“Hell of a thing. Always lived in Gulf Shores?”
“Yeah. My sister and her kid left over the bridge just before they closed it. I hope they made it but I just don’t know,” he said. “What brought you to the island?”
“When everything went crazy after the nuclear strikes, they sent me out with a busted up plane and a crew that had never worked together to pick up some secretary of commerce or education or something. Word was that she was next in line to be president. I dropped off a Split-A detachment of 6 Green Berets to locate and retrieve the Secretary. They didn’t stand a chance. Our base was overrun while we were in the air and we made it as far west as Gulf Shores before we had to set down.” She did not even think about it before she blurted it out. A month ago, she had been sworn to secrecy never to reveal it, now it did not really make a difference.
They continued in silence again, cocooned by the darkness, and their thoughts.
— | — | —
CHAPTER 49
USCGC Fish Hawk, off Ship Island Mississippi
November 13 Z+34 1:45pm
Billy watched the familiar waters of the Mississippi Sound stretch out before him as they passed the GP buoy that marked the Gulfport Shipping Channel. Heavily silted from the waters of a half dozen rivers, the sound along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast was shallow and its waves chopped in short little crests like no other place in the Gulf. You always knew when you were inside the sound. The course Billy had recommended paid off.
It had only been two hours since they had watched the rotten freighter Pamyat Ilicha sink deep into the water of the Gulf of Mexico after the mine that Billy attached had exploded a hole in her side. Since then they had crossed paths with a 122-foot schooner sailing from Florida to Texas in hope of a new life. The schooner’s crew would not come within a half mile of the cutter and refused to heave to and be boarded.
Rigged as an 1812-privateer with four working 6-pounder cannons, they were firm in their conviction to head to Texas where they believed they could find a good anchorage. Flying the yellow Gadsden flag with a rattlesnake and “don’t tread on me” emblazoned across, they were not in the mood to talk.
“Standoff, Coast Guard. We have quarantined our ship and will not allow anyone aboard. We are healthy now and mean to keep it that way. If you get any closer than 2000 yards, we will open fire on you, sir,” they had radioed.
Jarvis has told them “Don’t be a fool captain, this is a United States Coast Guard Cutter, and we will send you to the bottom if you open fire on us.”
“There is no more United States, sir, please stand away. We have four working six-pounder cannons loaded and trained on you right now. We aren’t looking to fight, but we will.”
The schooner said something over the radio about a submarine that they had seen torpedo a cruise ship the day before, just south of Dauphin Island, as they sailed away from the cutter. The debris field that Reynolds had called in earlier confirmed their story.
That had been the only thing they had passed since coming into the Sound that afternoon.
The Bosun observed Ship Island’s beach from the port side window with the binos. “No zombies but I’ve got a tank and soldiers on the beach, sir.”
Jarvis and Billy picked up their own binos from the bridge and peered at the Bosun’s contact. Sure enough, there appeared to be a tall, block-shaped, tank of some sort on the beach of the island. Next to the tank was a small cluster of camouflaged soldiers who for lack of a better word appeared to be shipwrecked.
“Looks like we found the Marines. Let’s get the small boat ready to go check them out,” Jarvis said.
“Aye, sir.”
Jarvis looked at Billy. “You want to ride with them, Mister Harris? I need Boats here at the helm.”
“Sure.”
Billy exited the wheelhouse and descended the ladder to the stern deck where the Cook and a couple of the enlisted Coastguardsmen were grabbing float coats and brain buckets. The Engineer stood by to launch the boat. The Cook handed Billy a float coat two sizes too small that Billy had no chance to zip closed. Billy tried the coat on while doing his best Chris Farley imitation to the amusement of no one but himself. Even after the month-long fish soup diet, he still had more of a keg than a six-pack.
The stern door came up and the Cook pulled the pin holding the zodiac in place as he started the small boat’s motor. They found themselves floating behind the Fish Hawk in just a few seconds.
The Cook, obviously enjoying his time away from the food service deck, gunned the Zodiac from zero to almost 30 knots at full throttle and headed for the beach. Billy grabbed the ‘oh crap’ bar in front of his seat, like a professional rodeo rider trying to hang on to a champion bull, and gritted his teeth. He could just make out the sound of Jarvis calling to the Marines on the island over the ship’s loudhailer telling them to remain calm that he—as the US Coast Guard—was sending a boat ashore.
Billy could see three slim Marines standing around a burned out driftwood campfire pit talking back and forth to each other. One of them had an M4 in his hand. The fact that he just held it by the flash suppressor and had the butt of the weapon on the sand was comforting.
As the Zodiac skidded to a halt on the beach in about three inches of water, the Marines began walking the short distance from their fire pit to the craft.
“Man, are we glad to see you guys!” the tallest and very sunburnt marine exclaimed in a heavy Cajun accent before the Cook had even cut the motor. He wore the darker marine pattern camouflaged uniform that clearly set him apart from Stone’s Guardsmen and their ACUs. The two other marines were quieter but had hopeful eyes.
Cook spoke up for the group. “What are you guys doing out here?”
“Do you have any water?” M4 marine croaked. Billy and one of the Coasties reached into a small cooler that was bungee corded to the deck and found a few bottles of water in there, which they offered. The trio soon greedily sucked the magic water down.
The Cajun marine that appeared to be the leader of the group leaned up against the round sidewall of the Zodiac looked at Billy quizzically. Billy imagined his blue jeans, fisherman’s sweater, and too-small float coat, not to mention the fact that he was the only one not wearing a gun belt with a SIG hanging off of it, made him stand out from the three Coasties.
“Where are you guys from?”
“Gulf Shores,” answered Billy.
“Alabama?”
“Yes, Alabama, jarhead.” the Cook interjected. “What brings the Marines to Ship Island, Mississippi, and where is the rest of your unit?” The Cook was an FS2, which as an E-5 was the same lateral rank as a Sergeant in the marines. Judging from the group, the leader of the marines was only a lance corporal and he seemed to snap-to emotionally when confronted with an NCO.
“Three Alpha, 4th Marine Amtrac Battalion out of Gulfport. We are a reserve unit that got activated when the shit hit the fan,” the lance corporal answered with a thick accent. He then glanced towards the other two marines and announced, “As far as I know we are all that’s left.”
“Bullshit, Theriot, you know that shit aint true.”
“Embrasse mon tcheue, mahn,” the young Cajun marine said, raising his hand as if he was about to go Ike Turner on his friends. The three marines exchanged looks but no one said anything else.
“So what happened in Gulfport and Biloxi?” Billy asked. The twin cities held nearly a half million people and were the lifeblood of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The lance corporal took the lead after a pause. “It wasn’t good,” he said in his thick Louisiana Cajun accent. “Les haricots ne sont pas sales, times are hard, mahn.”
The marines explained to Billy and the Cook how the four battalions of Navy Seabee construction engineers from the Gulfport Seabee base had gone out into the city to restore order, and the marines had tagged along. A National Guard mechanized infantry company and engineer unit whose arsenals were in Biloxi and an Army Reserve unit were holding a line of defense aro
und a small section of town that included a large community center and hospital.
Eventually the line fell after the Seabees ran out of ammunition. The command fractured and the Seabees and Marines fell back to the beach to be evacuated by helicopters to the fleet, while the National Guard and Army units drove up Highway 49 to link up with the 278th Cavalry Regiment from the Tennessee National Guard training at Camp Shelby. The Air Force sat the battle out and evacuated nearby Keesler Air Force base under orders.
“What about the Coast Guard?” the Cook asked.
The lance corporal shook his head. “They had a small base by Jones Park, but shagged ass before it got bad. I don’t know where they went.”
“So why didn’t you guys leave with the rest of the Marines and the Seabees?” Billy asked.
The lance corporal laughed, “We are the only ones that got out. Deh had us jammed up mahn. We waited on the beach for two days fighting with every-ting we had and the helicopter never came.”
Billy and the Cook looked at each other. After a radio conversation with Jarvis, they returned to the cutter with the three marines in the Zodiac. Billy watched as the Marine’s Amtrac grew smaller against the background of Ship Island’s horseshoe-shaped civil war fort as they sped to the cutter.
««—»»
Billy, the Cook, the Marine Lance Corporal, and two Coast Guard seamen rode the Zodiac to the beach in Gulfport. The other two marines had elected to stay on the larger cutter and raid the refrigerator. Billy had directed the Fish Hawk into the shipping channel just off the state port, then volunteered to go to the beach in the small boat to confirm the marine’s story. When he saw the beach firsthand, he regretted not remaining on the cutter.
Stretching from his feet to the horizon was a rotten carpet from a nightmare. A solid, intertwined weave of human bodies in a field of bone and turgid flesh covered everything from the waterline, across the white sand beaches, to the coastal highway and beyond. Hundreds of Seabee military trucks and hummers, all dark hunter green with a yellow bee cartoon stenciled on the door, sat abandoned in the sand in a defensive perimeter.
Everywhere, the perimeter had been breached and the bodies of defenders and infected alike remained where they had fallen. Isolated groups of infected still roamed the beach and crawled amongst the bodies. Horribly blown apart bodies from heavy weapons and high explosives hung off the seawall. Great waves of seagulls, mixed with redheaded turkey vultures, lined up in brooding queues along the edges of the vehicles.
There were human bones lying bleached and barren, strewn by animals. It was odd to think that when they were reduced to bones, you could not tell zombie from human, and human from zombie. A true ashes-to-ashes scenario. Most people, the closest they had ever been to death were their grandparents’ funerals. Bodies were something you saw in a movie or on CSI, not in your driveway, or in the hedges by your front door, or on the beach.
As the small boat slapped into the water, it ran parallel to the beach, but never closer than a hundred yards. The boat jigged occasionally to miss striking abandoned jet skis, small boats, and floating bodies.
“We never stood a chance. There were thousands of them in the end,” the Lance Corporal yelled out over the sound of the Zodiac’s diesel engine as sea spray pelted his young tired face.
“How many Seabees were there?” the Cook asked Theriot, the Marine Lance Corporal.
“I heard they had 5,000 stationed at the base in Gulfport, but half were deployed around the world, so I guess about 2,500 or so. They had tons of gear and weapons but we just ran out of ammo,” the lance corporal said.
“How did you guys get away?” Myers, the young Coast Guard seaman, asked. Billy was glad he did as it saved him the trouble.
“We had seven Amtracs that ran when the outbreak started. By the time we made it to the beach, we just had two left. The other one lost its crew, so we were the last one.”
“That tank can swim?”
The lance corporal nodded. “It’s not a tank, it’s an amphibious assault vehicle. They launch us from ships twenty miles offshore and we land a half platoon of grunts on the beach.”
“Bad ass, I should have been a marine,” Myers said, accompanied by a dope slap from the Cook.
“You Cajun or something?” the Cook asked.
“That’s la Creole to you, dipshit. Got me all swoll up in here man, shit,” said the marine, rubbing his sunburnt head with his hand.
The small boat continued slowly down the 12-mile stretch of beach that ran from Gulfport’s shipping channel, in front of Biloxi beach to Deer Island. The Fish Hawk stuck to deeper water a mile south, shadowing them.
They passed the old Veterans Hospital, the hundreds of huge beach homes, some there since antebellum times, dozens of restaurants, and the Coast Coliseum—a round dome sitting like a giant mushroom on the beach. The white, picture perfect for postcards Biloxi Lighthouse still sat along the highway as it had for 170 years, only manned now by the dead. Soon they saw the giant Biloxi Yacht club, one of the oldest in the country.
Between Deer Island and the narrow strip of beach, Billy pointed out the Beau Rivage and the Hard Rock casinos. Huge gambling venues that were built just before Hurricane Katrina and survived the thirty-foot storm surges, only to remain behind now to serve the infected remains of their former customers.
From the bridge that passed over the Back Bay of Biloxi hung a number of twitching infected that had been suspended over the side in nooses. Perversely, the zombies swung thirty feet over the water below, kicking and jerking but never dying.
Nowhere had they seen any sign of life. All that remained was the bodies and the staggering legions of those unlucky enough to be reanimated. By the time the Cook turned the Zodiac back out to sea to link up with the Fish Hawk, Billy was not even looking anymore.
««—»»
Billy sat on the bridge of the Fish Hawk and watched for the east end of Horn Island to appear before he ordered the Bosun to turn the cutter into the pass that led safely into Pascagoula. Just offshore of the small shipyard town was Singing River Island. Built in the 1980s to house a battleship group, the island was closed by the Clinton-era military cutbacks. The massive facility was turned over to the Coast Guard who ran a counter-drug task force from the base using loaned, former Navy Patrol boats.
Jarvis had heard of the base but had not had a chance to put in there before the outbreak, with most of his patrols being further east in Mobile Bay and off the Florida panhandle. Out of the rest of the crew, only the Cook and Billy had ever been there before—the Cook on a one-year stint on one of the boats, and Billy in tour when the base first opened.
The huge concrete dock, long enough for several cruisers and destroyers to occupy at the same time, was empty and deserted.
“Looks like the Cyclones left,” the Cook pronounced. “They had three of them here, about twice the size of the Fish Hawk and armed heavy. Real bad asses, did all that stuff you see on the commercials.”
Jarvis, Billy, and the bridge crew allowed the Cook to regale them with his stories of how he had been assigned to one of the Cyclone patrol boats and all the cocaine they seized every time they went out.
The Fish Hawk tied up briefly to the dock but left the engines growling at a low rpm while the three Marines, the Cook, the cutter’s engineer, and Billy armed up to go ashore.
“Good luck,” Jarvis told them as they stepped off the ship and onto the wide dock. Billy hung back as The Cook led the way with the Marines swinging their now-reloaded M4s in all directions looking for threats. Behind Billy was the Cutter’s backpack-wearing Engineer, carrying an odd-shaped, red, metal toolbox and a short sledgehammer. They moved across the base rapidly around a couple of buildings until the Cook stopped at a windowless brick structure with a slab-sided door.
“This is it, Pete, do your thing,” the Cook said to the Engineer, as he pointed to the door.
The man was already opening the red, metal toolbox as he shrugged the backpack to the grou
nd. Soon he had a set of short hoses and ignition cables attached to two small tanks inside the toolbox, set up with a 22-inch cutting rod.
“Don’t look at the light,” the professional muttered as he moved a set of dark goggles over his eyes and struck the end of the rod to produce a bright, short flame that burned white hot. He soon turned the flame to the heavy steel door’s hinges and lock bolts, sending a shower of yellow sparks flying everywhere.
After thirty seconds of cutting, he turned the rod off and stepped away from the smoking door. After a few kicks from the Marines, it fell away and clattered on the sealed concrete floor inside the formerly locked building.
The Cook pushed past the Marines and walked into the building. The magazine was built to store enough munitions for an entire naval task force, but was mainly an empty warehouse now. It did, however, still hold several pallets of squat wooden boxes and long plastic cases along one wall.
The Cook flipped open one of the large plastic cases and pulled out a wicked looking assault rifle.
“Mk18 close-quarters combat rifle. Basically, a super short M4 assault rifle with an Eotech reflexive laser sight and a forearm grip. The guns are standard issue to Navy SEALs but we kept few of them here,” he said as he caressed the rifle.
“About as sexy as you could get,” said one of the marines.
“I feel like a Boss with this bad boy. It’s all mine now, kid,” the Cook said, kissing the black rifle.
An hour later, as they sailed away from the abandoned base at Singing River Island, Jarvis and the Marines were already taking an inventory of what they came away with: more than thirty cases of ammunition in 5.56mm, 7.62mm and fifty-caliber; twenty of the exotic Mk18 rifles (one of which the Cook had already hidden under his rack), and a case of flash-bang grenades, among other items.
“Well, it’s not what I was hoping for but it’s better than nothing,” the Coast Guard Lieutenant said to Billy as the beaches of Mississippi fell away from the cutter. Without being seen, Billy quietly dropped Cat’s locket into the Sound and watched as it vanished in the white topped waves in the cutter’s wake.
Last Stand on Zombie Island Page 32