Under a Graveyard Sky

CHAPTER 25

“I’m starting to think there was a mutiny,” Steve said, stepping over the corpse. The man had been wearing body armor and he would have been facing a similarly clad man further down the corridor. Both had rifles by their bodies, one an M4 the other an AK variant, and there were casings scattered along the corridor.

“Looks that way,” Fontana said, turning the smaller man over. His legs and face had been chewed off but the armor had kept his torso intact. Except for the decomposition. “Ugh.”

“What?” Faith asked, looking down. “Clean it up and it’s pretty good gear. Well, except the holes that are in it.”

“It wasn’t the body or the gear I was going ugh about,” Fontana said. “Soccoro Security. Evan Soccoro’s company.”

“Context?” Steve asked.

“There are contractors and contractors,” Fontana said, continuing the sweep. “Despite it’s rep, Blackwater wasn’t actually that bad. They had something resembling quality control. Triple Canopy? Very good. At least their primary operators. And they pick good associate operators.”

“Primary, associate?” Faith said. “Bosses and subordinates?”

“Generally, but not exactly,” Fontana said, banging on a hatch. “You can call it racist, but primaries are all from developed nations. Generally. Associates are guys hired from developing nations. Associates are cheaper and generally not as well trained. Not always. Some groups use former Ghurkas for associates or even primaries. There’s one run by a former Ghurka that does shipboard security.”

There was no response so he entered the compartment. There were several bodies in there but none had been chewed. Some men, some women. Most had been shot in the head.

“So what’s with Socorro?” Steve asked.

“I won’t get into my personal issues with former Special Forces major Evan Socorro,” Fontana said. “Although I had personal issues with Socbreath. Which term came from his tendency to…fellate highers from SOCOM. Pretty much anybody who worked for him did. But he finally got a chain of command that, officially in writing, asked how an asshole, and a not particularly competent asshole, got to be a major in the Groups in the first place and he got out. And started his own security company. He had some assbuddy primaries that were mostly not former military, just call them gun geeks. Some of those guys are fine. A lot of them weren’t military cause they couldn’t make the grade. ‘How soon do I get to kill somebody?’ couldn’t make the grade. That’s the kind he liked to hire. Then instead of hiring good associate contractors like, say, former Peruvian mountain commandoes or El Salvadorans or even some of the SA or Angolan ‘bleks’ he picked west Africans.”

“Bloody hell!” Steve said, looking around a corner. “Seriously? More here.”

“Is that bad?” Faith asked. “I guess so.”'

“Think child soldiers whose ‘military experience’ consisted of rape, loot, pillage and burn,” Steve said. “Again, there are good West African troops…”

“For values of good,” Fontana said. “I think ‘good’ for even their elite is a stretch.”

“But the majority are pretty damned bad,” Steve said. “By any definition of bad you’d care to name. Competence, ability, discipline. I’m surprised anybody would hire a group like that.”

“They were cheap,” Fontana said, shrugging. “He didn’t pay his primaries at full standard rate and his associates got paid dirt. So he could shave a few bucks off a contract.”

“Looks like he got what he paid for,” Faith said, pointing to a hole in the bulkhead. “Steel. I’d say… 7.62?”

“Yeah,” Fontana said, staring at one of the female bodies. “I think these were potential infected that were terminated. I don’t see any bites but that might not have been how they were chosen. And…”

“The women have all been raped,” Steve said. “From the ligature marks.”

“Oh, God,” Faith said, grimacing.

“‘If one holds his state on the basis of mercenary arms, he will never be firm or secure; because they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, unfaithful; gallant among friends, vile among enemies; no fear of God, no faith with men; and one defers ruin insofar as one defers the attack; and in peace you are despoiled by them, in war by the enemy,” Steve said.

“Da and his quotes,” Faith said. “Which one is this one?”

“Macchiavelli’s The Prince,” Fontana said. “I know some good guys who are contractors. And some good companies.”

“So you’re facing a zombie apocalypse where every reasonable person foresees a potentially permanent breakdown in law and order, and you bound onto your megayacht, load up with models, then hire a security company filled with freaking West Africans?” Steve said.

“Well, no,” Fontana said. “That was stupid. You might as well put a steak around your neck and go jump in a tiger pit.”

“So…” Faith said. “Guy’s smart enough to build and run a billion dollar company. How come he makes that mistake?”

“Situation he’s in is a tough call,” Fontana said. “I mean, in normal times no way that you’d have to deal with a take-over by your security. There’s laws. Bad things will happen to them. Post-apoc? Don’t ask me what I would have done if I was the guy running security, had all the guns and all the people who knew how to use them, and the boss was now utterly useless.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Steve said.

“Different situation entirely,” Fontana said. “And I’m not Socorro.”

“I’m not talking about that,” Faith said. “I can see that problem. I mean, I’ve been nervous about all the new people. Not you, Falcon, but… You know, who do you trust? I guess I’m wondering how a guy like Mickerberg could have picked somebody even I would know not to trust?”

“You’re thirteen but you’ve got the background,” Steve said. “Your mom and I gave it to you. I don’t know a lot about the guy, but I got the impression of intelligent liberal, one each. To them, everybody who knows how to use a gun looks the same. There’s no difference between Sergeant Fontana and Kony in Congo. He probably just told one of his staff to find a security company that could supply security and picked one of the lowest bidders.”

“We’re all babykillers after all,” Fontana said, banging on a hatch. “Hello! Any babies to kill in there?”

“If there were any survivors, that would not be very reassuring,” Steve pointed out.

“No, just zombies,” Fontana said, looking in. “Dead zombies.”

“Sure they were zombies?” Faith asked.

“They’re naked and some of them are chewed,” Fontana said, closing and marking the hatch. “I hope like hell they were.”

* * *

“Da, I’m starting to think that zombies aren’t the worst things in the world…”

The cabin on the top deck was nearly the size of the main saloon with a panoramic view of the surrounding ocean, a massive in deck hot-tub, a wet bar big enough for a public bar and a bed that could hold forty. At a guess, there had once been a good bit of gilding from the looks of where stuff had been ripped out. There was also a huge stack of Mountain House boxes and five gallon containers of water.

The solid steel door had been cut through by a welding torch. On the bed were ten women, naked, their hands bound behind their backs and shot in the head. At the head of the bed was a male corspe, unbound, also naked, with the top of his head blown off. All of the bodies had been gnawed by ferals but they hadn’t died from the zombies.

“Major Socorro,” Fontana said, smiling thinly. “We meet again.”

“How do you know it’s him?” Faith asked. The body’s face had been chewed off.

“Right height, right build and I know how he was about women,” Fontana said. “There’s rough and then there’s batshit.”

“Holed up to wait for the zombies to take over,” Steve said. “Probably with the pick of the prettier women. Then when the mutineers burned through the door he shot them and himself?”

“Looks that way,” Fontana said, wandering around the suite. “What’s missing is the weapons and ammo.”

“And the gilt,” Steve said, pointing to where something had been prised from the walls. “You know, modern sport fishers don’t sink very readily. They’ve got buoyant foam inserted everywhere…”

“Zombies are taking over, the mercs load up the one away-boat with all the gold and all the guns?” Fontana said. “Overload the boat?”

“Which explains why it went down like a stone,” Steve said, shaking his head.

“You know,” Fontana said, musingly. “Billionaire like this probably had real gold. I mean, bars, coin…”

“Jewelry,” Steve said. “And not costume.”

“Did we just drop a treasure ship in five thousand feet of water?” Faith said. “Please tell me we didn’t drop a treasure ship in five thousand feet of water…”

* * *

“Yeah, you did.”

James Michael “call me Mike” Dugan, assistant engineer, had been found hiding in one of the yacht’s cavernous storage lockers along with a female Indonesia cook named Eka Sari. They’d been brought up on deck and were sipping soup in a relatively undamaged portion of the promenade.

“We could hear them talking about it,” Sari said softly. “When they were speaking English.”

“It wasn’t real clear that Socorro had taken over at first,” Dugan said. “Mick was always sort of stand-offish with the crew. But then Socorro took over his cabin and the… Africans started going nuts. Mick had brought a bunch of his friends and execs along.”

“And women?” Steve asked.

“Yeah,” Dugan said. “Lots of girls. Mick hadn’t been seen for a week. I mean, I didn’t interact with guests but…”

“I did,” Sari said. “And there were questions. All of Mr. Mickerberg’s food was being taken to him by security, ‘for his safety.’”

“Then… Socorro had all the guests brought up on deck and the Africans separated out the men and women, and the women who were…older,” Dugan said. “And the Africans shot ’em. Right in front of God and everybody. Told us if we didn’t follow his orders, we’d get the same. Then the party started…” he said, glancing quickly at Sari and then away.

“Rape,” Sari said, looking at the deck. “Much rape.”

“Told you Socorro was batshit,” Fontana said, shrugging. “I think he hired the Africans cause they were the only guys he could find as fucked up as he was.”

“Then people started going zombie,” Dugan said. “And it really hit the fan. There was some sort of a split in the gang. We heard Socorro was killed, the leader of that faction, guy named Meloy, went zombie and the Africans, those that hadn’t turned, started loading the away boat. With, like, every bit of treasure they could get their hands on. And there was a lot. It was about that time that I…went into the compartment and sealed the door. Turned out Sari was already there…”

“I had hidden when the fighting broke out,” Sari said.

“There was a pause there,” Steve said.

“What pause?” Dugan asked.

“Before you hid in the compartment,” Steve said. “You skipped a step.”

“I sort of locked the engines down and turned off the lights,” Dugan said, grinning thinly. “And locked down the engine room doors. I was the last surviving engineering officer. That’s what got them to leave the ship; no lights, no power, drifting. I figured, turn everything off, lock it out, hide in the compartment, wait for them to leave and then come out.”

“Good plan,” Fontana said, drily. “Except for the zombies.”

“Yeah, them,” Dugan said, shrugging. “Thanks for clearing them off.”

“Mr. Dugan, you know the laws of salvage,” Steve said. “Any live survivors means it’s not salvage. Our…approach is slightly different. We allow survivors equal shares on all portable wealth of the boat. The boat is property of the Flotilla as well as half of the materials. We give… When there is a survivor or survivors who can run the vessel, we generally allow them to keep it if they want to join the Flotilla. Or if we don’t need it. In the case of this let’s say we’ll be extremely lenient in that regard. But if, as you’ve indicated, it’s still probably functional and has some fuel… I think this we may need.”

“So… That sort of makes you pirates,” Dugan said.

“Needs must is the best I can say,” Steve said. “Okay, flip it around. You take the boat. It’s not salvage. It’s not entirely clear, by the way. Are you going to finish clearing it?”

“Uh…” Dugan said. “Can I get some help?”

“No,” Fontana said. “I mean, face it, you already did.”

“So even passing that,” Steve said. “Your stores will eventually run out. Where are you going to get more? Where are you going to get fuel?”

“You can’t run this without support,” Fontana said.

“On the other hand,” Steve said. “We can’t run it at all. You and a Coast Guard petty officer are the first qualified engineers we’ve rescued. I doubt that how ever many manuals she reads, my wife can even start the engines on this thing.”

“Not the way I buggered the computer controls she can’t,” Dugan said.

“So, obviously, we need your cooperation and I hope support,” Steve said. “This is well set-up to be a floating command and support ship. We need somewhere to put the refugees, give them a few days rest before we give them the choice of helping or being put into Coventry.”

“You can get to Coventry?” Dugan said.

“There are two sailboats we floated in Bermuda harbor,” Fontana said. “Which is filled with sharks that have gotten used to snacking on uncoordinated zombies. Anybody who doesn’t want to help out we drop on those. They’re hellholes, really, but there’s nothing else to do with them.”

“Most of them are less sick, lame and lazy than tired and afraid of the sea,” Steve said, shrugging. “And there’s no great benefit, to their eyes, to bouncing around in tiny boats in a big sea. I think that some of them would probably go for being on this one. Even if it’s not in the big room.”

“Cleaning this up…” Dugan said, shaking his head. “When I went to ground it had gotten bad, but not this bad.”

“That’s the price of getting out of Coventry,” Steve said, grinning mirthlessly. “And the price of remaining out is continuing to provide support to a reasonable standard.”

“I can run the engines,” Dugan said. “For as long as they hold out. And they’re good, don’t get me wrong. And new. But I can’t con this thing. Where you gonna get a captain?”

* * *

“What do you think?”

Despite her surname, Geraldine Miguel could have been from Missouri. She had that Midwestern look. Blond hair, blue eyes, Scandinavian facial structure. She was actually from Texas, a ninth generation family that went back to the pre-Republic days. Most of the line, however, was Germanic rather than Hispanic, which explained the looks.

“I think it’s going to take a hell of a lot of crew,” Geraldine said, looking around the still dark helm. “And one hell of a lot of clean up.”

“I have a cunning plan on that,” Steve said as the lights came on and the panels started to light.

“Which involves?” Geraldine asked.

“Using an enemy.”