Sophia “Seawolf” Smith was one of the founding members of the Wolf Squadron. As such, despite being fifteen, she was a shareholder and not a minor one, as well as being a member of the Captain’s Board as skipper of the thirty-five-foot Worthy Endeavor. The boat had gotten beaten up by nearly six months at sea, not to mention the zombies that took it over, but it was still her boat.
“You won’t,” Fred said. “You, especially, won’t.”
Fred Burnell was the “Vessel Preparation and Assignments Officer” on the Grace Tan. The massive supply ship had an open center and rear deck. On it were, now, four “cabin cruiser” yachts on props in various stages of repair and refitting. Since all of them worked when they were brought alongside it was mostly a matter of cleaning them out.
“Things change,” Burnell said. “We’ve got crews cleaning them up, now. But we’re retiring the thirty-fives. They’re just too small and don’t have enough range.”
“So, what am I looking at?” Sophia said.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Burnell said, smiling slightly.
“No,” Sophia said, frowning. “Sorry. Should I?”
“No,” Burnell said. “I guess seen one cast-away, seen ’em all. The Endeavor plucked me off a life raft. So let’s just say I owe you one even if you don’t know it. There’s a very nice 65' Hatteras Custom sitting out there. Not too beat up by zombies. The only ones on it were below, and we’re changing out all the below materials. Good engines, low hours… ”
“I appreciate it,” Sophia said. “Sorry for snapping your head off.”
“Not a problem,” Burnell said. “Can’t tell you how happy I was when you blew that foghorn. Oh, you’ll need two light clearance personnel and deck hands. Bigger boat.”
“I guess I need to go do some scrounging,” Sophia said. “What happens in the meantime?”
“Support for the clearance of the Iwo Jima,” Burnell said. “I think you know how that works?”
“Hopefully better than the Voyage,” Sophia said.
* * *
“Okay, okay, seriously?” Faith “Shewolf” Smith said. The thirteen-year-old had gotten her height from her father and it had kicked in young. Nearly six feet, slender and with some of the look of a female body-builder, her fine blonde hair was currently hanging limp and damp on her neck in the heat.
“You say that a lot,” Sergeant Thomas Fontana replied.
The thirty-two-year-old black Special Forces sergeant had become fond of his… well he couldn’t call her “protégé” since she’d taught him the ins and outs of close-quarters battle with infecteds. Partner was the right term but it was hard to apply to a thirteen-year-old girl, no matter how well she fought zombies.
“The middle of this ship is missing,” Faith said, pointing pointedly. “There is a great big gaping hole in the middle of this ship. Below the waterline!”
The foursome were looking, in amazement in Faith’s case, at the USS Iwo Jima, an Amphibious Assault Carrier the size of a WWII “Fleet” carrier. The combination aircraft carrier, troop ship and floating dock, while not as big as the Voyage Under Stars was really, really big. Especially from the waterline looking into its cavernous well-deck.
“It’s not missing,” Fontana said. “It can’t be missing if they never put anything there.”
“That’s the well-deck, Faith,” her father said. Steven John Smith was six foot one, with sandy blond hair and a thin, wiry, frame. Although he was the putative commander of Wolf Squadron, so designated by the US Navy no less, he did clearance as well. They still had only four hard clearance personnel and he was good at it. Besides it burnished the reputation and this “squadron” was all about force of personality. “Obviously, it’s where they pull landing craft in and out.”
“That doesn’t make it not nuts,” Faith said. “I know nuts when I see nuts. Letting water into a ship? That’s nuts.”
“The good news is the well-deck is open,” Smith said. “You don’t have to climb a boarding ladder up to the flight deck.”
“They dropped the stern gate when we abandoned ship, sir,” Lance Corporal Joshua “Hooch” Hocieniec said.
Hocieniec completed the foursome that had only recently completed clearing the cruise liner Voyage Under Stars, listed as the world’s second largest “super cruise liner.” Larger than any passenger liner in history, it was best described as a floating Disneyland and just about as damned large. While the Iwo was big, as large as a WWII aircraft carrier and with much the same look, it wasn’t the Voyage, thank God. The only larger ships on the ocean than the Voyage were supertankers, which had relatively small areas for zombies to inhabit and a supercarrier. God help them, the Hole was sort of hinting they’d like one of those cleared. Steve had flatly told them “Not until we’ve got a lot more Marines.”
Hocieniec was the only survivor of the Iwo they’d picked up so far. There were sure to be more out there but all the life rafts from the amphibious assault ship found so far contained only the dead. And the few people picked up from the Voyage who might be potential reinforcements were still in too bad a condition to assist. With any luck there would be some Marines alive on the boat. They’d found that people were awfully inventive, given the slightest chance, at staying alive.
“And, look,” Faith said, “a welcoming party.”
Zombies, not so inventive. But very tenacious. It seemed like all zombies needed was fresh water. Which would seem in short supply at sea except their concept of “fresh” was about the same as a dog’s. And if one died from the water quality, well, the survivors would just eat him or her.
Which was why there were at least thirty zombies waiting for them on the deck of a hover craft inside the ship. Which was more or less exactly where they were going to have to go. Fortunately, the stern gate was down and conditions were calm. Very calm.
The Iwo Jima had been, deliberately, “parked” in the Horse Latitudes zone of the Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso-the only sea not bounded by land-was surrounded by, but not affected by, the various currents of the North Atlantic. The Horse Latitudes were, in turn, a zone where there was always little to no wind and only very rare storms. They were the bane of early explorers of the Atlantic for the constant calm. They were called “the Horse Latitudes” because those were the latitudes where you had to eat the horses.
The combination, along with the somewhat entrapping sargassum weed that gave the region its name, meant that the assault ship was going to stay there. Except for the minor waves transmitted from distant storms, the area was pretty much flat calm, a nice change from the storm they’d left behind in Bermuda.
Since they’d gotten in contact with the Hole in Omaha, center for the Strategic Armaments Control, Wolf Squadron had found out that most Navy surface ships as well as many major commercial vessels had been similarly “parked” for the duration. The opinion of the “powers that be” prior to the Fall was that that way they’d be more or less impossible, or at least difficult, to find and they wouldn’t be blown away by hurricanes or other storms. The commercial ships had apparently gone into the normally untraveled zone to avoid the Plague and have a place where they could maintain minimal power. As far as anyone knew, none of them had been uninfected.
On the horizon there was a supertanker full of Liberian crude. The normally empty zone was, relatively, chock with big ships full of H7D3 infected.
“You know,” Faith said, musingly, “if we get this running we’re going to have to rename it the Galactica, right?”
“Ouch,” Fontana said. “Geek points galore.”
“What?” Hooch said.
“Wait,” Faith said. “Does that make the infected… wait for it… Zylons?”
“Ow!” Fontana said, snorting.
“With due respect, Staff Sergeant… ” Hocieniec said. “What the hell are you talking about?”
