Under a Graveyard Sky

by John Ringo

  Thereafter the Navy went to all helo or boat transfers for personnel at sea.

  * * *

  “You know we just hit the four hundred mark?” Steve said, keying the double doors.

  “Four hundred days?” Fontana asked, popping the hatch with the Halligan and moving back.

  “Four hundred people,” Steve said. “Four hundred known survivors of humanity. Plus the Hole and CDC and whoever they’re in contact with.”

  “Holy crap,” Faith said softly.

  “I know it’s not a lot,” Steve said, shining his taclight around the cavernous room. A zombie in the distance growled, then howled. It couldn’t even be seen, but it alerted others, who stumbled to their feet and headed to the lights. “But we’re getting there. Back to defense positions.”

  “Not that,” Faith said, taking up her position behind a counter. “That room. What was it?”

  “Casino, I think,” Fontana said. He began slow-aimed fire at the blinded zombies stumbling through the door. He already had four magazines laid out on the counter.

  “It’s huge,” Faith said, sticking a finger in her ear to cut down on the cracks from the AK.

  “Should have seen the ones in Vegas,” Fontana said.

  “Maybe someday,” Faith said. “When I’m, like, ninety. Zombie clearance, Vegas.”

  “Resident Evil: The Cruise Ship. You can see the game, right?” Hooch said.

  “I think we’re playing it,” Steve pointed out.

  * * *

  “How come when I’m shooting, my ears don’t ring?” Faith asked, tagging a zombie in the chest as it tried to figure out how to get around a roulette table with a Surefire in its eyes. “The beauty of this ride ahead . . .” Tap, tap . . .

  The zombies were having trouble with the complex layout of the casinos. Casinos were designed to get people to change directions so they’d go “Ooooh . . . I bet I can win that game!” The zombies could see the lights, they just couldn’t figure out how to get to them. Then, all of a sudden, they would. For that matter, it wasn’t always clear to the clearers where the open areas, or the zombies, were.

  Clearing them out was a painstaking process of zombies howling and thrashing in the darkness. When they could, they took the zombies at range.

  Faith had had to break out the kukri. Twice.

  “Aural damping,” Fontana said.

  “Checking right,” she said, shining the light around the other side of the roulette table. For some reason, the chewed-up people just weren’t horrible anymore. She could even slide her eyes right over the kids. “There’s an answer? I was sort of asking one of those rectangular questions.”

  “Rhetorical,” Fontana said, chuckling. “Clear left. Clearish. I think we’re going to have to sweep and resweep.”

  “Works for me,” Faith said. “Hang on, stumbler coming around my side.” She took the shot. She’d stopped double tapping to conserve ammunition but the .45 round was usually good enough with one shot. It didn’t kill the zombies immediately, but they bled out pretty quickly. “Reloading. Hang on. Da?” she said, over the radio.

  “Go.”

  “I’m running out of forty-five mags. I’ve got ammo but I don’t exactly want to reammo in here.”

  “I’ve got mags,” Fontana said.

  “Like I’m gonna use a Colt if I don’t gotta,” Faith said. “I could also use a break.”

  “Roger. Pull back to the entrance.”

  “This does get the adrenal gland, don’t it?” Fontana said, firing twice in rapid succession. “They just seem to come out of nowhere.”

  They’d learned when they cleared the theater to shut the door behind them. It meant they didn’t have a way out. It also meant they didn’t have leakers that suddenly appeared when they thought they were at a “secure” point.

  “And I think if we’re going to keep clearing this thing we might as well all go to carbines,” Faith said, starting. She fired two rounds into a body on the floor. “It moved. I swear it did.”

  * * *

  “How long can I stand under here?” Faith shouted as the water from the fire hose poured over her.

  “As long as you want!” the guy manning the system wasn’t Coast Guard. She didn’t even recognize him. “It recycles!”

  “Cool,” Faith muttered, giving him a thumbs up. She was just going to stand there for a while then.

  * * *

  “Be careful not to fire in the direction of the other team,” Fontana said nervously. “And watch the bouncers.”

  “No worries,” Faith said, hefting the AK variant. The Arsenal SLR-107 would only have been vaguely recognizable to Mikhail Kalashnikov. It had an improved safety, AR buttstock, rail with lights and Trijicon TA11F. But the guts were still the reliable system Kalashnikov had stolen from various WWII assault rifles, then refined. “I have fired this thing before . . .”

  A zombie charged out of the shadows to her right and she turned and double tapped it in the chest. The rounds continued through the body and bounced off a bar on the other side, and pinged off into the darkness.

  “Oops,” she said as the infected collapsed on the floor.

  “You hit?” Fontana asked.

  “No. You?”

  “I’m good.”

  “I hate full metal jacket . . .”

  * * *

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Faith said. “I just . . . Seriously? An indoor pool? Seriously?”

  The cavernous room was marked “spa.” Faith had always wanted to go to a spa. She’d sort of envisioned small rooms with hot tubs and massage tables or something. She’d always wondered what a “walnut scrub” was.

  There were hot tubs scattered around in various styles. There were Roman baths, Japanese baths, stone flagging and walls. The ceiling, far, far overhead, was a massive skylight that gave them an unfortunately clear view of the interior.

  Zombies would eat each other for food. All they really needed to survive was something resembling water. And the “spa” had had lots of water.

  So there were lots of zombies, and although they’d been awakened by Steve’s whistle, it had echoed in the cavernous interior and they weren’t sure where to go. The room was lit well enough the team had turned off their taclights. Not to mention, there were pools of water all over the place so even the zombies that noticed them were having a hard time getting to them.

  Except for the close ones.

  “I’m really glad we went to rifles,” Faith said, targeting one of the nearer zombies. It was having to go around a counter to get to them and she got it with a deflection head shot on the run and it dropped out of sight.

  “Nice,” Fontana said, taking two more down.

  “Is it just me, or was that exactly like shooting a duck in an arcade?” Faith said. She fired at another one but missed. “We going to move forward?”

  “Yes,” Steve said, firing. “But one team. Head for that high ground over there.”

  The “high ground” was what had probably been an indoor waterfall.

  “Hug the wall,” Steve said. “Take them down as they come to us. Don’t engage over twenty-five meters unless I say so.”

  “What’s the fun of that?” Faith asked.

  “I’d like as many of the rounds to go into the zombies as possible,” Steve said.

  “Don’t shoot till you see the reds of their eyes,” Fontana said. “Gotcha.”

  * * *

  The one problem with the “high ground” was that once they’d gotten up there, all the zombies could see them and closed in. And they couldn’t exactly retreat.

  “This is getting sort of hot,” Fontana said, doing a fast reload. He had to pat for magazines until he found one.

  “Hot, yeah,” Faith said, firing steadily at the mass of infecteds clawing their way up the former waterfall. “But it’s not in the dunny, yet.”

  “Dunny?” Hooch asked.

  “Aussie for a latrine,” Steve said.

  “What is, in your opinion, in the dunny?�
�� Fontana said. “’Cause I could sure use some time to reload mags.”

  “Being in the dunny isn’t no time to reload magazines,” Faith said, reloading. “Being in the dunny is all your knives are stuck in bodies, you’re tripping over your mags and brass and your Halligan tool is bent.”

  “I can’t wait for you to get legal so I can propose . . . .”

  * * *

  “We in the dunny, yet?” Fontana asked as he stuck the pry base of his Halligan into a zombie’s eye.

  “Nope,” Faith said, pounding one on the head with her AK. “I haven’t had to shoot one off me and I’ve yet to pull a knife . . .”

  * * *

  “. . . dunny yet?” Hooch yelled, sticking his bowie knife into a zombie’s stomach and ripping up.

  “Halligan tool bent?” Faith asked, firing into a zombie’s head. Another one grabbed her legs and her feet slipped out from under her. The zombie dragged her down the rocks of the waterfall as she kicked at it. Others piled on, trying to bite through her armor.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Fontana said.

  “Okay,” she yelled. “Now we’re getting there!”

  “We’re going to have to melee down to her,” Steve said, smashing his Halligan into a zombie’s head.

  “We’re barely holding here,” Fontana said.

  “When we’ve winnowed them down . . .”

  * * *

  “Nice thing about being in a scrum,” Faith said as Fontana dragged her out from under the bodies. Steve was doing the same thing for Hooch. “You don’t have to worry which direction you’re aiming and there’s no real way to miss. That was in the dunny.” She looked around, sitting up, her legs still covered by zombie bodies.

  “Hey, look, the waterfall is working again. Sort of . . .”

  * * *

  Day Four

  Faith stood under the decontamination shower and made a motion with one hand for “more . . .”

  * * *

  Day Six

  “Okay, seriously, like, how many of these damned things are there . . . ?”

  * * *

  Day Nine

  “This is why I hate five five six.” Faith fired three more times. “Oh, just die already!”

  As the supply of rounds for the Smiths’ AK variants dwindled, they had switched to the Coast Guard M4s, which used the much smaller 5.56mm round. The arguments for or against 5.56 were complex but the fact that it generally took multiple rounds to stop one of the infected was notable.

  “You need to shoot them in the head,” Fontana said, double tapping a zombie.

  On the other hand, a team had finally found the key for the Campbell’s ammunition magazine, which had a plentiful supply of 5.56.

  “The United States started to go downhill when it changed from a round designed to kill the enemies of our glorious republic to one designed to piss them off,” Faith said, shooting a zombie five times, then walking up and shooting the still-thrashing infected in the head. “Seriously, just die, okay?”

  “Seriously, it’s legal to marry at fourteen in Arkansas.”

  “Fine,” Faith said, double tapping a zombie that had reared up out of the darkness. “If we clear Arkansas by the time I’m fourteen we’ll talk.”

  “That’s not fair . . .”

  * * *

  Day Eleven

  “Okay,” Faith said, laying down fire with the MG240 off the Campbell. “This is more like it!”

  They’d finally cleared the “passenger” areas all the way to the top of the ship. The top deck was mostly open and a perfect place to use a machine gun. Especially from the top of a water slide . . .

  “Happiness is a belt-fed gun,” Fontana said, grinning. “Remember, short controlled bursts or the barrel will overheat.”

  “That’s got to be a design flaw. What’s the fun of short controlled bursts . . . ?”

  * * *

  “Eh,” Faith said, stepping out of the stairwell. “Back in the dark again.”

  The passenger areas were entirely clear. Except for the few emaciated survivors in the cabins, there had been no uninfected individuals.

  Now it was time to work on the crew areas.

  “I’ll clear if we find zombies,” Faith said. “But if there’s nobody who answers a knock, I’m just going to let somebody else check the cabin.”

  “Hopefully down here they’ll all have died of dehydration,” Steve said. “The zombies, that is.”

  “Trixie doesn’t want to know about the cabins,” Faith said.

  “We get it, honey,” Fontana said. “We’ll check the cabins.”

  * * *

  As a senior maintenance officer, Robert “Rob” Cooper didn’t have access to all the supply areas. Technically. But as a senior maintenance officer what he did have was a lot of friends willing to look elsewhere when he turned up with a dolly. Besides, everybody was doing it. Everybody knew that things were going to shit—you only had to be around one person who “turned” to realize that this was really and truly bad—and everybody was stocking their cabins.

  Rob didn’t stock his cabin. He stocked a maintenance locker. For one thing, it was closer to the supplies area. For another it had a white water line running right through it that was below the line of the water supply. And it wasn’t anything tough for a guy who’d worked his way up as an engineer to run a quick fitting into the line. In other circumstances, that would be an automatic firing offense and really, really stupid.

  After two months in the darkened maintenance shack, he was sooo glad he’d ignored both regulation and “common sense.”

  And so was Gwinn.

  He’d run into the Staff Side Third Officer while trying to make it to the lifeboats. Unlike a lot of the Ship-Side officers, he’d stayed on the ship with the passengers. Right up until the “abandon ship” call, which had been made by Staff. And when he’d headed to the lifeboats, in a zombie apocalypse, he’d gone prepared. The crowbar was how he’d beat his way most of the way to the lifeboats before finding out, from Gwinn, that they were all gone.

  She’d protested heading to his hide-out. She’d been bitten at the boats and then again from the zombie he beat off of her. Then there was the blood splatter from the beating. But he’d insisted. He didn’t know why even then. Maybe it was the thought of such a pretty lady becoming a zombie or being eaten by them. And he kept in the back of his mind that he had a crowbar and a bunch of painting plastic if it came to it. But in the end she’d accompanied the burly fifty-three-year-old engineering officer into the bowels of the ship.

  It had been fortunate he’d brought her with him. They were halfway to the forward maintenance shed when the full lockdown hit. Even his card didn’t work, which pissed him off. Maintenance, as he mentioned to her at the time, was supposed to have access to the whole ship. Especially in an emergency. But Gwinn’s continued to work all the way to the shed.

  It had been touch and go with Gwinn. She’d gotten real sick. Fortunately, he had plenty of water to feed her and a pretty decent supply of medicine. He’d had a lot of friends in the crew.

  But she was a tough lady. Easy on the eyes until the lights cut out on day three. Easy on other areas as the months went by.

  The “months” was starting to be a problem. He’d thought he’d stocked enough food for pretty much any reasonable period. And they’d been careful with it. But he realized that it was no five-year stock. Eventually, they were going to run out. And being in a compartment, even one as large as this, with anyone, even someone with as much common sense and decency as Gwinn, occasionally made you contemplate the crowbar.

  “I spy with my eye . . .” Rob said.

  “If you ever want to have another of something that also starts with a B, don’t even think about it,” Gwinn said.

  “Queen bishop to Knight four.”

  “Queen to rook five. Check.”

  “Your bishop is at king six, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Damn. King bishop to—” He paused a
s there was a strange sound in the distance. “You know, even if all the zombies would go away, fixing this thing is going to be a shipyard job.”

  “I doubt there’s much use for a—” She stopped as there was a distinct, rhythmic, clanging in the distance. “Was that . . .”

  “Shave and a haircut?” Rob said, rolling to his feet. He didn’t even have to fumble his way around the compartment anymore. He walked to the hatch and started banging on it regularly. “Come on!” he said, banging harder. “I don’t care if you’re fucking pirates!”

  “I sort of do,” Gwinn said, then paused. “No, I’ve changed my mind. I’m fine with pirates.”

  * * *

  “Nothing,” Faith said, lowering the steel pipe. “You wanna check it?”

  They’d found some survivors in the crew cabins. Some of them weren’t even in horribly bad shape. The crew had, it turned out, been stocking up. And several of the cabins that were empty had quite a bit of stores. Some of them even had stuff that was sort of comical in a black way. One of the stewards’ quarters had five pounds of caviar in it. Fontana had pointed out that caviar was originally designed to be long storage and was a good source of protein. Faith had learned two things that day. That and beluga caviar was icky. Even on some really expensive kind of cracker.

  “Roger,” Fontana said, keying the lock. As he did, there was a distant clanging.

  “Customers?” Faith said. “Seriously?”

  “Sounds like it’s coming from forward,” Fontana said, moving down the corridor. “Try it again.”

  Faith banged on the walls, hard, and was rewarded with more banging.

  “Guy’s in good condition,” Faith said.

  “This way,” Fontana said, continuing.

  They followed the sound around a cross-corridor to a door marked “Forward Maintenance Support.”