CHAPTER 21

Kent Island, Maryland
 
Senior Chief Petty Officer Samwell grew up in a family of trade workers. His grandfather was a plumber, his father was a carpenter, so to round out the family business, he became an electrician. To bypass the union’s abusive apprenticeship training, he joined the navy at the age of seventeen for journeyman training and licensing. Samwell had only intended on a four-year commitment, but he settled comfortably into the naval organization.

There was nothing exotic in the Samwell family history. Yearly trips to their rustic hunting cabin or enjoying lawn seats at local minor league baseball games was the extent of family vacationing. Samwell rarely left their small town growing up, let alone the state.  His home state that he proudly supported, with no knowledgeable comparison of outside the borders. So, when he experienced his first Western Pacific deployment he was awestruck. Visiting Hawaii, the Philippine islands, Thailand, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Australia, and Guam, he became the most well-traveled person at his family reunion.

As much as his grandfather and father wanted him home to help with the family business, they were proud of his accomplishments and duty to country. He entertained them with colorful stories of his electrical engineering school, and his day-to-day duties aboard various naval warships which carried a larger population than his home town. Samwell complained of the plumbing problems on board complexly designed vessels, and his Grandfather offered enthusiastic expert advice, as if repluming a battleship was a weekend job. His father who had built homes his entire life, was fascinated with multilevel airlock construction that prevents ships from flooding.

In his first four-year enlistment, Samwell had visited more countries than anyone in his town and he was loving an adventurous life enough to reenlist and making the Navy a career. Being a simple man, from a simple family and a simple town, he never had aspirations for more than what the Navy could provide. Satisfied with ship life, he never purchased a house off base, a fancy car, or bought himself exotic trinkets. The only time he made big purchases was when he’d send a surprise package to his family with specialty tools that he knew would make their jobs easier.

Senior Chief Samwell, like most middle-aged men, had begun to shown signs of aging. Grey hair speckled his thinning hairline. His khaki uniform fit snugger than the year before. And a pot belly had protruded over his belt. He had never been an egocentric person, but the Navy did have height-weight and fitness regulations. To counter his slowing metabolism, he begun a morning walking routine to start the day. When the USS Gerald R. Ford was docked in port somewhere warm, he preferred to walk laps around the aircraft carrier’s 1100-foot-long flight deck. If the weather wasn’t pleasant, he’d walk on a treadmill in the upper-level gym that was restricted for higher enlisted and officer ranks.

A few months prior, the Atlantic Fleet had been in the Mediterranean when news of World War 3 had hit. Emotions on ship ran wild. Saber rattling and rallying war cries vibrated throughout the steel framing. Chaplains held mass and counseled groups several times a day to ease the minds of sailors, worried for their families. Senior Chief Samwell’s life did not change all that much. He lived for the navy and had not really lost anything. Hardships of his mother and aunts entered his conscience, but he knew that the men in his family were more than capable to provide during challenging times.

The naval battle group spent every resource to recover as many US civilians and military personnel abroad as possible. When General Lyons finally recalled the entire fleet back to the continental United Sates in support of an American reconstruction mission, there was not a single complaint. Although, as nobody had official news of the state of the union, rumors ran rampant on what they were returning home to.

Senior Chief Samwell preferred when the ship ran smoothly day to day. He was a big fan of preventative maintenance and system testing. When electrical problems arose, he would anger easily and take it personally that his work had been neglected. He normally did not like problem solving complex solutions which would fluster him, but luckily, he had an entire team of skilled and experienced electrical engineers to lean on.

When he had been tasked to retrofit an entire island’s electrical grid, he wasn’t thrilled, but was honored for the chance to help American civilians for the first time in his career. Little did he know that his engineering team would be issued one of the largest houses on the island to berth in and work from. General Lyons knew how to take care of his people, that took care of him. Samwell took the general’s mission as a personal challenge to get the island powered as quickly as possible and his team was equally motivated.

It takes a catastrophe for most people to realize how good their lives had been. Humans, Americans especially, tend to take advancements in civilization for granted. Unless they travel to third-world poverty nations, they truly don’t appreciate the luxuries they have. Until it is gone. A simple event, like a prolonged power outage, completely ruined not only America, but the ripple effect was felt worldwide.

When Samwell’s team had successfully reinstated electrical power to a portion of the island, it also helped speed up the plumber and pipeworkers in the renovation of the water and sewage treatment facilities by allowing them to use basic power tools and machinery. Being the Senior Chief in charge of the successful electrical grid project, he had become an exceedingly popular man to his senior officers, and throughout the local community.

In appreciation, gift baskets were often left on the front porch of his team’s house. People thanked him at the market. Even special operations soldiers would gift them bottles of booze scavenged from the dreaded off-island dead lands. Ladies at the brothel gave him special treatment.

One lovely girl in particular took a special interest in him. Of course, Samwell knew she was a prostitute that showed all customers special attention as good service practice, but she was genuinely attracted to him. Although, his recent success had gained him many new powerful friends. Most women want to be associated with important and influential men, such as himself. Undoubtedly, her attraction to him was to help elevate her social position out of prostitution.

But Samwell did not mind, they both seemed to enjoy each other’s company. The increasing amount of time they spent together reminded him of a carefree time in his younger life, years ago when his ship would port in Thailand or the Philippines. Christine held his hand as they strolled through the neighborhood towards the bay water’s edge.

Her Asian beauty was enough to enslave him. She was tall for being from the Philippines, lighter skin tone, had thinner lips, and narrower eyebrows than what he’d remembered. Samwell had used to make fun of the Chief Petty Officer stereotype of older navy men marrying young overly energetic Filipina girls. And yet there he was falling into naval tradition. But the apocalypse was a lonely place since only three percent of the population remained. To add to the disparity, since Kent Island housed mostly military personnel, the male to female ratio was extremely unbalanced.

Christine wholeheartedly asked him about his day, and his special work assignments. She was amazed that a nuclear reactor had been built into a floating vessel and frightfully asked if the island could be in danger of radiation which made him laugh. He had to reassure her in detail, how the power generation and distribution was controlled safely. When he had a difficult day, she would even become defensive, asking who his superiors were, so that she could confront them.

Christine took the American name, to help assimilate into western culture. She had immigrated recently to study nursing, just before the Dark Day. Samwell asked her of her past often, but she would become dreadfully sad when speaking of her parents who were likely deceased or had transformed into horrible monsters. Conversations of her recent life would typically be redirected out of embarrassment of prostitution.

The two of them would go on walks after duty and talk until the sun sat on the horizon. Just being around her, elevated his dopamine levels, which made him feel good about himself. Everyone else on Samwell’s team was alone, but he had her comforting companionship. His ego inflated and he walked with confidence. At work he became more aggressive, willing to take risks and tackle bigger projects that he never would have before.

The western sky filled with orange and red hues, as the sun dipped below the horizon. He came to enjoy this time of day the most, but also sad that they would soon part ways. She surprised Samwell, by whispering in his ear that she did not want to be alone that night. He wrapped a protective arm around her to shield the crisp wind blowing off the bay as he guided her back to his shared living quarters.

As they approached the house, through a window Christine could see his entire electrical engineering team playing a board game on the dining room table. She motioned for him to take her through the back door to avoid awkward conversation that would obviously follow her introduction.
 
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Late in the night, moonlight filtered into the chilled bedroom. Christine gently rolled out from beneath multiple layers of warm blankets, careful not to wake Samwell from his heavy sleep. Quietly, she retrieved a large lavender scented candle from her small backpack and placed the parting gift on a bedside nightstand. With a flick of a lighter, the wick danced waves of soft candlelight over the bedroom walls.

Christine dressed quickly. She softly opened the bedroom door into the hallway, and on the balls of her feet she swiftly exited the slumbering home through the back door. Stepping on to the moonlit sidewalk, she noticed every house in the neighborhood was dark presenting a witness free getaway. With quick steps, she made her way towards the harbor.

At the marina she entered a large disabled and abandoned yacht, and donned a red LED headlamp that illuminated her way in an eerie red glow towards a cold and musty sleeping quarters. Hidden inside a closet, was a mounted locked safe that she opened using a key worn on a necklace tucked into her shirt. Inside the safe Christine found a manila folder marked “Operation Fang Bite.”

On a piece of stationary, embossed with a Ministry of State Security logo, she wrote in a Chinese cypher:

Mission Complete. Information Extracted. Target Executed.

Sealing the envelope with a tamper proof sticker that bore a single red star. Chinese, not Filipina you old racists pervert. Christine thought to herself in anger. She turned off her headlamp and made her way further down the marina dock to a seemingly well-maintained luxurious fishing boat loaded with fishing poles and nets. She climbed aboard unseen and slid the manilla envelope under the closed door to her local national clandestine currier.

Sitting on a wooden bedside nightstand, the large glowing cozy candle continued to flicker while it bathed snoring Senior Chief Samwell in peaceful dancing light. Once the candle wick melted a quarter way through the pleasantly lavender smelling wax, it sparked an internal cannon fuse that ignited a blasting cap compressed into a pound and half of PVV-5A plastic explosive and roofing nails packed tightly into the candle’s hollowed out bottom.

Christine, a honey trapping Chinese sexpionage spy, that Raymond had been surveilling at in the market, assassinated Senior Chief Petty Officer Samwell. The structural damage and fire caused by the boobytrapped candle was so severe, the house collapsed killing the entire electrical engineering team. With the deaths of the American naval engineers, she also successfully killed any forward progress in reestablishing an island wide electrical grid.