11 Chapter 8

Helia has found several interesting things it seems over the last few hours or so but the one that caught my attention the most was a large coast guard cutter. That, if it's in good condition, would nearly ensure we made it to Texas unless we had shit for luck.

I could see bodies on the deck from the aerial view I had through Helia but the ship at least looked in good condition from what little could be seen from up high. It would take us a few hours to reach the cutter so we had time to prepare our gear before we boarded.

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A few hours later

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It took a while to gather our gear, mostly because I had to dig out a few things that would be useful. We would be adding some noise cancelling headsets to our gear, as firing guns in the bowels of a ship is not exactly conducive to keeping your hearing. Also some good Ka-Bars would be added to everyone kit since this would be close quarters and you never know what will be around the corner. unless your a wizard anyways. like me. useful that.

As Captain Devon stops the ship a few hundred meters away from the Cutter, me and my team and a few extra board the Dinghies. Basically its me, Victoria, Kimmie, Johnny, Cara, Alexandria, Doctor Bethany, Annie and a few of the crew from both ships who could at the least pilot the vessel. The crew would stay on the deck until the ship was cleared as they were somewhat of a finite resource.

We will be boarding through the back of the ship as its the easiest place to simply climb onboard.

After sniping any of the walkers near the stern of the ship I boarded first, quickly ganking a walker in the temple as it shambled up to me, the others quickly boarding after me.

There was one thing I noticed that should have been obvious before, a lot of these things were not uniformed sailors and were wearing Norma clothes. Which means they took on refugees before they actually knew what was going on most likely.

"Well, originally there should have only been around a hundred people onboard but no who knows. This is going to be far more annoying now." I told my team with a sigh. They looked grim but ready.

I quickly had a thought and unslung my rifle and removed the silencer and put it in my cargo pocket. The others looked at me curiously so I answered their unasked questions with something that should have been obvious to al of us. "Going to draw them to US with the noise and then we can clear the ship of stragglers. They all had lightbulb moments while I tried not to laugh, I'm surprised one of them didn't come up with the idea, while they can all be somewhat airheads they are still pretty smart especially Annie and Victoria.

And with that started and over an hour later, me shooting periodically to remind the idiots we were here since the others were mostly knifing them, it was time to clear the ship of the stragglers, this was truly the only dangerous part of the mission, getting in close quarters with them.

We went in three groups to secure and clear different areas of the ship, me and the doctor took the engine room, Victoria, Kimmie and Johnny took the mess hall and recreation areas and crew quarters while Annie Cara and Alexandria took the bridge, mostly because Annie could hack shit and figure out how to turn things on.(maybe)

My group ran into dozens of them on the ray to the engine compartment and when we finally got to it after a good 45 minutes of carefully turning corners and slaughtering walkers we finally found a closed door that actually lead into the engine compartment. Huh figured everything would have had happened too quick for them to sea off anything.

"Alright, I'm going to open the door, be ready to stabby stab anything that comes out." Bethany just nodded agreement.

As I was opening the door I heard a weak voice on the other side of the door begging us not to shoot. I guess they managed to either flee or lock down the room before the infection, color me shocked. Huh how to deal with this?

"I am coming in to talk, don't do anything stupid please." I tell them while motioning the doctor to stay out and draw her firearm.

As I walked in I noticed 7 rather dirty and smelly sailors who looked like the have been through hell. They also looked fairly malnourished and dehydrated for obvious reasons, god knows how long they trapped themselves in there. I sighed sadly when I caught sight of the terrified looking 9 year old little girl sitting there in the corner. After seeing them with no real weapons I put away my pistol causing them to relax even just slightly.

After checking them for a moment I called Doctor Bethany in to look them over for a few minutes, giving them what food and water we had on our persons, which wasn't really much because it was a short mission.

5 of the 7 survivors were in dirty uniforms while another was a middle aged woman most likely the mother of the child and the last was the little girl herself. Well maybe the sailors can help with the ship once they are in better condition hopefully.

After some talking for a few minutes while the doctor helped them as best she could I learned that one of the uniformed women was the chief engineer and the rest were ensigns. That would be useful I think.

After they were able and ready to travel we first went to their quarters to clear out their things, myself going first to make sure the path is clear of course. Eventually we ran into Victoria's team finishing up the crew compartments in the area. They were obviously surprised at finding survivors but not as surprised as you would think since they had a malnourished looking dude in a grungy uniform with them as well.

Well this is interesting, I wonder why there are so many survivors, I wasn't really expecting to find anybody alive on this tub. Fuck now I'm going to have to check every ship in the area for survivors because especially those who can crew warships will be important in the future, helicopter and aircraft pilots would be nice as well, all I currently got is Annie for my yachts helicopter but it only has a range of roughly 500 miles.

After meeting up with the others and grabbing the crews gear and such things we made our way to the bridge, me casting revelio charms every so often so that I am not taken by surprise after finding survivors. The only people I could now sense were my groups and the people on the bridge. Nobody else came back as 'alive' if that makes any sense? I can tell there are human like things still on the ship but my guess is they are walkers so they come up with weird results to my senses.

With that we found our way to the bridge with the assistance of the chief engineer helping to lead us there.

Once we arrived Annie began talking complicated things with the chief engineer, she also pulled out her official ID badge and telling her that basically the government is gone and that we were trying to salvage this ship and maybe help others along the way.

Annie may have also mentioned how the government had carpet bombed many of the largest cities around the country by how dismayed several of the crew looked as I was trying not to put attention to all that, simply looking at the ships systems that I would never understand without a stupidly long crash course.