“Survivors?” Olga said, sitting up and shading her eyes.
“Shit,” Sophia said, looking up. “Son of a bitch.”
The condo had ropes hanging from several of the balconies as well as growing plants. There was exterior piping that looked as if it was used for collecting rainwater. Several groups of people were trying to attract their attention. There were quite a few survivors. At least thirty.
“We could do this,” Olga said. “We can’t just leave them!”
“Olga,” Sophia said. “You can shoot. You had to qualify for the position. That’s different than fighting as part of a fire team up to the condos then clearing those. Hang on. Division, going noise hot to demonstrate the issue to my new security people.”
Sophia had been barely puttering along. The
As piano opening of “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’ boomed across the marina, zombies started pouring from everywhere. Sure enough, they’d been sleeping in the sailboats. Now they were howling. And their howling started to set off every zombie in the town. It was apparent that there were at least hundreds if not thousands.
“Oh,” Olga said, looking around.
“His comrades fought beside him,” Sophia sang as she puttered over to the public park. There was a line of buoys marking a “no crossing” zone and she puttered right up by it then dropped her anchor. “But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best… ”
“So the CIA decided, they wanted Roland dead… ” Olga sang in harmony. She’d gone below and gotten her M4 while the boat was being repositioned. “Permission to do some target practice, Captain?” she sang in time to the song.
“Division, doing some catenary target practice,” Sophia said.
* * *
“
“On that, sir,” the Chief of Boat said. “
“You betcha.”
* * *
“It is hard to hit them with a moving boat,” Olga said. She was laid out in the prone position on the sundeck forward. “Or are they not noticing the 5.56? There is not much rocking.”
“Each,” Sophia said. “Both. Takes a lot of practice.” They’d both put on hearing protection.
One of the group of zombies lined up on the waterfront finally stumbled over and fell. When it did, the group fell on it, ripping at it with their teeth.
“Gross,” Olga said, continuing to fire.
Seagulls clustered around, trying to find a way through the infected. Which drew more infected. Some of them waded out into the water. Then one went under and the water turned red. The others didn’t seem to notice. They just stopped, waving their arms angrily, slapping the water and howling, when they were low-chest deep. Another went under. Then another.
“Swimming is contra indicated,” Paula shouted. She’d put in earplugs.
“Are those two screwing?” Olga asked.
Sophia picked up a pair of binos and looked through them.
“Yup,” she said, lowering the binos. “They do that when there are these feeding frenzies. They stay away from each other till there’s a source of food like this. Then they swarm and tussle over it. Sometimes they start screwing in the middle of the tussle. You’ll see a male run down a female, or sometimes a smaller male, and try to eat it and screw it at the same time. Although usually it’s screw then eat.”
“Gross,” Olga said, taking another shot.
“Don’t get Faith started on it,” Sophia said. “A couple of times when she’s been in scrums, the males realize she’s female. There’s no way to get through on her gear but she still doesn’t like it.”
“What do you do?” Olga asked. “I mean, if you’re in a… what was the word?”
“Scrum,” Sophia said. “Basically, if you’re at the bottom of the dog pile. There’s a reason that Faith carries a lot of knives. Apparently they get less romantic when you cut their parts off.”
“Lots of knives,” Olga said. “Got it.”
“Yes, you did,” Sophia said. “Oh, you meant the knives. But you hit that last one.”
“I was aiming for the one next to him,” Olga said. “This is hard.”
“Division,
“Roger, Division.”
“I wonder which Marines they’re sending,” Paula said.
“Three guesses,” Sophia said. “And Hope and Charity were unavailable.”
“Zombie boogie?” Olga asked.
“We crank the music all night,” Sophia said. “Have a party. Lots of lights.”
“Flares,” Paula said. “Fireworks if we’ve got ’em.”
“Then in the morning, well, party’s over, we politely ask any zombies who have turned up to lie down, be good zombies and enjoy their afterlife.”
“Now is when I would like to be on the gunboats,” Olga said as the boats began to jockey into position. “If I went over there and asked them nicely, do you think they would let me play with their
“I’m sure they’d let you play with anything you’d like,” Sophia said. “You can probably stop by during the party.”
“So you’re talking about a real party,” Olga said, looking over at her.
“Pretty much, yeah,” Sophia said. “Booze, snacks, trying to carry on a conversation over the music cranked up to atomic level. There’s usually not nudity or anything. And since we’re as close as you get to the cops, you don’t have to worry about them breaking it up. But I need to get the boat turned around, now that the gunboats are in position. Have to have the speakers facing the beach, you know?”
Olga watched as the crews got the.50s set up and loaded. Then they opened fire.
The big bullets smashed the crowd of infected into zombie goo in seconds. The seagulls were properly thankful.
So were the people up on the cliff. They were waving fit to die. Olga could see that some of them were crying. Then someone apparently found some spray-paint and started waving a badly painted american flag. The stars were black dots but it was the thought that counted.
Olga waved to the group then realized she really should have put on some sunscreen.
* * *
“Paula, we’ll need to lay out some of the special stores.”
“On it, Captain.”
* * *
“Why am I not surprised,” Sophia said, drily, as Faith stepped onto the wash deck.
