“Well, I’m very grateful for your hospitality,” Nathan said, holding up his drink in salute.
Warden smiled and deep wrinkles spread across his face. “Frozen veg and canned meat are taken for granted onboard ship. Most of the crew moan at the lack of variety in their diet. I guess your arrival has helped the crew to realise just how lucky they are.”
He cast a glance to Doctor Robertson.
Robertson ignored the inference and changed the topic. “How did you managed to survive so long? The last reports of survivors we had would have been more than a year ago.”
“Just lucky I guess,” Sarah said.
“Well, it was more than that,” Nathan said, casting a glance over at Sarah. “Sarah pretty much kept us all together. When the shit came down, no one knew what was happening or why or anything like that. Sarah, she kept her head. Got a few folk organised, rescued a few others like me.”
“How many of you were there?” Captain Warden asked.
“Twenty-seven of us when we found that warehouse,” Sarah said. The math stood out at her. Twenty-seven minus three equalled twenty-four dead. Sarah, in a small burst of hope, corrected the figure—maybe Ryan was okay with the marines on the mainland.
“We cleared the dead fucks out of the place,” Nathan said, furrowing his eyebrows. “What did your guys call ‘em?”
The question took Captain Warden by surprise. “Um… Oh, the marines call them Whisky Deltas. W.D.’s.”
Nathan nodded in recollection. “Yeah we didn’t have much stuff with us. Just one gun and some tire irons, a few makeshift bludgeons and the like. Originally we were just there to try and raid some supplies, but when we got in…” Nathan shot a smile at Sarah. “You called it, what, an Aladdin’s cave?”
Sarah smiled back. “Yeah, the place was stocked to the roof.”
“We blocked the gate after we’d got in just so we didn’t meet any surprises on the way out,” Nathan explained. “Sarah suggested that we could hold up for a while, so she got us to barricade the entrances and check out the warehouse in groups.”
“We lost Mr. Aslam that day and the guy from the supermarket to a bite a few days after that,” Sarah said.
“Jeez, I’d forgotten about him,” Nathan said. “Never could remember his name. Had to keep looking at his name tag. Seems like such a long time ago.”
“It must have been hard for you all,” Dr. Robertson said, unintentionally shifting her gaze onto Jennifer.
“My mommy and daddy died,” Jennifer said.
“It was tough on us all,” Sarah added as she put an arm around the young girl.
Nathan sat back in his chair while pushing his plate away. “A few folk went stir crazy. We had a couple of suicides early on. Just couldn’t hack the moaning outside and the claustrophobia inside.”
Sarah’s thoughts were wrenched back to the roof of the warehouse. It was only this morning but yet that too felt like a lifetime ago. She closed her eyes and felt an almost imperceptible shaking of her head. Her emotions were in turmoil. She hated herself because she had decided not to go on. It hadn’t been a snap decision, a moment of madness brought on by the oppressive conditions. Sarah had measured it out in her mind. She had weighed the difference between the possible enjoyment and misery her life had to offer. She had decided that what scant moments of pleasure she could scrape from her existence would be vastly outweighed by the misery. When Ray had come to her with his appraisal of the food supplies, the balance tipped still further. Now there was a timescale to the futility. Now she knew how long it would last and that that time would inflict more hardship. It seemed pointless to endure it for a few extra weeks. Now there was even a positive side to her death. Now Sarah could add nobility to her suicide. One less mouth to feed would mean more food for those trapped inside.
Sarah suddenly realised it wasn’t the fact she had planned to kill herself that she found disturbing, it was the clinical way in which she had weighed the worth of her life.
“It’s sad when people die,” Jennifer said.
“Yes it is,” Sarah agreed. She lent over and gave Jennifer a full-blown hug. Sarah needed the contact, the reminder of what was good about life. She paused for a moment, soaking up the affection from this young girl and felt guilty for ever wanting to abandon her.
Nathan went on, “Then the Hanson brothers decided that they were going to take their chances, try and get help. Hell, even the radio had been dead for months by that point, but a good few folk said they’d rather risk it than stay locked up inside. You know, even though the radio had been dead for years we always knew we weren’t the only people left in the world.”
“Oh, how did you know that?” Captain Warden asked.
“Was it just the hope?” Doctor Robertson asked romantically.
“We needed to keep our morale up, but it was more logic than faith,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, one night Ray and Sarah got out these marker pens and flip charts and started…” Nathan paused, searching for the right words. “What did Ray call it? Brain dumping?”
“Brain storming,” Sarah corrected.
“How did that work?” Doctor Robertson asked.
“There we were a couple dozen people bunkered up in that warehouse,” Sarah said. “Ray and I guessed that if we could do it, other people would have, too. We came together by chance and got lucky with the warehouse, but as Ryan pointed out, there were much more prepared people and places.”
“Yeah,” Nathan chimed. “Hell, you were always seeing something on the news about some nutter in the hills with like a million rounds of ammo and a personal nuclear bunker.”
“And leaving those apocalypse survivalists to one side, we knew governments all over the world were a thousand times more prepared. I mean, statistically it was impossible to think we were the only ones left alive out of seven billion...”
Nathan butted in, “Ray did that calculation about the lottery tickets.” Leaning over the table with a slightly drunken lurch, his face lit up. “Ray said that the chances of us being the only people left alive was the same as winning the lottery every draw for a year.”
“Well, he was right,” Doctor Robertson said. “I think it worked out at one in four hundred survived.”
“That’s horrendous,” Sarah said.
“High command estimate there are between twelve and seventeen million left,” Captain Warden said. “And if you ask me, that’s a fair number.”
Doctor Robertson added, “We’re not on the endangered species list yet.”
“Seven billion is a lot of walking dead though,” Nathan said.
“No, it didn’t work out that way, although I follow your logic,” Doctor Robertson said. “You see, the majority of deaths didn’t come from bites.”
Nathan and Sarah looked surprised.
“Most people died of disease or starvation. More people died from civil unrest than were infected. In Los Angeles I saw more gunshot wounds than bites.”
“Christ, that’s fucked up,” Nathan said.
“In the first few days after the panic hit, I found myself in a supermarket,” Sarah said. Her head hung low. “I saw this frail old man punched to the floor for the loaf of bread he was holding.”
Doctor Robertson, sensing her guilt, reached out her hand across the table. “There was nothing you could have done, Sarah.”
“His nose was busted up and bleeding and his wife was half kneeling on the floor holding him and crying. I know I couldn’t have stopped that thug,” Sarah said, pre-empting Doctor Robertson’s platitudes. “But I could have stopped to help that old man and his wife. Instead I grabbed what I could off the shelves and ran.”
“Nothing more inhumane than man,” Captain Warden said as if reciting a quote. “We’ve all seen and done things that were unpalatable.”
At that he shot a look over at Doctor Robertson.
“It may be unpalatable, but there’s nothing inhumane about our work, Captain Warden,” Doctor Robertson protested. “W
e only work on cultures and infected cadavers. We don’t even conduct vivisection.”
“I still find what you and Dr. Frankenstein do distasteful, not to mention dangerous,” Warden replied. “Besides, I don’t see the point in your work. All we need do is keep out of their way until they rot away to nothing, rather than wasting our time tinkering away with the corpses in your lab.”
“What’s to say that will be the end of it?” Doctor Robertson demanded. “What if it lies dormant or re-emerges from its reservoir!” Her voice took on a belittling tone. “The risks involved in our tinkering are minimal and the gains substantial.”
“To you maybe, but what about the collection team!” Warden retorted.
Dr. Robertson felt her jaw clamp shut. She had been thinking about the likelihood of something going wrong in the lab without even considering the soldiers sent out to collect their specimens. Technically they weren’t her responsibility, but it was her work that necessitated the dangerous incursions.
Ever conciliatory Sarah stepped in. “We’re very grateful that your helicopter landed so close to us,” she said.
“Yes, you were very fortunate our marines chose to set down where they did,” Captain Warden said.
“It was very lucky,” Nathan agreed and looked over at Sarah again. “If you hadn’t been up on the roof so early we might never have known you were there. Very lucky—‘cause you had no reason being up there at that time.”
“We do get the collection teams to set down in different areas,” Warden said. “It helps us build up a better picture of how things are playing out on the mainland.”
Having failed to elicit a response from Sarah, Nathan turned in his chair, arm over the back and faced the Captain. He said, “You said they were collecting specimens. I’ve got to admit having those things downstairs—”
“Below decks,” Jennifer corrected.
“What? Oh, right.” Nathan stumbled before continuing, “Having those things below decks would creep me out.”
“The whole purpose of this ship being here is to research the contagion,” Doctor Robertson reiterated, more for the Captain’s benefit than the guests’. “We experiment on the cadavers and from time to time we collect new specimens either because we have exhausted the ones we have or if we want to track the rate of decay.”
“And anyway,” Captain Warden spoke up, “we don’t have more than three or four onboard at one time. That was one security protocol I insisted on in spite of our resident researchers’ protests. I believe there is only one at the moment, isn’t that correct, Doctor Robertson?”
Doctor Robertson nodded. The Captain’s regulation hadn’t added to the safety of the crew, only the perception of safety. Fewer specimens may have reduced the risk of an accident onboard, but it had necessitated more trips to the mainland which in turn had added to the attrition rate of the extraction teams.
“That’s right, Captain,” Doctor Robertson said. “That’s why we had to send the marines out on a roundup.”
Doctor Robertson didn’t know what had made her say that. Placing any blame back at Warden wasn’t going to make her situation any better.
“So what sort of experimentation do you do?” Sarah asked, sensing the rising tension.
Doctor Robertson replied, reiterating her mandate, “We research the contagion. We’re authorised by Ascension Command to explore any area that will be of benefit. The cause, its life cycle, its transmissibility.”
Sarah leaned closer. “You didn’t mention in the infirmary where you think it comes from. What causes it?”
“We don’t know,” Doctor Robertson admitted.
“I heard,” Nathan butted in, “it was a plague from space brought back by some probe or something.”
“That would seem unlikely,” Doctor Robertson countered.
“Why?” Nathan asked.
“It’s unlikely it could have survived the high temperatures of re-entry,” Doctor Robertson explained.
“Or the freezing in outer space,” Nathan chipped in, eager to prove he had a grasp of something scientific.
“But wasn’t there some biological samples that survived when that shuttle crashed a few years back?” Sarah asked.
Doctor Robertson smiled. “It’s debatable whether or not that was contamination as a result of the crash.”
Sarah looked Doctor Robertson in the eye. “So it is possible?”
“It’s not impossible.” Doctor Robertson looked across at Nathan. “Both the cold of space and the heat of re-entry would likely kill off any active agents.”
“I sense a but in that,” Sarah said.
“There would have to be a whole chain of suppositions. We’ve already shown in the lab that it doesn’t survive lower than minus one hundred degrees. But I suppose if the contaminate were deep inside an asteroid or comet, although freezing it could be possible to get enough energy to keep it viable. Then suppose it were to fall to Earth and if it were deep enough inside the meteorite to insulate it. That’s just too farfetched.”
“As farfetched as the dead coming back to life?” Captain Warden threw in.
“Dead is a misconception clearly addressed in our reports,” Doctor Robertson admonished.
Sarah lent forward, excited by what the Doctor had just said. “What do you mean? Are they dead or aren’t they?”
“The person dies but the body is colonised, for want of a better term. Even though the person’s brain is starved of oxygen, the contamination keeps some of the simplest of functions going as a means of propagating itself. These people are dead as we would understand it, but their resurrection it isn’t some kind of supernatural force. It’s biology. Some organism is killing then hijacking their host.”
“That sounds like something from outer space to me,” Nathan said.
“Saying it’s from outer space when there’s no evidence to support that theory is just as misleading as claiming it’s God’s wrath,” Doctor Robertson objected.
“So how come it all sparked off at once?” Nathan asked, waving his fingers as he wafted his hands over his dinner plate. “That’s explained by a spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere. All those germs wafting down on the planet below.”
“No, it just appears to have flared up all at once,” Doctor Robertson said. “Remember when SARS flared up in Hong Kong? Toronto saw cases a matter of days later. The disease spread so quickly because it was easy for people to travel. A businessman from Kowloon catches the virus and in the few hours it takes for it to incubate he’s across the Pacific and in an office in Canada. Couple that with the fact that so many of the initial reports were miscategorised and we have a far more plausible scenario than bugs from outer space.”
“But it’s not impossible,” Nathan said.
Doctor Robertson rolled her eyes with frustration. “It’s not impossible but it’s so improbable that it’s not even worth calculating the odds, let alone investigating it.”
“And there it is again, Doctor,” Captain Warden huffed.
Doctor Robertson was brought back to their conversation in the infirmary and the Captain’s exasperation at the lack of any tangible progress. But now there was something he could understand and Doctor Robertson had to use every ounce of her willpower to keep quiet. She couldn’t steal Professor Cutler’s thunder. She wanted to see the look on that sour face when they presented him with the scientific breakthrough of the century.
She kept her eyes down, loading her fork with another mouthful of dinner.
“What do you mean by that, Captain?” she asked, talking into her plate.
“We’ve been on this boat for years and what do we have to show for it?” Captain Warden said.
Doctor Robertson raised her head and addressed the Captain. “On the contrary, Captain Warden, we have advanced our knowledge of this condition quite considerably.” Waving her fork at the Captain, Doctor Robertson’s pride grew into defiance. “You well know Professor Cutler and I have produced as much research as all of the other facili
ties combined!”
“That, my good Doctor, is due to the fact that we haven’t been overrun!” Warden replied venomously. “In no small part due to my safety protocols!”
Sensing the full-blown argument was about to spoil her dinner, Sarah spoke up. “Doctor Robertson, you got sidetracked on where the virus comes from.”
Both Doctor Robertson and Captain Warden looked round at her. Captain Warden ceased his rancour out of an atavistic politeness for his table guests.
Doctor Robertson saw what Sarah was trying to do straight away and was more than happy to break off from yet another pointless argument.
“Of course, you have more than a passing interest in science,” Doctor Robertson said, turning to the Captain. “Sarah here was at university studying Chemistry.”
“Is that so?” Captain Warden said, not knowing where Doctor Robertson was going with this line of conversation. Anticipating an ambush, he kept his response polite but neutral.
A smile spread across Doctor Robertson’s face. “I’m hoping she will accept my invite and help us with our research.”
Sarah shook her head. “I doubt if I could be any use. I was only a second year.”
“As you can probably tell, there is a skills shortage at the moment. A second year student is a whole lot better than anyone else can boast on this boat.”
“We were speaking in the infirmary about what caused the outbreak. You never got round to answering the question,” Sarah said, trying to turn the attention away from herself.
“That’s a difficult question,” Doctor Robertson said. “We’ve never been able to isolate the contagion.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we,” Doctor Robertson admitted. “We can see the effects but none of the agent. It acts like a virus in its propagation but seems to derive energy like yeast. The lack of aerobic action—”
Nathan laughed, “Does that mean it can’t dance?”
Jennifer’s snigger encouraged Nathan to laugh more.
“That’s the scientific term for breathing,” Sarah interpreted. “You were saying...?”
Domain of the Dead Page 10