“When exactly did you read this little spy report on me?” Yue asked.
“I asked for it right after the first dinner service where you waited on us.” Jeff said simply.
“I’m confused why you think being a creepy stalker makes you more of a catch than all those sailors with their cool hats and bell bottoms?” Yue was still trying to piece together why his reviewing her dossier would have any impact on their relationship. He seemed pretty sure he had an ace in the hole.
“Well. Long story short after I read it, I went ahead and shifted around a plan I had in motion to lead to this moment.” Jeff said dramatically.
“Ok. Seriously. Just go ahead and say whatever the hell it is you’re talking about.” Yue gave Jeff her best shut up or put up look.
“Well. I meant for both your brothers to be arriving here in a few minutes after we finished dinner. Instead, we’ve managed to get one brother on the plane and your ex-boyfriend. From what I gather the ‘ex’ part of that may not be extremely final. Completely up to you to figure that piece of it out. It’d suck big time but I’m willing to back off if that’s what you want.” Jeff said.
Yue was in shock. This incredible man had researched her and moved heaven and earth to rescue one of her brothers. She was kind of curious who the ‘ex’ boyfriend was. Her only guess based on the people that the secret service could’ve interviewed was Blaze. She still had her work cut out for her. She still had to rescue either LeBron or Drew but, in a few minutes, she’d be seeing at least one of them. The Blaze thing had never really been real, so she wasn’t too worried about that.
She was still holding Jeff’s hand. She pulled on it hard enough to force him to get up and come around the table to her. She looked up at him and he bent down and they kissed. She’d expected their mutual clumsiness to result in more damage to their faces, but they seem to have found their rhythm. The kiss was a solid ten. It might not rate that on the Princess Bride scale, but it was pretty solid on the Yue scale.
Chapter 14: Reunions and Revenge
“You ok man?” Drew asked Blaze. Drew had slept most of the trip out to the carrier. Considering he was stuck in a small space filled with psychotic maneaters he surprised himself by being so cavalier about where he chose to nap. It’d worked out ok though. The dull roar of the engines and the monotony of the flight had lulled his exhausted self quickly off to snoozeville. The duct taped bags of infected humanity had started bouncing around again, but it wasn’t like they were ripping their way out of their constraints anytime soon. Even if they did, they’d still have to rip apart the solid steel cages they were in. It was the kind of solid heavy metal construction people would feel comfortable jumping into during shark week on the southern tip of Africa.
“I’m good.” Blaze answered wiping away tears. He didn’t look good. He looked like he’d just had to shoot Old Yeller. He also looked a little crazier than normal. The scary part was how quickly he wiped the tears away and slapped his game face back on. His years of showmanship giving him amazing control over how he presented himself. You never knew when you were dealing with Blaze and when you were dealing with a character Blaze had created for some specific purpose. The first time they’d met him he’d been wearing a top hat and ringmaster get up.
“I know you lost a lot of friends and everything.” Drew began trying to console Blaze. Blaze politely looked at him waiting for him to finish. Drew had no idea what to say next. Everything sounded fake and stupid in his head. You couldn’t say the word condolences out loud. It didn’t even seem like a real word. It was just something Hallmark put on the cards in the funerals and loss section. The fake word was written all over cards that were less than three feet away from cards with pictures of kittens in bikinis on them. It was what you said to people you didn’t really know when someone died that you didn’t really care about.
“You really do suck at this kind of stuff.” Blaze said smiling and swooping in to give Drew a manly hug. Drew accepted the hug happy to be let off the hook.
“Are we landing?” He asked Blaze. It felt like they were descending. The airplane had been buffeted around a lot more than Drew was used to from the very few times he’d flown commercial. He assumed it was because the military didn’t really care as much about comfort. Kind of like the way cruise ships had the stabilizers on them to keep passengers from actually having to feel like they were at sea. Maybe civilian airplanes had the same sort of concept?
Blaze was saved from guessing by the appearance of flight suit walking out of the cockpit to verify the cargo was still intact. If anyone was going to know what was going on it was the Samuel Jackson impersonating green flight suit wearing guy who got to sit next to the person actually flying the plane. Hoping for some details on what was going on they greeted him as cordially as possible. They were told to sit down and strap in once their visitor had confirmed the cages were still securely locked in place. Flight suit disappeared back into the cockpit leaving Blaze and Drew facing the wrong direction on a set of flimsy seats right next to one of the cages.
“Every zombie movie ever says this is a bad idea.” Drew said nervously staring at the cage next to him to make sure the crawler locked inside hadn’t managed to figure out how to get out of it’s restraints. Considering how powerful they were it wasn’t entirely impossible.
Blaze glanced over at the cage and shrugged. He seemed entirely too calm. Drew considered asking him for a few of whatever happy pills he’d snuck on board. It was difficult to reconcile the sight of the calm man sitting next to him now with the grieving wreck he’d woken up to not so long ago. This wasn’t baseball though. There was plenty of crying in the apocalypse. Plenty of it happened for no apparent reason at inopportune times. There was so much grief and confusion and loss floating around that people just got overwhelmed. Drew had found himself in a similar broken-down state a few times as well. He knew where Blaze was coming from.
Drew’s stomach suddenly dipped like he was on the worlds stupidest roller coaster. It felt like they were dropping out of the sky. Drew tried looking around to see if they had floatation devices. Flight suit hadn’t bothered standing at the front of the plane telling his passengers all about how to survive an ocean landing. Come to think of it flight suit had been a horrible flight attendant. He could’ve at least offered them some peanuts and a beverage.
They were dropping faster now. The plane swooped up like the roller coaster it felt like they were on was starting a loop de loop. Drew was happy he hadn’t really eaten anything in a while. A mouthful of barf gushed out of his mouth and down the front of his shirt. He was pretty sure it was mostly just coffee and puke flavored water. Much better than the chunky stuff. The plane slammed into something. Drew screamed. The plane slammed into something else. Drew stared wildly around waiting to see water start pouring in. He worked feverishly at his seatbelt. Tugging it off he jumped up and sprinted to the door leading into the cockpit.
The door opened before he got there. A startled looking flight suit had his pistol half raised while Drew was asking him how they got the raft out. Flight suit put the pistol down.
“What raft? What are you talking about? What’d you spill on your shirt?” Flight suit asked.
“Didn’t we crash into the water? I puked.” Drew said slowly looking around. A whirring noise behind him indicated the ramp was being lowered.
“We landed on the carrier. That’s why I told you to sit down and strap in. It can feel like you’re crashing if you’ve never done it before.” Flight suit explained. The man was starting to look amused now. That instantly pissed Drew off. He completely forgot about the fact that he’d been willing to give this guy a five-star review at the beginning of the flight.
“Yeah. That feeling like you might crash part of what you just said. You could’ve said something about that earlier. You know we’re stuck in a tiny room full of crawlerz right? This is already a pretty tense situation.” Drew said starting to get fired up. Blaze must’ve sensed it because he p
ulled Drew over to help him make sure all of the cages were still bolted down correctly.
“Just chill dude. We’ve been brought to the floating paradise of the privileged few. The beautiful people. The ones judged worthy to survive the end of the world. We play our cards right we could join them. Or sink this boat and swim away on our backs with our middle fingers in the air.” Blaze whispered.
Drew wondered how Blaze thought they’d be able to swim backwards with both hands extended out of the water. Of course, Blaze also thought he could singlehandedly sink this floating city. Compared to that some fancy swimming wasn’t that big of a stretch. Bemused by the mental images the ideas conjured up Drew scooped down to pick up the box of knockout juice they’d brought with them.
“Should we hit them again?” Drew asked holding the box of roofie powder up. The bags inside the cages were jerking around again. At least four of them were. One of the bags hadn’t moved at all since they’d originally wheeled it into the cage on the plane. Drew was thinking four out of five was pretty good. Especially considering the technique that they’d used for capturing the crawlerz. Shooting them in the legs then injecting them with enough experimental drugs to knock out an elephant wasn’t the FDA approved method of taking prisoners. It wasn’t like the Geneva convention applied to these things though.
“Probably not a bad idea.” Blaze said. “Unless we manage to kill them by injecting them too many times with this stuff. Let’s let the big dogs decide once they get a look at these hefty bags of humanity.”
As if in response to what Blaze had said a loud motor started whirring. The ramp descended slowly down to the flight deck. Once their eyes adjusted to the bright lights being shone on the plane, they could make out a small crowd of people gathered outside. A good portion of those people were aiming weapons at them. Understandable considering what their cargo was. Flight suit and the pilot had been keeping the carrier informed as to the status of their cargo, but this wasn’t something you took chances with.
“I still don’t get why they think this is a good idea.” Drew whispered out the side of his mouth while doing his best to appear non-threatening.
“These arrogant bastards think they can get away with anything. They’ll get theirs.” Blaze shot back barely bothering to whisper. Drew glanced over sharply and saw that Blaze wasn’t wasting a lot of energy trying to appear friendly. Like their lives weren’t already complicated enough. They moved to the side to make way for the group of Marines jogging up the ramp to inspect the cargo.
“All secure!” One of the Marines called out to the men outside.
The entire section of the deck they were on started lowering itself into the belly of the carrier. One of the Marines laughed when Drew let out a startled yelp. He really wished people would start saying something before the machines he was on did things that made him think he was about to die.
“Wow. That was pretty manly.” A familiar female voice piped up from the bottom of the ramp where the crowd of people all seemed to be enjoying his discomfort. Drew was about to tear into the smirking girl at the bottom of the ramp when it clicked that it was Yue standing there smiling up at him. She looked weird in a pair of dungarees and the light blue uniform shirt she was wearing. Drew waited until the plane stopped moving then walked down the ramp to give Yue a big hug. Blaze was right behind him grinning with his arms spread wide. Yue gave him an awkward half hug pat kind of thing that wiped the grin right off Blaze’s face.
“Which one of you is Drew and which is Blaze?” A tall gangly man in a set of slightly wrinkled khakis asked. He’d stepped forward immediately after the awkward hug between Blaze and Yue.
“I’m Drew.” Drew said stepping forward and shaking the man’s hand. He shot Yue a quick look and noticed she looked a little flushed. It suddenly dawned on him he might be meeting Yue’s newest crush. That wasn’t going to help with Blaze’s current fixation on these people having taken everything away from him.
“Hi I’m Blaze. Any idea what happens next here?” Blaze had stepped in to shake the tall man’s hand. Blaze’s face was lit up in a genuine looking smile. Knowing how he really felt about all this Drew was amazed once again by the guy’s acting acumen.
“Good to meet you both. I’m Jeff. We’re making up most of this as we go along honestly. We’re going to follow the standard protocol for isolating the specimens you brought us with a couple of updates due to how dangerous they are. Basically, we’re going to have multiple guards behind sealed off hatchways pointing guns at the cages and each other twenty-four hours a day. I think we should be doing this on some base on land personally, but I was overruled. Anyway, we’ll get them isolated then run tests to find out more about what makes them tick. We need to know our enemy better.” Jeff said.
“I’m with you on thinking it’s a bit risky bringing those things aboard the ship. I figured you guys would have that part covered. Do you know what we’re supposed to do? The two of us? They mentioned we’d probably be interviewed after we served as escorts for the living dead.” Blaze asked. Drew watched Blaze nonchalantly throwing out the questions. He was still trying hard to reconcile the calm, friendly non-crazy Blaze he was seeing now with the wild eyed, tear covered, Navy hating Blaze of not too long ago.
“Oh yes. We’ll get you hooked up with the officer on duty to get you bunks assigned and all of that. You’ll be our guests for the first few days while we pump you both for whatever information you can provide. After that it’ll be up to you and logistics honestly. Keeping thousands of people aboard a ship at sea like this is going to keep getting harder to sustain. Short term you’ll be asked to join some sort of work crew and you’ll also both have the opportunity to sign up if you’d like but that’s not mandatory.” Jeff explained. He was still talking to them, but a good portion of his attention had shifted to the plane’s ramp where the Marines and a group of sailors were working on carefully off-loading the cages.
The body bags inside the cages were jerking around like Houdini was about to pop out of them. Drew watched wondering if maybe they should’ve dosed up the crawlerz one more time after all. All he could picture was one of the bags bursting open and a crawler somehow getting its teeth into one of the people loading the cages onto the olive-green forklift.
“Nerve wracking, right?” Yue asked him. She’d slid up close to Drew as Jeff walked away to supervise the unloading operation. Drew noticed she’d made sure to keep her distance from Blaze.
“Jeff?” Drew asked under his breath. He wanted to verify his suspicion but didn’t necessarily want Blaze in on that conversation.
“Yep. He’s in charge of basically everything around here. How’s LeBron?” There was so much noise from the unloading and the other activity around them that it was unlikely anyone who cared would hear what they were talking about. Blaze had walked away to give them some space once it became apparent Yue was no longer interested.
“LeBron’s good. You remember the special agent who had you drugged to make the kidnapping easy?” Drew asked casually.
“I think it’s called being shanghaied when there’s a boat involved but yes, I vaguely remember the douchebag.” Yue replied wryly.
“He’s got some serious man love going for LeBron. We’re going to have to pry him away.” Drew said.
“What do you mean?” Yue asked looking shocked and worried. Drew realized what he’d just said.
“Not that kind of man love. More like the kind where he thinks LeBron is super smart and sees him as a serious asset. He isn’t going to let him go without a fight.” Drew clarified.
“Ok. That makes sense. We need to figure out how to get him here or get us there. Any thoughts?” Yue asked. She was watching the cages get driven away. They didn’t have a ton of time. Jeff had given her a quick wave as he left with the cage transports to make sure the packages were properly secured.
“I think the most obvious thing is there’s already two of us here and there’s only like five crawlerz on this ship. There’s l
ike a billion crawlerz on land. I like the place with the free food that’s pretty much crawler free personally. If your new boyfriend’s in charge of everything I say we swing for the fences to try to get LeBron shipped out here. Leander may want to hold on tight but he’s also an order following bureaucrat. He wouldn’t go against a direct order.” Drew said. Yue nodded along. Those were all excellent points.
“Boyfriend huh? You work fast and aim high. Was your first date before or after the roofies wore off?” Somehow Blaze was standing right behind them. He’d obviously been listening in. He didn’t sound super pissed. More like he was making casual conversation and joking around. Yue didn’t take it well though.
“At least he didn’t send a bunch of idiots out on motorcycles to try to kill me and my brothers because he wanted our car.” Drew thought Yue raised some pretty good points there. Blaze just smiled and nodded. A little bit of the crazy had leaked back into his eyes. Before anything else dramatic could happen, a sailor showed up with orders to take them to get settled in. Drew made some quick plans to meet up with Yue later then him and Blaze followed the sailor through the labyrinth of the ships passageways to find out where they’d be sleeping.
Crawlerz | Book 2 | Batten Down The Hatches Page 13