Outpost (22 page)

They
surveyed the ship stern to prow. They met in the bridge.

'We
have free access to the bridge and the officers' quarters,' said Jane. 'But
from level two downward there are barricades at every door.'

'Plenty
of blood around,' said Ghost. 'The crew fought a running battle. Must have been
a hell of a fight. They prevailed, I guess. The ship is locked down pretty
tight. We're safe, but most of the ship is off limits.'

'So
where are the crew?' asked Punch. 'The blokes who built the barricades?'

Ghost
shrugged. 'Maybe they spotted land. The ship was drifting. They saw some kind
of habitation. They took to the boats and rowed for shore.'

'Habitation?
Out here?'

'Hyperion
has been adrift a long while. No telling where it's been.'

'Imagine
the food down below,' said Punch. 'Caviar. Real eggs. Champagne. All out of
reach. I'm not going to loll around in a presidential suite and slowly starve.
I say we organise raiding parties. We haven't got enough shotgun shells to kill
the passengers, but we've got enough to hold them off while we grab food.'

'Explains
the Juliet flag,' said Ghost.

'The
what?'

'Blue
and white flag near the prow. International maritime signal. Dangerous cargo.
Keep clear.'

'See
this screen?' said Jane, sitting in the captain's chair in front of the
Raytheon console. 'Revs. Engine speed. I'm almost certain these switches govern
the propellers.'

Ghost
leaned past her. He pressed buttons and turned dials.

'Off-line.
If we want more than light, we will need to fire up the turbines.'

'I
bet they shut down the engine room,' said Jane. 'When they evacuated the lower decks
they must have turned everything off. Standard procedure. The kind of thing
people do in a fire drill. Someone will have to go down there and switch it all
back on.'

'Shit.'

Jane
led Punch and Ghost to the chart room. A wall plan.
Hyperion
, floor by floor.

'We
have free run of the top-most deck. But the engine room is nine levels beneath
us.'

'Three
thousand passengers, you reckon?'

'A
liner like this? Yeah. If the ship is running at full capacity there must be
two or three thousand infected down there.'

'Then
we would have to move fast and get lucky.'

Jane
explored the captain's suite. She sat at his desk. She found a passport in a
drawer. Dougie Campbell. British citizen. Fifty- eight.

An
envelope on the desk blotter. A thick sheaf of handwritten notes. Part letter,
part diary. Campbell spent half his life at sea. He got lonely. He wrote to his
wife every night.

Ship
gossip. Most of the crew were east Europeans working for tips. Romanian and
Polish. The Romanians hated the Polish. Officers had to mediate.

Jane
thumbed through the pages, scanned trivia, searched for the moment it all went
bad.

She
sat back in the chair and put booted feet on the desk.

The
ship docked at Trondheim two weeks into an Arctic cruise. They brought aboard
fresh supplies and a couple of new waiters.

Three
days out: an incident in a kitchen. One of the new waiters went berserk. He cut
himself with a cleaver, then attacked two pot-washers. Deep cuts. Bite
injuries. The waiter was restrained and sedated. He was confined to the medical
bay.

Thank God no passengers were hurt.

A
couple of nights later a group of passengers gathered to sip hot chocolate on
deck and watch the Northern Lights. They saw a distant figure at the end of the
promenade climb over a railing and jump into the ocean. The figure was wearing
a white galley uniform. The figure appeared to be hugging a heavy fire extinguisher
to help himself sink.

Passengers
threw lifebelts into the sea and raised the alarm. The ship came to an
immediate halt. The crew trained searchlights on the sea. No sign of the man.

Quick
headcount. The missing man was a pot-washer treated for bite wounds.

The
captain radioed ashore for medical advice. Four staff and two passengers had
been admitted to the infirmary for treatment. They were delirious, restrained,
and bleeding from their eyes and ears.

Representatives
of Baltic Shipping instructed the captain to implement full quarantine
procedures. Isolate all infected personnel and head for the nearby port of
Murmansk.

The
ship was turned back from Murmansk. Their maydays were ignored. They tried to
approach the port, despite the harbour master's refusal to let them dock, but
were fired upon by Russian soldiers as they threw mooring ropes to the jetty.
Instead, they sailed west towards Norway.

Patrick
Connor. Bosun for nine years. The captain's closest friend. The men stayed
aloof and professional during the working day, but most evenings they sat in
the captain's cabin and uncorked a bottle of claret. Neither man was supposed to
drink. The seniority of their positions meant they were never truly off duty
while the ship was at sea. So they sipped wine in secret and enjoyed their
little transgression.

It has been a week since Patrick was bitten. I have
had to watch the horrifying progress of this disease. I have had to watch my
friend slowly become a monster. It has been the worst experience of my life
.

Patrick
was bitten on the face. He was bending over Lenuta Grasu, one of the Romanian cabin
maids, when she broke her restraint and bit a chunk from his cheek. He
immediately washed and disinfected the wound, but both he and the captain knew
it would do no good. The disease was transmitted by body fluid like HIV or
hepatitis. Once a person became infected they quickly succumbed to dementia.
They, in turn, would bite and claw, be driven to transmit the infection any way
they could. Rafal, the Trondheim waiter who was the first to show signs of
infection, was lashed to a hospital bed. He spat and snarled. He was horribly
deformed. There was little chance he would recover.

Dr
Walczak, the ship's surgeon, referred to the disease as rabies, for want of a
proper diagnosis. By the time they reached Norwegian waters the fourteen-bed
medical bay was full to capacity. The staff commandeered a couple of staff
cabins for use as treatment rooms. Patrick Connor had volunteered to help
Walczak, allowing the doctor to get much needed rest from time to time.

Patrick
wrote farewell letters to his wife and children, then allowed himself to be
restrained. It took less than twenty-four hours for the disease to take hold.
In rare lucid moments he begged for death.

The
captain made frequent visits to the medical bay.

This evening Dr Walczak and I had a long conversation
in which we discussed the best form of treatment for Pat, the best way to
relieve his suffering
.

Next
diary entry:

We held Patrick's funeral service at noon today, and
committed his body to the deep
.

The
captain liberated a few bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon from the galley. No
journal entries for the next three days.

Jane
lay on the bed. She scanned the notes. Page after page of carnage. One by one
the captain's crew succumbed.

The
engines were shut down.
Hyperion
drifted north of Norway.

They
lost the lower levels. They hoped that, by dropping the watertight compartment
doors, they would seal infected passengers in the lower cabins. But the
passengers found the stairwells before the crew had time to finish building
barricades.

First
Officer Quinn issued his men with Molotov cocktails. If they held their ground
in the stairways, if they drove the infected passengers back down to the lower
levels, they might retain control of the upper decks.

I don't think those sent mad by this disease
intentionally kill. They are compelled to bite and penetrate, to spread the
contagion. Nevertheless I have seen eyes gouged and throats ripped out.
Survivors lie injured in cabins and corridors crying for help until they too
are overtaken by blood-thirst, haul themselves to their feet and attack
.

It
was hard to estimate casualties. Captain Campbell conducted a head-count. A
minority of the passengers and crew, fewer than a thousand, were declared clear
of infection. They treated the injured in the Grand Ballroom.

I wish Dr Walczak was still with us. Quinn tells me
the doctor was sighted near the sewage treatment plant just before the lower
compartments were sealed. He had no shirt. His back was clustered with spines
like a porcupine. He often said he would rather die than succumb to this
strange affliction. I suppose he didn't have time to take his life before
dementia took hold
.

There
seemed little chance the captain's journal would reach his wife, so instead he
left a warning.

Once a person enters the advanced stages of infection
they become extremely hard to kill. Quinn saw a girl cut clean in half when we
dropped the watertight doors. She lived for fifteen minutes. She dragged
herself across the deck, still trying to bite and tear. The entire lower half
of her body had been detached and left behind, nevertheless her legs continued
to kick and twist
.

Many
of the crew armed themselves with knives from the kitchen. Word soon spread.
Knives didn't work. Stab wounds didn't even slow them down.

The only effective way to deal with the infected is
either to destroy them in their entirety with a weapon such as a Molotov
cocktail, or inflict a severe blow to the head
.

The
captain was shocked to find himself listing the most efficient ways of
'dealing' with the infected. In a matter of days his passengers and crew had
become lethal predators.

It is a matter of survival. Those of us who remain
must act quickly and ruthlessly to ensure the ship does not become totally
overrun
.

Campbell
wondered if there were some way of scuttling the ship, sending the infected
passengers and crew to the bottom of the ocean as a mercy.

Campbell
gave the order to abandon ship. He and his crew had been shivering in the cold
and dark for days. They were drifting. Navigational instrumentation off-line.

They
posted lookouts round the clock in the hope of sighting land. One night they
saw what they hoped to see: lights in the distance. Steady, electric light. Too
dark to make out detail. The captain estimated they were drifting east of
Svalbard. They were probably passing the little coastal township that served
the Arktikugol coal field. He ordered his men to take to the boats.

Seventy-four
souls.

Hard to believe of all the passengers under my care, all
the crew under my command, this ragged handful of exhausted and traumatised
people are all that remain
.

Campbell
gave First Officer Quinn the ship's log and told him to lead the survivors to
safety. He saluted his men as they rowed away.

He
was alone aboard the ship, the last uninfected individual on the vessel. He
retreated to his cabin. He uncorked a Bordeaux.

Campbell
could have evacuated the ship with his men, but was determined to play the role
of captain to the last.

We all need to believe our lives have some ultimate
meaning. I have rank and responsibility. It's not foolish to live your ideals
.

Jane
woke with a jolt. She had dozed off, crumpled papers in her hand.

She
stood at the washstand. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and cleaned her teeth. Toothpaste
and bottled water.

'Jane? You there
?' Ghost.

'Yeah.'

'
Punch and I are going to make a run for the engine
room
.'

'I'll be right there
.
'
'

Jane
adjusted her dog-collar. The room reflected in the mirror. A silver-framed photograph
on the desk. Captain Campbell and his wife in happy times.

'Okay,
Dougie,' said Jane. 'Let's get our boys home.'

Ghost
chose a hatch near the stern. A big, red '
X
'
sprayed on the door. They dismantled the barricade. A cabin sofa and a couple
of TVs. The hatch was jammed shut by a crowbar.