The Final Outbreak

by M. L. Banner

  Both their heads snapped aft, to the solid wall end of the swing deck. There, only a few feet from them, were at least a dozen black birds, fighting over the torn-apart carcass of a seagull.

  They had interrupted the black birds feeding. Now the black birds focused their red-eyed attention on the two officers. It was as if their fiery eyes were telling them, “Why fight it?”

  Jessica glanced back at the bridge and now saw two crazy men silently growling out of frustration that their meal that got away, clawing their raw fingers at the closed hatch that they couldn’t figure out how to open.

  Unheard by either of them, an alarm rang out on her console. Its display read...

  1:30:00

  1:29:59

  1:29:58

  52

  Crazy People Too

  “Run to the Spa,” Jean Pierre yelled.

  Ted and TJ both knew the place and immediately moved in that direction, leading the way, and Jean Pierre following close behind. Ted briefly paused to snatch up a little table that had scooted out into their walkway, brandishing it by two of its legs. He liked the weight of it and that he could use it to keep the crazy people’s mouths away from him. He also scooped up a pointed butter knife and slipped that into his back pocket, wishing he had one of Flavio’s knives, or even one of the ship’s steak knives they’d hurled at the monkey earlier. But as there was no meat being served in the Solarium—except the raw human kind, he thought—this would have to do.

  “Come on,” TJ insisted, also holding up. Her sunglasses flashed as she whipped her head from side to side to check out her perimeter for any potential threats to them. Her abrupt movements from side to side caused her Orion necklace to flop around onto the small of her back.

  To Ted, she now looked like a living rendition of the warrior Orion, at least the necklace’s version. And yet she acted anxious. Of course, who wouldn’t here, now.

  Ted couldn’t help but take in the surreal landscape of the Solarium. It truly was stranger than fiction.

  One of the performers in the cruise ship’s drag show was there, dressed in full costume. He was attempting to escape one of the crazed people by jumping into the spa pool. The performer’s dazzling feather-headdress hit the sloshing water first; his sparkling platform boots entering the water last. The crazed person didn’t seem to care for the water much, immediately redirecting his fury at someone else less wet. That poor SOB was a passenger who was completely caught off-guard while gawking at the flamboyant performer’s leap into the pool. The crazed person tackled the unsuspecting passenger, driving both of them into the slick and yet very solid pool decking. Both their heads hit hard, and the crazed person harder. Yet the crazy man rose and continued his assault on the now-dazed passenger.

  The soaked drag show performer saw his opportunity and popped out of the water, sans headdress, white makeup sliding off his face. Mixed with the red of someone’s blood, his was a macabre mug. He clutched his knees, panting and grinning. He must have known his luck wouldn’t be so kind if he held there any longer, and he dashed off.

  Passing in front of Ted and TJ was an obese man with frazzled white hair attacking a very small oriental woman. The woman appeared to be holding the crazed man back to protect her husband, an equally small person on the floor, wearing bright orange pants and white slip-on loafers. The man was screeching in a sopranic voice, sounding almost like a waterfowl. The frazzled-hair man was overpowering the much smaller woman, biting her and scratching at her, until she fell to the ground.

  The crazed man then turned his attention to her orange-trousered husband, who tried to duck walk away without much luck. The crazed man caught up with the smaller man right in the middle of their path to the Spa.

  Ted had a thought. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but like many of his thoughts, his subconscious mind figured shit out before his conscious mind could give reason to it. But as usually was the case, he knew he was right. Just before his wife was about to thwack the white-haired man with her tray, Ted yanked out the butter knife and holding the blade-end, he whacked one of the table legs multiple times, generating echoing ping-noises, as if it were a musical instrument.

  Apparently the ping-ping-ping sound was so loud, even TJ stopped in mid-swing, almost acting like the sound was piercing and hurting her ears. But it also had the desired effect.

  The crazed man’s head swiveled in Ted’s direction, and he course-corrected, pushing off the oriental man.

  Ted wasn’t sure what he was expecting. He knew subconsciously that the loud noise would affect the crazy-person, he just hadn’t thought through what would happen after he’d done it: it was not like they had time. Certainly, Ted hadn’t expected the man to move so quickly, because he had barely enough time to push the table forward, using the top of it to deflect the man away. Luckily for Ted, inertia—both his and the man’s—caused the frazzled-hair man to shoot past Ted and onto the floor.

  When the crazy man bounded up, both Ted and TJ were ready. Before the crazy man could take more than one step, both pummeled his head multiple times, until he crumpled to the floor and lay unmoving.

  They briefly flashed each other smiles, before TJ moved forward, Ted following. Jean Pierre still brought up the rear, swiping wildly with his own drink tray at a bird that seemed absolutely fixated on his chrome dome.

  A flash of movement to Ted’s left pulled at his attention. He didn’t know how, but amazingly the oriental woman who was brutally attacked and bitten sprang up. She looked a bloody mess, but without hesitation, she sprinted toward a couple cowering in a corner of the Solarium under one of the larger tables.

  Was it a bite that did that to her? he wondered. But that made no sense from what he understood about this parasite.

  Ted must have not been paying attention, because he crashed into his wife, who was trying to hold the spa door open.

  She said nothing, but scowled at him. Ted shrugged his shoulders as Jean Pierre breezed by them inside. Ted and TJ rolled in, clicking the spa door closed behind them.

  The three of them stared out of the spa’s double glass doors, chests heaving for air.

  “Did you see that the people are crazy too?”

  Ted and TJ swung their gazes at Jean Pierre. They didn’t have to say anything; their looks screamed, “No shit, Sherlock.”

  TJ turned to her husband. “Is it the bite that turns them... crazy?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it, but it seems so. Did you see that oriental woman bound up after being attacked?”

  TJ grimaced behind her Oakleys. “Yes, but how? Why?” She reached around her back and pulled her Orion charm around her necklace chain, rubbed it a couple of times and let it drop just above the neckline of her soaked sports shirt.

  In quiet, they studied the Solarium’s chaos, while catching their breaths. Jean Pierre decided to check out the spa.

  Ted hadn’t answered TJ. And TJ didn’t press him, as she knew he was chewing on the new sets of facts. “Did you see how they responded to sound?”

  “Yeah, and you almost made me deaf.”

  “It wasn’t that loud,” he lamented. “Besides, I have a theory. The infected animals and now infected people are attracted to sound. I saw it with the birds: they attacked the loudspeakers while the alarm was going off, and then they stopped when it was no longer blaring. The screaming of the uninfected seems to draw the attention of any crazy humans or animals.”

  “Once infected, they don’t seem too human. And did you notice they don’t seem to care about their inj—”

  A screech from the back of the spa stopped them both cold.

  “Psst.”

  Jean Pierre was in front of one of the individual spa rooms, his hands waving them forward.

  They quickly scooted in his direction.

  Jean Pierre pushed open the door, and out poured Zen music: some sort of Indian musical montage, obviously meant to help their spa clients meditate or feel relaxed or something of which Ted had no idea, not being a
spa-guy.

  Jean Pierre slipped in through the door, followed by TJ and then finally Ted, who pulled the door behind him.

  The three of them froze.

  Inside were two couples. One of the two men, a bare-chested older man with wrinkled olive skin, brandished a heavy hardcover book, covered in splotches of blood and feathers. He was poised like a baseball player at the plate, about to swing for the fences. Then the older man’s jaw dropped at seeing Ted.

  He brought the book-weapon he had been holding up down to face level, pulled out a white handkerchief from a back pocket of his khakis and whipped off the gore from back cover—not even flinching at the blood and guts. He let the hankie drop to the floor, while glancing at the back cover, and then turned up his face again at Ted, his scowl building into a grin.

  Ted recognized the older picture on the back cover: it was his big stupid-looking smile, complemented by a handle-bar mustache, his deerstalker hat tilted down to block out the sun, and the ocean surf spraying behind him from the balcony of their aft cabin of his first transatlantic cruise, some years ago. He never liked the picture, but his agent said it made him look like a “real person.”

  “Greetings, Mr. Bonaventure,” said the man. “I’m David Cohen.” He thrust out his hand as if he were at a book signing, and nothing else was going on in their world. All thoughts about adding more gore to his book-weapon were forgotten.

  The Zen music was almost loud enough to drum out the screaming outside their room. Almost.

  53

  Collapse

  All they could do at this point was run. It wasn’t what Jörgen and his crew were trained to do, but who was trained for a riotous horde of crazed people, driven by an absolute desire to kill?

  Somehow, they were able to pull Urban away from the crazed man who had taken a huge chunk of flesh out of his neck. But there were others now. What seemed like scuffles within the crowd were passengers and some crew attacking others. Both Jörgen and Wasano attempted to break up the attacks, but it was no use. In rapid fashion, they were being overwhelmed.

  There may not have been any policy for dealing with riots like this one, but there was the rule about protecting your fellow crew members when invaders had boarded your ship. And this crazy disease had boarded their ship and was attacking it and his crew. And with Urban’s injuries looking more serious by the second, Jörgen and Wasano thought it better to retreat to safety for now, while they still had a chance.

  They followed the panicked passengers down the half-flight of stairs and then turned into the first crew access they could find, figuring that the numbers of frenzied people would be smaller, if only because of the smaller ratio of crew to passengers. They were correct.

  Although there was some screaming in the crew stairwell below them, it certainly wasn’t the all-out melee of the more public areas. They could stop here and collect themselves and figure out what to do next.

  They found a cart of linens in the stairwell, abandoned by a room steward, and fashioned a make-shift compression bandage around the left side of the nape of Urban’s neck. This they tied around his chest and under both arms. A lot of tissue was missing in his wound area, and more important, he had lost a lot of blood. His blanched features and sunken eyes were alarming. But all of this was alarming.

  In the back of Jörgen’s mind, he couldn’t help but wonder if the Urban’s bite-wound would turn him into one of those lunatics. It didn’t matter. If he did, they’d deal with him. Right now, he was one of their crew and as his captain, Jörgen knew that he would do everything he could to protect his officer to the bitter end, no matter how or when that might be.

  “So where now, Captain?” asked Wasano. “Officer Patel needs medical attention.”

  Jörgen wanted to get onto the bridge. That’s where he belonged. From there he could captain them through this crisis. But Wasano was right, Urban needed immediate medical attention.

  “Give me your radio.”

  Wasano handed him his walkie.

  “This is Captain Christiansen. Repeat, this is Captain Jörgen Christiansen. Doc Chettle, report. Bridge, report. Engineering, report.” He let go of the transmit button and turned up the volume.

  Static and screaming sounds were followed by “Captain, this is Assistant Engineering Director Niki Tesler. Sir, we cannot get to engineering. This whole floor is overrun by these insane people...” she started to breakdown. “They ate Ivan, sir. It was horrible. I didn’t know what to do...”

  They thought she had stopped transmission, because they couldn’t hear anything else. Then... sniffles. She still had her transmit button depressed.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Background static now, as she was done.

  “It’s all right, Niki.” He almost never referred to someone by their first name in public, and certainly not on the radio. “Are you safe? Where are you?”

  “I’m just off the control room, in Ivan’s—I mean the Chief Engineer’s—private office. I have two other crew here. We’ve been hiding and trying to keep quiet. They seem to be attracted to noise. But the place is overrun. So we’re not going anywhere.”

  “Have you heard from the bridge lately?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What about the engine room?”

  Static silence. Niki was keeping off the air to let someone from the engine room chime in.

  “Captain...” the speaker crackled, “this is Max Borne, from ER. I’m stuck in an access duct, port side aft of the main engine room. This place is a madhouse, sir.”

  “Sit tight, Mr. Borne, until this blows over.” He said this, even though he doubted this would blow over any time soon. “To anyone else, do we have any control over this ship?”

  Silent static.

  Niki chimed in again. “Sir, I believe all those not affected by this have holed up somewhere, for safety.”

  There was a screech directly above them. It was close.

  Jörgen turned the volume down and clicked transmit. “We’re going off comm for a little bit. Sit tight, officer, and anyone else listening. Captain out.”

  Safety first, he thought. Then medical assistance for Urban, then figure out how to wrestle back control of the ship later. Everything should be on automatic, so they should be good for a while.

  “Ye Olde Tavern,” Jörgen whispered. It was only two floors down from where they were, and if they could make the turn quickly enough, and there weren’t many frenzied people in the area, they might be able to escape inside. They needed to get to someplace safe to attend to Urban, who now appeared to be going into shock. “Ye Olde Tavern would be closed, and no one should be inside,” he whispered once more, not wanting the frenzied person below them to hear.

  Jörgen and Wasano hoisted Urban up, on each side of him, and they lumbered down the two decks, practically carrying the nearly unconscious man.

  Holding up at the exit, they gave each other a quick glance. The low lights of the crew access stairwell masked their concern. At first, Jörgen didn’t want Wasano to see his alarm. And Wasano had the same look, probably thinking something similar. At this point neither cared.

  Urban did his best to just stay lucid. But he continued to lose blood, in spite of their best efforts to suppress the flow from his wound with their linen compression-bandage. It was obvious he was teetering between consciousness and unconsciousness. They couldn’t get to Ye Olde Tavern fast enough. And even then, he still needed medical attention and they were moving much closer to Chettle’s infirmary.

  Ye Olde Tavern’s door was immediately contiguous to the crew access door they were lingering behind. If the coast was clear, they could quickly unlock the door and close themselves in. No one else should be there.

  Wasano carefully pushed open the door, just a crack and peeked out. An ocean of screaming and yelling poured through.

  “How does it look, Wasano?” whispered Jörgen, inches away. He couldn’t see a damned thing, and it was killing him not to be the eyes, but he wanted t
o honor his new head of security by ceding this part of their mission to him.

  Wasano remained motionless, other than his head, which turned slowly, like a lighthouse beacon, taking in everything. “I think it looks clea—hold on.” Without saying another word, Wasano bounded through the door, his feet squeaking on the floor.

  Jörgen took over his position in the door and glanced out. He whispered to Urban, “Don’t move,” and then dashed out the door as well.

  ~~~

  Urban wasn’t sure if any time had passed, or if he had lost consciousness or not, because the world was swimming in front of him. His captain said something he didn’t catch, before disappearing. Using his uninjured arm, he grabbed the doorknob above him and swung himself to the other side of the door, twisted the knob and peeked through. He now understood where his captain and security director went.

  An older woman was fighting against a much younger woman wearing a spa bathrobe. The older woman kept beating the younger woman with her cane, but the younger woman was unrelenting, screeching anger and scratching at the older woman, who had her back up against the Ye Olde Tavern entrance.

  The security director yanked the younger woman away, tossing her easily to the floor, while the captain helped the elderly woman up. She was trying to tell them something when several people burst out of the Ye Olde Tavern’s door. The elderly woman must have been trying to hold the door closed when she was attacked.

  The Spa Woman was already up and fixated on the security director, while captain and the elderly woman were racing back toward the opening Urban sat in. Urban used the last of his strength to move out the way and hold open the door farther to make passage easier. He hoped no one else would come through, because he wouldn’t able to do anything. The captain, security director and elderly woman bounded through the opening and slammed shut the door, and the only thing holding Urban. He flopped to the floor, hearing his head clunk against the floor and the door being pounded on from the other side.