by Jeff Thomson
And judging from Wheeler’s eyes, he didn’t think much of it, either. Still, wandering around alone did seem just a bit suicidal. The base was more or less clear of zombies, but more or less didn’t equal one hundred percent.
“Petty Officer Erwin,” Wheeler said, addressing Rees, the designated gopher.
“Sir,” the young man replied.
“Grab your MOPP gear,” Wheeler ordered. “You’re going for a little stroll.”
131
Comm Center
Sand Island, Oahu
“Hello all stations, hello all stations. This is United States Coast Guard COMMSTA Honolulu, United States Coast Guard COMMSTA Honolulu. We are back on line. Any traffic, contact two-one-eight-two, or VHF Channel Two-One. This is United States Coast Guard COMMSTA Honolulu. Out.” Amber unkeyed and replaced the mic on the GSB 900, then did the same with the VHF radio, switching it from Channel Sixteen (the emergency channel) to channel twenty-one, for general traffic. The GSB remained on 2182khz, because that’s where it was usually set, given that it was for long-range comms, and unless somebody far away wanted to chat, they’d only use it for emergencies.
Of course, the broadcast wouldn’t have anywhere near its normal range, given that power to the repeating antennae, strategically placed throughout the islands (if not the antennae themselves), was down. Sooner or later, they’d have to send somebody out there, into the zombie-haunted world, to try and repair them - somebody whose was not Amber Winkowski. Uh-uh. No sir. She would not be going on that mission.
And so thinking it, she realized she’d probably just jinxed herself. Murphy’s Law would dictate that the very first act of Gideon D. Hall, upon the Star’s arrival to Sand Island, would be to order her to survey and fix them. She just knew it.
Sheep shorn, Amber, she chided herself. Time to get busy.
It felt familiar, yet odd to be sitting at the comms console again. Not that she’d been away very long, but after spending so much time essentially trapped in this windowless box, she’d grown accustomed to seeing the sun again.
“COMMSTA, this is Sassafras,” LT Amy Montrose’s voice came through the VHF.”
“Go, Sass,” she said, retrieving the handset she’d just put away.
“We’re sending a party of two over to pick up that truck?” It came out as a question, as if the Lieutenant was asking whether or not the truck she and Scott Pruden had used to escape the Facilities Engineering Building actually existed.
“Roger, Sass,” Amber replied. “It’s on the south side of the building.”
“Roger that,” Montrose said. “Break - break. Team Four, Team Four, Sassafras. Over.”
Silence greeted the call. Amber waited, wondering if Duke would remember he led Team Four. Everybody had just been referring to their part of the overall operation by the name of Duke’s large, and bizarre, and heavily-armed truck. It seemed simpler that way, and from what she knew about Duke, simple was the way to go.
He wasn’t stupid, by any stretch of the imagination. Far from it. Anyone who could keep up with Chief Jones, and remain the friends they obviously were, had to be pretty quick on the uptake. Judging from little more than their repartee, which was all Amber really had to go by, Duke could hold his own. Having said that, however, and making use of all her college-educated pop-psychology skills, he seemed to be exactly what he was: a what you see is what you get, simple, meat and potatoes, no-frills Bosun Mate.
And still, silence greeted the call.
“Team Four, Team Four,” Montrose’s voice called again. There came the sound of a muffled comment from the background, then Amber heard, “Oh for the love of God,” from the still keyed and open mic. “Skull Mobile, Sass, Two-One.”
“Go, Sass,” Duke’s voice replied, almost immediately.
“Rendezvous with Ms. Gordon, south side of the building. Over.”
“Roger that,” Duke said.
“Sass, out.” If radios were capable of being slammed, the way old-style phones used to be, Amber felt certain Amy Montrose would have slammed that radio with a vengeance. As it was, however, the Sass just clicked off, as Amber started to laugh.
132
CG 6583
The Ball Field
“Zombies,” AT3 Mark Columbus said through the intercom.
Carrie snapped a look toward his side of the aircraft, and sure enough, a crowd had begun to gather at the fence surrounding the baseball field. Her first thought: the fence is pretty small, was quickly replaced with: we have no weapons.
ASM2 Kyle Rogers, the Swimmer, had been issued a sidearm, as had ASM1 Ronny Wallace from the 6585 - even though Chief Jones had security well in hand, what with all the weapons he carried. But the rest of them had gone au naturel, as it were. After all, why would they need guns?
Right?
Wrong.
The survivors, squeezed into the back of the aircraft, were quiet - for all of about three seconds - until one of them (a forty-something woman who at one time had clearly been affluent, but now look worn and bedraggled, almost like a homeless person) spotted the zombies. She screamed. Then so did the rest of them.
“Sassafras, 6583, she called through the radio waves. “We have bogies incoming.” Where she’d come up with the word bogies, confused her for a bit. She was a Coast Guard pilot, not a fighter pilot. She flew a Dolphin, not an Apache. What did she know from bogies? But the word and slipped through her lips like the most natural thing in the world. She could imagine LCDR Sagona, in 6585, staring at the radio receiver, with a clear and disdainful What the Fuck expression on his face, and the people manning the Sass Bridge were probably laughing their asses off at her, right about now.
So where had it come from?
Then she remembered. Saturday afternoons watching war movies with her father. She was an only child, and he’d never said anything - never even came close to hinting at it - but she always knew he’d have rather had a son. So she’d compensated for her wrong gender, by watching crappy old war movies. It seemed such a little thing, then. Now it was giving her shipmates a reason to laugh at her. Great. Just great.
None of which addressed the central problem: There were zombies, and they had no weapons.
“Do something, damn you!” One of the survivors shouted from behind her. She looked over at her co-pilot, Zack Greeley. He gave her one of his thousand watt smiles - or tried to. She suspected he was just a bit too scared to pull it off.
“Roger, 6583,” the voice of LCDR Wheeler came through her earpiece. “Stand by. Help is on the way.”
133
On the rooftop
Honolulu, Hawaii
“Help the guy, you fucking idiots,” the woman said, pushing through the crowd of people who’d been standing there, watching Jonesy - with all his gear and weapons - struggle to climb to the next level of the multi-tiered highrise.
She was tall and thin, and Asian. Japanese, Jonesy thought, though it didn’t matter. Her long, salt and pepper hair seemed about ready to stage a great escape from the bun she had pinned to the back of her head by one of those female contraptions he’d seen a million times, but had no idea what they were called.
A thin man, looking all the more thin because of the loose way his clothes fit to his clearly malnourished body, came up alongside her. He also had long hair, and a full beard.
“Give him a hand,” the woman snapped.
“I’m doing it,” he replied, in good-natured, argumentative style.
Husband and wife, Jonesy thought, grasping the outstretched hand and heaving himself up onto the next rooftop. “Thanks,” he said, groaning to his feet.
“Holy shit,” the woman said, eyeing all his weapons and gear. “How do you stand?”
“Carefully,” he replied, knowing the answer was cliched, and not caring one bit. The weather was mild and pleasant, as it always was on Oahu, but there on the tiered roof, with the wall of the next highest level blocking the breeze, and wearing all of his gear - including the MOPP suit - his ass
was melting.
“Don’t suppose we could borrow a couple of your weapons...?” the man said, and Jonesy’s defenses went on alert.
“Zombies?” he asked.
“No,” the woman replied. “There’s just a few people we wouldn’t mind shooting.”
“They might turn into zombies,” the man offered.
The woman shrugged and gave him a toothy grin. “It could happen.”
“Right,” Jonesy replied, looking at the crowd of survivors. They were a motley bunch, but that, he supposed, was to be expected. These people had been living on the edge for weeks, maybe months, with limited food, surrounded by former humans who wouldn’t think - at all, let alone think twice - about killing anyone they could grab. They hadn’t showered, they hadn’t washed their clothing. They were starved and dying of thirst, and so far beyond being scared out of their wits, that their wits had departed for parts unknown.
Their friends were dead, their families were dead. They’d probably watched them die. They might have even had to help them along in the process, just to keep from being killed themselves. Jonesy could relate.
“What have you been doing over there?” A woman who looked as if she’d shrunk to about a third of her original size demanded, striding up to them.
“Case in point,” the male half of Jonesy’s new acquaintances said.
“An asshole,” his wife added.
“I’ve had enough of your foul language,” the new and complaining woman said to her.
“Eat shit and die, bitch!” The woman snarled, taking a step forward.
“Well put,” her husband added.
“Easy,” Jonesy said, really not wanting to deal with a domestic dispute, on top of everything else. He stepped between the Asian woman and the shrunken woman, holding his arms out like boxing referee.
“I expect more from our government,” the complaining woman snapped.”
“So do I,” Jonesy replied, gesturing toward Sand Island. “But since half of that government is over there on the base, where there are still zombies roaming around, I’m afraid we’re both going to have to lower our expectations.”
“I’m a taxpayer!” she protested.
“The IRS is dead, bitch,” the Asian woman countered. “And if you don’t shut up...”
Time to take charge of this, Jonesy thought. Before it turns into an Ultimate Fighting match.
“Tell you what,” he said aloud. He pointed to the shrunken complainer. “You go to that side of the roof...” He turned toward the Asian woman and her husband, pointing in the opposite direction. “And you guys go to that side.” He pointed to the rooftop at his feet. “We’ll call this the Demilitarized Zone.”
“Come on, dear,” the man said to his wife, taking her by the arm.
“I’ve never been so insulted,” the other woman said.
“Sure you have,” the man replied, gesturing toward his wife - whom he was holding back. “She’s insulted you worse than that, plenty of times.” So saying, he walked his wife over to the far end of the roof, where lay - miracle of miracles - a large Chocolate Labrador dog.
First one I’ve seen in...Since we bugged out of here, Jonesy thought, in wonder. He figured for sure all the household pets would have been eaten by now.
Giving one, final, cautionary hand gesture to the formerly large, but still obnoxious woman, he walked over to take a look. The dog lifted his head, rolled one eye in Jonesy’s general direction, flapped his tail a token time or two, then resumed his relaxed slumber.
“Calm down, Mac,” the man said. “Don’t want to scare this guy away.”
Mac, the dog, snorted, but didn’t otherwise reply.
“He’s a real killer,” the Asian woman said.
“I can see that,” Jonesy agreed.
“His name is Mac,” the husband stated the obvious.
“So I gathered.”
“I’m Marc, and this is Wendy.”
“That’s Marc with a C,” the wife - Wendy - explained.
“I’ll make a note,” Jonesy said, making no effort, whatsoever, to do so.
“The bitch...” Wendy gestured toward her nemesis, who scowled at them from afar. “Is Missus Charles Eddington-Smyth.”
“Ah!” Jonesy said, lamely, having no other response.
The husband and wife looked at each other and grinned, then said in unison: “Of the Beverly Hills Eddington-Smythes.”
“But of course,” Jonesy grinned back at them - though, they couldn’t see the grin behind his filter mask. “Should I extend my pinkie while recording her name?”
“At the very least,” Marc replied, his grin going wide.
Jonesy was about to make some other smart-assed remark, when LCDR Wheeler’s voice came through his earpiece.
“Team One, Sass,”
“Go, Sass,” said, seating the receiver further into his ear. He knew he was Team One, because he’d come up with the number designations, and claimed the first spot for himself. Call it ego, call it hubris, call it just making sure he could remember the number of his own team. In any event, it worked.
“It’s going to be a bit before the helos return to your location. Over”, the new CO said, without elaboration.
“Roger that,” Jonesy replied, looking toward Sand Island.
This can’t be good...
134
M/V Corrigan Cargo III
08.200221N 162.978453W
“But isn’t this an act of piracy?” Goddard asked. He’d taken the small boat over from the Corrigan Cargo III, after they’d rendezvoused. He could have saved himself the trouble. The Point of Order and USS Paul Hamilton were less than a day out of Palmyra. He could have saved Charlie the trouble, more to the point.
“Not piracy, sir,” Blackjack Charlie said, trying not to grit his teeth. The Honorable Henry David Goddard, presumed President of the United States, and definite pain in Charlie’s ass, stared at him, a blank and vapid, and infinitely irritating expression on his puffy face. Charlie wanted to punch that face. Hell, he wanted to put a twelve-gauge shotgun blast into that face at point-blank range, obliterating it for all time, like the ancients did to particularly disliked Egyptian statues of past pharaohs.
He considered the allusion. Yes, he thought. Maybe an historical perspective is what I need. If the ignorant dipshit even knows what history is.
“Are you familiar with the British Empire?” He asked.
“Oh yes!” The former-Congressman said, bouncing on his toes with enthusiasm. “Brexit was a brilliant move,” he added. “A brilliant move, indeed.”
Brexit, the British exit from the European Union, had been a financial disaster, putting a fork into the once-great British Empire, and relegating it to the status of a debtor-nation, along the lines of Greece - before Pomona rendered such things as the world economy moot. But did the intellectual amoeba know this? Of course not.
“No, sir,” Charlie said, his fingers twitching to reach for the blackjack tucked beneath the back of his untucked shirt. He added pummeling the fucknut into dust to his growing list of desires. “I’m referring to its history.”
“Like when we kicked them out of this country?” Goddard asked, warming to the conversation. Clearly, the man didn’t realize they weren’t in the United States, anymore. Or that the United States, as an effective nation, no longer existed. For all any of them knew, this conglomeration of misfits in and around Palmyra, along with those other people around Midway and Hawaii, were all that was left - of sane, sentient representatives of E Pluribus Unum.
“Somewhat before and after that,” Charlie replied.
“Ah!” the idiot exclaimed. “History was never my strong suit,” he said, apologetically.
I’m stunned, Charlie thought. “Ever hear of the British East India Company?”
The politician’s face went momentarily blank. “A bit,” he said.
A bit, my ball sack, Charlie thought. “The British had the strongest Navy, back in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Ce
nturies,” he said, gathering his thoughts to try and pierce the envelope of abject ignorance surrounding the man’s head. “The British East India Company was an unofficial arm of that Navy, and they used it to first dominate an area, then rob it blind in the name of commerce and trade. It was essentially state-sponsored larceny, and Queen Victoria used it to great success, by augmenting it with their army, ordering British soldiers to bayonet every non-white fuzzy and wuzzy who had the poor taste to live anywhere the Brits could make a whole lot of money, and thus, they became masters of Empire.” Charlie marveled a little at how pedantic he sounded, but lecture-mode seemed far preferable, under the current circumstances, to saying: look, you stupid motherfucker, it’s like this...
He continued. “In India and China, it was spice and tea and silk and textiles. In Africa, it was diamonds. In the Carribean, it was rum, molasses, and French and Spanish shipping.” Charlie smiled. “Which was piracy, though they didn’t call it that, until the pirates, themselves, got so successful, they threatened the Empire’s holdings in the Americas.”
“Hmm, yes,” Goddard said, pursing his lips and nodding, as if he understood.
“The Romans did the same,” Charlie continued. “As did the Greeks, and the Persians, and the Phoenicians, and every other empire throughout the history of civilization. That’s how they became empires: by force.” He paused to see if the idea was taking root, then brought it home before the simpleton got distracted by a shiny object, thus making it necessary to have it explained to him all over again. “That is what we are doing here.” He waved toward the Hamilton, and the Point of Order, and the ship upon which the idiot arrived. “I’m trying to give us the strongest Navy.”
Goddard bowed his head, as if in concentration. Charlie fully expected to see steam spewing from the moron’s ears at any moment. But then the man did something wholly unexpected. He raised his face, looked directly into Charlie’s eyes, and smiled.
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