Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Read online

  This really sucks, she thought, doing her best to keep her face impassive, in front of both Lieutenant Commander Wheeler, their new Captain, and Lieutenant Montrose, who were there with her on the Bridge. The ship sat tied to the pier, so there was no helmsman, and she wore a filter mask, which covered the lower half of her face, thus concealing a good deal of her expression, but she couldn’t cover her eyes. Wearing sunglasses past sunset would be just a bit suspicious.

  “Go, Eight-Three,” the reply (from one of the Rescue Swimmers) came through the tiny radio speaker.

  “That’s it for us tonight. Fuel state is too low to attempt another hover and recover, so I’m afraid you guys will need to make do on your own until morning,” Scoggins said.

  “Roger,” the young man (whose voice Molly didn’t recognize enough to attach one of the names of their new arrivals to it). “Understood.”

  “Is the Chief with you?” Scoggins asked, and Molly’s heart skipped about three beats.

  “Negative,” came the reply. “He went inside with a couple of the survivors.”

  “He did what?” the voice of CWO2 Peavey screeched, as he came through the interior door and onto the Bridge.

  LCDR Wheeler looked directly at Molly. There could be no hiding the sudden concern and mild fear in her eyes. “He should have said something to us,” he remarked, softly.

  “Damned right he should have,” Peavey snapped, ever-ready to point out Jonesy’s faults. The incredible urge to smack him - never far from the surface these days - returned to swat at Molly’s psyche.

  “He’s doing his job,” she said, looking at Wheeler, but directing her words to Peavey.

  “He’s an insubordinate show-boater,” Peavey countered.

  “And the one and only trained professional at Special Ops among us, Mister Peavey,” Wheeler said, his voice even. “So unless you’d like to take his place out there, I suggest you cut him some slack.”

  “But...” the idiot sputtered.

  “Don’t make it an order,” Wheeler cautioned, and Molly could have kissed him for it - and wouldn’t that have been wildly inappropriate?

  It felt as if her heart were doing jumping-jacks. Jonesy’s risking his life - again. Peavy’s condemning him again. Wheeler’s defending him - again. But none of it addressed the Big Kahoona: What the Hell is Jonesy doing?

  7

  Inside the building

  Honolulu, HI

  “Breaking and entering?” Jonesy asked. It seemed such an odd statement, under the circumstances, but, then, odd could easily be considered the new normal, so...?

  “Take a look inside the cupboards,” Wendy suggested, pointing toward the kitchen, which was half-visible through a partitioning wall to his left - where he’d have to turn his back on them to investigate.

  What have they been eating?

  Only one thing to do:

  “Sorry, but I gotta ask,” he said, trying to sound apologetic, even though he really didn’t feel it. “You guys haven’t, by any chance, been imitating Hanibal Lector, have you?”

  They stared at him, incredulous, for a long moment. Then Wendy busted up laughing, followed closely by Marc, who looked as if he could scarcely catch his breath. Mac, the dog, lifted his head about an inch, flopped his tail onto Wendy’s lap a few times, then resumed his repose, apparently deeming himself above such human frivolity.

  Wendy, still laughing, curled her hands into claws, raised them to the level of her face, then gave an exaggerated snarl. Marc fell off the arm of the couch and began pounding on the carpet.

  “You thought...?” He gasped, finally, his face red with mirth and early-stage oxygen deprivation.

  “Hey,” Jonesy protested. “Desperate people do desperate things, and you guys don’t seem as starved as your fellow survivors.”

  Wendy’s laughter cut off with a look of disgust.

  “Those worthless assholes,” she snorted.

  Marc picked himself up off the floor, still chuckling, but better able to breathe. “We tried to get them to join us, but they didn’t want to play.”

  “Join you doing what?” Jonesy asked. “Snacking on human beings?”

  This produced another, shorter, burst of hilarity from the married couple. Mac actually raised his head a full foot, and stared at his mistress, as if, perhaps, she’d lost her mind.

  Jonesy began to wonder. The entire scenario seemed surreal. They were in what - from all appearances - seemed to be a pleasant home. The furniture was comfortable, the place looked clean, and lived-in, and normal, as if the apocalypse never happened. Yet there they were, discussing the possibility of cannibalism. Or, at least, Jonesy was discussing it. The other two were laughing their asses off. Mac lay mute, and unaffected. And all Jonesy had to do was look out the sliding glass door and beyond the balcony to see the wreckage of Honolulu. Weaker minds would have crumbled, right there, on the spot.

  Marc, still chuckling, and far more in control of himself than his wife, walked past Jonesy and into the kitchen, beckoning him to follow. He did, and watched as Marc opened the nearest cabinet to reveal three shelves of canned goods. There were empty spots. The shelves weren’t completely full, but there was enough there to last them at least another week or more.

  There were canned beans and corn and chile. There was fruit cocktail, and peas, and peaches. Marc opened another cabinet to show five large cans of dog food, alongside two small bags of the dry stuff.

  “I thought you said the food ran out,” Jonesy remarked.

  “It did,” Wendy - finally over her latest laughing fit - said, joining them in the small kitchen.

  “So where did it all come from?”

  “Not all of the residents survived,” Marc said, his voice solemn, but the twinkle in his eyes still showing amusement.

  “And Marc had his gadget,” Wendy added.

  Marc grinned proudly. “Breaking and entering.”

  8

  Facilities Maintenance Building

  ISC Sand Island, Oahu

  “Kick it down!” Duke yelled to Seaman Pat Querec, who stood in front of a steel door, looking at the large Bosun Mate, as if he’d lost his damned mind. BM3/OPS Greg Riley thought he might actually have.

  The door was steel. You don’t “kick down” a steel door. Not if you want the bone structure of your leg to remain intact. Querec tried it anyway - with predictable results.

  “Ow, fuck!” the young man shouted, hopping away on his other - undamaged - leg.

  “Lightweight,” Duke growled, then proceeded to pound away at the offending portal with the hammer in his right hand. The door resisted at first, even with such power as could be wielded by the big brute, giving testament to the foolhardiness of his order to Querec. But Duke didn’t seem to mind, and after three mighty swings, the thing burst open onto the large warehouse bay. And yes, there were zombies.

  ET1 Glenn Newby was the first to fire, using his M-4 with the precision he’d been showing since the new guys from the Star joined the old guys from the Sass. Of course, new and old were relative terms, since the two groups’ experience level was only separated by a month or so. But it had been a month of sitting fat and happy (again., relatively speaking) on an icebreaker in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in the middle of early Summer, versus fighting for their lives against hordes of ravenous, insane, human flesh-eating assholes. Experience counted in matters such as these.

  They were at the Facilities warehouse for the explicit purpose of securing the cable necessary to bring power from the solar panels atop the Comm Center building to at least some of the other buildings on base. Chief among these was the Medical Clinic, of course, but they also needed electricity to run the ovens and grills of the galley. Plus, refrigeration would be nice, so any fish or goonie birds they happened to catch wouldn’t spoil right away.

  Not much chance of that happening with all the refugees who were already starting to arrive from Honolulu. Tonight, it was just a handful, due to limited fuel for the helos, but come
tomorrow morning, and the arrival of the Polar Star, the base would start getting crowded in a hurry.

  Duke clobbered a nasty-looking bald zombie in a loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt, and no pants, knocking him to the ground with a decided splat. Of course, that might have been the sound of its head being caved in by Duke’s hammer, but Greg really didn’t want to dwell on which disgusting possibility it might be.

  Newby shot another one (a naked woman) and ET2 Scott Pruden - the only one of them who’d been in this building before now - fired his nine millimeter into the face of a former Coast Guard Lieutenant, who was stumbling toward them like the crazed freakazoid it clearly was.

  And suddenly, there were no more zombies. No live ones, anyway. Greg hadn’t had a chance to join the fight, and didn’t feel the slightest bit disappointed.

  He was a navigator, for Christ’s sweet sake! Not a ninja warrior, not a Rambo wannabe, nor anything resembling any of those things. Other people could kill the poor, infected bastards. Greg was perfectly okay with being a spectator.

  “Where’s the cable?” Newby asked Pruden.

  “I have no idea,” the red-haired man - who for some reason often referred to himself as Jurgen McAwesomeness - replied.

  “I thought–“ Newby began, but Pruden cut him off.

  “I know we’re supposed to have some in here, somewhere, but I don’t know where.” He shrugged. “I mainly worked on the Patrol Boat upgrades.”

  “But–“ Newby again tried to get a word in edgewise, but Scott Pruden cut him off a second time.

  “And the solar panels, before that,” he said. “Until the airport complained and we were forced to abandon the project.”

  “So you don’t–“

  ”Should be over there, somewhere,” he said, pointing, and then heading off toward a pile in the far back corner, stepping over the body of a long-dead zombie on the way. “Amber killed that one,” he added.

  9

  Comm Center

  Sand Is, Oahu

  “COMMSTA, this is Polar Star,” the voice said through the radio speaker inside the Comm Center. Amber Winkowski felt...conflicted...and not just about being back in the saddle, as it were. She’d been trapped - alone - in this room for weeks, and stuck in it, tiptoeing around Scott Pruden for a couple more weeks beyond that. It had been dark, since there’d been no electricity, and the air had been stifling. And there had been ghosts. One ghost in particular: that of Petty Officer Jackass.

  She still couldn’t think of or speak his name (Jackson) out loud. She’d killed him, with the sharpened end of a mop handle to his throat. He had not died easily, but he had died in this very room.

  “...ETA to the Sea Buoy, zero-six-hundred,” the voice continued, referring to the marker buoy at the entrance of the approach channel to Honolulu Harbor.

  “Roger, Polar Star,” she said into the VHF microphone. “Looking forward to your arrival.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, now was it? She was certain some people were looking forward to it, as, for example, LCDR Wheeler, aboard Sassafras, and the air crews from the two helos, which were currently parked in the left and right fields of the base ballpark, not too far from where she now sat, ruminating about what tomorrow would bring.

  She had defied the orders of the Captain of the Star, by remaining mute, despite repeated calls - certainly a dereliction of duty, at the very least. She had done this in support of Ensign (now Lieutenant, Junior Grade) Molly Gordon, then Commanding Officer of the Sassafras, in spite of being fresh from the Academy, when the young woman defied his orders to cease and desist all operations until their arrival. Gordon had done this so she and her ragtag crew could rescue the people on the base. People like Amber, herself.

  Things had generally gone downhill from there.

  A member of the Sass crew had been killed, because he and his shipmates were too close to the Sand Island Bridge when they blew it up. A Lieutenant from this base had been killed, struggling with Ensign Gordon for possession of a handgun, after he tried to take command of the ship. And another Sass crew member had been injured when he got dog-piled by a roving gang of zombies.

  Those were just the high points. All of them had taken place without adult supervision - except for the injured crewman. That happened after Wheeler took charge. A small detail.

  Now, Caption Gideon D. Hall - an actual four-striper Captain, and quite possibly the new Commandant of the entire Coast Guard - would be arriving in the morning. The question was, what would he see when he got there? What would his assessment be after Wheeler briefed him, and he saw the situation for himself?

  Would he see a cocky Ensign, mad with a power for which she was not remotely qualified, who had ignored his orders, and gotten her men killed and injured? Would he see the results of a coup, in which the woman murdered an officer who had lawfully been trying to assume command, as was his legal right, due to superior rank? Would he believe she had been aided in these actions by her crew, who, themselves, had shown a near total disregard for superior officers, like CWO2 Peavey? Would he see Amber’s part in all this?

  Or would he see the truth?

  Would he realize that what Molly Gordon had done was to take the battered remnants of a crew devastated by an outbreak of the Pomona Virus on their ship, in which their own shipmates - their own friends - had turned into ravenous, homicidal maniacs, bent on death and a midnight snack of human flesh, and re-form them into a cohesive unit, whose soul purpose was nothing less than saving thousands of people? Would he see what that crew had done, without benefit of adult supervision, without adequate resources, or weapons, or hope? Would he see how far out on the edge they were? How exhausted they were? How, in spite of this, they were carrying on with the mission, and succeeding, beyond all expectation?

  Mister Wheeler had seen it. Amber overheard the comms between Captain Hall and LCDR Wheeler, when Hall told him to do as he saw fit - at least until he arrived with the Star. Wheeler had not only given them a pass for their transgressions; he’d gone so far out on a limb as to promote the lot of them, to use them for their experience and counsel, and to pay attention to what they said.

  But Hall outranked Wheeler, and there was really no getting around it. So nothing the new CO of the Sassafras had done would matter, if Hall saw it differently, and Hall would be there in the morning.

  10

  Inside the building

  Honolulu, HI

  “We were running out of food,” Marc explained, as Wendy and Mac, the dog, led them down the staircase, and into the darkness. The only light remained that from the small flashlight attached to Jonesy’s helmet. “Trying to stretch what we had, and feeling certain we maybe on our own for quite a while.”

  “Or forever,” Wendy added.

  Whether this was a dig against Jonesy and the rest of the Coasties, he wasn’t sure, and in any event, it didn’t matter. Things happened the way they had. He and the crew hadn’t exactly been sunning themselves on a pristine beach, sipping colorful cocktails with tiny umbrellas in them.

  He could understand the general frustration. These people had been in a horrible situation, with no sign of hope, and now that they were coming out of it, the blaming phase could begin. They needed a fall guy; someone to whom they could point and say You did this. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, and Jonesy couldn’t give a flying fuck, but that didn’t change reality.

  “And in any event, there were things wandering the hallway,” Marc continued.

  “We call them either zombies,” Jonesy explained “or assholes.”

  “I like assholes,” Marc replied.

  “You would,” Wendy remarked.

  “But there came a point,” Marc carried on, ignoring the friendly jibe from his wife, “when we had to do something, or starve.”

  Mac did his sniffing trick at a door on the seventh floor. His hackles rose, and he gave a single, quiet Ruff.

  Both Marc and Wendy stiffened. “Assholes,” Wendy said, looking at Jonesy. “You go first
.”

  He hesitated, but only for a moment, then reached over his shoulder and unsheathed his right-hand kukri machete, moving forward. Mac gave a low growl as he passed, and Jonesy scratched the fuzzy ears, and patted the dog’s head, then eased open the fire door and peered into the hallway beyond.

  A single, emaciated zombie stood, perhaps twenty feet down, shuffling away from them. It came to a jerking halt, gave a slight moan, then slowly turned in stages, shuffling one foot, then the other, then the first, until it faced the light from Jonesy’s helmet. It stared for a moment, as if trying to work out this new development, then, apparently having decided the light meant food, it moaned louder and started toward them.

  Jonesy saw no other zombies, no other threat, and this thing looked so destroyed by hunger and deprivation, the odds were really good it wouldn’t put up much of a fight. He strode forward, swung the blade, and loped the thing’s head off with practiced ease. It collapsed to the ground, like the bag of bones it was.

  “I want one of those,” Wendy whispered, coming up behind him and pointing at the blood-covered machete, now held at his side.

  Mac padded up to the corpse, sniffed it once, then lifted his leg and pissed on it. “Good boy,” Marc said.

  “We taught him to do that,” Wendy explained.

  “Why?” Jonesy asked.

  “Mac knows the smell of his own piss,” Marc said. “It marks the corpse, so he isn’t growling when we go to a door we’ve already been through. Saves on repetition.”

  “And doesn’t give me any more gray hairs,” Wendy added.

  “Smart,” Jonesy said, impressed. These guys had adapted to the situation well. Way more than most people would, he suspected. They might prove useful.

  “Haven’t been to this floor yet, though,” Marc said. “Pick a door, any door.”

  “Let’s see what’s behind door number two...” Wendy quipped.

  Jonesy looked from one end of the long hallway to the other, and shrugged, then pointed at the nearest one. Wendy nudged Mac in that direction, and the chocolate lab lumbered toward it, sniffed, then sneezed and backed away.