The Final Outbreak

by M. L. Banner

  But his captain and the officers, even if they were talking heads for the corporation that owned his ship, might need his help. It’s not like their two-bit security officers knew anything about fighting: they were overseen by a washed-up American cop. This was his ship and his people, and if he didn’t do something about what was going on, then who would?

  For just a moment, he allowed himself to think about the family he’d lost in the war. When the Russian troops invaded, it would have been easier to have given in to them. To lock his doors, ignore his superior’s call to report to his regiment, and instead go about being the man of his household, protecting his momma and younger brothers and sister, like he had since his father had died. But just as he felt the calling now to right a wrong that was going on, he knew he had to stand up against this regime. If he didn’t, who would? Turned out it didn’t matter, as the rest of his adopted Ukrainian Army folded over like wet towels. And the bombing and crossfire of their short, one-sided battles ended up killing his family. If he was there when it happened, he’d have been killed too. And a big part of him felt like he should have been there to protect them. At least, unlike so many of his countrymen, he stood up for what was right. And he would do it now as well.

  His migraine would have to wait, as it always did.

  Flavio slammed his cabin door, grabbed a bottled water from his mini-refrigerator and knelt before the silent man. Whisking the pillow case off his head, he splashed some water on the man’s face and watched him spring to life. Instantly, the man became crazy again; red eyes drilled into Flavio with fury, mouth screeching animalistic brays. He was crazy all right. Flavio knew what he had to do.

  He slipped the pillow case back over the man’s head, causing him to thrash even more. Folding the top of his own digits toward his palm, and stiffening his hand and wrist, Flavio waited and at the right moment, chopped with the side of his stiff hand just below the man’s ear, making him quiet again.

  Time to go to war again, but this time against an unknown enemy. Regardless, he would have to dress appropriately.

  A rudimentary plan started to form in his mind, while he slipped on his camouflage pants and long-sleeved olive shirt and laced up his boots. He’d get to deck 8 and the monitor room. There, he could communicate with all the parts of the ship, so he knew better what he was up against.

  He remembered Jumpsuit’s chomping mouth and attempts to bite him in the neck and thought he’d add extra protection. He tied a heavy scarf around his neck and pulled out his leather work gloves to protect his hands. Last, he pulled out his two carbon Moriknives, with plastic sheaths, and slipped one on each side.

  A thought occurred to him and so he considered it, nodding acceptance and stepping to his closet to get what he knew was perfect for this mission. He had found a giant wrench, left on I-95 a year ago. It was almost two feet long and was heavy. It was the perfect blunt weapon, he thought as he glanced at Jumpsuit, lying in silence, chest still heaving.

  Slipping each glove on, he lifted the wrench-weapon and threw open his door and rushed into the hallway. Checking both ways, Flavio dashed forward, turned a corner and headed toward the nearest crew elevator.

  If Jumpsuit had been conscious, the crazy-man would have heard the thump-thump-thump of boots double-timing away, followed by an animal-like screech, then immediately by the thwack of Flavio’s wrench-weapon striking something soft, followed by the thump-thump-thump of his boots, as Flavio headed into his next battle.

  50

  Deep

  Whaudeep Reddy of India, or “Deep” as his Regal European name tag declared, stared in stunned silence at the monitor room’s screens. It was like watching a T.D. Bonaventure horror movie in HD. Only this was real, and it was live.

  Deep was so fixated on the monitor room’s screens, he didn’t even blink once as he moved his focus from one screen to the next, holding his gaze just long enough to see each camera’s passing three-second image. Then it moved onto the next camera view. Each of the nine screens displayed one scene or another of the same type of rolling images. All revealed the ship in complete chaos.

  The firsthand experience with the monkey attack was beyond scary. This was worse. Ironically that was the reason Deep was here: Fish was so freaked out by almost getting eaten by the monkey during their card game in the Living Room, Deep had volunteered to take his shift. This shift.

  And what a shift it was. First he watched birds attack the guests and crew. At that moment, it was the most bizarre thing he’d ever seen. He did nothing of course; what could he do? So he just watched helplessly as passengers and crew were running for the exits, or beating back the assaulting birds with whatever they could get their hands on.

  Even on the little screens, he could see the blood, and the terror on their faces. But that was nothing compared to the next wave.

  It had come out of nowhere. The first indication was odd but still explainable: a couple of passengers rolling around the deck and he assumed they were simply trying to get up and release themselves from their entanglement, or they were fighting a bird attack in an uncoordinated fashion. But that was all he could gather during the camera’s three-second glimpse, before it cut away to the next camera view.

  Then Deep caught another similar scene on a screen showing the mid-ship, starboard deck 5 cabins. There were two passengers also on the floor. But one was on top of the other whaling on him with his fingers extended like little knives, rather than fists, as Deep would have expected in a fight. He thought knives, because he could have sworn in the three-second vignette he’d seen, blood coating each of the assaulting man’s digits. Then that camera cut away again.

  Within minutes, most camera views showed either passengers or crew running in a panic, or in a fight with one another. It was impossible to make heads or tails of what was going on though, because the view of each of the ship’s 460 cameras continually changed every three seconds, like 460 irritated eyelids blinking back what they didn’t want to see. And then each fluttered, revealing the next three-second scene. All nine of his screens blinked from scene to scene at a dizzying pace, but none of the vignettes provided enough information to really know what was going on. Deep had had enough.

  He typed a command to show the continual streams of several specific cameras. He called up cameras, 28, 57, 98, and on the same deck 99, 247, 394 and 395, 421, and finally 422. This gave him the uninterrupted views of the areas he had seen the most activity around the ship, just before and after the bird attacks.

  His jaw fell open.

  Each of the cameras he had chosen showed the same thing: scores of people had gone crazy like the birds and the dogs, and were now attacking other people.

  A scene in the Solarium told him the whole unbelievable story. A very large woman in a multi-colored dress had been bent over heaving the contents of a recent meal. Deep was watching her, because she was right in the center of the camera’s view and at least two other people who appeared to be overcome by this crazy-disease ran right past her.

  Why were the crazy people attacking other people who were running away, but ignoring this big target that wasn’t moving? It made no sense to Deep, and so he watched.

  Then Deep was surprised to catch the streaming video of that very pretty blonde with the pony-tail, dressed in her tight running outfit. Her author-husband was in front of her. They stepped quickly by the big sickly woman; the husband—he couldn’t remember their names—seemed to be fixated on helping someone on the ground, just out of the camera’s view.

  Deep watched the blonde pass by the sickly woman, and like a switch had been flipped, the sickly woman sprang up and attacked the blonde. Or was the sickly woman attempting to attack the husband, but the blonde was in the way, and the two got entangled?

  There was a loud thump on the door, which made Deep shudder.

  He cocked his head over, while remaining seated, and saw a pale-looking crew member in the small window inset in the door. The crew member glared at him with strange r
ed eyes, like they were bloodshot from a three-day straight shift, but even redder.

  The crew member opened his mouth, like he was intending to mouth words, knowing Deep couldn’t hear anything through the heavy door. Instead, the mouth of the pale man opened wider, and then wider still.

  Deep turned his shoulders, fully intending to run the other way and hide. It was so creepy, his skin crawled.

  But then Deep remembered that that door was as solid as they came. It was a specially reinforced hatch meant to secure the monitor room and its recordings from terrorists. Part of some of the upgrades during its time in dry-dock.

  He sat up straight, feeling safer now that he had thought through his position.

  The pale crew member seemed fixated on Deep, mouth stuck open, a line of spittle growing off his chin. Then the crew member’s head spun, like he heard something. His mouth closed and he moved away from the window, out of sight.

  Deep glanced again at his main screen—his mind processing what he just witnessed firsthand—desperately wanting to see what was happening to the pretty blonde. She was holding the sickly-looking woman—who wasn’t acting very sickly now—back, and having some difficulty because the larger woman was flailing around so much. The larger women appeared to be trying to bite the blonde. For a moment, Deep thought that the blonde wasn’t fighting the larger woman, but holding onto her. Then the blonde’s author-husband bashed the large woman in the head with a serving tray.

  Deep wanted to watch what happened next, but another camera caught his attention. It was one of the bridge. There were only two officers there: Jessica, from Iceland and the most beautiful of all blondes on their ship, and their safety director, Mr. Helguson. Deep watched Jessica open up the hatch and a second officer he didn’t recognize rushed through the opening and was frantically telling Jessica something.

  “Dammit! I wish I could hear what you’re saying!” Deep spat at the screen.

  While Jessica was focused on the other officer, someone rushed through the hatch—she didn’t close it—and ran into Jessica. It was one of those crazy people.

  Deep rose from his rollered-seat abruptly, sending it across the span of the small room and crashing into the other wall.

  “I can’t help you, Jessica.”

  51

  Bridge

  At first Jessica was only startled, thinking it must have been some sort of mistake: this man didn’t mean to run into her. But just as suddenly as she was slammed into the bridge flooring, she knew she was now fighting for her life.

  The man on top of her seemed enraged to the point of being crazy, and she desperately tried to push him back, her hands clasping around and then slipping off his sweaty upper-arms. His mouth chomped at the air in an exaggerated way.

  He’s trying to bite me.

  His mouth moved closer, and she exhaled a brief scream; she’d forgotten to breathe, holding it much too long, and then she tried to gulp back needed air.

  This seemed to stir up the crazy man even more, his mouth chomping rapidly in anticipation of reaching her. A wad of his saliva plopped onto her neck, right below her Adam’s apple.

  The crazy person was telegraphing his next target.

  She was equally disgusted and petrified at the same time. And yet she was able to react to his movements, mostly keeping him at bay.

  Fatigue was already bearing down on her, aiding the crazy’s unending assault. If this battle persisted much longer, she suspected she’d lose, even though the slight man didn’t weigh any more than she did.

  He was so close the heat from his putrid breath felt scorching.

  She turned away, seeking help from Brian Murphy, the second officer who entered their bridge with this crazy person in tow. But Brian was cowering behind a console. He stared wildly at her and the crazy man on top of her.

  “Help me!” she begged. However, expelling the air to say this only gave the crazy man more ground. And she knew she couldn’t hold on much longer.

  Her words seemed to shake Brian from his moorings. Maybe it was the man’s ingrained chauvinism or maybe he forgot himself. She didn’t care; she was just glad that he seemed to be heading her way, though way too slow. She knew she only had a little fight left in her.

  She couldn’t look at the crazy, who kept chomping his mouth and teeth, like she was some piece of meat. She was used to being treated this way among the men in her profession, but it was always figuratively, not literally. This was insane. “Help!” she bellowed again.

  Brian disappeared and then reappeared, now holding up a model of the Intrepid, a to-scale rendering of the ship. He held the model back and then arced it around in an attempt to knock Crazy Man off her. But he was too high and he didn’t have a good grip on the ship model.

  It connected and then bounced off Crazy’s head, only snapping the man’s head back, but at least momentarily stopping his chomping. Crazy reacted instantly, turning his anger on Brian, who appeared perplexed at becoming the focus. Crazy Man sprang off Jessica onto Brian in a single bound.

  The springboard off her stomach took all of Jessica’s breath away, and for a long moment, she remained on the floor, physically and emotionally paralyzed, while she gazed out the side of her field of vision in amazement. What happened next shocked her back into action. Crazy Man’s mouth clamped down on Brian’s neck, brutally. She launched like a rocket and leapt onto the two men in an attempt to pull Crazy off her now gravely injured comrade, but she tumbled off them. Crazy doggedly held onto Brian.

  Jessica found the ship model on the floor. Rising to her knees, with all the strength she had left, she picked the model up and brought it straight down onto the Crazy Man’s head, cracking it open like a melon.

  But she feared she was too late.

  Brian gurgled a hollow scream while pushing off the now unconscious, or even deceased Crazy Man.

  Oh God, I think I killed him!

  With the dead man off, Brian clutched his torn-up neck and blurted another weak scream.

  She’d never seen so much blood, not thinking it was possible for a human to expel that much blood and still be alive.

  Oh God, Brian was going to die!

  Jessica was at once swept with feelings of overwhelming sadness and terror, and the strongest of desires to crawl into a corner and cry. But there was no time.

  At the hatch, two more crazy people bounded through. One instantly locked onto her and pushed off the other to try and redirect his movement in her direction. But their legs tangled and they both tumbled to the ground in front of her.

  Run.

  There was no way she could make it to the hatch and exit the bridge: the crazies were between her and it. But she might be able to make it to the starboard swing deck.

  If I leave now.

  She bounded up, glancing once at the flailing tangle of crazies, desperately trying to right themselves and get at her. One of them was almost up already.

  She focused on the swing deck hatch, putting all her effort on this. It was her only chance. Then she remembered Ágúst: he was in the bathroom still. She flashed a glance at the door, seeing the sliver of light shoot out the bottom. Then she remembered the navigation instructions, and she turned to look at her console; its warning light—the one she set to make sure she entered in the course correction—was flashing at her, giving her a countdown to their collision course into the Azores.

  She turned back to the swing deck hatch, knowing she had one chance to make it out alive—the only chance she’d have to see her child and her husband, if they were even still alive.

  She pumped her legs, but like a nightmare, she was too far away and going way too slow. She could hear the crazy behind her, snarling and huffing.

  She chanced a glance back, knowing that it was the wrong thing to do, but unable to keep herself from doing so. She had to know.

  He was right behind her, and he was reaching his hand out—

  She smacked hard into the starboard window-wall, just to the right of the hatc
h, surprised that she was off her mark. I should have been facing the door.

  She reached over to the hatch mechanism and pulled herself to the door, just as crazy man hit, head to metal.

  Jessica put all of her fifty kilos down on the handle, the hatch clicking its response.

  She chanced another glance, amazed that the crazy man, who should have been knocked out or at least dazed by his head connecting with the metal, was still doggedly after her. The crazy refocused on her much too quickly and even though his head was now gushing blood from the impact with the bridge’s steel window-wall frame, he was clawing his way toward her. She still had to open the door, slip through, and close it tight. She wouldn’t make it in time.

  Jessica squealed, moments before the crazy was upon her, when a black-laced shoe hit the crazy mid-chest, sending him past her to the ground. She glanced below her and saw Ágúst there, now wearing his sunglasses, panting and trying to right himself.

  “Let’s go,” he hollered, and she obliged, pulling the door open that Ágúst could slip out, followed immediately by her.

  We might make it after all. Maybe I will see my family.

  They yanked on the handle, four hands intertwined as one, sending the hatch shut with a thunk.

  They released and scuttled back on their butts as the hatch’s window was filled with the pale face of the red-eyed crazy man, silently snarling at them.

  With their backs to the rails of the swing deck, they panted mutual “whews” at their just making it out of the bridge alive.

  They glanced at each other, unable to form words from panting uncontrollably, large smiles covering their faces.

  And then they heard the screeches again.

  These were outside.