The Infected Dead (Book 1): Alive for Now

by Bob Howard

  I chose the Glock from my shoulder holster first and sighted in on the first target. When I pulled the trigger I was surprised by the flat pop of the gun firing. It wasn’t like the sound in movies or in my video games. The sound seemed to surround me and hit me at the same time. No one ever told me you could feel the sound of a gun shot.

  I looked in the direction of the target expecting it to be gone, obliterated by the bullet. It was still there, gently bobbing in the water, and the worst part was that I didn’t even know where the bullet went. It could have clipped a tree branch on Mud Island for all I knew. I sighted in on the target for a second time. This time I exhaled and squeezed the trigger and was rewarded by the sight of the target being shredded. I must’ve shut my eyes the first time, expecting to be some kind of natural expert at this.

  The second target took three shots, but I was satisfied with the results. I was getting comfortable with the gun and was ready to switch to the next gun already. It was while I was sorting through the ammunition for a revolver that I heard someone yell, “Hey, you! You in the boat!”

  CHAPTER 3

  Atlantic Spirit

  Most cruise ships have a maximum capacity of just over four thousand people, but that was under the best of circumstances. Before taking on that many passengers, there would be plenty of provisions in the storage compartments because there would be another eight hundred to one thousand crew members.

  As the Atlantic Spirit slowly pulled free of Charleston harbor, rookie police officer, Kathy McGinley, was wondering what she could have been thinking. She only wanted to save as many people as she could, but as she looked around at the frightened, crying people she wondered if she hadn’t just saved them for a worse fate. She couldn’t imagine the crew being able to find a place to put everyone, and when everything had gone crazy the ship wasn’t nearly done loading provisions for the next cruise.

  Patrolman McGinley had heard there was a reporter looking for her so she could interview the hero who had taken charge at the cruise terminal, but she wasn’t in the mood for a talking head asking her what it was like to be a hero. She didn’t feel like a hero. Some of those people trying to get around the car barricade were still people, but she knew they couldn’t take the chance of having someone who had been bitten make it through to their side.

  She wasn’t an imposing person. She just had a way of getting people to listen to her. At five feet five inches and one hundred and twenty pounds, she looked good in her uniform and had to work hard to be treated as an equal. The blonde hair and nice features also made it easy for her to get the attention of men around her, so when she started giving orders, everyone just started listening. The more she directed them, the more people joined in.

  It seemed like no time had gone by at all when she boarded with the last of the passengers. A ship’s officer with gold epaulettes on his shoulders was waiting for her at the top of the gangway, and he asked her to accompany him to their security center.

  “I’ve been asked to find you as soon as possible,” the officer said as they went deeper into the ship.

  They went through some doors that were for crew only, and he led her to a cabin with a sign on the door that said Master at Arms. It was a bigger cabin than she expected, and it was manned with about a dozen people and a considerable amount of technology.

  “This way, Officer McGinley,” he said. “There are some people who need to see you. I am Ensign Reeves, by the way. If you need anything, just tell a crewman to find me, and I’ll take care of it.”

  A burley man about twice the size of Officer McKinley stepped up to her and shook her hand. “Chief Barnes, Ma’am. That was a good job you did on the docks. You ready for another job?” The Chief had a way of looking kind and gentle but all business at the same time. Kathy had been told by her father that every ship had one ‘old salt’ on board who kept the ship from sinking. This was probably the old salt on the Atlantic Spirit.

  Barnes had red hair and a full beard, and he seemed to fill her whole field of vision. She couldn’t imagine what this mountain of a man would want her to do, but she needed to keep busy. The last thing she wanted to do, besides get interviewed by the reporter who was looking for her, was to have someone stick her in a cabin to get some rest.

  “What can I do for you, Chief Barnes? Can I help with organizing the passengers or something?” she asked.

  “Oh, I have something much more important for you to be doing, Ma’am. We have almost five thousand people crammed onto this ship without anyone in charge of security. Our Master at Arms didn’t make it back to the terminal. We don’t know if he was even trying to get back to the ship. The way you took over on the docks to keep those raving maniacs from tearing everyone to shreds was just genius. You think you could put some of that genius to work on this ship and help us get organized?”

  “Me? You want me to take over security?” I asked. “Look, I’m just a rookie, and something had to be done out there. Someone had to do something, or we were all going to die.” She wondered if she sounded like she was whining, but what she felt was exactly what was coming out. This cruise ship was as big as a small town, and she wasn’t really experienced with something this big.

  Chief Barnes gave Officer McGinley a big, wide smile and said, “We won’t be conducting interviews for the job, and the pay is not so good, but I doubt there’s a more familiar face to the people on this ship. They know you saved them, and those who don’t know surely will find out soon enough. Now, we could use your help, and it would be good for morale for them to see you’re still here with us. What do you say?”

  McGinley rotated to look over the operation and thought it resembled the 911 call center at the police station. She saw people in uniform with various insignia showing rank, and they returned her look with appreciative smiles.

  “I guess I can’t say no, Chief, but I would definitely need your help.” She looked up at him and liked him instantly. Unlike the police station, she wasn’t going to have to prove herself to this man. She knew he was really in charge, but his ego wasn’t bruised at all by enlisting her because of her superstar status.

  “You’ve got it, Ma’am.” He flashed that big smile again. “Now, let’s get down to work. What are your first orders?”

  She hated to admit it, but she knew exactly where to start. There had been too many people on that dock for her to believe no one had been bitten. She had seen some people taken into the tent after being identified as a risk, but the number was just too small.

  “Chief, I need to meet with the head of the medical staff. I need to see how the crew is prepared to respond if anyone on board was bitten before boarding.”

  Chief Barnes furrowed his brow in thought and said, “But we had a medical team on the dock examining people before they boarded.”

  “You had a team of twenty medical workers who checked a few thousand people who were desperate to get onto the ship. How many people were already in their cabins before they started screening people? How many crew members were already at their stations? Would they have told someone if they were infected?” McGinley shot her questions at such a rapid fire pace that the Chief began to see the gravity of the situation.

  “Chief, if I was one of those medical personnel on the dock, I might have even let somebody slip by just because I was in a hurry to get back on the ship myself.”

  Anyone watching would have become worried, because it looked like the Chief was angry at first, but Kathy McGinley saw his expression for what it was. If there was one person on board who was infected, it could become uncontrollable fast because there was nowhere to go except overboard.

  She softened her voice and lowered it so no one else could hear, “Chief, there’s no such thing as quarantine for this infection. From what I saw, you can’t just put someone under observation to see if they get better. We have to be ready to make the hard choices, and I can’t make them by myself. I need medical and security staff, but more than anything we need to start screening ev
eryone again.”

  “And if we find someone who has been bitten?” he asked.

  “You tell me, Chief. Are we going to be able to let them stay on board? We need to be prepared for entire families to defend each other. What if it’s someone’s child? Do we let infected children stay with their parents and hope they don’t get bitten?”

  Officer McGinley was saying one thing but thinking another. “I am so far over my head here.” What she didn’t know was that Chief Barnes was thinking the exact same thing about himself. This was an entirely new problem for him, too.

  “Officer McGinley, you’re saying we won’t be able to let people stay on board if we find they have been bitten. How do you propose they be put off the ship? We won’t have places where we can stop. If we pull into a port to let people off, there will be people trying to board. We don’t have enough lifeboats as it is, and I don’t think the Captain is going to let you just dump people overboard.”

  Now that he had laid it all out there, McGinley knew two things for sure. Like it or not, they would have to find a way to quarantine anyone who had been bitten, and it was only a matter of time before things got out of control.

  “Chief, let’s get together with the medical crew, and I need to know more about this ship. What’s the most secure compartment where we can quarantine people? Is there a hold or large storage area that can be entered from above?”

  “I’ll have the Chief Medical Officer paged to meet us in one of the dining areas. It’s large enough, and all of the large compartments can be accessed from above.”

  Chief Barnes spoke with a crew member who began trying to locate the medical staff. He and the new Chief of Security then began weaving their way through passageways and people. Kathy tried to memorize their path because she knew she wasn’t going to be able to stop and ask for directions, and the maps all looked like maps of New York City. Being a police officer, she was pretty good at learning directions, but the ship was just too massive.

  They eventually came to a large dining area that was crowded with people, most of whom were doing nothing more than waiting for instructions. Crew members with iPads were circulating through the crowd collecting names and other identifying information.

  There were going to be hundreds of people who had left home without daily medications. Kathy wondered how many would need insulin, blood pressure prescriptions, or other drugs they needed just to stay alive. If statistics held true for this floating city, ten to twenty percent of the passengers would be smokers, and they were going to be in a great mood.

  She saw an officer approaching with a small group in tow. His demeanor was immediately superior and arrogant as he stormed up to Officer McGinley.

  “I’m a busy man, and I want to know who the hell you think you are having me dragged down here.” He put his hands on his hips and leaned forward and downward into Officer McGinley’s face.

  Looking up at the officer’s face would have been easier if he wasn’t standing so close, and she could feel pressure on the front of her shoes where his feet were up against hers. He was tall, skinny, and had pale skin. He had a patchy black beard that was probably his attempt to look the part of the Chief Medical Officer.

  Without backing up or turning away, she said in a calm voice, “Chief Barnes, as the new Chief of Security, I need this man detained on charges of assault. Please see to it, and then get me the next member of the medical staff who would be in charge if this man wasn’t on board.”

  Chief Barnes didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, spun the surprised doctor around, and cuffed him as if he had done it every day. Officer McGinley was impressed by her new friend.

  The loudly protesting Chief Medical Officer was handed over to a crewman who took him away without ceremony. Kathy saw a few of the medical staff with grins on their faces. It wasn’t hard to figure out that Dr. Self-Important wasn’t very popular with the staff.

  Chief Barnes motioned to the second in command of the medical staff to step forward. She extended her hand and said, “Jean Mitchell at your service, Ma’am. What can we do for you?”

  She was a cute brunette who was not more than five feet tall, but the important thing was her open respect for Kathy.

  “Thank you, Jean. I need all the help I can get, and right now I need help setting up this dining area as a quarantine site. Any suggestions about how to proceed would be welcomed, but I can see that our biggest problem is going to be clearing these people out of here.”

  Kathy didn’t want to offend her new friend, but she had to bring up the examination process she had seen on the docks.

  “Jean, I know we were in big trouble back at the cruise terminal and had to move fast, but do you think the passengers were screened well enough before they boarded? I mean, what if someone bitten is in a cabin right now?”

  Jean looked around and said, “Well, maybe we can kill two birds with one stone, Ma’am. We could start by setting up an examining area in one corner of the dining hall and move these people to cabins. At the same time, the people in cabins already can be examined by separate teams.”

  “Those are the kinds of suggestions I’m talking about, Jean. Keep them coming. How many people to you have, and where can we get more?”

  Jean turned to a couple of the people behind her and gave some rapid instructions. They took off through the crowd while talking into small communication devices that looked like cell phones or walkie-talkies.

  “They’re contacting security teams. They need to send people to go with medical teams. If they find someone who’s been bitten, we don’t expect them to come willingly,” said Jean.

  Kathy turned to Chief Barnes and said, “Chief, the Captain has to sign off on what we’re doing. Can we get him to do a ship-wide announcement asking everyone to stay in their cabins? We should also find a way to verify who has been checked. Do we have enough iPads and cell phones to be able to create a database of their pictures?”

  “That’s why we wanted you to be the security officer, McGinley. I’ll get someone from I-T to start collecting the information.” He gave her his trademark smile and started making his own calls.

  While she was talking with Chief Barnes, Jean was getting the dining hall separated into sections. She had partitions brought in for privacy because this was going to be more than just a check of visible extremities. She was also giving instructions in a low voice to the medical staff.

  “Ok, people, we aren’t doing physicals. We aren’t looking at rashes, we aren’t checking blood pressure, and we aren’t saying ahhhh. We’re looking for bite marks. If you see a bite mark, don’t make a big fuss about it. Just direct the individual to the section on the starboard side away from the exits. Make sure the person gets there. We can’t have anybody leaving once they’ve been identified. Any questions?”

  Jean surveyed the faces of her staff and was satisfied with what she saw. They were a good group, and McGinley saw that they were already getting the passengers lined up at the appropriate area. They had ten cubicles partitioned off, and the first ten people were already being ushered in for examination.

  Before they even came out of the examining rooms, crew brought in by Chief Barnes were standing by to get names and photos, and then they were turned over to crewmen who escorted them to cabins. The only slow downs were created when families had to wait for other family members to finish their examinations.

  Kathy McGinley watched with some small satisfaction, but she realized she was holding her breath. She estimated that the dining hall probably only held about one-tenth of the number of people on the ship, and if they found even one person who had been bitten in this group, she could only hope it didn’t mean there were nine more out there who hadn’t been found yet.

  Crewmen escorted by armed security began arriving with people coming from the cabins. Kathy overheard bits and pieces of conversations from passengers, some of whom weren’t happy about giving up their cabins, and some complaining that they were already examined. Kathy heard one
man asking a crewman for information about how to file a complaint, and that this was the worst cruise he had ever been on.

  Kathy stepped over to the man and asked him to come away from the line of passengers for a moment. “You are not on a cruise, Sir. You are being rescued,” she said. “Do you understand the difference?”

  When the irate passenger was returned to his place in the line, Kathy was both amused and amazed, because the man had asked for her name, as well. He informed her she would have a hard time finding a job as a night security guard at Walmart when he was done calling in his favors from influential friends. She gave him her name and simply said, “I’m sure you’re correct, Sir.” When she thought about it for a moment, it occurred to her that if she lived, she would have plenty of nights as a security guard, but for a very different reason than what this pompous ass was thinking.

  The first five hundred came and went without incident, and that was a good sign. The Captain made the ship wide announcement asking all passengers to stay in their cabins until they were summoned and escorted to the dining area.

  Part way through the passengers who had already been in the dining hall, ship service crew began passing out emergency rations to passengers who were being taken to cabins. One of them assured Kathy that rations were also being taken to the cabins where the first examined passengers had been placed. He told Kathy that Chief Barnes had given the order because passengers in cabins were also in need of a meal, and it was one way to get them to come peacefully.

  McGinley was a bit lost in thought when she saw one of the medical personnel give a signal to someone by the quarantine area. It was subtle, but there was no mistaking that she had found a bite wound. It was a young man who had an embarrassed look on his face. He kept apologizing to the medical staff about not telling anyone.