Problem was, she couldn’t help thinking about it - or about Tara. It wasn’t a sex thing (or so she kept telling herself), and this didn’t feel like some of her past flings (because she really couldn’t call them relationships) with guys. This was different, and it threatened to drive her right out of her ever-loving gourd. So... Concentrate on something else...
Harold Simmons, newly promoted to BM3/DECK, and fresh out of his rack, where he’d been recovering after getting dog-piled by a whole bunch of zombies, stood in the shade of one of the larger banyan trees surrounding the diamond. In his hand, he held an M-4, pointed at the ground. He was there to provide security, and none too happy about it. In his opinion (which he’d shared with anyone who would listen) he should still be in bed. Operational necessity had said otherwise.
To suggest the patchwork conglomeration of Sass personnel, Star personnel, and Base personnel was spread thin, would be akin to saying...? She didn’t know what it would be akin to saying. Something really thin, like too little butter on too much toast, only more so.
They had people on the North Shore, people on Kauai, people in Pearl Harbor, people in the Base Galley, people in the medical clinic, and people in the small boat, providing security for the people at Ala Moana Mall. Others were doing necessary maintenance on the Sass and Assateague. Still more were involved in the Olympic-level cat herding, otherwise known as taking care of all the refugees.
One advantage to finding herself in charge of the Admin side of things, was that she could choose which of the hundred tasks she could assign herself. She’d chosen this: checking in new arrivals.
But with all the noise the helo caused when landing and taking off, and the fact there were still infected lunatics running around the perimeter of the base and trying to find a way inside so they could snack on a little old yeomen from Alabama, named Lydia, having the Coasties spread like butter on toast meant no one to watch over them. Maybe having the civilian woman (and her dog) helping out with security wasn’t such a crazy idea, after all.
“Here zombies,” Wendy sang. “Come on zombies. Come and die.”
Then again...
“Helo inbound,” Harold called, taking the commco down from his ear.
Here we go again...
78
The Rooftop
Ala Moana Mall
“Jeez, people, back up,” Pat Querec said to the crowd of refugees who were putting forth a monumental effort to do the exact opposite.
“Save your breath,” Greg Riley told him. “They’ve been like this since we landed.” True enough, Greg thought, feeling a bit chagrined by his sin of omission.
What he hadn’t said - what he’d omitted - was that the hundred or so people on the rooftop had been pushing steadily forward, and away from the door in the doghouse structure, some hundred or so feet away. They still hadn’t told him why. He’d asked - more that once - but their answers had been as evasive as they were varied.
Just anxious to get out of here, took the prize for the most popular. There’s a funny smell over there, won most creative. The roof is unstable, had come up a few times, and I like it better over here, held the trophy for most cryptic. What they all had in common, however, and what Greg absolutely did not want to tell either Pat, or ASM1 Ronny Wallace (the Swimmer from the 6585), was how they all seemed to cast sidelong glances at that door.
Not that Greg had done anything sensible, like, say, investigate, either. Something told him he should just leave well enough alone, and so he had. Still, it gave him a tingling feeling at the back of his neck, the way he imagined the cowboys of old got in Apache country. There be Injuns about, Pard...
And after all, the operation had been going rather smoothly, all things considered. The 6583 had picked up a load of six survivors, dropped them at the base, then headed to the Star on the North Shore for fueling. They’d since come back, made an additional three runs, and were now returning to the Star. The 6585 had fueled, then picked up two loads, and was on their way back for a third. Thirty-six refugees, thirty-six people rescued. Not bad for a zombie apocalypse.
So why couldn’t he shake the feeling of unease?
“These people need a bath, stat,” Pat said, sidling up to him. “They stink worse than when the sewage tank overflowed down in McMurdo,” he added. “You remember the brown trout?”
Ah, disgusting gallows humor... Could always count on Pat Querec to put things in perspective.
There came a loud BANG - not like a gunshot. More like something heavy hitting something else hard.
“What the fuck was that?” Pat asked.
Greg thought he knew. Oh, my, yes, he thought he knew. The tingling in the back of his neck raced down his spine and straight to his testicles. Why were the survivors avoiding that door?
79
FAA Tracking Station
Ka’ala Mountain, Oahu
“My spidey senses are tingling,” Scott Pruden muttered, not quite under his breath.
“Then ask them to pass me that cable, please,” Marsha Gilbert (formerly of Raytheon) said, proving he hadn’t been as quiet as he’d thought.
She lay on her back, half under a console in the Tracking Station control room, her body somewhat contorted to reach the wiring harness beneath and behind - living proof the people who designed this shit never had to work on it. An actual technician would have made access to the connection for the solar array, which supplied power to the entire facility, and was, therefore, vital to the continuing operation of it, more accessible, or, at least, not requiring anyone working on it to turn themselves into a human pretzel. But had they consulted the likes of Scott (Jurgen McAwesomeness) Pruden? They had not. He handed her the requested cable, then retrieved his M-4.
Someone (or some thing) had damaged the cable by the simple expedient of knocking down the pole on which it was strung, between the solar panels and the control room. This had, in turn, caused a short, frying some of the wires inside the console. A solid dent in the front fender of one of the pickup trucks (one of the two with their doors open) explained the how of it, but did nothing to explain the why.
Where were the people who came in those trucks? If they were alive, why couldn’t anybody find them? If they were dead, where were their bodies? Had they been attacked, and just run off into the jungle? If so, why had they stopped to lock the gate behind them?
Inquiring minds (chief among them, good old Jurgen McAwesomeness) wanted to know. The answer might save their lives.
Enlightenment came in the form of a girlish scream.
“Oh fuck!” The voice shouted from somewhere outside. Scott ran to find its source.
Duke and Rudy McGuin running toward him from the direction of the tracking station dome. Marc Micari poked his head around a building to his right. SN Dixon Grimes popped his head out beyond Marc, then Jim Westhoff did the same behind Grimes, in a weird imitation of the Three Stooges. Which left...
Ensign Jaime Devon came running into view, in full reverse, backpedaling away from a low, single storey structure set apart from the other buildings at the southwest corner of the compound. “Fuck!” He screeched again, and stumbled, tripping over his own feet, and falling flat on his ass. It might have been funny, might have sent Scott into gales of highly inappropriate laughter, had it not been for the three zombies staggering out of the building and straight toward the Ensign.
80
M/V Corrigan Cargo III
10.782740 N 162.558273 W
“We’ve got five hundred miles to figure out how to stop this thing,” Morris Minooka said to Gunner’s Mate First Class Ernie Swaboda. They were crammed into the crawlspace below the compartment they’d turned into Fire Control, surrounded by hundreds of cables twisting this way and that into the darkness, both in front and behind them, like a school of giant squid swimming through a steel cave. The freighter had been turned into a weapon of war - albeit one jury-rigged to within an inch of its life.
“And how, exactly, do you plan on doing it?”
Swaboda asked, as well he should. It wasn’t like they could just disconnect a few wires. Problem was, they’d jammed the cables into the crawlspace and throughout the ship in such a chaotic jumble, in an effort to get done before Blackjack Charlie decided to start shooting random people as an incentive to move faster, that simply cutting wires could have unpredictable and potentially deadly results. Doing so would either turn every one of the monitors and controls off, thus making it obvious to the pirates that they’d done something hinky, or cause one or more of the missiles to detonate, and kill them all. Neither option seemed viable.
“I’m working on it,” Morris replied.
Truth be told, he had no idea how they were going to do it. All he knew was that if they didn’t, then thousands of people would burn alive.
81
Nawiliwili CG Station
Lihue, Kauai
“Found the crew,” BM3/OPS Steve Bohenna said, his face white, and his voice cracking, as he leaned against the door jam of the Station CO’s office.
LTjg Carol Kemp looked up from the all-but meaningless stack of reports she’d pulled from a three-drawer filing cabinet behind the institutional desk, at which she sat. She stared at him, her heart sinking, even though she’d known the odds of finding any of the Small Boat Station’s crew alive had been remote, in the extreme. Still, there’d been hope - always hope, always the only thing left to cling to - even if only a small one.
“Dead?” She asked, already knowing the answer, already reading it on his face. He nodded.
CWO4 Vincenzo appeared in the hallway behind Bohenna. “Found the small arms locker,” he said, shrugging. “What’s left of it.” She raised a single eyebrow in response. “There’s some ammunition - nine millimeter, five-five-six, and twelve gauge - a couple flare guns, and a civilian revolver, with a trigger lock, but that’s it.” He shrugged again. “Looks like they put up a hell of a fight.”
Bohenna shoved himself off the door jam with a grunt. “And for what?” He asked, the disgust and frustration in his voice echoing what she felt in her chest. “What are we doing this for?” the young navigator asked.
Bobby V gave him a sharp glare. “We’re doing our job,” he said.
“Really?” Bohenna retorted. “Since when is it our job to preside over the death of humanity?”
“You better stow that attitude, right fucking now,” Vincenzo snapped.
“Or what?” came the reply. “You gonna throw me on an island full of zombies?”
The two men squared off in the hallway, the testosterone coming off of them in waves, Carol thought, ought to be thick enough to see. What a waste of time, she thought. What a waste of energy.
“Enough,” she said aloud. The two men just stared at each other. Great, she thought. A pissing contest in the middle of an apocalypse. “If you gentlemen are finished comparing the size of your respective dicks,” she said, with an even voice, though in a tone hopefully commanding enough to convey her displeasure - as if that might mean something. “Bohenna, take Fegley and Batiste and see if you can get the surf boat started. Mister Vincenzo, on the way in, I saw what looked like a seagoing tug. Kindly take Seaman Sinclair and investigate.”
She didn’t look to see if they followed her orders, didn’t glare at them, daring them to disobey. Instead, she went back to staring at the paperwork that was all that remained of the men and women who’d served at this station.
The thought saddened her. Maybe Bohenna was right. Maybe there was little to no point to what they were doing. Maybe. Did it matter? No.
She heaved herself up and out of the chair, feeling the fatigue all the way to her bone marrow. Join the Coast Guard, she thought. Be part of the action.
She pondered what Bohenna said. Was he right? Were they just presiding over the death of humanity?
Did it matter?
Shaking her head - maybe to clear it, maybe to negate all the thoughts swirling around inside it - she headed for the door. There was work to do.
82
Comm Center
ISC Sand Island, Oahu
“Come on, guys,” Amber Winkowski said to the silent console. “Give me something to do.”
She’d been sitting there - alone - in the Comm Center for hours that felt like days, and gave her uncomfortable flashbacks to her time trapped in this very room. She wasn’t trapped, not any more, except by the necessity of duty. Somebody had to be there. Somebody had to monitor the radios, and perform the occasional relay, as she’d done between the RHIB, the Sass, and the Star, but that had been ages ago. Okay...hours. Same difference. She drummed her fingers on the desktop.
Of course, had she been busy, the shit would have indeed hit the fan, so she should probably just count her blessings and embrace the boredom. Screw that, she thought, felt a twinge of guilt, then dismissed the whole idea, and went back to being bored out of her skull.
“All I want is a little action,” she said aloud to the empty room. “Doesn’t need to be Armageddon...”
83
FAA Tracking Station
Ka’ala Mountain, Oahu
“Don’t fire, dumbass,” Duke growled, pushing the barrel of Scott’s M-4 towards the ground. “You want to signal every zombie for ten miles?”
He didn’t, of course. That would be foolishness; tantamount to suicidal stupidity. But did Duke really need to call him dumbass?
He said none of these things, of course. Scott Pruden’s parents hadn’t raised any dummies - in spite of Duke’s comment - especially when he saw the large man pull the twin hammers from his belt and stride straight at the stumbling zombies.
Ensign Devon was crab-crawling backwards away from them, a whimpering, mewling moan coming from his mouth. Scott might have felt disgust for the man, but at the moment, he found himself too mesmerized by the tableau of three homicidal maniacs converging on one, hammer-wielding, possible psychotic. Or was it the other way around? In either case, it was sure to get bloody.
If Duke was psychotic, if he had lost all his marbles and become several bricks shy of a full load, then, number one, Scott wouldn’t be the one to tell him so; and, number two, he was really glad the man was doing it for their benefit. Maybe this was the new normal. Maybe what the new world needed were new definitions. Crazy is relative, or so they say, and one man’s crazy, could be another man’s salvation. Maybe they were all crazy. Maybe the whole world (or, at least, their portion of it) had gone stark, raving mad.
Or maybe it was all just so much bullshit. He watched in fascination as Duke moved in for the slaughter.
A trio of sentient, rational, non-utterly insane humans might have approached the big man with caution, or, perhaps a strategy, like attacking him in some formation, such as an arrow, or separating to give the hammers less of a target-rich environment. They might have tried to surround him, overwhelm him, or - at the very least - make things more difficult. Instead, they just staggered mindlessly toward him. Result: inevitable.
Duke waded in, taking the first in the forehead, splattering brains and gore onto the ground in a gout of destruction. The thing never knew what hit him. The second fell to a great roundhouse blow to the temple, with equally horrific results. The third hesitated.
Maybe it wasn’t quite as infected as its brethren. Maybe its lizard brain hadn’t entirely taken control - or, then again, maybe it had, and the fight or flight instinct had kicked in, favoring the latter response. Then again, maybe it was just too fucking insane to make the life-saving connection that his two compatriots had gone down like a pair of bowling pins. In the end, it didn’t matter. Duke’s hammer saw to it with brutal efficiency.
Silence fell.
Not really. There hadn’t been much sound at all, except perhaps the noise Scott’s blood made as it rushed around near his ears. Now all that remained were Devon’s whimpering moans.
A door burst open behind them, and they all turned, Scott’s M-4 coming up without any cogent thought from Scott’s brain. Rudy McGuin and Marc Micari both stepp
ed back. Duke spun and stepped forward, with hammers held ready. Devon continued whimpering.
Marsha Gilbert paused in the doorway of the Control Room, staring at them. “What?” She said, finally. “The power should be good to go.”
They all stared back at her. Scott’s brain had apparently left for parts unknown, during the brief, yet gratuitously violent span of the attack and repulse by blunt force trauma. Presumably, the others held expressions similarly vacuous as the one he knew must show on his own face. Marsha snorted.
“It means we can turn the antenna on,” she said.
84
CG 6583
Over Ford Island
“Down thirty...” AT3 Marc Columbus called from the hoist, as they lowered the pallet of bottled water slowly downward toward the roof of the FEMA Warehouse.
LT Carrie Scoggins - busy hovering the aircraft, though she was - still managed to feel somewhat guilty to be leaving the ten Marines in the besieged building. Not that they could do anything about it. Well, maybe they could. Maybe they could manage to drop the cable down to each of them in turn and raise them without battering them to a bloody pulp, and/or getting the cable caught on all the vents and HVAC units, and antennae, and whatever else covered the roof of their prison, leaving them scarce room to stand still, even less room to move, and no room to hoist them, with any level of safety to either the Marines or the helo.
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 15