by Jeff Thomson
Their BM1 had become a zombie.
102
In quieter, less chaotic, less fraught with murdering shipmates-turned zombie times, MK2 Frank Roessler had, on occasion, voiced, with some jealousy, the opinion that the Deckies stole the Engineers’ thunder by laying claim to the term “Big Fucking Hammer,” (BFH). That they used said implement to work on the chains for the buoys that were the Sass’s stock in trade, was entirely beside the point. It had been discussed at great length during the annual extended deployment down to American Samoa, with Deck Force insisting their claim took priority, and so the Engineers couldn’t use it. This was absurd nonsense, of course, but a ship full of bored men on extended deployment with lots of time on their hands, generated such nonsense like a wind turbine generates electricity. Heated arguments had been made with raised voices, and the potential for fisticuffs had not been beyond the realm of possibility, and so (in the interest of crew harmony) the Engineers had acquiesced - sort of.
The thing about engines on something the size of the Sass, was that they were big. Not as big as, say, those on an oil tanker, but pretty damned big, nonetheless. Naturally, therefore, many of the nuts and bolts holding those engines together were also pretty damned big, and thus required the use of wrenches that were just as damned big. In fact, they were deemed fucking big, as in Big Fucking Wrench, an example of which (its handle emblazoned with the letters BFW in bright red paint) was currently being used by MK2 Frank Roessler to cave in the skull of his Engineering Officer.
The man had gouged out the eyes - gouged out the fucking eyes - of DC3 Mike (Ski) Kiepelkowski, who was lying on the deck with his face in a pool of his own blood. Frank had seen it happen, had watched it happen in dumb horror, too shocked to move, until the EO turned his/its attention onto him, at which point, Frank moved with speed and agility, spurred on by abject terror. He’d seen the wrench on the table near where Ski had been sitting, grabbed it and swung in that disconnected, otherworldly way that sometimes happens when someone acts on pure instinct. His aim had been true, the blow had been solid, and now CWO4 Kinkaid, his head misshapen and bleeding like a Las Vegas fountain, lay on the deck, his own blood mingling with Ski’s.
Frank stared at the bodies on the deck, his heart beating like a Keith Moon drum riff, his breathing sharp in his lungs. The wrench - its handle long enough to reach the deck - hung loosely in his hand.
For one moment, then two, then three, he thought of nothing. In the fourth moment, however, he thought: Where’s Maury?
103
The .357 kicked like a son of a bitch as Skizzy Pete fired it at the head of the man he saw coming around the corner. The recoil and noise of it shocked him, and his aim sucked. The first bullet slammed into the man’s shoulder, the second ricocheted off the steel wall in front of him, and the third went sailing over the side of the boat. The guy dropped like a stone, but he was still trying to bring the rifle around toward Pete, and so Pete shot him again, this time hitting the flesh of his gut. Blood squirted from the belly wound, making Pete want to puke, but his gag reflex was interrupted by a shout from behind him.
Another guy came around the opposite corner, carrying a shotgun. Skizzy Pete ran like the scared little bitch he was, leaping over the fallen form of the man he’d just shot. He did not run fast enough.
The roar behind him followed by searing pain in his right butt cheek combined into the thought: I’m shot in the ass, but he kept right on running - now hobbling - just as fast as he fucking could. More by instinct and self-preservation than by any sort of skill, he snapped a couple shots of his own over his shoulder. He doubted any of them found a target, but astoundingly, they seemed to work. No other blasts from the shotgun followed.
Ahead, he saw two ladders: one close, going up, and another further along, going down. The one up was closer, so he took it.
A third man (how many of these fuckers are there?) popped into view at the top of the ladder. He was carrying a pistol. Skizzy Pete paused. The man above paused. They looked at each other for a suspended moment, then both pointed at the other and fired.
There was one final kick from the .357 in Pete’s hand, followed by a CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, as the hammer fell on empty chambers, and Skizzy Pete Hannity knew he was well and truly fucked.
The first bullet struck him high on the left shoulder. The impact swung him around, and he started to fall backwards. He flailed with his right arm, dropping the pistol, and trying to grab the ladder rail, but it did him no good. The second round hit him in the leg, the third missed completely, then the fourth, fifth and sixth hit him square in the chest, and Skizzy Pete was no more.
104
OS2 Amber Winkowski sat on the porcelain throne and waited. She considered herself to be a patient woman. She wasn’t flighty, wasn’t headstrong (most of the time), and wasn’t reckless. But sitting on a toilet with the seat and lid down waiting for a zombie to bleed out in the next room was about to drive her right out of her ever-loving mind.
She looked at her watch. It had been at least an hour. Or was it two? She couldn’t remember checking the time when she locked herself back in the head after skewering the Zombie-Jackass. Her butt was getting numb; she knew that much.
Okay, so, think... The human body held how many liters of blood? She didn’t remember that, either. And a single, horrifying thought brought gorge up into her throat:
The virus causes memory-loss.
Her heart stopped beating, as if her arteries had suddenly clogged with every single piece of cheese-laden pizza she’d ever eaten. It was trying to beat, trying to push the blood through her veins, but it couldn’t quite seem to make it move, as if her life-fluid had turned to ice.
Could I have it? Could I be turning? If I was, how would I know? Would I know?
There was the age-old question: If you were crazy, would you know it? She didn’t feel crazy. She felt fine (her numb butt notwithstanding). She hadn’t caught the cold. She hadn’t caught any cold in years - a decade or more, come to think of it. She was alarmingly healthy, although her diet sometimes made her wonder how that was possible.
She hadn’t felt feverish before, and didn’t feel so now. She felt fine, all things considered. Her situation sucked, and the seating arrangements in this head left something to be desired, but she didn’t feel the least bit sick. So why the memory loss?
Stress, you idiot.
The internal condemnation popped into her mind, was considered, agreed upon, then shunted aside as having no more significance to the problem at hand. And the problem at hand was that she was going stir crazy.
She contemplated that lovely thought for a moment, and realized this was only the beginning. Sooner or later the zombie in the Comm Center would bleed out, would be dead, and she could leave the porcelain throne behind and give her butt a rest. However, even after she was able to access the Comm Center, she’d still be trapped inside a locked and windowless room in a building filled with unfriendly used-to-be people who would gleefully tear her to shreds. She didn’t know from stir crazy - yet.
With a small groan, she rose on half-asleep legs. Her joints hurt. This was an after-effect of the adrenaline rush that had enabled her to become a spear-wielding warrior goddess. The incongruity of the juxtaposition of Amber Winkowski and Warrior Goddess made her chuckle. Then it made her guffaw. Then it made her laugh with a hilarity tinged with just a little bit of hysteria. She was losing her grip, and she knew it. She got herself back under control.
Screw this, she thought. Time to take the bull by the horns and wrestle that nasty dilemma to the ground. Time to check on the zombie.
105
Jonesy burst through the Bridge door in time to see Molly jab a pair of stainless steel dividers into LTjg Bloominfeld’s left eye.
Dividers of the type they used on Sassafras were six inches long, and ended in two sharp pins, instead of a pin and a pencil of the variety normally found in high school geometry classes. They were used for measuring distances on paper nauti
cal charts.
They also, it appeared, worked just fine as a way to kill a zombie.
The thing that had been Craig Bloominfeld reared back off of Molly, staggered a couple of steps, ineffectually swiping at the metal implement sticking from its eye, then fell to the deck, after tripping over the still and blood-splattered form of Jack Ross. It groaned and cried and writhed for a few moments, twitched a couple times, and stopped moving altogether.
Jonesy surveyed the carnage. Borgeson lay bent backwards over the console, his chest a mass of gore, his blood pooling on the deck below the helm. Ross lay slumped over, facing the bulkhead, his neck craned at a horrible angle, the back of his skull looking as if someone had taken a jackhammer to it. Above him, the readout screen of the deep fathometer was cracked in three places and smeared with brain matter and small chunks of bone and hair. Molly watched him taking it all in. He saw her looking, saw her hold her breath, as if in anticipation of a blow he had no intention of delivering.
He looked at Bloominfeld again, at the dividers protruding from his eye socket. How many times, he wondered, had he dreamt of doing that to one of the Junior Officers? Not Bloominfeld, though. He’d been one of the good ones, but Jonesy knew plenty of boot Ensigns who’d come up and snatched the dividers right from his hand, while he was in the midst of taking a fix, and every time it happened, he’d had brief visions of snatching them back and stabbing them into the arrogant fuckers’ eyes.
He looked at Molly, and tried to giver her a reassuring smile. He could tell it wasn’t working, and was about to add a few comforting words (or at least what he hoped were comforting words - pathetic though they may have been), when he saw her own eyes dart toward something behind him.
“Bridge door!” she shouted, pointing over his right shoulder.
He spun and saw DC1 Devon Holdstien (clearly a zombie due to his complete lack of clothing and blood-smeared face) lurch through the open portal, with wild eyes, gnashing teeth and outstretched clawing hands. Fireman Carnegie loomed behind Holdstien, also nude, also smeared with gore. And it looked as if there was someone (or some thing) else behind him.
Jonesy strode forward and planted a straight kick, flat onto Holdstien’s chest, sending the creature slamming back into Carnegie. They both collided with EM1 Sinstabe, whose presence stopped them from falling back through the hatchway. Jonesy tried a snap kick into Holdstien’s jaw, which connected, but did nothing to free the zombie-jam at the door. He kicked the DC1 again for good measure and to provide a bit of breathing room, then backed off a step and reached behind him to the two sheaths at the back of his harness belt. He fumbled a bit with the velcro, but managed to remove the two LE batons, and with a practiced snap of both wrists, extended the rods to their full length.
He had trained for this. Not this, specifically, not fighting zombies on the Bridge of a ship, using LE batons, but he had spent many hours learning Kali and Escrima, on the mat or in the park, smacking trees with his ratan Baston sticks and annoying the local squirrel and bird population. He had sparred with other people, of course, but never, in the hours, and hours, and hours of sweat and busted knuckles, did he expect to actually have to use this shit to kill crazed zombies from Hell who used to be his shipmates. This went way above and beyond, and he might have paused to consider the absurdity of it, but he was simply too goddamned busy trying not to get killed.
“Molly!” he called, without looking, but got no response. He snapped a look over his shoulder and saw her standing, stock still, her mouth open in stunned horror, staring at the zombie swarm trying to enter the Bridge. “Ensign!” he snapped, and that got her attention. He darted forward and swatted Holdstien in the left shoulder and right ear with the two batons, in a maneuver called The Blessing, oddly enough - not hard enough to do any real damage, but it did back the thing off. “Is the other door clear?”
He didn’t see her check, busy as he was with the battle, but he took it for granted when she answered with a quick, but clear: “Yes!”
He attacked the swarm with a fury of blows, called the Redonda, or Whirlwind: a series of right and left swings to ears and elbows and heads, hitting both Holdstien and Carnegie. The howling things backed away, but the press of zombie flesh from behind kept them from going very far.
He couldn’t keep this up much longer, and it wasn’t doing much good. Something had to change. “Head to the Flying Bridge!” he shouted. “We need room to fight!”
106
“Fuck me!” Harold said, diving for the end of his bat. It had become trapped under Ronald “Bart” Simpson’s dead body after it had made an absolute mess out of - and became stuck in - the Machinist Mate Striker’s ear. Duke was dealing with BM1/DECK Dennis Hurdlika, their “Boats,” who’d just turned zombie, leaving Harold to deal with YN3 Greg Haversham and SN Stanley St. John.
Haversham was getting to his/its feet. His/its shoulder slumped downward, making him lopsided, and he/it didn’t seem to be able to use the arm attached to it, but that didn’t stop the diseased lunatic from lunging toward the nearest non-infected human: one Seaman Harold F. Simmons, jr..
Harold grabbed the end of the bat and yanked, the effort pulling the dead weight of the dead zombie whose ear didn’t seem to want to let go. He jammed his foot into the side of the zombie’s head and pulled harder. The bat came free with a disgusting and indescribable sound, and Harold backpedaled several steps, trying not to fall on his ass. But he had the bat, and just in time.
Seaman Stanley St. John had been trapped beneath Haversham and was now free to roam about the compartment doing whatever damage and mayhem suited his/its fancy. Naturally, what suited its fancy was Harold Simmons, who had always enjoyed a certain popularity amongst the crew, but would have traded it all for anonymity at this particular moment. He didn’t, however, seem to have a choice. The two shipmates-turned drooling, snarling, homicidal zombies advanced on him.
He couldn’t run, couldn’t hide, couldn’t wish away the reality, and he couldn’t think of a single smart-assed remark, so he took a batter’s stance and waited. His heart pounded the blood of his body straight up into his freaked out head, as if his skull might explode with the pressure, but it didn’t stop him from thinking. A wild swing had missed its intended target (SN Tommy Barnes) before and ended up lodged in the ear of FNMK Simpson, whose weight had dragged his one and only weapon from his sweat-slick hands. It would not do to have it happen a second time. In a split second of survey and assessment and decision, he noticed the naked ex-Yeoman’s “toy soldier” dangling between the advancing zombie’s legs, the testicles hanging low and swinging. The idea sickened Harold, but it didn’t stop him from taking a mighty underhanded and upward swing, as if aiming at a slow pitch softball he intended to hit into next fucking week. The bat connected with a sick, squelching slap, and the creature stopped dead, as I’ve been terribly struck in the balls, made it from the junction of the thing’s legs to the recently-cooked brain. Harold didn’t wait for the message to get through. Planting his booted foot on the young man/zombie’s chest, he yanked the bat back and away, then took two shuffling steps to the side, as the body fell in a heap into the space he had just occupied.
Stanley St. John barely noticed as he stepped onto the still-writhing form of Haversham and continued to advance on Harold. He, at least, was still clothed, sparing Harold the never-to-be wiped-from-his-brain vision of yet another naked shipmate covered in blood, with his dick hanging out as he headed to do damage to Harold’s favorite Seaman: himself. He hadn’t liked St. John much. The kid was too opinionated, too self-absorbed and self-important, and always seemed to be pointing out flaws in the orders of his superiors. That was Harold’s job, dammit. He didn’t need some new boot fucker coming in and getting in the way of his rightful position. He swung the bat at St. John’s chest, stepping into it. It struck home with a crack of what had to be ribs, but it didn’t seem phase the new zombie, who swatted it away and kept coming. Harold stepped to the right, quickly regained his stance, and
swung with everything he had at the zombie’s head.
This time, it didn’t matter that the bat got stuck in flesh and bone and brain and blood. As St. John fell, Harold looked up in time to see Duke’s mighty hammer blow crash into Dennis Hurdlika’s left temple. The thing’s head cracked like a hairy egg, and the former Bosun Mate fell to the ground, joining the bodies of Haversham and St. John, DeBenedetto and Simpson and Tommy Barnes.
He looked at Duke, who stood there, panting and surveying the carnage. The Bosun Mate looked into Harold’s eyes.
“Well...” he said. “That sucked.”
Harold boggled. “You think?”
107
Davy Gordon, age ten, who liked football, not baseball, and who didn’t like girls (except for some of them, like his Mom and his sister and his cousin - but that was different), heard the gun fire and didn’t hesitate. He sped up the ladder toward the Bridge. His Dad was up there, and his Dad needed him. It was time for Davy to show that he could be a man his Dad could count on.
This was important.
The slide on the .45 locked back. The pistol was empty. Its contents (most of them anyway) were on display at the bottom of the port side exterior ladder to the Bridge, in the body of the asshole who had tried to storm up it. John, his own body tense and feeling sick, felt for a moment as if he might puke, but the gorge receded back down his esophagus, and seemed as if it might stay there. He swallowed to be sure.