John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“Yeah, sure,” Isham said nervously.

“Clear, Captain or Aye, aye, captain,” Steve said, trying not to sigh. “There really is a reason for it. So… Try it again…”

“Toy, this is Cooper.”

“ Cooper, Tina’s Toy , over,” Sophia said.

Sophia sometimes thought about complaining that she was on the helm about fourteen hours a day. She, like, never got a break. The problem being, she knew she loved being at the helm.

They’d picked up two other boats and six more survivors. Isham, Christianson and four others that volunteered to leave had been put on one of the yachts and told they could go anywhere they wanted, don’t let the door hit you in the ass and don’t get in our way.

Chris was now running the Daniel Cooper , a 75' “flush deck trawler.” It wasn’t as cool looking at the Toy but Sophia had to admit it had more room. And it had taken less of a beating from zombies.

“Uh, Captain Chris wants you to come over here…”

“Where is here and why, over?” Sophia asked.

“There’s a big boat here. He says it’s a Shewolf job.”

“Give me your location, over,” Sophia said, trying not to snort. She was actually at fault for the nicknames. She’d been talking to Paula, at the helm as usual, and telling some stories from Da’s old days. His old para nickname of Wolfsbane had come up. That got changed to “Captain Wolf.” Then people started calling her, Sophia, “Seawolf.” So now it was “Papa Wolf” or “Captain Wolf,” “Mama Wolf,” “Seawolf” and “Shewolf.”

She took down the coordinates, then another voice crackled over the speaker.

“Seawolf, Cooper, over ,” Chris said.

“Roger, Cooper ,” Sophia replied.

“Need to talk to your Da, over.”

“Da,” Sophia said, keying the intercom. “Cookie’s on the horn. Says there’s a boat that’s a ‘Shewolf job.’”

“I hate you!” Faith yelled from the saloon. She was engaged in cleaning some of the guns.

“It’s not my fault your adopted,” Sophia sang out.

“I’m not adopted,” Faith said.

“She’s not adopted,” Steve said, walking onto the bridge. “ Cooper, Toy actual, over.”

“Got a big job here, Toy . Forty, fifty meter tug. Zombies, plural, on deck. Lots of corridors. Not our cuppa.”

Steve had supplied Chris with some weapons to clear open boats but not something like that. Besides, he’d expressed an unwillingness to do serious clearance. “I was a chef not SBS.”

“Roger,” Steve said, thinking about it. “We’re about to clear a purb. We’ll vector after that.”

“Roger. We’re on to other clearance then?”

“Roger. Continue clearance. We’ll handle the big job.”

“Better you than I. Cooper, out.”

“Shewolf job?” Faith said. “Big job?”

“You are about to get your wish, I think,” Steve said. “Big ocean going tug. Hundred and fifty feet or so. Zombies on deck.”

“Which means zombie city,” Faith said, excitedly. “Boo-yah!”

“You’re too weird not to be adopted…”

* * *

The EPIRB had been another bust. The tug was another matter.

“Assuming it didn’t run its engines out and it’s diesel that’s a boomer of fuel for the taking,” Steve said.

The tug was enormous. Next to it the Toy looked like, well, a toy. And, as reported, there were zombies on the deck.

“I can get an AK and try to shoot them off,” Faith said.

“You mean I can try to shoot them off,” Steve said. They were certainly lining up for it. “I’m a better hand with a rifle.”

“Bet I get more than you,” Faith said. “Bet you dishes.”

“The problem is bouncers,” Steve said, considering the angles. “We’re going to hit low some of the time. We don’t want them bouncing back. That would be unwelcome.”

“I was thinking from the flying bridge,” Faith said. “But if we fire from down here, they’re going to bounce up, right?”

“There’s a bit of a lip,” Steve said, pointing to the metal balwark. “Either way, we’re going to have some come back and down. 7.62 tends to keep going you know. Like going through your mother, going through the hull…”

“Frangibles?” Faith said.

“We’re a bit short on those,” Steve said. “Full up body armor, ballistic glasses, shotgun and hope like hell we don’t kill anyone but zombies or sink the boat.”

“Shotgun spreads, Da,” Faith pointed out.

“It also is relatively low velocity,” Steve replied. “When, not if, it bounces it hopefully will not go all the way through the hull. The family will rig up, everyone else below decks.”

* * *

“Think you put enough holes in the boat, honey?” Stacey asked, nicely. There was a large one right in one of the saloon windows.

“I’m just glad nothing worse happened,” Steve said. He was finishing rigging for the entry. This time an assault pack made sense. But they’d put lifevests on outside everything. They were going to have to climb a boarding ladder to get up to the tug’s deck. That was going to be a new experience. “We’re going to have to figure out a better way to clear zombies off the deck.”

“Like water cannon maybe?” Sophia called. She’d taken off her helmet but was still in armor. And she hadn’t liked it when a bouncer had come through the cabin.

“As I said,” Steve said, “we’ll have to find something better.”

“I’ll go get the fiberglass patches…” Stacey said.

“I still got more than you did,” Faith said. “You’re on dishes tonight.”

* * *

“We need to use the dinghy for this,” Steve said, grimacing. “I don’t want to put the boat alongside until we can get some of those big balloon things from the tug.”

“Going up there from the dinghy is going to be tough,” Faith said.

“Which is why we’re going to do it very carefully,” Steve said. “And wear lifevests.”

* * *

“Pirates make this look so easy,” Faith said, throwing the grapnel again. “Damnit!”

“Don’t hole the dinghy,” Steve said as she pulled the rope back in.

* * *

“Son of a b-blug-blug…” Faith spit out a mouthful of water and flailed at the surface. “This vest isn’t…Blug!”

Given the weight of her gear, the vest was barely keeping her at the surface.

“Grab the rope , Faith,” Steve yelled. He was up on the deck already and dangling a recovery line to her. Fortunately, the vessel wasn’t moving much in the light swells.

“Ow!” Faith said, as the hull hit her helmet and pushed her under. She managed to get a hand on the recovery line, though, and Steve pulled her back out from under the tug.

“Tell me there aren’t any sharks,” Faith said, flailing with one free hand for the boarding ladder.

Steve looked around and considered his answer carefully. The recently terminated infected had, after all, bled out. The scuppers were, in the old term, running with blood. And, yes, there were a few shadows. And fins…

“You might want to hurry…”

* * *

“We need a better way to get onto boats,” Faith said. She was sprawled out on the deck of the tug.

“You realize you’re lying in infected zombie blood, right?” Steve said.

“I sooo don’t care,” Faith said. “We’re going to wash-down when we reboard, anyway. Christ that sucked. I was getting ready to dump my gear. If we didn’t need it and if I could figure out a way to do it without taking off the vest I would have. But all I could think was if I took off the vest I was doing the deep dive with sixty pounds of gear to take off on the way down.”