To Sail a Darkling Sea

boat, too.”

“ ‘Oh, I just get a pleasure yacht.’” Faith mimicked. “All I get is a ton of stuff and a Barbie gun!”

“Faith …”

So maybe a family dinner wasn’t the best idea…

* * *

“Oh, yes,” Sophia said, pulling away from the cluster of craft around the Iwo Jima. They hadn’t managed to sneak quite all of the Endeavor’s “special stocks” over to the new boat, but they’d gotten a lot of them. And she wasn’t having to ferry stuff back and forth from the Alpha or Grace anymore. “The freedom of the open sea… ”

“Kuzma Flotilla, form line astern of Vessel One,” Kuzma called. “And when I say, ‘form line,’ I mean something resembling an actual line.”

“You were saying?” Paula asked.

“Son of a bitch… ”

* * *

“Son of a bitch,” the sailor said, covering his eyes.

“I told you to cover your eyes and not open the hatch all the way up,” Fontana said, tossing a chemlight into the compartment. “That will give your eyes some time to adjust. How many in your compartment?”

“Four,” the Petty Officer said. “Left.”

“Here’s four pairs of sunglasses,” Fontana said. “Put them on when we come back.”

“You Coast Guard?”

“No. Nor Navy, Marines or Sea Scouts. Wolf Squadron. I’m Special Forces, she’s some sort of psycho anime chick come to life… ”

“Hey!”

“Long story… ”

* * *

“I’m up for a threesome if anybody’s interested…?”

When you were so bored and tired of being in a compartment with people you no longer could stand that you couldn’t even get a flicker out of Mister Willy at a suggestion like that, you knew it was bad. And he was out of Copenhagen. Bad on toast.

Turned out that Gowen had never had group sex. Group sex hadn’t been what Januscheitis had actually suggested but the idea got floated about two weeks after their little discussion. After the first time, she got really into it. By a couple of weeks after that it had been ongoing. There was flat nothing else to do in the compartment. He’d tried reading by the light of his watch and decided that was a bad idea. And he was out of Copenhagen. The senior NCO in the compartment had not been a happy camper for a few days when the Copenhagen ran out.

He’d maintained PT every day. Some of the guys thought that a go around with Gowen should count. They’d done PT, even Patel the swabbie. So had Gowen even after it was pretty clear she was preggers. How they were going to explain that, he wasn’t sure.

They’d checked the corridors to see if the zombies had left. On one end the answer was they’d all died of dehydration. Which meant that the watertight doors on the other side were dogged. They’d checked that and run into more zombies. So their perimeter had expanded but that was about it. They’d knocked on a couple of bulkheads and found out there were other survivors in the area. But nobody they could link up with. The zombies held all the intermediate areas.

They’d used tap code to get a roster and passed their own on. They’d tried to use it to pass information and converse. That had worked for prisoners of war but there was no real point with this situation.

One of the compartments had run short of water after a short while. They’d tapped about ways to get some to them but they had nothing that could cut through the steel bulkheads. L-4-638 tapped that they drew lots and were going to “terminate” two to conserve water. It was three dudes and a split and the dudes had agreed that she wasn’t in the lottery.

Semper Fi, dudes. Both of the Marines had “terminated.”

638 was just about down to the final male swabbie terminating. They were drinking piss mixed with water and everything that anyone could think of to hold out. 642 had dudes slowly scratching through with a crowbar, trying to cut a hole to the compartment. Like their own, 642 had a tap and was below the main fresh water tanks. So far they’d had a steady stream and they were putting more into every ration can they emptied.

649 was low on food. But they figured they had about another two months on short rations. 642 had reported that when they were through to 638 they’d try to find a way to 649. Eventually you could cut through steel with a crowbar. They weren’t reporting their progress, though, which didn’t bode well for either compartment.

“I wouldn’t turn down a blowjob,” PFC Rodas replied.

“Patel, you’re up,” Derek said.

“That is getting really old, jarhead,” Seaman Patel snapped.

“Come here, honey,” Derek said. “If none of these other gentlemen are up to the challenge of satisfying you… ”

“Freeze,” Smitty said.

“What?” Gowen said. “Why…?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Januscheitis snapped. “Smitty?”

“Freeze,” the Sergeant replied. “Listen.”

“Got noth-”

“I hear it,” Gowen said. “Banging?”

“So somebody’s banging on a compart-”

There was the clear echo of a burst of fire in the distance.

“Threesome hereby terminated,” Januscheitis said, rolling to his feet. “Somebody survived with rounds! Git it on, Marines!”

“OO-RAH!”

* * *

“I think we got customers,” Faith said, listening to the distant banging.

“Supply areas,” Fontana said. “Makes sense.”

“Hooch,” Faith said, keying her radio. “We got more customers in Sector L.”

“Good to hear,” Hooch replied. “We’ve got some in M as well.”

Rain had blown into some of the open outer hatches. That had, in turn, worked into pools in the upper area corridors, some of them all the way to the coamings. There were dead bodies and shit in most of the water but the zombies drank it anyway. It was amazing what the human body could withstand. Some anyway.

They’d been following a series of open hatches, finding live zombies all the way down. The surrounding compartments had all failed to respond to banging. Somebody else would have the fun of checking them later.

“This way,” Fontana said, turning his head from side to side.

Faith banged on the hatch and was rewarded with the irregular banging, scratching and howling they’d come to associate with zombies.

“Right about now I’d like a grenade or something,” she said, putting her hand on the hatch’s locking mechanism.

“Never use a frag on a boat,” Fontana said. “About the only thing I knew about clearing boats before this. Ready?”

“Hang on,” Faith said, reaching for her iPod. “Or a chainsaw maybe… ”

* * *

“Open the hatch,” Januscheitis said.

“You su-?” Derek said then recalled he was a Marine again. “Aye, aye, Staff Sergeant.”