The Final Outbreak

by M. L. Banner

“Yes, that’s what I want.” She motioned past him, her smile leading the way.

  He turned to the display, anxious to get away from this crazy woman.

  Once he was at the display case, he wasn’t paying attention and drove his knee into it, sending two other table-top displays onto the floor. “Dammit!” he huffed, and glanced at TJ, who remained in her place.

  “What color?” he asked almost inaudibly.

  “Blue.”

  The clerk reached inside, snatched two boxes from under the glass, and marched over to her, holding the boxes out in front of him like a shield of protection. “Here are two sets. Pa-please go now.”

  She accepted the boxes, unlocked and then backed out the door.

  “Thank you for your help.”

  90

  Meet Up

  Ted stood, arms wrapped around his chest, his back holding up the room’s aft wall, while tapping a nervous foot to the floor. She was late.

  He looked at his watch—that he had never worn, until a few days ago—to confirm this. It was ten minutes past their meet time. This really annoyed him because it meant that he had less time with her before they both had their duties to attend to. They had so little time together these days.

  He drilled his eyes through the all-glass conference room door, catching glimpses of people flashing up and down the aft stairwell, a few feet away.

  She was never late before...

  That was before all of her changes. He was the one who was usually late. It was his wife who reminded him constantly of his appointments. It was one of the reasons why he started wearing his watch, a gift from her a while back. When she had recommended he bring it on this trip, he questioned her about it. “Who wears watches anymore?”

  “Remember, you won’t be carrying your phone with you everywhere, and I don’t want us to be late for shows, or our dinner with the captain.”

  “That’s what I have you for,” he told her. He was only half kidding.

  “But I might not always be around... I may be lounging at the pool while you’re writing. Please bring it.”

  It seemed like a little thing back then, barely a few days ago. Now every decision they’d made, and would make from here on out, felt doubly important.

  An attractive blonde, about TJ’s height, breezed up to the door, and he held his breath. But it wasn’t her. To confirm this, the woman moved quickly past the door.

  When he called her this morning on her house phone—he was allowed certain privileges being a member of the wardroom, including use of the house phones, which were still designated for emergencies—she at first didn’t sound interested in meeting. He recalled this conversation too... “Good morning, how are you?”

  “Fine,” she said, absent all emotion.

  “Are you sleeping?”

  “Some.”

  “Can we meet?”

  “I have to help with the fuel negotiations.”

  “You know that I know that. Please, I need to see you.”

  She paused for a moment, and then her tone changed. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  He had remembered this conference room was kept empty for important ship business and that it wouldn’t be used just before this parley with this guy on an island who had fuel. So he set it up here.

  Finally, he saw her slowly come up the stairwell and stop a few feet before the door, where she gazed inside and saw him looking back at her. It was hard to see her clearly, because the door was covered with smudge marks, probably from people looking in, and a recently erected sign on the other side that said, “This room is reserved indefinitely for the Bridge Crew.”

  She approached the door and pushed it open, and that’s when he could see all of her.

  He immediately had a flashback of the sexual dream that turned into a nightmare this morning, recalling both his arousal and his terror all at the same time. His heart raced again.

  She looked absolutely radiant in her usual outfit: compression shorts and short-sleeve running shirt, complemented with color-coordinated running shoes; blond hair pulled back into a crisp ponytail; nose-plug winched around her nostrils, and its skin-colored tether loosely ringing her neck. She wasn’t wearing her necklace, but she said the clasp had broken and she was afraid of losing it now.

  He noticed right away two monumental changes in her appearance since the last time he had seen her.

  First, her skin glistened a radiant brown; she’d been rapidly losing melanin, causing her skin to look a more deathly pale shade each day. But the biggest change was her eye color.

  They were blue.

  Not her normal blue, but not red or pinkish either.

  Her smile made his heart sore. She seemed genuinely happy to see him.

  And then she did something unexpected: she stepped up to him, wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tight.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said into her ear.

  “Me too.” Her voice was nasal-sounding. She was also sweaty, like she had just completed a run.

  He gazed into her eyes for just a flash and kissed her. That’s when she went rigid and pulled away.

  “Geez, you’d think we could afford to turn the air on in here,” she joked, probably to cover her change. But her voice too sounded strained.

  “You know, the whole fuel situation...” That’s when he saw her cover-ups.

  Her eyes weren’t really blue; they were purple: she was wearing blue contacts, which couldn’t completely counteract her red eyes. And her tan was from a bottle and not real. He could see now she looked more gold-colored than brown, like he had originally thought. He glanced at his hand that had clasped her shoulder and noticed some of the tanning cream had come off. He rubbed it around his fingers for further confirmation.

  He glanced back up at her, but his gaze drifted higher, catching what he thought were a couple of white hairs hiding behind the blond strands in her well groomed eyebrows.

  “Guess I could never fool you, Ted. Does it look that bad?”

  “No... I guess a part of me wanted to believe that you were the same. You know, before your changes.”

  “Yeah, me too. But we both know I’m not. I’m completely different than what I was before all of this.”

  The truth was a bitter pill that he didn’t want to swallow, but now he was forced to.

  They held their silence for an uncomfortably long period of time. They had never had an uncomfortable moment of silence between them before, savoring each other's presence so much that periods without conversation were just as glorious as those infused with rapid dialog. That had changed too.

  “I love you, you know,” he said.

  “But that’s not enough anymore.”

  There it was. The fact that he didn’t want to admit, but she put it out there. It was like a knife thrust directly into his heart. “Just don’t give up on us.”

  “I haven’t. In fact, knowing you are there is what has kept me... human.”

  At last, something to hold onto. They weren’t lost, yet. He could still hope that she held on, as long as she remained “human.”

  There was a loud beep-tone, followed rapidly by another one. This was the prelude to an announcement. Before the apocalypse, these were often ignored because they were usually just outside of earshot and it was known that each was some sort of fun declaration about the day’s drink special or an upcoming show. Now, the announcements brought him anxiety, even those he already knew about.

  “That’s the captain, telling everyone to get inside and to remain there until after we have concluded the trade and we’ve left the port.”

  “It’s also why I have to go,” she said.

  He knew this too, but he didn’t want their time to end, especially on her last hopeful comment. Then he considered what she was about to do.

  “Please be careful.” He thought about Molly’s comments about the parasitics maybe having super-speed. “You may have new abilities, but you can’t outrun a bullet.”

  This comment mad
e her stop—she was already headed to the door. “Are we expecting trouble?”

  “Ahh...” They weren’t, but he was still skeptical of the whole thing. “No. Just promise me you’ll be careful and not take any unnecessary chances.”

  She flashed her purplish eyes his way and gave him a slight smile. It felt genuine. “I promise. Bye.”

  She turned and was out the door. Gone.

  91

  The Parasitics

  Whaudeep Reddy floated to the door and opened it just one second after Molly’s faint knock on the other side. He didn’t want her to wait long without protection. The area around the deck 8 Monitor Room, like most of the ship, was secure. But after everything that he’d seen, he didn’t want to take any chances with this nice, elderly woman. So many images of violent murder were welded permanently inside his head, replaying themselves over and over, day and night.

  “Oh my, you’re so kind. Thank you for moving so quickly, Mr. Deep.”

  Deep offered an arm to help her inside, but she refused and hobbled under the aid of her odd-shaped cane. Once she was inside, he stuck his head out the door, to make sure no one else was there. His skin bristled at the thought that another one of those parasitics might be dashing down the hall, all because he wasn’t at his seat watching for them, and warning the ship. He hadn’t slept much worrying about missing the next attack. And with all that he’d learned from Dr. Molly’s and his own observations, his anxiety grew with each passing day. Something was coming. And it was coming soon.

  He checked in both directions: of course, the hallway was clear.

  After securing the door, making sure it was properly latched, he turned to watch and wait for Dr. Molly to take her seat. “Shuffle-thump, shuffle-thump,” she worked her way to the chair beside his. The one with the two plumped-up pillows to comfort her aching bones.

  Deep thought that she really should have an escort when she made her way forward, across the span of the ship, to the MR. With her reviewing tapes and making notes about the parasitics as often as four times a day, and for hours at a time, he was worried for the woman’s health and safety: it would be so easy for her to trip and fall on her way to the MR.

  But all his proposals for assistance were resisted by her, often with her stating adamantly that she didn’t need any help, nor did she feel it was right to bother anyone else with such a request. Even when he offered to come and escort her himself, she said, “No!” And that it was her call, not someone else’s. He at least got her to agree to call him first when she was headed toward the MR. That way, he could watch her like a hawk from his MR chair when she started her trip to the MR, just as he also did when she left the MR. At least he could do that for her.

  Deep couldn’t help but appreciate the work ethic of this woman, who was probably older than his own grandmother. And it wasn’t that she had great stamina, as he often saw evidence of her exhaustion, especially now. Each time they met, she looked more and more the part of the elderly woman. He knew it was her scientific drive to understand their monsters, coupled with a general feeling of alarm that they had a very limited window to do so. Regardless of her reasons, Dr. Molly Simmons was someone he’d grown to care for and greatly admire.

  He flashed an unseen smirk at her back, as she was getting set in her seat. He didn’t want to rush her. So he’d wait until she was done fiddling with her cane, even though he felt building apprehension at being away from his monitors.

  It was almost zero-eight-hundred, which was their normal feeding time. But after yesterday’s two incidents of attempted attacks, right at feeding times, they had moved this morning’s feeding time up a half hour or so, to see if the parasitics were going to try something right at 08:00 or would they wait for the guard and feeder’s entrance around 08:30? And with the new information from last night, which he hadn’t yet shared with Dr. Molly, there was no way to know what they’d do next.

  He could see she was done fiddling with the pillows in her seat.

  “Are you close enough to the monitors, ma’am?” he said softly, just behind her.

  She turned her head and shoulders back toward him and glared a look that said, “I’m not so feeble I can’t move my own damned chair!”

  He nodded and whipped around her, dumping himself into his own seat. He typed a couple of quick commands on his keyboard and waited for her to start the review of some of the key video snippets he had compiled. He’d already seen the live feeds playing on four of the monitors, including the main screen.

  Before she’d start looking at the video, she would examine his notes scrawled on the clipboard which he had left in front of her: a detailed summation of any interesting developments since her last review, the parasitics’ movements and any thoughts about what he saw. She’d given him instructions on how to write research notes about their empirical observations. And he tried to follow her direction to the letter.

  He was anxious for her to get to the newest development, at the end of his notes, which both surprised and terrified him. But she always did a review of their previous notes first, to make sure she didn’t miss something, before she worked her way to the most recent point. He waited for her to get to that place, studying her facial features, while his mind wandered, thinking about how much had happened and what they’d seen so far in the few short days they’d been observing their parasitics...

  Once they had control of them, Dr. Molly had been tasked by the captain to examine all of the live and taped feeds from the four cameras they had trained in and around the Wayfarer Lounge, where the parasitics were being held: two inside the lounge, one covering the main entrance, and one on the back stage—it was pitch black back there, so it was as if they had no camera there. None of the feeds had audio, so they could only rely on the video and the first-person reports from the guards who watched the doors and the volunteers who fed these monsters.

  Since they had locked the doors on the parasitics and turned down the air conditioning to keep it icy cold, sending them into a form of hibernation, they had gained a lot of knowledge about them from the two cameras.

  Deep had been on watch almost the entire time and had reviewed every moment of tape himself, including those from Fish’s short shifts. He also read every one of Dr. Molly’s notes. So he knew exactly what was going on.

  Until an hour ago, most of the parasitics were asleep and naked. But it wasn’t always this way.

  During the first day, after the temperature in the lounge had dropped, the parasitics then mostly lay in their places and fell into some sort of quasi-sleep. Dr. Molly explained it was similar to what bears do in the winter. She said it was a semi-hibernative state, where they were very aware of what was going on around them, but as long as they didn’t sense a threat, they remained where they were.

  She said this was occurring for several reasons: they needed the rest to replenish their energy; their bodies needed to fix what was broken or damaged; and they needed to wait until it was warmer, so that their body temperatures could rise to their new normal levels, which was considerably hotter than our own normal.

  After the first few hours of that first day, something unexpected, but wholly explainable occurred: they started to cluster themselves into pods, intertwining arms and legs so as to almost become one.

  By the second day, all their clothes had come off, apparently for two reasons, one very odd and the other sensible.

  Deep’s cheeks always flashed red when he thought about this, and he was enormously embarrassed when he was present with Dr. Molly while she watched this with him.

  Almost all of them had copulated together, often with whomever they were next to. Dr. Molly suspected that most of the time it was not the normal partner they were on the ship with. At first, Dr. Molly said she had thought this was part of their innate desire to indulge in their primal behavior, based on who biologically had the greatest sex drive. But the longer she studied the parasitics’ behavior, the more she said she suspected there was a purpose to this behavior: t
he parasites inside each host wanted their hosts to reproduce.

  She said this was especially odd, since it didn’t fit the T-Gondii’s normal life cycle of trying to end up in the guts of cats, where they could naturally reproduce. So her hypothesis—he loved that word—was that the volcanic bacteria that spread world-wide had somehow mutated or genetically altered the parasites which were controlling their parasitics, along with most of the human and animal population of the world.

  But their parasitics’ behavior wasn’t just filled with sleep and sex. They had witnessed several murders as well.

  Like the sex, Dr. Molly at first thought this was part of each person’s basic needs being exaggerated by the parasite. And that this was just the parasitic’s period of rage being expressed by murdering another parasitic that was in its way.

  When it happened, it was quick and violent.

  What changed Dr. Molly’s opinion, at least somewhat, was after seeing what they did with the bodies: each was eaten.

  So even though parasitics were undoubtedly driven to kill non-infected humans and consume their flesh for sustenance, they were not opposed to consuming each other, if it was necessary. Dr. Molly later said that she believed they were choosing to kill the weaker of their group, perhaps those with mortal injuries.

  Whatever the reasons were, it was too gruesome to watch. And like the sex parts, Deep often averted his head or partially closed his eyes so he didn’t have to witness this. His own fear was that these images would become commonplace to him and at some point, he’d find them no longer disturbing.

  Luckily for Deep, these two behaviors seemed to stop about as abruptly as they began, but they also couldn’t really tell.

  That was because by the end of the second day, the parasitics started to use their already-shed clothing to cover themselves, like a large blanket. It was then that they realized the parasitics were both protecting their body temperatures and maybe even trying to raise them. Several other interesting developments immediately followed.