Errol's Folly

by Dave Brown

  “Can we take the ship into that channel?” She asked, pointing at the break in the coral wall between the two islands. Reg shook his head.

  “I have no idea how deep that is. If we try it and it's too shallow we'll bottom out and get stuck, maybe permanently.” He stopped his fingers from drumming. “Have we got any other boats?”

  She motioned toward the hatch leading down into the tower. “A few inflatable emergency rafts down in some of the equipment lockers.”

  Reg turned to the door and hurried off the bridge. “Come with me.”

  He took the steps as quickly as he could, finally coming to a halt on one of the crew quarters decks. At the end of the corridor, last hatch on the right, he tapped in a code on a keypad that had been mounted to the bulkhead only a few months before. The door to the former quarters of Bob Graham unlocked and Reg swung it open. After stepping inside, he surveyed the neatly ordered rows of weapons they had taken from the marine helicopters on his old ship. There were two handguns missing. “Well done, Jones,” he said under his breath. He grabbed a third pistol and a belt holster, putting them on.

  “You and Patty get one of those rafts out,” he told Barbara as he slipped his belt back through the loops in his pants. “Grab a wireless and then row as fast as you can over to the big island. I'll keep trying to raise them but if I can't, you're my backup. Find the captain, tell him what's happening.”

  She didn't move, just looked at him. “What's the gun for?”

  “Just in case,” he said, “Now go, hurry!”

  She ran down the corridor and he heard her calling Patty's name. He glanced around the room again, his eyes stopping on the rocket propelled grenades and their tubular launcher. “No,” he said to himself, “I'd just blow myself up.”

  #

  Reg stood on the bridge and held the binoculars up to his face. He could just make out the raft disappearing around a jutting part of the bigger island. Sand Island, it was called, according to a map stuck to one of the rear bulkheads. It seemed a rather unimaginative name. He panned the lenses to the left and took in the large white jet sitting, seemingly forgotten, at the west end of the long runway.

  A loud low horn startled him and he nearly dropped the binoculars. Turning to look out the port side he saw the small boats were sweeping toward the atoll at a leisurely pace. He stepped out onto the catwalk and saw the great container hauler coming to rest about fifty meters south and west of the Folly. Her anchor chains had already descended into the water. There were several people on deck over there, some of them waving amiably at Reg. He doubted many of them were fully aware of what Pelozar was doing here, but Reg didn't really know himself.

  The speakers on the bridge crackled and Pelozar's voice drifted out of them. “Folly, this is Konkinklijke, over.”

  Reg ran back inside and grabbed the microphone. “This is Folly, we read you.”

  “Ah, good. It's Mr. Stoneham, isn't it?”

  Reg wondered how he knew and then remembered he was the only person on board from England. “That's correct, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “I have decided to take a small team over to make sure your people are safe. If you have any new information about the atoll, I would appreciate hearing it.”

  Reg ran through what he knew from his conversations with Jones and Errol the night before. He decided the less Pelozar knew going in, the better. “As I said, we've been unable to raise the team.”

  “Very well. We'll bring your people back safely, Mr. Stoneham. I promise.”

  Reg gritted his teeth. The man sounded like he was lying and wasn't even trying very hard. “Thank you, Koninklijke, we appreciate it.”

  Fifteen minutes later he saw a small boat with an outboard motor begin speeding away from the big ship. He looked through the binoculars and saw a man at the controls with a rich tan and jet black hair, except for a few streaks of gray in the sides. That had to be Pelozar. There were five other men in the boat with him. They were all dressed casually but there was something about them that made Reg's stomach tighten. They looked... hard.

  Chapter 26

  Patty tied the inflatable raft up next to the Folly's skiff while Barbara surveyed the tree line. A bellowing ship's horn drew their attention out to sea. They could see the Folly, half a dozen small sailing boats, and the massive bulk of Koninklijke behind all of them. Patty turned away from the view and started walking toward the trees.

  “We have to find the others,” she said. Barbara made a short sound of agreement and they headed off together. It wasn't a long walk to the Mall that Errol had told them about, but there was nobody there that morning. They decided to follow a sign to the medical clinic. There were two men standing outside the building. They both looked up in surprise when they noticed Patty and Barbara approaching.

  “Uh, hi,” one of them said, “Are you from the ship?”

  Patty nodded, “We need to find Errol. Can you help us out?”

  “They're on a tour of the research facilities,” said the other man. “I'm Greg Weizt. I can take you to them.” He extended his hand. Both women shook and introduced themselves. Then they were walking inside the building, Patty explaining the situation as they walked.

  “What's the big deal?” Greg asked as he tapped out a code on a wall panel. A large bulletin board retreated into the wall, revealing elevator doors. The three of them stepped inside. “Errol already told us they were scouting for places to settle and we've got plenty of room. It's not like we wouldn't welcome the company.”

  Patty shook her head as they began to descend. “This Pelozar guy has some kinda beef against Errol. Something's just not right about him showing up like this.”

  Greg shrugged, and Patty could understand his confusion. He was on the outside of this, hadn't experienced everything they had. She had gone to a few committee briefings with Errol. Pelozar had rubbed her the wrong way from the first time she met him, and she detected his distaste for her friend long before he did himself. Sometimes men just missed that kind of thing.

  They got off the elevator and Patty was quite impressed with what she saw: a high-tech hospital, albeit a small one. Greg wasted no time showing them around, instead leading them straight down a corridor toward a large set of double doors. They swung smoothly open at his touch, obviously meant for fast access. When they followed him through they saw a paved tunnel and a motorized cart that Patty immediately wanted to examine, but she knew they had no time. She and Barbara strapped themselves into two seats Greg pulled open and then held on as he zipped them down the passage.

  “This must be why Reg couldn't reach them on the radio,” Patty said, pointing around them at the tunnel walls. Barbara nodded. It didn't take long for the cart to reach the other terminus. Greg hopped out of the driver’s seat and motioned for them to follow him through another pair of double doors. The facilities inside were even more advanced than the hospital but their guide left Patty and Barbara little chance to take it in. He jogged down a hall, glancing through open doors until he found someone.

  “Where's the tour?” he asked.

  “Specimen lab,” another man answered. Greg nodded and jogged away again. Patty saw the man in the room looking curiously after them as they followed. They probably hadn't had many visitors over the years, if any. She remembered that feeling well.

  Greg stopped at a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only” and tapped a code into another keypad. The door locks thumped in the jam and he pushed it open, ushering them inside. The first things Patty saw were her crewmates standing in a loose semicircle around a woman. Then she looked beyond them and saw an enormous clear walled cage filled with people. She'd gotten so used to seeing lots of different faces that it took her a moment to realize the ones inside the cage were dead.

  “What the hell is this?” Barbara said loudly.

  The group near the cage all turned to look at her and Patty, but Errol was the first one to speak. “What's wrong?” he said, walking over to them immediately.
/>   “Pelozar is here,” Patty said. “He brought Koninklijke and some smaller boats.”

  Seung Jin, walking behind Errol, let out a groan. “I worried he would do something like this but hoped he didn't have the balls.”

  “Somethin' like what?” Jones said.

  “Juan has always been the most... aggressive voice on the committee. My guess is he plans to do something ridiculous like claim the atoll for New Taiwan. Liberate. That's the word he'll use.” Seung rolled his eyes.

  “What the hell is this?” Barbara asked again.

  “Test subjects,” Errol said. “They're trying to destroy the zombies.”

  Patty looked at the cage again and saw that it wasn't a single enclosed space. There were several cells, twelve if she counted correctly, divided by the clear material. She scanned upward and saw several lifting mechanisms attached to the high ceiling. It looked like any of the cells could be opened as needed, even lifting internal walls to create larger cells. By using lifts instead of hinges, the designers of the lab guaranteed the cells would remain closed in a power failure.

  Now she looked at the creatures themselves. There were three in some cells, four in others. All of the zombies where clawing at the clear walls, trying to get at the living humans on the outside. Then she noticed there was one cell that was different. The far left corner of the front row contained three of the things, but there was something wrong with them. Patty thought about that for a moment and realized she had it backwards. There was something wrong with the creatures in the rest of the cages. They were dead but still energetically moving around. These three were barely moving at all. Their eyes gazed hungrily out at her and her friends, but their bodies were rotting away. She saw exposed bone in several places, muscle tissue turning to mush. It wasn't something wrong, it was something right. They were doing what dead things were supposed to do.

  “You made them decompose,” Patty said, slightly surprised at the note of hope in her voice.

  “Very good,” the woman from the lab said. “That's exactly what we've done.”

  “We should get back upstairs and call the ship,” Jones said to Errol.

  “Greg, is there a fast way up from here?” Errol asked.

  The man nodded and headed toward a door on the far side of the lab. The rest of her shipmates followed him but Patty stayed behind with the woman, curious to learn more about the work being done here.

  “How did you do it?” she asked.

  “Well, as I was telling your friends, decomposition happens in several stages. I'm Maria, by the way.”

  Patty smiled and shook hands, “Patty.”

  “Nice to meet you, Patty. Anyway, the first stage begins following death. The body transitions to an anaerobic state, no oxygen in the cells. Z's make it through stage one normally, but that's where they stop.” She walked over to the cage and Patty followed reluctantly. She didn't like being near these things, even if they were behind several inches of polycarbonate. “The second stage is when the body's own bacteria take over. They require an anaerobic environment to do that. The virus that creates these things kills the bacteria before they can get to work. So, we toughened up the bacteria a bit.”

  “It sounds so simple,” Patty said.

  Maria barked out a laugh. “It only sounds that way. We spent years trying different angles. It was only a few months ago we came around to looking at decomposition as a weapon.” She held up a hand and started ticking things off on her fingers. “We tried attacking the virus, the nervous system, their behavior, their perception.” She shrugged. “Nothing worked.”

  Patty looked at the specimens, banging and clawing at their cages. “Where'd you get them? Were they... friends?”

  “No, thankfully. We started getting deliveries a week after we got here, government people in ships and boats. Three or four a month for the first eighteen months. Then they stopped showing up.” She shrugged again. “We just kept working.”

  Patty turned her attention back to Maria. “So, what now?”

  “We run more tests to verify that it works and then eventually find a way to introduce it into the population.”

  An image flashed in Patty's mind of Jimmy Hong and his wife Lana, flying their little plane over the West Coast like a crop duster. Magic green gas sprayed out of canisters on the bottom, and down on the ground zombies started melting away when the cloud touched them. She knew it wouldn't be that simple but just the fact that something so hopeful had passed through her mind made her wonder. Maybe the traumas of the past few months hadn't crushed her spirit after all.

  Chapter 27

  The research lab was beneath a rusting aircraft hanger, but Anne didn't know that until they got outside. First Greg took them to a large open lift. Two long hatches opened in the ceiling above them and they rode the enormous flat elevator back to the surface. The building in which they emerged was large and spacious. Anne thought it was a warehouse at first because of the numerous stacks of crates and boxes littering the floor. There was a straight path to a pair of large metal doors that Greg needed help getting opened.

  “We don't use this entrance much,” he said as they stepped out into the sunshine. The radio on Errol's hip immediately crackled to life, Reg's voice calling out of the speaker. Even though he sounded agitated, Anne was overjoyed to hear his voice.

  “This is Folly calling away team, come in please.”

  Errol grabbed the walkie and brought it to his mouth. “We read you Reg, what's going on?”

  “Ah, brilliant. Listen, Pelozar is on his way to the island with some very serious-looking blokes. They should be landing any minute.”

  “Acknowledged, Folly.” Errol dropped the radio and turned to Seung Jin. “Is he going to do something violent?”

  “I doubt it. They're more likely for his protection than anything else. He doesn't really know what to expect here. Juan had a difficult time right after the collapse. He never told me the whole story but I know he had some pretty close calls. One of those men is sure to be Rodrigo, his... assistant. They got out of Panama together.”

  Anne saw Jones turn an eye toward Renee Devoux with something that looked like suspicion, and remembered the woman's absence the night before as they walked to the barracks after dark. Was Renee the same sort of assistant to Mr. Seung as this Rodrigo was to Mr. Pelozar? She suddenly remembered dropping to the deck as explosions went off around her. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, even though it had only been a few months since the aircraft carrier. Jones had known exactly what to do and had no trouble killing people he saw as a threat to his friends. Was he Errol's special assistant? Is that what the world had come to? Maybe it had always been that way and she'd been too insulated to notice.

  Errol spoke, snapping her attention back to the present. “Greg, you said you're interested in taking on new people. Do you speak for everybody?”

  The scientist shrugged. “Yeah, basically. I sort of just... slipped into that after we got here.”

  Errol nodded. “I know the feeling. I think we should just head over to the dock and tell him that flat out. Be polite, tell him there's no need for any dramatics. There's plenty of room here, plus a whole other island over there,” he said, waving his hand to the east. “We were going to do it anyway, maybe he just wants the credit. I don't really care.”

  “I agree,” Seung said. Greg nodded as well. Errol looked over at Jones.

  “Don't look at me. I just work here,” the Texan said, a sardonic half-smile lifting his lips. Anne decided to speak up.

  “Whatever's going to be the least hassle. This guy wants the credit, let him have it. I just want to spend some time on dry land.”

  Her opinion seemed to close some final switch in Errol's thinking, because he started walking toward the dock. “Okay then, let's go.”

  At the end of the day it turned out to be a lot of tension over nothing. Pelozar made plenty of noise about scared, hungry people needing a place to rest, but the occupants of Midway had already decided
to welcome them with open arms. Anne was impressed with Greg Weizt's diplomatic ability. He found just the right words to appear in deference to Pelozar while maintaining the scientists' claim as the first ones on the atoll.

  After that the new arrivals went on the same tour she had just taken. Errol and Seung went along as well. Everybody else went back to the barracks to regroup. The rest of the day passed in a blur as she and her friends were greeted, shown around, and welcomed by a long series of Midway locals. When Anne sank into her bed that night in Charlie barracks, she was asleep and dreaming before she even had time to think about sleeping and dreaming.

  #

  A sound woke her. It had been present long enough to push its way into her dreams. She transitioned to her room in the barracks from a nightmare about being aboard Boi do Mar as it sank into the sea. The sound was a blaring siren from outside the window, and the manner in which it woke her left her unsure whether she was dreaming or not. For a brief moment, she felt like the bed was sinking into the floor and she would feel water rushing over her feet at any second.

  She shook her head hard and rubbed her face with her hands. The siren was still there and she was rapidly coming fully awake. “Okay,” she said to the room, and the sound of her voice against the siren was the last jolt she needed to get it together. She heard a commotion outside the door to her room. Enough lying around, she thought, time to see what's happening. She swung herself out of bed and hurried to the door.

  There were several people just hanging around, talking in hushed voices. Others hurried past at regular intervals, some definite purpose behind their haste.

  “What's going on?” Anne asked the first person to notice her, a man she thought was called Bergen.

  “We're on lockdown. There was an alert issued from inside the lab.” He waved a finger toward the ceiling and she realized he meant the siren.

  “Do we know what happened?”

  He shook his head. “No. The siren goes off and we lock the building up, that's how it goes. Whoever is on duty at the hospital will make the next call.”