Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy

by Thomson, Jeff

  It figures, she thought, disgusted with herself. I finally get with the Alpha Dog, and he turns out to be an idiot. That’s just great.

  The idiot in question kept staring and frowning, then seemed to come back to himself. He took a deep breath, and slowly shook his head,

  “Cut her,” he told Dirk.

  “No! Wait!” Felix said again.

  “What?” The pirate king barked.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Felix replied.

  “Why the Hell not?” Dirk said.

  “Because I know where they’re making the vaccine.”

  34

  The Mess Hall

  ISC Sand Island, HI

  With a feral scream of rage, the Asian refugee started crawling across the mess table toward Mrs. Charles Eddington-Smyth, who stared at her, apparently too stunned (or too mulishly stubborn) to react to the very real threat coming toward her with hands curled into claws. Lydia’s heart stopped, and the feel of Tara’s soft breast flew out of her mind, heading (thankfully) for parts unknown.

  “Stop her,” she shouted, but this proved to be a waste of breath, as Marc, the Asian woman (Wendy’s) husband, grabbed her around the waist, at about the same time as Gary King, the large cook, arrived on the scene and interposed himself between the attacker and the intended victim of obvious mayhem. If Lydia didn’t know any better, she’d have thought the refugee was turning zombie.

  Come to think of it, that was a real possibility. Who knew what they’d been through on that rooftop? Who knew whether or not the woman had been recently bitten?

  She’d seen people turn before, on that horrible day in Guam, but it had been from a distance, and her mind had been so stupefied with shock and outrage, the memory couldn’t really be trusted. But this was close - dangerously close - and the fear-center of her brain woke up and said hello, sending electrical shivers up and down her spine.

  But then she felt Tara’s arm go around her waist from behind, and the girl’s warm breath played across her ear, as she whispered, “Easy, easy.”

  It should have scared her more, should have cranked her fight or flight instinct straight up into Danger, Will Robinson mode, but it didn’t. It felt soothing, almost - warm and comforting. And then Tara - being Tara - just had to run one of her hand up Lydia’s rib cage, close enough to run the tip of a thumb along the underside of Lydia’s breast.

  She suddenly found herself standing, unencumbered by either Tara’s arms, or the mess table bench, a full six feet away. How she got there, she hadn’t a clue, but there she was, her heart pounding, her breath coming in short, sharp, gasps. And in certain neglected and purposely-ignored parts of her body, a warm and not entirely unpleasant heat rose. Give yourself a really good orgasm. Then get on with it.

  Lydia turned, and ran.

  35

  Electrical Team

  ISC Sand Island, HI

  “Run away!” ET2 Scott Pruden shouted, talking his own advice as a gaggle of zombies came stumbling around the corner of the Comm Center building, putting to rest the myth that the base was a hundred percent clear. Feets don’t fail me now, he thought.

  They knew there were gaps in the fence line, but those were supposed to be well off to the west side of the island, or over by the Container Port. There shouldn’t be any of the insane bastards running around on base, and yet there they were, large as life, three of them, the crazed expressions on their faces leaving no doubt as to their intentions. They weren’t there to make friends. They weren’t there to strike up a conversation about the weather, or to ask directions to the nearest tourist attraction. They certainly weren’t there to invite the team to tea. In point of fact, they looked hungry, and Scott didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what was on their preferred menu. What was the line from Lord of the Rings? Oh yes. Man flesh.

  Two more of them appeared around the corner of the Comm Center, then another three from beyond a clump of trees. Where were they all coming from? He didn’t know, and didn’t care. Time to be elsewhere...

  He ran harder, seeing the young puppies, Seaman Grimes and Seaman Apprentice Nailor, go sprinting past him, on their way, no doubt, to a less dangerous locale, like, say, Bermuda. Not that Bermuda would be any safer. Not that anywhere would be safer. Maybe Antarctica... Could he talk the Star into going back there?

  Not a chance.

  He risked slowing down enough to snap a look over his shoulder without tripping over his own feet. Where was Newby?

  The sound of gunfire answered his question.

  36

  The Wardroom

  USCGC Polar Star

  “Chief Jones!” Commander Swedberg, in full Executive Officer mode, shouted, jolting Molly into action.

  Jonesy - or, more accurately, Jonesy’s big mouth - was about to get his ass in trouble, if it hadn’t already. Didn’t matter that Peavey was an ass-hat who hadn’t done a single thing to contribute to the rescue efforts. Didn’t matter that he’d shown his own incompetence and possible cowardice during the Napalm offload, when they’d incinerated the zombies at the Container Port. Didn’t matter that his constant naysaying had her more than ready to pummel his stupid expression into goo. He was an officer. Jonesy was enlisted. Enlisted people were never supposed to openly denigrate officers, under any circumstances, least of all during a meeting chaired by the senior-most member of the United States Coast Guard.

  That was her job.

  She stood, and faced Captain Hall - who’d pointedly avoided direct eye-contact with her (no doubt still pissed about her own transgressions), and said, in a loud and clear voice:

  “Chief Jones is right.” She didn’t shout, didn’t scream (as she really wanted to), didn’t launch herself toward Peavey, bent on strangling the son of a bitch, but every eye turned to her. “This...thing...we’re doing, this mission, this Grand Enterprise, is about the most horrible thing any member of the Coast Guard has ever been called upon to do. We’re killing hundreds, thousands of unarmed human beings, in order to save other human beings. It goes against the very nature of the Coast Guard, itself. We’re the Lifesavers, yet the Chief has been forced to kill - commit murder - over and over again, day, after day, for weeks, with little rest, and no end in sight. And he’s done it, valiantly, with little regard for his own safety.” She pointed to Peavey. “And what’s this man been doing? Nothing. Not a goddamned thing, except complaining, arguing, and getting in the way.” She turned back toward Hall. “We should be thanking the Chief, and sending this piece–“

  ”Stop!” Jonesy shouted, laying a had on Molly’s arm that was still pointing toward Peavey.

  “No, Chief,” she protested. “This has been a long time coming, and–“

  ”Shut up,” Jonesy snapped. “Listen...” He cocked his head toward the portholes on the pier side of the ship.

  “What...?” She asked, not hearing anything, the blood still rushing through her head, quickly building to the boiling point.

  “Listen,” he said again. And then she heard it: the rat-tat-tat of gunfire. “Gotta go,” he declared, scooping his rig of armor and weapons off the deck, as he strode through the door, taking her pounding heart with him. Once more into the breach...

  37

  The Grounds

  Palmyra Atoll

  “How long have you known?” Blackjack Charlie asked, shoving Felix into the early twilight. He’d dragged Felix outside, leaving Dirk to have a little fun with their latest acquisition. He hadn’t needed to do either.

  He hadn’t needed to do quite a lot of things he’d been doing since they escaped from Soledad. Some of it had been necessary, of course. Desperate times, and all that. Stealing the first sailboat, for example. They’d needed a way to get out of the Bay Area, and the most zombie-free place they could go was out to sea. So stealing the Daisy Jean from that old couple had been a necessary evil. Killing them, however, had just been plain evil.

  “I didn’t know,” Felix said, “not for sure, but I guessed. And from her reaction
, it was the right guess.”

  “And you based this guess on...?”

  “Radio chatter I picked up during a couple night watches,” Felix replied, and received a backhanded slap for his trouble. It wasn’t that powerful, didn’t hurt, not really, not physically, but it stung what little remained of Felix Hoffman’s pride.

  “What the fuck was that for?” he demanded. Blackjack didn’t immediately react, just stood there, in the middle of the Palmyra main thoroughfare (such as it was). Felix pondered his non-reaction in an offhand sort of way, still feeling the sting of the Pirate King’s slap. The impasse didn’t last.

  “Why’d you keep it a secret?” Charlie asked, adding menace to his words. Like so many things he’d been doing, the addition wasn’t necessary.

  They hadn’t needed to kill more than half of the survivors they found on the Hamilton, but Charlie had ordered it and the others had done it without a moment’s hesitation. They hadn’t needed to keep the women they found as indentured whores, but they’d done that, as well. They hadn’t needed to torture that Navy officer to death.

  “I didn’t,” Felix protested. “But I wasn’t certain, so I kept my mouth shut on the off chance I was wrong.” That had been a defense mechanism, pure and simple. Like the monarch who killed the bearers of bad news, Blackjack Charlie didn’t react well to bad information. Or maybe it was that he reacted to it the same way he seemed to be reacting to everything else: with violence. Either way, discretion had seemed the safest course of action, just as speaking up seemed to be the safest one now.

  Charlie put his face mere inches from Felix’s, and lit it from beneath with his flashlight, like a bad horror movie from the Nineteen Fifties. “Let there be no mistake,” he said, his breath sour in Felix’s nostrils. “Pull anything like it again, and I’ll gut you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Felix said. He would do as he was told.

  For now...

  38

  Electrical Team

  ISC Sand Island, HI

  “Stop!” Scott Pruden shouted to the two junior enlisted members of the electrical team, who were racing away toward parts unknown. “We gotta go back!”

  “What?” Seaman Grimes shouted in reply. He’d stopped, but his body was tensed, as if to start running again at the slightest provocation. Seaman Apprentice Nailor, stopped, ran another couple steps, stopped again, then seemed undecided as to which he should be doing.

  Scott could relate. He wanted to keep running. He wanted to find an elsewhere to be - anywhere, really, except right there, on the base, where zombies had infiltrated through a gap in the fence. That was the sensible thing to do, the reasonable thing to do, the sane thing to do. But somewhere out there, back in the direction from which they’d been running, Glenn Newby was fighting for his life.

  They were armed, sort of. Each carried a nine millimeter pistol, with a couple of spare magazines. Nailor carried a shotgun, though Scott couldn’t be sure the kid knew how to use it. But they hadn’t gone out there as zombie hunters. They’d been stringing cable from the Comm Center to the Clinic, not wandering around prepared to do battle. The pistols were just...you know...in case. Well, now the in case had happened, and what were they doing? Running like scared little rabbits.

  And Glenn Newby was fighting for his life.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and took off running.

  39

  Outside the Mess Hall

  ISC Sand Island, HI

  I laugh (Give yourself a really good orgasm) because it keeps me from screaming (Then get on with it). So simple. So easy to say (or think), yet Lydia couldn’t wrap her head around any of it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  Her mother, purveyor of all things wise and ladylike, would have said: nothing is. But her mother was dead. Her family was dead. Her world was dead, and yet here she was, trying to make sense out of an apocalypse, while an extraordinarily sexual lesbian kept hitting on her. It was enough to give anyone the vapors. Her mother had also been big on the vapors. They came upon her whenever the situation called for them - and they could be used to proper advantage. Strategic vapors, then. And they wouldn’t do Lydia a single bit of good.

  Then get on with it. Tara’s voice said, inside her head.

  Good advice - if frightening to the core, considering its source. Get on with it. Get on with what? Compiling a list of refugees? Tara’s courting ritual? The zombie apocalypse?

  These thoughts danced a two-step through her synapses, then threatened to start square dancing Couldn’t have that. Run away! She walked, her pace finally slowing after her rapid retreat from the Mess Hall, through what used to be a really nice military base.

  She’d been on several, over the years, and what she’d noticed was that the rest of the services kept their grounds strictly utilitarian, to varying degrees, depending on general temperament The Air Force wasn’t too hard core; the Marine Corp was positively pathological. But the Coast Guard just seemed to keep theirs nice. Groomed, of course, with everything trimmed and in its proper place, but they generally had neither the time, nor the spare bodies to get overly carried away with it. Now it looked like the average city park, in the slums, near Montgomery, Alabama, after years of severe budget cuts. Everything was either dead, from improper care and feeding, or just plain overgrown, from neglect. Debris and detritus were scattered everywhere. She couldn’t see the splotches of zombie road kill, as she had before, but she knew they were there. The seagulls, standing in squadrons, gathered around bits of something, here and there and everywhere, told her so.

  None of which answered the question of just where in the hell she thought she was going. To the Sass? No. Everybody there was either working, sleeping, or attending the big meeting on the Star. What excuse could she give for being back on board when there was so much work for her to do at the Mess Hall? Go back there, then? Give yourself a really good orgasm, Oh, Hell no! Where, then? Should she just wander aimlessly, wallowing in her personal pity party? No, she decided. Not that. Screw that.

  So...what?

  Then she had all of the answers she needed - and none of them. They came in the form of gunfire.

  40

  The Bridge

  USCGC Sassafras

  “Go!” Molly shouted to Duke, as she rushed onto the Bridge, after leaping up the ladder, two rungs at a time. He took off at a run, having already donned all his gear. The delighted grin on his face almost frightened her.

  These guys - her guys - were so far out on the edge, they were running on blood spray, instead of ground, hopping from one droplet to the next, like demented avengers. She thought about the imagery, and wondered where it came from. Then she knew: Jonesy’s favorite line of lyrics, from a song by Pink Floyd. Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

  She’d always thought it silly, at best, and twisted - in a bad way - at worst, calling into question the general sanity of someone she...what? Cared for? Was that it? No. Not strong enough by half.

  Jonesy...

  He was out there. Somewhere. Now. Risking his life. Again.

  And what was she doing? Watching.

  She picked up a pair of binoculars, more to have something to do with her hands, than to serve any actual purpose. Whatever was going on, wherever it was, remained out of sight, beyond the Boat Station, beyond the Mess Hall, over towards the Comm Center, but it felt good to be doing something, anything.

  The single - though quick - rifle shots were suddenly joined by the rip of what she knew had to be Jonesy’s Thompson submachine gun. Once more...

  She could do nothing to help. Nothing. She couldn’t even give him the hope for what she knew he wanted: her. Officer-slash-Enlisted-comma-Twain-comma-Never Shall Meet. And what about her? What did she want? And did it matter? No. It did not.

  The interior door opened, and she might not have noticed, but something, some sixth sense, made her look. Samantha stood there, wearing the same clothes she’d had on yesterday - along with the
same gas mask. Her eyes looked puffy from sleep, yet strangely determined.

  Molly’s young cousin joined her on the bridge wing, and Molly tensed, expecting and dreading another outburst of anger from the love-sick teenager. Perfect, she thought, with enough sarcasm to fill every building on the base. Just what I need...

  But Samantha said nothing - at lease not at first. The girl jumped as another burst of gunfire shattered the uncomfortable silence. So did Molly.

  “Jonesy?” Sam asked, her voice small and hesitant.

  “Yes,” Molly replied.

  Sam nodded, as if checking off a confirmed suspicion. “Being suicidally brave again?” She asked.

  “Naturally,” Molly replied.

  And then Samantha did pretty much the last thing Molly expected, and grabbed her in a tight, desperate hug.

  “I’m scared,” Sam said, into Molly’s shoulder.

  “Me too,” Molly said, hugging her back, trying to convey with that hug everything she couldn’t say.

  “Wish I could do something,” Sam said.

  “Me too,” Molly replied.

  “But there isn’t, is there?” Sam asked.

  “Nope.”

  They fell into silence, wrapped into each others arms, waiting to see what happened to the man they both loved.

  41

  The Fence Line

  ISC Honolulu

  “Fuck me sideways,” Jonesy said, staring in wonder and horror at all the zombies headed their way. “Where are they all coming from?”

  “You asking me?” Glenn Newby asked, firing off another double-tap into an oncoming asshole wearing a concert shirt from - of all people - Barry Manilow.

  “No,” Jonesy snarked. “The six other guys we’ve got standing here.”

  And then there were six other guys - well, four, really. Pruden, Grimes, and Nailor ran in from one direction, and Duke arrived from another. All of them opened fire - the trio in a frightened staccato, Duke, with blasts from his twelve gauge, Newby with the consistent, measured double-tap, and Jonesy with the rapid fire rip of his Thompson.