John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“Stuck,” Faith said. The dog had released but the hatch wouldn’t open.

“Crowbar,” Steve said. “Carefully.”

“There is no careful with a crowbar, Da,” Faith said, pulling it out.

“Wait,” Braito said. “There’s something better…”

* * *

“I need, like, a sheath for this,” Faith said, hefting the Halligan tool. “This is, like, totally made for zombie fighting.”

She jammed the adze portion into the seal of the door and pushed on the bar. The hatch gapped slightly.

“There’s a rope holding it closed,” Steve said, shining a taclight into the interior. “No zombies. Not alive anyway.”

“Can you get the rope?” Faith grunted. “Hang on, let me…” The tool slipped, fortunately missing Steve. “I need this in further.”

“Hammer,” Mike said. “And you might want me to do it next time.”

“No way,” Faith said, hefting the halligan. “I love this thing! I wanna have its babies.”

* * *

“No survivors,” Steve said. Getting the hatch open had involved hammering in the Halligan, gapping the hatch and cutting the rope with a machete.

The room had held five people: male, female, three children. Now there were five corpses.

“One guy with a gun,” Faith said, picking up the pistol. “Wife and kids went zombie and he killed himself?”

“Looks like,” Steve said. “One of the kids is still dressed. Trapped in the room, no food, zombies outside… Murder suicide is my guess.”

“Bill Carter,” Mike said, shaking his head. “He’s the engineer. Sort of my boss.”

“Sorry,” Faith said.

“He wasn’t the greatest boss in the world,” Mike said. “But I sort of liked his kids. Can we…”

“We’ll clear all the bodies,” Steve said. “They’re people. We don’t do the full flag and sheet thing but we give them a burial at sea. We try not to just toss them to the sharks.

“Thanks,” Mike said. “That’s…good.”

“Onward,” Faith said, spraying a C on the hatch, then putting an arrow on the bulkhead next to it pointed to the nearest entry point. She shook the spray-can. “I don’t suppose you guys have some more of this onboard?”

* * *

“Lots of supplies,” Steve said, whistling thoughtfully. The small hold was packed with cases of Number Ten cans as well as general “groceries.” It looked like the back room of a grocery store except for everything being tied down under cargo nets.

“We were figuring on being at sea for a while,” Braito said. “We were going to need it.”

“So why the hell is she dead?” Faith asked, looking at the bloated corpse. “I think she. She’s been dead a while.”

The corpse was clothed and lying up against the bulkhead. She, probably, didn’t have any evidence of wounds and was in a hold packed with food.

“Remember how sick you got?” Steve asked. “The virus kills people twenty percent of the time.”

“Moving all these stores is going to be a pain in the patootie,” Faith said.

“We’ve got cranes,” Mike said, pointing up. “Open up the top hatch, winch it out.”

“That…works,” Steve said. “If it’s flat calm.”

“You can tow a tug boat,” Mike said. “The main transfer is shot but that doesn’t mean you can’t tow it. How far to the nearest harbor?”

“Bermuda’s about a hundred miles away,” Steve said. “Last time I checked the position. Put it in Bermuda harbor and call in the boats to load up? Hell, it’s got enough diesel to keep us running for months.”

“What about Isham?” Faith asked.

“I think we can spare some,” Steve said.

“I hate to point this out,” Braito said nervously. “But this isn’t, technically, salvage.”

“You don’t have to finger your pistol, Mike,” Faith said. They had loaned him one for his own security on the boat as well as body armor. “And it makes me nervous when you do. You don’t want me nervous.”

“Down, Faith,” Steve said. “Mike, you can claim it as last survivor I guess. There’s no owners anymore that we know of. But what, exactly, are you going to do with it? You don’t have a boat to tow it to Bermuda. It’s drifting.”

“I’ll, you know, cut you in on it…?” Mike said.

“That’s what we were looking at anyway,” Steve said, shrugging.

“So…what do I get?” Mike asked.

“You mean besides being rescued?” Faith replied.

“What do you want me to offer?” Steve asked. “Mike, what you get in this world is what you make for yourself. I suppose at some point there will be enough people mobile that you can add ‘what you take from others.’ But right now all there is either running and hiding or doing what we’re doing, trying to save people like, you know, you . If you want some help to try to find a boat… I’m getting stingy with those, really. But I’ll do that. Trade you this for a functioning yacht and as much stores as you can carry. Hell, refuel as often as you’d like until the tanks are dry. But what are you going to do , Mike? Keep running and looking for that one ‘safe’ place? Good luck finding it. I haven’t heard where it might be.”

“I know boats,” Mike said, his brow furrowing. “I mean, I’m not a captain, but, hell, none of you are. But…I know repairs. And we’ve got repair materials. I don’t want to go around scavenging. Being in here… It’s scaring the shit out of me. I want the lights on and the whole thing cleared out. But I can repair boats…”

“Okay, we anchor the hell out of this in a protected part of Bermuda harbor,” Steve said. “And you can act as a base station? If we get a tanker or something, we’ll bring it in for fuel?”

“I’m getting the feeling we need to talk about how to organize this whole thing,” Faith said. “But can we finish clearing the boat first? Or do we let Fly do the rest?” she asked with a feral grin.

“Please, no,” Braito said.

“There,” Steve said, cocking his head. “The reason you’re willing to share the boat, then.”

“Point,” Braito said.

“So, let’s get finished clearing,” Steve said, heading down the corridor. “Then we’ll figure out how this is going to work in more detail. Zombies! Zombies! Any zombies…?”

* * *

“ Toy , away team,” Steve said, taking off his respirator. They were running out of filters, which was going to suck pretty soon. It wasn’t bad on the deck but the air was still thick with rot.

“Away team, Toy.”

“Where’s the Cooper , over?”

“About fifty miles northeast.”

“Ask them to vector here,” Steve said. “There’s supplies and we need to have a meeting.”

“Roger.”

“Chris, I swear to God I should have just kept you as a cook,” Steve said, wiping up the spaghetti sauce with garlic bread.

“It’s nearly as good as that place in New York,” Faith said, then grimaced. “Sorry, Chris, but…”

“Nah,” Chris said, taking a bite of green beans. “I know what you mean about those places in New York. Some of those old guys are wizards. And there’s only so much you can do with canned meat. Besides, much of it was Tina.”

“It’s great, Tina,” Sophia said. Stacey had stayed on the boat after talking with Steve and giving him her proxie.

“I didn’t do much,” Tina said, shyly. She’d transferred to the Cooper to get away from the Toy , which still had too many bad associations.

“I think I might transfer,” Patrick said. He’d been acting as assistant helmsman and deck hand on the Toy .

“Which kind of brings up the subject of this meeting,” Steve said. The saloon in the Cooper had enough room for most of the crowd and most people were done with dinner.