by Bob Howard
The nurses turned him over to the quarantine staff and reassured him that he would be fine. Kathy walked over to the quarantine area and watched as they got the man situated just as if he was checking into a hospital.
Chief Barnes came up to Kathy with a grim look on his face. She patiently waited without asking what was wrong. He would tell her what it was in his own way.
“Officer McGinley, the Captain asked me to fill you in on what’s happening ashore,” he said.
They stepped out of earshot, and the Chief gave her a horrific description of what they had left behind. Not just every country, but every major city had reached the point of no return and were overrun by infected dead who were swarming into survivor strongholds by the hundreds and thousands. He told her they were monitoring a TV station in Wilmington, North Carolina that was still broadcasting, but they didn’t know how much longer they would be on the air.
When the Chief was done, she asked if there was any good news, and she could see that the Chief was trying to find a bright side of this situation he could share with her. He leaned in and whispered, “I want to show you something.”
Chief Barnes led her to a door that was discreetly placed in a corner and entered a long passageway. “There’s a corridor like this on every deck. You’ll notice they are along the side of the ship, and no matter which deck you’re on, you will come to a ladder that goes down to the next deck. When you are low enough to the waterline, there are lifejackets next to doors where you can jump from. If you don’t have time to make it to a life raft, don’t hesitate to find one of these jump doors.”
As he explained, he led Kathy to the first ladder and down to the next corridor. She saw the jump door and a cabinet full of lifejackets. She looked out through a window and saw how high they were above the water.
“The jump won’t kill me,” she asked?
“No, not if you do this with your arms.” He demonstrated by hugging himself tightly across the chest. “You don’t want your arms flailing around when you hit the water, and this will also keep you from hitting yourself in the face or from getting hit if there’s something already in the water. Remember, if you’re jumping you probably won’t be alone.”
They went back to the quarantine area and found that another bite mark had been found. This time it was a whole family that was in the quarantine area watching as a woman was being made comfortable. She was a wife and a mother, and her family didn’t want to leave her.
Jean walked over to Kathy and the Chief and told them she felt like it wasn’t worth making an issue of the family staying together until there was a reason. As she was saying it, another family was being escorted into the quarantine area. Kathy didn’t see the point in watching to see who it was. Sooner or later it would be a child, and then it would start to get to her. She knew she had to stay objective if she was going to make the right decisions.
She motioned for the Chief and Jean to step outside. “I know it depends on how many there are, but do we have a secure area in case one of them dies?”
The Chief said, “We have a small brig, but it can only hold about six people, and not separately from each other. The only thing I can think of is being prepared to drop the dead overboard.”
“We could monitor closely in quarantine, and if someone looks like they are getting critical, we can tell the families their loved one is being moved to a medical treatment room. Then we can secure the infected with restraints in the medical bay,” said Jean.
“It’s worth a try,” said Kathy. “I can’t think of any other way. In any crisis crowd control can make or break you. How about we also tell the families we will announce visiting hours when we’re finished with the exams? That will at least stall the inevitable.”
“Sooner or later the Captain is going to be forced to tell everyone just how bad things are,” added the Chief.
******
Fatigue finally caught up with Officer Kathy McGinley, and Chief Barnes saw it before she did. After some coaxing he got her to a cabin on the level reserved for officers. He told her they needed her thinking with a clear head, and he had a steward bring a tray of food. She managed to not cry until he pulled the cabin door closed. Then she had to cry it out before she could eat the food.
She wanted a shower, but she figured she could do that after she shut her eyes for a few minutes, but the food and the crying had drained her. A few minutes turned into eight hours.
It probably would have been longer if not for the knocking on her cabin door. She opened it to find the steward with coffee and breakfast. She felt a little guilty about eating breakfast served in a private cabin, but the smell of the coffee made her stomach growl, and she couldn’t resist. Guilt was okay, but going hungry would be stupid.
She found Chief Barnes in the dining hall where he was keeping an eye on the quarantine area.
“How’s it going, Chief?” She noticed he looked tired and more serious than the day before.
He scratched at his beard and nodded toward the quarantine area. “We’ve examined about seventy-five percent of the passengers and crew, but the number of bitten really jumped. One thing we didn’t think of was that whole families would have bites.”
“What?” She couldn’t believe her ears.
“Yeah, we had families that must have been caught in swarms of the infected. Some were bitten more than once. We had to move some to the medical ward to be restrained. They weren’t looking too good. As a matter of fact, we had one family that didn’t even need to be brought to the examining area or quarantine first. They were so far gone that they were taken straight from a cabin to the medical ward. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t started going door to door. Someone would’ve gone there sooner or later, and after the door was open, it would’ve been loose.”
Kathy was about to ask the Chief if anyone had died when she noticed something under her feet. It felt like a gentle swell of the deck, unlike what she had been feeling since they left port.
“What was that?”
The Chief looked at her like he didn’t understand the question at first, but then he realized he was taking for granted that others knew what it felt like to be at anchor.
“I think you just felt the ship roll a bit. We dropped anchor a couple of hours ago,” he said.
“We dropped anchor? Why?”
“Like I said, a couple of hours ago, right after the Navy showed up. They hailed us and asked if we had any infected on board. When we told them that was affirmative, they ordered us to drop anchor. Apparently they were afraid we would try to make port.”
“Did you tell them what we were doing? You know, quarantine then restraint?”
The Chief let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, we did, but we didn’t have a plan for the next step, so they think we’re planning to keep the infected alive.”
“Who or what gave them that idea?”
“Officer McGinley, the Captain apparently didn’t share our feelings about the doctor you took an instant liking to yesterday, and he let him talk with the Navy when they asked for the Chief Medical Officer. He wasn’t exactly supportive of you. Instead of leading them to understand that you had taken measures to control the spread of infection, he made it sound like you were trying to help the infected.”
“How long do we have to stay here? Do you know?”
“I have an idea,” he said. “I think they want to see if we can keep the infection under control. If we dispose of the infected as they die, and no one new becomes infected, then they will let us resume our trip, but I have to ask you Officer McGinley, were we going anywhere in particular, anyway?”
When Kathy thought about it, it made perfect sense. The Navy couldn’t do anything more for the people on the cruise ship than watch and wait, and even if they kept moving, there was nowhere to go. They might as well save the fuel for when they needed it……whenever that might be.
“So, Chief, has anyone died yet?”
“No, but it won’t be lo
ng. There are several who are restrained and their vital signs are getting worse. Maybe we should go down to sick bay and see if we have to face that decision yet,” said the Chief.
Kathy looked around and spotted Jean. She looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep, but she smiled warmly when she saw Kathy and the Chief looking in her direction.
“Jean,” Kathy called out to her across the room. “Can you go with us to sick bay?”
Jean weaved her way through the people still waiting to be examined until she caught up with them. “Good morning, what are we doing, Kathy?”
Kathy gave the tired looking nurse a quick hug and asked, “Have you gotten any rest or even food?”
“Oh, I’ve got time for that later. We’re almost done. I’ll get some rest after we’re finished examining everyone.”
“Nurse Mitchell, as the new Chief of Security, I’m ordering you to get some food and then some rest, but first we need for you to come to sick bay with us. It may be time for us to take the next step after restraint.”
Jean Mitchell got the same look on her face that Chief Barnes was wearing. The question they couldn’t answer was whether or not they would have enough time between the death of an infected person and when they came back.
Kathy felt like she had known these two people her whole life, and she could read the concern they had on their faces.
“We need a plan,” she said. “I think we should leave them restrained as we remove them from sick bay.”
“I agree,” added Chief Barnes. “While we’re at anchor we have a floating dock in the water on the starboard side. Sick bay has a direct exit onto the floating dock as a precaution. Under normal circumstances it would allow for rapid evacuation of passengers under a medical emergency. Ironically, we will be using it for rapid disposal of the dead.”
The trio was somber as they navigated through the ship and down to sick bay. The atmosphere was even worse when they arrived. There were several armed guards standing by outside the door, and they took a few moments to brief them on their plan. They stepped through the door to the sound of several crying people. Most were infected and restrained, but the crying was from loved ones keeping vigil.
“I thought we agreed we would keep uninfected family members from coming to sick bay with the ones who need to be restrained,” said Kathy.
Jean and Chief Barnes exchanged looks, and the Chief answered, “We did, but we also thought the Chief Medical Officer would stay in the brig longer. It could be worse.”
“How could it be worse?”
Jean answered this time, “He’s so busy kissing up to the Captain that he doesn’t have time to be down here bothering us. Besides he can’t stand to be around this many sick people.”
Together they moved to the bed of a man who looked very pallid, and his eyes were closed. Jean listened to his breathing with a stethoscope and then used a pen light to check his pupils. She silently nodded toward the starboard exit to indicate the time had come for the final step. The Chief had security guards move partitions into place, and they quietly wheeled the bed to the exit.
Without a word, they removed the restraints, rolled the man onto his side and put a tie-strap around his wrists behind the back. The exit was made for rapid evacuation, but it was still a chore to get the man onto the floating dock. They were just letting his body slip into the water when his eyes popped open and he began snapping his teeth. Jean had a close call but got her arms out of the way with only a torn shirt sleeve. She was visibly shaken and kept saying, ‘no’ in a low voice. Kathy immediately inspected her arm for her and couldn’t find a scratch.
“Oh my God that was close,” said Chief Barnes.
The three of them watched as the man slowly sank below the surface. His eyes still seemed to be on Jean, and his teeth were still snapping at her. Kathy couldn’t tell if he was really breathing or if he was just filling up with water, but it didn’t matter to her. She found she wasn’t even thinking of him as anything but a danger to her and the others, just like the people back at the cruise terminal.
Jean was the first to speak. “He shouldn’t have gotten on the ship. He should have stayed behind and not put everyone else in danger.”
“Not much for eulogies, are you Jean?” asked the Chief.
“I guess I don’t have much sympathy right now. If he had bitten me, I would have sunk with him to the bottom before I would’ve put everyone else in danger,” she answered.
“Too bad everyone doesn’t feel the same way,” said Kathy. She didn’t know if she would have tried to stop Jean, but she hoped she could be as brave if it came to that decision.
They walked back inside single file and were met by one of the nurses working the ward.
Jean asked as she approached, “What is it, Carrie?”
“We have two more who look like they’ve expired. I checked their vitals, and both are zero.” Carrie was an experienced trauma nurse who had seen death before, but she looked different this time. “One is just a kid,” she added.
The trio of McGinley, Mitchell, and Barnes filed into the room and went to the beds indicated by Carrie.
Jean asked her, “Any idea which one went first, Carrie? We may need those few seconds.”
“It was close, but I think his father was first.” She pointed at the man restrained in the bed across from the little boy. As she pointed at him, his eyes opened, and he immediately began fighting against his restraints.
This time there was no attempt to restrain the arms behind the back. As if they had discussed it beforehand, they let the brakes loose on the bed and wheeled the man away. Chief Barnes was in the lead with one end, and Carrie was at the feet. As they were going out the door onto the floating dock, Kathy and Jean were right behind with the second bed. By the time they were going through the door, Chief Barnes and Carrie had dumped the entire bed over the side with the man still restrained. The added weight made it sink like a rock despite the buoyancy of the mattress.
They pushed the second bed into position and removed the restraints while tipping the bed to one side. The body fell freely into the water and sank, mercifully before the boy had a chance to come back as one of the infected dead.
This time they stopped for a moment of silence. The father could have told someone he had been bitten, but the boy had probably stayed quiet because he had been told to.They all understood hope, and hope that your child was going to live is one of the most powerful forms of hope they could think of.
Before going back inside, they had a quick discussion about what they had done. They didn’t want to throw beds over the side, but the alternative was too risky.
Kathy was the one to make the hard decision, but putting it into words to the others made it sound like the words were coming from somewhere else.
“We should start restraining the hands behind the back in advance, and I think a mouthpiece should be taped into place.”
Carrie asked, “Can’t we sedate them?”
“We know sedatives will work while they’re alive, but I doubt they would do anything after they come back,” said Jean.
Kathy added, “I had wondered the same thing at one point, and I even thought about euthanizing them, but we know what would happen after they die. The only thing we would be doing is speeding up the process.”
Chief Barnes said, “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”
No one answered him, but each quietly acknowledged to themselves that they had all been thinking the same thing at some point.
Over the next hour they made the trip outside a dozen more times. Fifteen bodies sank out of sight, and it never got easier for them. Maybe it was easier to accomplish because they were getting practice, and maybe they lacked sympathy for those who had selfishly put everyone in danger, but they felt like it was a never ending funeral.
The Chief was the first to notice that their Navy escort had pulled away. He guessed that the crew of the destroyer had watched them and decided they were doing what they had to in or
der to survive. They also knew there was nothing they could do to help without placing their crew in harm’s way.
As they entered the sick bay after making a trip outside like some sort of grim reapers, they were greeted by a crewman who was carrying a message from the staff in the dining hall. The breathless crewman managed to tell them there was some sort of problem with the Chief Medical Officer.
Carrie gathered together a new team to help her with the gruesome chore of removing the dead, and the trio that had become inseparable went to the dining hall. They didn’t know what they were going to find, but if it involved the walking ego with the title of Chief Medical Officer, they knew it wouldn’t be good. As soon as they walked into the large hall, he charged in their direction. Behind him work crews were dismantling the examining and quarantine areas.
“I need to talk with you,” he shouted as he closed the gap between them. “You work for me.” He jabbed a finger toward Jean. “And I out rank you,” he directed toward Chief Barnes. His glare turned toward Officer McGinley, and he practically spit on her when he shouted, “And you have no authority on this ship. The Captain said so.”
He had no sooner finished the sentence when chaos broke out behind him. Having said his piece, he was satisfied that he had put everyone in their proper place, so he charged back to the disruption in the far corner of the dining area.
“Can’t you morons take down a simple partition without causing such a racket?” He disappeared into the quarantine area yelling something about people following orders, but the yelling turned into an unnaturally high scream. Medical staff and passengers alike began streaming out of the quarantine section, and they were closely followed by at least four infected who were biting victims who hadn’t been able to get away.
The Chief Medical Officer was only able to get as far as the entrance to the partitions that created the quarantine section. Kathy saw him go down with huge patches of blood spreading across his white uniform. His screams were from the agony of being bitten by two of the infected. He disappeared as quickly as he had appeared.
