John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“Good,” Steve said, hooking a finger. “That’s going to take some work. Any of them skilled?”

“Two sailors,” Bobby said, shrugging. “Deckhands not captains but they know deck work and some mechanics. But I’ve got one kid you need to meet. I mean, you stopped by, want to cover that?”

“Let me meet the ‘kid,’” Steve said.

* * *

“Lance Corporal, this is Commodore Wolf,” Kuzma said.

The lance corporal jumped off his bunk and came to attention.

“Lance Corporal Joshua Hocieniec, sir, pleasure to meet you!”

Hocieniec was slightly under normal height, almost skeletally thin and darkly tanned, a sure sign of having been in a raft or lifeboat rather than stuck in a compartment. He had didn’t have a beard, which had become common in the flotilla, but he did appear to have a five-oclock-shadow.

“As you were, Marine,” Steve said.

The crew room was neat as a pin. There was clear evidence of zombie damage but it had been scrubbed to the walls and the Marine’s blouse was washed and neatly hung on the wall. He’d even polished his boots.

“Where’d you come from?” Steve asked.

“Life raft, sir!” Hocieniec barked.

“The Iwo Jima ,” Kuzma said softly. “Only guy in the liferaft.”

“Sir…” Hocieniec said. “I swear, it was abandoned!”

“Start from the beginning,” Steve said, sitting down on a chair. “Or, rather, what happened in general?”

“We were in lockdown, but the bug got onboard somehow, sir,” Hocieniec said, precisely. “Just the flu at first, then people started to turn, sir. We tried to maintain control but… My team leader, Sergeant Fry, he turned in the middle of a clearance, sir, and then he bit PFC Conner. Finally, the acting CO ordered abandon ship, sir. I…the boats were going over the side just…going, sir. I couldn’t even find a boat and I was clocking out, running out of ammo, sir. And I’d got the flu. I didn’t know when I was going to turn, sir. I went over the side and into the drink. I was floating when I spotted the raft, sir. I climbed aboard. I tried to paddle to some other guys who were afloat but the wind was blowing…sir, I did absolutely everything I could, sir…”

“Calm down, Lance Corporal,” Steve said. “No worries as they say in my homeland. Nobody was able to hold onto anything. Generals, admirals, captains and commanders weren’t able to do more. And I’ll note that ‘Commodore’ is an honorary title in my case.” He considered the Marine for a moment. “How are you doing? What’s your condition in your opinion?”

“Ready for duty, sir,” Hocieniec said. “I understand you need clearance personnel. I am ready to fight zombies any day you say, sir.”

“Here’s the deal,” Steve said. “You might have heard rumor we’re in contact with higher. They haven’t called back in a while but the subs, which is how we communicate with them, are still out there. So, presumably is this unknown ‘Headquarters.’ They haven’t given me the right to order military personnel to provide support. But they know that military are working with us and haven’t objected. The situation is ambiguous. But we’ve got an SF sergeant, active duty, doing clearance. I don’t see them objecting to a Marine. However, it’s up to you. I can’t order you to do it. That being said, if you agree, it’s like enlisting. You then do follow the orders of whoever is assigned over you. You may just be trained in clearance by a thirteen-year-old female. Think you can handle that?”

“I’ve…heard about Shewolf, sir,” Hocieniec said. “Shouldn’t be a problem, sir.”

“Do you have a handle, Lance Corporal… Hoochken…”

“ Hocieniec, sir,” the Marine said, his face very clearly not smiling. “Hooch or Burma, sir.”

“Burma?” Steve asked.

“If I don’t shave three times a day I get a shadow, sir,” Hooch, said, rubbing his chin. “Burma Shave, sir.”

“All right, Burma,” Steve said, sticking out his hand. “Welcome to Wolf’s Floating Circus.”

* * *

“How’s the weather report look,” Steve asked. “If it chops up this is purely going to suck.”

The ship wasn’t a tanker. It was an oil rig support ship. Which in a lot of ways was better. Support ships were designed with massive tankerlike bunkers because, oddly enough, oil rigs had to be resupplied with diesel. But it also had deck cargo room and some even had machine shops. It could be a real find. There being a few little issues. One of them was not whether it had diesel. They knew that because they could smell it. That was one of the issues. There was a leak somewhere.

The other issue was what was on deck. Besides lashed down cargo, there were two zombies. And between the hydrocarbons and not knowing exactly what was in the cargo on the deck, they couldn’t exactly shoot them off.

“It’s good,” PO3 Ruth Gardner said. “Again.”

For this op, Steve simply had to have some trained people. While Isham cleaned up the Alpha , he’d pulled Geraldine and Dugan off to come try to recover the support ship. But he’d also had to dip into the Coasties for support. Ruth Gardner was a fueling expert, called POL in the military. She was trained in unrep as well as “issues” with fuel and fuel systems. What she wasn’t trained in was repairing fuel systems. Different MOS. Dugan was pretty sure that if it was repairable at all he could do it.

“I’m okay with input on how to do this,” Steve said. “Cause I’m sort of buggered.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Fontana said. “But I don’t know if it’s a good one.”

Steve was just fine with “normal” danger, like, say, a zombie apocalypse, for Faith. This was something different. So he’d dropped Hocieniec off on the Endeavor with Faith to go do some light clearance and brought along Fontana.

“Which is?” Steve asked.

Fontana went over to a bag of gear he’d brought along and rummaged through it. After a moment he brought out a machete in a sheath and drew it with a flourish.

“You’re joking,” Gardner said, munching on a cracker.

PO3 Gardner was pregnant. So were many of the women. There had been a noted sociologial response to societal stress called “the replacement factor.” After major disasters, women had a habit of getting pregnant at a higher rate than during good times or during the stress period. The post-war Germany was noted as an example as well as post-Black-Plague Europe.

In the case of the zombie apocalypse, it had much more to do with men and women trapped on lifeboats and in small compartments with no access to contraceptives and exactly zero to do. In a few cases, that had definitely been due to force. Those men were on a special boat in Coventry. There were a few cases were the jury was still out. In Ruth’s case, like the young lady found with Fontana, there seemed to be no issue. The only real issue was that she was found in a compartment with two other, male, Coast Guardsman and she honestly had no clue which was the father. The “dads” didn’t really care. They were both good naturedly arguing over who was the “real” prospective dad.

“In 1994, eight hundred thousand people were massacred in Rwanda,” Fontana said. “Mostly by having an arm hacked off by a machete and being left to die. These zombies are not walking dead.”

“No,” Steve said. “But they do spread a blood pathogen.”

“I’ve been exposed at this point,” Fontana said. “And I’ll wear raingear. Cause clear sky or no, it is gonna rain.”

* * *

“The question is how you’re going to get up close enough to chop off an arm,” Steve said, conning the inflatable closer.

The supply ship had a midships deck that was, for a ship its size, remarkably low to the waterline. Steve couldn’t see how it wouldn’t get swamped in heavy seas.