Under a Graveyard Sky

by John Ringo

  She jammed the adze portion into the seal of the door and pushed on the bar. The hatch gapped slightly.

  “There’s a rope holding it closed,” Steve said, shining a taclight into the interior. “No zombies. Not alive, anyway.”

  “Can you get the rope?” Faith grunted. “Hang on, let me—” The tool slipped, fortunately missing Steve. “I need this in farther.”

  “Hammer,” Mike said. “And you might want me to do it next time.”

  “No way,” Faith said, hefting the Halligan. “I love this thing! I wanna have its babies.”

  * * *

  “No survivors,” Steve said. Getting the hatch open had involved hammering in the Halligan, gapping the hatch and cutting the rope with a machete.

  The room had held five people: male, female, three children. Now there were five corpses.

  “One guy with a gun,” Faith said, picking up the pistol. “Wife and kids went zombie and he killed himself?”

  “Looks like,” Steve said. “One of the kids is still dressed. Trapped in the room, no food, zombies outside . . . Murder-suicide is my guess.”

  “Bill Carter,” Mike said, shaking his head. “He’s the engineer. Sort of my boss.”

  “Sorry,” Faith said.

  “He wasn’t the greatest boss in the world,” Mike said. “But I sort of liked his kids. Can we . . .”

  “We’ll clear all the bodies,” Steve said. “They’re people. We don’t do the full flag-and-sheet thing, but we give them a burial at sea. We try not to just toss them to the sharks.”

  “Thanks,” Mike said. “That’s . . . good.”

  “Onward,” Faith said, spraying a C on the hatch then putting an arrow on the bulkhead next to it pointed to the nearest entry point. She shook the spray can. “I don’t suppose you guys have some more of this onboard?”

  * * *

  “Lots of supplies,” Steve said, whistling thoughtfully. The small hold was packed with cases of Number Ten cans as well as general “groceries.” It looked like the back room of a grocery store except for everything being tied down under cargo nets.

  “We were figuring on being at sea for a while,” Braito said. “We were going to need it.”

  “So why the hell is she dead?” Faith asked, looking at the bloated corpse. “I think she. She’s been dead a while.”

  The corpse was clothed and lying up against the bulkhead. She, probably, didn’t have any evidence of wounds and was in a hold packed with food.

  “Remember how sick you got?” Steve asked. “The virus kills people twenty percent of the time.”

  “Moving all these stores is going to be a pain in the patootie,” Faith said.

  “We’ve got cranes,” Mike said, pointing up. “Open up the top hatch, winch it out.”

  “That . . . works,” Steve said. “If it’s flat calm.”

  “You can tow a tug boat,” Mike said. “The main transfer is shot but that doesn’t mean you can’t tow it. How far to the nearest harbor?”

  “Bermuda’s about a hundred miles away,” Steve said. “Last time I checked the position. Put it in Bermuda harbor and call in the boats to load up? Hell, it’s got enough diesel to keep us running for months.”

  “What about Isham?” Faith asked.

  “I think we can spare some,” Steve said.

  “I hate to point this out,” Braito said nervously. “But this isn’t, technically, salvage.”

  “You don’t have to finger your pistol, Mike,” Faith said. They had loaned him one for his own security on the boat as well as body armor. “And it makes me nervous when you do. You don’t want me nervous.”

  “Down, Faith,” Steve said. “Mike, you can claim it as last survivor, I guess. There’s no owners anymore that we know of. But what, exactly, are you going to do with it? You don’t have a boat to tow it to Bermuda. It’s drifting.”

  “I’ll, you know, cut you in on it . . . ?” Mike said.

  “That’s what we were looking at anyway,” Steve said, shrugging.

  “So . . . what do I get?” Mike asked.

  “You mean besides being rescued?” Faith replied.

  “What do you want me to offer?” Steve asked. “Mike, what you get in this world is what you make for yourself. I suppose at some point there will be enough people mobile that you can add ‘what you take from others.’ But right now all there is is either running and hiding or doing what we’re doing, trying to save people like, you know, you. If you want some help to try to find a boat . . . I’m getting stingy with those, really. But I’ll do that. Trade you this for a functioning yacht and as much stores as you can carry. Hell, refuel as often as you’d like until the tanks are dry. But what are you going to do, Mike? Keep running and looking for that one ‘safe’ place? Good luck finding it. I haven’t heard where it might be.”

  “I know boats,” Mike said, his brow furrowing. “I mean, I’m not a captain, but, hell, none of you are. But . . . I know repairs. And we’ve got repair materials. I don’t want to go around scavenging. Being in here . . . It’s scaring the shit out of me. I want the lights on and the whole thing cleared out. But I can repair boats . . .”

  “Okay, we anchor the hell out of this in a protected part of Bermuda harbor,” Steve said. “And you can act as a base station? If we get a tanker or something, we’ll bring it in for fuel?”

  “I’m getting the feeling we need to talk about how to organize this whole thing,” Faith said. “But can we finish clearing the boat first? Or do we let Fly do the rest?” she asked with a feral grin.

  “Please, no,” Braito said.

  “There,” Steve said, cocking his head. “The reason you’re willing to share the boat, then.”

  “Point,” Braito said.

  “So, let’s get finished clearing,” Steve said, heading down the corridor. “Then we’ll figure out how this is going to work in more detail. Zombies! Zombies! Any zombies . . . ?”

  * * *

  “Toy, away team,” Steve said, taking off his respirator. They were running out of filters, which was going to suck pretty soon. It wasn’t bad on the deck but the air was still thick with rot.

  “Away team, Toy.”

  “Where’s the Cooper, over?”

  “About fifty miles northeast.”

  “Ask them to vector here,” Steve said. “There’s supplies and we need to have a meeting.”

  “Roger.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “Chris, I swear to God I should have just kept you as a cook,” Steve said, wiping up the spaghetti sauce with garlic bread.

  “It’s nearly as good as that place in New York,” Faith said, then grimaced. “Sorry, Chris, but—”

  “Nah,” Chris said, taking a bite of green beans. “I know what you mean about those places in New York. Some of those old guys are wizards. And there’s only so much you can do with canned meat. Besides, much of it was Tina.”

  “It’s great, Tina,” Sophia said. Stacey had stayed on the boat after talking with Steve and giving him her proxy.

  “I didn’t do much,” Tina said shyly. She’d transferred to the Cooper to get away from the Toy, which still had too many bad associations.

  “I think I might transfer,” Patrick said. He’d been acting as assistant helmsman and deck hand on the Toy.

  “Which kind of brings up the subject of this meeting,” Steve said. The saloon in the Cooper had enough room for most of the crowd and most people were done with dinner.

  “I’d wondered what the agenda was,” Chris said, arching an eyebrow.

  “This is Mike Braito,” Steve said, gesturing to Mike. “He’s the only survivor we found on the Victoria. Being a professional seaman, he’s been a real help with figuring out how to board without killing ourselves—”

  “Hear, hear!” Faith said.

  “And in finding our way around the tug. Which is full of diesel and packed with stores, by the way . . .”

  “That’s good to hear,” Chris said. “We could use a refuel.” />
  “And being a professional seaman, he also pointed out that since he was alive it’s not, technically, salvage.”

  “I’m not saying I won’t share,” Mike said as heads swiveled towards him. He held up his hands in surrender. “I just wonder what I’m going to get out of it. Okay? Is that so wrong?”

  “People didn’t ask what they were going to get out of it when they rescued you,” Paula said snappishly.

  “Yes, actually, we did,” Steve said.

  “What?” Paula asked.

  “Well, I knew there was a good chance that it would have fuel,” Steve said. “And that it might have supplies. There was an— There was an economic reason to clear it. Call it logistic if you want. But there was a thought beyond ‘might there be survivors.’ Which brings up the point. I am going to go right on clearing as long as it takes. And I’ve got some ideas about how to clear the land . . .”

  “How?” Patrick asked. “I mean . . . That’s a lot of bullets. We don’t have that many, do we?”

  “No,” Faith said. “We’re even getting a little short on shotgun ammo.”

  “I said ideas,” Steve said. “I’m not really willing to talk about what they are right now because they change based on what we find. But the point is . . . I think we need to talk about the . . . the theory of this whole thing. I’m going to go right on clearing and saving people. But how do we make some of the decisions that need to be made? What right, really, does Mike have to that boat? I’m not saying that he doesn’t have rights. I’m saying that, face it, this is not before the plague. There are laws of the sea. But those have changed over the years. Forget the laws. For one thing, there’s nobody to enforce them. How do we organize ourselves? Example: I said that if he wanted I’d try to find him a decent yacht and he could take as many supplies as he wanted in exchange for the tug—”

  “Can we use the tug?” Chris asked. “That’s a lot for a derelict. Does it run?”

  “No,” Steve said. “We need to tow it to Bermuda. But we’ll need Mike’s help to do that. But the real point is, do I have the authority to make that promise? That was the thought that crossed my mind after I said it. Chris, when we found the Cooper, you were the obvious choice to take it over . . .”

  “You giving him my boat?” Chris asked.

  “No, but the point is I said ‘Chris, this is your boat.’ I said it. And I gave Isham that forty-five footer. Is that my decision to make?”

  “We’re sort of following your lead, Steve,” Paula said. “I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “Uhm . . .” Patrick said, raising his hand. “I’ve sort of been thinking about that.”

  “Go,” Steve said.

  “You said you were a history professor,” Patrick said. “One of the groups I was thinking about is the Italian companeres.”

  “Okay, not a reference I’d expected,” Steve said with a laugh.

  “Companeres?” Chris said, blinking. “What?”

  “Simply put, they were mercenary bands during the long wars in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Italy,” Steve said. “They’re where we get the word ‘bravo,’ which was what they were called individually. It just means ‘the courageous ones.’ They basically fought for shares and elected their leaders rather than having them appointed or fighting for lords directly.”

  “Ronin,” Paula said.

  “Ronin were radically different,” Patrick said.

  “They’re better known and there are some similarities,” Steve said. “The big difference being that companeres came from multiple backgrounds whereas ronin were samurai that lost their lords and had no one to be loyal to afterwards. So you’re saying we should vote?”

  “I think . . .” Patrick’s face worked. “I don’t explain stuff very well sometimes. But companeres were one of the bases of the Star Trek universe system.”

  “We’re all over the map, here,” Paula said, sighing exasperatedly.

  “The companeres were sort of share and share alike,” Patrick said. “Which is how the Federation was based . . .”

  “You mean the stupid liberal ‘we don’t have money’ bullshit?” Faith said.

  “It wasn’t stupid,” Patrick said, shaking his head. “They had so many resources that trade in terms of money was left behind. Cory Doctorow explained it better in—”

  “Stop,” Steve said. “You have already done two digressions. I used to think the Star Trek thing was an example of Roddenberry’s liberal side as well. But once I got my head around the economics it made sense.”

  “It does?” Faith said.

  “I won’t say it wasn’t procommunism political speech disguised,” Steve said. “But in the Federation, anything was available at the touch of a button. There weren’t any basic resource restrictions. If you didn’t want to work, you didn’t have to. On the other hand, there was no economic drive to be, say, a starship captain. You did it because you could and you wanted to. The question I’ve always had is why there was a restriction on how many starships a group like that had. Why couldn’t anybody have a starship if there were exactly no resource restrictions? But that’s besides the point. And I think Patrick’s point is that as we get better at clearance, resource restrictions aren’t going to be an issue after a while. Patrick?”

  “Right,” Patrick said, pointing. “That. What you said. In Starfleet you didn’t want to get promoted for the stuff. You wanted to get promoted to run stuff. To be a Star Fleet captain. Not for the money. About all you got in terms of stuff was a bigger cabin.”

  “How did they do promotions?” Sophia asked.

  “Ummm . . .” Patrick said.

  “Through Starfleet based on presumed merit,” Steve said. “Which doesn’t help us. And it’s more than promotions, although that’s part of it. But on that point, when we find the next boat that’s useable, assuming we don’t have the question of legitimate salvage, who gets it? And who decides?”

  “You do,” Chris said.

  “Really?” Steve said. “Because the next person I’d give a boat to is Sophia.”

  “What?” Sophia said, her eyes wide.

  “Uh . . .” Chris said, frowning.

  “Sophia?” Faith said angrily.

  “She has more boat handling experience than anyone else we have,” Steve said, ticking off his points on his fingers. “She’s engaged in the program. She’s not only a good helmsman, she understands the logistics side. She’s diligent and people like her. She gets things done. Oh, I’d choose the crew carefully, but those are my points.”

  “Okay,” Chris said, his brow furrowing. “She’s kind of young—”

  “Yeah!” Faith said. “And . . . and . . .”

  “Faith, you don’t even like driving when it’s your watch,” Steve said.

  “Yeah, but . . .” she said, frowning.

  “You want to do the paperwork?” Steve asked. “Figure out the fuel use? Try to figure out which EPIRB to do next?”

  “Well, no, but . . .” Faith said. “Damnit!”

  “How ’bout me?” Paula asked, cocking her head.

  “There are other potential choices,” Steve said. “But the best choice, in my opinion, is Sophia. Actually, if he wanted it and agreed to fully join the program, I’d now say Mike.”

  “Uh, I don’t want to clear boats,” Mike said, holding up his hands.

  “Sophia hasn’t cleared an actual powered boat since we started,” Steve said. “My point is, Chris, you said I get to decide. Should I? I’m not saying I shouldn’t. I think, for now, that’s the way to go. But what’s my authority? What’s it based on? Saving people?”

  “That’s a pretty good basis,” Paula said. “Why don’t we put it to a vote?”

  “Because if we’d put it to a vote at a certain point when Isham was onboard I might have lost?” Steve said.

  “So you want to stack the deck?” Chris said.

  “Not stack the deck,” Steve said. “But who we get off of boats is a crap shoot. Do we automat
ically give them voting rights? How often do we have elections?”

  “You want a charter?” Patrick said. “Like I said, companeres. And I was serious.”

  “There’s no Starfleet, Patrick,” Paula said.

  “There wasn’t with the companeres,” Patrick said. “I think . . . Okay, pirates, then.”

  “Oh, great choice,” Faith said, rolling her eyes. “We’re not pirates!”

  “When pirates captured a ship, they had to decide who got it,” Patrick said. “And they were freebooters. They worked for shares. The shares were based on . . . Actually, I’m not sure what the shares were based on but they voted on the basis of their shares.”

  “Okay, now you’re talking my language,” Mike said. He’d been looking puzzled through the whole exchange.

  “Go,” Steve said.

  “Lots of boats, tugs, fishing boats, are share boats,” Braito said. “When you make money off something like salvage, part of it goes to the cost. Like, the food, fuel, some for maintenance. Then the profit’s split between the owner and the crew. Sometimes it’s not a direct split but it’s pretty close. Then it’s broken up. The captain gets part of the share, then the other bosses, then the crew. Usually it’s the captain gets twenty, thirty percent, the other senior guys, deck boss and engineer usually, share another twenty and the hands share out the rest. Newbies don’t get a share, just straight rate. To get to be share hands, they have to be voted on by the crew.”

  “You’re talking about Deadliest Catch?” Faith asked.

  “That’s how they do their shares,” Braito said, nodding. “And when you have something that’s a question that the crew gets rights on having a say, they vote their shares.”

  “Freebooters,” Chris said, rubbing his beard. “Heh. I always sort of wanted to be a pirate.”

  “What about larger decisions?” Steve said. “No, back to the point. Is that the way that we should organize ourselves? Does it make sense?”

  “For this level,” Paula said. “But your point about larger is valid. We’re planning on being bigger, right?”

  “And what about salvage?” Chris said. “Mike, I get the point that the Victoria isn’t ‘legal salvage.’ But we need those supplies.”