You're Never Ready for a Zombie Apocalypse (Guardians of the Apocalypse Book 1)

by Jeff Thomson

  Since Dave was so large and so hairy, the idea of what he would look - and smell - like when the suit finally came off, filled Lydia with sincere revulsion. Of course, she wouldn’t be smelling like a daisy when her’s came off, either, come to think of it. They sat there in shared misery, knowing they were stuck for the duration, condemned to watch others leave the stifling confines of the Forward Hold to go out into the air and perform the duties that she and Dave had so happily avoided - until now.

  The hatch opened with a clunk, and LTjg Amy Montrose, her face barely recognizable beneath the mask, entered and said: “We need three volunteers to act as runners.”

  Lydia’s hand shot up.

  64

  Jonesy walked onto the Mess Deck, grabbed a tray, and shuffled to the serving window as the line of hungry Coasties slowly made its way to the promise of food at the end of a long day. As a First Class, he could, technically, skip to the head of the line, but he’d always thought it was bullshit when he was more junior, and so couldn’t justify doing it now. Rank did have its privileges, but that didn’t mean he had to exercise them every time.

  Talk in the compartment was subdued, instead of being the usual raucous conglomeration of a dozen different conversations going on at a dozen different tables, as sailors talked shop, or bitched about their day, or their boss, or talked eagerly about the next liberty port. Jonesy had, on occasion, thought it seemed rather like a family dinner, only larger. The basic conversations were the same. Only the details were different. This was a family - his family.

  He reached the serving window, and could smell the aroma of herbs and spices which meant CS1 Gary King had whipped up a batch of his famous Spinach Lasagna - Jonesy’s favorite. Gary himself was serving.

  “Made this for you, Jonesy,”“ Gary said, sliding a square of cheesy, garlic-y goodness onto the tray, and adding a perfectly toasted piece of garlic bread.

  “Thank you, sir,” he replied touched. Just like a family...

  EM3 Dan McMullen bumped into him from behind on his way to drop his own tray in the scullery.

  “Sorry, dude,” the Electrician said. People bumping into each other was just something you had to get used to on a ship. In the civilian world, this would have been an unusual event, but at sea, it was an everyday occurrence. Jonesy barely noticed. He’d been focused more on the impending lasagna.

  “Better watch out, Dan,” SN Borgeson said, from his table close to the serving window. “Petty Officer Kevorkian might take you out.”

  Yeah... Just like a family, Jonesy thought, his appetite vanishing. A really dysfunctional family.

  He looked at his tray, sitting on the counter in front of the window, then looked at Gary. The cook’s eyes held complete understanding.

  “Fuck,” Jonesy said, almost in a whisper, and then he turned and walked away, leaving the tray behind.

  “Take over serving,” Gary said over his shoulder to SNCS George DeGroot, who had already begun the task of cleaning the galley. He was pissed. Insensitivity was something you just got used to in the military. It went hand-in-hand like morning muster or any other part of the daily routine. But as with all things, it could be taken too far.

  He stalked out the door to the port passageway, turned at the vestibule just aft of the buoy deck and entered the Mess. He had a temper, did Gary King, and he knew it. He’d gone to great lengths over the years to control it. His wife had helped in that regard.

  She was dead now. Probably.

  He made his way to the serving window, picked up Jonesy’s abandoned tray, and took it to the scullery, trying to curb his rage. It worked. By the time he turned to face the crowd, ice had formed in his veins. He stood in front of Borgeson, but didn’t look at him.

  “How’s everybody feeling?” he asked, his voice calm.

  “Great chow, Gary,” MK3 Danny Morey said.

  “Nobody feeling feverish?” Conversation in the compartment fell silent. “No skin irritation?” Nobody answered. “So who’s going to turn next? You, Morey? You, Borgeson? And how many more of us is that person going to kill, if Jonesy ain’t around to save us? To defend us?”

  “I was only joking, Gary,” Borgeson said.

  “You idiots ought to be kissing Jonesy’s ass,” he said, quietly, but everybody heard him. “Don’t you get that he’s keeping you alive? How many of you would Scoot have killed? How many would Doc have killed, or Masur?” He finally looked down at Borgeson. “He’s protecting you, and you just dumped a pile of shit on his head. You better hope he forgets it when the next one of us turns.”

  65

  OS2 Amber Winkowski stood with her back against the wall in the Comm Center. Jackson Grabon, whom she’d never really liked, thanks to his arrogant indifference to anything or anyone who wasn’t him, and whom she barely tolerated, thanks to his many and varied idiosyncrasies, like his habit of chewing with his mouth open, had become a zombie.

  He hadn’t stripped off his clothes, thank God, because that was a sight she did not want to take with her to the grave, but he was, at the moment, trying to stalk and kill her. She had managed so far to keep the radio console between them, but she couldn’t keep running laps around the COMMCEN forever. She needed to think. She needed a plan. She needed a weapon.

  He/it started to climb up on the desktop, from which he could crawl over the top of the console, but she darted left and made it to the far end before he got halfway. He/it stopped climbing and instead started scrabbling down the desktop like a gerbil.

  Behind her was a short corridor leading to the head. She could close the door on him and probably block it, but she’d be trapped in there, and all the food and water were out here. No choice, really. She feinted, as if to run back the way she’d come, and he/it hesitated in its imitation of a rodent. She turned and ran for the door.

  66

  Blackjack Charlie Carter watched as the RHIB disappeared into the distance. Most of his gang was in it: Old Joe, Joe-Boy, Hank Lazardo (whom Charlie thought was a fucking psycho, but you can’t choose your associates in an apocalypse), Eddie Cochrane, the child molester who had latched onto the group when they made their break from Soledad, Skizzy Pete Hannity, the rapist, and Sugar Brown, the pimp (another goddamned pimp - he couldn’t seem to get away from them), who had beaten one of his whores to death. There wasn’t a whole brain between them, but they’d have to do.

  He’d wanted to go along - should have gone along - but he couldn’t be sure the Daisy Jean would still be here when they got back, in the event this attack didn’t work. They were bastards, one and all, but they were not pirates, and if ever there was a situation that called for buccaneers, this was it. Only Old Joe had even known how to handle the RHIB.

  This was one Hell of a dice roll, and he knew it. The odds of success were less than fifty/fifty, but Blackjack Charlie was both a gambler and a pragmatist. It might work, if whoever was on that other boat got caught by surprise, and if it worked, they’d have another boat, more supplies, and vaccine. Definitely worth the gamble. If, on the other hand, the other crew managed to fight off the attack, if they killed off a few or all of the men in that RHIB, well, then, there’d be six fewer mouths to feed.,

  The three remaining: himself, George Potter, the mechanical engineer who’d murdered his wife in a drunken rage, and Felix Hoffman, the chemist for what had been the largest Ecstacy lab ever busted, could live on what stores were on the Daisy Jean for several months, if they augmented their larder with fish. Charlie didn’t ,like fish, which was odd, since he’d been a Merchant Seaman, but if it came down to a choice between fish or starvation, he’d be a fish-eating motherfucker. So they had time. They could make do. And he still knew where the other boat was. If this attack failed, he could always wait, and try it again with better people and a better plan.

  Besides, the murderous bastards he’d sent off in the RHIB might just kill a few of the other crew. That would even the odds a bit.

  He smiled his devil’s smile, and sat down to wait.


  67

  Jason Gilcuddy looked out to sea from his post on the True North. The sky was midnight blue, which fit, since it was, after all, midnight. He missed this. Civilian life had been okay, he guessed. He had a decent enough job, a little bit of money, and plenty of time - at last - to search for a wife. That had always been his problem when he was in: never enough time. They were always either underway, or repairing the ship, or getting ready to get back underway. And there were SAR cases, and LE cases, and oil spills, and natural disasters, and whatever else the Coast Guard had been called upon to do. And then there were the transfers, always getting sent someplace new. He was never in any one place long enough to find that right girl.

  Astoria, Oregon, had been as good a place as any to end up - and better than many others. He had friends there. John was there, and his family. And so were Gus and Jim, both of whom he’d met and worked with during his career. It was the one true advantage to being in a service as small as the Coast Guard: you were always running into people you knew, and Astoria was full of ex-Coasties. Not sure why. It was a nice enough place, and the scenery was breathtaking, but it hadn’t provided the one thing he wanted most: a wife.

  None of which mattered now he thought, as he stared at the 9mm pistol in his hand.

  He’d been surprised (to say the least) when John handed it to him. He could see Jim going armed. The man positively adored guns. He could see John going armed. He had always been about protecting his loved ones, and with a heart like John’s, that meant a lot of people. It even meant him, he supposed. He smiled at the idea, then frowned again as his gaze went back to the firearm.

  Mick - the definition of a man’s man - was a natural for a weapon. Even Lane - quiet, unassuming Lane Keely - seemed natural with a gun in his hand. But Jason Gilcuddy? Really? Not in this lifetime.

  Yet here he was, on the boat deck of a ship at sea, preparing to defend her against Pirates. No, seriously...Pirates? Apparently so. There he was, armed and on watch, waiting for...what, exactly?

  He didn’t know, so he just continued looking to the East.

  He’d have been much better of looking to the West.

  68

  YN2 Lydia Claire, dressed quite a bit like somebody in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, moved swiftly down the Boat Deck, heading forward from Fueling Position Six. It had been belatedly decided that since people in MOPP gear and gas masks could not coherently converse over the sound-powered phones, as would be SOP during fueling ops, and since using a comco was ill-advised while loading JP5 jet fuel (the risk of ignition from any radio transmission being too high to risk), then runners would be needed to carry information back and forth between the fueling stations and Main Control.

  She slid down the ladder onto the Forecastle, then waited as SN Jennifer Collins let her into the hatch leading to the Mess Deck. Condition ZEBRA required permission for hatches to be opened, but the Captain, in the interest of speedy communication, had decided positive control of the hatches could be maintained by the presence of people at key points. In the interests of not allowing the zombie virus into the ship, however, a decon shower had been set up in the vestibule (with its strategically placed deck drain), which pelted her with chemical-laden high pressure water every time she entered any of the monitored hatches. It was getting pretty annoying, but at least she wasn’t still locked in that hold.

  A thick, rubberized sheet had been stretched from overhead to combing that prevented air from getting inside the ship, but did not restrict sound. Of course, the combination of rubber mat and gas mask didn’t enhance clarity of communication, and so she had to yell.

  “Position Six, eighteen feet, three inches!” she shouted.

  “Roger,” an equally muffled voice replied from beyond the rubber veil, and then she turned around and scurried her ass back to Position Six, just aft of the Starboard Boat Deck.

  BM1/OPS Jeff Babbett was there, camouflaged in his protective gear, kneeling on the non-skid deck, and slowly feeding a weighted measuring tape up and down the fuel tank sounding tube. Anyone who could get out of the stifling hold had gotten out of the stifling hold, and all the other such antechambers of Hell created by MOPP Level 4. An oily rag sat on the ground next to him, and he wiped the jet fuel from its latest mark on the measuring tape, after he’d read it.

  “Nineteen foot one,” he said, and grinned at her through his gas mask. “Good cardio, eh Lydia?”

  “Sure,” came her muffled shout in return. “I’ll have buns of steel, if I don’t drop dead from running up and down that ladder,” she added, then turned and retraced her steps.

  The decon spray hit her like needles from a nail gun as she repeated the reporting process, was told Station Six could secure, and that she could move to Station Fourteen, and then, dripping wet, both outside and in (she was sweating profusely inside the MOPP suit), she headed back up the ladder to the Boat Deck to give Babbett the good news.

  By pure chance, she happened to glance into the five foot gap between the air castle wing and the bow of the LCVP, and saw the pier, some fifty yards off their starboard side, lit up along its entire length by sodium arc lights. What she saw, illuminated in their brilliant glare, stopped her, dead in her tracks.

  People - hundreds, maybe thousands of people - were gathered on the pier and waving madly at the Polar Star. They carried suitcases, they carried backpacks. Some of them carried babies or small children.

  Refugees, she thought. And then she saw CWO4 Vincenzo and a crew of five Deckies setting up fire hoses along the rail aft. What the Hell? She thought, and then added: “What the fuck?” out loud, as she saw them pointing the hose nozzles outward, in the direction of the pier.

  69

  “Sir,” Jonesy said, his voice straining against the urge to scream at the stupid son of a bitch. “I strongly recommend we have the crew tie themselves up and place gags in their mouths. At least when they’re in the rack.”

  “No,” Medavoy said - again. And again., he was being a dick-headed moron. “I will not allow it.”

  They were in the Wardroom, again, for another goddamned meeting, again, and Medavoy was being his usual obstinate, contrarian self - AGAIN!

  “Sir,” Jonesy’s voice was cold as ice, as he tried to contain his growing rage and disgust. “Most of the crew sleeps in four-man compartments. Each person, therefore, has three roommates.” Christ! It was like explaining something to an idiot child! “If one of them turns, if one of them goes full neurological in a compartment with three other sleeping people who have not turned, and if that person is not somehow restrained, those berthing areas will turn into slaughterhouses.”

  “You’re exaggerating, Jones. And taking council of your fears,” the CO said, his voice bland, and instantly infuriating. “Tisk, tisk.” The tisk, tisk is what did it, the straw that broke the fucking camels back.

  CWO2 Larsen stepped in before Jonesy could do anything stupid. “Sir, he does have a point.” The CO scowled at him, but he kept on, unfazed. “If we don’t do something, this problem could escalate.”

  “Into what, Mr. Larsen?” Medavoy snapped, derisively. “Tell me what you think is going to happen.”

  He’s completely fucking delusional, Jonesy thought, but kept his mouth shut for fear that if he opened it, he might just explode and beat the living shit out of the prick. Kicking your Captain’s ass - even in a zombie fucking apocalypse - would be bad, on a monumental scale.

  The Warrant Boats sat heavily back into his chair and looked at the CO with stunned incredulity. Clearly, he wanted to say something, clearly he wanted to explain to the idiot. But just as clearly, he didn’t want to mention the “Z” Word. Jonesy could see it in the man’s face. CWO2 Larsen said nothing. Nobody uttered a word.

  Whether you hated the person or not, whether you respected the person as a human being or not, whether you thought the person had his head so far up his own ass that it was a miracle he could even breathe, or not, there was nothing more like God on High as the Captain o
f a ship. And the one thing you never, ever did, was buck the Captain’s authority. There was a word for it: Mutiny.

  “I thought so,” Medavoy said. “Meeting is dismissed. See to your duties.” And so saying, he got up from the table and exited the compartment.

  The remaining people there (all the officers, less Molly and Bloominfeld, who were on the Bridge, plus Jonesy) looked at each other in silence. Nobody said anything, but Jonesy could see it in all their faces. Medavoy may have just sentenced us to death.

  70

  CS3 Manny Manoa woke up feeling hungry. This was nothing new. He was a big boy. He was always hungry. What he didn’t know (and soon he would be past the point of ever knowing), was why he should also feel angry. He sat up, careful not to give himself a concussion on the bottom of the bunk above him, and planted his feet on the ground. Why angry?

  He shook his big head, flexed his dinner plate-sized hands, and farted. Above him, SNCS George DeGroot stirred. Across from him, SN David Duprovniak, and CS3 John Ryan slept on.

  He’d been feeling bad for days, now. He knew about the Pomona Virus, of course, had seen the ultimate result when Doc turned in the middle of the funeral. But word was you had to catch the cold first, had to get the respiratory infection, and then the neurological would kick in, and he hadn’t done either. In fact, he had never caught a cold, as far as he could remember. The problem was, he couldn’t remember much of anything. His memory was fuzzy. His mind was fuzzy.

  He looked into his rack and saw a spot of blood on the sheet, just below the pillow. Blood? He looked at his left arm. Nothing. He looked at his right arm and saw a raw patch of skin where there had been a small scab. Nothing big, no gaping wound, just a small cut that had been caused by...? He couldn’t remember.