Under a Graveyard Sky

CHAPTER 24

“Once upon a night we’ll wake to the carnival of life,” Steve crooned to the blaring music, his feet propped up on the flying bridge and just enjoying the ride. “It’s hard to light a candle, easy to curse the dark instead…”

Sea Fit always seemed to find the big ones. And this time Captain George was being cagey. He’d just said “you’re going to need all your clearance teams.”

Steve after some thought had centralized the “clearance teams” on the Toy. It just made sense. Captain Blair had picked up a former Army cook who was comfortable enough to do clearance on small boats. But right now, hard clearance was still relegated to Faith, Fontana and himself. And that way they had all their throw-weight concentrated.

He kept his voice low: singing wasn’t one of his gifts. But he could hear Faith caroling along in a high, perfect, soprano and even a deeper and not bad tenor from Sergeant Fontana. They were busy prepping gear on the aft deck. If the rolls bothered them it wasn’t apparent. He heard Faith laugh about something and wondered, mildly, if putting her alongside the older and presumably heterosexual SF sergeant was a good idea. He wasn’t a jealous angry father type by any stretch and trusted his girls to make reasonably intelligent decisions.

But Faith was still a bit young to make mature and intelligent decisions regarding romance and, face it, both his daughters were hotties. The main issue he had wasn’t if something happened. He knew Faith generally knew the guidelines on that sort of thing. They’d had discussions on the subject. And in Fontana’s position, the temptation had to be fairly high. The real issue was when, not if, something went wrong and dealing with the aftermath. Faith was both passionate and, at this point, about as deadly as they came.

It didn’t, for now, appear to be a real issue. But it was just another nagging problem at the back of his mind.

Like the Coasties. The “headquarters” hadn’t gotten back to them at the three day limit. The sub was still out there. It even maintained the same general position relative to his boat. The ESM mast was scooting along the surface, five klicks or so, port, forward. Just in case he got a call he guessed. He’d put them on the Large, since they had some people who could figure out the systems, and pointed out that they didn’t really have the fuel to use it, then showed them the flotilla’s usage. The Coasties were…coasting. They were being useful, helping out on the Victoria, working on boats, but until they got some orders they couldn’t really do much.

They’d gotten two more boats up and doing rescue/clearance, Blair was over on the Changing Tymes, now, Sophia had taken over the Worthy Endeavor, taking most of his crew with her! And they’d found Captain, with an actual ticket and everything, all ocean, all tonnage, Geraldine Miguel as a survivor on the 72" N2 Deep. After taking a little break in harbor and getting her boat cleaned up the tough “forty something” captain had immediately headed back out to sea. And on her first day with a crew drawn from the women “sick, lame and lazy” had cleared ten life rafts and rescued six survivors. She’d do.

He paused in his ruminations and picked up his binoculars, peering into the distance. The Toy was a yacht, not a sport fisher, so it didn’t have a tuna tower. Which slightly limited the distance at which anything could be spotted. That depended upon the conditions, of course, but in general, height equaled how far you could see at sea.

That also meant that up on the fly bridge he could see further than the helm. Which meant he was the first to spot the target.

By the same token as having a higher spot to look from, being higher above the water meant you were more visible. And this boat was visible from too far away. Then the music cut off.

“Captain Wolf?” the helmsman called over the radio. “I think I’ve spotted it on radar…?”

His new helmsman, Gustav Fleischmann, had had some experience with small fishing boats. Graduating to the Toy was an adjustment and he was still unsure about all of the readouts. But he could and would drive a boat and he seemed fairly reliable. Sure of himself…not so much. Then again, Steve wasn’t so sure of him and generally took the boat for close maneuvers.

“Roger,” Steve said. “I’ve got it on visual.”

He wanted to curse. The boat could be a gold mine or a bust. But it was even larger than the Large. Much larger as he finally spotted Sherill’s Bertram alongside. It looked like, well, a toy boat. In fact, the boat was much much larger than he’d realized. It wasn’t a boat, it was a… Small cruise ship? Megayacht? He wasn’t sure.

He flipped channels for the flotilla frequency.

“Sea Fit, Toy, over.”

“Sea Fit, over,” Sherill answered back immediately.

“Fit, you sure know how to pick ’em.”

“You like? We get part of the swag, right? If you’ve got it, we’ll continue.”

“Oh, no,” Steve said. “This is an all hands evolution. All boats, relay, proceed to location of Sea Fit for all hands clearance.” He paused for a moment, then keyed the radio again. “Fit… Is that thing listing?”

“Yeah,” Sherill replied. “And you gotta see why…”

* * *

“Bloody buggers…”

The megayacht was…massive. As long as the cutter with some of the same lines but…prettier. It was anything but utilitarian. And it was, indeed, listing.

On the starboard side of the yacht was a “boarding and support center” that was basically a door in the hull of the boat that dropped down to water line. There was also a boarding ladder down from the promenade deck, which was above the height of the Toy’s flying bridge.

The reason for the list was immediately apparent. There was a heavy hawser pointed straight down from the boarding area for “support boats.” Attached to it, as was apparent from looking down through the crystal clear water, was a sport fisher, probably as big as Sherill’s bertram or a tad bigger. About sixty feet down. Bobbing up and down from the swells. Underwater.

“I can’t believe this thing hasn’t capsized,” Sherill said over his loudspeaker.

The yacht also had a contingent of zombies. But they were sort of background to the big fishing boat attached to the much bigger ship.

“Well, that there’s a puzzler,” Fontana said, looking over the side of the Toy. He spit in the water. “It’s so clear I sort of thought it would keep dropping.”

“You don’t realize how clear til you see something like that,” Steve said.

“And them,” Faith said, pointing to the circling sharks.

“Okay, here’s the puzzler,” Steve said. “The way the zombies are now, they’re easy meat.”

They were lined up on promenade deck, their arms waving and reaching for the nearby boat. There was a waist-high railing but there was plenty of room above it for a shot. Of course, there was a steel bulkhead behind them, which meant that any round was going to bounce. At least any that went through.

“Bouncers,” Fontana said.

“Move back to the aft deck,” Steve said, pointing but not looking. He was still considering the sunken boat. “The problem being, that someone is going to have to go down there and release that thing. If you try to cut the hawser…you don’t want to get close enough to cut the hawser. It’ll snap back like a sixty foot taipan and twice as deadly. That means raising it or releasing it. Raising it…no. However, there is, unless I’m mistaken, a quick release on it. So…hook up a line, pull and it goes into davy jones locker.”

“Makes sense,” Fontana said. “Except for the being sixty feet down and we don’t have SCUBA gear.”

“That is not an issue,” Steve said. “I am an expert free diver.”

“And then there’s them,” Faith said, pointing to the sharks again. “You know, the sharks. The man-eating sharks. The man-eating, probably-been-surviving-on-zombies-that-fell-off sharks?”

“Right, those,” Steve said. “About those…”

* * *

“You sure about this?” Sherill asked.

Some people tended to call him “Captain Gilligan” for his vague resemblance to Alan Hale, Jr. He had the same blue eyes, thinning blond hair. As he was getting his beer gut back, the resemblance was increasing.

His devotion to the His Sea Fit was almost doglike. He’d already lost three crewmen who couldn’t take the constant pounding of being on a 35ft sport fisher, in deep ocean, day in and day out. Thirty-five foot sport fishers were not designed for long-endurance, at-sea operations. Captain Gilligan didn’t seem to care. You’d pry him out with a crowbar.

“If they don’t leave,” Steve said, sitting on the bulwark of the aft deck of the Fit wearing swim fins and goggles, “no.”

The sharks were still circling below but with luck that was going to change soon. There was another shot from the aft of the boat and Steve vaguely heard the ricochet go by overhead. There was a flush-deck at the rear of the yacht, which had the infecteds right at waterline. Whether they dropped in the water or not, the blood from them should attract the sharks.

“You’d better not shoot my boat,” Sherill said.

There was a splash in the distance and first one of the larger sharks then the entire group headed aft.

“Unlikely,” Steve said. “Angles are wrong.” Or course, they were probably going to be putting holes in the yacht but he figured it could probably take it. The “boarding support area” was half-way underwater and the yacht hadn’t sunk.

He took a deep breath and slid quietly over the side.

He porpoised down into the depths, spinning in a three sixty to keep an eye around. In his left hand he had a light line with a spring clip on one end. The other hovered over his H &K.

While there had been snorkels, swim fins and masks aplenty among the boats, not one single speargun had been found. Steve was hoping, really hard, that he wasn’t going to have to test if you could fire an H &K USP.45, with octagonal barrel and Austrian engineering, sixty feet underwater.

He hadn’t had much of a chance to do breathhold diving in a while. Most of the times they stopped there were sharks around the boats and zombies to kill. People to save. Even Jew Bay was a no-go zone. In fact, he hadn’t had a lot of time for anything but the Program in a while.

But while he’d grown up on a station, it was close to the coast. And he’d grown up swimming and free diving. This was home territory. Including the sharks, which in Australia were just one of those things like box jellies, spider and snakes you had to put up with.

When he reached the hawser he put his right hand on it and followed it down to the latch point. The hawser wasn’t tied to the fishing boat. It was connected to a quick release latch, which was, in turn, connected to an apparently massively strong davit.

Steve felt like he was out of air but knew it was just CO2 build-up so he let out some air as he carefully connected the clip to the quick release. That was as much as he could handle on one breath so he started back up. He spun around, again, looking for potential threats but the sharks were busy feasting at the aft of the boat. His motions were smooth and regular, just another healthy, happy fish in the water. Nothing to attract them.

His heart beat faster as a massive hammer head came coasting down the length of the megayacht. It seemed in no hurry to get to the feeding frenzy aft. On the other hand, it didn’t turn towards Steve.

He surfaced and swam, splash free, to the dive platform on the rear of the Sea Fit and pulled himself completely out of the water, sprawling out on the platform.

“You okay?” Sherill called from the tuna tower. He was holding a rifle in his hands.

“Fine,” Steve said. “Is that for zombies or sharks?”

“Yes!”

Steve breathed deeply and waved with two fingers for Sherill to back the boat closer to the megayacht. The less lateral distance he had to cross the better.

This time he slipped off the dive platform face down to get a better head start. He spun in place and then tried not to panic as the massive hammer came coasting towards him. It had apparently decided that the other boat was probably going serve up tasty zombies as well.

Steve decided to just keep heading down. Hammerheads were known to attack humans and this one was obviously accustomed to feeding on infecteds. But they were also fairly smart for sharks and also tended to focus on distressed, fish, birds and mammals. Steve’s movements were regular and steady. It should ignore him. Should.

He kept an eye on it as he headed down the hawser to the line. The medium weight nylon was more or less negatively buoyant and hadn’t gotten far from the hawser. Steve got ahold of one end and moved away from the hawser. As soon as he was clear, he sped up, swimming away from the boat and the quick release as fast as possible, the line wrapped around his left hand.

He felt the shock of the line going taught and looked back. The quick release had surrendered, finally, and the boat shot into the depths as the hawser snapped upwards.

Pulling Steve along with it. Which had been part of the plan.

Unfortunately, the sharp movements excited the hammerhead, which headed for the only reasonable source of protein in view: Steve.

The shark came in at lightning speed but Steve had had a master’s course in drawing and firing fast at this point. He fended the charging hammerhead away by placing the barrel of the H &K against its port hammer and pressing the trigger as it rolled to take a bite of tasty human.

The gun did not explode and the hammerhead did not take well to being shot in the head by a polymer capped, expanding, 45 caliber ACP. It spasmed and dashed away in a corkscrew, its tail lashing furiously.

Unfortunately, it was now “a distressed fish, bird or mammal.” Sharks sense such movements and are attracted to them. And while there were tasty zombies at the aft of the boat, there were also a lot of sharks. So some of the ones on the edge of the pack banked away and headed towards the new source of potential protein.

Which meant right at Steve.

He wasn’t sticking around to watch or anything but the sharks were coming in from near the surface. The hammerhead was tracking down and forward on the megayacht and that meant that the sharks’ path led them right to Steve.

Who they passed without note. He was still being calm and regular in his movements and they didn’t see him as easy prey. Five, six, nine sharks darted right past him in pursuit of the massive hammer as he calmly made his way to the surface.

“I thought you were a goner, there,” Sherill called. “They were too deep to shoot.”

“If you’d shot one of them I would have been a goner,” Steve muttered. If one of the charging sharks had been shot as well, all the rest would have closed in with Steve as tasty snack in the middle.

“What?” Sherill asked, starting to climb down.

“Easy peasy,” Steve said, decocking the H &K and taking a series of deep breaths. “No worries, mate.”

* * *

“Okay,” Fredette said, shaking his head and listening to the take from the captains. The increasing number of boat captains in the “flotilla” gossiped like old women on various frequencies, which made keeping up with the goings on of the group easy. “This guy is flipping insane. Diving into a feeding frenzy to release a boat and then taking out a shark with a pistol?”

“If it’s crazy and it works, it ain’t crazy,” Bundy said, shrugging and making a note. “Note to sonar. That weird transient was the sound of a.45 being fired sixty feet underwater…”

“Don’t forget the whole ‘into a shark’ part,” Fredette said. “That probably changed the acoustics from just firing it.”

“Good point…”

* * *

Galloway raised an eyebrow and looked at Commander Freeman.

“His own subordinate skippers call him ‘Captain Insanity,’ sir,” Freeman said, defensively.

“Not to influence the discussion or anything,” Brice said, holding up her hands. “But I’m starting to like this guy.”

Freeman looked at his monitors and sighed.

“Sir, we may have a destabilizing element in the equation.”

“Which is?” Galloway asked.

“Passive sonar on the Dallas indicates an approaching Russian Typhoon.”

“They’re sending a boomer?” Brice said, blinking. “A boomer?”

“They’re fast attacks are not as well designed for long endurance as ours,” Freeman said. “It’s possible that they don’t have a fast attack to close the position. Acoustics indicate it is probably the Servestal.”

“Sounds like time to talk to Sergei again,” Galloway said, grimacing.

* * *

“Slippery,” Steve said as he jumped off the dinghy onto the boarding platform. The dinghy was going up and down in five foot regular seas whereas the boarding platform was hardly moving. He’d done it so many times it he really didn’t notice. “Watch your step.”

He’d actually landed on the chest of one of the dead infected. He also didn’t really notice that except one detail.

“Is it just me or is there a preponderance of women?” he asked, catching the line thrown to him.

“We’d noticed that,” Fontana said. “And for all they were zombies…kinda pretty ones.”

“Men,” Faith said, stepping easily onto the flushdeck. “Da, this is one of the easiest boardings we’ve ever done.”

“Noticed,” Steve said. “But if you slip overboard it will go quickly to one of the worst,” he added, pointing to the still circling sharks.

“So, you seriously shot a hammerhead with a.45?” Fontana said, taking point. There were stairs up to the promenade deck to either side of the landing. He took port just because. There also appeared to be some sort of pop-out door but there were no obvious external controls.

“Wasn’t my first option,” Steve said, as Faith took starboard. “And I’m not sure whether to trust the gun again. We need to be really careful on fire discipline on this one. I think it’s going to be as bad as the cutter.”

“Well, it’s got all the usual zombie mess,” Fontana said, looking over at Faith. “Ooo, look, there’s movement to my starboard!”

“Very effing funny, Falcon,” Faith said. She looked through the heavy glass doors at the interior and shrugged. “I dunno, a little paint, some carpet…”

“A lot of carpet,” Steve said. “I think we need to start clearing freighters to look for carpet.”

What appeared to be the main saloon was about sixty feet long, two stories high and had once been a vision in fine wood bars, tables and white carpet and equally white sofas and chairs. There were also plasma screens freaking everywhere. From the looks of it, some of the windows could double as smart-screens. The central bar was of cream, silver and blond wood with “SOCIAL ALPHA” emblazoned above along with what appeared to be the logo for Spacebook, the social networking site. Someone had defaced it, apparently tried to strip off the platinum and since it was above most of the damage that had probably been an uninfected human.

Half the plasmas were obviously trashed. The floor was covered in the usual mix of blood, decomposing flesh and feces. So were the sofas, chairs, tables and the fine wood bars. There were bullet holes in half the windows. There were at least nine chewed corpses in view.

“All of the booze is gone,” Fontana said, looking behind the central bars.

“Maybe they figured out how to break the top of a bottle,” Faith said, stepping gingerly around the central bar to starboard and sweeping from side to side. The room had no interior light but they were still getting good radiance from the tinted windows. She checked behind the bar on her side, leading with her Saiga. “Cleaning this up is going to be a bitch and a half. But I think it might be worth it.”

“The problem is, again, fuel,” Steve said.

“There’s that small tanker Sophia found,” Fontana said, sweeping to port again.

“Let’s say I’m a little uncomfortable clearing a tanker,” Steve said, hefting his Saiga. “Especially one that has been sitting without spaces being vented. All I can see is Faith shooting a zombie and the whole thing going boom. Then there’s the problem of getting it running and getting the fuel from it to the other boats. In mid ocean.”

“All problems we’re going to have to figure out,” Faith pointed out. “We’re going to need the fuel now or later.”

“Open hatch to the interior,” Fontana said, pausing. The scattered bars were designed to get people to flow in a freeform manner. They also tended to restrict line of sight. Which he wasn’t enjoying.

“Olly olly oxenfree!” Faith shouted. “Zombies, zombies, any zombies home?”

“I wonder how far that actually carried?” Steve asked.

“Far enough,” Fontana said, as the laser dropped onto the zombie’s chest.

“Wait!” Faith said, delightedly.

“Why?” Fontana asked. The zombie was in pretty bad shape and it wasn’t closing fast, but it wasn’t like he wanted him to get to melee range.

“Oh, My God!” Faith squealed as the zombie charged. “Do you know who that is?”

“No,” Steve said, still covering the rear. “You going to shoot or Fontana?”

“Mike Mickerberg!” she said, pulling the trigger on the Saiga twelve gauge. The former internet billionaire was splattered all over the deck of his mega yacht. “Clean-up on Aisle Nine!”

“That’s getting old, Faith,” Steve said. “And who?”

“The guy who invented Spacebook! Duh.”

“Well, even if we had the equipment we couldn’t use him for vaccine,” Fontana said.

“Why?” she asked, heading to the next hatch. “He’d infect people with horrible apps?”

“Actually, I was wondering if he had a spine,” Fontana said, then looked down. “Yep. Sure does. Amazing…”

“Don’t step in him, Da,” Faith said. “You might get Slimelined. HELLO! ANY ZOMBIES IN THERE? ZOMBIES, ZOMBIES, OLLY-OLLY OXENFREE!”