The Final Outbreak

by M. L. Banner

  It wasn’t just that she was attractive—she certainly was. It was her passion and her laughter. It was so genuine and contagious. He felt the worries of his world drift away when she laughed. And she laughed all the time.

  He had never met someone who was always in such a good mood, when he so rarely was in one himself. Sure, she had her down moments, like everyone else and most especially lately. But hers never lasted very long before she’d bring up some funny anecdote from her past or from a movie that taught her some life-lesson; something that had meaning and why the world was a better place than all of them thought because of that little snippet of human understanding she’d uncovered from something otherwise so trivial.

  Flavio knew if the world was a better place, it was because of her being in it. Period.

  “Are you even listening to me?” she asked, her face still wrinkled in a happy grin.

  No, he wasn’t. At least not completely, but he didn’t want to generate a frown from her lovely face. “So why you love movie about zombies so much?”

  “It’s not the zombies really. I mean come on; the whole zombie-thing is pretty lame. You see, it’s not about zombies; it’s about the friendship with your mates and it’s about love in the worst of times and it’s about looking out for one another, all told through Sean and his girlfriend Liz and his best friend Ed. And I’m reminded of this often... with you and me.”

  “So that makes me Sean?” He glowered at her, not really meaning it the way he said it, and knowing the unintended connotation of what followed. But he didn’t mind.

  “Only if it means that I’m your girlfriend.” She smiled and reached out and touched his hand.

  At any time in the past, at a moment like this, when a woman would try and get close to him, Flavio would head for the exit. But nothing in him was yelling, “Run!” Quite the opposite. He wanted this, too.

  He returned her smile with his own and covered her much smaller hand with his. Then he turned somewhat serious. “You know I have no girlfriend since my wife died.”

  His mouth started to dry up a bit. And he felt droplets of perspiration slide down his neck and puddle around his collar. For any normal adult male it would have been nerves causing this. Sure, he was a little nervous, but not for the reasons most men sweated during these moments with someone they were attracted to. And at the same time he felt confident he was exactly where he should be. He was mentally preparing himself to head down a road he hadn’t traveled down in a while. He was about to dust off an old emotional road map that he had folded up many years ago and put away for safekeeping.

  He would unfold it now.

  He was ready.

  He was the one that asked her out on this “coffee date,” even though she used her own credits to purchase their coffees in the MDR. Every passenger was allotted one cup of coffee per day as part of their daily sea rations. He told her that it was sensible they’d share theirs together, in the open area of the Solarium. It was far more than common sense that drove him to ask her on this date.

  “I do know this,” she said softly. “We’ll take this as slowly as you need.”

  “Don’t need slow. Life too short.” He abruptly leaned over the table, almost knocking his half-full cup of coffee over, and kissed her. It was the first time he had kissed a woman since his wife.

  He sat back down and was greeted by the same captivating smile that he now knew he would look forward to every day, no matter what that day brought them.

  Then he remembered where he had to go and his whole demeanor changed. “Sorry. Have to go.”

  Vicki looked at her watch. “Oh yeah, your new job. Do you know what it is?”

  “No, but it better be good or I complain to captain.”

  Flavio squeezed her hand again. They exchanged quick grins and he dashed off.

  ~~~

  Jessica

  “I think you’re all set, Jessica,” proclaimed Deep, his grin stretching ear to ear. “You now have all of the ship’s video feeds available on your console.” He stepped away from her console to give her room to approach and give it a try.

  Jessica returned a weak smile and approached her console before she halted. She already knew how to work the controls and trusted that if Deep said it was fixed, it must be fixed. She really didn’t want to play with it right now, like he wanted. She just wasn’t in the mood.

  She attempted a smile again. “Thank you so much, Deep. I’ll test it out later, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh sure. I know you have lots to do. I’ll come back tomorrow and help you with anything else you may need.”

  “Hey, what about engineering? We have a long list of things that need fixing.” Niki scowled, her words almost sounding like grunts.

  Deep stared at the woman who was much taller than him—most non-Indian woman were—acting a little stunned by Niki’s hostility. “Ah, Bu-Buzz,” he stammered, “...is working on these, I think. I’ll ask him when I see him later today.” He turned back to Jessica, his facial features softening again.

  “Anyway, I’ll see you later.” Deep’s all-white smile re-enveloped his face. It was a nice face, and in spite of what was going on, it felt reassuring to have someone looking out for her.

  “Thank you, Deep. You’re a life saver,” Jessica answered. “And thanks for the coffee.”

  “Sure,” Deep said under his breath, while he grabbed his small bag of tools and beelined it to the bridge exit. And just as quickly as he had entered, he was out the door. It felt to Jessica as if some warm Indian breeze had blown through the bridge and was then gone in an instant.

  “You know that boy just wants to get into your pants? Of course, he’s not the only one.” Niki flashed her cohort a mischievous grin.

  Jessica glowered at Niki. Deep’s infatuation with Jessica was widely known around the ship and Jessica really didn’t mind it. He was sweet and a good friend, and she needed friends right now. She also didn’t mind the chiding from others, including Niki. Except now, when each day was filled with a greater realization that she would probably never see her family again. She reminded herself that it was just Niki; this was the way she was.

  Although Jessica had rarely worked directly with Niki, since Niki’s position originally kept them on different decks, she was recently reminded why she didn’t care for Niki: it was her acidic personality.

  That and the fact that she’s so damned butch.

  That’s when she was hit by what Niki meant by the second part of her statement. With this and seeing the knowing grin on Niki’s mug, which then grew upon recognition that Jessica had just caught on to her pass, Jessica turned beet red.

  “Ah... I...” she stammered. “You know I’m straight... and married, right?” Jessica held up her ring finger to buttress her argument. But the small diamond in her engagement ring, under the bridge’s muted light, barely glinted a rebuttal.

  “Hey, Sunshine, don’t get your dainty little panties all bunched up. I’ll stop hitting on you. But Deep is another story. He brings you his coffee allotment and then goes out of his way to make sure your console works, when so many other things on the ship need work. Just saying, you’re going to have to do something about him.”

  Thankful now to be on this otherwise uncomfortable subject, but off one far more uncomfortable, she quickly answered. “Deep is sweet. He knows it’s been a tough time for me.”

  “It’s tough on all of us,” Niki chortled. “But I suspect it’s toughest on the guests who now must work as crew.”

  87

  New Crew

  Hans

  “This sucks,” Hans huffed. He reexamined his list, once again counting the number of cabins they had left to do. “Forty, forty-one... We have forty-one more of these damned things. And we’ve already been to this one before.”

  “Yeah, but then we’re all done with this project,” Frans stated, a little too enthusiastically.

  “Sure, but then the captain will make us his personal slaves on something else. Don’t
forget we’re supposed to be guests of this cruise line, not workers. I wouldn’t have gone on this cruise if I had thought we might be forced into working. And all because we have special gifts.”

  “You mean because we’re infected.”

  “I still don’t believe that. We’ve been given special abilities. Though I would sure like some of the other abilities too. You know, like the super strength that that tow-headed woman has. Then we wouldn’t have to take any more crap from the captain.”

  “Just knock on the door,” Frans said, obviously annoyed by the whole conversation.

  “Fine,” Hans huffed back. He balled up a fist and thumped hard on the solid cabin door. “How do you say this Schlitzauge’s name anyway, little brother?”

  “I think, Ya-kO-bus,” Hans read it phonetically and partially nodded his own acceptance to his pronunciation.

  The door opened with a light squeak, and a single eye revealed itself through the dark slit. Then part of the man’s face.

  “Jes?” asked the sleepy looking mug attached to a single blinking eye, still shrouded in darkness behind the door.

  “Are you Yakobus Wahid, currently working as a room steward on deck 7?”

  “Jes... What is this about?”

  Hans gave an exaggerated sniff, immediately crinkling his nostrils like he’d taken a whiff of something malodorous and then turned to glare at Hans, who nodded affirmatively back at him.

  “Congratulations.” Hans handed Yakobus a pre-printed piece of paper. “You’ve been given a new cabin, one much nicer than someone of your status would have normally been given.”

  ~~~

  Jaga

  Jaga looked again at the piece of paper to confirm it. He’d examined the damned thing maybe a hundred times already. And each time he did, it made less sense than it did the first time he looked at it.

  “Here it is, little buddy,” he said to Taufan, “our new home.”

  He didn’t understand why he had to move in the first place. There was nothing wrong with the arrangement he currently had. He liked having roommates. And since Asap went all crazy and disappeared and Catur was gone, Yakobus and he had more room than ever before.

  Now he was forced to leave his home of several years. No explanation. No reason. Just some big German dude and a smaller version—probably brothers—who showed up unannounced at his door last night. They were part of the new crew: guests recruited into service by the captain.

  Jaga’s first thought was that he was about to be fired for having a ferret on board, and for the trouble he caused. But nothing was ever said about this. Just the late-night knock on the door. Yet that wasn’t the most bizarre part of the German brothers’ visit.

  After they had knocked on his door and confirmed he was in fact himself, they then did the most peculiar thing: they sniffed him. The two brothers then looked at each other, acting like he had body odor or something—even though he had just showered—and then nodded at each other. Then the big guy said to his brother, “Number 3626” and his brother pulled out a sea card from a box, handed it to Jaga and said, “Congratulations Jaggamashi, you’re now in cabin 3626. Enjoy your new quarters, but move in by early tomorrow morning.”

  It was all so strange.

  And he wasn’t the only one. Many of the other crew—the ones who had been around for a while—were moved as well, some to this side of the ship and others to a cabin more forward.

  “It makes no damned sense.”

  Now he was going to be living here, in a guest cabin, very much like the nice guest cabins he cleaned... or rather, used to clean, as he was also told that he was going to be given a new job too. Apparently the guests, or rather new crew members, would be cleaning their own cabins. There were more important jobs each of them would be doing. Though he couldn’t imagine what else the captain would have him do.

  He wondered who would visit him in the middle of the night to deliver that message. And what sense did it make to take him away from something he was good at? And he loved it too, seeing his guests happy during their vacations. He had received a lot of praise from corporate about this and it was the reason why he was given so many cabins to service.

  He wasn’t good at anything else. He never had much use for school and he didn’t have any skills, other than taking care of his buddy. “Right, Taufan?” He scratched the tuft of fur below the ferret’s mouth to encourage a response. Taufan gave a little groan. Jaga took that as a “Yes!”

  He pulled the new sea card that he was given from his pocket and slipped it into the door. He was almost surprised to see the lock turn green and click open. Pushing in on the door, he was immediately dumbfounded. This was a giant room, far bigger than what he and Taufan needed. Why would they give him this big room, for no reason at all?

  He looked down at his ferret, almost expecting help from him with this quandary. Taufan bristled in his arms: his buddy was asking to be released. No doubt he wanted to examine the room for himself.

  “And look Taufan, you have a window.”

  Jaga allowed the cabin door to slam shut and then he let go of his ferret.

  Taufan burst out of Jaga’s arms and darted across the room to the large window, immediately enthralled with the island they were fast approaching.

  Maybe he should look at this as a positive. Maybe a little change was good. “Why go to all of this trouble unless it was a good thing?”

  Taufan chittered his response at the window.

  It still didn’t make any sense, but at least Taufan approved.

  88

  Flavio

  He was on a quick breakfast mission for Thai food, if he could just find some. He needed to eat quickly to be done in time for his meeting, which he guessed other crew members like him would be attending, all to receive their new job reassignments, whatever they were. “Dammit,” he cursed under his breath.

  He found himself standing in front of the locked entrance to the crew mess. A recently printed sign—definitely not there yesterday—was taped to the door, to remind him and others why they were locked out:

  From the Captain:

  Everyone, including all original and new crew and all officers, is to take their meals in the Main Dining Room.

  Flavio remembered hearing this, but it didn’t register until now. They damn well better have my Thai food, he thought. But he knew that that had changed too, like everything else on the ship.

  He smiled at this last thought, thinking of Vicki. Not all changes were bad.

  Someone cleared his throat and Flavio turned away from the door to see a tiny junior officer standing behind him. The man’s shoulders drooped under Flavio’s shadow, as he hulked over the officer. “Sorry to bother you, sir,” the officer said, peering almost straight up at Flavio. “I was just coming up to get you. You are wanted in the MDR by the captain. He’s waiting for you right now.”

  All of this struck Flavio as strange.

  He had thought he was meeting in a group, all to receive their new jobs from someone far below the rank of captain. He certainly didn’t expect a private audience with the captain himself.

  And how did this junior officer know he’d be here? The officer had said, “I was just coming up to get you,” which must have meant that he was coming up to his new cabin, since he was no longer in his normal cabin on this level, having been given one of the guest cabins, with a fantastic view and a great bed, several decks above them.

  Then it struck him.

  Flavio tilted his head upward, glancing at one of the hundreds of the ship’s cameras mounted on ceilings throughout the ship. He nodded his understanding at the one less than a meter away, peering down at them.

  But there was one more unexplained oddity that Flavio just couldn’t wrap his mind around. This officer referred to him as “sir.” Since Flavio was not an officer, he should have just been referred to by his last name, Petrovich. That was normal decorum on an RE ship, unless that had changed too.

  Flavio recast his gaze back down to
the diminutive officer. The man was patiently waiting for an answer or some sort of acknowledgment. “Thank you. I go now.”

  It was all Flavio could think of saying. His mind was having difficulty keeping up since so much was changing, so very rapidly: he had actually slept an entire night for the first time in memory, he didn’t have a headache, he felt genuinely happy and to top all of this off, the captain of his ship was waiting for him.

  Flavio shook his head, turned and started toward the MDR. He heard the soft shuffle of the junior officer’s feet behind him when he entered the crew stairwell. It was obvious that the man had a mission to make sure that Flavio made it up to see their captain. Flavio was going to make sure the man was going to have to work a little to complete his task.

  Some things don’t change, he thought to himself, as a smirk crept onto his face.

  It didn’t take long, because Flavio double-timed it to the MDR, his destination. A part of him wanted to see if his shadow remained glued to him, though he wasn’t sure why. And afterwards, he felt a little silly for doing this.

  One doorway later, he stepped into the MDR. Behind him were the sounds of the diminutive officer hacking up a lung. Flavio chuckled to himself.

  If I were in charge of crew exercise, you would be the first person who would have to run laps, he thought. His smile-lines moved higher.

  Flavio found the captain right away. The man who only a few short days ago was the staff captain until he was elevated in title when his superior was brutally murdered by the parasitics. Jean Pierre stood up from his chair and greeted Flavio with a broad and welcoming grin.