John Ringo - To Sail a Darkling Sea

“If we do any land clearance, look in the libraries and big houses,” Sophia said. “I bet around here you can probably pick up some great stuff.”

“This is okay?” Olga said. “We can, salvage?”

“If there’s time and if we clear the town,” Sophia said. “Sure.”

“Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, kissing her on the cheek.

“Okay, now you definitely need to get a room.”

“Okay,” Sophia said. “Don’t think we’re clearing this one.”

The town of El Chorillo was not at water line. The marina was at the waterline. The town was on top of a two hundred foot bluff. Most of it. The rest was condominiums built into the bluff in racks up the to what was a small mountain. There was a large public park right at the waterline behind a massive rock breakwater.

“Senorita,” Chen radioed. “Drive into the marina and check it out. All I see is sailboats.”

“Roger,” Sophia said, engaging the motor on slow. “Paula. Get up forward and check the water.”

“Roger,” Paula said.

“Check the water?” Olga said. She’d changed into a bathing suit. The girl was about covered in fine scars including one on her chest that didn’t look like a surgery scar. More like a knife. Sophia had decided she wasn’t going to ask.

“There was a sunken boat in the harbor at La Playa,” Sophia said, entering the marina carefully. “Nobody noticed it until the last day and thank goodness nobody hit it. But we’re getting extra careful. There’s no real channel here. That shouldn’t be an issue. Hopefully.”

“All clear so far,” Paula called.

From the entrance, Sophia could make the same determination. There were some off-shore power boats, though. And the usual zombies. Most of them were in shadow, asleep. But she counted at least six in view. When you saw six, you knew there were more like two dozen. Most of the sailboat cabins were open. They’d pop up like fleas if she cranked the radio.

“No really ocean capable yachts,” she radioed. “I mean, thirty-fives, but that’s it. There are some big Bayliner kind of boats. Is that what we’re looking for, over?”

“Do they look hell on wheels fast, over?”

“Negative,” Sophia said. “Thirty maybe thirty-five knots.”

“I’d say this is a bust.”

“Roger,” Sophia said, backing and filling in the turning basin. “Headed back out.”

“Division, Guppy.”

“Go, Gup.”

“We going to shoot ’em up, over?”

“Negative. We’re under time to find boats and such. Only where there’s a good salvage target.”

“Okay, but you see the survivors, over?”

“Survivors?” Olga said, sitting up and shading her eyes.

“Top of the cliff. Set of condos. Waving a sheet. Bunch of ’em. Over.”

“Shit,” Sophia said, looking up. “Son of a bitch.”

The condo had ropes hanging from several of the balconies as well as growing plants. There was exterior piping that looked as if it was used for collecting rainwater. Several groups of people were trying to attract their attention. There were quite a few survivors. At least thirty.

“Boise, you got your periscope up, over?”

“Roger, LitClearOne. We confirm multiple survivors.”

“Can you get up with Squadron and retrans the video? I’m pretty sure this is not a security team objective, over.”

“Stand by.”

“We could do this,” Olga said. “We can’t just leave them!”

“Olga,” Sophia said. “You can shoot. You had to qualify for the position. That’s different than fighting as part of a fire team up to the condos then clearing those. Hang on. Division, going noise hot to demonstrate the issue to my new security people.”

Sophia had been barely puttering along. The Senorita’s exhaust was below the waterline and she didn’t make much noise. Now she turned on the stereo and cranked it.

As piano opening of “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’ boomed across the marina, zombies started pouring from everywhere. Sure enough, they’d been sleeping in the sailboats. Now they were howling. And their howling started to set off every zombie in the town. It was apparent that there were at least hundreds if not thousands.

“Oh,” Olga said, looking around.

“His comrades fought beside him,” Sophia sang as she puttered over to the public park. There was a line of buoys marking a “no crossing” zone and she puttered right up by it then dropped her anchor. “But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best… ”

“So the CIA decided, they wanted Roland dead… ” Olga sang in harmony. She’d gone below and gotten her M4 while the boat was being repositioned. “Permission to do some target practice, Captain?” she sang in time to the song.

“Division, doing some catenary target practice,” Sophia said.

“Roger, Senorita.”

* * *

“ Jeepers ,” the skipper of the Boise said. “COB, I’m defining this as a morale boost video. Retrans to the rest of the boats.”

“On that, sir,” the Chief of Boat said. “ Bella Senoritas indeed. Damn those are some fine legs.”

“You betcha.”

* * *

“It is hard to hit them with a moving boat,” Olga said. She was laid out in the prone position on the sundeck forward. “Or are they not noticing the 5.56? There is not much rocking.”

“Each,” Sophia said. “Both. Takes a lot of practice.” They’d both put on hearing protection.

One of the group of zombies lined up on the waterfront finally stumbled over and fell. When it did, the group fell on it, ripping at it with their teeth.

“Gross,” Olga said, continuing to fire.

Seagulls clustered around, trying to find a way through the infected. Which drew more infected. Some of them waded out into the water. Then one went under and the water turned red. The others didn’t seem to notice. They just stopped, waving their arms angrily, slapping the water and howling, when they were low-chest deep. Another went under. Then another.

“Swimming is contra indicated,” Paula shouted. She’d put in earplugs.

“Are those two screwing?” Olga asked.

Sophia picked up a pair of binos and looked through them.

“Yup,” she said, lowering the binos. “They do that when there are these feeding frenzies. They stay away from each other till there’s a source of food like this. Then they swarm and tussle over it. Sometimes they start screwing in the middle of the tussle. You’ll see a male run down a female, or sometimes a smaller male, and try to eat it and screw it at the same time. Although usually it’s screw then eat.”

“Gross,” Olga said, taking another shot.

“Don’t get Faith started on it,” Sophia said. “A couple of times when she’s been in scrums, the males realize she’s female. There’s no way to get through on her gear but she still doesn’t like it.”

“What do you do?” Olga asked. “I mean, if you’re in a… what was the word?”

“Scrum,” Sophia said. “Basically, if you’re at the bottom of the dog pile. There’s a reason that Faith carries a lot of knives. Apparently they get less romantic when you cut their parts off.”

“Lots of knives,” Olga said. “Got it.”

“Yes, you did,” Sophia said. “Oh, you meant the knives. But you hit that last one.”

“I was aiming for the one next to him,” Olga said. “This is hard.”

“Senorita, Division.”