by John Ringo
* * *
“EPIRB,” Sophia said from the helm. “Looks like one of those good lifeboats.”
“I hate those,” Faith said. “I’m getting to hating this whole idea.”
“There are survivors,” Steve said. He was starting to realize what luck finding Tina on their first boarding had been. “And it’s not about how many dead we find but how many alive.”
“If we find anyone alive,” Faith said.
“Faith,” Stacey said from the galley.
“Well, I keep getting rigged up!” Faith said. “And for what? There’s nobody!”
“I survived,” Tina said. She was carefully cutting up a blackfin they’d caught earlier in the day. They always had a line running behind the boat.
“I’m sorry, Tina,” Faith said. “I’m just frustrated.”
“What you’re doing is important,” Tina said. “You don’t know what it’s like, thinking somebody is going to come and they never do…” She paused and wiped her eyes. “And then you did. Faith, you’re a miracle to somebody. You were a miracle to me. You just have to keep looking.”
“Horn,” Sophia said a minute later. She’d started to slow to come alongside.
The horn blasted, then blasted again.
“Bloody hell!” Sophia said. “Survivors!”
* * *
“Chris Phillips,” Chris said, holding out his hand. “Thank you.”
“Steve Smith,” Steve said, taking his hand and pulling him aboard. “Are you the last off?” Steve asked.
“Last off,” Chris said. “Pulled the EPIRB as you requested.”
“We’re going to be tight as hell,” Steve said, looking at the group on the aft deck. There had been seven survivors from the lifeboat. “And we’re going to have to be careful with rations. You’re the senior officer?”
“As such,” Chris said. “I was a chef onboard the Voyage Under Stars.”
“Damn,” Steve said. “No offense, but I was hoping for engineering or ship’s officer.”
“They scarpered long before,” Chris said. “Aussie?”
“Got it in one,” Steve said. “Brit?”
“Former RN,” Chris said.
“Para,” Steve said. “Okay, as we announced, we need to do a salt-water washdown. We got some slops from the boats we’ve cleared and we’ll try to find clothes for everyone. Males are forward…”
“We’re a bit past that,” Chris said. “We’ll just wash down here.”
“Uh…” Steve said.
“Sir,” one of the ladies said. “Captain. First, again, thank you. Second, we’ve been on that tiny little boat for two months. There is absolutely nothing we don’t know about each other including what we look like without clothes.”
“Well, then,” Steve said, shrugging. “We’re already rigged for wash-down…”
* * *
“You’ll probably get tired of us saying thank you,” Paula Handley said, sipping tomato soup. Not only had they included it as a major store item, they’d found more on the Toy and the one other boat they’d cleared. Paula was the lady who had pointed out that group washing was not going to be an issue. In her late twenties with fine, reddish blond hair, she looked as if she might once have been plump. Two months under starvation conditions had changed that. “But thank you, thank you, thank you…”
“Where the hell is the Coast Guard?” one of the men asked, truculently.
“Gone,” Faith said. She was looking nervous with all the people on the boat and had kept her sidearm. She was clearly trying not to tap it. “No shortwave from any governmental agency. The few ham radio operators on land say that they can’t move outside of their compounds and spend a lot of time hiding even then. There are some towns that survived in the high arctic but they’re back to, basically, living like indians.”
“Show a light, have a gen and you’re hit by the zombies,” Steve said. “I’m wondering about my brother. He had a professional fall-back point. But I just hope it was strong enough.”
“Everything can’t be gone!” the man said. “That’s not true!”
“Mister…sorry, name?” Steve said, calmly.
“Isham,” the man said. “Jack Isham.”
“Mr. Isham, I can’t prove to you that it’s gone,” Steve said. “But there is a shortwave receiver. I can pull up the frequencies of the few hams that are out there. If they’re broadcasting. If they’re not gone as well. And you can then check the Beeb, FEMA, what have you. They are gone. Check for yourself.”
“Well, where are we going to go, then?” Paula asked, looking around. “There’s not enough room on here for us to stay forever. I appreciate the hospitality but…”
“Other boats,” Steve said. “There are more. Some of them larger. For the time, we’ll need to be a floating community as it were.”
“I want to get my feet on dry land,” one of the women said. She was probably a well-preserved sixty and had the remains of a strong dye job. Her natural hair color was now clearly gray.
“I’d say I’d be happy to drop you off on some nearby landfall,” Steve said, shrugging. “Where you can compete for resources with the zombies. But we’re still in clearance mode. We are, clearly, going to have to find more boats. But that is the point. There are other people out there who need to be rescued as much as you did. Once we find another boat, it will go to people who want to continue the rescue. If we find an excess, I’ll be glad to turn some over to people who don’t support rescuing others. They can then go do whatever they’d like. But in the meantime, there are people to be saved. We’re currently on our way to another distress call…”
“‘Whereever a Tardakian baby cries out…’” a young man said, grinning.
“Oh, please, Pat,” Paula said, despairingly. “Not that again.”
“Well, it’s what he’s saying,” Patrick Lobdell said.
“I’m sorry?” Steve said.
“As Paula said, we’ve been in each other’s pockets for two months,” Chris said, drily. “Pat is an SF movie nerd par excellence.”
“I can quote over thirty movies,” Pat said. “Verbatim.”
“As he has, repeatedly, demonstrated,” Chris said. “If I recall correctly, that was a quote from Galaxy Quest. One of his favorites.”
“‘Whenever a Tardakian baby cries out,’” Patrick said, thrusting his fist in the air. “‘Wherever a distress signal sounds among the stars, we’ll be there… This fine ship…’”
“‘This fine crew,’” Paula said, shaking her head.
“‘Never give up,’” the entire group chorused, tonelessly. “‘Never surrender.’”
“Oookay,” Steve said, putting his hand over his mouth to contain the chuckle. “I can see that it’s a bit of a sore point…”
“And, Jack,” Paula said, dangerously, “don’t get started on football scores…”
“If you will stop talking about sewing,” Jack snapped.
“And we’re going to go back to the original discussion,” Chris said, firmly. “In which Mr. Smith was outlining his plan to clear… How much?”
“You want to see the EPIRB map for the North Atlantic?” Steve said. “There are over two thousand distress beacons. About ten percent are hard aground and, well, they’re screwed.”
“One boat of people cannot clear two thousand lifeboats,” Isham said.
“When we find a functional boat,” Steve said, “as previously noted, it goes to someone with something resembling experience and agreement to keep searching. And so on and so forth. I’d guess Mr. Phillips.”
“I’m a cook, not a ship’s officer,” Chris protested.
“Ever conned a boat?” Steve asked. “Something this size?”
“Well, bigger, actually,” Chris said. “But…”
“Sophia, what had you driven before you started conning the Mile?” Steve asked.
“My bike?” Sophia said from the helm. “You might remember I’m still fifteen, Da.”
“Fifteen?” Pa
ula said.
“Faith’s thirteen,” Steve said, gesturing to the girl lurking in the corner. “And she plowed the road out of Washington Square.”
“Excuse me?” Isham said. “Washington Square Park?”
“We are four of the ten survivors from the last concert in New York City,” Faith said. “Which we got out of by blowing away so many zombies you could follow our path by the bodies. So don’t get me started on how hard it’s going to be to clear a bunch of boats. Boats are easy. Hey, Patrick is it? Bet you’ve played all sorts of video games. Want to fight some real zombies?”
“Uh…” Patrick said nervously.
“Faith,” Steve said.
“No, Da,” Faith said angrily. “What Tina said. They wanted to be rescued. I bet you were praying to God every day that somebody could come to rescue you. And now you want to…what? Curl up and cry? While there are people out there that need you? Screw you.”
She turned and stalked out of the saloon, slamming the door behind her.
“Bloody hell,” Chris said.
“Faith is a little passionate,” Steve said in apology. “We don’t expect any of you to go charging aboard zombie infested freighters any time soon. You need to get your strength back. But you need to start thinking about how you can help and if you want to. If you don’t…well, we’ll find something to do with you eventually. For now, just rest up.”
“Da, this is another sport fisher,” Sophia called. “About five minutes.”
“If you’ll pardon me,” Steve said, standing up. “It probably is a derelict but there may be some supplies.”
* * *
As Sophia blasted her horn, a zombie stumbled out onto the aft deck of the yacht. Female, she was in surprisingly good health.
“I guess we’d better rig up,” Faith said, drawing her sidearm. She fired one handed and hit the zombie in the upper chest. The woman had been at the rail, clawing in the direction of the Toy and flipped forward into the water. “That made things easy.”
“Don’t fall in,” Steve said, pointing at the water. A fin cut through the water and the shark rolled over and tore into the still thrashing zombie.
“Guess not,” Faith said, holstering her pistol. “I think I just figured out why you’d want a gun that shoots underwater…”
* * *
The 50' sportfisher, christened “Reel Fast,” had two more zombies, one dead of apparent starvation, four other dead bodies, including two children, all well gnawed, and no survivors. The dead zombie had been in the engine room and before succumbing to starvation had well and truly trashed it. The engines would probably still work but every other system was damaged. Beyond repair from their point of view.
What it did have was stores. The group had stocked up heavily and apparently been hit by the plague shortly after setting to sea. The reason the female zombie was in such good shape was that a large amount of the stores had been freeze-dried rations, ubiquitously called “Mountain House” although most of these were a different brand. Many of the boxes were in the saloon and open. The zombie had figured out how to rip them open, with her teeth from the look, and had had plenty of supplies for the voyage.
“Where’d she get water?” Faith asked after they’d pieced it together.
“Rain?” Steve said. “The self baler was stuck. There’s a puddle.”
“You’d think she’d get sick,” Faith said, pointing to the water. It was mixed liberally with fecal matter.
“Surprising what people can survive,” Steve said. “They’re still homo sapiens after all. And we’re a resilient species.”
CHAPTER 17
“Can I help?” Chris said to Stacey.
“I don’t know,” Stacey said, smiling. “Can you help?”
“I may be somewhat unconfident about your husband’s plan to clear the seas of zombies,” Chris said, grinning, “but I am a past master of galleys the world over.”
“I was just putting some sushi together,” Stacey said. “We caught a big blackfin. I wasn’t sure what people…”
“Please,” Chris said. “It would help me to spend some time in normal conditions. I’m a chef.”
“Oh,” Stacey said, stepping back and raising her hands. “Go right ahead. I’m not even that good a cook.”
“Do you have a primary role?” Chris said, starting to expertly slice the tuna. “I mean, your daughter… Sophie is it?”
“Sophia,” Stacey said. “Or Soph.”
“She’s the helmsman,” Chris said. “The other one is the bruiser…”
“Call it ‘clearance expert,’” Stacey said, grimacing. “I really hate it but it’s what she enjoys and she’s good at it. And I guess you’d call me the ship’s engineer. I’m…mechanically inclined. Mechanical, electrical. I’m just good at it. Geek stuff sort of.”
“I note you’re all armed,” Chris said.
“Is that an issue?” Stacey asked.
“No, I’d say it’s wise,” Chris said. “For myself… I spent ten years under discipline in the RN. Not great discipline, I was a cook, then a chef. But I am familiar with the need for discipline and authority at sea. Especially in small boats. I’m fine with taking orders from your husband, and you, at least for the time being. I even agree with his plan, grandiose as it seems at first glance. But others…” he shrugged. “Keep your weapons.”
“Any particular others?” Stacey asked, quietly.
“Jack Isham owned a small manufacturing company in the States,” Chris said. “Nori?”
“We packed loads,” Stacey said, gesturing to a cupboard. “We figured we’d be eating a lot of sushi. When we ran out of gas for the stove… When we were running out I boiled up a bunch of rice. And it was sushi for the next week until we got this boat.”
“As I was saying,” Chris said, laying out the nori. “Jack is not a bad person. But he insists on being in control. I guess it’s from being his own boss for so long. So he’s not going to just take orders and will, frankly, be a right pain to have around. Tom Christianson was a drug dealer taking a cruise with his stripper girlfriend. They both made it to the boat. She turned. He really didn’t seem to care. Not someone who looks out for others and I suspect not someone to let into your weapons stash.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stacey said, tapping her pistol. She shook her head. “I guess it was sort of a bad idea for there to be only two of us on the boat, huh?”
“They’re tired,” Chris said, quietly. “They’re getting used to being safe. Somewhat safe, anyway. But, yes, there may be problems in the near future. Sushi.” He presented the expertly arranged plate. “I’ll continue on this. You probably should be near the companionway below and the helm.”
“Got it,” Stacey said, taking the plate. “Why? I mean, not why I should be there…”
“I agree with your husband’s plan,” Chris said. “I’d even say I’m trustworthy enough to arm, but I wouldn’t suggest you believe it until I’ve proven it. And having survived everything I’ve survived, I don’t want to be caught in a firefight.”
* * *
“Sushi,” Isham said. “That’s it?” He took two, though, and stuffed them in his mouth.
“Your stomach has to get used to food again,” Stacey said, sitting down between the group and the helm. And by the companionway below. “Sushi’s surprisingly easy to digest.”
“We’ve been eating a lot of raw fish,” Paula said, taking one and biting it delicately. Her face assumed a beatific expression for a moment. “With rice and nori is exquisite.”
“Anybody who has any energy and a strong stomach?” Steve asked. “Boat’s trashed. Zombie in the engine room. But there are a lot of supplies and we can cross-load fuel and water.”
“I’ll help,” Patrick said, standing up. “I’m not exactly feeling great but the soup helped.”
“Jack?” Steve asked.
“Do I get a gas mask?” Jack asked, taking another sushi roll.
“Sorry,” Steve said. “All out.”
“Then I’ll pass,” Isham said.
“Anybody else?” Steve asked.
“Steve,” Stacey said. “Let’s hold off on cross-load. We have enough stores for now and we know which EPIRB it is. We can always come back. And there are more lifeboats to check. Just leave the EPIRB going and we’ll come back. Let’s get you and Faith back aboard.”
Steve started to speak, then noted where she was sitting.
“Okay,” Steve said. “Sophia, next EPIRB?”
“About ten miles,” Sophia called. “Lifeboat.”
* * *
Faith jumped aboard the inflatable liferaft and cut the wire to the EPIRB with her kukhri. She jumped lightly from the side onto the back deck of the yacht, then bent down and poked the fabric of the raft, holing it.
“I hate the ones that are just empty,” Faith said as the lifeboat started to deflate.
“How many have you cleared?” Paula asked.
“I don’t know,” Faith said, shrugging her shoulders. “You’d have to check the log. Bunch. Clear, Da!”
“Roger,” Steve said. “Next one, Soph.”
“I sort of like the boats,” Faith said, shrugging. She hadn’t bothered to rig up for this one. “Creeping around in the dark looking for zombies may not sound like fun to most people, but it is to me.”
“To each their own,” Paula said, laughing. “I’ll leave it to you.”
“But the lifeboats and liferafts?” Faith said, frowning. “Usually everybody’s dead. And usually cause the zombies got them. What happened with you guys? No zombies?”
“No,” Paula said, her face closing up. “There were infected.”
“So how’d you make it?” Faith asked. “You didn’t have any guns.”
“Right after we hit the water, Chris had us put on light restraints,” Paula said, carefully. “Just light knots. When somebody started to…turn, we could…restrain them.”
“There weren’t any when we got there,” Faith said, then stopped. “I just realized this is something you really don’t want to talk about. Sorry. Me and my big mouth.”
“No,” Paula said. “And, yes. I guess… I’m afraid it would be hard to understand. It’s not something that we even talked about on the boat. Chris and, while he was still with us, a guy named Donnie would…take them out on the aft deck and deal with them.”