To Sail a Darkling Sea btr-2

by John Ringo

  “Not Flatbush,” Zumwald said, snorting. “Please. Riverside if anything.”

  “Okay, Riverside.”

  “You’re just going to give me Riverside?” Zumwald said, snorting again. “Like you’ve got that power?”

  “By then, yes,” Steve said. “There will have to be a way to redistribute resources. All of it, no. Most of it, yes. Can I absolutely promise that? No. If I have the authority when that time comes, you get all the property in Riverside not held by survivors or people with provenance.”

  “Seriously?” Zumwald said.

  “Seriously,” Steve said. “I don’t want to live there. And there aren’t going to be many people surviving in those mansions. There may have to be some lag period to vestment. Some of the owners may have fled elsewhere and survived. But when the vestment period lapses, it’s all yours.”

  “You’re just going to give people land?” Zumwald said.

  “Somebody is going to have to,” Steve said. “When Ohio was originally settled, the plots that were granted were about ten square miles per homesteader. One of the reasons it was so easy to colonize, by the way, was that it was well maintained by Native American tribes who had been wiped out by, guess what, plague. There will be scavengers before we’re done clearing Miami. Distributing salvage will be one of the tough parts of this job at that point. As will enforcing it.”

  “That’s assuming you can clear it,” Zumwald said. “And you’re still be cadgy about that.”

  “Yes, I am,” Steve said. “It’s going to be a massive endeavor. And most areas the best that we’ll be able to achieve is something like La Puntilla. There aren’t many infected. You can move around if you’re armed and know how to use a weapon.”

  “That makes the property a little less attractive,” Zumwald said.

  “Oh, think, Ernest,” Steve snapped. “You’re smart. Apply your brain. You want it cleared out? You hire a salvage company that has some specific rights. They have the guns. They clear it out for some of the salvage. It’s not hard.”

  “And if they turn on me?” Zumwald said, sourly.

  “That is actually what government is for, Ernest,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Enforcement of contract law. That is, at base, pretty much its entire purpose. Everything else just gets ladled on by idiots.”

  “That’s not communism,” Zumwald said.

  “I said I’m running a communism now,” Steve said. “Free market will kick in pretty quick once we’re not stuck on these boats. Hell, it already has. There’s trading going on. People think it’s black market. I think it’s great. I just need to figure out, again, what is and is not workable. Not ‘legal’ or illegal. Just workable. So contracts can be enforced by the government and not black marketeers. I’m a free market guy. Just doesn’t work when we’re all still on the ragged edge. Then it’s tyranny and, yeah, communism. Or something like it. We’ll get to free market. But we’re not going to see LA, or New York, as you remember it, any time soon. Not in our lifetime. Not in our great grandchildren’s.”

  “Yeah,” Zumwald said.

  “So, returning to the original issue,” Steve said. “I need someone to do the pre-planning for our next float. And future missions. If you take the job, you’ll start working with Isham today. You’ll need to get a basis for what’s required. Then build a plans and ops team and figure out the float. For which you won’t have much time.”

  “Great,” Zumwald said, frowning.

  “And the quarters and the rest,” Steve said. “The main thing, though, is the power and the prestige. The multitudes bowing and scraping. And, eventually, Riverside.”

  “If you can swing it,” Zumwald said.

  “There will be politics involved,” Steve said, shrugging. “You’re generally good at that. If you have a reason to support my position, that’s a benefit. And, as with Isham, if you fuck me you had better run far and fast.”

  “You really did miss your calling, Smith,” Zumwald said, laughing.

  * * *

  “Oh, thank God,” Sophia said as the Senorita cleared the harbor and hit the first rollers.

  A slight squall had come through the night before and the water was a bit lively. But nothing that the Senorita couldn’t handle and it seemed as eager to hit the waves as its captain. Not so much the crew.

  “I think I’ve sort of lost my sea legs,” Paula said. “I am mildly queasy.”

  “Not me,” Sophia said. “I am sooo ready to go see some new harbors that don’t stink of rotting bodies and rotting liners.”

  “Can I come up?” Olga asked.

  The girl had been a late addition. Turned out she had significant civilian shooting experience.

  “Sure,” Sophia said. “As long as you promise not to hijack the boat.”

  “Very humorous,” Olga said, sitting down on one of the benches of the flying bridge. “You forget, I was the bait, not the hook.”

  “You’re forgiven,” Sophia said. “And I was joking. I wouldn’t have let you on my boat if I thought you were going to take it over.”

  “How the hell did you end up on the Money?” Paula said. “You said you were an American. Where did the Russian accent go?”

  “I can get it back if you want,” Olga said, with a Slavic accent. “But I grew up in Chicago. And I’m not Russian, I’m Ukrainian. Yes, there’s a difference and yes I care. I moved to the US when I was six with my family. My father sort of had to leave. The FSB had recruited him and he told them to fuck off. They did not take it well.”

  “FSB?” Paula said.

  “Russian spy agency,” Sophia said. “Was he normally a spy?”

  “Sort of,” Olga said. “He was mostly a foreign military attaché prior to that. FSB wanted him to… do some things in the Middle East he did not agree with. It wasn’t even spying. It was, basically, money laundering. When he said no, well, there were issues? It was not even legal as far as legal ever matters in Russia. He became a liability. I don’t really remember it very well except a safe-house in Turkey. We were there for some time. Then we were in Chicago where I grew up.”

  “So how’d you end up with Mister ‘I have a Rocket Launcher’?” Sophia asked.

  “I was on a modeling tour in Europe,” Olga said, shrugging. “You know, it is hard to get a job as an international model these days if you are not Russian? So I told them I was Russian. I speak Russian. And read it. And French. And Spanish. German. Italian. Ukrainian obviously.”

  “Wow,” Paula said. “I mean, why?”

  “I wanted to be a spy,” Olga said, shrugging. “I applied to the CIA. I was turned down. I did not meet the psychological profile. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Basically, I have a hard time taking orders from idiots.”

  “Don’t think of me as an idiot and I won’t give you an idiotic order,” Sophia said. “But if I give you one, you’d better do it. Because it’s probably going to mean surviving or dying.”

  “You I don’t mind,” Olga said. “Or I wouldn’t have joined your crew. Don’t ask me about Nazar. So I was in Spain with the troupe. When the Plague hit, they shut down travel. And all my guns were in America. In a zombie apocalypse. I was quite upset.”

  “You should have seen Faith when they told her she had to be disarmed in New York,” Sophia said. “Then they gave her a taser and that was mistake. What kind of guns?”

  “I like that your family prefers the AK series,” Olga said. “I really do think it’s superior to the M16 series in many ways. Much more reliable. They say it is less accurate but that is at longer ranges. The round is not designed for long range.”

  “I can hit at a thousand meters with my accurized AK,” Sophia said. “It’s a matter of knowing the ballistics. It’s not real powerful at that range, but try doing the same thing with an M4. I’ll wait.”

  “Oh, jeeze, you two,” Paula said. “Get a room.”

  “So continue with how you got on the yacht,” Sophia said. “We don’t want our cook getting all woozy with gun geeki
ng.”

  “We were called by the agency and asked if anyone wanted to ‘catch a ride’ on a yacht,” Olga said. “When they said who owned the boat… I nearly said no. We all knew Nazar. Or at least of him. Not a nice man, as you might have noticed. We knew what we were getting into. But then we were told he had vaccine… ” she shrugged again.

  “Accepting Nazar’s offer was perhaps not the worst decision I have made in my life. I survived. Not how I would have preferred to survive, but I was vaccinated and I survived. But I did not even hint that I knew more about his men’s weapons than they did. They were pigs. Tough guys. But none of them were military and none of them really knew what they were doing with them. When they brought out the RPG, I nearly peed myself. Irinei had no idea what he was doing with it. I don’t think he even knew the safety was off.”

  “You know how to use an RPG?” Sophia said.

  “My family liked the United States very much,” Olga said, sadly. “We all like guns and anything that goes boom. And in the US, you could find people who had licenses for anything. I’ve fired an RPG, yes.”

  “Well, if we find an RPG you can have it,” Sophia said.

  “Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, clapping her hands girlishly.

  “But we’ll be keeping the rounds and the launcher separate,” Sophia said.

  “Oh, my, yes,” Olga said. “And both will have to be in a well sealed container. This salt air would cause corrosion quickly.”

  “I guess you miss your guns?” Paula said. “That’s not a request for an inventory and loving description of each, by the way. Got that enough from Faith.”

  “I do,” Olga said. “But I miss my books more.”

  “Books,” Paula said. “Now you’re talking my language.”

  “I have more books than shelves,” Olga said. “And I had many shelves. I collect old manuscripts when I can afford them.”

  “If we do any land clearance, look in the libraries and big houses,” Sophia said. “I bet around here you can probably pick up some great stuff.”

  “This is okay?” Olga said. “We can, salvage?”

  “If there’s time and if we clear the town,” Sophia said. “Sure.”

  “Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, kissing her on the cheek.

  “Okay, now you definitely need to get a room.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The vote, I thought, means nothing to women. We should be armed.

  Edna O’Brien

  “Okay,” Sophia said. “Don’t think we’re clearing this one.”

  The town of El Chorillo was not at water line. The marina was at the waterline. The town was on top of a two hundred foot bluff. Most of it. The rest was condominiums built into the bluff in racks up the to what was a small mountain. There was a large public park right at the waterline behind a massive rock breakwater.

  “Senorita,” Chen radioed. “Drive into the marina and check it out. All I see is sailboats.”

  “Roger,” Sophia said, engaging the motor on slow. “Paula. Get up forward and check the water.”

  “Roger,” Paula said.

  “Check the water?” Olga said. She’d changed into a bathing suit. The girl was about covered in fine scars including one on her chest that didn’t look like a surgery scar. More like a knife. Sophia had decided she wasn’t going to ask.

  “There was a sunken boat in the harbor at La Playa,” Sophia said, entering the marina carefully. “Nobody noticed it until the last day and thank goodness nobody hit it. But we’re getting extra careful. There’s no real channel here. That shouldn’t be an issue. Hopefully.”

  “All clear so far,” Paula called.

  From the entrance, Sophia could make the same determination. There were some off-shore power boats, though. And the usual zombies. Most of them were in shadow, asleep. But she counted at least six in view. When you saw six, you knew there were more like two dozen. Most of the sailboat cabins were open. They’d pop up like fleas if she cranked the radio.

  “No really ocean capable yachts,” she radioed. “I mean, thirty-fives, but that’s it. There are some big Bayliner kind of boats. Is that what we’re looking for, over?”

  “Do they look hell on wheels fast, over?”

  “Negative,” Sophia said. “Thirty maybe thirty-five knots.”

  “I’d say this is a bust.”

  “Roger,” Sophia said, backing and filling in the turning basin. “Headed back out.”

  “Division, Guppy.”

  “Go, Gup.”

  “We going to shoot ’em up, over?”

  “Negative. We’re under time to find boats and such. Only where there’s a good salvage target.”

  “Okay, but you see the survivors, over?”

  “Survivors?” Olga said, sitting up and shading her eyes.

  “Top of the cliff. Set of condos. Waving a sheet. Bunch of ’em. Over.”

  “Shit,” Sophia said, looking up. “Son of a bitch.”

  The condo had ropes hanging from several of the balconies as well as growing plants. There was exterior piping that looked as if it was used for collecting rainwater. Several groups of people were trying to attract their attention. There were quite a few survivors. At least thirty.

  “Boise, you got your periscope up, over?”

  “Roger, LitClearOne. We confirm multiple survivors.”

  “Can you get up with Squadron and retrans the video? I’m pretty sure this is not a security team objective, over.”

  “Stand by.”

  “We could do this,” Olga said. “We can’t just leave them!”

  “Olga,” Sophia said. “You can shoot. You had to qualify for the position. That’s different than fighting as part of a fire team up to the condos then clearing those. Hang on. Division, going noise hot to demonstrate the issue to my new security people.”

  Sophia had been barely puttering along. The Senorita’s exhaust was below the waterline and she didn’t make much noise. Now she turned on the stereo and cranked it.

  As piano opening of “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’ boomed across the marina, zombies started pouring from everywhere. Sure enough, they’d been sleeping in the sailboats. Now they were howling. And their howling started to set off every zombie in the town. It was apparent that there were at least hundreds if not thousands.

  “Oh,” Olga said, looking around.

  “His comrades fought beside him,” Sophia sang as she puttered over to the public park. There was a line of buoys marking a “no crossing” zone and she puttered right up by it then dropped her anchor. “But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best… ”

  “So the CIA decided, they wanted Roland dead… ” Olga sang in harmony. She’d gone below and gotten her M4 while the boat was being repositioned. “Permission to do some target practice, Captain?” she sang in time to the song.

  “Division, doing some catenary target practice,” Sophia said.

  “Roger, Senorita.”

  * * *

  “Jeepers,” the skipper of the Boise said. “COB, I’m defining this as a morale boost video. Retrans to the rest of the boats.”

  “On that, sir,” the Chief of Boat said. “Bella Senoritas indeed. Damn those are some fine legs.”

  “You betcha.”

  * * *

  “It is hard to hit them with a moving boat,” Olga said. She was laid out in the prone position on the sundeck forward. “Or are they not noticing the 5.56? There is not much rocking.”

  “Each,” Sophia said. “Both. Takes a lot of practice.” They’d both put on hearing protection.

  One of the group of zombies lined up on the waterfront finally stumbled over and fell. When it did, the group fell on it, ripping at it with their teeth.

  “Gross,” Olga said, continuing to fire.

  Seagulls clustered around, trying to find a way through the infected. Which drew more infected. Some of them waded out into the water. Then one went under and the water turned red. The others didn’t seem to
notice. They just stopped, waving their arms angrily, slapping the water and howling, when they were low-chest deep. Another went under. Then another.

  “Swimming is contra indicated,” Paula shouted. She’d put in earplugs.

  “Are those two screwing?” Olga asked.

  Sophia picked up a pair of binos and looked through them.

  “Yup,” she said, lowering the binos. “They do that when there are these feeding frenzies. They stay away from each other till there’s a source of food like this. Then they swarm and tussle over it. Sometimes they start screwing in the middle of the tussle. You’ll see a male run down a female, or sometimes a smaller male, and try to eat it and screw it at the same time. Although usually it’s screw then eat.”

  “Gross,” Olga said, taking another shot.

  “Don’t get Faith started on it,” Sophia said. “A couple of times when she’s been in scrums, the males realize she’s female. There’s no way to get through on her gear but she still doesn’t like it.”

  “What do you do?” Olga asked. “I mean, if you’re in a… what was the word?”

  “Scrum,” Sophia said. “Basically, if you’re at the bottom of the dog pile. There’s a reason that Faith carries a lot of knives. Apparently they get less romantic when you cut their parts off.”

  “Lots of knives,” Olga said. “Got it.”

  “Yes, you did,” Sophia said. “Oh, you meant the knives. But you hit that last one.”

  “I was aiming for the one next to him,” Olga said. “This is hard.”

  “Senorita, Division.”

  “Division, Senorita,” Sophia answered in a Spanish accent. “Aqui, over.”

  “Bringing up the gunboats. Squadron is punching down a Marine team. We’re to do the zombie boogie, primary clearance at dawn. Sending DivTwo down to the next cluster to check it out.”

  “Roger, Division.”

  “I wonder which Marines they’re sending,” Paula said.

  “Three guesses,” Sophia said. “And Hope and Charity were unavailable.”

  “Zombie boogie?” Olga asked.

  “We crank the music all night,” Sophia said. “Have a party. Lots of lights.”