“Really, miss?” the lady said.
“I’ve been out on ops since we left the Canaries,” Sophia said.
“Then, yes,” the sponsor said. “I think you are going to really need these.”
She handed Sophia a handful of tissues.
The video started with a montage of videos and stills that most people knew and remembered, to the background of Billy Joel’s “Miami 2017.” No sound on the videos, just the music. The President announcing the Plague. National Guardsmen in MOPP4 at check points. Riots. Video of reporters in “Infected Care Centers,” vast warehouses with “afflicted” tied to cots and even mattresses on the floor, writhing and snarling, covered in feces and sores. Flashes from the CDC briefings. The fairly famous scene of the Fox anchor going nuts on camera. A skyscraper on fire in some foreign city. Quite a few of the shots were from NYC. Fires, riots, fighting in the streets in what looked like Queens. A carrier being evacuated by helicopter with the caption “USS John C. Stennis evacuated due to rampant H7D3 infection.” It had been more screwed up than she realized even before the Fall. She’d been head down in the lab most of the time. A scrolling tally of the living was across the bottom of the screen, dropping like a stone, six and a half billion, then six, then five, then four…The body count of civilization ending.
The views faded to a shot of Earth’s surface, by night, dated the day the Plague was announced. There were more as the plague progressed and the sparkling strands of light slowly began to turn off, portion by portion, Africa went before South America went before Asia went before North America went before Europe until the entire world was cloaked in preindustrial darkness. The last section that was lit was somewhere in the U.S., near Tennessee she thought.
Then the shots zoomed down, pre-Plague satellite and file images of New York, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, filled with people and life and laughter, the cities bright by day and night with a trillion incandescent and fluorescent and neon and LED lights proclaiming to the heavens that Here Was Man.
And then the same cities, in current satellite shots, with avenues choked with decaying vehicles, and raven-picked bodies, and naked infected roaming the deserted streets.
The current night sky shot. Not a light to be seen. A world cloaked in preindustrial darkness.
The music ended. All there was was a scrolling night shot of the dead world from a satellite. It seemed like the movie had ended and Sophia almost got up, wondering why anyone would want to see this montage of horror. They’d all lived it.
Then there was the sound of the scratch of a match that touched a candle. The flame flickered for a moment, then puffed out to a background of childish laughter…
And came back as it faded back to her, Sophia, trying to light Mum’s birthday cake and Faith blowing it out every time she tried. She hated that video. She’d been ten and Faith eight and she was sooo pissed at her. She’d been no help making the cake and then Da wouldn’t make her stop. He thought it was funny. Had Da kept the damned thing?
“Quit it, Faith,” she heard herself say. “It’s Mummy’s birthday…birthday…birthday…”
Upbeat instrumental music she didn’t recognize, the screen said “Call to Arms” by Angels and Airwaves. Mile Seven, the forty-five-foot Hunter sailboat they’d started on. New York burning as they sailed out. The first light storms. Trying to figure out how to run a sailboat. Catching fish for dinner. Faith grinning and holding up that big albacore she’d caught. The tropical storm that had caught them off Bermuda. Another video, this one taken by Faith as they were being tossed about like a leaf in the middle of the storm.
“Having fun, Sis?”
“I blame Da for this, you know,” she heard herself say.
“Funny, I blame you.”
At the bottom there was a notation: Wolf Squadron: Squadron manning: 4. Steven John Smith, 45. Stacey Lynn Smith, 38. Sophia Ann Smith, 15. Faith Marie Smith, 13. With shots of each of them from New York and the Hunter days. A couple of those were from the paparazzi who had caught them leaving the BotA building.
Then a shot of the Tina’s Toy as they were approaching the first boat they’d “rescued.” Cruxshadow’s “Sophia” started.
A shot of Tina, looking small and sad with her name captioned. Pictures of Mum and Da and Faith and herself, pulling out the remains of Tina’s family. Ripping up carpet. Scrubbing the decks. Mum in the engine room covered in oil from a burst line. Sophia hadn’t seen Tina in forever, didn’t even know where she was. Last she’d heard the girl was on the Boadicea. She made a note to look her up.
The manning was now “5.” Although, honestly, Tina was never a lot of help. At the bottom the names of the members of the squadron were scrolling continuously. The scroll kept getting longer and longer as more and more people joined the “squadron.”
A picture of them bringing aboard the survivors from their first lifeboat. Chris and Paula and all the rest. She’d taken that shot. Paula was in the South Wing, Flotilla Four, now, still skippering the Linea Caliente. She and Chris had just gotten engaged, last Sophia heard.
The pic Da had them take of the group off Bermuda. “We few, we happy few” as he’d put it. There were twenty-five people in two boats and she knew all their names. She’d held most of their hands coming over the transom. Just like the guy on the floating dock had held hers to get onboard.
Then more boats, the first squadron in Bermuda Harbor with captions of the boats. The Grace Tan. The Tina’s Toy. The His Sea Fit. The disabled oceanic tow boat Victoria’s Boss which as far as she knew was still anchored in Bermuda. People she knew were around, somewhere, but she hadn’t seen in months. The USCGC Campbell. She and Faith throwing grapnels onto the boarding platform at the rear and the survivors of the crew being picked up by the squadron boats. Chris Phillips pulling a survivor aboard his boat at sea. A shot of the machine shop Mike Braito had set up on the Victoria with Mike sweating over a piece of metal he was grinding down. Another person she hadn’t seen in forever. The number at the bottom kept clicking up. More and more names scrolling across until the family’s was lost in the welter.
Two dozen survivors became three, then four. Then a hundred. More boats working at sea. People who had been seen clambering aboard rescue boats now manning them or working in the Victoria. Fishing and cleaning fish. Faith reloading Saiga magazines. Sophia at the helm of her first boat. More survivors coming aboard, wearing sunglasses and shielding their eyes or reveling in being on a boat that was under power.
The Voyage Under Stars. A video taken of the death camp emaciated survivors in cabins and the man jumping overboard to the sharks. The His Sea Fit cruising past the massive liner, the Bertram 35 looking like an ant next to the supermax ship.
Then a shot of all the infected gathered on the landing deck as the music died. And Faith’s voice came up on the radio. Sophia knew what was coming. For those who weren’t catching the words, they were flashed on the screen.
Faith Marie Smith (13): “Da, the Dallas cleared off a deck and put in a ladder. If we wait, the zombies are going to come around again. You know how they are. Permission to, I dunno…Get a foothold is what Soph just said.”
Steven John Smith: “Do you have a backup plan?”
Faith Smith: “No, but I’ve got lots of guns and knives and a machete. I’m still looking for a chainsaw.”