The girl from this afternoon, Fenna, stepped out from behind a tree, dressed now in shorts and a torn T-shirt. Tears streaked her face as she clutched her bloody arm. “Please, can you help me?” He looked at her face and her wound, calmly raised his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then he turned and jogged off toward the town.
Cruise Ship Reine des Mers, Somewhere in the Indian Ocean
March 30th
“Queen of the Seas, my ass!”
“Dammit, Greg, if you say that one more time, I swear I’ll scream!”
When Greg had suggested the trip as a fun way to accommodate his big promotion and transfer to Johannesburg, Emma pointed out that they were still in the tail end of the monsoon season. But they had decided to go anyway. Monsoon rains this time of year only lasted for a couple hours in the morning, and there were plenty of things for the kids to do on the big cruise ship.
The ship had left Singapore bound for Cape Town on March 5th with 4600 passengers and 2500 crew, and the cruise had been rough from the start. Two days out, the desalination system had broken down and the ship was forced to make an unscheduled two-day stop in Penang. That would have been okay, but it rained hard both days, not only in the morning but all through the day.
A big storm system camped over in the Bay of Bengal and made the crossing miserable. Despite the ship’s huge size, many passengers were seasick, including Greg and their oldest son Tommy.
At Colombo in Sri Lanka, the AC in their room stopped working. The maintenance crew arrived quickly, but their room lay on the sunny side of the ship and it started to get hot. There was nothing they really wanted to see in Colombo, so they took their three boys to the game room and let them feed tokens into the machines all morning. It had a bright side, though. In the arcade they met another couple, John and Karen Clarke, who were Aussies like them with two kids about the same age. John had sold his trucking business and apparently done quite well. They too had taken their kids out of school for the month-long cruise.
Then the night after they left the Maldives, a huge fight had broken out in the casino. It happened just before dawn, they heard, long after they had gone to bed. The staff seemed very closed-mouth about it, but apparently some Russians from Vladivostok had gotten into it with a group of the wealthy Chinese from the balcony suites. Rumor had it that the Russians were naked and having a sex party right out in the open! Other people said they were on some bad drugs. But everyone agreed nudity was involved. The Chinese security people got into a major brawl with the Russians. Furniture broke and blood spilled. The casino closed the next morning so they could clean up the mess and didn’t reopen until after lunch.
They were in the sandwich shop by the arcade when an alarm sounded over the ship’s speakers. It had a pleasant “bing bong ding” sound that kept repeating but they could tell it was an alarm, because two of the young women who worked at the shop looked at each other for a moment in surprise and then immediately hurried over and closed and locked both sets of doors. Emma kept asking the women what was happening, but they didn’t seem to know either. The one that appeared to be in charge said, “The ship is on a temporary lockdown. Please enjoy your food. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
At one point they heard some people running past in the corridor, but then nothing. After about forty-five minutes, another alarm sounded and the girls unlocked the doors again. “There, see?” she said brightly. “Everything’s fine.” But she looked concerned.
After lunch they strolled past the forward lounge. Workmen hustled to stack chairs and take down tables, and a line of cots queued up in the corridor. Two Chinese men in suits argued with one of the senior crew nearby. The officer tried to placate them, but they stormed off angrily.
“Crikey!” John said. “Somebody’s not ’appy.” A man labored just inside the door, loading the stacked chairs onto a dolly. “’Ere, mate,” he said. “What’s going on?”
The man straightened up and looked around. “We’re relocating everyone from the forward port side balcony deck. The whole zone is being sealed off.” He looked around again and lowered his voice. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but they think someone might have tampered with the water supply up there somehow. People have been going batshit crazy and attacking each other. The infirmary is full and so is the brig.”
“A brig? I didn’t know cruise ships even have a brig!”
“Well, they call it a security area, but there are cells down there with bars on ’em. In the Navy, we called that a brig.”
Kenny, who had recently turned five, tugged on Emma’s hand. “Mummy?” he said quietly.
“Not now, Kenny dear.” She looked around the room and felt a lump form in the pit of her stomach.
“So what’s being done about this mess, ’ey? We headin’ back to port?”
“Well, I know the captain’s been asking for permission, but for some reason the Indian government won’t let us come back. Told him to continue on to the Seychelles. Or if he needed better medical assistance, head for Madagascar or the Emirates.”
“Screw me dead! That’ll take a week at least! Did they say why?”
“Dunno. Either they didn’t give a reason or the captain isn’t saying. I know he’s been on the satellite phone with the cruise line all morning trying to work something out. I wish he’d make up his mind, though. There’s a tropical storm forming about 200 miles northwest of Diego Garcia, and if we don’t start making steam, we might clip the edge of it. If you think the Bay of Bengal was bad, wait until you try riding out a typhoon in the Indian Ocean.”
Emma turned and looked out the huge windows lining the corridor. An azure blue sky stretched all the way to the horizon, with not a cloud to be seen.
Kenny tugged at her hand again. “Mummy?”
“What is it, Kenny?”
He pressed her hand to his cheek. “Mummy,” he said. “I don’t feel good.”
The harbor master at Port of Victoria, Seychelles, checked his schedule. The cruise liner Reine des Mers due in late last night, hadn’t arrived yet. It didn’t particularly surprise him. A tropical system off Diego Garcia had fooled everyone and turned northwest, unusual for these waters. She probably veered south to avoid the worst of it. He expected she’d haul in by dinnertime and the passengers would have some stories to tell the folks back home. Still she should have checked in by radio.
But she hadn’t arrived when he left, and she wasn’t there when he came the next morning. He tried to raise her on the radio, but she didn’t respond. He sent a general bolo alert to all ships between there and the Indian coast, and contacted the cruise line’s headquarters in Marseilles.
Nine days later, a container ship making the southern run from Mumbai to Cape Town spotted a smudge of smoke on the southern horizon. No Mayday broadcasts were reported, but when they tried to make radio contact they couldn’t raise anyone, so they diverted and headed south.
Nine hours later they found a debris field. A single bright yellow lifeboat bobbed in the waves. The lifeboat was one of the latest models, built to accommodate three hundred and seventy people. There were eleven survivors on board.
South Elgin, Illinois
April 1st
The old man grunted a bit as he hoisted another forty-pound bag of dog food onto the pile in the back of his old Ford Explorer. 500 pounds of dog food should last about a year, he figured, if he supplemented it with other protein. Feed the troops first, he thought to himself. The huge Farm and Fleet store had allowed him to cross a fistful of items off his list, including shovels, a pick, a couple axes and hatchets, and a thousand yards of rope of various gauges, among others. On an impulse he’d also bought a hundred feet of heavy chain. He had no idea what he’d use it for, but it seemed like a good idea.
His first stop of the day had been a gun shop in Dundee where he often practiced at their range. The old man had a few guns at the townhouse, especially hi
s beloved .45 Colt Government Model that he’d had in Nam, which he took everywhere he traveled. But most of his guns were at his places in Telluride or the Hole. He’d made a serious dent in their supply of .45 and 9mm hollow point, and added the best gunsmithing tool kit they carried. He also purchased four AR15s, a dozen Sig Sauers, mostly P226s, including a pair of the new the MK25s, half a dozen Smith and Wesson Airlites and 3,000 rounds of .357 magnum for them. He picked out a pair of Weatherby Mark V rifles that were chambered for 30-06, and scopes and suppressors to go with them. He’d hoped to find a couple Remington 700s, but the ones they had were all chambered for .226s, a round he disdained. He was old-fashioned, he guessed. He’d shot his first deer with a Winchester 94 using the 30-06, and had stayed with that caliber ever since. As an afterthought he added a Winchester SXP 12 Gauge with a full camo dip. He didn’t much like shooting birds, but a man’s got to eat.
A normal person wouldn’t be allowed to purchase so many guns at one time, but he’d picked up a federal dealer’s license years ago, back when he used to collect guns, and kept it current ever since. It was good to have money, he thought, but sometimes it was better to have guns. Illinois had a 72-hour waiting period for firearm purchases, but he had the FF so it didn’t apply to him. He pulled the Explorer around to the front and loaded all the guns and ammo into the back. He was just finishing up when the owner came outside. He peered into the back of the Explorer and said, “Holy smokes, Owen! I hear you pretty much cleaned us out of Sigs. You planning on going to war?”
He straightened up, wincing a bit. “Just doing a little prepping, Bob.”
“Never thought of you as a prepper. What’s going on?’ He’d known Bob for years, and liked him. The big man was a straight shooter in the old man’s book. He looked around the parking lot, lowered his voice and said, “Listen, this is probably B.S., but you know my brother’s a doc, right?”
“Yeah, with Doctors Without Borders. He’s in the Mideast or something, isn’t he?”
“India, actually, in a city called Raipur. I talked to him last week and he was pretty upset. There have been riots and he’s had some strange patients at his clinic. There’s some weird plague going on over there and according to him, dead people are attacking the living. He actually mentioned the words ‘zombie apocalypse.’”
The big man smiled. “Oh, bullshit,” he said. “You don’t really believe that crap, do you? Figured you for a sensible man.”
“Look, Bob… If it was anybody else I wouldn’t give it a thought. But my brother knows his stuff, and I’ve been checking the news feeds and it feels like something’s going on out there. Lots of unexplained trouble in out of the way places, especially in the Far East.” A flight of geese broke above the tree line and flew over the parking lot, honking loudly, and they both stopped to watch.
“Tell you what, Owen. Do you load?”
“I haven’t in years, but I did in my younger days.” Back in the day, he engaged in competitive pistol shooting and shot every chance he could get, which was often. He found himself spending a fortune on ammo, so he started loading his own. “What are you thinking?”
“I just had a guy trade in an old RCBS Rock Chucker, along with a full set of carbide dies, bullet molds, a lead melting set-up, and all the rest. It’s old, but you know those things are so well made your grandkids will still be using it. Let’s get you set up.”
A while later he drove off with the loader, a digital scale, measures, 20,000 primers in several sizes, and eighty pounds of high-end powder. Plus all the guns and ammo. Thank you, American Express, he thought.
Later that day he hit the Big Lots store where he loaded up on can goods. He made sure to include a lot of Spam. People made jokes about Spam, but he’d always liked it. He noticed it came in different flavors now too. Bacon-flavored, hickory smoked, jalapeno, and even chorizo. He also stocked up on a variety of seasonings, which he figured would come in handy. Plus coffee, although he hated the stuff himself, and chocolate. He figured he needed a lot of chocolate.
Google found him a health food store nearby where he purchased huge bags of a couple different kinds of whole grain rice and several types of beans. He turned to leave when he saw they had a large selection of bulk salts, which surprised him. So he loaded up on sea salt, rock salt, kosher salt, and even some pink salt.
At an army surplus store on Route 31 he found a dozen sets of camos in different sizes, plus ghillie suits in desert brown, woodland camo and dark mossy green. He texted his nephews and asked, “What size shoe do you wear? How about Terry?” and bought them each two pairs of good quality combat boots, and two pairs for Evan. He already had several pairs for himself at home that he wore hunting. At Target he bought a whole bunch of large, heavy-gauge plastic bins in different sizes. And toilet paper. Lots and lots of toilet paper. At Cabela’s he found water purifiers, extra fishing equipment to supplement what he had at the townhouse and a variety of knives, including a half dozen Marine KA-BARs, a big heavy knife with a full tang and a 7-inch blade.
Several times he had to stop at home and empty his Explorer. Each time he did, he closed the garage door before he started unloading, and covered everything with a couple tarps before he went out for more.
By dinner time he was exhausted, but he knew the boys needed their exercise. He loaded them up in the car, drove a few doors down to another unit, and rang the bell. He immediately heard a dog barking, and the door opened. The man who answered was thin and wiry, with a big nose and a broad smile on his homely lined face. He had never asked, but he figured Floyd was pushing 90. He and his wife Marilyn were here already when he bought the place, and he liked the old couple. “Hey, Floyd. Can Willow come out and play?”
Floyd looked at the dog dancing around his feet. “What do you say, Willow? Do you want to go play with your boyfriends?” Willow, a brown mutt with short legs and a thick body, loved to play. Since Floyd and his wife didn’t get around very well, he took Willow to the dog park with them whenever he could. When Marilyn had a rough patch with her health the year before, he even kept Willow at his place for a couple weeks, so Floyd could stay with her at the hospital. He didn’t mind; Willow was well-behaved and the boys loved to have her around.
He drove them all to the dog park where he sat on the bench and watched them roughhouse. On the way home he stopped at Portillo’s drive-through and picked up a bacon burger for himself and three plain hotdogs for the animals. He didn’t normally feed them people food, but he figured pretty soon there might not be any more people food to give.
That night, tired as he felt, he made calls to a number of old army friends and hunting buddies to warn them of what might be coming. Most scoffed, a few didn’t. One of the first calls he made was to his old friend, Rick Cenarrusa. He had met Rick in Boot, and they served together for two of his three tours in Nam. Rick came from a very successful family of sheepherders from Idaho. His great grandfather, a Basque from northern Spain, had come to mine silver in the late 1800s and found a beautiful countryside whose mountains and lush river valleys reminded him of his home in Cantabria along the north coast of Spain. He did well in silver, and when the silver vein played out, he opted to stay, and used the money he’d saved to purchase a nice spread and turned to sheep ranching, as his family back in Cantabria had done for hundreds of years. He sent word to his family, and soon brothers and sisters and cousins joined him. Many Basques never considered themselves citizens of Spain, but rather a conquered people, and the wide open West, with its rugged landscape and spirit of self-reliance, felt more like home than home did. The family now owned one of the largest sheep ranches in Idaho.
He and Rick had remained close ever since the war. He’d stayed at the family ranch frequently, and they often went on extended hunting trips for elk and mulies and bighorn. Rick’s first child had been unable to pronounce “Owen” as a toddler. Instead it came out “Ownie.” So even now, to Rick’s kids and grandkids, he wa
s “Uncle Ownie.”
Rick was also a prepper.
Owen laid out what he knew and they talked about it for a while, going over possible scenarios.
“You know,” Rick said, “This sounds like Angikuni and Hoer Verde.”
“I’m not familiar with those.”
“Okay, well, Hoer Verde was a town in Brazil. Population about 600. One day in 1923 some people come to town and find it’s totally deserted. Everything in its place, except the people were all gone. The only clues were in the schoolhouse. On a chalkboard, somebody had written the words, ‘There is no salvation’ in Portuguese, and there was a gun that had been fired recently. And that was it. Check Google. You’ll find them both. There’ve been others too, but these are the most famous.”
“Angikuni was a big Eskimo village of 2,000 people way up in northern Canada. In 1930 this old trapper shows up at the village and everybody’s gone. Vanished. There’s food, clothing, hides out drying... Same thing. Everything’s normal, except all the people are gone. No one ever figured out where they went. They just disappeared.”
“So what do you think it means?”
“I don’t know. One place is bitter cold, the other is steaming hot. Field testing, maybe?” They both fell silent for a while.
Finally Rick said, “You know we’re ready here for whatever might happen. You should come out, bring Evan and his kids. We have room. There’ll always be a place for you here, my brother.” They wished each other well. He hung up with tears in his eyes.
Over the next couple days he ran more errands, including a stop at Home Depot where he loaded up on an assortment of power tools, especially a table saw and a nail gun. Almost as an afterthought he added a selection of hand tools, including a couple of hand drills, an assortment of files and rasps, and a good set of chisels. He had a complete woodworking shop at his studio in Telluride where he liked to make his own frames and the occasional piece of furniture, but that was a thousand miles away and he didn’t want to go there in case he couldn’t make it back. He had no idea how long he had, but if the shit came down, he wanted to be here to protect his family.
The Old Man & the End of the World | Book 1 | Things Fall Apart Page 6
