The Final Outbreak

by M. L. Banner

  “Captain,” TJ asked, her voice almost inaudible through the din, “Do you think Mount Etna's eruption will affect our itinerary?"

  “In a way, it already has, Theresa Jean.” Captain Christiansen sipped a coffee. He was about to say something more, when the head waiter handed him a note.

  At first, the captain’s stately poker-like mug held. The distinct lines of his ruddy features were like deeply chiseled navigational marks carved over forty years of working on ships. Then they did a course correction, only for a moment. But others were watching. So they steered back to their normal intensity.

  He grabbed the shoulder of his staff captain, and when he stood up he whispered something that changed Jean Pierre’s demeanor in an instant.

  "I'm sorry, but I have to leave you, but we have a few things we must attend to. I’ll be in contact with you shortly,” he said to Ted. “Theresa Jean and Ted.” He smiled and nodded to both of them. “Thank you for your enjoyable company.”

  He still acted like there was nothing wrong in the world, yet he hurried to a back exit. The staff captain followed, but hesitated as he passed by TJ, casually thrusting his hand out into TJ’s. “Charmed, Theresa Jean... Ted.” He then bounded quietly after the captain.

  While Ted and the MDR watched them leave, TJ glanced down into her palm. In it was a crib note: “Tomorrow @ 6:30 A.M.”

  13

  Jaga

  “Taufan?” Jaga whispered, fearful of letting anyone outside his quarters hear him.

  “Taufan?” the young man called again, rummaging through the belongings around his bunk.

  He stood back up and glared at his bunk area, scratching his disheveled hair, forcing himself to think of what he must have missed.

  “Jaga, what are you doing?” boomed his best friend, who had quietly entered and snuck up from behind.

  Although startled, Jaga was also relieved that it was just Yakobus and not someone else. Then, Jaga’s features drooped, like a slice of cheese on a hot sandwich. He leaned over to his friend’s ear. “Yakobus, I can’t find Taufan anywhere. He’s not in his box.”

  Yakobus nodded calmly, and quickly stepped over to the open door of their shared quarters, closing it tight. Putting an ear to the door to make sure what they said would not be heard, he whispered, “Could he have gotten out?”

  “I don’t know.” Jaga moaned while trying to massage the worry from his temples.

  They both knew Jaga would be fired for hiding his pet ferret on board. Their superior, the assistant chief of housekeeping, was okay with the infraction, if it was kept quiet and no one else outside of his roommates knew about it. If their secret left their inner circle or if Taufan happened to spring free to another area of the ship, Jaga’s years with Regal European would end abruptly.

  His roommates would never break Jaga’s confidence, not only because they too loved Taufan, but because they believed the little guy brought them luck. They also felt sorry for him. Besides being small for a ferret—not that ferrets were big to begin with—Taufan often shivered when scared. It was both pitiful and cute at the same time. Taufan apparently had a much lower than normal body temperature and pulse rate, compared to a typical ferret. So he often shook as a reflex to the outside temperature. Jaga had even hand-stitched a little covering out of athletic socks to keep him warm. Although it looked ridiculous, his roommates agreed the ferret-suit was perfect for Taufan.

  Jaga first noticed Taufan was missing when he found the empty sock covering on his bed. When Jaga noticed it was somewhat torn, he became alarmed and started his search.

  At night Taufan normally slept with him under the covers. And when Jaga arose, before he left for the day to start his duties, he would put Taufan in a giant shoe box, with holes poked into it for air. Inside was a small rolled-up towel, which acted as a bed, and even a little litter compartment, separate from Taufan’s sleeping area, for him to do his business. At night Jaga left the box open and Taufan would crawl in and use the ferret-bathroom or he’d crawl up and say “hello” to his roommates, or just prowl around the room. Usually when Jaga woke up, Taufan was by his side, often snuggled into his neck. But during the day, he stayed in his box. No exceptions.

  Today, when Jaga had returned, Taufan was gone and his box’s top was askew.

  There were previous occasions where Jaga had thought that Taufan had broken free from his box. Items under his bed, where the box lay, were moved and the box top was not quite on right. Yet he had never caught Taufan outside of his box during the day, until now.

  Yakobus pulled Taufan’s box from under his bed and poked around underneath with his flashlight.

  “I already searched there,” Jaga snapped.

  Yakobus shot back a glare and then took a long breath and said in a soft tone, “Jaga, I’m just trying to help. You might have forgotten something.”

  Jaga hung his head, feeling sorrow for his momentary spike of anger directed at his friend. It was obvious Yakobus had his best interests in mind. Mostly he just missed his little friend.

  The door crashed open and Asep bounded through, like the big, bumbling fool that he was.

  Yakobus and Jaga both spun on their heels, their eyes meeting Asep’s, who halted mid-motion. This was the roommate they liked the least. Worse, Asep was assigned to several of the concierge class rooms on deck 8 of the ship and always reminded his roomies of this.

  “What’s going on, brothers?” Asep asked, eying each suspiciously from under his flawlessly coiffed hair, which hung just above his eyes. He sported a crooked smile, perfectly chiseled into his olive features, which had never shown a blemish. He was working on a dark stubble, even though he had shaved a second time at noon.

  Asep was always calling them ‘brothers’ even though they had no direct relation—that they knew of.

  Jaga hesitated answering, intent on measuring his reply so as to not reveal too much. So Yakobus jumped in. “Jaga has lost something. I was trying to help him find it.”

  “It wasn’t that silly rat of yours, was it?” Asep was always calling Taufan a rat.

  “Have you seen Taufan?” Jaga pleaded.

  Asep looked over his shoulder first, apparently making sure no one was listening, then back to his roomies. “I came in here about twenty minutes ago to get something I had forgotten. Anyways”—he always started his stories with anyways—“sometimes, when no one’s here, I would say ‘Hi’ to your rat. He’s my buddy too, you know.”

  Jaga nodded, now understanding why Taufan’s box top and some of his own belongings had been moved at various times.

  “Anyways, when I came back to the room twenty minutes ago, I visited with Taufan. But he jumped out of his box and bit me.” He held out his hand to lend support to his story.

  “Did he escape?” Jaga wasn’t interested in Asep’s superficial wound.

  “Well, no. Anyways, I closed the door right away, as you had asked, and he ran around the room, all crazy-like. Anyways, he stopped on our desk.” Asep pointed to the common desk they all used. “And I was standing there.” He pointed to where Yakobus was standing now, in front of an open locker.

  Asep paused, like he was trying to gather how to explain what he was going to say next. “Anyways, your rat just stared at me and his eyes were red, and... well, I swear he growled at me.”

  “Ferrets don’t growl,” Jaga snapped back.

  “Anyways, he made weird noises—it sounded like a growl, okay. And then he ran at me and then jumped for me. His mouth was open and I swear to you he was going for my face...”

  “What happened, pretty-boy?” Yakobus prodded, impatient to conclude the story. Asep loved to draw out a story forever, especially if it concerned his “perfect olive complexion.” Besides, they all had to get back to work soon and certainly couldn’t be standing around here all day long listening to another one of Asep’s stories.

  “Anyways, Taufan tried to attack me—I swear—and I just reacted. So I fell to the floor.” Asep demonstrated, collapsing down t
o his hands and knees.

  “Anyways, Taufan missed me and landed inside the locker there.” Again Asep pointed to where Yakobus was standing.

  “You opened this locker?” Yakobus asked, looking at the closed locker.

  “No! It was open when I got here. Catur must have left it open. Anyways, Taufan had landed inside Catur’s locker. And you know Catur is a pig and so Taufan couldn’t get out because he was trapped in all of Catur’s stuff. So I spun around and slammed the locker door shut while he was flailing around inside.” Asep demonstrated Taufan’s movements, convulsively waving his hands and arms, like someone having a seizure.

  “You left him in there?” asked Jaga, somewhat incredulous about Asep’s whole tall tale.

  “That’s why I came back here again, I wanted you to know that I—” Asep glared at Yakobus, who was opening the locker door. “Don’t do th—”

  Yakobus yelped as Taufan leapt out of the locker past Yakobus and made a beeline for the entrance to their quarters, which Asep had left open.

  Asep reached for the entrance door, just one second too slow. As the door seemed to shut in slow motion, they all watched the flash of Taufan whipping around the door frame’s base and down the hallway, out of sight.

  They stood silently for a moment, unsure what to do next.

  Jaga leapt for the door, opened it, swept through, and ran after Taufan, anxious to save his ferret and his job.

  14

  Al

  The speed with which Al had lost control of his boarders, and therefore his career, was mind-numbing.

  After a quick nap, he was woken in his room by a call from the hotel captain, “We’re getting complaints on decks 2 through 4 about some full-on ruckus involving dogs.”

  Al could hear them long before he stepped into the Regal European Pet Spa. Inside, the barking was so loud he had to cover his ears. He hollered at the guests. “Hey-hey-hey. What’s all the barking about?” It was a rhetorical question, because he knew exactly what was upsetting all the animals.

  He marched down the spa’s walkway, passing each pet-suite. If he had looked through each floor-to-ceiling glass door, he’d have seen each resident scurrying around its space, barking its discontent at the last suite at the end of the walkway: The Presidential Pup Suite.

  Al halted in front of this double suite, which looked even bigger because of the diminutive size of its occupant. He just glared at the pup.

  Not acting its size, the white toy poodle stood resolutely behind the clear glass, with all the bluster of an animal ten times its weight. It snarled erratically through its teeth. Then, upon seeing Al, it focused an ascending growl at him, as if seething with pure hatred. Its eyes were a crimsoned fury. Its gnarling rumble crescendoed and, like a coiled-up spring releasing, it leapt at the door. Ignoring any tenderness it must have felt from the injured paw—there were three stitches under those bandages—it pummeled the glass boundary with its front paws and jaws.

  Al could do nothing but gawk at the poodle, driven mad by something absolutely mysterious.

  The poodle’s behavior had him completely flummoxed. After its owner had left, the dog had almost immediately fallen asleep in its bed, without so much as a whimper. And he figured the poodle had finally settled down.

  Then this morning, when Al came in to clean the suites, Monsieur’s personality rapidly changed. First it was confused, bumping into the walls and barking at the air. Then, it became outright hostile. When Al attempted to take the animals for their morning walk he had to muzzle the poodle and leave it to stew about its behavior. It wasn’t his first time dealing with an aggressive dog. And so he assumed this pampered pooch was no different.

  Al had learned long ago that he had to act quickly so as to wrestle the behavior out of the animal before there was a chance it would bite him or any of the others. It was simple: he’d quickly muzzle the offending dog, and that dog would learn its boundaries. Dogs were smart and pretty quickly figured out what was acceptable and what was not. An Aggressive would settle down soon after that. Once its behavior was more passive, he’d remove the muzzle as a reward. If it didn’t play nice at that point, he’d muzzle it again. With the more combative breeds such as pit bulls or chows, he’d sometimes have to muzzle the animal as many as three times before it had learned its place. With Monsieur, it had already been four, and was about to be five. It was only then that he started to doubt whether this behavioral modification technique was going work at all with this boarder.

  Al pulled the clipboard out of its sleeve, just off the door, and reread Monsieur’s details. Maybe he’d missed something.

  He hadn’t.

  Then he considered the injury to its paw. He’d thought the dog had cut it on one of the many sharp objects in the butcher’s area, but maybe it was something else. A horrid thought hit him: what if it had been bitten by one of the rats and the rat was rabid?

  Although the dog now displayed many of the signs common to rabies, there was the problem of incubation period. From his veterinary training, he knew the typical period from exposure to onset of clinical signs was weeks, not twenty-four hours or less. No, it had to be a behavioral issue. Al made a decision.

  He flipped a switch on the wall, and the Presidential Suite’s glass door went milky-white. Its snarling occupant disappeared from his sight. He wasn’t sure how the door worked—something having to do with electrical poles and filaments—but it seemed to mostly silence the animal’s tirade. Rather than growling, it seemed to busy itself, probably with one of its many toys.

  Al turned and walked back toward the front of the spa, flipping each of the suite’s door switches as he passed, until he reached the first door. The spa’s din rapidly became muted, and then blinked out. It was time for their walk, and Al thought it would do them good to get out and walk out their agitation. He’d muzzle and leave the poodle once again, for punishment. One last shot with that one.

  One by one he pulled out each dog and attached their leashes to the master harness, making them sit and stay by the door. Although two of the dogs acted confused, they all behaved. When it was time to deal with the poodle, he flipped the light/door switch. His mouth drooped open and his jaw went slack.

  The double suite was utterly destroyed: the bedding ripped to shreds, the toys similarly disemboweled, pictures from the walls knocked down and torn, and finally, bloody paw prints everywhere. The little dog stood transfixed by itself in a cracked mirror on the opposite wall, foaming spittle pooling below it.

  Al shook his head once and regained his composure. Now was the time to muzzle the dog, while it was preoccupied. Al acted quickly, but the dog was quicker.

  He swished the door open and took three rapid steps to the dog, who was still glowering at its mirror image. It appeared frozen but for its rapidly heaving chest. With his left hand, he reached for the dog’s collar, and with his right he moved to slip on the muzzle. But before his left touched the collar, the animal snapped its head back and sank two of his canines into Al, who reacted by dropping the muzzle. Monsieur then dashed out the door, toward freedom. Al leapt for the crazed animal, futilely attempting to get a hand on it. But the dog was gone.

  Al scuttled out of the suite on elbows and knees, just as Monsieur hopped on top of the giant German shepherd named Max, the same dog who had stomped on Monsieur last night.

  Max, like Al, watched in sheer disbelief as the toy poodle, who was maybe a twentieth the size of the shepherd, sank its itty-bitties into the massive shepherd’s neck. The shepherd shrieked and then clawed at the air and flung its head and body sideways to detach the small ratlike dog. Monsieur flew several feet before sliding to a stop against a wall. But it wasn’t dissuaded. The poodle righted itself and leapt into the pack of dogs, chomping at anything near its mouth.

  All the dogs were panicked now, snarling and barking at the pint-sized terror. But size didn’t seem to matter in this crazy world. Little Monsieur viciously targeted the next dog in the group, a gray schnauzer with white leg
s. Once again, the smaller but far more ferocious dog had no trouble overpowering the larger one.

  Al was panicked himself, as he raced to break up the melee. The little dog was drawing blood, lots of it. And the other dogs were going crazy trying to get away from the little devil. All the dogs were going to be seriously injured if he couldn’t stop this. And... he glanced down at his throbbing hand and saw that he was gushing blood everywhere from a larger than expected gash.

  ~~~

  Eloise Carmichael stumbled on the last step of the stairwell, nearly falling over before one of her five-inch heels caught the sheer material, partially tearing the train of her $20,000 dress.

  She righted herself and inspected the damage, pulling the train’s folds forward and contorting at an odd angle. From what she could see, she assessed it was only a small, unnoticeable tear. Most eyes shouldn’t be on that part of her dress anyway.

  She stood erect and automatically preened her hair, certain some of the strands must be out of place. She stared forward at nothing. She felt lost and now, thinking about it, she’d completely forgotten why she was on this deck in the first place.

  Her eyes searched for some sign and she found herself before the deck 1 elevators. Both sets of doors were framed by a golden metallic material, polished to a nearly mirror sheen. Eloise now saw her own reflection. Better do a systems check, as husband number two or three—she couldn’t remember which one—used to say.

  She scrutinized her face. After her second most recent facelift, she looked pretty good. Her fingers patted at her throat, causing some small tremors in the little wattle that hung below her chin. She would need to have them work on that soon, but otherwise...

  Passable.

  She touched at the ends of her hair, which had held well throughout the evening.

  Passable.

  Next, she examined her figure, wonderfully accentuated by the dress. She stood up straighter still and held her hands below her bust, pushing up and letting go: the dress didn’t have any bra inside to lift and support, although, after the $30,000 augmentation by her plastic surgeon, her puppies held firm.