by Howard, Bob
“Okay,” she said. “Here we go.”
Jean took the key out of the lock. If she had time when the fun started, she would lock the door, but she doubted there would be time. She left the cell door open and went over to the cabin door. She quietly turned the lock to the unlocked position and then backed all the way to the open cell door.
She drew in a deep breath and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Hey, dirt bags and scum buckets. Come and get it.”
Jean backed in the cell and pulled the door shut behind her. She was just about to reach around and lock the door when the cabin door flew open. It wasn’t like the infected dead rushed to get anywhere. It was just the sheer weight of them that made the door slam open harder than she had expected. Three of them were trying to come into the cabin at the same time. She had hope for one at a time, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now.
The first of the infected to get through the narrow cabin door was one of the guards Jean had seen earlier with the Captain. He was missing a large piece of his neck, but his face was undamaged, so she knew it was him. He had been one of four that she had seen including the Captain. The next one was the young guard who had brought her the soup. Behind him was Captain Aristov and the other guard who had tried for a peek at her when the Captain had first come to see her. It saddened her because they were all so young.
When the first one arrived at the cell, it did exactly what they all do. It slammed hard against the steel bars of her cell and reached in as far as it could. Jean calmly held the pillow up to its face, pulled the Glock from her belt and pressed the muzzle against the squirming infected dead that was trying to push the cell door inward. She pulled the trigger, and it slumped backward onto the floor. Somehow the thing that had been Captain Aristov got to the cell door second. Jean now had the added insurance of the first one being in the way, so she had more time to compose herself before the infected dead version of Aristov reached through the bars.
Jean got the pillow in place and pressed the muzzle against it just as she had the first time, but just as she pulled the trigger, and as the former Captain Aristov flew backwards away from the bars, she felt a searing pain along her left arm. It felt like her arm was on fire, but she knew she hadn’t been bitten. She looked at her arm and saw the trail of blood where the infected dead had left a deep scratch from her elbow to her wrist. It had somehow managed to reach in far enough to grasp at her shirt, and when it lost its grip, it had blindly tried to grab her arm.
In the split second that she had before the third infected reached the cell door, she realized her mistake. The cabin had been too warm, so she had taken off her thick, protective jacket, and it was still lying in a pile behind her in the corner of the cell. She only had time to think to herself that she didn’t know if a scratch was fatal like a bite, or if she was going to be okay. All she knew for sure was that it wasn’t like any scratch she had ever gotten before. This one felt like someone was cutting her arm off with a dull knife.
The third infected tripped over the bodies in front of the cell and literally stuck its head most of the way between the bars. Jean shoved the pillow against the head and pulled the trigger almost simultaneously. It had barely fallen free of the bars when the fourth one stumbled over the others for its turn. By now Jean was angry and afraid. She was taking care of her problems one by one, but she had gotten that stupid scratch, and not knowing if it was a death sentence was almost as bad as being bitten.
There weren’t more infected trying to get into the cabin which meant one of two things. Either there were no more in the corridor outside, or no more of them had heard the muffled gun shots. Jean listened, trying to hear if there was anything moving out in the passageway on the other side of the door, but eventually understood that the ringing in her ears was real. The Glock had been quieter than it would have been if not for the pillow, but it had still been loud enough inside the small cabin to have messed up her hearing.
The dead were piled up outside the door in a very small area, and she had to work to get the door open far enough to squeeze through. She looked at the bodies and was grateful that she hadn’t been forced to use Plan B. The Chief always said to have a second plan, and hers had been to hold the mattress up against the bars and shoot more than one at a time.
Jean very quickly closed the cabin door and locked it again. She opened the cabinet and grabbed the bottle of Vodka from the shelf. She knew it was going to hurt bad, but she needed to clean that scratch as soon as possible. Not to mention the fact that she felt like she could use a drink.
“I know,” she said to herself, “you shouldn’t drink when you’re pregnant, but you shouldn’t be on a Russian ship with over four dozen infected dead when you’re pregnant, either.”
She started to pour the Vodka on her arm, but she stopped herself and added, “You’ve got the order wrong, stupid.”
Jean took a long drink from the bottle, rolled her eyes in appreciation of the burning sensation as it went down, and let out a satisfied sigh. She waited just a minute for the buzz to hit then doused her arm with the liquid. She thought she might pass out from the pain, and her head felt more than a buzz for a few moments, but she shook herself out of it. She tore off part of her sleeve from the other arm, soaked it in Vodka and did her best to tie it around the injured area. Where the scratch had broken the skin, the pain was unbelievable. Even if it wasn’t fatal, it sure felt like it was killing her arm.
She remembered her jacket and knew it could give her more protection, so she wriggled back through the cell door to get it. Once she had it on, her arm felt a little better, but she found it so hard to push completely out of her thoughts. She was in love. She was going to have a baby. She wasn’t supposed to die like this, and Eddie might never know what had happened to her.
Jean grabbed the flashlight and announced to herself and the empty room, “Okay, Jean Mitchell. Your pity party is over. Time to find your way out of here.”
She listened at the door and then quietly turned the lock. When she pulled it open and stuck her head out into the passageway, she saw it was clear of more infected. There were a couple of cabin doors along the walls, and but she was looking at the space between them. Then she felt a little embarrassed when it occurred to her that she was looking along the walls for one of the maps she was accustomed to seeing on cruise ships. She had hoped to see something that said, “You are here.” She had been incredibly lucky so far, but she didn’t think she would get that lucky.
The first thing she had to do was find her way upward. Odds were that she was below decks somewhere, so she had to find a gangway that would at least get her moving in the right direction. Jean tried to find a rational reason to go either left or right, but nothing fit. If she would have had a porthole, maybe she would know whether it was better to go for the bow or the stern. From what she remembered about the Zodiacs, the stern was a better choice because one thing she wasn't going to be able to do was swim from the ship to Mud Island.
She decided to go to left, but only because she didn't have a clue which way would be better. She walked as lightly as she could, not making a sound so she wouldn’t attract attention and so she would be able to hear clearly if something came along. It looked like her corridor dead ended into a cross corridor that went left and right.
"Oh good," she whispered. "I get to make another fifty-fifty guess with no information. Maybe the ‘you-are-here’ sign is in that corridor."
About twenty feet from the next corridor she heard that shuffling sound that was easy to recognize as an infected dead dragging its feet. If she ever saw one walking normally by picking up its feet and putting them down one in front of the other, it might scare her more. She stopped going toward the corridor and lowered herself to the floor. If it was coming her way, she figured she had an even chance that it would go straight unless it saw her standing in the middle of her corridor. Once she was flat on the floor, she aimed her Glock down the hall and waited.
The dragging
sound increased in volume, and for one wild moment Jean wondered if it was coming up behind her. She couldn't remember if she had checked her back since starting forward down the hall. She resisted the urge to turn around, and that turned out to be a good decision because a shadow appeared at the cross corridor in front of her, and the infected dead that followed the shadow would have seen her moving.
It came from her left, and Jean held her breath. It was another Russian sailor, and he looked liked he had been bitten several times before he died. It was dragging its left leg, and that made the infected turn its body slightly away from Jean, and since there was no reason for it to turn, it continued to walk straight ahead down that corridor.
"I guess I'm going left again," Jean whispered. She let out a ragged breath and slowly got to her feet. As she did, she looked back down the hall from where she had come and satisfied herself that nothing had been sneaking up on her from behind.
Her arm throbbed, and she wondered if it would be better to pour more Vodka on it or to drink more of it. She decided neither would be fine for now and started for the end of the corridor again. It didn't take her long to reach the turn, but the first thing she did was check the progress of the infected that had passed by. She got a chill when she saw the corridor to the right where the infected had gone was a dead end, and it was almost to a closed door. Once it got there, it was going to either push open the door or bounce off of it. If it bounced off the door, it was just as likely to get turned around and start back for the other end of the hall.
Jean glanced down the hall in the opposite direction and saw the gangway she was looking for. It sat slightly to the left of the hallway, and it went upward. Around the gangway, the corridor continued on to another closed door. Sooner or later, the infected would get around to walking back down the corridor on that side, and it would drop straight down to the deck below. Jean honestly didn't know if an infected could walk up a set of stairs, but she knew they could fall down stairs like pros. The good news was that the gangway was also steep. That would make it harder for her hallway friend to follow her if it turned around before she reached the stairs.
She sprinted for the beckoning gangway as quickly as possible without making noise and was just putting her foot on the first step when she heard the infected bounce off of the door at the end of the corridor. She glanced back and saw the infected was going to go for two. Instead of bouncing off and turning its momentum back the way it had come, it still had its back to her and was starting forward toward the door. Jean went up the stairs and thought to herself there were only about fifty more of them to get by.
The next level up was a nightmare, not because she could see more infected, but because she was looking to her right at a vast compartment that could only be the engine room. That meant she was somewhere in the back, lower decks of the ship. She had to find a way to go straight up, or she would have to cross through the engine room. Once again she had to remind herself that it wasn’t all bad. Most of the ship was on the other side of the engine room, so most of the crew would also be in the forward part of the ship. There was still a generator running somewhere in the engine room, and she was just thinking how lucky she was that the power was still on, when she heard the generator start to sputter. The lights flickered almost in time with the sputtering of the generator, and as the generator stopped so did the lights. It went silent and dark at exactly the same moment.
Jean froze right where she was and just listened. Down below the stairs she could hear the dead crewman she had managed to sneak past. Its efforts to get through the closed door also seemed to be effected by the lack of light. It had changed course and was dragging itself back toward the stairs.
She wan’t afraid of the infected down below her deck. What bothered her was that they were drawn to noise, and it was making plenty……or maybe it was just noisier without the sound of the ship drowning it out. Either way, if she could hear it, so could the other infected, and that meant she couldn’t just stand there and wait for them to come along. As much as she knew the flashlight would also give away her position, she also knew she wasn’t going to go anywhere without turning it on.
Jean tucked the Glock back into her belt and fumbled the flashlight out of her coat pocket. She couldn’t see an inch in front of her face so she was having to do everything by touch, the whole time listening to the infected dead at the bottom of the stairs. Jean didn’t hear something come close to her as much as she sensed its presence. She felt the same feeling she had gotten every time she had to squeeze onto a bus or a commuter train and stand too close to men she didn’t know. Her skin crawled, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck felt like they had a static charge.
Maybe it was from hanging around with Kathy, or maybe her knees just did what they wanted to do, but she dropped to the floor just as something bumped into her hard. She managed to hang onto the flashlight, but she knew she had been standing on the top step of the stairs so she reached out and grabbed at the air with her free hand. At first she found the metal railing of the gangway, and she gripped it hard. Then she felt the shin bones of the infected dead that had tried to wrap its arms around her. Her stiff grip on the railing acted like someone had strung a rope across the steps, and she felt it fall past her.
The tumbling noise of the infected falling doing the stairs was enough to set off a chorus of groans from all directions, and Jean knew she couldn’t lay there and cry about what was really hurting her, and that was her left arm. The scratch felt like it had been ripped open, and it hurt worse than ever. When she put her other hand to it, it felt hot and puffy like infection after scraping yourself on a rusty nail.
The engine room was too risky to cross, so Jean started crawling in the opposite direction in the dark. She kept feeling along the walls every few feet hoping to find something familiar. Hoping to find a door or a ladder going to the main deck of the ship. She wasn’t hoping to find the pair of shoes her hand discovered.
Jean recoiled instantly, and whether the infected could see or not, it followed her. She didn’t turn on the flashlight because she would have needed to search for the switch, but she had pushed herself away so hard that she went from being on her knees to being flat on her back. More out of instinct than anything else, she drew her knees up to her chest with her feet in the air, and she felt the weight of the infected fall on top of her. She had the wind knocked out of her, but none of the Russians were exceptionally large, and this one was possibly the smallest member of the crew. With every bit of strength she had, Jean pushed with her feet and felt the weight of the infected dead fly off of her.
She heard it land, and the last thing she would have believed was that it wouldn’t come right back, because they didn’t feel pain. Jean pulled the Glock from her belt and then thumbed the on switch of the flashlight just as it grabbed at her foot. She was at point blank range when she pulled the trigger, and the blast blew the infected over onto its back.
Jean took about three seconds to collect herself and then was on her feet running. She went straight over the infected that was now spread across the corridor, and as she did she hoped anything coming this way would trip over the body. Ahead she could hear more movement, and the ship seemed like it was too narrow for another corridor to be running parallel to hers. That meant she was likely to run into more of the infected as long as she was in a corridor. The best she could hope for was an empty cabin, and she hoped the Russian ship builders had the same way of thinking that most shipyards had. They tended to put accommodations areas aft of the engine room for the officers and crew to be nearer to the area where they worked. She didn’t bother to turn off the flashlight because she had already advertised her location to the entire dead crew.
Only a few more long strides down the hallway brought her to a cabin door that was open. She panned the flashlight around the room and saw that it at least looked like it was empty of the infected. She decided she had enough of playing hide and seek in the dark with things that bite, so she duck
ed inside and locked the door. With her back against the door, Jean stood panting for a few moments, wondering if it was possible to get out of the ship. She shone the light around the room again and saw that it might have been the Captain’s quarters. The best part was the porthole.
Jean checked the lock on the door again then went to the porthole. It was facing Mud Island. She tried to remember everything about her time on the ship so she could figure out how long the others had been gone, but time went by fast and it went by slow. She had no idea when they would be back. For all she knew they could already be back.
For the first time since the lights had gone out, she felt real hope. It was dark outside, and if her friends had returned, they would be watching the Russian ship through the security cameras. They would be wondering why they weren’t seeing signs of life, but most of all, they would be wondering where she was. Jean lifted the light to the porthole and gave the universal signal for help……SOS. She may have only been a nurse on a cruise ship, but everyone working at sea had to know the basics.
Jean repeated the SOS several times, knowing that even if they had seen it, there was no way to signal her back. She could only hope they were getting their gear together for a rescue attempt. She didn’t notice that she was dripping with sweat, partially due to her arm, and partially because the ventilation system was off. She also didn’t notice she was already just randomly flashing the light, having lost the ability to remember the sequence. When the flashlight slipped from her fingers, she was already unconscious before she fell to the floor.
Chapter 12
Hope
The flight from Guntersville back to the coast was uneventful, but with each passing minute Ed was becoming more and more worried. The only break in the monotony was when they circled the area around what had been Fort Jackson to see if they had done any good when they sprayed fuel on the infected.