylor stood shivering at his lookout-post, scope in hand, scanning for icebergs and wondering for the umpteenth time why he had agreed to this. The judge had offered what he had considered at the time to be a very fair choice — join the Navy or do time in a Federal Pen. In retrospect, his rash decision to go Navy had been a profound mistake. Stomping his feet to stay warm, he daydreamed of a nice prison cell with perhaps a rudimentary Virtusuit — or even if there was no access to Virtu, at least a solid old-school gaming console. Busted for hacking a government vacation site (a tropical hotspot for low-level bureaucrats to frolic) and temporarily converting the sandy beaches to molten lava, the lowly seaman spent his days repenting for the 3 near fatal heart attacks his action had caused. The chief petty officer who oversaw Taylor was fully aware of the seaman’s criminal background and didn’t cotton to convicts in his squad. If Seaman Taylor wasn’t staring at endless grey ocean and freezing his ass off, he was cleaning latrines or scrubbing the galley deck.
The USS Hagel was a high-tech sailing yacht that had been gutted and repurposed by the Navy as a patrol boat. The once gleaming ship of German design and Italian finishes was now a one-hundred-foot long streamlined lump of battleship grey, recently painted with a nice blue stripe to restore the sense of a private yacht or perhaps a merchant ship. Rather than its usual assignment endlessly circling an island full of might-as-well-be-lepers, the Hagel had been temporarily commissioned to hunt out pirates. With fuel being so precious, a boat like the Hagel was a perfect long range decoy. Anything that the Navy had with a nuclear plant had been long ago commandeered for power generation ashore. The big cruisers and destroyers that ran on fossil fuels sat mostly at their docks, their crews running drills in calm water, pretending to defend the nation from no known enemy.
As Taylor scanned the vast open ocean, he kept an eye out for their supposed shadow. Despite the cost in fuel, a cruiser had been designated to monitor the Hagel from beyond the horizon. In all likelihood, thought Taylor, the warship remained docked at Martha’s Vineyard awaiting any real distress call.
The Hagel was no pussycat of a ship. She sported a 30mm cannon that was currently disguised as a topside cabin and had a torpedo tube on each side disguised with the shells of extra lifeboats. She had been sailing south for three days, zig-zagging about and staying roughly ten miles off shore where most of the reported incidents were known to have occurred. Upon reaching the limit of known shipping lanes to and from the Seven States, the captain chose to head further south. For more than a decade, the South of New Jersey had been more or less abandoned to exploration.
Taylor considered the remnants of North America — curled as it was into a Post-Omega fetal position. It had become a welcome divergence that trade would exist again with fellow survivors from across the Atlantic. The reports of the fabulous Moroccan ship having to fend off pirates had his countrymen finally shrugging off their blankets and removing their collective thumbs from their mouths. They sent Taylor and his fellow sailors out to take a look around.
About time, he thought.
He sucked back the snot in his runny nose and spit a gob from his high perch, watching it shred apart in the breeze before strafing the deck below. He was on the 03:00 to dawn watch; the coldest watch. He countered it by letting his imagination drift to the tropical paradise he had hacked. In his mind, two nubile topless avatars were massaging coconut butter into his shoulders and thighs. A smile broke across his freezing face, only to be soured by a heavy pellet of frozen rain striking his exposed cheek. Taylor opened his eyes and cursed at the dense black clouds above. The drops landed randomly at first and slowly built up a rhythm. In moments, he was standing under a deluge; the bitch of a cloud unrelentingly pissing on him.
The Hagel had radar, but radar didn’t reflect off of sails very well, and did nothing to alleviate the danger of submerged or semi-submerged icebergs. Thus the lookout post was built onto the foremast where Taylor had a full view of the approaching sea but no place to shelter. Abandoning his post was out of the question so he stood against the rain as best he could. Time passed like dripping cold molasses until a gleam in the distance caught his eye. It was brief — like a flash. He stared hard in the direction he thought it came from. There it was again, just on the horizon, ten degrees to starboard. Again. It appeared to be a signal. He raised the scope to his eye and held his hand out over the lens as best he could to ward off the rain. A set of white sails stood out against the gray sky. Taylor had been a terrible signals student, but even he recognized an SOS.
He alerted the watch commander, who relayed it to the first mate who relayed it to the captain who confirmed the distress signal with his own eyes and then wished that he could break radio silence to alert command. Instead, he ordered a course adjustment to head for the flashing light. He ordered his signalman to respond with a quick reply, noting the sighting, and asking what manner of distress the distant ship was experiencing. The response was simple: Struck iceberg, taking on water.
Dawn was at hand as they approached the struggling vessel. The icebergs around them were larger and more densely packed, some as tall as small mountains. Taylor and multiple other crew members became fully engaged in insuring that the Hagel didn’t join the other boat’s bad luck.
The sinking ship was a large sixty-foot wooden sloop. Her sails were reefed to reduce power yet keep the bow pointed head to wind. Taylor may have been a poor student of the sea, but even he got the idea of maintaining the boat’s stability by keeping her stopped and pointed windward. Any listing wasn’t obvious, but perhaps the boat was just sitting low in the water. There was no crew to speak of on deck. That was curious.
Another low level seaman, E-1 Neighbors, spotted the flying drone. She had been looking up at the luff of the Hagel’s second mainsail when what she thought was a bird took a most un-birdlike turn and flew out of sight over one of the really big bergs to their east. Neighbors didn’t have time to point it out before it was gone. Still, she turned to the chief sail handler. “That was a litt
le plane, Chief.”
“Eh?” said the chief.
Pointing, she said, “A little plane. A drone I mean. It flew over that big berg there.”
“Are you certain?”
Neighbors had good instincts and she fell into an instant state of alertness. Bypassing the chief, she yelled to executive officer, Lieutenant Davis. “A drone was circling over us, XO. It just flew past that big berg!”
Captain Fitch, who stood next to Davis by the tiller responded. “Repeat that Seaman.”
They were perhaps a hundred yards from the distressed ship with the big iceberg to their starboard. Neighbors opened her mouth to repeat her words when Taylor up in the perch spotted the bow of a huge sailing vessel appearing past another mountain of an iceberg on their left.
Taylor yelled, “Contact! Port beam!”
A white painted three masted barque came fully past the berg and angled toward them. Assorted guns were mounted on her deck and four black spider-like machines hung in the rat lines.
On the foredeck of the distressed vessel a black hunk of hardware unfolded itself into another spider-like machine. The thing stood on six legs and swiveled a Roman centurion-like head at the Hagel while deploying a heavy gauge weapon from its side.
Taylor was so startled that he dropped the scope. The tool made a loud thud when it hit the deck.
The white barque was making maybe 12 knots as it angled for the Hagel. The distressed ship plowed forward, suddenly under power. The spider machines on both ships opened fire.
As Neighbors dove into an open hatch she was splattered with the chief’s shattered skull and brains.
Taylor watched in helpless horror as Captain Fitch and the XO were shredded to bits. Then he saw the machine on the distressed ship point its gun up at him.
Captain James Grimes, a former US Navy destroyer commander, had successfully taken over the operation of the TSS Eagle, when her former captain and crew had been incapacitated a little more than a year before. A run in with a ship carrying demon children had left the former captain and most of its crew unable to continue their duties; several having committed suicide since. Although there hadn’t been another incident like it, as a precaution, every new attack on an unsuspecting ship was handled by drone until said ship had been fully secured. Humans were forbidden from the topsides during an assault. In a secure room below decks of the white barque, Captain Grimes stood with his command staff. The men and women let out little whoops of pleasure and excitement as they watched the various drone operator’s screens feed real-time video from their individual sentinels. The 5 machines fired their grappling hooks into the Hagel’s rigging and launched themselves at the ship, then proceeded to slaughter the remaining crew on deck without pause or consideration of mercy.
Aboard the Navy ship, a sentinel stepped past the shredded bodies of the captain and his XO and skittered down the unprotected gangway.
Below decks, Seaman Neighbors tripped and scrambled down the central hallway past her terrified and woefully under-armed crew-mates, and pounded on the locked communication room door. “Beeman! Open the door!” There was no response from the other side so Neighbors slammed her shoulder into it. “Beeman! Open up!”
A blaze of heavy weapons fire lit up the corridor and echoed from the stern. Men and women returned fire and screamed as they fell. Neighbors heard a heavy thud behind her and looked down the hall to see one of the spider robots slam onto the floorboards of the main salon, one of its sharp pointed legs spearing a fallen yet still moving sailor. The pierced man screamed in agony as the devilish looking machine’s eyes locked in on Neighbors. As its weapon came to bear, she had time to swallow.
Inside the communications room, Ensign Beeman sat with a rigid spine, his shaking hands holding the mic as he forced himself to speak calmly into the radio. He had Martha’s Vineyard Command dialed in but got nothing but static.
He heard Neighbors die horribly outside the door, double checked that he had switched on the automatic Mayday, and added his own voice, screaming, “MAYDAY!”
What he couldn’t know was that all radio traffic was being jammed.
The door creaked and seemed to bend inward as a scraping sound slid down its length. Beeman’s chin shuddered as his voice caught in his throat, and he closed his eyes to say a short prayer.
Aboard the Eagle, Captain Grimes, with a satisfied nod, accepted the news that the US ship was secure. He turned to Commander Ragnar and spoke through the side of his mouth, “A cleaning crew, Ragnar. Bodies weighted as usual. Shipshape in an hour. Over the horizon we will be before any search party or more.”
With the Hagel under tow and the decoy sloop underway on her port stern, The Eagle pulled into its home port to be greeted by a larger party than usual. The Shore Navy was more or less left to its own devices. In most cases, even when returning with a prize, they pulled into the docks with little fanfare; just a shore team standing by to repair and deep clean the captured ship; the seized cargo unloaded for transport to Dover.
As Grimes stood on the poop and observed the docking operation, he was surprised to see Chief Councilor Colonel Quale with a small entourage standing on the large deck of the nearby officer’s club.
As captain of their prize fighting ship, Grimes was more or less the admiral of The Shore’s small navy. He nevertheless enjoyed little power within the council that oversaw the governing of the peninsula turned island. Councilman Quale had been an Army colonel and one of the right hands of the father of The Shore — Councilman Niles Plimpton — gone for more than a year now after setting out after a party of Northerners. As time passed without a real head of state, Quale had slowly taken command, becoming The Shore’s de-facto leader. Grimes met Quale’s eyes and the leader offered a nod of hello that also said, yes, I’m here waiting for you.
Grimes had sent his action report ahead. Given that he’d made the bold choice to take the unprecedented step of capturing a Northern warship, he supposed it wasn’t unusual for Quale to want a personal debrief. It was curious though, that he wouldn’t have just sent for Grimes and had him report in front of the entire council.
When Grimes finally stepped into the officer’s club, he made sure that Commander Ragnar was at his heel as back-up and witness. Quale was a tricky man to navigate. Grimes never knew what side of the coin the man had landed on, on any given day; the man’s thin-skinned ego needed to be carefully handled.
Quale stood by the window sipping something hot. The new Chief of the Army, Colonel Josh Olsen, was standing next to him at what appeared to be an ‘at ease’ version of attention. Just as Grimes was more or less an admiral, who nevertheless retained a captain’s rank, Olsen was, for all intents and purposes, a general, but remained a colonel. Grimes was quite certain that this was a calculation on Quale’s part, inherited from Plimpton, and meant to keep the people from overly admiring any one leader and any one leader from overly admiring him or herself — unless that leader was Quale. Even the members of the council were merely called councilman or councilwoman. Quale had reserved Chief Councilor for himself; something that Grimes was sure that the long missing Councilman, Niles Plimpton, would have frowned upon.
Quale smiled politely past Grimes at Commander Ragnar. “Well done Commander. To you and your team, many congratulations on another successful hunt. Please have some refreshment.”
Ragnar, having never been addressed by Quale, offered a salute and stuttered, “Yuh-yes, Chief Councilor. Thank you, sir.” He turned, stopped at a table with some pre-poured lemonade, looked perplexed for a moment, and grabbed a cup and drank.
Grimes ignored the lemonade and waited instead for Quale to get to it.
“A celebration is in order, Captain, after your bold decision making. Arranged I have, for some sustenance. We have some excellent local ham — baked with the honey taken off that second Moroccan ship.”
Grimes cleared his throat. “Sounds delicious, Chief Councilman.”
Quale indicated some chairs by the fireplace th
at crackled with a comforting blaze. “But first sit, won’t you, gentlemen? Tired you must be.”
Grimes and Ragnar took the offered seats, sitting across from Quale and keeping silent. Colonel Olsen remained standing a pace or two behind and to the left of Quale. Grimes couldn’t help but think of the man as more bodyguard than Army head.
Quale pulled out a tobacco pouch and filled a pipe, saying, “You’re to be commended, Captain.” He lit his pipe, leaving the thought dangling.
Classic Quale, thought Grimes. Drag out every little nothing. Just get to the fucking point.
Quale said, “The choice to make such a bold move without orders… Perplexing. The timing… Call it fortuitous.” He waved the pipe toward Olsen. “Just wrapping up, we are, the first phase of our new operation. All the pieces are suddenly in place. Come in handy, this captured Navy ship will. Commander Ragnar, your moment has arrived. Take charge of this new prize you will. Shipshape and ready to sail in twenty-four hours, I expect. Grimes, about to head back north, you are. Provision, you will, for two companies of troops. ”
PART TWO
Island Hell
CHAPTER EIGHT
This Jerry
It remembered That Jerry; That Jerry, the systems analyst for a major insurance firm. That Jerry had worked out of a satellite office in Hoboken. It remembered That Jerry had a wife and son who That Jerry had watched being torn and hacked limb from limb on That Jerry’s front lawn by a mob of Fiends. That Jerry had hung helplessly from a telephone pole — a pole that That Jerry had frantically shimmied up with all thoughts of his family’s survival wiped clean by raw mind-bending fear. It remembered That Jerry had once been a field tech for a major telecom company, and that’s why That Jerry still had the pole climbing rig in the garage — the pole climbing rig which That Jerry (the coward) had used to reach safety while his family was butchered beneath him. It remembered That Jerry being up that pole for six days while the pack of Fiends fed off his wife and kid and Mrs. Waters next door. It remembered That Jerry making a break for it when a National Guard unit had mowed down the pack of rabid Fiends that had surrounded the base of that pole. It remembered That Jerry being on the run for weeks, then months, hooking up with other refugees, always overrun, always just escaping, always with survivor’s guilt built onto layers and layers of a toppling self-hate-cake. It remembered the end of the struggle, when the tide was turning in New England, when safety could really, actually, legitimately be sought. It remembered that it didn’t mean danger wasn’t still everywhere. It remembered the day that That Jerry had given up. That Jerry had been running until That Jerry’s lungs seared with agony and the muscles in That Jerry’s legs were awash in lactic acid, adrenaline no longer providing enough boost to make a difference; all of it twenty yards away from a team of soldiers cheering on his mad dash. It remembered how excruciating it was to have a mouthful of flesh taken off the top of That Jerry’s shoulder. It remembered That Jerry waking up in the Army mobile medical tent, the surgery, the recovery, the therapy, the pills, the never-ending pills. It remembered That Jerry’s new life, the exiled life, strapping on a pair of pole climbers and maintaining the wires; the lifeline electrical grid of Nantucket. It remembered that just a day or two before That Jerry had felt very sick and a terrible thirst had taken over, like the pills were no longer working. Then it woke up… and It was This Jerry.
A House Divided: Book 3 of The Of Sudden Origin Saga Page 7