Under a Graveyard Sky

CHAPTER 31

“Any decisions you need me to make?” Steve asked as he stepped off onto the flush deck of the Alpha.

The waves were chopping up and the deck was awash but he didn’t really care. It would clean some of the crap off his boots.

“None,” Isham said, shaking his head. “It’s not a power grab. Everything that can be got under control is under control. Just…trust me on that and get some rest.”

“I want to drink myself to sleep,” Steve said.

“Hang on,” Isham said. “Hang on to that grab rail and just stand there. We’re going to wash you down out here.”

“Makes sense,” Steve said. He was covered in wet weather gear top to bottom. “The guns are going to need…”

“To be cleaned off in fresh water, dried really well and then lubed up really well,” Isham said, backing up the stairs. “Just let them wash you down…”

* * *

“Steve,” Stacey said, hugging him. “Oh… God…”

“It’s bad,” Steve said, nodding. “I’m really regretting bringing Faith onboard.”

“She’s having a lot of problems with the…” She stopped and grimaced. “She likes the zombie hunting…”

“I’m going to switch her to that as purely as possible,” Steve said, nodding. “I mean, there are horrors to that. But this has been… Different.”

The cabin was excellent. Steve wasn’t sure how Isham had procured the materials to return it to if not its former glory than very liveable. But it was nice. And the meal that had been waiting for him after his long, hot, shower looked really, really good. He wasn’t sure that he could eat it, though.

“You have to eat,” Stacey said.

“Reading my mind?” Steve asked, smiling faintly.

“Always,” Stacey said.

“Talk to me about something,” Steve said, taking a forkful of the dish. He wasn’t sure what it was but it was excellent. “When did Chris go back to being a cook?”

“That’s Sari,” Stacey said, smiling.

“The one that was on here?” Steve asked, then winced. The horrors of the Voyage had nearly blotted out how bad the Alpha had been when they boarded.

“She’s a really good cook,” Stacey said. “And Mike is overseeing the maintenance on the weapons and gear. I made sure they were all clear. He knew how to clear them but I checked first. He’s going to fine tooth them.”

“How’s Isham doing?” Steve asked. “This is the sort of thing I need to talk about.”

“Doing fine,” Stacey said. “He found one of the SSLs that’s a premier scrounger who turned up, among other things, boxes of Cuban cigars. Isham’s up in Mickerberg’s old office smoking big black cigars and running things like he’s General Patton. It’s funny to watch in a way. I think until this came up he really wasn’t… In the game? But now he is. And he’s doing a good job at it.”

“Keep an eye on him,” Steve said.

“I am,” Stacey said, shrugging. “But when we had a moment alone he brought it up. And he pointed out that you’re the one with the subs backing you. That headquarters gave you the authority. Not him. He said ‘Broken down and busted or not, I’m not going try to buck the United States Government. It’s still got nuclear weapons.’”

“Now that sounds like it might be honesty,” Steve said.

* * *

“Okay, wow,” Faith said, shoveling down the breakfast. “This is really good. Do I want to know what it is?”

“Eggs,” Sari said, laying the plates out for the clearance team. “With more eggs.”

There were the scrambled eggs, which were awesome, a really good canned fruit salad and fried potatoes. There was even fresh baked english muffins. With butter.

“It’s got a bit of a fishy taste but a good one,” Fontana said. “What’s the meat? It tastes like…lobster?”

“Scrambled eggs with lobster,” Sari said. “And some secret ingredients.”

“I’m going to let you keep the secrets,” Steve said, looking out the window of the “dinette.” The small compartment, relatively it being the Alpha, had a good view of the growing flotilla of boats working on the Voyage. He could even see the Campbell drifting in the distance. The Alpha and Grace had rendezvoused with it overnight and transferred clearance materials as well as medical supplies. Fortunately, it had lots of both. The cutter had seemed like a big ship when they first cleared it. Now they had a new appreciation for “big.” But for its relatively small size, it was absolutely packed with disaster material. Which made sense given its jobs.

“Today is pure clearance,” Steve said.

“Oh, thank God,” Faith said. “Wait… Zombie killing clearance or checking cabins clearance?”

“Zombie killing clearance,” Steve said. “We’re going to sweep all of the remaining untouched areas on the port side cabin zone, then work our way across the ship and sweep the starboard side. If we run into survivors doing that, unlikely, we’ll call for extraction or extract them ourselves. The Coast Guard personnel are going to manage the extraction in cleared areas and provide security. That’s mostly for the people doing the actual removal.”

“I can handle that,” Faith said. “Sorry, but I’m just…”

“Nothing, at all, to be sorry about, Faith,” Fontana said. “This is getting to me. And I thought I’d seen pretty much every horror possible in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact that you’re not completely round the bend is pretty remarkable.”

“I know the Trixie thing is freaking people out,” Faith said, shrugging. “But…”

“It’s a way for you to compartmentalize,” Steve said, nodding. “People who do this sort of thing have to do that. Everyone does. You just happen to have an outward expression. The question, since you raise it, is are you going to be okay continuing?”

“I’m fine if it’s killing zombies,” Faith said, shrugging. “And I can handle the usual sort of stuff. But Hooch had to take over checking the cabins. I… I can’t do that right now. Even finding live ones… Half the time I was like: What’s the point?”

“We’ve lost some,” Steve said. He’d had a quick briefing that morning before breakfast. “And according to the doctors at the CDC we’ll probably lose some more over the next week. But most of them are making it. We’re saving people. But for today… We’ll just blow some zombies away.”

“That’ll help,” Faith said, grinning.

“Weaponry,” Steve said. “There are some large areas we’ll be clearing. Despite my fear of bouncers, I think we need at least one rifle. There are sure to be more security zombies and we need to start conserving our shotgun rounds to the extent it’s possible. Sergeant Fontana, you’ll carry that.”

“Roger, sir,” Fontana said. “Any word on the ammo from the Campbell.”

“We got a resupply of two hundred rounds of shotgun,” Steve said, grimacing. “That was all that was in the ready locker or found scattered onboard. There’s a magazine but it’s apparently a vault. And nobody can find the keys. And since it’s a magazine…”

“You can’t exactly cut it open with a blow torch,” Fontana said.

“There’s a team looking for the keys at the moment,” Steve said. “According to what I got, there should be two thousand more rounds of twelve gauge in there. Another reason to use the rifles whenever possible. We have, also, a limited amount of seven six two but we’re currently better on that than on shotgun. So when it’s possible, Sergeant Fontana will take the shot. Please make sure that all rounds go into the target.”

“I will,” Fontana said. “But you get bouncers from shotgun as well.”

“They tend to be caught by the body armor,” Steve said. “And the spots not covered by armor that are likely to kill us are small. With the exception of the face, of course. Which is why in addition to all the other stuff we’re carrying, we’re going to be adding ballistic face shields. The Campbell had six onboard. They’ve already been mounted to the helmets.

“Kuzma has set up a fresh-water decontamination shower on the lifeboat deck, forward. If we get as bloodied up as we did yesterday, Faith, we’ll run through that. There’s also a forward support post set up with food, water and ammo, and we can drop back to it and take a break. One thing we’re going to have to look for is a forward point that we can set up as a permanent secure point on the Voyage. Not too big, not too small, some exterior light and most of all secure.”

“That’s all I’ve got for now. Let’s eat.”

* * *

“Just sip,” the lady said, putting a straw to his lips. “It’s chicken broth…”

Rusty still could barely do that. He was feeling better. Not human but all the water they’d been pumping through him was helping. He still could barely lift his arms.

“Thank you,” he said, leaning back on the pillows when the small cup of broth was down. He was so far gone, he actually felt full. “Are you a nurse? And where…?”

“Okay, first of all, you’re on a support ship called the Grace Tan,” the lady said. “I’m Amanda. No, I’m not a nurse. We’ve only got one nurse survivor and she’s organizing this. I’m a survivor like you. I was on a lifeboat. I was on the Voyage, too. The way things worked out… I’m glad I made it to the lifeboat. But a lot of those…” She shook her head.

“So… Is it the Navy or…?” Rusty asked.

“It’s a long story,” Amanda said, smiling. “If you feel you’re up to some reading, they’ve made a little pamphlet…”

* * *

“I can’t believe we’re trying to unrep from a cruise liner,” Gardner said.

Unrep, or “underway replenishment,” was a tricky business in the best of times and circumstances. The basic idea was to create sort of zip-lines between two ships and slide stuff back and forth. Simple on land. Two rocky points tended to stay reasonably the same distance apart down to the subatomic level. Ships, however, did not. So what usually happened was that your package, be it ammunition or food or toilet paper or, God help them, people, tended, if the ships closed, to go into the drink, or if they separated, be flung upwards at a high rate of speed. In extreme circumstances the package could fail to choose between being crushed as the too-close following ships collided or being flung upwards, the rope part and go flying into the far distance.

One unfortunate, and extremely disliked, lieutenant commander in the Navy in the 1960s had all four happen on a single attempt at moving between a destroyer and a carrier. The lieutenant commander was first dunked, then popped back out rapidly enough to thoroughly dry the ropes as they hyperextended. This, of course, had the effect of bouncing him up and down like a tightened rubber band. He was then dunked, again, repopped at which point the carry line parted, throwing the unfortunate officer upwards in a ballistic arc. The lieutenant at the conn of the destroyer panicked, ordered a radical course correction to starboard, towards the carrier, just as the officer landed in the water between the two vessels, which promptly collided. The lieutenant commander was assumed to have been crushed as his body was never found. The irony that the lieutenant commander, the carrier vessel battle group’s inspector general, had just written a scathing report on the conn training of the officers of the destroyer was not lost on the incident report board.

Thereafter the Navy went to all helo or boat transfers for personnel at sea.

* * *

“You know we just hit the four hundred mark?” Steve said, keying the double doors.

“Four hundred days?” Fontana asked, popping the hatch with the Halligan and moving back.

“Four hundred people,” Steve said. “Four hundred known survivors of humanity. Plus the Hole and CDC and whoever they’re in contact with.”

“Holy crap,” Faith said softly.

“I know it’s not a lot,” Steve said, shining his taclight around the cavernous room. A zombie in the distance growled, then howled. It couldn’t even be seen, but it alerted others who stumbled to their feet and headed to the lights. “But we’re getting there. Back to defense positions.”

“Not that,” Faith said, taking up her position behind a counter. “That room. What was it?”

“Casino I think,” Fontana said. He began slow aimed fire at the blinded zombies stumbling through the door. He already had four magazines laid out on the counter.

“It’s huge,” Faith said, sticking a finger in her ear to cut down on the cracks from the AK.

“Should have seen the ones in Vegas,” Fontana said.

“Maybe someday,” Faith said. “When I’m, like, ninety. Zombie clearance, Vegas.”

“Resident Evil: The Cruise Ship. You can see the game, right?” Hooch said.

“I think we’re playing it,” Steve pointed out.

* * *

“How come when I’m shooting, my ears don’t ring?” Faith asked, tagging a zombie in the chest as it tried to figure out how to get around a roulette table with a Surefire in its eyes. “The beauty of this ride ahead…” Tap, tap…

The zombies were having trouble with the complex layout of the casinos. Casinos were designed to get people to change directions so they’d go “Oooo…I bet I can win that game!” The zombies could see the lights, they just couldn’t figure out how to get to them. Then, all of a sudden, they would. For that matter, it wasn’t always clear where the open areas, or the zombies, were to the clearers.

Clearing them out was a painstaking process of zombies howling and thrashing in the darkness. When they could, they took them at range.

Faith had had to break out the kukhri. Twice.

“Aural damping,” Fontana said.

“Checking right,” she said, shining the light around the other side of the roulette table. For some reason, the chewed up people just weren’t horrible anymore. She could even slide her eyes right over the kids. “There’s an answer? I was sort of asking one of those rectangular questions.”

“Rhetorical,” Fontana said, chuckling. “Clear left. Clearish. I think we’re going to have to sweep and resweep.”

“Works for me,” Faith said. “Hang on, stumbler coming around my side.” She took the shot. She’d stopped double tapping to conserve ammunition but the.45 round was usually good enough with one shot. It didn’t kill the zombies immediately, but they bled out pretty quickly. “Reloading. Hang on. Da?” she said, over the radio.

“Go.”

“I’m running out of forty-five mags. I’ve got ammo but I don’t exactly want to reammo in here.”

“I’ve got mags,” Fontana said.

“Like I’m gonna use a Colt if I don’t gotta,” Faith said. “I could also use a break.”

“Roger. Pull back to the entrance.”

“This does get the adrenal gland, don’t it?” Fontana said, firing twice in rapid succession. “They just seem to come out of nowhere.”

They’d learned when they cleared the theatre to shut the door behind them. It meant they didn’t have a way out. It also meant they didn’t have leakers that suddenly appeared when they thought they were at a “secure” point.

“And I think if we’re going to keep clearing this thing we might as well all go to carbines,” Faith said, starting. She fired two rounds into a body on the floor. “It moved. I swear it did.”

* * *

“How long can I stand under here?” Faith shouted as the water from the fire hose poured over her.

“As long as you want!” the guy manning the system wasn’t Coast Guard. She didn’t even recognize him. “It recycles!”

“Cool,” Faith muttered, giving him a thumbs up. She was just going to stand there for a while then.

* * *

“Be careful not to fire in the direction of the other team,” Fontana said nervously. “And watch the bouncers.”

“No worries,” Faith said, hefting the AK variant. The Arsenal SLR-107 would only have been vaguely recognizable to Mikhail Kalashnikov. It had an improved safety, AR buttstock, rail with lights and Trijicon TA11F. But the guts were still the reliable system Kalashnikov had stolen from various WWII assault rifles, then refined. “I have fired this thing before…”

A zombie charged out of the shadows to her right and she turned and double tapped it in the chest. The rounds continued through the body and bounced off a bar on the other side, and pinged off into the darkness.

“Oops,” she said as the infected collapsed on the floor.

“You hit?” Fontana asked.

“No. You?”

“I’m good.”

“I hate full metal jacket…”

* * *

“Okay, okay, okay,” Faith said. “I just… Seriously? An indoor pool? Seriously?”

The cavernous room was marked “spa.” Faith had always wanted to go to a spa. She’d sort of envisioned small rooms with hot tubs and massage tables or something. She’d always wondered what a “walnut scrub” was.

There were hot tubs scattered around in various styles. There were Roman baths, Japanese baths, stone flagging and walls… The ceiling, far, far overhead, was a massive skylight, which gave them an unfortunately clear view of the interior.

Zombies would eat each other for food. All they really needed to survive was something resembling water. And the “spa” had had lots of water.

So there were lots of zombies. And although they’d been awakened by Steve’s whistle, it had echoed in the cavernous interior and they weren’t sure where to go. The room was lit well enough they’d turned off their taclights. Not to mention, there were pools of water all over the place so even the zombies that noticed them were having a hard time getting to them.

Except for the close ones.

“I’m really glad we went to rifles,” she said, targeting one of the nearer zombies. It was having to go around a counter to get to them and she got it with a deflection head shot on the run and it dropped out of sight.

“Nice,” Fontana said, taking two more down.

“Is it just me, or was that exactly like shooting a duck in an arcade?” Faith said. She fired at another one but missed. “We going to move forward?”

“Yes,” Steve said, firing. “But one team. Head for that high ground over there.”

The “high ground” was what had probably been an indoor waterfall.

“Hug the wall,” Steve said. “Take them down as they come to us. Don’t engage over twenty five meters unless I say so.”

“What’s the fun of that?” Faith asked.

“I’d like as many of the rounds to go into the zombies as possible,” Steve said.

“Don’t shoot til you see the reds of their eyes,” Fontana said. “Gotcha.”

* * *

The one problem with the “high ground” was that once they’d gotten up there, all the zombies could see them and closed in. And they couldn’t exactly retreat.

“This is getting sort of hot,” Fontana said, doing a fast reload. He had to pat for magazines until he found one.

“Hot, yeah,” Faith said, firing steadily at the mass of infecteds clawing their way up the former waterfall. “But it’s not in the dunny, yet.”

“Dunny?” Hooch asked.

“Aussie for a latrine,” Steve said.

“What is, in your opinion, in the dunny?” Fontana said. “Cause I could sure use some time to reload mags.”

“Being in the dunny isn’t no time to reload magazines,” Faith said, reloading. “Being in the dunny is all your knives are stuck in bodies, you’re tripping over your mags and brass and your Halligan tool is bent.”

“I can’t wait for you to get legal so I can propose….”

* * *

“We in the dunny, yet?” Fontana asked as he stuck the pry base of his Halligan into a zombie’s eye.

“Nope,” Faith said, pounding one on the head with her AK. “I haven’t had to shoot one off me and I’ve yet to pull a knife…”

* * *

“….dunny yet?” Hooch yelled, sticking his bowie knife into a zombie’s stomach and ripping up.

“Halligan tool bent?” Faith asked, firing into a zombie’s head. Another one grabbed her legs and her feet slipped out from under her. The zombie dragged her down the rocks of the waterfall as she kicked at it. Others piled on, trying to bite through her armor.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Fontana said.

“Okay,” she yelled. “Now we’re getting there!”

“We’re going to have to melee down to her,” Steve said, smashing his Halligan into a zombie’s head.

“We’re barely holding here,” Fontana said.

“When we’ve winnowed them down…”

* * *

“Nice thing about being in a scrum,” Faith said as Fontana dragged her out from under the bodies. Steve was doing the same thing for Hooch. “You don’t have to worry which direction you’re aiming and there’s no real way to miss. That was in the dunny.” She looked around, sitting up, her legs still covered by zombie bodies.

“Hey, look, the waterfall is working again. Sort of…”

* * *

Day Four

Faith stood under the decontamination shower and made a motion with one hand for “more…”

* * *

Day Six

“Okay, seriously, like, how many of these damned things are there…?”

* * *

Day Nine

“This is why I hate five five six.” Faith fired three more times. “Oh, just die already!”

As the supply of rounds for the Smiths’ AK variants dwindled, they had switched to the Coast Guard M4s, which used the much smaller 5.56mm round. The arguments for or against 5.56 were complex but the fact that it generally took multiple rounds to stop one of the infected was notable.

“You need to shoot them in the head,” Fontana said, double tapping a zombie.

On the other hand, a team had finally found the key for the Campbell’s ammunition magazine, which had a plentiful supply of 5.56.

“The United States started to go downhill when it changed from a round designed to kill the enemies of our glorious republic to one designed to piss them off,” Faith said, shooting a zombie five times, then walking up and shooting the still-thrashing infected in the head. “Seriously, just die, okay?”

“Seriously, it’s legal to marry at fourteen in Arkansas.”

“Fine,” Faith said, double tapping a zombie that had reared up out of the darkness. “If we clear Arkansas by the time I’m fourteen we’ll talk.”

“That’s not fair…”

* * *

Day Eleven

“Okay,” Faith said, laying down fire with the MG240 off the Campbell. “This is more like it!”

They’d finally cleared the “passenger” areas all the way to the top of the ship. The top deck was mostly open and a perfect place to use a machine gun. Especially from the top of a water slide…

“Happiness is a belt fed gun,” Fontana said, grinning. “Remember, short controlled bursts or the barrel will overheat.”

“That’s got to be a design flaw. What’s the fun of short controlled bursts…?”

* * *

“Eh,” Faith said, stepping out of the stairwell. “Back in the dark again.”

The passenger areas were entirely clear. Except for the few emaciated survivors in the cabins, there had been no uninfected individuals.

Now it was time to work on the crew areas.

“I’ll clear if we find zombies,” Faith said. “But it there’s nobody who answers a knock, I’m just going to let somebody else check the cabin.”

“Hopefully down here they’ll all have died of dehydration,” Steve said. “The zombies that is.”

“Trixie doesn’t want to know about the cabins,” Faith said.

“We get it, honey,” Fontana said. “We’ll check the cabins.”

* * *

As a Senior Maintenance Officer, Robert “Rob” Cooper didn’t have access to all the supply areas. Technically. But as a senior maintenance officer what he did have was a lot of friends willing to look elsewhere when he turned up with a dolly. Besides, everybody was doing it. Everybody knew that things were going to shit-you only had to be around one person who “turned” to realize that this was really and truly bad-and everybody was stocking their cabins.

Rob didn’t stock his cabin. He stocked a maintenance locker. For one thing, it was closer to the supplies area. For another it had a white water line running right through it that was below the line of the water supply. And it wasn’t anything tough for a guy who’d worked his way up as an engineer to run a quick fitting into the line. In other circumstances, that would be an automatic firing offense and really really stupid.

After two months in the darkened maintenance shack, he was sooo glad he’d ignored both regulation and “common sense.”

And so was Gwinn.

He’d run into the Staff Side Third Officer trying to make it to the lifeboats. Unlike a lot of the ship-side officers, he’d stayed on the ship with the passengers. Right up until the “abandon ship” call, which had been made by Staff. And when he’d headed to the lifeboats, in a zombie apocalypse, he’d gone prepared. The crowbar was how he’d beat his way most of the way to the lifeboats before finding out, from Gwinn, that they were all gone.

She’d protested heading to his hide-out. She’d been bitten at the boats and then again from the zombie he beat off of her. Then there was the blood splatter from the beating. But he’d insisted. He didn’t know why even then. Maybe it was the thought of such a pretty lady becoming a zombie or being eaten by them. And he kept in the back of his mind that he had a crowbar and a bunch of painting plastic if it came to it. But in the end she’d accompanied the burly fifty-three-year-old engineering officer into the bowels of the ship.

It had been fortunate he’d brought her with him. They were half way to the forward maintenance shed when the full lockdown hit. Even his card didn’t work, which pissed him off. Maintenance, as he mentioned to her at the time, was supposed to have access to the whole ship. Especially in an emergency. But Gwinn’s continued to work all the way to the shed.

It had been touch and go with Gwinn. She’d gotten real sick. Fortunately, he had plenty of water to feed her and a pretty decent supply of medicine. He’d had a lot of friends in the crew.

But she was a tough lady. Easy on the eyes until the lights cut out on day three. Easy on other areas as the months went by.

The “months” was starting to be a problem. He’d thought he’d stocked enough food for pretty much any reasonable period. And they’d been careful with it. But he realized that it was no five year stock. Eventually, they were going to run out. And being in a compartment, even one as large as this, with anyone, even someone with as much common sense and decency as Gwinn, occasionally made you contemplate the crowbar.

“I spy with my eye…” Rob said.

“If you ever want to have another of something that also starts with a B, don’t even think about it,” Gwinn said.

“Queen bishop to Knight four.”

“Queen to rook five. Check.”

“Your bishop is at king six, right?”

“Right.”

“Damn. King bishop to…” He paused as there was a strange sound in the distance. “You know, even if all the zombies would go away, fixing this thing is going to be a shipyard job.”

“I doubt there’s much use for a…” She stopped as there was a distinct, rhythmic, clanging in the distance. “Was that…”

“Shave and a haircut?” Rob said, rolling to his feet. He didn’t even have to fumble his way around the compartment anymore. He walked to the hatch and started banging on it regularly. “Come on!” he said, banging harder. “I don’t care if you’re fucking pirates!”

“I sort of do,” Gwinn said, then paused. “No, I’ve changed my mind. I’m fine with pirates.”

* * *

“Nothing,” Faith said, lowering the steel pipe. “You wanna check it?”

They’d found some survivors in the crew cabins. Some of them weren’t even in horribly bad shape. The crew had, it turned out, been stocking up. And several of the cabins that were empty had quite a bit of stores. Some of them even had stuff that was sort of comical in a black way. One of the steward’s quarters had five pounds of caviar in it. Fontana had pointed out that caviar was originally designed to be long storage and was a good source of protein. Faith had learned two things that day. That and beluga caviar was icky. Even on some really expensive kind of cracker.

“Roger,” Fontana said, keying the lock. As he did, there was a distant clanging.

“Customers?” Faith said. “Seriously?”

“Sounds like it’s coming from forward,” Fontana said, moving down the corridor. “Try it again.”

Faith banged on the walls, hard, and was rewarded with more banging.

“Guy’s in good condition,” Faith said.

“This way,” Fontana said, continuing.

They followed the sound around a cross-corridor to a door marked “Forward Maintenance Support.”

“Figured it would be a food supply locker,” Fontana said, keying the door. He’d stood to the side to keep from blinding the people. He popped a chem-light and tossed it through the door.

* * *

Rob had put his arm over his eyes when the door clicked to keep from being blinded. He heard something rattle on the floor and, Gwinn’s comment about pirates still in mind, panicked that it might be a flash bang.

“That will help your eyes adjust,” the guy on the other side said. “Just slowly let them creep open. How many?”

“Two,” Rob answered. “You coast guard?”

“Wolf Squadron,” the guy said. “We’ve got some Coasties with us but it’s mostly a volunteer civilian effort. You sound in good shape.”

“Stocked up,” Rob said, shifting his arm just enough to get a little light. It was blinding and he quickly covered it again. “And there’s a water tap in here. Can we get out, now?”

“Wait for us to finish clearing this area,” the guy said. “Get your eyes a little adjusted. You know of anyone else in this sector?”

“Other than the infecteds?” Rob said. “No. And all those are dead up to the main sector hatch. There are some on the other side.”

“That hatch four-six-one that leads up to the main passenger area?” a female voice asked.

“Yeah.”

“Took care of that for ya,” she said, coldly.

“If you guys can walk we’ll finish clearing then come back for you,” the guy said. “Just hang in there another fifteen minutes. No more. Oh, if you hear us banging, bang. This place is a fucking maze.”

“If we do get lost,” the woman said, “you can actually self extract if you’ve got the strength and the guts. It’s clear. We’ve spent two weeks and nearly ten thousand rounds making it that way.”

“We’ll wait,” Rob said. “Fifteen minutes?”

“Should be about that,” the guy said. “Be back.”

The hatch shut and locked and Rob cracked his eyes again. If he looked away from the chemlight the light was only slightly blinding.

“Rescue,” Gwinn said, wonderingly. He hadn’t seen her in months and chemlight wasn’t usually considered romatic but she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen in his life. Like him she was stark naked. The compartment had been so warm and stuffy, they’d stopped wearing their clothes after the first couple of weeks.

Rob went over, sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

“We’ve got fifteen minutes,” Rob said. “I wonder how we could spend the time.”

“You old goat,” Gwinn said, shaking her head. “Maybe by getting dressed?”

“Spoil sport.”

* * *

“Sunglasses,” the guy said, sticking a pair through the cracked hatch. “We’re using taclights. You’re going to need them. And for outside.”

“Outside,” Gwinn said, wonderingly. “What’s the weather?”

“It’s kicking up,” the woman answered. “There’s front that’s headed down. We may have to suspend ops depending on how bad it gets. Don’t look directly at the lights.” She opened up the hatch, then paused. “Son of a… Are you Third Officer Gwinneth Stevens?”

“Yes,” Gwinn said, holding up her hand to the lights.

“Son of a gun,” Fontana said, laughing. “Chris said you got bit.”

“Chris survived?” Gwinn said. Her hand flew to her belly and she looked at Rob.

“Miss Stevens,” the woman said, carefully. “Chris was on a small boat for two months. Uhmm…”

“Don’t sweat what happened in the compartment,” the guy said. “You’re not the only one who has been friendly with others, Miss. We’ve got a saying…”

“What happens in the compartment, stays in the compartment,” the woman said.

“He found someone?” Gwinn said. She couldn’t decide if she was hurt or relieved.

“Sort offf…” the woman said. “He really didn’t talk about the boat until we had to board it. We didn’t even know about you two until… He told us to look for you, your body anyway, for your access card,” she finished, pointing at the card on her lanyard. “And I’d been around him lots of times. Which, by the way, meant he was really broken up about it. If he’d gotten over you completely he’d have talked about you. That’s how it works, mostly.”

“Look,” the guy said. “Can we get you two topside and figure out the social-political issues later?”

“Mind if I bring my crowbar?” Rob said. “Just in case?”

“You don’t get to use it on Chris,” Gwinn said.

“Not gonna,” Rob said. “I’m afraid he’s gonna want to use it on me.”

* * *

When they reached topside and the twosome were shielding their eyes from the light, Faith reached for her radio, then paused.

“How do I do this, exactly?”

“Better you than me,” Fontana said.

She switched frequencies and looked around. Sure enough the Cooper was right off the ship, taking on more survivors. There were three passengers for every crewmen but about twice as many crew as passengers had survived.

“Cooper, Cooper, this is Shewolf for Cooper actual, over,” Faith said.

“Cooper, actual, over.”

“Talk to him, girlie,” Faith said, holding out the radio.

* * *

“Chris… Chris, it’s Gwinn…”

* * *

“The Assault Carrier Iwo Jima is in the Bermuda High so it’s out of the storm belt,” Steve said as the Toy was tossed by another wave. “We need the ammo, we need the guns and with any luck at all, there will be some surviving Marines…”

He spun the boat to the south and put the hammer down. Behind him the boats of Wolf Squadron formed themselves into a ragged line and followed. There were ships to clear.

Two miles to the north, the cruise ship rocked on a darkling sea silent as a tomb…

To Be Continued