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

by Thomson, Jeff

  “And, in any case,” Carol said. “There are no cruise ships, so let’s make our way to the Station, shall we?”

  61

  CG 6583

  Downtown Honolulu

  Greg Riley felt the pull, as the lift line went taught, and the odd feeling of semi-weightlessness, as his feet left the concrete slab atop the building they’d just cleared of survivors. The tingling feeling in his balls he thought he’d gotten over during the operation, returned, if only to demonstrate by its absence that he hadn’t gotten over it, at all.

  Twenty-seven survivors, in five lifts, and more than twice that number the previous afternoon.. Not a bad haul, all things considered. There could have been none. They could have all been dead, either by the virus, or the zombies, or simple starvation and dehydration, but they’d survived., against all odds. Pretty cool, he thought.

  Of course, they could have been a bit more appreciative.

  What took you so long?

  Where have you been?

  Were you waiting for an engraved invitation?

  I’m a taxpayer, damn it!

  That last was his favorite - as if the fact the person used to pay taxes to a government that was now every bit as much a victim of the virus as they were, actually meant something. It didn’t mean a thing. Not any more. But try telling them that.

  Of course, there were responses at the opposite end of the spectrum, as well. As soon as we land, I’m going to fuck your brains out... This, from a forty-something woman who clearly hadn’t been wearing a bra, and looked as if she might break him in two, if she actually made good on the promise. Of course, she also smelled as if she hadn’t showered in a few weeks, but he supposed that was to be expected. It’s what soap had been invented for.

  The bottom lip of the helo door came into view, and in two shakes of a lambs tail, hands were pulling him in. His first sight, upon unhooking the line and dropping into his seat, was the braless woman. She winked.

  62

  Seaplane Wallbanger

  26.563054 N 169.651971 W

  “Can’t we switch seats?” CWO2 Peavey whined. “Those benches don’t have any pads.”

  Translation: Jim Barber thought. My butt hurts.

  “No,” Jim said aloud. The worthless dickhead had been complaining since before they took off from Honolulu. Now, some seven hundred miles later, the Warrant Officer’s nasal-ly voice had worked itself into his psyche like some annoying gnat that just wouldn’t go away. Come to think of it, the analogy was perfect. He sincerely wanted to swat the bastard.

  “Couldn’t be more plain,” Harvey Walton said, staring at Peavey just as he’d opened his mouth to do some more whining. “You asked him a question, and he gave you an answer.”

  “But–“

  ”Might I suggest you sway from side to side,” Harvey interrupted. “First on one cheek, then the other.” He looked at Barber, and shrugged. “Not that it’ll do him any good, but it might keep him occupied and, therefore, not annoying us.”

  Jim nodded in reply, then glared at Peavey. “Well?”

  The officer groaned, raising his hands to the sky as if in supplicating prayer. He turned and went back to his padding-less seat.

  There, he resumed his place on the bench, with Gus Perniola, Lane Keely, Samantha Gordon (still chafed and sullenly pouting over having to leave the Sass), and John Gordon, who merely stared, blank-eyed, at the idiot, occasionally making a sudden move with his hand to brush back his short hair. He did so again as Peavy took his seat, making the man flinch.

  Clearly, Peavey remembered John’s backhand. An oldie, but a goodie, Jim thought. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer piece of shit. Served the bastard right, too. What kind of asshole calls somebody’s niece a whore right in front of him? Dumbass.

  They were headed back to Midway; John and company to get the True North underway and start search and salvage ops, and Peavey to...do whatever kept him out of everybody’s way. Jim sort of felt sorry for the people who remained on the atoll, but not too sorry. Fortunes of war and zombies.

  They were also transporting six of the refugees from the Honolulu rooftops - a drop in the proverbial bucket, compared to the number they were rescuing, but the exodus had to start somewhere. They couldn’t leave them all at the base in Sand Island. Not enough room, for one thing. Not enough supplies. And since operations were ongoing, the refugees were more hindrance, than help. But where to ;put them, and how to get them there?

  Couldn’t do it by air, not with just the Wallbanger. Not enough capacity, and Harvey and Jim needed to sleep, at least occasionally. They couldn’t transport, fly reconnaissance, run supplies to and from, and coordinate with the efforts on Kauai, all by their lonesome. The helicopters were no help. Didn’t have anywhere near enough range. So how were they going to do it? The True North, obviously.

  Harvey looked at his watch and sighed. “Shade less than four hours, I should think,” he said.

  “Then we suck up the last of your stash of av-gas on Midway,” Jim said, “and head back into the air.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Harvey agreed. “Pity,” he added.

  “What?” Jim asked, confused by the non-sequitur.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any time to actually be wicked,” Harvey replied. “So sad.”

  “We could schedule some time,” Jim offered. “But then we’d need to forget about sleeping.”

  “Hmm,” Walton mused. “What’s the American saying?” He asked. “Ah, yes. We can sleep when we’re dead.”

  63

  USS Arizona Memorial

  Pearl Harbor, HI

  “Oh,” Molly breathed, staring at the white wall filled with one thousand, one hundred and seventy-seven names, which sat at one end of the memorial. One thousand, one hundred and two of those sailors and Marines were entombed directly below their feet as they stood in silent awe.

  Jonesy prided himself on being emotionally steady - bland, even (the general insanity of the current situation notwithstanding). Not a lot of highs, not a lot of lows. Sure, he felt things, reacted to things; felt love and anger, and sometimes (like now) both. Rarely did he show any outward sign. Okay, so maybe his violent tendencies had taken control a bit more of late than he would have liked. So, he wanted to pound fucktards like Peavey into so much goo? Given the circumstances, he thought he’d been showing remarkable restraint. But this...

  How could anyone look at those black-lettered names and not react, not feel something stirring, deep down, the emotion coursing through their body, and filling their soul? If they could, he thought, they weren’t human.

  As if in answer to his silent question, he heard a distant howl, coming from the direction of Ford Island. Definitely not human. Not any more.

  He wiped the tears from his eyes, snuffed his running nose, then looked at Molly, who was silently weeping.

  “Oh,” she said again.

  “Yeah,” he replied, his voice, though quiet, echoing through the sunlit space. He resumed staring at the names, unable to look at Molly’s tears.

  He found it difficult to define just what, exactly, he felt. The pain he’d felt on the way in, the sense of absurd pointlessness wrapping his emotions in regard to the woman standing next to him, had faded to nothing. Well, not quite nothing. It was still there, deep down inside, but distant, remote, and of no comparative consequence.

  Neither did he feel the chest-swelling of National Pride, with trumpets blowing and flags waving, and a chorus of the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background. This, too, had been transcended by the sheer sense of tragedy. Because that’s what December 7th, 1941 had been. Tragic. Pointless. A complete waste of human life. Even Yamamoto had known the attack was a dumb thing to do - that at best, it would give Japan a few brief months of breathing room. The ending of the Pacific War had been a foregone conclusion, even before the Enola Gay dropped its one lone bomb.

  So, Jonesy supposed, was the inevitable result of the Pomona Virus. In the end, humanity would s
urvive, would rebuild, would crawl its way out of the ashes of this disaster, and be stronger for having survived. And just as in the Second World War, there’d be one hell of a lot of killing between the beginning and the end.

  He thought of the design of the Arizona Memorial, what critics had called the smashed milk carton when the idea was originally proposed. Two peaks (one on either end), with a dip in the middle, signifying the achievements leading up to the attack, the depression following it, and the inevitable triumph at the end.

  Whoever created Pomona, whatever lunatic distributed it and caused this current, pointless tragedy, in the end, wouldn’t succeed in what logic dictated must have been his ultimate goal: the destruction of the human race. Why else would he have done it? What else could have been his end game? Humanity would survive. Jonesy and Molly, and the crews of the Sass, and the Star, and True North would make sure it did, even if they had to die to make it happen.

  As if, in an odd sort of synchronicity, Molly had come to the same conclusion, at the same time, he heard her take a single, deep breath, then saw her turn to look at him, a fierce determination in her tear-filled eyes.

  “We have to liberate this place,” she said.

  “Yep,” Jonesy replied.

  “This is Hallowed Ground,” she said.

  “Yep,” he replied again.

  She stared at him for a moment longer, then said: “What are we waiting for?”

  64

  The Skull Mobile

  Schofield Barracks, Oahu

  “Holy sheep-shit, Batman,” Scott Pruden said, as they rounded the curve, and Schofield Barracks Army Base came into view.

  “That’s something you don’t see every day,” Marc Micari agreed.

  “Armored zombies,” Duke grumbled, concurring with the general consensus that this cast a decidedly sucky pall over the day’s festivities.

  Indeed, Scott could see a phalanx of staggering, stumbling, certainly homicidal soldiers, in full uniform, including Kevlar and helmets, milling about in front of a barricade in the middle of the road ahead. A few of them were semi-naked, having apparently decided trousers were too constricting, but all of them had somehow retained their body armor. They weren’t armed, of course, and it was doubtful they could do anything with the weapons if they had been - such being beyond the mental capacity of your average zombie - but their protective gear would make it that much more difficult to kill the poor bastards.

  “That’s going to ruin my paint job,” Duke muttered, bringing the truck to a stop, some two hundred yards from the gaggle of infected freakazoids.

  “This thing is painted?” Rudy McGuin, the Operations Specialist from the Star said, in an offhand, distracted way, as he stared at the zombie horde. Scott could relate. This was, no doubt, the first time the young man had been within grabbing distance of the hapless, yet murderous victims of Pomona.

  “Oh my Lord,” Jim Westhoff added his two cents, as he diligently shot video of their latest obstacle.

  There was a gate, Scott knew (having been to the base a few times, Pre-Plague, when he’d needed to perform maintenance on the antennae), at the split between McComack Road and Ayers Avenue, after the turn, off Wilikina Drive, but apparently, some strategic genius had decided (as the shit began to hit the proverbial fan) that it’d be a good idea to blockade the road, even before granting access toward the gate. Seemed pointless, since wooden saw horses and Humvees parked diagonally, nose to nose, were no match to a high security gate with a guard post, but what did he know? He was just a wimpy little Puddle Pirate. Of course, this meant he had active brain cells, unlike the mental midget who’d thought the barricade would be a good idea, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

  The end result was obvious. Some member (or members) of the blockade team had already contracted the virus, by the time the order came down. He (or they) had then turned, and attacked their fellow soldiers, killing some, wounding, and thus, infecting the others. As to what they’d been eating to sustain themselves in the interim between then and now, and what they’d been using for a water source, to keep from dying of dehydration...? This, too, was obvious, or, rather, became obvious. The twin decorative water fountains (their jets of water now still and powerless) flanking the gate access road, and the piles of bloody, mangled things, scattered here, there, and everywhere near the barricade were evidence enough.

  “Move forward, Petty Officer,” Ensign Devon commanded in a shaky voice he was clearly trying to conceal behind bluster. It didn’t work.

  “In a minute,” Duke replied, meditatively scratching his chin, as he scoped out the situation.

  “You will do as you’re told!” the Butter Bar Idiot barked.

  The large Bosun Mate slowly turned to regard the dipshit. Scott made a mental bet with himself, laying better than even odds Duke would pound the stupid son of a bitch. “In a minute,” Duke repeated. “Unless you’d like to drive,” he added, and Scott could feel the growl, deep down in his toes.

  Nobody drove the Skull Mobile, but Duke. Nobody. Not even Chief (actually Chief Warrant Officer now, Scott reminded himself) Jones - and Duke liked him. Scott hadn’t known the large man very long, and the acquaintance had been entirely under extreme circumstances, but he didn’t need to be a savant to understand that little fundamental tidbit. So Duke was merely trying to demonstrate to the young Ensign that he should allow more experienced hands to remain in control.

  Devon sputtered - as Scott knew he would. Marc, the civilian, leaned forward from the rear, with the rest of the peons, and said to the Ensign: “I’d leave well enough alone.” He thumbed toward Duke. “I’d be more afraid of him, than the zombies.”

  Duke grinned in reply. The smile held a feral air about it.

  “Proceed,” the blithering idiot ordered, substituting volume for, say, good sense.

  Duke stared at him for a bit then grinned. “Buckle up, Buttercup,” he said, and gunned the engine.

  Oh shit, Scott thought, knowing what was coming. “Hang on,” he said aloud to his fellow peons in the back.

  “Ramming speed!” Duke yelled, and jammed the truck into gear.

  65

  USS Arizona Memorial

  Pearl Harbor, Oahu

  “Either that’s a signal mirror,” Jonesy said, grabbing Molly’s arm as she was leaning forward to board the RHIB. “Or I’m hallucinating,” he added, then qualified the statement. “I’ll give you even odds as to which.”

  She followed his pointing finger towards a group of distant buildings, a little ways inland from the southwestern shore of Ford Island. At first, she saw nothing but the desolation and scattered debris. Then came a flash, from what appeared to be the top of one of the warehouses, followed by another, and then another.

  “Survivors,” she said, stating the obvious.

  “Either that, or the zombies are using Morse Code,” he replied. “Hotel...Echo...Lima...Lima...Oscar,” he said, reading the signal. “Ah! Hello.” He released her arm and waved his. The flashes continued, their rhythm changing. “Not exactly standard visual signaling procedures,” he observed, “but effective.”

  She’d almost, kind of, but not quite learned flashing light while in the Academy, as part of one of those broad familiarization classes they were always teaching, to supposedly give the cadets an overview of each of the enlisted ratings. The result, however, was to stuff far too much information into their overtaxed brains, thus rendering the knowledge just this side of gibberish. Jonesy, however, seemed to know what he was doing.

  “Uniform...Sierra...Mike...Charlie,” he intoned. “Jarheads!” He exclaimed, then waved his arm to indicate his understanding.

  “Can we respond to them?” Molly asked.

  “What a great idea!” He replied, hopping down into the boat. She followed, watching as he turned the key to start the motor. It roared to life, sending vibrations through her boots and into her toes, as Jonesy snatched the handheld searchlight from its bracket on the side of the console. She pe
ered over his shoulder and saw him flick the selector switch to Signal. One more turn of the dial would have turned it into a spotlight.

  “Okay...” he said. “Let’s see if I remember how to do this...”

  66

  Warehouse 14

  Ford Island

  “Hotel...Oscar...Whiskey...Delta...Yankee...” Staff Sergeant McNaughton read aloud. “Howdy?” He turned to the PFC. “Fucking Howdy?”

  Dittery shrugged. “Coast Guard,” he said, as if it explained everything.

  McNaughton growled, then said: “Send them a single flash.”

  Dittery did as ordered.

  The response was immediate. “India...November...Tango...” He rolled the letters over in his head, at first not understanding. Then he did. “Interrogative,” he said. “They have a question. Send them a flash.”

  Dittery did.

  “Hotel...Oscar...Whiskey...Pause...First word is How. Mike...Alpha...November...Yankee... Many... How many? Now we’re getting somewhere.” McNaughton rubbed his hands together, more than a little glad to actually be doing something for the first time in weeks. “Send them ten Marines, plus at least twelve civilians on two other buildings,” he said, referring to the few they’d seen atop the NOAA Tsunami Early Warning Station, over on the other side of the island, and the several they’d spotted on one of the buildings surrounding the Joint Peal Harbor - Hickam Air Force Base Operations Center, off to the northeast.. He wasn’t sure the latter were, in fact, civilians, but it was a safe bet they weren’t Marines, and as such, didn’t really matter. Still, they were human, which gave them a few more bonus points over all the goddamned zombies roaming the island.

  They hadn’t been able to communicate with the other two groups because - either - the other redoubts didn’t have a signaling device, or, they didn’t know how to use one if they had, adding further proof to the civilian designation. But again, they were human, which made them okay in his book.