World of Ashes II (15 page)

Another call that did make it through the static was for the EMT’s to report below, a survivor locked in the foremost compartment of the ship had been found. Daniel and Jose escorted the EMT’s down, even though there wasn’t much reason for an armed escort now. The medics were already carrying guns of their own to put down plague victims, they just wanted to see who it was as much as anyone.

Standing next to the men who’d cleared the compartment, Daniel watched while the EMT’s hooked the survivor up to an IV and oxygen while they started taking vitals. He was dehydrated and emaciated, barely aware that he’d been rescued. It took more than an hour, but the medics stabilized him enough on the scene that he could make it outside under his own power. Once in the fresh air of the Florida sunset, their guest opened his eyes and looked around. “Где я?”

“We don’t speak Russian.” The Captain said.

“American. Good.” He said, drinking water from a bottle like it was going out of style. “I am Chief Anton Kuzma, Russian Minesweeper
Sonya.
”

“Welcome to America.” She said. “I’m Captain Jane Harrisburg, I’ll be taking custody of this vessel until it can be returned to the Russian Navy. For now, you are safe and are not a prisoner. Think of yourself as a guest.” She smiled.

“I thank you for your hospitality, Captain.” Kuzma’s accent was thick, but clear, making them wonder where he’d learned to speak English so well. “But I fear there is no Russian Navy to return to. At least not one that would travel this far for such a small boat.”

“How did you make it this far inland?” Harrisburg asked the next logical question.

Chief Kuzma looked around in bewilderment that this was not a beach, but an inland harbor. He really didn’t know. “How do you say it… Um, the fuck if I know, Captain. Admiralty ordered us to anchor in Havana, said it was safe there. Then, of course, the dead come. Some jump onboard when we pull out of dock.” He swigged more water. “We fight them off, so we think, but Command does not want our ship near the main fleet. They believe it is contaminated. I was to scuttle the boat, but charges…” Kuzma shook his head, looking away with an ironic expression that was nearly a smile, but only for lack of another expression. “Blasting caps for charges were in the room we locked the dead refugees in. I had carefully crafted plan to retrieve.” He laughed for real this time, thinking of how stupid the rest of the story sounded. “Does anyone have vodka? I feel like there is blood in my alcohol stream again.”

Captain Harrisburg handed him a flask of whiskey. “It ain’t vodka.”

“It’ll do.” He said, making no gesture to hand it back. “Is this Jack Daniel?”

“I don’t make that much on a Navy pension.” Harrisburg laughed, taking a seat across from Kuzma. Daniel and the others stood around while the EMT’s continued to monitor their new friend’s vitals before he would be taken to the shore.

“Da. Russian Navy does not pay us well either. So, where was I? Oh yes, carefully crafted plan… I say fuck it and call for extraction, you know? Have destroyer sink
Sonya
, but helicopter does not come. Pilot says storm is coming, I must wait and hope I do not sink. I check lock on door where zombie refugees are kept, lock is broken. I tied it up, but it seems I’m not that good at tying ropes. Next morning, ship’s anchor is also broken. I do not know this, but during battle infected become trapped in engine room as well as in doctor’s room, the ropes slipped or broke, I don’t know, and somehow they got out. I fight them again with batons and shields, one by one, back into ordinance hold. I almost have handled when rescue team arrives during eye of storm. They are sloppy and get bitten, and battle starts again.” Kuzma rolled his eyes and sipped more cheap whiskey. “Only this time I am too tired, I cannot fight anymore. I lock myself in closet where I slept during rest of bad part of storm. Not enough food, not enough water, no water-closet… It was hell. I do not even know how
Sonya
ends up here. Grace of God, perhaps.” Kuzma drank the rest of the cheap whiskey and then returned the flask. He looked up at Daniel, “You look smart in officer’s coat. Do I need to salute?”

“Thanks.” Daniel smiled back. “But I’m not officer. I still work for a living.”

Kuzma got the joke. “You can keep.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

Kuzma laughed more. “You, I like. So, what is for dinner?”

Taking the Russian Sailor and what weapons they could retrieve, the party returned to the docks. Kuzma went to the aid station to recuperate, though he’d have much rather gone to the bar. Those in charge stayed up late to discuss their findings at the police station. Daniel and Jose listened in on the meeting, though they weren’t the ones shouldering any responsibility.

Someone they didn’t yet recognize was being very vocal. “Why, exactly, would a minesweeper have a dozen infected corpses onboard? They weren’t a research vessel.”

“Could have been they didn’t have permission to dump the bodies. They are Russian, after all. Orders from their leaders don’t have to make sense.”

“We could, you know, just fucking ask him.” Sheriff Dougherty suggested.

“Is the ship salvageable?” Harrisburg changed the subject. Why wasn’t her job, taking it from here and making something of it was.

“Yes.” A bearded man said, still wearing a trucker’s cap that read
John’s Underwater Welding Plus.
“The flooding was caused by running aground, probably on the rocks in the delta. The ship had to have ridden a storm surge and somehow drifted here, because I can’t find any evidence she’s been under power for days. We can seal the holes in the morning, but there’s damage to the ship’s emergency batteries and one of the diesel engines. Also, it needs diesel fuel, so I hope you’re not planning any long term voyages with her because the tanks are almost dry. Even if they weren’t, she’s still too big to pilot out of the bay right now.”

“At least the fuel didn’t spill. That’s the last thing we need.” Someone else said. That was pretty universally agreed upon. The Deep Water Horizon spill was still fresh in the minds of those who’d lived through its devastating economic aftermath. Everything from a decrease in fishing and tourism to an unnecessary moratorium on deep water drilling had seen to the demise of much of Florida’s prosperity under the current political regime.

“So what are we going to do with a Minesweeper?” Harrisburg asked. “We’ve got enough able civilian sailors to crew her, and enough military veterans to use as officers.”

“We obviously need to fix it, we can’t have such a large wreck in King’s Bay. Hell, if she sinks she won’t even be fully submerged. We’d never be able to get rid of it then.” Dougherty said. Several marine salvagers agreed that without specialized equipment the King’s Bay area would be getting a new landmark in the form of a shipwreck.

“Fine. First thing in the morning we get the
Sonya
righted. We need someone besides Chief Jackoff to translate Russian into English. Wouldn’t hurt to translate it into Spanish as well, I don’t think cultural boundaries mean as much as they used to, certainly not borders. I wish I had more information for you all, but it’s getting harder and harder to contact anyone on the outside. The security detachment at the power plant has also abandoned their post, so we can’t drive up there and ask them either.”

The room was silent before Chief Kuzma spoke, he’d snuck out of the hospital tent with a juicy American hamburger in both hands and a bottle of Budweiser in every pocket. “Am I interrupting?” He asked with his mouth full when Harrisburg spotted him.

“Not at all, Chief. For those of you who have not yet met our esteemed guest, this is Chief Anton Kuzma of the Russian Minesweeper
Sonya
.” Harrisburg gestured to Kuzma as he finished another hamburger. No one could blame him for eating and drinking so much, not after what he’d been through.

“Hi, my name is Anton.” He said, standing. People who got the joke at AA’s expense repeated with
Hi Anton.

“Is there anything you can add?” Sheriff Dougherty asked. “…Chief.”

“Da. Envier Virus is global, this is true. I was aboard
Sonya
when Terrorists and Severnaya Koreya make announcement that they help plague jump oceans. Frantsiya, España, Germaniya, Kitiya, Kuba, anywhere we could make port, they are all gone. Comrade Putin said there would be reprisal against Ayatollah, but nothing yet.” He took a sip of beer to wash down the burger, “New infection cases are reported from London to Moscow, to Bearing Straight and South Africa. Most of world is declaring emergency… or war.” He shrugged at the last part, accepting the futility of fighting living humans long ago.

“Can your ship be fixed?” Harrisburg prodded.

“I have no idea. If what your divers say is true, probably.” Kuzma shrugged. He obviously wasn’t the ship’s engineer.

“What was your position on the ship?” Jose asked.

“I was Navy Infantry, like your Marines, only not all of us are paroled criminals. Not the highest rank, not the lowest. It was okay job.” Kuzma put down the rest of his edible booty to talk. “Since Russian Federation Navy is probably not going to come get either of us, it is yours now as spoils of war. If you want to get her moving, that might be okay, but there is no fuel, and not so much bullets for the guns.”

“What about satellite radios and radar?”

“What you would expect on boat that size.” Kuzma wasn’t super helpful. He looked like a bum with his unkempt, scraggly beard. It made it hard to believe he was any kind of elite soldier. “But honestly, Captain. Who are you trying to call? There is no one left.”

Harrisburg harrumphed. “Call it quits if you want, Chief, but I choose to take whatever life-line is thrown my way right now.”

It was decided in the next few minutes that preventing the ship from sinking was probably the best idea, even if it was useless otherwise. Another plan in the works was a fallback point on an uninhabited island in King’s Bay called Buzzard Island. It couldn’t sustain them for long, but if the town was overrun at any point by these rumored mass migrations from Miami and the rest of the South, they’d have somewhere to go.

After midnight Jose and Daniel made it back to Mr. Sitton’s home. Kaylee thought her new blue beret was the end all, be all of cool stuff. Her grandparents were just happy to see the two boys alive again. At midday Daniel got up, still long before Jose, who’d been sipping on a bottle of tequila before bed. He wasn’t going to wake up any time soon. John had gone to the store with Kaylee, leaving Joanne in the kitchen making tea. The news was on, not the repeats he’d been watching, but live broadcasts from the northern states. Every network was covering a recent battle in Denver, one that was still going on in fact, but hadn’t ended as quickly as many others. The footage reminded Daniel entirely too much of Washington, of those horrible days of knowing nothing and fearing everything. Had anything actually changed, or had he lulled himself into complacency?

“Looks like the Army is going to hold them at the Rockies.” She brought Daniel up to speed on that morning’s news. “There aren’t a lot of cases up there, the terrain is so hostile, even the wildlife attacks them.” Joanne tried to laugh, “If only we had an army of Grizzly Bears, huh?” It was a bad joke, but then again the bears might be more useful against hordes of zombies than all the tanks, fighter planes and warships ever built. What good, after all, was an F-22 against corpses sprinting through Main Street America? The boat they’d found might prove somewhat useful one day, but only as a rescue ship. Using the deck guns against zombies would just be wonton destruction of property… Though it would definitely be cool to watch.

“Jose and I can’t stay forever. We’re Soldiers, swore and oath and everything. We’ll have to leave eventually, join the others… Every soldier on that line may just be the crucial piece that saves the day. But out here, we’re just refugees like everyone else.”

“Do you know what’s going on out there? John has friends in high places, this is true. It’s just like Stalin’s Russia anywhere that czarist Muslim sonofabitch still has control. They’re sending boys in droves to a meat grinder. The Vice President already said they would allow anyone still AWOL to rejoin if they tried now, but there are reports making it up the pipeline of deserters being shot when they’re discovered.” Joanne didn’t sit, she couldn’t stop standing and watching the television with fury in her eyes. “John and I were talking… We want to get as many boats, that are seaworthy, together as we can and take whoever’s willing to an island that’s been cleared. There’s a bunch in the Keys that-”

“That’s a terrible idea.” Daniel jumped in quickly. “Do you think you guys are the only ones that have thought of that? Even if there are no infected on the islands, there will be thousands of refugees with the same idea as you. Here we have cars and boats, we can move quickly and there’s a fallback point almost anywhere we choose. I’ve been trapped behind enemy lines, believe me there is no safe place from these fuckers… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

Joanne put a hand on Daniel’s shoulders. “No, I’m the one who should be sorry. We don’t really know what to do anymore, and we can’t force you to stay here. But, you never know, we might actually win this. Somehow. And inoculation maybe.”

“You can’t inoculate against being eaten. I’ve heard the words ‘Extinction Event’ thrown around a few times now.” Daniel whispered, choking on his words. “You think this is what killed the Dinosaurs? A plague, not just an asteroid, I mean.”