“Anybody who has any energy and a strong stomach?” Steve asked. “Boat’s trashed. Zombie in the engine room. But there are a lot of supplies and we can cross-load fuel and water.”
“I’ll help,” Patrick said, standing up. “I’m not exactly feeling great but the soup helped.”
“Jack?” Steve asked.
“Do I get a gas mask?” Jack asked, taking another sushi roll.
“Sorry,” Steve said. “All out.”
“Then I’ll pass,” Isham said.
“Anybody else?” Steve asked.
“Steve,” Stacey said. “Let’s hold off on cross-load. We have enough stores for now and we know which EPIRB it is. We can always come back. And there are more lifeboats to check. Just leave the EPIRB going and we’ll come back. Let’s get you and Faith back aboard.”
Steve started to speak, then noted where she was sitting.
“Okay,” Steve said. “Sophia, next EPIRB?”
“About ten miles,” Sophia called. “Lifeboat.”
* * *
Faith jumped aboard the inflatable liferaft and cut the wire to the EPIRB with her kukhri. She jumped lightly from the side onto the back deck of the yacht, then bent down and poked the fabric of the raft, holing it.
“I hate the ones that are just empty,” Faith said as the lifeboat started to deflate.
“How many have you cleared?” Paula asked.
“I don’t know,” Faith said, shrugging her shoulders. “You’d have to check the log. Bunch. Clear, Da!”
“Roger,” Steve said. “Next one, Soph.”
“I sort of like the boats,” Faith said, shrugging. She hadn’t bothered to rig up for this one. “Creeping around in the dark looking for zombies may not sound like fun to most people, but it is to me.”
“To each their own,” Paula said, laughing. “I’ll leave it to you.”
“But the lifeboats and liferafts?” Faith said, frowning. “Usually everybody’s dead. And usually cause the zombies got them. What happened with you guys? No zombies?”
“No,” Paula said, her face closing up. “There were infected.”
“So how’d you make it?” Faith asked. “You didn’t have any guns.”
“Right after we hit the water, Chris had us put on light restraints,” Paula said, carefully. “Just light knots. When somebody started to…turn, we could…restrain them.”
“There weren’t any when we got there,” Faith said, then stopped. “I just realized this is something you really don’t want to talk about. Sorry. Me and my big mouth.”
“No,” Paula said. “And, yes. I guess… I’m afraid it would be hard to understand. It’s not something that we even talked about on the boat. Chris and, while he was still with us, a guy named Donnie would…take them out on the aft deck and deal with them.”
“Do I want to ask?” Faith said.
“We never did,” Paula admitted. “The first time Donnie and Chris took a woman, it was Tom’s girlfriend. They went out back and then Donnie came back in and then a bit later Chris. And he just said he’d handled it. That happened nine times. Then Donnie got bitten and he turned. He stayed out on the back deck, tied up, knowing he would turn. He said he’d been special forces and he…he really went out like a hero, you know? And you could hear when he turned and Chris just went out and… Came back. And then it was just Chris. Nobody would help him with them. I…I wanted to but I… I’m not like you.”
“I didn’t get bitten but I screwed up and got a cut,” Faith said, showing Paula her thumb, which still bore the mark of the injector needle. “Then I got into a fight with one on an elevator and the bitch bled all over me. And I got it. But I’d had the vaccine, at least the primer, and I only got a little. So I just got sick. Really sick. It’s the worst sick you can imagine.”
“I sort of saw,” Paula said. “Donnie didn’t go down easy. You know what was really crazy about Donnie?”
“What?” Faith asked.
“He was missing both his legs above the knee,” Paula said, shaking her head. “He said he’d lost both of them in 2001. In Afghanistan. Then went through all the process to go back on active duty and went back to Afghanistan.”
“That’s double tough,” Faith said, shaking her head. “I can only wish I was that tough.”
“So… What was the thing about the last concert in New York?”
* * *
“We need to have a crew meeting,” Steve said, poking his head out the back door. He wasn’t sure what Faith had been telling the survivor, but the woman’s face was dripping with tears. “You okay?”
“Oh, my God!” Paula said, howling with laughter. “I can just see Voltaire doing that!”
“It was sooo not my fault,” Steve said. “It was her idea!”
“It was Uncle Tom’s idea!” Faith said. “And at least I remembered my shotgun!”
“Anyway,” Steve said. “Crew meeting. Chris is taking the helm.”
“Okay,” Faith said, getting up. “Work, work, work…”
“At least I didn’t have you clean up that last boat,” Steve said.
“That boat needs to be sunk not cleaned,” Faith said.
* * *
“We have a potentially serious security issue,” Steve said.
“Who?” Faith asked.
The meeting was taking place in the master cabin, which was the only place outside the saloon or the back deck that would take them all.
“All of them,” Stacey said.
“I like Paula,” Faith said. “You’re talking about them taking over the boat? I don’t think she’d take over the boat.”
“I like Paula, too,” Steve said. “Paula, Chris, Patrick, I like all three. I’m not sure about the lady with the white hair.”
“Jack’s a dick,” Faith said.
“But I don’t fully trust any of them,” Steve said. “And, yes, Jack’s a dick. That was one of the big glaring holes in my plan that I can see but not really fill. There’s no…the term is ‘controlling legal authority.’ There’s no government to enforce anything. If one of them tries to take over, the best we’re going to get is a firefight.”
“There’s guns,” Sophia said. “And we’ve got all the guns.”
“Which is the point,” Steve said. “And we’re going to have to keep it that way for a while. But that means keeping someone on the guns at all times.”
“I don’t want to just sit in a cabin, guarding guns,” Faith argued.
“Isn’t how we’ll do it,” Steve said. “We’re going to have to hot-bunk, anyway. So… All four of us will hot bunk in here. With the door locked and bolted, whoever is in here will have plenty of time to respond if anyone tries to break in. Carry at all times. We were when they boarded. We’re just ‘one of those families.’ Gun nuts. And if anyone goes for a gun, we’ll deal with it.”
“That’s a way of putting it you might want to avoid,” Faith said. “‘Deal with it’ has a really special meaning for these guys…”
* * *
“You guys have been asking about the land,” Steve said as they left the next EPIRB. The liferaft had held only two corpses. “We’re going to kill two birds with one stone. Bermuda is about two hundred miles from our current position. We’ll clear in that direction. When we get there we’ll spend some time in the harbor. You can get a look around.”
“I could do with a Bermuda vacation,” Tom Christianson said.
Until the conversation with Stacey, Tom hadn’t really been on his radar. Now he was keeping him under more or less constant covert surveillance.
“Like I said,” Steve said, shrugging. “Anybody who wants to get eaten can go ashore. Up to you. This is an all volunteer operation.”
“If it’s all volunteer, where can I get off?” Isham scoffed.
“You want off?” Steve asked, calmly. “There’s a great big ocean. Go jump in it.”
“Fuck you,” Isham snapped.
Steve drew his pistol, walked over and put it to the man’s head.
“When I kill a zombie, I kill a human being,” Steve said. “I am fully cognizant of that. Zombies are not, by a long stretch, the first people I’ve killed, Mr. Isham.”