by Jeff Thomson
He stared down at the death he had caused, at first feeling nothing. But then the enormity of it hit him like a Mack truck. He sped to the rail and promptly lost his dinner. Just because he was ready to do something didn’t mean he had to like it.
82
Teddy Spute was not a happy camper. Not at all. John had stuck him with the women and children. And perhaps John had a point, since it had been his girlfriend who’d placed them in this predicament. But, dammit! How was he supposed to know Clara would be so fucking stupid?
Had he been blinded by a really nice ass? Was he so far gone from rational manhood that he could be manipulated by pussy? He knew the answer before his mind finished formulating the question: Of course he could.
He felt sorry for himself, and he knew it. He looked at her, sitting alone in a corner of the below-decks lounge. The wives hated her guts. No. They didn’t hate her, didn’t feel anything that strongly about her, except maybe the disgust all good women feel when they come in contact with the rare (but not uncommon) example of their gender that seemed to make them all look bad. He understood their point, intellectually. He even recognized the double-standard. One bad woman made them all look bad, whereas one bad man was just an asshole. He often puzzled over it, the way men do, over anything that doesn’t directly affect them. Or maybe he was just blowing self-justified smoke up his own ass. Either way...
His reverie was shattered by the sound of gunfire, and then destroyed when Marcie called out: “Where’s Davy?”
83
BM1/DECK Dennis Hurdlika opened the door to the four-man berth and, for a moment, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He thought: This has got to be a joke. But it wasn’t, and he knew it wasn’t.
In the first place, the door wouldn’t open all the way. SNCS George DeGroot’s still form lay in the way. Dennis stared at his face. It looked wrong, lopsided, and the cook’s right eye protruded, the white of it cracked like red lightening from burst blood vessels. More blood ran down his face and puddled on the floor, and his head lay at an odd angle, the neck twisted too far to the left.
The next thing he saw (and he felt oddly disconnected as he made these observations) was SN David Duprovniak. He lay on the deck past George DeGroot’s crumpled form, face up. His eyes held a curious expression, as if he died wondering idly what a strange dream he was having. His throat was a mess of blood and tissue. Someone - some thing - had ripped it to shreds.
That someone (thing) was huddled over the lower bunk to the right, making slurping noises. The absurdity of the situation, the sheer unreality of it, sang through Dennis Hurdlika’s synapses like a demented choir. This couldn’t be happening. But it was, and deep down inside, Dennis knew it was, knew what he was seeing was true: members of his crew, his babies, were now dead, and some asshole was now eating - fucking eating - one of them.
“What the Billy Blue Fuck is going on?” he shouted, his voice on the edge of hysteria.
The hulking form eating CS3 John Ryan, stopped in his/its snacking and turned its head to look at Dennis. It no longer looked like CS3 Manny Manoa, but Dennis knew it was. “Manny?” he choked, the name struggling to make it up his constricted throat and past his numb lips.
He felt a momentary twist of vertigo as the Manny-thing, on all fours, spun a hundred and eighty degrees and lunged at him, yanking the door all the way open, shoving George DeGroot and David Duprovniak aside like discarded and broken action figures. Then all six-foot-five, two hundred and fifty pounds of zombie cook was on him, scratching, biting, ramming him into the opposite bulkhead. The back of his skull hit whatever material made up the false wall covering the pipes and conduits and steel I-beam frames, went through it in a shower of sparks inside his own head as the universe exploded in his mind. Blackness overtook him and he knew nothing more.
84
Bad things were happening on the USCGC Sassafras. In the After Berthing section, BM1 Hurdlika lay crumpled, half on the deck, half against the false bulkhead through which his skull had so recently been shoved. CS3 Manny Manoa lurked above him, as if trying to decide whether he was still hungry or not, his face and chest (clad only in a tee shirt, nowhere near white anymore) covered in blood. That blood belonged to SNCS George DeGroot, SN David Duprovniak, and CS3 John Ryan, who were now dead in their four-man berth.
SN John Mad Dog Kennedy headed toward that berthing section, because he had forgotten his hat. The lapse in memory, would soon cause his death.
In the Cabin, LT Richard Medavoy quietly, desperately strangled his wife. She killed his son - his sweet Carson - and now she had to die. So intent was he on this macabre task, that he failed to notice the boy moving. Carson was not dead, and he looked hungry.
Down in the Wardroom Passageway, BM3/DECK Eddie Brown conducted his pre-watch rounds. This was routine. This was normal, even though nothing on board this ship had been either one of those things for days. He had tried to get in touch with his parents in Billings, Montana, but all the circuits were busy, and the e-mails he’d sent remained unanswered. It worried him, more than anything had ever worried him in his entire life, but he kept it inside, kept the panic down, and remained focused on the task at hand.
At first, it had been relatively simple. The ship was scheduled to go into Charlie Status for maintenance, meaning they wouldn’t be going anywhere for at least a month. There would be time to get in contact. He would talk to his parents, they would be fine. They lived in Montana, for God’s sake. As bad as this zombie bullshit was, how on Earth could it reach Montana?
But then the order came down. The Sass was getting underway. They were bugging out. The shit had gotten very, very real. If it was bad enough for the US Coast Guard to be effectively abandoning a major city like Honolulu, then what chance did anyone have, anywhere? Nevertheless, he’d tried to remain focused, tried to concentrate on the details of getting the ship supplied and underway. But then the Captain (LCDR Sparks, not that asshat Medavoy) abdicated, fearing he might be infected. And then Scoot turned, and Terry Proud had been killed. Then Doc, and Masur, and the questions of just who would turn next, who would become a zombie, and who would be the next to die, racheted up the paranoia to insane levels.
Nobody trusted anybody else. He didn’t trust any of them, and that, more than anything, sent ice through his veins. He’d always trusted his crew, had always known they had his back. Not any more.
The Wardroom was empty, as he knew it would be at this hour. He saw a bowl of fresh fruit, secured for sea in its own cradle on a sideboard, and thought about swiping an apple. He was hungry enough. He hadn’t been taking any meals on the Mess Deck. Not since Scoot. He’d grab bits and pieces of food: crackers, a banana, some coffee cake during break earlier in the day; but to sit in the compartment where Scoot turned, where Terry Proud had his throat torn out, where the blood from his dying body splattered the aft starboard corner like some sick painting by Jackson Pollock on LSD, was just too much. He decided against the apple.
He heard something back toward Chief’s Quarters and headed to investigate. He should have stayed put, should have grabbed the apple and savored its juicy nutrition, but he didn’t. He went to investigate, and found BMC Bernie Adams, scratching at a closed door. The Chief turned and regarded him with eyes so mind-fuckingly, so batshit-ingly insane, they left no doubt. Chief Adams was a zombie, and he was coming at BM3/DECK Eddie Brown.
Up on the Bridge, LTjg Craig Bloominfeld did not look good, at all. He kept tugging at the collar of his work blue uniform shirt, and it made ENS Molly Gordon nervous. She cast a glance over her shoulder at SN Borgeson, standing at the helm control. He saw it, too.
She stared out the Bridge window into the night. Clouds had come in, obscuring the moon and stars. It was dark out there, like the inside of a sensory deprivation chamber, and it gave her an odd feeling of claustrophobia - an absurdity, because she was as close to being outside as she could be, without actually being outside.
She looked over her other shoulder at BM3/OPS Jack
Ross, who was leaning back against the chart table, staring at nothing. “Have you taken the weather yet?” She asked, snapping him out of whatever thoughts might be swirling around in his head.
Ross was a closed one. She’d figured out Hebert. He was like an open book, though she suspected he didn’t think so. And she knew Jonesy - knew him far too well for her own good. But Ross was a bit of an enigma. A nice enough guy: friendly, respectful, even helpful. But he was so damned reserved, she could explode a firecracker under his butt and he wouldn’t twitch an eyebrow.
He looked at her for a moment, as if trying to focus his eyes after the thousand yard stare she’d interrupted. Then he glanced at his watch and said, “No Ma’am. I was going to let Hebert do it. Should be up here in a couple minutes to relieve me.”
Weather was something the Nav Watch did and recorded once an hour. They checked temperature, both wet and dry (to get the Dew Point), the anemometer (wind), the barometer (pressure), and they went out and looked into the sky to judge the type of clouds. Then they compared these findings to the previous recorded entries. Any drastic change would mean a violent shift in weather, which at sea, could spell disaster. Most of the time, there was no change, no cause for alarm. But if she had learned any one thing from her time growing up with Uncle John in a Coast Guard family, it was that Mother Nature could turn into a stone cold bitch in the blink of an eye. And so they checked weather.
At the moment, however, she wasn’t thinking of temperature or wind or barometric pressure, or anything, other than getting away from LTjg Bloominfeld.
“I’ll do it,” she said, then turned and headed out the Port Bridge door.
85
The jagged end of the makeshift spear thrust into Jackass Grabon’s throat, slamming him backwards against the Comms console. Amber put every ounce of energy, every gram of her own weight behind the thrust and it struck home, with a vengeance.
So why wasn’t the fucker dead?
By all rights, he should be dead. He had a stick jammed through his windpipe, and probably tickling his spine. Blood coursed from the wound in a sheet, so how could he possibly, by all that’s Holy, still be struggling against her? Yet he was.
He batted at the swab handle, the blows sending vibrations through her weakening arms, far in excess of what he should be able to do. The guy was a lightweight. Before he turned zombie, Amber would have sworn she could break him in two with a nasty thought, and yet it was all she could do to keep him pinned against the console.
She couldn’t keep this up much longer. Her wrists and elbows were beginning to hurt from the strain, and her legs were starting to shake from the effort of holding him back.
She was in better shape than this. She worked out. Okay...maybe she didn’t work out as often as she should, but she still went to the gym every week. Only, it had been three weeks since the last time, and maybe two more before that. Doesn’t thinking about it count? Apparently not.
Yeah, but she was busy. She worked sixty hours a week, in five, twelve-hour shifts at the Comm Center, and went to college for another twelve. She had to sleep sometime, didn’t she?
None of which mattered. She was losing this battle. Something had to give, and if that something was her, before she was ready to do...whatever she could do, then she was dead meat.
Think, Amber, think. Okay...thinking. He was bleeding. The human body only held so much blood. Sooner or later he would bleed out. And then he’d drop, and then he’d die, no matter how much stronger the Pomona Virus seemed to make him. Basic human physiology. Couldn’t get around it. There it was: a stone cold fact. She could wrap her head around it.
So...what? Stand there until he bled out? No. That wouldn’t work - as evidenced by the fact his attempts to swat the swab handle out of her hands seemed to be getting stronger while she was getting weaker. So...run. Back to the head. Lock herself in, and wait him out. Yes! That’s it! That’s the ticket.
With what seemed the last bit of upper body strength she possessed, Amber flung the Jackass-zombie to the side, and ran.
86
Jonesy sat at the Chartroom desk, waiting for the coffee pot to finish doing its job, trying not to think about Scoot, or Doc, or Terry Proud, or LCDR Sparks. He was definitely, absolutely trying not to think about Masur, and he was failing. How had it all gone so far south? How had he landed in this strange new world, where he could be called upon to kill his friends?
A week ago - less than a week ago - he’d been happy, if disgruntled at the abject stupidity of Coast Guard Bureaucratic bullshit. He was off the TACLET, but on a new ship, with a new crew who’d become his family. And now he was killing them.
Whiskey Tango Fucking Foxtrot?
All such maudlin thoughts, all considerations of his lot in life, all notions of anything, even unto the coffee he so desperately needed, flew out of his head like the Starship Enterprise going into warp drive, as he heard two things - two commotions - on either side of the Chartroom: one from the Bridge, one from the Radio Room. He stood, grabbed his helmet, and started to move.
87
BM1/OPS Jeff Babbett had finally released Lydia Claire’s left breast, though it still stung and he still held her in a bear hug from behind. The whole scenario might be funny - just a bit of slightly ribald slapstick comedy - if not for the reason behind it.
A new group of Deckies, as well as a few Engineers (though she could only tell one from the other by what they did) were releasing lines and disconnecting fuel hoses as if their lives depended on it. Somewhere deep down inside her, she understood their lives did depend on it, but she wasn’t about to give that knowledge any opportunity to shunt aside her righteous anger.
The other group of Deckies, Bobby V’s original team, were still spraying full pressure fire hoses at the swimmers trying to find safety on the Polar Star. But there was no more safety there, than on the pier, where hundreds of screaming people were trying to escape the growing number of turning zombies. One person might narrowly escape death, but the one next to them would get dog-piled by two, three, sometimes four instant maniacs, courtesy of the Pomona Virus. This happened all over the pier, as first one, then three, then a dozen people started raving, or ripping at their clothes, or biting someone’s throat in paroxysms of rage and lunacy and animal blood lust. Only, animals didn’t attack with such ferocity for no obvious reason.
Animals could be savage, simply because the act of tearing flesh was, on its own, considered savage by the humans who observed it, but savagery, itself, was a wholly human condition. Animals would kill to eat or protect their young. Humans, throughout history would kill for any reason that suited them, and were only restrained by moral or legal limitations. But these creatures had no such restraint. They killed because they could; no morality, no law, no reason, just the lizard brain doing what it had always done, since the Dawn of Man.
She watched in numb horror as the zombie hoard multiplied, as did the escalating body count. She watched in anger and disgust and shame as one of the swimmers, who had found a dangling line to the ship, struggled to heave himself over the rail, and CWO4 Robert Vincenzo shoved him back with the cruel end of a boat hook.
This was humanity in all its raw power, in all its fear and rage and violence.
She had joined the Coast Guard to save people, to help people, but now all she could do was watch them die. It sapped her of all remaining strength. She hung in Jeff Babbett’s arms. It was over. She was done. And as far as she could tell, so was humanity.
88
Jonesy flung open the Chartroom door and stepped into the passageway, in time to see Bill Schaeffer come flying out of the Radio Room door, backwards. His land-side roommate slammed into the opposite bulkhead and slid to the deck. His eyes were wide, but clear. He wasn’t unconscious, he wasn’t apparently hurt, but he was clearly freaked out.
The reason for Bill’s change from his normal laconic manner followed him out of the Radio Room door - not flying, but stalking. OS1 Carlton Bertram had turned zo
mbie.
“Hey! Zombie!” Jonesy yelled, and the Zombie-Bert turned his way. Jonesy didn’t hesitate, didn’t think, didn’t bother with strategy or tactics or any of the bullshit they taught him at the Special Missions Training Center on Camp Lejeune. He just nailed the bastard with a tactical-booted snap kick, square on the chin.
The former Operations Specialist flew backwards into nothing but air. On a normal staircase (the kind found in a house), canted at an easy forty-five degrees, he/it might have cushioned his/its fall somewhat on one or two of the lower stairs. It was possible. It might not have done him any good, in the long run, but it remained within the realm of possibility. On the shipboard stair-type ladder, canted at a much sharper twenty-two-point-five degrees, however, there was nothing to slow or cushion his/its fall until he/it landed with head and neck and spine onto the hard tile deck of the Captain’s Vestibule. He/it flopped over backwards, landing face down on the ladder leading to the 01 Deck.
Jonesy stared at his former shipmate, waiting for some sense of loss or remorse, but he felt nothing. And then Manny Manoa, in skivvies, covered with blood and bits of things Jonesy did not want to consider, stumbled by the bottom of the ladder, heading forward toward the galley. He gaped in horror and his heart skipped a beat, as he contemplated having to take on that big son of a bitch, but he took a step toward the ladder and the rag doll form of Carlton Bertram Zombie, anyway. He stopped, dead in his tracks, as he heard another loud commotion behind and above him, coming from the Bridge. Molly. The name popped into his mind in an instant, and his heart skipped three or four beats, as the idea of her getting hurt cut through him like a Star Wars light saber.
“Get back in Radio and lock the door!” Jonesy barked at Bill, then he turned and ran up the Bridge ladder.