“Damn.”
Billy turned and headed back to the cabin. He was determined to get moving again and put as much distance as he could from the cursed ship and his boat as possible. He had heard what the science teacher had said about zombies swimming but the last thing he wanted to do was prove the man wrong with first-hand experience.
“Pull away and head back toward the marina at 270 degrees and step up the throttles. Let’s get back home,” he said to Cat.
She looked heartbroken, “What is it? What did you see, daddy?”
He shook his head, “Throttle up, and place it on 270,” he said as he punched up the GPS to get their coordinates to pass on.
“Did you see Kevin, Daddy?” she asked and she turned the wheel to the compass heading and pushed the throttles forward. As the boat accelerated below their feet, they both braced themselves instinctively as the two cousins out on deck almost fell over.
“Kevin?”
“You know, he came to dinner last month. He’s like two years older than me. He wants to be a physical therapist. He likes guns, he’s in judo, he’s into weight lifting. He wants to go to Auburn next year. Typical boy but he’s really sweet,” she said smiling.
Billy just looked at her a second before shaking his head, “No, baby girl, I didn’t see him. He may have gotten off at Dauphin Island. The ferry looked empty.”
She grimaced and looked out over the chart plotter.
“Wait, was Kevin the 19-year old emo kid with metal crap in his face and holes in his ears?” Billy asked
“No, he was the other one,” she said, eyes glued to the chart plotter.
“Ah ok.”
“Our position isn’t updating, Daddy. It says we are still out over the reef even though we are at least a mile away,” Cat pointed out.
Billy looked at it, and then back to his GPS. Neither was updating. Both were plugged in and working, but they did not seem to be getting a signal. He tried rebooting them and unplugging them and the same thing happened.
No signal.
“Well, it looks like we are back to the old days,” he said as he dug through the cabinet to get the NOAA paper charts, divider, and parallel ruler out of storage.
He fixed their position as best he could with dead reckoning and marked where the ferry was before sending Cat out of the cabin on the pretense of checking on the fish and the cousins. She was only out on deck thirty seconds before he called the
Fish Hawk
on the radio to report the ferry, its cargo, and its heading.
— | — | —
ChapteR 30
The Chief was already tweaking out as he oversaw the detail weighing the
Fish Hawk’s
anchor. He had smoked his last cigarette and had been grumbling all morning. Jarvis had just gotten off the radio with the Cap’n of the
Fooly Involved
about the location of the Mobile Bay Ferry then he started barking orders. The charter boat captain had been emphatic that the ship was loaded with infected and drifting to shore. Jarvis called Stone on the secure tactical net, which in turn sent it up the chain to Reynolds.
“I have the
Fooly Involved
coming in hot now, captain,” the Cook advised as he looked out from the cutters window with the binos. “She is flying tuna flags!”
Jarvis moved to the radio, as he squinted into the horizon at the white Hatteras coming into view. From her tower she flew several small white flags with a blue tuna outline on them. “
Fooly Involved
, this is Cutter
Fish Hawk
, remember you need your federal tuna permit if going out for those species and need to keep your daily limits in mind even with the current circumstances, copy?”
After a dramatic delay, “Copy, Coast Guard,” came the reply.
Jarvis nodded and picked the mic back up. “We are heading out to your ferry now,
Fooly Involved.
The MPs are waiting for you at the dock. We will be back to relieve you as soon as possible.
Fish Hawk
out.”
“Wait what do you mean
relieve me,
Coast Guard?” the charter boat Cap’n called back over the radio.
“The Charter Boat Association voted to become part of the Coast Guard Reserve this morning, and you have been chosen to relieve us on quarantine duty until we can get back to port,” Jarvis radioed.
The
Fooly Involved
suddenly veered off course on its way into the marina on a collision course with the
Fish Hawk
and picked up speed. It was a thousand yards away and closing fast.
“What the hell is he doing, Captain?” The Cook asked.
“Looks like he is disinclined to agree with being the Q-ship for a while,” Jarvis said as he picked up the 1MC intercom mic that addressed the whole ship. “Rig for collision, all Z-doors dogged. Chief, get ready to put a shot across his bow from the forward mount,” the coast guard officer said calmly.
Jarvis picked up the radio again, “
Fooly Involved,
correct your course please,” he said calmly, noting that every charter boat skipper in thirty miles could hear and was probably listening to their conversation. There was not much entertainment in Gulf Shores these days. He nodded with approval as he observed the two 50-caliber machineguns train on the onrushing charter boat. They had yet to fire in anger during the outbreak, but he would be damned if he let some pissed off charter boat kamikaze him without a fight.
The
Fooly Involved
slowed almost to a creep and veered to come alongside of the cutter. Jarvis could see two chubby men on deck, and a teenage girl in shorts and a bikini top looking out at him.
“Stand down, gunners;” Jarvis called over the 1MC. “Looks as if he got the message.”
Jarvis turned to the Cook and nodded, “Go ahead and get underway as soon as the Chief gets the anchor cleared and the Engineer calls up to say the engines are good to go.”
As the charter boat pulled abeam of the
Fish Hawk,
it killed its engines and coasted neatly to a stop thirty feet away. From out of the cabin popped a darkly tanned man wearing cargo shorts, an old t-shirt, and a Calcutta fishing hat. His face was seamed by the weather, and wrinkled into an expression of distaste.
“What the shit is going on?” he yelled across the gap to Hoffman on deck as Jarvis stepped out of the bridge and climbed down to them.
“We’re heading out to intercept that ferry. First damn time we’ve left this marina in more than a week. Finally get some action,” the Chief said to Billy.
“I’ve got a load of fish to unload at the dock. I don’t have time to play Captain Crunch with a bunch of Grouper Troopers,” Billy yelled back across the gap between the two white boats.
Jarvis walked up behind the Chief, “Unload your fish on the dock then come back out here and anchor. Keep anyone infected from coming in. All new boats have to moor away from shore for three days before coming ashore.”
“I have a 36-foot Hatteras, not a patrol boat!” Billy yelled.
“There is a National Guard sergeant with a few MP’s there waiting for you. They will ride shotgun with you until we get back. Thank you for your service!” Jarvis said to the charter man and walked off.
Hoffman shrugged his shoulders and waved at Billy as the engines of the
Fish Hawk
fired up. Belching black smoke from her stack, the cutter began to move forward into the blue-green waters of the Gulf.
««—»»
Jarvis had the ship at full action stations as they cut through the gentle seas across the empty shipping lanes towards Sparkman Reef. The cutter’s GPS was not working but the Bosun had laid out a route to intercept the ferry on the chart and had fired up the surface search radar to see what they could find. Between the fathometer and the radar tied into the chartplotter, they had an accurate idea of where they were. The scope showed a large, near-stationary ship nine miles offshore at about the same area that the charter boat captain had called in.
“Bring up the diesels to make 15 knots over ground, Bosun. No need in burning all our fuel when this bad boy is adrift,” Jarvis said as he consulted the informational graph on fuel consumption on the chart table. At that speed, the ship burned an economical 50-gallon per hour, and it would only take slightly over a half hour to get where they were going.
“Aye, Captain,” the Coastie replied, adjusting the throttles and updating their location periodically on the paper chart in relation to the cutter’s two compasses and clock. It was the same navigational technique since the time of Magellan, but it still worked.
“Chief, get the boarding crew squared away. I only want you to put the small boat in the water to eyeball it, don’t get within touching distance,” Jarvis said to Hoffman.
“What’s the plan for if we find it, sir?” Hoffman asked.
“If we can save it, we’ll toss a line out and tow it in. If we can’t, then we’ll send it to the bottom with the 50’s,” Jarvis stated.
“Aye,” the moustache said with a nod and disappeared down the ladder from the bridge into the galley below.
Jarvis kept a running rotation between looking at his watch, then out the window to where the ferry should pop up at, then down to the radarscope, then back to his watch. He glanced over to the Bosun driving the boat, out to the deck where the Chief was assembling his three-man team and putting on their lifejackets and crash helmets, then to the foredeck where the two gunners were standing by the machineguns. He called the ship’s engineer and made sure that the engine room was good to go below deck. The Cook stood by in the bridge and helped as a lookout.
“Should be coming into view any second, sir,” the Bosun said after over twenty minutes had passed.
The scope showed a large blip almost on top of them that should be the ferry. They were also picking up the radar signature of the shrimp boat city that the charter boat had called in at the edge of the scope where Sparkman Reef was. Nothing else was on the water.
“Got it!” the Cook blurted out looking through binoculars. “Off the port bow about a thousand meters out.”
Jarvis rang the alarm bell and radioed out, “Get ready to go, Chief. We will get a little closer and drop it down so you can launch.”
“Aye,” the Chief’s voice came back tinny over the radio on the bridge.
They came to within a few hundred feet of the ferry, wallowing in the water with each wave, and cut the engines. The gunners stood by their guns but refrained from training them on the adrift vessel without a direct order. As the cutter came to a stop and the two craft bobbed on the rolling sea, Jarvis told the Chief to launch the small boat.
“Small boat away,” came the reply from the Chief on the radio with the small boat’s water jet engine roaring in the background.
Jarvis watched as the bright orange Zodiac small boat zipped across the gap to the ferry, throwing a bright white wake behind it. He could see the Chief and his team on the front of the inflatable boat as it motored away from the cutter, the sound of its engine droning off in the distance.
The Coast Guard officer was glued to his binoculars, as were the Bosun and the Cook, examining the ferry. The ship had been missing since the first day of the outbreak and had been the subject of much speculation and concern across the island. Rumors had placed it in Mobile Bay, washed up on Dauphin Island, escaped to Cuba (Jarvis’s favorite) or just about anywhere but where they now had it.
Jarvis could make out a number of vehicles on the decks of the ship, a few random bodies, and at least a dozen of the same sort of staggering automatons as they had seen at the Dauphin Island SAR station. The small boat came within a few feet of the ferry and circled around. As they did so, Jarvis noticed the torn and brutalized infected follow the small boat’s journey around the ferry with their arms outstretched and wild. Two of the infected tumbled over the rails and into the water just after the small boat passed by.
“Chief, you have swimmers in the water. They fell out after you passed the stern,” Jarvis radioed.
He saw the small boat immediately gun its engine, which produced a rooster tail of white foam behind it, jetting away from the ferry. It doubled around and passed by the ferry twenty feet further away.
“Negative,
Fish Hawk
, these are no swimmers. They dropped right to the bottom. There is no one here to save, sir. Subject boat is DIW, request RTB,” Hoffman radioed back.
“What is your impression of the vessel, Chief?” Jarvis asked to confirm what he already knew.
“I recommend against towing, sir,” Hoffman replied over the radio. The small boat was already making its way back slowly to the
Fish Hawk
.
“Roger that, Chief. Return to boat.”
“Aye,” Hoffman said as he accelerated and swung the small boat into the stern dock of the cutter where a fireman stood by to winch it in. By the time the small boat team had their feet back on the cutter, gunners at the front of the
Fish Hawk
were training machine guns on the ferry. A check on the scope and a 360-degree lookout advised that no one was in range besides the ferry.