Under a Graveyard Sky-eARC (26 page)

* * *

“That is a man on the ragged edge,” Brice said, quietly.

“A paladin in hell,” Ellington said.

“Excuse me?” Galloway said. “I understand the words…”

“Oh, my God,” Brice said, shaking her head. “Congratulations. You get the geek win for the
week
, Colonel Ellington.”

“Some context?” Galloway asked, tightly.

“Colonel?” Brice asked. “Would you care to explain?”

Ellington twitched and looked at her helplessly.

“General?” the NCCC asked.

“It’s from Dungeons and Dragons, sir,” Brice said, smiling tightly.

“Seriously?” Freeman said, snorting. Then he paused. “General, how did you…?”

“Air Force Academy,
Commander
,” Brice said, smiling at him coquettishly. They’d learned by now that when when the acting CJCS went “cute” that they were about to have their heads handed to them. “Is that a
problem
?”

“No, ma’am,” the commander said, holding his hand up to his mouth to hide the grin.

“There is a picture in one of the D&D books, sir,” Brice said, turning back to the NCCC. “A knight in armor standing on a precipice wielding a sword against a horde of demons. The caption is ‘A Paladin In Hell.’”

“Thinking about it, that does sound rather apropos of Commodore Wolf,” Galloway said, nodding at Ellington.

“Every material, every person, has a breaking point,” Ellington said, hauntedly. He was staring into the distance. “Fighting the darkness forces one to either be the light or embrace the dark. Every paladin finds his precipice.”

“Colonel?” Brice said, carefully as the silence dragged out. “Marine!”

“Ma’am!” Ellington said, snapping upright.

“Colonel, I’m not sure where you just went,” Brice said. “But we need you present in
this
reality. Or do I need to call the medics?”

“No, ma’am,” the colonel said, sharply. “Present and accounted for, General. My recommendation is a Naval Captaincy, sir.”

“Excuse me?” Galloway said.

“You’re joking, right?” Commander Freeman said, tightly.

“Granting the Commodore a Naval Captaincy would allow him to command military personnel as well as direct civilian technical experts, sir, thereby reducing his overall difficulty load. Furthermore, absent finding and rescuing a higher ranking military officer, which would require in all probability the clearance of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier or better or more likely the clearance of a major ground base, he would outrank any of the current submarine commanders. The Captaincy would be contingent upon allowance of communications by professional officers to assure some semblance of reasonable command responsibilities. Absent that choice, he could outline his plans such as they are to the submarine commanders and upon developing some method of vaccine production turn it over to them. Sir.”

“A captaincy?” Commander Freeman snapped. “A
Captaincy
? Are you
insane
? To some unknown Australian pirate
wannabe
? For that matter, Under Secretary Galloway does not have the
authority
to grant a Captaincy!”

“As a matter of fact…” Brice said.

“I do, in fact, Commander,” Galloway said, tightly. “It’s in the fine print. I can even give a brevet to flag rank. Obviously, it has to be approved by the Senate in time. But for that we’d have to
have
a Senate.”

“I…” Freeman said, his face tight. “I was not aware and meant no disrespect… Sir.”

“Colonel Ellington, thank you for that novel suggestion,” Galloway said. “That language is not to suggest I am dismissing it. It is, however, I feel premature. Right now we have a virtual unknown whose only claim to fame is rescuing a few people including some coast guard personnel and possibly knowing how to produce vaccine. I would say that we need more CV than that before making such a significant decision. That is all.”

“Yes, sir,” Ellington said, then twitched.

“As for Commander Freeman,” Galloway said. “I can understand your distaste for the very idea. You are a professional naval officer who has spent many years honing his expertise and the idea of just handing a commission, much less a captaincy to, as you put it, a pirate wannabe, is obviously distasteful. I’ll remind you that various persons were given ranks to which they were not ‘entitled’ during World War Two, a much less serious catastrophe than the one in which we are currently engaged.”

“I recall the story of your grandfather, sir,” Freeman said. “But with due respect they weren’t given
commands
, sir.”

“As I said, it is premature,” Galloway said. “And this discussion has been contentious and, yes, tiring. We have time to consider even the subject of the Coast Guard personnel and the cutter. Let us use it.”

* * *

“Bureaucrats,” Steve said, tossing Kuzma the radio. “They’re trying to figure out what to do. I said I’d give them three days.”

“Okay,” the PO said. “What are we going to do in the meantime?”

“I’d run you back to Bermuda and put you on the
Large
,” Steve said. “But it’s a six hour steam both ways and there are EPIRBs. So just chill and we’ll go rescue people.”

“We can help, sir,” Fore said. “That’s the best part of our job.”

“Just rest,” Steve said, tightly. “You’re all knackered out. Which is normal. You’ll recover. I was wrong to use you to clear when you’d just been rescued. Besides, usually there’s nobody
to
rescue. It’d just be nice to have somebody I could trust at my back. But until the Powers-That-Be speak I can’t even trust
that
.”

“Da,” Sophia said. “While you were on the horn we got a call. There’s another yacht. Sixty footer.”

“Joy,” Steve said. “How far?”

“About two hours.”

“Make for it,” Steve said.

“It’s…getting dark, sir,” Kuzma pointed out.

“Odd thing at sea with no clouds,” Steve said. “You can really tell when the sun’s going down, PO.” Steve winced. “Sorry, I’m still bloody furious at that bugger on the radio.”

“I understand, sir,” Kuzma said. “What I was pointing out is that it’s getting dark as in ‘are you going to do a boarding in the dark?’”

“Why not?” Steve asked. “These things tend to be bloody dark below-decks, anyway. Really, it’s easier in the dark cause you don’t have to let your eyes adjust.”

“Oh,” Kuzma said, blinking rapidly. “How many boardings have you
done
, sir?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “I’d have to check the log. Probably not as many as you. But probably a few more that had zombies on them. No worries: usually these sixty footers are fairly straightforward. It’s the doing them by
myself
that’s getting tiresome…”

* * *

Kuzma moved up to the flying bridge to observe the evolution.

“If you want to tell me anything, go ahead,” the “commodore’s” daughter said, a touch nervously.

“You’ve done this a few times before?” Kuzma asked.

“Yes, sir,” Sophia replied. “This is my seventeenth approach to a yacht this side. For larger than this we usually use the dinghy.”

“You come directly alongside?” Kuzma said.

“Yes, sir,” Sophia said. “If you’ll hold on a second. I don’t see any on the deck, Da!” She picked up the intercom. “Horn, horn, horn…” she called, then hit the foghorn in three short blasts. She waited a moment, then hit two more. “That usually brings them out of there are any that can get on the deck.”

“Come alongside!” Steve yelled.

“Roger, Da!”

She moved up to the yacht and let the wind carry her in the last few feet as the crew put balloon fenders over the side and hurled grapnels to bring the two yachts together.

“We had problems getting those right at first,” Sophia said. “The balloons. You’ve got to get them at just the right height.”

“Yes,” Kuzma said. He didn’t mention that he’d have actively advised against tying two boats together in six foot swells.

“Tied down!” Paula called.

“Is that your mate?” Kuzma asked.

“Well, technically Da’s the captain, Mom’s the first mate and I’m the second. Paula’s sort of my mate if you will.”

“Was she a boater? Before?” Kuzma asked.

“Ran a t-shirt shop,” Sophia said. “Pardon, this is a bit tricky.”

She engaged power to the engines, carefully, reversing to port and forward to starboard.

“It’s easier to hold them together if they’re into the swells,” Sophia said. “And the ropes don’t snap as much. Well, except when I’m doing this.”

Kuzma tried not to flinch as he saw the strains being put on the three quarter inch lines that were used on the grapnels.

“Lines part often?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sophia said. “All the time. If we don’t use a boat we salvage all the ropes.”

When the two boats were arrayed, “Wolf” leapt from one boat to the other. He was wearing body armor with a standard Class III PFD on top. His only weapon appeared to be a pistol. He dropped the PFD on the aft deck and entered the interior of the captured yacht.

“Worry about him when he’s in there?” Kuzma asked.

“Not as much these days,” Sophia said. “But, yeah. It’s worse with the big ones.”

“Top deck is clear. Evidence of zombies but none found. Going below.”

“Not ‘infecteds,’” Kuzma asked.

“They’re humans,” Sophia said, shrugging. “Not walking dead. More like evil, weaker, insane chimps. But it’s easier to think of them as zombies.”

“Ever killed one yourself?” Kuzma asked.

“We made the mistake of going to the last concert in New York City,” Sophia said. “They had their first real power outage during it. The concert was using generators. And lights. The zombies closed in. So…yeah. Don’t ask how many. I stopped counting after three or four. The next day, they blew the bridges, my uncle took off for his secure point and we sailed out.”

“Sailed?” Kuzma asked.

“We were on a sailboat Da bought when we got the word,” Sophia said. “We loaded it up with stores and we were careful with them but we ran finally out. So we found the
Toy
. Tina was still alive and Da just…changed. We started doing this.”

“You weren’t afraid of the flu?” Kuzma asked.

“We got vaccinated in New York,” Sophia said, carefully. “Since you’re still sort of a cop, you’ll allow me to take the Fifth on any more discussion of that, okay?”

“Okay,” Kuzma said. “But some of that stuff…”

“It was for real,” Sophia said, tonelessly. “Let’s just say my uncle had some connections. And, yes, it was the kind made from people’s spines. And, yes, we knew it. Now can we change the subject or are you going to arrest us?”

“No,” Kuzma said, shaking his head. “I wish I had some. I wish
we’d
had some.”

“Yeah,” Sophia said, shrugging. “Put it this way, NYPD was vaccinated
up
. Take my word for that. They and their families. Which took, by my count, about six thousand spinal cords.”

“Holy crap,” Kuzma said, his eyes wide. “Seriously?”

“Really should drop the subject,” Sophia said. “But, yeah, I’m sure. You could only get about ten units per infected. The count I got was thirty thousand vaccinated. And you needed primer and booster. Sixty thousand units. I don’t know where they were doing it, but they had to have had an assembly line that made Auschwitz look like Central Park.”

“One zombie, already dead, in the engine room. I don’t think this one is operable. Boat’s clear. Call your Mom…”

“Wolf, Kuzma,” Kuzma said. “Mind if I accompany?”

“Up to you,”
Wolf replied.

“Grab a respirator,” Seawolf said.

“Respirator?” Kuzma asked.

“For the smell.”

“You get used to it.”

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.