“We have not been having an easy twenty-four hours,” Captain Sigvard broke the silence on the bridge.
Mathias looked at the clock on the wall and realized that although it hadn’t been twenty-four hours since the bomb had gone off, it had nearly been that long since he last slept. He was exhausted.
“What are our options?” Captain Sigvard asked next.
“The way I see it, there are two real choices: run or fight,” Commander Crichton answered him.
“What are our chances if we fight?” Captain Karsten wondered. “Do we have anything that can take down something like the other cruise ship?”
“Remember that cruise ship is already full of zombies,” Lieutenant Boyle reminded everyone. “Those men took a risk boarding it. One of them could be dead already, and the other might be dying.”
“We can’t assume that,” Captain Bronislav spoke up. “They may have enough manpower and weaponry to clear out those zombies easily. In fact, we should be considering the zombies as weapons. They could find a way to move them from that ship to ours.”
“That would be a raiding party like no other,” Boyle sighed.
“Our weapon count has only dropped since our last meeting. I’m not sure we even have enough bullets to fully load every gun.” Crichton looked to James for a proper count. Everyone in that room knew not to speak unless one of the heads requested it of them.
“If we arm all shifts of the ship defence crew and the off-shippers with our best weapons, they can have at least two full magazines each. Some of them can even have three,” James told them.
“So few?” Karsten looked crestfallen.
Mathias stepped forward and waited for acknowledgement before speaking. “All ship defenders have only been carrying half loaded magazines for some time, sirs. We don’t need bullets often, and have been rationing them for the off-shippers. Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to scavenge as often as they used to, and it seems that when they do, they end up spending more bullets than they find.” He stepped back into the group once more.
“What about the civilians?” Bronislav asked. “Many of them are carrying around guns. Can we not take the bullets from them?”
“I doubt it,” Boyle shook his head. “None of them have more than what their gun can carry. We took all their extra ammo when we had that weeklong standoff with the American pirates last year. If we took the last of their ammo, they would feel defenceless, and we’d end up with a whole other set of problems on our hands. No, I think it’s for the best that we let the general population continue to be as armed as they always have been.”
“Do we at least have enough close combat weapons for everyone?” Karsten asked.
“Yes,” Crichton nodded, clearly relieved to have some relatively good news. “We have more than enough for everyone on this ship to carry something. In fact, I think we should start handing out close combat weapons to the civilians who’ve only been carrying firearms up until this point. As a precaution.”
“They’re going to wonder why,” Bronislav told him. “Are we sure we want to tell the population what’s happening? It may cause a panic.”
“This is a large enough threat that everyone should be informed. We can ask for volunteers to take on lookout and patrol shifts, and that way, if something happens, no one will be surprised,” Boyle suggested.
“For now, this information doesn’t leave this room.” Crichton looked sternly at everyone present.
“Is there a way we can take out the other cruise ship before this Sher’s reinforcements arrive?” Karsten asked.
“If there is, it won’t be easy,” Boyle shook his head.
“Maybe we could make a bomb like the one that injured us. Get the off-shippers to sneak it over and place it somewhere below the waterline,” Bronislav suggested.
“It’s risky, but doable,” Crichton agreed.
“We wouldn’t have this issue if I still had my torpedoes,” Karsten muttered.
“Captain Karsten, we all agreed, you included, that everyone would feel safer if you got rid of both the torpedoes and missiles on your submarine. The reactor on it has people nervous enough,” Boyle reminded him.
“Why are we even discussing this?” Captain Sigvard suddenly spoke up again after being quiet during the entire talk of war.
“What do you suggest?” Crichton asked him.
“That we take the other option. That we run,” Sigvard said to everyone.
“And where would we run to?” Karsten wondered.
“Texas,” Sigvard said with a casual shrug. “Look, I know we haven’t been to land in years, but maybe it’s finally time. I mean, we have to go back eventually, don’t we? The Diana won’t float forever, and I’d rather bring her in before she starts taking on water. All the zombies on land have probably rotted to dried-out husks that can barely move by now, and we have a few radiation detectors with which we can check out the area before we dock. I’ll admit that I don’t know much about nuclear radiation, but it’s been at least six years since the plants and storage facilities have gone off. I’m sure we could find somewhere safe. Besides, didn’t we hear over the radio that the facilities in the south were setting off controlled detonations to bury the nuclear material safely, once they knew they were going to be overrun?”
“What if this band of Jamaicans follows us? We don’t have enough fuel to get there if we go at top speed. We’ll have to go somewhat slowly, and they may be able to catch up. What then?” Bronislav asked him.
“Well, then we can fight them with our backs to the shore. If the ship goes down, I’d rather it go down in sight of land, and not where I know there are thousands of walking corpses beneath us. I say we vote on it.”
The vote was held quickly. Boyle and Sigvard voted for running to Texas, while Karsten and Bronislav voted to stay and fight. Crichton was the holdout.
“You have to vote,” Bronislav narrowed his eyes at Crichton.
“I think this is a decision for more than just us five men. We can’t put it to a ship-wide vote, that would take too long, but I hereby give my vote to the rest of the men and women in this room. Let them decide.” Crichton looked at the group assembled, all of whom suddenly stood a lot more rigidly. It had been a long time since they had to make a choice this important, or one that affected so many people.
Mathias already knew his choice.
“Those for staying and fighting, raise your hands.”
While Crichton counted, Mathias refused to look around. He didn’t want to know how many were making that choice, or who they were.
“Those who think we should make for land, raise your hands.”
Mathias lifted his arm high. He had a little girl to think about. If he could get her away from the fighting, he would.
When Crichton finished counting, he shared a look with the other ship leaders. He then addressed the entire bridge. “It looks like we’re heading to Texas.”
***
Mathias left the bridge, feeling like a weight had been lifted off him, but if the vote had gone the other way, it probably would have remained there. He went into the room near the bridge to pick up Milly.
“Milly?” Looking around the room, he didn’t see the three-legged husky anywhere. “Milly, where are you?”
“Excuse me.” Private Winchester stepped around him and began frantically to search the room.
“What’s wrong?” Mathias asked as the other dogs were picked up by their owners.
“I ran into some little kids who snuck out of school. I was just about to take them back when I got the call to the bridge. It sounded really important, so I left them in here.” The room didn’t take long for Winchester to search. He clearly found no sign of the children.
“Looks like they decided they didn’t want you to take them back to class, and they let my dog out in the process,” Mathias sighed. Milly was usually a good dog, but she had a tendency to wander off if no one was keeping her in check.
“And I just remembe
red there was something else I was supposed to report to the heads,” Winchester smacked his forehead, clearly frustrated.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m sure the kids are fine, and they’ll turn up somewhere. There are people all over this ship, and many of them will already be searching for Hanna. I’m sure someone else will find the kids. Hell, someone might have already come across them in this room and taken them back to school.”
Winchester nodded, but he was obviously still annoyed with himself.
“You better go make that report before you forget again.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.” Winchester left the room.
Glancing around the room one last time, Mathias determined that Milly was indeed missing. Like the children, she’d turn up sooner or later. She was an easy to recognize dog, and someone was bound to find her and return her to Mathias. He might even go look for her himself, but there was something else he wanted to do first.
The journey to Texas was going to be made public knowledge soon enough, but he always preferred to deliver news like that to his group personally. All of the Diana residents could technically be called his group now, but Mathias still thought of it as those he had lived with for roughly two weeks in a cabin in the north. The ship was full of subgroups like that: people who met and joined together to survive the day the zombies spread across their lives. The first person he was going to tell was Riley.
Heading to the medical centre again, Mathias felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over him. It had been a few years since he last needed to stay awake this long, and it seemed he could no longer handle the hours as well as he used to. Leaning into the corner of the stairwell, he took a short break until the nauseous feeling passed. Pulling himself back together, he continued on his way to the medical centre.
When he finally got there, he found that Riley was out of surgery and taking a break in one of the few waiting chairs they had along one wall. Mathias made his way over and plopped down in the seat next to her.
“I tried to radio you,” she said to him, sounding as tired as he felt. All emotion had been drained out of her.
“Did you? Sorry. There was a big meeting and nearly everyone had to turn their radios off.”
“You’re forgiven. What was the meeting about?”
“I want to hear how the surgery went first. Good news or bad news?”
“A bit of both. Rose should survive the amputation, that’s the good news. Great news, really. Jon made a very clean cut, and the other off-shippers stabilized her well.”
“What’s the bad news part of this?”
“You have to understand that when we’re in that kind of emergency, we’re completely focused on saving the patient’s life. Nothing else.”
“What’s the bad news?” Mathias sat up a little straighter.
“She lost a lot of blood, and we had to use a lot of our reserves on her.”
“That’s fine, we can just hold another mandatory donation drive.”
“You didn’t let me finish. Her blood, the blood that was coming out of her, was infected.”
Mathias’s back became ramrod straight. The mother of his child had been in a room full of contaminated blood. Looking her over, he noticed that Riley was wearing completely different clothes than she had been when he last saw her, and her hair had been washed recently.
“Have you been tested?” Mathias tried to keep as calm as she was being, but he was pretty sure he was failing miserably at it.
“I have been.”
“And?”
“And my blood tested positive.”
Mathias’s brain stalled. Before his eyes, he saw his friend LeBlanc saying that he was infected, and that he wanted Mathias to kill him.
“You don’t understand,” Riley shook her head, reading him as she always did, “everyone in that room tested positive. And everyone here in the medical centre.”
Mathias looked around the room. How could all these people be infected? Some of them were confined to their beds, and shouldn’t have had any contact with infected materials.
“Test my blood,” Mathias held out his arm.
Riley smiled weakly at him.
“Come on, just test it. I was here when Jon’s results came back positive.”
Riley did as he asked, first drawing his blood, and then putting it under the microscope.
“You’re infected too,” she told him.
“How?” Mathias frowned. “This doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t come into contact with any blood or saliva.”
“I know. A lot of people here haven’t. I’ve spent the last half an hour wracking my brain trying to figure out what’s going on.” Riley sat back down with a huff. “A few doctors are going around the ship collecting random blood draws right now. They’re saying it’s for a general population health test or something. They should be back soon.”
Mathias rested his head on his hands. How could this be? It made no sense! Unless…
“The bomb. Do you think that whoever set it off could have also been insane enough to somehow taint our water supply?”
“I thought about it. I also thought that maybe it’s something we ate. Problem is, we test all meat before anyone consumes it, and the water we use comes from the ocean.”
“All the zombies below us?”
“Doubt it. If it were an issue of the debris cloud that floats around them rising up to our water intake, then it would have happened long before now. We’ve had larger groups beneath us. And we’ve already determined that the virus can’t move through, or really even survive in water without being anchored to something.”
“So maybe the virus is changing.”
“And there’s the dilemma.”
Mathias suddenly felt so cold that he shivered. They always worried that the virus would change some day.
“How long do we have?”
“Don’t know. Don’t know how long we’ve been infected for. Some doctors are still running a bunch of samples and tests.”
Mathias leaned back, resting his head on the back of the chair. This explained why Riley sounded so detached. It was her way of dealing with things like this. She broke away from them, and looked at things only from a clinical perspective.
“So why did you come down here?” Riley suddenly asked.
With the information he had just learned, Mathias didn’t understand what she had asked him.
“You didn’t hear me radio for you, so what made you decide to come down here? Did something happen in the meeting?”
“Oh, we’re going to Texas,” he told her. It seemed so unimportant now.
“Texas? Really? Why? I thought we decided it wasn’t worth the risk to scavenge there.”
“We’re not going to scavenge. I think we’re finally returning to land. Or at least it sounds like we’re going to dry dock the Diana and give her a full inspection.”
“Wow. Texas. Do we know where in Texas? And why now? Is it because of the bomb?”
“There’s a man who got aboard the other cruise ship and is threatening us. We intercepted a radio broadcast and overheard him calling in some people from Jamaica. How many people know about the infection?” Mathias’s mind kept coming back to it.
“Only the doctors on duty right now. We knew something was up when everyone in the operating room tested positive. There is no other place we take that many precautions simply due to regular infections, so even one case is worrisome. We decided to wait until we had more information before raising an alarm. Why Texas?”
“I don’t know. It probably has to do with the size of the dry dock we need and the amount of gas we have. There are going to be meetings and announcements later, but I wanted to let the group know ahead of time. What happens if it turns out that everyone is infected?”
“Then everyone is infected. We all turn, and that’s the end of it.”
Mathias stood up, no longer able to sit, and in need of a distraction. “I’m going to go tell the others about Texas.”
> “Mathias?” Riley stood up as well, taking one of his hands into her own. “Don’t tell the others about the infection, okay? Not yet.”
“I won’t.” He kissed the back of her hand, and then slipped his out of it. Just before he left, he stopped in the doorway and turned to face Riley again. “Maybe you should take the rest of the day off. Get Hope out of school early.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll do that.”
As Mathias began to climb the stairs, he knew that Riley wouldn’t do that. The only thing she could do right now was look for more information. If she couldn’t do that, then she would wait for it. There was no way in hell she’d go anywhere near their daughter until she understood the infection. Even then, if there was any chance it would spread to Hope, Riley would make the choice never to see her again.
***
“Where in Texas are we going?”
“I’m sorry, what?” Mathias’s mind had drifted off, thinking again about what he had learned from Riley.
“Texas is big. I was wondering what part of it we were going to,” Tobias told him again. The two of them were sitting in the media room, the other reporters having vacated the premises in an attempt to learn more about this search for Hanna.
“Oh. I’m not sure. Obviously, a part that connects with the Gulf of Mexico but beyond that, I have no idea.”
“Who else have you told?”
“So far, just Riley and now you. I haven’t found the others yet.”
“I saw Josh not too long ago. He should be around here somewhere. I think he was making rounds to see his mental patients.”
“Thanks. I think I know where he is.”
“So, I guess I shouldn’t tell the other reporters about this?”
“I’d appreciate it. Besides, by the time I finish making the rounds to the others, I’m sure the ship captains will tell everyone else.”
Survival Instinct (Book 3): Fighting Instinct Page 13