Under a Graveyard Sky

“Shooting a person in the leg is tough,” Fontana said, closing up his assault pack and handing Hooch his refilled magazines. “Melee weapons?”

“If you’re talking about a machete,” Steve said, standing up, “I don’t think so. Kevlar takes stabs and it will cut by I don’t see cutting through it with a machete.”

“Machete or a kukhri takes off their arm,” Faith said. “With enough force. And I still say a chainsaw is the way to go.”

“They’re heavy,” Fontana said. “And if you tried to cut a security zombie with one the kevlar would jam the chain.”

“Come up,” Faith said, making a motion of cutting up between the legs.

“Ooooh,” Hooch said, grabbing his jewels. “There’s things you just don’t say around guys.”

The area the zombies had come from was a corridor about ten meters wide with more hatches off of it. There was a faint light area where the exterior hatch was open but most of it was shrouded in darkness. It was impossible to tell how long it was but at least there weren’t any zombies immediately coming into view.

“Where to?” Fontana asked. They’d decided to go for the quiet approach and see how it worked.

“Sweep this,” Steve said, pulling out a tac light. The powerful hand-light carried to the far end but barely. Turning around the same happened. The corridor was as long as a football pitch. “Bloody hell. Falcon, Shewolf, forward. Hooch, on me. Pick up any cards you find. Meet back here.”

* * *

“We need some cave lights,” Fontana said, sweeping the taclight on his Saiga from side to side. “This ship is too big for taclights.”

“No shit,” Faith said, then tapped hers. “I think mine took a beating. I’m going to need to switch it out.”

“I’ve got a spare,” Fontana said.

“So do I,” Faith said, stopping and pulling of her ruck.

“You guys had more Surefires than any one group should own,” Fontana said. “Not that I’m complaining.” He not only had one on his rifle but two duct-taped to his body armor facing forward and another in a helmet mount.

“Da always complains through movies, you know?” Faith said. “The idiot going into the basement in the horror movie with the light that doesn’t work pisses him off. We’ve got flashlights all over the house at home. And if we had to drop in the dunny in the dark he wanted plenty of light. But we never figured on clearing a bleeding cruise ship! What are cave lights?”

“You know those million candle power portable spot lights on boats?” Fontana said. “Like that but head-lights and hand lights. Smaller, too. They’d fill this up with light.”

“There,” Faith said, standing up and shaking her shotgun. “Better.”

“Must have been bad if you busted a Surefire,” Fontana said.

“Fair dinkum scrum,” Faith said. “And I don’t think it’s busted. Just messed up. This isn’t somewhere I want my taclight going out.”

The end of the corridor was a blank wall covered in instructions on boarding lifeboats. This was clearly the pre-boarding assembly area. All the hatches were either inboard or outboard. While there were plenty of “remains,” there were probably four times as many bodies as there had been zombies, all the zombies had been at the hatch. They picked up three security cards and moved back to the rendezvous.

“What now, sir?” Fontana said, handing over the cards.

Steve checked through them and stuck them in a pouch.

“No Gwinneth,” he said. “No senior officers.” He contemplated the hatches lining the corridor.

“Eenie-meenie-minie-mo?” Steve said.

“I was expecting something Australian,” Hooch said. “Like, uhm, g’dye or something.”

“Australians use it, too,” Steve said. “It’s a mnemonic of the Celtic numbering system. But that’s not important. The real question is, do we use this hatch, which is in the light, or one of the ones that is in darkness? If we use this one, it will automatically attract zombies when we open it. If they haven’t already gathered from the noise. If we use one further down either way, we might have the element of surprise but we’ll be fighting in the dark and silhouette.”

Faith pulled out her stethoscope and checked the door.

“I don’t hear anything,” she said. “But these are thick doors. No banging, no scratching.”

“I’d say this one, sir,” Fontana said. “First, we’re here. Second, we can see our exit.”

“Fair dinkum,” he said. “That’s Australian, Marine.”

“Roger, sir,” Hooch said, chuckling.

Like the exterior hatches it had massive double doors designed to open outboard. He swiped the reader with the security guard’s card and while the light went from red to green the hatch didn’t open.

Faith flipped out her Halligan and applied the prybar to the hatch which popped open, slightly.

Steve held up a hand, then waved to Hooch. Once it was moving, the hatch opened easily.

The room revealed beyond was apparently vast and entirely dark. It appeared to be an arena with a square deck in the middle.

“Is that a pool?” Faith whispered, pointing her taclight at the deck. “Or a basketball court?”

“I think it was an ice rink,” Hooch said. “No zombies, though.”

“Really?” Faith said. “OLLY-OLLY-OXENFREE!”

There was a wide-spread and growing growling and howling and heads started popping up all over the arena. The zombies turned their heads away at the bright lights after months in darkness but the also stumbled to their feet and started to close on the hatch.

“Back up,” Steve snapped, snapping up his Saiga and shooting the closest zombie. “ All the way outside. Exterior deck. Maintain formation. Back aft on exit.”

“Thanks a lot, Faith,” Hooch snarled.

“This was the plan, right?” Faith said, firing steadily. “Come get some, zombies!”

“This would have been the perfect time for some seven six two,” Fontana said.

The good news, this time, was that the zombies were half blind and instead of coming in a mass were trickling out. In large numbers and clots but not fifty in a bunch.

“Fontana, Hooch, reload,” Steve said, going to pistol.

“Up,” Fontana said. “Reload.”

* * *

“Okay,” Steve said. “We have something resembling a method for outer clearance. What did we do right and wrong? Faith?”

There had been nearly as many zombies in the arena as in the outer corridors. And in much better shape. When the wave had stopped they closed and latched the door to get some time for cross-load and another AAR.

“I shouldn’t have initiated without warning?” Faith asked.

“I’m going to put that in the area of a boo-boo,” Steve said. “But, yes, only initiate zombie call with warning. Hooch?”

“I fumbled my reload,” Hocieniec said. “I’m not that used to this AK system. Like it. Don’t get me wrong. These things are the shit. But I’m still getting used to the system.”

“Two things,” Fontana said. “Our store of 12 is low and so is.45. We’re fighting in fairly big areas and while this would be a weapons switch, I suggest we change out for your AKs. Seven six two would work just about as well as shotgun, we have more seven six two, this is one of the few areas where it will make sense and my shoulder is getting pounded by this twelve,” he added with grin.

“Whiner,” Faith said, grinning back.

“Makes sense,” Steve said. “You said two.”

“More, really,” Fontana said. “The initiation. Okay, so the zombies apparently spend a lot of time sleeping. We need an initiator. My first thought was a flash-bang but we don’t have any and it would probably be overkill. It would have been fun to toss one in the middle of that arena, mind you. But overkill.