John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“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…”