The Final Outbreak

by M. L. Banner

  They found themselves coming up to their ship, the Intrepid. As if they needed any prompting to board, it let loose a long horn blast.

  Between them and their destination was a giant terminus where a few other passengers calmly lolled inside. Most of the passengers, they suspected, were on board, as they had chosen to check in as late as possible, to as TJ said, “give them more time to enjoy Malaga.” Of course, the bird attack scuttled that idea.

  Only when they were forced to slow their pace, and feeling the safety of the giant building beckoning them inside, did TJ start to breathe just a little easier.

  Ted’s breathing increased the moment he saw the huge crowd inside. His eyes appeared to nearly pop out of their sockets; his posture stiffened, while almost shrinking.

  She knew this look: he was about to go into a full-on freak-out.

  Every time this had happened it broke TJ’s heart. She couldn’t imagine the pain her husband felt losing his first wife and child, all because of his enochlophobia. But she wouldn’t let it run its course. She wouldn’t let it conquer him. Not this time.

  She snatched his hand and dragged him and their bags—leaving one bag with a porter—through the horde and the port security.

  TJ did most of the talking for them at check-in, while he focused on his breathing.

  They might just make it through without incident, or so they thought.

  After receiving their Seacards they were told to head up to the gangway, which led to the entrance of the ship. They were definitely among the tail-end of the incoming passengers. Purposely avoiding most of the crowds was by TJ’s design. And Ted was thankful for this.

  Just inside the gangway entrance, they stopped at the rail to allow a small clump of passengers to move past them.

  It was their first moment of inactivity since Alcazaba.

  Each examined the other, faces still drawn tight. Ted brushed a lock of TJ’s hair away from her cheek and flashed a warm smile. He breathed a deep and exaggerated breath. “Whew, we made it, huh?”

  She returned his smile. Even though the gangway was mostly covered, she still felt anxious. Part of it must have been Ted, she reasoned.

  They watched their fellow passengers, also in the gangway, slowly process onto the ship. The awaiting crew welcomed them on board with beaming faces.

  Below them, a few of the ship’s crew pushed carts of baggage into a much larger entrance. One cart even held kennels containing a variety of dogs: pets of the passengers who paid for the privilege of sailing the Atlantic with their animals.

  It was all the normal hubbub of a cruise preparing to leave port. No one, not a single soul, appeared to reflect any of the angst or fear Ted and TJ had been feeling.

  “It’s almost like what we witnessed never happened, isn’t it?” The ship’s horns sounded again, with two long blasts, which were deafening this close, even inside their enclosed gangway. TJ watched the lazy movements of a couple more passengers ambling behind them, and still others being welcomed inside.

  After a while, TJ noticed that Ted had not answered her. She turned to him, concerned that maybe he was still not dealing well with the crowds, even though they weren’t that large at all.

  That concern changed focus quickly when she saw him; he had that same look he’d had at the castle. “Ted?” She wasn’t really after an answer.

  He clutched her forearm, not diverting his gaze.

  She followed his gaze, squinting to see what he must have been staring at. Her glasses were in her purse so she couldn’t quite focus that far.

  She felt the presence of a few other passengers on the gangway and noticed that they too were also seemingly mesmerized by something going on outside the port entrance where they had just abandoned their rental car.

  She blinked harder and squinted tighter, wishing her eyes worked better.

  In the distance, in front of a few plumes of smoke coming from the city center—which normally might have drawn a curious glance—there was a growing haze. The haze clung to the ground, like a smoke cloud rolling toward the port entrance.

  It reminded TJ of the occasional haboob they’d see in Arizona, near where they lived: a growing billow of dust that would consume everything in its path, dumping tons of sand on homes, businesses, vehicles, people, and pets. This swelling wave was similar in that its dusty mass seemed to consume most everything in its path. Only this cloud didn’t appear to be anywhere near as tall as a haboob. In fact it couldn’t have been more than a few feet above the ground, whereas a haboob could reach a thousand feet, or more.

  Also peculiar, this cloud was only moving down Paseo Reding, into the traffic circle of Fuente de la Tres Gracias. When they arrived, they’d noticed the streets of Malaga were covered in a fine gray dust, which had seemed foreign. Their hotel’s concierge said this was from the Mount Etna eruption. A wind blowing the dust could create this rolling cloud. But that didn’t explain why the dirty billows were tracking along only a couple of the streets.

  At the traffic circle, connecting several streets, the cloud noticeably turned and blew into the port entrance.

  It wasn’t a weather event.

  “Look, it’s moving toward us, almost ...”

  “... like it was sentient,” Ted finished.

  “What is it? It doesn’t look like the birds up on the castle,” she stammered.

  As their hearts accelerated, they gawked in horror as this undulating mass of murk quickly churned down Paseo de la Farola, the main street through to the port—parallel to the one they’d just walked on.

  A man crossing the street, seemingly unaware of the oncoming cloud, turned to look—it must be making a noise—and in his surprise, he tripped and fell onto the pavement. A small van veered off the road to avoid the man, crashing into a building.

  The wave didn’t hesitate. It blew closer, consuming all in its path.

  Now, the pedestrians on the parallel street were running. Their frantic screams arrived in breeze-filled wisps.

  Ted squeezed TJ’s arm tighter and flashed a puzzled grimace at her.

  TJ couldn’t stand it. She had to see what this was. She snatched her glasses from her purse with her free hand and banged them onto her face.

  She quickly averted her eyes and peered into his. Hers were filled with puddles. “Oh my God, Ted. What the hell is going on?” But neither of them could understand what was at the root of the cloud and why the people and cars were reacting this way. Dust blowing over you would not cause the fear these people obviously felt.

  Finally, TJ could see what caused the clouds, and it sucked her breath away.

  A younger woman beside Ted shrieked in horror.

  But it was Ted who announced the cause of the pandemonium. “No! Those cannot be rats. What ... what are they doing?”

  “Attacking,” TJ answered, her voice cracking.

  “What? What are they attacking.?”

  It was a rhetorical question, because each of them watched the wave of rats attack everything with a heartbeat: men, women, children, dogs.

  When the bile rose in his throat, Ted seemed to be the only one to understand what this meant to them. “Um... I think,” he announced in a loud voice, “we should all get on the ship.” He backed away from the railing, pulling his wife with him. They bolted toward the ship entrance at the end of their gangway, a very long hundred yards away.

  But he and TJ were the only ones moving.

  At least ten passengers lingered on the gangway, holding fast to the railing, gawking. Two even held up their cameras in an attempt to chronicle this oncoming spectacle. TJ shouted, “Let’s get going, people, before the rats get here.”

  Apparently, the use of “rats” in a sentence had the same value as shouting “Fire!”

  That moved them.

  The final passengers trotted behind Ted and TJ, their heavy footfalls and squealing baggage wheels a deafening swell as they bounced toward the ship entrance: their mutual finish line.

  “Slow down, fol
ks,” commanded a crew member who thrust out his palms to hold back the wave of worried tourists coming his way.

  They slowed, with Ted and TJ still leading.

  A muffled din grew in the background.

  A few terror-filled screams ripped through their frenzied calm, breaking down their usual decorum, and they pushed forward faster.

  They panicked when they could hear the cacophony of little squeals and the scampering of thousands of little feet, like heavy raindrops on a metal roof.

  “They’re coming,” someone yelled and pushed past TJ and bounded into the crew member, sending both tumbling to the ground.

  Other security crew members emerged from the door, thinking a fight had broken out.

  Ted and TJ held at a bridge connecting the port’s gangway with the ship’s opening. Ted yelled to an approaching security guard, “We need to get on board and you need to close up the doors. See that? It’s rats.” He gestured behind them to where he could hear the roiling mass.

  The guard could see a wave of movement stream up the gangway stairs and toward them. The remaining guests slipped past him, some abandoning their bags.

  He blinked twice in sudden comprehension and pushed Ted and TJ toward the opening.

  With everyone in, the guard halted at the entrance and glared at the open hatch.

  “Can’t you close this?” TJ asked, her voice growing more unsteady.

  The panicked guard turned his glare to her and said, “Only the OOD, security director, or captain can announce the command to seal up early.”

  “Then call the fricking captain!” Ted howled.

  04

  Captain Christiansen

  “Staff Captain, what am I looking at?” bellowed Captain Jörgen Christiansen.

  All heads of the bridge crew rubbernecked in the same direction. They gawked through their starboard windows, down the gangway below, fixated on the fast approaching wave of just what they didn’t know. None paid attention to the ringing phone, its light indicating it was from their starboard main guest entrance. It would ring when they wanted to close up, or if there was a problem.

  “Sir...” Staff Captain Jean Pierre Haddock hesitated through his binoculars, “I think they’re rats.”

  Captain Christiansen didn’t need any other prompting. Jean Pierre confirmed what his own disbelieving eyes were telling him. He learned long ago not to worry about the reasons why something was happening. He dealt in facts, and not in what was unexplainable. He had no idea why waves of rats were streaming in their direction, but he did know he didn’t want those damned things invading his ship, just as they appeared to be invading the port. “Sound the call to close up and to pull away from the dock.”

  The officer on deck or OOD, Urban Patel, didn’t hesitate, slapping a big red button on a panel below him, which sounded the horns announcing their departure. The deep blare of their ship’s horns was loud even in the protected confines of the bridge.

  Usually Security Chief Spillman, who was MIA at this moment, would ring the second officer on duty at the gangway entrance. So Wasano Agarwal, the first officer of security and now senior on the bridge, followed protocol and picked up the ringing phone. “Close up, now! Pull in everyone waiting to board; everyone else who comes after will need to wait.”

  He hung up the receiver and picked it up again, punching another button on the comm’s console. “Close up, leave whatever baggage isn’t already on board... No arguments. Do it now!”

  “I can confirm the doors are closing,” said Jessica Eva Mínervudóttir, first officer of navigation, watching her panel. “The passenger door is closing. The freight doors are already closed.”

  “Release from the dock now,” encouraged the captain.

  “What about the pilot boat, sir?” Jean Pierre asked.

  “We’ll wait just off the dock. I don’t want any of those rats on my ship.” The captain’s head and binoculars were one, aimed like a gun barrel pointed at the leading edge of the first wave of rats fast approaching along the gangway. They seemed to be surging toward them even faster.

  He moved over to the exit onto the starboard-side swing deck, to get a better look and to hear what he was seeing. The bridge was soundproof as well as waterproof to protect it during the gales of the heavy storms they sometimes encountered at sea.

  The moment the steel hatch cracked open, the frantic sounds of Puerto de Malaga poured into the bridge. The crew peered in the door’s direction. For only a few seconds, they paid little attention to their monitors as the outside blared a violent torrent of screams, car crashes, frenzied horns, and something else.

  It was a haunting sound: an escalating frenzy that built upon itself; a horrific drumbeat of hundreds of thousands of scampering feet and their corresponding squeaks. A crescendo that grew with each passing second.

  The captain could only stand the nightmarish sounds for so long. But before he turned back into the bridge and sealed them once more into their orderly bubble, he caught a quick glance of a sight that would haunt his nights, perhaps for the rest of his life: a couple of dock workers and at least one crew member overwhelmed by blankets of rats.

  He had once witnessed the decapitation of a crew member, back when he was a first officer. He always thought that was the most horrible sight he would ever see. This was worse.

  Jörgen stepped back onto the bridge and slammed the door, sealing out the chaos. It was the one space over which he had some control. Outside, he had none. He felt the troubled eyes of his crew on him, all wide, and close to panic.

  But the quiet was like a balm to their frayed nerves. And the strength of their captain was an elixir.

  Captain Christiansen only momentarily flashed anything resembling worry before his usual stern presence stood before them. “Report, how many on board?” He didn’t know what the hell was going on out there, but he knew his crew would be able to focus on their duties if he directed them. That would give them all a much-needed sense of control. Duties now; discover what’s happening later.

  “They’re still counting the last few who squeezed aboard when we closed the doors.” Jean Pierre fixated on his tablet. It flashed up-to-the-moment details about the ship, its passengers, and its crew. He kept his eyes glued to it for a prolonged period before giving the count, as if staring at it a little longer would somehow increase the dismal numbers. “So far,” he stressed, “728 guests and 501 crew. Only one cart of luggage didn’t make it. And we’re fully supplied.”

  The ship was supposed to have 1525 guests and 700 crew. Most of the missing could be easily attributed to the many flight cancellations. But he also knew others didn’t make it because of the rat attacks—still, it seemed utterly ridiculous to even consider that supposition.

  “Captain?” Jean Pierre asked. “What should we do now?” This kind of thing—rat attacks and departing early, leaving passengers and crew behind—was not part of their training or experience.

  “First Officer Mínervudóttir, call the harbor master and tell them to get the pilot boat here in two minutes or we’re plowing through the harbor without him.”

  “I’m on it, sir,” Jessica fired back.

  Jean Pierre held his gaze on the captain. “No, sir. I meant what do we do about the missing passengers?”

  Captain Jörgen Christiansen looked at each of his crew, who returned his steady glare with apprehension. He’d served with these five men and one woman for almost four years now, and they’d been through a lot, including one hurricane, one rogue wave, even an attempted boarding by terrorists. But none of them had ever been through anything like this.

  He learned a long time ago, as he was making the ranks on his way to becoming captain, to deal with what you know. These are the only actions over which you’ll ever have control. Don’t focus on those things you have no control over. They’ll take care of themselves.

  “We’re going to do our one job now, which is to take care of our current passengers and crew. OOD Patel, please contact corporate and
let them know, so they can get help on the ground and make arrangements for the stranded guests. We’ll get through this together, okay?”

  “Aye, Captain,” they responded together.

  “Mr. Haddock, can I see you in my ready room?”

  ~~~

  The two marched in and sat at the same conference table they’d met around hundreds of times to discuss everything from the highly significant, like which crew member to fire, to the insignificant, such as whether or not they should give a free spa package to a certain guest to keep them happy. The gravity of what they needed to discuss now weighed heavily on both.

  Jörgen hovered for a moment over a side table, slowly pouring equal measures of coffee into two mugs from a carafe that was always kept full and hot by one of his crew. He mindlessly set the full cups down on the conference table. “I wanted to speak to you before the rest of the crew about some troubling issues ahead of us, which are going to come to light soon.” He took the seat beside his number one, grabbed his Uffda coffee mug and sipped the hot liquid.

  “You mean more troubling than a swarm of rabid rats attacking our guests and crew?” Jean Pierre didn’t want any coffee. He was fully amped up at this moment, his body providing all the natural stimulant it needed, and so he certainly didn’t need caffeine. Besides, Jean Pierre was barely hanging onto his wits, by the edges of his fingernails. He was mere seconds away from drowning in waves of his own fear. He took in quick shuddering breaths, trying to calm himself down.

  Jean Pierre knew that it was important to look strong and decisive in front of the rest of the crew, especially on the bridge. His captain had taught him this. But in here, in the captain’s ready room, Jean Pierre knew he could be himself, speak his mind, and let his hair down (assuming he had any). “Captain, what the hell is going on? If you have additional information, please tell me.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Jörgen paused and gazed at his staff captain. “I don’t mind telling you that I’m terrified of what we’ll be dealing with in the next few days.”