The Doomsday Infection (28 page)

The commander held up a placating hand. “I know what you are going to say, but I’ve thought this through and it’s the only way. We haven’t the time or expertise to decommission the missiles, we’re not going to even have a skeleton forc
e to maintain the ship, or protect us from foreign powers and believe me they are gloating at our predicament right now and are jostling in line to take over this ship. I cannot, correction, will not, allow that. This ship must never fall into enemy hands. Therefore, there is no other option I can see. Gentlemen, we’re going to sink the ship.”

CHAPTER 39

20:15 PM

On the colorfully painted barge, Luke struggled while he man-handled the rotting corpses of the disease-ridden hippies - the previous occupants of the narrow-boat - up onto the deck and laid them in what he thought looked like death poses. Covered in sweat from the exertion and caked in pus and excrement from the two putrid carcasses, he thought about washing it off. He stood on the edge of the barge and went to jump into the canal for a quick dip and to wash the filth from his body, when Sophie shouted; “Stop!” her yell startled him and he almost toppled into the filthy water. “Have you forgotten what’s in there?”

Luke visibly paled when he remembered the alligator and more importantly the vicious snapping jaws. “Oh,
maaan . . .”

Later below deck in the hippy decorated lounge-cum-den-cum-kitchenette area of the barge Luke tried to adjust his eyes to the psychedelic decorations and chose to look out the porthole instead, watching the horse towing them northwards to safety. “This is the life. Can you imagine it, cut off from the outside world, no electricity, no TV, no phones, no emails, twitters or what-have-you bombarding you fifty times a day? This is so peaceful, I could get used to this.”

Sophie smiled and prepared some food realizing that they had not eaten in some time. “They grow all their own vegetables and herbs. There’s a small garden at the stern.”

“Stern?”

“The rear of the barge, they also make their own wine, want to fetch some?”

“Sure, where is it?”

“It is in a storage hutch in the bow."

“Bow? Is that the pointy end,” he asked and scooted away.

She chuckled at his ignorance of all things nautical. He snuck back with a bottle of red, used a cork screw on it and poured two glasses, “Cheers!” he clinked his glass against hers, “Here’s to freedom.”

“Shouldn’t we let it breath first?” she warned, but too late for Luke who glugged it down in one mouthful, then choked, making her smile.

He gasped as if his vocal cords were burned, then poured himself another glass. “It’ll take some getting used to. I wonder what else they’ve got?”

“They’re hauling coal by the look of the hold, - that’s where the cargo -”

“I know what a hold is. Coal? Is there any call for it these days, Where is the hold?”

She directed him to it and he climbed down into the hold
and kicked the coal around then saw the plastic wrapped bricks of marijuana, and smirked. He took one back to Sophie, “I think the coal was to mask the smell of this,” he said opening the package of dope. “Fancy trying it?” he asked already rolling a joint.

“First time for everything.”

“Oh yeah, me too,” he said not convincing her in the slightest.

She looked from the porthole as the
canal embankment rolled past at a slow pace. “I love this, it is so tranquil.”

20:30 PM

“
Are things that bad?” said the chief warrant officer.

“What
do you think?” the Commander said. “Take a look out there. You tell me.”

The chief warrant officer stared from the window high up on the conning tower and saw row after row of white shroud covered bodies covering the main deck
, ten columns wide and forty deep. He watched them systematically tossed over the side of the ship, and as distasteful as he thought it, he knew it was unavoidable. However, what he saw on the other side of the ship made his mouth drop open. He pointed with a shaky finger to the main deck, where a group of sailors sat on the outer guardrail. “What are they doing?” he asked, his voice quivering in fear.

“We’ve run out
of the medicine needed for the assisted suicides. This is my solution.”

“You’re as mad as the captain,” he said in undiluted outrage.

“I assure you, each and every one of them volunteered for this.”

Out on m
ain deck the first wave of volunteers, sat on the outer guardrail. Ensign Vandyke walked behind them, and said; “God bless you, son;” and shot each of them in the back of head. He felt no emotion as the front of the sailor’s head exploded in a cloud of blood, brain and bone and the sailor toppled forward into his watery grave. Ensign Vandyke had convinced himself that he was doing a great service to the ships contingent as a whole, ridding them of plague victims; and to the poor unfortunate victim, ending his life as swiftly and painlessly as possible. He had always thought that before the sailor could register the pain of the bullet, the brain would already be dead and not functioning. Vandyke blessed another sailor and dispatched him to the next world, a better world, or so he hoped.

Th
e next sailor sniffed back tears, only eighteen and looking even younger, Vandyke placed his hand on the boys shoulder comforting him. “Be brave, sailor, it’ll soon be over. God bless you,” he said, put the pistol to the boys head and fired, a sudden change in the wind caused the pink-tinged plume of blood to splatter across Vandyke’s face. “Goddamnit!” he said in annoyance, and wiped blood and brain matter from his face onto his sleeve.

From high up in the conning tower
the chief warrant officer said, “That’s barbaric - how can you condone the shooting of your own men?”

“The alternative is to have the ship over-run by dying plague victims. Those men would be dead by nightfall. They volunteered instead, for a quick painless death. It make
s sense, do you follow?”

“No I don’t.”

“Well, as I said they are all volunteers.” The commander said, watching as the next wave of men took the recently vacated spots on the guardrail, and waited while Vandyke reloaded.

20:35 PM

Second L
ieutenant Clinton slinked into his Blackhawk helicopter undetected. Trying to be as unobtrusive as possible he went through his pre-flight checks, then it was the now-or-never moment and he fired up the engine with a mighty thunder, which alerted the personnel around the chopper to his intentions. The surprised crewmen on the flight deck freaked out as the rotor blades started to revolve.

“Holy shit!” yelped a nearly decapitated member of the ground crew. He and the others ran from the dangerous whirling blades. The flight controller radioed the pilot, “Desist now,” he roared into the r
adio. The second lieutenant flipped him the bird, as the blades rotated faster.

“Stop him.” the elderly flight controller said to
a young recruit.

“How?” asked Seaman
Styles.

“Do it, sailor, that’s an order.”

Seaman Styles ducked down low and approached the helicopter unsure on how he would stop the huge metal craft. With trepidation and holding onto his cap for dear life, he carefully approached the chopper, thinking that decapitation might be better than dying of the plague, or the equally grisly prospect of a bullet to the back of the head followed by the indignity of slumping into the sea.

The flight control picked up the internal telephone linked to the bridge and the call answered immediately. “Commander, we have a problem.”

The commander gazed from the bridge window stupefied to see one of the two Blackhawk helicopters allocated to the ship preparing for take-off. Momentarily stunned into silence, he then turned to the chief warrant officer and said. “Shoot it down. Let it be a lesson to anyone else thinking of escaping.”

The chief warrant officer’s face blanched. He knew better than to disobey an order, but at the same time, he considered Dick Clinton, the Blackhawk pilot, to be a close, personal friend.
He felt the Commander glowering at him, he picked up the internal phone to the gun-battery and gave the instructions to fire, then uttered a silent prayer. “May God forgive me.”

As S
eaman Styles got close to the helicopter the down wash from the blades flapped his clothing and he lost his cap, which on a normal day could have him put on a charge, however, today, it was the least of his worries. The noise of the helicopter blades deafened him and the pressure from them pushed him downwards, he made it up close to the helicopter wheel and froze. 

The elderly flight controller cursed the new recruit and yelled, “Stop the bastard, that’s an order!”

The Blackhawk chopper had reached its optimum power, second lieutenant Clinton allowed himself a brief smile, and he eased the unsteady beast up into the air.

Seaman
Styles looked back at the elderly flight controller through the swirling dust created by the chopper’s blades and saw him gesturing frantically. The chopper hovered three feet off the deck, when the new recruit suddenly thought it was his way off the stinking disease-ridden vessel and leaped up into the air and wrapped himself around one of the chopper’s wheels.

The elderly flight controller had thought he had seen everything there was to see in life, but this was too much. A decorated war hero
helio-pilot deserting the ship, and the sailor he sent to stop him.

H
e could see their point of view; stay on the aircraft carrier infested with the Bubonic Plague and certain death. A death from what he had seen with his own two eyes appeared excruciating, or - and he could not believe he even contemplated such a notion - or. . .to hell with this, he thought and as the chopper cleared six feet from the deck he ran, jumped and clung onto another wheel.

Second lieutenant Clinton felt the chopper judder, twice in quick succession. He put it down to the crosswind, and as he pulled up, he passed the upper deck where two sailors watched his escape bid with pure
hatred in their eyes. He knew one of the men and could not meet his gaze, knowing that he was deserting them to meet certain doom, when to his surprise he saw one of them leap out at the helicopter, and felt the weight difference as the sailor had latched onto the chopper. Startled by this action, he spun the helicopter a full circle, and tilted from side-to-side to dislodge the weight, when the second crewman dived towards the chopper.

In the conning tower, the commander observed the cowardly scene unfold with barely concealed contempt and thinned his lips. How in the name of God had he had the misfortune to command such a pathetic bunch of traitors? He couldn
't wait for the missile to blow them to kingdom come; it was the least they deserved. No one wanted a deserter aboard their ship and he counted four! Damn them to hell!

A fifth sailor from a high vantage point in the rigging made a desperate lunge towards the escaping Blackhawk, but missed and hurtled head-first two stories down onto the deck, splitting his skull and spi
lling his brains in the process. A nearby deck-hand puked at the sight as the body jerked and convulsed, before jack-knifing in its final breath.

Gunner Graham spun around the sea-sparrow missile and locked on to the departing helicopter. The chopper rose passing the commander in the conning tower as an ultimate insult and cleared the ship. The gunner’s finger itched on the trigger, desperate to dispatch the loathsome traitor sullying the name of the ship, but he waited for the Blackhawk to get some distance not wanting any of the wreckage to fall back onto the ship, potentially damaging the vessel. He locked-on and let the computers take over, no-way would the chopper escape and all he
had to do was pull the trigger.

S
weat trickled down his back, as he waited . . . and waited . . . then fired. . . .

CHAPTER 40

20:40 PM

Second lieutenant Clinton put the chopper into a deep dive and the missile missed. He expected that they would fire upon him; it was standard procedure. He deduced that he would have time to clear the ship before they fired and with perfect timing, he saw the plume of smoke from the eight-inch barrel, and aimed the chopper into a dive, banking tightly back towards the vessel, knowing that the gunner could not fire low or close to the ship. The pilot was surprised to discover that he had to fight with the flight-controls, and to his horror plummeted towards the ocean. His eyes popped open when he saw seaman Styles fall into the ocean in front of him.

“What the fuck?” He must’ve b
een clinging on underneath, suddenly the flight-control loosened and as he was about to crash into the waves, he pulled back on the cyclic stick and soared upwards, he was going to make it after all. He grinned in satisfaction, he planned to circle the ship skimming the waves, but instead of heading for the mainland, as they would expect he would head out to the Bahamas a little over fifty miles from the Florida coast.

Gunner Graham pressed buttons frantically, the computer aided controls could not lock-on to a target so close to the ship, he took manual control, but could not do any better, he realized with a sinking dread that he would be
on a charge for failing to hit such an easy sitting target. His shoulders heaved and he sobbed in despair.

He did not intend to miss a second t
ime. He got a grip of himself and decided he did not care where the wreckage fell. There was no way, no sir, he was going to let the coward escape, and as they chopper rose, dumping the stowaways into the ocean, it presented itself right in front of the barrel of his gun, a gift that not even a child could miss and his finger hovered over the button.

Out on deck the sailors fired impotently as the chopper flew below them, the bullets ricocheted harmlessly from the armored plating. Clinton fought for the controls, as the chopper did not behave as it should and he realized that there must be other stow
aways underneath the craft. He took evasive action and climbed sharply. He felt rather than saw, as at least two more people dropped from the under carriage of the Blackhawk. He had regained control of the chopper at last, when to his utter horror he saw the starboard gunner fire.

The Blackhawk helicopter exploded
midair in a raging fireball and dropped like a stone, as over five tons of burning metal fell onto the main deck where the impact caused a second explosion killing the ground crew instantly and shattering the glass in the nearby portholes.

“What’s going on?” the captain asked with annoyance in his voice from between the jail bars of the brig, “Who are we firing at?” he asked the guard.

“I do not know, sir,” the guard replied.

“I need to be on the bridge, you understand that, sailor, don’t you? The Commander does not have experience of battle – I do. C’mon, let me out of here. This is serious. Why aren’t the aircraft being scrambled if we’re under attack?” The captain shook on the metal bars in frustration.

Moments later a second missile launched and the ship shook again. “We’re under attack and I’m the only man that can save us. Let me out now, you know it’s the right thing to do.”

The young guard wres
tled with his conscience for a long moment, realizing the magnitude of his action, then smiled and unlocked the cell, releasing the captain and the men that had remained loyal to him. The guard’s motives were not unselfish; he remembered the captain’s earlier promise of taking him with them when they left the ship.

“I’ll need your weapon, sailor,” the captain said and the guard handed over his sidearm without question. The captain and his men scrambled noisily up the metal ladder to the next deck, knowing there was no time to lose.

“What about me, sir?” asked the guard.

The captain stopped dead in his tracks, turned his head slowly, and glared evilly at his former jailor. “What about you?” he asked nastily.

“You promised to take me with you when you left the ship, sir,” he reminded the captain timidly.

“Leave the ship? Leave the ship!? What sort of captain would I be to leave my own ship? You’re talking mutiny,” the captain’s voice rose in pitch as he got angrier
, going red in the face.

It slowly dawned on the young guard that he had made a terrible, terrible mistake. His hand slowly crept towards the alarm button. The captain noticed, pointed with his newly acquired sidearm, for the guard to move his hand away, but he was reluctant to move his hand from the only bargaining chip he had.

The captain glared at him and asked. “Do you know the penalty for mutiny?” He squeezed the trigger and shot the guard in the chest. “It’s death.”

The guard staggered in surprise more than pain, thumped back into the wall, his out-stretched arm whacked the alarm button, and he fell as if in slow motion to the floor.

On the bridge, nine stories up the conning tower the commander watched bleakly as the clean-up crew tried in vain to extinguish the flames of the burning helicopter wreck.

At least twenty crewmen battled the flames, as thick, black clouds of voluminous smoke obscu
red his vision, when the Claxton horn blared. “Now what?” he said aloud, the last thing he needed, more trouble. The crewmen were dropping like flies from the contagion, he had some of the last able-bodied men attending to the fire to stop it spreading to the conning tower while the remaining walking wounded were making preparations to scuttle the ship.

Below decks, a sailor in the armament depot heard a gunshot. He
turned startled to the hazmat-suited captain, who raised a pistol and shot him dead. The captain swiftly dished out the weapons and ammunition to his supporters. Now armed and with vengeance in their blood, they briskly made their way up the decks shooting anyone impeding their progress.

The awful wailing of the Claxton horn and the billowing clouds of blinding, black smoke disturbed the commander greatly. An internal phone rang incessantly
, eventually it was answered by an ensign. “Commander?” he said quietly.

“What is it now?” he asked wearily.

“The captain and his men have escaped, sir.” no sooner had the Commander received this news he saw the hazmat bedecked men shooting their way up onto the flight deck and over to the nearest lifeboat. The deckhands were unarmed yet they were shot in cold blood by the captain and his followers.

A half-assed retaliatory team of armed sailors appeared from below deck and fired at the retreating men, killing one outright
and wounding another in his arm, puncturing his all import hazmat protection uniform and releasing the dangerous virus-filled outside air into his suit.

He crouched down and gave covering fire along with another and they held back the advancing sailors. The captain fixed the lifeboat ready for launching, greatly impeded by the hazmat suit and the limited vision the helmet gave
him. The gun battle behind him made the decision for him and he stripped off the helmet and his gloves and then worked easily preparing the lifeboat.

His loyal troops kept their
lackluster attackers at bay. In fact, one stood up, dropped his weapon and slowly advanced into the barrage of bullets, death by gunshot being preferable to the ravages of the plague.

Another
of the enlisted men half-heartedly tried to stop the captain leaving, when he understood what his colleague had done and with a sinking dread realized that if he did not die from the Bubonic Plague he would drown when the ship scuttled. Hobson’s choice, he thought. Death by plague, or by drowning. Now he had a third choice, a fast, painless way, like his colleague, death swiftly by a bullet.
Hmm
, a no-brainer he thought and dropped his weapon, praying that the captain’s men were expert shooters and that his death would be rapid and relatively painless. Thankfully, a high velocity bullet answered his prayers and removed the top of his skull in a plume of red mist.

“Come on” the captain shouted to his men above the sound of the Claxton horn, the burning helicopter and the incessant gunfire. The men backed towards the lifeboat and as they clambered in their attackers dropped their weapons rushed forward and leaped into the lifeboat with them, much to the shock and horror of the now helmetless captain who was in grave danger from the very air that these men exhaled. The two enlisted men raised their hands in willing surrender and looked pleadingly at the captain, who pulled his pistol and shot them
both dead without compunction.

He held his breath as his companions hefted the dead bodies over the side, then sighed with relief. He smiled and pressed the button on the hand-held controls and the lifeboat lowered awkwardly into the ocean and away from the madness above.

The captain’s loyal crewmen stripped off their cumbersome helmets and gloves and high-fived as one of them used an oar to push them away from the disease-ridden death ship and towards freedom.

A sailor leaped from the edge of the aircraft carrier and hit the ocean with a mighty splash. He landed awkwardly and his flesh stung, but he ignored the pain and splashed toward the departing lifeboat and freedom.

The oarsman heard the splash and saw a desperate sailor swimming in their direction. The sailor swallowed mouthfuls of seawater in his desperate bid to reach the safety of the lifeboat, but as he reached the gunwale of the lifeboat, an oar viciously cracked him over his head. The sailor barely had time to register what happened when the oarsman stood and swung the oar with all his might and once again caught the sailor on the top of his head.

The first blow stunned the sailor, the second split his skull wide open, and he slowly disappeared below the waves.

The oarsman grinned and held his hand up for a high-five when his was shot by a bullet from a sniper back on the aircraft carrier, he dropped to his knees, blood bubbled from his mouth, he choked and then pitched forward, where he twitched and jerked spasmodically on the floor of the lifeboat, leaving only three. The captain, nodded and his two companions heaved the dying man over the side, then he fired up the outboard motor and the lifeboat puttered to the shoreline. They settled back down and grinned at the captain, they were now out of range of gunfire and they were on their way to freedom, when the captain violently sneezed. He heard the cocking of weapons; he turned to find that the previously loyal pair of supporters had their guns pointed at him. “Now, hold on just one doggone minu -” They fired in unison riddling him with bullets.