Dead Meat | Day 5

by Clausen, Nick

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “How can a person with Alzheimer’s tell you anything about a virus then?”

  “It’s a little technical to explain.”

  “Try me—I had biology in college.”

  She says it as a joke, but Michael doesn’t seem to catch it. He leans forward.

  “Whatever this thing is, it’s clear that it’s affecting the brain. All other vital organs seem to shut down once the patient reaches the final stage. In fact, they begin decaying, just like the rest of the body. The blood more or less coagulates, the muscles atrophy, the bones even turn brittle. That’s why they have a hard time moving normally; for all intents and purposes, they’re corpses walking around.”

  Josefine feels an involuntary shiver.

  Michael is too busy talking to notice. “For some unknown reason, the virus is able to highjack the motor cortex and keep it running even after everything else has been shut down. That’s why it has zero effect when the police use rubber bullets and tear gas to try and pacify them. The only thing stopping an infected person is either damaging the brain or cutting it off from the rest of the nervous system.”

  Josefine flinches. “Do you mean, like … decapitation? That’s brutal! Has anyone done that?”

  Michael sends her a grim look. “I’ve heard some pretty gruesome stories. People get very creative when they’re trying to survive. One guy saw his neighbor use a tennis rachet to—”

  “I think I can do without the details.”

  “I get that. What I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t need to be anyway near that brutal.” He reaches over and places two fingers gently on the back of her neck. “You feel this? The soft spot right at the base of the skull? That’s where the connection to the brain is most vulnerable. A half-inch cut would probably do it.”

  He takes his hand away again and Josefine takes a second to rid that awful image from her mind. Then, she asks: “How do you feel about euthanasia?”

  He gives her a curious look. “I’m a doctor. My job is to keep people alive.”

  “I know, but … aren’t these people already dead?”

  “Clinically, yes. But we might need to redefine the term.”

  “Okay, but if we assume they are dead and that this virus is keeping them artificially alive, don’t you believe there comes a point where death is the merciful thing?”

  “Merciful to whom?”

  Josefine frowns and gestures towards the gurney. “The person suffering, of course. I mean, if there’s no cure …”

  “I’ve always opposed the thought of death as the easy way out,” Michael says. “But this is different. Here, we might need to do it to stop the virus from spreading any further.”

  Josefine considers it for a moment. “I think it still might be justified. You know, for the greater good.”

  “The thing is, we wouldn’t be doing it to ease their pain, but to save our own asses. Besides, you’d be talking about organized mass murder. The number I heard this morning suggested that almost a million people are now infected. By tomorrow it’ll likely be triple that. And once it really reaches mainland Europe, it’ll grow exponentially. Within a week, we’d have to orchestrate a genocide even the Nazis would’ve envied.”

  Josefine swallows dryly, then clears her throat. “But if they are … rotting, basically … won’t they eventually stop moving and die for real?”

  Michael shrugs. “It’s too early to tell. So far, there’s no signs of any of them slowing down, even in the first patients we restrained. The human body is a tough machine; it takes weeks for it to decompose completely, even after the respiratory and circulatory systems have ceased functioning.” He looks at the two bodies, and Josefine can tell from the way his cheek is moving that he’s biting down hard. “I don’t think waiting for the infected to die out will be a viable option. Just like putting down that many people won’t be possible, even if we wanted to.” He shakes his head slowly. “No, I’m telling you: a vaccine is our only hope. If we don’t find one very soon, there won’t be a happy ending for humanity.”

  ELEVEN

  Mille and Iver step inside the elevator, and Iver scans a card hanging from his hip, then presses a button. The elevator starts moving up.

  “You think your mom will let him out?” Iver asks.

  “No,” Mille says.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I could tell she understand the danger.”

  Iver doesn’t say anything, but he keeps looking at Mille sideways.

  She looks back at him. “What?”

  “It’s just … I didn’t feel good about leaving her to guard the door.”

  “Look, she’s a coward, but she wouldn’t risk other people’s lives,” Mille says, feeling suddenly and unexpectedly protective of her mother.

  “So you don’t think she might give in if he starts talking to her through the door?”

  “No. I trust her.”

  Mille hears the lie in her voice even as she speaks the words. And Iver hears it too, apparently, because he looks at her until the elevator stops. Mille makes a point to not look back. She believes her mother won’t open the door. No, she needs to believe it. Needs to believe that her mother is capable of doing something unselfish for once. Just this one time. That’s she’s not a complete and selfish narcissist.

  She glances at Iver and wants to say something, to tell him she’s sorry for snapping at him. But she doesn’t know how, and then the doors open and they step out into a wider hallway ending in a couple of double doors.

  Iver knocks on the door twice and opens it without waiting for an invite, waving Mille after him.

  The room must be the cockpit of the ferry—if that’s even the right word, Mille has no idea—and it’s impressively big. In the middle is a big control desk with all kinds of screens and buttons, and on three sides are tall windows showing the open sea and the dawning sky above.

  There are only two people in the room, both male, both dressed in white uniforms and ties. One is sitting by the desk, sipping from a mug of coffee; the other is standing off to the side, looking at his phone. The guy at the desk is young and heavyset, the guy checking his phone is older and has a grey, well-trimmed beard.

  “Darn it,” the older guy says. “It keeps telling me the app is already running, but it won’t open.”

  “Hi, Iver,” the chubby man says, raising his mug as a salute. “You found a friend who wants a look-see?”

  “Could you help me out here, Frederik?” the older man says with a grunt of annoyance, stilling looking at his phone. “I’ll never figure out this silly technology.”

  “Captain,” Iver says, turning to the older man. “I’m afraid we have a serious problem.”

  The man looks at him over rimless glasses. “So?”

  Iver takes a deep breath. “I believe … we believe … there’s a person aboard who’s infected with the Rhabdo-virus.”

  The guy with the coffee stands up, almost spilling coffee down his shirt.

  The older man doesn’t move a muscle; he just holds Iver’s gaze. “That’s not possible. We checked every last passenger before boarding.”

  “You didn’t check me,” Mille blurts out.

  Both men turn their eyes on her, and she feels an impulse to shrink back, but doesn’t.

  “You’ll excuse me for saying this, young lady,” the captain says in a still calm voice, “but you don’t look sick to me.”

  “It’s not me.”

  “It’s not her.”

  Mille and Iver speaks in unison.

  “It’s her stepfather,” Iver goes on. “He’s locked inside cabin B55.”

  The guy with the coffee looks from Iver to the captain and back again.

  The captain finally moves. He looks down at his phone again, and for a moment, it looks to Mille as though he’s simply going to continue doing what he was doing before they came in. But he puts away the phone after carefully shutting off the screen. Then he takes off his reading
glasses, folds them and places them in his breast pocket. He then comes, placing his hands casually on his hips. He’s older than Mille took him for—close to seventy, probably.

  He smiles a little when he looks at her. “What’s your name, young lady?”

  “Mille Klitgaard.”

  “I’m Carsten Sorensen, I’m the captain of this ship. This right here is Frederik, my second mate. So, what makes the two of you think that Mille’s—was it stepdad?—is suffering from the infamous virus?”

  Iver looks to Mille.

  “He was scratched by another infected person,” Mille says. “I saw it happen. He has a tear in his skin right here.” She taps her collarbone. “He’s already feverish. It’ll be a matter of fifteen to twenty minutes tops before he dies and—I mean, before he becomes contagious.”

  Mille realizes at the last second that explaining to the captain how things really work with the infected probably isn’t the right thing.

  “Back up a minute, please,” the captain says, waving his hand. “Where exactly did this happen? Where did your stepdad get this scratch?”

  “In Frederikshavn.”

  “There are no infected people in Frederikshavn. We checked with the authorities less than an hour before we took off. They wouldn’t have let us leave if the infection had reached Frederikshavn.”

  “Well, it has,” Mille says plainly.

  The captain moves his jaw in a peculiar thinking motion, then he looks at the second mate. “Call this in. Ask them if there’s been any infected people reported in Frederikshavn since we took off.”

  The second mate puts down his coffee and goes to another, smaller desk by the windows.

  “So, please carry on,” the captain encourages Mille. “Once you came aboard, what happened?”

  “I didn’t realize he was infected until we were already on the ship,” Mille goes on. “When I did, I tried to convince my mother that we needed to take it seriously, but … she didn’t really believe me. Then I found Iver and explained it to him. After that, I went back and locked my stepdad in his cabin.”

  The captain raises one bushy white brow. “You locked him in the cabin? How did you manage that?”

  “I barricaded the door using a cleaning trolley and some extension cord.”

  “That’s very resourceful of you,” the captain says, a tone of mild condescension in his voice. “Did your stepdad try to get out?”

  “Yes. He couldn’t.”

  “Is he alone in the cabin?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mentioned your mother—where’s she now?”

  “Outside the cabin. Guarding the door.”

  “And was it just the three of you who boarded together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anybody else been in close contact with your stepdad?”

  Mille thinks for a moment. “No.”

  “But you and your mother have?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmmm.”

  He eyes her with something Mille can’t quite read. She’s about to say something else when the second mate comes back and cuts in. “They said they’re just beginning to get calls about people being attacked in Frederikshavn, too.”

  “Darn it,” the captain says, much in the same tone of voice he used five minutes ago when he couldn’t get his phone to work. “I guess that settles it, then. We have to treat this as a possible outbreak of the virus aboard the ship.”

  Mille feels a deep pull of relief in her lower belly.

  “What … what do we do?” the second mate asks in a hoarse voice, looking at the captain like a small boy looks at his father.

  The captain turns his head and looks out the windows for a moment, as though the answer is out there amongst the waves. Then he takes a deep breath through the nose and begins speaking.

  “We need to get the infected person into proper isolation. Send medical personnel to move him to the ICU, then get them to confirm this is the virus. Make sure they understand the situation and take whatever precautions they need. Until we know for sure this is in fact the virus, we don’t mention that word to anybody who doesn’t need to know about it. The last thing we want is a panic spreading.”

  “Yes, sir,” the second mate says, reaching for his phone and calling up someone.

  “I … I don’t think that’s wise,” Mille says, frowning. “Sending someone to move him. You shouldn’t let anybody near him …”

  The captain doesn’t listen; he’s busy navigating something on the control panel.

  “Please listen to me,” Mille says, stepping closer, raising her voice. “Don’t send the doctors to check up on my stepdad; it’s too late anyway.”

  “We’ll let the medical professionals decide that,” the captain says without looking at her. “Please step aside.”

  Mille moves out of his way as he walks briskly to another desk.

  “They’re on their way,” the second mate reports, putting his phone away.

  “Good,” the captain says. “Now, please lock both doors to the cockpit, Frederik.”

  Iver frowns. “Excuse me, but why would you lock the doors?”

  “Because the four of us are quarantined starting five minutes ago.”

  The second mate, who was striding towards the door Mille and Iver came in through, now stops and turns around. “Wh-what?”

  “You heard me,” the captain says, still with a calm voice, but with an added tone of not inviting any backtalk. “These two young people might have brought the virus up here with them, and we could all be infected by now.”

  “No,” Mille says, shaking her head. “No, that’s not how it works.”

  “I’m sorry,” the captain says, turning away from her, “but I’m obliged to follow the guidelines put forth by the authorities.”

  “Listen, you’re completely missing the point! This is not the right way to deal with this …”

  “Frederik, the doors.”

  Before Mille can think, she steps out in front of the second mate, cutting him off. He recoils like she was a leper.

  “Listen to me!” Mille demands, almost shouting. “I know more about this than the damned authorities, I guarantee you that! I’ve seen this shit go down firsthand more than once!”

  All three of them look at her.

  Mille realizes there’s no other way than breaking the Z-word to the captain. So she addresses him: “Have you heard of zombies?”

  He frowns. “Zombies?”

  “Yes.”

  He shakes his head. “Can’t say I have.”

  “I have,” the second mate says, raising a hand in a schoolboy like motion. “They’re dead people coming back to eat the living.”

  “That’s right,” Mille nods.

  “Come now,” the captain says in that overbearing tone that’s starting to grind Mille’s gears. “You can’t expect me to believe—”

  “I’m not,” Mille cuts him off. “I don’t expect you to believe anything. ’Cause you haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

  Mille realizes her lips are shaking, and she takes a couple of breaths to steady herself.

  “To my knowledge,” the captain says calmly, “not a single person has died from the Rhabdo-virus yet.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Mille says plainly. “You heard about the school bus that was attacked the day before yesterday?”

  The second mate nods emphatically. The captain gives a single tip of his head.

  “Well, I was on that bus. And I’m the only one still alive. I saw most of my classmates die. One of them right in front of me.” Mille suddenly sees Mads’s face drift by and she blinks dazedly as she keeps talking. “He stopped breathing. His heart stopped beating. He was dead. If you’ve ever been close to a dead person, you know without a doubt they’re dead. And he stayed that way for maybe a minute. Perhaps two. It’s hard to tell. Then, he woke up again. But it wasn’t that he came back to life. He was still dead. Just, somehow, able to move. He attacked my friend and killed her almost instan
tly. She bled out in a matter of minutes. Then she woke up again, too. Started chasing other living people, I’m sure. By that time, I was unconscious. Someone else came by just in time and saved me.”

  She pauses, steadies herself and looks the captain squarely in the eye.

  “I don’t know if ‘zombies’ is the right term for the people infected, but I think it comes pretty close. Once you’re infected, it’s done. You’ll be dead within minutes. It can’t be treated; it can’t be cured. If we don’t handle this properly, everyone on this ship will die.”

  The captain looks at her for a couple of seconds. Then, he clears his throat. “I assure you, I’m taking it very seriously,” he says, a note of insult in his voice now. “This is my ship, and the thirty-two hundred passengers are my responsibility.”

  “Great, then make sure they get off this ship alive.”

  He crosses his arms. “Since you’re an expert on the subject, how do you suggest I do that?”

  “First off, don’t send anybody to look at my stepdad, and certainly don’t move him. No matter how cautious they’ll be, it’s too dangerous. Secondly, make sure there’s no way he gets out of that cabin. Seal the door properly and get somebody with weapons to guard it. Then turn the ship back and let the rest of the passengers off somewhere safe.”

  “And where would that be? Frederikshavn is now infected, and so are the rest of the major harbors. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get permission to board anywhere. The authorities simply wouldn’t let—”

  “Then don’t tell the authorities! All of these passengers deserve the chance to get off this ship, and not being trapped here waiting to get eaten alive!”

  The captain breathes deeply. Then he takes a step towards Mille. It’s not an aggressive gesture, but still Mille draws back a little.

  “I understand you’ve been through some terrible things,” he says, suddenly taking on a fatherly demeanor. “And I appreciate you trying to help. But there are protocols. And I’m obliged to follow them. End of discussion.” He turns to the second mate. “Now, close those doors, Frederik.”

  The second mate glances briefly at Mille, then nods and goes to the door. The captain turns towards the desk and picks up the radio.