Under a Graveyard Sky

CHAPTER 27

“Hydrocarbons, sure enough,” Gardner said. Her voice was barely audible between the silver suits they were wearing and the air-pak. She knew this so she tapped Fontana on the shoulder and made sure he saw the blinking indicator. “Take off your mask in here and you’re going to hit the deck, fast.”

“No worries,” Steve shouted. “The same could be said for the zombies. There is some good news.”

“And one spark and we’re going to go sky high,” Fontana noted. He used his hand to bang on the next hatch. “Anybody home?”

There was an answering banging, regular not frenzied like zombies.

“I knew we forgot something,” Steve said. “Spare air.”

“How many!” Fontana shouted. He put his ear to the hatch to hear the reply. “I think they’re saying four.”

“Stand by here,” Steve said. “I’ll take Gardner back to the ship. But I’m not sure how to… We’d have to fit them…”

“They must have a clear, or reasonably clear, air supply in there,” Gardner said. “And if there are females, they’re probably pregnant. Not good to have them exposed. I suggest we run blowers down here and clear out this passage, then extract them.”

“And we get blowers, where?” Fontana asked.

“There are some on the cutter,” Gardner said.

“Which we already had to do a six hour run up to and a seven hour run back,” Steve said. He was either going to have to figure out how to tow the damned thing or strip it soon. That was one of his nagging issues.

“It’s a supply ship,” Fontana said. “Would they have some?”

“We can try to ask,” Steve said.

“Do you have blowers?” Fontana said. “Blowers! Where are the blowers? If they’re answering I can’t hear. They’re saying something…”

“We passed an aid station,” Gardner said, pointing back the way they came.

“Which would have blowers?” Steve said.

“No,” Gardner said. “But it might have a stethoscope.”

* * *

Fontana ripped off his mask and leaned into the hatch.

“Where do you have air blowerthisairyoucan’tbreatheitwhereARETHEAIRBLOWERS!”

“OW!” Gardner snapped, holding her ears that the stethoscope was inserted into. “That hurt!”

Fontana quickly redonned his mask and took a deep breath.

“Wow, that really is foul.”

Gardner waved a hand for silence as she listened.

“Ask them if they said ‘locker by engineering’?” She pulled the stethoscope away from the hatch and covered it with her hand.

“LOCKER BY ENGINEERING?” Fontana shouted through his mask.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Gardner said, nodding and taking off the stethoscope. “Okay, you can bellow as loud as you want, now.”

* * *

“You got a clue how to use these?” Steve asked, looking at the fans and big coiled duct stuff. Mechanical wasn’t his gift any more than singing.

“As a matter of fact I do,” Gardner said. “But I’ll need some help moving them. Ooo, ooo, My. Poor. Pregnant. Back.”

“There’s a reason Sadie is back on the Large,” Fontana said.

* * *

In the end, Gardner did pretty much all the work but the toting. And in thirty minutes, they had the blowers evacuating and replacing the air in the corridors to the survivor compartment.

“How long?” Steve asked, looking at the descending sun. It wasn’t red. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. A bad sign was if the dawn was red.

“When this says it’s okay,” Gardner said, holding up the hydrocarbon meter.

“Picky, picky,” Fontana said. “Women!”

“You know, Fontana, on a boat like this I know ways to just catch you on fire. Ah, god. Not now…”

“What?”

“I gotta puke again,” she said, hurrying to the rail. “Be right back.”

* * *

“You gonna be okay?” Faith said as Hooch puked over the rail.

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry, that’s not what… I mean…”

“I’d say I puked the first time but I didn’t,” Faith said, then shrugged. “I mean, I have puked. Trust me. But I’ve seen worse than this. You should have seen some of the stuff on the Alpha.”

“How many of these have you done?” Hooch said. The scene in the lower deck was fucking awful. The male of the group, presumably the dad, had survived. By feeding on his family in what had been the master’s cabin. From the looks of it, they’d all zombied and had been fed on one by one. As he’d killed them he’d brought them down into the cabin as a nest and slept with the dead and decomposing corpses. Hooch had managed to hold it in until he noticed one really totally, what the fuck? detail. At the head of the bed, not covered in filth, almost like a little shrine, was a teddy bear. Like somewhere in the thing on the boat’s brain it almost remembered that it had somebody it cared about. It just couldn’t recognize that it was the tiny little corpse it was feeding on.

“People keep asking me that,” Faith said. “I need to get a count…”

* * *

“Five,” Steve said, nodding. “That’s not bad for a boat this size. Come on, we’ll get you over to the rescue boat.”

“Wait,” one of the men said, holding up his hand. “I’ll stay onboard.”

“Why?” Fontana said.

“If we leave the boat it’s salvage,” a woman said.

“Heh,” Steve said, grinning. “It’s salvage already. You’re not going to get screwed but you kind of want to sit down and have a chat about the new reality.”

“You do, you really do,” Gardner said. “And I’m saying that sort of officially as a member of the Coast Guard. In fact, as far as we can tell, I’m the number four senior United States Coast Guard officer. Cause there’s only six of us left.”

“What?” the man said, his face going ashen.

“Just come on over to the boat and get some fresh air,” Steve said. “We’re not going to pirate your boat.”

“Not exactly pirate,” Fontana said. “Hey, I wonder if I’m, like, Senior NCO of the Army.”

“In that case, I think Hooch is the Commandant…”

* * *

“How much fuel in the tanks, Hooch?” Faith asked, looking at the form. She was letting him do it for the experience. Besides the post-clearance tasks were getting old.

“Like, half a tank?” Hooch said.

“But dead batteries,” Faith said. “Okay. Hey, Paula! Toss me the slave!”

“Slave cable?” Hooch asked.

“Got it in one,” Faith said as Paula hefted the cable up from the other boat’s engine room. “Vicky make it up from cables and stuff they found. They do a little salvage in the harbor when the zombies aren’t real active or boats they can get to that don’t have any. But it’s stuff like this. I mean, I’ve had a couple of other people say they’ll try out clearance and they see one boat like this and give it up. It’s not just the zombies.”

“Who clears ’em out?” Hooch asked.

“Oh, the crews do,” Faith said. “If you want a new boat, that’s the catch unless it’s a hand-me-down like the Endeavor. Okay, engineering deck hatch is over here…”

* * *

“This is confusing,” Hooch said, looking at the electrical panel.

“Confused the shit out of me the first time I looked at it,” Faith said, throwing a breaker back and forth. “But this isn’t complicated. The Large, the Vicky, that fricking Alpha. Those are complicated.” She hit the “Start” button and the engine started whining. “Come on, baby…”

The engine rumbled to life and she grinned.

“And we have a working boat,” Faith said. “I think we get some sort of spiff for that but I don’t really know what it is.”

“Spiff?” Hooch said.

“Bonus,” Faith said. “Like, extra rations or booze or something. Speaking of which.” She keyed her radio. “You want the good pickins, come and get ’em. And it works.”

“Awesome,” Sophia replied. “Maybe I’ll ask for an upgrade.”

“Might want to look at the master cabin before you say that.”

* * *

“Oh, my God,” the man said, his face white.

“I know, zombies, right?” Faith said to the “captain” of the “prize crew.” The group were recent rescuees, mostly from liferafts, who had volunteered to join the Flotilla. “They’re worse than a rock band. Just try to avoid the crap. The flying bridge isn’t too bad and it’s a nice clear day. All you got to do is run it into Bermuda. The course is laid in on the GPS. Just follow the marked route. That’s the current channels, whatever the markers might say. Don’t necessarily follow the markers. They’re getting filled up. Follow the marked route, got it?”

“Yeah,” the man said.

“If you get in trouble, we’re always up on sixteen,” Faith said. “ Don’t go into the lower decks unless you’ve got a really strong stomach. The Marine with me puked put it that way.”

“Who cleans these up?” the guy asked looking at the feces and blood smeared interior.

“First test of a captain in the Flotilla,” Faith said, grinning. “Can you find a crew who’s willing to clean the boat?”

* * *

“You drink, Hooch?” Sophia asked.

“There’s two reasons for my nickname,” Hooch said.

“Twenty-five-year-old Strathisla,” Sophia said, handing him a highball half full of dark whiskey. “One of the real reasons to be a clearing boat.”

“And stuff like this,” Faith said, admiring the new gold and diamond tennis bracelet. She’d had to “extend” it with a bit of parachute cord since it was for a much smaller wrist. “Especially since I don’t drink.”

“This is authorized?” Hooch asked, taking a sip of the scotch. “I’m not really into scotch but that’s pretty good.”

“And enough of it and you forget what you see,” Sophia said, taking a pull. “Balancing doing this job half hammered and just doing it is the tough part. And we’re authorized one third of the salvage from cleared boats as the clearance boat. We really don’t have the room for it. Basically, we can take anything we can carry.”

“Hell, you don’t even clear,” Faith said. “What do you see that’s so bad? And I don’t drink.”

“Remember that raft with the kids in it, Faith?” Sophia asked, taking another drink.

“Yeah,” Faith said, looking at the deck.

“Kids?” Hooch asked.

“Life raft,” Sophia said. “Two kids. Maybe six and eight.”

“Zombies?” Hooch asked.

“No,” Faith said. “That was the tough part. They hadn’t zombied. There was no salt-water still. I mean…”

“There was a pack for one,” Sophia said. “It had been opened. But the still was gone. Maybe they could read the directions, set it up, but didn’t hook it up right and it drifted away. But it was gone. They’d died of dehydration.”

“Oh…crap,” Hooch said.

“That one still…” Faith said, her face working. “I mean, they must have tried really hard. They at least got the still out, you know?”

“Empty rafts,” Sophia said. “What happened? Who knows. Rafts with zombies and bits of the rest of the crew. Lifeboats with corpses and one zombie. Or even that’s dead. Just putrid bits of meat and intestines all over the fucking place…” She took another hit of the scotch and breathed it through her nose. “So I’m fifteen and I’m shooting for cirrhosis of the liver by thirty. Sue me. We earn this.”

* * *

“We barely touched the Grace’s tanks,” Isham said, looking at the computer. “I mean, the Alpha took them down but less than a quarter. There’s three times a fill-up for the Alpha in Grace’s tanks and the Alpha wasn’t dry. And we’ve filled the Large. I figured with the Coasties on it, they weren’t going to up and run off with it.”

“We were just preparing for a supply run when the word broke about the plague,” Victor Gilbert, First Mate of the Offshore Support Vessel M/V Grace Tan said. “We sort of packed along our…” He stopped and his face worked. “We packed along our families. Just a little…cruise…”

“Mr. Gilbert,” Steve said, handing him a glass dark with whiskey. “The same thing would have happened if they were on land.”

“Yeah,” Gilbert said, taking a drink. “But I wouldn’t have had to watch my wife and kids turn. You know?”

“I’m one of the few who doesn’t,” Steve admitted, shrugging. “Luck. Planning.”

“Bloody-mindedness,” Isham said.

“That as well,” Steve said. “Issues?

“No,” Isham said. “Just keeping it in mind.”

“So I ended up in the compartment with Stella, Larry Ashley’s wife and… Christ, Luis is Jeff Busler’s kid. Jeff was the deck boss. Larry was maintenance. And Sharon, she’s Chad Wilborn’s daughter, and Rich, he’s Sherri and Bob Tilley’s son, Sherri was the systems tech. Nobody has anybody…”

“No,” Steve said, “You all have each other. Captain Gilbert, those are the only children except Tina we’ve found. Alive anyway. This plague may or may not have wiped out civilization, but it has wiped out an entire generation.”

“Yeah, but there seems to be a new one on the way,” Isham said, chuckling.

“Pardon?” Gilbert said.

“Ahem,” Steve said. “I’m not going to pry, but I suspect Stella is pregnant?”

“How’d you…” Gilbert said, his eyes flaring. “Look…!”

“No worries, mate,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Just about every woman who was in a compartment with a man is pregnant. And we can usually sort out the rapes from the other.”

“Vic,” Isham said to the still visibly upset captain. “Take a deep breath. What Steve is saying is that it’s how things are, now. Part of the new now. Hell, there’s even a meme.”

“Meme?” Gilbert said. “Like LOLKatz or something?”

“Sort of,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t photoshopped it onto a picture of a pregnant woman. The saying is ‘What happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment.’ Goes two ways. There’s stuff that happens that you’re really ashamed of. On boats, in compartments. Having to kill somebody who turned.”

“Or, hell,” Isham said, “There’s one boat where there was a death that people just don’t talk about. It came out slow, they sort of hemmed and hawed…”

“And the response is, what happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment,” Steve said. “If there’s a complaint, we investigate it. To the extent we can. But… Stella hasn’t even hinted it was rape…”

“It wasn’t, honest,” Gilbert said, holding up his hands. “Hell, it just sort of…”

“You can talk about it if you want,” Steve said, shrugging. “Or keep it in the compartment. But you don’t have to be guilty about it. Yes, her husband was recently dead. So was your wife. The ‘right’ way, even if you’d liked each other before, was to ‘wait a decent period.’ You were alone in a compartment with nothing else to do and death all around you.”

“Except the kids in this case,” Isham said.

“We waited til they were asleep and did it real quiet,” Gilbert said. “Sue me.”

“Again and again if necessary,” Steve said. “No worries. One of the women from a liferaft, the man with her had to kill her husband when he turned. And she’s pregnant and they’re a couple. Humans adjust to the incredible. The survivors do. And one of the ways we adjust is things like ‘What happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment.’ Nobody but the people in the compartment, life raft, what have you, can really judge. It is one of the reasons that people in unusual jobs are given different courts than common citizens. Seamen have their own courts. Military. Because there is a reality to ‘You weren’t there. You can’t know. You can’t understand.’”

“And then there’s the prison thing,” Isham said, smirking.

“Prison thing…” Gilbert said, then grimaced.

“What happened in the compartment,” Steve said.

“Stays in the compartment,” Gilbert said. “Got it.”

“So, seriously, no issues,” Steve said. “The real issue is that while we’re starting to find some professionals, most of our crews are not professional seamen. Most of our captains are not professional seamen. And we have a real, critical, shortage of engineering personnel. Even mechanics. So when something breaks on a boat, the crews are generally stuck. And although most of them have been through storms, it’s mostly been stuck in compartments or puking up their guts and holding on for dear life in lifeboats and rafts.”

“No storms while you’ve been doing this?” Gilbert asked.

“Nothing serious,” Steve said, shrugging. “High summer and we’ve only had one tropical come up this way. That was before we started clearing and it was only a storm by the time it got here.”

“I remember that one,” Gilbert said.

“Me too,” Isham said.

“So we’re going to have to move,” Steve said.

“Move?” Isham said. “Why? We’ve got a good harbor here.”

“You’ve got Bermuda harbor,” Gilbert said. “Which is an okay harbor. You get hit by a really hard late season, I’m-going-to-rip-you-a-new-asshole hurricane, this is not the harbor you want to be in.”

“And with the ships, absent a truly excellent harbor, it’s better to be at sea,” Steve said. “If you’ve got the right crew. Which we don’t. And the small craft… There’s a reason they call it a ‘small craft advisory.’ Between the late season hurricanes that we’re going to get soon and the diurnals and winter storms… I’m thinking Canary Islands?”

“Good choice,” Gilbert said, nodding. “We’re going to have to fuel. I mean, the Grace has plenty for herself and could probably enough for a while for the small boats. But not to constantly refuel the Alpha.”

“Could you tow a full sized tanker?” Steve asked.

“Yes,” Gilbert said. “But I’d need a tow crew who knew what they were doing.”

“How about a guy who knows what he is doing and some people willing to learn?” Steve said, grinning. “Because that is the best you are going to get for any job in this flotilla.”

“What fun what fun,” Gilbert said, grimacing. “In that case, I can try. But I’ll be perfectly content to cut it loose.”

“Works,” Steve said. “ I think we’re going to have to leave the Vicky. I really should have gotten Mike in on this. But you’ve got quite a few accommodations from what I saw.”

“We could have carried a lot more people than we did,” Gilbert said, then sighed. “I don’t think that would have been a good idea.”

“There were few good choices,” Steve said. “As I said, my family was lucky. Although,” he added, shrugging. “The basic plan would have worked. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without one aspect but… Be that as it may, we can put more people on the Grace. We can put people on the Alpha. I’m willing to push it to the first diurnal or if we see a cyclone coming this way. For the diurnal we’ll bring the small boats in. But when either happens, we are upping stakes and heading away from the northeast Atlantic.”

“There are still a lot of boats and rafts out there,” Isham pointed out.

“And we can’t rescue anyone if we’re dead,” Steve said. “I am audacious, not stupid. Thereafter we will head to the Canaries and do this same thing, more or less. There are distress beacons everywhere and only we few, we happy few, to clear them. Depending on how many EPIRBs there are in that area, we may cut back across the ocean to the Carribean in winter. I would like to be off of Cuba by January. But I do not want to do that at the cost of leaving many behind. Which means we need more boats and more captains… Despite that, I’m going to start shutting down the thirty-fives, including the Endeavor. And I’m going to drag Captain Sherill out if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Good luck,” Isham said.

“Sherill?”

“Fully rated captain,” Steve said. “Who is totally stuck on his tiny little Bertram Thirty-Five. Used to run freighters for Maersk and chucked it, had a hissy fit as he puts it, for being a charter captain out of Charleston. Doesn’t want the responsibility. I’m going to have to convince him otherwise.”

“Like I said,” Isham said. “Good luck.”

There was a knock on the door and Isham looked at Steve.

“Enter!” Steve called.

“Commodore,” the young woman said nervously. “Sorry, but Captain Sherill is calling and he says it’s urgent.”

“Speaking of Captain Gilligan,” Steve said. “Where’s the radio room on this tub?”

* * *

“What’s up, Gi… Sea Fit?” Steve said.

“You need to get out here,” Sherill replied, instantly. “Now.”

Steve was used to the irrascible skipper’s usual tones. Desperately serious was a new one.

“Details,” he replied.

“You know how you’re always talking about people dying waiting for rescue in compartments?”

“Yes,” Steve said.

“It’s a cruise ship. I’m watching that in real time. Get in your fucking tub and get your Aussie ass and all the guns you can find out here. I’ll help clear this one. There are people still alive in their staterooms and they’re looking at me. I’m making a banner that says ‘Help is on the way. Hold on.’ Get out here, Wolf. Now.”

“All ships, relay that information to all receiving stations,” Steve said. “All vessels converge His Sea Fit’s location. Large, time to earn your munificent pay from your friendly Uncle. And time to fish or cut bait on the arms locker. Victoria, begin transfer all personnel and mobile equipment to Grace. Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Commodore, are you in radio range, over?”

“En- vo- proce- Sea-fit…”

“Endeavor’s about twenty miles away, Commodore,” Sherill called. “Their response was proceeding our location.”

“Begin surface clearance,” Steve said. “Do not do entry until I arrive. Relay that, Sherill. Commodore moving to location now. All vessels: don’t spare the horses. Wolf, out.”

He looked over at Isham and Gilbert.

“Get all of Victoria’s personnel and stores on your boat, Gilbert,” Steve said. “And any of the SLLs left. When you’re cross-loaded, head to the location. Isham, tell Captain Miguel to make ready for sea.”

“Are you taking this?”

“No time,” Steve said. “I wish I had something faster than the Toy.”

* * *

“That tears it,” Galloway said.

“Sir…” Commander Freeman said.

“I’m not talking about the captaincy, Commander,” Galloway said. “But we’re also not going to stand by and let who knows how many survivors die sealed into a cruise ship. Get me the Dallas and Charlotte…”