The Doomsday Infection (24 page)

CHAPTER 33

14:35 PM

Luke whooped as he heard the explosion. He felt euphoric, as if they were finally achieving something, taking control of their actions rather than reacting to the hazards thrown at them. They were causing distractions that could only assist in their escape, while the local military patrols attended the fires there would be less around to catch them. He held up his hand for Sophie to high five.

He was still congratulating himself when an armored jeep sped out from a side turning, heading toward the fire, but on spotting him, spun a huge arc to give chase. Luke opened the throttle further, knowing that the BMW 1200 GS would have a top speed of 125 mph.

The jeep was hot on their tail, the passenger stood with a rifle, took aim and fired, but the bullet passed harmlessly. Sophie saw this, leaned in close to Luke’s ear, and shouted what had happened. He took evasive action, swerved side-to-side, sometimes long wide arcs, and other times short, to give the sharpshooter no time to find a pattern. “Oh shit,” he mumbled.

“What’s up? Sophie asked. He nodded forward, and she saw the abandoned makeshift road block, made up of burned-out vehicles, some of which were still smoking. Luke slowed the motorcycle, knew he only had seconds to find a way through and saw a slight gap. He grinned, opened the throttle and they shot through the gap like a cork out of a bottle. The jeep tried for the same spot and crashed headfirst into the heap. The soldiers were shaken by the impact, but no one had been seriously injured. The driver backed the armored jeep up and drove straight at the gap once more, already widened at his first attempt, smashing into the vehicles with the sound of grinding metal, the gap widened further. A Mustang fell from its perch on top of the roadblock and helped enlarge the opening. He reversed once more, crunched into the stack of twisted vehicles and pushed on forwards, the engine screamed under the pressure, but eventually the driver succeeded and they pushed through the roadblock and continued their pursuit of the suspects.

The motorcycle was a dot on the horizon, as they chased after them quickly closing the distance between them. As Luke hurtled towards the coast, Sophie tapped his shoulder. “Faster! They’ve made it through!”

She watched in abject horror as the jeep gained on then, she looked over Luke’s shoulder willing him on. The boulevard was dead straight, and they would soon cross the bridge over the river then they were only blocks away from the beach and somewhere to hide amongst the hotels and gift shops.

When suddenly to Sophie’s surprise, the jeep appeared to slow.

“What you doing?” the gunner asked. “Why are you stopping? They’re far too far away for a shot.”

The driver switched off his engine put his feet up and lit a cigarette. “They
ain’t going anywhere,” the driver said grinning broadly. “Gimme the radio.”

14:45 PM

Fort Lauderdale is famous for its canals; more canals than Venice as they like
d to proudly boast and along with the Intracoastal Waterway and other rivers; Florida was a sailors’ paradise. Due to Florida being so flat, conventional bridges were out of the question. They needed a way for boats to pass under the low bridges, and Fort Lauderdale along with most major towns in south Florida had an abundance of bascule bridges, commonly known as drawbridges, where the two sides would rise into the air to allow boats a safe passage along the river.

These bridges were a major annoyance amongst the inhabitants, as mistiming a trip and having to wait for the giant jaws to open and the tedious wait as the boat passed along underneath at a snail’s pass, could easily add twenty
to thirty minutes to a journey.

T
hey broke down constantly as the local government cut the maintenance budget with the subsequent mechanical failures. Each bridge had a control room that would lower the flashing warning-barrier as the up to forty feet high leaves would open. Since the start of the Bubonic Plague outbreak, military personnel operated the cantilever bridge control rooms. They would raise the metal jaws to allow naval vessels to pass along the Intracoastal Waterway River and then lower them back down for the military vehicles to cross the bridge. However, for the last two days there had been little to do for the men stationed in such control rooms.

It was one such control booth that
the jeep driver had radioed with instructions to raise the bridge. The operator acknowledged the order, glad to have something to do and initiated the opening of the drawbridge.

14:46 PM

“Oh shit.” Luke said when he
saw the warning-barrier lowering, with flashing red lights and accompanying dinging of a bell, he knew it could mean only one thing, the bridge was about to rise, effectively trapping them.

He slowed for
a moment considering their various options and realized that they didn’t have any. He couldn't give up, if he did, they'd be executed.

Sophie saw the barrier lowering and had lived in Florida long enough to know of its significance, that the bridge was about to open, when she was almost thrown off the back of the motorcycle as Luke opened the throttle. “Oh no . . .”
she gasped and crossed herself.

“Oh yes.” he said as they hurtled underneath the warning-barrier. Sophie had to duck to stop the barrier decapitating her. “Don’t worry,” said Luke. “I’ve done this before.”

He opened the throttle suspecting he’d need all of the one hundred and twenty-five horse power the engine had to offer to keep them on trajectory and give him the momentum to clear the gap.

The military jeep stopped. “That
is one crazy sonofabitch!” said the driver as he watched the valiant escape attempt as the motorcycle appeared to climb the almost vertical metal jaw.

“Twenty bucks
says he doesn’t make it,” said a youngster from the back. They sniggered and placed bets.

“Who does he
think he is – Evel Knievel?”

“Who’s
Evel Knievel?” asked the youngster.

As
Luke and Sophie neared the top of the jaws they were nearing the seventy degrees mark and were in danger of stalling and tumbling back down when they took off and flew into thin air. Sophie screamed, but Luke screamed louder as he looked at the river eighty feet below them, then glanced forward and saw the corresponding jaw was twenty foot away and ten foot down, “Oh shit . . .” he said for a second time.

Then, with a bone shattered thump, he landed the BMW 1200 onto the second half of the bridge, but as he made his descent, the leaf opened further to its maximum of nearly ninety degrees pointing almost straight up into the air. Luke had to stand on the foot brake to engage it fully, to stop them falling forward, he leaned back laying on Sophie to keep his balance and by the time they made it to the bottom the jaw was almost perpendicula
r.

“Cool! Let’s do it again!”

Sophie looked over her shoulder gazing in wonder at the giant bridge unable to believe what they had achieved, then, “Did you say you’ve done that before . . .?”

16:00 PM

Submariner Pete Williams aboard nuclear powered submarine the USS Amarillo had scoured the entire ship and concluded that he was the last man alive. It had been the case for at least two days, and now the smell of death was over-powering. He locked each airtight door in an effort to reduce the gagging stench but the recycled air seemed tinged with the rotting smell.

He had hauled some of the bodies together trying to keep them in one place, but it was too much effort. He was hot and distressed; knowing that he was the only person alive aboard the vessel put an enormous strain upon him. The responsibility was enormous. He was only supposed to deal with computers. He had no idea how to maintain the nuclear reactor, which might explode without regular check-ups. Was it at this very moment, contaminating him with radiation? How could he find out? He did not even know how to contact the mainland; he had no training in radio operations. He had failed miserably the day before when he tried to raise the alarm and gotten no response. He knew that they were on a secret mission, so therefore, presumably there was to be no communications between base and the submarine so maybe that had been why they did not respond, or was he using the equipment wrongly.

He suddenly thought that the captain would have to be able to communicate with his superiors and made his way to the captain’s cabin. Yet each step he took weighed him down. He was covered in sweat and the air conditioning seem
ed to be malfunctioning, probably only needed re-setting but he did not know how to do that either. He stepped over the blackened corpse of a crewmember and could not fathom how they had gotten such a fast-acting disease onboard. There were medical checks after all, but somehow it’d happened. Was it a terrorist attack? His superiors needed to know; maybe the captain would have a computer giving him regular up-dates. After all, the high command would have to contact him if he was ever to launch the forty-eight nuclear warheads they carried. That would be the answer; he would get into the captain’s cabin, read the latest bulletins, and act accordingly. What if the protection of the USA was relying upon his submarine and that he was letting the country down? If he read that they had to retaliate, he would do so without compunction, if only he knew how.

T
here must be sequenced keys and codes. He knew the captain kept the codes in the safe, that would be standard procedure, but what else would he need? He climbed the metal steps to the upper deck, his footsteps echoing along the metal corridor. The heat sapped his strength and his will, but with dogged determination he made it to the captain’s quarters and was pleasantly surprised to find them unlocked.

The captain had die
d in a swivel chair by his desk. Dried blood had congealed on his face where he had bled from his eyes, ears and nostrils. There appeared to be dark black stains under the captain’s armpits and Pete Williams could detect the unmistakable smell that indicated the captain had lost controls of his bowels.

He wheeled the captain away from the desk, gazed at the computer screen and saw that the captain was halfway through composing a letter. He quickly scanned the letter and saw the captain was of the opinion that they were under some terrorist attack and had recommended swift retaliation, but he had not completed the letter and had not transmitted it.

He felt elated to think he finally had a lifeline to the outside world; he knew the navy would not let him down, or more importantly, not wanting to have a nuclear armed sub, unmanned and drifting helplessly on an unknown course. He felt euphoric that there was still a link and that they might come and save him, he was not going to die of suffocation on this stinking cigar-shaped coffin.

Williams added a paragraph below and typed ‘everyone dead from a virus, apart from me, submariner Peter Williams, please send help immediately. I have no way of steering, or surfacing, please, please help.’  

He thought of the panic HQ would suffer upon receiving his message. There would be an uproar, how in the name of god had an entire crew been slaughtered, by an enemy force and not even one person knew it was happening. Now you know how I feel, he thought.

How had the captain allowed this
virus to get on board? There were stringent medical checks on the submarine to prevent such a disaster happening.

He was suddenly startled by another thought; if this was an enemy attack then they already knew the USS Amarillo was on a secret mission, that i
t would not be in communication with a land base and would not be missed, and that they would use that time to plunder the sub and loot it of all its weapons. Oh god, he thought, there was no time to lose. He added another paragraph, ‘boarding by enemy imminent’

He smiled thinking that that would get
a reaction and relaxed for the first time in days thinking that he might possibly survive this. They'd rescue him and he'd be the sole survivor and hailed a hero. Might even get a medal out of this, his heart swelled with pride as he thought of his parents face’s, his mom would be crying with pride, even his surly old man might raise a smile, although he doubted it. When he told him he had signed up to join the navy, his old man had promptly called him a faggot, claiming only sissy-boys joined the navy, real men joined the army like he had. After many similar conversations, Pete Williams had left home under the cover of darkness not wanting any more confrontations with his old man, he felt sorry for sneaking away from his mom, but they came as a pair and she would always defend the miserable sonofabitch.

He never returned to his childhood home. Whenever he was on shore leave, he would hang around the ports with his shipmates, in gay bars mainly, proving his old man correct over one thing at least. As the time passed, it became harder and
harder to even think about going home, and as the months had turned into years he had resigned himself to the fact that he would never see his mom again. Maybe now, in his moment of glory, he could return to his small hometown being the all-American hero and treated like a king.

A clang from above
and a metallic groan from the hull, snapped him out of his reverie. Could it be the enemy arriving already? He would have plenty of time for daydreaming on his way back to freedom, he pressed the transmit button, his mouth dropped open in despair as a box appeared on screen;
enter pass-code
. . . .