Crossbones (22 page)

“But . . . how could you risk everything like that? Your life, your career . . .
our
careers.”

He laughed again. “I didn't think I'd get caught. We were all on the boat, the four of them and me, all real friendly.” He made his finger and thumb into a gun and pointed it at his sister. “And then I popped them. One jumped over the side, and I fired, thought I
popped him too, but it was dark. He must have gotten away and told someone, otherwise I wouldn't have been taken off my ship in irons, and they wouldn't have tried to take your command away.” He shook his head. “I really am sorry about that. I know how much your ship means to you.”

“You're
sorry
? Chick, if all this hadn't happened, we—”

“But it did happen, Sis,” he said, finishing his coffee. “And good thing too, or we'd have been in some hot water.” He shook his head. “Sloppy mistake on my part.”

“Chick, you murdered three men to avenge Leo? That's . . . that's
crazy
.” The last word came out in a whisper, as if Liz were afraid to speak it.

“Maybe,” he said, eyes dancing.

Liz looked at the man across the table, the
killer
across the table. How had he become this person without her seeing it? How much of it was her fault for failing him when he'd been little, failing to protect him from a monster like Mr. Drummond? Drug dealers gunned down, federal agents blown out of the sky, refugees shot in the back room of a cannery. None of it seemed to bother him at all. What else had he done that she didn't know about?

They sat there without speaking, the swells making them rock in their chairs. Charlie frowned at his empty coffee mug, while Liz's sat untouched on the table in front of her as she looked at a man she realized she really didn't know at all. An overhead speaker broke the silence.

“Captain to the bridge. Radar contact.”

•   •   •

M
r. Waite pointed to the radar scope, Liz standing beside him. Amy Liggett and their helicopter pilot, Lt. Riggs, peered over their shoulders. “It's a ship, no question about it,” said the quartermaster. “Ten miles out and closing.”

“The
Dorado
?” Liz wondered aloud, thinking of the cutter stationed to their south.

Waite shook his head. “Too big. Could be a tanker, or maybe military.”

“Any radio traffic?”

“Negative, the channels are clear.”

Liz peered at the scope. The blue-green blob indicated a ship moving almost imperceptibly across the screen. “I want to know what it is before it catches us anchored in a goddamn river. Senior Chief?”

Charlie moved to her side.

“Ready for storm duty?” she asked.

“Always, Captain.”

“I want you and another crewman to launch the MLB,” Liz said. “Put eyes on that contact and report back as soon as it's identified.”

“Aye-aye,” he said, and disappeared down the bridge ladderway.

Liz looked at her XO. “Sound general quarters.”

•   •   •

C
harlie and a bosun's mate sat in the bucket seats of the cockpit-style control room, the senior chief driving the motorized lifeboat with a pair of joysticks. Wiper blades slapped furiously at the cockpit windows, doing little to hold back the driving rain and spray. They made no difference, for it was black outside and they were operating on instruments alone. Beyond the heated interior, the storm attacked the forty-seven-foot launch as if enraged that any man would dare put to sea in such a tempest.

“Contact bearing to starboard, zero-four-zero,” said the bosun's mate, holding on to a rubberized grip mounted over the right seat radar scope.

“Here comes a big one,” Charlie said, and then the bow of the launch slammed into something unyielding, climbing, climbing as Charlie applied power. They were nearly vertical for an instant,
engines howling back against the wind, and suddenly there was a moment of weightlessness. The bow tipped forward again, and the launch, airborne a full fifteen feet above the surface, crashed back down on the other side of the swell.

Beyond the windshield was a charcoal wall shot through with green and streaks of foam, and within seconds the launch was climbing again. The hull shuddered, and as the bow appeared to point directly into the black sky, the bosun's mate let out a wail and closed his eyes. “We're going over backward!” he shouted. Charlie rammed the joystick forward for maximum power and bared his teeth.

The launch cleared the swell, trailing foam, and slammed once more into the trench on the other side. The bow of the small vessel knifed through the dark water and climbed another wave, repeating the process several more times, each climb growing slightly less steep as the craft moved out from the roughest of the surf. A mile away from shore, the waves were no less towering but were farther apart, rolling swells that the MLB handled easily. Wind and rain continued their incessant hammering.

“Give me a bearing,” Charlie ordered.

The bosun's mate opened his eyes and in a shaking voice reported, “Contact bearing to starboard, zero-four-four. Eight miles.”

Charlie steered the launch to an intercept heading, taking the dark waves on an oblique angle, powering across the surface as seawater crashed across the deck. The bosun's mate gave him regular updates on the contact's position and distance, the miles between them closing. When they were within one mile, Charlie switched off the cockpit lights, leaving only the glow of the instrument panel. He powered back to twelve knots, careful to keep the launch angled into the swells so as not to take them broadside, something that could easily tip them over.

“It should be right there,” the bosun's mate said, pointing. “I don't see any lights.”

Neither did Charlie. There should have been something by now, even if only the contact's red and green navigation lights. The radio frequencies held nothing but dead air.

At half a mile, Charlie said, “Hit the spots.”

The man in the right seat switched on the high-intensity lights mounted atop the cockpit and antenna cluster, then took hold of his own joystick to maneuver a powerful spotlight. As Charlie slowed further, the white beam tracked right to left across the darkness. Rain slashed across it like a curtain, impossible to penetrate.

“It's right
there
,” the bosun's mate growled. The radar scope showed the contact—a huge shape—as just off their starboard bow, but the storm hid it from sight. Seconds later, it was the storm that finally revealed it as a string of dazzling lightning strikes split the sky, searing the image in an instant of flashbulb white that trumped the masking rain.

“Fuck
me
,” Charlie whispered.

It was a cruise ship, completely without lights and power, adrift at the mercy of the sea. And it was heeled over to port at what Charlie judged to be a thirty- or thirty-five-degree angle, waves washing over the railings of its upper decks, surging around the supports of water slides and crashing against the hollows of steeply angled swimming pools. Its bow was pointed south, but the vessel was broadside to the sea, being pushed toward land with every wave.

“Why hasn't she foundered?” the bosun's mate said, finally putting the spotlight on it, the beam crawling across its hull in a circle of white, all that could be seen now that darkness had once again replaced the lightning. The angle of the ship reminded both men of news footage they'd seen about the
Costa Concordia
, the cruise ship run aground off the Italian coast years ago by a reckless captain, capsizing and ending up mostly on its side within swimming distance of a beach. The pitch to this ship wasn't quite as severe, but it was close, and the sight of it was unsettling to anyone who spent their life at sea.

Charlie powered the MLB around it, keeping a safe distance for fear a wave would throw them against her side, and motored along the seaward, starboard side that was tipped up toward a violent sky. The ship was massive, 960 feet, nearly the length of an aircraft carrier, eleven decks high and eighty-three thousand tons. It had a dark blue hull and a white superstructure with two red stacks climbing above. On the side of each stack was an iconic silhouette known the world over.

“This is the sickest,” the bosun's mate muttered, working his joystick.

The spotlight revealed that about half the lifeboats were missing on this side, one still dangling partway down the hull, hanging crooked on its cables. When the light settled on the boat, a gray arm stretched from within a side hatch, its hand pawing at the yellow fiberglass.

Charlie used the launch's powerful engine to fight the waves and motored around to the stern, seeing the ship's name in elegant, yellow script. They continued back around to port, the direction of the tilt, and the spotlight inched across portholes and glass balcony doors. Many were smashed, the sea flowing in and out at will, but others remained intact, and behind many of them were gray corpses dressed in shorts and tank tops, sundresses and flowered shirts. They pressed against the glass, mouths open in silent moans.

Charlie suddenly realized he had been aboard this ship, not as a passenger but with the Coast Guard, during a safety inspection ten years ago in San Diego. He remembered the gilded atrium, the rich décor and attention to detail, a thousand feet of fun and luxury.
How many guests and crew aboard? Three or four thousand?

It was probably making a summer run from Vancouver to Alaska, he thought, or south to San Diego. Summertime . . . it would have been filled to capacity, half of them kids. Charlie could picture thousands of corpses crawling along tilted passageways in the dark, stumbling past statues of princesses and cartoon animals,
feet shuffling through drifts of broken plates and glass. Some would be trapped in staterooms, others wandering restaurants and shops and theaters, still more caught in flooded, lower decks. All of them in the dark, all of them hungry. He imagined the moans that would echo through those carpeted, steeply angled corridors, and shuddered.

“That, shipmate,” Charlie said, “is a ghost ship.”

The bosun's mate simply moved his head up and down without speaking.

Charlie checked the cruise ship's position and calculated the movement of the sea. “It's going to be on the rocks by morning,” he said, then turned the launch back toward Brookings and applied power. He lifted the radio mic. “Seven-five-four, this is Recon Launch One. Contact identified.”

•   •   •

T
he storm blew out around six the next morning. While Amy Liggett went ashore to see how the refugees had fared in the night, Liz, Charlie, and several others went back out in the motorized lifeboat. Although the sky still churned with hues of black and gray and a light rain continued, the seas had calmed considerably, and they were all able to stand on the vessel's top control deck, facing the spray in foul-weather ponchos.

As Charlie predicted, the cruise ship had indeed reached the rocks during the night, and came to rest in the shallows a hundred yards west of where the town of Brookings sloped down to meet the Pacific. In the light of morning, the scene was even more chilling and awe-inspiring. The ship, upon grounding amid the rocks and shoals, had been pushed even farther to port and now tilted toward shore at an even forty-five-degree angle. Surf curled about its hull, but decks that had once been kept awash by the sea were now able to drain. Dozens of separate waterfalls gushed from points along the length of the ship, seawater pouring out through smashed windows
and over balconies, carrying with them a tide of flotsam: luggage, couch cushions and bedding, plastic cups and stuffed animals . . .

And corpses.

Decayed bodies flowed through these openings as well, plunging into the shallows with pinwheeling arms. After a number of minutes, heads broke the surface as those same corpses trudged across the sandy bottom and emerged at the shore, crawling onto dry land. Some floundered against slick rocks, but most climbed steadily toward a road that ran along the water's edge, a place lined with shops and sidewalk benches. Back at the ship, other creatures didn't wait to be washed out like floating garbage. They clawed their way up tilted stairways and through hatches, following one another over the railing, hitting the water, and then slowly making their way toward the beach.

Liz lowered her binoculars. To no one in particular she said, “This is going to be a problem.”

The newly arrived dead were a problem that seemed to compound with each passing day. By December, thousands of corpses had relentlessly made their way out of the grounded luxury liner and through the shallows up into the town. There was no way to stop them.

Before the ship beached itself and discharged its rotten cargo, the dead in Brookings had seemed manageable. They were scattered and, at least around the marina, could be engaged at a distance. Now they traveled in packs and herds, more than could be controlled with the diminishing supply of ammunition. The influx affected the scavenging parties most of all.

Until now, the refugee bands out gathering supplies were growing more confident, traveling farther into both the residential and commercial parts of town, coming back with impressive scores. The dead they encountered could usually be taken out with handheld weapons. Now, a raiding party of six or eight might find themselves confronted with a hundred or more zombies coming at them as a mob in the street, with dozens more angling in from yards and
doorways to their flanks and rear. Human losses were climbing, and it seemed that no group going out returned with its original number.

One entire party of ten headed into town, and never came back.

That one was especially hurtful to Liz. Ten adults capable of scavenging and serving on work details gone, weapons and ammunition lost, and ten more bodies rising to join the infestation. She wished she'd met the cruise ship at sea before it made landfall. She would have used the gun mounted on the foredeck to send it to the bottom.

The number of runs decreased, and so did the fifty percent tribute Liz demanded. That meant less food for her crew, and Liz knew that if the situation continued, she would have to go back to rationing, which would be a serious blow to morale. Not that morale was high to begin with.

An atmosphere of malaise was settling over the cutter, the crew unhappy with sporadic bathing in the cold falling rain, monotonous duty without the hope of shore leave, and illness. The ship was rife with poor nutrition, deplorable hygiene, and a worsening state of sanitary conditions. The pumps that operated the heads and flushed out the bilge had failed, and the crew was reduced to using plastic buckets for toilets, just like the refugees on shore. The ship reeked of feces and unwashed bodies, and Mr. Leary and the other contractors reported that, like the water desalinization unit, unique, military-spec parts would be needed to get the pump system running again.

It made Liz feel like screaming.

•   •   •

A
my Liggett made her way down the cutter's central passageway, headed for the bridge. She'd just returned from shore where a kind woman with two children had slipped her a deodorant stick, a
razor, and a travel-sized shaving cream in exchange for getting out of a corpse-burning detail. After a moment's hesitation, Amy accepted the bribe and returned to conceal the items in her quarters aboard ship. Now she was due to give the captain her daily briefing, something she'd come to dread.

Her route took her through the ship's mess, and as she approached she heard low voices and the clink of silverware. When she entered the compartment, the four enlisted Coast Guardsmen seated at a table fell silent. She came to a stop.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

The crew looked at her, then at each other. The petty officer third class who oversaw the propulsion system, her mentor since the day Amy had reported to
Joshua James
, nodded slowly and said, “Ma'am.” The others said nothing.

Amy looked at them, and most looked away. “Enjoying your meal?” she asked.
God, that sounded stupid.
The crew looked at their trays, then at each other.

“Is there something we can do for you, Ensign?” the petty officer asked.

Amy was shocked. The two of them had always been on a first-name basis, the older man taking her under his wing and teaching her the skills she needed with patience and kindness. She'd never heard him speak so formally.

“Negative,” she mumbled, moving through the mess and into the passage beyond. Behind her, the murmuring of voices resumed.

•   •   •

E
lizabeth sat in her captain's chair, legs crossed and looking at a map of Brookings. Sightings and incidents of contact with the dead were marked with circles in red pencil, along with notes of estimated strength. There were a lot of circles. Blackbeard was stretched out in a sunbeam, his body pressed against a forward bridge window,
sprawling across a navigation console. The cat now had free run of the ship.

Boots trotted up the ladderway to the bridge, and Liz heard her XO say, “Captain?” She motioned the younger woman forward and folded away the map. “Are you here to tell me about the fishing boat, Miss Liggett?”

“I just found out about it myself,” Amy said. “I spoke to the parties involved and talked them out of it.” While touring the Coast Guard station, Amy learned that a handful of refugees were planning to leave Brookings, taking the big, deepwater commercial fishing vessel lying at anchor in the marina. Alarmed, she immediately spoke with the group's leader, himself a fisherman, and made the case that it was safer to stay in the company and safety of others here in Brookings. There was argument: complaints about mistreatment, about the increasing activity of the dead and, of course, about the fifty percent tribute they were compelled to make. Amy narrowly won the argument by pointing out the many dangers and unknowns awaiting them in an uncertain and overrun world. It had given them pause, for now.

“It's a good thing for them that you did, Amy,” Liz said, looking at her from beneath the bill of her ball cap. “Because if they tried to leave, I would have let them clear the mouth of the river and then sunk them with the forward gun.”

The surprise must have registered on the girl's face, because the captain shook her head.

“I'm concerned that it shocks you,” Liz said. “You
do
see the security risk something like that would pose, don't you? They might tell someone we're here, and then we'd be dealing with bandits instead of just untrustworthy refugees and the walking dead.”

Amy managed to mutter, “Yes, ma'am.”

“Good,” said Liz. “When we're done here, put a small crew together and bring that fishing boat alongside. See that its diesel tanks are
pumped into our own bunkers. Then tow it back into the mouth of the south marina and scuttle it. That should prevent anyone from getting a similar idea.”

The younger woman nodded slowly, frustrated that the captain always seemed to know what was going on ashore before she did. It wasn't too surprising, though. Charlie Kidd was friendly with that refugee woman Ava, had leave to go ashore wherever and whenever he liked, and met privately with the captain every day.

“Proceed with your report, please,” said Liz.

Amy went through her usual list of topics: food and water status; results of a small, short-range raid that netted little; ammunition expenditure; and a body count of the dead eliminated by the shoreside sentries over the twenty-four hours since her last report. When she started to talk about morale among the civilians, the captain waved her off.

“I have my own problems aboard, Ensign.”

Amy knew it, and the behavior she'd just witnessed in the mess was only one more indicator. It seemed her commanding officer was holding Captain's Mast several times per week now, mostly for incidents of malingering, the punishment for which was added duties or assignment to a work party. Once, however, Chick overheard a crewman saying that he was simply going to slip off the ship and take his chances in the forest one night, maybe find a cabin and hunt for his meals. Simply for suggesting it, the captain locked the crewman in the maintenance closet for five days on quarter rations.

Better than the alternative, Amy thought. Senior Chief Kidd, in his unrestricted wanderings, had found a long, supple leather strap somewhere and presented it to his sister. “Just in case you decide to bring back the custom of lashes for offenses,” he said, smiling.

There had been no lashings, but the captain also didn't refuse the gift.

Amy concluded her report, then left to assemble a crew. She had a fishing boat to sink.

•   •   •

C
hick leaned against the railing of the cutter's stern, the SRP launch ramp below, the empty helicopter pad above and behind. Lt. Riggs stood beside him. Riggs looked around, then unzipped a chest pocket of his flight suit and passed a small silver flask to Charlie. The chief grinned, took a drink, and handed it back.

“That's some good hooch, el-tee.”

The lieutenant nipped at the flask and passed it over. “I have a few bottles stashed in my quarters. I might have an extra one.”

“Perfect,” Charlie said. “I have an empty flask in my quarters. It's lonely.”

“We'll have to fix that,” said Riggs.

Charlie sipped. “You're okay for an asshole officer, you know?”

The helicopter pilot smiled and took a pull. “And you're not bad for a mad dog killer, Senior Chief.”

“You'll have to be more specific,” said the burly, older man.

Riggs laughed. “The DEA bird you shot down in Seattle. The crew told me all about it.”

Charlie drank and said nothing, giving him a sidelong look. The lieutenant saw it and shook his head. “Don't get me wrong. It was the right thing to do. They would have taken away the ship, and the ship means survival.” The officer stared out at the harbor. “It's all about survival now.”

The chief nodded. He liked the lieutenant, not because he was willing to be a real person and have a drink with an enlisted man, but because of his attitude. He'd never flinched or raised an objection about the need to fully utilize the refugees and maintain ship security, and not once had he griped about the fact that a girl he outranked was the ship's executive officer. Riggs supported Charlie's sister without question, and that made him okay by Charlie.

They passed the flask back and forth for a while in comfortable
silence, looking out at the water and deserted buildings. Then Chick straightened and unslung his rifle.

“You gotta be
fucking
kidding me,” he said.

“What?” Riggs asked, looking around.

Charlie pointed. “Ten o'clock, over on the bridge.” He raised his rifle and looked through the combat sight. “Now I've seen everything,” he said with a chuckle. He passed the rifle to the officer, who sighted where Charlie was pointing.

“Is that . . . ?”

A corpse was shuffling across the US 101 bridge that linked the harbor with the main town. The thing was heading in the direction of the marina, and fifty yards behind it, a pack of half a dozen corpses followed, all dressed in vacation clothing, several of them kids. The corpse out front, the one that had caught Chick's attention, was wearing the kind of character costume seen in theme parks. The costume looked like it might have been a big, silly dog, but its torn and gore-matted condition made identification difficult. Its head had fallen off, the decaying skull of a woman poking out through the opening.

“That is wrong on so many levels,” the pilot said, handing the rifle back to Chick.

“Any guesses where it came from?” the chief said. “Any of them?” One of the dead little girls was dressed like a princess.
They've found us,
Chick thought,
and now they're going to keep on coming.
He elbowed the officer. “What do you want to bet I can put one in the cartoon character's head from here?”

Riggs snorted. “That's got to be five hundred meters, Chief. No way.”

“Then you'll win your bet,” Chick said. “What do you say?”

“I'll give you
two
bottles for a shot like that. What do I get when you lose?”

The chief smiled. “My lady friend on shore knows another young lady who might be interested in spending time with a fine young
officer such as yourself. Especially if he could bring her a bar of soap and maybe some toothpaste. I can make the introductions.”

The lieutenant bobbed his head. “That sounds
good
.”

Charlie took a breath, steadied his aim, and released it in a hiss as he pulled the trigger. A second later the costumed woman's head rocked to the left, and down she went.

“Damn,” Riggs gasped, then looked at the chief. “Mad dog killer.”

Charlie smiled at him and slung the rifle. “I'm gonna enjoy that hooch, el-tee.”