Extinction Level Event (Book 2): Holding Ground, page 22
part #2 of Extinction Level Event Series
“They never gassed Chicago.”
Ben said, “Not yet. Just wait.”
“Have all of you gone loco?”
“We just got gassed,” said Ben. “If it wasn’t for Sully, we’d be dead right now. So, excuse me if I wanna act a little less than whatever you’re doing.”
Peter chimed in, “Pheebs too. She helped me get the gas mask on. Ow. I’ll get you for that, woman.”
“And Phebe,” Ben added with a chuckle.
Matt came out and threw himself into a camping chair. “Is there beer?”
“Ain’t floating in the air, boy. Open the dang fridge. You getting a divorce?”
Matt opened the microfridge. “Shut up.”
“Moody, ain’t ya? We just survived death, Matt. Cheer the fuck up.”
“We survived death before.”
“We ain’t never once been gassed by Raptors before.”
Matt finished his swig. “That is true.”
“See? A new experience.”
Matt sighed.
Peter pointed at him against the glass to Phebe. “He will need therapy after being trapped with your roommate.”
“He dated her long before I moved in with her.”
“I don’t think he foresaw being trapped in the zombie apocalypse with her, though.”
“So few guys foresee that in their relationships.”
He laughed. “Very true. I got an idea.”
“Uh-oh. What?”
“While they’re down there, let’s fool around up here.”
“How much is fool around? Do you have your wallet?”
“Fuck. I do not. It’s down there, where the hordes of retirees who hate me are. They used to have sex with nothing. Back in the day.”
“They used to have three-month-old, nine-pound preemie babies. They just lied.”
“How am I going to fool around with you if you make me laugh?”
“Sounds like a personal problem. Sullivan.”
Chapter Three
Lights Out
1.
The sun set, leaving thousands of people stranded on the ocean.
Mazy’s voice through the open comm below, “Are we eating or am I feeding these people with ravioli out of the can? Just somebody let me know so I know how to proceed.”
“Now,” said Chris, onto his tenth beer. “She a good ole girl, if she ain’t black.”
“That wasn’t racist at all,” said Ben.
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“How are you confused?” Mazy’s voice asked.
“But what if somebody just don’t wanna fuck somebody of another race?” Chris asked. “Is that racist? I don’t mean you. You just too skinny.”
Matt said, “He likes each tit is as big as a normal woman’s head.”
“I can assure you,” she said. “I take no offense.”
Phebe laughed, laying on the floor of the wheelhouse.
“I apologize for him. I don’t really know him,” Peter said, laying on top of her. “I blame the Army.”
Peter’s smile dropped. He rushed off of her and grabbed the binoculars.
“What?” She sat up on her elbows.
He searched the night sky. “Fuck.” To the radio, “I hear bird ship rotor blades. Seeing their lights. Two of them.”
The goofy people below broke into action.
Phebe stood and did up her clothes. She saw through the front windows the flotillas go dark in a synchronized wave. Too much for coincidence.
“Is that an EMP weapon?” she asked. “Everything’s shutting off in sync to the helicopters”
He stared at her face for a second, then barked into the radio, “EMP weapon bird ship coming our way.”
A voice yelled from the interior stairs, “Gimme all the radios now.” Mullen.
“We gotta hurry.” Eric.
A moment later, the two dragged the metal garbage can up the stairs.
“All radios in here now,” Mullen ordered.
Peter stared at him. He was not behaving very Mullen like.
“I know this. Trust me.”
Peter threw the handheld radio to him.
Tyler hurried up the stairs. His arms filled with two-way radios. He dumped them and slid under the console with wire cutters.
“You got it?” Mullen asked.
“I see which to cut. Got it.”
The Millennials busted out into their own.
“Turn north and throttle forward,” Mullen ordered. “Give us as much time as you can.”
Engines on, Peter pushed the throttle forward and turned the wheel to head north. Everyone readjusted their stance for the movement of the boat.
Mullen told Peter, “You need to cut the power at the breaker. When I give the word, cut off all power. Tell them below to unplug electronics.”
Eric said, “Get as much as you can below the metal hull. Under steel beams. Then we need to turn when the EMP weapon hits to make it hit the side of the boat as much as possible.”
This was far out of Peter’s league. “Take the wheel, babe. Keep heading north. Throttle up for speed.” He hurried down the interior steps.
Phebe sat in the captain’s chair.
“They’re clear.” Tyler came out from under the console.
Eric and Mullen unbottled the CB and HAM radios and yanked their wires free of the console. They threw garbage out of the metal garbage can and piled Styrofoam plates. All the radios went inside.
“It’s gonna be to us soon.” Tyler watched out the window.
Lights of two helicopters flying low in the sky over the going-dark flotillas.
“It’s layered,” said Eric.
“Let’s flip,” said Mullen.
“Y’all, like less than a minute,” said Tyler.
She looked back to the sky beyond the stern. The helicopters followed them. Their lights obvious. She throttled down maximum. The bow lifted higher.
“Keep going,” Tyler told her.
“Flip,” said Mullen. “On three. One. Two. Three.” The contents of the garbage shuttled downwards as Mullen and Eric flipped the can.
“Turn to make the side face them,” Mullen told her. He yelled down the stairs, “We’re turning away. Cut the breaker when I say.”
“Copy that,” Helen re-laid from Peter. They had no radios to use.
“Every driven a boat before?” Eric asked Phebe.
“No.”
“Great.”
“How hard can it be?”
“Just don’t flip us.”
“No trust at all, Wong.”
Mullen yelled to her, “Turn now.”
She turned the wheel. She pulled the throttle down to decrease intense speed. The other two grabbed hold of her chair for stabilization.
The outline of a helicopter against the sky showed a large EMP weapons held to its belly.
“Hope our timing’s good,” said Tyler. He ran to the stairs. “Now, Sully.”
Phebe throttled back to neutral and cut the engine. The boat continued via momentum.
Helen re-laid Tyler’s command.
All the lights went out. The console went dark.
They watched one helicopter bank towards them. It flew overhead. They braced themselves, as if an EMP would hurt their bodies.
The lights in the ceiling sparked.
Voices below yelped and screamed.
The helicopter banked towards land to join the other. They moved north towards the Wrightsville Beach boats.
Helen re-laid from Peter, “Those cocksuckers blew up my TV!”
2.
The Molly sat dark at the mercy of the ocean, along with a thousand other boats. The stars shined bright. No light pollution once so ever. Like the world before electricity. Their glow reflected on the black ocean. Waves distorted their shape. A crescent moon gave illumination as bright as the full moon did before.
The only human sounds came from voices. No machine whirs.
Peter rushed to the wheelhouse.
“You can try,” said Mullen. “But it won’t.”
Peter turned the key anyway. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even the starter motor. “Fuck!” He punched the console. “What now?”
“We have to rewire,” said Mullen.
Peter laughed with an edge of crazy to it. “You say that like it’s easy.”
“It’s just what has to be done.”
“With what wire, Einstein?”
“We gotta get some.”
“Fuck.” Peter turned away, shaking his head. “Those motherfuckers!” His hand swept all the toys off the console.
“The radios,” said Eric. “That’s why they did it. To knock out communications.”
“Well,” Peter said. “I hope they all rot in Hell for this.
“Help me, Eric,” Mullen said.
They turned the metal garbage can right side up. Contents spilled out onto the floor.
“The radios should’ve survived,” said Eric. “Metal can. Styrofoam lining. A Faraday cage.”
Phebe was impressed. The geeks ruled the day.
“Too bad you couldn’t do that for the whole boat,” said Peter.
“The engines should be okay,” said Eric. “Metal on all sides. Should act like a Faraday cage, too.”
“Why won’t she start then?”
“All the wires up here are fried.”
“Got your fish finder.” Mullen pulled it out of the can. “The CB and HAM.”
“But,” Eric said, “the antennas and satellites will be fried, too.”
“Too bad we didn’t bring the Zodiac.”
“Yeah, Mul. Didn’t remember that when we fled for our lives from the fucking gas.”
“Just saying. An outboard would have a higher probability to survive an EMP.”
“We gotta drop the ankers or we’re gonna end up on the beach.”
Chapter Four
Walk the Plank
1.
“Peter.” Phebe rose out of the copilot seat. “I’m seeing boat lights.”
His head whipped around. The boys crowded him to look out the front windows.
“Aw. C’mon!” He took to the stairs down.
“What is it?” Eric asked.
“Pirates,” said Mullen.
Tyler asked, “Like, Blackbeard?”
“No, retard. Not like Blackbeard. Do you see tall sail ships out there?”
“Don’t be an asshole. Just asking.”
“More like Somalia,” said Eric.
“Isn’t that nowhere near here?”
“Thinking we got our own,” Mullen said. “Thinking also our guys could be really good at killing pirates.”
Eric said, “I was thinking the same thing. Let’s hope we’re right.”
“Yeah. Or we’re totally dead, dude.”
Phebe looked at them with worry. “First there’s zombies. Then the government tries to kill us. Now we got pirates. What’s next? Velociraptors.”
Eric said, “Velociraptors aren’t the way Jurassic Park depicted. They were short, feathered– “
She went down the stairs, uninterested in hearing the rest of Eric’s oration on dinosaurs.
In the saloon, the ex-military people held their weapons and loaded mags. They used headlamps and flashlights to see.
“I found the candles.” Grace stood up from the sink cabinet.
“They reach here,” said Peter. “We give them a surprise.”
“Fuck the motherfuckers up,” said Chris.
2.
The Molly was the biggest boat in the vicinity. Two pirate skiffs headed for her, bypassing the smaller crafts. A spotlight ran over her hull as outboard engines lowered throttle.
No lights inside, or anywhere else, on the boat.
Everyone stayed in the cabin and waited.
“Hello?” a man called from a skiff. “We’re here to help.”
Another voice, “Maybe they didn’t survive the gassing. We could live on a boat this big. No worries.”
Their accents American. They weren’t Somali or some other foreign pirates. They were red, white and blue American.
The trawler stood much higher than their skiffs. One skiff maneuvered to the stern, where Peter had rigged a ladder. A man climbed up. Armed and wore a headlamp. The weapon looked to be an M4. He held it in confident military style.
“Hello?”
He moved towards the dark cabin. Tried the door. Found it unlocked. Opened it. His headlamp beamed in.
His weapon seized from the left. A curved blade from the right cut his carotid artery in his neck then his brachial in his shoulder. Fast and quiet. Peter grabbed him and moved him to the side to bleed out. The man gurgled and gasped as he died.
“Gollis?” a voice called. It echoed from the dead man’s N-ear. “Where are you?” No response. “Gollis, report.”
“What the hell happened to him?” another voice asked.
“This boat is occupied. Men, we got hostiles onboard.”
“What the fuck?” a voice squawked. “Atwood’s fucking dead.”
“Sniper!”
“Fuck!”
In the cabin, Peter whispered, “Go. We want their skiffs.”
The ex-Rangers moved out.
A few shots back and forth on the hangout deck and it was over. Ben and Julio took out those on the skiffs.
“Clear,” Ben said from the wheelhouse.
“We need to get the skiffs before they float away,” said Peter.
Flashlights and headlamps on.
Peter climbed down the ladder at the stern. A loose rope tied to the ladder. He took it and climbed back up. Matt went down the latter onto the skiff. Using the rope tied to the skiff’s bow cleat, Peter pulled it to the drifting away boat. Matt jumped onto the drifter. He moved among dead bodies. Finding the bow line, he threw it up to Chris.
“Tie it on the midship cleat.”
“The what?”
“Chris, the fucking middle cleat. Mid. Hello.”
“Don’t get bitchy, Sul.”
“Tie it right. The way I showed you.”
“Got it.”
“Matt, throwing this line to you. Tie the skiff up to this skiff. Raft them together. Then throw me the stern line and we’ll secure them. Look for fenders down there.”
Matt caught the line and pulled the skiffs together.
“They got rope ladders,” he called up. “With hooks at the ends.”
“That must be how they board taller boats.”
Once fenders down to stop the boats from banging into each other, Peter checked all the work, especially the lines tied by Chris.
Everything secured.
Matt came up to the hangout deck via the hooked rope latter. “We got fifty cals now. Those boats are Marine Corps.”
“Damn,” Peter said. “Knew they were military.” He shined a light at the face of a dead man on the deck. “He’s like nineteen.”
“So is this one,” said Chris, checking out another.
“They’re real young down there, too,” said Matt. “New recruits. Barely off of Parris Island. Beards and hair growth say they been out here for a week maybe.”
“God,” said Peter. “They gotta be from Camp Lejeune.”
Matt shrugged. “It’s on the coast. Just north of us. About seventy miles away. Passed Topsail Beach.”
“Oh,” said Peter. “Yeah. That’s a nice beach. But what the fuck happened at the base?”
“Can we come out?” Phebe asked from the cabin door.
“Mazy’s gonna loose her shit seeing Marines gone pirate,” Matt said.
Peter looked up to the flybridge wheelhouse, where the snipers lurked in the dark. The windows open.
“Crap. Well. Let’s get on with this. Let the Marine wrath begin.” Peter raised his volume. “Just shooters can come out, Pheeb. Too ugly for the rest.”
“They’re in Syanna’s bedroom.”
“Keep them there. And it’s my bedroom.”
Tyler followed Phebe out. They looked wide-eyed at the bodies. Mazy dragged the dead body out of the cabin.
“Some help.”
Chris stepped forward and took the dead man under the arms while she took the legs.
“It’s a blood pool mess in there,” she said.
“Do we throw him overboard?” Chris asked.
“Let’s scavenge them first. See if they got anything we can use.”
Chris dropped the body on the deck like a sack of potatoes. Mazy released the legs.
She sighed loud.
“Just do it,” said Peter. “They’re Marines. Wanna kick ‘em?”
“What the fuck happened that Marines turned into this?” she demanded.
“That’s what we were trying to figure out.” Matt checked dead man’s pockets.
“Should we take their boots?” Tyler asked.
“Are we to that level now?” asked Matt.
“Better to just do it and ask questions later,” said Chris. “If you got the stuff, you can ask questions. If you don’t got it, it over. Done.”
“I’m taking the boots,” Tyler declared.
Guns, mags, holsters, belts, knives, boots and radios gathered in piles.
“Who cleans up the blood mess inside?” Peter hoped for a volunteer.
“He who killed cleans up his own mess,” Matt said.
“Damn it. Anyway to get the houseboat women to do it?”
“Really?” said Mazy.
“Yeah.”
“Everybody’s lost their damn minds!”
“That’s assuming I was sane before this.”
“It’s not a joking time, Sullivan.”
“What did I do?”
Ben came down the ladder.
“They’re Marines from Lejeune,” she told him.
“I got that.”
“Maybe they weren’t really pirating.”
“No,” said Matt. “There’s a shitload of civilian stuff on their skiffs.”
“Shit!”
Peter said to Phebe, “Where’s those girly wipies? I don’t won’t to waste water cleaning my knife.”
“You gonna use them on the deck too?”
“No. Just go get them.” He reconsidered his bossiness. “Please, babe?”
She chuckled. “Because you said the magic word.”
“What happened?” Mrs. Beasley confronted her in the dark companionway.
Phebe held the box of wipies she retrieved from the bathroom. She politely lowered her headlamp’s beam. “The guys took care of it.”
