Under a Graveyard Sky

by John Ringo

  “Jesus Christ,” Gardner said quietly.

  “What?” Woodman asked. She was shining a light into the interior. He craned his head around to look.

  On the deck was a skeleton. Some of the bugs seemed to be fighting for the last scraps of flesh but pretty much everything but bone and some scraps of skin and hair were gone. Bugs were even crawling in and out of the eye sockets, cleaning out the brains.

  “Holy crap,” Woodman said, “I don’t want those getting on me!”

  “I just figured out what they are,” Gardner said, stepping through the hatch after a flash around with her light. Every step caused a crunch. “And they won’t bite.”

  “They stripped that guy to the bone!” Woodman said.

  “That’s what they do,” Gardner said, bending down and picking up one of the beetles. It skittered along her arm and she shook it off. “They’re carrion beetles.”

  “Carrion?” Woodman said. “So they eat people?”

  “They eat dead flesh,” Gardner said. “I’d heard Wolf say he’d ‘seeded’ the boat. I didn’t know it was with these.”

  “Wolf did this?” Woodman said angrily. “To our people?”

  “Six of us came off, Woodie,” Gardner said softly. “Ninety-four and twenty-six refugees didn’t. You’ve carried bodies. You know how heavy they are. Now . . . they’re not.”

  “That’s horrible,” Woodman said.

  “No,” Gardner said, flashing her light around. “It’s efficient, simple and brutal. It’s Wolf all over if you think about it. These things only eat dead flesh. They may get into some of the electronics but those are mostly thrashed by the infecteds, anyway. It cleans the boat out of the main issue, the dead meat on the dead people. If we ever get around to clearing this out, all we’ll have to do is bag the bones.”

  “We won’t know who’s who,” Woodman said.

  “Does it matter?” Gardner said. “There’s a big thing, it’s called an ossuary, in France. All the guys who died in a certain battle in World War One. They buried them, waited for bugs like this to do their work, then dug them back up. All of certain bones are on the left, all the others are on the right and the skulls are in the middle.”

  She picked up the skull of the former Coast Guard crewman and looked at it as beetles poured out.

  “I don’t know who you were but you were my brother,” Gardner said. “This way, I know I can give you a decent burial. And I will remember you. Now, we’ve got a mission to complete, Woodman, and people waiting on us. Live people. Let the dead bury the dead.”

  * * *

  Chris hadn’t known the boat like the back of his hand, but he’d been able to determine the areas on the other side of several of the doors. The one they’d chosen was the “lobby” area between the, yes, bloody damned skating rink and the even more bloody damned “four-hundred-person theater.” Steve was starting to think that whoever had conceived this bloody beast had more megalomania than Napoleon.

  About half the doors were to stairwells to the passenger cabins. Steve was torn between wanting to clear the major areas and concentrate on the passenger cabins. But the way their fire had to be echoing in this ship, the passengers surely knew they were on the way. And he wasn’t sure he yet wanted to clear stairwells possibly filled with zombies.

  “We’ll open and attract from, not clear, this area,” Steve said. “Then the theater. Then start on the passenger zones.”

  “Roger, sir,” Fontana said, shaking his head at the pile of ammo boxes. They’d gotten boats alongside and brought up more people, including some “trained” seamen who were willing to go into “non-zombie” areas. With their help they’d brought all the ammo up onto the deck well away from the zombie bodies. Steve had also had them bring up some of his “little friends,” and they had been scattered on the bodies. And the team had gotten a bite to eat and rehydrated. Time to get back to work.

  The outer doors were already open. Faith checked the door, shook her head, put away the stethoscope, then pulled out the Halligan tool. This time Fontana and Hooch were on either side of the door, ready to pull.

  Steve swiped, then pulled back to cover.

  Faith popped the door, stepped back and started to put the tool on the deck. But there seemed like time so she stowed it away in its holster.

  Steve realized that they’d made a mistake. Not a major one, but a mistake. He either should have had Faith take one of the rifles or have Fontana handle the Halligan. The shotgunners were the first line of defense with the riflemen backing them. It was a minor point. There was, again, silence and darkness on the far side of the hatch.

  The foursome lined up in the hatch, and Steve lifted the whistle and blew.

  Again there was a gutteral howling from the interior. They immediately started to back up and were to the exterior hatch before the first zombie appeared.

  “Wait,” Steve said, taking the shot.

  “I thought you said shotgun in here?” Faith complained.

  “It was a clap shot and we’re conserving shotgun ammo,” Steve said. “Rotate for engagement.”

  They continued to back down the deck and stopped at the point they’d planned. And waited. There were sounds from inside the ship but no zombies appeared.

  “I think they stopped for a snack,” Faith said. It was hard to hear with all the gear on their heads.

  “Bloody stupid . . .” Steve said. He lifted the whistle and gave another blast on it. That got some coming around the corner and he and Fontana began to engage.

  The crackle of semi-automatic fire started to draw the zombies. But slowly. They came out even more slowly than at the theater, and the two riflemen continued to pick them off as they stumbled, mostly blind, into the light, looking for the source of the sound and thus food.

  Finally there were only the growling sounds echoing from the hatch.

  “Faith?” Steve said. “Don’t want you whining—”

  “Going pistol,” Faith said. She started to reach for her .45, then pulled out one of the 10mms that they’d gotten off the Coast Guard cutter. They’d left the arms room alone but any weapons on the deck were considered fair game. “Cover me, Hooch.”

  “Got it,” Hocieniec said, following her to the hatch.

  Faith fired several slow and deliberate shots into the darkness and downward. Then she shifted up and shot twice more.

  “I know this is a more powerful pistol,” Faith said, reloading and putting the weapon away. “But it really doesn’t feel that way, you know? We gonna close these doors? I’m not moving the bodies.”

  “Next time wait till they’re clear of the doors, then,” Hooch said. “Cover me.”

  * * *

  “Ready?” Steve asked.

  All four had switched back to shotgun after clearing the lobby and theater. Now it was time to start working up to the passenger cabins. That meant clearing the stairwell to the first three levels of passenger cabins.

  According to Chris, there were two sets, inboard and outboard. Based upon what they’d seen with the exterior ones, there might be as many as fifty survivors. Spread over an area the size of a skyscraper.

  But first they had to clear the stairwells.

  “Been that way,” Faith said. She’d insisted on point.

  Steve keyed the door, which popped open, dropping a decomposing corpse at her feet. It was wearing bermuda shorts and a flowered shirt. It was unchewed.

  There were scratch marks on the inside of the door.

  “Shit,” Faith snarled. “Shit, shit . . .” She turned around and walked to the far bulkhead and started kicking it. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!” Then she reached behind her to cover the teddy bear’s eyes. “Don’t look, Trixie. It’s not nicey.”

  Fontana looked at Steve, who held up a finger. Hooch had turned away as well. Steve was nodding his head as if counting time.

  “Faith,” Steve said as softly as he could through the respirator. “There are people who need saving upstairs. Do you need to head
back to the boats?”

  “Just give Trixie a second, okay, Da?” Faith said. She kicked the bulkhead a couple more times, then stuffed the bear’s head down into her assault pack. “I think Trixie needs some sleepy time.” She pulled off her outer glove, then reached into a pouch and pulled out an iPod. She put in the headphones, consulted the playlists, then turned it on. Last, she turned around and walked across and into the stairwell.

  “What are you waiting for, an invitation?”

  * * *

  Robert “Rusty” Fulmer Bennett III had gotten over regretting this “pleasure cruise” a long time ago. How long he wasn’t sure. His buddy, Ted, had suggested they go halves on a room “’cause chicks on cruises are easy.” He hadn’t managed to score before the news announced a plague on land. Then the word went around—rumor at first, then confirmed by the ship’s crew—that the “Pacific Flu” had gotten onboard. Things kind of went downhill from there.

  When they started getting really bad, the crew had passed out cases of bottled water and cans of food to each room. The cans were Number Ten cans and “you get whatever we have.” There was one case of liter bottles of water per person and three Number Ten cans. That made two cases of water and six cans in their room.

  Rusty was a big boy, over three hundred pounds and six foot seven in his stocking feet. He could go through two number ten cans of food in a sitting. One of the reasons he wanted to do the cruise was the all-you-can-eat buffets.

  But he also wasn’t an idiot and had watched enough zombie movies that he realized that they might be stuck in that room for a long time.

  Then there was the fact that they’d been handed six number ten cans of some weird-ass bland paste. It said “hummus” on the side and had a smiling picture of some terrorist-looking mother-forker spooning the stuff up and grinning like he’d just bombed a church.

  So Rusty put them to the side and hoped they wouldn’t have to eat it. And then Ted turned. He hadn’t even shown any signs.

  By the time the overworked security guards got there, Rusty had Ted tied up in some torn sheets and he’d managed to avoid getting bitten. Barely. He’d nearly lost it when Ted went. They had been friends since they were in grade school. But, face it, the reason they were friends was that Ted was the geek, Rusty was the muscle. If Rusty had turned, Ted wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  Rusty and Ted hadn’t been able to afford the expensive cabin with the ocean view. So they’d been watching the occasional zombie go for a couple of days. The ship was still serving, some. And Rusty had gone out a couple of times. But he sure wasn’t cruising for chicks. Just storing up fat and hoping like hell he wasn’t going to go zombie. The zombie plagues were the worst. Twenty-eight days and it was all going to hell.

  Then the “abandon ship” call came. Rusty tried to get to the lifeboats but there were zombies in the corridor. So he ducked back into his cabin and tried to figure out what to do. Then the doors locked and that was that.

  He’d drunk an entire bottle of water and filled it from the tap. He kept doing that for two days, drink the water, fill up the bottle. Drink the bottle, fill up the water. While the zombies howled in the mall. He could watch them. That was about the only entertainment.

  Then the power failed and while he could still watch the zombies there wasn’t any more water. Along with the water stopping working, so did the shitter. That was okay, he wasn’t pooping much.

  He’d conserved. He’d sipped even when he was desperate with thirst. He’d heard you could drink piss. When he filled a bottle, he drank that instead of water till it got dark and nasty. Then he’d sip water. . . .

  He could see the days go by but his iPhone ran out of power pretty quick and he had no idea what day it was. He had no idea how long he’d lived in that cabin. When he got up, he’d eat a teaspoon of that terrorist stuff, which somebody told him was made from ground-up chickpea, though the guy called it “garbanzo beans,” drink piss and then a capful of water to wash it down, then sit and wait for all the zombies to die or somebody with, you know, guns to come along.

  The ones in the hallway stopped making noise after about two weeks. He was surprised it was that long without any water. But he still couldn’t get out ’cause the door was locked and it was, like, steel. He’d pulled off the veneer to check.

  He was thirsty all the time and he was down to pure piss in the bottles. And it turned out that piss turned. It was starting to smell like ammonia or something.

  The zombies had, like, moods. Sometimes they’d be quiet, sometimes it seemed like for days. Then they’d get active and usually start fighting each other. He started calling them “orcs” ’cause they reminded him of those movies with the hobbits.

  Then the day came when he could hear them getting really riled up. He could barely pay attention. He couldn’t really remember the last time he’d gotten out of bed. He knew he was getting bed sores but it was just too much trouble to get up. But he could hear the zombies making noise and some sort of odd thumping. It was different but he really couldn’t care less. There’d been thumps before.

  Then the door opened. He heard it but he realized he couldn’t even move his head.

  “Another terminal,” a muffled voice said. It sounded like a chick but he’d had that dream before.

  “I’ll check.”

  A bright light was flashed in his face and he flinched. That hadn’t happened before.

  “You’re real . . . ?” he croaked.

  * * *

  “I need a stretcher team,” Faith said over the radio. “Some big guys. Even as a skeleton, this guy is big.” She unkeyed the radio. “I thought he was a deader. My bad.”

  “Just drink,” Hooch said, giving the guy a sip of water. All the survivors looked like they’d been in the death camps but this guy was particularly bad if for no other reason than being so big to begin with. His feet were hanging off the end of the bed. “A couple of sips. Your body needs to get used to it again.”

  “You’re really real?” the guy croaked again.

  “We’re really real,” Hooch said. “Sorry it took so long but the world’s gone to shit. We’re going to get you over to the boats in a bit. Tell them to bring an IV or this guy’s going to go into shock.”

  “Bring an IV,” Faith said. “Cabin three-nine-eight-four. Hooch, we need to keep clearing.”

  “Can you hold the bottle?” Hooch asked, putting it in the guy’s hand. “We need to keep looking for survivors. Don’t die before the medical team gets here, okay? Don’t give up.”

  “I won’t,” the guy said. “Thank you. Who are you?”

  “Wolf Squadron,” Hooch said. “Long story. They’ll explain it later. Just hang in there. We’re going to prop the door. We’ve cleared the zombies.”

  The guy just barely nodded and tried to raise the water bottle. He couldn’t even manage that.

  “Straw,” Faith said. She’d spotted one in an old Coke bottle. She cleaned it off, put it in the bottle and propped it where the guy just had to turn his head. “Can you do it now?”

  “Yes,” the guy said. “Thanks.”

  “Just hang in there,” Hooch said. “You made it this long. Don’t give up.”

  “Not gonna,” the guy said. “I want to kill zombies.”

  “Okay, now you’re talking my language,” Faith said, patting him on the shoulder and sticking the straw between his lips. “We’ll talk in a couple of weeks.”

  * * *

  Rusty couldn’t believe how good water tasted. It was, like, orgasmic. He didn’t have to worry about drinking too much. Every time he took a sip he had to let his body and brain settle down from the intensity of the experience. Sip, fireworks. Sip, twitch. Sip, more fireworks. There were, like, stars in his eyes. Then he realized it was a flashlight.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” a voice said. “The guy doesn’t have any veins to put a stick in!”

  “Let me try it,” another voice said.

  “Like you know how any better than me. Hey, guy,
this is gonna sting a little.”

  Rusty felt the needle go in but he’d just taken a sip of water and the fireworks sort of made it unnoticeable.

  “Shit . . .” Another probe. “I cannot find a vein . . .”

  “Let me . . .”

  Rusty wasn’t sure how many times they tried to put an IV in but he did notice that he was out of water.

  “Water?” he asked. “Bottle . . . ?”

  “Yeah, got it,” the guy said. Unlike the first two, who had been covered in weapons and what looked like firefighter gear, not to mention gas masks, the guy was wearing a raincoat and a gas mask but that was about all. He pulled the straw out and got another bottle, then inserted the straw back in Rusty’s mouth.

  “Finally,” the second guy grunted.

  The sensation coming up Rusty’s arm couldn’t be an IV. It felt like somebody had shot him up with freezing cold Coke. Then it spread through his whole body. He wasn’t sure he was going to survive the rush. He groaned.

  “You okay?” one of the guys said. “You know, that’s like the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.”

  “It’s right up there,” his partner said. “Let’s get him on a stretcher.”

  “Should we call for help?”

  “Seriously? I think this guy might weigh ninety pounds.”

  * * *

  Rusty was in a haze the whole way out of the cruise ship. He could sort of recall swaying in the air. And the feel of wind. It was cold after so long in the stuffy cabin. They’d wrapped a blanket around him but his feet stuck out.

  He saw people climbing up ladders on the side of the ship and had a vague impression of what looked like charter fishing boats or something.

  Then he was in a room in a boat that was bobbing up and down. A girl with black hair was holding onto his IV bag. She was a girl, too young, but she was the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.

  “I need another bag,” the girl said. “This one is nearly out already.”

  “Going to have to wait,” a male voice said. “We don’t have any. They’ve got some on the Grace.”

  “I don’t think this guy can wait,” the girl said.