Baublitz looked over at him. “Why are you telling me that?”
“Because I need to know if your mother has crabs.”
Ethan weighed in with his quasi-professional medical opinion. “As your medic I advise you to re-watch the Army’s Instructional video on spotting and preventing venereal diseases.”
“Baublitz you should tell your mom to do the same,” Walls said.
William asked Ethan “Do you have a pamphlet or something for him to give his mom?”
I only laughed as we motored through the calm brown water a couple hundred yards from the Sterett, now barely making headway in the channel, towards the Eastern Shore farmers who were waving to us from the shore. We scanned for threats, both from zombies, and from other humans.
As always the Marines hit the beach first, thirty seconds before our boat slid up beside them on the shore. I jumped out followed by the rest of the team. The LT announced herself. “United States Marine Corps, Lieutenant Simpson, identify yourselves.”
An old patriarchal looking fellow responded, “I’m Clayton Robins from Rock Hall, y’all can call me Clay. These are my family and other folks from around here. We mean you no harm. Y’all are the first soldiers we’ve seen since y’all pulled out two years ago.”
At that the LT went over to talk to him and some other older folks. My team and the Marines began to fan out in a perimeter. I walked over to the younger group and started talking to them; they seemed to be about my age, mid twenties, but with my beard I was the oldest looking. Some kids ran up and I gave them a candy bar from one of my pouches, they ran off fighting over it.
We made introductions and talked cordially. I asked how they were making out, asked if any were in need of medical attention, if they had anything they wanted to trade, or needed. But it seemed like they were doing a pretty good job of surviving on their own. They had managed to fortify this peninsula, Eastern Neck, and were pretty safe and well supplied. Ethan was looking over some of the older people, performing routine medical checkups.
One of them, Marion, seemed to be their spokeswoman. She looked both disarming with her pigtails, twin dimples, and smile and tough as nails with her arms, which were thicker than mine from years of farm work. She asked, “Are you a Marine? Because you sure aren’t dressed like the others, where is your camouflage?”
“No I’m a zombie killer, I’m on Irregular Scouting Team 5, we go in alone ahead of the army and collect information on future objectives.” Then I leaned in to whisper out of earshot of any devil dogs, “We have standards.”
“Is the army coming back soon?” she asked.
“No,” I replied. “We are continuing up the Bay on a separate mission. Anyone who wants is free to come with us and we’ll relocate them back west where it’s safe.”
“No, I don’t think anyone will go for that, we are doing just fine here on our own.” She answered without a second thought.
“I can see that.” I have nothing but respect for the people who chose to stay behind. “You’re farmers, right? I know you do agriculture things, but what about livestock? Also do you have any pretzels?”
Nope, sorry, no junk food left. We have goats and cows for dairy, for meat we have rabbits…”
“Rabbits!? You can get meat off rabbits?”
“Let me show you one of our rabbits.” She sent someone to collect one to show to me. He came back with his hands empty, but behind him was a rabbit the size of a medium dog!
“HOLY SHIT! Why is that rabbit so big?”
Marion said “It’s called a Flemish Giant; our largest are around 50 pounds, they were bread specifically for food.”
“Do they make good pets?”
“Oh yeah, like cats, they don’t make noise, can be litter trained, and eat only when they’re hungry.”
“That is the coolest animal I have ever seen! Any for sale?” I asked. We had a pet Beagle, Trooper, but he was with the rest of the family wherever they were. He was small compared to this monster though. My girlfriend back in college had had a pet rabbit, but it was much smaller than the beast that was currently in front of me devouring succulent dandelions.
“One of our does just had a litter a few weeks ago, I’ll trade with you,” she said. “Let’s go check ’em out.”
By now the area had been thoroughly searched for threats and was found to be clear. The farmers had made a nice safe place here. We began to mingle with the locals; we had about a half hour left until we had to be back on the boats. Ethan and William were trading ammunition for bottles of moonshine, Markus was being led away by a beautiful girl in Daisy Dukes, Walls was socializing with some of the marines, Baublitz was elbows deep under the hood of an old truck trying to fix something, and Bull was admiring some homemade weapons. I walked over to the rabbit hutches with Marion.
Twenty minutes later and we were all back at the boats. 8 Reeses Cups bought me a tan baby rabbit no bigger than a smoke grenade. I put it in the dump pouch I had on my pistol belt. For sentimental reasons I decided to name her Penny, after my girlfriend’s rabbit. I hoped she was still alive and had managed to keep her Penny rabbit alive, too. I pushed that thought out of my head and turned to get in the boat. It had been months since I last thought about her.
“Is what you are doing important?”
I turned to see Marion approaching with a bag over her shoulder.
“I like to think we save a lot of lives by putting ours on the line, I like to think we make a difference.”
“I want to join.”
I held out my hand. “Welcome aboard. You’ll probably be dead within the week.”
She took it without batting an eye. “You might, but I’ll make it.”
She had the right stuff, and I had a full squad for the first time in a months.
Chapter 6
When we climbed back aboard Sterett I grabbed Ethan before he could disappear below decks. “Gimme the moonshine.”
“I bought it fair and square,” he said.
“The ammunition you bought it with is team property, so is the moonshine now.”
“You don’t even drink, what are you gonna do with it?”
“Listen. William still has two jars, go split it with some of the off duty marines or something. Just remember, salt water makes a poor lubricant.”
He grumbled but relinquished his loot. Everyone started walking below, I grabbed Marion who had stopped to stare at some shirtless marines as they moved ammunition to a jury rigged ready locker by one of the after guns.
“Been a while since you’ve seen a chip n’ dales performance?” I teased her, then mentally kicked myself for not calling them the village people instead.
“No I’ve never seen a cannon that big before, does it work on zombies?”
“Depends on the ammunition, come with me.” I said as I led her to the other side of the ship where Chief Aquia was chewing out a group of sailors for some offense. I said “Chief, can I have a second?”
“What do you need, shipmate?” he asked, seamlessly transitioning from his drill sergeant voice to a slightly more congenial tone.
“I picked up a new team member and I need some equipment. Do you have anything to spare?”
“You know how bad it is for the army, it’s ten times worse for the navy, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.” He said matter-of-factly if not apologetically.
I pulled the jars of moonshine out of my bag and passed them over.
“Well shee-it why didn’t you tell me you had a still, come with me.” The chief said as he examined his new acquisition.