Voyage of the Dead - Book One Sovereign Spirit Saga (35 page)

O’Hara and the other two Marines looked back and forth, between the men they held at gunpoint and the overcrowded helicopter.  After a moment O’Hara motioned the terrified men forward.  He pushed them into the back row of the chopper and signaled the other Marines to follow and cover them.  One climbed in and did so, but the second noticed that there would be no more room for the sergeant major to follow.  He climbed back out and started to argue with O’Hara.  Mick Williams was already on the radio, confirming that Dolphin One was coming back to join them.  He waved O’Hara up to the cockpit window and told him the score.  It was decided quickly.  The sergeant major and other Marine would wait on the roof of the casino for Dolphin One to pick them up while Mick Williams flew the rest back to the ship.

The sergeant major’s wife and daughter were none too happy to leave him behind, but they had sent him off to war so many times that there was a built-in sense of acceptance when the Huey took off without him.  Mick flew as fast as he could to the
Sovereign Spirit
and swooped down moments after Dolphin Two had cleared the pad.  He unloaded his passengers and told one of the ground crew to keep an eye on the three men from the back seat.  He didn’t want to make snap judgments, but they were casino thugs.  He suggested that they be taken to the casino deck and detained there for questioning.  They couldn’t get into too much trouble in a room full of slot machines and gaming tables.  It might even make them feel more at home. Scott could deal with them later.  Mick took off again as soon as he took a new group of four Marines aboard.

When he got the Huey back to Oceanside he could see Dolphin One sitting on the roof of the casino.  Mick took the Huey down in a low and slow pass to confirm that O’Hara and the other Marine were being extracted successfully.  Then he circled and waited for Dolphin One and Two to form up for the rest of the rescue mission.  The next LZ, or landing zone, would involve all of the choppers.  They were going into a military housing complex where four of the Marine’s wives were thought to be holed up in different apartments.  Mick was beginning to realize how important Scott’s decision was to these men.  If they had continued north without attempting these rescue flights, all of the families of these Marines would have been condemned to at best a slow death of starvation or thirst, at worst becoming a zombie snack.  This was their only real chance at survival.

All three helicopters dropped down towards a large apartment complex near the base.  Dolphin One set down on the roof of the central building and O’Hara led a total of five Marines out to do battle.  Two of them went to the parapets and began to take well aimed head shots at the crowd of zombies below.   The rest moved to the stairway and began blasting their way down inside the building.  Mick waited for the snipers on the roof to dispatch most of the zombies in the parking lot behind the building, then settled down to insert the four Marines he was carrying.  Dolphin Two dropped in on the other side of the building by the pool.   There were now fourteen Marines on the ground, almost half of the platoon that had joined the
Sovereign Spirit
.  They were facing well over a hundred zombies with more arriving from the surrounding area every minute.  It would be a heavy blow to lose these Marines now.  Mick knew that he had to wait for their extraction, but his skin crawled as the zombies closed in.

This rescue took a total of about five minutes, but it seemed like hours to Mick Williams.  Dolphin Two took-off first, rising above the building with Marines leaning out to fire down on targets below.  Mick couldn’t tell if they had been successful with their rescue mission or not, but at least they were airborne again.  The two Marines who had stayed in the parking lot to secure Mick’s LZ were burning through ammo at a rapid rate.  Zombies were falling with head shots all across the parking lot, many of them hit from the snipers still on the roof.  But more zombies were running towards the firefight than even the Marine marksmen could keep up with.  Mick turned to his copilot, Sam, and said, “This is fucking crazy!”  Sam nodded mutely. 

Mick pulled his .45 caliber automatic handgun out off his shoulder holster and chambered a round.  Sam nodded and pulled out his own .44 magnum revolver.  They exchanged nervous glances and turned to cover the approaches to their respective sides of the helicopter.  Mick saw a zombie make it through the Marines’ gunfire and took aim at its head.  He fired at a distance of twenty feet and was gratified that his bullet entered its left eye and blew brains out the back of its head.  But many more were coming on fast.  

Moments later the door from the building to the parking lot opened and five Marines emerged with half a dozen women and children in tow.  These were not just the Marines that Mick had dropped off; they were also the ones who came down from the roof.  Sergeant Major O’Hara was leading the group.  He took in the situation quickly and deployed three of his men to help cut down the zombies swarming across the parking lot towards them.  Then he and the other Marine escorted the civilians to Mick’s helicopter.  As soon as they were aboard the rest of the Marines in the parking lot fell back to the chopper, firing steadily.  Their massed firepower was sufficient to stop the advance of the zombies, especially when Dolphin Two dropped into a hover and the Marines aboard leaned out to add their own fire to that of the Marines on the roof.  The seats in Mick’s chopper filled up fast.  The last two Marines simply sat on the door sill and put their feet on the skids, still firing into the crowded parking lot.  Mick pulled in full collective and the big helicopter rose ponderously into the air. 

Dolphin One picked up the snipers from the roof and all three helicopters headed back towards the ships.  Mick Williams felt cold sweat running down his back.  The rescue missions had been exciting, but horrifying too.  It was a lot different seeing these ghouls running towards you face to face than it was to look down on them from the security of an aircraft.  Mick had almost wet his pants down there, but the Marines had faced down the onslaught with the cool professionalism of trained killers.  His respect for these Marines was now complete. 

*****

George Hammer and his little flotilla had caught up to the
Sovereign Spirit
off the coast of Oceanside due to the time it took the ship to load the Marines and AAVs, as well as conduct rescue missions for the Marines’ families.  George was pleased to hear that Scott had decided there was no longer a threat of airborne transmission of the disease and that everyone on the boats of the flotilla who had not developed symptoms could be considered free of infection.  That meant that he and his daughter and grandsons could go aboard the
Sovereign Spirit
now, if they wanted to.  But Scott had asked if George would remain on the smaller yacht to lead the flotilla up the coast, since he had become the de facto leader of the little flotilla when they left the harbor in Cabo.  Scott said that George’s wife could join them on the
Expiscator
and he would also send over a junior officer to act as skipper.  That suited George just fine.  He had come to love Scott’s Hatteras fishing yacht.  It was a luxurious boat and he was getting used to handling it, but it would be nice to have a real sailor at the helm. 

George was more than a little nervous about the reunion with his wife, considering the transgressions he had pursued with Carla on the trip north from Cabo.  He knew that he needed to get Carla off the yacht, so he called her up to the Sky Lounge to discuss their options.  He poured her a drink of vodka and cranberry to break the ice.  She accepted it with a sly grin and moved closer, as if to kiss him, but he extended his arm to hold her off.

“This has to stop, now, Carla,” said George firmly.  “My wife will be coming aboard shortly and I’m going to direct all of my love and affection to her and the rest of my family.  They need me and I need them.”

“But I need you too, George,” Carla protested as tears welled in her eyes.

“No, Carla, you don’t,” George said with conviction.  “Maybe you did right after we rescued you.  Hell, maybe I needed you too.  I thought you were right about it being the end of the world and nothing mattering anymore, but that’s not true anymore.  I know what I have to do and I have an idea about what you should do too.”

“What?” asked Carla through trembling lips.

“You need to pack some things and go over to the
Sovereign Spirit
on the boat that brings my wife here.”

“You just want to get rid of me,” said Carla with a trace of anger in reaction to the unaccustomed experience of rejection.   George was fully aware that she was beautiful and had a sexual appetite that made her a prize for any red-blooded man, but he also knew where his loyalties lay.

“I just want what’s best for you,” George lied.  “Well, what’s best for both of us, really, and the best thing for you is to go over to that big luxurious ship and find a man that can really make you happy.  I’m not him.”

Carla’s lips pursed into a thin line as her nostrils flared and her gaze darkened.  “You’re damned right, you’re not,” she hissed.  “You might have been the best thing I could find on this little boat, but you couldn’t hold a candle to my dead husband.  He was rich and powerful.  You’re just big and dumb.  So I’ll be happy to move over to that big ship.  I’m sure I’ll find a
real
man over there.  But don’t think that I will ever forgive or forget you, George.  Oh, I know you saved my life, but that was destiny.  If you can’t see that, then you don’t deserve me, George.  So go ahead and send me away, but don’t think that you’ve heard the last of me!”  She punctuated her outburst by throwing her drink into George’s face. 

His hands balled into fists, but he relaxed them and wiped the vodka from his eyes, saying, “I only want what’s best for both of us.”  She spit at him before turning to leave.  George watched her swinging ass exit the door and mentally slapped himself for ever letting it get this far, but he felt a sense of relief knowing that she would soon be off the yacht and out of his life.  Or so he thought at the time.

Moving his mind back into survival mode, George returned to the bridge and looked at the boats emerging from the harbor.  Scott had warned him that the flotilla was about to grow significantly, but George was still surprised at how many boats sailed out of Oceanside Harbor to join his own.  There were at least a hundred of them.  Over half were cabin cruisers of various sizes, but there were also a large number of sail boats and some smaller cuddy cabin and open deck power boats too.  Many of them were not suited for a long voyage, but would suffice for a hundred mile cruise up the coast. 

George was very happy to see a Coast Guard cutter leading the boats out of the harbor.   The
Stratton’s
Long Range Interceptor had been with his flotilla since the bigger ships left them behind before dawn, but it was really just a speed boat sized craft.  Having a real cutter to escort the flotilla would add more than a little comfort to their situation.  The
USCGC Sea Otter
was about the same size as the
Expiscator
, perhaps a little shorter, but it was clearly a patrol boat with machine guns mounted on either side near her bow.  That would remove a lot of the responsibility from George for keeping order among members of refugee flotilla, not to mention protecting them from any outside threats.

The Cigarette
Top Gun
speed boat sped away from the
Sovereign Spirit
and rapidly approached the
Expiscator.
  George recognized his wife as the boat slowed next to the big yacht and he hurried down to the rear deck to help her aboard.  It had been five days since he left her to save their daughter in Cabo and a lot had happened since then.  He knew he couldn’t tell her everything that had happened, at least not yet, and he hesitated to show too much emotion in front of Carla, but he felt true joy as he helped her aboard and gave her a brief hug.

“I’ll be going back with you,” said Carla to the driver of the speed boat as she pushed her way past George.  “I need to be on a bigger boat.  This one makes me sick.”   

George nodded to the driver of the Cigarette and motioned for him to assist Carla aboard the speed boat.    He breathed a sigh of relief as she left the
Expiscator
without making an embarrassing scene in front of Mrs. Hammer.  Another young man helped her transfer before climbing onto the yacht and nodding towards George.  That would be the new skipper.  George nodded back before turning to escort his wife into the yacht’s salon.  Mrs. Hammer was overjoyed to be reunited with her family and favorably impressed when George showed her around the luxurious yacht.  He left her in the master suite and returned topside to get to know the young officer that Scott had sent to be the new skipper of the
Expiscator.

Stan Dawson was in his late twenties.  He had been a deck officer and small boat handler aboard the
Sovereign Spirit
and was excited to have been selected as skipper of the
Expiscator.
  Scott and Captain Fisher had explained that George Hammer would retain his unofficial position as leader of the flotilla, but Stan would be in command of the yacht due to his experience as a sailor.  He greeted Mr. Hammer with respectful friendliness, as he’d also heard that Hammer could be a hard-ass if you rubbed him the wrong way.