“Yes... but why infect us in the first place? And why only some of us?” Reed asked.
“That’s impossible to say without knowing more about the symptoms and side effects of infection, sir. Assuming there even is an infection to speak of.”
“I want to speak with the survivors.”
“Of course. Who would you like to speak with?” Commander Wilde asked.
“Which of them made first contact?”
“The owner of the resort.”
Captain Reed nodded. “Then we’ll start with him.”
Chapter 23
Five days cooped up in a windowless metal box! Beth slowly shook her head. She was lying on the top bunk, facing the door. Her dad was sitting below her on the floor in front of his bed, the lowermost of the three bunks on their wall, while Don and Melanie had each taken the bottom bunks on the left and right walls respectively.
With nine beds per each of the three enlisted bunk rooms in the quarantine section, there were several empty bunks in each room, but that did nothing to alleviate Beth’s claustrophobia. Doctor Wilde called the bunk rooms coffin lockers, and he wasn’t far off. That’s exactly what they looked like. Beth couldn’t imagine nine people crammed into one of these rooms night after night on long deployments. Although sailors probably got to spend most of their time doing stuff in other parts of the ship, not just cooped up in their rooms.
A knock sounded on the door, interrupting Beth’s pity party. The door opened, and two men in Marine uniforms walked in. Both of them had guns holstered at their hips, their hands resting lightly on the butts of those weapons as they stepped into the bunk room. Bill noticed that they wore surgical masks and blue nitrile gloves. Both of them hesitated in the open doorway.
Don climbed out of his bunk and asked, “What’s going on, Private?”
“Please step back, sir,” one of them said; then he glanced down at Melanie who was still lying in her bunk. “You, too, ma’am.”
Melanie climbed out, but neither she nor Don made any move to back up. “Is everything okay?” Melanie asked.
“Just fine, ma’am, but for security reasons, I need you both to step back.”
“Security...” Melanie trailed off.
“Now, please.”
Beth’s brow furrowed. Now they were being treated like criminals. Maybe they really were prisoners.
Don took three steps and nearly stood on Bill’s toes. Melanie reluctantly followed.
Beth’s dad rose to his feet just as she was climbing down from her bunk.
“What’s with the guns?” she asked.
“Just a precaution, ma’am.”
“The room is secure!” the second Marine called out in a loud voice.
And a moment later, two decorated Navy officers walked in, also wearing masks and blue nitrile gloves.
“A captain... and a commander,” Don said slowly.
“Captain Reed,” the taller of the two said. “And this is my XO, Commander Morris.”
“Are we being released?” Don asked.
“Not yet,” the captain replied. He had dark brown eyes and a deep voice. “We have some questions we’d like to ask.”
Beth glimpsed her dad shaking his head. “We’ve already told Doctor Wilde everything....” he trailed off.
“Humor me,” Captain Reed said. “Who’s the owner of the Koa Kai resort?”
Beth’s dad stepped forward, brushing past Don and Melanie. “I am.”
“Very well. Could you please recount for me what happened when you made first contact with the aliens?”
Beth listened as her dad recounted the experience of being pinned in place by one of the aliens and then subjected to mouth-to-mouth with one of its feet. He described the sensation of something cold, wet, and sweet entering his mouth.
“Interesting,” the captain replied in a flat tone that betrayed neither the surprise nor the disgust that Beth expected. “Has anyone else here had the same experience?”
Melanie stuck up her hand. “I did.”
“I see, and would you say that your experience matched what Mr. Steele described?”
“Yes,” Melanie replied in a tight voice. Her nose wrinkled and her upper lip curled. She looked like she was about to be sick.
“Any symptoms since then?” the captain asked, his eyes darting between them.
“Just one,” Beth’s dad replied.
The captain cocked his head curiously, waiting for him to go on.
“Sleepwalking,” he explained.
“Sleepwalking?” the captain asked. His gaze flicked to Melanie. “Is this something you’ve experienced as well?”
She shook her head. “I just have nightmares.”
Don spoke up, “He’s up and walking around three times a night, bumping into things and muttering to himself.”
“What does Commander Wilde have to say about that?”
Don’s lips curved dryly. “PTSD.”
The captain stood silent for a long moment. Before he could say anything else, a loud bell sounded repeatedly from overhead speakers, followed by a voice: “This is not a drill, this is not a drill, general quarters, general quarters, all hands to action stations!”
Captain Reed and his XO looked like they’d just been struck by lightning. They hurried from the room, vanishing in an instant. The two Marines were slower to exit, keeping eyes on Bill and the others as they backed out and shut the door with a metallic clunk.
“What’s happening?” Beth asked in the ringing silence that followed.
“The ship’s getting ready for battle,” Don replied.
* * *
“Captain on deck!”
“At ease. Report,” Reed said as he entered the CIC.
“The spacecraft is moving away from the island, sir,” an officer reported. Reed recognized him as the officer in charge of detecting and tracking air contacts, although technically this was a space contact. “Admiral Harris has ordered the fleet to spread out and prepare to engage.”
Reed traded glances with his XO.
“Why move away now?” Commander Morris asked quietly.
“Maybe they’ve accomplished whatever they came here to do,” Reed replied. To the rest of the crew, he said, “Carry on. If anyone needs me, I’ll be on the bridge.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Reed and his XO took the stairs two at a time on their way up to the bridge. As soon as Reed opened the door, he saw what was happening in the sky. The sun came creeping out from behind a sheer black spacecraft, casting a brilliant swath of light across the island. Sunlight raced across the water to greet them, and soon everyone on the bridge was squinting against the glare of broad daylight.
Reed hurried to the forward viewports and peered into the sky. Fluffy white clouds obscured some of the details, but in the gaps he could see a smooth dark surface scrolling across the sky. He hoped that meant there weren’t any alien guns aiming down on them, but that was probably asking too much.
“Where are they headed?”
“Due south, sir,” the OOD, Lieutenant Peterson, reported.
“There’s nothing out there but open ocean,” Reed replied, staring warily at the trailing edge of the massive ship as it slid across the sky. “Where the hell are they going?”
Chapter 24
—48 Hours Later—
“They left their people behind to die,” Captain Reed said, slowly shaking his head. “And then they vanished into thin air somewhere over the Pacific. None of this makes any sense, Mike.”
Commander Michael Morris frowned at him across the small table in Reed’s quarters. “It’s a mystery, that’s for sure, sir.”
Reed took a sip from a steaming mug of black coffee and winced as it burned his tongue.
Nearly the entire fleet had moved on without them to chase the alien ship across the ocean, only to watch a day later as satellites showed it vanishing into thin air. The Port Royal had been left behind to supervise ground operations on Kauai. So far thirty-two
landing capsules had been found, and twenty-nine alien bodies recovered—all of them dead and being dissected by military and civilian doctors in a quest for answers. UV radiation exposure was their current best guess for the cause of death—meaning that they’d somehow all died of a severe sunburn. Theorists speculated that was why they’d eclipsed the island to begin with, and why they hadn’t landed over the mainland or some other continent. They’d been trying to protect their people on the ground from the sun. But if that was the case, why the hell didn’t they just wear spacesuits, and furthermore, why not wait to recover their people before moving off?
Reed’s own conclusions were troubling at best. “The ones who came down were obviously disposable,” he said, peering over the rim of his coffee mug at his second in command.
“I agree,” Commander Morris replied.
“And the fact that they left the island suggests that they already accomplished their mission—whatever the hell that was. What’s the current count for survivors of direct encounters? Two, three hundred?”
“Last I heard it was up to three-forty something.”
“Okay, so they come here, traveling who knows how many miles; they block out the sun, land operatives, and target select individuals to contaminate with an unknown pathogen.”
“One that’s asymptomatic,” Morris added.
“So far,” Reed replied, before taking another sip of his coffee. “I don’t like it. I want them off my ship. The CDC is better equipped to test them, and the whole island is under quarantine anyway.”
“So are we,” Morris said. “As far as anyone is concerned, we’re equally compromised. We sent recon teams and one of them has been bunking with those civilians for the past week.”
“We’ve taken precautions,” Reed replied. “There’s a good chance none of us is infected outside the quarantined section.”
“What about the surviving Crawler in the brig?”
Crawler was the media’s nickname for the aliens. “The Admiral wants us to hold onto it,” Reed replied. “But the civilians can leave.”
“And our people in the quarantine section?”
“They’ve all been exposed, so they’ll have to go, too.”
Morris looked uncertain.
“Something on your mind, Mike?” Reed asked.
“We might need Commander Wilde and Chief Miller on board if we have been compromised. Besides Corpsmen Reese and Diaz, they’re the only medical staff we have.”
“We’ll make do. Right now Wilde and Miller are a bigger risk to us than I care to take. Give the order. I want them all off my ship before the next watch.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Fresh, warm air whipped past the boat as it skipped over the water toward a familiar beach. Apprehension swirled in Beth’s gut. The prospect of returning to her dad’s resort, the scene of a massacre, seemed far less terrifying in broad daylight, but she still shuddered to think about what awaited them there. Who was going to clean up and remove the bodies?
No one spoke as they came ashore—much less the surly Marine at the back of the zodiac. He clearly didn’t like being exiled to shore along with them.
Within minutes, the beach scraped the keel tube of the boat, and they piled out over the bow. Beth’s sandals slapped wet sand as she jumped out. Another four boats roared up to either side of them, and more people clambered out. Like Beth, most of them wore borrowed blue and gray, camo-patterned Navy uniforms. She spied the familiar faces of James and his family, then Melanie, followed by the other widow, Avery Walsh, a tall woman with designer sunglasses. Beth looked away, shielding her eyes from the sun as she peered up at the Koa Kai.
Marines streaked by, dragging their boats far up the beach, followed by Doctor Wilde with his gray crewcut and ambling gait. When he reached the tail end of the nearest boat, he turned to address them. He wore a troubled frown on his wrinkled face. His younger assistant, Chief Miller, came to stand beside him, and the four Marines who’d rescued Bill and the others took up flanking positions. They held their rifles at the ready, eyes scanning the shrubbery that hedged the beach, and the grassy palm-lined path leading up to the Koa Kai.
“All right, listen up,” Commander Wilde said. “We’re all stuck here for the time being, but Mr. Steele has graciously offered to provide free lodging for all of us at his resort.”
“What about food!” one of the survivors asked.
Beth glanced at him. She recognized Allen immediately. He was a short, balding man with dark hair and a smooth, baby face that made him look younger than his forty-two years of age. Allen was an accountant from Jamestown, Virginia, on vacation by himself to clear his head after a messy divorce.
“The government will provide rations to the island for as long as the quarantine lasts,” Commander Wilde replied.
“I have two kids waiting for me back in Virginia,” Allen added.
“And they’ll still be waiting for you when the quarantine is lifted, but right now, they’ll be much better off with you and everyone else on this island safely isolated.”
Loud grumbling issued from the group. “When will the quarantine be lifted?” James demanded.
“When the CDC decides it’s safe,” Wilde replied.
Silence rang like a bell as everyone absorbed the implications of an indefinite stay on Kauai.
“I don’t want to go back there,” a small, broken voice said. It was Avery.
“No one wants to go back,” James added.
“It’s not the same!” she screamed. “You didn’t lose your whole family. I did!”
The group broke into a loud argument as people shared fractured accounts of their own experiences. Commander Wilde just stared at them with a deepening frown, waiting for the chaos to subside.
Beth’s dad stuck his thumb and index finger in his mouth and whistled sharply for attention. The arguments stopped, and he raised his voice: “You’re all free to look for alternate accommodations! But for those who can’t afford it, or who would rather not suffer the expense, my offer stands.”
“Thank you, Mr. Steele,” Wilde added. “I’m sure everyone appreciates your generosity.”
“What about the bodies? Who’s going to remove them and clean up the blood?” another survivor, the resort’s chef, Jenna Jones, asked. She was a tall blonde woman with green eyes and a golden tan. Her gaze flicked to the other two survivors, both local islanders who’d been working as housekeepers at the resort. Beth recognized them as Hanna Kahele and Akela Smith. The tourists began staring expectantly at them as well.
Akela shook her head. “We not goin’ ta clean dat shit!”
“Then who is? Us?” James demanded.
The group burst into loud arguing once more, and Commander Wilde raised his voice. “Settle down! The CDC will handle clean-up if they haven’t already. Now, please wait here while we clear the area.” Turning aside to one of the flanking sets of Marines, the commander nodded and said, “Corporal Gibson, would you please scout ahead and report back?”
“Happy to, sir,” Gibson said. He made a hand gesture to the Marine standing beside him and raised his rifle to his shoulder, heading for the palm-lined pathway. Both men strode up the path, quickly disappearing over the top of the stairs that led from the surf and snorkel hut to the pool area.
Beth wondered if Melanie’s husband was still floating in the pool, and with that thought she remembered who else was missing—her boyfriend, Toby. During her stay on the Port Royal it had been easy to imagine that he’d run away to safety somewhere in town—to his house, maybe—but now doubt wormed through her thoughts, whispering darker possibilities. She nudged her dad in the ribs. “What about Toby?”
He turned to her with a furrowed brow. “What about him?”
“Who do I ask about him? If someone cleaned up already, how do I know if he’s...” she swallowed. “How do I know if he was one of the ones who died?”
Bill sucked in a breath and blew it out slowly. He wrapped an arm aro
und her shoulders and squinted up at his resort. “We’ll ask around, but for now let’s assume he escaped.”
“Okay.” Beth nodded agreeably, trying to do just that.
Chapter 25
Beth spent the next half an hour sweating through her baggy uniform under the umbrella-shaded loungers at the top of the beach, waiting with her dad and everyone else for the Marines to return. Doctor Wilde and Chief Miller passed out bottles of water while the other two Marines kept watch. Beth emptied her water in minutes and promptly wished she hadn’t—she needed to pee, and the only bathroom anywhere nearby with running water was the ocean. Beth stared over the sun-spackled tips of gentle swells, wishing she could be out there on her surfboard.
By the time the Marines came tromping back down the beach, Beth’s bladder was bursting.
“How’d it go?” Commander Wilde asked.
“All clear, sir. No contact,” Corporal Gibson replied.
“Bodies?”
“None. Blood’s everywhere, though. Easy enough to clean off tiles, but the carpets are done.”
“What about the pool?” Bill asked.
The corporal’s gaze darted to them. “It’ll have to be drained and scrubbed.”
Wilde nodded to the group. “All right, let’s move out and get settled. Mr. Steele will be in charge of room assignments, so if you have any concerns about that, you can talk to him.”
“What about the plumbing?” Beth asked, squirming from a sharp stab of pain in her lower abdomen.
The commander’s grizzled eyebrows formed a peak in the center. “What about it?”
Bill explained, “Our main water line burst before all of this began. The plumbers went out to get supplies and never came back.”
“I see,” Commander Wilde replied. “Don’t worry, we’ll get it done. What was your vacancy at the time of the incident, Mr. Steele?”
“Twenty-five percent.”
“And how many rooms at the Koa Kai?”
“One hundred and twenty.”
Under Darkness (A Sci-Fi Thriller) (Scott Standalones Book 1) Page 9
