Under a Graveyard Sky

“I’ll check.”

A bright light was flashed in his face and he flinched. That hadn’t happened before.

“You’re real…?” he croaked.

* * *

“I need a stretcher team,” Faith said over the radio. “Some big guys. Even as a skeleton, this guy is big.” She unkeyed the radio. “I thought he was a deader. My bad.”

“Just drink,” Hooch said, giving the guy a sip of water. All the survivors looked like they’d been in the death camps but this guy was particularly bad if for no other reason than being so big to begin with. His feet were hanging off the end of the bed. “A couple of sips. Your body needs to get used to it, again.”

“You’re really real?” the guy croaked again.

“We’re really real,” Hooch said. “Sorry it took so long but the world’s gone to shit. We’re going to get you over to the boats in a bit. Tell them to bring an IV or this guy’s going to go into shock.”

“Bring an IV,” Faith said. “Cabin Three-Nine-Eight-Four. Hooch, we need to keep clearing.”

“Can you hold the bottle?” Hooch asked, putting it in the guy’s hand. “We need to keep looking for survivors. Don’t die before the medical team gets here, okay? Don’t give up.”

“I won’t,” the guy said. “Thank you. Who are you?”

“Wolf Squadron,” Hooch said. “Long story. They’ll explain it later. Just hang in there. We’re going to prop the door. We’ve cleared the zombies.”

The guy just barely nodded and tried to raise the water bottle. He couldn’t even manage that.

“Straw,” Faith said. She’d spotted one in an old coke bottle. She cleaned it off, put it in the bottle and propped it where the guy just had to turn his head. “Can you do it now?”

“Yes,” the guy said. “Thanks.”

“Just hang in there,” Hooch said. “You made it this long. Don’t give up.”

“Not gonna,” the guy said. “I want to kill zombies.”

“Okay, now you’re talking my language,” Faith said, patting him on the shoulder and sticking the straw between his lips. “We’ll talk in a couple of weeks.”

* * *

Rusty couldn’t believe how good water tasted. It was, like, orgasmic. He didn’t have to worry about drinking too much. Every time he took a sip he had to let his body and brain settle down from the intensity of the experience. Sip, fireworks. Sip, twitch. Sip, more fireworks. There were, like, stars in his eyes. Then he realized it was a flashlight.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” a voice said. “The guy doesn’t have any veins to put a stick in!”

“Let me try it,” another voice said.

“Like you know how any better than me. Hey, guy, this is gonna sting a little.”

Rusty felt the needle go in but he’d just taken a sip of water and the fireworks sort of made it unnoticeable.

“Shit…” Another probe. “I cannot find a vein…”

“Let me…”

Rusty wasn’t sure how many times they tried to put an IV in but he did notice that he was out of water.

“Water?” he asked. “Bottle…?”

“Yeah, got it,” the guy said. Unlike the first two who had been covered in weapons and what looked like firefighter gear not to mention gas masks, the guy was wearing a raincoat and a gas mask but that was about all. He pulled the straw out and got another bottle, then inserted the straw back in Rusty’s mouth.

“Finally,” the second guy grunted.

The sensation coming up Rusty’s arm couldn’t be an IV. It felt like somebody had shot him up with freezing cold coke. Then it spread through his whole body. He wasn’t sure he was going to survive the rush. He groaned.

“You okay?” one of the guys said. “You know, that’s like the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.”

“It’s right up there,” his partner said. “Let’s get him on a stretcher.”

“Should we call for help?”

“Seriously? I think this guy might weigh ninety pounds.”

* * *

Rusty was in a haze the whole way out of the cruise ship. He could sort of recall swaying in the air. And the feel of wind. It was cold after so long in the stuffy cabin. They’d wrapped a blanket around him but his feet stuck out.

He saw people climbing up ladders on the side of the ship and had a vague impression of what looked like charter fishing boats or something.

Then he was in a room in a boat that was bobbing up and down. A girl with black hair was holding onto his IV bag. She was a girl, too young, but she was the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.

“I need another bag,” the girl said. “This one is nearly out already.”

“Going to have to wait,” a male voice said. “We don’t have any. They’ve got some on the Grace.”

“I don’t think this guy can wait,” the girl said.

“What’s your name, angel?” Rusty said.

“Tina,” Tina replied. “You’re on the Changing Tymes. We’re going to take you over to another ship called the Grace Tan in just a little while.”

A stretcher was set down next to his holding a woman who looked like one of those survivors from a death camp. Her skin was pulled back against her cheeks and she was, really, literally, was skin and bones.

“Can you hold two?” one of the stretcher bearers asked.

“I can for a while but we need some way to hold them up,” Tina said. “And more. This guy needs another one!”

“We’re running out,” the stretcher bearer said, shrugging. “I’ll see if I can find something to rig up…”

“…I said we need more IVs. These people are so gone…”

“We’ll float everything we’ve got off. Charlotte is about two hours out with the Campbell. They have plenty…”

“Roger, Dallas. Thanks again for the assist…”

“Dallas, Squadron Ops, tell the Charlotte, we’re sending an inflatable up to pick some up. We’ll handle the boarding…”

Rusty wanted to hold on. He was afraid if he closed his eyes he’d die. But finally they closed.

* * *

The passenger cabin areas didn’t really involve “clearing.” It just involved opening the cabin door and seeing if the people inside were dead or alive.

“I can kill zombies all day long,” Faith finally said, shaking her head at the door. “And I’m fine with this. But Trixie cannot walk into one more cabin and find a family dead of starvation.”

“Tell Trixie that’s fine,” Hooch said. “I’ve got this. You and Trixie guard the door.”

“Sorry, Hooch, but…”

“Faith, you’ve got nothing to apologize to anyone, ever,” Hooch said, going in the cabin, then coming back out. “Empty.”

“Really?” Faith said. They’d found some like that.

“Shhh…” he said, leaning forward and whispering. “That’s all Trixie needs to know.”

“Okay,” Faith whispered, nodding.

* * *

“You know your daughter’s going a little bat shit, right?” Fontana said, checking the corpse for pupil response. It seemed like some of them weren’t even decomposing they were so dried up. But this was a corpse.

“I’ve noticed,” Steve said. “The question is if it’s functional bat shit or nonfunctional bat shit.”

“There’s a difference?” Fontana asked as they checked the room across the hall. There weren’t any surviving zombies, period. And the only human survivors were those who had been very very careful using their