Mayflower

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Three years after the pandemic hit, Mike Slattery has accepted that his wife Christine and daughters are dead. Mike has moved on, marrying Maddie Rawlings and having a daughter together. Then he gets the surprise of his life when an isolated group of survivors is found, and their leader is someone very familiar.

Spin-off from Lonely Hearts Club.

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Michael Slattery looked up as Commander Kara Green flew through his office door without knocking. "Captain Slattery! I need you in Communications right now."

Given that Kara wasn't known to overreact — hell, the woman was so calm when her husband was MIA that half the staff at the White House assumed that the identical surnames were a coincidence — Mike immediately stood. "What's going on, Commander?"

"We found another Mayflower group," Kara explained, giving no further information for her obvious, to Mike at least, agitation before she turned and began walking swiftly down the hall, presumably expecting Mike to follow.

"Let me guess," Mike joked, "on Easter Island."

Mike deliberately paced himself as he followed Kara. Given that he was more than a foot taller, she had to take a step and a half to equal one of his and, while finding another group of survivors was always exciting, it certainly didn't require them to run down the corridor. The groups, dubbed Mayflowers in the few official documents that were later recovered, were mostly civilians loaded onto cruise ships during the height of the pandemic and sent to unpopulated islands in a last-ditch attempt to stop the spread of the virus. The idea had been to create self-sufficient colonies who could ride through the worst of the virus in isolation and, Mike assumed, repopulate the earth if necessary. While they hadn't found a Mayflower group recently, the fact that there were others out there wasn't entirely surprising. Since the idea of the program was to send people to uninhabited places, which were by their nature very remote, and then have the people there avoid any contact with those around them who could potentially be infected with the Red Flu, the groups often didn't hear about the cure until a Naval vessel broadcasting on an open channel happened to come close enough.

Besides, in addition to being short, Kara had to be exhausted from dealing with an infant and a two-year-old. Mike sympathized with the former. While Nora was now six months old and starting to sleep through the night, Maddie had recently transitioned to a 24-hour on, 48-hour off shift, meaning that Mike was running solo two overnights a week. He found himself needing more than the usual amount of coffee the day after, as well as the occasional discrete nap in his office. Still, he was smart enough to keep his complaints to himself. While Maddie was the one to propose the new schedule, Mike knew how much she hated being away from Nora for so long.

Although Maddie hadn't said anything, Mike was pretty sure that she would have left the Navy by now if they weren't so short-staffed. After all, she had never been a lifer and only rejoined after the pandemic to assist with cure distribution. Unfortunately, Mike didn't see anything changing in the near future. Given the military's severe shortage of helicopter pilots, the staggered schedule was the only way to keep an experienced pilot available at all times. As much as Maddie and Sunshine were working on getting a new batch of pilots trained, most of them simply couldn't handle anything outside a routine run. The few who did show some natural aptitude quickly got assigned to vessels.

And there was Jesse, who was in her own category altogether.

"Navassa Island," Kara corrected, "in the Caribbean. Forty miles west of Haiti."

That was mildly surprising. Most of the successful Mayflower colonies were in the Pacific, which made sense when you considered how many remote islands there were. Given the amount of naval traffic in the area of the Caribbean, Mike found himself surprised that this group had remained hidden for so long.

But Kara wasn't done. "Apparently a hurricane hit just before they arrived. It sank one of the cruise ships that they arrived on and destroyed much of their supplies, including their communications equipment. The other cruise ship left, supposedly to retrieve more supplies and survivors but never came back. Without communications, the group left behind weren't aware of the cure, apparently, which is why they didn't use a tender boat to sail over to Haiti until recently." She stopped abruptly, turning to Mike, scanning the corridor around them. "Anyway, none of that matters. What's important is that their leader is a woman named Christine Slattery."

Mike stared, feeling a slight ache, one that had become familiar over the years since he returned to the United States to find his wife and daughters missing. "She has the same name as my wife?"

"No Mike," Kara said softly. "She is your wife. Or, to be more accurate, your former wife."

The pounding in his ears was louder than the rush of the ocean and, for just a second, Mike wondered if someone had slipped him drugs. "It's my Christine?"

Kara nodded, her forehead wrinkled in concern. "Yes."

Mike blinked as the roaring in his ears began to dim. "Guess that divorce was a good idea. Bigamy is illegal."

"Captain..." Kara began.

"I'm fine," Mike interrupted. Then, ignoring Kara's frown, Mike walked unto communications, and came face-to-face with his wife's face filling a screen that took up most of one wall.

Ex-wife, damn it. He needed to remember that.

She looked surprisingly good given that the last few years could hardly have been easy. Christine's chestnut hair was peppered with gray, and Mike could easily pick out the lines on her face that she would have hidden with makeup in years prior. But she didn't look too skinny, like some groups that ran out of food, and wasn't obviously sick. Hell, she looked pretty much the same as she had three years ago on the day that he left with the Nathan James.

"Mike?"

It was only after Christine spoke that Mike noticed how silent the room had become.

"Christine," he replied. She smiled, the expression so familiar that Mike found himself smiling back automatically, despite the shock that still held him captive. "You're alive."

Such an idiotic thing to say, yet Christine didn't mock him. It was something he had always loved about her, how she understood what he meant, even when it wasn't what he actually said. "I am. And you are. I didn't dare believe it was true, even when they told me that you were now the CNO."

"The girls?" He managed, his mind refusing to make the leap from Christine surviving to their girls being alive.

"Fine, back on Navassa," Christine replied and, again, Mike wondered if this was real. Maybe he was actually asleep, having the most realistic dream of his life. Then Christine's smile disappeared and she went from his Christine to cruise director mode, the way she did when she needed his complete attention. "They're running out of food and medicine on the colony, Mike. That's why I took the risk of taking a tender to Haiti. We had no idea there was a cure for the virus until we arrived. We need help, Mike, and it can't wait. Whitney and Hannah can't wait."

His girls were alive.

The miracle he never believed possible had come true. Except, they were still in danger. The roaring in Mike's head returned at the thought of finding them, only to lose them now. Unable to summon a single coherent thought, Mike glanced at Kara. "What's the situation, Commander?"

"We can get you to Haiti in twenty-four hours, sir," Kara replied instantly, meaning that she had been working on this before she even told Mike. "The Ramage is in the area and can meet you and Mrs. Slattery, before making its way to Navassa."

Mike had no idea how Kara planned to manage that, but he didn't care. He returned his gaze to the screen. "I'll be there tomorrow, Christine."

He was leaving Communications, having gone over the general travel arrangements and what supplies could be quickly freed up with Kara, when she suddenly stopped him. "Will Lieutenant Rawlings need help with Nora while you're gone, Captain?"

Mike froze, mind spinning as reality broke through the shock holding him hostage. He was married to two women. Not really, of course, but Christine didn't know about the divorce and Maddie thought that Christine was dead.

"I'll let you know," he managed, and then escaped into the hall with the intent of finding Maddie.

Even if he didn't have a clue what to say.