Crossbones (16 page)

•   •   •

W
hile Team One was still entering the sheltered Coast Guard mooring, Chick's crew motored up to the commercial docks, a high pier set in front of a warehouse. There were no vessels here now, and the SRP tied up at a low wooden walkway with a stairway at one end. The crewmen spotted movement among the barnacle-encrusted pilings and aimed their rifles into the shadows under the pier.

Water sloshed against wood and concrete, causing a figure in a yellow rain slicker to bob up and down. The surf turned it over and
they saw a picked-at, gray-white face with one colorless eye, mouth open and trying to gargle out a sound. The dead fisherman was caught on something, and one pale hand beat helplessly at the rising and falling water. A pair of crabs were locked onto the head and were busily dining on putrid flesh.

“That's fucking nasty, Chief,” one of the seamen in the launch said, aiming his rifle.

Chick pushed the barrel aside. “Don't waste the round. Let the sea have him.” He looked under the pier to the right and pointed. “You think
that's
nasty?”

The others peered into the shadows to where the chief was pointing. Wedged between a piling and a concrete retaining wall was the white carcass of an adult sea lion, also bobbing in the ebb and flow. It was covered in bites, and as they watched, gray arms broke the surface, hooked fingers digging into the rotting meat and pulling, heads and shoulders emerging as teeth chewed into the animal before sliding back down.

The four men with Chick stared in revulsion, then looked at the surface of the water all around their launch. Chick laughed. “Keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times,” he said, then looked past his men, and his smile faded. Out at the marina to their north was a rough pier of earth and stone, separating it from the river. Chick saw no fewer than a dozen pale creatures trying to claw their way out of the water, hands unable to find a purchase on the slime-coated rocks, slipping and sinking only to emerge and try again.

He looked at the water.
How many are down there? Is that why this place looks so empty? They're not really gone, they're just below us.
He pictured hundreds of town residents at the bottom of the harbor, trudging through silt and stumbling over mossy stones, tangled in a century's worth of fishing line and long-forgotten lobster pots as fish and crabs picked them slowly apart.

Chick gave an involuntary shudder, then ordered his men out of the launch and onto the wooden walkway. He organized a more
relaxed line than the ordered stack Amy was using and led his men up the stairs.

The rain arrived, casting a murky pall over the harbor as the team reached the top of the pier and moved along its length, looking down at their launch from above. A conveyor belt hung over the water like a long arm, something that could have been lowered to fishermen, who would feed their catch up the belt to be deposited in bins. Netting with orange and yellow floats was strung high on drying racks, and even months after the fishing had stopped, the odor of the place's former industry clung to it.

The warehouse facing the dock had two high garage doors, both capable of handling forklifts, both of them closed. A metal door, also closed, stood between them. Chick took the team to the end of the dock where a ramp descended to a boardwalk, which in turn ran the length of one side of the southern marina. Rows of canopies, some tattered by weather, lined the boardwalk, and colorful banners sagged overhead. Paintings and sculptures, racks of souvenir T-shirts, and tables covered in crafts stood out in the rain, and the planks were littered with dropped bicycles, straw hats, and canvas shoulder bags. One of the banners read,
Welcome! Brookings Art Festival, August 11–18
. Moored at the edge of the boardwalk and accessible by a gangplank was a replica of an eighteenth-century two-mast schooner. An arch over the walkway was decorated with the image of a parrot and the words
Captain Scupper's Party Cruises
. Nothing was moving down on the ship's deck, or along the length of the boardwalk.

“Seven-five-four, Team Two,” Chick said into his radio, rainwater dripping from the bill of his ball cap. “We've reached the commercial dock, no contact. Going inside.”

The single door between the garage bays was unlocked, and they went in single file, Chick in the lead with a small flashlight clicked into a holder beneath his rifle's muzzle. The smell hit them at once, making everyone recoil. Two months' worth of rancid snapper,
crab, tuna, and shrimp assaulted their noses, and the men fought to keep from retching. One failed, and Chick had to clench his teeth to keep from doing the same. If there were Whiskey-Deltas in here, he thought, they'd never smell them over the spoiled fish.

“Spread out, lights on,” he ordered, and the men fanned out to either side of the chief, switching on their own rifle-mounted flashlights and advancing slowly.

The structure turned out to be three smaller warehouses connected one behind the other, with a small cannery at the back. They found loading bays and worktables, rows of hooks holding yellow overalls and jackets, coils of hose and grinders for fish waste. Rows of ice makers stood empty and silent. Chick spotted some warehouse racking stacked with pallets of cardboard boxes and led them to it. A quick inspection unveiled a stockpile of canned tuna, crab, and sardines.

“Jackpot,” Chick said, grinning. He looked at his men and nodded, and they immediately began stuffing cans into cargo pockets. Chick peeled open a can of sardines, sucked the oil from one fish, and then began chewing greedily. Again he nodded at his men, who tore into cans of their own, stuffing their mouths and making happy groaning and smacking noises. A month and a half at half rations made this feel like a feast, and the senior chief, considered a heartless bastard at sea, was instantly elevated to hero status. Charlie watched them eat for a bit, grinning, then got them back online.

Moving deeper into the warehouse, they came upon a creature in shorts and a T-shirt, bent over a rolling tub at the waist, its upper body inside shoving putrid fish heads and tails into its mouth. It was making a grunting sound similar to his men as they had feasted on canned fish. Charlie reached his rifle into the tub and tapped the barrel against its head. When the creature looked up with milky eyes and into the muzzle opening, Charlie pulled the trigger.

He keyed his mic. “Team Two, contact. One Whiskey-Delta down, continuing sweep.”

Now that he knew the opposition fed not only on the living but carrion as well, Charlie realized that this place would be a magnet for the dead. He cautioned his men to be extra watchful and was glad he did. They shot down three more corpses, all feeding on one thing or another, as they completed their sweep of the building. With each kill, his men seemed more confident, and Charlie did nothing to shatter their illusion or jar their short memories. That confidence was useful. He didn't want to remind them how quickly they would be fucked if they got hit by a swarm, like the one at Port Angeles. Let them enjoy the moment, he thought.

At the very back of the building was a row of offices, the only place left to investigate. Charlie split them up in order to check the offices quickly, taking the door to the far right. He found it locked, so he shouldered it in and brought his light up fast, just as something in the room let out a frightened squeal.

His light showed four of them in here: a big bearded man holding a cleaver, a ratty-looking woman in a dirty yellow fleece, and a narrow, bald man in a gray T-shirt that read
Oregon State
. A two-year-old boy sat on the floor next to the bigger man, a filthy street urchin of a child with a rope tied around his neck. The big man was gripping the other end.

Chick panned the light across them. “Show me your hands,” he ordered. “And you drop that cleaver right now.”

It hit the cement floor with a clatter. A pair of backpacks and a pillowcase were on the floor as well, cans of fish spilling from within.

“Doing a little shopping, I see,” said Chick. “Who are you people?”

“I'm Ava,” the woman said, starting to stand but stopping when Charlie waved her back down with the rifle barrel. The child didn't answer, and the big man just grunted, “Robbie.”

Chick looked at the rope around the boy's neck, then at the man holding it. “What the fuck, Robbie?” he said. “You think he's a dog, or are you saving him for a snack in case the food runs out? Take that fucking thing off him right now.”

Robbie complied, not looking at the chief.

“Very, very bad,” Chick whispered.

The thin, bald man cleared his throat. “I'm Henry Blake, from Eugene. I'm an English professor.”

Chick stared at him. “You're a teacher? Really?” He pointed his M4 and shot Henry Blake in the face, the bullet flinging the body against a wall. Robbie made a panicked noise and lunged for his dropped cleaver. Chick rotated at the hips and shot him in the head too.

Boots and flashlights raced for the office from outside, and his crewmen crowded into the doorway, weapons raised.

“Hostile Limas,” Chick told his men, then looked at the woman. “United States Coast Guard, we're here to help you.” His rifle barrel tracked toward her, and Charlie began to grin. “Are you hostile too, Ava?”

She shook her head and looked in his eyes. “No, sir. I'm friendly.”

•   •   •

T
wo hours later, deciding there were no armed camps in the immediate area that might pose a threat to her ship, Liz gave the order for
Joshua James
to come about. The 418-foot cutter then reversed slowly into the mouth of the Chetco, the commercial docks to its stern, the Coast Guard station to port, and the bow pointed out to sea before it dropped anchor. From here the vessel and its fifty-seven-millimeter gun commanded a dominant view of the small coastal town.

Brookings, Oregon, had a new master.

By midmonth, the crew of
Joshua James
was settling into its new home. Inventory from the cannery went a long way toward replenishing their food supplies, and this was supplemented by clearing out the Coast Guard station's mess pantry. A food services truck was located near a marina restaurant and emptied, providing a little variety beyond canned fish. The boatyards at the far end of the south marina held some useful machine parts and lubricants, and both the diesel and gas tanks that had once served marina craft were pumped dry to fill the cutter's fuel bunkers. During a patrol, Amy Liggett found an ambulance and drove it back to the Coast Guard station, much to the delight of their rescue swimmer, Castellano, who, although he was an enlisted man, was named ship's medical officer.

Water remained a problem. The three remaining contractors were able to get the desalinization system working again, but only for a single afternoon before it failed once more. Mr. Leary, the older electrician and the unofficial leader of the contractors, reported to the captain that he didn't think it would run again until numerous mechanical and electrical parts were replaced, pieces very specific to the system. The brief time it did run provided them with a
quarter tank of drinking water, but despite the filtering system, it tasted vaguely oily. Rain collection buckets were set out, and several fire hydrants on shore were opened only to find there was no pressure, and no water to be had.

In the weeks since their arrival, refugees hiding in Brookings had seen and made their way to the big white ship anchored at the mouth of the harbor, some approaching by small boats but most coming in overland. There was a trickle at first, but that quickly swelled to more than three dozen. Liz put Ensign Liggett in charge of shoreside security and gave her a four-man detachment. The young ensign was responsible for disarming refugees—most had one type of weapon or another, mostly for hand-to-hand combat—inspecting them for bites (none were bitten), and settling them into quarters at the Coast Guard station. The captain also ordered her to screen the new arrivals for useful skills and assign them to work parties.

“So far we don't have much,” Amy told her commanding officer during an afternoon meeting aboard ship. “A lot of motel and restaurant workers, retail and shop employees, office clerks, a couple of painters and construction workers. At least a third are children. There's a pair of fishermen, a kid who was an auxiliary sheriff's deputy, and a fish and game warden.”

Liz had looked at Amy's list. “We're a nation of baristas and video game designers.” Then she looked at her XO. “Everyone works, Amy, or they can't stay. Anyone can collect water and wash laundry and dishes, and you have a few skilled laborers here. Find them jobs. Incorporate the deputy and the fish and game officer into your security detail. If you get pushback from anyone—”

“I can handle them,” Amy said.

Liz smiled at her. “You're turning into a capable and dependable officer, Miss Liggett. Keep up the good work.” Amy had smiled and doubled her efforts, just as Liz intended.

Having both the opportunity to go ashore and something of a
home improved morale immediately, and the atmosphere of quiet reserve in the wake of John Henry's hanging appeared to have passed. It was also no longer necessary to restrict the crew from monitoring the radio. Two months after the outbreak, the airwaves were eerily silent.

Although the Coast Guard Cutter
Dorado
was stationed only twenty-six miles to the south on the California coast, it never appeared, and Liz decided the other cutter's captain would have more important worries of his own. Even if it had shown up looking for trouble, Liz was confident that she would have easily outgunned the much smaller vessel, but she had no wish to fire on her own and was glad not to have to give the order.

The dead were an ongoing problem.

Amy Liggett's shoreside security was regularly tested. Corpses from the nearby RV park were drawn by the activity at the Coast Guard station. There were more than the young officer had expected, and her team was forced to expend more ammunition than she wanted to stop their approach, often coming in waves like a tide. In response, she organized a team of refugees armed with hatchets, axes, and improvised stabbing weapons to meet the oncoming dead. It worked; the dead were slow, and she had enough manpower among the civilians to put them down without wasting bullets.

She also created a pair of shooting platforms on the station's lawn, parking a pair of dump trucks on the grass forty yards apart, and posting round-the-clock, rotating sentries armed with M14s up in the beds. Whiskey-Deltas that slipped past her skirmishers were engaged from there. Refugee work parties collected the bodies, dragged them out to a breakwater, and burned them.

“I'm concerned,” Amy told her captain. “The shooting incidents are increasing because the numbers of the dead seem to be climbing, and sometimes it's too much for the people on the ground.” So far her team of civilians had avoided being bitten, but there were some close calls.

“By now the RV park is probably empty,” Amy said, “but I think they're starting to come from those hotel and seaside condo complexes farther south. I'd like to lead a clearing operation.”

Liz denied the request. There simply wasn't enough manpower or ammunition, the same reasons the scavenging parties couldn't go exploring much beyond the immediate marina areas. A residential area to the east could provide them with much-needed supplies, and the town itself on the other side of the river would be a real boon, but—at least for now, she conceded—they couldn't risk the losses.

Still, there were three losses in as many weeks. Fortunately, to Liz's thinking, only one had been a coastie while the other two were refugees on work details. Those deaths weren't as significant as trained crew. Including the two surviving men from
Klondike
, and the pair of airmen they had picked up in Port Angeles,
Joshua James
was down to a total of eighteen serving Coast Guardsmen.

•   •   •

C
harlie knocked at his sister's door, and she let him in. He was wearing a black knit watch cap and a dark gray fleece pullover under his combat vest. In addition to the grooming standard, Liz had loosened the uniform regs, in part to conserve water used for laundry, but also to boost crew morale. The chief wore his sidearm as well as a machete-like blade he'd found on a fishing boat, and his M4 was slung on his back. He brought coffee.

Liz smiled in appreciation and took the cup, waving him into a chair. She was able to drink without wincing now, the knife wound to her face less painful and healing in a ragged pink scar, just as Castellano said it would. This had become a routine for them, some quiet time in her quarters late in the evening before third watch began. She asked the same question she did every night.

“How's the crew?” Since their time at sea, her brother had changed, making a real effort to win over the crew, eliminating the derogatory sea slang from his vocabulary (terms such as
deck ape
and
bilge rat
) and treating the young men and women as human beings. As a result, and as the only chief on board now, he had become something of a father figure and big brother seeing to their needs, keeping them positive, encouraging them when they were low. He now had both the respect and pulse of the crew, and that was important to any captain.

Chick eased into a chair. “They're holding it together. Keeping busy helps, and so do regular meals. Having the civvies handle some of the workload is a big relief. Getting the chance to kill a Whiskey-Delta
really
helps some of them, helps with their anger and fear.”

She nodded. “Any problems?”

He gave a shrug. “Homesickness. Questions about their families, worry about being infected. Nothing too serious; I'm dealing with it. No one is speaking against you.”

“And my officers?” Liz knew Charlie watched and listened and would give her the straight story, a very valuable asset.

“The girl is too busy to gripe. She's trying really hard, and she listens when I talk to her.” In the Coast Guard, it was the chiefs who typically trained and looked after junior officers. “She'll be okay. Lt. Riggs was a little bent out of shape when you wouldn't let him recon the airport down south, but he's over it. It would be great to get him a helicopter.”

“And I'd love to get him one. It would change everything for us,” Liz said.

“Otherwise he's a fair leader and a good watch-stander,” said Charlie. “He's just itching to fly.”

The captain nodded. She hadn't been speaking lightly. A working helicopter would open up all sorts of doors: improved recon, extended scavenging efforts, and the ability to send out longer ground patrols that could depend on air support and medevac if needed.

“Hey, I got you something today,” Charlie said, and pulled a
black square of folded cloth from a pouch on his combat harness. “I found it on that booze cruise schooner in the marina.” He opened it for her to see.

She looked at it and shook her head. “You have a sick sense of humor, Chick.”

He laughed and tucked it away.

She leaned back in the chair and sipped her coffee. “How are you holding up?”

The patented Charlie Kidd grin appeared. “Never better.”

He looked it too, but that hadn't always been the case. Charlie had forever been rough around the edges, and he'd had his share of problems. In school there had been truancy, underage drinking, and fighting. Lots of fighting. He didn't get along well with other kids, and not being as large as most of them, he was often picked on. Charlie compensated by going on the offensive, taking on boys much bigger than he was and taking his share of beatings in the process. In time, when kids realized the small but scrappy boy wasn't afraid to fight back—sometimes by ambush in a school hallway followed by a ruthless pummeling—they left him alone. In high school Charlie discovered the weight room, put on mass and muscle, and became a real threat that people avoided.

He used his new size to settle old grudges, and was expelled several times. Teachers began to label him a
bad kid
.

Liz's mother and father, both professionals working in Boston, grew increasingly worried that their son was headed down a road that ended in either prison or self-destruction. It was Liz who persuaded Charlie, after he'd kicked around aimlessly after high school for a few years, to join the Coast Guard, where he would be provided with much-needed focus and discipline. Charlie consented and quickly began to thrive in the structured world of the military.

He faced obstacles and setbacks, however. Learning to play well with others didn't come easily to him, and there was still the occasional fight. These were almost always off-duty with alcohol
involved, but he'd once gotten into a confrontation aboard ship with a larger man who outranked him, but who said the wrong thing to Charlie.

I said step lively, short stuff. And what the hell are you smiling about?

The senior man ended up with four missing teeth and Chick landed in the brig, minus one stripe.

Surprisingly, Charlie had come back from the incident and worked to improve himself, changing his attitude and committing to a career in the service. Liz was proud of him for that. A lot of people would have used the setback as an excuse for self-pity, choosing failure over hard work, but not him. He was still rough-around-the-edges Charlie, and he still struggled with relationships. He had never had a woman in his life who was more than a fling, although recently Liz had noticed he was spending time with a refugee named Ava, and in his case she looked the other way regarding fraternization. He had made something of himself, rising to the rank of senior chief. A comfortable retirement would have been in his future.

A retirement where he could go out on his boat and murder drug traffickers.
She tried to push that aside.

Despite his many improvements, Liz knew her brother better than anyone, and she could tell that inside, he hadn't changed all that much from the little boy always on the alert for attack, prepared to meet it with a disproportionate level of violence. It seemed that something was always simmering just beneath Charlie's surface, a darkness behind those smiling eyes.

Liz knew where it came from.

“I finally heard that one of the civvies you shot was a teacher,” Liz said, her voice soft as she watched him.

Chick looked right back at her. “I heard that too.”

•   •   •

M
om and Dad are getting sick of this, Chick,” Liz said. They were in her 1980 sky-blue Mustang, two years old now but new to her. All her friends thought it was cool that she had a car at sixteen, and Liz was in love with the sleek, powerful machine. And maybe in love with Scott Darby too, a boy one year older than her, though she was less sure of that. Eight-year-old Charlie rode in the Mustang's passenger seat.

“It's bad enough you get held for detention almost every day,” she continued, “but now Saturdays too?” She lit a cigarette. Mom and Dad didn't know she smoked, but she wasn't worried about lighting up in front of her brother. If there was one thing the little turd did well, it was keeping his mouth shut.

Like he was doing right now. Charlie rode in silence, hands clasped in his lap, looking at his Keds.

Liz held the cigarette below the door as they stopped at a traffic light. Lexington, Massachusetts, wasn't that big a town, and she didn't want someone who might know her mother to see her smoking and make a phone call.

“Why can't you just be normal?” Liz demanded.

Charlie said nothing.

Liz went to the public high school, but Charlie was still in elementary school, and the teachers didn't care for her little brother's foul language, lackluster schoolwork, and playground scuffles. He was held after class as punishment all the time now, and it was Liz who had to break away from whatever she was doing—as if
she
were being punished for having a life!—to collect him at the end of the day. Mr. Drummond, the athletics coach, finally announced that what the boy needed was the disciplines of sports and physical exercise, and he took on Charlie's correction personally, forcing him into four hours of Saturday detention every week.