02 Flotilla of the Dead (30 page)

“Is this true?” Scott asked the thug in front of him.  When he didn’t get a reply Scott looked out at the crowd and repeated the question loudly.  Several heads started nodding and others lowered their gaze to avoid meeting Scott’s eyes.

Another woman pushed her way through the crowd and said, “Yes, it’s true.  It only got worse after that.  I’ve been raped by half of them, but they keep telling me that I’m lucky because they fed me. The women who don’t let them have their way don’t get any food.” 

“Shut up whore,” snarled one of the men.  “You know you liked it.”  That was too much for Mark to take.  From his position on top of the Harbor Patrol Boat he fired a single bullet into the bastard’s forehead.  Everyone froze for an instant and then the panic began.  The thug in front of Scott dove for his gun and Scott put a 5.56mm bullet through his shoulder to stop him.  Several other men drew weapons, while most of the rest turned and ran up the pier towards shore.  Most of the women were smart enough to drop flat on the pier, except the one who had been called a whore.  She just jumped off the pier into the water.  Scott, Mark and O’Hara fired well aimed shots at anyone who raised a weapon.  Jake had been whispering into the radio microphone since the confrontation began.  

When the fleeing mob was half way to the foot of the pier the Super Huey swooped in from the harbor and descended to hover in front of them with half a dozen Marines aiming rifles from the open side doors.  This brought the mob to an immediate halt.  The ones who were still armed threw down their guns and raised their hands.  Most of the rest lay face down on the pier, or huddled into a fetal position, as the rotor wash blew sand and dust around them.  A couple of the men threw themselves off the side of the pier and started swimming away.  Mick Williams settled the big helicopter to within three feet of the pier and the Marines jumped off with weapons locked and loaded.  Then Mick pulled back on the collective and the helicopter lifted away to circle the action.

It was all over in less than a minute from Mark’s first shot.  Four men were dead, six wounded, including the big mouthed thug that Scott shot in the shoulder.  None of Scott’s party, or the Marines, received as much as a scratch.  There were thirty prisoners, including the two swimmers that the Marines chased down.  Twenty-six women had been with the mob when Scott arrived.  All of them claimed to have been held against their will.  But the woman who had been first to speak, as well as the one who claimed to have been gang raped and had been called a whore, pointed out eight women who they said had been in league with the ring leaders of this armed gang.  Scott spent almost a minute in hushed consultation with Sergeant Major O’Hara before turning to address the people cowering before him.

“All of you should have known better than to be a part of this.  I don’t know enough to decide which of you are actually responsible for the crimes that have been committed here, but I’m not going to be your judge and jury either.  For now, all of you men and the eight women accused of either committing or aiding and abetting these crimes will be held here, tied to the pier, under armed guard.  You will be given food and water.”  They all looked scared, but the promise of getting some food and water seemed to reassure some of them.  Perhaps they were thinking that Scott wouldn’t be as hard on them as they had been on others.  It was a forlorn hope. 

“Tomorrow you will face a trial by your peers,” Scott continued.  “By that I mean that we will find twelve people from the town and the boats out in the harbor that know which of you are guilty of denying them their rations and who want to see justice done.  As I said, I won’t be the judge passing sentence on those found guilty.  We’ll try to find a civilian judge or elected official for that job.  If not, your judge will be a Coast Guard officer.  And don’t forget that looting, rape and murder are all punishable by death under martial law.”    The faces of the prisoners went from tanned to whiter than a ghost, or zombie, in seconds. 

*****

While Scott and the Marines were busy rounding up the gang of armed thugs, Captain McCloud and his crew were paying visits to the five cruise ships anchored off Avalon.  Everyone aboard those ships was happy to see the big Coast Guard cutter.  Captain McCloud had been in contact with the cruise ships’ captains by radio already, but it was different for the people aboard to actually see the
Stratton
up close.  The white warship exuded an atmosphere of hope and security even in the midst of unfathomable horror engulfing the world.  

  Captain McCloud launched his Interceptor patrol boat and spent the next three hours making personal visits to each of the ships to meet their captains and address their passengers and crew over the public address systems on each ship.  His approach was simple and straight forward.  He told everyone that most of the mainland had been overrun by zombies and that normal civilization had been totally disrupted.  He told them how lucky they were to be aboard a cruise ship during the outbreak and how smart their ships’ captains had been to seek refuge at Catalina.  He told them that the Coast Guard was here to assist them.  And he explained that the Survival Flotilla, under command of Commodore Scott Allen, had secured a Safe Haven composed of Terminal Island and the Port of Long Beach that included stockpiles of food and fuel.  Then he invited the ships and everyone aboard them to join the Survival Flotilla and seek sanctuary in the Safe Haven.  On the first four ships it worked like a charm.

As expected, most of the ships had sailed with light loads of passengers due to the bad economy prior to Z-Day.  The total count of passengers and crew among the five cruise ships was just over 7,000 people, out of a possible 15,000.  That was partly because the
Carnival Splendor
and the
Disney Wonder
we almost empty, as expected, aside from their crews.  There were several hundred passengers aboard each of them
who had refused to leave when the ship returned to port on the morning of Z-Day, but the majority of returning passengers had left the ships that fateful morning and walked into a nightmare. 

Captain McCloud tried to imagine what it would have been like for them to return from a pleasure cruise to find man eating zombies swarming the streets.  Most of them had probably been locals who made it to their cars in the parking lots and tried to get home to friends and family, only to get sucked into the deadly traffic jams on LA’s freeways.  For those trying to make it to LAX the nightmare would have been even worse.  The smart ones, including those who were simply terrified, had refused to leave the ships.  They were probably the only ones still alive. 

He also heard horror stories from the captains of three cruise ships that had passengers or crew turn into zombies on Z-Day.   The worst outbreak had occurred on the last ship that Captain McCloud visited, the
Oosterdam,
where twelve passengers transformed into zombies in the early hours of Z-Day.  Luckily, almost all of the other passengers were safely asleep in their locked staterooms and the companionways of the ship were covered by video cameras.  An alert officer on the bridge saw the infected passengers acting suspiciously and sent two security guards to investigate.  The zombies attacked and killed the security men, but this was also viewed by video, so the bridge officer triggered an alarm that closed the automatic water tight doors and fire doors throughout the ship and set them to only open manually with a special key that officers carried.  His actions isolated the zombies in three sections of corridor.  Unfortunately, it also trapped more than a hundred passengers in those areas with them.  Captain McCloud was shocked, but not really surprised, to learn that all of those people were still locked up in those areas and many of them had been attacked and transformed into zombies themselves when they opened their doors to leave their cabins.  As a result, there were now about sixty zombies and fifty or more starving passengers who were trapped in those secured areas.  Luckily they still had running water in their bathrooms and hadn’t died of thirst.  

The outbreak had made the
Oosterdam’s
captain decide to abort the cruise to Hawaii and turn back for California.  But by the time they approached San Diego the news had made it very clear that there was no safe port in this storm.  After conferring with other ships, he decided to set course for Catalina.  They had been anchored here for a week, but nobody – including the first Coast Guard patrol boat that had met them here – was willing to face corridors full of zombies to rescue those trapped in the cabins on either side.  This revelation brought ice water into Captain McCloud’s veins. 

“Are you serious, Captain Anderson?” McCloud asked incredulously.  “You told the Coast Guard about your emergency and they refused to help?”

“Told them?” scoffed the bald, over weight and gray bearded Captain Anderson.  “I showed them live video of the monsters pounding on the doors down there!  Your Coast Guardsmen turned white as sheep, or should I say as yellow as my piss, then made a very quick and undignified exit from my ship!  So don’t expect me and my crew, not to mention the other passengers, to embrace your arrival as much as the other ships have.”

“The behavior of those guardsmen sounds unconscionable and I will get to the bottom of it when I meet their commanding officer,” replied Captain McCloud.  “But in the meantime I’m going to kill those zombies and rescue your trapped passengers, if that’s alright with you, captain?”

“Have at ‘em sonny,” said the salty but respectable old sailor with a grin.  “I had my own men try it with fire axes at first, but those damned beasties don’t die easy!”

“My men have some practice at this kind of work now, using more than axes.  I’ll send for an armed boarding party of ten men immediately.  We won’t be able to fit even that many into firing position in those passageways, but it’s better to have more than enough when dealing with zombies,” Captain McCloud explained. 

“Okay,” Captain Anderson said with a pleasant ring to his voice.  “Maybe you are the hope we’ve all been praying for.  God bless and Godspeed.”

*****

Sergeant Major O’Hara organized a rotating guard detail of Marines to watch the prisoners on the pier and decided to lead a patrol to liberate the remaining supplies in the grocery stores and capture or kill as many of the outlaws who were hording them as possible while Scott and Mark interviewed the women who had been their unwilling accomplices.  Once they were reasonably certain that they had the right people in custody, Scott returned to his intended purpose in Avalon.

Without a Harbor Master or the Harbor Patrol to facilitate things Scott would have to find others to help him arrange dock space for the
SS Lane Victory
, or find a barge to transfer supplies ashore from the old cargo ship.  A crowd of locals had formed at the foot of the pier when they learned that help had arrived to free their town from the oppression of outlaws.  Scott went to meet them and explained his intentions.  They were more than happy to help and several of them left for the ferry pier to see about clearing some dock space for the supply ship.

As soon as those plans were made, Scott asked about organizing a meeting of locals and boat people later that night in the famous Avalon Casino so that he and other leaders of the Survival Flotilla could introduce themselves, report on conditions back on the mainland, and describe their plans for survival and recovery.   Scott explained that he also wanted to help leaders of the local community regain control of the town now that the outlaws were in custody and mentioned that he would organize a trial the next day.  Once again the locals offered their full cooperation and set about spreading word of the meeting that night.  Scott was just about to head back to his ship to freshen up when he heard gunfire coming from a block or two inland.

*****

            O’Hara and three of his Marines moved cautiously, but swiftly up the unusually crowded streets of Avalon.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of Boat People had come ashore in search of provisions or shelter, or maybe just news and companionship.  They filled the streets as they wandered, seemingly aimlessly, in search of this or that.  But they parted like the Red Sea as the armed and uniformed Marines approached. 

            “United States Marines coming through, make way!” O’Hara yelled out every few seconds.  “Clear the road for the Marine Corps!”  Whether it was his words and commanding voice, or the weapons they carried made no difference.  The result was the same.  And as the crowd moved aside, O’Hara and his men began to see motionless bodies lying here and there in the street.  The blood around them was evidence enough that they had fallen victim to violence, but it was not clear if they had been regular people or zombies when they were taken down.  O’Hara looked around, picked out a middle aged man watching them pass and addressed him in his best Sergeant Major voice.  “You, sir!  What happened here?”

            The man looked left and right, hoping the grizzled Marine was addressing someone else, then looked back at O’Hara and said, “It’s the end of the world, sir.  Some people don’t seem to be handling it too well.  That man there,” he pointed at the closest body, “was out of his mind and attacking anyone who came near him.  I don’t think he was a zombie because he was yelling obscenities, but he was acting crazy.  One of the men he attacked had a gun.”  He turned and pointed at another body in the street, as if what he had already said was more than enough explanation for the first body.  “That woman over there was a victim of rape and murder.  At least she claimed to have been raped by the man who was chasing here with a knife and he did use it to slit her throat.”

            “And where did that man go?” asked O’Hara, trying to make sense of what he was hearing.

            “Probably back to the supermarket with the rest of those hoarding and whoring bastards,” replied the elderly man evenly.  “They have control of all the food and they only share it with women who will let them have their way.  Or they simply take what they want if the women say no.  I know it’s wrong, sir.  But they’re armed and they shoot anyone who tries to stop them.”