To Sail a Darkling Sea - eARC

by John Ringo

  It must have been early on in going to sea because by the time the team boarded, the wife was a clean-picked skeleton from seabirds and the husband was a mummy.

  Despite not having useable respirators, the 70-foot sailboat was, otherwise, chock full of goodies. How people loaded to flee a plague was, in many ways, idiosyncratic. They’d salvaged one boat that was full of books. And they’d loaded as many as they could, since books were the main source of entertainment these days. Books could be traded for other stuff.

  There were a few consistencies, though. Boats with women onboard loaded lots of toilet paper. Sometimes much or all of it had been used up by the time the crew died but generally not. They also loaded lots of feminine hygiene products. This one had both. They’d found one boat that must have been owned by a restauranteur or a chef. It was positively packed with spices as well as various tasty goodies.

  But there were several consistent salvage materials. Just about every boat had loads, boatloads, of alcohol, jewelry and, often, fine cigars. It was, like, the first thing most people packed. They’d grab their jewelry and booze and smokes if they had them. Then there was the fact that they tended to drink the cheap stuff first.

  So when they boarded a boat, they almost always found some really nice jewelry and high-quality booze. The kind of people who could afford yachts tended to have both.

  “Lots of halfsies,” Paula said, looking over the bar in the saloon.

  “Mix and match,” Rusty said.

  To conserve space, they tended to combine partially full bottles. They tried to make sure it was the same “type,” bourbon with bourbon, scotch with scotch. But mistakes happened. Gin and vodka was okay. Rum and scotch not so much.

  “There is a god somewhere that is angry because of combining stuff like Cutty Sark with fifty-year-old Laphroaig,” Paula said. “We are one day going to run afoul of him and he will raise a great storm to punish us.”

  “What is… Famous Grouse?” Rusty said.

  “Scotch,” Paula said, hefting a box of pasta onto the deck.

  “Got a case of that,” Rusty said. “Now if I could just find some shoes… ”

  They’d turned up a set of max sized galoshes on a boat but so far the security specialist didn’t have any real shoes. Or pants that fit. His jeans fit around his narrowed waist but stopped mid-calf and were a bit tight in the crotch. Not that Paula minded the latter.

  “We could strap a couple of inflatables to them,” Paula said.

  “Very funny… ”

  * * *

  “And we’re clear,” Sophia said. “There’s a ship to the southeast the Last At Sea spotted. Said there were some infecteds on deck so they banked off. We’re to check it to see if it’s worth sending a salvage and recovery crew.”

  “I’ll get my gear ready,” Rusty said. “I hope I don’t have to do one of those boardings like Faith did.”

  “Eh, I’ll just pot ’em off with what my sister would call a Barbie gun… ”

  * * *

  “What is this thing, a ferry?” Paula asked, fingers in her ears.

  The vessel named Pit Stop was a bit over a hundred feet long with a large bridge and presumably crew area forward and a low-set rear deck that could clearly be opened up at the back. The back deck had a vintage car, an inflatable and four pallets of stores piled on it. It sort of looked like a ferry. The difference was, it was also rather thin and lean looking. The design was actually vaguely similar to the cutter they’d cleared.

  “No clue,” Sophia said. “But if you’d give me a minute, this isn’t as easy as it looks.”

  Sophia was laid out on the flying bridge with ear-muffs on and an accurized M4 with a Leupold 9x scope propped up on a cushion. She’d wrapped the strap around her arm and was carefully preparing her shots.

  Sophia was more than prepared to give her sister props for close-quarters zombie fighting. Faith was a brawler, always had been. When they went to tactical ranges, Faith regularly beat her scores.

  When they went to target ranges, Faith went home pouting. Sophia had been planning on trying out for the Olympic shooting team when she got a little older.

  Faith was a brawler. Sophia was a sniper.

  The problem was catenary, the relative motion of two vessels bouncing up and down and side to side on the ocean. It meant your target was always moving all over the damned place. Which just meant that you waited for the right moment to take the shot. If you tried to follow the target, you ended up chasing it all over hell and gone. The US Navy SEALs might have figured out a way to chase the target. Sophia had time. She waited.

  * * *

  There was a crack and Paula flinched as one of the infected dropped with an almost unnoticeable hole in his forehead and the back blown out of his head.

  “Damn,” the mate said.

  “Come to Seawolf,” Sophia whispered. “Be good little zombies. Yuck… they do eat brains… ”

  * * *

  “That’s why so many survived,” Sophia said.

  As a skipper, and an Acting Ensign, whatever that was, she really shouldn’t be doing boardings. But when they’d left the main squadron, Rusty was the only volunteer for “hostile boarding specialist” that she could scrounge up. And clearing something this size was a two-person job. Paula and Patrick were trustworthy to hold the boat. Not so good at clearing zombies.

  Fortunately, one of the ships they’d cleared had some double-ought and a couple of pump shotguns. So they both had adequate firearms. Rusty had some body armor borrowed from the Coast Guard. It wasn’t really his size, as usual. And he still didn’t have real shoes.

  Needs must.

  The reason for the surviving infected was a set of bags of rice on the pallets. The zombies had gnawed into the rice bags and had been feasting on the rice. And from the looks of things, the occasional bird that had tried the same.

  There was also freshish rainwater pooled in the inflatable on deck.

  “Water, food, zombies,” Sophia said, pointing. “No fresh water, no zombies.”

  “I wouldn’t drink that,” Rusty said. The water was clearly foul. Then he thought about it. “Yeah, come to think of it, if I had that on the Voyage I’d have drunk it.”

  “Interesting fact,” Sophia said, cautiously rounding one of the pallets. “With water like that, the trick is to use an enema.”

  “Seriously?” Rusty said, grimacing.

  “Your rectum sucks up water from your poop,” Sophia said. “It’s why it comes out solid. The water gets drawn out by the rectum. And it also filters out the bad stuff, obviously. So if you’ve got really foul water and you really need it, you just give it to yourself as an enema.”

  “I wish I’d known that on the Voyage,” Rusty said. “I was mixing water and urine.”

  “Which was why you survived,” Sophia said. “Won’t work with salt water, by the way. But you can even survive, for a while, on small quantities of salt water. The problem is, it’s actually the salinity of the human body. So your body can’t really absorb it well. But when you’re really dehydrated, your salinity increases compared to salt water and you can survive. For a while. Then you go fricking nuts and die. Also the problem with urine. When you’re recycling, you’re still losing water and the salinity, not to mention urea, gets higher and higher and you die.”

  “I really don’t want to be back in that situation again,” Rusty said.

  “And, hopefully, you won’t,” Sophia said, regarding the open hatch on the deck. “Any zombies in there?”

  “Want me to yell?” Rusty asked.

  “Nah,” Sophia said. “I’m pretty sure any that are alive would have come for the feast… ”

  * * *

  The only “survivor” hadn’t. He’d hanged himself in the small cabin he was trapped in. But most of the belowdecks watertight doors were closed. The engine room was in good shape, as was the bridge. Pretty much the only areas messed up by the infecteds was a companionway. And the cabin with the suicide was a bit rank
.

  “Good find,” Sophia said, examining the main engine controls. When she’d first seen an engine room like this, she’d thought she’d never understand one. Now, while she was no expert, she generally knew how to get the engine started on something this size. If there was any fuel and juice. She went through the procedure for engine main start—it was an air-powered starting system—and hit the button to start it cranking.

  “Come on, baby,” she muttered. She could tell the batteries were low, but the starter generator did turn over. Then the big diesels rumbled to life.

  “Beauty, eh!” she shouted. They’d both donned earmuffs.

  “Nice!” Rusty shouted, grinning.

  She went up to the bridge to check the systems. There were readouts in the engine room but she understood bridge systems better. Besides, it was easier to talk. Everything, so far, looked in the green.

  “Rusty, go get some of daddy’s little crawlies and drop them on the bodies on the deck and in the cabin. Then head back to the boat. We don’t have a prize crew so I’m going to con this back to the Large. Just follow me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rusty said.

  “Don’t fall behind,” she said.

  * * *

  “Okay, so I’ve got to slow down,” she muttered. The Pit Stop was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a speed boat. But it was faster than the No Tan Lines. A lot faster.

  * * *

  “It’s a crew supply vessel,” Kuzma said.

  “Details?” Sophia said, yawning. She’d had to keep awake non-stop heading back to the flotilla.

  “Details, sir,” Kuzma said, without rancor.

  “Sorry, sir,” Sophia said.

  “No problem,” Kuzma said. “The Coast Guard is sort of easy on the whole ‘sir/ma’am’ thing. But the Navy’s not. And I’m trying, at fairly long range, to get you ready to assume the mantle of a Navy officer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sophia said. “Understood. But… What is a crew supply vessel? Bringing supplies for crews or supplying with crews?”

  “Both, either, depends on the configuration and mission,” Kuzma said. “Generally they’re faster than other ships their size and they’re used to do things like run crews out to oil rigs or supply ships like the Alpha at sea or at least in out-of-the-way coves. That was probably what this one was used for, based on the, you know, antique car on it. Which means there’s another megayacht out there somewhere. Well, there are probably lots of megayachts out there somewhere. Somewhere is the key.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sophia said, yawning again. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Been there,” Kuzma said. “However, there is one other area to cover. I understand that you did not have a prize crew available. However, in the future, while I can understand your doing boardings until we can get you another security officer, you should have put two of your crew aboard the Pit Stop to con it back or called for a prize crew. The Lines is your boat. You’re the skipper. You don’t leave your boat. Understood, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sophia said.

  “When you’re a bit more clear-headed I’ll go over some of the very bad things that have happened in history when skippers leave their boats at sea,” Kuzma said. “Repeat after me. Do not leave the boat.”

  “Do not leave the boat,” Sophia said. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  * * *

  Rusty was trying to stay awake. He really was. It was just there was nothing to do on what the Navy called “midwatch.” They boat had an autopilot which currently had it cruising at just about walking pace on a general “southwest” heading. He just had to sit at the helm, not touching anything, keep an eye out they weren’t going to hit a drifting boat or freighter and try to stay awake.

  They’d picked up about a dozen refugees in the past week, mostly from one big lifeboat. They were dossed down below. Everyone was dossed down below except one Rusty Fulmer Bennett III who had drawn midwatch.

  He stood up, walked around the small bridge and sat back down. Which was about when he noticed a small red icon flashing on the control screens.

  He looked at it, rubbed his eyes and frowned.

  “ ‘Main breaker overload fault’?” He said just about the time the icon got brighter and the console started going “Breeep! Breeep! ” Then another icon popped up.

  “ ‘Engine room fire alarm’?” Rusty said. There was a moment of confusion before it kicked in. “ENGINE ROOM FIRE ALARM?”

  * * *

  “What the hell is that sound?” Harvey Tharpe said, rubbing his eyes as he opened the cabin door.

  Being on this yacht was better than being on the lifeboat but not much. They were packed in like sardines. There was food but being woken up in the middle of the night by a blaring “Squeee! Squeee! ” was not his idea of fun.

  The former businessman had been “robust” before being cast adrift on a lifeboat in a zombie apocalypse. He still had his height and some solidity. So he was more than a bit surprised when the short, blonde skipper of the boat, wearing not much more than a camisole and panties smashed him out of the way like an NFL linebacker on her way aft.

  “MOVE PEOPLE!” the boat captain shouted, continuing to hammer her way through the crowd of refugees.

  * * *

  “Fuck a freaking duck,” Sophia said, opening the door to the engine compartment. The smoke wasn’t so bad she needed a respirator but it was bad. And they were dead in the water. All the power except the shrieking alarm was out.

  She threw the main battery disconnect, then picked up one of the industrial fire extinguishers and played it over the exterior of the main breakers which were the source of the fire.

  “Skipper?” Paula said, picking another one up.

  “We need to get it open before we use them all up,” Sophia said, putting her hand on the extinguisher. “Get Rusty to get all the passengers up, out and on the sundeck.”

  She slid one hand into a rubber glove and popped open the main breaker panel. The whole thing was smoldering so she played the rest of the fire extinguisher over it until it was cold. A tick checker showed that the whole thing was electrically cold as well. Now if only the batteries hadn’t discharged their whole load into the panel and killed themselves as well.

  “What can I do, Skipper?” Patrick said groggily. The “engineer” was wearing not much more than the skipper.

  “Get a hand-held,” Sophia said. “See if there’s a sub in range. Tell them we had a major electrical fire. Fire is under control. No power at this time. May be repairable but we may need assistance. Don’t at this time but may. Got it? Do not call mayday or PON-PON. Do not.”

  “Got it, Skipper,” Patrick said.

  “And get these people the HELL OUT OF MY ENGINE COMPARTENT!”

  * * *

  “Not to alarm you, Skipper… ” Paula said as Sophia was jumping another wire.

  The whole damned panel was screwed. She was having to rebuild it from scratch. On the other hand, every time they cleared a boat they grabbed anything resembling parts and often stripped out things like the breaker box. They had a lot of parts, breakers, wire and what-not stashed in various nooks and crannies in the boat. However…

  “How full are the bilges?” Sophia asked.

  The No Tan Lines, while a great boat and definitely better than her previous one, had its issues. One of said issues being a small leak somewhere. They’d tried and tried to run it down but never could. It normally wasn’t a problem. They bilge pumps handled it fine. Unless they were off-line for six hours while the boat’s skipper, with some fumble-fingered help from the boat’s “engineer,” completely rebuilt the main breaker box which, not coincidentally, supplied power to said bilge pumps. Sophia had been noticing the way the boat was slowly getting more and more logy.

  “Little water in the lower deck,” Paula said, carefully. The skipper clearly didn’t need more stress. “Just a skim.”

  “I love pressure,” Sophia said. “I eat it for breakfast. Patrick, under the bed in the number three
sleeping compartment there’s a bundle of green wire in a box. Somewhere in that box should be another Westinghouse twenty-five amp. Just bring the whole box.”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper,” Patrick said, scurrying out of the compartment.

  “ ‘It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor...’ ” Sophia sang, listening to the slap, slap, slap of the rising water below as she ripped out another burned wire and tossed it on the deck. “ ‘Won’t you be mine, could you be mine… ?’ ”

  * * *

  “Alexandria, No Tan Lines, over,” Sophia said, leaning into the blast from the air conditioning on the bridge. The engine compartment, besides stinking of ozone and burned rubber, had been hot as hell.

  “Alexandria. How’s it going, over?”

  “Please relay to flotilla that we are back in business,” Sophia said. “Although we’re completely out of parts for a main breaker box. On the other hand, the one we’ve got is practically brand new, now.”

  “Roger, No Tan Lines. Will relay. Glad to hear you’re okay. Alexandria out.”

  “And with that, I’m going back to bed,” Sophia said, hanging up the radio. “Somebody’s got it,” she added, waving a salute at Paula.

  “I’ll take care of it, Skipper,” Paula said.

  * * *

  “Paula,” Sophia said the next afternoon as they were cross-loading refugees to the Living Large.

  “Yes, Skip?” Paula said.

  “Refresh my memory,” Sophia said. “Did we have a fire in the engine room or did I dream that?”

  “We had a fire in the engine compartment, Skipper.”

  “Last night?” Sophia said.

  “Yes,” Paula said, frowning.

  “Did it get handled?”

  “You put it out and rebuilt the breaker box. You don’t remember?”

  “I think I must have done it in my sleep,” Sophia said. “I thought I was just dreaming. I’m getting too old for this shit… ”

  CHAPTER 6

  АлтыÏнного воÏра веÏшают, а полтиÏнного чеÏствуют.