‘We’re all supposed to return to our cabins. I think people are sick all over the ship. Look, I need to quickly wash this blood off me. So should you.’
Justin stepped toward the bathroom.
‘Don’t!’ Amy blurted. ‘Don’t go in there.’
‘I need to wash this blood off.’
‘Not in there.’
‘I need to,’ Justin insisted.
Amy covered her face with her hands. ‘Then don’t look in the shower. It’s awful.’
‘Okay.’
Justin averted his eyes from the shower cubicle, but he still glimpsed the shape lying twisted up in the bottom of the shower recess.
There’s a body in there.
Thankfully the foggy mirror didn’t reflect the image. He scrubbed his hands and arms with soap and water.
He couldn’t do much with his clothes. He needed to get back to his own cabin.
‘I have to go now,’ he said, emerging from the steamy bathroom.
‘Maybe you should stay here,’ said Kim. ‘We’re not supposed to leave our cabins.’
Kim had closed the cabin door. Amy was calling for help.
‘This isn’t my cabin,’ said Justin. ‘My mom’s alone. I need to get back.’
Kim nodded and opened the door a crack, peering out. ‘It looks clear. Good luck.’
‘Same to you,’ said Justin, ducking out the door.
Jogging back toward his cabin, Justin’s sneakers moved silently on the hallway carpet.
He heard all kinds of noises coming from cabins. It sounded like every third cabin had their TV playing full volume and every channel was violent.
Except it all sounded too real.
Holy crap. The sick people are everywhere.
He ran past people fleeing their cabins and hammering on nearby doors for help. Some people were screaming through the doors for help.
Some doors were letting people in; some doors weren’t.
Justin passed a woman crying in the hallway, wrapped in a blanket.
I can’t stop and help everyone. I have to reach Mom.
Justin’s cabin was three levels up.
He ignored the elevator and took the stairs.
Why didn’t I just call Mom from the other cabin? That would have been the sensible thing to do, but he hadn’t even thought about it.
I’m not thinking straight. I just need to get back to our cabin and wash this blood off.
He didn’t see the men until it was too late.
He collided with one, spinning, but not losing his footing.
Everyone froze.
The two men stared at him, at the blood on his clothes, as though waiting for him to flip out.
‘I’m not sick,’ Justin rushed out, raising his hands. ‘I just helped someone. I’m trying to reach my cabin.’
The two men carried a sheet between them like a hammock. In the hammock lay a body. They placed the body against the corridor wall, like dirty wash ready to be collected.
The younger man wore a white baseball cap with a red brim. The older man wore only gray swimming shorts.
‘What happened?’ puffed Justin, nodding at the body.
‘He was thumping at our door,’ replied the younger man. ‘We thought he needed help. I opened the door and he went berserk. He tried to stab Dad with a screwdriver.’
‘I think he had a heart attack,’ said the older man. ‘One second we were wrestling over the screwdriver and then he just dropped dead. He must be about seventy years old.’
Justin didn’t know what to say. He just nodded.
‘You shouldn’t be out here,’ said the older man. ‘People are flipping out all over the place. How far away is your cabin?’
‘Not far.’
The man nodded back down the corridor. ‘Don’t go near the photo shop. We heard more crazies back there smashing things. If you run into any of these nutjobs, they’ll try to kill you. And be more careful running around corners.’
‘I will.’ Justin nodded and dashed up the stairs. On the next level up the hallway was filling with people.
He saw a woman using a bath towel to stem the bleeding from a man’s head. Several other people looked injured.
The man with the bloody towel around his head pointed at Justin. ‘Keep moving, boy! Up! Up!’
Did I miss hearing another announcement? wondered Justin.
‘What are you all doing?’ Justin asked. ‘Where are you going?’
‘The idiots running this ship have got it all backward,’ said the man with the injured head. ‘We need to get healthy people to the top deck and the fresh air. The ducted air conditioning is spreading the infection through the cabins. If we follow their instructions we’ll all get sick.’
‘Look,’ pointed the man.
A nearby door shook on its hinges as someone very angry tried to escape their cabin.
‘They’re so far gone they can’t even use door handles.’
He’s right, realized Justin. I heard dozens of doors being pounded on like that. They’re trapped.
The man pointed back down the corridor. ‘That’s why the hallways are filling with cabin refugees and not the infected. Now get moving, and tell anyone you see.’
Justin nodded and ran up the stairs to his level.
Like the level below, cabin refugees were filling the hallway.
Justin’s cabin was near the stairs. Reaching for his swipe card, he heard a crazy passenger in the opposite cabin.
Jesus - I hope they don’t break through that door and jump on my back. Where is my card? Did I leave it in the cabin again?
He wasn’t fast enough.
An arm reached around him.
Justin spun.
He only knew one person that quiet.
In her wheelchair, his mom was like a sneaky rolling ninja.
‘Get inside,’ his mother hissed, swiping open the lock and pushing him from behind. ‘What are you doing out here?’
Justin held the door for his mother and then shut it behind her. It locked automatically.
‘I woke up and you were still gone,’ he said. ‘You’ve been gone for hours!’
His mother spun her wheelchair. ‘I told you to stay in the cabin!’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I texted you from...Justin, are you hurt? You’re covered in blood!’
‘No, I’m not hurt. I helped some people. It’s their blood.’
‘What happened?’
‘I heard someone screaming. One woman was strangling another woman, so I knocked her out with a chair.’
Justin didn’t mention what he’d glimpsed in their bathroom.
‘Quickly. Get into the shower. Leave your clothes on,’ ordered his mother. ‘Don’t get any blood in your mouth, eyes or nose.’
His mother scooted backward in her chair, grabbed something from the writing desk and then scooted forward. She handed him scissors. ‘Cut your shirt off. Don’t pull it over your head. Make the water as hot as you can stand it.’
In the bathroom Justin cut off his shirt, stripped and then stepped under the scalding hot shower. His skin glowed bright red from forehead to feet when he stepped out.
He felt relieved though.
If his mother knew about anything, it was killing germs.
She’d left jeans and a t-shirt at the door. When he stepped from the bathroom she checked his pulse.
‘How do you feel?’
‘I’m not sick.’ He pointed at the door. ‘This is why they called you away last night, isn’t it? What the hell’s going on out there?’
Justin’s mother was an expert. Her last job was with the U.S. Center for the Study of Infectious Diseases. She’d been recruited into the P.M.R.U (Pandemic Modeling and Response Unit) to design government policy after the bird flu pandemic of 2009.
Now she worked as an independent consultant for the same people, designing computer models to predict infection rates of emerging flu strains.
Her job was to prevent as many people as pos
sible from getting sick.
‘What did you tell them to do?’ asked Justin.
Erin was barely holding it together.
I can’t keep this up. It’s too much.
Her cousin was dead, and dozens of emergency calls flooded her radio.
She could barely respond to a quarter of them with so many staff sick.
She took a deep breath, put down the first aid kit, and prepared herself.
Here we go again.
She swiped her card through the lock. ‘Go, go, go!’
Her three man fire response team surged into the cabin like storm troopers charging an enemy’s trench. The element of surprise and overwhelming force proved paramount.
Erin considered Neve Kershaw’s presence a miracle. When Neve entered their emergency meeting, Erin didn’t know what to expect.
But Neve had devised a plan within minutes.
She outlined priorities and responsibilities.
She took a group of overwhelmed, confused staff and gave them an immediate focus for their resources and attention.
She allocated priorities to every member of senior staff.
Erin’s first priority was saving healthy people trapped in cabins with sick cabin mates. Neve suggested using the ship’s fire-fighting teams for this purpose.
It made sense. The fire-suits were the closest thing on board to biohazard suits, and the fire response teams were trained for hazardous situations.
‘Treat the violent passengers like fires,’ Neve had said.
So exactly as trained, the fire teams raced to the target cabin, gained access, and then immediately employed a left-hand sweep of the cabin.
Subduing violent passengers proved very different to extinguishing a fire.
A powerful spray in the face from a fire extinguisher disoriented some. If that failed, a three-man clubbing with fire extinguishers worked equally well.
The fire team just needed enough time to extract the healthy people trapped in the cabin.
Fortunately the sick passengers didn’t understand how door handles worked now. They pounded on the doors, ignoring the handles.
Unfortunately, the fire response teams were running low on charged fire extinguishers.
Much more clubbing than spraying proved necessary.
In her team’s wake lay a trail of unconscious passengers.
The healthy passengers were sent, or stretchered, up the aft steps to quarantine areas on decks ten and eleven.
The medical teams used the aft stairs. The fire response teams used the stern stairs. Neve Kershaw’s plan to separate the teams worked well. Everyone could move quickly.
Erin had supervised the extraction of sixteen healthy passengers now.
Other fire teams worked the other decks, but none could keep up.
Even Neve had underestimated the infection rate.
‘Erin! Look out! He’s hot!’
‘Hot’ meant sick.
Erin wasn’t only supervising.
She needed to stop any infected passengers leaving their cabins.
Anyone ‘hot’ had to be stopped.
All the crazies had cabin fever.
They all wanted to escape and attack the first person they found.
So far, three had reached their doorways.
None had passed Erin.
And neither will this one, she told herself.
A full-sized extinguisher felt impractical to Erin. She balanced a half-sized extinguisher on her shoulder.
Erin judged the charging man’s height and stepped aside. Timing mattered most.
...now.
Erin swung the fire extinguisher two-handed.
Crack!
The fire extinguisher collided squarely with the man’s skull. The man practically somersaulted backward. He hit the deck and didn’t move.
Erin stared down at him.
They run into it every time.
Blood covered the passenger’s pajama pants and feet. A pair of scissors stained the carpet beside him.
Oh, God. We weren’t fast enough.
Her fire team emerged and yanked off their hot, heavy masks.
‘Too late,’ puffed the first man out. ‘His wife locked herself in the bathroom. He broke through. He killed her.’
The crewman pointed at the scissors.
Erin used a thick, black, permanent pen to write ‘V1’ on the door. Neve Kershaw insisted they code the cabins. ‘V’ stood for violent. ‘1’ stood for one sick passenger.
‘Drag him back inside,’ Erin said. ‘We need to keep—’
The scream sounded like audio lifted from a horror movie.
Erin spun.
A woman dashed barefoot into the corridor.
‘Help me!’ she screamed. ‘My daughter’s still in there!’
Erin ran to help.
Shreds of a purple satin nightgown hung from the woman. Bright red welts covered her back.
‘He’ll kill her!’ the woman screamed. ‘He’s gone crazy!’
‘We’ll get her,’ Erin said, moving the woman a safe distance back.
Her fire team rushed into position.
They lined up single file along the wall, ready to storm the cabin.
Erin heard a terrified shriek from inside the cabin.
‘Ready?’ Erin asked her team.
When they nodded, Erin swiped the lock and shoved open the door.
With the door open, Erin should have stepped back.
This time she didn’t.
A terrified teenage girl was curled up on the floor. Over her loomed a hugely muscled man with tattoo-covered arms. He struck the girl again with a thick leather belt.
The girl looked about fifteen.
Erin charged into the cabin.
As the belt came down again, Erin threw herself over the child.
Whack!
Excruciating pain punished Erin’s back. She gripped the girl tightly, keeping her covered.
The man roared and struck again.
Erin braced herself for the pain.
Whoosh.
The leather belt swung past her ear.
Erin saw her fire team had tackled the giant man.
‘Come on,’ Erin yelled at the girl. ‘Get up. Let’s go.’
The girl’s legs barely worked, so Erin dragged her to door.
‘Here!’ Erin yelled to the girl’s mother. ‘Take her to deck ten. Hurry!’
The woman grabbed her daughter, crying in relief.
Erin spun and grabbed her fire extinguisher.
Her team struggled to subdue the giant man.
‘Everyone out!’ she yelled. ‘Let’s go!’
The moment her team ran out, Erin yanked the door shut. The giant man charged the door a second later.
Thump!
Her team dropped their extinguishers and tore off their masks.
Dripping with sweat, exhausted, they stared at the cabin door jumping on its hinges.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Erin. ‘When I saw that girl I couldn’t wait.’
‘He wouldn’t stay down,’ said one. ‘We pounded him. He just kept getting up.’
‘He was huge,’ said Erin.
The pain in Erin’s back felt like a double row of angry wasp stings.
That beating should have hospitalized him, thought Erin. But we couldn’t even stop him. We just stalled him a few seconds.
‘Is anyone hurt?’ asked Erin.
All three shook their heads.
‘You did an excellent job,’ said Erin. ‘But we can’t stop now.’
They all nodded, understanding the situation.
Erin very clearly wrote the code on the door to indicate an infected passenger waited inside.
She wrote in extra-large letters because if someone entered the cabin by accident, they probably wouldn’t escape alive.
Coleman unzipped another bag.
Sergeant King handed out weapons.
King’s weapon resembled a tactical pump-action shotgun, but it fired ammun
ition unlike anything Coleman had ever seen.
The U.S. Military wanted options.
They had tested six new weapon systems.
They all worked, but like all weapons, each had its strengths.
‘How much of this new stuff are we taking?’ asked Forest.
‘All of it,’ Coleman answered.
Coleman knew who performed best with each weapon-type, and King issued them accordingly.
‘A riot?’ asked King. ‘I thought cruise ships were full of old people. What are they rioting about?’
‘Maybe not enough prunes on the menu,’ joked Myers.
Coleman checked his own equipment. ‘People don’t normally kill each other over prunes.’
‘Fatalities?’ asked Corporal Forest. ‘How many?’
‘Unconfirmed,’ said Coleman. ‘That’s why we’re going.’
Coleman scanned the cruise ship’s floor plans.
This ship is massive.
He let the plans seep into his mind like osmosis, trusting that when he needed the details, they would be there.
This will get very messy if we can’t gain control quickly, predicted Coleman. It’s too large an area for a six-man team to secure.
He scanned his team critically.
He didn’t have to worry about Corporal Forest. The light-haired, blue-eyed farm boy had been through hell and back with Coleman.
Almost a year ago, forty Marines had stormed the Biological Solutions Research Facility.
Seven had emerged alive.
Corporal Forest was one of those seven.
Sergeant King was another.
Unlike Forest, Sergeant King had emerged from the complex a different man.
King’s closest friend, Corporal Ramon Martinez (a.k.a. Marlin), had been one of the thirty-three Marines killed in that nightmarish operation. He’d burned to death right before Coleman’s eyes.
King and Marlin had been like brothers.
In fact, they were closer than many brothers.
King was Godfather to Marlin’s baby daughter, Emerald Martinez. After Marlin’s death, King had stepped into the role, helping to raise Emerald and support Marlin’s family in every way he could.
Like Coleman and Forest, King had a tattoo of a blue marlin leaping from the water on his shoulder.
They would never forget their brother, but with King it went deeper.
King pretended to have his anger issues under control, but Coleman knew otherwise. King’s fuse was dangerously short. Coleman and Forest needed to watch him constantly.
HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) Page 3