The Final Outbreak: An Apocalyptic Thriller

by ML Banner

  Only then was it obvious to him: close to a dozen people—passengers and crew—were attacking other passengers and crew inside the atrium.

  “It’s crossed over to the people,” he yelped. “We need to get out of here.”

  45

  Infirmary

  A crewman struggled to carry an unconscious woman who wore shorts and a t-shirt coated in splashes of red. A blood-soaked beach towel was strapped around her calf with a man’s belt. “Where can I put her?” bellowed the crewman.

  Dr. Chettle pointed to a corner of the room, where there was an open spot on the floor. Its occupant had been released a few minutes ago. He watched the crew member lay the woman down and one of his volunteers, charged with triaging the incoming patients, quickly checked the woman’s vitals. The volunteer peeked under the injured woman’s makeshift bandage, pulled out a red marker and drew a single red line across her forehead: her injuries were life-threatening, but they could probably save her. At least it wasn’t a black marker, which would have meant death was eminent.

  He’d had two patients with the black marks of death in the last few minutes. He didn’t want any more.

  The day, like the patients coming to the ship’s ad hoc infirmary, had quickly gone from green (minor injuries) and mostly food poisoning illnesses, to yellow (non-life threatening injuries) from bird attacks, to red and black because of the more serious and yet very odd injuries.

  He moved over to the newly-delivered bloodied woman in the corner and examined the loose red bandage wrapped around her leg. His nurse, Chloe Barton, joined him on the other side of the injured woman, having just finished suturing one of the many bird-bite wounds they had had in the last few minutes.

  “What do you need for this one, Doctor?” she asked.

  He glanced up from his patient to find Barton already slipping the cuff of their electronic sphygmomanometer around the woman’s forearm, obviously taking a cue from the woman’s red designation. Chettle’s view of Barton’s abilities and usefulness had grown exponentially in the last 24 hours. She’d been an enormous help to him and the injured. It was like she’d taken a common sense pill: pressure seemed to forge her into one of the better nurses he’d worked with over the years. Perhaps she needed a hectic atmosphere, like an ER. When this whole mess settled down—if it settled down—he’d recommend that she work in an ER, rather than the day-to-day boredom of dealing with the cuts and bruises of stupid or drunk passengers on a cruise ship. Her talents were needed in an ER setting. But at this moment, he was very glad to have her here.

  “I don’t know, I was just...” Dr. Chettle halted and glared at the exposed wound, a fresh stream of blood pooling around its edges. “We’re dealing with human bites now.” He looked at Barton, almost to confirm what was an obvious but still unbelievable fact: this was the fourth human-bite case they’d witnessed in the last half-hour.

  He looked around for the crewman who brought the woman in, wanting to find out what happened. But the man had already left. Chettle had only picked up a few dribbles about the pandemonium up on the pool and sun decks. And based on the injuries, as crazy as it sounded, he could at least explain the bird-bites. When the human bite cases started to appear, he had no explanation. Human bites were almost always reactionary, a means of defense.

  He’d only seen offensive attacks such as these in drug abuse cases. If there was only one case on the ship, perhaps he could explain it. But four? He needed to find out what was going on. He caught another crew member steadying a new incoming patient, this time an older man, but with a similar looking bloodied arm. The old man weakly held a red towel against his wound.

  Chettle turned to his nurse. “Completely clean, suture, and dress the wound”—he paused to consider all the cases—“and make sure there are no other wounds. I’ll be right back.” He stood up and turned away from the injured woman and Barton, who was already removing the towel from the wound, while clutching a bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide.

  “Hey you,” Chettle bellowed to the crewman across the room. “What’s happening up there?”

  The crewman’s eyes darted to him and around the room. Right away, it was obvious he was both scared and confused.

  “It’s okay. You’re safe here. Now please tell me what’s going on topside?”

  The man looked down and up again. “Ahh, they’re attacking each other?”

  “Who? Who’s attacking?”

  “The people.”

  “How...” Chettle turned his attention everywhere around the room and yet nowhere. His eyes fell upon the spots of two of his earlier patients who had been feeling really sick from the same food poisoning that hit maybe forty percent of the ship’s passengers and similar numbers of crew. Both patients were confused and one was drooling and almost unresponsive: the one with the Hawaiian shirt, who was no longer in his bunk. Three different types of incidents: food poisoning, then animal bites, and now human bites. All, within days of each other and all seemingly unrelated. And yet something in his gut told him they were, even though that didn’t make a lick of sense.

  “Hey Doctor. Can my brother go now?” hollered a hulking German man, two beds down. Chettle stepped over to the bed, where another much skinnier German, bare-chested with a blanket around his shoulders was sitting up, alert. The beefier version of the man—if Chettle remembered right, they were brothers—was standing beside him. The beefy one gazed at the doctor with scornful eyes. He was the one who asked the question.

  Chettle flipped through his charts, searching for the bed number. Franz Litz and his brother Hans. Franz was bitten by a dog. He supposedly tried to pull away a crazed dog that was attacking another passenger and was bitten in the process. Franz had been disoriented for a few hours, but seemed alert now. They’d long since cleaned and dressed his wound. Chettle knew he’d need more bed space, especially now. So there appeared to be no reason to hold this man. “Yes, you both can go. But—” Chettle stopped mid-sentence, his head drawn to the other side of the infirmary, where there was a flutter of colorful movement.

  “Great!” exclaimed Hans. He yanked at his brother’s arm, pulling Franz out of his makeshift bed. “Let’s get out of here and go to the pool to take in beer and bikinis...” his voice faded off as both brothers gazed at the flash of commotion away from them.

  The man in the bright Hawaiian shirt, who had earlier left his bunk, was now stooped over another patient—a woman who Chettle had sedated after multiple bird bites and who was finally resting. She was now screaming in a perfect soprano pitch. Hawaiian Shirt almost appeared to be growling back at the woman, and the woman was pushing at him and kicking, trying to keep Hawaiian Shirt away.

  Chettle started after Hawaiian Shirt, not sure what he would do, but knowing he had to intervene in some way. “Hey,” he yelled at the man. “What are you doing?”

  Hawaiian Shirt hesitated and was kicked to the ground by the screaming woman, but he immediately pushed himself up from the floor and leapt at the kicking woman, who had wiggled out of her bed and was now trying to stand. Her voice broke into an even higher pitch, if that was possible.

  Chettle reached the man, who was chomping his teeth like some comedy routine where he was mimicking a Great White chowing down on a lowly fish.

  Just as Chettle reached Hawaiian Shirt, the man’s chomping teeth found the flailing woman’s hand, clasping down on it like a vise, cracking tendons and bones. Her screech reached glass-breaking levels when Chettle tugged at the man’s Tommy Bahama, pulling the woman his way too.

  ~~~

  Hans’ face turned from scowl to shock upon seeing the same thing Franz had: the bloke in the colorful shirt had turned his chomping-act onto the doctor.

  Franz had felt wobbly at first when his brother had so abruptly pulled him out of bed. He was alert now and standing upright. And although he felt plenty warm now, he pulled the blanket he’d been wearing more firmly around his shoulders and gazed at the scene.

  The threesome of the doctor, the injured
woman and the colored shirt guy all struggled on the floor; the doctor was now the one doing the yelling; there was so much blood.

  Another scuffle occurred right beside them. An oriental crew member appeared to be fighting with another patient, and both were flailing around on the floor. The oriental was pounding the patient’s face with balled-up hands, like a machine whose only purpose was to pummel objects: a machine that was screaming... no, screeching, like an animal. “Was zur Hölle?” Franz yipped (What the hell?).

  “Der Mist. The Americans call it a ‘shit-storm,’ little brother. Let’s go.”

  Franz could see the woman who had been bitten on her hand—it looked bent at a funny angle—was now pounding with her other hand on the crazy guy with the colorful shirt, who was busy trying to chomp down on the doctor’s neck. “But... but shouldn’t we help?”

  He didn’t look up at Hans, totally transfixed by what he saw.

  The infirmary’s noises had now grown ear-splitting, as most of the room’s occupants or visitors were rushing in panicked dashes for one of the two exits.

  “That Drecksau (dirty pig)?” Hans said about the doctor. “No, we go now.”

  Franz felt his big brother yank his arm back and pull him toward the closest exit. He did nothing to resist, while his arm was nearly dislocated in Hans’ anxiousness to get them out of there.

  The whole time, Franz watched the “shit show.” He caught another glimpse of the colorful-shirt guy’s mouth finding the doctor’s jugular, sending a geyser of blood in the air.

  But what drew Franz’ gaze, just before he exited the infirmary, what made him shiver from a growing cold inside of him, as he glanced at each of the multiple scuffles involving people screaming, growling and attacking, were the evil red eyes of the crazy-looking ones.

  46

  Flavio

  Flavio Petrovich was awakened by a rattle and crash. He lifted his head slightly, eyes ratcheted open, scanning his cabin. Not that he could see anything, his cabin was pitch-black. Even if he had left his lights on—he remembered turning them off—he wouldn’t expect to see anyone or anything because he didn’t share his cabin with another crewmate. That meant the noise had to have been made by some other damned rude person outside his cabin. Another crash and a heavy bang against his door set Flavio on a boil. He couldn’t get a moment’s rest. It wasn’t bad enough that he had to deal with all of the stupid crew members, and the obnoxious German guests, and then the crazy red-eyed rats, but now his fellow crew wouldn’t let him sleep.

  Why can’t they leave me alone, in peace?

  “Is that too much to ask?” he bellowed at the murk.

  His fingers fumbled through the darkness, finally finding and flipping his phone around to see the time. It was 13:42. He’d only slept three hours. Now he was really pissed. He was going to give this person an ear-full.

  Flavio tossed back the covers, slid his feet into his slippers and marched over to the door of his cabin. Admittedly, he was glad to have one of the few private cabins for non-officer crew members, because of his seniority with Regal European. Although he always felt it was their way to try and placate him, instead of paying him a higher wage. He slapped the handle, twisted it violently, and threw open the door.

  Inside the doorway, he held up and froze.

  As this was a deck three, crew-only hallway at the far aft of the ship connecting mostly officer’s cabins to other crew areas, the last thing he expected to see was trash. But right in front of his door was an overturned cart, just like the ones used by room attendants to clean up rooms. Half of the contents of a bag of trash attached to the back of the cart was spilled across the orange-carpeted floor. A crushed tampon box stood up like a sign-post of all that was wrong, right before his slippered feet.

  “Vat da holy hell is this?” he blared to no one.

  A scream to his right.

  He turned to see a running room attendant, gaping mouth hanging, in full stride bounding over the cart and the trash, as if it wasn’t his place to deal with this. He probably was the one who made the mess.

  Flavio was about to yell at the man’s back, before he was out of earshot, when he heard another scream... more like an animalistic screech.

  Again, Flavio turned to face the noisemaker: it was another crew member running right at him. He wore a black jumpsuit and roared like a tiger whose cubs were poached. The man looked as angry as Flavio felt. More. Perhaps you should have picked up the trash, Flavio wanted to instruct the attendant, who was probably out of the hallway by now.

  The jumpsuited-crewmember didn’t belong here though: his uniform indicated he worked in the engine room, and he certainly didn’t have a cabin in this hallway. Jumpsuit Man attempted to run by Flavio, dead-set on the attendant, and didn’t seem to notice Flavio, much less the large obstruction in the hallway. Instead of jumping over it like the attendant, he plowed through it, without any success. Jumpsuit tripped and fell hard, face first. There was a crack that Flavio knew all too well: the man had broken a bone.

  “Whoa—whoa there, crazy man. Settle down,” Flavio instructed as he took a step into the hallway.

  Jumpsuit didn’t “settle.” He convulsed and flailed, no doubt causing more harm to whatever part of his body he broke.

  Flavio stepped closer to the man. “Are you crazy?”

  Jumpsuit twisted back to glare his anger at Flavio. The man’s eyes were a fire-like red and he had a deep gash in his cheek that seeped blood. Jumpsuit’s arms were thrashing in the air and against the carpet: a cross between trying to get traction and a temper tantrum, but the man’s brain couldn’t decide which, so he did both without any control.

  A couple of years ago, the crew members like Flavio who dealt directly with guests were given a security seminar on what happened when someone was shot with a stun gun. Some of the security guards were getting them. Corporate said they were non-lethal and wanted to show the crew. One of the old-timers, Eddie, who worked with Flavio in the MDR, volunteered, acting as if there were nothing to it. When Eddie was hit by the electrodes, or whatever they were called, he convulsed violently on the floor just like Jumpsuit Man. Unfortunately for Eddie, no one knew about his heart condition. He died, along with the stun gun program.

  Jumpsuit finally gained a little traction on the garbage, squishing beneath his feet liquids, soaps, creams, and other unmentionables, all disgusting discards from people’s trash.

  Flavio reflexively took a step back toward his room, thinking it was a safer place to be than in this hallway, with this convulsing freak.

  Jumpsuit found his footing, although one foot wasn’t working too well: it was bent at an odd angle.

  Flavio could have sworn he heard a grinding sound and imagined bones upon other bones, breaking and grinding inside the man’s mangled ankle. But Jumpsuit ignored what had to be excruciating pain. It was as if the man no longer felt pain, or he felt it and just didn’t care. Then again, maybe he did feel the pain, because Jumpsuit brayed an unearthly sound which was a mix of a tormented scream and a vengeful battle cry. Flavio had heard both before, but in a much different theater.

  Flavio stutter-stepped backwards when he realized Jumpsuit was somehow moving toward him fast on his broken ankle.

  Flavio’s heel slid—on the damned tampon box—and he started to fall backwards into his room. At that moment, for perhaps the only time, Flavio wished he had had a roommate, because there was no one there to help him. He looked up, just as Jumpsuit landed on top of him.

  47

  Deck Eight Falls

  Just outside of cabin number 8531, a nearly naked woman, known to a few on the Intrepid as the woman who liked to marry and then murder her husbands, and to the rest as simply Eloise—this was before she was purged—straddled a man in black overalls and plunged her digits into the man’s eye sockets, burying two of them up to her first knuckle. Her forefinger, already chewed off at the second knuckle, pressed into the man’s temple, generating pain for her, and more anger. Eloise palme
d the man’s head like a bowling ball, screeched an anguished cry, and drove her mouth into the man’s cheek. As she bit down and pulled back, enough skin, muscle and tendons ripped free to expose the man’s teeth. After she chewed on his raw tissue, the man who’d just been promoted to mechanic bellowed a final howl before Eloise tore into his throat to silence him for good.

  An alarm blared an ear-rattling tone, drawing Eloise’s attention. She glared a serpent-like gaze at the speaker with headlamp-like anger and howled at it in reply; her newfound food burst out of her mouth.

  She sprang up, intending to attack the speaker with equal abandon, when a rotund man from cabin 8520 brushed past her, his terrycloth bathrobe and black boxers fluttering as he dashed down the hallway.

  Eloise brayed at the man’s back, a guttural scorn for disrupting her focus. Bathrobe Man raced forward, unabated down their starboard-side hall, toward movement a couple of dozen cabins away. She cast her eyes back down at the man in the black overalls below her, holding her gaze on the dying man.

  The decimated mechanic would never get a chance to tell his wife that he would have been bringing home more money for his family because of his promotion. Instead, he lay in a growing pool of red, gurgling, shallowing puffs of air bubbling out his newly enlarged mouth and opening in his throat. His eyes were now growing bowls of crimson, their soupy liquid pouring over its corners like tears down his face. Finally, his last breath—barely half a puff.

  Eloise turned back to the speaker, no longer blaring horn sounds, but the voice of a man commanding them to do something she didn’t understand. She spun back to glare at Bathrobe Man, who had tackled a couple of German tourists running the other way. The trio thrashed and wailed together. This drew Eloise’s interest. She responded with an anticipatory snarl and leapt off the dead mechanic, dashing toward the rising din of screams.