Under a Graveyard Sky

“Not really,” Faith said. “Limited guns for it and we carry mostly forty-five. We’re okay, for now, on forty- five. The shotgun ammo is, yeah, going to be helpful. But,” she unkeyed the mike for a second. “Hey, Hooch, you know how to use an ‘assault boarding ladder’?”

“Yeah!” Hooch said. “Sort of. I mean, I’ve seen it done.”

“Dallas, we may need somebody to coach us through using an assault boarding ladder, over,” Faith said.

“We’ll do that, Shewolf,” Dallas responded. “The tough part is the throw. It’s got a double line. You get the grapnel up, make sure it’s on, then pull in on one of the lines. That pulls the ladder up and it hooks in at the top. Then it’s just a matter of climbing the ladder. Stand by….”

“Roger,” Faith said, shrugging at Sophia’s look.

“Shewolf, have your boats pull back. We’re going to do a close approach and send up a party to clear off some of the zombies from your boarding area. We may, say again may, be able to get the ladder in place for you.”

“Don’t get yourselves contaminated doing that,” Faith replied, sharply. “You’re the closest thing we’ve got to home left, Dallas. Look… Just. Standby.”

“Roger, Shewolf.”

“Hooch,” Faith called. “They want to shoot some zombies off the side and maybe get the boarding ladder in place. I’m afraid they’re going to get contaminated.”

“They’ve got suits like moonsuits onboard, Faith,” Hooch called back. “And a machinegun. I think they can do it. The question is can they get the zombies up to the boarding area?”

“Dallas, you sure you can do this and not contaminate yourself?” Faith asked. “Cause I just thought of something.”

* * *

“She’s more worried about losing a sub than her own life,” Galloway said. “I am going to cover that girl in medals. So help me God.”

* * *

“What is your suggestion, Shewolf?”

“We’ve got some vaccine,” she said, looking at Sophia. “It’s still good, right?” she whispered.

“Should be,” Sophia said. “We even stabilized it.”

“Not a lot left, but enough for a small team. We’d really appreciate the help with the boarding. But I’m worried about the rest of your crew getting contaminated. So… Your guys clear the group off. Get the ladder up if they can. Then put them off in a lifeboat or something. We’ll get them some vaccine. It’s supposed to take two weeks to work. But they can’t get the blood pathogen except with a bite or getting blood in a cut. And if that’s all you get, well, I survived after just the primer. So all they get, maybe, is the flu bug. And we’ll keep away from them so they shouldn’t get that. I guess you can float them rations or something. So… They hang out until they’re boosted. Ten days on a raft. Most of the…squadron has done two months. If you can spare them and if somebody wants to volunteer. And if that makes any sort of sense. Over.”

“Interesting plan. Considering that, Shewolf. Being discussed by experts. We have volunteers either one way or both. Have your boats clear back from the port side. We are going to do a close approach for direct fire.”

“Roger, Dallas,” Faith said. “Thanks. Really, really appreciate it.”

“Hey, you’ve got the tough part, miss. Dallas out.”

“Squadron, this is Seawolf,” Sophia said over the flotilla net. She engaged the engines to full and turned to port as she said it. “Clear the port side, say again, port side of the ship. Dallas is going to do a ‘close approach for direct fire.’ Get way, way back. In fact, get forward and way back or on the far side of the ship. Ricochets from machine-gun fire can kill you at a mile.”

“You girls just know too damned much about guns,” Sherill growled. “Moving around to the far side. I do want to watch, but not enough to get hulled.”

“We were approaching your location,” Chris called from the Cooper. “But on consideration, I’m stopping about five miles out. Nice to see the bloody USN decided to finally show up to the party.”

“Navy’s here?” someone called. “Hallelujiah!”

“Submarine,” Sophia said. “It can’t do much but fire from range. They’re not contaminated and don’t want to be that way. But, yeah, we’ve got some support. Finally.”

“Chuck, switch to twenty-three and I’ll fill you in,” Chris said. “I was monitoring the conversation.”

“Be nice to get some help. Switching.”

* * *

The “radio” was a blue satellite phone with no markings on it. Steve set the Toy on autopilot and hit the only number listed.

“Strategic Armaments Control, is this Commodore Wolf?”

“Roger,” Steve said.

“Stand by, please.”

There was a click.

“Wolf?”

“Roger.”

“This is quote Blount, Commodore. My actual name is Frank Galloway. Prior to the Plague, I was one of several people rotated to secure points to act as NCCC in the event of something like, well, this.”

“Zombies high on the list of possible problems?” Steve asked.

“No,” Galloway said. “Not really. And to give you an idea how bad it is, I was number one hundred and twenty-six on the list. The current Commander of the Joint Chiefs is a brigadier and you can guess how low the rest of the people are. The reality is that there probably are other survivors higher up the chain. There may even be functioning secure points which have just lost commo. But…”

“But possibly not,” Steve said.

“CDC is still there as well. And several other nations have maintained at least one functioning fraction of their former government. Russia, notably. One of the reasons we haven’t called you back is that we’ve been getting…flack from the Russians. They’re insisting on equal access to the vaccine.”

“I don’t have an issue with that,” Steve said. “I mean… I’m not some sort of tranzi, but right now there’s no real point in worrying about borders. They’re basically gone.”

“My Russian counterpart is an interesting chap,” Galloway said. “He’s stated that Russia is no more and that it is again the Soviet Union and that absent supplying all of his nuclear wessels ///sic/// with vaccine, immediately, he will solve our zombie problem with nuclear strikes.”

“What?” Steve said.

“I’d appreciate you keeping that to yourself, Commodore,” Galloway said. “As I said, the reason you’ve been out on a limb is that we didn’t have a secure line. I had considered this method earlier but it was not… I should have done it sooner. I apologize. While this is not exactly a busy job, it’s not all beer and skittles.”

“Going to have to leave that in your lap, sorry,” Steve said. “Any idea if this cruise liner has an x-ray machine.”

“It does,” Galloway said. “But the overall lab supplies and equipment will be miniscule. And the nearest hospital ship with one is in the very south Atlantic. It was on its way from the IO when the plague broke out. And it managed to still get contaminated. Do you think you can clear a land area?”

“Depends on how large,” Steve temporized. “And right now, no. But I have some notional plans for clearing, say, small towns that are remote from major infected presence.

“Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had barely nine thousand personnel,” Galloway said. “However, it had been upgraded to support not only the detainees but as a support base for disasters in the Caribbean region. Also… sometimes there were refugees with medical conditions from those disasters that needed a better hospital. If there wasn’t a hospital ship available, they could be treated at Gitmo without bringing them to the U.S. So a second hospital was built, which has a full epidemiological lab. It should have everything you need to produce