by Jon Schafer
Cage’s mind flashed to pictures he had seen of people who had been liberated from World War II concentration camps. They were the only things in his life's experience he could compare to the sight in front of him.
Two living skeletons covered with open sores lay on top of a stained mattress in the center of the room. Surrounding them were dozens of empty cans that had weeks ago held food and had been literally licked clean. Two plastic jugs, each a quarter full of rust colored water, sat on the floor. A short distance beyond these was the picked clean carcasses of what looked to have been two dogs and the skeletons of a dozen rats. Looking through an open door leading off of the room to the right, Cage could see inside a bathroom that seemed to literally swim before his eyes like a moving shadow. This was where the buzzing sound came from. It was infested with thousands of flies. Focusing again on the two people lying on the mattress, he could see that they too were beset by flies that buzzed around their sores and crawled across their bodies.
At the same time sickened and mesmerized by the sight, it took him a minute to come to his senses. Reality struck him like a pool cue between the eyes. Calling out for his medics to come inside on the double, he went to open the window to get some air moving through the room.
As he reached out to move the curtain aside, a barely audible voice from one of the skeletons said, “No. You'll let them in,” and then started crying softly as it asked Cage if he was real.
Two medics showed up and started tending to the emaciated couple on the bed, so Cage went to search the rest of the house. He knew what it contained due to the smell that hung in the air. On the back porch he found it, the bones of a human skeleton.
Through his disgust, the thought came to him that it was ironic for people who were trying to keep from getting eaten to resort to cannibalism.
He pushed down his revulsion as he considered how to handle the situation.
Charge the couple with murder? That was impossible since courts, judges and, thank God, lawyers were a thing of the past. Even if Major Conway convened a court of law at the base, whatever verdict and punishment they handed down would never be held up if things ever went back to normal.
Handle it myself? Martial law had been declared, so he knew he would be entirely justified in meting out punishment for any crime he came across.
But what would be the punishment?
Death?
Did the people in this house commit murder? As far as he knew, there hadn't been a situation like this in the history of the Arkansas National Guard.
He felt relieved when he decided that he would have the two people transferred back to the base and dump the problem in Major Conway’s lap. Not only the legal, but also the moral and ethical aspects of the situation were far beyond his scope. Plus, underlying this was the question he had to ask himself; what would I do if I were trapped in this house?
Standing at the bottom of the stairs in the Clarksville Courthouse, Cage tentatively sniffed the air and was relieved. While the smell of human feces and urine were thick in the air, the smell of human meat was not.
One of the soldiers saw him and said, “It’s pretty bad upstairs, sir. But I don't think they've been eating each other.”
The second soldier handed over the gas mask that each of the people on the S and R team carried and added, “You'll need this though. With no running water...”
The mask wouldn't completely block out the smell, but it would cut down on it considerably. He took it with a thank you.
The other soldier handed his to the man accompanying Cage, and the two started up the stairs.
When he arrived at the jail area, he saw Jones carrying on a conversation with someone through a steel door. Noticing his CO, Jones’ voice sounded hollow through his own gasmask as he said in greeting, “There's a total of twenty-seven, sir. Physically they're all in good shape. This used to be a civil defense shelter so they had food and water. Dysentery seems to be their biggest problem.”
Rapping the steel door with his knuckles, he added, “Guy that I’ve been talking to told me that one of the cops who locked down in here with them got infected a couple weeks ago and started freaking out. Thought the others were gonna kill him when they found out, which they were. Late that night, he grabbed all the weapons and forced everybody in here. Left them some food and water and just wandered off, sir.”
“That must have been the guy we capped at the front door,” one of Jones’ men chimed in.
Cage studied the door and then asked his demolition man, “Can you blow this without killing everyone inside?”
Studying the lock, he answered, “Piece of cake, sir.”
After moving the soldiers out of the way and having the captives gather at the far end of the cellblock, the door was blown with no trouble, and the people inside were freed. The occupants consisted mostly of county workers and their families who had taken refuge in the building. A bonus came when Jones found that an older, rather mousy looking woman was the County Clerk. They had her escorted down to where his men were searching the records room while the rest of the group was moved outside into the parking lot and fresh air.
As the last of them were filing over to where the medics waited to check them out, Cage overheard part of a conversation that Jones was having with a good looking brunette he was escorting.
“-and it seemed like something was directing them,” she said.
“Directing who?” Jones asked.
“The dead. It was like something was making them move around,” she replied.
Jones looked skeptical and the woman threw her hands up in the air and said mournfully, “No one believes me.”
Cage spoke up, “I might. Tell me what happened.”
Seeing Cage's rank, the woman clammed up. Shaking her head, she told him, “It was nothing. It only happened once anyway.”
“No, really,” Cage insisted. “Tell me what happened. Anything we learn about these things could end up saving the lives of my men.”
Reluctantly, the woman started talking. “I was up on the roof getting some air a few weeks ago, and I thought I heard the sound of a truck engine so I started looking around. I wanted to make sure someone was really out there before I said anything. I didn't want to get everyone's hopes up for nothing. But anyway, I look down at all those things wandering around in the parking lot. There must have been a couple hundred of them. All of the sudden they kind of formed up and started moving to the right. It wasn't anything organized or anything. They all just started moving that way.”
The woman pointed to the far side of the parking lot and then pointed to the near side as she added, “Then they all moved to this side. Once they were there, they all moved back to the far side. After that, they broke up and started milling around like they normally do. It was so eerie seeing them act like that. I felt like all the hair on my body was standing on end.”
Careful that she didn’t see them, Cage and Jones exchanged a look of disbelief after the woman finished her story, both knowing that the dead were only mindless pieces of meat wandering about in search of food. While they did congregate in groups, there was nothing organized about them. Unless they had a focus, like meat on the hoof, they spent most of their pathetic existence roaming about looking for something to shove in their mouths.
Jones gave a small shake of his head and shot Cage a look. To no one's surprise, since the dead had started coming back to life, mental illness had increased proportionately. The insanity and horror that everyone lived with, combined with a lack of food and water if you were trapped, often brought on hallucinations. Both Cage and Jones had rescued people who told them of seeing Jesus, the Devil, the Loch Ness monster and aliens landing in their backyard.
Jones laid his hand on the woman's arm and guided her toward the medics, leaving Cage standing near the shattered front doors of the City Hall as he planned their next move. Undisturbed by crazy tales of synchronized dead, his mind was already looking at a mental map of the town while he planned whe
re to have his scroungers search next.
Consumed by this task, the crazy story that the woman told him was quickly forgotten.
Chapter Sixteen
The Dead Calm:
Tick-Tock pointed to the empty slot in the velvet-lined case and said, “That's where the spare lens is supposed to be, but it's not there. This is fucked up. I should have checked it before we came out.”
Steve looked at the Calm of the Seas floating half a mile away and cursed Reverend Ricky. After receiving the sextant the previous day, he and Tick-Tock had given it a cursory inspection. Everything had appeared to be in order, and they laid plans to go out and get a fix on their position. This morning, they had taken The Usual Suspects far enough from the cruise liner so Tick-Tock could shoot the sun without interference. As soon as he held the sextant up to his eye though, he realized the lens was cracked. He assured Steve that this was not a major problem since all sextants came with a spare. Then it had become a problem.
“That bastard's got the spare lens,” Steve said vehemently. “I feel like going back and shaking it out of him. For some reason he's slow walking us and trying to keep us here.”
“Maybe he thinks you’re cute?” Tick-Tock suggested with a smirk.
“You're only funny to you, Tick-Tock,” Steve shot back.
Looking at the empty water stretching out around them, Tick-Tock said, “Well, it's too wet to plow and I can't dance, so unless you want to go fishing, we might as well head back. It'd be nice to know exactly where we are but I think I’ve estimated our position well enough to find land. Once we hit the coast, the charts we’ve got are accurate enough that it shouldn’t be a problem figuring out whether to go north or south.”
Still angry, Steve said, “Fuck that. I’d rather carve a new lens out of Ricky's fat ass.”
Tick-Tock laughed and said, “I know how you feel but you need to take it easy. You're the steady influence on our little group. If you go off half-cocked then we're screwed. We have to keep our priorities straight.”
Steve took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah, you’re right.” A thought suddenly struck him and he said, “Maybe that's what Ricky's trying to do. Provoke us into doing something so he can justify ordering his people to come down on us.”
Tick-Tock thought about this as he cranked the engine over. When it had warmed up, he slowly eased the throttle forward and said, “Kind of makes sense. But what's his end game? I mean, if he wanted to try and wipe us out, he could tell his people we were sent by Satan to drag their souls down to Hell or something. He could call down some kind of half-assed Christian jihad on our ass.”
Steve shook his head, “I don't know. Regardless of what Ricky wants, I think it's time we took off. We’ve got just about everything we can get from the ship, and I’m tired of playing games. Everyone's rested up, so let's go. We can make for land and try to find Corpus Christi or some other big city and see if we can find a military unit or someone in authority we can turn Cindy over to.”
Tick-Tock asked, “When do you want to leave?”
“No later than tomorrow morning,” he answered. “I’d prefer taking off as soon as we can get everyone's ass on board The Usual Suspects, but there's still a few things we need to take care of.”
“Like Ricky?” Tick-Tock asked.
Steve nodded. “We’ve got to at least warn his people that the ship's sinking. Heather wants to take Ricky out and so do I. If we get the chance, we'll go for it, but that'll be the last thing we do before we leave. Ricky definitely needs to go.” Steve laughed and added, “The population's been depleted so much that it means statistically there should be fewer assholes around. If we weed some more of them out now, the human race will be better off when it rebuilds. The world doesn't need people like Ricky around.”
“There will always be people like Ricky around, so why bother? Kill one and a dozen take his place,” Tick-Tock pointed out.
“Don't be such a downer, Francis,” Steve said with a smile.
Even though they were the only two on the boat, Tick-Tock cringed and looked around as if someone might have heard. “You promised you'd never let anyone know my real name.”
Innocently, Steve said, “But I didn't tell anyone that your name is Francis, Francis. It's just us out here.”
“You're an asshole.”
“So, are you going to help me take Ricky out and let his people know that the ship's sinking?” Steve asked. “Or do I tell Susan that your real name is Francis Aloysius Beauregard the Third?”
“You'd stoop to blackmail?” Tick-Tock asked, to which Steve grinned and nodded maliciously. Tick-Tock laughed and said, “I would've helped anyway.”
“I know,” Steve replied. “But I still have to give you a ration of shit now and then, Franc-.”
“Don't say it.” Tick-Took warned him, “Or you're taking a swim.”
The two men traded insults all the way back to the Dead Calm.
As Tick-Tock eased the sailboat up against the side of the ship, Steve had just finished telling him to learn Spanish so he could be lame in two languages when he noticed something that put a damper on their fun. Pointing at the gunwale of the sailboat, he said, “I didn’t see it when we left because we were jumping down, but I see it now. The ship has settled almost two feet since we first boarded her. Remember how we had to board her from the bow of the sailboat where it curves up? Now we can practically climb in from the side.”
Tick-Tock immediately saw the difference in height between the bottom of the hatch and the top of the gunwale and said, “That's not good. I'd say at the present rate, this baby's gonna start taking water on in a big way in about three or four days. After that, she'll go down fast.”
Looking at the hatch, Steve said, “That settles it, were not staying on board any longer than tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest, we’re out of here.” Steve eyed the remaining area between the water and where it would start pouring into the Dead Calm as he considered his decision. “That doesn't look like we’ve got a lot of room to play with. You think it'll stay afloat until tomorrow? You said it’d take two or three days to flood. Is that a guess?”
After considering the question, Tick-Tock replied, “Based on what I know about ships, unless something drastic fails we should be alright. These liners have dozens of safety features and hundreds of watertight compartments. Unless we hit an iceberg, we should be fine. From just looking around the parts of the ship we’ve been on, I’ve noticed that almost all the hatches are closed. That'll keep any flooding to a minimum. If we get a chance, we might want to check out the decks below four and see if they're flooded. We can't close this hatch though or we won't be able to get to the sailboat.”
Steve considered what he knew about ships and it concurred with what Tick-Tock said. He’d catch up with Brain later and ask him, just to be sure. As a precaution, he’d keep someone on board The Usual Suspects so they could cast off if the Dead Calm did start to go down. If the cruise liner sank, it would pull their only means of transportation with it.
Steve grabbed the case containing the sextant and went in search of Heather. He found her sitting with Mary and Sheila at one of the tables in the dining room and explained their problem. Pulling out the sextant to show her, he was interrupted by Mary who said, “What's the big deal, just grab another one. There's got to be at least a dozen of them.”
Exasperated, Steve held out the instrument and asked, “Do you even know what this is? It's a sextant. These aren't just lying around everywhere.”
“Maybe they're not lying around everywhere,” Mary shot back in a condescending tone, “but there's a whole bunch of them in a store called the Brass Eagle. I was just in there yesterday and saw them with my own eyes.”
Reciting from memory, Mary sounded like she was reading from a sales brochure, “Nautical sextant in designer display case. Sextant fashioned from solid brass with silver inlay. Hand tooled scene depicting a nineteenth century whaling ship on the cover. Nine hundred twenty-nine
dollars and ninety-eight cents. U.S. Dollars.”
Steve's mouth dropped open in shock. He looked at Heather, who was also awe struck, then turned back toward Mary when the ridiculousness of the situation hit him and started to laugh. First, they were trying to get a sextant and then worrying about finding a lens, when of all the people on board, Mary had come across a dozen on one of her shopping sprees.
He saw Mary getting angry at his laughter, so he said, “I'm not laughing at you, Mary. I swear I'm not. In fact you just earned your keep for this entire trip.”
Suddenly realizing what he'd just said and knowing that Mary would try to take advantage of it, he added, “I mean you've earned your keep up to now.”
Not exactly sure of what she'd done but wanting full credit for it, she replied, “It wasn't easy. I work hard at what I do.”
“Yeah, shopping,” Steve said. “But this time it looks like it paid off.”
Steve laughed again and Heather joined in. Seeing that Mary was starting to get angry again, he said, ''Take me to the Brass Eagle, Mary. You da bomb, baby.”
***
Brain followed the lithe figure down the darkened hall, concerned they were getting too far away from deck four. When the person in front of him told him there was a satellite radio stowed near the bridge, he hadn't hesitated to make the journey. He'd dropped everything to go in pursuit of the treasure. Now he wasn't so sure it was such a good idea. Even though there were only a few hundred of Reverend Ricky’s followers scattered about the ship, he expected to run into at least one of them by now. Instead, all the passageways were deserted. It was spooky.
Fingering the .45 caliber pistol in its holster at his hip, he realized that in his excitement they hadn't made an effort to conceal themselves. They had used the grand staircase instead of the elevator shaft to access the upper decks. Besides being worried about being spotted by Ricky’s people, now that he thought about it he wasn't sure if Susan and Cindy had seen them go, since they were watching the stairs on deck four. Thinking about it for a second, he realized the angle was wrong. No one could have seen that they left.
