by Alex Scarrow
It could have been all the noise they were making; it could have been that first root he tore open as he’d pushed the second door out. Either way, the virus was onto them. We’re screwed. We’re dead! Leon could feel terror locking his mind, overturning his plan with an instinctive desire to flip the cage and run for his life.
The dark carpet of small creatures picked up their scent and corrected its course as it began to surge straight toward them.
He shot a panicked glance at the mesh on either side of him; the holes were big enough for a finger to poke through, but no more than that.
Shit. Shit. Shit. All of a sudden, he realized this idea of his was ridiculously stupid. He was going to be eaten alive in a prison cage of his own making.
“OhmyGod!” he heard Cora scream in front of him. She started to lift the front of their cage up, presumably trying to get out and run.
“NO! DON’T!”
He reached forward and grabbed her arms, jerking her hands from the mesh.
“LEMMEGO…LEMMEGO!”
She was trying to shake his hands off and push the cage up with her shoulders. A yawning gap opened up as the front of the cage lifted again, the front two casters spinning uselessly in the air.
“Stop! You’re gonna let them in!”
She wasn’t listening. She was thrashing now, the cage bouncing around and threatening to topple over.
He did it out of instinct. Probably because it worked with Grace when they were younger. He grabbed the thick rope of her ponytail and yanked on it savagely.
She let out a loud yelp, lost her footing and fell into him, toppling them both backward and upending their cage completely. He found himself lying on his back, Cora on his legs, the front of the cage and two dangling wheels above them both, silhouetted against the gray sky.
“SHIT! GET IT DOWN! GET IT BACK DOWN!”
He rolled her off him and sat up, reaching for their mesh canopy. The creatures were almost upon them now. Just a few yards away.
And close enough to see that they were bigger than normal. These things seemed to have no standard configuration, just random, almost-chaotic arrangements of pale, crablike legs and claws sprouting from a central pearl-colored carapace.
The front of the heavy cage swung down in a painfully slow arc, clattering loudly as the freewheeling castors slammed into the asphalt, bounced up several inches, and clattered down again.
The first of the creatures crashed into the wire mesh and were held back by it, others quickly piling in behind them, climbing over their spine-covered skins to get a purchase on the wire. Cora was screaming. Leon was pretty sure he was screaming too as the crabs, unable to squeeze their bodies through the gaps, probed through the gaps between the wires with their claws, serrated spines, antennae, reaching for him, desperate to make contact.
Cora was recoiling, swatting at them, backing into him and pushing him into contact with the rear of the cage.
“CALM DOWN!” Leon shouted, his own voice sounding as ragged and broken as hers. “THEY CAN’T GET IN! WE’RE SAFE!”
Above him, he heard the creatures scuttling across the roof of their cage, testing for a way in, others swarming around it, clawing their way up the sides. Within a minute, the entire mesh was covered. It was almost dark inside, the pallid daylight reduced to a thousand jagged gaps as small bodies shifted and jockeyed for position around them. The air was filled with the hissing noises of their shell-like bodies scratching against the wire.
He looked down at the ground. Artur had attached the casters to the very bottom rim of the cage, giving the wheels just enough clearance from the cage to work. But that meant there was a gap of a few inches all the way around.
He could see bodies wriggling into the space, fighting each other for an opportunity to squirm under; if the gap had been a fraction wider, they would already be inside.
As it was, the very smallest of them were beginning to wriggle free from the press of bodies at the bottom and squeeze in. Leon stomped on the first one that got under.
“Cora. Cora! We have to move this forward. NOW!” She nodded quickly. “Be careful. Don’t let the cage rise up or they’ll flood in!”
She yelped in reply.
Leon looked for a space on the wire to grab hold of, but every inch was covered. He balled his hands into fists and braced his knuckles against the mesh, feeling sharp pricks as the nearest of the little snarks began to probe his flesh.
“Let’s go!” he yelled, quickly moving his fists away and placing them elsewhere.
Cora copied him, effectively punching at the cage to move it forward. The wheels began to turn, and they took their first few steps, stepping on and crushing the bodies of the smallest creatures that had made their way under.
Leon had no idea how the others were doing and no way of seeing which way to go. As they slowly rolled their way forward, it was only with the vague hope that they were still facing the right way.
Chapter 9
U.S. Navy Ensign Carl Dornick steered the rigid-hulled inflatable closer to the looming cruise ship. Even from two hundred yards away, it towered above them: large, flat, white, and dashed with countless rows of broad, square windows.
“I’m slowing down. Eyes on the water, guys,” he barked into his walkie-talkie above the roar of the outboard motors. He eased back on the throttle and the boat slowed, settling down into the water and casting a gentle bow wave. The other five rescue boats followed suit, fanning out on either side of him to form a V.
They were close enough now to pick out more details, like people. Dornick hadn’t been sure what to expect and presumed he’d be witnessing rows of orange-life-jacket-wearing passengers waving frantically from the promenade deck. The only clear instructions he’d been given were: Absolutely NO ONE is to be rescued FROM THE SHIP. Only people lifted out of the sea. Is that perfectly clear? ONLY OUT OF THE SEA.
The briefing officer hadn’t wasted time explaining why, since they all knew about the salt/virus thing. As his boat had bounced its way across the gently swelling waves, he’d reassured himself with a comical mental image of flailing, sluglike creatures thrashing and steaming amid foaming water, crying “I’m meltiiinnng!” in some cartoon voice.
He’d even—stupidly—grinned at that. But as their boats were drawing in close to the ship, Dornick felt ashamed of his flippant imagination. The rolling humps and valleys of deep-blue-gray water were peppered with flashes of high-visibility orange. Dozens of them.
“We’ve got jumpers in the water already, watch your speed!”
He eased back on the throttle until the engine was one tick above idling and they were now barely nudging forward, the boat’s inflatable stern no longer lifted proud and high but bobbing sulkily at the same level as the rest of the hull.
He could see the shoulder flashes of orange life jackets and rolling, lifeless heads. Dornick winced. The passengers had been given instructions to wait until rescue boats had arrived before abandoning ship. The water was a degree or two above freezing. Ten to fifteen minutes was about as long as a person could hope to stay alive. It had taken them twenty minutes to launch the boats and ten to make their way across. Many of these people were already dead or too far gone to revive.
“Look out for moving ones!” he shouted to the two crewmen up front. One of them raised a hand to acknowledge the order.
Holy crap! It’s like Titanic! He turned to look around at the other boats. They were spreading out into an evenly dispersed line that chugged gently forward, picking careful paths through the bobbing dead.
He glanced up again at the Sea Queen. Now with his engine only chugging softly and the Atlantic slapping at their fiberglass hull, he could try listening for voices calling out for help.
It took a few seconds for his ears to adjust. He could hear something. Faint. So faint it was almost drowned out by the softly sputtering engine behi
nd him. He switched it off.
“Engines off, everyone!”
The other boats followed suit.
Now, finally, it was quiet, save for the slosh of water beneath them as they bobbed like a row of buoys fifty yards back from the ship’s vast vertical hull.
Dornick listened. “You hear that?”
They nodded. “Sounds like…” Seaman Chapman cocked his head. “Sounds like whale song?”
Dornick nodded. It did. Not the clicks or deep grumbles they made, but that melancholic lowing that could carry for dozens of miles. The sound seemed to be coming from above. From aboard the ship somewhere.
He reached for the bullhorn hanging from its cradle beside the helm and cupped it to his mouth.
“Attention! Attention! Passengers of the Sea Queen, rescue boats are waiting for you at the aft on the port side. Please make your way to the aft, PORT SIDE!” His words, distorted and electronic, bounced back off the ship’s sheer hull.
He waited and listened. That faint wailing was there still, rising and falling in pitch, at times sounding like a chorus of voices.
“Jeez. Is that singing?” asked Chapman.
Dornick ignored him. He clicked the bullhorn’s trigger and tried the same announcement again.
This time, there appeared to be a response. He heard a solitary voice. He craned his neck to look up and right. He could see a pale face, a hand waving frantically from the ship’s aft deck. He counted about a dozen figures suddenly appearing beside it.
Dornick raised the bullhorn to his mouth again. “We cannot board your vessel! You will have to jump!”
He turned on the boat’s engine and spun the wheel to the right. Although the rear of the cruise ship was less than sixty yards away from them, anyone jumping into the water was going to be stunned by the impact and go into an immediate cold-shock response. They needed to be right there, ready to pull them out within seconds of impact.
Dornick waved at the other boats to follow his lead, then did his best to steer quickly through the near-frozen floating bodies.
He eased back again on the throttle, dropping the engine into neutral, and the boat coasted to a halt at the ship’s rear. He looked up at the passengers still frantically waving for help from the curved aft railing.
“You must jump!” he bellowed through the bullhorn again. “WE CANNOT COME ABOARD!”
“Sir?”
“What?”
Chapman pointed up at them. “None of them have got life jackets on.”
“I know. We’ll have to get to them quickly.” He edged his boat forward, just a fraction closer. Not too close though—if a body hit the boat from that height, it would sink them.
“You have to jump! We. Will. Retrieve. You!”
Dornick looked around at the other boats. They all needed to be a touch closer. He grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Get in tighter! They’re jumping without jackets.” He watched the other pilots as they jockeyed for position, forming a semicircle around the rear of the cruise ship. Close. But not beneath.
Dornick looked back up. One of the passengers seemed to understand what was being asked of them—a woman, swinging one leg over the safety railing, then the other. She clung to the railing though, not quite ready to let herself go. “LET GO! WE. WILL. RETRIEVE. YOU!” his bullhorn squawked again.
Chapman shook his head as he watched. “Fall’s gonna kill her, sir!”
“It’ll shock her. Just get yourselves ready to pull her in!”
The woman seemed about to let go, then stopped. Ready to try again. Then she jumped.
She fell like a mannequin dropping like dead weight, turning slowly forward and smacking the water face-first.
“DAMN!” shouted Chapman. “That’s gotta ’ave killed her!”
Dornick eased the throttle up, and their boat lurched forward.
Ten yards. Five yards.
He eased back into neutral, the boat coasting the last yard or so as Chapman and another man leaned out over the prow, ready to pull the woman aboard and administer first aid. Chapman got a grasp on her first.
“Sewell, gimme a hand!”
“I got her, I got her!”
Together, they managed to get a firm grasp of her, and on a quick count of three, they pulled her up over the inflatable side of the boat by her armpits.
The three of them tumbled backward into the boat, and it took Dornick a good ten seconds to untangle what he was looking at and to understand it wasn’t quite right.
Her skin was blistering. No…bubbling. He could see pustules welling up rapidly, emerging all over her pale skin. It reminded him of milk in a pan, at the point of boiling and threatening to turn into a rising froth.
“What the hell?” Sewell was looking at the same thing.
The woman suddenly opened her eyes wide and began to thrash violently. “OH-GOD-OH-GOD I’M BURNING! HELP MEEE!”
“Shit! Shit!” Third-degree burns all over. “Hurry!” cried Chapman. He grabbed her arms to stop her thrashing around while Sewell tore open the first-aid kit to look for the burn dressings and face shield.
Dornick hooked up the walkie-talkie, left the helm, squeezed around the side of the console to give his men a hand—an instinctive muscle-memory response borne from endless first-aid drilling.
Then his brain engaged.
Burns. Salt.
The virus. SHIT!
Too little, too late.
“LOOK!” Chapman was gazing upward. He pointed up at the rear of the cruise ship. Dornick followed his finger and tried to make sense of what was coming down toward them.
Over the safety rail—no, over and under. It looked like a mudslide in slow motion, a waterfall of molasses, long, dark drools of oily liquid stretching elastically toward them.
“What the fu—?”
“Shit,” Dornick muttered.
The treacle-like threads spilled down over their boat like the myriad silk threads of a collapsed spider’s web. He saw dark nodules on the threads, hundreds, oozing, sliding down… Closer, he could see the nodules were little, rounded bodies sprouting a Swiss Army knife of fragile, little limbs.
Hundreds. Thousands.
As the three seamen were overwhelmed, Dornick’s walkie-talkie hissed and crackled from its hook by the console.
“Everyone, pull back now! Pull back. Pull—”
Chapter 10
Tom leaned on the railing as he watched the rescue boats make their way back. There were three of them coming back fast, kicking up angel wings of spray as they bounced heavily on the swelling sea.
“Christ,” he hissed under his breath. The radio traffic between the boats had been confused and panicked. From what he could see as they drew up beside the USS Oakley, they’d lost two boats and crews. Six men in total.
He counted eight figures wearing bright-orange life jackets.
We saved just eight?
The fleet channel was still being bombarded with garbled requests for rescue from the Sea Queen. There were still hundreds of people aboard, alive. But by the sound of it, the viral outbreak was out of control.
They’re already dead, Tom. Nothing you can do for them.
He turned to Captain Donner. “How quickly can you sink that ship?”
“What?”
He nodded at the distant, pale bulk of the cruise ship. “How quickly?”
Donner recoiled at the suggestion, his mouth dropping open. “You’re serious?”
Tom glared at him.
“We…uh, we have six Mark 54 torpedoes on board for ship-to-ship contact. I’d guess just a couple on target would be enough.”
“Launch all six. Let’s make this as quick as we can.” Captain Donner turned to pass the order on, hesitated, then turned back to face Tom. “USS Baron is much closer to her than—”
“I don’t car
e which ship sinks her,” Tom snapped. “Just get it done!”
Donner nodded and headed back inside the bridge.
Tom looked back down. On the main deck below, he could see their Southampton passengers lining the railing, watching the three motorboats as they made their hasty approach. They watched in silence as the boats drew near. No cheering or waving for the returning heroes. The mood was somber. He spotted the dark-haired girl with the walking stick he’d spoken to half an hour ago. She was watching the boats intently.
Jesus. What a mess.
The rescue bid had cost them boats and men. This whole endeavor so far had taken about seventy personnel from what remained of the U.S. Navy. The president was going to have a fit when he heard about that. For now, Tom could only hope those six poor bastards in the two missing boats were already dead, and not…
What a goddamn mess.
Until this morning, the cost had seemed worth it. They’d rescued nearly two thousand civilians from Calais and Southampton in total, and the Pacific Nations ships had picked up about twice that number. He gazed at the distant bulk of the Sea Queen and realized that the majority of that number, just over a thousand of their rescued people, were aboard her.
The three boats began to slow their approach, peeling to the left to close in alongside the destroyer. Tom could see the precious few they’d just rescued from the freezing cold water now wrapped up in foil thermal sheets. Some of the civilians lining the rail began calling out, a chorus of voices that could have been support for the crewmen or words of comfort for the rescued. In the chorus of voices, he thought he heard someone calling out his kids’ names.
* * *
Freya squinted at the foil-wrapped figures in the bobbing motorboats below. There seemed to be no more than two or three of them per boat.
So few.
She cupped her mouth again and waited for a momentary pause in the voices calling down, then tried again. “Leon? Grace?”