Both meant the same thing, and both were accurate.
Killing wasn’t normal human behavior. It seemed like it, and it certainly resided in the human collective unconscious, but most people went through their entire lives without ever coming close to essentially committing murder. Men thought about it more than women, he supposed, though not out of any sexist preconception. Hollywood had cranked out scores of violent movies every year, year after year, for decades, and men were invariably the target audience. Boys were raised to play soldier, to play war, to play at killing; girls (generally) weren’t. In any case, and in spite of all the hypocritical moral outrage, voiced whenever political advantage could be perceived, the vast majority of men and women never took up arms with the express purpose of killing another human being. But when the need arose, when the proverbial shit hit the actual fan, the only sure way to survive was to (in the immortal words of Rambo) become war.
War is all Hell, General William Tecumseh Sherman said, a hundred and fifty-odd years before. It wasn’t a movie or a game. It couldn’t be played at.
Disguise fair nature with hard favored rage...
The whine and chop of the helicopter started in the distance, grew near, and finally passed overhead. “Eight-Three, recon the bridge,” Jonesy ordered through the miracle of modern communications technology.
“Roger that,” Carrie Scoggins voiced her reply.
The hovering aircraft nosed down and shot forward, wasting no time. It hovered above the far end of the island, where Ford Island Bridge should, for all intents and purposes, be a smoldering pile of ruins, if their mad inventor, Marc Micari, had placed the C4 properly. If he hadn’t, then the zombies would keep right on streaming across the harbor, filling Ford Island at the precise moment they were trying to rescue the stranded Marines.
Murphy, however, had other ideas.
“Uh, Houston,” Carrie Scoggins began. “We have a problem.”
214
M/V Point of Order
Off Midway Atoll
“Do it. Do it now!” Blackjack Charlie shouted. He slammed the phone back into its cradle and spun to face Hennessy and Felix, who stood staring at him on opposite sides of the small pilothouse. Hennessy’s eyes were cold and angry; Felix’s - though he couldn’t actually see them - were, he felt certain, filled with the same dread as his heart.
Kill him for me, baby...
Clara’s words echoed through his mind, at once encouraging and accusing him. He’d had the opportunity before Charlie launched the insane and ill-fated attack on Midway. He’d chickened out.
No other way to look at it. Felix Hoffman was a coward.
Blackjack Charlie shoved his finger toward Hennessy. “Get your ass down there and get them ready. We’re going again.”
Hennessy didn’t move.
“Charlie,” Felix began. Charlie’s blackjack ended the conversation before it could go any farther.
He’d always heard the expression, seeing stars, though he’d never experienced it, himself. An entire galaxy exploded inside his head, as the cudgel slammed into the outside. Only a last-second cringe kept it from slamming into his temple. Instead, it glanced off the top of his head, but it proved enough to drive him to the deck.
Charlie stepped away, ignoring him. He did not ignore Hennessy.
Pulling his nine millimeter, he pointed it at Hennessy’s face. “Move, damn you,” he said.
Hennessy moved.
Felix shook his head, rose to his knees, and blinked. He glanced toward the doorway. Clara Blondelle stood there, halfway down the ladder leading to the salon, below. Only her head and torso were visible. She said everything she needed to say with her eyes:
Look at him, they seemed to say. His back is turned. Now’s your chance.
Charlie’s back was indeed turned, as he watched Hennessy make his way out the port bridge door. He’d never have a better chance.
His head swam as he regained his feet. His knees felt weak. His bowels felt as if they might evacuate themselves right into his trousers. He reached behind him for the knife.
215
Seaplane Wallbanger
40 Miles off Midway
“Twenty minutes,” Harvey Walton said.
“Fly faster,” Jim Barber replied.
As if his demand turned into that last and final straw, the starboard engine coughed, choked, then revved again, and slowly regained its normal thrum.
“What the fuck?” Jim asked, expecting no answer in return.
Harvey gave him one, anyway. “There, there, old girl,” he said, caressing the steering console. “Don’t let the angry yank upset you.”
Jim glared at him.
“Best not to temp fate,” Harvey said. He reached into the pouch on the left side of the pilot’s seat, and withdrew a bottle of gin. It wasn’t the good stuff, wasn’t the gin worth several hundred dollars a bottle. Molly Gordon, and then LCDR Wheeler had taken great pains to keep Walton away from the temptation, but clearly he’d managed to acquire an admittedly inferior replacement. He unscrewed the cap and raised the bottle in salute. “Here’s to you, my dear,” he said, toasting the seaplane. He gulped down an alarming third of the bottle before offering it to Jim. “I find drinking to her good health helps,” he said.
“With what? Cirrhosis of the liver?” Jim asked, incredulous. The limey bastard would drink to anything.
He continued to hold the bottle out, and replied: “With the gods of fate and fortune.”
“What?” This was nonsense.
Walton shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt.”
Jim stared at him for a moment longer, teetering on the edge of finally, incontrovertibly proving the man truly was batshit crazy, and not giving a rat’s ass, if for no other reason than the fact the whole goddamned world was batshit crazy, and if such was the case, why fight it?
He took the offered bottle and drank. It tasted fine.
216
The Duck Bus
Pearl Harbor
“Houston, we have a problem,” Molly heard Carrie Scoggins’ voice say.
“What now?” Jonesy’s voice replied.
“The detonation was...” the pilot’s voice paused, as if searching for the correct word. “...less than completely successful.”
Molly could see Jonesy, standing in the bow of the LCVP, staring toward the northwest, shaking his fist at the sky and cursing a blue streak. Okay, she couldn’t actually see his swearing. She could see his lips moving, could see the anger in his face, but at their current distance, without the aid of modern communications, she couldn’t hear what he actually said. He could be reciting the poetry of Longfellow, or Yeats. He could be entertaining the other men on the LCVP with a discourse on the current state of the post-apocalyptic world economy. He could be saying any number of things, but she doubted it.
“Less than successful?” Harold asked, from the seat behind her. He shared that seat with Jim Westhoff, their Public Affairs Specialist, turned zombie fighter. Together, they made an odd pair, but the entire ad hoc attack force was a smorgasbord of personalities and skill levels. Odd pairings were the rule, rather than the exception. “What the fuck?”
“Please define,” Jonesy’s voice finally said, as if attempting to answer Harold’s question.
“One of the large support beams is still intact,” Scoggins replied.
“Are there zombies walking across it?” He asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Well, fuck me sideways,” he said, the profanity finally coming out. “Anything you can do about it?”
Molly searched the northwestern sky, saw the orange and black dot hovering over the far end of Ford Island. Finally, Scoggins replied.
“Negative.”
Molly returned her gaze to the LCVP, saw Jonesy standing there, pointing his face toward the deck and shaking his head. She saw him sigh, then apparently come to a decision. His head came back up, and she heard him say: “Roger that. Break, break. Assateague, proceed to the bri
dge, and see what you can do to keep the Zeds occupied.”
“Roger,” Frank Roesseler’s voice responded. “Be advised, our stock of twenty-five millimeter is running low.”
“Of course it is,” Jonesy replied. “Do what you can. Break, break,” he continued. “Eight-Three, commence lifting ops; R-R-B, give us cover fire on the landing zone; Sass Two, take station, as planned; Duck Bus, wait for our signal,” he ordered. Molly saw him looking right at her. “Seriously, Molly, wait till I call you,” he added.
“Fuck that,” Wendi Micari said, from behind her, on the other side of the bus from Harold and Jim Westhoff. The profane sentiment was almost obliterated by the calls of: “Roger,” in response to Jonesy’s orders.
A large part of Molly agreed. She wanted to go now, and she most certainly didn’t want to wait while Jonesy went right back into the jaws of death. Another part, the portion of her psyche that spent four years at the Academy learning to give - and take - orders, however, accepted the necessity, albeit begrudgingly. This was the job. Didn’t mean she had to like it.
“All units,” Jonesy called. “Execute.”
Please, Jonesy, she prayed. Stay alive...
217
M/V Point of Order
Off Midway Atoll
Kill him! The voice inside Clara Barton’s head screamed as Felix lunged toward Blackjack Charlie’s back.
She’d seen a lot of movies over her years, had been taken to those movies by any number of men, most of whom had spent the time trying (and usually succeeding) to get into her pants. There were more than a few well-known motion pictures she’d seen, but couldn’t say what they were about, if her life depended on it. Somehow, however, her dates had always seemed to give up their efforts at molesting her during the action sequences. She had, therefore, seen the same scene, over and over again, in any number of testosterone-fueled action movies.
The hero is in a desperate battle with the villain (or his henchmen, or terrorists, psychotic clowns...whatever...), the scene is set, the action begins, and suddenly everything is happening in slow (sometimes super-slow) motion. Felix’s attack on Blackjack Charlie was nothing of the kind. It happened so fast, Clara almost missed it.
Felix lunged, with the knife held out in front of him like a spear. Charlie whirled, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. The gun came up, the shot cracked the air like a pick into a block of ice, and Felix’s head exploded outward, spraying blood and bone and brain matter all over the steering console.
Clara saw it all in a flash from her position halfway up the stair. Felix was dead. His body slumped to the deck and fell over onto its side.
It.
The body was no longer Felix, no longer her recent lover, no longer the man she’d manipulated into trying to kill the one man in all the world that Clara Blondelle wanted dead more than any other. And Clara Blondelle couldn’t have cared less.
None of it mattered. Not one bit. Why?
Because Blackjack Charlie’s back was to her now, and she had a knife of her own.
218
The Skull Mobile
Ford Island
The most direct route to the building with the trapped Marines was to shoot straight up Liscomb Bay Street, the harbor end of which had a wonderfully solid concrete pier. It would have been easy - relatively speaking, what with hordes of bloodthirsty zombies, and all. Naturally, however, the cocksucking, motherfucking, son of a two-bit crack whore, Murphy had other ideas.
“Well this sucks,” Scott Pruden said, from his position at the sunroof gun mount.
“You think?” Duke asked, rhetorically.
Jonesy stuck his head out the passenger side front window. He barely had room between the side of the truck and the side of the LCVP. “Move us along the shoreline,” he told BM2/DECK Samuel Stern, whom they’d stolen from the Assateague, since he was the only one, apart from Duke, who had any experience maneuvering the cumbersome landing craft.
The problem that vile piece of diseased zombie shit, Murphy, presented to them was simple, while being frustratingly annoying. The pier was all well and good if they wanted to tie off to it and stroll along the avenue, through an untold number of starvation-crazed, infected assholes, all the way to the warehouse where the Marines waited to be escorted to safety. Since doing so would be suicidally, idiotically insane, they needed to find a beach onto which they could unload the Skull Mobile. What’s more, they needed to find one where the Duck Bus could also land, and could make it to the warehouse, preferably without being swarmed by human flesh-eating zombies.
Piece of cake, Jonesy thought, as he tried - and failed to see over the high bulkheads of the LCVP. The only one of them in the truck who could possibly see where they were going was Pruden. Jonesy turned in his seat and asked:
“Anything?”
“A lot of concrete,” the Electronics Technician said. “Hang on...,” he said, rising onto his tiptoes. “Yeah...Yeah...I can see...We’ve got something up here.”
“Are you gonna share, or keep the news to yourself?” Marc Micari asked, from his position among the boxes and boxes of ammunition, hand grenades, and the last five pounds of C4.
“Beach,” was Pruden’s only reply. He didn’t need to say anything else, as the sound of metal grinding onto sand and rock filled the metal box within which they, and the Skull Mobile waited.
Machinery whirred. The ramp lowered. A phalanx of zombies waited to welcome them onto Ford Island.
“Open fire!” Jonesy shouted, as Duke slammed his foot on the gas.
219
Seaplane Wallbanger
Midway Atoll
“Midway Tower, Midway Tower, this is Wallbanger, Channel Sixteen and One-Twenty-One-point-Five,” Jim called into the radio handsets he held, one in each hand. This was his third attempt and the lack of response was staring to unnerve him. “Where the fuck are they?” He asked Walton, though the man could hardly have any better idea than he did.
The British pilot consulted his watch. “Far too early for tea time,” he quipped.
“Too early for cocktail hour,” Jim countered, eyeing the bottle which now rested in the pouch on the right side of the pilot’s seat. “But it hasn’t stopped you.”
The atoll lay ten miles distant, clearly visible in the late morning sunshine. Jim thought he saw something off to one side, grabbed the binoculars out of the pouch on his left, and confirmed it.
“There’s a boat just offshore,” he said. “A yacht, I think.”
“Pirates?”
“I doubt it’s the Mickey Mouse Club,” Jim replied.
“M-I-C-K-E-Y...” Harvey sang, off-key.
“Fly the fuck-ing plane,” Jim sang back at him.
“Oh, well done!” Harvey said, with a big grin on his face.
The plane shuddered, as a loud POP sounded from above and to the right. The starboard wing dipped, then righted.
“What the fuck was that?” Jim snapped.
“There, there, old girl,” Harvey soothed, once again caressing the steering console.
Jim craned his neck, but couldn’t see any telltale smoke from the engine. The deep thrum of the twin propellers sounded a bit rough, but they always sounded that way on the ancient bird.
“Seriously, man,” Jim said, “fly the fucking plane.”
“You’re sounding like the proverbial broken record,” Harvey Walton said in reply, which made Jim think the two of them sounded like an old married couple whose conversational style had settled into good-natured bickering as a means of communication. The image didn’t help, so he dismissed it out of hand.
He retrieved the twin handsets and tried his luck again, as they approached the harbor.
“Midway Tower...”
220
M/V Point of Order
Off Midway Atoll
Three steps. That’s all she needed. Three steps: two up the ladder, and one across the deck, and it would be done. Blackjack Charlie would be dead. Her thighs tensed, her grip on the knife ti
ghtened. She hesitated.
This was where Felix had gone wrong. This was where Charlie had sensed the move like he had ESP, spun, and blew Felix’s head into mush.
The man had reflexes like a cat, and the uncanny good luck and instincts borne out of years of barroom brawls and prison life, where he’d had to develop that sixth sense, or paranoia, or whatever it was he used to escape who knew how many close calls that could have ended in his serious injury or death. Clara certainly didn’t know. How could she? The question zipped through her head at the speed of thought, while her body waited to fight or take flight.
She had to move, had to do something, one way or the other. Either head below and out of sight, where it may or may not be safe, where she may or may not have to be used again, or tossed aside again, or tortured again by this man who - for the moment, anyway - held all the cards.
He controlled her life. He decided who she fucked, or, more importantly and disgustingly, who could fuck her. He could order her gangbang on a whim, present her to his men as a prize to be pawed at and molested and to have a train pulled on her, by every, single pirate under his command, until she was left bruised and battered and covered in sticky spunk.
These thoughts also blinked across the tragedy playing out on the movie screen of her psyche. How had she gotten here? How had this happened to her? Who had done this to her?
She couldn’t answer the first two questions, but she knew the answer to number three: Blackjack Charlie Carter. That’s who’d done this to her, that was who to blame for her lot in this miserable life. He’d done this. He’d caused this. It was his fault.
“Don’t even think–” he started to say, without bothering to look at her behind him, sensing both her presence and her intent. He started to, but the radio interrupted him.
“Midway Tower, Midway Tower, this is Wallbanger...”
He turned his head toward the VHF unit hanging above the helm, that was now covered by what used to be the inside of Felix Hoffman’s skull. She lunged.
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 35