John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“Finally,” the second guy grunted.

The sensation coming up Rusty’s arm couldn’t be an IV. It felt like somebody had shot him up with freezing cold coke. Then it spread through his whole body. He wasn’t sure he was going to survive the rush. He groaned.

“You okay?” one of the guys said. “You know, that’s like the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.”

“It’s right up there,” his partner said. “Let’s get him on a stretcher.”

“Should we call for help?”

“Seriously? I think this guy might weigh ninety pounds.”

* * *

Rusty was in a haze the whole way out of the cruise ship. He could sort of recall swaying in the air. And the feel of wind. It was cold after so long in the stuffy cabin. They’d wrapped a blanket around him but his feet stuck out.

He saw people climbing up ladders on the side of the ship and had a vague impression of what looked like charter fishing boats or something.

Then he was in a room in a boat that was bobbing up and down. A girl with black hair was holding onto his IV bag. She was a girl, too young, but she was the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.

“I need another bag,” the girl said. “This one is nearly out already.”

“Going to have to wait,” a male voice said. “We don’t have any. They’ve got some on the Grace .”

“I don’t think this guy can wait,” the girl said.

“What’s your name, angel?” Rusty said.

“Tina,” Tina replied. “You’re on the Changing Tymes . We’re going to take you over to another ship called the Grace Tan in just a little while.”

A stretcher was set down next to his holding a woman who looked like one of those survivors from a death camp. Her skin was pulled back against her cheeks and she was, really, literally, was skin and bones.

“Can you hold two?” one of the stretcher bearers asked.

“I can for a while but we need some way to hold them up,” Tina said. “And more. This guy needs another one!”

“We’re running out,” the stretcher bearer said, shrugging. “I’ll see if I can find something to rig up…”

“…I said we need more IVs. These people are so gone…”

“We’ll float everything we’ve got off. Charlotte is about two hours out with the Campbell . They have plenty…”

“Roger, Dallas . Thanks again for the assist…”

“ Dallas , Squadron Ops, tell the Charlotte , we’re sending an inflatable up to pick some up. We’ll handle the boarding…”

Rusty wanted to hold on. He was afraid if he closed his eyes he’d die. But finally they closed.

* * *

The passenger cabin areas didn’t really involve “clearing.” It just involved opening the cabin door and seeing if the people inside were dead or alive.

“I can kill zombies all day long,” Faith finally said, shaking her head at the door. “And I’m fine with this. But Trixie cannot walk into one more cabin and find a family dead of starvation.”

“Tell Trixie that’s fine,” Hooch said. “I’ve got this. You and Trixie guard the door.”

“Sorry, Hooch, but…”

“Faith, you’ve got nothing to apologize to anyone, ever,” Hooch said, going in the cabin, then coming back out. “Empty.”

“Really?” Faith said. They’d found some like that.

“Shhh…” he said, leaning forward and whispering. “That’s all Trixie needs to know.”

“Okay,” Faith whispered, nodding.

* * *

“You know your daughter’s going a little bat shit, right?” Fontana said, checking the corpse for pupil response. It seemed like some of them weren’t even decomposing they were so dried up. But this was a corpse.

“I’ve noticed,” Steve said. “The question is if it’s functional bat shit or nonfunctional bat shit.”

“There’s a difference?” Fontana asked as they checked the room across the hall. There weren’t any surviving zombies, period. And the only human survivors were those who had been very very careful using their supplies. And there weren’t many of those.

“One of my grandparents had been a prisoner of war during The War, as it’s referred to Down Under,” Steve said, closing the door on the dead. “To his dying day he never drank more than one cup of water with breakfast, one with lunch and one with supper. That was exactly all he drank. Doctors told him it was bad for him. He didn’t listen.”

The next room contained a family that had zombied. Or at least some of them had. One young male was still wearing scraps of clothes. All the corpses except one had been thoroughly gnawed.

“And he had about a million other quirks. Like reading so slow it took him a year to finish a book. He’d read one word, savor it like the water, then read another. He’d developed what looked like bat shit habits that kept him alive and sane in the camps. This world isn’t going to get any better soon. The question is if Faith’s, face it, schizophrenia is a functional response or if it’s going to cause a real split personality. Because, right now it’s the only armor her brain has against this horror. And, face it, whereas Granpa’s bat shit was weird in the normal world, Faith’s going to have to grow up in this bat shit world.”

“She’s only thirteen,” Fontana said, walking in the next room. That was the pattern. Fontana took outboard, Steve took inboard. “Ever thought about, you know, pulling her back? We’ve got the Coasties now to help with clearance.”

“The Coasties have other skills,” Steve said. “And when they say ‘clearance’ they mean rounding guys up, searching for drugs and maybe getting shot out. They don’t mean blowing their way through zombies.”

“They’re still adults with some weapons training. Got a live one. Not thirteen-year-old girls.”

“On the face of it, you’re right,” Steve said. “I should pull her back. You wanna tell her? Medical team to cabin Two-Nine-Seven-Four.”

“No,” Fontana said, giving the woman some water. “Hey, you’re gonna make it, okay? Just hang on. We’ve got medical teams on the way.”

“Th’nk u…” the woman whispered.

“Just sip the water…”

* * *

“So, about Faith,” Fontana said. “The zombies don’t bother her. Much. This shit is killing her.”

“I know,” Steve said. “But the damned stretcher teams will barely come up into the dark areas. And they won’t go anywhere we haven’t cleared for zombies. Even when all the zombies are dead. Find somebody who’ll do this besides you, Hooch, me and Faith and I’ll send Faith zombie hunting.”

“Get the Coasties,” Fontana repeated. “This is their kind of shit.”

“I will,” Steve said. “When they get here. Some. Some are going to have to help with just keeping these poor bastards alive. We’ll go back to heavy clearance. But for now, we’re all we’ve got.”

“And we can’t do this all day and all night, twenty-four seven,” Fontana pointed out.

Steve reached up and changed the frequency on his radio.

“ Dallas , you got me?” Steve asked, walking into the exterior cabin. There was a body on the bed. He pointed.

“Gone,” Fontana said. “No pupil response.”

“Dallas, here.”

“Can you retrans to squadron ops, over?”

“Roger.”

“Squadron ops. Jesus, Wolf…”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Isham, we’re going to call this at twelve hours from when we went over the side. Whenever that is. The clearance teams that is. If the Coasties are on site by then I’d like them to manage the recovery work. But nobody works on it for more than twelve hours at a time. The clearance team is going to need some bunks on the Alpha or the Grace . And somebody who has a clue about gear to get this shit cleaned up. All that we’re going to be able to do for the next… God knows how long is clear, eat, sleep and clear. Can you manage that?”