Dead Calm (11 page)

But still, over the years, as he watched the power
these preachers wielded, Richard craved what they had.

When the first cases of the HWNW virus were reported
on the news, Richard saw his clients jump on the story and start
calling it God’s retribution for our sins. They had been spouting
the same line for years about AIDS, herpes and the clap, but a
little fear went a long way to convincing the masses of divine
retribution and opening their wallets and purses in the hopes they
could buy themselves into heaven.

Although profits rose, Richard wasn't going to let
business get in the way of his much needed vacation. Leaving things
in the capable hands of his personal assistant, Rosencrantz, Inc.
now had eight full time employees, he embarked on his planned
vacation with a redhead named Sheila, who he met in a dive bar in
Tennessee, secure in the knowledge that the additional money coming
in, due to the latest virus spreading across the world, would be
waiting for him when he returned.

After two days of sex, sun and self-indulgence,
Richard woke on the third day to a knock at his cabin door.
Answering it, he found one of the ship’s officers standing
nervously in the passageway. The man explained that, because of
some mechanical difficulties, temporary difficulties he stressed,
all passengers needed to remain in their cabins until further
notice.

Suspicious of the explanation and the jittery
demeanor of the officer, Richard nonetheless agreed to remain in
his room. As soon as the officer moved on though, he dressed
quickly, grabbed his camera, and after making sure that the coast
was clear, slipped out of his cabin. He’d heard horror stories of
people on cruises being stuck at sea for days when their ship broke
down, and if this was a similar case, he wanted pictures to back up
the lawsuit he would slap the Cayman Cruise Lines with.

Looking for anything suspicious and keeping his nose
open for the smell of backed up sewage, since this seemed to be one
of the most reported causes of a cruise being disrupted, Richard
hadn't gone far when he heard the sounds of cursing and fighting
coming from a hallway ahead. Rushing forward, he found himself at
one of the service corridors the crew used. Not quite knowing what
to expect, he was completely unprepared and shocked at what he
saw.

Two cabin attendants gripped the wrists of a
middle-aged woman. She struggled and fought them with a rage that
Ricky had never seen in a female before. Thinking he had walked in
on a rape, he was preparing to back up and watch the festivities
when the woman broke the grip of one of her attackers. Before the
man could restrain her, she lunged at his partner and sank her
teeth into his forearm. Blood flew as the woman whipped her head
back and forth and the attendant screamed for help.

While he was expecting to sit back and watch a sexual
assault, Richard was shocked at this turn of events. He was even
more surprised when he jumped forward and grabbed the crazy lady
around the waist. Not sure whether he was helping her or the man
she had bit, he dragged the woman backwards. The attendant screamed
again and this was when Ricky saw that the female fury wouldn't
unclench her teeth from where they were clamped into the man's arm.
He watched in fascination as the skin on the man's limb stretched
further and further until it reached the breaking point. With a wet
plop it let go, and Ricky saw more blood well up in the mouth-sized
gap where a huge chunk of meat had been removed from the man's
arm.

Rage and blinding pain overcame the attendant, making
him forget the Captain’s orders about not harming the passengers,
as he swung a roundhouse punch at the woman’s head. It connected
with her left temple and Ricky felt her go limp in his arms.

Letting the dead weight drop to the deck, Richard
quickly retrieved his camera and started taking pictures of the
scene as he backed away. Both crewmembers seemed unconcerned with
this, which Richard found curious. He stopped and watched as they
wrapped the wounded man’s arm in a shirt to staunch the flow of
blood. When they were finished, the injured man said something in a
thick brogue about seeing the ship's doctor and walked away. The
remaining crewman then grabbed the inert woman by the legs and
started dragging her across the carpet. Looking up from his burden
and seeing Richard watching him, he said with a British accent,
“Thanks for your help before, Gov, but I could use a bit more if
you might.”

Seeing that the woman had not regained consciousness,
and believing that the Brit was now tampering with a crime scene,
Richard decided that since he had gotten involved in an attempted
rape and assault, it was time to put some distance between himself
and any liability.

Putting on an act of being an innocent bystander, and
in a loud, righteous tone, he said, “Just wait a minute, you can't
move her. What do you think you're doing?” Looking closely at the
lifeless body, he added in an incredulous voice, loud enough for
any potential witnesses to hear, “What did you do? Oh my God, I
think you killed her!”

Adjusting his grip on the woman's leg, the attendant
seemed unconcerned as he replied, “Might have done just that, Gov,
but she's still got to go with the others.”

Richard was going to continue his charade by yelling
for help, but the man's statement stopped the words in his mouth.
Instead, he asked in a curious tone, “Others?”

“Lots of them, don't you know, Gov?” The man
answered. Looking down at the body and then back up at Richard, he
said, “It's an outbreak of some kind. At first the Captain thought
it was drugs but....” The man's voice trailed off.

Richard quickly put together the reports on the news
and in the papers he had seen before coming on this cruise, with
what he'd just witnessed, and came up with the HWNW virus. Wanting
to know more about what was going on, he reached down and grabbed
the woman's arms and let the cabin attendant lead him through a
maze of crew passageways to the Sounds Lounge.

Built on two levels, it really wasn't a lounge but a
two-story theater complete with stage, orchestra pit and balcony.
Entering through the doors leading to the balcony, the first thing
Richard noticed was an unpleasant smell. It was a slightly rank
odor, which reminded him of the time he came across a raccoon that
had crawled into a tin shed behind his house and died. No one
discovered it until months later and it gave off the smell of old,
musty death. The second thing he noticed was a strange sound that
came and went. It was a high-pitched keening noise that seemed to
dig for the center of his brain.

“What the hell is that?” He asked the Brit.

“You'll see in a minute, Gov,” he answered and
pointed with his elbow toward the edge of the balcony where two
crewmembers were readying a rope.

After depositing the woman with the two men, Richard
followed his guide who ushered him to the rail and motioned for him
to look. Leaning over cautiously, he found himself looking down at
rows of plush seats with aisles cutting between them stretching
away to the stage. At first noticing nothing unusual, he thought to
himself, so what, it's a fucking theater.

A hissing noise made him look straight down. Jumping
back slightly at what he saw, Ricky exclaimed, “Holy shit, what in
the fuck is that?”

In just a brief glimpse, he had seen over two hundred
former members of the passengers and crew clustered beneath the
balcony in different stages of dress and undress with different
types of grotesque, oozing wounds. Shaking off his initial shock,
Richard leaned over the rail again for another look. Fascinated, he
let his eyes scan the group below as he took in the different,
gruesome aspects of the horror show.

One man's head flopped sideways, his neck muscles
ripped away. A woman in shorts and a halter-top raised fingerless
hands as if in supplication. A teenage boy dragged himself across
the carpet by his hands, the muscles in his legs shredded to the
point where they wouldn't support his body weight. He passed an
older lady missing an ear and part of her scalp, revealing the gray
white bone of her skull. A beautiful woman gawked up at Ricky. She
was wearing nothing but bikini underwear bottoms as she stood with
one ponderous breast half ripped away to hang limply from her
chest. A college-aged man, who didn't appear to have a mark on him
but who had the same bluish-gray skin stretched across his face
matching the others, made a hissing noise when he noticed the two
men above him. It went on and on. Feral, hungry eyes stared up at
Richard as the whining noise he heard earlier started up and rose
to a crescendo. The sound was coming from the things below.

Looking closer at the woman with only one breast and
then at the others, something that Richard had first thought was a
trick of the light became apparent. A thick, black pussy substance
had replaced the blood that should be leaking and spraying from
their wounds.

Turning to his guide to Hell, he asked, “What's that
stuff oozing out of their bodies?”

“Don't know, Gov, an infection of some sorts I'd
guess,” he answered with a shrug.

Another well-endowed woman with her chest exposed
through a torn Miami Dolphins jersey caught Richard's attention. He
watched her for a few minutes before turning away with a look of
disgust on his face. He wanted it to appear like he was repulsed by
the sight, but what he really wanted to do was hide the erection
pressing against the crotch of his pants. He hadn't been this
excited in years.

Richard's gaze settled on the two men who had taken
custody of the woman he'd helped bring to the balcony, and he tried
to take his mind off his growing lust by watching them. One held
the woman's arms up while the other looped a rope around her chest
and drew it tight. When he was finished, they picked her up and
lowered her over the railing down to the floor below. When she hit
bottom, the man on the right gave the line a stiff jerk to release
the slipknot he'd made and reeled the rope in.

Seeing Richard watching him, he called out, “I think
that one's dead, but it's kind of hard to tell. They all kinda look
dead.”

Turning to look once more at the things below him,
Richard had to agree. They did look dead. He'd just fixated on the
breasts of the woman in the Miami Dolphins jersey again when a hand
suddenly appeared out of the corner of his vision. At first
flinching away, he felt embarrassment roll through him when he
realized it was the Brit trying to shake his hand.

“Easy mate,” the man said, “just wanted to thank you
for your help. I'll escort you back to your cabin and then I need
to get back to work. Idle hands are the devil's tools and all
that.”

Richard shook with the man and let the Brit lead him
back to his room.

Sheila had woken in his absence, so after closing and
locking the door behind him, Richard took his lust for the woman in
the torn jersey out on her.

As he lay in bed afterward, his mind drifted to how
he might gain from his present circumstances. Without question, a
lawsuit would be forthcoming against the cruise line. With
thousands of people on the Calm of the Seas though, the number of
plaintiffs would lessen the payout. Richard racked his brain. There
must be some way he could profit from this disaster. Maybe
blackmail. He had pictures of the crew assaulting a passenger, so
that should be worth something.

Richard's thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the
door and a voice calling out that the problem with the ship had
been fixed. Remembering what he had seen that morning; he had a
suspicion that the real problem was just beginning.

Wanting to find out more, he joined the passengers
milling about in the Masthead Bar and listened to them speculate as
to the cause of the temporary lockdown of the ship. Their theories
sounded ludicrous to his ears, and he contented himself by feeling
superior in the knowledge of what was really going on.

As he sat at the bar sipping one of the complimentary
drinks being given out to assuage the ruffled feathers of the
passengers, he thought of the people around him as being nothing
but sheep. This led his mind to freely associate with the word
flock. And from just that simple word, there bloomed an idea of
such magnitude that he could barely contain himself. Taking a deep
drink of his Mai Tai, he let the plan unfold. Not sure of all the
details, but sure it would work if he played it right, he decided
to begin right then and there.

Although he'd worked hard to lose his Georgia accent,
Richard let it flow as he turned toward the two middle aged ladies
sitting next to him and drawled, “I know what's going on, and all I
can say is that it's an act of God.”

Richard saw that the two women were instantly
attentive, either cuing in on the word God or the fact that he
claimed to know the reason for the disruption of the cruise. Laying
it on thick, he reminded the two women of the HWNW virus before
telling them they had an outbreak on the ship. He had seen it with
his own eyes. Speaking loud enough to be heard by others sitting
and standing nearby, he soon had a sizeable crowd gathered, hanging
on his every word.

He started out by relating what he had seen in the
Sounds Lounge while throwing in any Bible verse that seemed
appropriate for the situation and repeated the story a few times
for the newcomers who congregated to hear his tale. When he had
everyone's attention, he ad-libbed a story about ministering to a
group of natives while working as a missionary in Africa. He told
how the heathens of the village he'd been sent to bring Christ to
wouldn't give up their sinful ways. He related that the natives had
run him off and then finished his tale by saying that two weeks
later, the entire community was wiped out by the Ebola virus. This
brought gasps from some in his audience, so Richard added in a deep
somber voice, “He who rejects the word of God and his messenger
will be struck down in the coming plague.”