02 Flotilla of the Dead (11 page)

            “Is he alive?” asked Scott abruptly.

            “Oh yes,” she replied confidently.  “He’s alive, but certainly not in one piece, is he?  I hear that you were the one who performed the amputation.”

            “That’s right, Grace,” Scott answered slowly.  “And I’m sure I did a horrible job of it.”

            “Actually, it’s one of the better field amputations I’ve seen, although I must admit that the only other ones I saw were at a MASH unit in Iraq where bullets and explosives had done most of the job already.  But you actually chose a good place to sever the arm.  If he survives, I might even be able to give him a controllable prosthesis.  By connecting his severed tendons to a ball joint we could restore some elbow action to whatever we attach below it.  Now the only question is, if he’ll survive.”

            “He’d just been bitten on the forearm by a zombie a minute earlier and I thought that cutting off the arm was his only chance for survival.  Do you think it worked?”

            “It’s too soon to tell, but you are right that it was his only chance,” replied Dr. Greenburg.  “Right now he is under heavy sedation and his vital signs are relatively stable, although he is developing a slight fever.  That’s normal for an amputee.  Nevertheless, I had him placed in restraints, just in case he wakes up as one of them.  I really don’t have any books with case studies on what symptoms to look for in a person who is infected by this damned super rabies, or zombie plague.”

            “So what is your best guess, Grace?” asked Scott sincerely.  “Will he pull through?”

            “I just don’t know, Scott,” she replied.  “He might.  Or he might not.  But don’t dwell on it tonight.  All I can tell you for sure is that I think you did the best thing possible to give him a fighting chance at survival.  You should be proud of that, whatever the end result may be.”

            “Can I see him?” Scott asked.  “Just for a few minutes?”

            “Not tonight,” the doctor said.  “I don’t want anything to wake him up.  It’s important to keep him unconscious during the worst of the post-amputation trauma period.  He needs at least twelve hours under sedation for his nerve endings to stop sending constant phantom pain to his brain.  It could become chronic, if he experiences it now.  But if he’s still human tomorrow morning, it will probably be safe to say that you saved his life.  Now go upstairs to your family and friends.  I’ll look out for Clint.”

            “Thanks Doc,” said Scott with a deep sigh.  Then he turned away reluctantly and headed up to discover what new problems needed his attention on the ship that he once thought of as his escape from the worries of reality.  As he walked down the length of the vehicle deck on the
Sovereign Spirit
, taking a moment to appreciate each vehicle and “toy” in turn, he decided that he was still very lucky, or truly blessed.   The world as they knew it had indeed ended, but not for him and most of the people who meant the most to him.  The recent economic crisis had devastated the livelihood of millions of people, but left Scott virtually unaffected.  Then the zombie plague had literally ended the lives of what he now had to assume were millions, if not billions of people, but left Scott and most of his loved ones untouched.  He had even kept a lot of his wealth, if such a thing existed anymore, since there were 10,000 one ounce gold pieces in the ship’s safe, worth tens of millions of dollars last week.  The gold might not be much more than ballast at the moment, but Scott realized that it was another of the assets that made the
Sovereign Spirit
uniquely suited to help reestablish some semblance of civilization somewhere, if he could help enough people survive the Zombie Apocalypse.     

*****

            Captain Fisher, Captain McCloud, Sergeant Major O’Hara and George Hammer were all waiting for Scott when he returned to his private office on the Sky Deck.  They had planned a post mission conference, but Scott had been preoccupied with his concern for Clint.  If any of the others were bothered by his tardiness, they didn’t let it show. 

            “Mission accomplished,” said O’Hara to break the ice.  “Not as many weapons as I might have hoped for, but more than enough for our current needs.  And those LAVs and HUMVEEs from the DHS unit are a Godsend.  I hear the Coast Guard found a lot more small arms than we did too.”

            “Yes,” confirmed Captain McCloud.  “We collected over two hundred rifles, shotguns and machine guns, with close to a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, but it came at a heavy cost.  The zombies killed two of my crew.”

            “Oh shit,” said Scott.  “I’m very sorry to hear that, Shawn.  And I guess you heard that my friend Clint was bitten on our mission too.  I amputated his arm, so he might survive, but I know the anguish you must feel.”

            “Yes, Scott, and thank you for those sentiments,” said McCloud.  “It’s a heavy burden that commanders like us must shoulder at times like these, but my crew and I had the minor consolation of eliminating over five hundred zombies before we left the Coast Guard Station.”

            “That many?” asked Scott with more than a touch of surprise.  “How could there be so many zombies loose on that end of Terminal Island?”

            “I suspect that most of them were prisoners from the federal facility next door.  Someone must have let them loose,” McCloud speculated.

            “Tough break,” O’Hara interjected.  “At least you took them out of action, so they won’t get anyone else.  And now we have a mobile force that can sweep all of Terminal Island clear of zombies in a day or two.  The good news seems to be that once these things find a target they just keep coming for it, no matter how many of them get wasted in the process.  With half a dozen armored vehicles and a good supply of ammunition, we can clean up thousands of them, if necessary.”

            “That sounds like a good idea,” said George Hammer.  “If you want to leave me here to collect and distribute all the supplies from the port, I don’t want to be fighting zombies every damned day to do it.”

            “Okay, George,” said Scott.  “I get the point.  But I’m not sure we can ever get rid of every zombie here.  What we can do is seal off all the bridges to Terminal Island and make sweeps to wipe out as many of the infected as we can attract, including any left at the prison.  But if some of the zombies are smarter, or less likely to attack our vehicles, or even locked up inside a building or a ship, well, we won’t be able to find them all in the time we have here.”

            “So you’re leaving soon?” asked George.

            Scott nodded and said, “The way I see it, we need to load up and head out within the next two days to deliver fresh water and supplies to the boat people who have been out at sea, or trapped in marinas.  We can help a lot of survivors now that we have access to all of the resources here, but if we don’t get some help to them soon, a lot of them will start to starve, or come back on shore and be attacked by zombies.  I won’t leave you defenseless, George.  Now that we have the LAVs, I think we can leave you one of the bigger Amtracs, along with some of the HUMVEEs, including the one with a grenade launcher and the ambulance. And I think it’s wise to leave you a squad of Marines to man them too, if that’s okay with you, Sergeant Major?”

            “Yes, Commodore,” O’Hara agreed.  “I think a few good men would be very useful here, to hold the fort so to speak.”       

“I have some more news for you gentlemen,” said Captain McCloud.  “I flew over and landed on the
Cape Inscription
this afternoon.  Their captain sounds ready to join the Flotilla and the ship is fully operational.  I told him that I would return tomorrow with the rest of you to explain how we can work together.  And I asked him to invite representatives from the Sea Launch ships too.  After looking at their position on the old Navy Mole, I think that should be one of the first places on Terminal Island that we secure from zombie infestation.”   

            “And just what is a Navy Mole?” asked George Hammer.

“Well, it’s not a blind rodent or a growth on your body,” said Captain McCloud with a smile.  “The Navy Mole refers to the third definition of the word mole: a massive manmade breakwater that creates a harbor or anchorage for ships.  In this case it’s a narrow spur of manmade land with deep water on both sides.   We can seal off the landward end with empty cargo containers and fences to make a secure stronghold,” McCloud explained.  “There’s a big empty pier with a fueling station there, and the north side of the pier were the
Cape Inscription
is docked is empty and designed for ships with vehicle ramps.  It’s a much better place for the
Sovereign Spirit
to dock and deploy vehicles than this passenger terminal.  The Mole also has a commanding view of the entrance to the port, so we can monitor the vessels coming in and out better from there too.  You’ll see what I mean, if you come with me tomorrow.”

“Count me in,” Scott confirmed.

“Me too,” agreed George.

“I want to see the rocket ship,” said O’Hara with a smile.

*****

After the meeting Scott went down to the Grand Salon to get something to eat from the buffet that was set up there every afternoon.  There were about fifty people in the big room, including some Marines and members of the crew, mostly sitting around watching the GNN news feed on the projection TV.  Fox Rusher was back on, looking a little worse for wear, with bags under his eyes from the strain of living in a television studio surrounded by zombies for more than a week.  Scott grabbed a plate of assorted cheese and crackers and walked over to listen to the news for a moment.  Mick Williams was already sitting alone in a booth near the TV, so Scott nodded a greeting and sat down across the table from him.

“Reports continue to trickle in from isolated individuals and communities around the world, mostly via the internet. They confirm that virtually all major cities have been overrun and normal communications have broken down. However, the statements coming from Camp David, NORAD, and the CDC continue to be optimistic and report significant progress in combating the zombies and the infection.  Citizens are still being told to remain at home and avoid contact with the infected until organized relief efforts arrive to assist them.  In the mean time, the only sources of information for most people comes from portable radios or, for those who still have electricity, from satellite TV and the internet.  With telephone service interrupted, the only forms of long distance communication left are radio or the internet.

 “The internet, which started as a dispersed system of independent servers designed to survive a nuclear war, is still operating at reduced capacity.  That is because the internet has no central brain or control center and the whole thing is simply the sum of its parts. So when some of those parts fail it just reduces the performance of the system, but doesn’t turn the whole thing off. The servers that remain online, such as ours at GNN, can be reached by anyone else who still has internet access.  However, the loss of so many other nodes, servers and service providers has reduced the speed and performance of online communications.  Many of you are watching this program on streaming feeds right now and you will notice that we have stopped streaming in HD and have gone back to low resolution video.  We decided to do that because most of the internet is no longer capable of providing the high speeds necessary for streaming HD images. 

“Now we have some live video from the GNN helicopter flying over the South Bay area of Los Angeles.  As you can see, the city remains at a total standstill.  The freeways have all been jammed with abandoned cars since Z-Day and we haven’t seen many vehicles moving on surface streets for several days now.  All of the people you see crowding the roads in this shot are zombies.  We can confirm this because of the distinctive way they react to the helicopter.  Notice how they all turn and extend their arms towards it.  This is an almost universal response, unless they are engaged in chasing or attacking something else. 

“I can also report that most of the major fires that started since Z-Day are out now, although the wildfire that started in the Hollywood Hills is still burning eastward through Glendale.  Meanwhile the fire seen here started at an oil refinery in Torrance and has consumed over three square miles of homes and businesses.  It is still spreading east along the 105 freeway.  There are no firefighters left to stop it.  Any survivors hiding anywhere in the path of this major fire are advised to make preparations to escape, but wait until the last possible moment to leave shelter. 

“Zombies do run away from a big fire, but not until it gets less than 50 yards away from them.  This means that survivors should have a narrow window of opportunity to leave a threatened building after the zombies go past and before the fire reaches you.  Unfortunately, you will not be able to get far from the fire without catching up to the zombies.  Our experts suggest that the best thing to do at that point is to find a sewer or storm drain away from any combustible buildings or vegetation and hide in it while the fire passes over you.  After the fire has passed, you should go back into the burned area and look for a secure place to hide again. 

“Speaking of sewers and storm drains, some survivors are reportedly using them as either places of refuge, or as tunnels to move around parts of the city, since this seems safer than using the streets above.  However, there is no guarantee that zombies won’t find you down there either.

“Now, as you can see, our Helicopter is currently flying down the 710 freeway towards Long Beach and we will show you the conditions there before it returns to GNN headquarters here in West Los Angeles…”