HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) (5 page)

Amy covered her face with her hands. ‘Then don’t look in the shower. It’s awful.’

‘Okay.’

Justin averted his eyes from the shower cubicle, but he still glimpsed the shape lying twisted up in the bottom of the shower recess.

There’s a body in there.

Thankfully the foggy mirror didn’t reflect the image. He scrubbed his hands and arms with soap and water.

He couldn’t do much with his clothes. He needed to get back to his own cabin.

‘I have to go now,’ he said, emerging from the steamy bathroom.

‘Maybe you should stay here,’ said Kim. ‘We’re not supposed to leave our cabins.’

Kim had closed the cabin door. Amy was calling for help.

‘This isn’t my cabin,’ said Justin. ‘My mom’s alone. I need to get back.’

Kim nodded and opened the door a crack, peering out. ‘It looks clear. Good luck.’

‘Same to you,’ said Justin, ducking out the door.

Jogging back toward his cabin, Justin’s sneakers moved silently on the hallway carpet.

He heard all kinds of noises coming from cabins. It sounded like every third cabin had their TV playing full volume and every channel was violent.

Except it all sounded too real.

Holy crap. The sick people are everywhere.

He ran past people fleeing their cabins and hammering on nearby doors for help. Some people were screaming through the doors for help.

Some doors were letting people in; some doors weren’t.

Justin passed a woman crying in the hallway, wrapped in a blanket.

I can’t stop and help everyone. I have to reach Mom.

Justin’s cabin was three levels up.

He ignored the elevator and took the stairs.

Why didn’t I just call Mom from the other cabin?
That would have been the sensible thing to do, but he hadn’t even thought about it.

I’m not thinking straight. I just need to get back to our cabin and wash this blood off.

He didn’t see the men until it was too late.

He collided with one, spinning, but not losing his footing.

Everyone froze.

The two men stared at him, at the blood on his clothes, as though waiting for him to flip out.

‘I’m not sick,’ Justin rushed out, raising his hands. ‘I just helped someone. I’m trying to reach my cabin.’

The two men carried a sheet between them like a hammock. In the hammock lay a body. They placed the body against the corridor wall, like dirty wash ready to be collected.

The younger man wore a white baseball cap with a red brim. The older man wore only gray swimming shorts.

‘What happened?’ puffed Justin, nodding at the body.

‘He was thumping at our door,’ replied the younger man. ‘We thought he needed help. I opened the door and he went berserk. He tried to stab Dad with a screwdriver.’

‘I think he had a heart attack,’ said the older man. ‘One second we were wrestling over the screwdriver and then he just dropped dead. He must be about seventy years old.’

Justin didn’t know what to say. He just nodded.

‘You shouldn’t be out here,’ said the older man. ‘People are flipping out all over the place. How far away is your cabin?’

‘Not far.’

The man nodded back down the corridor. ‘Don’t go near the photo shop. We heard more crazies back there smashing things. If you run into any of these nutjobs, they’ll try to kill you. And be more careful running around corners.’

‘I will.’ Justin nodded and dashed up the stairs. On the next level up the hallway was filling with people.

He saw a woman using a bath towel to stem the bleeding from a man’s head. Several other people looked injured.

The man with the bloody towel around his head pointed at Justin. ‘Keep moving, boy! Up! Up!’

Did I miss hearing another announcement?
wondered Justin.

‘What are you all doing?’ Justin asked. ‘Where are you going?’

‘The idiots running this ship have got it all backward,’ said the man with the injured head. ‘We need to get healthy people to the top deck and the fresh air. The ducted air conditioning is spreading the infection through the cabins. If we follow their instructions we’ll all get sick.’

‘Look,’ pointed the man.

A nearby door shook on its hinges as someone very angry tried to escape their cabin.

‘They’re so far gone they can’t even use door handles.’

He’s right
, realized Justin.
I heard dozens of doors being pounded on like that. They’re trapped.

The man pointed back down the corridor. ‘That’s why the hallways are filling with cabin refugees and not the infected. Now get moving, and tell anyone you see.’

Justin nodded and ran up the stairs to his level.

Like the level below, cabin refugees were filling the hallway.

Justin’s cabin was near the stairs. Reaching for his swipe card, he heard a crazy passenger in the opposite cabin.

Jesus - I hope they don’t break through that door and jump on my back. Where is my card? Did I leave it in the cabin again?

He wasn’t fast enough.

An arm reached around him.

Justin spun.

He only knew one person
that
quiet.

In her wheelchair, his mom was like a sneaky rolling ninja.

‘Get inside,’ his mother hissed, swiping open the lock and pushing him from behind. ‘What are you doing out here?’

Justin held the door for his mother and then shut it behind her. It locked automatically.

‘I woke up and you were still gone,’ he said. ‘You’ve been gone for hours!’

His mother spun her wheelchair. ‘I told you to stay in the cabin!’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I texted you from...Justin, are you hurt? You’re covered in blood!’

‘No, I’m not hurt. I helped some people. It’s their blood.’

‘What happened?’

‘I heard someone screaming. One woman was strangling another woman, so I knocked her out with a chair.’

Justin didn’t mention what he’d glimpsed in their bathroom.

‘Quickly. Get into the shower. Leave your clothes on,’ ordered his mother. ‘Don’t get any blood in your mouth, eyes or nose.’

His mother scooted backward in her chair, grabbed something from the writing desk and then scooted forward. She handed him scissors. ‘Cut your shirt off. Don’t pull it over your head. Make the water as hot as you can stand it.’

In the bathroom Justin cut off his shirt, stripped and then stepped under the scalding hot shower. His skin glowed bright red from forehead to feet when he stepped out.

He felt relieved though.

If his mother knew about anything, it was killing germs.

She’d left jeans and a t-shirt at the door. When he stepped from the bathroom she checked his pulse.

‘How do you feel?’

‘I’m not sick.’ He pointed at the door. ‘This is why they called you away last night, isn’t it? What the hell’s going on out there?’

Justin’s mother was an expert. Her last job was with the U.S. Center for the Study of Infectious Diseases. She’d been recruited into the P.M.R.U (Pandemic Modeling and Response Unit) to design government policy after the bird flu pandemic of 2009.

Now she worked as an independent consultant for the same people, designing computer models to predict infection rates of emerging flu strains.

Her job was to prevent as many people as possible from getting sick.

‘What did you tell them to do?’ asked Justin.

Erin was barely holding it together.

I can’t keep this up. It’s too much.

Her cousin was dead, and dozens of emergency calls flooded her radio.

She could barely respond to a quarter of them with so many staff sick.

She took a deep breath, put down the first aid kit, and prepared herself.

Here we go again.

She swiped her card through the lock. ‘Go, go, go!’

Her three man fire response team surged into the cabin like storm troopers charging an enemy’s trench. The element of surprise and overwhelming force proved paramount.

Erin considered Neve Kershaw’s presence a miracle. When Neve entered their emergency meeting, Erin didn’t know what to expect.

But Neve had devised a plan within minutes.