Demon (25 page)

The second deck smelled of exhaust and gasoline with a faint smell of sewage. The entrances to all the engineering spaces, from the main machinery rooms to the sewage pump rooms to the air-conditioning units, were all on this deck. Morris stood and listened, hearing the knocking of the diesels below him and the humming of the air conditioners one frame over.

Morris liked the engineering spaces. He grew up the son of a mechanic and had a natural affinity for the huge sixteen-cylinder diesels that propelled the
Rushmore
. When he came down, he always paused to listen. Every once in a while, he'd wander down into the actual main spaces and gaze at the engines and imagine what his life would have been like if he hadn't gone to medical school.

Not that he wanted to give up his license so he could go turn wrenches or anything. Morris liked his profession. But the engines reminded him of his dad and that was a nice feeling. His dad had died years ago, and Morris felt closer to him when he was down here.

Morris smiled.
Now back to work,
he thought.

He unlocked the reefer and opened it. Cold air spilled out and enveloped him. It felt good compared to the tropical heat that blanketed the ship. He stepped in. On the floor lay the five bodies, wrapped in plastic and sealed with duct tape. The
Rushmore
didn't have a morgue on board like aircraft carriers and other large navy ships. But the reefer worked well enough as a short-term solution. This unit was kept at just above freezing and would sufficiently maintain the bodies until they could be flown off once they were closer to shore.

Morris squatted next to the first one and pulled out a Gerber knife and sliced the tape. He pulled back the plastic and looked over the body. Then he turned on his recorder and started his examination.

Forty minutes had passed by the time Morris squatted over the fifth body, happy it was the last, and sliced through the tape. He pulled the plastic away and revealed the body to the overhead fluorescent light.

He stood up and gasped. The skin and muscle on the hands and arms had fallen off and collected on the plastic underneath in brown and red powder. The lips dangled by thin strips of tissue.

Morris lifted the recorder to his mouth and started to speak when he saw the dead man blink.

“What the hell?” He stepped back and the recorder slipped from his grasp and hit the deck.

The body sat up, its eyes locked on him, its mouth open in a silent scream.

Morris's adrenaline rocketed and he turned and started to run, when his stomach seized up. He fell to the deck hard, his chest caving in and his muscles twitching. His vision failed and pain exploded in his head, as if a spike had been driven into his brain.

Then it all eased, fading away slowly. Morris's vision returned. It was blurry at first but sharpened. The pressure on his chest relaxed and breaths came easier. His stomach unknotted.

He sat up and looked around him. It took him a second or two to remember he was in the refrigerator. Then he looked at the bodies. All of them were there. His eyes shot to the fifth, the one that had sat up.

Or he thought had sat up. It was lying perfectly still now. But the skin and muscle had indeed fallen from its arms and legs. And now he noticed it had also lost skin on sections of its face.

He moved closer, wanting to examine the body further, when nausea washed over him. He leaned to the side on his hands and knees and vomited. Blood and chunks of tissue shot out of his mouth and splashed onto the slick gray deck. Morris retched and puked again.

After a few more heaves, Morris regained his composure. He rocked back and sat on his legs and looked at what had come out of him.

“Jesus,” he said. He didn't know what had caused the seizure and the blackout, but he started to think it was worse than an epileptic fit. He wasn't epileptic but had heard of sudden onset. If he had puked bile, he could have brushed it off as motion sickness brought on by the seizures and strain on his body. But looking at the blood and what was clearly digestive tissue, Morris feared it could be some kind of cancer that had gone undetected.

Before he could question any further what was happening to him, Morris heard ungodly screams outside the refrigerator. He pushed to his feet and walked to the door. The world spun around him and he blinked and swallowed, trying to chase the dizziness away. Once he had, he opened the door.

In the space outside the reefer, an engineer in blue coveralls kicked his steel-toed boot repeatedly into the face of a woman in a similar uniform. Blood covered the floor.

Morris rushed forward and grabbed the guy and pulled him away. He spun him around, ready to deck him, but then saw the look in the man's eyes.

They were dead. Well, not dead but glassed over. The kind of look eyes get when the body dies. Vacant. Empty. As if the personality had drained away to nothing.

The man didn't even seem to see Morris. He just broke Morris's grip and walked in circles around the space. After a second or two, the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a utility knife.

The engineer flicked open the blade and pressed it to his neck.

“Wait—”

But the man sliced his own neck from left to right before Morris could even twitch a muscle. Arterial spray burst from the wound onto Morris and the reefer door behind him. The man dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his neck like a waterfall. Then he fell forward onto his face, the blood pumping out along with the rest of his life.

Morris's body shook. He tried to make sense of everything that had happened to him in the last five minutes, to find order in the chaos, but any rational explanation avoided him. Then, another wave of nausea hit him and he dropped to the ground and puked again.

More screams tore him from his desperate gags. They seemed to echo around him. Morris realized the screams came from above him and from passageways to either side.

“What the hell is happening?” he said.

Morris attempted to push up, to move toward at least one of the screams and see if medical attention was required. He needed to try, to at least prevent one unnecessary death. But the world went black again. And this time his vision didn't return.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

M
ike lay on his bed, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, his thoughts on what had happened and what would happen next, when four shrill blasts followed by a female voice blared over the loudspeaker in his stateroom.

“Security alert, security alert,” the female voice said. “Security alert, first and second deck forward of frame twenty. Security Alert Team and Backup Alert Force, report. All hands not involved, stand fast. Security alert.”

Mike sat up as the four shrill blasts came again and the female voice repeated the message. He stood up and opened the door and walked into the passageway.

The ship was silent. Then he heard footsteps pounding down metal ladders below him, though soon those faded. He walked down the passageway and found the Captain's Ladder. He climbed it and looked in the cabin, but Temms wasn't there.

Mike moved further down the passageway on the O-6 level, past the Captain's Cabin to a watertight door. The word
PILOTHOUSE
was engraved on blue Bakelite.

He lifted the quick-acting latch and opened the door. On the other side of the door stood a tall man behind a console. Mike saw his hands on a small wheel and assumed he must be the helmsman. To Mike's left stood a woman reading the security alert message out loud into a handheld microphone over the ship's announcing system. Next to her stood a couple of quartermasters bent over a chart plotting fixes.

Mike's eyes shifted from left to right. An officer stood in the middle of the pilothouse, a pair of binoculars to his eyes and looking forward out the windows. Another officer stood nearby, talking on a phone. Then Mike's eyes settled on Temms, sitting in an elevated chair on the starboard side of the pilothouse. She had a wireless handheld radio in front of her mouth and spoke fast into it. Mike couldn't hear her but knew by the shade of red on her face she wasn't happy.

“Sir, we're at security alert,” the woman who had been making the announcement said to Mike. “No civilians on the bridge while we're at security alert.”

Mike turned to her. “I'm sorry?”

“It's okay,” Temms yelled across the pilothouse. “Get over here, Mike.”

Mike nodded at the woman, then walked over and stood next to Temms's chair.

“What's going on?” Mike said.

“What's going on is all shit is hitting the fan. That's what's going on.”

“An outbreak?” Mike said.

“If you want to call it that.”

“Is it happening like on the
al-Phirosh
? Are they attacking each other?”

“This isn't a science experiment.” Temms lifted the radio and said, “All teams, this is the captain—report status.”

The radio crackled and then a voice said, “SAT 1 moving into position.”

Then another voice said, “SAT 2 moving into position.”

Finally, a third voice said, “BAF standing by on the turntable.”

“SAT 1 and 2, do you hear or see anything?”

“This is SAT 1. Negative. The screams have stopped.”

“Negative for SAT 2 as well.”

Temms lowered the radio and sighed. Her eyes shifted to Mike. “All hell broke loose about five minutes ago. A couple of spaces around the second deck forward of frame twenty reported hearing screams. Then it seemed to spread. I positioned the SAT teams well outside the possible proximity of a moving infected person.”

“You're assuming someone is infected,” Mike said. “But has there been anything in the quarantine berthing?”

“Not a peep.” Temms shook her head. “The second deck is pretty much engineers. All the entrances to the machinery spaces are down there. No one from the berthing or visiting the berthing would venture down there.”

“Not the Marine guards?”

“No reason.”

“What about the medical guys?”

Temms started to shake her head again and then stopped. “We pulled five dead bodies from the water with the survivors.”

“Yeah, so?”

“We stored them in the forward reefer.”

Mike started to ask what that meant and stopped. They had stored the dead in the refrigerator, just like the first incident on the
al-Phirosh
.

“Shit,” Temms said.

“Who would have gone down there?” Mike said, feeling suddenly lightheaded.

“Doc Morris. He went down there to start his report on the deceased. As long as we have a dead body on board, the theater commander requires an update on all the peculiars. Call it an intel brief for the dead.”

“Because they're going to assume custody of them eventually.”

“Right. We get close enough to land and the bodies get flown off. Happens all the time in the gulf, with smugglers and fishermen who drown at sea.”

Mike rubbed the back of his neck. “And Doc went down there.”

Temms held up a finger and pressed the transmit button on the radio. “Doc, Captain.”

Nothing.

“Doc, Captain.”

Nothing again.

Temms looked at Mike. “All the officers and senior enlisted on board have one of these radios. They like to call it their ‘electronic leash.' Well, he should be answering up. Put two and two together.”

Mike swore under his breath. “So, now what?”

“Just like Yusuf,” Temms said. “We wait. We've got the area contained. I want to wait a little longer before I order them in to take a look.”

Mike nodded. “And then what?”

“I haven't gotten that far.”

Mike slipped his hands in his pockets. “If the guys in the quarantine berthing aren't showing any signs—”

“Then we've got something else on our hands. And how we beat it, I don't know. Yusuf scuttled the
al-Phirosh
and that failed.”

Mike thought about the situation and possible solutions. Only two sprang to mind. Abandon ship with the survivors of the
al-Phirosh
or abandon ship without them.

“I see the wheels in your head turning,” Temms said. “And I know what you're thinking. I'm not ready to go down either route. First, I want to see what's in that area, to see if it matches what supposedly happened on the
al-Phirosh
.”

“Understood,” Mike said.

The radio crackled again. “Captain, SAT 1. Still no movement or sound.”

“Captain, SAT 2. Same here.”

“Aye.” Temms lowered the radio.

“What about the Marines?” Mike said.

“They're keeping the quarantine berthing locked down.”

“From people getting in?”

“From getting out.”

Mike rubbed his hands together and waited. After a few more minutes, Temms lifted the radio and said, “SAT 1 and 2, commence sweep of the secured area.”

“Aye, Captain,” both teams said.

“Apparently this thing incubates,” Temms said to Mike. “No one was going nutso when we pulled them from the water. So it has to infect and then develop inside someone before it breaks out.”

Mike nodded. “We originally thought of Henry Prince as a carrier with a natural immunity himself. But it's pretty obvious he wasn't special.”

“Well, it did pick him. Maybe that's what it does.”

Mike smirked. “Sounds like the demon theory.”

“If what happened down there even remotely resembles what Yusuf described, I'll be willing to believe anything.”

“Not so insane now, huh?”

“Oh, it's still insane. But this isn't exactly a sane situation.”

“Captain, SAT 1.”

“Go ahead.”

“Captain—” The voice broke off. “Captain, it's a damn mess down here. I had to order some of my people out. They couldn't handle it.”

Temms closed her eyes. “SAT 2, report.”

“It's a massacre,” the SAT 2 team leader said. “Blood everywhere. I've counted five dead so far. Jesus, it's Higgins.”