Geert felt like he was swimming in a pit of tar. His thoughts felt sluggish and his limbs refused to respond the way they were supposed to. He tried to take a breath, but air refused to enter his lungs regardless of how hard he tried.

He suddenly woke up in his bed back home with a gasp. He looked around and was surprised to find himself in his bedroom back home in Vlissingen. He brought up a hand – a human hand – up to his face and felt around. No beak, no feathers, all normal. He allowed himself a smile and stood up.

In the end that crazy story was just a bad dream. No apocalypse, no Russian dragon or wooden dogs or unicorns… Just life as usual.

He stood up and put on a bath robe, smelling the scent of fresh eggs coming from the kitchen. His girlfriend was making breakfast for them. He crept up behind her and gave her a surprise hug, which the blonde accepted with a cute laugh. They kissed.

“Why hello there, how is it going sailor?” She greeted him.

“Couldn’t be better with you here love, oh how I missed you.” He answered, beaming.

“By the way, Jos said he was coming by noon.” She said.

“Uh? Who is Jos?” He asked, puzzled.

“Your boyfriend of course. How could you forget? You wouldn’t stop talking about him whenever you called.”

Geert gaped at her as if she had sprouted a second head and backed away slowly. Time seemed to stop as his vision shattered like broken glass before he had time to ask her anything.

And then he was back in his room, sitting on his bed. A featureless male silhouette entered the room and Geert smiled brightly at him before he crept backwards and beckoned him forward with an inviting gesture… But he hadn’t willed his body to move.

Before he had time to react or assess the situation, the silhouette was all over him. His body refused to react to the orders he was giving it. The atmosphere felt dark and oppressing but his body wouldn’t stop smiling. He tried to push the silhouette away but to no avail, his body instead pressed itself against it in a lover’s embrace.

He then felt something insert itself between his legs and a searing pain flashed through his nether regions. He managed to wrench his gaze free and take a look between his thighs.

He was getting fucked alright. Gone was his male genitalia, now replaced by a wet slit currently being penetrated by the same apparatus Geert used to wield a mere days before. He tried again to free himself from the silhouette’s embrace, but it just kept pounding him senseless.

An arm flashed in the corner of his vision and his focus was brought back to the silhouette’s face. He gave Geert a forceful kiss which his out-of-control body accepted with reckless abandon. He smiled at the captive Dutchman before uttering a few words.

“Polly wants a cracker?”

And in an instant, gone were the silhouette and the bedroom, now replaced by the steel bars of a cage.

Geert looked around in surprise, he was back in the kitchen but it was… different. He was trapped in a small cage in a corner of the room, which felt a lot bigger than before. He looked at himself and discovered red feathers instead of his tanned skin.

“Polly wants a cracker?” The question repeated itself in a different voice, and Geert’s head whipped around to stare at his girlfriend, now enlarged to a gigantic size.

He brought up a hand in alarm and let out a cry of surprise, only the hand was a multicolored wing and the cry was more of a squawk.

He was a fucking parrot now, and his girlfriend was trying to feed him a cracker.

The sheer surprise made Geert fall backward from his perch in the cage and down he went, his attention turning to the white of the ceiling. All around, everything blurred as he fell and fell for what felt like hours, leaving only him, the white of the ceiling, and the pull of gravity on his back.

Geert opened his eyes. A white ceiling greeted his vision, accompanied by a continuous beeping off to his side. His head throbbed, his body ached, and his limbs felt like they were being chewed by legions upon legions of red ants.

And the large beak in the middle of his vision told him more than a thousand words ever could. He still was a parrot.

“Godverdomme…” He swore tiredly before turning his head to the side.

He was lying under a white sheet on a gurney inside the infirmary. The beeping off to his side was coming from the heart monitor currently keeping an eye on the other patient in the room, a sky blue unicorn hooked to more tubing than Geert cared to count.

Not that he wasn’t plugged in too, he realized with distaste. Someone had stuck an IV in his arm, a monitor around the other and… Oh God no.

He had a catheter shoved between his legs, and judging by the yellow color of the tubing… He gagged.

He also had a sling holding his arm tightly in place as well as a splint around his leg. Uh, that hound may not have managed to draw blood but he sure had done a number on him, he mused. He distractedly scratched one of his ears with a talon, noting in passing that he also had a bandage around his head, that one holding a cool pad against a nasty goose egg on his forehead.

Also, he was only wearing a hospital gown… Not that it was particularly surprising, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.

On the bright side, someone had left a bottle of water on a table beside him. Geert was all too glad to down it and rectify the unpleasant feeling of his parched throat. He didn’t have a clue as to how long he had been down, but from the feeling in his throat that wasn’t just a couple hours. A glance at the clock in the room told him it was eight in the evening, but what day?

Geert tried to move to the side of his gurney so that he could extend his uninjured arm and reach the room’s intercom set but he had to retract it when a lance of pain coursed through his side and made him grit his beak in pain.

Looks like he was stuck there waiting ‘til someone dropped by. He dropped back in his bed and exhaled loudly in annoyance, the sound of the air passing through his beak making a soft whistle.

It took half an hour before a certain grey griffon came in to inspect his patients. Geert leveled a critical eye in Vadim’s direction.

“Took you long enough.” He rasped.

Vadim startled and looked at him in surprise.

“Oh hi there… How long have you been awake?”

“Half an hour. How long was I out?”

“About… thirty six hours I think.” He answered after looking at the clock. “How do you feel?”

“Groggy, sore, and I could seriously use a refill of water.” Geert said, holding up his empty bottle.

“Yeah I’d expect you to be… You took one hell of a hit from that hound.”

“You tell me, ‘doc’, what do I have? And was the catheter really necessary?”

Vadim refilled his bottle from the tap before giving it back.

“Considering you filled two bags, I’d say it is. Seriously, you ain’t the kind of guy I’d ever consider as having any risk of dehydration. And it’s not like I put it there because I get off on shoving tubing up people’s genitals thank you very much.” He paused to look at the monitor by the unicorn’s bed. “That being said you both had me looking up procedures for that. Do you know how hard it is to translate procedures meant for humans to… let’s call it aliens. Do you?”

“Can’t really tell.”

“It’s fucking hard.” Vadim growled out. “And I hate being stuck as the medical guy in the first place. Seriously, why do Maritime Academies keep letting people skip the medical courses? I mean, really?”

“You’re rambling.” Geert pointed out.

“Eh come on, I got a lot on my mind.” Vadim said, sitting on his haunches by Geert’s bed. “You know, there are some interesting things about your new anatomy. You’d think it would be avian down there and you do have the cloaca, except it seems to be only connected to the reproductive system. It’s kind of a mix of mammalian and avian features.”

Geert gave his superior a weird look, but the griffon kept going without paying attention.

“It’s fascinating to be honest. I bet you’re now an egg laying species, but the digestive system looks mammalian, which was convenient for the catheter and explains why you can urinate at all, birds don’t do that. I guess you could say you’re kind of a reverse platypus.”

The parrot’s answer was just a stare.

“Eh sorry.” The griffon sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “You just woke up and I’m throwing all that stuff at you.”

“Maybe you could begin again from the start and tell me what I have.”

“Yeah, sure. Pretty simple, Rahul brought you in with a concussion, a dislocated hip and shoulder and some bruised ribs. I set those back in place, but you should avoid straining them for… a day or two… I think.”

“You think?”

“I’m not a doctor pal.” Vadim raised his claws in defense. “All I got as a basis is my old folio from medical courses and all. It’s kinda vague. That being said, I did learn something about you when I reset your hip.”

“And what would that be?”

“Did you know you can bend your legs both ways? As in, backwards and forwards? I’ve seen you parrots walk, human style, so I don’t know if you figured it out yet.”

Geert raised his eyebrows.

“I did not. Never came to my mind to try and bend my knee the opposite way, thought that was common sense. Thanks I guess.”

“Eh it’s nothing.” Vadim shrugged.

There were a couple seconds of awkward silence where Vadim looked at Geert in expectation, his orange nomex clad tail swishing back and forth behind him.

“Alright, what did I miss?” Geert asked.

“A lot that’s what you missed.” Vadim said with a grin. “When you guys got rid of those ‘wood hounds’ or whatever they’re called, you opened the way for some serious supply gathering. We got our fuel, so all tanks are full. Gives us something like three months of autonomy. Then there are all the military trucks we’ve added to the vehicle fleet; the guns but that you already know.” He stopped and gave a gentle tap of the talon on the side of his beak. “Artyom recruited Sri and Nikola to give us weapon training with those by the way. Training is still being planned but should begin in a day or two.”

“So we’re armed now?”

“Hell yeah we are, and pretty heavily thanks to you. The Captain has been partial about handing them out however. Gotta be sure we don’t accidentally shoot someone you know? After the trucks and guns, we’ve also loaded a couple containers worth of food, parts and the works. Electronics too, the whole nine yard of TV’s, processors and computer components. Carlos has been working all day on improving the server grid and all; we even got some radio equipment for each truck… and a fuckton of satellite phones.”

“A fuckton?”

“An entire twenty foot container. Loaded with regular sat phones and some weird kind of modified smartphones equipped with a satellite antenna. Damn useful those things, ‘cause the wireless phone connection went down yesterday.”

“It went down? As in, completely?”

“Yeah, antennas stopped working around midnight. Not really practical when you pair that with the ever decreasing number of working servers on the internet. But now we got the stuff to compensate. Who needs antennas when you got satellites, eh?”

“And the charts? Did we get them from the internet?”

“Only the ground charts. Navigation charts…” Vadim stopped to give him a bright smile, which was a bit unsettling coming from someone with the face of a falcon. “We just robbed the Admiralty building for all its intel.”

“All of it?”

“Even the chart printer. Now we can literally go anywhere in the world and have the charts for it. Neat right?”

“Damn right. Is that all?”

“Not even close.” Vadim said. “Still got two things to say. One is: we’re working in the lower holds to install a workshop and vehicle repair bay. Had to go and get some new ventilation units from a warehouse to make sure we don’t suffocate if we ever want to use it but it’s shaping up rather nice. We also installed some fuel tanks just for vehicle fuel so we don’t mix up our varieties of diesel.”

“All in the course of one day?” Geert asked incredulously.

“I didn’t say it was finished, I said it was shaping up. It might take weeks to finish that. Still, the second thing is the Captain’s new standing order. He calls it the ‘It’s all there in the manual procedure’.”

“Care to elaborate on that?” Geert asked.

“Basically, because we’re gonna be out of our area of expertise most of the time, we can take supplies and all, but for every item we take, we gotta make sure we grab both spare parts and all the manuals for them.”

“Eh I get it. He thinks that if we’re gonna be stuck like that we have to make everything last, right?”

“That and we can’t really afford to fuck up when using foreign machinery. Not when the ‘doctor’ can’t fix much more than basic wounds.”

They kept talking for a while before Vadim was forced to excuse himself and leave, having duties to attend to. To Geert’s request, he gave him some painkillers by plugging a fresh bottle in his IV and moved his bed closer to the intercom phone. Vadim promised the parrot he would come back later to remove the catheter when he was done before hurrying away.

The Dutchman glanced at the still unconscious unicorn in the room. Recovery was going to be boring as hell…

Vadim went down several stairways before reaching the level of the stern ramp. He left the stairway to be met with a ramp that was bustling with activity.

Two of their trucks were backing in, each carrying a load of equipment including steel plates and their new ventilator fans. Micha was guiding them deeper inside to the position they had chosen to set up their planned workshop as well as the vehicle repair bay.

The Third Officer found himself zigzagging between a handful of shipmates bringing tools to the construction site before he found his target: Alejandro, the Chief Officer. The parrot was currently busy talking with their Chief Engineer, Schmitt, both of them looking at a laptop set up on a desk on a side of the car deck. They acknowledged his presence with a nod before returning to their discussion.

“So…” Schmitt continued “As I said, we need to raise the tweendeck fifty centimeters to fit enough extractor fans for the workshop. If we raise it more than that we lose the possibility to use it for container and car storage. Trucks are already a lost cause for that part, but the main decks leave us with enough capacity to house at least two hundred TEU’s or cars on that deck alone.”

“Yeah, agreed on that point. We lose the ability to adjust the height on the tweendeck though. Not really a problem as long as we can roll in the containers on MAFI’s. Do we have enough room to let their tractors pass?”

Schmitt squinted at the laptop before nodding.

“Yes, only 20 centimeters to spare, but they will pass. You think we can pierce the deck to pass the ventilation conduits from the workshop?”

“Only if you add a watertight seal around the hole. Mark it down, use a weld to attach the conduit, and then mold a rubber seal around the hole to block out water egress.”

“That’s all I see on the plan for now. When do you want the refueling station to be completed? The one for the trucks I mean.”

“Stick to securing the diesel tanks on the bottom deck. We will see if we can pass some fuel lines through when the workshop is done. In the meantime, it can wait.” Alejandro reviewed the plan on the laptop. “That’s done faster than I’d have wished but safety wise it seems to pass inspections.”

Schmitt clasped his shoulder and gave him a tired smile.

“Don’t worry about it too much, you told me you had some dry-dock experience, refitting ships and all, you’ve done that before. Plus we I looked it through on the computer, structural integrity and stability are sound. Hell, we even gain something like twenty-five centimeters on the metacentric height.”

“I know. But this time it’s my own ship I’m modifying, not just a client passing through.”

“Doesn’t change much, and we reviewed the safety procedures three times already. Materials are in place, you just got to give the green light.”

Alejandro gave the laptop one last look before nodding and turning to his colleague.

“You’re right. Can’t improve much on it anyway. Take the laptop and print the schematics. I don’t want to start the works today, so delay the beginning until tomorrow morning.”

Schmitt gave Alejandro the thumbs up and then left with the computer. The Chief Officer turned to Vadim who had been observing the conversation.

“How was it in the infirmary?”

“Geert’s awake, the other guy, not so much.”

“Still an improvement. How long do you think he will need before getting back to work?” Alejandro asked.

“Not too sure about that. I told him he’d have to stay off of his leg for about two days.” He said hesitantly.

“A bit long considering he basically is our interpreter in the area…”

“Can’t do anything to help with that. Regardless, you wanted to talk to me?”

“Uh uh, you’re on watch now, right?”

“Yes, doing my rounds around the ship and keeping an eye out from the bridge from time to time.” He answered. “Why the question?”

“I’m trying to work out some planning. Regardless, since you kept saying you wanted to go out and take part in the salvaging, I got you an ‘expedition’ for tomorrow.”

The griffon sat on his haunches and crossed his forelimbs. With a nod he told the Chief Officer to go on.

“The Captain has been quite hesitant about letting you leave, but I managed to convince him to make an exception.”

“Really?” Vadim said with raised eyebrows.

“Yes, really. I got a more extensive list of the tasks for your expedition, but basically I want you to take a three man team to retrieve medical supplies from the clinic on the navy base. Rahul got it marked down on a map when he explored the area so you can’t miss it.”

“Only the clinic?”

“That’s the first destination I added so I could justify sending you. Do you know the company Dräger?”

“They make gas masks and breathing equipment, correct?” Vadim hesitated.

“Among other things, but yes. They have a warehouse close to the inner harbor, and it’s in the vicinity of another depot belonging to an industrial clothing manufacturer. You catch my drift?”

“Yep, first the medical supplies, then the breathing apparatus and finally work clothing.”

“I added some specifications to your list, so if you can find the thing Dräger uses to customize gas masks and all that would be great. I don’t know if it’s a mold or a 3D printer, but just take it. Try to get a lot of gas detectors too.”

“Will do.” The griffon smiled; finally he was getting out of the ship. “That all you had to tell?”

“Yep. You got a lot to do yourself?”

“Nah, just got to get the catheter off of De Vries then it’s back to watchkeeping. Goodnight.” He said, walking off.

Around them, the stream of vehicles unloading wares for the upcoming workshop was winding down. Not that it mattered to Vadim, who was all too glad to finally get to go ashore.

The following morning saw Vadim sipping coffee from a thermos by the stern ramp. Alejandro was at his side and giving him a last minute briefing on his mission for the day, with the Third Officer quietly reviewing the map onto which he had marked his destinations.

“If you don’t mind me asking amigo, who’s coming along for your little expedition?” Alejandro asked after he finished his briefing.

“When the Captain heard of the details he told me to take Artyom along. Third guy in our group is Boris.”

“Two Russians uh? You must be the only Ukrainian I know that doesn’t have a problem with them.”

“Don’t be mistaken, I am pissed off about Crimea.” Vadim remarked. “It’s the Captain that gathered us all in a room once and told us if we caused any problem about it he would blast us with a fire hose. All of us at once, that is.”

“And?”

“Eh, once you get past the politics they can be pretty cool guys.” He gave the Chief Officer a pointed look. “You just have to remember never to mention Sebastopol.”

“Uh, I will try to remember that.” Alejandro said before finishing his coffee.

Minutes later, both Boris and Artyom arrived loaded with guns and flak jackets. It looked like the ballistic protection made for a good utility rig if you loosened it enough to account for the wings on their back, though he doubted it would be comfortable.

Boris passed Vadim one of the older rifles as well as a fully loaded jacket which was already equipped with a pistol holster. He noted that Artyom was carrying one of the SCAR’s instead, as well as one of the newer pistol models.

“Here you go Officer, the jacket is already fitted. You got three mags for your rifle, one of the less lethal pistols with two mags; some stun grenades and a bayonet. That good for you?”

“It should be, are the radios already in the truck?” Vadim asked as he put on the jacket.

“Loaded them this morning, three walkie-talkies, one long range radio for the truck, and our sat phones. The phones already have a GPS and we can load them with the truck’s battery.”

Just as he said that, Artyom rolled by them in a Unimog and waved for them to get on board. Vadim wished Alejandro a good day and just like that they were off.

Vadim almost racked the slide on his rifle before being stopped by Artyom who told him to avoid chambering a bullet when they were in a vehicle. He told him they were still hammering down the finer details for weapon procedures, but that they had already decided to forbid having chambered weapons when on board of the ship or in vehicles.

The salvaging effort of the crew in the vicinity of Amandine was easy to notice. Most of the trailers in the yard had been left open to the elements, and some gaps indicated the former place of those they had selected for loading. Vadim was ready to bet that if he were to check out the container terminal, most of them would have already been pried open.

They passed a couple heavy duty forklifts by the entrance. Some shipmates had left them here since it was more practical to carry a container on them for the three kilometer distance between the ship and the terminal rather than wasting time loading containers on a trailer.

Zeebrugge was looking a bit dilapidated after the passage of the crew, but they had done their best to avoid causing undue damage to the houses. Rahul and Nguyen had raided some restaurants in the area the day before to ‘improve’ the kitchen’s equipment, and some of their shipmates had done their groceries in the shops around the marina, but most houses had been left intact.

What’s the point of raiding a house to get electronics when you can get them brand new from the harbor after all? The same went for clothing, to a lesser extent because most on the crew didn’t want to bother refurbishing human clothing to fit them. Coveralls were enough work as is.

Didn’t stop them from refilling their snack and liquor supply in town; Vadim had long stopped counting the amount of Belgian Beer loaded on board. Plus they had brought him his share and then some.

Funnily enough the worst problem they had had after the wood hound incident was only guard dogs (no they didn’t shoot them). Either the trio they killed was the whole pack or the surviving members had fled the area.

They stopped at the guard post of the navy base to retrieve the keys to the buildings. The Captain had told the crew to leave them there in case other ‘survivors’ passed by later and wanted to get supplies. They didn’t need all the equipment the base could provide.

Artyom steered the truck at a slow pace towards a white painted building with large windows. Vadim eyed it critically, already locating the emergency wing and taking note of an odd port set in the wall next to it. It reminded him of a submarine hatch.

They parked the truck next to an old olive green ambulance that had seen better days.

“Much as I respect these guys for preferring rugged equipment to modern tech, some of their cars have to be older than the fall of the Soviet Union.” Artyom commented as he eyed the ambulance with distaste.

“Not gonna lie, that doesn’t make me very confident about the content of the building.” Vadim said.

He retrieved his rifle from the truck’s cabin and slung it across his back before walking over to the doors and trying out several sets of keys. Behind him, his companions took position to keep an eye on the area.

“Say Boris…” Vadim began while testing keys. “Have you figured out a way to shoot reliably yet? I mean, I don’t know how to go about it when I already need four limbs to walk around.”

“Pistol when moving I think.” He answered. “Otherwise I can’t picture a way to shoot on the move. With a handgun you only need one hand, err claw I mean. Otherwise you can just shoot from a prone position, it’s more accurate anyway.”

“Uh huh.” Vadim acknowledged. “I’d think you could shoot from a sitting position, but I’m not sure about the recoil.”

“What if you brace yourself with your tail?” Boris asked, looking back.

“’cause you got that amount of control on your tail? Mine’s just swaying back and forth without input.”

“I don’t, but I can at least direct it in the direction I wish to. Probably I can figure it out eventually…”

“Good luck with that.” Vadim said sarcastically. “Anyway, it’s open.”

The lobby that greeted them was rather… spartan to put it mildly. The base commander mustn’t have dedicated much in the way of funding to decorating the clinic considering how it was shaping up to be.

If the desk in the entrance showed signs of modern tech and a desire for efficiency, the walls spoke another language, featuring a beige paint that must have been there since the building’s construction, and that had to be a long time.

“Wow, someone really hates interior decoration.” Boris joked. “Watcha want us to do uh, Officer?”

“For now? Let’s just locate their supply storage and have a look around.”

Unfortunately for Vadim, the offices didn’t hold any document he could use because they were all written in Dutch and he doubted Geert would have the medical know-how to translate them.

He did find a British medical encyclopedia though. Someone serving there must have studied in Britain before the cataclysm, not that it mattered to him: he just loaded the five tome publication on a cart before continuing his exploration of the building.

Boris came back to him saying he had found the blood bag storage, so he dragged his cart in the direction of the wing indicated by his subordinate. The other griffon led him to a large room separated from another by a thick glass window.

Eh, now they had found where the entire budget went: a hyperbaric treatment wing. That would make sense if that navy wanted to take care of their divers, he guessed.

Vadim took a look at the refrigerator housing the bags Boris had pointed out. How could he make sure it would be compatible with them? Unlikely to be possible, but worth trying. He started to look through shelves around the room before finding his goal: a blood group test kit. He took two.

“Boris, friend, do you like science?” He asked, opening the kit.

The goshawk griffon by his side stared at him wide eyed. The nature of the question dawned on him and he backed off quickly.

“Come on, you can’t seriously believe our blood would be compatible with human blood?”

“We can’t be certain of either possibility, so it’s worth trying. Worst case scenario, I prick you for nothing. This won’t hurt much, I promise.”

“You’ve been making a lot of those promises recently.” The other griffon scowled. Nevertheless, he held up a forelimb to Vadim.

So both griffons underwent a blood type test, Vadim participating in a show of good faith to his colleague. Much to their surprise, they actually got a result from the test. A negative for both of them. That had Vadim scratching his beak in thought.

“And what do you make of that?” Boris asked him.”Beside the fact that I used to be B negative.”

“Nothing quite yet, and I was O positive. I will have to take some more testing equipment on board for that and try a couple things more, but this tells me enough to want to take those blood bags. What’s the expiration date anyway?”

Boris looked at the fridge.

“Five weeks approximately. I feel like we’re gonna toss them overboard either way.”

“Better have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Leave the fridge plugged for now, we will come back on the return trip to pick it up.”

From that room, Vadim settled for picking up a box of testing kits and transfusion equipment. After a short hesitation, he also added all the testing equipment he could find. He may not be a scientist, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying if it could help him keep his shipmates alive.

In the hyperbaric care center, they found an oxygen concentrator and a large supply of compressed bottles, which they were all too keen to add to the growing pile of equipment on the carts they were pushing.

The two griffons then brought their bounty back to the lobby; only to discover that Artyom had beat them both to the emergency wing. The dragon was smoking a cigarette by the truck, now loaded with several crates of medical supplies, and a safe of moderate size.

“What’s with the safe?” Boris asked.

“Found their controlled drug stash. Got the key for it too.” He said, dangling a set of keys from his claw for emphasis.

“Did you find a fridge filled with medication too?” Vadim said.

“That I did.” The dragon took a drag from his cigarette. “Didn’t load it. Figured you’d want to wait.”

“Correct.” Vadim glanced at the truck, it was already half full. “I think we will already make a trip back to the ship with all that so we can already bring the refrigerated stuff. Spares us from having to come back.”

“We’re only half full though…” Boris muttered.

“The infirmary has room for one more bed. Go grab a gurney, or better, an actual medical bed and some holders for the IV’s, I will get the blood. Artyom?”

“Got it” The dragon said, crushing his cigarette underfoot. “Get the fridge, be there in a minute.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were unloading the supplies at the ship. Vadim hurried to the infirmary to plug in the two fridges before leaving just as quickly as he had come. Geert did try to strike a conversation but there was no way the Ukrainian was getting tricked into staying on board. Just as soon as the last crate went from the truck to the deck, he had Artyom drive it off the ramp and towards to the inner harbor.

Later that evening, Geert was still bedridden in the infirmary. People had come to visit him that day, but it had been rather dull for him to stay stuck in bed like he was. Oh sure, there had been some activity in the morning when they brought in the new medical equipment, but even that was rather short lived. Most on the crew didn’t have any idea how to stow the medical gear besides making certain the fridges were plugged in so they left that work to Vadim who was invariably going to be pissed off about it. Geert could already picture the griffon ranting.

Thankfully, Alejandro had stopped by early in the afternoon to give him a laptop so that he could keep himself busy. The rest of his time had thus been spent looking around on the internet for working servers and retrieve as much data as possible.

Needless to say, the last days had seen the satellite antennas of Amandine being strained to the very limit of their bandwidth, though the data flow was slowly winding down as more and more servers shut down from neglect. It had been almost a week since the cataclysm occurred, and they still had to find traces of activity beyond an injured guard on the first day.

Geert looked to his side. An unconscious injured guard. Vadim had mentioned something about a change in his blood pressure this morning but Geert was too groggy at the time to understand what he actually meant. The unicorn remained hooked to an IV and under constant monitoring and oxygen supply.

Returning to his work on the laptop, he began downloading a dozen paid manuals from maritime websites using the ship’s account. They were slowly losing hope about the situation resolving itself shortly, so he might as well use the money while they still could. It wasn’t even a bad use of their credit since he could easily justify their use for, he checked… A guide to installing new and innovative firefighting solutions. Yeah, that he could justify.

The manuals soon joined the growing collection hosted on the ship’s server banks. They had long passed the 10 terabyte mark from the constant downloading, a fact that Roberto, the ship’s secretary, didn’t miss announcing loudly in the cafeteria according to the rumors he got from outside the infirmary.

The parrot turned his head when he heard a groan to his side. He looked at the unicorn in wonder, could he be waking up already?

The blue unicorn, currently lying on his back, let out a small cough before his eyes fluttered open. He let out a small groan and closed his eyes immediately because of the bright light in the room. He reached for his face with a hoof but stopped upon seeing the appendage.

Looks like someone hasn’t had the time to get acquainted with their new form just yet, Geert thought. The unicorn let out an annoyed snort before turning his attention to the rest of the room.

“So you’re awake?” Geert asked. A rhetorical question of course, but he wanted to catch his attention.

The unicorn’s turned in his direction, eyes wide.

“You’ve been unconscious for a while, how are you feeling?” Geert asked.

That only earned him a confused look. Great, he probably didn’t speak English. Time to try Dutch then.

“Do you speak Dutch?” He tried again, this time getting a nod as an answer. “Can you talk?”

The unicorn shook his head and pointed a hoof at his throat before letting out a raspy breath. Should he make a joke about the guy sounding hoarse? Nah, he didn’t understand English anyway. With some effort, Geert grabbed a crutch by his bed and hoisted himself on his uninjured leg. He hid a wince and made his way to the sink. The unicorn male probably needed some water. All this motion also made him very self-conscious about only being clad in a hospital gown.

Geert tried to help the guard drink a cup of water, since it mustn’t have been very practical with hooves for hands, but he insisted on drinking it by himself. To his credit, he managed to balance the cup between two hooves and get some liquid down his throat without spilling too much water on his own fur.

The parrot sat down on his bed. Standing up had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit. The bedridden unicorn was now reduced to staring at the empty plastic cup he was balancing on two hooves.

“Are you feeling alright?” Geert tried again.

He was feeling that the guard was trying to ignore him, but by the way the large ears on top of his head twitched, he had clearly heard him.

“We found you unconscious three days ago.” Damn, correct as it might have been, it still didn’t feel like it had been that long. “We brought you to our ship and one of our officers did his best to patch you up.”

The unicorn finally deigned to respond to Geert’s attempts at a conversation.

“You, human?” He rasped.

“Yes, about one week ago we were anchored near the sandbanks. We don’t know what caused this yet, but it sent us a couple hours forward in time and turned us into... I would say mythological creatures but there’s so much variety to it it’s frankly ridiculous.” Geert guessed that he meant to ask if he used to be human.

“Variety?” The unicorn asked.

“Kind of, we have griffons, dragons, a minotaur and then some. I don’t even know if there’s an actual name for what I turned into. You’re the first unicorn we find. The first person beside our own crew for that matter. Zeebrugge was completely deserted when we entered the port.”

The unicorn gazed back at his lap for a moment, seemingly deep in thought before pointing to his cup and asking for a refill. Geert hoped he wouldn’t ask too many of those because he was beginning to believe Vadim’s assumption that he would need a few days to recover fully.

“My dog?” The guard asked when Geert handed him his refilled cup.

“He didn’t make it. Too much blood loss.” Geert shook his head. “If it makes you feel better we killed the… things that killed him and injured you, which is how I got hurt by the way. Our cook buried him next to the boatlift.”

“I’ve been working with Samson at my side for the past five years…” The unicorn muttered somberly after finishing his cup. He shook his head. “I’m sorry; when I woke up like this…” He waved a hoof at himself for emphasis. “I first thought it was just a dream but…”

“It’s fine I understand. We still have problems coping with the situation on this ship. Most of us don’t want to admit it and try to get on with our work, but you can see it in their eyes.” Geert comforted him. “Just checking in case we read your dog tags wrong, but you are Bart De Mesmaeker, correct?”

“Correct.” He nodded. “I’m sorry but I didn’t catch your name…” He said.

“Geert De Vries, fourth officer on this ship, the Amandine.” The parrot presented himself, offering his uninjured arm for the unicorn to shake.

Bart hesitated for a brief second before extending a foreleg. Geert just improvised and shook the offered hoof firmly.

“Fourth officer? So you’re not military?”

“No, the Amandine is a merchant vessel, roll-on/roll-off to be exact. I know we weren’t supposed to break in the base but…”

“It’s fine.” Bart interrupted him. “I know I should be mad about that… But I can’t really complain since I would have died otherwise. We’re still in Zeebrugge right?”

“Yes, we’ve been spending the last few days gathering supplies and modifying the ship. I don’t think you will be too happy about it but we took some guns and ammo from the base.”

“Do you guys even have any use for them?”

“Well, we did use them to kill the wood hounds that injured you. Your own pistol took down one.”

Bart let himself fall down against his bed, a scowl on his face.

“How certain are you that everyone is gone?” He asked.

“Pretty certain. Short range we keep looking and only found you. Long range we keep trying to listen on all waves for radio chatter or activity on the web but… Nothing; and internet servers are going down as we speak.”

“Ain’t that fucking fantastic.” Bart muttered. “It’s the apocalypse and I’m already injured and turned into a pastel unicorn… As if the situation wasn’t bad enough in the first place.”

“Wanna talk about it?” Geert asked.

“What, want to hear a sob story?” Bart almost snarled, which would have been rather comical given his current form. “Well here you go: daughter gets killed by a drunkard in a car when going to school, wife divorces me because I’m supposedly responsible even though I was on the other side of the country, then I get demoted to fucking corporal after twenty five years of service and shoved aside to some god-forsaken base nobody gives two shits about because I happened to get caught drunk after my daughter’s burial. AND THEN THIS?!” He yelled the last part. “I mean, for fuck sake, I’ve been to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, and it wasn’t half as bad as that shit. Karma my ass.”

“Damn, and here I thought my situation was bad.”

“Oh really? And how can you even call it bad? You just turned into something that’s still relatively close to human.”

“Lost my dick in the process tho’” Geert said.

“What, you mean you’re not a girl?” Bart asked, getting a nod from Geert.“Yeah I don’t envy you.”

“You bet…” Geert snorted. “On a more serious note, can you speak English? ‘cause that’s kind of the lingua franca on board.”

Bart shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Never bothered to learn a foreign language. I know bits and pieces of French, a word or two in English but that’s about it.”

“That’s not going to make this easy… at all.” Geert sighed.

“Sorry about that.” Bart shrugged. “I’ve managed to live most of my life without having to learn any foreign language. It never really was necessary.”

“Still, in all likelihood the Captain will want to talk to you. He’s been gathering all the info he can on the cataclysm recently, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t want to hear your own tale.”

“Can you tell me about him?”

“Sure, got plenty of time on my hands anyway. Here’s how it goes…”

And then Geert launched himself into a lengthy explanation on Captain Prateek and the workings of M/V Amandine.

Author's Notes:

This chapter (and the next one) will be a bit less entertaining with the lack in action, but I felt it was needed to set the scene for the next arc that's coming in two chapters. Large scale action and "big stuff" loses its meaning if you don't build up to it. At least that's the way I see it.