At the End of the World

by Charles E Gannon

  “You’re the biology and premed type, Willow, not me. I can’t see anything, because the fragments didn’t really make holes; they made slits, almost like he’d been cut with a razor. I packed them as well as I can, but they keep soaking the gauze.”

  What little I knew about surgery and wounds told me that did not sound good. But I didn’t say that—not yet.

  It took us about two hours to get everyone together again, and the prisoners locked up in the gunpowder house: not much more than an unfurnished, unheated shack on a stone foundation. We took turns guarding them with their own guns: Johnnie had shinnied up the ship’s davit ropes and got their weapons.

  For which he caught hell from the captain while he was shinnying back down. “You damned fool! You can’t know that ship is safe. They might all be contagious. They probably are!”

  Which scared us all because it became pretty clear pretty quickly that the captain had heard more about the plague than he had let on, probably before we had even come around Tierra del Fuego.

  But there was no time to ask him—or even think—about that. We had a lot to do. Alvaro had been shot through the thigh: no broken bones, but he lost a lot of blood and the fall stunned him. Chloe alternated between hovering over the little guy and then leaping to her feet, eyes full of hellfire, ready to go out to the gunpowder house and shoot the Argentinian survivors.

  Not that they didn’t deserve it, but the captain insisted that they had to be debriefed. He waved off my attempts to check his wounds even though he became very pale.

  By two o’clock, Alvaro was caning around, and we were ready to talk to the prisoners. There were only eight left, four of whom were badly wounded. We stood outside the gunpowder house, pushed in a camp stove. They were grateful for the heat, asked for food, which only got them stares; it was pretty clear they had been eating a lot better than us.

  Alvaro and the captain did most of the talking; the captain because he had clearly done this kind of thing before, Alvaro because Spanish was as much his first language as English.

  The pirates weren’t eager to share information, but they weren’t eager to die, either. It also turned out that the alert ones didn’t care what happened to their wounded, or really, each other. But what were we willing to give them in exchange for cooperation?

  Captain Haskins told them he’d provide the best care for the wounded that he could, and that, furthermore, he would let them join our community if they were willing to go back on board their ship and unload the supplies for all of us to share. Alvaro got very dark when the captain forced him to offer that. The Argentinians could barely keep from smiling; that deal was obviously fine with them. I think we were all silently wondering if the captain had gone, as he put it, around the bend. The raiders almost certainly had some weapons left on board their ship, and even if they couldn’t fight all of us, once aboard and unsupervised, there wouldn’t be much we could do to keep them from motoring away. We couldn’t even be sure they hadn’t left someone—or something—aboard as a backup: it was a plague ship, so we weren’t about to search it. The only reason we thought it was probably empty was because the raiders had all been so eager to get off, away from the fire. Which ultimately did a lot of superficial damage, but burned out before the whole ship caught flame.

  Our worst fears about the team at KEP were confirmed. As the captain had expected, rather than making a direct approach, the raiders had tried sneaking into the warehouses. They set off the booby traps and almost all the supplies had burned. They were evasive about how they’d known to travel to Husvik, but it was clear that Keywood and his staff had not given us up easily, if at all. According to the pirate leader, they had died of exposure after breaking out of the building in which they had been locked.

  Captain Haskins ended by getting their assurance that their story was complete and honest, pointing out that the penalties for lying were extremely severe in our group. The pirates swore to their truthfulness on Bibles they had never read, and on the souls of mothers that they had probably abandoned to squalor and disease by the time they were fifteen.

  The only really useful information we got was about the plague itself. We learned more details about the various stages of the disease, about how contagious it was, and which were the most likely ways to catch it. But ultimately, what none of them knew was how long you had to wait before going back into an area where all the infected had died. In fact, it was that uncertainty which had led them to grab the ship about two months ago: a conglomeration of semi-allied gangs that had one leader smart enough to realize that the only way they were going to live was by getting away from all possible sites of infection. But during their weeks at sea, most of them had turned anyhow and ultimately became the survivors’ zombie shock troops.

  The captain motioned them to get up; it was time to unload their ship. Alvaro stared at Captain Haskins, who only stared back and used a boat hook to pull out the camp stove once the four unwounded pirates had exited.

  The captain had us tow the Argentinians back to their ship in a separate dinghy, then shocked us by being the first to board, even though he clearly had difficulty ascending the rope ladder that Johnnie had left hanging from the stern. He disappeared into the aft hatch, was gone for a few minutes. When he returned, he confirmed that he had found no traps and motioned the first two Argentinians to come aboard. Once they were, he had them hold the ladder steady while the last two clambered up.

  When the second pair was just a few feet away from the taffrail, the captain quietly drew the revolver that Alvaro had used earlier and put a bullet into the back of first one raider’s head and then the other. As they fell, he yanked the knots holding the rope ladder: the last two raiders plunged down into the water, screaming as soon as they surfaced.

  I don’t think anyone spoke or moved for a full second. Then, reflex took over and we went into rescue mode. We started grabbing for boat hooks and life preservers.

  “No,” shouted the captain. “Leave them.”

  “Leave them?” I shouted back. “They’ll die!”

  “As they should. Care to guess what I found on their ship?”

  I shook my head.

  “The gnawed remains of Larry Keywood and Diane Paley.”

  It took us a second to realize the full significance of that: the raiders had used the station team as fodder for their zombies.

  So we watched the two dog-paddling Argentinians plead and pray and shiver and sputter, growing more pale, growing more listless. Finally, unable to even tread water, they sank beneath the grey swells without so much as a ripple.

  The captain had watched from the ship’s taffrail. “They were warned about the penalty for lying. They’ve paid the price. Wait there.”

  He made five trips into the ship’s interior, emerging with large, bulging plastic trash bags. He also ran a fuel hose over the side, told us that it was for tapping one of the fuel tanks. Then he lowered the bags into the dinghy in which we’d brought along the Argentinians and climbed down into it himself. At that point, he was as pale as the men who’d drowned a half hour before. He mumbled for a line. We tossed him one and then towed him to shore.

  Once there, he snarled at us if we came close. He dragged the bags out of the dinghy, upended them all on the scree beach, careful not to touch anything that fell out, and spun on his heel toward the radio house, wobbling as he went.

  “What are you doing?” Giselle shouted after him. Her voice was angry, frightened, hurt.

  “Putting myself in quarantine,” he said. “No one comes in. We speak through the door. Burn their dinghy. Burn the bags. Filter masks on when you handle what I salvaged. Even though I never touched it directly, everything goes in boiling water. Even the ammunition. Can’t take a chance. And Johnnie?”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re going to stay in the end room of the manager’s house. You went on the ship, so no contact with the others. Not safe.”

  He turned and locked himself in the radio house after givi
ng us strict orders to stay away from the wounded pirates in the gunpowder house. Earlier in the day, we would have argued against just leaving them to freeze overnight, which they would certainly do. Now, death by slipping from semi-consciousness into sleep and on into hypothermia seemed like a fairly mild form of justice. Besides, no one was willing to expose themselves to whatever virus the prisoners had been living next to for weeks or months.

  Alvaro limped away someplace, trailing blood in the snow. Chloe made to go after him, but Giselle put a hand on her arm and shook her head. When Alvaro came back, he looked okay, but his eyes were red. He insisted, almost violently, that he was going to take the captain’s dinner out to him. No one argued.

  By the time Alvaro came back, he was too tired to do anything except tell me that the captain wanted to speak to me.

  I went out to the radio house, knocked on the door. It opened a crack. “Stay back.” The captain sounded terrible.

  “Captain, what is it? What can I—?”

  “Two things. First, I left a manila envelope under my bed. In it, you’ll find everything I ever learned about this bloody virus. It’s not complete, but it has some additional details about what to avoid and how long it takes to become symptomatic under different conditions. Second: write down what happened today. Not just the action against the raiders: everything. Everything we learned from them, everything you observed. You—we’ll need it.” But his correction to “we’ll” sounded like an after-thought, the kind of thing people say when they are trying to pretend that they’ll live as long as their kids or are trying to act confident about surviving a dangerous surgery.

  So I just said, “Yes, Captain,” and went back to the manager’s house.

  I have done as he has asked. I have written everything down. And now I want to sleep and not think about tomorrow. Or anything that comes after.

  August 28

  Now that Willow went and recorded her report in my journal, it doesn’t really feel like my journal anymore. But maybe that’s okay. I started it for myself, but now, I have to wonder: is this journal just about me, anymore? Or is it the story of us? And if so, maybe I have to rethink who gets to write in, and read, it.

  We wanted to bury Blake, but with the ground frozen, there just wasn’t any way to do it. So we put him to rest in the whaling station’s graveyard and piled stones on top of him. When it came time to say a few words, everyone looked at me. Don’t know why, except maybe I reek of Recovering Catholic. Anyhow, I was the only one who’d spent any time in a church.

  We tried checking in on the captain on the way to the graveyard, but when we opened the door a crack, we heard snoring. So we backed off. When we tried on the way back, he answered our first knock. He had to be talked into some food, which I brought back out with Willow.

  He sounded very weak. Told us to leave the food on the step, that he’d pick it up. Willow asked him if she could come in just a step or two, to see how he was doing. He refused. She threatened to push on in anyhow.

  The captain replied in his ice-cold authority voice. “If you do, I will not be able to allow you to leave. You’ll have to stay in here with me. For weeks, maybe months. So don’t come through that door.” By the end, his voice had faded to a pleading whisper.

  Willow tried to say something, choked back the words along with a sob, turned on her heel and walked back to the manager’s house. Really quickly.

  I didn’t know what to do or say, but about a minute after she left, the captain spoke. His voice was low. “Alvaro, things are going to get more difficult.”

  “More difficult than a ship full of raiders?”

  He may have chuckled; he just may have been coughing and gurgling. “Fair point. Let’s say things are going to get difficult in a new way.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear. The old way was getting boring.”

  “I knew you had some cheek in you. But hard facts, now, Alvaro. I’m never leaving the radio house.”

  “Captain, if you haven’t come down with the virus in a month—”

  “Alvaro: think. You’re smarter than that.”

  He was right. Deep down, I knew better.

  He evidently knew my silence meant I realized he was right. “Don’t feel badly, lad. I knew I was dead when I climbed up the ladder to the stern of that ship.”

  “What do you mean? Your wounds aren’t—”

  “Alvaro: it has nothing to do with my wounds, although they will accelerate my—my outcome. As it is, you’re going to have to go through all my kit soon, anyway. So when you get back to the manager’s house, go in my room. Go look at the bottles in my medicine cabinet. That will tell you what you need to know. I was the only one who could risk going on their ship, because I’ll be dead before I can, er…can ‘turn.’ Assuming I’m infected at all.”

  “Captain, whatever is wrong with you, you can’t be sure—”

  “Yes, I can be sure. What’s wrong with me is not going to get better. And even if I had some miraculous reversal, I can’t risk staying near you lot, lest I do turn. This is the way it has to be. But there’s a harder patch ahead.”

  Now I knew what he meant. “Johnnie.”

  “Yes. He’s a good lad, but it will be hard having him living in a separate room in the manager’s house. So, when I—no longer have need of my bunk here, this is where he should be.”

  “So this becomes the plague house.”

  “Yes. So, listen now: here’s what you have to do.”

  He talked me through the necessary steps in about five minutes. He had it all thought out, down to the last detail. By the end, he had gotten hoarse. “Now go. Talking makes me tired.”

  I heard him shuffle away, deeper into the radio house.

  When I got back to the manager’s house, I went into his room; everyone stared at me as I did. Everyone except Willow, that is. She just looked real sad.

  I learned a lot of things. Like what a bastard I was for calling him the Great Ghoul of the Ocean-Sea and other smart-ass shit like that. The first of those orange prescription med bottles I picked up had this on its label: “Methotrexate—for advanced Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.” I didn’t see the dosage or anything; I didn’t need to. There was Lieutenant—no, Captain—Alan Haskins’ death sentence, written out as calm and plain and small as the bullshit you read on the label of Flintstone’s vitamins.

  And then I saw that the bottle was empty, and that the “next refill date”—in Valparaiso—was May 30, 2015. Almost three months ago. So, whatever the captain had heard on the radio by mid-June made him skip going to Valparaiso for his meds. Going through the rest of the prescription bottles (which included interferon, Welbutrin, and a bunch of opioids), I found another empty methotrexate, this one from Port Stanley. Clearly, a pharmacy there was his back-up plan. But by that time, no one was dispensing any meds—or anything else—in the Falklands.

  The only bottle that didn’t make sense at first was a prescription for Vyvanse, made out for someone named Phillip Grover. Then Willow walked in and solved the mystery.

  Looking over my shoulder, she scanned the bottle and said, “Huh. Sure.”

  “What?”

  “It’s why the captain perked up over the last week. That’s some kid’s ADHD meds. Vyvanse is an amphetamine. Must have been left behind on some cruise.”

  “Damn it,” I muttered. “The captain, he—he deserved better than this.”

  She nodded. “He’s had a hard life. Unfair.”

  “Unfair?”

  She shrugged, went to the nightstand. There was an open manila folder on it. “He had me get this out from under his bed last night: all the data he ever collected on the virus that’s causing this plague. But I found something else under there.” She took what looked like an oversized jewelry box off his nightstand and handed it to me.

  Inside was a square silver cross. It was hanging from a white ribbon with a purple stripe running down its center. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at a medal. “Holy shit. What do y
ou think it is? The Victoria Cross or something?”

  She handed me a much folded letter on royal—royal?—stationery that had gone with the medal. It was the Military Cross, awarded for gallantry to Lieutenant Alan P. Haskins of the—

  I looked up. “He’s friggin’ SAS?”

  She nodded as I put it down. “I wonder how long we would have survived if anyone else had been the captain of Voyager.”

  For a moment, I couldn’t decide whether I felt we were the luckiest people on the planet for having had him with us, or the unluckiest for losing him and never knowing who or what he was until now. I guess if we hadn’t all been such a bunch of self-involved kids with our heads up our asses and obsessing over first-world problems, we might have seen him more clearly.

  Tucked under the medal box were letters. The addresses were written in a female hand. Judging from the postmarks, they were probably from the woman Keywood had mentioned. Who seemed to be one and the same as the security operative he had lost on Fortuna Glacier, according to some of the security stamps on a few of the envelopes: evidently, she been assigned to Port Stanley from the Foreign Office. I put the medal box back on top of the letters: I couldn’t open them any more than Willow had been able to when she found them.

  We wandered out into the next room. Everyone was there, looking at us. Because now we had morphed into a combined surrogate-captain; we were the ones who shared out the information, set the next course. I thought I might shit my pants right there.

  I started to speak. Before I had the first word out, Giselle put up her hand. Yes, she put up her friggin’ hand. I just nodded.

  “What about Johnnie? He needs to hear what’s going on, too.”

  I answered carefully. “We’ll catch him up. As soon as we’re done here. But captain had some—orders—about Johnnie. And himself.” Which I explained in stomach-sinking detail.

  After that, we had to review the new equipment we’d added to our collection. Although a lot of the raiders’ guns had gone overboard, there were the bunch Johnnie had pulled off the ship, and then a few more the captain had stuffed into the bags he’d brought out. There were four Argentine FALs, three Rexio pump shotguns, and two AKs that looked like they had been well-chewed and spat out by the backstreets of half the cities in South America. There was about an equal number of handguns: a few Tauruses and Browning Hi-Powers, but most were .38 Special knock-offs.