by Rob Horner
Not to keep them safe. No. That would never be his sole reason for doing anything.
“What about him?” William asked, pointing to Jacob. “And me? We’re kind of in the same boat, aren’t we? Immunes who’ve been bitten?”
Buck hugged Jacob closer.
The general wanted them in Atlanta for a reason.
Caitlin needed to figure out that reason.
Chapter 28
“Make sure we get the decks swept and the rails wiped down,” Captain Carver said to the air.
“Aye, Sir,” one of the Boatswains replied.
Out on the docks, nervous passengers giggled and brushed themselves off. One woman almost as big around as she was tall popped her wig off and gave it a shake. The hair beneath was sparse, and age spots decorated her scalp like a small archipelago. Two old men gave each other brusque pat downs like military buddies checking themselves for lint or a spot of dirt prior to an inspection.
They weren’t a large group, just a dozen or so seniors getting a group discount for crossing an item off their bucket lists. The small white bus with the words “Southside Seasoned Citizens” stenciled on its side in bold, black letters was already out of sight, the twenty-something driver heading back to the retirement home to pick up another load of fall-conscious but intrepid adventurers ready to paint the town gray.
The cloud of brown grit had come from nowhere, just dust and micro debris kicked up by something and whirled into the air.
Thankfully, none of the oldsters seemed bothered.
A radioman clicked something on his equipment. “Dockmaster says there’s a construction site a couple blocks outside the docks. They must have blown a pile of dirt our way.”
The captain clucked. “Just our luck then. Get the word out. No passengers on any outer deck until we’re twelve miles out. That should give us plenty of time to shake the dust off our boots.”
“Exterior closed off until we’re in international waters,” the Boatswain replied. “Roger that.”
Navigator Davis watched from the bridge of The Island Belle as a dozen crewmen, stewards, and bellhops helped the elderly passengers climb the gangway, or took bags and provided quick directions to cabins and the most important amenities.
Belle was the pride and joy of Vacation Venture’s cruise liner fleet, big enough to sail straight through a hurricane but nimble enough to avoid one without needing to reroute complete around it. State of the art omni-thrust engines coupled with the latest in positioning software allowed her to compensate for any shift in flow, current, tide, or swell so the passengers’ drinks didn’t so much as tilt, not even if some dimwit drunkard set a crystal goblet on the polished wood rail of a roulette table.
Davis strained to suppress a yawn. Even with the pending departure, he’d stayed up way too late playing poker with some of the other crewmen.
“Rough night, Davis?” the captain asked.
“You should know, sir,” Richard replied.
The poker game had been the captain’s idea. Yet there he stood, hands clasped behind his back in classic military fashion, gold-buttoned white uniform as immaculate as if he still served in the United States Navy. He looked none the worse for lack of sleep and seemed chipper today than he had yesterday. Maybe it had something to do with the news. All into the long night they’d listened as report after “breaking news” report came in. Rioting in DC. Some kind of warehouse explosion in Georgia. People getting sick everywhere.
None of it had touched Jacksonville, Florida.
Not yet at least.
And with the last of the passengers on board and the gangway being raised and stowed, it looked like their luck was going to hold. Maybe by the time they returned everything would be over and back to normal.
* * * * *
“If you’ll follow me, please,” the good-looking sailor said, “I’ll show you to your cabins.”
Melody and Kathy both turned, eager smiles plastered across their faces.
Chelsie sniffed. To look at those two, stick legs moving faster than at any time in the ten years she’d known them, they probably thought the sun rose and fell in the young fellow’s eyes.
He was good looking, but Chelsie knew which side of her bread was buttered, and it wasn’t going to be done by him. Not that she would mind. If her trick hip didn’t act up, she could probably teach him more in an hour than he’d get in a lifetime of wooing the pretty ignorants getting drunk in the casino. Looking at the other two and how they shuffled to keep up with the porter, Chelsie decided they were exactly the type of dunderhead sexpot she had in mind, only sixty years too late.
Jason and Brett also seemed keen on the young man, though for very different reasons. They peppered him with questions using nautical terminology that might not ever go out of date, but which referenced equipment and procedures that certainly had. Both gentlemen were former military, though only Jason had served on a ship. It showed in more ways than he’d ever know, she thought. Between the two of them, Jason was more yacht while Brett was a teeny dinghy. But let no one say Brett didn’t know how to man his oar.
Chelsie hid a girlish flush by readjusting her wig. Satisfied the vanity curls were in place, she stepped through the “hatch” and into the “passageway.”
She caught up to the others after only a few steps. They were congregated around the young sailor like hummingbirds around a feeder, listening intently as he pointed out a map on the wall. It was one of those insufferable “you are here” things first made famous in shopping malls before being picked up by every government office and schoolhouse. They made sense and they were effective, which explained why the government had to copy the idea. Honestly, if private industry were allowed input into governmental affairs, there’d be far fewer problems.
This map was different. Oh sure, it had the outline of the ship stretching left to right, with stairways and elevators marked appropriately. But unlike a mall map, this one didn’t detail any of the smaller spaces. If there was a Kohl’s or Great American Cookie, she couldn’t see it labeled. The only words to the right of the outlines were strange to her, though she wasn’t about to speak and reveal her ignorance.
She wouldn’t have to anyway.
Both Melody and Kathy were sure to get answers for her if she had a little patience—not a day went by they didn’t show their ignorance and they weren’t likely to stop just because they were on vacation. And if not them, then Staci or Tameka might as well, if only so they could get their wrinkled old asses into their cabin sooner. Chelsie was nobody’s fool. Those two were so intent on discovering the love that bears all shame and should never reveal its name that it wouldn’t surprise her if either turned around and there was a bright scarlet letter on their foreheads. It wouldn’t be an “A,” no sir. Idly, Chelsie wondered if a pitch for a geriatric version of The L Word might gain traction.
“All spaces on the ship, no matter whether they are cabins or restaurants, begin with the floor name, which we call ‘decks,” followed by whether it’s in front of the ship, the middle, or the rear, then whether it’s on the right, the midline, or the left side.” The young main pointed to the legend printed on the lower right corner of the map. “You see, right now we are two-M-S.” He tapped a finger on the “you are here” marker. “That means we are on deck two, at the middle of the ship, or ‘amidships,’ and on the right—the starboard—side.”
Needlessly convoluted, Chelsie thought, while adding a little nautical flair. It might be fun to challenge herself later, maybe try to find a place using only the strange directions. Better yet, maybe she could send Brett off on a wild goose chase by deliberately scrambling the code.
“So where are the cabins, exactly?” Staci asked.
Chelsie smiled inwardly as Tameka grinned at her soon-to-be-girlfriend. It was bad enough the woman had a black name, but to also be gay…
None of this stuff would be happening if the president got his way and sent all the nonbelievers out of the country. Chelsie wasn’t sure
if he’d actually said that’s what he wanted to do, but CNN reported it often enough. Where there’s that much smoke, there must be a spark. She doubted any news organization would make something up out of whole cloth.
“Most of the cabins are here and here,” the young man said, reaching out an arm lined with bulging muscles to tap various places on the map, “on decks one and zero.” Kathy barely kept her hands still as his arm passed in front of her, and Chelsie hid another smile. “I believe your planner booked rooms for you in the same location, towards the rear—or stern—and close to an elevator on deck one. Though there are restaurants and shops on every deck beginning at two and going up to seven, the best of both are also in the stern. Deck four is the quietest of them all—”
“Translation: boring!” Priya said, earning a soft chuckle from a couple of others. Chelsie liked the diminutive Indian woman; she embraced the stereotype of older people saying whatever comes to mind.
The young sailor joined them and lost some of the stiffness in his shoulders. No doubt he’d been raised to be on his best behavior around old farts like them, but Priya’s comment put him at ease. “Decks five and six might be more your speed then,” he said, smiling at Priya. “Livelier music, dance clubs, and casinos—”
That got the men’s attention, but Chelsie tuned them out. A decidedly unpleasant sensation surged through her innards, a chilly twisting that screamed of nausea or impending diarrhea and her body hadn’t decided which was coming. Maybe both.
“Uh huh,” Priya said, batting her long, dark eyelashes at the man. “And where might you be found, when you—”
“Excuse me,” Chelsie blurted, feeling sweat pop out on her forehead. Oh yes, something bad was coming. “I hate to be rude, but can you just tell me how to get to our elevator?”
“I…of course.” He turned caring gray eyes on her and Chelsie saw her son in his features, though he was thirty years in the grave, dead by one of Saddam’s terrorist Iraqis in the first Gulf War. “Are you all right?”
She couldn’t hide her distress any more than she’d be able to hide the mess if she didn’t get to a bathroom. “Old person bowels. Please. The elevator.”
A couple of the others murmured quietly, which for the hard of hearing meant loud enough to be heard a state away.
“Told her to take the Metamucil before we left.”
“Can’t tolerate Metformin either myself. Skipped my dose this morning just so this wouldn’t happen.”
“I said Metamucil.”
The young man smiled at her as Jason and Brett argued. “Go straight down this hall to the first crossing, then turn left,” he said. “You’ll pass elevator banks G, F, and E. When you get to D, that’s your ride. Go down one deck to one. What’s your name, Mrs. —?”
“Chelsie Young,” she gasped.
“Okay, Mrs. Young.” He checked his clipboard. “Looks like you got a single cabin. Room is 1MS102.” He pulled a white card the size of a credit card out of a manila envelope. “This is your room card with the number on it. Please keep it with you at all times.”
Chelsie accepted it gratefully, muttered her thanks, and moved away from the group. She could feel their eyes following her as she walked, cheeks clenched. Having a destination gave her new strength of will. She could make it. As long as she concentrated on finding the right elevator and finding her cabin and didn’t think about the liquid fire running through her small intestine like a shrieking kid through a water park, she could make it.
There were other people out and about in the passageways, though everyone made room for her. She wasn’t a small woman by any stretch of the imagination, and she could feel another kind of burning starting up in her thighs as they rubbed mercilessly against one another. The discomfort was secondary but it gave her something to focus on besides the saliva starting to flood her mouth and the ungodly sensation of a dam bursting somewhere in the region of her absent appendix, like a toilet inside of her had flushed, moving a vast quantity of liquid shit from the narrow confines of her small intestine.
Regardless of her urgency, she didn’t curse people who failed to move aside fast enough, and she avoided stepping on any toes. With one hand digging in her purse, she located the special blister pack containing her Zofran. The melt-in-your-mouth tablets were difficult to open in the best of times, but somehow she managed, slipping one under her tongue as elevator bank D came into view.
I’m going to make it, she thought. The taste of fruit and mint filled her mouth as the tablet dissolved. Her nausea didn’t disappear, but it lessened noticeably. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the diarrhea bubbling just behind her rectum.
Thankfully, an elevator was waiting as soon as she pushed the “down” button.
The ride lasted only a few seconds, but it was an eternity. Gas built up with the crap and she clenched tighter, knowing full well that any breach in her defenses would allow the tide to roll.
Gasping, one arm across her overly large stomach, certain she could feel the roiling in her guts from the outside as well as the inside, she lurched out of the car. Four elevators served this bank, standing in a crossing alcove between two long halls. Each hall sported a sign on the wall, visible from the alcove. One hall featured rooms numbered from 100 to 130 to the left, and 99 to 71 if she turned right.
Scooting into the right hall, she groaned as another spasm of pain wrenched her guts. The nausea was back, only now she feared it was a backflow from her bowels. She’d read about small bowel obstructions and lived in fear of something like that happening to her. All older people kept track of their bowel movements and had a small pharmacy of medications whose sole purpose was to keep them regular. You could vomit feces if something clogged up the lower end.
The left side of the hall had doors with odd numbers on them. Hers was the second door on the right. For a wonder, the keycard worked on the first try, and she staggered into a room barely large enough for the full-sized bed and dresser with a television mounted on top of it. Being amidships, there were no windows, but there was a tiny closet and a bathroom which might be larger than the closet, but it was hard to tell. There was enough room to yank her dress over her head, taking the vanity curls with it, letting both fall to the floor. Next came her pantyhose and panties, and something squeezed itself between her cheeks as if her body knew it was almost time and was fighting a losing battle against the irresistible pressure straining an aged door with a rusted lock.
Thankfully, the close confines of the room worked for rather than against her. Simply put, the room was so small and the furniture so cramped that it was impossible for someone her size to fall over. There was bed or wall in every direction, no need for handrails.
Then she was free of everything but her bra, which she wouldn’t remove unless she was getting into the shower. Chelsie had been large breasted even as a young woman, and childbirth combined with bad eating habits and the insidious pull of gravity only served to make her breasts larger and hang lower. Wearing a bra meant less back pain and none of the nasty skin yeast infections so many other large women suffered with.
She had to turn sideways to enter the bathroom, but then her ass cheeks met the cold surface of the toilet, and all hell broke loose.
The nausea returned too, but the shower stall was within leaning range.
She stifled a scream as the first waves of liquid fire poured out of her ass and the remnants of breakfast raced back out of her throat.
A foul smell rose from between her legs, worse than any dump she’d ever had, and she’d had some doozies in her seventy-plus years. A second surge of vomit came up, though now she couldn’t tell if it was a continuation of the first or brought on by the disgusting shit-baby she’d just delivered.
The pain in her innards hadn’t lessened despite that she was purging from two directions, but the only thing she could think of was, Damn, I didn’t turn on the vent fan.
She couldn’t hold back a moan of complete misery as her bowels spasmed again, but she
did manage to give the toilet a courtesy flush.
Then it was bend over and let another stream of lava shoot out her ass while her face aimed for the shower.
God, what is wrong with me?
Chapter 29
Robbie Wilson’s head spun.
There’d been so much happening in the past twenty-four hours that it seemed like a bad dream. If only he could wake up.
They were probably still in the woods, him and Jasmine, legs tangled and with a thin sheet twisted around them. He could blame it on poorly cooked fish caught from the stream by their campsite. Maybe it was the beer they’d brought, kept cool by the rushing water but maybe still exposed to enough heat to change some aspect of its chemistry.
Nothing else made sense.
Not the craziness at the rest stop.
Not Desiree going from scared girl with a bite on her hand to crazy zombie attacking him inside the car.
Not the naked woman with her throat torn open, muscles twisting in plain view like a bad horror-porn mashup.
Not even Bert with his rough way of talking and ready cache of guns, his prepper views that somehow incorporated an undead apocalypse instead of just the stereotypical the government is evil.
Yes, a dream would explain everything.
But if it was a dream, why was it lasting so long?
Usually, dreams gave the perception of time passing without the intimate knowledge of every second spent waiting.
Take the previous night, for example.
Bert led them to a modest double-wide trailer set several blocks back from the entrance to The Wilds. It had its own postage stamp plot of land, tasteful decorations which included an American Flag on a tacked-on porch, and even an honest-to-God white picket fence surrounding the green grass. One look at Ed, the beefy lordling of Trailer Park Kingdom, and Robbie knew he wasn’t the decorator.
Edward Scriven was about as prototypical redneck as anyone could be. Wife-beater T-shirt, mullet haircut, broad but rounded shoulders and even broader stomach making a paunch over navy blue sweatpants. He looked clean, which argued more for the effectiveness of his wife at maintaining order than it did for any particular hygienic attitude of his. A pair of tattoos decorated his upper arms. On the right was the Marine logo, a stylized eagle clutching a globe, behind which ran a fouled anchor. Semper Fidelis stood out in boldened black in a chat bubble, as though the eagle spoke the words. On his left shoulder was a thorny rose with the name Jennifer written along the stem, and 1998 etched inside one of the petals.