The Final Outbreak

by M. L. Banner

  “That’s where the thermophilic bacteria comes in,” exclaimed the captain, nodding his understanding.

  “Exactly. I don’t know why, perhaps no one will, even if by some miracle our race survives this. But the thermophilic bacteria was just the inciter that the T-Gondii was looking for.

  “And this bacteria was already unique, without the normal soft cell-walls of most bacteria. This thing is tough as nails—almost indestructible. And when it infects a host that is also infected with T-Gondii, it appears to set the T-Gondii’s new programming off, so that the hosts then do what the T-Gondii told it to do: kill or destroy every non-infected species of mammal.”

  “Sorry, Ms. Simmons,” interrupted the security head—she couldn’t remember his name, nor see far enough to read his name-tag. “You said, ‘if our race survives this.’ There must be some way to stop this?”

  “It’s Dr. Simmons, actually.” Molly wasn’t one for titles, but she didn’t want her words to be taken lightly. “And it is I who am sorry. I’m not sure there is any way to stop this. We’ve known for decades about the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria and kills two to three million people a year. And yet the best we can do is practically kill the patient with arsenic. So instead, the medical community had been focused on prevention, because we simply don’t have a cure. I don’t suspect we’ll ever find a cure for this either.”

  The six occupants of lifeboat 35 fell completely silent, weighed down by this shocking piece of information.

  A loud tone startled all but the security chief and the captain. The security chief reached around his belt and unclipped his radio, and to Molly, he said, “Someone has put out an ‘all hands’ call on the radio. Mine was turned down so as not to attract the attention of any of the crazy people.”

  He turned up the volume.

  “... Repeat. This is First Officer Jessica Eva Mínervudóttir. We are stuck on the swing deck. I’m asking for any officers to respond, or anyone from engineering.”

  The radio responded right away. “Hello, First Officer. This is Staff Captain Haddock.”

  The security chief held the radio to his mouth. “This is Acting Security Director Wasano Agarwal. I’m here with Captain Jörgen, Deck Officer Urban Patel, and three guests.”

  “Jörgen, you’re safe, sir?” bleated Jean Pierre.

  Wasano handed Jörgen the radio.

  “Yes, we’re safe. But Deck Officer Patel was seriously injured. Where are you?”

  “We’re holed up in a room in the spa. What about you?”

  The captain quickly gazed at Molly, and then Hans and Franz before speaking. “Staff Captain, we’re in life boat 35, with three passengers.” The captain’s tone had changed like he was reminding his officers to keep up their radio decorum. Molly was a widow to a ship’s captain and understood protocol very well. “First Officer, who’s OOD?”

  Oh-oh!

  There was a long silence, before Jessica—the one trapped on the swing deck—answered, in a much more obtuse manner. It was as if she knew, after the captain’s subtle reminder, that there were passengers within earshot.

  “No one is, sir. And I didn’t get the new navigational instructions into the ECDIS. We are still on a 296 degree heading, at fifteen knots, and we’ll hit our destination in just over an hour.”

  ~~~

  Jean Pierre let his head droop down, his chin practically coming to rest on his chest, the walkie held suspended in the air, where he’d been listening. After a deep breath, he stood up straight, radio finding his ear. “Have you been able to raise anyone from engineering?” He suspected he knew the answer, but he had to ask to confirm this.

  Jessica answered, “No, sir. Since Safety Officer Helguson and I were chased off the bridge, we’ve been trapped on the swing deck by a couple of those crazy people. I’ve been trying to raise someone for the last fifteen minutes.”

  “Merde,” was the only thing Jean Pierre could think of saying, before he let his body fall into a soft chair, pushed up against the wall of their spa room.

  Ted stepped over to him. “Did I understand your first officer’s veiled point correctly?”

  Jean Pierre looked up to Ted and then over to the four passengers who heard much more than he wanted to have to explain, but he knew he had to now.

  “We’re all in this together now. Best tell them what we just heard,” Ted exclaimed, while rubbing a temple.

  “Yes, JP,” TJ huffed, the first words any of them had heard from her in awhile. “Spill the damned beans.”

  “If we don’t find some way to get to either engineering or the bridge and change our course, in just over an hour, we will slam into Punta Delgado at fifteen knots.”

  56

  Eye in The Sky

  A few minutes earlier

  Deep had been watching and listening to everything, but that’s all he could do.

  When he first saw the ship’s captain and the others about to make a break for Ye Olde Tavern, Deep tried to warn them on the radio that this would be a problem with all the crazies running around that very public deck, and those in the bar. But his base unit wouldn’t transmit, even though it was receiving most everything, albeit weakly.

  Best he could figure was that the connection to the radio’s antenna, which ran up through one of the conduits and out to the antenna outside—so he and the bridge, just forward of him, and engineering, below and aft of him, had the best radio reception—was broken, no doubt from the tsunami. The fact that he was receiving anything seemed a miracle. Worse, like an idiot, he’d forgotten his portable in his cabin. So while he’d glanced at each of his monitors, he was busy fashioning an improvised dipole antenna for his base unit, using strands of wire from a coil pulled from a dead generator.

  After a few minutes of watching the captain’s group, the staff captain’s group, the bridge, starboard swing deck, engineering, and a few other key areas, it was obvious to him that they had lost control of the ship to the crazies. This was, of course, bad. But he wasn’t immediately worried, because he knew everything on this ship, including navigation, was on autopilot.

  They still had some time. At least that’s what he was thinking.

  Now, all Deep wanted to do was tell everyone with a radio that he was right there with them watching.

  He thought about some American news programs, which received periodic reports about traffic accidents and safe routes for morning commuters, all coming from a news helicopter, which called itself their eye in the sky.

  He would be the ship’s ‘eye in the sky’ and maybe point out possible routes to safety for crew members and passengers. He also wanted to promote the conversation further among the officers and crew about what was going on and how they could fight against it, together.

  Deep keyed the microphone, “Hello, this is Deep, speaking from the MR. I’m putting a call out to all officers. This is Deep in the Intrepid’s Monitor Room. Do you read me?”

  “What was that?” asked the staff captain, his signal weak and scratchy. “Something just cut you out, like someone was transmitting over you.”

  “Dammit!” bellowed Deep. The steel surrounding the MR was too great. His antenna wouldn’t be enough to transmit his signal outside the MR and then to each location, many of whom were also deep within the ship’s bowels. This is why his base unit was connected to an outside antenna. He needed to get his new antenna outside. But he had no idea how to get it outside while he was stuck inside the MR.

  Deep stepped to the MR entrance and glared out the small window to the outside world, currently owned by the crazies.

  He heard a muffled animal-like screech and saw a shadow shoot by, the beast’s screech-sounds trailing behind it.

  “How will I get an antenna out there?” he wondered out loud, shoulders drooping. It seemed impossible. He wished he could talk to Buzz, their know-everything-electronic fix-it guy, more than anything right now. Buzz always knew what to do.

  Deep was lost in thought, staring through the windo
w, when something large consumed all light in the window.

  He stepped back and saw it was a man in a head waiter’s uniform. The name tag flashed by before he could see it, but he saw the colors of the flag.

  Ukrainian or Romanian, he thought.

  There were others huddled around the waiter.

  Deep caught a brief view of the side of a ferret cradled carefully in someone’s palms, followed by the faces of his friends Jaga and Yacobus and one more familiar face behind them. They were mouthing something.

  Deep disengaged the lock, and the four men and one ferret poured inside, with the waiter slamming the door shut behind them.

  “Tha-thanks for letting us in, Deep,” Buzz stammered.

  “You are exactly the person I needed. So glad you’re here, and you’re safe.”

  Deep turned to his other two friends, wearing chasm-sized grins. “Hello Jag—” Deep nearly bit his tongue when he caught the full-view of Jaga’s ferret, cradled against Jaga’s chest. The ferret was eyeing him. Exactly like the other crazy animals, Jaga’s ferret had blood-red eyes.

  “Don’t worry about Taufan; he’s fine, even though he has those crazy eyes.”

  “Enough pleasantries. You contact bridge? What is status of crew?” demanded the big Slavic waiter. This man was serious looking: more like a general in the military than a waiter. The uniform looked too small for him, like it had shrunk or he had grown out of it.

  Deep wondered, even though the accent sounded right for his nametag, if this man killed the waiter whose uniform he was wearing: it was coated in splotches of blood. There were other oddities: long sleeve shirt, leather work gloves duct-taped around his sleeves, and large bandanna bunched around his neck. Finishing his ensemble were two sheathed knives—one on each side—and a large wrench clutched in his hand, also covered in blood. He was ready to do battle; rather, he had already done battle.

  “This is Flavio,” said Yacobus. “He helped us get here safe. He wanted to get to the MR too.”

  “Hello Flavio,” Deep offered, making direct eye contact with the man who towered over all of them.

  Flavio didn’t change his expression, blurting, “Status please?”

  Deep knew who was in charge, in spite of the uniform. He obliged the man. “The ship has crazies everywhere, including on the bridge and in engineering. And I haven’t been able to reach anyone on the radio yet, because my connection to the antenna is broken.”

  “How do we connect?” Flavio asked. He scooted closer to the video screens, his arms now folded and cradling his blood-soaked wrench. His eyes flitted from screen to screen.

  “Well, I don’t exactly know. But I’m hoping Buzz here could help us figure that out.” He turned to Buzz, whose eyes had been searching around the MR, “So Buzz, I’ve constructed a dipole, but it won’t work in here because of the heavy steel around us. Maybe we could—”

  Buzz cut him off, “Actually, that’s simple. You have plenty of coaxial cable. Connect that from the radio to the dipole antenna you created. Then someone needs to get outside the crew areas, where you’re not dealing with the thicker steel skeleton around the MR, for instance, inside the atrium.”

  Deep’s mouth dropped. He was going to suggest some way to connect with the broken antenna, or push wire through the conduit. This was so much better. And yet it was impossible.

  Who would be nuts enough to volunteer to leave the safety of this room, and then snake a coax line from there through the crew access hallway into the atrium, where there were bunches of crazies waiting to murder him?

  Flavio turned to Buzz, with the same serious expression he had when he came in. “Thought you said this was simple.”

  “Simple, yes. Easy, no.”

  “So, if antenna is placed outside in public area,” Flavio tilted his head upward to do the calculations, “roughly eighteen meters away, assuming you have enough of this cable, we can speak to the crew?”

  Deep’s mouth snapped shut before he spoke, “Yes, I have more than thirty meters of cable.”

  “Okay, I go, now.”

  “But...” Jaga looked out the window of the MR door and watched another two crazies pass by. “There are so many of them out there. We just barely made it. How will you get through them?”

  “I can handle it.” Flavio hoisted his bloody wrench in the air and tapped the handle of one of his knives with his free hand to demonstrate his intent, which was already obvious to the others. He didn’t blink an eye as he studied the screens, especially those on deck 8—their deck.

  Flavio tracked Deep who had returned from the other side of the room with a roll of black cable and another roll of thin metal cable and said, “Would be better if you can make diversion noise, but I can still do it without.”

  Deep nodded and quickly twisted the two wires connecting the coaxial cable with the antenna. He grabbed a roll of electrical tape and spun it around and around the splice, cut the tape and smoothed out the edges.

  While Deep was focused on the antenna, Buzz paced around the room, stopped suddenly, and then addressed Jaga.

  “Say, does your ferret still do that run-away-and-return game?”

  At that moment, Jaga started fidgeting as he did when he was nervous. He knew exactly what Buzz had in mind.

  ~~~

  “This is stupid idea,” Flavio told them. “My life is depending on big rat?”

  Jaga flashed the big man a scornful glance, but Flavio had already turned away to receive instructions from Buzz on how to set up the dipole antenna so that it would work throughout the ship. Jaga returned to reassuring his ferret Taufan, while Deep adjusted the animal’s straps. Attached to the straps was one of the two portable radios Deep had retrieved from the lost and found. They were almost his, as the guests who left them ten months ago hadn’t requested their return. After twelve months, lost items would go to the crew in an auction, held once a month. The funds from the auction were used to add supplies to their crew recreational areas. Deep had already told the potential bidders that the radios were his. The auction was to have occurred in a couple of days, if the world hadn’t ended.

  Oh well, maybe the radios will help to save us, he resolved.

  “Taufan will do as he’s told,” Jaga announced, while looking up at the hulking Slavic. “Are you sure the angries won’t eat him?”

  “Angries”—Flavio smirked at this—“only attack people or animals not like them. Can’t promise it works for big rats, but I guess better than nothing... unless one of you want to be diversion?” Finally, Flavio’s small grin evaporated, as if it never existed before.

  “It’ll work, Jaga,” Yacobus insisted. “Remember how he was with those dogs? They weren’t after Taufan; they were after that man hiding behind the water bottles.”

  Jaga seemed to accept all of this, deciding absolutely that Taufan would do this. It was certainly less risky than one of them going out there, as Flavio had joked.

  Jaga leaned over to his ferret. “Okay Taufan. When I tell you to run, you run, all right?”

  Taufan seemed more interested in preening himself than anything else. And at that moment, all but Jaga felt dubious the ferret would follow his commands.

  Flavio humphed a sigh, and then grabbed the rolled-up cable and attached antenna. “Make sure your rat goes in right direction. Don’t want crazy people chasing both of us.”

  “He’s not a rat. He’s a ferret.” Jaga rose and stood tall, in defiance. But his face was not even close to that of the larger man.

  Flavio grinned again, just a little more this time. “I know.” Then he turned serious again. “Let’s do this, now.”

  Deep stood ready at the MR exit and when he received a tepid nod from Jaga, he slowly unlocked and cracked open the door. He turned his ear to the opening, while the others waited directly behind him. Deep must have felt safe, because he pushed his head outside just enough that he could see in both directions of the hallway. Then he withdrew himself back inside and took a knee.

  “
Okay, now!” he whispered and threw open the door wide enough for them to do their part. Jaga darted into the hall, facing forward, laid Taufan down and held him pointed away, so that he’d run in that direction. Then he commanded, “Run, Taufan. Run.”

  Taufan took off, and Jaga withdrew back through the door. Their door clicked closed.

  Jaga lifted the second portable to his lips and yelled, “Run!” And then clicked on the emergency button that comes with these radio units.

  Even muffled, all of them heard the loud tone echo down the hall, followed by the louder tone’s reverberation from their walkie. The sound changed slightly, telling them that Taufan had just turned down the U-shaped hallway, that followed around them. It would be out of view of their cameras, until he returned or ended back up front.

  All but Jaga glared out the window. He didn’t want to see this.

  Several shadows dashed by their window, running forward, in Taufan’s direction.

  “They’re taking the bait,” exclaimed Deep.

  “Open door, quietly,” Flavio commanded.

  Deep obliged and Flavio slipped out, clutching the loops of coaxial and antenna cable in his left hand and clutching his heavy wrench with his right. He held up at the edge of the doorway.

  Two more crazies ran by, screeching their dislike at the loud noise, but running toward it just the same.

  Flavio shot an eye aft, holding for just two seconds. Then he darted in that direction, letting loops of cable fly out of his left hand. His wrench was held up, ready to strike. He didn’t look back, even though he should have.