To Sail a Darkling Sea

He hit another speed dial.

“Isham.”

“Marines are done. Three days. Schedule the first planning meeting for tomorrow morning.”

“Got it. I’ll get a count on the boats. Oh, your cigarette boat is on the way. You’re welcome.”

* * *

“Oh, god, what now?” Faith said at the knock on the door. She was stretched out on her bed, too exhausted to bother picking up a book. “There’s nobody here! We went shopping in Santa Cruz!”

“Open the door, Faith,” Sophia said. “I did go shopping.”

“Well, I’m glad you had time,” Faith muttered, getting up slowly. “Hang on.”

“I come bearing gifts,” Sophia said, shouldering past her. “What’s gotten under your skin?”

“You?” Faith said. “I’m exhausted, okay?”

“Good, all the more reason to go to the spa,” Sophia said. “So am I. And I need a hot-tub. There’s a new bathing suit in there for you.”

“I do not like spas, sister dear,” Faith said. “There are bad things in spas.”

“This spa does not have bad things,” Sophia said. “It has a hot tub and a massage guy named Eduardo who is smoking hot. Put on the suit. You’ve got ten minutes.”

“And who are you to boss me around?” Faith said. “I can and will sit on you and make you cry.”

“I’ve got two weeks date of rank on you, Faith,” Sophia said. “Not to mention way more smarts. That’s who. Just put on the suit and I’ll be back in a minute.”

Faith pulled out the suit and contemplated it grumpily. The biggest problem was it was beautiful and she knew it would look good on her.

“I hate her,” she muttered.

* * *

“So, we’re rolling along through the picturesque town of Puerto De Las Nieves… ” Sophia said, taking a sip of wine.

Faith had to admit that the hot tub was better than the dinky little tub in her room. And the suit really did look good.

“Really was picturesque. Beautiful place. Hardly any infected. Hadn’t found any survivors, yet. We weren’t split up, all moving along in a convoy of, you know, Fiats and Toyotas, whatever we could pick up.”

“Been there,” Januscheitis said, taking a pull on his beer. “Take it it didn’t go well?”

“So, we’d cleared the town. Freaking gunners had made piles of infected. But there were two little towns off to the side. And you know how the infected come to those flocks of seagulls.”

“Like, well, seagulls,” Lieutenant Volpe said.

“So we come around a corner and there’s, like, this wall of zombies,” Sophia said. “I’m in the lead in a little Toyota RAV4 with Rusty out the sunroof with the Singer and all I can think is ‘roll up the windows!’ For some reason, ‘open fire’ doesn’t even cross my mind. So, that’s what I say. ‘Roll up the windows! Back up!’ And I’m on the radio, ‘Roll up your windows, back up!’ And all of a sudden it occurs to me that there’s a guy with a machine gun stuck out of the sunroof for a reason… ”

“And they say you’re the smart one,” Faith said, shaking her head.

“Didn’t he open fire, ma’am?” Januscheitis asked.

“No rank in the spa,” Faith said. “Jan owes a quarter. Unless it’s one of the ones with a bazillion screaming zeds. Then rank is fine.”

“No he didn’t open fire, Jan,” Sophia said. “Because the Sergeant Major had been putting the fear of God into everyone. And, besides, it’s Rusty. He’s not the sharpest Halligan tool in the shed. So I kind of go, ‘Uh, Rusty?’ ‘Yes, ma’am?’ ‘You can open fire.’ ‘Oh, thanks!’ And it wasn’t even a real wall. About twenty. Rusty pretty much took care of it. I’ll leave the ground combat stuff to you Marines.”

“I was sorry to hear about Specialist Mcgarity, Miss,” Januscheitis said. “He was a good man.”

“He was,” Sophia said, taking a sip of wine. “For God’s sake, watch your step boarding.”

“Heh,” Faith said. “Watch your step in the bilges. I still think Pag pushed him.”

“Oh?” Sophia said. She really was tired of discussing her sole casualty. She missed Anarchy which was as much a reason not to talk about it as any.

“The bilges on these things are massive,” Lieutenant Volpe said. “I don’t think they used to be filled with sewage but they are now. And oil and occasionally zeds. So Corporal Derek Douglas has decided he is on a one man crusade to eliminate the word ‘zombie’ from the vocabulary. This is not a zombie apocalypse. These are not zombies. They are not the living dead and do not particularly eat brains.”

“The Gunny told him if he rolled his eyes one more time behind his back he was going to scoop them out and feed them to him,” Januscheitis said. “That was right after the Gunny had used the z word.”

“So there was a little ‘incident’ in the bilges,” Faith said, grinning. “They’d just popped a deck hatch to check a portion of them and Derek… slipped. Or, possibly, was pushed.”

“He wasn’t injured,” Januscheitis said. “He was just covered in oil and crap-filled water. Which since he was in the water got in under his gear. And it still stinks.”

“Which has got him to shut up about the zombie thing,” Faith said. “Thank God.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to get back to cruising,” Sophia said, leaning back in the water. “Looking for survivors, do a little fishing, clear some small boats, auto-pilot and just go!”

“Meanwhile, we’re going to be training on boarding from zodiacs,” Faith said. “Which we’ll apparently be taking all over hell and gone. While you’re catching a suntan on your flying bridge.”

“You can catch a suntan on your zodiac,” Sophia said. “Of course, you’ll be being beat to hell while you do. Have fun.”

“I hate you,” Faith said. “I really do.”

CHAPTER 30

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.

Napoleon Bonaparte

“From what PO Paxton says about you, you should be the captain,” Sophia said, yawning and looking at the print-out from the new guy’s “nautical training course.” “Scored a ninety-eight on the written? That’s better than most of our pro captains. Better than I did.”

It was ten AM but she’d had a late night partying with the Marines. Even Faith had finally gotten into the act. Which sort of pissed Sophia off since Faith was a way better dancer. And she could drink better than Sophia, who had been practicing for God’s sake.

The new crewman was both fairly good looking for an older guy and oddly… unnoticeable. He should have been sunburned after going from a compartment to the nautical course but instead was just starting to brown. Eyes so blue they were nearly black, grey-shot black hair and she could look him in the eye standing up which meant he was short as hell for a guy. There was something about him she couldn’t put a finger on. She’d been raised to be a paranoid and compared to most of her generation she was. But in this case what should have triggered paranoia, “something odd,” was instead triggering a feeling of… relief? She had the oddest feeling that the man, unnoticeable though he might be, was going to be a real asset.

* * *

“I’m a quick study, ma’am,” Walker said. He was trying not to laugh at the situation.

“The only question I’ve got is can you take orders from a fifteen-year-old?” the girl said, looking up finally. “According to this, you’ve also got some civilian shooting experience and you’re a vet. Which is great. But I’ve been