by John Ringo
“Like, half a tank?” Hooch said.
“But dead batteries,” Faith said. “Okay. Hey, Paula! Toss me the slave!”
“Slave cable?” Hooch asked.
“Got it in one,” Faith said as Paula hefted the cable up from the other boat’s engine room. “Vicky makes it up from cables and stuff they find. They do a little salvage in the harbor when the zombies aren’t real active or off boats they can get to that don’t have any. But it’s stuff like this. I mean, I’ve had a couple of other people say they’ll try out clearance and they see one boat like this and give it up. It’s not just the zombies.”
“Who clears ’em out?” Hooch asked.
“Oh, the crews do,” Faith said. “If you want a new boat, that’s the catch unless it’s a hand-me-down like the Endeavor. Okay, engineering deck hatch is over here . . .”
* * *
“This is confusing,” Hooch said, looking at the electrical panel.
“Confused the shit out of me the first time I looked at it,” Faith said, throwing a breaker back and forth. “But this isn’t complicated. The Large, the Vicky, that fricking Alpha. Those are complicated.” She hit the “Start” button and the engine started whining. “Come on, baby . . .”
The engine rumbled to life, and she grinned.
“And we have a working boat,” Faith said. “I think we get some sort of spiff for that but I don’t really know what it is.”
“Spiff?” Hooch said.
“Bonus,” Faith said. “Like, extra rations or booze or something. Speaking of which.” She keyed her radio. “You want the good pickins, come and get ’em. And it works.”
“Awesome,” Sophia replied. “Maybe I’ll ask for an upgrade.”
“Might want to look at the master cabin before you say that.”
* * *
“Oh, my God,” the man said, his face white.
“I know, zombies, right?” Faith said to the “captain” of the “prize crew.” The group was made up of recent rescuees, mostly from life rafts, who had volunteered to join the flotilla. “They’re worse than a rock band. Just try to avoid the crap. The flying bridge isn’t too bad and it’s a nice clear day. All you’ve got to do is run it into Bermuda. The course is laid in on the GPS. Just follow the marked route. That’s the current channels, whatever the markers might say. Don’t necessarily follow the markers. They’re getting filled up. Follow the marked route, got it?”
“Yeah,” the man said.
“If you get in trouble, we’re always up on sixteen,” Faith said. “Don’t go into the lower decks unless you’ve got a really strong stomach. The Marine with me puked; put it that way.”
“Who cleans these up?” the guy asked looking at the feces- and blood-smeared interior.
“First test of a captain in the flotilla,” Faith said, grinning. “Can you find a crew who’s willing to clean the boat?”
* * *
“You drink, Hooch?” Sophia asked.
“There’s two reasons for my nickname,” Hooch said.
“Twenty-five-year-old Strathisla,” Sophia said, handing him a highball half full of dark whiskey. “One of the real reasons to be a clearing boat.”
“And stuff like this,” Faith said, admiring the new gold and diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist. She’d had to “extend” it with a bit of parachute cord since it was for a much smaller wrist. “Especially since I don’t drink.”
“This is authorized?” Hooch asked, taking a sip of the scotch. “I’m not really into scotch but that’s pretty good.”
“And enough of it and you forget what you see,” Sophia said, taking a pull. “Balancing doing this job half-hammered and just doing it is the tough part. And we’re authorized one-third of the salvage from cleared boats as the clearance boat. We really don’t have the room for it. Basically, we can take anything we can carry.”
“Hell, you don’t even clear,” Faith said. “What do you see that’s so bad? And I don’t drink.”
“Remember that raft with the kids in it, Faith?” Sophia asked, taking another drink.
“Yeah,” Faith said, looking at the deck.
“Kids?” Hooch asked.
“Life raft,” Sophia said. “Two kids. Maybe six and eight.”
“Zombies?” Hooch asked.
“No,” Faith said. “That was the tough part. They hadn’t zombied. There was no saltwater still. I mean . . .”
“There was a pack for one,” Sophia said. “It had been opened. But the still was gone. Maybe they could read the directions, set it up, but didn’t hook it up right and it drifted away. But it was gone. They’d died of dehydration.”
“Oh . . . crap,” Hooch said.
“That one still . . .” Faith said, her face working. “I mean, they must have tried really hard. They at least got the still out, you know?”
“Empty rafts,” Sophia said. “What happened? Who knows. Rafts with zombies and bits of the rest of the crew. Lifeboats with corpses and one zombie. Or even that’s dead. Just putrid bits of meat and intestines all over the fucking place . . .” She took another hit of the scotch and breathed it through her nose. “So I’m fifteen and I’m shooting for cirrhosis of the liver by thirty. Sue me. We earn this.”
* * *
“We barely touched the Grace’s tanks,” Isham said, looking at the computer. “I mean, the Alpha took them down but less than a quarter. There’s three times a fill-up for the Alpha in Grace’s tanks and the Alpha wasn’t dry. And we’ve filled the Large. I figured with the Coasties on it, they weren’t going to up and run off with it.”
“We were just preparing for a supply run when the word broke about the plague,” Victor Gilbert, First Mate of the Offshore Support Vessel M/V Grace Tan said. “We sort of packed along our . . .” He stopped and his face worked. “We packed along our families. Just a little . . . cruise . . .”
“Mr. Gilbert,” Steve said, handing him a glass dark with whiskey. “The same thing would have happened if they were on land.”
“Yeah,” Gilbert said, taking a drink. “But I wouldn’t have had to watch my wife and kids turn. You know?”
“I’m one of the few who doesn’t,” Steve admitted, shrugging. “Luck. Planning.”
“Bloody-mindedness,” Isham said.
“That as well,” Steve said. “Issues?”
“No,” Isham said. “Just keeping it in mind.”
“So I ended up in the compartment with Stella, Larry Ashley’s wife and . . . Christ, Luis is Jeff Busler’s kid. Jeff was the deck boss. Larry was maintenance. And Sharon, she’s Chad Wilborn’s daughter, and Rich, he’s Sherri and Bob Tilley’s son, Sherri was the systems tech. Nobody has anybody.”
“No,” Steve said, “You all have each other. Captain Gilbert, those are the only children except Tina we’ve found. Alive anyway. This plague may or may not have wiped out civilization, but it has wiped out an entire generation.”
“Yeah, but there seems to be a new one on the way,” Isham said, chuckling.
“Pardon?” Gilbert said.
“Ahem,” Steve said. “I’m not going to pry, but I suspect Stella is pregnant?”
“How’d you . . .” Gilbert said, his eyes flaring. “Look . . . !”
“No worries, mate,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Just about every woman who was in a compartment with a man is pregnant. And we can usually sort out the rapes from the other.”
“Vic,” Isham said to the still visibly upset captain. “Take a deep breath. What Steve is saying is that it’s how things are, now. Part of the new now. Hell, there’s even a meme.”
“Meme?” Gilbert said. “Like LOLCats or something?”
“Sort of,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t photoshopped it onto a picture of a pregnant woman. The saying is ‘What happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment.’ Goes two ways. There’s stuff that happens that you’re really ashamed of. On boats, in compartments. Having to kill somebody who turned.”
“And the response is, what happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment,” Steve said. “If there’s a complaint, we investigate it. To the extent we can. But . . . Stella hasn’t even hinted it was rape . . .”
“It wasn’t, honest,” Gilbert said, holding up his hands. “Hell, it just sort of . . .”
“You can talk about it if you want,” Steve said, shrugging. “Or keep it in the compartment. But you don’t have to be guilty about it. Yes, her husband was recently dead. So was your wife. The ‘right’ way, even if you’d liked each other before, was to ‘wait a decent period.’ You were alone in a compartment with nothing else to do and death all around you.”
“Except the kids in this case,” Isham said.
“We waited till they were asleep and did it real quiet,” Gilbert said. “Sue me.”
“Again and again if necessary,” Steve said. “No worries. One of the women from a life raft, the man with her had to kill her husband when he turned. And she’s pregnant and they’re a couple. Humans adjust to the incredible. The survivors do. And one of the ways we adjust is things like ‘What happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment.’ Nobody but the people in the compartment, life raft, what have you, can really judge. It is one of the reasons that people in unusual jobs are given different courts than common citizens. Seamen have their own courts. Military. Because there is a reality to ‘You weren’t there. You can’t know. You can’t understand.’”
“And then there’s the prison thing,” Isham said, smirking.
“Prison thing . . .” Gilbert said, then grimaced.
“What happened in the compartment,” Steve said.
“Stays in the compartment,” Gilbert said. “Got it.”
“So, seriously, no issues,” Steve said. “The real issue is that while we’re starting to find some professionals, most of our crews are not professional seamen. Most of our captains are not professional seamen. And we have a real, critical shortage of engineering personnel. Even mechanics. So when something breaks on a boat, the crews are generally stuck. And although most of them have been through storms, it’s mostly been while stuck in compartments or puking up their guts and holding on for dear life in lifeboats and rafts.”
“No storms while you’ve been doing this?” Gilbert asked.
“Nothing serious,” Steve said, shrugging. “High summer and we’ve only had one tropical come up this way. That was before we started clearing and it was only a storm by the time it got here.”
“I remember that one,” Gilbert said.
“Me, too,” Isham said.
“So we’re going to have to move,” Steve said.
“Move?” Isham said. “Why? We’ve got a good harbor here.”
“You’ve got Bermuda harbor,” Gilbert said. “Which is an okay harbor. You get hit by a really hard, late-season I’m-going-to-rip-you-a-new-asshole hurricane, this is not the harbor you want to be in.”
“And with the ships, absent a truly excellent harbor, it’s better to be at sea,” Steve said. “If you’ve got the right crew. Which we don’t. And the small craft . . . There’s a reason they call it a ‘small craft advisory.’ Between the late-season hurricanes that we’re going to get soon and the diurnals and winter storms . . . I’m thinking Canary Islands?”
“Good choice,” Gilbert said, nodding. “We’re going to have to fuel. I mean, the Grace has plenty for herself and probably enough for a while for the small boats. But not to constantly refuel the Alpha.”
“Could you tow a full-sized tanker?” Steve asked.
“Yes,” Gilbert said. “But I’d need a tow crew who knew what they were doing.”
“How about a guy who knows what he is doing and some people willing to learn?” Steve said, grinning. “Because that is the best you are going to get for any job in this flotilla.”
“What fun, what fun,” Gilbert said, grimacing. “In that case, I can try. But I’ll be perfectly content to cut it loose.”
“Works,” Steve said. “I think we’re going to have to leave the Vicky. I really should have gotten Mike in on this. But you’ve got quite a few accommodations, from what I saw.”
“We could have carried a lot more people than we did,” Gilbert said, then sighed. “I don’t think that would have been a good idea.”
“There were few good choices,” Steve said. “As I said, my family was lucky. Although,” he added, shrugging, “the basic plan would have worked. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without one aspect, but . . . Be that as it may, we can put more people on the Grace. We can put people on the Alpha. I’m willing to push it to the first diurnal, or if we see a cyclone coming this way. For the diurnal we’ll bring the small boats in. But when either happens, we are upping stakes and heading away from the northeast Atlantic.”
“There are still a lot of boats and rafts out there,” Isham pointed out.
“And we can’t rescue anyone if we’re dead,” Steve said. “I am audacious, not stupid. Thereafter we will head to the Canaries and do this same thing, more or less. There are distress beacons everywhere and only we few, we happy few, to clear them. Depending on how many EPIRBs there are in that area, we may cut back across the ocean to the Caribbean in winter. I would like to be off of Cuba by January. But I do not want to do that at the cost of leaving many behind. Which means we need more boats and more captains. Despite that, I’m going to start shutting down the thirty-fives, including the Endeavor. And I’m going to drag Captain Sherill out if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Good luck,” Isham said.
“Sherill?”
“Fully rated captain,” Steve said. “Who is totally stuck on his tiny little Bertram thirty-five. Used to run freighters for Maersk and chucked it, had a hissy fit as he puts it, for being a charter captain out of Charleston. Doesn’t want the responsibility. I’m going to have to convince him otherwise.”
“Like I said,” Isham said. “Good luck.”
There was a knock on the door and Isham looked at Steve.
“Enter!” Steve called.
“Commodore,” the young woman said nervously. “Sorry, but Captain Sherill is calling and he says it’s urgent.”
“Speaking of Captain Gilligan,” Steve said. “Where’s the radio room on this tub?”
* * *
“What’s up, Gi . . . Sea Fit?” Steve said.
“You need to get out here,” Sherill replied instantly. “Now.”
Steve was used to the irascible skipper’s usual tones. Desperately serious was a new one.
“Details,” he replied.
“You know how you’re always talking about people dying waiting for rescue in compartments?”
“Yes,” Steve said.
“It’s a cruise ship. I’m watching that in real time. Get in your fucking tub and get your Aussie ass and all the guns you can find out here. I’ll help clear this one. There are people still alive in their staterooms and they’re looking at me. I’m making a banner that says ‘Help is on the way. Hold on.’ Get out here, Wolf. Now.”
“All ships, relay that information to all receiving stations,” Steve said. “All vessels converge His Sea Fit’s location. Large, time to earn your munificent pay from your friendly Uncle. And time to fish or cut bait on the arms locker. Victoria, begin transfer all personnel and mobile equipment to Grace. Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Commodore, are you in radio range, over?”
“En—vo—proce—Sea-fit . . .”
“Endeavor’s about twenty miles away, Commodore,” Sherill called. “Their response was proceeding our location.”
“Begin surface clearance,” Steve said. “Do not do entry until I arrive. Relay that, Sherill. Commodore moving to location now. All vessels: don’t spare the horses. Wolf, out.”
He looked over at Isham and Gilbert.
“Get all of Victoria’s personnel and stores on your boat, Gilbert,” Steve said. “And any of the SLLs left. When you’re cross-loaded, head to the location. Isham, tell Captain Miguel to make ready for sea.”
“Are you taking this?”
“No time,” Steve said. “I wish I had something faster than the Toy.”
* * *
“That tears it,” Galloway said.
“Sir . . .” Commander Freeman said.
“I’m not talking about the captaincy, Commander,” Galloway said. “But we’re also not going to stand by and let who knows how many survivors die sealed into a cruise ship. Get me the Dallas and Charlotte . . .”
CHAPTER 28
“Time, time, time,” Steve said pushing the throttles of the Toy forward again. It didn’t give him any more speed. “Ask me for anything but—”
He stopped speaking as an attack boat made a fast surface off his starboard bow at about a thousand yards. He noted in the back of his mind that they’d surfaced upwind.
“Tina’s Toy, USS Dallas, over,” the radio crackled.
“Steve!” Stacey screamed from below.
“I see it,” Steve said, picking up the radio. “Wolf Actual, over.”
“Wolf, all possible support has been authorized for this operation,” the Dallas said. “USS Charlotte is in the process of taking the Campbell under tow to bring it to the cruise ship. We cannot supply clearance personnel but access to all USCG materials are, say again, are authorized and USCG personnel are to place themselves, temporarily, under your command for clearance and rescue support. We don’t have much in the way of shotgun rounds but we’re going to float what we have off in a boat, as will Charlotte upon arrival, to assist your clearance teams. Current weather report is no fronts or tropical activity for this area for a minimum of ten days. Some convection storms are possible but they are scattered. We will be monitoring all area channels but are now authorized to direct communicate. We will be taking over Marine Channel Thirty-Three. We will continue to give what support we can without being contaminated. Do you have any questions at this time?”