Dead Sea (13 page)

    "Never mind my name! You threw him overboard?
You killed him?"

    "No," Runkle said. "We didn't kill him. The bite did that. He was already dying. You've all seen how fast the sickness works. The times vary depending on the person, but the end result is the same. Unless you totally incinerate the body or destroy its brain, it comes back after death. He'd have been dead in a few more minutes, and then…"

    He didn't finish. He didn't have to.

    "If it's any consolation," the chief muttered, "we made sure that he didn't suffer."

    I braced myself for the expected outcry, but surprisingly there was none. A few people looked unhappy about it, a few more looked queasy, but nobody objected out loud. This was a new world with new laws. You did what you had to in order to stay alive. All of them had survived this long-they knew what it took. To remain human, you had to give up a little bit of your humanity. I'd done stuff I wasn't proud of-shooting Alan, for example. But something else was bothering me, too. If the guy had been bitten but was still alive when they threw him overboard, what happened after he drowned? Did he still turn into a zombie? Hamelin's Revenge was already in his bloodstream. Did he wake up on the bottom of the ocean and start attacking the fish? I wondered again if the disease could transfer to marine life.

    "So there are twenty of us," Chief Maxey said once more. "That should give me a better idea of how long the ship's stores will last. Not that we really have any. But we'll get to that in a minute. First, let me tell you about myself and about your new home. If you didn't hear me before, my name is.SMC Wade Maxey, United States Coast Guard, retired. Specifically, I was a signalman. SMC stands for Signalman Chief. I actually served onboard the
Spratling
in the eighties, and when she was finally decommissioned in 1987 and turned into a historic attraction, I was hired by the Maritime Museum to serve as a curator and tour guide. Believe me when I tell you that nobody knows this ship better than me. I'm a part of her and she's a part of me, and I'm glad they saved her from the scrap yard. Usually, when they're no longer seaworthy, those old ships are cut up and sold for scrap by their owners before they become completely worthless. Only a few of the really old ones have survived. Most of the time, that's because of dumb luck. And sometimes, they escape the scrap yards because of their historical significance, as was the case with the
Spratling.
The coast guard felt it was an important vessel."

    As Maxey talked, I wondered how much of his speech was from his normal tour recital and how much was for our benefit. I had to give him credit. Despite his warning about putting us to sleep, he held everybody, including the kids, spellbound.

    "The USCGC
Spratling,"
he continued proudly, "is significant because she is one of the last of the fleet's high endurance cutters. With the exception of our polar ice breakers, these are-or were-the largest class of vessel in the coast guard's fleet. The
Spratling
is just under four hundred feet long, has a beam of forty-five feet, and weighs a little over three thousand, two hundred and fifty tons. She was a sister vessel to the USCGC
Taney,
the only ship that was left' floating during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As you might remember, the
Taney
was also docked at the Inner Harbor until a year ago, when she was sent to the shipyards in Norfolk for major refitting and preservation work. The
Spmtling
became the sole military vessel attraction after that. The
Spratling
was named for former Secretary of State William B. Spratling, who was a former college roommate of President Jeffrey Tyler. Please do not hold that against her."

    The crowd laughed politely, and Joan applauded.

    "She is one of the last three treasury-class coast guard cutters still left afloat. The
Spratling
and her various crews have served our country proudly for over sixty years. During that time, she's been through a lot. She saw combat in both World War Two and Vietnam, and was also called upon to assist civilians during Hurricane Agnes in the seventies and more recently, along the Gulf Coast after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. During my, service aboard the
Spratling,
she was a vital asset in drug interdiction, search and rescue operations, border enforcement, and fisheries protection. While these may sound mundane to you, they are anything but. They can be-and were- very dangerous operations. She also participated in the search for John E Kennedy, Jr. after his plane crashed. She's seen a lot of history, and I'm proud to serve aboard her. I hope that you're all proud to be here, as well. Now, if you look forward, you'll notice that big dome on top of the pilot house. While we're doing that, everybody wave to Turn."

    We did, and behind the pilot house window, Turn waved back. He looked embarrassed.

    "That dome," Chief Maxey explained, "is a special storm-tracking antenna. In addition to its other duties, the
Spratling
also helped track storms for many years, until the use of more sophisticated storm-tracking satellites and radars became common. The antenna was reinstalled for posterity when she became a museum. Sadly, it is not active."

    I stared at the dome. A seagull was perched on top of it, watching us with interest.

    "Now," the chief continued, "for the nuts and bolts. We are powered by two diesel engines and two gas turbines with controllable-pitch screws. We have enough fuel onboard to last us about two weeks. Our top speed is just over twenty-one knots per hour. Not too shabby, folks. We also have two Boyle and Snyder boilers-a very dependable manufacturer. Luckily, the boilers are still operational and I know how to operate them, or else we'd still be sitting at the harbor. In truth, there's not much that I
don't
know how to do onboard this ship.

    "As you can see, we are equipped with a helicopter flight deck. You're standing on it, in fact. We also have a retractable hangar, which is still operational even though we no longer have the facilities to support helicopter deployment. The weapons systems are still functional, too. After years of service and several tours of duty, the
Spratling
was totally refitted and relaunched in 1965. One of the showcase displays in the galley contains newspaper clippings of the event. She was modernized again through the fleet rehabilitation and modernization program in 1979. Actually, she was one of the first coast guard vessels to undergo that upgrade. During that time, the original caliber big guns were replaced with much more modern versions. They do a lot more damage."

    Mitch and another man both whistled in appreciation.

    "Finally," the chief said, "she's also equipped with both a seventy-six millimeter cannon and twenty millimeter Phalanx Close-in Weapons System, or CIWS, in military-speak. Sadly, though all of the weapons are still operational, we have no armament for them. After September Eleventh, the museum frowned upon keeping explosives onboard the ship, as I'm sure you can understand. I said before that the
Spratling
was a big ship."

    Professor Williams exhaled a cloud of cherry-scented pipe smoke and interrupted him. "That's all very impressive, Chief. But what's the bad news?"

    "I was getting to that. To be honest, there is all sorts of bad news. The
Spratling
hasn't actually been out to sea in years, and I'm afraid to push her. We're doing okay so far, but the truth is, we could break down at any time. If that happens-well, let's just say we'd have a difficult time getting replacement parts. But the engine and boilers are in good shape. As I said, we have two diesel engines and two gas turbines, and I estimate we have enough fuel for two weeks, if we conserve it. But if we run into trouble, we don't have the weaponry to fight a sea battle, and we'll have to run. The faster we go, the quicker we deplete our fuel supply."

    "What kind of trouble could we run into?" Mitch asked. "It's not like the zombies can pilot a boat. They can't touch us out here." ' "No, they can't. But it's not just the dead that we have to worry about. With no law and no coastal patrols, I'm afraid the seas may be just as dangerous as the cities were. There are bad people who will take advantage of situations like this. They thrive on it. I'm sure all of you encountered them on land over the last few weeks. We could encounter them out here, as well. We might run across pirates or raiders at any time. And if that happens, we'll have to run. We have no heavy armaments. We don't have the means to defend ourselves, unless they board us and it comes down to small arms fire. I'll come back to that in a minute, but first we need to talk about supplies."

    He turned to Hooper. "Cleveland, when we're finished here, I'd like you and Tran to inventory our food supply. Obviously, we didn't leave port with a full complement. This was a museum, not an active duty vessel. What little food we do have is stuff I managed to sneak onboard during the first few days of martial law."

    "You stayed here during the collapse?" Murphy, the man who'd lent us toothpaste earlier, asked.

    Chief Maxey nodded. "I had nowhere else to go. I'm not married. I have no children. I don't even have a pet. My apartment was just where I went to sleep. All of my free time was spent here onboard the
Spratling.
This was where I wanted to be. And by then, it wasn't like we were open for tours, anyway. Early on, I raided the Whole Foods store, the aquarium's cafeteria, and some of the restaurants at the Inner Harbor. But I was alone and couldn't carry much at once. And to be honest, I wasn't counting on feeding twenty people. Food and water will be our number one concern. The good news is we have fishing tackle onboard-
I
used to fish in the evenings after we closed to the public. And one of the displays has deep sea rods that previous sailors used. So we can supplement our rations with fish. We can catch and collect rainwater, as well. The ship has a small supply of fresh water. It was used for the water fountains and the head-that's a rest-room for you civilians who don't speak military. But the water tank isn't at full capacity. I've shut off the showers and sinks so that we can better conserve it. The toilets and urinals are shut down, too, but I kept the head in the engineering compartment operational. We'll show you how to get there later on. But that is the only functioning head and I ask that when you use it, you adhere to the following rule- if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down. That will help to save water."

    We laughed at the joke, and then he continued.

    "The showers in that head are also functional. Again, I ask that you adhere to a strict time limit. No longer than two minutes per person to shower. Once we fill our tanks, I'll lift that rule. My plan is to find a base or station where we can take on supplies. Maybe we'll try the naval base in Norfolk, or Hampton Roads or Portsmouth. There are a number of bases and commercial docks we could try. We could possibly even anchor off Ocean City or one of the other seaside resorts along the coast, and take a lifeboat in to shore."

    "But the situation in those places will be just like it was in Baltimore," Mitch said. "Do we have enough people to fight our way into and out of a storage depot or fueling station if it's overrun with zombies?"

    "I don't know," the chief admitted. "But I'm glad you brought that up, Mister…?"

    "Sorry. My name's Mitch Bollinger."

    "Well, Mr. Bollinger, you raise something else that we need to talk about. Officer Runkle and I were talking earlier this morning about law and order onboard ship. Like it or not, this is our home for the foreseeable future. Now, I'm sure that all of you are very nice people, but the fact of the matter is, I don't know for sure. Neither do you. With the exception of Mr. Bollinger and his three friends," he nodded toward me and the kids, "all of you boarded the ship on your own last night. None of you were traveling together. It was simple luck-and the fires of course-that brought you all to the harbor at the same time. So even though we might all seem nice, we really don't know each other. Many of you brought weapons onboard: rifles, pistols, knives-I think I even saw some grenades, though I can't remember who had them. Officer Runkle and I feel that our best course of action is to lock all of those items up in the ship's armory. It's for your safety as well as everyone else's onboard. We have children present, and it wouldn't do for one of those weapons to find its way into their hands."

    "Hey," Malik said, "I know how to use a gun. Grenades, too. I blew up a whole bunch of zombies last night."

    A few people in the crowd laughed, and that just made Malik angry. Glaring at them, he leaned against the rail and scowled.

    "I'm sure you're very brave, son," Chief Maxey said. 'And if you used a grenade last night, then I think it's safe to assume it was your father or Mr. Bollinger who brought them onboard?"

    I started to tell them that I wasn't his father, but before I could, Mitch spoke up.

    "I did," Mitch said. "And I'm not too happy on the idea of giving them up, even temporarily. Like you said, we don't know each other that well. And what if we do get attacked by marauders? How would we defend ourselves if we got boarded?"

    "If we were attacked," Runkle said, "we'd know in advance. The chief has a key to the armory. He could distribute the weapons."

    Mitch didn't seem assured. "Is it the only key?"

    "Yes." Chief Maxey nodded. "I have a complete set of keys for the ship. The duplicates are back at the Maritime Museum offices."

    "So, no offense, Chief, but if something happened to you-if you fell overboard or lost the keys or something, and we were attacked, what would we do then? Cut through the armory door with a torch?"

    "Well," the chief admitted, "that wouldn't be very feasible."

    "No, it wouldn't," Mitch said. "And we don't have the means to copy your key. Look, I don't like the idea of all of us roaming around with guns either, but the simple fact is I'd feel more comfortable holding onto mine."