by SD Tanner
They made their way down to the engine room where Jordy was still working on the generators. He looked up in surprise at them and asked, ‘What’s goin’ on?’
He replied tersely, ‘Hunter got Juan and we can’t find him. We need ya somewhere safe while we sort it.’
Jordy nodded, put his tools down and followed them out of the engine room. Deciding the best place for Jordy was a small and completely secure room, he took him to one of the crew rooms and they quickly checked it was clear.
Pushing Jordy into the cleared crew room, he said, ‘Make yourself comfortable. We’ll be back when we’re done.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘Don’t open the door until you hear from one of us.’
Jordy sat down on the bunk bed in the room and said calmly, ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
They needed to find Juan. Deciding to follow the blood trail, he returned to the bar. The blood trail led into reception and up the stairs to the top deck and he wondered why Juan had come this way. On the pool level, they found Juan lying face up in the empty swimming pool.
Standing at the edge of the empty pool, he called, ‘Juan! Whatcha ya doin’ down there?’
Juan didn’t answer or move. Max was staring down at Juan and, sounding confused, she asked, ‘I don’t get it. He should be infected. Why isn’t he moving?’
Looking down at Juan in the empty pool, he replied, ‘I dunno. Usually the hunter virus takes ya straight away so Juan is dead, but the hunter he’s becoming ain’t.’
Still looking at Juan, Max asked. ‘Do you think he’s playing possum?’
He hadn’t thought of that and replied, ‘If he is, then that ain’t somethin’ I ever saw a hunter do before.’ Remembering what Lydia had said about the super hunters, he thought a hunter might not play possum, but a super hunter might.
Turning to Ip, he asked, ‘Can ya talk to him?’
Max looked surprised and asked, ‘Can she talk to them?’
Still watching Ip, he replied, ‘Yeah, we’re pretty sure she can, but she can’t talk to us so it’s a bad channel.’
Ip thinks: This one before me is still new. But his mind is one of the few. This is how the rulers are born. With blood and gore and throats torn. The happy human is not with us here. All that is left is this new mind that fears. Kill it now before it forms. It serves no good purpose. Its heart is deformed.
Ip looked at Juan, then back at him and then she turned and walked away.
‘Where’s she going?’ Max asked sounding confused.
Understanding her message, he sighed. Juan was dead, and if the thing in the pool was a hunter, it would be manic by now and that meant it was a super hunter. He thought, maybe it takes longer for someone to turn into a super hunter. Juan must have had just enough time to put himself somewhere he couldn’t easily hurt them, and he decided Juan was a good man and he hated losing good men.
Sighing, he said grimly, ‘You should take Ip back to the bar’
Max’s face hardened and she said firmly, ‘No. This is the job and I won’t hide from it. Let me take him. He’d want me to.’
As Max aimed her M4, Juan sat up. His shirt was drenched with blood and he could see Juan’s eyes were a bright blue, and then they were gone along with his head as Max fired her gun. Taking Ip with him, he went down to the bottom of the ship to let Jordy know it was safe to come out of the crew room.
‘Ya think you got ‘em all now,’ Jordy asked.
‘I’m guessin’ so,’ he replied, but if he was honest, he wasn’t completely sure.
The super hunters were smarter and there was a risk, however faint, one might still be hiding on board. He told Jordy to come with him, and they headed up to the bar. When he got back to the bar, he grabbed a towel from the gym and went outside. The downed hunter was still flailing uselessly on the deck. Holding the folded towel over its mouth and nose, he pulled back its eyelids. This one’s eyes were brown and he knew that meant it was an original hunter. Wrapping the towel tightly around its whole head and neck, he hauled the flailing body up and over the side of the rail.
He went back to the blood covered bar, where Jordy and Max were waiting and explained, ‘There’s a new evolution in the hunters. We’re calling them super hunters and these ones are smart. They know how to hide and play possum.’
Looking unhappy, Max asked, ‘Is that what Juan was? A super hunter?’
Nodding, he replied candidly, ‘There’s no way to be sure, but I’m guessin’ so. I think they must infect slower or somethin’ ‘cos Juan had time to put himself somewhere he couldn’t hurt us. He was a good man.’
Jordy absorbed this new information with the same relaxed attitude he always had and asked, ‘So, what do ya wanna do now?’
Detecting Jordy’s lack of concern, Max asked sharply, ‘Doesn’t any of this shit bother you? I mean, we just lost a guy. A good guy.’
Jordy had a bit of old man potbelly, and rolling back in his chair, he crossed his meaty arms over his chest and rested them on his belly. Giving Max a long stare, he said calmly, ‘I am 68 years old. I didn’t expect any of this to happen, and when it did happen I didn’t expect to survive. I lost my wife of 45 years, my two boys, my five grandchildren and my great grandchild. Young lady, at this point life can’t take any more from me. I’m just happy to do what I can to help you folks along, and I’ll keep doin’ that until life takes me too, but don’t ask me to mourn no more than I already do. I miss my wife and my boys and the little ones and I can’t mourn no more than that.’
Max was struggling not to cry and she said quietly, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, sweetheart,’ Jordy said sincerely. ‘You got fight in ya and the world needs more of you and less of me.’ Patting her hand paternally, Jordy turned to him and asked, ‘So, what’s next?’
‘That depends on you,’ he replied. ‘For the rest of this trip, we stay together.’
‘Okay,’ he replied. ‘I’m still working on the generators. I got water and lights on, but I need to work on the generators for the engines and computer systems. I figure you’ll be wantin’ access to them computers for manuals and such.’
He hadn’t thought of that, but Jordy was right, the ship probably had online manuals. Looking at Max, he asked, ‘How good are your computer skills?’
Max looked at him as if he had gone mad and said abruptly, ‘Complete crap. I used to be a waitress. Remember?’
Surprised by her anger, he said, ‘That don’t mean ya can’t use a computer.’
Sounding irritable, Max snapped, ‘If I coulda done that, I woulda had a better job.’
He thought, the mentoring thing wasn’t turning out to be as much fun as Pax promised it would be. Seeing Ip smirking at him, he thought, quit reading my mind Ip and he gave her a mock glare. Frowning, he wondered if she really could read his mind and thought, can you read my mind Ip? He decided he was tired and it wouldn’t matter if she could read his mind, it wasn’t as if he was trying to hide anything from her.
They spent the rest of the night and half the day with Jordy while he worked on the generators. At least, he and Max learned a lot about the ship and how the generators worked. Ip had gotten bored and left them to it. He would rather she’d stayed, but she was her own person and always had been. He didn’t think he could start telling her what to do just because they were a couple, and he doubted Ip would pay him any mind even if he did.
Hatch showed up around lunchtime with more supplies and he brought Pax, TL, Benny, Mackenzie, Kat, Mom and Pop. If the ship was viable, which it was, he wasn’t planning to have Ip spend another night at the Base. If the super hunters really were after her, then she wasn’t safe at night on land and neither was the Base with her in it. He figured Ip could be at the Base or on scavenger runs in the day, but she needed to spend her nights on the ship. He intended to spend most nights with her, but wanted Mom and Pop on the ship for the nights he couldn’t.
He updated them on what had happened to Juan and everyone was sorry to hear abo
ut yet another loss for the Base. Kat said she would check if Juan had any family on the Base, but Max assured her he didn’t. This was the first time Pax had seen the ship and he was over-excited.
Bouncing on the balls of his feet, and clearly wanting to explore the ship, he said excitedly, ‘Can we get this thing to move?’
‘Dunno,’ he replied. ‘Jordy reckons there should be manuals on the computers, but I don’t think we can risk movin’ the ship without someone with some real experience.’
TL suggested, ‘Maybe with a better reach we can find some survivors with the right skills.’
Pop asked, ‘What happens if we can’t get the ship to sail?’
Giving Pop a grim look, he said, ‘Then it’s probably not a long term solution. The ship will deteriorate without engineers to maintain it, plus we’re a sittin’ duck. It’d be a question of time before we would come under some sort of assault, and it’s pretty hard to defend a shore to ship attack if ya can’t move.’
Looking surprised, Mom asked, ‘Who would attack the ship? Why would they?’
Shaking his head, Pax said plainly, ‘Bad people, Mom. They didn’t go away just ‘cos the world ended. If anythin’ they stepped up. We already got one asshole on our tail who could and would take this ship out from the shore.’
Pop looked at him in disbelief and asked, ‘What did ya boys do to piss someone off that bad?’
Shrugging, Pax replied, ‘We didn’t do anything, Pops. The guy came lookin’ for us ‘cos we’re organized and we got people and supplies. That’s all it takes these days.’
Mackenzie laughed and said to Pop, ‘And we broke into his base and stole a helicopter.’
He didn’t want to rehash that story and, interrupting them, he said, ‘We already got plenty of enemies, and we best assume more to come. The ship will take care of the hunters and super hunters for the time bein’, and we can keep Ip and ourselves safe from ‘em. The livin’ are another problem. If we get hit from the shore we’re gonna have two or even three hundred people trapped on this ship. If we can’t get the ship movin’, we can’t stay on it, but it’ll do for now.’
Pausing, he looked around at the group and said decisively, ‘As long as every step we take is steppin’ in the right direction, then we’re doin’ fine. We take it one problem at a time.’
TL nodded in agreement and said, ‘I’m gonna use the bird to widen our reach. There’s gotta be someone out there that knows how to drive the ship. I just gotta find them.’
Pax nodded and said, ‘I got Major major asshole under watch. We’ll know if he’s gonna make a move and we got the combat teams to take that sonofabitch out first.’
Kat said, ‘And I’ll set up the Base processes again. We’ll need some rules of operation, and we need to make sure we can feed and care for two to three hundred people. What’s the capacity for this ship?’
‘That’s a good question, Kat,’ he replied. ‘Accordin’ to the brochures I found, there’s 270 guest rooms, but there’s also the crew cabins. The rooms look like they can hold three to four or six to eight people per room. In theory ya could put over a 1,000 people on here, but I wouldn’t.’
Looking puzzled, Pop asked, ‘Why not?’
He replied, ‘Accordin’ to Jordy there’ll be constraints on the power, but it’s more than that. If we can’t get the ship moving and there’s a problem, we’d struggle to get that many people back to shore safely in the life boats.’
Pax added, ‘Not to mention the supply problem, Pop. We only got one bird and if we can’t park the ship, we gotta supply by small boat and air. It’s risky. Plus that’s a lot of supply we gotta find, load, ship and store safely.’
He’d already thought of these problems and said, ‘Until we can move the ship, we need to cap the head count. If we can move the boat, then I reckon we can to use it for scavengers and combat personnel and transit for civvies movin’ to the camps on land. We were settin’ up the camps for a reason. We need people livin’ somewhere secure where they can start workin’ the land for food.’
Looking worried, Pop asked, ‘Given what happened at the Ranch, do ya reckon that’s doable, Bob?’
He replied, ‘Yeah it is Pop, but not on the mainland anymore. We need to find small islands we can clear and get people set up there.’
Nodding, Pax added, ‘Yeah, and I’ll need to train troops somewhere. I can’t train ‘em on a ship unless ya happy for me to shoot the shit out of it.’
He said, ‘We also gotta pump our air power.’
‘True,’ Pax agreed. ‘We need more pilots and we need more birds. I know Major major asshole’s got a couple he ain’t puttin’ to good use.’
TL added, ‘And we need more people. Problem is, we don’t have anywhere to put them all yet.’
‘What if we kept the Base up and running?’ Kat asked.
Nodding, TL said, ‘If Ip isn’t there, maybe the super hunters will leave it alone.’
Thinking out loud, he said, ‘That’s not a bad idea, Kat. Doubt we can move the CDC anyway. Be useful to have the Base to take care of it.’
It was an option, but the ship and the Base would need to be able to communicate and, wondering if the ship’s communication equipment might work, he asked, ‘I’m okay with that, but we need a way to stay in contact. Does anyone know how a ship’s comms work?’
‘Well, the ships got ‘em,’ TL said. ‘We just gotta work out how to make ‘em work. Kat have we got anyone who has any comms skills?’
Shrugging, Kat replied, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll check when I get back to the base.’
He started ticking off what they needed to sort out next and said, ‘Alright. We need a mission brief to sort out how to split the head count between the ship and the Base. Plus we need to set the priorities for scavengin’ and survivors runs. We need to know what skills we need and what we got already and how we’re gonna move people out to the ship and when.’
Nodding, TL added, ‘And we need to learn a lot more about this ship. Fuel requirements, communications capabilities and a realistic pitch for head count on board while we can’t move it.’
Benny said, ‘If Jordy has the on-board computers up, I’ll take a look for anything useful. I got a tablet with me and I might be able to download data to it if they got Wi-Fi.’
‘Good idea, Benny,’ he replied. ‘And, Pax, I wanna update on Major major asshole. I take it ya got someone on the ground in there?’
Only Pax knew who from their base was spying on the Major. Pax nodded at him and he assumed he would get a briefing from Pax later.
Feeling tired to the bone, he said, ‘That’s enough base talk for now.’ Grinning, he said, ‘Let’s go check out the ship!’
Guiding people through a tour of the ship, everyone was as impressed as he, TL and Benny had been. They eventually found Ip in their Grande Suite and she’d opened the guest luggage, dumping the contents all over the lounge. When they found her, she was wearing an oversized and sparkling evening gown, aviator glasses and every piece of jewelry she could find.
Greeting him with her usual smile, he smiled back at her and asked, ‘Whatcha doin’, hon?’
Mom looked at her bizarre outfit and asked, ‘Where did she get those clothes?’
Still smiling at Ip, he replied, ‘Luggage, I guess.’
‘Woah!’ Pax hooted from the bathroom. ‘Check out this bitchin’ jacuzzi!’
Ip let out a delighted squeak and ran off into the bathroom. By the time they joined them there, Ip and Pax were sitting fully clothed in the Jacuzzi. Ip leaned across and turned on the tap while Pax sat with her looking very pleased with himself.
TL turned to him and said, ‘Dumb and dumber.’
‘Hey,’ he growled. ‘That’s my girlfriend ya bein’ rude about.’
Pax chortled happily and said to Ip, ‘Doan listen to them. They’re just uptight assholes.’
Ip looked back at them with a smug expression and then started pouring bubble bath into the water and they all st
arted to laugh. He thought the craziness of the times they now lived in was perfectly summarized by the moment.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A problem shared is a problem halved (Gears)
It was an unprecedented luxury, but they decided to stay on the ship for the night and return to Base with Hatch in the morning. Mom, Pop, Benny and Mackenzie were cleaning the blood from the bar. Hatch was still sleeping somewhere. He, TL, Pax, Kat and Max were sitting in their suite eating breakfast from the MREs they brought with them. Having discussed their plans to split the survivors between the ship and the Base, it was obvious Kat had a bone to pick with them.
‘You’ve had the Base for two months now,’ Kat said. ‘You’ve done a great job. We have nearly two hundred people there and we still have people arriving almost daily.’
Knowing Kat wanted to tick them off about something, he said, ‘Ya don’t need to sweeten us up, Kat. Jus’ tell us straight.’
Taking a deep breath, Kat said, ‘I don’t want to tell you how to do your jobs, and I’ve been happy to be the person fronting the Base, but you have to talk to the people there. They need to know who you are, what you’re doing for them and why. I’m not the leader here.’ Pausing, she gave him a stern looked and added, ‘You’re their leader, Gears, so step up and speak to the people you’re leading. They need to know you, or they won’t follow you.’
Now it was his turn to take a deep breath. Public speaking was not his thing. As Pax was ever ready to remind him, he was a big gorilla with a ripped up face. He scared the hell out of people and he knew it.
Giving Kat a weary look, he said, ‘Hmm, I don’t see myself as a politician. That’s TL’s job.’
‘Hey!’ TL complained loudly. ‘Don’t dump that on me. I’m affable, congenial even, but I’m not a politician.’
Pax turned to him with an expression of complete confusion and said, ‘I think ya jus’ described a politician.’
Putting his hand up as if to ward Pax off, TL objected and said, ‘No, No, No. Just ‘cos I’m the only one of three of us with any manners, doesn’t make me a politician.’