Guardians of the Apocalypse
Book Two: Zombies in Paradise
a novel by Jeff Thomson
Copyright 2018, Twisted Synapse Books, West Haven, UT
Library of Congress 1-6409130821
All Rights Reserved
Cover Art created by
The idea for this story was suggested by the scenario posited in John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series; (Baen Books, Wake Forest, NC). As such, there are similarities: both are Military Theme Zombie Fiction, both take place in a marine environment, and both involve a viral outbreak. The plot, characters, locale, branch of service, and focus are all different. Some of the science is the same, but science is science, and you can’t just make stuff up. Having said that, the author believes in giving credit where credit is due, so thank you Mister Ringo. Well done, sir. You can find his books on Baen.com and Amazon.com
Thanks also to Mr Lane Keely, and Ms Lisa Hillman, and Ms Pamela Troupe-Jones for being beta readers, along with an extra special thank you to Mr Jim Barber for his continued support and assistance in my writing efforts. You are all my heroes..
Feel free to contact the author:
This book is dedicated to my shipmates. We may not have always liked each other, we may not have always gotten along, but we always had each other’s back. And though the years have gone by, and though we may not have seen or heard from each other in far too long, I still have yours now, and I always will.
Any resemblance to anyone living or dead (or a zombie) is purely coincidental - except where it’s not (and those people know who they are and have graciously allowed me this bit of literary identity theft.
And thanks, finally, to the readers. The first book in this series, You’re Never Ready for a Zombie Apocalypse has performed much better than I expected it to. The reason is simple: You. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading. As for the future, I hope you stay with me on this wild and (hopefully) entertaining ride. Keep supporting Independent writers. Damn the man! Help us show them that their way is outdated, and their days are numbered.
FLASH
EYES ONLY
NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION
**************
*TOP SECRET*
**************
EYES ONLY. COPY ONE OF ONE
0114Z07JUN2018
TO: FLAGCARGRUFIVE
FM: FDO/LOOKINGGLASSONE/CHEYENNEMTNNORAD
CONF:21CYV5474SD216TT954A1
EYES ONLY
SUBJ: POMONA VIRUS
1. INITIATE WILDFIRE PROTOCOLS SOONEST.
2. PERSONNEL CONCERNS NOT TO BE CONSIDERED.
EYES ONLY
**************
*TOP SECRET*
**************
TXEND
1
USS Ronald Reagan
12.493106N 165.521408E
Rear Admiral Jason Nathaniel Odenkirk stared at the message. He wanted to disbelieve it, but he didn’t. He’d been expecting it.
He sat back in his comfortable padded chair in the Flag Office of the USS Ronald Reagan, not feeling the least bit comfortable. Not feeling anything. He heard the POP, POP, POP of small arms fire in the distance, getting closer, ever closer. Outside CIC, unless he missed his guess. He looked at the message again.
Personnel concerns not to be considered...
That said it all, didn’t it? He reached onto the desk toward the telephone, hesitated, then lifted the handset out of its cradle. He waited while the Watch Officer did the military dance of identification and greeting, then said: “Get me the Captain.” He barely heard the obligatory, “Yes, Admiral.” He barely heard anything, except his heartbeat and the distant firing. His eyes were fixed upon the innocuous bench on the port side, beneath the port hole.
It was rectangular, about four feet long, made of steel (or so it seemed) and painted Desert Sand. He’d always been amused by that name, and the odd dichotomy of painting the interior of a ship in a color named after the farthest thing from the ocean possible: the desert. He was not amused now.
The seat was padded in dark brown leather, as was its back against the bulkhead. It was normal in every respect, except, perhaps, that it was almost imperceptibly wider than the standard bench of its type. No matter, in the Grand Scheme of things. Pass it off as understated opulence for the Flag Officer - a nice perk.
“Captain Wernicke,” the deep voice of the man said through the telephone line. At least it was still working. At least they still had internal comms.
“Captain, message to all ships. Form perimeter around us, out to seven miles. No ship to be more than seven miles from our position at any time,” he said.
“Yes, sir, Admiral,” Wernicke said, but Odenkirk could hear the hesitation in his voice.
“What is it, Captain?”
“Well, sir, we’ve lost comms with the Paul Hamilton. All frequencies, as well as visual signalling,” he said. “We think the ship has...fallen, sir.” The man’s voice was even, almost dead. Coping mechanism, Odenkirk thought. His eyes found the bench again. Won’t have to cope with it much longer...
“Very well,” he said. “Bring us within seven miles of it, and then send the message.”
2
COMMSTA Honolulu
Oahu, Hawaii
“Message to self,” Amber Winkowski muttered under her breath. “When crawling through the overhead, with knees upon the false ceiling, during a zombie apocalypse, always make sure your foot doesn’t fall through the fucking ceiling panels.” At least that’s what the words sounded like inside her head. To her actual ears, they sounded more like an incomprehensible conglomeration of consonants, mixed with grunts and the occasional vowel.
The Mini-Maglite she gripped in her teeth as she made her way across the crawlspace platform above the false ceiling might have had something to do with it. The flashlight wasn’t doing a whole lot of good, other than to render speech impractical. It was pitch black up there, and the loom of the thing cast shadows over what little she could see. Mainly, it revealed dust, which threatened to send her into a sneezing fit.
The platform on which she perched, was narrow and held up by steel wires so thin, she felt certain the laws of physics were being violated every second it failed to snap its moorings and send her plummeting into the office below. Her knee had slipped, causing her foot to crash through the styrofoam (or whatever the Hell the stuff was) panel, revealing the mild twilight streaming through the windows of OSC Bernard’s former office. Morning or evening? She wondered, then dismissed the thought.
The door had been locked - she remembered as much from her ill-fated expedition to find a place to dump Jackass’ body. She also remembered the deranged and hungry expression on Bernard’s blood-smeared face as he stumbled out of the Cafeteria toward her. At least he hadn’t been naked. LCDR Donovan had been, however, and that was a memory she would gladly scour from her memory for all time.
It seemed like weeks ago. It had only been days. Then again, she could be wrong. It could have been weeks. Not months. No, not that. But weeks were within the realm. How many days had it been since the generator failed? She possessed a watch - a real nice one, given to her by Grandma Winkowski on her twenty-first birthday - but she’d taken it off. Time didn’t mean a whole lot in the dark, and what little it could tell her was far too depressing. So... three days? Four?
She didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. Not getting the sheep shorn, as her grandmother said in answer to more or less everything. She continued crawling forward.
Her destination, vague though the plan may or may not be, was the Antenna Equipment Room. Th
is, she knew, lay on the opposite side of the central corridor off which Bernard’s office sat. But since she didn’t have a ladder, and, therefore, needed to climb up on the Comms Console (which sat under the wrong side of the hallway) to access the ceiling, she’d had to take what she could get. Now all she needed was a crossover platform.
The plan - such as it was - was to somehow access the roof. This would have been a simple matter of climbing the stairs on the far side of the building, in the past, but the past had gone the way of the dodo, and the zombies had taken control of the Communications Building. What she was going to do when she got up there remained a mystery, but this sojourn wasn’t really about results, now was it? It was about doing something. It was about getting off her ass and making something happen - even if that something turned out to be a pointless waste of time. Time, she had. What she needed was purpose.
She located the crossover ten yards further on, managed to turn down it without falling through the ceiling, breaking her neck and becoming some zombie’s dinner (or was it breakfast?), and soon found herself facing a brick wall. At least it looked like a brick wall from what she could see through all the conduits and cables and whatever else hid in the shadows created by her flashlight beam.
What little illumination the beam managed to provide, showed the perpendicular platform stretching into the darkness to either side. Right or left? She didn’t know, and that would have to change, or she’d go stumbling in the dark on hands and knees in the wrong direction. Murphy’s Law would make sure of it. She’d dated someone named Murphy, once upon a time. It had not gone well.
Were she a ninja or a kung fu master, she might have reached out with precise ease, wasting not one motion, not one twitch of a muscle, and lifted the false panel nearest her right hand, then peered downward into whatever lay below, leaving no creature, no insect, no entity larger than a paramecium any the wiser for her presence. Being neither of those things, however, what transpired was nearly her downfall - literally.
Her knees hurt, and trying to ease the pain caused her thighs to hurt as well. Attempting to shift her weight, sent a stab of white hot agony through her abdominal obliques on her right side, just as she reached for the panel to peek beneath it. The involuntary wrenching of her body to escape the pain at exactly, precisely the wrong moment, made her fumble the panel, which went crashing to the floor below, right at the feet of none other than OSC Bernard, zombie.
The blood-smeared face looked down at the crumbled panel, then up and straight into Amber’s eyes. It yelped, sharp and short, in surprise, then growled, deep and low, then howled, loud and keening, as if sending an invitation to every insane, infected creature on the island.
Amber learned two things from this - three, if she included that Murphy was an asshole. Number one: she was over the rear atrium, and so needed to turn left; and two: zombies (even white ones) could, in fact, jump.
3
Midway Atoll
28.207217N 177.373493W
BM1/OPS Socrates Jones did an experimental spin of his Baston Sticks as he entered the matted area of the Midway Residential Sector Gymnasium, trying to get loose. He was tall and lean and muscular, wearing gray sweat pants and a black George Thorogood and the Destroyers sweatshirt with the sleeves raggedly cut off. He had a deep tan, and sun-crinkled, hazel eyes, filled with mirth. There hadn’t been a lot of that, lately - mirth. There hadn’t been much beyond terror and horror and killing and dying since LCDR Sparks, the former CO of the USCGC Sassafras stumbled onto the pier in Honolulu and turned over command to LT Richard (I’m a Dickface) Medavoy.
Medavoy was dead now. Sparks was probably dead. And thirty-nine other members of their crew of forty-eight had been buried at sea. There were now eight of them left. Only eight, to run a ship that needed at least five times as many.
Duke and Dan sat idly watching him from the floor alongside the mat, and Harold pounded the speed bag off on the far end of the gymnasium. Hardly anybody traveled off the ship alone now, seeking the comfort of the few who remained, as if human contact was the only thing keeping them from sinking back into the nightmare. Or maybe that was just Jonesy.
MK2 Frank Roessler was tinkering with some mechanical device or another in the Engine Room of the Sass, moored to the pier inside Midway Harbor. CS1 Gary King was currently turning four of the atoll’s thousands of goonie birds into dinner. Turns out the Laysan Albatross was quite edible. It tasted like rangy chicken - in the hands of mere mortals, but Gary was an excellent cook, and so in his hands they were more like pheasant - or so they all kept telling themselves. Goonie Under Glass, they called it, with theatrically-extended pinkies, as if attending a party at The Savoy. At the very least, the birds supplemented their stores, which, though plentiful (given there were only eight mouths to feed), were not inexhaustible.
OS3 Bill Schaeffer was shut up in his Radio Room, trying like Hell to contact somebody - anybody - out there in the fallen world. He’d briefly been in communication with COMMSTA Honolulu, but that fell more than a week ago. He was still in contact with a civilian ship, the M/V True North, captained by a retired Coastie and expected to arrive on Midway Atoll sometime later that day.
The niece of said retired Coastie was Ensign Molly Gordon, their Commanding Officer, who’d been made so when all of the other officers either died or turned into zombies. The ink on her commission might still be wet, given that she’d reported aboard fresh from the Academy on the day Sassafras bugged out of Honolulu, but her leadership had gotten them to Midway, where they were now relatively safe. In a zombie apocalypse, that was plenty good enough. The Ensign, herself, was currently somewhere on the island, making her way to the gymnasium, so Jonesy could give her training with the Baston fighting sticks. To suggest he felt conflicted about this would be a decided understatement.
He’d known her for many years, first as a young teenager in Alaska, under the care of her uncle (who’d been Jonesy’s First Class at the time) and then during her Cadet Summer, when she reported aboard the USCGC Healy, where he’d been a navigator. His current conflict was the result of the (probably) ill-advised, definitely sexual affair they’d indulged in on the Healy. It ended well, as such things went, and they parted friends, but it started when they discovered they’d both been learning martial arts during the years since they first met.
He’d been learning Filipino Kali, and Jeet Kune Do (created by the immortal Bruce Lee), and she had been training in the Israeli fighting technique known as Krav Maga. They took to sparring, she kicked his ass, he put the moves on her, and the rest was history - at least until she reported aboard the Sassafras.
With her being Commanding Officer, the odds of rekindling their affair were so minuscule they couldn’t be calculated by existing technology, but that did not stop him (or his overactive libido) from desiring her. And so, yes, he felt conflicted as he awaited her arrival.
He did a series of stretches and squats and spins, twirling the fighting sticks faster and faster, as he went through his routine. He was trying to get warmed up, to get the kinks out, to get ready for the training session - or so he kept telling himself. But with each swish, as the Baston sticks sliced through the air, memories of the battle on board the Sass kept flashing through his mind.
He had killed people - shipmates - using these techniques. Scoot (swish), Masur (swish), Scoot (swish), Masur (swish), Holdstien, Sinstabe, Carnegie, Donelly, Robinson (swish, swish, swish, swish, swish). The horror, the rage, the bloodlust swirled within him, rising, growing, pulsing, aching to get out, to attack, to kill.
“Hey, Jonesy!” a voice called behind him. He spun into a fighting stance: legs shoulder width apart, lead shoulder canted at a forty-five degree angle toward the enemy, elbows in, primary hand forward, secondary hand back and up, ready to defend or strike. His heart raced, his eyes were wide and wild, his thoughts, feral.
“Damn, dude...” Duke said, scuttling backwards on his butt. BM2/DECK Duke Peterson, had been sitting on the tiled floor at the ed
ge of the mat - until Jonesy turned and prepared to kill him. “What the fuck?”
“He’s scaring me, Duke,” EM3 Dan McMullen said, getting up and backpedaling away.
Seaman Harold F. Simmons, jr., stopped pounding the speed bag on the far side of the gym long enough to look over, misinterpret what was happening, and say: “Pussies. Kick their asses, Jonesy.”
In slow degrees, Jonesy relaxed, muscle by muscle, forcing himself to calm down, to come back from the Bad Place of his memories. Fuck me, he thought. “You wanted something?” he asked Duke, when his pulse rate had finally dropped out of the lethal range.
“No, dude,” Duke said, with a nervous chuckle. “I’m good.”
Harold shrugged at the apparent nonsense and went back to the speed bag. The chunka, chunka rhythm started slow and grew in intensity and speed, until the bag itself was barely visible. The three men watched him in growing wonder. They’d never seen him work a speed bag before, and it was impressive. After about four minutes of blistering, precise, fury, he smacked it one last time, then stepped back and breathed deep.
“Been awhile,” he said.
“You box?” Jonesy asked.
Harold shrugged. “It was either that, or the street gangs,” he said. “And my Mama said she would kick my ass from here to Tuesday if she ever found out I got into that shit.” He shrugged again. “She would have, too. So I went to the gym.”
“And that was an excellent idea,” Ensign Molly Gordon said, as she entered the Midway Gymnasium, some five thousand miles from the Philadelphia of Harold’s youth. She wore a loose and well-used sweatshirt, with Coast Guard Academy emblazoned over her smallish breasts, and a fairly tight pair of yoga pants, over a pair of black Adidas. Her short hair was tied back into a small pony tail.
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