To Sail a Darkling Sea - eARC (23 page)

He puked. Couple of times. The boat smelled worse than it looked. And none of these fuckers seemed to even notice. Like it was a walk in the fucking park.

Finally they came to the worst. He wasn’t sure what the fuck had happened in the room but the zombies weren’t just dead, they were
fucked up
. Huge fucking holes in their chests. He puked, again, when he realized he was looking at ribs and shit. For real.

“Jesus, Smith, enough, okay?” Zumwald said, bent over. He was just puking in his mask at this point. There wasn’t anything to puke up. “Enough.”

“I think you’ve noted the difference in the wounds?” Smith said. “Big fucking holes? That’s my daughter’s signature. Then there are these,” he said, walking over to a pile and picked one of the dead zombies up by its hair. “This is where Captain Wilkes, who was in training, got piled by zombies. Please try to stop puking long enough to note the cuts to the back of the neck. Do you see them?”

“Yeah,” Zumwald said, looking then looking away. “You can see the fucking spine.”

“I was given to understand that one of the things that Faith told you when you grabbed her arm was ‘The last guy who grabbed me, I cut off his hand.’ It was a tense moment; I’m not sure you remember.”

“I remember,” Zumwald said.

“She was being quite literal, I hope you understand,” Smith said. “She literally cuts off the hands of infected that grab her.”

“You’ve made your point, okay? She’s a fucking badass. I’ll make the movie.”

“I doubt it,” Steve said. “The likelihood of there being any significant movie industry in the near future is unlikely. What there is is this. Blood and death and shit and crap and horror. We are living, Mister Zumwald, a much worse reality than any movie you could possibly make. Even given a budget. Okay? Or, perhaps you should just get a camera. This is reality TV. On steroids. Every fucking day, Zumwald.”

“And if there’s a star, it’s the lady that you manhandled,” the black lieutenant said.

“And this is, yes, very much like
Survivor
. Some people do get thrown off the island, or the boats as it may be, Mister Zumwald. And, no, I won’t give you a boat. We need all the boats we can get working. And no, as noted, I will
not
throw you in the shark-infested harbor. I will put you down in the town of La Puntilla, which is a charming place from what I’ve heard and has plenty of resources for a resourceful person such as yourself. It will be a bit like
I Am Legend
. Just you, scavenging for survival in the zombie apocalypse. Does that sound appealing, Mister Zumwald? I’ll even give you a pistol. If I’m feeling sufficiently nice, I’ll even give you bullets for it. And more than one.”

“You’re insane,” Zumwald said. “That’d be murder.”

“No, throwing you in the bay, with or without concrete overshoes, would be murder,” Smith said. “Because the sharks around here have developed a real taste for manflesh. Putting you off in Puntilla would be, at best, abandonment.

“But I want you to really look around. When you make this much of a mess, it’s a bitch to clean up. We are not going to even attempt to clean this boat. But those Marines fight in this crap, every damned day, looking for the few, rare, survivors such as yourself. They do it because they are told and because they are fucking Marines and every Marine sees himself as a hero. Then, Mister Zumwald, after walking through hell, they go back to the boat and have to clean up all their
gear
. Bad enough that they have to do
this
, then they have to clean it up. And they do that. Perfectly. Every night. Then the next day they go out and like the Spartans of yore—again, I’m sure you’re aware of the movie—they burnish their shields and go forth to do battle.”

“What’s your point?” Zumwald said.

“What the movie failed to mention was that the Spartans only put a last coat of polish on, so to speak,” Steve said. “Each of them had body servants that did most of the work. So the Spartans could concentrate on what they did best: Killing. Now, body servants have, obviously, gone out of style. We
organize
and
manage
things now. You’re all about the deal in Hollywood. So here’s the deal. The deal of a lifetime. You are now in charge of cleaning all this crap off of the Marines’ gear. Every night.”

“Oh, fuck you!”

“Do you know what this is, sir?” one of the Marines said. He pushed up against the former executive from behind and held out what looked like a baseball for a second.

“Shit,” Zumwald said, trying to back up. There was nowhere to go. It was a wall of Marine behind him. “That’s a fucking grenade, you… You’re all fucking
insane
!”

“It’s what Miss Faith says when
‘fuck you’
isn’t enough, sir,” the Marine said. “Would you care to try the next step up from ‘fuck you,’ sir?”

“Please, Staff Sergeant,” Smith said. “Some couth. I did not say nor suggest that you, Mister Zumwald, would be wielding a toothbrush… ”

“And you’ll need to use a toothbrush,” the other Marine growled, “cause
I’ll
be checking it. And if it ain’t good,
I
ain’t as nice as the Captain,
Mister
Zumwald.”

The fucker sounded
exactly
like R. Lee Ermy. Zumwald had had to deal with that fucker one time and he
hated
fucking R. Lee Ermy. The prick.

“I said ‘in charge,’ Mister Zumwald,” Smith said, then drew his pistol.

Ernest knew he was dead but the fucker just pulled out the other things with the bullets in them and held both up in his hands.

“So, recruit and manage people to clean gear, to the
Gunnery Sergeant’s
specifications, or one pistol, twenty-one rounds and La Puntilla. Such a
deal
I’m offering you!”

“Dude, you missed your calling,” Zumwald said. “You should have been in
my
business. Deal.”

CHAPTER 16

Me that ’ave watched ’arf a world
‘Eave up all shiny with dew,
Kopje on kop to the sun,
An’ as soon as the mist let ’em through
Our ’elios winkin’ like fun—
Three sides of a ninety-mile square,
Over valleys as big as a shire—
“Are ye there? Are ye there? Are ye there?”
An’ then the blind drum of our fire ...
An’ I’m rollin’ ’is lawns for the Squire,
Me!

Kipling
“Chant Pagan”

Faith looked up from the computer at a knock on her door and thought about it. She had a shitload of homework and this damned report to finish.

“It’s open,” she said after a second.

The
Boadicea
didn’t smell like decaying zombies anymore. It smelled like a hospital. There was a thick reek of disinfectant everywhere.

The cabin she was in had had a zombie in it. But she only knew that cause there wasn’t any carpet. But there
were
thick rugs, Persian or something she thought. She wasn’t sure where they’d came from but they were nice. The rest of the cabin, except for some minor fittings, was pretty much what she thought a cabin in a cruise she was supposed to look like. She’d never been on a cruise until the Plague and she wasn’t planning on going on one even if somebody hit a button and made the world like it was. But it had a big bed, bigger than the one she’d had on the
Alpha
, and a really nice head. Big shower and a bath tub which she’d put to good use more than once. The head wasn’t as “refined” as on the
Alpha
but all the fitting were original at least.

They’d been clearing for a week. Faith wasn’t sure if it was deliberate on Captain Wilke’s part but she hadn’t been near any of the cabin areas on the supermax. All she’d seen was the bowels of the ship. The usual compartments and zombie mess. Some people might have thought that was punishment. For Faith it was sort of relaxing. Once they got past a certain point, there weren’t even many zombies and they had found some survivors.

She had been in on the “spa” clearance. Wilkes had paid attention on that one and they’d hit it with every Marine they had from several different entry points. There were quite a few surviving infected but it was over in ten minutes. Not a single scrum. Faith had been mildly disappointed. But it was the “professional” way to do it. And she was starting to appreciate “professional.”

What she did NOT appreciate was the homework. Captain Wilkes had scrounged textbooks for her to study. Not just Marine manuals, either. Math, science, English. Chemistry. Yuck! With weekly tests.
And
he was making her do all her platoon reports, then “annotating” them. He had given her a dictionary and thesaurus, among other things, and after the first report after giving them to her told her she was “not allowed words of more than two syllables.” It was worse than fucking school. “Recess” was killing zombies.

“Hey, how’s the report going?” Wilkes said.

“Fine, sir,” Faith said, standing to attention.

“As you were,” Wilkes said, coming in and looking over her shoulder. “I would say that ‘fine’ would be mostly done, Lieutenant. Not stuck on the first sentence.”

“I was reading Lieutenant Fontana’s report, sir,” Faith replied. “And trying to determine a better way to say what I was trying to say, sir. But… sir, what’s an ‘action plan’?”

“An action plan is any plan which involves action, Lieutenant,” Wilkes said. “Direct conflict. When you told me to prepare to fire through the zombies, multiple times, and try to aim my shots so that TnTs would go through the hatch, that was an action plan.”

“Battle field preparation plan, sir?” Faith asked.

“Knock on the door and make sure the zombies are awake,” Wilkes said. “You’re preparing the battlefield to optimize
your
strengths, kinetic projectile fire, over
their
strengths, direct contact engagement.”

“So it’s another way of saying ‘get them into your killzone, don’t go into theirs,’ sir?”

“It’s a more modern way of saying it,” Wilkes said. “Your father’s background is historical. Useful, don’t get me wrong. But he tends to phrase things in a way that would be normal in a staff meeting for, say, Operation Overlord.”

“That’s… D-Day,” Faith said. “Sixth of June, 1944.”

“Fifth and sixth, yes,” Wilkes said. “I’d expect that of your father’s daughter.”

“Horrible with dates, sir,” Faith said. “But there’s this band, Sabaton, that’s got this really rocking song about it.”

“Okay,” Wilkes said, chuckling. “Why am I not surprised. Lieutenant, the report will keep. It’s time for some professional education.”

“Yes, sir,” Faith said.

“Accompany me,” Wilkes said, waving.

They went out of the cabin, down the corridor and around the corner to what Faith remembered as being one of the “big” cabins, the real luxury ones.

“Senior officer’s country?” Faith asked.

“We don’t have many of those, yet,” Wilkes said, wielding the key. As he opened the door, Faith could hear people laughing. “So we appropriated it. Officially. I wrote a staff study. It was approved.”

Fontana, Lieutenant Volpe, Janu and the Gunny were all sitting around a table playing poker. There was a bar set up on one bulkhead and some snacks laid out.

“There really aren’t enough of us for an O club,” Wilkes said. “So this is the Staff NCOs and Officer’s club.”

“The dues are we gotta scrounge the stuff,” Fontana said. “Seawolf owe you any favors?”

“Being my big sister and a pain in the ass count?” Faith asked.

“I found you some razzleberry tea, LT,” Janu said, pulling some out of a cooler.

“Staff Sergeant,” Faith said taking the can and popping it. “You shouldn’t have. No, wait, you should, you really, really should. Ah,” she said, taking a sip. “Nectar. I shall see what my sister, terror of the seas, has in her stash. That she’ll give up.”

“In that case, I’m a rum drinker, ma’am,” Janu said.

“No rank in the mess, by the way, Faith,” Wilkes said. “Same to you, Jan.”

“Yes, sir,” Jan said. “That’s going to be tough to manage, though, sir.”

“The point to the mess is that in here, you can say to somebody that they’re as full of shit as a Christmas turkey and get away with it,” Wilkes said.

“I’ve heard that quote somewhere before, sir,” Gunny Sands said. “Brotherhood of War?”

“Love that series,” Fontana said.

“It’s also true,” Wilkes said, picking up the cards and shuffling them. “Reports and after action meetings are important. This is important, too. You can just talk and without it being official. Figure out the stuff you don’t figure out in meetings. Tell somebody they’re fucking up, even if they’re a superior. Although, I’d appreciate nobody telling me I’m a ‘cowardly fucktard.’ ”

“You were out of your depth, sir,” Gunny Sands said. “You’re a pilot, not an infantry captain. And this shit really does suck.”

“Appreciate that, Tommy,” Wilkes said, dealing. “Five card draw. No wilds. I really am out of my depth in clearance. I can’t wait to get a stick back in my hand.”

“TMI, sir,” Lt. Volpe said. “TMI.” He tossed a penny on the table.

“What are we betting for?” Faith asked, examining her cards. She’d played poker before but not a lot.

“We are not
betting
,” Wilkes said. “That would be against military regulations. We are having a friendly game of cards that happens to involve some items of no particular value being on the table. Purely for the purposes of examination.”

“Each cent is a dollar,” Fontana said. “Against back pay.”

“We get paid?” Faith said.

“Eventually, assuming that we ever have an economy again,” Wilkes said. “We should get paid. Armies that don’t get paid have a tendency to wither and die or revolt. We Marines won’t revolt. I won’t speak to wither and die.”

“I think right now we’re basically getting paid in booze, food and loot,” Januscheitis said. “Which goes a long way to making for happy Marines.”

“Then you trade the loot to the skanks on the
Money for Nothing
and you’ve got all the bases covered,” Faith said.

“Olga is not a skank,” Volpe said, piously. “And our relationship is one of the mind.”

“Now I know where you keep your brain, Mike,” Wilkes said.

“I have an issue with basing our pay on looting, sir,” Gunny Sands said. “It is corrosive to discipline.”

“Totally agree,” Fontana said. “And this is from an SF guy. We’ve had that problem historically. When people start paying more attention to what they can pick up in an area than their jobs… It can get bad.”

“Especially when an officer goes dress shopping,” Faith said. “That really was a bad call on my part.”

“Not absolutely sure, Faith,” Januscheitis said. “It’s one of those legend things. It’s what makes you, you, LT. We thought it was a hoot. And it wasn’t like the infected ever got close.”

“Still, looting is an issue,” the Gunny said. “In general.”

“Also the only way we’re getting any disposable income, Gunny,” Januscheitis said. “I think we need to come up with some regs about it. It’s not looting, anyway. It’s salvage.”

“Salvage only counts on the sea, St… Januscheitis,” Gunny Sands said, gritting his teeth over the “no rank in the mess” thing.

“Gunny, with respect, everybody in those towns is dead, okay?” Januscheitis said. “If we pick up some stuff from the houses, they don’t know, their relatives don’t know because they’re dead, too. And, no, I don’t like being a damned scavenger, Gunny. But like Miss Faith said, it’s all we’ve got as disposable income.”

“I suppose we need to discuss with command some sort of scrip,” Wilkes said. “There needs to be a better system than loot.”

“What would people buy with it?” Volpe asked. “They’re given food, clothing and shelter.”

“Better food, better clothing, better shelter,” Wilkes said. “We need to have an economy.”

“Christ,” the gunny growled. “Next thing you know there’ll be bankers and loans and pawn stores.”

“There already are pawn stores, Gunny,” Januscheitis said. “At least, places you can trade loot for other stuff. Better stores, better booze.”

“Boats like my sister’s,” Faith said. “They get loaded down with booze. And stores. They offload a bunch of it but they always keep some choice stuff. Not necessarily the Navy boats,” she said, hastily. “But a bunch of the rescue boats are civilian. I’d guess from those. And that is salvage. And you could always trade it for dresses. Or, yeah, better clothes. Just cause a girl gets something from slops, doesn’t mean she doesn’t want something better. Okay, again, bad example.”

“What are they doing with all those dresses, anyway?”

“They haven’t made the announcement, but first pick goes to Marines for the Ball,” Wilkes said. Then he blinked. “For their dates, I should mention. Any Marine showing up at the Ball in a dress will be thrown out.”

“Well,
thanks
,” Faith said. “I’m supposed to wear MarPat?”

“I mean, any
male
Marine,” Wilkes said, then sighed. “I give up. You know what I mean. They’ll be given a voucher for a dress that they can give to their date. One dress. Some of them are being held back but most of them will be available to choose.”

“I can see the fights now,” Januscheitis said.

“Speaking of which,” Fontana said. “Miss Faith: Do you have a date to the Marine Corps ball?”

Faith blushed and glanced at Januscheitis. He was studiously looking at his cards.

“On a matter of professional development,” Wilkes said, smoothly. “As an officer, Miss Faith, your date needs to be an officer or a civilian. Not an enlisted man of any branch. And not anyone in your chain of command.”

“I’d love to be your date to the Marine Corps Ball, Lieutenant Fontana,” Faith said. “Since Mike’s dating that Russian sl… lady, Olga, it was you or my sister.”

“Hey, Olga’s a nice lady,” Mike said.

“She is, Mike,” Faith said. “I was just twitting you. And that way Tom gets to go. Cause, like, he’s not a Marine.”

“I am accustomed to being the odd man out,” Fontana said. “Try being pretty much on your own in RC East. But I’m delighted you accepted the offer. I’d been sweating it.”

“I’m sure,” Faith said, batting her eyelashes. “And, no, you’re not getting laid. I will have a knife.”

“Do you ever go anywhere without one?” Volpe asked, grinning.

“Of course, not,” Faith said, flipping out her tactical. “Duh.”

“Looks like a trip to the
Money
is in my future,” Januscheitis said. “Based on the LT’s reaction, I don’t think I’ll have a hard time getting a date.”

“I can just see it now,” Faith said. “Marines cruising the harbor, voucher in hand. ‘Would you like a Paris original? There are try outs
.
.
.’ What is it with guys?”

“There’s a very long explanation,” Fontana said. “And there’s the short one. Which do you want?”

“You sound like Da,” Faith said. “And I know the long one. Da put me through the lecture in various forms, getting a bit more specific each time, from about the time I was ten. The gene is selfish. Males are broadcast procreators, women are conservative. Males want to breed with as many women as possible, at least reasonably high quality ones in terms of breeding, since that’s the best way to spread their genes. Women want the optimum single male. I can talk about it in more detail if you really want. With hand gestures and a diagram if somebody wants to find me a white board.”

“I think we’ll pass,” Wilkes said. “Thank you, Faith.”

“Seriously, ever seen zombies going at it?” Faith said. “I have. Not sure I’m up for that, thanks.”

“Complete change of subject before we get even deeper in the dunny:” Fontana said, “I think the spa op went well.”

“Sure cleared it in record time,” Faith said. “Not even one scrum. Sort of disappointing.”

“I’m not so sure,” Janu said. “Sorry, sir. The multi point entry was… We nearly had some serious blue on blue. I think we could have done a single point entry and been okay. Pot’s light.”

“Kinda agree, kinda disagree, Jan,” Fontana said. “I think it would have been a nightmare with hajis. But you Marines have gotten pretty good at on-point targeting. Even with a little range.”

“Don’t think so,” Gunny Sands said. “God damn accuracy is going to shit with all this short range shit. We need some range time to dial those Marines in. Preferably a KD. Three.”