Burn Notice, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Title: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Author: rise_your_dead
Fandom: Burn Notice
Characters/Pairings: Fi/Mike; Sam, Mike, Fi, and Jesse
Length: 2,554
Rating: explicit/nc-17
Spoilers: general show spoilers; spoilers for who Sam's girlfriend is in season 6
Warnings: strong gore and violence; cannibalism; language
Prompt: Sam/any--everyone that ever disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle comes back. I fear it turned out a bit gen.
Summary: Sam takes on a favor for a ladyfriend, and ends up sending the entire team to the Bermuda Triangle, where certain legends take on new life.
Sam Axe had a marshmallow-soft heart. Which was, he told himself, the only reason he was standing on the deck of this luxurious but isolated tin can when he could’ve been creasing the sheets with Elsa.
Then again, it was HER fault he was out there in the first place. ..
“We have the right coordinates,” Michael said to Fiona as both came up portside, causing Sam’s fingers to tighten briefly against the trigger of his HK. “I can’t tell you why they’re not here.”
“It’s two in the morning,” Fiona complained lightly. “Sam might have brought us some coffee.”
“There’s a pot downstairs,” Sam reminded her. “And if you didn’t know how to use that gun you’d be back in Miami filing your nails.”
“Aww, Sam,” she smirked. “What would I do without your chauvinism?”
“After what I did tonight there’s no way you can keep calling me a chauvinist! If it weren’t for my undying respect for Elsa…” Fiona laughed a sound Sam simply ignored. “…I would be back at the hotel lying around in her hot satin sheets and getting a Swedish coconut oil massage.”
Michael had tuned them both out, focusing on what he could see on the horizon through the binoculars he’d brought. “Nichole said that her ships disappear at these coordinates every night at midnight?”
“Right - and when she sees them again months later there’s no crew, and the boats come back stripped of anything classifiable as a weapon. Sounds like we’re dealing with pirates.”
“We’ve dealt with worse.” Fiona seized the intercom. “Jesse, do you see anything?”
“Just the back end of the boat,” Jesse complained, then snapped his gum. “You don’t really believe this horseshit, Sam, do you? Boats disappearing out in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle and coming back abandoned or not at all? It’s an old SEAL’s tale.”
“Kid, once you’re around as long as I’ve been you can start telling me what’s real and what’s fake,” Sam growled.
Michael checked his watch. “We’re waiting for a boat to display punctuality. This could take a very long time, Sam.”
“We’ve got three weeks worth of food down there.” Sam grinned. “She wants this job done for her friend tout suite.” He grinned. “Elsa promised me we’d have a little fun when we get back, if you catch my drift.”
Sam’s intercom crackled to life suddenly. “TMI, man. Wayyy too TMI,” Jesse complained. “And are you sure we’re supposed to rendezvous with this guy at 5 in the morning?” Jesse asked.
A bright white light penetrated the fog, and Michael, Sam and Fiona all tensed as it tracked along the smooth black of the eerily calm water, until it landed directly to reflect off of Sam’s eyes.
“Looks like we’ve made contact,” Michael murmured.
Sam grimaced into its brightness, blinking away the pain by tucking his sunglasses into place. Even under the intrusive scrutiny of the spotlight, all three of them stood rock-steady as the vessel parted the fog and approached their dockside.
The mists parted to reveal a bustling deck and a very old-fashioned looking vessel. Onboard, a group of sailors dressed up in dark blue uniforms scuttled about, hauling anchor and pulling down the gangway. They parted from the railings to reveal a besuited figure of some authority, who eyed them with regal but warm acceptance.
“Those aren’t modern dress uniforms,” Michael muttered from the corner of his mouth.
“Maybe they’re reenactors,” Sam whispered. He poked Fiona’s shoulder, and noticed she was staring at one of the soldiers. He turned toward her, his irises glimmering an unnatural shade of blue. She shivered once but squared her shoulders as the group’s leader - clearly a captain, if Sam had to judge by his whites - disembarked.
“They do seem rather…invested,” she declared drily.
Michael’s jaw locked as he turned toward the starboard side of the vessel.
““Hello,” smiled the kind-faced, white-bearded captain, impeccably dressed in his summer uniform. He boarded their ship without asking permission, hands tucked behind his back, “Is this the Venus?”
“Yes,” Michael said, in a clipped British accent. “Arthur West,” he offered his hand. “Attaché for Miss Silverberg. We put out an all-points distress signal - but I have to admit we hoped we might draw the Grand Tuscany.” It was, they knew - thanks to meticulous research on Sam’s part - the last major ocean liner to disappear in this area in 2010.
“For a ship that’s sinking, it seems to be awfully steady,” the captain noted dryly.
Michael’s lips turned upward, dry to the bone in turn. “It’s shipshape. What we need to discuss is of a more personal nature. It seems your ship’s been at the site of several disappearances lately…” Michael produced a badge Sam had carefully falsified just that morning. “I’m really Agent Dana Scully of the Federal Maritime Commission. We need a word with you.”
The captain’s smile grew tense as he. “I would prefer to do so on my vessel.”
“And I would prefer to do so on mine. As you’re in my jurisdiction, I don’t believe you have a choice.”
His mouth tightened. “The Bermudas are a free country.”
“Very well,” Michael said. “The Haunted Star is a fine vessel. But I’d be far more comfortable somewhere where I could put up my feet.”
Sam fingered the trigger of his gun, a gesture that didn’t escape the captain’s attention. “Might my men come with me?” he asked, pulling out his pocket watch. “Ahh, look at that. We’re getting close to seven o’clock. Time for the early evening meal. Come. We’ll treat you to a fine dinner.”
His grin was viscous enough to send a chill down Sam’s spine. Michael cleared his throat and then shook his head. “We’ll gladly serve your needs.”
“If you insist, sir,” the Captain declared. He walked by Sam and Fiona with their guns at the ready, motionless. “Follow me.”
Weirdly, Sam felt as if he’d been frozen just as still as a plaster effigy - as if all of that stillness hadn’t been accomplished by choice…but by force.
***
The belowdeck quarters of the Haunted Star were well-appointed with every amenity known to man, but the captain seemed not to care for them; quite formally he sat across from Michael behind the midshipman’s desk and took off his hat.
He eyed Fiona as she came to stand shoulder-to-rib with Sam. “Young lady, that weaponry won’t be necessary,” he declared.
“That remains to be seen,” Michael declared coolly. “Let’s have a seat and talk about your exploits.”
The captain pulled a cigar from his pocket and popped it between his lips. “What exploits? I’m a simple captain of a small schooner.”
Michael chuckled. “If you call that small, I’d love to see what you think ‘large’ is.”
The captain smirked and pulled open his double-breasted jacket. Fiona clicked the safety off of her HK, but his swift fingers pulled a cigarillo free of the material before she could shoot. “I don’t fight fire with fire.”
“Fire’s the least-effective weapon you have on the water,” Michael replied, his eyes granite-hard.
“And why do I need fire when there’s so much water?” He pinched the end. Only Sam was at a vantage point high enough to see that the rolling paper was surprisingly thick of nature. It seemed tanned and stretched by something beyond normal methods.
“What did you do with the Tuscany’s crew?” Michael asked. The captain said nothing as he licked the length of his cigarillo.
Sam’s eyes widened. He knew what this looked like; where he’d seen natural rolling materials such as these before. “Dana…” he breathed out, remembering even then to stay in character.
“What. Did you do. With her crew?” he saw Michael’s eyes flare slightly; it was the only hint that he recognized the scent they were both all too familiar with from too many a combat zone; the acrid odor of burning human flesh.
The captain smiled wickedly, and then tongue snaked out and licked, black as tar, along the blood-coated surface of the cigarillo. “My men are only human, sir. And every man needs to eat.”
That was when the door splintered open behind them with a forceful, percussive sound.
***
The next thing Sam recalled was the clink of metal handcuffs slipping into place around his bruised wrists. He felt warmth seeping into his aching muscles and recognized, from the sensation of muscular bulk pressing against his back, that he’d been cuffed to Jesse.
One glance told him that they’d been stuffed into the engine room, and that Michael and Fiona were a couple of inches away, cuffed in a loop with wrist irons to his side.
“Stay here while we figure out how to best…prepare you for the future…” the captain smirked, disappearing quickly through a large, heavily reinforced door. Two guards stood near the escape hatch, and their monstrous, inhuman glares raked over the forms of team Westen with open bloodlust. Sam stared right back, waiting for a distraction, waiting for the right time to speak his peace.
“Can you file these open?” he heard Michael whisper to Fiona.
“Yes, if I had a file,” she hissed back. A soft clink sounded as she raised her shoulders. “The chair!”
Sam could feel what she’d discovered; a little metallic notch an inch upward from his cuffs. They might spend an hour filing through them….or they could turn the bolts open, using that jutting piece of metal like the head of a Phillips screwdriver.
“So what if we manage to wiggle loose. How’re we gonna get out of here?” Jesse hissed.
“The only way we know how,” Michael replied. “Full force.”
“Well, boys, I’m glad I came prepared….” Fiona said coolly. “Would one of you be a dear and toss this piece of C4 I’ve got in my braid at the door?”
“You keep C4 hidden in your hair?” Jesse gawked.
Fiona smirked. “It’s filled with secrets.” Then she smiled at Michael.
“Where did you hide the ignition switch?” Sam wondered.
Michael tapped the face of his innocuous-looking watch, and Sam barely bit back a cackle. He grabbed the bit of plastic explosive out of Fiona’s hair with the deftness of an experienced hairdresser. “Count of three?”
They counted it down.
Soon enough, the door was history.
**
“Okay,” Sam said, spraying the line of green-eyed zombies with a series of bullets that set them into a bawling, clawing frenzy. “So it’s not a domestic call.”
“IF you knew about this,” Fiona snarled, stomping the rotting, bony head of the nearest corpse in, “YOU’RE going to require a domestic call.”
“Sister, I didn’t even believe zombies existed until we got here,” He heard Michael curse as he cut the head off of an ancient pirate - it crumpled against his blade, spewing white puss down his shirt.
Jesse was right behind him. “We need to kill the captain,” he said, beating another of the zombies over the head with a spine of his desiccated compatriot. Sam and Fiona stared at him in incredulous disbelief, and he quickly said, “you guys don’t watch zombie movies? Kill the head, the body dies. ”
“I’d need fewer braincells,” Sam replied. “You think it’s worth a shot?”
“We have enough bullets,” Michael points out. “It couldn’t do us any more harm.”
Sam shrugged, picking up a couple of discarded guns. The zombies were melting and drooling all around him, and he tried not to think of what the goo was doing to his new Italian shoes.
***
It didn’t take them long to find the captain, hiding in a luxurious stateroom. They kicked down the door to find him drinking brandy at the head of the desk. He seemed to be expecting them, and rose from his seat.
Michael grabbed his unresisting shoulder and threw him over that chair, then cocked his gun and rested the muzzle against The Captain’s temple. “I believe you owe my friends a few million marks in silver.”
He smiled broadly. “And so the prodigal prisoners escape,” he said, applauding the four of them sarcastically, palm to thigh. “I’m surprised you had enough bullets.”
“We know how to make do,” Sam growled. He wasn’t particularly proud of that fact, but in a warzone you did what you needed to survive.
The Captain seemed to be thinking on his feet. Quickly, he knocked Michael away and seized Fiona and yanked her close to his body. “All I need to do is bite your girlfriend once,” he grinned, breathing against Fiona’s neck, displaying two bright-green fangs as he snarled, “and she’ll become my slave for eternity.” Fiona didn’t betray an ounce of fear as he ran his finger down her throat. “We haven’t had a woman on this vessel for a century. Most become meals for my men, but this one…she has spirit. She’d be a perfect concubine…”
As every man seemed to do when around the feisty redhead, he didn’t count on Fiona’s resourcefulness. In a moment she had his arm twisted behind his back and her knee in his kidney. “Shoot him!”
“FI!” Michael’s croak was heartrending. Sam knew what might happen, that if the angle was off she would lose her life. He was too far out of reach, trying to give Jesse backup as they cut through another swath of zombies.
“Shoot him!” she screamed.
Michael buried a single bullet in the captain’s skull.
The backwash of blood threw them backwards, through the doorway and onto the deck.
***
Sam lay gasping on the desk, his mouth and nose flooded with the raw taste of old blood. He managed to tuck his head into the crook of his mouth to wipe it before surfacing.
The foredeck was in chaos; bodies melted into a mass of slime, smoking craters on the deck. She was taking on water, would probably sink soon. They needed to get off, now.
Sam staggered to his feet, glanced around, and shouted for his friends. It was Michael who came up the stairs first, followed immediately by Jesse and a trail of grey smoke.
“Where’s Fiona?” Michael asked, his eyes close to manic. Then a furious shout from the waters nearby drew their attention; there was Fi, swimming for her life with all the elegance of a drowning swan. All three men teamed up to lower a rope and she scrambled up, wiping the slime from her eyes.
Sam waited for her to make a sarcastic comment. But Fiona was staring lover his shoulder; Sam followed her gaze and soon mirror her expression, gaping at the assortment of ships which bobbed in the water. Some were as fresh as the Haunted Star had been, others simple flotillas from ages long gone by.
Michael and Jesse locked eyes with the two of them. A maniacal glint lit Fiona’s expression. “Well, they’ve called the cavalry,” she said. “But we’ve been through worse.”
“Two hundred of them and four of us. Looks like the odds are about even,” Jesse replied.
“Ready for a hell of a time, Mikey?” Sam looked excited, aware that with their skills and the supplies they had they could cut through these undead SOBs in a matter of hours.
“I’m on it,” Michael declared, staring down the future, the way home, with steel in his gaze.
THE END
Author: rise_your_dead
Fandom: Burn Notice
Characters/Pairings: Fi/Mike; Sam, Mike, Fi, and Jesse
Length: 2,554
Rating: explicit/nc-17
Spoilers: general show spoilers; spoilers for who Sam's girlfriend is in season 6
Warnings: strong gore and violence; cannibalism; language
Prompt: Sam/any--everyone that ever disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle comes back. I fear it turned out a bit gen.
Summary: Sam takes on a favor for a ladyfriend, and ends up sending the entire team to the Bermuda Triangle, where certain legends take on new life.
Sam Axe had a marshmallow-soft heart. Which was, he told himself, the only reason he was standing on the deck of this luxurious but isolated tin can when he could’ve been creasing the sheets with Elsa.
Then again, it was HER fault he was out there in the first place. ..
“We have the right coordinates,” Michael said to Fiona as both came up portside, causing Sam’s fingers to tighten briefly against the trigger of his HK. “I can’t tell you why they’re not here.”
“It’s two in the morning,” Fiona complained lightly. “Sam might have brought us some coffee.”
“There’s a pot downstairs,” Sam reminded her. “And if you didn’t know how to use that gun you’d be back in Miami filing your nails.”
“Aww, Sam,” she smirked. “What would I do without your chauvinism?”
“After what I did tonight there’s no way you can keep calling me a chauvinist! If it weren’t for my undying respect for Elsa…” Fiona laughed a sound Sam simply ignored. “…I would be back at the hotel lying around in her hot satin sheets and getting a Swedish coconut oil massage.”
Michael had tuned them both out, focusing on what he could see on the horizon through the binoculars he’d brought. “Nichole said that her ships disappear at these coordinates every night at midnight?”
“Right - and when she sees them again months later there’s no crew, and the boats come back stripped of anything classifiable as a weapon. Sounds like we’re dealing with pirates.”
“We’ve dealt with worse.” Fiona seized the intercom. “Jesse, do you see anything?”
“Just the back end of the boat,” Jesse complained, then snapped his gum. “You don’t really believe this horseshit, Sam, do you? Boats disappearing out in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle and coming back abandoned or not at all? It’s an old SEAL’s tale.”
“Kid, once you’re around as long as I’ve been you can start telling me what’s real and what’s fake,” Sam growled.
Michael checked his watch. “We’re waiting for a boat to display punctuality. This could take a very long time, Sam.”
“We’ve got three weeks worth of food down there.” Sam grinned. “She wants this job done for her friend tout suite.” He grinned. “Elsa promised me we’d have a little fun when we get back, if you catch my drift.”
Sam’s intercom crackled to life suddenly. “TMI, man. Wayyy too TMI,” Jesse complained. “And are you sure we’re supposed to rendezvous with this guy at 5 in the morning?” Jesse asked.
A bright white light penetrated the fog, and Michael, Sam and Fiona all tensed as it tracked along the smooth black of the eerily calm water, until it landed directly to reflect off of Sam’s eyes.
“Looks like we’ve made contact,” Michael murmured.
Sam grimaced into its brightness, blinking away the pain by tucking his sunglasses into place. Even under the intrusive scrutiny of the spotlight, all three of them stood rock-steady as the vessel parted the fog and approached their dockside.
The mists parted to reveal a bustling deck and a very old-fashioned looking vessel. Onboard, a group of sailors dressed up in dark blue uniforms scuttled about, hauling anchor and pulling down the gangway. They parted from the railings to reveal a besuited figure of some authority, who eyed them with regal but warm acceptance.
“Those aren’t modern dress uniforms,” Michael muttered from the corner of his mouth.
“Maybe they’re reenactors,” Sam whispered. He poked Fiona’s shoulder, and noticed she was staring at one of the soldiers. He turned toward her, his irises glimmering an unnatural shade of blue. She shivered once but squared her shoulders as the group’s leader - clearly a captain, if Sam had to judge by his whites - disembarked.
“They do seem rather…invested,” she declared drily.
Michael’s jaw locked as he turned toward the starboard side of the vessel.
““Hello,” smiled the kind-faced, white-bearded captain, impeccably dressed in his summer uniform. He boarded their ship without asking permission, hands tucked behind his back, “Is this the Venus?”
“Yes,” Michael said, in a clipped British accent. “Arthur West,” he offered his hand. “Attaché for Miss Silverberg. We put out an all-points distress signal - but I have to admit we hoped we might draw the Grand Tuscany.” It was, they knew - thanks to meticulous research on Sam’s part - the last major ocean liner to disappear in this area in 2010.
“For a ship that’s sinking, it seems to be awfully steady,” the captain noted dryly.
Michael’s lips turned upward, dry to the bone in turn. “It’s shipshape. What we need to discuss is of a more personal nature. It seems your ship’s been at the site of several disappearances lately…” Michael produced a badge Sam had carefully falsified just that morning. “I’m really Agent Dana Scully of the Federal Maritime Commission. We need a word with you.”
The captain’s smile grew tense as he. “I would prefer to do so on my vessel.”
“And I would prefer to do so on mine. As you’re in my jurisdiction, I don’t believe you have a choice.”
His mouth tightened. “The Bermudas are a free country.”
“Very well,” Michael said. “The Haunted Star is a fine vessel. But I’d be far more comfortable somewhere where I could put up my feet.”
Sam fingered the trigger of his gun, a gesture that didn’t escape the captain’s attention. “Might my men come with me?” he asked, pulling out his pocket watch. “Ahh, look at that. We’re getting close to seven o’clock. Time for the early evening meal. Come. We’ll treat you to a fine dinner.”
His grin was viscous enough to send a chill down Sam’s spine. Michael cleared his throat and then shook his head. “We’ll gladly serve your needs.”
“If you insist, sir,” the Captain declared. He walked by Sam and Fiona with their guns at the ready, motionless. “Follow me.”
Weirdly, Sam felt as if he’d been frozen just as still as a plaster effigy - as if all of that stillness hadn’t been accomplished by choice…but by force.
***
The belowdeck quarters of the Haunted Star were well-appointed with every amenity known to man, but the captain seemed not to care for them; quite formally he sat across from Michael behind the midshipman’s desk and took off his hat.
He eyed Fiona as she came to stand shoulder-to-rib with Sam. “Young lady, that weaponry won’t be necessary,” he declared.
“That remains to be seen,” Michael declared coolly. “Let’s have a seat and talk about your exploits.”
The captain pulled a cigar from his pocket and popped it between his lips. “What exploits? I’m a simple captain of a small schooner.”
Michael chuckled. “If you call that small, I’d love to see what you think ‘large’ is.”
The captain smirked and pulled open his double-breasted jacket. Fiona clicked the safety off of her HK, but his swift fingers pulled a cigarillo free of the material before she could shoot. “I don’t fight fire with fire.”
“Fire’s the least-effective weapon you have on the water,” Michael replied, his eyes granite-hard.
“And why do I need fire when there’s so much water?” He pinched the end. Only Sam was at a vantage point high enough to see that the rolling paper was surprisingly thick of nature. It seemed tanned and stretched by something beyond normal methods.
“What did you do with the Tuscany’s crew?” Michael asked. The captain said nothing as he licked the length of his cigarillo.
Sam’s eyes widened. He knew what this looked like; where he’d seen natural rolling materials such as these before. “Dana…” he breathed out, remembering even then to stay in character.
“What. Did you do. With her crew?” he saw Michael’s eyes flare slightly; it was the only hint that he recognized the scent they were both all too familiar with from too many a combat zone; the acrid odor of burning human flesh.
The captain smiled wickedly, and then tongue snaked out and licked, black as tar, along the blood-coated surface of the cigarillo. “My men are only human, sir. And every man needs to eat.”
That was when the door splintered open behind them with a forceful, percussive sound.
***
The next thing Sam recalled was the clink of metal handcuffs slipping into place around his bruised wrists. He felt warmth seeping into his aching muscles and recognized, from the sensation of muscular bulk pressing against his back, that he’d been cuffed to Jesse.
One glance told him that they’d been stuffed into the engine room, and that Michael and Fiona were a couple of inches away, cuffed in a loop with wrist irons to his side.
“Stay here while we figure out how to best…prepare you for the future…” the captain smirked, disappearing quickly through a large, heavily reinforced door. Two guards stood near the escape hatch, and their monstrous, inhuman glares raked over the forms of team Westen with open bloodlust. Sam stared right back, waiting for a distraction, waiting for the right time to speak his peace.
“Can you file these open?” he heard Michael whisper to Fiona.
“Yes, if I had a file,” she hissed back. A soft clink sounded as she raised her shoulders. “The chair!”
Sam could feel what she’d discovered; a little metallic notch an inch upward from his cuffs. They might spend an hour filing through them….or they could turn the bolts open, using that jutting piece of metal like the head of a Phillips screwdriver.
“So what if we manage to wiggle loose. How’re we gonna get out of here?” Jesse hissed.
“The only way we know how,” Michael replied. “Full force.”
“Well, boys, I’m glad I came prepared….” Fiona said coolly. “Would one of you be a dear and toss this piece of C4 I’ve got in my braid at the door?”
“You keep C4 hidden in your hair?” Jesse gawked.
Fiona smirked. “It’s filled with secrets.” Then she smiled at Michael.
“Where did you hide the ignition switch?” Sam wondered.
Michael tapped the face of his innocuous-looking watch, and Sam barely bit back a cackle. He grabbed the bit of plastic explosive out of Fiona’s hair with the deftness of an experienced hairdresser. “Count of three?”
They counted it down.
Soon enough, the door was history.
**
“Okay,” Sam said, spraying the line of green-eyed zombies with a series of bullets that set them into a bawling, clawing frenzy. “So it’s not a domestic call.”
“IF you knew about this,” Fiona snarled, stomping the rotting, bony head of the nearest corpse in, “YOU’RE going to require a domestic call.”
“Sister, I didn’t even believe zombies existed until we got here,” He heard Michael curse as he cut the head off of an ancient pirate - it crumpled against his blade, spewing white puss down his shirt.
Jesse was right behind him. “We need to kill the captain,” he said, beating another of the zombies over the head with a spine of his desiccated compatriot. Sam and Fiona stared at him in incredulous disbelief, and he quickly said, “you guys don’t watch zombie movies? Kill the head, the body dies. ”
“I’d need fewer braincells,” Sam replied. “You think it’s worth a shot?”
“We have enough bullets,” Michael points out. “It couldn’t do us any more harm.”
Sam shrugged, picking up a couple of discarded guns. The zombies were melting and drooling all around him, and he tried not to think of what the goo was doing to his new Italian shoes.
***
It didn’t take them long to find the captain, hiding in a luxurious stateroom. They kicked down the door to find him drinking brandy at the head of the desk. He seemed to be expecting them, and rose from his seat.
Michael grabbed his unresisting shoulder and threw him over that chair, then cocked his gun and rested the muzzle against The Captain’s temple. “I believe you owe my friends a few million marks in silver.”
He smiled broadly. “And so the prodigal prisoners escape,” he said, applauding the four of them sarcastically, palm to thigh. “I’m surprised you had enough bullets.”
“We know how to make do,” Sam growled. He wasn’t particularly proud of that fact, but in a warzone you did what you needed to survive.
The Captain seemed to be thinking on his feet. Quickly, he knocked Michael away and seized Fiona and yanked her close to his body. “All I need to do is bite your girlfriend once,” he grinned, breathing against Fiona’s neck, displaying two bright-green fangs as he snarled, “and she’ll become my slave for eternity.” Fiona didn’t betray an ounce of fear as he ran his finger down her throat. “We haven’t had a woman on this vessel for a century. Most become meals for my men, but this one…she has spirit. She’d be a perfect concubine…”
As every man seemed to do when around the feisty redhead, he didn’t count on Fiona’s resourcefulness. In a moment she had his arm twisted behind his back and her knee in his kidney. “Shoot him!”
“FI!” Michael’s croak was heartrending. Sam knew what might happen, that if the angle was off she would lose her life. He was too far out of reach, trying to give Jesse backup as they cut through another swath of zombies.
“Shoot him!” she screamed.
Michael buried a single bullet in the captain’s skull.
The backwash of blood threw them backwards, through the doorway and onto the deck.
***
Sam lay gasping on the desk, his mouth and nose flooded with the raw taste of old blood. He managed to tuck his head into the crook of his mouth to wipe it before surfacing.
The foredeck was in chaos; bodies melted into a mass of slime, smoking craters on the deck. She was taking on water, would probably sink soon. They needed to get off, now.
Sam staggered to his feet, glanced around, and shouted for his friends. It was Michael who came up the stairs first, followed immediately by Jesse and a trail of grey smoke.
“Where’s Fiona?” Michael asked, his eyes close to manic. Then a furious shout from the waters nearby drew their attention; there was Fi, swimming for her life with all the elegance of a drowning swan. All three men teamed up to lower a rope and she scrambled up, wiping the slime from her eyes.
Sam waited for her to make a sarcastic comment. But Fiona was staring lover his shoulder; Sam followed her gaze and soon mirror her expression, gaping at the assortment of ships which bobbed in the water. Some were as fresh as the Haunted Star had been, others simple flotillas from ages long gone by.
Michael and Jesse locked eyes with the two of them. A maniacal glint lit Fiona’s expression. “Well, they’ve called the cavalry,” she said. “But we’ve been through worse.”
“Two hundred of them and four of us. Looks like the odds are about even,” Jesse replied.
“Ready for a hell of a time, Mikey?” Sam looked excited, aware that with their skills and the supplies they had they could cut through these undead SOBs in a matter of hours.
“I’m on it,” Michael declared, staring down the future, the way home, with steel in his gaze.
THE END