Yue walked extra fast down the ship’s corridors until she was about halfway to her duty station. It suddenly dawned on her that in less than thirty minutes she really would be on stage. It’d be time for her to turn it on. She’d never in her life successfully impressed a boy to get him to like her. She couldn’t even remember trying since the Billy incident in sixth grade. She’d made him a Valentine’s Day card with choose me and a check box on it. He’d drawn a picture of a butt on it and showed it to all his friends. Longest day ever.
In the food service room, she lined up with the rest of the servers for the standard inspection. She may not be in the Navy, but she still had to adhere to their rules. At least she did if she wanted this nice cushy job versus cleaning toilets all day. She doubted she’d have as much opportunity to influence the leaders of the free world if they saw her primarily as the Chinese girl who scrubbed their pee off the floor. That was assuming she even got to scrub important people’s pee. The people who designed the ship to support a coed crew had opted not to put in any urinals. Men were already pretty bad at aiming when the bathroom wasn’t swaying back and forth in the middle of the ocean. The people who design massive billion-dollar war machines were not the same ones responsible for cleaning up the pee stains on the floor.
She passed inspection like she always did. As much as she fantasized about being a cool rebel, she was a rule follower at heart. She always just took one piece of candy out of the help yourself buckets on Halloween. It was just the way she was wired. Walking out the door with a towel and a pitcher of water she began topping off everyone’s glasses. Most of the men in the room were important enough to have been waited on the majority of their adult lives. A few of them were gracious while some were more demanding. The bulk of them ignored the servers. The pitchers of water might as well be floating around the room on their own. The petty officer in charge had kicked off this service by reminding them that a good server gets a thank you at the end of the night. No one even notices that a great server was there.
Yue scanned the room for her target. Jeff was seated at the same table as the President. There were a few governors and senators as well as their spouses at the table also. The President looked gaunt. His slightly reddened eyes sunken back into his head. He was knocking back bourbon like it was water. The first lady looked on disapprovingly and attempted to slow him down. Yue let her eyes slide away from that little family drama and roam down to the awkwardly tall man sitting at the end of the table slurping on a bowl of lobster bisque.
Jeff appeared completely out of place. The politicians surrounding him were all used to steak dinners and bourbon. Jeff was used to pizza and late nights of research. The politicians were used to sending people out to collect data for them. Jeff had an army at his beck and call, but he still felt like he had to see things firsthand to really understand them. Everyone was dressed formally while he was wearing a wrinkled button down with a plain blue windbreaker over it. The windbreaker was too small, so his arms stuck out too far. His hair was all over the place. The man was just a mess. Yue would’ve felt sorry for him if she wasn’t trying so hard to figure out a way to get him to talk to her.
As a server the only conversation she was supposed to engage in was around what type of liquid the important people wanted to pour into their face holes. She wasn’t important enough to discuss their food choices unless asked directly. She was strictly a water, soda or iced tea fetching part of the meal. Her job could be eliminated by setting out large pitchers of different beverages on the table at the beginning of the meal. Not that any of these people would lower themselves to pouring their own drink. She was kept busy refilling waters and other drinks. It took three other servers to handle the alcohol orders.
Yue was racking her brain on how she was going to casually get Jeff’s attention. It had to be something subtle enough not to draw the attention of the other guests but obvious enough that Jeff would know she was interested in him. She wanted to get his attention but didn’t want to risk ending up on urine scrubbing detail. She was worried if she tried something too subtle the socially awkward Jeff might not even notice. If the petty officer in charge noticed anything she’d be done.
She decided on a smile. She’d try a smile on the first go around so as not to appear overly eager. He’d either notice her smiling at him or not. Out of nowhere it occurred to her he might be gay. She might be trying to seduce a gay man. The fact that someone as important as this guy didn’t have a wife suddenly seemed less like an opening to her and more like a red flag. Why would someone with such a sweet government gig not be married? He was even tall. Tall and a good job made up for a lot of other character flaws on match.com. This guy was e-harmony material. There was no good reason for him to be sitting at a table dumping way too many oyster crackers into his lobster bisque all by himself.
Yue took a deep breath. She worked on flipping her mindset. She was great at manipulating people. Now she was wondering if that was a direct result of the Billy incident. She was putting way too much thought into this. She was trying to psychoanalyze her issue with smiling at a guy while she poured his water. She took a deep breath and set off on a beeline towards his water glass. She was poised and pouring before she realized his glass was still pretty full. Rather than overflow the glass she pulled the pitcher up mid-pour.
She’d pulled up a little too late though and the water overflowed the glass onto the table. Jeff grabbed a napkin and leaned forward to wipe it up right as Yue bent down to do the same. Overly anxious about the whole interaction Yue bent down way too fast. The top of her forehead collided with the bridge of Jeff’s nose. He was slightly off-balance from leaning forward to help wipe up the water. He threw his hands up to try and stop himself from falling over. He ended up with a handful of Yue’s left breast. He immediately let go thrusting himself backwards trying to stammer out an apology as he went over backwards with blood bubbling out of his nostril.
A completely mortified Yue stepped backwards in horror knocking over the wineglass of the senator who’d been seated beside Jeff. He jumped up with a lap full of wine cussing and wiping at his crotch with a large cloth napkin. Ignoring him Yue went around Jeff’s fallen chair to see if he was ok. Before she’d made it more than a step or two a large man appeared out of nowhere and slammed her into the bulkhead. Head spinning from bouncing off the metal wall she watched as another man helped Jeff back to his feet. He was trying to explain that it’d all been an accident when the senator ordered the man who’d just roughly handcuffed Yue to take her out of the room.
Yue glanced into the room one final time and saw Jeff still trying to explain what’d happened. Another man was trying to help him get his nose to stop gushing blood everywhere. The man ushering Yue down the hall stopped and took the cuffs off her wrists. She had tears flowing down her face. Way too many emotions bubbling over after all that. She’d just lost her best chance to rescue her brothers. There was no way she was getting that gig back.
“I’m guessing you’re just a huge klutz, right? Not some sort of ninja assassin who kills via headbutts?” The large man asked her.
“I’m just an idiot. I don’t know what the hell just happened. Please tell Jeff I’m so sorry. Tell the senator too. I have no idea. I’m so sorry.” Yue was unable to figure out an appropriate way to apologize for what’d just happened. She wasn’t even sure what’d just happened. This had one hundred percent replaced the Billy incident as the new boy trauma in her life. She hoped all the therapists weren’t dead.
“Ok. I doubt you’ll be welcome back in the VIP mess hall again anytime soon. Or galley or whatever they call it on a ship. I did my time in the green machine before signing up for the service. We’re going to have you locked down in your berthing area for now while we conduct a quick investigation. I’m assuming nothing’s going to come from it. I do need your badge though.” The secret service agent held out his hand to Yue. She handed him her yellow laminated badge morosely. Ten minutes later she was being escorted b
ack to her berthing area by a couple of shore patrolmen.
Charani looked up from her bunk when Yue walked in and gave her a big smile. She was halfway out of her bunk to ask Yue how it went when the rest of Yue’s entourage walked in. Yue shot her a look saying to keep quiet. Charani faded into the background when Yue asked her escort if she could use the head before getting in her bunk. The man nodded at her then spoke briefly to one of the women in the room. After a brief whispered exchange, him and the other male sailor went back out the door to station themselves outside. Men weren’t allowed to hangout in the women’s berthing area.
Charani followed Yue into the head. The room was empty except for Yue who was busy splashing water on her face. She gave Charani a halfhearted smile.
“I’m guessing it didn’t go as well as hoped?” Charani asked. She really wanted to know what’d gone wrong but even more importantly she wanted to be there for Yue. Plans went sideways. It happened all the time. Especially in the times they were living in. The important thing from Charani’s perspective was surrounding yourself with people you trusted to help you get through this mess.
Yue continued to aggressively scrub the makeup off her face. When she’d finished, she used a couple of paper towels to dry off and got ready to walk back to her bunk. Since no one was beating on the door to try and get her to hurry she gave Charani an abbreviated account of what’d gone down in the dining room. Charani listened attentively and was a good enough friend not to bust out laughing at the description of events. She even held back from describing it as a couple of trains crashing together into a dumpster fire.
After Yue had recounted what’d just happened Charani got out of the way so Yue could head to her bunk. All Yue really wanted to do was put her face under her pillow and try to pretend like the last two hours had never happened. What a complete and total failure the day had been. The woman who the shore patrol had spoken to about her opened the door to the head and looked over at Yue.
“Once you’re done in here there’s a tall goofy looking guy covered in dried blood waiting to talk to you in the passageway.” Having delivered her oddly worded message, the woman shut the door and left.
Chapter 9: Hold My Beer
They waited until the next day to collect the specimens. The carrier wasn’t going to be close enough to send the plane for a few days anyway. The planes would be sent with cages for the crawlerz to be placed in. Leander had tasked the men in the warehouse with capturing the needed crawlerz ahead of the planes arrival. After a lot of brainstorming, they decided the best course of action was to chain the crawlerz up with so many chains that they couldn’t move. They were putting a lot of their faith in the knockout mixture that’d worked so well on Blaze’s people.
“One more time just so everything’s correct on our obituary. We’re going to go outside where we know a bunch of surgers are hanging out. We’re going to somehow lure one into our hardened facility then lock the others out while we drug the one that got in. Once we have it drugged, we’re going to zip tie, handcuff and chain it until we can’t actually see it anymore. Then the idea is to rinse and repeat with a few more of the monsters. Some of those monsters being crawlerz who can rip the sides off buildings and jump from the ground to the top of a house with one leap.” Drew asked Zimmerman. Zimmerman nodded in the affirmative. Drew could tell the SEAL team NCO was not amused.
“It’s an evolving plan.” He answered.
“Ok cool. Then just so I’m clear on this we’re going to take these highly contagious super monsters on a plane ride to the boat holding the leaders of what’s left of our country? The only ones who might be able to possibly get us all out of this mess. The one place that’s safe from these things? We’re going to fly some of them there in homemade cages?” Drew kept going.
“A ship.” Zimmerman corrected him. “Billion-dollar floating war machines are called ships. Not boats.”
“That’s the part you have an issue with?” Drew asked incredulously. He’d do anything to get Yue back. Endangering thousands of people on the ship she was being held prisoner on seemed a little excessive though. Especially since he had no idea how to get her off said vessel once he arrived. She could very easily become one of those few thousand who ended up either dead or infected. It wasn’t like she was being held on a boat full of Nazis. She was on the last bastion of American strength on the globe as far as Drew new. The Marines had been pretty free with the information sharing once the cat was out of the bag on the carrier.
The problem of how to get the drugs into the infected had been batted around as well. The powdery chemical was stored in multiple cannisters in the section of the warehouse containing boxes of pharmaceuticals. Blaze, Drew and the rest of them were very interested in what exactly was contained in that chemical concoction. They’d peppered the Marines responsible for mixing it up with a laundry list of questions. The Marines had no clue other than it was similar to Rohypnol. Rohypnol being the formal name for the mixture commonly known as the date rape drug. The reason for the large amount of it stored in the warehouse was for precisely what they were doing now. Collecting large numbers of unwilling human specimens in the event of a pandemic.
No one had anticipated having to collect specimens that had superhuman strength coupled with an uncontrollable rage. There were no dart guns stored on the shelves. Tranquilizer darts like the ones used on elephants would’ve been nice. They had the sedative they needed but the delivery system was lacking. All they could think to do was subdue the infected by beating the hell out of them with bats then use a hypodermic to inject the drug manually. They’d spent some time carefully duct taping syringes to the end of long poles for that part of the operation. They just hadn’t worked out how to press the plunger on the syringe once they had the needle shoved in the target specimen.
If the infected ate and drank like normal people, they could’ve just sprinkled it over some pizza and left a poisoned six pack on the doorstep. Blaze and Drew hadn’t been amused at that joke since it was obviously at their expense. Standing in front of the door with syringes full of knock out juice and a rifle loaded with rubber bullets Drew wondered what horrible things he’d done in a former life to deserve this. They couldn’t think of a great way to capture the infected, so they were going to open the front door and just go for it. With awesome plans like this Drew no longer wondered why so many of the base defenders had died in such a short amount of time.
“What’s the plan again?” Drew asked Blaze. On top of the rubber bullets they were also sporting body amor and facemasks courtesy of the riot gear they’d found.
“Zimmerman’s waiting for the guy at the barracks in the communications center to tell him there’s one walking by the front door. We open the front door and beat the crap out of it then jab it with a couple of the syringes. Once it’s out we secure it with chains and cuffs. Once tied up we bag it and throw on some more tape just to be safe. Should be fun.” Blaze answered sarcastically. He was sweating profusely in the thick padding they were wearing. If it was thick enough to make him sweat like that, he hoped it was thick enough to stop the surgers from biting through it.
“I guess he got the call.” Drew muttered raising his rifle and wishing it was loaded with real bullets. He still couldn’t believe they were doing this.
Zimmerman ran his identification card over the RFID reader beside the door and the lock snapped open with a loud click. The SEAL next to Zimmerman pushed the door open and went straight out of it ready to let the rubber bullets fly. The rest of the team went out looking like an armed conga line. Drew saw their tango tearing across the field straight at them. The SEAL in the lead calmly aimed his rifle and proceeded to demolish the surger’s face with a stream of high-powered rubber bullets.
Moving quickly the rest of them swarmed the surger before it could recover. The blood covered face of the middle-aged male surger lying on his back in the dirt seemed harmless enough. The rubber bullets might be intended to be non-lethal but half a magazine of thos
e straight to the face couldn’t be good for you. They got two needles into the man’s thigh before Zimmerman raised his fist in the air and ran for the entrance to the warehouse. The rest of them immediately scrambling to beat him there. A fist in the air and the guy with the radio in his ear hauling ass for the door could only mean one thing.
There were a lot of surgers coming to join the party. They’d anticipated that might be the case. Plan B was to shoot up the ones they dropped then wait for the heat to die down before going back out to retrieve them. They’d just hit the infected guy with the smashed in face with about three times the dosage needed to put a regular person out of commission for a day or two. What that’d do to the infected they had no way of knowing.
The surgers came tearing around the side of the warehouse too fast to be ignored. The SEALs sent a hailstorm of the rubber bullets at the fast-moving attackers and quickly ducked back into the warehouse. Despite being the first one back to the door Zimmerman was the last one in. He posted up beside the door making sure the rest of the team made it in. One of the SEALs on his team slammed and locked the door as soon as Zimmerman dove through it. Almost immediately the walls and door began taking a pounding as the surgers outside did their best to get in. The visibly frazzled NCO ignored all that noise and began talking rapidly into his radio.
Crawlerz | Book 2 | Batten Down The Hatches Page 8