John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“Seriously, it’s legal to marry at fourteen in Arkansas.”

“Fine,” Faith said, double tapping a zombie that had reared up out of the darkness. “If we clear Arkansas by the time I’m fourteen we’ll talk.”

“That’s not fair…”

* * *

Day Eleven

“Okay,” Faith said, laying down fire with the MG240 off the Campbell . “ This is more like it!”

They’d finally cleared the “passenger” areas all the way to the top of the ship. The top deck was mostly open and a perfect place to use a machine gun. Especially from the top of a water slide…

“Happiness is a belt fed gun,” Fontana said, grinning. “Remember, short controlled bursts or the barrel will overheat.”

“That’s got to be a design flaw. What’s the fun of short controlled bursts…?”

* * *

“Eh,” Faith said, stepping out of the stairwell. “Back in the dark again.”

The passenger areas were entirely clear. Except for the few emaciated survivors in the cabins, there had been no uninfected individuals.

Now it was time to work on the crew areas.

“I’ll clear if we find zombies,” Faith said. “But it there’s nobody who answers a knock, I’m just going to let somebody else check the cabin.”

“Hopefully down here they’ll all have died of dehydration,” Steve said. “The zombies that is.”

“Trixie doesn’t want to know about the cabins,” Faith said.

“We get it, honey,” Fontana said. “We’ll check the cabins.”

* * *

As a Senior Maintenance Officer, Robert “Rob” Cooper didn’t have access to all the supply areas. Technically. But as a senior maintenance officer what he did have was a lot of friends willing to look elsewhere when he turned up with a dolly. Besides, everybody was doing it. Everybody knew that things were going to shit-you only had to be around one person who “turned” to realize that this was really and truly bad-and everybody was stocking their cabins.

Rob didn’t stock his cabin. He stocked a maintenance locker. For one thing, it was closer to the supplies area. For another it had a white water line running right through it that was below the line of the water supply. And it wasn’t anything tough for a guy who’d worked his way up as an engineer to run a quick fitting into the line. In other circumstances, that would be an automatic firing offense and really really stupid.

After two months in the darkened maintenance shack, he was sooo glad he’d ignored both regulation and “common sense.”

And so was Gwinn.

He’d run into the Staff Side Third Officer trying to make it to the lifeboats. Unlike a lot of the ship-side officers, he’d stayed on the ship with the passengers. Right up until the “abandon ship” call, which had been made by Staff. And when he’d headed to the lifeboats, in a zombie apocalypse, he’d gone prepared. The crowbar was how he’d beat his way most of the way to the lifeboats before finding out, from Gwinn, that they were all gone.

She’d protested heading to his hide-out. She’d been bitten at the boats and then again from the zombie he beat off of her. Then there was the blood splatter from the beating. But he’d insisted. He didn’t know why even then. Maybe it was the thought of such a pretty lady becoming a zombie or being eaten by them. And he kept in the back of his mind that he had a crowbar and a bunch of painting plastic if it came to it. But in the end she’d accompanied the burly fifty-three-year-old engineering officer into the bowels of the ship.

It had been fortunate he’d brought her with him. They were half way to the forward maintenance shed when the full lockdown hit. Even his card didn’t work, which pissed him off. Maintenance, as he mentioned to her at the time, was supposed to have access to the whole ship. Especially in an emergency. But Gwinn’s continued to work all the way to the shed.

It had been touch and go with Gwinn. She’d gotten real sick. Fortunately, he had plenty of water to feed her and a pretty decent supply of medicine. He’d had a lot of friends in the crew.

But she was a tough lady. Easy on the eyes until the lights cut out on day three. Easy on other areas as the months went by.

The “months” was starting to be a problem. He’d thought he’d stocked enough food for pretty much any reasonable period. And they’d been careful with it. But he realized that it was no five year stock. Eventually, they were going to run out. And being in a compartment, even one as large as this, with anyone, even someone with as much common sense and decency as Gwinn, occasionally made you contemplate the crowbar.

“I spy with my eye…” Rob said.

“If you ever want to have another of something that also starts with a B, don’t even think about it,” Gwinn said.

“Queen bishop to Knight four.”

“Queen to rook five. Check.”

“Your bishop is at king six, right?”

“Right.”

“Damn. King bishop to…” He paused as there was a strange sound in the distance. “You know, even if all the zombies would go away, fixing this thing is going to be a shipyard job.”

“I doubt there’s much use for a…” She stopped as there was a distinct, rhythmic, clanging in the distance. “Was that…”

“Shave and a haircut?” Rob said, rolling to his feet. He didn’t even have to fumble his way around the compartment anymore. He walked to the hatch and started banging on it regularly. “Come on!” he said, banging harder. “I don’t care if you’re fucking pirates!”

“I sort of do,” Gwinn said, then paused. “No, I’ve changed my mind. I’m fine with pirates.”

* * *

“Nothing,” Faith said, lowering the steel pipe. “You wanna check it?”

They’d found some survivors in the crew cabins. Some of them weren’t even in horribly bad shape. The crew had, it turned out, been stocking up. And several of the cabins that were empty had quite a bit of stores. Some of them even had stuff that was sort of comical in a black way. One of the steward’s quarters had five pounds of caviar in it. Fontana had pointed out that caviar was originally designed to be long storage and was a good source of protein. Faith had learned two things that day. That and beluga caviar was icky. Even on some really expensive kind of cracker.

“Roger,” Fontana said, keying the lock. As he did, there was a distant clanging.

“Customers?” Faith said. “Seriously?”

“Sounds like it’s coming from forward,” Fontana said, moving down the corridor. “Try it again.”

Faith banged on the walls, hard, and was rewarded with more banging.

“Guy’s in good condition,” Faith said.

“This way,” Fontana said, continuing.

They followed the sound around a cross-corridor to a door marked “Forward Maintenance Support.”

“Figured it would be a food supply locker,” Fontana said, keying the door. He’d stood to the side to keep from blinding the people. He popped a chem-light and tossed it through the door.

* * *

Rob had put his arm over his eyes when the door clicked to keep from being blinded. He heard something rattle on the floor and, Gwinn’s comment about pirates still in mind, panicked that it might be a flash bang.

“That will help your eyes adjust,” the guy on the other side said. “Just slowly let them creep open. How many?”

“Two,” Rob answered. “You coast guard?”

“Wolf Squadron,” the guy said. “We’ve got some Coasties with us but it’s mostly a volunteer civilian effort. You sound in good shape.”

“Stocked up,” Rob said, shifting his arm just enough to get a little light. It was blinding and he quickly covered it again. “And there’s a water tap in here. Can we get out, now?”