The R2-D2-looking dome of death was computer and radar-controlled to the nth degree, the multi-barreled 20mm cannon designed to operate autonomously in its job of protecting the ship from incoming missiles and aircraft with a reaction time far less than that of a human. This meant there were literally miles of wires and connectors, along with chips and relays and a host of other intricately-designed things to detach and unhook, then re-attach - in the correct, precise order - on the deck, and into the operating systems of the Corrigan Cargo III, which hadn’t been designed for them.
But they’d done it - more or less. The work was still in progress, to be sure, but the nearly-impossible part of it was finally over, and he’d been thinking that maybe - just maybe - the pirates would let them get a few hours’ sleep, before they all started collapsing onto the deck while, say, transferring high-explosive rounds from one ship to another, or up and down ladders, or across barges, or..., or.... He stifled a yawn and looked at Blackjack.
“If you want to launch from this platform,” he repeated, once again pointing at the deck of the Hamilton. “The answer is no, regardless of the range.” What the pirate had asked was how close they needed to be to launch the Harpoon, and/or Tomahawk missiles.
“”We won’t be using this platform, as you call it,” the pirate countered.
With a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer, Morris asked: “Exactly what are you planning to use?”
Blackjack Charlie thumbed toward the Corrigan Cargo III, sitting at anchor three hundred yards offshore.
“You’re crazy,” Morris spat, wishing he could tape his own mouth shut a split second after he said it.
The pirate scowled at him, the potential for violence evident in his eyes. But then he raised a single eyebrow and shrugged.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But we’re doing it, anyway.”
Morris Minooka shook his own head in response. “I don’t think you know what you’re asking,” he said, expecting to see his life flash before his eyes for the sheer stupidity of poking this particular nest of skull-and-cross-boned hornets. Charlie just continued to stare at him. Morris pointed to the foredeck missile pads. “Those missiles are in specially-designed tubes, set into a specially-designed compartment, that won’t...gee, I don’t know...melt when you launch. Or set off the other missiles that are stored right next to the one you’re launching. They’re not jury-rigged in half-assed fashion into the cargo hold of a freighter. What you’re suggesting is suicidally stupid.”
The resulting backhand to Morris’s cheek should have been expected, but too many other things were going through his exhausted mind, so when it landed, the blow knocked him flat on his ass.
Blackjack Charlie Carter loomed over him, gazing down, his demeanor almost nonchalant. He folded his arms over his chest and stood there, looking at Morris for what seemed to the young Navy man both an eternity, and no time at all.
Then the pirate said: “I suggest you find a way.” He stared for a moment longer, and added. “Or I’ll kill you, and find someone who can.”
48
The Warehouse
Facilities Maintenance Building
“Keep your eyes open,” ET2 Scott Pruden said to Seaman Apprentice Jerry Nailor. “And don’t let me get my ass chewed off.”
He was twisted and contorted under the steering column of the behemoth cargo forklift, trying to remember the Basic Wiring class he’d taken all the way back in high school. Problem was, he couldn’t remember shit. He was used to manuals and drawings and schematics of highly complex equipment, like radars and radios and...technical stuff. He was a technician, after all, and not a car thief. But there he was, trying to hot-wire a forklift. He should remember this stuff. It was basic, simple, shop class-level electronics. But he’d gone so far beyond it, and into the world of high tech, the memory seemed lost amongst the trees inside the forest of all the rest he’d learned since then. Education has turned me into a moron, he mused, then mentally smacked himself for not paying attention.
The warehouse had been cleared of zombies when they’d grabbed the coils of cable to string between the buildings. They’d cleared it: himself, and Nailor, and Grimes, and Newby. Okay, Newby had done most of the actual clearing, just as Amber had done most of the wet work when they’d escaped from this very building in the stake bed truck they were now using to haul refugees from the makeshift landing pad at the ball field, to the Mess Hall and/or Clinic. But he’d helped. Really. Ask anybody.
Then again, they thought they’d cleared the base, and the fusillade of gunfire off toward Sand Island Parkway, which separated the base from the industrial area to the north and west, gave lie to that theory, so maybe he shouldn’t feel too confident about his safety. Of course, he had Nailor watching his back as he worked, but, then, this didn’t exactly fill him with confidence, either. The kid was...shaky. Hopefully not too shaky. He was armed, and guns do have a tendency to go off, if you’re not careful. Murphy’s Law would dictate just what direction Nailor’s misfired rounds would go: straight up the ass of Scott (Jurgen McAwesomeness) Pruden.
That would suck.
He grabbed what he thought were the correct two wires, one in each hand, gave a silent prayer, then touched the exposed ends. There was a spark and crackle of weak electricity, and the forklift turned over once, twice, a third time, then began the slow whir, whir, whir of a dying battery.
“Fuck,” he said aloud.
“Any luck?” Nailor asked.
“Does it sound like it?” Scott snapped.
“Just making conversation,” came the reply, somewhere in the vicinity of his left shoe.
Pruden extricated himself and stood, stretching his twisted back muscles. He needed a battery - or something to charge this one. There had to be spares, somewhere. This was the military, where the spare parts had spare parts. Question was: where?
They found them in a locker marked: Hazmat. He let Nailor lug the heavy replacement. Rank, after all, had its privileges.
The forklift started with an un-dramatic put-put of a propane-powered engine, that was nearly drowned out by the sudden increase in gunfire.
“Let’s go,” he said, and climbed aboard.
49
The Grounds
ISC Sand Island, HI
“Get your shapely ass over here,” the voice of Tara McBride hissed from behind Lydia, who almost - but not quite - jumped completely out of her skin at the sound. She whirled to look at her new-found friend, and suddenly felt as if her skin had exited, stage left.
There was a zombie behind Tara.
“Run!” Lydia screamed, pointing at the shambling figure that was incongruously, impossibly dressed like one of Robin Hood’s Merry Men. The costume - because that’s what it had to be - was ragged and dirty and torn in places, but unmistakable, right down to the funny hat that had - beyond all reason - remained jauntily perched upon the insane young former man’s head.
Tara just stood there.
“Run, you idiot,” Lydia modified her previous warning, pointing still more emphatically. Tara finally looked behind her. She got the hint.
Two more of the enraged, once-upon-a-time human beings staggered around a corner of the Facilities Maintenance Building. Yet another - this one stark naked, with its face dripping blood, and its hairy chest matted with what appeared to be fresh gore - lurched up from behind a Subaru, looked right, looked left, then locked in on Lydia, and howled, as if pissed off at having its meal disturbed. Tara ran past it, swerving out of the way like a running back headed for the goal line.
In the distance, somewhere on the far side of the Comm Center, the gunfire increased. Not that it was doing herself and Tara any good, since it wasn’t where they were, and the shambling, stumbling zombies were between them and the sound. This left three choices, which ran through Lydia’s head like the speed-scroll of a movie played on a commercial television channel, its credits rolling by at twice the normal speed to ensure enough time for the advertisers to sell fe
minine hygiene products and erectile dysfunction pills before the next program.
They could head toward the Sass, they could retreat into the Facilities Maintenance Building, or they could stay put and become the Main Course. None sounded particularly inviting. The Sass was a good half-mile away, the building may or may not still be zombie-free, and being eaten didn’t appeal to Lydia, in the least.
Then a fourth option appeared in the form of a large forklift, which careened around the pier side of the Facilities Maintenance Building and sped off - in the opposite direction, toward the gunfire.
“Help!” She screamed, at the top of her lungs.
Tara joined her, with flushed face and heaving breast. She took one look at the retreating machine, then scooped to pick up a piece of what looked like a car part that had been laying on the ground amongst the other detritus strewn all over the grounds. She hefted it, wound up like a pitcher on the mound of the Big Game, and flung it at the forklift. It almost missed, almost went sailing right past the tail end of the thing, to fall harmlessly and uselessly onto the asphalt roadway. Almost - but not quite.
It caromed off the weighted back end of the forklift with a resounding CLANG they could clearly hear, even though they were forty or fifty feet away. The driver heard it, too - as evidenced by the fact he braked the machine and cocked his red-haired head to stare at them. Lydia stared at the girl in wonder.
Tara shrugged. “High School Baseball,” she explained. “I was the pitcher.”
The driver - Lydia could now see it was Scott Pruden - swerved the forklift in a tight circle, chewing up a bit of lawn next to the roadway, and gunned it toward them. The young man seated next to him (Nailor), his feet dangling over the side, since the thing wasn’t built for passengers, gaped at them in shock. Pruden snapped a few choice words at him - which they couldn’t hear - and Nailor fumbled the pistol from its holster, nearly dropping it. Hanging on with one hand, the boy swung the weapon in a wide, exaggerated arc toward them, leaving Lydia with but one coherent thought:
“Duck,” she shouted, grabbing Tara by the front of her uniform shirt, tearing it and spraying buttons, as Nailor was spraying nine millimeter bullets. They fell in a heap to the ground, as those bullets began to ricochet in every direction except their intended zombie-targets. One of them chewed up dirt three feet in front of Lydia’s face.
Something, some instinct, made her roll on top of Tara, shielding the girl from poorly-aimed harm. She didn’t think, didn’t analyze, didn’t stop to ponder the whys and wherefores. She most definitely didn’t pay any attention to the now button-less front of the woman’s uniform shirt, which lay wide open. At least Tara had worn a bra, for a change. But she ignored it. Really.
Lydia had just acted in a way totally contrary to good sense and self-preservation. There was a moment - a very brief one - in which to ponder the fact, and then the forklift was upon them and Pruden was shouting.
“What are you doing, you idiot?” He snapped - clearly at Nailor, but Lydia couldn’t help noticing the double meaning, even if it existed only inside her own head. “Put that thing away, before you hurt somebody,” Pruden, said, confirming the obvious, then he added. “Do you ladies need a lift?”
50
Communications Center
Palmyra Atoll
“Oh yeah,” Felix Hoffman said, behind Clara Blondelle’s head. Above and behind, actually. Mostly above. She had him in her mouth, working her magic.
They were in what passed for a communications center, in this nothing rock in the middle of nowhere, called Palmyra. Felix was on watch. Clara was on her knees. What Felix was watching for, she did not know, but she did know why she was on her knees.
They had given her freedom of travel, much to her surprise. Even after tying her to a chair and threatening to cut up her face, they let her go on her merry way. Not that there was anywhere she could go.
They had her sailboat under close watch. They had all the boats under close watch - and there were a growing number of them. The pirate band had been busy. Be that as it may, obviously Blackjack Charlie Carter wasn’t the trusting sort of pirate. Apparently, he thought some of his new volunteers would take one or more of the several boats they’d found or salvaged or stolen, and get the hell off this rock. He was right.
She’d learned as much, both from her fellow Crew Sluts, as the pirates called the female “survivors,” and from the men she’d managed to coerce into talking. In her experience, a good blowjob beat Sodium Pentothal, every time.
None of the core leadership group were casting aspersions toward the Pirate King, and even the lower-echelon grunts and assistants and technicians the pirates had allowed to live weren’t exactly talking smack about him, either, but the signs were there. Add a few carefully-worded questions asked while the men were in the throes of approaching orgasm, and she got her answers. This was her skill, her forte, and she’d been putting it to good use for years. Knowledge was power, and the source of that knowledge ran right through her mouth and hands and pussy and ass. It had always been this way.
“I’m getting close,” Felix gasped, though he hadn’t needed to. She could tell he was close. Long experience had taught her how to gauge it.
On the surface, it might seem as if her talents were being wasted on this nothing of a man, especially when there were so many others who - again, on the surface - were in greater positions of authority and influence. That might be true, but her instincts told her it wasn’t. Those instincts had been honed over long years, in many a bedroom and boardroom, and bathroom stall, where she had learned her particular talent for judging just who was in the best position to help her get what she wanted.
And what did she want in this case? Simple.
She wanted revenge.
51
The Grounds
ISC Sand Island, HI
“Hang on!” Tara said in a laughing voice, grabbing Lydia by the waist to keep her from falling off the bouncing forklift, as it made its way toward the sound of gunfire. She slipped further, and the girl’s hand suddenly enveloped her breast.
Lydia might have been embarrassed, might have reddened to the color of ripe radishes, might have gasped and squirmed to escape the intimate grasp, but she was simply too damned busy trying not to drop and bounce off the pavement, as the heavy machine rolled over her soon-to-be lifeless body. She grabbed one of the stanchions that held up the forklift’s roof, and pulled herself into a less precarious position. Tara’s hand slipped away, leaving behind it the warm and not entirely uncomfortable sensation of human touch.
Give yourself an orgasm, she thought, ruefully. Another part of her mind answered: Oh shut up.
They rounded a corner, beyond the Comm Center, and the source of the gunfire came into stark view. The huge Bosun Mate, Duke, was rattling away with the machine gun from the top of his ridiculous truck. Chief Jones, Glen Newby, and Ms. Gordon were firing away with pistols. Seaman Grimes stood behind them, doing nothing, except trying to look in every direction at once, his own pistol useless in his right hand, the slide jacked all the way back, the gun clearly empty - even to Lydia, whose own experience with firearms consisted of a brief two days’ range training during bootcamp, and the occasional excursion into the woods with her siblings, hunting for squirrels with an ancient twenty-two their father had inherited from his grandfather.
A lady doesn’t do such things, her mother had always said about gunplay - in diametric opposition to all but the Cotillion-set of her Alabama hometown. Boys played with guns. Ladies sipped tea in the shade of a warm southern afternoon. It had seemed absurd then, and felt doubly so now, in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. At the moment, Duke’s machine gun seemed like a useful thing to have.
The forklift lurched to a halt and they hopped off - Lydia onto shaky legs, which threatened to give at any moment. I’m having the Vapors, she thought, leaning against Tara for support. Then she came back to her senses, realized who she was leaning against, felt the presence of that high
ly sexual being, became painfully aware of the woman’s body and the softness of the nearly-exposed breast currently squashed against her arm, and stood, taking a step to the right, away from her...what? Friend? Shipmate? Object of the tingling feeling in her body and the skipping of her heartbeat?
Get a grip, Lydia. This proved to be quite easy, what with gunfire and zombie hordes, and such-like.
Chief Jones turned to Pruden, who remained behind the wheel. “Ramming speed,” he shouted, pointing toward the crowd of raving lunatics trying to squeeze through the gap torn in the fence, some twenty yards ahead. Their way was blocked, somewhat, by the incredible pile of mangled bodies stacked upon the ground like so much bloody cord-wood.
Beyond them, beyond the fence, on the roadway outside the base, what seemed to Lydia like hundreds of homicidal fiends stumbled and shuffled and squeezed their way toward the human dinner inside. Where they’d come from (the industrial area, dummy) or how they’d found their way to the gap with their diminished mental capacity (process of elimination), was inconsequential when compared with her desire to see them gone, never to darken her door again.
Scott Pruden looked toward the pile, scratched his red-haired head, then lowered the large forks to the ground and floored the accelerator pedal. The forklift shot forward, picking up speed, and began scooping the bodies in its path. Some of them bounced to either side, some of them made a pile upon the twin forks, and a disgusting lot of them were crushed beneath the behemoth machine as it shoved its way toward the gap, barely seeming to notice as it squashed them into so much goo.
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 9