You're Never Ready for a Zombie Apocalypse

by Jeff Thomson

  Jonesy took arming to a whole new level. He wore two thigh holsters, with two .45s, a double shoulder rig with two Baretta nines, his Bowie knife and dive knife in calf sheaths, and two - count them, two - kukri-machetes, one strapped to each side of his pack, so he could pull them over his shoulders and use them as he had the batons. He also held the M4, on a retractable chest rig, and a shitload of magazines for everything.

  Molly hadn’t questioned that he had enough weapons and ammo to start a small tribal war, but she had cocked a questioning eyebrow. He’d shrugged and said: “Always Ready.”

  “If Midway is an island in the middle of nowhere,” Harold shouted over the wind and engine noise of the RHIB, of which he was the cox’n. He was in his normal uniform, with the addition of a light, dayglow orange float coat. He wasn’t going ashore. “How could they possibly have gotten infected?”

  That was a damned good question Jonesy had been asking himself since they first started getting no response from the Harbormaster. When they made the ninety degree turn toward the inner harbor, they got their answer. Three sailboats, ranging in size between forty and seventy feet lay at anchor on the south side of the basin.

  “Ain’t that a bitch?” Jonesy said.

  “What?” Harold asked, as if he’d missed something important.

  “Those boaties thought they were coming to a safe haven. Someplace they could wait out the plague. And the people on shore thought they were doing the right thing helping them out.” Jonesy explained.

  “So?” Harold asked.

  Jonesy shrugged. “Nobody knew they were letting death come through the front door.”

  “How fucking poetic,” Duke jibed.

  “Feel free to blow me,” Jonesy replied.

  Insults thus given and duly returned, they began to scan the area, looking for the best approach.

  “Head for the seaplane ramp,” Duke told Harold, pointing to an old and chewed-looking square of concrete just shy of the dividing line between sand and trees on the western side of the harbor.

  Jonesy turned on the radio he had tucked underneath his armor and signaled Duke to do the same. “Sass, Sass Two, Over,” he said, using the designation for that particular small boat. Sass One was a Motor Surf Boat, of roughly the same size, but without the inflatable sponsons.

  “Sass Two go,” Molly’s voice came over the airwaves.

  “Making the approach to the beach. Over.”

  “Roger,” she replied. “Don’t get killed. Over.”

  “That was my plan,” he said, standing and readying himself for the jump onto the ramp. He knew, without thinking, that Harold would waste no time in getting the flying fuck away from shore just as soon as they were off. It happened exactly as he thought it would. They hit the concrete, and the RHIB roared away. The evolution took maybe fifteen seconds.

  Once Sass Two was away, they stood on the slab in near total silence. Jonesy could hear the deep thrum of the RHIB engine, but it was distant, and somehow disconnected. He knew the wind was blowing, because he could see its effects on the trees to their right, but he couldn’t feel it or hear it inside all of the gear. They stood there, waiting.

  Nothing happened.

  And then it all happened at once.

  137

  “...so I discovered I’m the only non-insane person left in the building,” Amber said into the secure radio set. She was talking to Sassafras again, which, as near as she could tell, was the only ship out there. Or at least the only Coast Guard one. She knew the Navy had to have assets out there. The Ronald Reagan Carrier Group had been returning from the South China Sea, after joint operations with the Theodore Roosevelt Group off of Korea, and the George Washington was supposed to be somewhere near San Diego, as was the Carl Vincent. All of which was speculation, of course, because the Navy didn’t tell the Coast Guard where their fleet was.

  “At least you’ve got that going for you,” the electronically-altered voice of whom she now knew to be Bill Schaeffer said.

  “Lucky me!” she replied. “What’s your status?”

  “There are eight of us left.” Amber couldn’t tell for sure, given all the cryptological crap happening with the signal, but it sounded as if he were simply stating a fact - no opinion, no feeling. Just the facts, Ma’am. “Thirty-nine dead. Forty-one, including Medavoy’s wife and child.”

  “That...sucks,” she said.

  “Yes it does,” he replied.

  “How can you still run the ship?” she asked.

  “Nobody is sleeping much,” he replied. “Plus, we caught a SAR case. EPIRB on a sailboat, two-hundred fifty miles East of Midway.”

  “Survivors?” she asked, hoping for some good news.

  “Three aboard,” he said. “All dead.”

  Her heart, which had been bouncing enough to be considered a basketball, sank yet again. It did not rebound. The crowd did not go wild. There were no cheers. There weren’t even any tears.

  If she started crying, she might never stop, and that wouldn’t do her any good. She’d never been much of a crier - even when she was a little kid. Oh, she had a temper, alright. Her mother had taken great delight at regaling family gatherings with tales of her outbursts, but tears had not been her normal response to anything. Lately, however, it was looking like a good idea. But once it started, Niagra Falls would look like a leaky faucet in comparison.

  “What’s your–“ She had been meaning to ask for their plan, when the lights blinked out. No warning, no flicker, just darkness. One moment. Two. Three. Her heart apparently decided the pit of her stomach was no longer a suitable location, and was seeking accomidations elsewhere at some higher elevation within her torso as she waited for the Emergency Generator to kick in. Four. Five. Six.

  At least the emergency lighting should turn on, but it wasn’t. Was this it? Would she now be trapped in darkness?

  Seven. Eight. Nine.

  At Ten she heard a decided CLICK as the generator came on and the lights flickered back into blessed brilliance. Thank God, Buddha, Krishna, Nebakenezzer, Noah, and any other religious figures that might be listening, she thought, as she waited for all the systems to reboot.

  She should have spent her time shutting down all the equipment so it didn’t fry when the power came back up, but, number one, it had been really damned dark, and, number two, she was scared out of her damned wits. One by one, however, all the gear came back up without any increase in the ozone levels. No sparks, no smoke, no electronic screetching; just the light beep, beep, beep as it all came on line.

  She re-keyed the code into the secure radio set and picked up the mic. “Cutter Sassafras, COMMSTA Honolulu. Over.”

  Silence. Just static. Nothing more.

  “Cutter Sassafras, COMMSTA Honolulu. Over,” she repeated, adding insistence to her tone, as if that would somehow work. It didn’t.

  Think, dammit, think! She thought. The antennae on the building were pretty tall, but the building itself was at sea level, which limited the range. There were repeating antennae atop Ka’ala, on Oahu, Moana Kea, on the Big Island, and Haleakala, on Maui, but if the power was out, then the power to any or all of those repeaters could also be out. The Sassafras was a good eleven or twelve hundred miles away. Without the extra boost, the odds of reaching her weren’t even worth calculating.

  Amber Winkowski was alone.

  138

  Jonesy and Duke moved forward, slow and cautious. They were on a rocky stretch of sand on the western edge of the harbor. To the left, stood a stand of trees, then a greenbelt of sorts, filled with various grasses and a shitload of gooney birds - only a few of which had bothered to waddle out onto the sand. A road stretched northeast on the western edge of more trees.

  A small, rectangular shed sat on the near edge of the first stand of trees. The door stood open, swinging slowly in the mild breeze. No one - neither person, nor zombie - poked their head out to discover the source of the boat noise.

  What had once been the seaplane hangar, but
was now (judging from the several cars and pickup trucks parked on the side they could see) converted to some sort of office building or workshop area, sat off to their left and inland. With no better plan, they headed toward it. Jonesy kept wondering when everything was going to go to shit, and it kept not going there, which was driving him nuts.

  “Okay...,” Duke said, his voice coming through the radio earpiece. “What the fuck, over?”

  “Shore team, this is Sass, over.” Molly’s voice came through loud and clear. She didn’t sound nervous, but he knew her, and knew she’d be biting her lip - internally, if not visible to the viewing public.

  “Go,” Jonesy said.

  “What’s you status, over?”

  “Approaching the seaplane hangar,” he replied. “No contact yet.”

  “Roger,” she replied, and seemed about to say something else, but then apparently decided against it. “Over,” she added, and Jonesy had to hand it to her. If ever there was a fish out of water, it was Ensign Molly Gordon. No amount of training at the Academy could have prepared her for what she now faced, and yet she seemed to be facing it just fine.

  They approached a man door, next to what had clearly been a large overhead bay door, now rusted and decrepit. He doubted they could open it with a forklift. The man door, however, opened easily inward.

  “Flashlight,” he said, reaching his hand back toward Duke, who handed him one, already turned on. It was dark as fuck inside the place even with the brilliant shaft of light. Shadows loomed out of the blackness, and had Jonesy been more prone to histrionics, he might have imagined all sorts of Lovecraftian creatures waiting for them, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t. He didn’t see much of anything else, either, except the vague shape of a large panel truck off to one side, its hood up, and its windows reflecting back into his eyes.

  “Where are all the people?” he asked. There wasn’t any point to the question, because Duke couldn’t have any more answers than he did, but asking felt right. They moved across the vast expanse of concrete floor toward the offices at the back, judging by the glass partition sitting there, waiting for them. No heads popped up, no sounds reached their ears, no zombies arrived to attempt beheading them or rending their flesh.

  The offices were as empty as the cavernous warehouse, though these, at least, showed signs of there having been live people in them at some point in the not-too distant past. A trash can lay un-emptied, a desk held papers spread out to be read, along with a mug, half-filled with cold coffee, and emblazoned with an insipid cat picture and the caption: Hang in There, Baby.

  They opened doors, looked in closets, found nothing. It was eerie. It was annoying. Jonesy kept thinking about the fight on the Flying Bridge, as he and Molly waited for the zombies who weren’t showing up to start the dance.

  They located an exterior door, opened it, and found themselves at the back of the building, facing a paved road. Up ahead, they could see a crossroads, with one paralleling the shoreline and the other heading inland. They made their way to it, saw nothing in the direction they were heading, and turned inland.

  At the corner, there were a series of Japanese markers. They were written in Japanese, and so incomprehensible, but Jonesy was sure it had something to do with the battle. It seemed odd, since the Japanese never made it to the island, itself, just flew over it and blew shit up, but thinking about it was an unnecessary distraction, so they kept going, past trees and grass that had been mowed within the last week or so, maybe two.

  They came to a road sign at a T-junction and discovered they had been walking down Nimitz. To their right was a large building, carrying the sign: Midway Mall.

  “Wonder if there’s a Starbucks,” Duke said.

  Down Peters Avenue, to their left, and set back from the road maybe thirty yards, sat a series of narrow buildings that formed either an “L” or a “T.” They couldn’t be sure which, since they could only see the parts of it they were facing, and even then could only catch glimpses of it through the trees.

  Then they did see something - or, rather, some one - down Peters, stumbling out onto the road in pursuit of a gooney bird. They watched, fascinated, as a naked zombie caught the bird, wrung its neck and began to tear into it with gnashing teeth. It hadn’t bothered to pluck the feathers, which hung out of its mouth and floated away on the light breeze.

  Jonesy looked at Duke, who shrugged. He raised the M4 to his eye, then paused, thinking better of just opening fire.

  “Sass, Shore Team,” he said.

  “Go,” Molly’s voice said.

  “One person in sight. Infected. Opening fire. Over,” he said, then took aim and took the shot.

  The crack of the 5.56mm round echoed through the silence so loud, he might as well have been using a fifty caliber black powder buffalo gun. The naked male zombie with bad table manners staggered backward, but did not fall as the bullet struck home, center mass. It stepped back, steadied itself, then looked down the road, directly at them.

  Jonesy knew he hit the thing, if for no other reason than the growing blossom of blood on its chest, but apparently, the ruined brain of the poor infected bastard - whoever he had been - needed more encouragement to register that it had just received a mortal wound. He fired again, hit again, and the zombie toppled over. The second shot echoed, just as the first had done. Birds squawked somewhere in the distance, then the silence returned. He looked at Duke, then back down Nimitz the way they had come, then back at the now dead body in the middle of Peters Avenue.

  A keening howl began to rise, directly behind them.

  139

  Blackjack Charlie eased in toward the M/V Point of Order, using some of his dwindling supply of diesel, rather than coming in by sail. “Get ready, but keep your guns out of sight,” he said to Felix and George, as they headed out onto the port deck to handle lines.

  George had not been thrilled, to say the least, when he regained consciousness with a massive headache, but he had not voiced any more objections, except when he discovered that the alcohol had been locked away in Blackjack’s cabin. He was, however, keeping a hawk’s eye on the man for as long as he carried one of the remaining 9mm pistols.

  A lone man, in what appeared to be a yellow sweater vest stood on the foredeck of the ninety-foot Broward Motoryacht. The vessel floated on the calm ocean, not under power. Charlie hoped like Hell it wasn’t because they’d run out of fuel. He needed that fuel. He needed that yacht, come to think of it. The Daisy Jean was a good boat, for what it was, but it wouldn’t do in the long term. He needed to upgrade, and he had set his sights on this newcomer. The fact there was only one man in view, he took to be a good sign, but he was not counting his chickens.

  “Ahoy!” the man shouted, waving his arms, and Blackjack Charlie shook his head.

  Who the fuck said “Ahoy?” Morons, that’s who. Morons and people who had no idea what they were doing upon the sea. He couldn’t count the number of suicidal idiots who’d bought great big yachts, convinced they could handle them, simply because they could afford them. The bottom of the world’s oceans were littered with their carcasses.

  Problem was, nobody - no matter how stupid and arrogant - could have handled a ninety foot yacht this far into the Pacific without help. So where were the other people? Where was the crew? Where was the captain? He sincerely doubted Mister Sweater Vest could be anything but the walking wallet. So were they all dead? Had they all turned zombie? Or were they waiting somewhere below, planning to do to Blackjack Charlie what he was planning to do to them?

  Inquiring minds want to know, he thought.

  140

  “...Shore Team, this is Sass, Over,” Molly’s voice crackled over the radio.

  “Little busy!” Jonesy shouted, letting the M4 snap back to his chest as the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber. How the Hell had he gone through a thirty-round magazine that fast? Duke popped off two rounds of twelve-gauge, as Jonesy pulled his right-hand .45.

  “Need to reload!” Duke shouted. Jones
y stepped in front of him and started walking backward in a three-point shooter’s stance. The zombies had come from nowhere, and now they were simply everywhere.

  There were only forty to sixty people who lived on the whole damned atoll at any one time, and it looked like all of them were pouring out of the Midway Mall. The building itself, wasn’t much to look at, and didn’t seem to be a mall at all, in any sort of traditional sense - just a large building, made of wood and aluminum, and maybe some concrete, here and there, with a peaked, shingle roof on top of it. Windows dotted the face, and a double door, half glass/half wood sat in the middle. Zombies poured out of it.

  They were also coming from around the near corner, as well as through the trees, almost behind them as they backed down Nimitz toward the harbor. Jonesy and Duke had already killed a half-dozen of them (which Jonesy might have felt shame about, considering his shitty marksmanship, if he hadn’t been too goddamned busy), but there were plenty more where they came from.

  “Shore Team, what’s your status? Do you need help?” Molly’s voice said into his ear.

  The slide locked back as he put two final rounds into the chest of a pretty, young, female zombie, wearing a tee-shirt that said: Mama Like!, who had come out of the woods to his right. Duke signaled he was reloaded by taking the head nearly off of a small, naked, oriental man coming down Nimitz from the Mall.

  Jonesy holstered the pistol and puled the nine-millimeters from his shoulder rig. He opened fire with both at a portly guy in cook’s whites, spraying most of the rounds into the surrounding trees.

  Calm down, asshole, he said to himself. He was panic-firing, and he knew it. He had only fired dual pistols a few times, and then only in the controlled environment of an indoor range. This was neither indoors, nor controlled, and he was blasting away like some untrained rent-a-cop who’d seen too many action movies. He willed himself to get his shit together.