02 Flotilla of the Dead

Flotilla of the Dead

Book Two of the Sovereign Spirit Saga

Copyright 2012

David P. Forsyth

All Rights Reserved

This book is dedicated to the two women who have had the greatest influence on my life. To my mother, Gloria Brooks Forsyth, who will always be the real author of the family and whose encouragement and optimism have been a constant inspiration.  And to Pamela Resnik Rosenthal, the love of my life, whose creative and impetuous spirit makes every day an adventure.   Thank you for your patience, your love, and your support, but most of all for your friendship and sense of humor that lights my life. 

*****

This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead (except for historical and public figures), is purely coincidental. Although many of the places and things depicted do exist, numerous liberties have been taken and intentional embellishments made.  This book does not purport to provide accurate descriptions of any actual locations, things, or entities.  To the best of the author’s knowledge there are no such things as zombies and no plans by anyone to create them.  This is an original work of fiction and all intellectual property rights are reserved by David P. Forsyth. 

Flotilla of the Dead

Book Two of the Sovereign Spirit Saga

“Like the virus that gave it life, this undead force will continue to grow, spreading across the body of the planet until there is nothing left to devour.  Where would you go?  What would you do?”
 
Zombie Survival Guide
, Max Brooks

Prologue: Interlude in Hell

Carl finished cleaning the pistol he had taken from the corpse of a policeman that had turned into some kind of monster.  They called them zombies on the news.  It was the same description that Carl had decided on after his first encounter with the bloodthirsty cannibals, after his wife turned into one of them in front of the urgent care facility on Sepulveda Boulevard.  Hard to believe that had only been a week ago; a bloody, terrifying, unbelievably insane week that had transformed Carl from a happily married and reasonably successful mechanical engineer into a hard core survivalist, zombie killer, and grieving widower.  It still amazed him that civilization could disintegrate so quickly.  One day he was packing his bags for a Caribbean cruise and by the following morning he was driving around in a stolen ambulance, killing “zombies” with an axe.  His situation had improved considerably since joining other survivors at a secure oil refinery in El Segundo, but he couldn’t get rid of the constant feeling of tension and dread in his gut.  Some of that was certainly due to the loss of his wife, Pricilla, in the first hour of Z-Day, not to mention seeing his city disintegrate around him, but the knowledge that hordes of undead cannibals were lurking outside the chain link fence of the refinery was what really got under his skin.

The “zombie apocalypse,” as the talking heads on TV were calling it, seemed to have taken everyone by surprise.  Ordinary people had suddenly turned into cannibalistic fiends whose only goal was to bite normal people and turn them into “zombies” too.   He was living in a horror movie, without the scary music, but with much more fear and real danger than even Blue-Ray-3D could reproduce.  It was a never-ending nightmare and Carl had done his share to add to the carnage.  He had helped to save quite a few people from the zombies, including a dozen families from an RV park and another family trapped in a sporting goods store, but he had personally killed or mutilated at least a hundred of the zombies and helped organize the destruction of many more.   Carl was almost positive that the infected were incurable and needed to be exterminated, but the slim chance that he was wrong plagued his restless mind.   Thoughts of his wife, first as the kind and gentle woman he had loved and then of her attacking the cab driver at the urgent care, filled him with a confused mixture of grief, guilt and rage.   

Only the mechanics of survival kept him sane, so Carl finished reassembling his liberated 9mm pistol, loaded a full magazine, and returned it to the police issue holster on the belt that also bore his handy ice axe and the dead cop’s stun gun.  It was still early morning and he was sitting on the open tailgate of the “zombie proof” Suburban inside which he had spent the night on his new air mattress, reading a Kindle Fire.   He reached inside and pulled out his Remington 12 gauge semi-auto shotgun with folding stock and spent the next few minutes devising a holster for it on the side of his survival kit backpack by cutting the bottom of a side pocket out and slipping the shotgun through from above.  The pistol grip kept it from passing all the way through.  He put the backpack on and practiced drawing the shotgun over his left shoulder.  When he was satisfied, Carl replaced all of his gear, except for the pistol belt, into his Suburban.   None of these things had belonged to him a week ago.  It was all “appropriated” from the dead, or from abandoned buildings and vehicles.  Some people might call it looting, but Carl called it surviving. 

The world had changed.  Credit cards, ATMs, checking accounts and online shopping were things of the past.  Grabbing whatever could help you survive and thinking up new ways to defend yourself from the zombies was all that mattered now.  It was a living nightmare, a world overrun by the undead, where only the smart, strong and lucky had any hope of survival.  Carl guessed that he fit into all three of those categories.  After surviving on his own for two days in a city that was eating itself alive, he had been smart enough to head for the refinery, strong enough to fight his way there, and lucky enough not to have been bitten in the process. Now it seemed that he was becoming a de facto leader of the other survivors who were hiding out inside the fences of the refinery.  It was not a role that he had asked for, but it gave him something to do besides dwelling on the loss of his wife and everything else that he valued in life.

In order to pass the time, Carl leaned into the Suburban and turned on the radio.  He hit the seek button and watched the digital readout spin through the FM frequencies without pause.  At least there had been one or two stations broadcasting yesterday.  One of them had even been playing canned classic rock on a two hour loop.   Now there was nothing.  He switched to AM and repeated the process.  This time the digital tuner stopped on a weak signal.  It was scratchy and hard to make out, but someone was talking.  He turned up the volume and climbed into the driver’s seat to listen.

“…surrounding the studio here in Burbank.  I’m trapped inside and broadcasting on emergency power from the generator.  I don’t know if anyone can hear me anymore, or how much longer I can do this.  The water stopped running yesterday.  I cleaned out the last of the snacks and sodas from the machines in the lobby this morning and heard those things outside, pounding on the doors.  I’ll have to start drinking the water from the toilet tanks soon.  This is crazy!  Where is everyone?

The Emergency Broadcast System instructed us all to stay where we were, secure the building against intruders, and wait for help to arrive.  That’s what I did.  Even when everyone else left to try to reach their families, or run for the hills, I stayed here to bring you the news.  But I’m done now.  If anyone can hear me, I did my job.  Now please come and get me.

There is no more news to report here.  I don’t think anyone is listening anyway.  If so, where are you?  What the hell is happening out there?  When I look out the window I don’t see anything except THEM.  They wander along the streets.  They look in windows.  They go in and out of buildings.  A lot of them seem to be trying to get into this one.  I’m losing my mind here.

I have a police and fire radio scanner, but it’s mostly silent now.  I think I keep hearing transmissions from their helicopters.  They talk about landing at the EOC, I think that’s the county’s Emergency Operations Center, but I’m not sure.  If any emergency services people can hear me, please say something on your radios.  Tell me when you are coming to rescue me. 

The generator will run out of gas soon.  When it does, I’m done.  I’ll go up to the roof and hope that one of those helicopters comes to get me. If they don’t show up, I’ll probably dive off this eight story building head first.  I sure as hell don’t want to die of thirst, or be eaten alive, or get bitten and turn into one of THEM!

Oh God, help me…

Carl couldn’t listen to any more of it.  He turned down the volume and took a few moments to reflect on what the man had said.  It was true, what he said about following the instructions of the authorities.  All the radio and TV stations had told everyone to stay at home, or wherever they were when the zombie outbreak occurred.  Most people had probably taken that advice.  Carl and his wife probably would have followed those instructions too, if they hadn’t been smack in the middle of the outbreak at LAX.  Then they would have been in the same hopeless position as the radio announcer was now, unless the zombies had already broken into their house.

Millions of people were in that same position now: trapped in their homes or offices, surrounded by zombies, running out of food and water, still waiting for Big Brother to come to the rescue.  How had it come to this?  Who was responsible?  Why didn’t the remaining news services tell people the truth about how bad things were getting?  The people who were still hiding out in their homes needed to know that help was not coming any time soon.  Instead, the remaining news outlets just kept repeating the same advice since the crisis began – stay where you are and wait for help to arrive.  It was bullshit. 

Carl shut off the radio and got out of the Suburban and looked at his surroundings.  The refinery smelled like oil and chemicals.  It was an ugly industrial compound, surrounded by a city overrun by the undead, but he was safe here – at least for now.  He suddenly realized how lucky he really was. 

Chapter 1: God Save the Queen

"We're surrounded. That simplifies the problem!” –
Lt. General "Chesty" Puller, USMC

            Conrad Kroeker was worried.  He knew that the supplies would not last much longer.  People were already complaining about the lack of variety in the food, the absence of fresh produce, and the shortage of alcohol.  But it was the water that worried him the most.  The pressure had been falling, slowly but noticeably, for several days.  What could he do if it stopped flowing altogether?  He was a hotel manager, not a survivalist.  Conrad stood at the rail on the deck of the
RMS Queen Mary
and gazed down at hundreds of zombies who wandered around the parking lot and occasionally moaned in his direction.

            There were over three hundred people trapped aboard the old cruise ship come hotel and tourist attraction.  Only two policemen aboard had guns.  They were stuck there, surrounded by water on three sides and zombies on the other.  Even if he knew how to launch the decorative lifeboats on the harbor side of the ship, they would end up trapped within the protective breakwater.  Zombies sometimes climbed along the rocks there too.  Conrad thought he had been clever to have all the gantry walkways destroyed or doors in the hull closed up tight on the day of the apocalypse.  He still thought it had been the right thing to do.  It had certainly kept the zombies off the ship, after all, but now it seemed as if he had simply prolonged the inevitable.  His hopes of rescue or a return of law and order had been squashed.