Under a Graveyard Sky

mostly from liferafts, who had volunteered to join the Flotilla. “They’re worse than a rock band. Just try to avoid the crap. The flying bridge isn’t too bad and it’s a nice clear day. All you got to do is run it into Bermuda. The course is laid in on the GPS. Just follow the marked route. That’s the current channels, whatever the markers might say. Don’t necessarily follow the markers. They’re getting filled up. Follow the marked route, got it?”

“Yeah,” the man said.

“If you get in trouble, we’re always up on sixteen,” Faith said. “ Don’t go into the lower decks unless you’ve got a really strong stomach. The Marine with me puked put it that way.”

“Who cleans these up?” the guy asked looking at the feces and blood smeared interior.

“First test of a captain in the Flotilla,” Faith said, grinning. “Can you find a crew who’s willing to clean the boat?”

* * *

“You drink, Hooch?” Sophia asked.

“There’s two reasons for my nickname,” Hooch said.

“Twenty-five-year-old Strathisla,” Sophia said, handing him a highball half full of dark whiskey. “One of the real reasons to be a clearing boat.”

“And stuff like this,” Faith said, admiring the new gold and diamond tennis bracelet. She’d had to “extend” it with a bit of parachute cord since it was for a much smaller wrist. “Especially since I don’t drink.”

“This is authorized?” Hooch asked, taking a sip of the scotch. “I’m not really into scotch but that’s pretty good.”

“And enough of it and you forget what you see,” Sophia said, taking a pull. “Balancing doing this job half hammered and just doing it is the tough part. And we’re authorized one third of the salvage from cleared boats as the clearance boat. We really don’t have the room for it. Basically, we can take anything we can carry.”

“Hell, you don’t even clear,” Faith said. “What do you see that’s so bad? And I don’t drink.”

“Remember that raft with the kids in it, Faith?” Sophia asked, taking another drink.

“Yeah,” Faith said, looking at the deck.

“Kids?” Hooch asked.

“Life raft,” Sophia said. “Two kids. Maybe six and eight.”

“Zombies?” Hooch asked.

“No,” Faith said. “That was the tough part. They hadn’t zombied. There was no salt-water still. I mean…”

“There was a pack for one,” Sophia said. “It had been opened. But the still was gone. Maybe they could read the directions, set it up, but didn’t hook it up right and it drifted away. But it was gone. They’d died of dehydration.”

“Oh…crap,” Hooch said.

“That one still…” Faith said, her face working. “I mean, they must have tried really hard. They at least got the still out, you know?”

“Empty rafts,” Sophia said. “What happened? Who knows. Rafts with zombies and bits of the rest of the crew. Lifeboats with corpses and one zombie. Or even that’s dead. Just putrid bits of meat and intestines all over the fucking place…” She took another hit of the scotch and breathed it through her nose. “So I’m fifteen and I’m shooting for cirrhosis of the liver by thirty. Sue me. We earn this.”

* * *

“We barely touched the Grace’s tanks,” Isham said, looking at the computer. “I mean, the Alpha took them down but less than a quarter. There’s three times a fill-up for the Alpha in Grace’s tanks and the Alpha wasn’t dry. And we’ve filled the Large. I figured with the Coasties on it, they weren’t going to up and run off with it.”

“We were just preparing for a supply run when the word broke about the plague,” Victor Gilbert, First Mate of the Offshore Support Vessel M/V Grace Tan said. “We sort of packed along our…” He stopped and his face worked. “We packed along our families. Just a little…cruise…”

“Mr. Gilbert,” Steve said, handing him a glass dark with whiskey. “The same thing would have happened if they were on land.”

“Yeah,” Gilbert said, taking a drink. “But I wouldn’t have had to watch my wife and kids turn. You know?”

“I’m one of the few who doesn’t,” Steve admitted, shrugging. “Luck. Planning.”

“Bloody-mindedness,” Isham said.

“That as well,” Steve said. “Issues?

“No,” Isham said. “Just keeping it in mind.”

“So I ended up in the compartment with Stella, Larry Ashley’s wife and… Christ, Luis is Jeff Busler’s kid. Jeff was the deck boss. Larry was maintenance. And Sharon, she’s Chad Wilborn’s daughter, and Rich, he’s Sherri and Bob Tilley’s son, Sherri was the systems tech. Nobody has anybody…”

“No,” Steve said, “You all have each other. Captain Gilbert, those are the only children except Tina we’ve found. Alive anyway. This plague may or may not have wiped out civilization, but it has wiped out an entire generation.”

“Yeah, but there seems to be a new one on the way,” Isham said, chuckling.

“Pardon?” Gilbert said.

“Ahem,” Steve said. “I’m not going to pry, but I suspect Stella is pregnant?”

“How’d you…” Gilbert said, his eyes flaring. “Look…!”

“No worries, mate,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Just about every woman who was in a compartment with a man is pregnant. And we can usually sort out the rapes from the other.”

“Vic,” Isham said to the still visibly upset captain. “Take a deep breath. What Steve is saying is that it’s how things are, now. Part of the new now. Hell, there’s even a meme.”

“Meme?” Gilbert said. “Like LOLKatz or something?”

“Sort of,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t photoshopped it onto a picture of a pregnant woman. The saying is ‘What happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment.’ Goes two ways. There’s stuff that happens that you’re really ashamed of. On boats, in compartments. Having to kill somebody who turned.”

“Or, hell,” Isham said, “There’s one boat where there was a death that people just don’t talk about. It came out slow, they sort of hemmed and hawed…”

“And the response is, what happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment,” Steve said. “If there’s a complaint, we investigate it. To the extent we can. But… Stella hasn’t even hinted it was rape…”

“It wasn’t, honest,” Gilbert said, holding up his hands. “Hell, it just sort of…”

“You can talk about it if you want,” Steve said, shrugging. “Or keep it in the compartment. But you don’t have to be guilty about it. Yes, her husband was recently dead. So was your wife. The ‘right’ way, even if you’d liked each other before, was to ‘wait a decent period.’ You were alone in a compartment with nothing else to do and death all around you.”

“Except the kids in this case,” Isham said.

“We waited til they were asleep and did it real quiet,” Gilbert said. “Sue me.”

“Again and again if necessary,” Steve said. “No worries. One of the women from a liferaft, the man with her had to kill her husband when he turned. And she’s pregnant and they’re a couple. Humans adjust to the incredible. The survivors do. And one of the ways we adjust is things like ‘What happened in the compartment, stays in the compartment.’ Nobody but the people in the compartment, life raft, what have you, can really judge. It is one of the reasons that people in unusual jobs are given different courts than common citizens. Seamen have their own courts. Military. Because there is a reality to ‘You weren’t there. You can’t know. You can’t understand.’”

“And then there’s the prison thing,” Isham said, smirking.

“Prison thing…” Gilbert said, then grimaced.

“What happened in the compartment,” Steve said.

“Stays in the compartment,” Gilbert said. “Got it.”