Voyage of the Dead - Book One Sovereign Spirit Saga (2 page)

Eventually a sound behind him triggered Carl’s survival instinct and he spun back towards the urgent care as a bloody paramedic stumbled out the door.  “Please help us,” said Carl weakly, but the paramedic didn’t look like he was in any condition to help anyone.  His head jerked around at the sound of Carl’s voice and he snarled as he charged forward with outstretched arms and bared teeth.  His face was drenched in blood and he looked like something out of a horror movie. 

Carl lurched away from the attack and vaulted onto the hood of the taxi cab, which was jammed into the side of the ambulance.   He turned and threw a kick into the paramedic’s face, lifting the fiend off his feet and almost certainly breaking his jaw.   But the maniac didn’t stay down, so Carl jumped off the other side of the hood and circled around the ambulance with the paramedic in hot pursuit. 

The taxi’s horn, which continued to blare, must have attracted attention because more bloody figures were emerging from the urgent care center.   Carl’s choices were limited.  He could run towards the back of the parking lot and hope to escape in that direction, but he had no idea what was back there and it would mean abandoning Pricilla.  That didn’t feel right.  Instead he jumped into the open rear doors of the ambulance and pulled them closed behind him.  He had just enough time to find and depress the lock before bodies began to slam against the doors.

Voyage of the Dead

Book 1 of the Sovereign Spirit Saga

"There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for.  Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That's right; I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this…”
       
Center for Disease Control official website,
"Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse."  May 16, 2011.

http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

Chapter 1:  Breaking News

“Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost.”
–
Napoleon Bonaparte

           
The
Sovereign Spirit
was cruising 1,000 miles off the Pacific coast of southern Mexico towards Cabo San Lucas at a steady 15 knots when the world as we knew it ended.  There were no obvious signs of impending disaster for the 107 souls aboard the 472 foot expedition mega yacht.  No explosions or mushroom clouds.  No tsunami, hurricane, or asteroid strike.   Nothing obvious.  No immediate panic or mayhem.  The passengers and crew of the former long distance passenger and car ferry were geographically isolated from the traumatic events that began to sweep around the world on the morning of April 1, 2012.  They were not, however, isolated from the news.

            It was still pre-dawn in the Pacific when Scott Allen awoke from a fitful sleep. He snuck out of bed, careful not to disturb his beautiful wife, Michelle, and went to get a breath of fresh air.  Scott strolled quietly out onto the Sky Deck.  In years past he would have lit a cigarette, but he had quit smoking immediately after winning the lottery.  Instead he took several slow deep breaths of the clean ocean air and stared up at the unblemished glory of the star filled sky.  The stars were slowly being overpowered by the glow of dawn to the east, but the sea remained slivery black as the open ocean swells rolled by.   The sight, sound and motion of the ship’s bow breaking through the southerly seas were enhanced by the phosphorescence of the wake that broke through the waves.  It should have been a marvelous experience.  Unfortunately, Scott was disturbed by his already forgotten dreams.  All he knew was that they had left a film of sweat which the warm sea breeze turned into a sticky residue on his bare skin. 

Scott ran his left hand through his prematurely graying hair that he kept slightly longer than most men his age.   He had always been considered handsome, but at the age of 47, and after winning hundreds of millions of dollars in the lottery, he was finally convinced that he needed to live a healthier lifestyle.   No more smoking.  No more fast food.  Not as much drinking and regular exercise to bring his six foot tall body back into the best shape that he could muster at his age.  He had been 175 pounds in the Army at the age of 18 and, while he had put on some weight since then, he had never topped 200 pounds.  Staring out over the phosphorescent ocean, Scott contemplated going down to his fully outfitted gym for an early morning workout, but there was something nagging at his mind that pointed elsewhere. Feeling the need for some form of distraction, he turned away from the rail and walked towards the multi-media room that adjoined his master suite.

            Although the
Sovereign Spirit
was originally launched in the 1960s, she had been refitted and updated with the latest technology more than once in her long life on the seas, especially during her most recent conversion from specialty cruise ship to luxury mega yacht.  Part of these upgrades included top of the line satellite telecommunications.  That technology brought the atrocities of the day to those aboard the
Sovereign Spirit
in crisp HD detail.  Scott was the first person aboard to witness these events when he turned on the big screen and tuned into the Global News Network.

“This is Fox Rusher with Breaking News from GNN headquarters in Los Angeles.  For the past few hours we have been receiving numerous reports of incredible acts of violence erupting in cities and towns across America and around the world.  Details are sketchy at best, but most accounts agree that significant numbers of people are engaged in spontaneous acts of brutal violence on their fellow citizens. There is no official explanation for these events.

            Scott took only a moment to digest the horrible news before he lifted the handset next to his recliner chair and punched in the extension for the night watch on the bridge.  “This is Scott Allen.  Please wake the captain and ask him to meet me immediately in the media room on the Sky Deck.  Tell him it’s urgent.”  After he hung up the phone, the bad news on TV continued to unfold while Scott began to contemplate who he could hit up for a pack of smokes. 
 

“We now have live video feeds from various news sources around the world, but our producers have made the decision to delay and edit many of them due to graphic violent content.  I am being told that some of the footage shows intense homicidal cruelty and apparent acts of cannibalism.  We have prepared a partially edited feed from Times Square in New York City taken from the GNN studios there within the past few minutes.  The pixilated portions of the screen have been intentionally altered to obscure the worst images of violence, but we highly recommend viewer discretion in watching this footage.   As you can see there are massive crowds of… Oh my God!”

            The scenes from New York were impossible to sanitize.  New York was four time zones ahead of Scott’s ship and it was a bright morning with a clear blue sky.  Thousands of panicked pedestrians poured out of buildings, collided and stampeded along the sidewalks, and overflowed into turmoil on the streets.  Many of those fleeing were clearly bleeding from injuries to their arms, legs and faces.  Many others seemed to be pursuing the injured and healthy alike.  When a pursuer caught someone, they fell upon them with obvious violent intent.  That is where the pixilation took over, but it could not mask the sprays and pools of blood that spread across the pavement and throughout the crowd.  The camera zoomed in on an NYPD cop who pulled his service pistol and fired into the back of one of the attackers who seemed to be biting a young woman on the arm.  The perp took the round without flinching, then spun around and charged the policeman, taking three more rounds to the chest without pause.  He sprang onto the cop, accepting any additional gunshot wounds without slowing, and sunk his teeth into the policeman’s neck.

            “Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Captain Jordan Fisher when he glimpsed that scene on the 85 inch plasma display as he entered the Sky Deck media room to which he had just been summoned.  “Is that one of your horror movies, Scott?”

            “I wish,” replied Scott with a grimace and hit mute on the TV remote, cutting off a stuttering Fox Rusher.  “No, that’s the GNN satellite feed.   Please take a seat and watch this with me for a minute, captain.  If this is half as bad as it looks, we’re going to have some very serious decisions to make soon and I want you to have as much information as I do when we face them.”

            The scene from Times Square pulled back to reveal increasing mayhem.  Taxis, trucks and buses plowed through the panicked crowds in a seemingly blind attempt to escape the madness.  Victims and attackers alike were crushed into road kill.  Mercifully, traffic was soon jammed and ground to a halt.  Bodies littered the streets and sidewalks.  Endless streams of people continued to pour into the square from every direction.  It was impossible to tell which were trying to escape and which were attacking until one pounced upon another.  Then the camera returned to the spot where the policeman had been overrun by the berserk cannibal.  Amazingly, the assailant who had been shot was walking away, but the cop was lying in a pool of blood, apparently dead.  Then, as the camera operator was starting to pan away again, the body of the policeman shook violently and he hopped to his feet.  Shaking his head once in confusion, with flaps of bloody skin swinging from his neck, the cop turned and lashed out at a passing civilian.  Grabbing a fist full of the woman’s hair, he yanked her towards him and bent his head to her neck.  The pixilation could not hide the horror of that moment.

            “Damn!” said Scott as he watched the carnage unfold.  “That’s what I was afraid of.  He just turned into one of them!”

            “One of what?” asked Fisher in a stunned tone.

            “I’m not sure exactly what to call them yet, Jordy,” responded Scott, “But for want of a better term, ‘zombies’ will do for now.”

            “Zombies?  Get real, Scott!  I know you like those Dawn of the Dead movies, sir, but  zombies aren’t real.”

            “Perhaps, captain.  I would have agreed with you a hundred percent yesterday.  But what other explanation would you offer when you wake up to this shit?”

            “Hmmm.  Well, what is the news saying about it?”

            “Not much, yet.  Nobody seems to have any answers.  But that’s part of the reason I want you to watch this with me.  This may be more important than we can imagine,” said Scott as the image of Fox Rusher replaced the carnage in Times Square.  “The laws of nature just changed and we may need to learn the new ones fast if we want to survive.”  With another grimace Scott restored the volume.

“…inexplicable rioting and unprecedented acts of violence!  Similar footage and reports are coming in from France, Britain, Germany, Italy, as well as many locations in Asia, Latin America and across the United States.  Emails, texts, and twitters are painting a picture of worldwide pandemonium. As best as we can tell at the moment, this is a global pandemic of violence. 

The images next to Fox Rusher’s head shifted rapidly through edited scenes of broadcasts from around the world.  They were careful not to dwell on any particular attack, but every scene was obviously violent:  Mobs running through the streets of Paris with the Eifel Tower behind them; Bodies covering a lawn in front of a church somewhere in Europe; A brief scene of carnage in a Japanese airport terminal;  Rioting and mayhem in the parking lots at Disney World.  And on and on… 

“There have been no official statements from Washington, but we now have word of a military alert and recall of all active duty personnel to their bases.  Several state governors, including those of New York, New Jersey, Florida, California and Texas have declared states of emergency and called up the National Guard in the past hour. 

“The President is currently aboard Air Force One, returning from his latest twelve nation tour of Africa.  White House spokesmen report that he is being kept fully informed of developments.  Due to violence in Washington, DC, we are told that Air Force One is being diverted to an undisclosed location, but the President is expected to address the nation later today.

 “Meanwhile we must report that GNN has lost communications with several of our sister stations across the country.  In fact, we just lost the live feed from our New York studio that was providing footage from Times Square.  However, GNN will continue to broadcast live from our Los Angeles headquarters.  Power outages and large fires are being reported in many metropolitan areas.  Emergency services are flooded with 911 calls.  Cell phone networks are overloaded.